Southern Poison (27 page)

While Holloman was an enigma, Peggy Lee was what she appeared to be on the surface: a capable research chemist with few social skills. She didn’t pop up in any Internet searches, except for a few trade publication articles in which she was mentioned as conducting fertility research. No marriages, no children. No rap sheet. No social organizations or clubs. She didn’t belong to her college alumni association. Even her neighbors at the apartment complex where she lived could recognize her photograph, but didn’t know her by name.

My next visit needed to be the lab where Peggy worked, and thanks to the GPS locator JJ put on Holloman’s rental car, I knew exactly how to get there.

A nondescript building with no signage, the laboratory was in Wilmington’s industrial section and when I found a small Honda with a license tag registered to Peggy Lee Cooke, I knew I was at the correct spot. During the time I waited, sitting in the hearse, a constant stream of trucks traveled the roads. Nondescript delivery trucks, brown UPS trucks, refrigerated trucks, tractor-trailer rigs,
and workers in pickups. Two hours, one Pepsi, and one bottled water later, a FedEx van stopped at the lab. Its driver went inside with an empty hand truck. He came out wheeling four large boxes. He went back in to collect another four. He returned a third time to make it a total of ten. Soon after the FedEx van continued on its route, Peggy Lee emerged. Hair in a ponytail and still donning a lab coat, she put on sunglasses and went straight to her car. Based on the time, she was either going for a late lunch or heading out early for the day.

The entrance door was equipped with a dead bolt lock and a standard lever door handle lock. I picked the lever lock in seconds and was pleased to find the dead bolt unengaged. A wall-mounted numerical keypad beeped when I walked in, but the alarm system was not set. Either the chemist was careless, or she planned to return soon.

I found the packaging area, where she put her raw ingredient into cardboard boxes for pickup and backtracked until I found a partially full box. Inside were opaque glass bottles filled with a thick substance. I stashed two of them in my backpack and searched the lab until I came across a desk and computer. I stuck in my earpiece and called Soup. As usual, he was home, clacking away at a keyboard. That’s the good thing about computer hackers. They’re always there.

“Okay, I’m standing in the lab in front of a computer and I’ve got the memory stick thingie you gave me. What do I do with it?”

“It
so
turns me on when you talk techie to me,” he said.

“C’mon. I’ve got to hurry.”

“Laptop?”

“Desktop.” We did some rapid-fire question and answer until Soup told me where to insert the stick and which buttons to push. “Now what?” I asked.

“Now you wait and watch.”

The computer screen came to life and the light on his memory
stick started flashing. According to Soup, it was copying the hard drive.

He slurped something. “Depending on the file sizes, it could take fifteen or twenty minutes. You may as well go play with something else while you wait. When the blue light on the device stops flashing for more than five seconds, it’s done. Just yank it out. Unplug the power cord to the computer, count to six, plug it back in. They’ll think it was a power surge.” He hung up before I could say that I owed him.

While I waited for Soup’s device to do its thing, I rummaged. I sifted through desk drawers, looked through the contents of four refrigerators, and searched the bathroom. Finding nothing of interest other than a bunch of lab-type stuff, I went back to the smallest of the refrigerators and found a ginger ale. The blue light continued to flash as I drank my soda. I waited. My phone buzzed.

“Holloman’s on the move and it looks like he’s headed to the lab. Aren’t you there now?”

“Yep.” I disconnected and, standing on a chair, peeked through a small window near the ceiling of the building. Holloman’s rental car pulled in, right next to the front door. I sprinted to the door, locked the dead bolt from the inside, ran back to the computer, removed the stick without bothering to see if it was done, unplugged the computer power cord, and shoved it back into the outlet without counting to six. I went inside the bathroom and shut the door. Using the toilet for a step stool, I jimmied open a push-out window above it, and ungracefully hauled myself and my backpack through the opening. Landing in a patch of weeds, I crouched, listening, until I heard the front door open. As soon as it clicked shut, I headed across the street.

Taking a break to smoke cigarettes, two workmen from a screen printing shop watched as I sprinted toward them and made my way to the corpse caddy, which I’d backed in next to a Dumpster. I shook
out my hair, adjusted my bra, and climbed into the hearse. Pulling out, I gave them a big smile and wave. Dumbfounded, one just stared after me, but his buddy waved back.

I drove by Soup’s place to give him the memory stick.

