Floral Depravity (23 page)

“Yes, sir,” Lafferty said, and started to approach the goat. He paused after each step, with a grimace on his face that somehow reminded me of Matt Dillon approaching a bank robber or horse rustler for a showdown.

“Let me go get Melanie or Carol,” I said. “They'll know what to do.” I took off toward the stables.

The chickens were all over the path, and I think I heard a moo coming from the woods.

When I got to the stables, I could see the devastation the storm had left. Frightened animals had apparently jumped or pushed through the makeshift stalls, and the tent itself was compromised, with one side of it drooping oddly. Carol was pushing up a stake that had gotten loose, sending the rainwater that had collected in a pocket cascading to the ground near her feet.

“Melanie's not here,” Carol said. “She's tracking down the last two horses and a missing cow. Everything got out in the storm.”

“Do you know how to lead a goat?” I asked.

“Are we still missing a goat?” Carol glanced at the pen. “I guess we are. They weren't the highest priority.”

“Yes, well, if someone doesn't get it out of Larry's flower beds, he's going to do it bodily harm.” I wasn't sure that Larry would actually shoot the goat. I suspected that he just threatened to do so to get someone to move it up the priority list.

“Will do.” She went to a large wooden box, pulled out a harness, and was gone.

I looked around to see if there was something I could do to help. Since my one skill was mucking out the stalls and the horses apparently spent very little time in them, I wandered around checking out the rest of the animals. There were only about three chickens still in the structure, but I spied an egg in the straw on the floor of one of the pens, so I let myself inside and picked it up, feeling all rural and whatnot.

“Audrey, should you be in there?” The voice was my father's.

I turned to face him, holding my prize egg like a trophy, when I heard, rather than saw, the pig. If what happened next sounds odd, keep in mind that my only experience with pigs was Wilbur from
Charlotte's Web
, the ever-lovable
Babe
, and the dapper, bow-tie-wearing Porky from the old cartoons. Pigs are nice, right?

Not this one.

The pig advanced toward me, making grunting and squealing sounds, bumping its nose into the back of my leg.

The bump was all it took to lose my footing on the slick hay, and I tumbled down on top of the pig. The prized egg flew against the wall, dripping yellow yolk down the wood.

I can't say if this particular pig was overly aggressive or not, since I had no standard or previous experience to go by, but he didn't take my intrusion well. More angry grunts and frightened squeals followed, only some of which came from the pig, who kept coming at me. I used my elbows to shield my face.

“Audrey, here!”

My father reached his hand over the top of the enclosure and somehow managed to pull me up to the top of the wall.

In that span, memories flashed before my eyes. Not my whole life, but the life I recalled with my father, being swung in circles in his strong arms. Of his holding my hand when we crossed the streets as we walked to the park or to the library.

Then the pig climbed the wall until it was practically standing (I thought only cartoon pigs could stand). So I swung myself off the top of the wall, back outside the pen, intending to land on my feet, but I managed to tangle my foot on the way. I fell awkwardly at my father's feet.

I pushed my face out of the straw and struggled to catch my breath.

“Breathe, Audrey,” he said, and helped me to my feet.

Bent over, I struggled until the breath finally came. I can't say if anyone has ever died by having the wind knocked out of him, but it sure does make for scary moments until that first gulp of air fills your lungs.

I must have stood there for a full minute, just breathing and relishing the feeling of air going in and out.

I looked down and saw that my ankle was still tangled in the handle of some satchel that must have been left on the top of the makeshift wall. Its contents were dumped in the hay.

I extricated myself to start collecting the items I'd knocked over. There was a pair of leather gloves, some makeup, a bottle of nail polish, a toothbrush, and dental floss, all with bits of hay clinging to them.

My dad looked sheepish when he handed me a tampon. “Here's your . . .”

I took it from him and shoved it back into the bag. “Not mine,” I said. “Must belong to one of the girls.”

“I'd say the odds of that are pretty good.”

I shoved the loose objects into the bag, including a college ID card. Carol Graham. She looked shell-shocked as she stared into the camera while standing in front of a brick wall. School IDs haven't improved much.

I draped the satchel on top of the wall like it must have originally been placed, and I turned to face my father. He was again wearing the cassock. I decided to go for businesslike. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“Audrey, I thought we should talk.”

“I'm a little busy at the moment.” Bixby's reminder that the clock was ticking on the investigation had hit home. Barry Brooks may not have been a gem, but that didn't mean it was acceptable to let his killer get off free. Nor was it acceptable for Nick to suffer through a lawsuit over something he didn't do.

