Southern Poison (31 page)

She shook her head.

“I’m going to let you up now and you’re going to walk back to the car and get in.”

She nodded.

“He’s going to kill me and my baby,” she said when we were rolling again.

“We’re not going to let that happen, Peggy Lee.”

I
sat the chemist at my kitchen table and, still not quite trusting her, cut off the zip strips and secured her hands behind her back with a new pair. I put a glass of ice water in front of her and stuck a straw in it.

When I went into the living room, I came face-to-chest with a giant. Close to seven feet tall, he had the build of a wrestler and looked like he’d just come from Maui in Bermuda shorts, a multicolored shirt with giant hibiscus blooms all over it, and some sort of a shell pendant on a leather cord around his neck. His thighs and biceps were as thick as tree trunks. Once I got beyond his body, I saw a pleasantly handsome face with light blue eyes.

“Who are you?” I said.

“Paul.”

“What are
you?”

“Your personal bodyguard.”

“You’re a SWEET agent?”

The corners of his mouth twitched briefly upward. “Something like that.”

“Was that a smile?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Huh,” I said, noticing a variety of weapons strapped to his body, mostly concealed by the baggy shorts and bright shirt. His main piece, protruding from a quick-draw hip holster, was the size of a small cannon. I dialed Ashton, who verified that Paul was there for my protection.

I hung up and checked out the giant once again. “The boss says
you’re legit, so make yourself at home. The dog’s name is Cracker. My father lives in the connecting apartment. His name is Spud. We usually eat at my pub downstairs. Oh, and the guest toilet runs if you don’t jiggle the handle.”

He followed me to the kitchen and leaned against a wall. Still sitting at the table like a good girl, Peggy Lee gasped when she saw him.

“Are you going to do that all the time?” I said to Paul. “Follow me from room to room?”

“Yes.”

“What about bedtime?”

“Yes.”

“Huh,” I said.

The corners of his lips twitched again.

Ashton could be
creative when the situation warranted and I had to give him credit for securing a safe house on short notice, even if it was a boat. Visible from the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, the SS
Cape Pelican
was docked at the Navy’s wharf as a part of the Maritime Administration’s Ready Reserve Force. At port cities nationwide, RRF vessels sit empty while they await call-up, and it’s not uncommon to see the same ship docked for several months at a time in Wilmington.

Almost seven hundred feet long and one hundred feet wide, the SS
Cape Pelican
was designed with a giant ramp to allow cargo to be driven on and off, according to one of the three crew members who was assigned to boat duty as long as Peggy Lee was aboard. Other than roving security and the two-person detail assigned to keep an eye on the chemist, the giant ship was eerily quiet. Peggy Lee’s new temporary home was the captain’s quarters, which included a living area and private head.

Paul towering behind us, Ox and I carried bags of takeout from
the Block: shaved beef sandwiches with horseradish sauce, roasted red pepper and goat cheese quesadillas, a few six packs of cold beer, bottled water, and cartons of milk and juice for the mother-to-be. After distributing the food, we found a shady spot on the deck to eat what was left. While Paul and Ox did the male bonding thing, Peggy Lee and I had a chat.

She’d met Chuck Holloman at a conference, she said, and that’s when she fell in love. The first night over dinner, they discussed her years of research that never yielded a fertility cure, her education and background, her hellish upbringing, and her appreciation for chemistry. Chuck was the first man to applaud her talents, the first man to show an interest in her, the first and only man she’d ever slept with.

A month into their long-distance relationship, Chuck quizzed Peggy Lee about her views on environmental preservation and when he flew to Wilmington later that week, he told her about Project Antisis.

“His vision seemed so admirable and so important to the health of the planet,” Peggy Lee said. “We were in his hotel room, eating room-service food, when the idea came to him. A product using one of his company’s adhesives and a synthetic version of the wild leafy shiff bush extract. Something that girls would put on their skin to ultimately reduce population growth and save natural resources.”

I swallowed my last bite of quesadilla and started on a Coors Light. “That’s when the two of you came up with Derma-Zing.”

