The owner also wanted a bid on maintaining the rest of the indoor plants combined with building and maintaining the flower boxes. Peggy promised to have something for him in the next few days. She shook his hand and went to meet Al.
He was waiting outside Latta Arcade in his blue Isuzu Trooper. “Lucky for me Mary was busy today. She doesn’t take kindly to me mentioning work on a Saturday.”
Peggy fastened her seat belt. “I’m glad you could go with me. Dr. Samson treated the woman who died. He consulted me because of my work with poisons. But he doesn’t know anything about police work. You may be able to shed some light on the investigation.”
“Did they arrest anyone for the poisoning?” Al turned the car on to Interstate 77 toward Columbia.
“They talked to Mrs. Stone’s husband and checked the people she worked with,” she answered. “They couldn’t find anything to connect her death to him or anyone else.”
“But you think there might be some connection to whoever killed Warner.”
“Anemonin poisoning is rare. These two incidents might have happened on the same day. I found Mark’s body that morning, and Dr. Samson consulted with me about the poisoning in Columbia that night. The woman was still alive when I talked to him.”
“So where does this stuff come from?” he asked without taking his eyes off the road.
“The chances are it was home-brewed. Whoever did it knows something about botanical poison and set up a little distillery. It wouldn’t take much.”
“If that’s the case, could forensics tell if the poison was the same on the two cases?”
Peggy shrugged. “Theoretically. I’m not a medical examiner, but I believe the poison would be traceable. I’ll have to do some research to verify that.”
Al laughed. “Damn, Peggy. Why aren’t you working for us?”
“There are thousands of cases of accidental poisoning every year, my friend. There are probably hundreds of intentional poisonings as well. But either medical examiners don’t catch them or the symptoms are mistaken for something else. I don’t think any police department has a botany professor on staff to look for plant poisonings.”
“And here I only thought you had a green thumb! You’re full of surprises.”
“Thanks.” She smiled at him.
“Like it wouldn’t surprise me to find out you were somehow involved in the whole fiasco with the Warner case. It has all the earmarks, doesn’t it? It involved a college prank, or what looked like a prank, that led to us discover he’d been poisoned with some kind of plant. Couple that with the fact that you found the body and you’ve been poking your nose in on the investigation. Someone might think you set the whole thing up.”
Peggy pulled down the sun visor and opened the mirror before she took out her lipstick. “That sounds like a real stretch of the imagination to me. First of all, if I’d known Mark was poisoned by anemonin, I would’ve simply told you, wouldn’t I?”
“I hope so.” He laughed. “I think you’re right. I think that might be reaching, even for you.”
She laughed with him, but her heart was fluttering in her chest. He was closer to the truth than she hoped he’d ever know. She certainly wouldn’t ever tell him.
“You know this puts your little assistant in a bad light.” Al took out a pack of gum and offered her a stick. “The chances are the DA will do exactly what you’ve been wanting him to do and drop the charges on Mr. Cheever. But this new evidence gives us a more complete picture of the killer. Not only did she need opportunity at the shop to use the shovel, she needed prior knowledge about plants and how to use them. She needed to know something about Warner’s habits, too.”
Peggy thought about his accusations. He was right. She helped prove Mr. Cheever was innocent. But her confession put Keeley in the spotlight. “Keeley doesn’t have the kind of information she’d need to poison Mark.”
“And how hard would that be to get? She could probably go on the Internet and look it up. You said the killer wouldn’t need sophisticated equipment. Ms. Prinz told us she asked Warner to meet her at the shop that night. All she had to do was administer the poison. Forensics should be able to tell us how long it was between when that happened and when he died.”
“Is that what Jonas is thinking?”
Al wouldn’t commit. “I’m not sure. But it’s what
Peggy didn’t want to speculate on that yet. If the two poisoning cases were related, that could immediately change the picture for Keeley. What were the chances she knew Molly Stone? She changed the subject, and they talked about John and times past as they finished the trip to Columbia.
HAL SAMSON WAS WAITING ANXIOUSLY. He jumped up from his chair when he saw them. “I’m so glad you could come. Maybe there’ll be an answer to this.”
Al and Peggy sat down beside the doctor’s cluttered desk. The office was sparsely furnished with older office equipment. The green-and-white tile floor was clean but worn. The place smelled strongly of disinfectant.
“Peggy told me what she knew about this case,” Al said. “How about you filling in the rest, Doctor?”
Samson already had the file out. He passed Al and Peggy pictures of Molly Stone. “I’m sure Peggy told you that her husband brought her here presenting with unusual symptoms. Her skin was cold to the touch. She had almost no pulse. Her respiration was slow, almost failing.”
“What made you think about poison?” Al asked as he took notes.
“Blood work showed she had a high level of anemonin in her system. We immediately called poison control as well as the CDC since we weren’t sure how she came by the toxin. It wasn’t injected. I learned this morning that it was in a bottle of root beer she had at the bank. The police assume someone put it there. They just don’t know