“I've got a flight out at midday tomorrow,” he said, “so there's not much time left.”

I nodded. I didn't agree or disagree. My emotions were jumbled, compacting the darkness of murder and the joy of new birth all within a short week, and in a week in which I'd had very little sleep. I had no great desire to spend more time with this man, but neither was I as angry and bitter, so I supposed it wouldn't hurt much to talk with him.

Melanie came back in, riding a horse bareback. “Oh, Audrey. So glad you're here. You did come to work, right?”

“I guess I can help for a little while,” I said. When Bixby had said that today was the last full day to observe the goings-on at the camp, he really didn't give me any hints on how to spend that day. “What do you need done?”

She pulled her hair back in a ponytail. “I don't care if they didn't wear their hair like this in the Middle Ages, I need to keep it out of my face. Where's Carol?”

“Off to collect a goat. What can I help you with?”

“The horses have to be dressed for the tilting and the joust.”

“Tilting? Like at windmills?”

“Exactly. Both the tilting tournament and the joust use lances, except in tilting the knight uses the lance to hit the target and not another rider.”

“Sounds safer than jousting.”

“You'd think, but it depends. See, the lances are different. In tilting they're allowed to use a regular lance. But in a joust these days, they have a special one, made of a lightweight wood like balsa. The idea is that you can only use so much pressure before it snaps. Really, the biggest danger with these guys seems to be falling off a horse. Especially if they've had a tankard of ale before the competition.” The expression that fell across Melanie's face was the closest that came to a sneer that I'd ever seen on this normally good-natured young woman. “It's like drinking and driving. It ought not to be allowed. In a way I wish I didn't sign up for the stables. I like horses too much.”

“I hear you.” Then again, I hadn't signed up for any of this.

“And there's another job I've not been looking forward to, either.” She looked at my dad. “Maybe you can help.”

“I'd be glad to,” he said. “What is it?

“We've got to get Barnaby to the tournament grounds.”

“Barnaby?” I asked. “Which one is he?” I thought I'd learned all the names of the horses and most of the cows—not that they'd likely name a cow Barnaby, since I knew just enough to know that cows are all the females of the species—but that name was unfamiliar.

“Barnaby is the hog,” she said. “Poor thing.”

“But why would they need a hog at the tournament grounds?” I looked at the pig, which had gone to eat the egg I'd broken in my unceremonious fall. He was much less foreboding from outside the pen, with his rather complex pattern of black, brown, and milky pink patches. “What kind of sport uses a pig instead of a horse . . .” And then it dawned on me. “Oh.”

Life seemed so much harder in the Middle Ages, when dinner might have included an animal you had cared for and tended and become attached to. Then again, was it much worse than raising animals in tightly packed cages? Still, the thought was enough to put “consider vegetarianism” on my mental to-do list.

In the end, my father was the one elected to escort poor Barnaby to his final resting place. To my relief, my father didn't reappear anytime soon. He was too much of a distraction.

Meanwhile Carol managed to wrestle the goat back into his stall, saving him, at least, from the threat of an untimely death. She then went out again to wrangle more of the missing animals while Melanie stepped me through how to dress each of the horses. It was a little before noon when I was ready to lead the first one to the corral near the tournament grounds.

“Wait,” Melanie said. “I think it's fair time you learned how to ride.”

Over my objections, she rattled off some brief instructions. Perhaps my body was too tired to produce adrenaline, because before long she was helping me up into the saddle. Melanie was a natural instructor. On the first trip, the only thing I had to worry about was staying on while she led the horse to the corral, but for each successive trip, she took off more training wheels, so that on the final trip, I held the reins, and oddly enough, not only did I stay on, but the horse went where I'd wanted it to go and stopped when I wanted to stop. My hands were red and itchy, probably because I wasn't used to handling the reins. I can't say I felt like a natural in the saddle, but I could see why Melanie and Opie loved these animals.

Before long all the horses were corralled.

“You should take a break and enjoy the rest of the tournament,” Melanie said.

Enjoy? I doubted that was going to happen. My stomach was already gurgling. Still, I promised to do just that as soon as I retrieved my bag from the stables.

When I arrived back at the stables, however, Carol was in a shouting match with a man I recognized as another of the food vendors. Bixby was trying to referee the discussion, while my father was standing on the sidelines looking uncomfortable.

“What is this?” I said, perhaps taking my deputy status a little too seriously.

