“Let’s say there is alcohol in Warner’s body. What does that prove?” Paul argued. “Alcohol didn’t kill him. A shovel did.”
“Yes, and alcohol doesn’t kill a drunk driver,” Peggy persisted, “the car does. But alcohol is a contributing factor. Someone may have given him a drink without his knowledge to make it easier to kill him.”
“That isn’t police thinking. You aren’t a police officer or a homicide detective.” He put down his coffee mug and got to his feet. “It’s late. I’m exhausted. Promise me you’ll throw this stuff away and not go any further with this.”
Peggy’s eyes were like shards of bright green glass. “I can’t do that, Paul. If there’s a chance I can help Mr. Cheever with this, I will. You could be more useful, since
“I’m going home.” He glanced at Mai. “I’d like to talk to you outside for a minute.”
Mai stood up. “Sure. I’m on my way out anyway.”
Peggy waited until her son stepped outside, then faced Mai. “I won’t blame you if you don’t want to go any further with this. I probably had no right to ask you in the first place.”
“Whatever! Like I’m going to let him tell me what to do! He’s a badass rookie cop. I have three years of experience in forensics. I outrank him technically. Don’t worry about it. I have a day off and a friend at the state crime lab in Raleigh. I’ll run this up to him, and we’ll see what happens. It might not be anything.”
“I realize that.” Peggy hugged her. “Thanks for trying. And don’t let that blowhard intimidate you.”
Mai made a strange whooping sound in the back of her throat and assumed a martial arts stance. “I saw this on TV the other night. Impressive, huh?”
Peggy laughed and saw her to the door. She started clearing away the coffee cups when she noticed that Mai left her gloves behind. She hurried to the kitchen door and poked her head out into the frosty night to see if the other woman was gone.
Instead, she found Mai and Paul engaged in a passionate kiss against the brick wall. Mai’s boots were barely touching the frozen ground, and Paul’s face was hidden by her hair. Neither one of them noticed when Peggy opened and closed the door.
“That’s interesting,” she told Shakespeare. “I think we’ll leave them alone. It would be good for both of them to have something besides their work.”
Shakespeare looked like he understood. He waited for Peggy to put the cups in the dishwasher, then followed her into the basement.
Peggy’s first attempt at a night-blooming rose was a dismal failure. The graft wouldn’t take, and the plant died. She noted it and tried again. The water lily was doing very well. It seemed to like her little pond. Her six-foot angel’s trumpet was blooming, six, waxy white hanging flowers perfuming the air.
She put on gloves to gather pollen from the stamen and harvest a few seeds. She was working on a fast- acting antidote to angel’s trumpet poison she hoped would someday find its way to pet store shelves. Thousands of animals were attracted to the plants and died from its toxin.
After watering the plants that were dry and logging in her results from all of her work, she crept slowly up the basement stairs. She’d never considered an elevator for the old house. But necessity might make her think about it. Someday. Not right now. Her knee was feeling better. She wasn’t old enough or dysfunctional enough to need help yet.
She went up to her bedroom with the dog at her heels. He jumped on the bed as she changed clothes. “I don’t think that’s going to work.” She grabbed a couple of large floor pillows she used for decoration and threw them on the carpet next to her bed. “There you go. Down boy. Down Shakespeare. Come on. On the pillows. Get down.”
The big mouth was grinning and slobbering. The tail was thumping the mattress. The more she called him, the more excited he got. Finally, she gave up and promised she was going to buy a book about dog training.
Peggy glanced at her computer. She hated not to log on and collect her messages. One of them might be from Nightflyer. Not that she wanted to answer it. She lost the debate with herself, sat down in the chair, and booted up her computer.
There were 215 messages. Some of them were spam, but she’d installed a good spam blocker a few months ago, so it caught most of them. Only one message asked her if she was ready to refinance her mortgage. Then there were the obligatory ads that either wanted to enlarge her penis or her breasts. She trashed those and went on.
The rest of the raw autopsy data from Hal Samson was waiting for her. She didn’t want to look at it until morning. Unlike the Warner case, there was no suspect in the Columbia poisoning. No one’s life was at stake since the poor girl was already dead. She could relax and go through the details later.
There was one message from Nightflyer. He wanted to meet her for chess at midnight. She glanced at her watch. It was almost two A.M. Surely he wouldn’t wait that long for her.
She logged on at the site and waited for a partner. Since the players were located all over the world, there were always people waiting to play. The chat box showed two of them from New Guinea who were already engaged.
The statement always meant a clearing of the screen and insertion of the chessboard. She tapped her fingers on the desk and bit her lip. She knew she shouldn’t stay. Wasn’t she worried enough yesterday to ask for Al’s help?
She looked at the words in the chat box and answered.
