Page 42 of The Botanist's Assistant
Had Dr. Deaver plucked and deflowered this vulnerable young woman, or had she fallen under Dr. Deaver’s spell as many did and assumed a relationship that wasn’t there? The note was unclear, but she had a sinking feeling.
“There’s another Deaver note on the back,” Joe said.
Margaret turned the paper over. “Convallaria majalis,” she read out loud.
“What’s that?”
“Lily of the valley, a woodland plant with a pretty scent but, because of its concentration of cardiac glycosides, also highly poisonous. Sometimes people put it in wedding bouquets, which I don’t think is the best portent for a marriage,but nobody asked me. They might as well carry a sign:Trouble Ahead.”
She knew she was going on, but she needed to drown outthe riot of doubts that had begun gathering in her head and shouting slogans like, “What Else Did He Keep from You?” and “I Thought He Respected Women.”
“So, pretty but dangerous. Is that what Deaver was trying to say?” Joe asked.
Margaret let out a sigh. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“This could point to motive on the wife’s part,” Joe said. “If this Lillie called her, the wife might have accepted it and forgiven him—some women do—but then, when he filed for divorce, whether it was the young woman or not, she lost it. She was about to lose her comfortable life, and you said she was a chemist so she would have known about atropine and probably had a key to his office. She could have gotten into that cabinet you talked about.” He was rolling now. “Then she could have forged his initials in case someone got suspicious and ordered a tox screen. That way it would look like suicide.”
He snapped his fingers. “Did she drink Diet Coke?”
“I don’t know,” Margaret said.
She didn’t know anything at the moment. Facts twisted and turned. Details arrived, then disappeared.
“We could go look in the wife’s recycling for Diet Coke bottles,” Joe said.
“I guess we could.”
Joe set down the notebook. “You’re right. I’m getting way ahead of myself. I do that sometimes. We should make a real plan.”
Would she soon be digging through someone’s trash orgetting in touch with this Lillie person pretending to be…what? A polltaker asking about her position on affairs with married men?
Margaret’s stomach rumbled, the release of the hormone ghrelin notifying her stomach and intestines that she’d missed her dinner. The body was full of noises: creaks and pops and grumbles. They never bothered her.
“You’re right,” Joe said as if answering her digestive tract. “I should get back to work and you can get home to eat. We can check in tomorrow. There’s lots more to investigate, including who stole that last research book and what could have been in it.”
Now here is the cat, wanting dinner just as she wants hers.
“Just a minute,” she tells the feline, closing the door against a gust of wind that sends raindrops pelting a side window.
She returns with a clean bath towel, unfolds it near the throw rug at her front door and invites the cat inside.
He steps into the room as if he is a guest arriving at his favorite hotel.
“Sit there.” She points at the towel. “I’ll get you some food, then start a fire. I don’t want mud all over my floor.”
The cat sits and Margaret goes to her cupboard. There’d been a sale on tuna fish, five for five dollars, and she opens a can, then sets it in front of the feline. Maybe she will have a tuna fish sandwich for her own dinner.
The cat sniffs at the food as if judging its quality, then digs in while Margaret sets herself to fire making. She lays out two oak logs as a base, crosses two pieces of pine over it, stuffs afire-starter stick and kindling beneath the pine and strikes a match. Flames soon lick the wood in a hungry but satisfying way. She checks the cat. He is next to the empty tuna can licking a paw.
“Here, let me do that,” she says.
It takes her twenty minutes to rub off the mud and scissorthe burrs from the hunter’s fur. He looks better but she can do little about his scars. She peers more closely at the cat’s closed eye but can’t tell if there’s been an injury or if it’s infected. Should she apply some topical antibiotic and see what happens?
She runs a hand over the cat, checking for burrs and tangles she missed. When she draws her hand down the length of its back and up its tail the second time, it arches to meet her touch. From inside the little animal comes a low rumble, like the soft snore of a contented sleeper. The little feline gets up and goes to sit by the fire.
“You’re welcome,” she says.
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