I have presented to view divers forms or plots, amongst which it is possible you may find some that may near the matter fit, and shall leave the ingenious Practitioner to their consideration and use.
Leonard Meager
The English Gardener: Or, a Sure Guide to Young Planters & Gardeners, 1688
In the time I’d spent with the chief, the temperature had dropped ten or fifteen degrees and snow had begun to spit from the leaden sky. When I came out of the police station, the wind ran icy fingers down my collar, grabbed fiercely at my hair, and ripped my breath away. Virgil had arrived.
I was wearing only my corduroy blazer, so I ran to the car and grabbed Jenna’s parka from the back seat, although when I put it on, it was like folding myself into an ice pack. When I put a hand into a pocket, I was glad to find a pair of mittens.
At the hospital, I parked as close as I could to the entrance. When I got out and yanked the parka hood over my head, something cold and wet hit my cheek. I looked down as a large white snowflake splatted onto my cocoa-brown sleeve. In Pecan Springs, it snows only once or twice a decade, so I was as thrilled as a kid with a new sled.
The chief, not so much. When I caught up with him outside the entrance, he was glaring up at the sky. “I’m ready to be done with this winter crap,” he growled as he opened the door. “Hard on the city’s snowplow budget.” Which isn’t a topic I had given much thought to, so I followed him without reply.
Inside, the small community hospital had a sharp antiseptic smell. The hallways were bright and busy, and the people wore that look of focused intensity you see on the faces of those who are working on important—perhaps life-altering—tasks. Conway had been moved out of the ICU into a private room, and a uniformed cop was parked on a chair outside the door. The day-shift cop, Curtis said. He hadn’t been taking any chances that Conway’s assailant might come back to finish him off.
The charge nurse—Mary Jean—and the chief were first-name acquaintances. She sniffed her displeasure when she saw that he had brought somebody with him. But he was firm, so she directed us to Conway’s door and told us we had fifteen minutes. The room was small, with one window in the outer wall so the patient could watch the snow falling onto azaleas covered with pink blooms and one on the hall so the nurses could watch the patient.
Conway was flat on his back in the narrow bed, his head elevated a couple of inches. His left side was heavily bandaged, an IV drip was taped into the back of his right hand, and he was hooked up to several monitors strategically stationed at the head of the bed. He was pale and deflated, as if the life force that pumped him up had seeped away, along with the blood he’d lost. An oversized florist bouquet of orange and yellow lilies sat on the wheeled table over the foot of the bed.
We took off our parkas and dumped them on the room’s only chair. “Hey, Jed,” Curtis said in a friendly tone. “How you doin’ there, man?”
“Not just real well.” Conway’s voice was a hoarse whisper and he cleared his throat and tried again. “But they’re saying I might live.” He managed a wan smile.
“Glad to hear it,” Curtis said. “When I saw you on that gurney, I figured you for a goner.” He gestured to me. “Hey, this is the pretty lady who found you and called nine-one-one. China Bayles. An investigator all the way from Texas, on the hunt for that big old book that got stolen from Sunny Carswell’s library. She happened to walk in the front door of your store about the time you were going down at the back. Kept you from leaving any more blood on your carpet.”
Conway’s eyes focused on me and he tried for another smile. “I really can’t thank you enough. You being there—lucky thing for me.” His forehead puckered. “An investigator?”
I returned the smile, murmured the obligatory “So glad I could help,” and moved back against the wall without answering his question.
Curtis stepped closer to Conway. “I guess you know why I’m here, Jed. There are things I’ve got to know, and the sooner the better.” He reached up and flicked the switch on the black body cam he wore clipped to his uniform shirt. “For the record, we’re on camera. Let’s start with who did this. Who shot you?”
I approved. Some cops object to body cams, but they work for both cops and citizens. The protection goes both ways. And in this circumstance, it was an unobtrusive way to document the interview.
Conway turned his head. “I don’t feel like—”
“Come on, man,” Curtis said impatiently. “You and me, we go way back. But this is not a social call and I don’t have time for games. You give me what I need and I’ll see what I can do to keep you out of the worst of the trouble.”
“Trouble?” Conway turned back again, alarmed. “I’m the victim here. Somebody came in through the back door of my shop, looking for money.” His voice got squeaky. “Big bald biker-type white guy with a tattoo on his neck and a—”
“Stuff it, Jed,” Curtis snapped. “You sure the hell are in trouble. Don’t make it worse with obstruction.” He glanced at me and leaned closer. “Blackwell,” he said distinctly.
Conway’s eyes widened. “No, no. He was white. Biker. Snake tattoo on his neck.”