“Hey, interesting set of wheels you’ve got there. Is that what retired people drive these days? Casket baskets?”

“How fast can we see what’s on there?” I said, ignoring his smirk.

Soup told me he’d get on it right away and call me later.

When I arrived at the Block, the parking lot was jammed and loud music emanated from one corner of my bar. Cutting through the crowd of people, I found Ox and pulled him into the kitchen.

“I don’t know what’s going on yet, but we need to get Lindsey out of her Derma-Zing contract. I don’t think we want her to have any further contact with Holloman or his company.”

Ox smiled. “I was going to tell you the exact same thing. I just had a talk with the modeling agency and Lindsey has fulfilled her new contract. But even if she hadn’t, I agree that we don’t want her involved anymore.”

The physical nearness to Ox fired up my nerve endings and my hands migrated toward his body. I picked up a discarded beer carton to give them something else to do, and updated him on Peggy Lee’s laboratory. “What do you think about it all?”

Ox removed the cardboard box from my grip, tossed it against a nearby wall, and took both of my hands in his. “I think I’d be destroyed if something happened to either one of the women in my life, Jersey. That would be Lindsey and you, just in case you’re wondering.”

We would have stood like that long enough to enjoy the moment if Ruby hadn’t hustled by. “You’d better get out there and tell your daddy to quit giving away shrimp and crab leg platters. The hush puppies and chicken fingers were one thing. But all the seafood’s gonna add up to a pretty penny.”

I let go of Ox’s hands. “What is he up to now? And who brought a band in here?”

“Beats me,” Ox said. “I just got here.”

Ruby let out a jolly belly laugh. “You two didn’t set this up?”

We shook our heads. A cook shouted something to another cook and a server hurried by looking stressed.

“Oh, this is priceless!” Ruby said. “Spud and his friends have put on a fund-raiser. Got Wilmington’s art council involved and everything. Flier advertises fifty-cent beer, dollar drinks, and free food all night long. Plus no cover charge for the music. They’re going to auction off his two sculptures at ten o’clock.”

She pulled a folded sheet of paper from her apron pocket and passed it over.

Incredulous, I scanned the page. “They made a flier? And who authorized free food?”

“Spud said you did. That you were helping him raise enough money to pay for the damage at the shooting range.” With a final hearty laugh, Ruby scooted off. “Your daddy is a piece of work.”

A stray customer wandered into the kitchen. “Hey, do, uh, you guys know where I can get my raffle ticket for the drawing?”

“What drawing?” Ox said to the girl, who looked like a college student.

“The paper said there’d be dollar raffle tickets for sale, to win a year’s worth of free lunches. One a week. I’ll spend five dollars to try and win that!”

“Paper?” I said. “You saw this in the
newspaper?”

“Well, yeah.” She held out a five-dollar bill.

People
kept piling in and, for the first time ever, Ox began to worry that we might exceed our allowable occupancy per the fire
marshal. The band stopped playing promptly at ten and a professional auctioneer took the microphone. Apparently, Fran donated
Road Rage
for the cause, after she bought it from the insurance company. The auctioneer went full-bore, arms and body synchronized with his voice, as he put on a show that could have enticed an accountant to buy a fifty-dollar bill for a hundred dollars. Despite his rhythmic, melodic skills of persuasion, nobody bid on the Chrysler. The alligator brought a single bid of one hundred dollars, but the businessman retracted his offer when he learned that the tail no longer moved. Ever persistent, the auctioneer took a twenty-minute break to allow prospective bidders a chance to look at
Road Rage
and
Nature’s Wrath
one more time. During the second round of bidding, not a single person raised their hand. Nobody even lifted their arm to take a drink of their fifty-cent beer. Not surprisingly, the arts council folks had already left. Shrugging, the auctioneer found Spud sulking at the bar and asked for his fee.

Spud’s voice came out in a high-pitched squeak. “Fee? You didn’t raise any money, for crying out loud! How am I suppose to pay your fee out of the profits when there ain’t no profits?”

“Sorry, pal,” the auctioneer said. “This is how I earn my living. I can’t help it if nobody wanted your sculptures. I did my best. You could glue gold coins to those things and they still wouldn’t sell.”

“How much does he owe you?” Bobby said.

“Hundred dollars. But considering how things turned out, let’s make it fifty and I’ll get out of here.”

