The Botanist's Assistant, page 23
“So, I’ll bet if they check your car, they’ll find the cocktail glass with your prints on it, which puts you at the scene, and Veronica Ann will show them the photo of you and Dr. Deaver in bed and testify how he broke it off with you, which would give you motive and opportunity. Who knows, they might even find the scotch bottle in your car, which could still have traces of atropine.”
Purdy glares at her. “You old witch. You should have eaten the cupcake.”
For a moment, Margaret is confused.
Then: “Calvin!” she shouts, and runs from the room.
35
The Early Girls Are Late
They are just settling themselves at a wooden table in Margaret’s garden when she emerges from the cottage bearing a large platter of spaghetti, even though it is not her normal spaghetti night. Tom the tabby walks in front of her, his jangling bell announcing Margaret’s approach as if he were a small herald declaring the arrival of a queen. Calvin and Joe both look up.
It’s mid-September and there’s a crispness in the air that signals the beginning of nature’s slide into quietness, the soft turning of leaves. The blooms on the roses are blowsy. The dahlias are giving their last show. Margaret is wearing her dragonfly blouse and her newish old jeans. She sets the platter carefully in front of the men.
She has tossed spaghetti noodles with chunks of fresh tomatoes and tears of basil from her garden, along with garlic, olive oil, butter, salt and a grinding of black pepper. There is a small bowl of grated Parmesan cheese on the table.
Calvin beams. “Your tomatoes came just in time for my birthday.”
“A little present from Mother Nature,” Margaret says, seating herself at the head of the table. “That June fog really slowed everything down.”
“I guess that makes them not-so-Early Girls,” Joe says, and Calvin chuckles.
Joe pours red wine all around and Margaret thinks, It’s five p.m. on a Saturday, but why not?
Calvin grabs the pasta fork and scoops two big servings of spaghetti onto his plate. He’s wearing gray gym shorts with a black Grateful Dead T-shirt that bears the large image of a skull. A skull shirt isn’t something Margaret thinks a regular person would wear to a birthday celebration, but then, she’s not Calvin. She is, however, grateful that he’s not dead.
Margaret had arrived at the lab door just as Calvin was taking a second bite from the cupcake. She had yelled “Stop,” grabbed it from his hand and flung it to the floor.
“Hey!” Calvin had said. “What was that about? You said I could have it.”
“I want you to sit down while I call an ambulance,” Margaret said firmly.
“An ambulance?”
“The cupcake was intended for me. I think it may have been poisoned.”
Calvin turned as white as his lab coat and clutched a hand to his throat.
“Stay calm. You’re going to be fine. Just give me your phone.” Margaret had left hers in her purse in the janitor’s closet.
Calvin fumbled the phone from his pocket, moaning, “How can this be happening? I’m too young to die. Why did I even try to stop smoking?”
“Sit, Calvin. Panic doesn’t help,” Margaret said, although her own heart was racing, and fear was rising like a tide inside her.
Calvin could not die. She would not let him.
A fire truck and ambulance arrived seven minutes later, and Margaret accompanied Calvin to the hospital, bringing the cupcake remains she’d scraped from the floor. She told doctors of the possibility that Calvin had ingested poison of an unknown origin, handed them the cake leavings, and treatment was started quickly even as his heart began to beat wildly and vomiting set in. He spent five days in the hospital, Margaret arriving promptly at four thirty p.m. each day to relieve Calvin’s parents, whose strict schedule of dinner and the nightly news at five thirty had Margaret’s full support. The appearance of Calvin’s mother and father at Calvin’s bedside each day at nine a.m. also served to reassure Calvin that perhaps the poodle had not usurped his inheritance after all. Tests of the cupcake, meanwhile, determined it had, indeed, been poisoned, containing ground-up wolfsbane—enough to kill an adult. Even one as big-boned as Margaret.
It turned out Purdy had audited a Zoom version of Dr. Deaver’s Superpowers of Plants class and had become entranced with poisonous plants and the evil work they’d done. She’d harvested the plant after discovering it near the university, leaving one stem at the lab door in hopes of deterring Margaret from her investigation through intimidation and fear, and saving the other to use as a poison if needed.
Purdy was detained by the campus police after the ambulance had pulled away. Joe had called Officer Bianchi saying he was holding a murder suspect and gave him the location. When the officer arrived, Joe played the recording for him while Purdy shouted that she’d been intimidated and confused and forced to say things that weren’t true. Bianchi looked rattled but he took Purdy in for questioning, then called the sheriff’s department. Sure enough, the scotch bottle (with traces of belladonna-laced alcohol) and the glass were found inside Purdy’s car, which made Margaret glad the article she’d left about cluttered desks hadn’t inspired Purdy in the least. In addition, a scattering of dried wolfsbane leaves was found along a baseboard in Purdy’s kitchen. She obviously did not sweep the floor as she should.
There were news articles and breathless TV reports about a spurned lover and a poisoned professor, but no one knew the extent of the story until two months ago when the Washington Post published a long, in-depth article Joe had written. It told a story of rivalry, jealousy and betrayal at a small university that had brought not only a renowned and popular professor’s death but an attempted cover-up that had failed, thanks to the dogged work of an underpaid but dedicated fifty-four-year-old research assistant.