“Right. Derma-Zing was phase one of Project Antisis. Chuck had been planning the project for years. He already had the name, a play on the goddess of fertility. He just hadn’t yet figured out how to implement his vision. Anyway, we discussed it and realized the skin adhesive idea would work. So he hired marketing people to handle the advertising and stuff. Once Derma-Zing ran its cycle, Chuck planned to move forward with another product. Phase two.”

From my perch on the mammoth ship, a pleasure boat cruising
past looked like a toy. “And you went along with this plan, no questions asked?”

“He convinced me it was all for the better good,” she said. “At that point, I’d have done anything for Chuck. Plus he said that the girls could get pregnant later on, after they’d stopped using the product. I guess I convinced myself that was true, so really, we wouldn’t be doing any harm.”

“But deep inside, you knew that the majority of the girls would never be able to have a child, didn’t you?” Studying her, I couldn’t grasp that the woman in front of me was capable of participating in such a horrendous act.

“I don’t know. Maybe,” she said. “I just loved him. I loved him so much and I believed everything he said. It’s almost like I was under his control. I guess it took me getting pregnant to see things clearly.”

She talked for another half-hour and finally, the story and the guilt purged from her system, Peggy Lee gained an appetite and dug in to her food. When she finished, she ate my leftovers.

I asked the chemist about the items they’d found in her apartment, including the book on depression. I’d seen the detailed list.

“There’s nothing in my apartment on Project Antisis. Nothing. Not even my past research notes. Everything was at the lab. Chuck insisted on it. And the self-help book on depression? It’s not mine. The only books I have are chemistry books.”

I caught a glimpse of Ox and Paul out of the corner of my eye. Paul had barely said three words to me since he appeared in my home, but now he and Ox were laughing like old fishing buddies. Or in Paul’s case with the hang-ten duds, old surfing buddies.

“What about your diary?”

Lines appeared on Peggy Lee’s forehead. “I have a diary, yes. I used to call it my depression diary. It was sort of like going to therapy, I guess. Only I’d write my thoughts down instead of talking to somebody. When I met Chuck, I was happy and quit writing in it.”

Ashton called to tell me he was on the way over with someone to take an official statement from the chemist. If there was enough evidence to do so, they’d arrest Holloman in Roanoke, Virginia. If not, they’d simply pick him up for questioning.

“He’s going to pin everything on you, Peggy Lee. You’re the chemist, and the lone employee at the Wilmington lab. You did the research on the shiff bush. There’s incriminating verbiage in your handwritten diary. The notes on Project Antisis were found in your apartment. It doesn’t look good.”

“But it was his plan, not mine! And Chuck was sleeping with me, to make me fall in love so I’d go along with what he wanted. He said we’d get married.”

I finished the beer and considered a second one. “So? He was sleeping with his live-in girlfriend, too. Not to mention the receptionist at ECH Chemical Engineering&Consulting. He’ll say you were just another lay.”

She let out a wail that turned into sobbing. I can’t stand crying, especially when it’s coming from an adult. I grabbed another beer and joined Ox and Paul at the deck’s railing. A short time later, Ashton came aboard with an assistant.

He nodded in the direction of Peggy Lee. “Can you make her stop crying? We need to get a statement.”

“Not my job,” I answered. “But if you’ve brought some food, she may stop wailing long enough to eat again. She’s eating for two, you know.”

We looked up to see one of the security guards leading a group tour: Spud, Fran, Bobby, and Lindsey.

“For Chrissakes,” Ashton said. “This is supposed to be a safe house, not a damn party pad.”

“I overheard Jersey and Ox talking about this floating hideout.” Spud’s cane shrugged. “Doodlebug wanted to see the ship. And Fran made a pie for the chemist lady.”

“It’s lemon,” Fran interrupted. “I must have gone through a lemon pie a week when I was pregnant.”

“And Bobby’s here because we drove his van,” Spud finished. “We couldn’t just leave him out there.”

“There you go,” I said to Ashton. “Problem solved. Feed the chemist some pie and you can get your statement.”

The guard took my father, his girlfriend, Lindsey, and Bobby on a tour of the ship while Ashton’s assistant carried the pie to the captain’s quarters.

