Lead a Horse to Murder (35 page)

I wondered if Nick had been dealing with all this. Putting myself in his shoes, at least for the distance required to walk from the parking lot to the Life Sciences building, was certainly making me more sympathetic to what he was facing. I felt bad that I hadn’t been more patient, and I vowed to be more understanding from now on.

At the moment, however, I had more pressing things on my mind.

“Room three-eighteen . . .” I muttered as I walked down the dim hallway on the third floor of the redbrick building that housed Brookside’s biology department. When I’d telephoned and asked how I might get in touch with a botanist, the woman in Community Relations seemed to know immediately who the best person for me to speak with would be. I was glad I didn’t have to go into too much detail about the kind of information I was seeking. Explaining why I wanted to know about a particular plant species’ effectiveness as a poison wasn’t exactly something that I expected would come tripping off my tongue.

Then I spotted it: Room 318. The door was closed, but through the glass insert I could see a lab similar to the ones from my college days. Beyond it stretched a sunny room with huge windows that appeared to serve as a greenhouse.

I knocked softly, nervous about disturbing the professor who did his research here.

A stocky man in his late fifties, dressed in a rumpled white lab coat, opened the door. His bushy salt-and-pepper hair contained more white than black, as did his full beard. Behind his wire-rimmed glasses, I could see serious, intelligent eyes.

“Dr. Newcomb?”

“Please, call me Harry. And you must be Dr. Popper.”

“Jessie,” I corrected him.

“Jessie, then. I got a call from Community Relations telling me you’d be stopping by.”

“I hope this isn’t a bad time,” I said, glancing around uncertainly.

Smiling, he gestured behind him at the room filled with greenery. “Just as long as you don’t do anything to keep my plants from growing, we’ll do fine.”

“I won’t take up too much of your time,” I assured him. “I wanted to show you some drawings and ask you what you thought.”

I handed him Callie’s sketchbook, which I’d opened to the first of her renderings of angel’s trumpet.

“Very nicely done,” he observed, studying her handiwork before flipping through the pages. “I see there are lots more. Whoever drew these is certainly talented.”

“Yes, she is. But what I’m interested in is the subject of the drawings,” I explained. “The plants themselves.”

“I see. I suppose you already know that they’re drawings of angel’s trumpet,
Datura
stramonium?”

“That’s what I thought.”

“
Datura
is quite common in the United States, as well as Canada and the Caribbean,” Dr. Newcomb continued. “It also grows in South America. Jimsonweed, green dragon, mad apple, locoweed . . . they’re all members of a group of plants that’s known as the belladonna family. You’ve heard of it, right?”

“Sure. I don’t know much about it, though.”

“If I remember my plant lore correctly, the name ‘belladonna’ comes from the women in Italy who used it because one of its effects was dilating their pupils, which they thought enhanced their looks.” Dr. Newcomb chuckled. But he quickly grew serious. “These particular plants also happen to be popular with teenagers.”

That was a new one. “What’s their appeal?”

“In addition to causing feelings of confusion and disorientation, they can also have a hallucinogenic effect,” he explained. “Kind of like LSD. But it’s even easier to get hold of, so kids use it as a recreational drug. They smoke it, eat the seeds, or use it to make tea.

“But it’s not as if modern kids discovered it. Homer wrote about it in
The Odyssey,
and Shakespeare used it in several of his plays.
Hamlet, Anthony and
Cleopatra . . . and let’s not forget the famous climax of
Romeo and Juliet
.”

“Yes, I remember learning about that in college,” I told him. “The plant’s ability to induce a deathlike state came in very handy when Shakespeare needed a heart-breaking ending for his play.”

“This plant also happens to have played an important role in history. Any chance you remember Bacon’s Rebellion, from the days you were a student of American history?”

I shook my head. “Sorry. If we covered it, I’m afraid it didn’t stick.”

