Pretty Poison (2 page)

“If I can’t get there myself, I’ll send someone else out.” Peggy took her appointment book out of her bag and flipped through the pages. “When would be good for you?”

“Anytime really,” Claire said. “Well, anytime in the next week. Kevin’s out of town until then. He doesn’t care much for dirt being all over. I try to do big projects while he’s gone.”

“How about day after tomorrow?”

“That would be great! Thanks!”

Peggy started toward the door that led into Brevard Court, anxious to open her shop. The autumn morning was gorgeous, with wreaths of mist hanging in the trees. After a hot, dry summer of milky skies and heat lightning, the bright blue Carolina sky was a blessing. The sun was warm despite the chill of November. It was a wonderful ride . . . until she ran into the Saturn.

Even then, she couldn’t complain. Nothing really happened. Except she found out her heart could still race a little when she was talking to an attractive man. That was more of a surprise than running into the side of his car. Her husband, John, had only been dead two years. She never expected to consider a man as anything more than a friend for the rest of her life.

She shuffled her keys, looking for the right one that would open the door. Good smells were already emanating from Anthony’s Caribbean Café and China King restaurant. Across the way, the Carolina Expert Tailor shop was busy, and a woman in a tight red business suit was smoking a cigarette outside of Cookie’s Travel Experts.

Brevard Court was built at the doorway to Latta Arcade. Like a turn-of-the-century mini-mall, the shops continued along the inside arcade in the restored 1915 office building. The antique light fixtures and parallel rows of shop fronts created the feeling of walking into the past. The overhead skylight, which was part of the original architecture, kept shoppers dry. Its original purpose was to provide natural light for cotton buyers to inspect their goods.

The rent was a little steep, but Peggy loved the look and feel of the place. The Potting Shed had real heart-of-pine floors that squeaked when she walked across them. It wasn’t huge, but it had a nice-sized warehouse space in the back to keep shovels, potting soil, and other essential items. She did a brisk business, even in the winter. Charlotteans were avid gardeners all year long.

One of the students who worked for her created a beautiful banner for the big storefront window. Red tulips linked to yellow marigolds. Purple hyacinths entwined with pink carnations. It made her think of spring when she saw it.

Her shop was the realization of a dream Peggy and John Lee had shared. An urban gardener’s paradise. They saved money religiously toward it for ten years. It was going to be their retirement. They both loved plants and gardening.

Peggy was the daughter of a South Carolina gentleman farmer. She grew up walking barefoot through cornfields and soybeans in the rich coastal soil. She loved to help out with planting and harvesting. Her career as a botanist was a natural extension of her love of plants. She taught classes at Queens University for twenty years before retiring when she was fifty. She went back to teaching part-time to help offset expenses with the Potting Shed.

John called working in the yard his getaway. He came home, put his hands in the dirt, and forgot everything he’d seen and heard on the streets of Charlotte. He was amazing with trees and shrubs. He had azalea flowers the size of grapefruit. All of their neighbors were envious.

He was a police detective for twenty years. Walked a beat for ten years before that. Then he answered a late-night domestic dispute call that ended in violence. It would be two years in December since he was shot and killed on the sidewalk outside a south Charlotte house. The husband killed his wife as well as John Lee. He fled the scene and was never found.

When John died, Peggy took all the money they’d saved plus his pension fund and opened the shop. Her accountant almost had a heart attack. But there was prime space in the downtown area available. She’d wasted enough time.

Business was slow at first. There were times she was afraid she was going to lose everything. But the idea caught on as more people began to inhabit the expensive condominiums and apartments being built. Charlotte’s inner city was coming alive, and Peggy’s garden shop was part of it.

Humming to herself, Peggy took off her purple cape as she walked in the door and tossed her hat behind the counter.

Traffic was light on Thursdays anyway. Things would pick up around lunchtime when the personal assistants and office managers came out of the uptown buildings. They loved to eat lunch in the courtyard outside her windows where benches and wrought-iron tables and chairs were set. Then they wandered through the shops.

