Authors: Kylie Brant
Waking Evil 02 (25 page)
“Such as?”
The woman wrinkled up her brow. “Oh, for instance the leaves of aloe vera can be used as a gel for burns, cuts, and abrasions. Ginger can be helpful for anythin’ from migraines to calmin’ nausea or fussy bowels. Valerian root can assist with insomnia or anxiety. Dandelion leaves can be used as a diuretic, and its root can stimulate liver function. Even Queen Anne’s Lace, a wildflower, has many uses.” Her expression turned mischievous. “Its seeds can treat a hangover.”
“Good to know,” Dev murmured.
But Ramsey had picked up on one of the woman’s earlier examples. “What other roots have healin’ powers?”
“Oh, there’s kava. The word refers to the plant and to a beverage made from its roots. It’s not indigenous to our country, although I know healers who grow it. Chewin’ on the root or drinkin’ the beverage made from it has strong intoxicant effects. It acts as a tranquilizer. The roots of Queen Anne’s Lace contain vitamin C and carotene. The bark from tree roots are often used in healin’, but I tend to steer clear from harvestin’ them, since it’s difficult to do so without injuring the healthy tree in the process.”
Cora Beth rose suddenly. “I think I have somethin’ that might help you.” She hurried to the back of the house, where Ramsey could see rows of planters on top of tables beneath the large window.
She came back holding a pamphlet in her hand, which she thrust toward Ramsey. “This brochure is put out by Natural Herbal Healing and lists several plant roots used. Many of them are also used by hoodoos.”
Ramsey and Dev shared a glance. “Hoodoos?”
Cora Beth’s smile showed a dimple that made her face look more youthful. “Sorry. Hoodoos are root doctors who use plants, especially roots, for their magical, healin’, and spiritual powers. Some of them prepare sachets from herbs for protection, or good luck. Others use plants with mindalterin’ effects for their ceremonies, as well.”
“Would you consider sellin’ any of your plants outright?” Ramsey asked. Maybe if she could take some samples back to Jonesy, he could use the roots for comparisons to the substance taken from Cassie Frost’s body.
But Cora Beth’s negative response was emphatic, and even Dev’s wheedling couldn’t sway her.
“I have to save my plants for people who need ’em,” she said firmly. “I just can’t grow replacements fast enough to be sure I have everythin’ I use for my patients.”
Armed with the brochure the woman had given her, Ramsey stood. “Do you know any hoodoos in the area?” she said, as the woman was leading them to the door.
After a long hesitation, she responded, “I don’t. Katie Patterson used to mix potions and such for anyone silly enough to approach her, but she ran off years ago with Eleanor Per-kins’s husband. Neither of them have been back since.”
Her gaze shifted back to Dev then, and warmed. “You stop back anytime, now, hear?”
He took her hand in his, holding it a moment. “Tell Sam I said hey, will you?”
“You can be sure I will.”
Ramsey’s mind was racing as the two of them descended the steps and headed toward the car. Maybe the root Cassie Frost had ingested wasn’t meant to be herbal or medicinal in nature at all. Maybe it was symbolic in some way. She’d worked cases before that skirted the occult. Had put away a woman claiming to be a witch, Satan’s own handmaiden. Since she’d managed to kill two men before she was stopped, Ramsey tended to agree with the description, figuratively at least.
Because Dev knew his way around these parts, Ramsey reluctantly allowed him to drive while she took his place in the passenger’s seat.
“I don’t pretend to know what’s behind your interest in plant roots, but Cora Beth’s mention of hoodoos did bring about a thought. You might consider people dabblin’ with the occult. Various plants and herbs are used for protection circles, for example. Others to ward off evil.”
“So you think I should be looking for Satan worshippers frolicking around at midnight, burning devil circles in the ground while swilling a concoction they’ve made from plants?”
Ignoring her flippancy, he continued, “That, or by association, a religious organization.”
She stared at him blankly. “Religion? The last time I checked, it wasn’t associated with the occult, except in the most hardened zealot’s ranting.”
