“That would be great, thanks. It’s been a pleasure meeting you.” He shook her hand heartily. “I’m sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”
Peggy agreed. She walked back with him to the auditorium parking lot. Hal Samson was exactly the kind of man she should be interested in, if she was ever interested in a man again. He was a few years older than her. Intellectual. His clothes were a little messy, but she wasn’t exactly neat herself, especially when she was working.
But where was that little spark when they parted company at his gray Volvo? There was no flutter when he waved to her from behind the window. She watched him drive away and sighed. She just wasn’t ready yet.
PEGGY TOOK OFF HER GLASSES and rubbed her eyes. It was two A.M. She’d spent the last three hours searching through her files for any new information she might’ve missed about treating anemonin poisoning.
Despite frequent updates from her colleagues in the study of poisonous plants, there was no new research on
Trying to get the thoughts of death out of her mind, Peggy did what every gardener does when they can’t sleep: She took out her seed catalog. Scarlet runner beans and pink hibiscus were always soothing. She was thinking about planting some lilac bushes in her yard, even though they didn’t do as well in the warm, damp Southern climate.
Despite the bright pictures, she couldn’t focus on the catalog. The day’s events weighed heavily on her mind, especially the dead man on the floor in her shop. There were so many unanswered questions.
If Mark Warner were a little less of a celebrity around town, she wouldn’t have known him. He wasn’t there the few times she’d been at the Warners’ home. But there were so many newspaper articles about him; he was almost as familiar as the mayor.
She suddenly remembered that a beautiful woman was at his side when he came to Brevard Court those warm fall days. She’d seen them together a few times in the shop. The pair didn’t act businesslike toward each other: heads bent close together, stroking each other’s arms. And the woman dressed a little expensively for a personal assistant.
Of course, everyone had heard the gossip about the Warner family. Rumor had it that Julie and Mark both fooled around on the side. Maybe those rumors colored her thinking about the man.
While Al’s idea that Mark got locked in the shop by accident was ludicrous, what if he was purposely hiding? Was it possible that he planned to meet the tall brunette there after the shop closed? She’d have to check with Keeley and Sam to see if they were there the night before. They sometimes dropped off plants and supplies at night. Maybe they saw or heard something.
Peggy shook her head and flipped a page in the spring catalog without seeing it. That didn’t make any sense either. The Potting Shed was too small for her not to notice if someone was still there when she closed up. And a man in Warner’s position wouldn’t skulk around in a garden shop waiting to be locked in. He’d simply arrange to meet the woman at a friend’s house or a hotel.
Yet there he was lying dead in her shop. While none of the hypotheses made any sense, the result was incontrovertible.
A tiny chime sounded from a clock on the mantel across the bedroom. She jumped up and fumbled around for her slippers. With her glasses in one hand, she ran down the broad spiral staircase that led to the ground floor.
The house was chilly, as always, when the weather got cool. John had frequently complained about the quirks and problems of living in a big, rambling house from the turn of the century. Upkeep was ridiculous and sometimes improbable.
But Peggy loved the old house. She loved the feel of the cool marble stairs on her feet in the summer. She loved all the nooks and crannies. She kept a thirty-foot blue spruce growing in the entrance hall. Each room in the house had a fireplace. The ceilings were still the original plaster.
But the basement was her passion. Here she dabbled and played with Mother Nature. In her botanical lab, she cross-pollinated and modified, looking for new varieties of plant life for pleasure as well as medicinal purposes.
The basement sprawled the length and width of the entire house, but it still wasn’t enough room for her pets. It opened into an acre garden that she cultivated by the season. Here she produced a black rose last summer. Under a two-hundred-year-old oak with branches thicker than her body, she grew purple mushrooms. Two years ago, she produced a small green melon that tasted exactly like a peach.
Tonight, she was going to view her night-blooming water lily for the first time. It was named Antares for the largest red star in the constellation Scorpius. A friend of hers who worked at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania sent it to her last month. She put it in her indoor pond and was quickly rewarded with gorgeous dark green and purple leaves.
An array of various heat lamps and ultraviolet lights guided her way through her experiments. She caught her breath when she saw the lily. It was as wide as a dinner plate. Its velvety scarlet petals were reflected in the filtered water where it floated. She immediately took out her camera and notebook. Then she pulled up her sleeves and started in on the real work. She was hoping to create the first rose to only bloom at night.
PEGGY DIDN’T LOOK UP AGAIN until she heard the doorbell ring at eight-thirty. She was wet from working in the pond and covered with dirt. “And that would be the police,” she muttered to herself as she put the teakettle on to boil.
She never actually went to sleep last night. She took off her gloves, brushed the loose dirt from her pants, and looked at herself in the antique mirror that hung in the foyer.
Her green eyes seemed greener the last few years, more summer green than spring. She had more white in her hair. Like being blond from the summer sun, only older. The color ran out of her hair after John died. Until then, the red only had traces of white through it.
She touched the fine lines that ran from her eyes and mouth, not willing to spend the time or money to make them less noticeable. She still had a strong chin, like her mother. And too many damn freckles! Pushing her shoulders back under her purple sweater, she opened the door.
