twenty-seven

“We’re grateful that you tipped us off to the poisoning,” Roy Stockton told Francine, Charlotte, and Jonathan later. They sat in the detective’s office in the Parke County Sheriff’s building. There were certificates of accomplishments on the wall behind him and on an adjacent wall were photos of him with various Indiana dignitaries. In all the them he wore his signature Stetson. “The coroner rushed the results of his blood analysis. William died of poisoning from the toxin tremetol. We were able to find a tiny vial laced with it in the wastebasket in his room. It had Dolly’s fingerprints on it. We obtained a search warrant and found a container of it in her house. We believe she may also have used it to kill the woman whose funeral she arranged for, Belinda Flowers.”

“What’s the motive, though?” Charlotte asked. “Why kill her husband?”

“She has clammed up on the advice of her lawyer, which is to be expected. The prevailing theory is the sizable life insurance policy. She’d gain control of the company in the case of William’s death, of course, but it looks like she pretty much controlled it anyway from the interviews we’ve conducted. In comparison to the equity they had in their company, the insurance policy wasn’t that much, so it’s tentative. Still, people have been known to kill for less.”

Francine could tell Charlotte was less than satisfied by the way she jabbed her pen in her notebook, scribbling sentences in it as the detective discussed the case.

Charlotte paused, holding her pen to her lips as though she had a sudden thought. “What about an affair? Could she have tossed William over for another man?”

“Do you have a person in mind?” Stockton asked. “The only person we can determine she had some kind of strong relationship with is Zedediah Matthew, and from all appearances it was acrimonious.”

Francine loved that Roy used words like acrimonious, though she might have used something stronger. “I thought she might have been behind the arson at Zed’s house,” she said. “Zed told me at one point he said he would get revenge on the person who torched his house.”

“Which brings up the arson point,” Charlotte said. “Do you know who did that? Was that Dolly too?”

“We have circumstantial evidence, like the containers placed at the food booth, that might indicate she was behind it. But it could be planted evidence as well. It could be someone was trying to frame her, or frame you, Francine. We understand you have inherited Zed’s property. But you have an iron-clad alibi.”

Francine was offended by the suggestion. “Why would I burn down the very house I stood to inherit?”

“The property is worth much more than the house. You might have done it to kill Zed so you could inherit the three hundred acres right away.”

Jonathan put his arm around her. She reached up and felt the warmth of the hand on her shoulder. “I still haven’t figured out why he left it to me.”

“You might never.”

Francine patted his hand and sat up. “I would think Dolly would have an iron-clad alibi. She was at the hospital with William when the two fires were set.”

“She left for a period of time during the afternoon, supposed to go meet her sister at her house. But it turns out she wasn’t with her sister. So Dolly was gone long enough to set the two fires or rig them up to go off later.”

“All for Doc Wheat’s treasure,” Francine said. “Whatever treasure that was.”

“When did Zed buy the property from Doc Wheat?” Charlotte asked. “I couldn’t find any record of the sale when I searched the county databases. Somehow it became listed as Zed’s property in the late 1960s, but Doc Wheat had disappeared before that.”

“Doc Wheat vanished from the county in 1969, long after his business as an herbal healer had closed. As far as we know, there is no record.”

Francine was as disturbed by Charlotte as the lack of answers. “Who was Belinda Flowers to Dolly? Why would she have poisoned her like she poisoned William?”

Stockton shrugged. “Again, we don’t have an answer to that. We know that Dolly and William were particularly attached to her. Perhaps it was an angel of mercy act. The woman had been in a vegetative state for over a year.”

The “angel of mercy” comment struck Francine. Zed knew Belinda Flowers too, she thought. She wore a necklace with the same graphic that was found on the bridge and on my grandmother’s diaries. What if Zed were the angel of mercy? But that wouldn’t explain William’s death.

She wondered if opening the box Zed left her would shed any light on the subject. She hadn’t had a chance to try the key on it yet. Charlotte was anxious to see it opened as well. They needed to get some time alone to do that. She’d told Jonathan about the box, but he didn’t know yet she had a key that might work. He’d assured her, though he hadn’t seen the box, that it likely could be pried open. She thought he was right, but she only wanted to use that as a last resort. Merlina’s words about needing the key to understand the contents of the box, at least according to what Zed had told her, haunted Francine.

You are to mine. Those were the words they’d uncovered on the Roseville Bridge. But Zed spoke of a treasure. Was Belinda Flowers the key to Zed’s heart or his treasure, or both? And what was the treasure? Love? The grotto? The water?

She could hardly wait to finish up here to unlock the box.

“I don’t like Dolly as the person who torched Zed’s house, burned down the Roseville Bridge, and killed two people, one of which was her husband,” Charlotte said. “She doesn’t seem, I don’t know, nasty enough.”

Charlotte said this from the back of Jonathan’s truck. They were driving back to the house in Rockville. Francine sat in the front seat with Jonathan. Her thoughts were scattered, but they were running along the same lines as Charlotte’s.

“That’s your intuition again,” Jonathan said. “The facts seem to say otherwise.”

Francine defended Charlotte. “The facts don’t seem conclusive to me, either, Jonathan. Not until there’s motive to back them up.”

