Poisoned Petals

DETECTIVE AL MCDONALD, a broad-faced black man who’d been her husband’s partner for twenty years on the job, finally stopped in to see her a little after five. Selena was gone for the day, taking extra credit classes to add to her engineering courses for fall.

“Peggy!” Al embraced her and smiled down into her face. “How’s it going?”

“Good! My parents are up for a visit. How’s Mary?”

“Still waiting for me to retire.” He chuckled, talking about his wife of many years. “I might have my time in, but I don’t see anything else waiting for me up the road. I’ll probably stay where I am until I can’t get around anymore and they kick me out.”

She laughed. “Can I get you something to drink? I think I have some Coke in the mini-fridge.”

“No, that’s fine.” He planted his large frame on a stool behind the counter. “I got your message. What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure.” She told him what Nightflyer said about Darmus.

He groaned. “Not that weird guy on the Internet again! Peggy, how would he know if Darmus is dead or not? Have you asked yourself that question? I mean, was he in the hospital or something?”

“I don’t know.” She didn’t want to tell him about her excursion to the funeral home. There might be some unpleasant repercussions. Was it illegal to open a sealed coffin? Even worse, he might not believe her. It would be better to convince him to check it out on his own. “All I do know is that he knows things. He has ways of finding things out.”

“Like what? I mean, what does he think happened?”

“He thinks Darmus might have faked his own death.”

Al’s thick black brows raised above skeptical dark eyes. “That’s ridiculous! You and I both know what kind of man Darmus was. He wouldn’t do such a thing.”

“But—”

“And even if he would, don’t you think someone would’ve noticed? A doctor saw him at the hospital. The ME examined him at the morgue. The mortician has him now. Wouldn’t someone have noticed the dead man wasn’t Darmus Appleby?”

“He was badly burned.”

“They checked his dental records! The man we’re about to bury was Darmus Appleby!”

Peggy’s forehead knitted together. “Don’t you think I’ve argued with myself about this? But there are a few things that bother me.”

“Like what?”

She told him what she recalled about Darmus feeling cold when she tried to move him. “And he was supposed to be buried with his wedding band. Why would Luther have it in his hand at the Community Garden when he died?”

“Maybe he was taking it to the mortician to have it put back on Darmus. Did you ever think about that?”

“No.” She bit her lip to keep from spilling what she found in the bronze coffin. She needed to talk to someone, in a roundabout way, and find out how the law felt about opening coffins. She wanted to find Darmus, but she didn’t want to go to jail.

“Think about it, Peggy. You told this Internet guy those things, and he fueled that overactive imagination of yours!”

“Thanks.” She frowned and moved to the other side of the counter, shifting seed packages and pot stickers shaped like fairies.

“I’m sorry,” he relented. “I didn’t mean—”

“Yes. You did!”

He looked down at his shiny black shoes. “Look, Peggy. Is there any scrap of real evidence that us normal mortals can understand?”

She started to blow him off. He wasn’t listening anyway. But she knew this might be her only chance to get more information. “I think there may be. Darmus wasn’t himself since Rebecca died.”

“That’s true. But that doesn’t mean he ran away and pretended to die.”

“The corpse in the house was disfigured. Anyone could make a mistake.”

“Dental records don’t lie.”

She couldn’t argue with that and pressed on. “Nightflyer thinks it may not have been an accident that Luther died. I don’t know, Al. I just have this feeling that he’s right, and something is wrong.”

He closed his eyes. “I don’t want Darmus to be dead either, Peggy. But trust me, someone would’ve noticed during the long chain his body passed through. Maybe he wasn’t Elvis or someone instantly recognizable, but this kind of thing doesn’t happen. There was blood work, dental work. The dead man is Darmus Appleby, sad as that may be. We have to accept the fact.”

“I suppose you’re right.” She sighed and glanced around the familiar walls hung with old garden signs and antique farming implements. Oh God! I’m going to have to tell him the truth. Then she thought of something else. “I suppose it doesn’t make sense. But for my own peace of mind, could you get me a copy of Darmus and Luther’s death certificates?”