“Socrates dot com.”
Conway sucked in a breath. “Means nothing to me. I—”
“Sunny Carswell.”
“Sunny—”
The chief held up a finger, then another. “Amelia Scott. The Hemlock Guild. That expensive book that’s gone from the Carswell library. Those high-priced flower prints you’re pushing. Socrates dot com.” He was holding up five fingers. “All this shit is tied together in one big plot. I want to know how, and you’re going to tell me.”
“I’m calling the nurse.” Conway felt for the call button that was on the bed, close to his hand. “I need to get some sleep.”
“Forget it.” Curtis shoved the button out of reach. “You know I won’t quit on this, Jed. And if you won’t talk to me, the next person standing here will be the DA. You don’t want to deal with her, do you? Marlene won’t care how bad you hurt. She’ll haul your ass out of that bed and plant you in front of the grand jury so fast it’ll make your head swim. She’ll ask you about those pricy pictures you’re hawking on that website of yours. How you got ’em, who’s buying them, what kind of taxes you’ve been paying on the income. She’ll haul Amelia in there, too.” His cell phone rang and he reached into his pocket to silence it. “Your gal pal is in it just as deep as you are. And whoever shot you is in deeper.” His voice grew rougher. “Who was it? Amelia?” His voice altered. “Margaret?”
Conway closed his eyes. “Not Margaret,” he whispered. “Margaret had nothing to do with any of this. I want . . .” He stopped.
I was waiting for him to say “I want my lawyer.” Actually, that’s what he should have said. If I’d been a member of the North Carolina bar I would have felt obligated to step forward and say, “This cop may be a friend but you don’t have to answer his questions, Mr. Conway. Whatever you’ve got to say, you need to say it to your attorney first.”
But I wasn’t and I didn’t and Conway didn’t either. Instead, he lay there in bed and thought about things. When he opened his eyes again, he said, “It’s complicated, Jeremy.”
“It’s always complicated,” Curtis said flatly. “That’s the hell of it. Mary Jean will be booting me out in a few minutes. So start with whoever it was who put the gun to your back and pulled the trigger. We can get to the rest of the plot later.”
There was a long silence. “Shit,” Conway said finally. He took a breath. “To tell the truth, I’m pretty damned sick of living like a criminal. I want my life back.” Another breath. “It was Amelia. It was Amelia all the way.”
“Amelia Scott?”
“How many other Amelias do we know?” Conway was wearily ironic. “But the shooting wasn’t her fault. I’m sure she only meant to threaten me.” He gulped a breath. “The gun must have gone off . . . you know, accidentally.”
“Got it. Amelia Scott tried to shoot you. Accidentally. So how did you work this little operation? She lifted the stuff out of the Carswell library and gave it to you to fence?” Curtis’ voice took on an edge. “And Margaret? What about her? Is she any part of this?”
“No, no,” Conway said again. “Not Margaret. She worked at Sunny’s library, yes. But she had nothing to do with this. Jeez, Jeremy, you of all people ought to know that. Margaret wasn’t in on this.”
Something about the way he said that caught my attention. Why should Curtis know what Margaret was involved in?
The chief grunted. “So okay. So how did this cottage industry work? Amelia stole, you fenced? Is that it?”
“Fenced.” Conway winced at the word. “Yeah, basically. I’d tell her what to look for, what I had a buyer for, what I knew would sell. She’d get it out of the library. Had to do it that way, after Sunny shut me out. But then the new director—Harper, her name is—said she was closing the library to visitors and wouldn’t let Amelia in. As far as I was concerned, that was the end.” He coughed, painfully. “I told Amelia I was calling it quits.”
I suppressed a wry chuckle. I’d often wished I had a hundred bucks every time I heard a crook claim that the crime he’d been caught in was his last crime. I had the feeling that there was more to this plot than Conway was telling us. Much more.
“Calling it quits?” the chief asked. “Ending the partnership, you mean? Closing down the website? What?”
“All of it. I wanted out. I was ready to . . . go straight, I guess you’d say. When the book went missing, Dr. Harper started tightening security at the library. She told the foundation board they had to have cameras and an alarm system. I told Amelia we were done.” Another cough, harder this time. He lay back, pale and wasted-looking. “That’s when she lit into me about the Blackwell book.”
“Lit into you?
“Yeah. Yesterday. We were in the shop and she was loud and pretty wired. I told her I had to open the store and I walked her to the back door to let her out. But she was screaming and—” His jaw was working. “I kind of pushed her out the door and turned to go back into the shop and . . . and, that’s when it happened. When the gun went off. I don’t think she meant to do it.”