“Then how did Dolly’s fingerprints end up on the bottle of whatever poison was used?”

Francine threw up her hands. “Who knows? But it doesn’t make sense as we see it now.”

“Tremetol,” Charlotte said, consulting her notes. “That’s the poison Dolly used.”

Francine pulled out her phone. She did a Google search. “Tremetol is derived from the white snakeroot plant.” There was a photo on the website that had come up, and she clicked on it. When she saw the plant, she did a double take. “Look at this,” she said, thrusting the phone in front of Jonathan.

He glanced at it, but then went back to driving. “I can’t get a good look,” he said. “Tell me what you think it is.”

“It was the white blooming bush we saw at the grotto.”

“You’re certain?”

“As certain as I can be without having it in front of me to compare.”

Charlotte unbuckled her seat belt and perched on the edge of the seat behind Francine. “What bush? What grotto?”

The seat belt light on the dashboard showed an unbuckled passenger and a dinging noise began to sound in the car. “Charlotte, please put your seat belt back on,” Jonathan said.

“Here.” Francine handed Charlotte her cell phone.

She slid back into place and dutifully buckled in. The noise stopped. Charlotte studied the image. “You saw this where?”

“In Zed’s greenhouse,” Francine corrected.

Charlotte gave Francine a suspicious scowl. The affected look, which wrinkled Charlotte’s already wrinkled face, scrunching up her nose and pushing out her upper lip, almost made Francine laugh. “You said something about a grotto.”

“No, Francine’s right,” Jonathan said. “It was in the greenhouse.”

“Why do I think you two are hiding something from me?”

Francine tried to divert Charlotte’s focus. She turned back to Jonathan. “But if Zed was in possession of the plant used to make tremetol, that would imply that he was the one to poison William and Belinda Flowers. First of all, how would he do that without being seen, and what would be his motive? And how did Dolly’s fingerprints end up on the bottle? And I can’t see Zed setting fire to his house and to the Roseville Bridge.”

Charlotte handed the phone back to Francine. “Excuse the pun, but could Zed have planted the evidence?”

Francine performed some mental gymnastics in her head. Four crimes, two suspects. Who did what to whom? Or were there other possibilities? Were there other persons involved who could have aided or abetted the criminal or criminals? It required too much concentration, like a sudoku puzzle at the highest difficulty rating. She didn’t have the energy for it right then. “It all boils down to motive, and until we understand that, I don’t think we’ll have the answer.”

The car settled into silence as they motored to the Rockville mansion.

In the kitchen, Mary Ruth, Alice, and Toby were mixing, baking, and otherwise preparing for tomorrow’s Covered Bridge Festival. In all the excitement over Dolly’s arrest, Francine had nearly forgotten why they were in Rockville in the first place and that Mary Ruth had to have things ready for another day of selling her goods.

Charlotte opened the oven door and looked in, steaming up her white framed glasses. Mary Ruth shut the oven door and nudged Charlotte out of the way. “The scones need the heat, not you.”

“I couldn’t see them anyway. Smells like oranges in here.”

Alice put down a microplane. “It’s because I’m zesting oranges for the scones. They’re cranberry orange.”

Charlotte’s mouth turned down. “I missed Robert Irvine, didn’t I?”

Mary Ruth pulled a tray of cookies out of the second oven and used a spatula to shuttle them off onto a cooling rack. “Yes, but he’s coming over here this evening to get some background footage of us prepping for tomorrow. He’s also going to ask a few more questions.”

Francine saw the clock on the oven. “It’s almost six o’clock. How much later is he going to be?”

“They didn’t say. As I understand it, the organizers took Robert over to Bridgeton and Mansfield to get B-roll of him walking around and sampling some of the other food offerings.”

The corners of Charlotte’s mouth turned up as she smiled. “I’d like to see that. Can you imagine him checking out the beef jerky and the lemon shake-ups? I’ll bet he’d have a lot to say about that.”

Francine and the others had a laugh at the thought of Robert Irvine sampling some of the less sophisticated offerings. “I suggested they take him to the mill at Bridgeton,” said Mary Ruth. “That would give viewers a more favorable impression since they grind their own flours that are available for sale.”

Charlotte perused the few items that were finished. “Do you need our help?”

Mary Ruth let out a sigh. “Yes, I could use it. We’ve been shorthanded with you and Francine being gone and Joy out filing stories for the station. She stopped by briefly and told us the killer had been arrested. We’re sorry to hear it was your cousin’s wife Dolly, Francine.”

Francine tried to be honest. “In some ways, it doesn’t quite make sense still. I think we’ll all feel better when we know what the motive is.”

Before Mary Ruth could get them started helping her, the doorbell rang. Charlotte used her cane as a third leg and beat Mary Ruth to the front door. “It’s Robert Irvine!” Francine heard her say.

Jonathan tugged at Francine’s hand and indicated they go upstairs. He leaned toward her ear and whispered, “While everyone’s distracted, this would be a good time to open the box.”

Francine wanted to meet Robert Irvine, but she’d been on television enough for one day. She and Jonathan scuttled up the back staircase.