A Corpse for Yew (29 page)

“And they were all good with that? Even your mother?”

“Even my mother, bless her heart. She told me I could be out of mourning now.”

“And here you are, still wearing black.” His hand followed her side and made a rustling sound against the dress. “This one I like. Why haven’t I seen it before? Is it new?”

“Not exactly. I was just holding on to it for the right moment.” She kissed him and smiled. “Would you like me to heat up that pasta now?”

“Never mind the pasta.” He kissed her hand, then held it as he led her out of the kitchen. “I could use a little warming up instead.”

 

 

“I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING that happened to you from the moment you were born until I ran into your Saturn at the coffee shop.”

He laughed. “That’s a lot to talk about.”

“I already know more than I knew before,” she admitted. “I know you were in the Air Force. Skipper told me.”

“What else did Skipper tell you?”

“Not enough. Start talking.”

“There’s really not much to say. My father left when my sister died. My mom raised me. I was lackluster in high school. Never even tried out for science club with the other geeks. I joined the Air Force, came back, and decided to go to college.”

“And you went to school and became a veterinarian.”

“And we all lived happily ever after.”

“No wonder I don’t know much about your past! I thought it was my fault. Now I see it’s because you don’t like talking about it. What about everything that happened in between? What about girlfriends and your first car? You can’t keep those things secret anymore.”

He groaned. “Why do I have a feeling that’s all about to change?”

She kissed him and snuggled close to his chest. “Because you fell in love with the wrong woman. You know I have to understand everything.”

“And you’re insatiably curious, can’t stand anything being secret, and are just plain nosy.” He kissed her nose to soften his words. “I’ll start at the beginning. I was born a little small but feisty. My mother said my hair was curly until I was three; then it turned straight. My favorite toys were animals, hence the profession.”

“Maybe not that far back,” she complained. “Let’s talk more about your ex-girlfriends from high school up, and don’t leave anything out.”

“Maybe we should wait until after we get some sleep. I hate to put on horse liniment unless I’m completely awake. No telling where it could end up.”

“I suppose that’s fair.” She yawned. “I have an early date at the lake again, looking for more yew branches.”

“You must have enough of those to make a whole yew tree by now.”

“You’d think so. But it has to be the right yew tree.”

“Or the right person.”

“What?” She sat up in his bed and looked at him. “Of course! That’s the answer. It’s not the yew berries. It’s the person who gave them to her. Lois had to know and trust the person who gave them to her. That’s why Snook isn’t guilty!”

“Great name. I love the people you meet, Peggy. But what happened to Lois eating the berries by mistake, no one feeding them to her?”

“Her pocketbook being stashed in the tree negates that idea, because we know she had the carnelian ring in it. I think whoever fed her the berries did so to get the ring, then pushed her into the mud. Lois wouldn’t have been able to walk that far after eating that number of berries.”

“But the killer didn’t go in after it?”

Peggy agreed that it seemed a long shot. “Maybe it dropped into the mud and whoever was with Lois didn’t see it at the time. Jonathon said there’s a spring under the mud that keeps it moist. It also keeps it moving. That’s why it took us a few minutes to find Lois. The question still remains: Did Lois go out early to meet this person and give them the ring, or did this person surprise Lois and decide the time was right?”

There was no response from Steve. She realized he was asleep. Smiling, she laid her head on his chest and listened to his breath and heartbeat. Being engaged would be good. It was a new start to a new life. Marriage was far enough off that she didn’t have to panic . . . yet.

If she’d been home, she would’ve gone downstairs and worked on her projects in the basement. She didn’t want to leave Steve, so she lay quietly until she finally fell asleep.

 

 

AN INNER ALARM WOKE PEGGY at six a.m. She kissed Steve, they showered and shared cold pasta for breakfast before they went their separate ways for the day.

Peggy went back to her house, refusing to think about all the complications that would arise from being with Steve all the time. The whole his house-her house argument stayed out of her consciousness as she let Shakespeare out and put on a kettle of water for tea.

The phone rang at the same time the kettle whistled. She answered one while she reached for the other and poured the water into her cup. “Good morning, Paul. Are you on your way home?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” He chuckled. “I noticed you weren’t home last night when I drove by the house.”

“All right. I give up. My truck was plugged in. The bike was in the shed. How could you tell I wasn’t home?”

“I stopped in. Shakespeare thought it was you. Did you patch things up with Steve?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes. We’re on for the engagement dinner on Tuesday. Maybe we should make it a double wedding. How about you and Mai joining in?”

“That was a cold, cruel thing to say. You know she isn’t ready for that yet. I
know
she isn’t.”

“Because you ask her every day?”

“Not anymore. Anyway, good news ’bout you and Steve. Will you live in our house or his?”

“I’m not thinking about that right now. Go home. I’ll talk to you later.”

She closed her cell phone and sat down to look at her garden outside the kitchen window and sip her tea. She was fortunate to have the big oaks that shaded the backyard from most of the sun. Even so, the drought was hard on everything growing. The holly bushes were wilting along with the burning bushes and marigolds. The dogwoods with their red berries, were the only trees that still looked healthy. She didn’t know how much longer anything would survive unless they started getting regular rain again.