“I'll sue,” the man shouted. “That pig should have been delivered no later than ten a.m.”

“Look,” said Carol, “I'm just a student. We had a lot of problems with animals getting out last night in the storm. If I go out and find your pig now—”

“It's too late now,” he said. “There's no time to butcher it and cook it properly, and there's no way I'm going to risk getting sued for spreading trichinosis.”

I fought hard to hide the growing smile as I glanced at my father, who was looking off into the woods.

I stepped forward. “How much is the pig worth?” I asked.

“On a good day, I could have earned over a thousand dollars selling the meat,” he said.

I shook my head. “Not the meat. The pig itself. Of that weight?”

“Four hundred? Five hundred?”

“If someone paid you five hundred for the pig, would that satisfy you?” I asked.

“But, Audrey, where am I going to get five hundred dollars?” Carol whined.

I looked at my father and didn't relax my gaze. “Free Barnaby?”

Finally he sighed, reached under his cassock to retrieve his wallet, and pulled out a number of bills. As he pressed the stack into the other man's palm, I leaned in. “You better get Barnaby back into his pen.”

He nodded.

“And since you now own a pig, you'd better figure out what to do with it. I expect that's going to delay your departure tomorrow, since I'm pretty sure the airlines don't allow animals that large to travel in the baggage compartment.”

Carol ran up and hugged me. “Audrey, that was fabulous!”

Even Bixby managed a, “Not too shabby, deputy.”

As my father skulked into the woods to wherever he'd secreted Barnaby, and Bixby marched off in the direction of the tournament grounds, Carol and I headed back into the stables.

“Now might be a good time to apologize,” I said. “I accidentally dumped your bag earlier. I think I got everything back inside. But in case you find a little straw in there . . .”

“Oh?” Carol went immediately to the bag in question and rummaged through it.

“And Opie sent back your book.” I pulled the book out of the bag that I had brought, and a piece of paper fell out of it. What had Amber Lee said about a message from Opie?

Audrey, check out page 61. This is very interesting. Not sure what to make of it.

I inhaled a breath through my teeth. Why were history enthusiasts always thinking their discoveries were interesting? And then they recount them, in excruciating detail, to anyone polite enough not to feign a sudden spastic colon. But since Opie was a good kid and my colon was only spazzing intermittently, while Carol continued the inventory of her bag, I flipped to page 61.

I found myself looking at a small section on poisons of medieval times. Featured was a full-color picture of monkshood.

Monkshood—or at least a picture of it—in Carol's book. What did it mean? Or did it mean anything? Just because you own a book doesn't mean you know what's on page 61. For example, I think I still have a copy of the
Canterbury Tales
, but I couldn't tell you what's on page 61, especially since I quit reading when it got a little too bawdy for my taste. I'm not sure I even made it to page 61—even though I skipped the prologue.

But this was a book that Opie had said that Carol knew by heart. And right there on page 61 was a big glossy picture of monkshood with a caption detailing its use as a poison. I could see what Opie had meant by her note. What did this mean?

Obviously it meant that Carol didn't know the book as well as Opie had first thought. After all, in our little hunt in the woods for the murder weapon, Carol had no idea what monkshood looked like. She'd been the one foolish enough to touch it.

But was Carol foolish?

I wished I could believe that she was. But looking at the worn textbook with neon highlighting striping the text surrounding the photo, I knew she never could have missed it.

But why then would she pretend not to recognize it, especially when just touching it put her in potential danger? It just didn't make sense, so I tried to push the thought from my mind, but it came rushing back in with more.

What motive would Carol have to kill Barry Brooks? By all accounts, she barely knew the man. Yeah, sure, Brooks had made a pass at her, but she was a pretty young woman, intelligent and personable, so I suspected she'd experienced unwanted advances before—and that she had better techniques for dealing with that sort of thing than murder.

And if I asked Carol about the picture in her book, no doubt she'd hit herself on the forehead and exclaim how foolish she was to forget.

But Carol wasn't foolish.

Still, I stuck Opie's note into my bag before handing the book back to Carol.

She tossed it into her bag. “Walk with you to the tournament grounds? I'd love to see the final events.”

I nodded. This would be a good time for me to do that observing that Bixby said I ought to be doing.

“That was a great thing you got your father to do for Barnaby, by the way,” she said. “Very kind. I'm going to suggest that they make it a tradition—that is, if they don't cancel next year. But freeing the pig could be popular like the presidential pardoning of the Thanksgiving turkey.” She laughed. “But I won't mention the turkey part of it; that's a sour subject here.”