“You said she lit into you about the book. You’re talking about the big one that was stolen from Hemlock House a couple of weeks ago?”
“Yeah. The Curious Herbal. Amelia believes I took it. She wanted her half.”
“Wait a minute. Amelia believes you took the book? You’re saying you didn’t?”
“I didn’t.” He looked up, his eyes on Curtis’ face. “Swear to God I didn’t, Jeremy. In fact, when I heard it was gone, I figured she had taken it. Amelia.” He dropped his eyes. “I may have given her a pretty hard time about that.”
Oh, he had, had he? I could imagine the two of them, fighting over who had stolen the Herbal, each one accusing the other. I could see the argument escalating until it finally ended with a gunshot.
He was going on, as if he were glad to get this off his chest. “I don’t have a clue where the damned book is, and I kept telling her that, over and over. But I couldn’t convince her. She just kept saying she knew I’d taken it out of the library and sold it to that collector in Brussels who wants it. She said she had to have the money and I had to hand it over. She’s got money troubles.” His smile was a grimace wobbling with exhaustion. “Like me. Like you.” He closed his eyes and his voice dropped to a whisper I could barely hear. “Like everybody. Money troubles.”
I was squirming. If this were a movie, we’d just had our confession moment—taped on the chief’s body cam, start to finish—and the end titles soundtrack was coming up while the closing credits rolled. But in real life, the Hemlock County DA would be a lot happier if Curtis would break off the interrogation right now and do two things.
One, subpoena Conway’s bank account records, to see if there were any recent large deposits.
And two, question Amelia Scott. It was time to confront her with Conway’s accusation. Get her denial or her explanation. Or that of her lawyer.
But most important, get the weapon Scott had used to shoot Conway—before she chucked it in the river and they had to pay a dive team to look for it. Which was probably not in the city’s budget.
And he ought to have a talk with Margaret Anderson, too. I could think of several reasons why Conway might want to convince the chief that she wasn’t involved in his scheme. The most likely: that she had taken the Herbal, he had sold it for her, and the two of them had split something close to a hundred thousand dollars.
I had thought about this earlier, after I’d heard from Claudia Roth that Anderson was angry when the board replaced her. Stealing the Herbal would settle accounts with the board for essentially firing her and at the same time get even with her rival for being better qualified. Plus, of course, there was all that money. I had even considered Margaret as a candidate for Conway’s shooter. Now, I mentally subtracted the Smith and Wesson from my image of the frosted hair, the red twinset, and the Manolos.
Next questions: If Margaret had stolen it, did she still have it? Or had Conway already fenced it for her? And why had the chief so deliberately evaded any discussion of Margaret in our conversation earlier that morning? What did he know that I didn’t?
Meanwhile, Conway was not going anywhere. He would no doubt get a lawyer with whom the DA could dicker. If he returned the unsold items and helped to recover those he had sold, he might get the charges reduced from felony larceny to—
Mary Jean appeared at the door. She frowned at me and gave Curtis a starchy smile.
“Time’s up, Chief. And Phyllis just called the nurses station—says to tell you that you need to pick up your cell. It’s urgent.”
“Thanks.” Curtis put a hand on Conway’s arm. “I’m going now, Jed. After I’ve got a few things straight with Amelia—with Margaret, too—I’ll be back and we can start getting this mess cleaned up. You hang tight for now. LeRoy Hatch is sitting right outside the door. Need anything, just ask him.”
This sounded generous, but I knew what it was: a warning that there was a cop standing guard. Take one step out that door, you’ll be wearing cuffs.
Conway knew it, too.
• • •
Outside, the snow was coming down fast and fierce now, blown almost sideways by the whipping wind. Virgil had arrived in earnest. Through the blur of its shifting white curtain, I could see the time/temperature sign on the red brick bank building across the street. I shivered. Thirty-two degrees—a full twenty-five degree drop since I left Hemlock House that morning. The calendar had flipped back to winter in just a few hours.
Behind me, the chief was on his cell. He ended the call and pocketed the phone, lips tight. “You’re coming with me.” He jerked his thumb toward the intersecting street. “Six blocks south on Pine, big brick house, middle of the block on the right. Meet me there.”
“What’s going on? Who—”
But I was talking to the back of his black parka. He sprinted to his car, turned on the flasher and the siren, and pulled out of the parking lot fast, fishtailing on the icy pavement. Wherever we were going, he was aiming to get there in a hurry.
I was slower. Somebody had spread salt pellets on the sidewalk, but the footing was still treacherous. Bent against the wind, I had to struggle to keep my balance. In the car, I saw that it was now nearly nine-thirty and I was supposed to be at Margaret Anderson’s house, so I called and told her I was running late. “I should be able to make it in another hour,” I told her.