She switched on the lights and set up the cash register for the day. She was having some trouble with the computer she used for ordering unusual plants and supplies for her customers. But a good swat on the case set that right. The store was ready for the fall planting season but gearing up toward the winter months when most outside work was maintenance. Her seed catalogs were beginning to arrive to fill everyone’s mind with visions of color for spring.

She looked around the shop. Everything was set up for her first customer. Except for the garden spade in the middle of the floor. Peggy glanced at her watch and wondered how late Selena was going to be as she walked around the counter to pick it up.

The pointed end of the spade was tinged reddish brown. Carolina clay, probably. But this seemed darker. There were traces of it leading toward the warehouse door in the back of the shop. Wondering what happened and who she was going to chew out for it, she picked up the shovel. That’s when she saw him. Her hands went numb, and the shovel clattered to the floor.

She wasn’t sure how long she stood there looking at the man. Her first impulse was to turn around and run out of her shop, screaming for help. But she was made of sterner stuff. Or at the very least, she was morbidly curious. Years of being a cop’s wife didn’t prepare her for this. But her background as a researcher made her push her emotions aside and take another look.

The man was facedown in one of her attractive wicker baskets filled with anemone bulbs. It was part of the autumn scene she’d created, complete with scarecrow and pumpkins. He’d obviously fallen forward, dragging the scarecrow from its perch on the oak rocking chair. The straw figure looked forlorn, lying half under the man’s weight like some bizarre teddy bear.

She wanted to look away. She had her cell phone open but couldn’t get her fingers to press the buttons. The terrible picture mesmerized her. She felt like one of those people she yelled at who gawked at car accidents. She knew what she should do, but the connection between logic and motor function failed her.

The man could be a homeless person. Despite the best efforts of the real estate management group who owned Brevard Court, there were usually one or two of them hanging around. Although his clothes seemed too clean and his trousers had a sharp crease down the legs. There was also the little question of how he came to be in her shop.

The courtyard door was locked when she came in. She locked it after the last customer left yesterday. He didn’t come in that way without a key. The only other way in was through the back loading door. She wanted to check it. But she couldn’t get her feet to move any more than she was able to dial 911.

He might just be unconscious. Peggy really wanted to think that was the case. There was only one way to tell.

She stepped carefully around the man on the floor until she could reach down and touch his neck. There was no pulse. He was as cold as last winter. There was some dried blood on his white shirt collar. It spread down his back to darken his suit coat and reached up into his hairline. There was a thin trickle of it on his right ear. Blood had pooled on the floor around him.

He definitely wasn’t one of the college students who worked for her. She couldn’t tell who he was with his face buried in the basket. And she knew better than to move him. How many times had John come home complaining about a disturbed crime scene?

But she couldn’t help noticing some of the same details John used to tell her after coming home from a call at three A.M. Caucasian man. Probably about six feet tall. Fairly athletic build. Light brown hair. She couldn’t tell the color of his eyes, and there were no visible scars. At least not from her perspective. There was a white mark on his outstretched wrist that looked like he was used to wearing a watch. His nails were manicured.

She stopped cataloging his vitals when her gaze reached his feet. He was wearing black nylon socks but no shoes. She glanced around the area. There was no sign of them. She heard a key rattle in the back door. It was locked, too. Not sure what to expect, her hand reached out for one of the rakes in the display.

“Morning, Peggy! How’s busi—geez! What happened?”

Peggy looked up at her assistant. “I’m afraid he’s dead. Don’t touch anything.”

Selena Rogers remained where she was, horror-stricken by the sight of the body. “How do you know he’s dead? Maybe he’s asleep.”

“I touched him. He’s stiff and cold. He’s not ever getting up again.”

Big blue eyes widened even further. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. There’s some blood. I don’t think he died from natural causes.”

“Did
you
kill him?”

