Page 62 of The Botanist's Assistant
“An accident?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“With what? By whom?” Sterling pales.
“With atropine,Atropa belladonna. Most likely in hisscotch, which he drank sometimes to celebrate a success,” Margaret answers. “And the ‘who’ is why I’m here.”
“He was murdered?” Emotions swirl over Sterling’s face.
“That’s what I suspect, although the police have refused a toxicology screen, which would prove my theory.”
Margaret gives Sterling a few moments to let the news sink in. She’s sure that, as a biochemist, Sterling understands that Dr. Deaver suffered a horrible death.
“Shall I tell you what I know?” Margaret asks.
Sterling is staring out the window as if in another place.
“Professor Sterling?”
Sterling shakes herself out of her thoughts. “Oh yes. Of course. Please.”
Margaret tells her everything: Dr. Deaver’s dilated pupils, the disordered room, the unbuttoned shirt and open windows, the note on the computer, the scotch and Diet Coke bottles.
“Jon didn’t drink Diet Coke,” Sterling interrupts.
“That’s exactly my point,” Margaret says.
She notes that Sterling’s knowledge of Dr. Deaver’s habits indicates a relationship beyond work colleagues. She goes on to describe the missing cocktail glass, the campus police officer’s lazy efforts, the dean’s attempt to cover things up, the availability of atropine in the lab plus the appearance of the wolfsbane stem.
“Sometimes, as they say, the simplest answer is the best, but, in this case, I think not,” Margaret says. “I believe there are two people who might have wanted Dr. Deaver dead.”
“Who are they?” Sterling breathes.
“I slandered someone before and don’t want to do thatagain. I think your answers, however, might point me in the right direction.”
“Go on, then.”
“Maybe you could start by telling me how you and Dr. Deaver met.”
“If it will help.” Sterling’s lower lip trembles but she brings it under control. “I was just starting here and I saw that he was doing a talk for transfer and reentry students, and I was intrigued.”
Margaret remembers Dr. Deaver mentioning the talk. It was to be about the early history of plants as medicine, from the Chinese in 3000 BCE who used the ephedra plant (ma huang) to treat fevers to Egyptian physicians in the first and second centuries who dispensed senna pods to cure constipation and which remain part of some laxatives today.
“Usually, professors of his stature don’t do those kinds of things. They tend to save their lectures for benefactors and big audiences,” Sterling says. “I decided to attend. He was funny and brilliant and open, and the students loved him. Afterward, I went up to tell him how much I admired what he’d done. He asked what I was working on and when I told him, he said he’d love to hear more. We went for coffee and talked for three hours. He was an amazing scientist.”
“Yes, he was,” Margaret says almost to herself. Despite some of the things she’d learned, no one could doubt Dr. Deaver’s science.
“Then, we…” Sterling hesitates.
“Became lovers?” Margaret finishes.
One cannot be a botanist and be a prude. Not after youlearn how sunflowers pollinate themselves by curling parts oftheir pistils around their stamens and that four-wing saltbushes will change genders after a drought or sudden freeze.
“Well, yes,” Sterling says. “But it wasn’t like that. He was going to marry me.”
“After his divorce.”
“Of course. It wasn’t just us, however. He and his wife had been having trouble for a while. In fact, she was the one who first suggested divorce. She only got angry when Jon jumped the gun and filed before her. I told Jon he was risking a long, drawn-out fight and that he should be more generous. Veronica Ann had hired this barracuda of a lawyer, and I told Jon she would bleed him dry. Besides, he could afford a lot more alimony, especially after he went to work for my father.”