“Good idea. But I'm afraid I had nothing to do with the ‘free Barnaby' campaign. That was all my dad's idea.” And it struck me that I was now calling him “my dad” instead of “my father.” I wasn't sure what I felt about that, although it no longer gave me that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Although what he's going to do with a pig, I have no idea.”

“Does he own a farm or something?”

I shrugged and rubbed my itchy hands on my rough tunic. I looked at them in the sunlight. They were fiery red, with little blisters beginning to appear. Surely the reins couldn't have done that.

I swallowed hard, trying to disguise my increased heart rate. I needed to think this out like a proper investigator, not jump from conclusion to conclusion. Still, I had to admit the rash on my hands was beginning to look eerily similar to the one I'd treated on Carol's hands the night she accidentally touched monkshood in the woods.

Accidentally? There was that assumption again. I tried to recall what I had seen in that quick glance at the article in the textbook. It had briefly mentioned poisoning by ingesting monkshood root. It made no mention of possible contact reactions, which are not as uncommon in the plant world as people might think. Even in the shop there are certain flowers we tend to wear gloves while arranging. Amber Lee has a bad reaction to lily sap, for instance.

But what if the killer had used this very book as their primer on poisons? He or she would have known about the deadly effects of ingesting the roots but have been unaware of the effects of touching it until it was too late.

But that didn't explain the rash I had on my hand. I hadn't touched monkshood. But had I touched something that had been in contact with monkshood?

I tried to think of everything that I had touched since arriving back at the camp. The horses' reins and all their finery. The egg I found? I certainly hoped not, because that wouldn't fare well for Barnaby. And then the contents of Carol's bag, including her gloves.

Come to think of it, with all the rough work she was doing in the stables, why wasn't she wearing the gloves to protect her hands? And why would there be monkshood sap on the gloves anyway?

This was where my slipshod theory failed to develop. Even if I assumed that Carol was some sociopath who responded to unwanted advances by killing unworthy suitors, I couldn't have it both ways. If she knew about the possible contact reaction, she wouldn't have touched it. And if she touched it, it would imply that she didn't know about the possibly dangerous contact reaction, and therefore wouldn't have thought it necessary to wear gloves.

But monkshood hadn't appeared just once. There'd been those roots put in the Ashbury Dumpster with clues pointing toward Raylene Quinn. But why should Carol want to implicate Raylene?

“Although maybe he is worth giving another chance,” Carol said.

I struggled to recall what we had been discussing. “The pig?” I felt I missed part of the conversation, or at least the intent. And suddenly every word out of Carol's mouth grew in importance.

“No,” she laughed. “Your father. Trust me. I know it's hard to grow up without a father. You know, when I was in kindergarten, we had to draw a picture of our family. I drew a picture of me and my mother and my grandparents and my uncle. The teacher leaned over the table and said, ‘Just the people who live in your house.' And I said, ‘These people all do live in my house.' Then she pointed to a picture of my uncle and asked, ‘Is that your father?' I looked her in the eye and told her that I didn't have a father, that I never had a father.”

That was a blow to my heart, maybe an intentional one. I knew that feeling. The loneliness or embarrassment at father-daughter dances. The flat-out jealousy when your friends complained about their strict fathers and you envied every moment they had to suffer because of it. Nothing makes you appreciate the importance of a father more than growing up without one.

But this wasn't about me. Was Carol playing the empathy card to distract me? I could feel my heart rate boost into overdrive. No, Carol wasn't foolish, but there was more here under the surface. Could she be that wily and manipulative?

And what would be her motive? An insane hatred of men perhaps? She resented her father's leaving, and maybe he was a philanderer. So she kills the first philanderer who comes on to her. Or maybe his age was a factor. After all, Brooks was old enough to be her father . . .

Old enough . . . to be her father.

“Did you say you never met your father?” I asked. And I had a sinking feeling . . .
Oh, Carol, what have you done?

She didn't answer my question, just kept walking toward the tournament grounds, which suited my purposes quite well, since that was where Bixby and Lafferty were. And although I was technically a deputy, they had certain refinements that I lacked. Like a weapon and handcuffs. And a working knowledge of Miranda rights. Already we were within sight and hearing of the grounds, where brightly dressed horses raced and their riders used a lance to attack the targets. This was the tilting competition, then.

A shout went up as a rider fell from his horse.

