Pretty Poison

Peggy sighed. She’d tried to keep the rest away from him. “It’s not quite that simple. Steve didn’t send the sample away the first time he looked at the cat. He knew it was poison, but he didn’t know what kind of poison.”

“What do you mean? He went back and got the cat from the housekeeper?”

“In a manner of speaking. You don’t want to know the details. But they wouldn’t impress a judge, and they might get Steve in trouble.”

Paul shook his head. “Then they’d probably get Steve’s partner in trouble, too, right?”

“Yes.” She pushed past that discussion. “The question now is, what we can do with the information we have? I’m sure Julie Warner killed her husband. She probably killed Molly as well. The cat was probably an accident. But the ME will need a base comparison of the poison to know for sure. If I’m right, that’s in her house. We can’t get into her house without a search warrant.”

“And you can’t get a search warrant on illegally obtained information.” Paul understood her dilemma. “You’ll need some other evidence that corroborates what you’ve already got. But it has to be obtained legally.”

“I don’t know what that could be at this point.” Peggy folded a kitchen towel that was left on the table. “Any ideas?”

“Not really. And my advice would be to leave it to Al and Lieutenant Rimer.” He got up and hugged her. “But since I know that’s not going to happen, I’ll think about it today and ask around. Okay?”

“Thanks, honey. I appreciate your help.”

Paul left for work. Peggy locked the kitchen door and went upstairs to get dressed. She didn’t have classes that day. The university was closed for the Thanksgiving holidays. She was grateful for the extra time to consider the problem and get the Potting Shed set up for Christmas.

She was amazed the police were moving so slowly against Keeley. But every day they had a chance to continue looking for answers was a day in her favor. Peggy wasn’t going to let Keeley go to jail when she knew in her heart Julie was guilty of the crime.

She dressed in jeans for the dirty cleanup work at the shop. She tied her Reeboks and slipped the leash on Shakespeare’s collar. She wanted him with her, since she might be working late.

There was half a pot of coffee left from breakfast, despite her guests. “Might as well take this with me,” she told the dog. “It’ll look good in a few hours.”

She took out a small green thermos and started pouring the coffee into it. The action made her remember something else important. Ronda told her Julie was at Mark’s office the night he was killed. What if she’d delivered the poison to him? The bank videotaped everything for security reasons. If Julie was on one of those tapes, she might be able to place her at the bank at the right time to administer the lethal dose.

“I think I’m going to drop you off at the shop, then take a quick trip over to the bank.” She patted Shakespeare on the head. “Let’s see if we can’t find the legal evidence Paul was talking about.”

A FEW HOURS LATER, Peggy was sitting in a small room directly across from the security manager’s office at Bank of America’s corporate headquarters. She told the security chief someone was stealing her plants. He was glad to play back a few tapes that could help her find the person.

It was a small, white lie. Even her daddy couldn’t raise fire and brimstone from it. And it was done with the best of intentions.

The security manager located the tapes from the night Mark was killed. He told Peggy he was glad Mark didn’t die there. “Bad feeling when someone dies on your watch, you know?”

“I can imagine.” She was better able to empathize than he’d ever know.

The security manager left her alone with instructions on how to stop and rewind the tape. Peggy watched the footage carefully, glancing at the bank’s sign-in sheet for the time Julie arrived.

When she got to seven p.M. on the tape, she slowed it down. There was Julie in a fabulous, calf-length black wool coat. She had a colorful scarf tied around her neck and a white pharmacy bag in her hand.

“What’s this?” Peggy asked as the tape moved forward.

There was another shot of Julie in the elevator. Then she appeared again, passing Ronda as she went toward Mark’s office. Ten minutes later, she got back on the elevator, without the white bag, and left the building. The sign-out sheet showed her leaving at seven-twenty.

“That’s it!” Peggy pushed the button to make a copy of that part of the tape. “That’s how long it takes to murder your husband. What did you do then, Julie? Wait somewhere until you saw him leave? You thought he was meeting Ronda at the hotel that night. But instead, he went to meet Keeley at my shop. You knew he was still alive when Keeley ran out crying. You had to curb your impatience to see what happened until Mr. Cheever went in and took Mark’s things. Finally, you went in and found him, not quite dead. But you didn’t want to wait for the poison to finish the job. You picked up a shovel and hit him with it.”

Shaking her head over her flight of fancy and the terrible things people did to each other, Peggy took the tape, signed out of the building, and went to see Al.

“YOU DID WHAT?” Al demanded when she explained everything to him.

She left out the body moving of cat and man. She couldn’t understand why he was so upset.

The door to his office opened, and Jonas poked his head around the corner. “Is it okay to come in? It sounds like the Gulf War out here in the hall. Afternoon, Peggy. Are you causing Al to have a heart attack?”

Al got up from his chair. “As a matter of fact, maybe this is exactly what we need.” He glared at Peggy. “My friend has some ideas about the Warner murder.”

“And the Stone murder,” Peggy added without remorse.