Managing a turn in the drive, he headed toward the road, using far less care than she had to avoid the ruts and potholes. “Witchcraft, for want of a better word, and religion aren’t that far apart, at least in terms of origin and followers. You’ll find some of the same symbols, some of the same characters, integral to each. Different interpretations, of course, but consider the practice of voodoo, for an example. Elements from Catholicism are intricately interwoven into the practice, probably because missionaries were converting the natives and elements of the faith intermixed with the native beliefs.”
He’d given her something to consider. The substance found in Cassie Frost’s stomach had to have been ingested after her capture. Which likely meant it had been forced on her by her attacker. Even if Powell was right, and it was the act of power rather than the substance itself that was important to the UNSUB’s ritual, Ramsey had to believe there was a reason for the attacker to choose that particular material. Either it produced a desired effect—intoxication, sedation, elevated libido—or it symbolized something to the offender.
And if she could figure out exactly what it symbolized, she would have drastically narrowed the search for the perp.
The hour spent at Nellie Rodemaker’s was, in Ramsey’s estimation, a total waste of time. The apple-cheeked woman welcomed Dev with an exuberant hug and a good-natured scolding for not stopping in sooner. From the occasional question Ramsey could manage in between all the gossip about relatives between her and Dev, it appeared that Jenny Callison had been right. Nellie was more midwife than herbalist, although she appeared to have a handy collection of natural remedies for everything from morning sickness to contractions.
It took some less than polite insistence, but she eventually managed to extract Dev from the woman’s home, and they headed in the opposite direction to Raelynn Urdall’s house.
Slanting him a glance as he drove, Ramsey looked for signs of upset in his expression but didn’t find it. “She wasn’t exactly complimentary about your mother.”
He gave a nod, his handsome face pensive. “Blames her for goin’ off and remarryin’ so quick, sounded like. I’ve never gotten that impression from any of my other relatives. Most folks would understand a young widow wantin’ to put the past behind her, ’specially with all that had happened with my daddy.” Checking his mirrors, he passed a battered pickup hauling a teetering load of brush. “ ’Course I seem to recall my granddaddy sayin’ once that Nellie was sweet on my daddy at one time, so I’ll just consider the source.”
His words brought back some of the questions she still had regarding that old police report he’d shown her. Resigned to the fact that she wasn’t going to be able to put them out of her mind, she asked, “Is the man who served as chief of police back then . . .” Searching her memory, she plucked out the name. “John Kenner . . . still around?”
“As far as I know, he still lives over on Hazlewood. He must be . . . I’d guess mid-seventies by now. He and Doc Theisen are fiends at checkers. Used to play every Thursday night.”
She mulled over the information as Dev pulled into a recently regraveled drive and nosed the car up the wind of it to the house perched above. There was absolutely no reason to believe a link existed between Jessalyn Porter’s death and that of Cassie Frost. No reason to think a nearly thirty-year-old closed homicide case had any connection to the one she was hired to investigate.
So she didn’t even want to contemplate Adam Raiker’s reaction if he discovered she was considering poking around in that old case for reasons that weren’t, by any stretch of the imagination, professional.
She was working sixteen-hour-days, she rationalized, getting out of the car when Dev pulled to a stop before a small clapboard house desperately in need of some tending. If she wanted to take an extra hour and get a few questions answered, it was hardly detracting from her devotion to this investigation. It wasn’t as if she slept a full night.
The new front porch on the house managed to make the rest of the structure look seedier. There was a woman bent over in a garden at its side who’d risen at their arrival, slipping off gardening gloves and raising a hand to shield her gaze as she studied the visitors.
“Hey there, Mrs. Urdall. It’s Devlin Stryker.” His gait as lazy as a nap in a hammock, Dev ambled over to the woman, an easy smile on his face. “Maybe you don’t remember me, but I roomed next to Tad our first year at the university.”
“I recall.” With no answering smile on her face, the woman jerked her head to Ramsey. “ ’Member you, too. Told you yesterday I had nothin’ to say to you. That hasn’t changed.”