And maybe, by that time, the chief could go with me. But he seemed to have some sort of information about Margaret that I didn’t have, and we would have to discuss my plan to meet with her before I kept the appointment. I would cross that bridge when I came to it, though.
The streets were already glazed and treacherous, and where I’m from, we don’t get a lot of practice in driving on ice. It was definitely a challenge, especially since the windshield wipers of my little Mirage were having trouble keeping up with the blowing snow. I could see the chief’s flasher ahead but I didn’t even try to catch up to his car.
Midway down the block, several squad cars were angled into the curb in front of an impressively porticoed brick house. An EMS ambulance was there too, the med techs huddled with their backs to the wind, hands in their pockets and watch caps pulled down over their ears. As I got out of the car, I saw the chief hurrying up the snowy driveway toward the double garage. Yellow crime-scene tape was stretched across the driveway and the front walk. The snow had been blowing hard enough to create a small drift in front of the garage door. It had stayed in place, like a low white curb, when the door was lifted.
A uniformed officer in a heavy navy-blue parka, her blond hair skinned back into a ponytail, had come out of the garage and was talking with the chief. When I joined them, I saw that the officer’s name badge said Chris Bojanov.
“When?” the chief was asking.
“Last night, seems like. A neighbor found her this morning and called it in—” Bojanov glanced at her watch. “A half hour ago. Doc Lawrence just got here. He’s in there now.” She jerked her head toward the garage. “With her.”
“A note?”
“In the car, along with an empty bottle of Lunesta and a Glock 9mm. The car ran until it ran out of gas. Most of the night, probably.” She added, “I bagged the note, the gun, and the bottle and left them where I found them. The note is kinda long and rambling, but it explains the gun.”
“Stay here,” Curtis told me.
I stayed. I’ve seen suicides. I didn’t need to see another.
“I know who you are.” Bojanov frowned at me. “You’re that woman from Texas who found Jed Conway after he got shot yesterday. The one who was typing.” There was a faint note of accusation in her voice. “At the police station.”
I nodded. “I just can’t resist those Selectrics, you know? Every time I see one, I have to sit down and put my fingers on it. And then before I know it, I—”
She rolled her eyes.
I should behave. “Anyway,” I said penitently, “it looked like y’all had more than enough to do.”
She eyed me, remembering I was there with the chief, and decided we must be on the same team. “We’re understaffed,” she agreed. “Ask the chief, he’ll tell you. Every budget, it’s the same. City council never gives us enough positions. Or overtime.”
I nodded sympathetically. I’d heard the same complaint from my friend Sheila Dawson, the Pecan Springs chief of police. But I was thinking of Amelia Scott and wondering what had driven her to kill herself. Was it the prospect of going to prison for attempted murder—or for murder, if Conway had died? Was she repenting her role in the library larceny that the two of them had dreamed up? Or was there something else? Something like . . .
I turned my back to the wind and pushed my hands into my pockets. My fingers were cold inside my borrowed mittens. My feet were even colder. “I understand that Ms. Scott was the president of the Hemlock Guild.”
“Yeah. The right-to-die folks. Not all that popular in Bethany. I guess she decided to practice what she’s been preaching.” Another frown. “Except that I thought they were supposed to use hemlock. No shortage of that around here.” She pointed a leather-gloved finger toward a tall, conical tree beside the garage, now frosted with snow. “There’s one right there.”
“Hemlock poison doesn’t come from the hemlock tree,” I said.
“It doesn’t?” Bojanov looked surprised. “No kidding?”
“No kidding,” I said.
“Where does it come from, then?”
“Poison hemlock is a plant, maybe yea tall.” I held my hand waist-high. “Looks a lot like Queen Anne’s lace, blossoms like little white umbrellas, lots of green, ferny leaves. Doesn’t take much to kill a person—a hundred milligrams, just eight or nine fresh leaves, will do the job. It was the go-to poison for centuries, if you had a mind to do yourself in. Not so much now, though.” Now, there’s carbon monoxide, as near as your closest car and garage. And a lot less painful way to go.
“Queen Anne’s lace? I see that blooming along the road all summer.” Bojanov shook her head. “Jeez, I always thought hemlock poison came from the tree. Like, if you boiled a bunch of cones, maybe. How about that? All these years, and I was wrong.”
“I think somebody told me she sold real estate,” I said. “Ms. Scott, I mean.”