The headline in the Post read: Poison, a Professor and the University That Tried to Cover Up a Murder. It was the most-read article on the Post website for a full week. Purdy was awaiting trial after a preliminary hearing found there was enough evidence to prosecute her.
Margaret, Joe and Calvin are silent as they eat, as people often are when the air is fresh, the food is good and one is hungry. It’s why Margaret doesn’t believe in appetizers. Why dull the intense pleasure of eating on an empty stomach?
Both Joe and Calvin ask for seconds.
Three weeks ago, in what was a complete surprise to him, the Washington Post called and offered Joe a permanent job. Editors there wanted him to travel the country writing about cold cases and people wrongfully accused of crimes. He’d put in his resignation letter at the university and was already looking into a possible article about a case involving the unidentified bodies of a woman and her daughter and how new techniques for testing degraded blood samples had identified the victims and renewed the search for their killer.
Margaret had been reluctant to agree to the article when Joe proposed it shortly after Purdy’s arrest. When, however, the university launched a damage-control campaign claiming sloppy police work and an investigation into possible irregularities in Dr. Deaver’s work that hinted at the possibility he had swallowed the poison himself, she couldn’t stay quiet.
Officer Bianchi had folded like a cheap suit (Joe’s words). When Joe asked him why he hadn’t ordered a toxicology screen after Dr. Deaver was found dead, Bianchi claimed he was considering the request “from that strange woman” when the dean had called. According to him, the dean said he would keep quiet the fact that Bianchi had been coaching his kid’s soccer team on university time in exchange for Bianchi not requesting a toxicology screen.
“I thought it was the professor’s heart anyway. Everybody said it was,” Bianchi told Joe. “I couldn’t lose my job over something like that. I got a family to support.”
Purdy’s story was more complicated.
Her life, as Joe discovered, had been filled with cruelty and desertion.
Abandoned in a cheap Las Vegas hotel room with her younger brother when she was eleven—her parents went off to gamble and never came back—Purdy had been shuttled through twelve foster homes, then tossed out into the world when she turned eighteen.
“Beth always had a chip on her shoulder,” her brother, Michael, said after Joe found him working as a mechanic in Los Angeles. “She needed to prove she was better than everybody else, and lord help anyone who crossed her. She’d go after you.”
When Joe wrote that Purdy’s ex-husband had died several years earlier after a mysterious hit-and-run accident while he was jogging with his second wife, the Dallas Police had opened an investigation.
Joe lifts the wine bottle. “Anyone for more? I brought another bottle.”
Margaret waves him off but Calvin gestures for a refill.
“It’s going to take at least three glasses to get me on that driveway again,” he says.
Joe pours. “It wasn’t so bad.” He’d driven Calvin to the party in his pickup.
“Oh no? I think mountain goats would get nervous on that road. My life flashed before my eyes the whole way up.” He turns to Margaret. “I don’t know how you do it every day. If I were you, I would have let them fire me and then sued them for wrongful termination so I wouldn’t have to risk life and limb on a regular basis.”
When Joe asked the dean about why he’d ordered Margaret to falsify information for the Cameron Foundation grant, then tried to fire her when she wouldn’t, he’d mumbled something about collaboration being the hallmark of Roosevelt University, then claimed some important appointment and told Joe he needed to leave.
Apparently, the “important appointment” involved him hurrying across campus to Human Resources and snatching Margaret’s unprocessed termination papers from a startled Anita Allshouse. He then emailed the Cameron Foundation asking to withdraw the application he’d sent, placing the blame on Purdy for what he claimed had been a clerical error, then trying to erase the incriminating emails he’d sent to Margaret.
For a man of science, he turned out to be incredibly inept at technology and Joe easily traced the fraudulent application back to him.
As soon as Joe’s article was published, the dean put in for early retirement for “health reasons,” a request that was quickly granted by the provost.
“Dean Harold McDonald was a valued member of our community but, unfortunately, like many people who must deal with the budget constraints of today’s universities and the pressure to continually provide an outstanding learning experience for our students, he succumbed to the scourge of academic burnout,” the provost wrote in a statement to Joe. “We wish the former dean well and we are doing all we can to address stress-related issues with faculty and staff.”
Margaret takes a last sip of her wine and leans back in her chair.
“I come to work every day because what we do is important,” she tells Calvin. “I come to work because I believe in science and the process of discovery and, besides, what else would I do?”
“Our new boss doesn’t scare you?” Calvin asks.
Margaret shakes her head.
“Not even a little bit?”
Margaret supposes Veronica Ann Deaver’s drive and intensity might intimidate some people, but she likes how the woman has taken charge, hiring an additional postdoc and securing a collaboration with the medicinal chemist from Florida, which helped her win a three-year, three-million-dollar Cameron Foundation grant.
The provost claimed the idea of Veronica Ann taking over the lab had been considered by him even before the grant and that he hadn’t known about the fraudulent grant application, two assertations Joe could neither prove nor disprove. Levi Blackstone, meanwhile, quit his post and got a job with a biotechnology start-up run by an infamous Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Margaret didn’t begrudge him. A shark should swim with sharks.
