Poisoned Petals (24 page)

Peggy believed Holles was the most likely suspect at the moment. He knew about the money and where Darmus was. He probably knew about Luther’s asthma. And he certainly hadn’t wanted her to reveal that Darmus was alive.

Peggy left to talk to her weekly garden club as soon as Selena arrived. The garden club met at the Kozy Kettle, where Emil and Sofia sold them coffee, tea, and pastries as they talked.

“This morning’s subject is planting a tree.” She addressed the usual crowd of twelve women who attended the meeting almost every week. One of the husbands, Marvin Whitley, sat beside his wife with an expression on his face that could only be called complete agony.

Peggy took out her clear bucket and put it on the table. “The first thing you should do is consider your yard. A tree needs room to grow. Think about the height it will eventually reach. For instance, a dogwood won’t get as tall as an oak. Make sure you aren’t setting yourself up to cut down your tree when it matures.”

“How close can I plant a tree to my house?” Jane Matthews asked.

“Give the roots enough room to grow without them invading your basement,” Peggy answered. “At least ten feet, depending on the tree. I brought a weeping peach tree with me this morning.”

There were murmurs of how cute the tiny tree was with its cascading branches and delicate pink flowers.

“Dig a hole at least double the size of your root.” Peggy used her spade in the bucket to make a place for her sapling. “Take the tree carefully out of the container or sack it comes in. Then place it in the hole you dug and cover it with dirt. Be sure to pack the dirt down well around it.”

“What about fertilizer?” one of the women asked.

“I recommend fertilizer spikes.” Peggy held up a package of fertilizer. “Pound a few into the ground around the roots. You’ll have to read the directions to know what’s right for your tree.”

This was followed by a flurry of questions about trees in general. Emil brought Peggy some peach tea while she talked. She smiled at him and answered the next question.

Janice Whitley could hardly wait for the meeting to be over. She rushed up, leaving her husband behind. “Peggy, you won’t believe what I just heard! They’re opening up a Smith & Hawken store across the street in the Atrium!”

“Who told you?” Smith & Hawken was an expensive garden shop that supplied choice garden products to an upscale market. They didn’t have plants or landscaping capabilities, but they could wipe out her garden furniture and paraphernalia sales. Peggy didn’t like the sound of that.

“David Friese from the Bookmark over in Founders Hall. He said he heard it today.”

“Competition?” Marvin asked, hearing the first thing he could understand that morning.

“Not directly,” Peggy replied. “But it would affect us.”

Five of the women from the meeting, all dressed in business suits and heels, followed Peggy to the Potting Shed, each looking for something different. She was able to set up a very nice deal with one of the shoppers for an expensive patio set. The three-piece wood and canvas set would be delivered the following week.
Take that, Smith & Hawken
, she thought as she rang up the sale.

But she knew the elite garden store would make a dent in future sales of that kind. They were a little pricier, but they were bound to have a bigger shop with room to display more products.

A large, spike-haired black man in an expensive gray suit came into the shop as the last customer left. He glanced around at the tomato seedlings in the large, wide-paned windows that faced the courtyard and touched a birdhouse that looked like a pirate ship. Then he planted his feet on the floor, looking like a pirate balanced on the deck of his rolling ship. “Which one of you is Dr. Peggy Lee?”

Selena stepped from behind the counter and placed herself protectively in front of Peggy. “Who wants to know?”

“Erasmus Smith. I’m Darmus Appleby’s attorney. Are you Dr. Lee?”

Peggy pushed up out of the rocker. “Of course not. I’m Peggy Lee.” She stepped forward and held out her hand to him. “I hope you’ve tried a murder case before.”

Erasmus’s broad face and slanted eyes showed no surprise. He obviously knew about the new charges. “I hope so, too. If not, your friend is in trouble. Fortunately, I’ve tried many cases like this one.”

“How were they like this?”

“My client is innocent. I’m sure you know that, Dr. Lee.”

“I believe that’s true,” she agreed. “The question is, who killed Luther if Darmus didn’t?”

The attorney flicked an imaginary dust mote from his flawless suit sleeve. “That is not my concern. The question for me is how to prove my client is innocent. Or at least how to make him
look
innocent.”

“I think we’re basically talking about the same thing, Mr. Smith. What can I do to help you?”

He glanced around the room again, then focused on Selena and Peggy’s father, who was there to help for the day. “Not here.” He handed her a business card. “My office. Three this afternoon.”

Peggy nodded. “I’ll be there.”

When he was gone, after one last derisive look at the Potting Shed, Peggy glanced at the business card. “I can’t believe Darmus trusts that man with his life.”

“He seemed fine to me,” her father remarked. “A little sneaky and shiftless just like a lawyer should be.”

Selena laughed. “You’re right about that! Wonder where Darmus met him.”

“Sometimes you have to make do,” Peggy said. “Darmus may not have had much choice.” Erasmus Smith’s business card was from Feed America. Apparently the group was still interested in what happened to Darmus. “I’m going to go over there and find out what’s going on.”

Paul called her a few minutes later, while she was handling a delivery of sundials. “Darmus made bail. I didn’t know if you heard. Feed America raised the money for him.”

Her brows knitted as she signed the delivery receipt. “All of this mayhem hasn’t slowed the group down, has it? With Darmus out of action and Luther dead, Holles just keeps going and going.”

“Gotta go. Just thought you’d want to know what happened.”

“Thanks. I’ll talk to you later.”

Peggy tapped the phone absently on her chin as she considered the possibilities.