“Yeah. Commercial real estate.” Feeling the cold, Bojanov stamped her feet. “Market hasn’t been any too good here and the chances for recovery don’t look great. I heard her company bottomed out a couple of months ago, after some bad investments. Filed for Chapter Eleven. Folks said she might lose her house, too.” She looked up at the place speculatively. “Maybe she decided she couldn’t live without it. Some people are like that, you know.”
“Could be,” I said, remembering Conway’s remark about money troubles. Looting the Carswell library must have seemed like an easy way to make up the difference. And once the money began coming in, it would have been an incentive to more looting. The loss of it could have been an motivation for suicide. “Family?”
“Divorced last year, no kids. All wrapped up in that Hemlock Guild stuff, I understand. You know how it is with some people. They get a tribe, they don’t need anybody else.”
The chief stepped out of the garage, his eyes flinty. To Bojanov, he said, “Miller is taking over for you and you’re coming with me. Bring your car. This may take a while and I may need you to stay after I leave.” To me, he said, “I’m bringing in a team to search this place for that book you keep talking about. Can you describe what they’re looking for?”
“I can likely get you a photo,” I said, taking out my phone. Pointedly, I added, “while you get a search warrant.” Back in 1973, North Carolina had been the last state to abolish the common-law crime of suicide. Which meant that no crime had been committed here, and there were no exigent circumstances. It wasn’t my job to remind him he needed a warrant, but I did it anyway. I was on his team, wasn’t I?
He narrowed his eyes at me. “The warrant is coming.” His cell dinged, and he looked at it. “It’s here. You got a problem, Bayles?”
“No problem at all,” I said cheerfully. “Just being helpful.”
I put in Jenna’s cell number. The chief pulled Bojanov off a little distance to talk to her. Bojanov went to her squad car, and he came back. By that time, my phone was displaying three photos of an impressive calf-bound, gold-embossed, silver-clasped copy of A Curious Herbal. Jenna had sent them.
“Forwarding to you,” I said.
It took just a moment to transfer the photos from my phone to his and from his to the search team’s. He pocketed his cell. “Follow me,” he said, and started down the drive.
“Where to now?” I asked, trying to step in his footprints. The snow had been falling hard and drifting while I’d been talking to the officer. My loafers were soaked. Ruby’s hand-knitted wool socks were soggy. And cold.
Over his shoulder, he said. “Margaret Anderson’s. I want you there, too.” At the foot of the drive, he stopped abruptly and turned. “Something else. When you were interviewing folks for that so-called article of yours, did anybody come up with the idea that maybe Carswell hadn’t killed herself?”
I stopped too, pausing to answer his question. “The parrot lady couldn’t add it up,” I said. “Her thing was the weapon. According to her, Sunny would never have used a gun to kill herself—and especially not that gun. Because of her father and grandfather, that is.” I hunched my shoulders against the wind. “Are you going to tell me what was in that suicide note?”
The chief scowled. He was deciding whether I deserved to know. At last, he said, “It was a confession. Scott claims she killed Sunny Carswell.”
“O-kay,” I said slowly. I wasn’t surprised. Even the sheriff had said that the death raised more questions than they had answers for. And murder can be made to look like suicide—if the murderer is smart. And lucky. “She give details?”
“How she did it, why she did it. Says Sunny caught her stealing pages out of books. Says she knew where that old gun was kept. She got it, met Sunny in her room, shot her, wiped the gun and put it in Sunny’s hand.” He paused. “Says she shot Jed as well, and left us the gun to prove it. A Glock nine.”
I whistled between my teeth. “She say why she shot Conway?”
“Yeah. Says that he knew how Sunny died and threatened to tell. When she found out he wasn’t dead, she figured he’d turn her in.” Another pause, this one longer. “But she claims she had nothing to do with the big book. The one you’re looking for.” His voice was oddly flat. “She says Margaret Anderson must have stolen it.”
And there it was. An accusation made in a dying declaration was considered an exception to the hearsay rule and was therefore admissible in court.
But this revelation wasn’t much of a surprise to me, either. I had already moved Anderson to the top of my suspect list. “You’re going to search Anderson’s house?”
Silly question. Of course he was going to search Anderson’s house. Scott’s suicide note provided the probable cause he needed to get a warrant. He wanted me to be there to identify the Herbal if he found it. Well, I supposed I could do that preliminarily. He would need to bring Dorothea or Jenna down from the mountain for an official identification.
“Yeah,” he said briefly. There was more coming, and he opened his mouth to tell me what it was.
But it didn’t come. He cleared his throat, tried again, and gave it up. After an awkward moment, his glance fell on my loafers and he found something he wanted to say.
“In weather like this, anybody with a lick of sense would be wearing snow boots.”