Hating the water restrictions that prevented her from helping her plants, Peggy switched on her laptop to check her e-mail. She was part of several focus groups of botanists from around the world who discussed their projects in the hope of solving world hunger through better horticulture.

There was an e-mail from Sir Nigel about the yew berries. Apparently all parts of the plant were poisonous except for the berry. He also told her that chewing on the seeds could release enough poison to kill Lois.

She replied and thanked him, asking him about his own projects at the institute that were connected with their yew studies.

Like every other day, there were hundreds of e-mails to sift through. Even with her spam blocker on the highest level, she still received scams from people who claimed to represent everyone from the IRS to the wife of a foreign dignitary who needed help sending money out of her country. All of them were just ways for the unwary to lose money at best, and their identity at worst.

She deleted those e-mails gladly, wishing she could send each of them back and tell the senders how stupid it was to send them out. Unfortunately, that would probably give her computer a virus, and she’d just gone through that recently.

Peggy glanced through the remaining e-mails, noting one familiar name after another. She knew Dr. Mendosa in Costa Rica was working on a grain plant that would have a shorter growing season and fare better in hotter climates. Dr. Kingsley was e-mailing about her edible cotton project that seemed promising.

There was one e-mail that didn’t fit in with the rest. She would’ve deleted it for spam, but in the subject line was one word that caught her attention:
Nightflyer
. The e-mail address was different from any of the ones her old chess partner had used before. He’d told her he would try to contact her occasionally after going underground to escape from people he worked for at the CIA.

It sounded bizarre to think about it now. But she knew him too well to doubt his true involvement in things larger than most people understood. Several times he’d helped her solve cases with information no one else was privy to or willing to share.

She bit her lip as she clicked on the e-mail.
Dear Night-rose, I am doing well if not living happily ever after. I stay constantly one step ahead of the men who are hunting me. I’m sorry I can’t contact you more often. I would not endanger you for anything. I hope you are staying out of trouble and are content with your life. I will write again when I can. All my love, Nightflyer.

It seemed there would be no complex chess match between them online, where they could chat about whatever was going on in the world and she could ask him for advice about what she was doing. She missed those days, but they had come to an end soon after she’d met Steve. Those long, lonely nights with only the Internet for company seemed to be behind her. She didn’t miss them.

Peggy knew she couldn’t answer Nightflyer’s e-mail. He’d explained the situation to her. As soon as he’d sent the e-mail, probably from some wireless café, he’d be gone. There was a certain romance to it that had almost captured her imagination. But she wasn’t the kind of woman who could leave everything behind for a man. She was happy with her life and the second chance she’d been given for love.

Her last swallow of tea accompanied her final reminiscing. She shut down her laptop and went upstairs to change her clothes. Shakespeare followed her up the marble staircase, and back down again when she was done. He looked at her sadly and whined a little.

“I suppose you want to go out to the lake,” she said to him. “I’ll warn you, I have to go over to the Potting Shed for a delivery before I go out there. No falling in the pond again. You’re too big to go swimming in there.”

The Great Dane thumped his tail hard on the old wood floor. Peggy took that as a promise to behave, and put on his harness and leash. She’d be happy to have his company out at the lake. Too much was going on out there for her to feel comfortable alone.

With Shakespeare beside her in the truck, she drove to the Potting Shed to wait for Sam’s rain barrel delivery. Lois’s funeral was at four. She’d have to be back from the lake by then and to have left the yew branches at the lab. Merton wouldn’t be at the university until Monday, so there was no point in going all the way out there.

Peggy let Shakespeare into the shop as the delivery truck arrived. The man was nice enough to put all of the barrels into the storage area in back before he left. She thanked him and gave him a nice rosemary plant for his wife.

She was getting ready to bring Shakespeare back out to the truck when the Shamrock Historical Society van pulled into the parking lot beside her. She groaned and closed her eyes. This wasn’t a good way to start the day.

WHAT PEGGY HAD COME TO think of as the militant arm of the museum, the Shamrock Historical Society, spilled out of the van. Jonathon was with them. She could only guess that the ladies had adopted him since he’d been forgiven for his sins. Apparently all question of him killing Lois had been resolved to their satisfaction.

“Peggy”—Grace was the first to reach her—“we need your help.”

“We have to get into Lois’s house,” Geneva continued. “There are things in there that don’t technically belong to Lois or her descendants. Chief Mullis is holding an auction there next week, and an appraiser is going through on Monday to catalog the items.”

“Some of the things actually belong to the museum,” Jonathan said. “At least that’s what the ladies tell me. I’ve informed the board, but without the chairman they can’t act, and he’s in Switzerland until the end of the month.”

“I understand what you’re saying.” Peggy tried to stop the tide of emotion flowing over her. “But I’m the wrong person to talk to about this.”

“If you’re talking about that stubborn horse’s back end, Mullis, you’re barking up the wrong dogwood tree,” Dorothy told her. “We already tried talking to him. He said if he found out any of us went in there to look through Lois’s things, he’d send us to jail.”

“First of all, he can’t just send anybody he wants to jail,” Peggy assured them. “But going into his house—”