“What about that sign she put up in the lab? No Shorts. No Sandals. No Science,” Calvin says.
“Wise advice for those who work with chemicals,” Margaret says.
“I asked to be grandfathered in, but she said dressing for success brings success,” Calvin says. “I guess I can’t argue with her.”
“She’s a very smart woman,” Margaret says.
The day is cooling. It won’t be long before the rains arrive. Margaret hopes it will be a good year, both for the forest and for her garden. Veronica Ann has promised her a raise. Perhaps she will order a load of gravel for the spot in her driveway where the seasonal spring runs.
A blue jay squawks and the trio turns to see Tom step from the forest, ignoring the bird the way one would pay no attention to a car alarm in the city. A veterinarian had to remove the feline’s badly damaged eye, but the cat has put on weight and his coat is shiny. He crosses the garden and sits in a patch of sunlight.
“That cat doesn’t know how good he’s got it,” Calvin says.
“Oh, I think he does,” Joe says.
Margaret stands. “I’ve got dessert.”
“Please tell me it isn’t carrot cake,” Calvin says.
“Apple cobbler,” Margaret says. “I don’t think any of us will be eating cake for a while.”
Margaret likes both the new acting dean and his recently hired assistant, a no-nonsense young man whose desk is organized and neat, and who put his foot down about supplying cake for birthdays.
“This is a college, not kindergarten,” he reportedly said.
“Mind if I have a birthday smoke?” Calvin asks.
The poisoning incident has done nothing to cut back on Calvin’s smoking, and Margaret thinks that if staring into the black void of death did not stop you from the habit, nothing would.
Calvin’s fingers still shake, and his anxiety still rears its nervous head, but his parents dipped into their savings and bought him a small mobile home in a neat park, which allows him to avoid yipping dogs and also bestows on him a sense of moving forward.
“Go ahead and smoke,” Margaret says. “Just be careful not to burn down the forest.”
Calvin’s eyebrows raise. “Oh lord, I didn’t even think of that. What if I start one of those giant fires that destroys the whole valley? I read about a guy who did that and is in jail now. Maybe I’ll just have more wine.”
“I’ll get the bottle for you,” Joe says.
Margaret gathers up the plates while Joe takes the now-empty platter and the used utensils and follows Margaret into the cottage.
Margaret stacks the dirty dishes by the sink while Joe uncorks another bottle of wine.
Her floors shine. She polished them early this morning in preparation for the party.
“You know, with my new job, I’ll have more resources,” Joe says quietly. “I could look for your sister if you want.”
For a moment, Margaret doesn’t move. Her hands still on the edge of the sink.
Margaret had told him Grace’s story but only after he’d agreed it would be off the record.
They were sitting in his house with cups of tea, and she’d brought the little data notebook that chronicled her investigation in real time. It was mid-May and the weather was cool and unsettled. He’d built a fire in the fireplace.
He thumbed through the small book and asked her why she kept such a detailed recording of her days. His face was open and accepting. She thought he wouldn’t judge her.
Against the soft crackle of flames, she’d told him about Grace, about her lapse in concentration that day, about the guilt she carried and how making order out of the randomness of life made her feel more in control. He put his hand on her hand for a moment and squeezed. Tears burned in her eyes. It had been so long since anyone had touched her in a kind way.
He said he’d spent a lot of time in therapy himself and didn’t believe what people said about time healing all wounds and that it seemed like maybe talk was the better antidote. Still, he promised it would be her story to keep if that’s what she wanted. She told him she did.
Margaret turns toward him now. “You’d look for Grace?”
“Only if you want.”
It feels like an enormous decision.
“Let me think about it.”
“Take all the time you want.”
Margaret inhales a deep breath, opens the oven, and pulls out the warm cobbler. Joe takes the wine bottle and a small stack of dessert plates. They walk out into the late afternoon light, and there is the little hunter curled on Calvin’s lap. Calvin looks up. “I think Tom likes me. You should hear him purr.”
For a moment, Margaret’s heart catches at the sight of her garden and the cat and the table where they have all gathered to eat.
It feels good to have friends.
Acknowledgments
I love scientists.
I love their devotion to knowledge. I love how they overcome obstacles and the way their minds work. I’ve met many scientists in my time as a journalist and was awed by every one of them: There was the pair of brilliant researchers who, on a shoestring budget and with a makeshift supercomputer of one hundred borrowed Dell Pentium III processor workstations, were the first to assemble the DNA sequence of the human genome. There was the biomolecular engineer who found a way to extract DNA from decayed hair and bodily-fluid samples, which helped not only to identify unnamed murder victims but also solve cold cases around the country. Then, there was the professor of ecology and evolutionary biology who took her students out of the classroom and into the field, energizing a new crop of researchers.
Every one of those scientists inspired me—and inspired this book. But none more than my sister, Regina Donohoe, who devoted herself to the field of environmental toxicology for her entire career.
She is the one who took me on the hike that became the setting for Margaret’s home high on a hill, identifying fiddlehead ferns, black-headed grosbeaks, bay laurel and, most importantly, poison hemlock as we walked.