There was more here, much more, than a wariness with strangers. The woman’s dislike was almost palpable. Sifting through the possibilities, Ramsey quickly settled on one. For whatever reason, Raelynn Urdall didn’t like cops.
“Haven’t seen Tad for . . . shoot.” Dev scratched his jaw, eyes narrowed against the sunlight. “Two years now, I guess.”
Raelynn’s face, tanned and creased from the sun, registered surprise. “You saw Tad two years ago?”
“I look him up regular when I’m in New York seein’ my editor. Never did answer my calls last spring when I was there. I was sorry to miss him.”
The wave of grief that washed over the woman’s face was as immediate as it was tragic. “You must not have heard the news. I’m surprised, since the town buzzed about it for months. He’s in prison.” The bitterness was directed at Ramsey. “Cops in New York set him up. Wanted him to inform on some of his friends, and when he refused, one of them planted drugs on him. Enough to get him sent away for intent to deliver.”
Ramsey was silent while Stryker commiserated with the woman. Urdall’s accounting of the events was possible. There were crooked cops in every department. But it was even more probable that Tad had been a dealer who’d refused to give up the bigger fish in the chain and had taken a fall because of it.
Stryker had his arm around the woman’s shoulders now, his head bent closer to hers, as Raelynn dabbed at her eyes. “I am purely sorry to hear ’bout Tad’s problems, ma’am. You tell him hey for me the next time you talk to him. It’s got to be a hard thing for you. How’ve you been holdin’ up?”
Ramsey caught a note of genuine concern in his voice, and she slanted a glance at him. It had been easier to resist that charm when she could dismiss him as no more than a small town Romeo used to conquering women with his slow-as-molasses drawl and affable smile.
But there was more.
He
was more. She shifted uneasily. And the unexpected depths of him shook her long-held defenses. Made her question hard-learned lessons. And that was alarming enough to make him a very dangerous man.
He
was more. She shifted uneasily. And the unexpected depths of him shook her long-held defenses. Made her question hard-learned lessons. And that was alarming enough to make him a very dangerous man.
Certainly Urdall was responding to him. But then Ramsey was beginning to believe that anyone with two X chromosomes would. With the exception of Hannah Ashton this morning, he seemed capable of turning anything female into fluttering eyelashes and cooing responses in a matter of seconds. Even Ashton had thawed in his presence, which she’d be willing to bet represented a notable response for the woman.
“Sounds like Tad didn’t get justice,” Dev was saying as he walked the woman slowly up to the porch, his arm still around her shoulders. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am ’bout that. But the fact is, too many people don’t these days. Take that young lady they found dead a coupla weeks ago. They still don’t know who did it or why.”
Tears dried now, Raelynn fixed Ramsey with a stare. But it wasn’t quite as hard as it had been earlier. “Thought that was your job.”
Giving a slow nod, Ramsey said, “It is. But people ’round here aren’t always willin’ to speak to an outsider, especially one workin’ with the law. Gettin’ answers can be slow.” It was easier than she’d like to don the drawl at will. She’d much rather believe she’d lost it years ago. Certainly she’d worked at it.
Dev took a perch on the top step of the porch, and Raelynn sank down next to him. “We all have our reasons, I guess. But I s’pose it wouldn’t hurt to give you the information you was askin’ for yesterday. Don’t know what it has to do with that poor girl’s murder. You wanted to know about plants used in healin’, you said.”
“That’s right.” Sensing capitulation, Ramsey pulled a notebook out of her jacket pocket, jotting notes as the woman rattled off more examples than even Cora Beth had given them.
“’Course herbs are used for more reasons than healin,” the woman said as she wound down.
Interest sharpening, Ramsey flicked her a glance. “Such as?”
“Flowers each have an associated meanin’. Like the magnolia stands for nobility, and the daffodil for unrequited love.” Raelynn shrugged, as if the matter were inconsequential. “I don’t hold with all that, you understand, but there are some who do.”
“What if I wanted to buy a sample of everything you grow?” Ramsey asked, forgetting her drawl in her rising excitement. “What would that cost me?”
The woman hesitated, glancing at Dev and back. “I don’t know . . .”
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