An
hour later, we’d lost Spud and his entourage and we’d run out of beer, but at least Ashton had the statement he came for. As I figured, he said they’d question Holloman, but there wasn’t enough evidence to arrest him. The crazy man with a God-complex would probably go free.

“What will you do with the chemist?” I asked.

“Keep her here for a few days. Most likely, she’ll be imprisoned.”

“What about the product?” Ox asked. “It’s still on the shelves, being used by millions.”

“The plan is for ECH Chemical Engineering to agree to a worldwide recall, pay for the advertising, and offer full product refunds.”

I looked at my handler. “That’s it? Give people their money back? What about all the affected teens?”

“It’s a delicate situation, Jersey. First, we don’t want to create panic. Second, we’re still not exactly sure what we’re dealing with. The chemist says Holloman told her to increase the amount of the suspect ingredient in the adhesive. Anyone who has used the latest Derma-Zing, according to her, could be sterile after one or two applications. Girls using the earlier product wouldn’t be affected until three or four months of use.”

We immediately thought of Lindsey, who was happily eating
lemon pie with the chemist in the captain’s quarters. Of course she’d used the latest product because she was getting it for free, shipped straight from the production line. Once again, Ox faced the water with closed eyes, breathing deep, as if drawing strength from some unseen source.

“Peggy Lee says there’s nothing to be done. For those users whose systems have already been affected, the damage is irreversible.” Ash-ton wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “We will implement a course of action that is in the best interest of the public.”

I could read between the lines of Ashton’s diplomatic double-talk. His superiors didn’t want to create a nationwide scare. After all, if a simple cosmetic product could cause sterility, what other horrors might be present in unregulated personal hygiene items, makeup, or even clothing fibers? Not only would the United States’ economy feel the impact, but there would be a public outcry for regulation of absorbable consumer products. The Food and Drug Administration is already understaffed, underfunded, and under fire from citizen watch groups. It wouldn’t be good.

“Hey, you guys!” Lindsey called, skipping our way with the chemist in tow. “Listen up. She can fix things. She can make an antidote!”

“Is that true?” Ashton asked the woman, sitting her in a chair.

Peggy Lee nodded.

“She was like, all weepy and stuff,” Lindsey said, “like it’s the end of the world or something. Saying that a bunch of girls can never have baby and it’s all her fault. Blah, blah, blah. So I ask her, how can she be pregnant, when she’s been working with this bad chemical, right? And she goes, it’s the by-product!”

“Explain,” Ashton demanded.

“Basically, when you squeeze extract from the plant, there’s a pile of stuff left over,” Peggy Lee said. “Think of it as pulp, if you will. It’s soft and waxy, and I’ve been rubbing it on my hands and
arms because it’s a wonderful moisturizer. Then I got pregnant. My doctor says it’s a miracle, but Lindsey just made me realize that the by-product is the answer.”

“Go on.”

“I think I was on the right track all along, during those years of frustrating research. Purified extract from the plant produced the opposite result of what I wanted—it causes
infertility
—but something in the by-product holds the answer for fertility. It stimulates and heals the ova. It might be the seed casings or the woody stem bark. I’m not sure. But something created a reversal of my condition, my faulty eggs. If I can isolate it, I can create an antidote. I can undo all the damage that Derma-Zing has done.”

Ox grabbed me and his daughter into a tight circle for a group hug. Lindsey never considered that she might be one of the infertile ones. I’d been agonizing over how to tell her that her ovaries were damaged. But Ox’s faith in his vision remained strong—the one where he saw grandkids in his future—and he decided that Lindsey didn’t need to know what the doctor’s test results revealed. At least not until she was older. And now, not ever. Relief and amazement flowed between me and Ox. The embrace would have held much longer if Lindsey didn’t wiggle her way loose.

“So all the kids who’ve used Derma-Zing can have babies if they want to,” the girl announced. “I mean, you know. Someday. Like maybe when they’re forty or something.”

Spud, Fran, and Bobby slowly shuffled our way in one geriatric clump. “This ship is huge,” Spud declared. “We need Fran’s scooter to get around on this thing, for crying out loud. I’m exhausted.”

“Have a piece of lemon pie,” Fran said. “That will perk you up.”

Lindsey shook her head. “Peggy Lee ate it all.”