“Of course not! Don’t be silly! I don’t even know who he is!” Peggy carefully stepped back around the body. Her hands were shaking, but she forced them to punch in 911. She turned away from the dead man. Selena’s entrance broke the spell. She was glad to be able to function again.

“Was he killed right there, looking at the bulbs?”

“I don’t know. He was dead when I got here.” The emergency operator came on the line. Peggy told her what happened and her address. She closed the phone and sank down on the nearby garden bench. Her knees were a little weak, and she was light-headed. She despised those ridiculous women who fainted at the sight of blood and wasn’t about to become one of them. “You might as well sit down, Selena. This could take a while.”

It only took the Charlotte police department about a minute and a half to get a squad car to Brevard Court. An ambulance was there soon after. Peggy opened the door for them, then stepped aside.

The uniformed officer took a cursory look around the shop. He didn’t seem particularly upset when he saw the man on the floor. He took out a small notebook and pen. “Are you the one who found the body?”

She looked at his name tag. “Yes I am, Officer Kopacka. This is my shop.”

“Your name?”

“Peggy Lee.”

He looked up. “Didn’t you used to be a singer?”

“No.” Like no one ever asked her
that
question. “That was someone else.”

He asked her a series of rapid-fire questions. She answered as well as she could. When it came to the shovel, she admitted that she disturbed the evidence. “I didn’t know at the time that it was evidence. It was just in the way.”

“And what makes you think the shovel is evidence now?”

She shrugged. “The blood on the edge?”

He looked skeptical. “And you’ve never seen this man before?”

“Maybe. It’s difficult to tell, since I can’t see his face.”

He scribbled down her answers, then addressed Selena. “What about you?”

“Me? I just got here. Peggy was standing over him when I walked in. I don’t know what happened.”

He looked back at Peggy.

“Hey, Kyle,” his partner called, “you better come and take a look at this.”

“Stay right here, both of you. I have more questions.”

“I have plants to run over to Wachovia,” Selena said. “Then I have class at noon.”

“Not today. Even if you didn’t see what happened, we still need your statement.”

Peggy put her arm around Selena’s shoulders. “Don’t worry. It’ll take a while to clear this up, but everything will be fine. I’ll call Liz at Wachovia and postpone. You should be able to get out of here in time for class.”

“Thanks.” Selena shivered when she looked back at the dead man. “What do you think happened? If you just got here, too, how did he get into the shop?”

“I don’t know.”

The officer came back to them. “You ladies might as well get comfortable. We’re going to have to wait for a detective. This man’s been murdered.”

“That’s crazy!” Selena declared. “Peggy wouldn’t hurt a fly!”

“Please don’t help me, Selena. I don’t think the officer was suggesting that I killed the man. Were you, Officer Kopacka?”

“Not necessarily.”

“That’s very reassuring. Thank you.”

Selena moved closer to her. Her long black hair and cocoa skin emphasized her golden whiskey brown eyes. She was tall and thin, a long-distance runner at Queens University. After taking Peggy’s botany class by accident last year, she went to work for her a week later. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I’m just so nervous, you know? This is like being on one of those reality shows. Except for real.”

“It’s okay. I don’t know how all of this happened. But I know we can clear it up. There wasn’t a dead man here when we left last night.”

“No.” Selena stopped. “Was there a delivery? Not that they would’ve delivered him here but . . .”

Peggy pushed a strand of white hair out of her face. “I’m not sure. I’ll have to take a look at the delivery log.”

Emil crashed in through the courtyard door. “Peggy? What happened?”

“You can’t come in here,” Officer Kopacka told him. “This is a crime scene.”

All five-feet-ten inches of Sicilian male bristled. His voice was still heavily accented, even after twenty years away from Sicily. “Hey! I’m a taxpayer! I’m entitled!”

“I’m sorry, sir. Nobody walks in on a crime scene unless the detective on duty says so.”

“Okay. Where’s the detective?”