“Bacon’s Rebellion took place in Virginia in 1676. It’s often considered the first step in what eventually became the Revolutionary War. However, there’s an increasingly popular theory that it was largely the result of two gentlemen with particularly large egos. One was the governor of Virginia and the other was his rebellious young cousin, Nathaniel Bacon. The two of them were apparently doing battle for personal reasons that had nothing to do with politics. At any rate, Bacon, who had kind of a problem with authority, instigated a little skirmish. The British sent troops to suppress it. But when they got to the New World, they couldn’t resist having a little fun with some
Datura
they found growing here. It ended up making them so silly that they were completely ineffective.”

“So these plants can have a major effect on people, but they aren’t lethal?”

“I didn’t say that. In fact, they all contain toxins— two tropane alkaloids, hyoscyamine and scopolamine, also known as belladonna alkaloids. And believe me, they’re heavy-duty chemicals.”

By that point, my heart was pounding. “So people do die from ingesting it.”

“Sure. It happens all the time, especially with the kids who are using it because of its hallucinogenic properties. Another common scenario is that someone who ingests it falls into a stupor and loses the ability to make sound judgments. That, combined with losing coordination, can cause them to die accidentally. You know, driving without their full faculties, stumbling over the side of a cliff—”

“Or falling off a horse.” My mouth was so dry I could hardly say the words.

“That would certainly be consistent with the effects of the drug,” Dr. Newcomb said, nodding. “But don’t get me wrong; it can kill by itself. It causes anticholinergic toxidrome. There’s a saying about the symptoms: ‘blind as a bat, mad as a hatter, red as a beet, hot as a hare, dry as a bone . . .’ In other words, the signs are warm, dry skin, dry mouth, tachycardia, seizures, sometimes delirium with hallucinations, and finally, coma. It could take hours or it could be immediate, depending on what part of the plant is ingested. The concentration of the toxins is much higher in the roots, compared to the leaves. As a result, the toxic effects from consuming the roots could occur right away, while someone who had eaten the leaves might not experience them for hours. The amount consumed would also make a difference. Anyone who ingested sufficient amounts would experience a spike in body temperature, paralysis, and—probably most important—a drastically increased heartbeat that could cause an arrhythmia and kill them.”

He handed me back the drawing pad. “So what exactly do you want to know?”

“I think you’ve already told me what I wanted to find out,” I told him.

“In that case,” Dr. Newcomb said with a little shrug, “I’m glad I could be of help.”

“Thank you for your time.” I hesitated. “Actually, I found it surprisingly strange, being back on a college campus again.”

“Yet it sounds like you’re someone who keeps on learning,” he observed.

“I suppose you’re right,” I said, turning to leave.

I didn’t bother to tell him that at the moment, I felt as if everything I learned turned out to be bad news.

As I unlocked the door of my Volkswagen, I noticed it was another beautiful autumn afternoon. The sun was shining brightly, just a trace of briskness energized the air, and the leaves on the trees on the campus were tinged with red and gold. Yet the delightful afternoon did nothing to improve my dark mood. As hard as it was to face, my suspicion—that Callie had poisoned Eduardo, and that she’d used angel’s trumpet to do it— now looked like a strong possibility.

Not only did she hate him, I thought grimly as I started the ignition, she had plenty of access to a plant that had the power to kill him. She’d made drawings of it, again and again. And the night poor Inez was poisoned, she was the only other person at Heatherfield. It all added up.

But she’s a
child! I reminded myself.
She’s only
fourteen years old! Surely she’s not capable of something that horrendous!

My reluctance to believe that Callie could be a murderer was supported by the fact that I was still considering a long list of other possible suspects. And they were all much older, wiser, and craftier.
Please,
please,
let me
be wrong about Callie,
I thought.

My newfound knowledge about
Datura
also increased my concern about Inez. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Heatherfield, figuring I’d ask whoever answered how I could get in touch with her.

“Hello, MacKinnon residence,” a familiar voice answered.

“Inez?” I asked, surprised.

“Dr. Popper!” she replied, dropping her formal tone. “I am so glad you called! I wanted to thank you for your help last night.”

“That’s why I’m calling,” I told her. “Inez, I’ve gotten some more information about the poison that may have been used to kill Eduardo—and which you might have ingested yesterday. It’s really important that you see a doctor—”

“I already have,” she replied. “Thees morning, I told a friend of mine, a girl who works in a house nearby, what happened. Like you, she says I must go to the doctor. She knows a man who will not charge so much money. He says I am fine. Eet was maybe something I ate, some food that was bad, or maybe I had a touch of the flu.”