Carol shook her head. “You know what the whole idea of chivalry was supposed to be, right? We think it's supposed to stand for courage, honor, and virtue, of defending the defenseless and slaying the cruel dragons. But I looked up the word, and you know what? It originally just meant horsemanship. Just a bunch of dumb jocks playing around on horses. All the rest, the knight in shining armor jazz, was probably added to make it seem more romantic.”

She stopped in her tracks. “And the knight-errant? I'm beginning to think they were nothing but a bunch of traveling marauders, raping and pillaging as they went.” She stared off at the tournament field. “Sometimes a girl's got to slay her own dragons.”

“Is that what you did, Carol?”

She kicked a clod of dirt with the toe of her boot. “If anybody figured it out, I knew it would be you. You know what it's like, to want to know your father, to want him in your life, but to fear what he is or might have become. You must know exactly how I feel.”

“But to come all this way to kill him?”

“I didn't come to kill him. He and I were both here last year; did you know that? I knew who he was then, but I kept my distance and watched him. I heard the stories. He was supposed to be some hotshot spy.”

“I've heard that, too.”

“I went home and kicked myself for being too shy to meet him, and then I signed up to TA the course so I could come again this year. This year, I told myself, would be different. So I requested to work in the stables, where I knew I'd run into him. I even took a few riding lessons so I would be more qualified to do that.”

“What exactly did you expect?”

“I wanted . . . a chance to talk. That was all, really. I wanted a chance to look him in the eye, tell him who I was, and then . . . take it from there. In my daydreams he'd say how glad he was to meet me and give me a hug. That's all I wanted. I was so excited when he agreed to meet privately to talk with me.”

“Carol.” And suddenly I felt heartsick for her. The photo that my father had taken of Brooks leering at Carol. “Brooks came on to you.”

“He somehow assumed that I asked to meet him for some kind of tryst. And I told Melanie and Opie that he'd made a pass at me, like he had the other girls, but it was more than that. He touched me. I reminded him that I'd only come to talk. Next thing I knew he had me cornered against a tree and he was kissing me. His hands were all over—”

“Carol.” I took her hand. “I'm so sorry.”

“I felt so sick at that moment. I no longer wanted to tell him who I was. I didn't want anything to do with the man. But he was strong and wouldn't let go. He had me pinned against that tree and wouldn't take no for an answer.”

And a shrewd lawyer would have focused on the fact that she willingly met him in the woods.

“It was then I told him,” she said. “I had to. It was the only thing that stopped him. At first he laughed. But then I shouted out my mother's name and he stopped. Audrey”—tears were streaming down her red face unchecked—“I would have been okay with an apology. Even then. Call me desperate or foolish. All he needed to say was, ‘I'm sorry.'”

Somehow I knew the story just got worse from here. I leaned in and gave her a hug, and she collapsed in a fit of sobbing in my arms. I just hoped no one was around with a camera. I'd hate for that picture to end up in the paper or shown on television as “Deputy hugs murderer. Details at eleven.”

When her tears quieted, I asked, “How did he respond?”

“He was angry. He was actually angry at me. Said I wouldn't get a penny from him. I never mentioned money at all. Honest.”

That figured. Since Barry Brooks was the master of the prenup, he probably was not too thrilled about the idea of another mouth to feed—or in his eyes, a possible extortionist or leech.

“And then he started asking how old I was. I told him I was nineteen. Then he started ranting about how old he felt. But that's all he wanted to know, how old I was. Not, ‘Did you have a nice life?' or ‘How is your mother?'”

And then I recalled the ID card that had fallen out of her satchel. Her last name was the same as the biochemist Brooks had replaced with Raylene. “Your mother worked for Brooks.”

“Yup. Dumped and fired on the same day, just before she found out she was prego. And replaced with that bimbo Raylene.”

“From all accounts, Raylene is pretty smart.”

“Yeah, well, my mother is the most brilliant person I know. She never should have been let go. Do you know how hard it is to get back into the workforce when you've been canned? He couldn't even be bothered to give her a good recommendation.”

“Is that why you sent the note and put the monkshood in the Dumpster? To get back at Raylene?”

“I didn't think that would stick,” she said. “Not as evidence. I just wanted to make sure the police hadn't missed what kind of relationship they had and what kind of man he really was. I mean, for a day or two after our confrontation, he avoided me. But I followed him. It's like I had to know who he was. To see what happened after the shock wore off.”

“But there was no change?”

She clutched her arms in front of her chest as if she were cold, or if the memory were. “He couldn't even keep his pants zipped up.” She snorted. “And I mean that figuratively, since there are no zippers allowed here, of course.”