“Problems?” the delivery driver asked.

“No more than usual.” She focused on him. “How are you doing, Fred? How’s Thelma?”

“I’m okay. Been having a few problems with my back, but otherwise things are good.”

“I’m glad. How are Thelma’s allergies this year?”

“Better! That trick you told me about eating local honey seems to have worked for her. She’s not even taking her prescription this year.”

“That’s great!” Peggy patted his hand. “The chances are everything we need to stay well is out there. We just have to know about it.”

“Yeah. Who’d have thought about honey helping allergies?”

Peggy agreed as he climbed back in his truck and got ready to pull out. She’d only heard recently about honey made within twenty-five miles of a person’s home being able to help allergies. It had something to do with the enzymes in the honey acting like a vaccination against the pollen from local flowers. The program had to be started in the winter to give the enzymes time to build up, but if Thelma’s results were good, it could help many allergy sufferers.

Her mind turned to the problem with Darmus as she walked back into the shop. She wished there were an enzyme that could solve it as easily as the allergies were handled. Darmus didn’t kill Luther. She was certain of that. But someone was trying to make it look like he did. Someone planted that information about hyacinths in his office. It wouldn’t make sense for him to have it printed up all nice and tidy for them to find, not that he’d need it anyway.

“I don’t like that look, Margaret,” her father said when he saw her. “You’re plotting mischief.”

Peggy recalled her grandmother saying that when she was a child. “Maybe. And I could use a partner. Are you in?”

He grinned. “As long as I don’t have to go to the mall, I’m in!”

PEGGY AND HER FATHER DROVE over to UNCC, the Charlotte campus of the University of North Carolina. Compared to Queens, it was a sprawling giant that sat neatly in a small corner of Charlotte. The large, modern buildings made the campus look more like a hospital complex than an educational facility. Created in 1946, it had none of the historic charm of its sister in Chapel Hill, but Peggy knew it was a good school. Paul graduated from there. Sam went there, too.

At one point, the north end of Charlotte had been growing as fast as the campus. Strip malls had brought traffic, and IBM had brought industry. The wealthier denizens of the city moved out to Ballontyne and Pineville, leaving behind their expensive homes. Now many of those buildings sat empty, victims of massive unemployment. As more and more jobs were shipped overseas, computer technicians joined the unemployment lines or looked for jobs at Taco Bell.

Inside the campus, Peggy and her dad found Harwood’s office.

“I’d like to see Professor Harwood.” Peggy told his assistant. “He’s expecting me.”

The pretty girl in the tight pink tank top and green short shorts smiled and whipped her long auburn hair back over her shoulder. “He was called to a meeting. He should be back soon. He quit, you know. That leaves me having to look for another summer job.”

“Really?” Peggy commiserated. “That’s too bad. It must be his work with Feed America.”

“Yeah,” the girl mourned. “They say he’s got some real money now, you know? But
I
won’t see it.”

Peggy looked around the foyer. There were no chairs. “Could we wait in his office?”

“Oh, sure. Go ahead. I don’t care.” The girl took out her nail polish again and started liberally applying poppy red polish to her toenails.

“Thanks.” Peggy smiled at the back of the girl’s head, then beckoned her father into Holles’s office. It was barely more than a closet. “No wonder he wanted to take over Feed America.”

“Not much here,” her father agreed, squeezing himself into a corner where a folding chair was open. “I take it Darmus has a bigger office?”

“Much bigger. I’m sure he could have had more, but he’s always been a sparse man. I have a feeling Holles won’t be the same.” Peggy didn’t sit down right away. Instead, she calmly started rifling through Holles’s desk.

“What are you looking for?” Her father watched her. “Should I stand outside the door and whistle if I see him coming?”

“That would be great, Dad. But we don’t want to look too suspicious.” She glanced at the closed door. “Just stand over there and hold the doorknob. That will give me a minute to sit down if we’re interrupted. Holles will think the door is stuck.”

But there was nothing incriminating on the desk—at least nothing she could find. If Holles was involved with what happened to Darmus and Luther, he didn’t leave any trace of it here, unlike the blatant information the police found on Darmus’s desk. There was also nothing here about Feed America.

Just then, Peggy saw something on the floor under the desk and stooped down to get it. It was a cottonseed. She heard Holles’s voice outside the door and rushed to sit down as she stuffed the seed in the pocket of her jeans. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t preserved. The police couldn’t use it anyway; this was an illegal search.

As they planned, Peggy’s father held the doorknob for a moment, and then finally opened the door with a big, hokey smile on his face. “Sorry about that. I was about to go look for the bathroom and didn’t realize you were on the other side of the door.”

Was it Peggy’s imagination, or did Holles scan the room carefully like he was checking to be sure nothing had been removed?

“That’s all right.” Holles clapped his hand on her father’s shoulder. “You’re Dr. Lee’s father, right?”

“That’s right, Ranson Hughes.” He shook Holles’s hand. “Up here from the Low Country for a couple of weeks.”

Holles’s eyes glittered at Peggy. He closed the door behind her father as he left the office. “Well! I’m pleased to see you here. I was hoping our little exchange the other day didn’t sour our relationship. What can I do for you?”

“Have you considered that whoever killed Luther might have been trying to get his hands on the group? If you take over, you could be next.”

He laughed. “I’m not really worried about that. Someone will have to head up the organization. It might as well be me.”

Might as well be a skunk as a snake
, the old phrase repeated in her mind as she looked at his oily smile. “Well, you certainly have the credentials. I’ll talk to you later.”