“Did you tell him about what happened to Eduardo?” I asked her anxiously. “Inez, I think you have to consider the possibility—”

“I am fine, Dr. Popper,” Inez insisted. “See? I am even back at work today. A leetle tired, maybe, and my stomach still does not feel so good, but I am—what ees the saying?—back on my feet again.”

She thanked me again for my concern, then insisted that she had to get back to work.

At least she saw a doctor, I told myself as I hung up. And from the way she sounded, she seemed to be fine.

Yet the possibility that, like Eduardo, she had been a victim of poisoning continued to nag at me. While she seemed unwilling to consider that such a terrible thing had happened to her, I couldn’t be as certain.

I was about to pull out of my parking space, still agonizing over whether Inez had gotten the medical care she really needed, when my cell phone rang. I put the car back into park and grabbed it off the front seat. Glancing at the familiar number on the screen told me Forrester was calling. My heart sank.

“Hey, Popper! Long time no hear from!” he greeted me. He hesitated for just a moment. “We’re still friends, aren’t we?”

“I’ve just been busy,” I told him. Quickly, I added, “With veterinarian business. Seems like one emergency after another lately.”

“I know the feeling. Sounds like being a vet is almost as bad as being a reporter. ‘Crisis oriented’—isn’t that what they call it? But I hope that doesn’t mean you haven’t had time to—you know, work on our little project.”

“Actually . . .” I cleared my throat, stalling as I tried to come up with an excuse. “I’m sorry, Forrester, I’m getting beeped,” I lied. “This could be a client. Can I call you back?”

“Sure, Popper. You know I’m always happy to hear from you.” In a voice that, even in my distracted state, struck me as awfully flirty, he said, “Day
or
night.”

As I hung up, I felt a little guilty for having held out on him. Yet I hadn’t been able to bring myself to play Show and Tell. Something prevented me from telling him what I’d learned about Callie and angel’s trumpet— and the conclusion that naturally arose.

Somehow, I just couldn’t bring myself to say the words out loud, that such a young girl may have committed murder.

At least, not until I’d ruled out some of those other suspects—starting with the one in my very own backyard.

Chapter 16

“The wildest colts make the best horses.”

—Plutarch

This time, I was actually glad to see Winston Farnsworth’s cream-colored Rolls-Royce parked in front of Betty’s house. As I pulled up outside my cottage, I tried to think of a way of luring him outside— while keeping Betty
inside
. Asking him to look at one of my tires, claiming that it appeared to be getting flat, struck me as a good possibility. Then, once I had him alone, I’d simply have to do some quick thinking about how to get him to come clean with whatever information he had about Eduardo Garcia’s murder.

I rang Betty’s bell, trying to ignore the knot in my stomach and hoping my acting abilities were good enough to convince her that there really was a problem with my tire. I was so befuddled over the prospect of lying to one of my closest friends that I actually jumped when Winston answered the door.

“Oh!” I cried. “I was expecting Betty.” I could feel my cheeks growing warm. After what had happened last night, I was relieved he didn’t slam the door in my face and flee in terror.

In fact, he smiled warmly, making it clear there were no hard feelings. “Hello, Jessica. I’m afraid Betty isn’t here. Apparently the ribbon on one of her ballet shoes tore off, and she’s in Port Townsend, trying to find someone to repair it. But you’re certainly welcome to come in and wait. Or simply to visit.”

I strode inside. “Is Frederick with you?” I asked, as if visiting with a dachshund, rather than a mere human being, was a stronger reason to pay a call.

“He’s at home,” Winston said, “probably having the time of his life barking at squirrels.” Chuckling, he added, “Goodness, you’d think that after all this time, dogs and squirrels would have called a truce.”

“Right.” At the moment, I wasn’t feeling very friendly toward him. In fact, I kept glancing around, terrified that I’d see some sign of foul play. Just because Winston said Betty was out doing errands didn’t mean he was telling the truth. After all, not trusting him was what had brought me here in the first place.