Fran scrawled out a check, signing it with a flourish. The auctioneer pocketed the check and made his exit.

“I ain’t gonna be no kept man, Frannie,” my father grumbled. “I can pay my own bills.”

“Good, because I’m going to stop the music soon so we can get all these people out of here,” I said. “I’m sure the band will want to be paid before they go, too.”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Spud stuttered. “I was going to pay them out of the profits from selling the sculptures.”

Bobby and Hal and Trip pretended they had to go to the urinal and smartly sauntered away, not wanting to be near Spud when he started looking to borrow cash.

Fran rubbed my father’s back. “I’ll pay the band tonight, sweetie, and you can pay me back later.”

Spud grumbled his thanks. Since his poker buddies had collected eighty-eight dollars from raffle ticket sales, I let the band go ahead and give away the advertised prize of free lunch for a year. Ox put the eighty-eight bills in the register before Spud had a chance to pocket them.

By midnight, the Block had mostly cleared out, Spud went to bed, and Cracker was so stuffed from all the dropped food, he wouldn’t move. One of the cooks threatened to quit, Dirk stopped by to tell me that I had to move Spud’s abandoned vehicle off my property or I’d be fined, and Ox estimated that we’d given away more than nine hundred dollars’ worth of food. Only Ruby, a bartender, and the other servers were happy with the evening’s outcome. All the free food and cheap beer had filled their pockets with wads of tip money.

“What is this
, Peggy?” Chuck said, holding up a pamphlet on prenatal diet tips.

Peggy cringed. Her mind spun, trying to come up with a plausible reason she had the publication. “Wh-wha-what were you doing in my purse?”

“I was looking for a pair of reading glasses. I’ve misplaced mine.”

“I don’t use reading glasses,” she said.

“Dammit, Peggy, answer me. What are you doing with this, unless—” He stopped in midsentence, instantly knowing she’d betrayed him. Ripping the pamphlet in half, he threw it at a trash bin. “You didn’t get the abortion.”

Instinctively backing away from him, she put her hands over her belly. “I went to the appointment, I swear. But I couldn’t go through with it. I
want
this baby.”

Chuck shoved her into a chair and stood towering over her. “Why did you lie, Peggy?”

“I told you. I want this baby, and I knew you’d try to make me
get rid of it. Besides, I didn’t lie. I just never told you that I didn’t do it.”

Chuck paced the length of the lab to calm down. “Are you still committed to Project Antisis?”

“Of course I am,” Peggy Lee said, just to keep his temper in check. She was no longer sure what she believed in, especially now that she’d experienced the bliss of pregnancy. She just knew she’d do anything to protect her miracle baby and keep it safe.

Chuck sat in a chair next to his chemist. “With your help, Peggy, we have pulled off something that will alter the future of the world, do you realize that? Since people don’t have enough sense to stop reproducing, we’ve intervened. We have prevented
several million
potential pregnancies from happening in developed countries.” Chuck’s eyes had glazed over. “Do you realize how beneficial to the preservation of the earth that is? Do you?”

Peggy Lee could only nod.

“That’s several million fewer greedy, hungry, careless humans. Several million fewer plastic toys and multimillion fewer disposable diapers in landfills. We’ve impacted everything from water usage to polluting plastics to oil-gobbling cars on the road. We’ve made a dent, Peggy, a huge dent. We’ve made a difference. We have helped the people of this earth.”

Wide-eyed, Peggy Lee nodded again.

Chuck took a deep breath, eyes closed, face to the ceiling and paused that way before speaking again. “Isis was the goddess of fertility. You and I, Peggy, and a lot more environmentalists just like us, realize the benefit of being
anti
Isis. Project Antisis will be the savior of the earth, and Derma-Zing is just the beginning.”

Chuck went to the refrigerator and removed a plastic bottle of spring water, irked that Peggy still hadn’t bought more of his favorite canned seltzer water. He returned to the chair and slowly drank. Derma-Zing had already exceeded his most aggressive
expectations, Chuck thought. Usage was up to four million girls, and with the new formulation, sterilization could be caused with as little as two applications. Drinking the water, he made the decision to close out phase one of Project Antisis. Not only had his chemist betrayed him, but some users such as the Oxendine girl were demonstrating physical symptoms. It was just a matter of time before medical professionals started talking to each other and began searching for a common element.