Mai smiled. “Sorry to meet you under these circumstances.”
Peggy watched the crime scene teamwork on the body, inspecting it for anything that might help them discover what happened. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“We’ll need your fingerprints, Professor Lee. Also those of anyone who works here.”
“That’s fine. I’ll tell my people. But I’m afraid you’ll find a lot more than their prints here.”
“It will give us a base to use as a comparison, since your prints will come up most often. I could do your prints right now so you won’t have to come to the precinct,” Mai offered. “Do you own this shop?”
“Thanks. Yes, I’m here almost every day.” Peggy shrugged. “I teach botany, but that’s only part time. I contract out the fieldwork for the shop to some students. It’s mostly commercial plant care.”
The assistant ME looked at the dead man again. “And you’re sure this is Mark Warner?”
“Positive. As I said, I’ve seen him around the courtyard lately. He’s been in the shop a few times. He never spoke or bought anything that I saw.” Peggy put her hands into her pockets. “But I’m sure you’ll want to have someone who knew him better actually make the final identification.
They sat down together. Mai carefully put Peggy’s fingers on the ink pad, then rolled them on the paper. She put a tag on the prints before she slipped the paper into a plastic bag and sealed it.
Peggy thanked her for the damp towelette to clean her hands. “Now what?”
“If you could have all the people who work for you come in, we could do their prints and begin matching up who belonged here with who didn’t.” She gave Peggy a business card. “If they have any questions, they can call me.”
“Thanks, Mai. I’ll let them know. That’s Selena over there. She works here, too. She might as well get it over with while you’re here.”
“All right. How many people have keys to the shop?”
“At least five that work here,” Peggy answered. “Oh, and Mr. Balducci. I gave him a key in case he needed to come in for some reason.”
“That’s the sandwich shop owner?”
“Yes.”
Mai sighed. “It looks like time of death will probably be around midnight. What was Mark Warner doing here in the middle of the night?”
The media picked up on the story and added to it, but they couldn’t ferret out the answer either. Not that they didn’t try. She refused to talk to any of the local reporters about the incident. She knew what Julie Warner was going through. It had been terrible for Peggy to hear the information about John’s death repeated a dozen times on TV and banner headlines trumpeting it in the newspapers.
She was scheduled for an evening lecture at the university. It was tempting to postpone it after the day’s events. But it wouldn’t do any good to hide in the house. She knew that too well.
Peggy forced herself into a black business suit that she teamed with an emerald-green blouse. She never wore heels, using her mode of transportation as an excuse. Really, she refused to put her feet through that agony. There was no one left for her to impress. She wasn’t a young woman looking for a man.
There were the usual joggers on the street as she pedaled toward Queens University. She recognized some of them as students. They huffed and waved as they passed her. She rode beneath a city crew beginning to put up Christmas decorations on the streetlights. Evening traffic swarmed around her as she merged with the cars streaming into the university parking lot.
Peggy quickly repaired the minor damage done to her hair by the brisk wind. She glanced at her watch, realizing she was about to be late for her lecture. Fortunately, she’d never been a stickler for time. A few minutes here or there weren’t going to hurt anyone. That attitude always drove John crazy.
The auditorium was full when she finally walked out on the stage. The dean had been stalling for her, running on about future events scheduled in the auditorium. “Here she is at last! We were beginning to wonder if you were going to show up, Dr. Lee.”
Peggy thanked him and squeezed his hand behind the podium. She kept her voice down as she said, “Thanks for covering for me, Phil. I’m lucky to be here at all tonight. It’s not every day I find a dead man in my shop.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” the dean whispered out of microphone range.
“I’m fine.” She moved closer to the podium and adjusted the microphone. “Good evening. I apologize for being late. Let’s not waste any more time. As many of you know, I’m Dr. Margaret Lee. I teach botany here at Queens. Let’s talk about botanical poisons.”
She pressed the button on the projector control as the lights came down in the auditorium. A picture of a sunlit vine came up on the screen. “This is a common plant you’ve probably seen many times.
Pens scribbled, and fingers typed on laptops. For the next hour, she took the audience through a list of poisonous plants that could be found in the garden or home environment. She’d worked with botanical toxins and their antidotes as a hobby for years. It finally spilled over into her professional life last year when she was consulted on a poisoning death that occurred in the North Carolina mountains.
“In conclusion, just because a flower or plant is pretty or seems familiar doesn’t make it safe. If you have
