“Yes.” Peggy smiled at both of them, thinking what a shame it was they weren’t still together. Mai was certainly her best bet for grandchildren. “Let’s talk about the case, shall we?”
It wasn’t hard to identify the crime scene in the Community Garden. The area was roped off and didn’t seem to have been disturbed since they found Luther there. But a thousand footsteps had crushed everything living around the spot. Most of the tender young grass was dead. Tree limbs from a few dogwoods were broken and some were left hanging. Even a few large rocks had been pushed aside and rolled over.
“I don’t see how you’re going to find any plant parts here.” Paul crouched down and looked at the site.
“We don’t need them to be whole.” Peggy crossed the police tape. “Let’s just see what’s out here.”
She took samples of everything living she could find, letting Mai bag the items as she told her what they were. They had a hundred bags of living matter when she finished, but there was no sign of a hyacinth. “I don’t know where else to look.”
Paul shrugged. “What about Darmus’s house? The house was burned, but the yard is still there. He had all kinds of plants.”
She glared at him. “I’m not here to prove he killed Luther.”
“Then prove he
They got back into the car and drove out toward UNCC. Traffic was heavier now as workers started pouring into the uptown area of Charlotte. Fortunately, they were heading away from the city.
Darmus’s house was covered by a blue tarp to keep rain from making the damage even worse. It was hard for Peggy to look at it. It made her remember how she risked her life rushing in to save a man—a man who was already dead.
“This may be even worse than the Community Garden,” Mai said as they got out of the car. “The firemen weren’t looking to avoid stepping on things.”
Mai was right. The yard had been trampled under the weight of firemen’s boots and pulled apart by long, heavy hoses. Whole rosebushes were uprooted. Daylilies, just showing their green leaves, were scattered from one end of the yard to another. Hundreds of yards of grass were gone. Daffodils were decapitated, their bases still standing proudly in the sun like lonely sentinels, witnesses to the terrible devastation.
Ignoring the chaos and destruction wasn’t easy, but Peggy put her mind to the task and searched through the yard, bagging hundreds of other botanicals. But there were no purple hyacinths. She was relieved and puzzled.
But the flower could have been snatched up from anywhere: a garden shop, grocery store, hardware store. Everyone sold them this time of year. It would be almost impossible to locate one flower base in the city. And then timing would have been critical for the killer. Since the scent would wear off, the hyacinth would have had to have been sprayed moments before Luther smelled it to have that kind of deadly effect.
“Anything here?” Paul asked.
“Nothing obvious,” Peggy said. “I’m ready to go back to the lab.”
“WE’VE HAD ANOTHER PIECE of evidence come in,” Ramsey told Mai and Peggy when they got back. “We think it may be the base of the poisoned flower.”
“Where did it come from?” Peggy put down her kit and looked at the new botanical evidence.
“We received it from an anonymous source. So we have two pieces of plant structure. Let’s compare them.” Ramsey looked at Mai. “Will you go and get us some coffee, Sato? And a few bagels. I’m famished. Would you like something, Dr. Lee?”
“No, I’m fine. Thanks.” Peggy took off her coat as she wondered why Mai let Ramsey treat her like an overpaid gofer. How could her career be on the right track with him sending her for coffee?
She took the samples of hyacinth from Ramsey, feeling as though he already knew the answer and really only wanted her to confirm his hypothesis. He stood silently to one side, trying to appear as if he wasn’t watching her work. She decided to ignore him, get done with the sample, and go home.
Peggy looked at the pieces of stalk under the microscope. The green, tubular fibers matched where the stem had been separated. “We’re in luck. The person who did this pulled the stalk apart. That actually makes it easier for us to tell that the two were one piece. The ends of the flower stalk and the slight piece of stalk left from the base plant are the same.” There was no question of that. The match was as perfect as any jigsaw puzzle.
But there was something else there, too. “Would you bring me those samples we collected?”
Ramsey looked around the room. It was empty except for the two of them. “Are you speaking to me?”
Peggy glanced up at him. “I’m looking at something unusual on this stalk, and I don’t want to move it. Please get the samples we took from the Community Garden. I think they’re in that gray case over there.”
Ramsey looked around one last time as though someone might appear to save him from the task, but when no one appeared, he grudgingly went to get the gray case. “What are you looking at? I didn’t see anything there except the stem.”
“That’s because
“So . . .” He stood next to her and peered down his large nose at her.
She moved aside so he could look at the stalk while she carefully went through the samples in the case, laying them out on the counter beside her. “What do you see on the cut end of the sample?”
“I see the stalk, the flower. What should I see?”
“Do you see that small bit of white matter with a black dot in the center right where the flower first meets the stalk?”
