Pretty Poison

Shakespeare off at her house after he had a short romp in the yard.

Mai was waiting in the parking lot when they pulled up. She stared at Steve, then pulled Peggy aside and hissed, “He shouldn’t be here. This is too important!”

“He pretty much knows everything about the case,” Peggy assured her. “He’s okay. I trust him.”

“Okay.” She glanced at him, still not happy with it. “I don’t think you were followed. I didn’t see anyone behind you when you pulled in. Did you?”

“Why didn’t we meet at my house or your apartment?” Peggy tried to get at the heart of the matter.

“Because Paul or someone else on the job might show up at either place. This has to be kept secret for now. We’re the only ones who can know.”

They went inside and sat down at a secluded back booth. An irritated waitress took their orders for coffee and hurried off.

“What makes you think someone would follow me?” Peggy asked Mai when the waitress was gone. The whole thing was comical except for the terrible look of anxiety on Mai’s face.

“When you know what I know, you’ll understand why we have to be careful.” She looked at Steve again, sighed, then plunged into her disclosure. “Mark Warner wasn’t drinking, he was poisoned.” Her voice was almost too quiet to be heard across the table.

Peggy sat forward. “Are you sure?”

Mai nodded and glanced uneasily around the restaurant. “My friend in Raleigh finished the tests tonight. Warner had enough pure protoanemonin in his system that he would’ve died without being hit in the head with the shovel.”

“Protoanemonin?” Steve asked. “What’s that?”

“The poisonous part of the anemone plant,” Peggy explained, stunned by the discovery. “In its purest form, anemonin depresses circulation and respiration by paralyzing the motor centers in the brain.”

“Right,” Mai agreed. “I looked it up. It’s rare. Hard to come by. How would Mark Warner have come in contact with it?”

“I imagine someone gave it to him. If it’s done right, it’s the perfect poison. It’s tasteless and odorless. The purer the crystal specimen, the less likely it would cause vomiting if it was swallowed. And no convulsions before death. It would appear as though the person was asleep.” Peggy considered what Mr. Cheever told her. “Yet that could account for the odd behavior that made Keeley think Mark had been drinking.”

Peggy didn’t mention the poisoning in Columbia, though she immediately considered it. How odd to find two rare poisonings with the same substance so close together in time and geography. Unless they were linked somehow. She made a mental note to call Hal Samson and apprise him of the other poisoning.

“This changes everything.” Mai gripped her hands together tightly on the table. “But how do I tell anybody? The ME has to know. But if I tell him, I have to admit to sneaking into the morgue and conducting my own personal tox screen. He’ll fire me so fast, I won’t know what happened. And if I don’t tell him . . .”

“You sneaked into the morgue?” Steve asked with a glance at Peggy. “Is that legal?”

“There’s no point in concentrating on that,” Peggy answered. “We have to find a way to make the police aware of their mistake without Mai losing her job.”

“I’ve thought of everything.” Mai tore her napkin apart. “There’s no way to accidentally stumble on these results. I might as well face reality. My career is over. I’ll have to get a job at McDonald’s or Taco Bell.”

Peggy disagreed. “You did what needed to be done. I’ll find a way out for you. Has Mark’s body been released yet?”

“This evening. I called the funeral home. The body is scheduled for cremation first thing Tuesday morning. His family is holding the memorial service Wednesday. No embalming. At least we don’t have to worry about that. The ME will have to call the body back for a legal tox screen. The media is bound to pick up on it. That puts the whole office in a bad light. It makes it look like we made a mistake.”

“You did,” Steve reminded her. “But everyone does. At least you caught it before it went too far.”

“Peggy caught it,” Mai corrected him. “I went along with her.”

“There has to be some way of undoing this,” Peggy whispered to herself as her brain raced for an answer. Like a bolt of lightning, it came to her. “We’ll have to steal the body back!”

THE PLAN CAME TOGETHER at ten p.M. in Peggy’s kitchen. She sent Mai home after telling her to be ready for anything. She didn’t call Keeley. The girl needed her sleep, and she couldn’t ask her to be involved with stealing her dead lover’s body from the mortuary.

She could and did ask Sam. He was only too glad to oblige. He tapped into his fraternity, who considered the idea as nothing more than a prank. Steve sat through the meeting that created the plan. He shook his head a few times but otherwise didn’t voice his disapproval.

Peggy knew she should probably feel the same, but she’d gotten Mai into this mess; she had to get her out. Sometimes, extraordinary measures were required to help a friend.

THE FRANKLIN MORTUARY WAS AT the edge of the county. It was one of only a few places that actually did its own cremations, a fact they cited with pride. The landscaped grounds were well-kept and spacious. Several eternal flames glowed at strategic points throughout the cemetery that surrounded the crematorium.

It was raining at eleven-thirty the next night when the small group banded together to observe their target. The gas flames glowed eerily with heavy fog dripping moisture on the dull brown grass. The building was densely shrouded in fog, only the lights on the outside showing up from the street. Low-hanging clouds embraced skeletal trees and made the night even more ominous. Ghostly white guardian angels watched them.