The Postman Always Purls Twice (23 page)

“I suppose. But even if someone managed to sneak into Heath's trailer and tamper with his spicy lemonade brew, wouldn't he have noticed chunks of daffodil bulbs floating around his glass? It's clear liquid. Not a hide-all-sins, smoothie sort of drink,” Dana argued.

“Did you ever try one of those do-or-die diets?” Suzanne paused. “You're looking at the champ. I can't even read the guidelines before I'm craving a big, fat cheeseburger, smothered with mushrooms and onions. What if he fell off the detox wagon and secretly called Burger Heaven, for a cheat meal delivery?”

“Or ordered onion rings. Perfect diet cheat food,” Lucy chimed in.

“The poisonous bulbs could have been slipped into his food that way,” Maggie agreed. “But that sounds too complicated. Was this killer standing around with a secret container of sliced and sautéed daffodil bulbs . . . and slipped a few spoonfuls on this secret hamburger?”

“I think Jack said his stomach was pumped and it appears Heath was no diet cheater. Nothing else was found but the ingredients of the lemonade . . . and the poison.”

“So somehow the poison was extracted from the bulbs?” Maggie pondered aloud.

“I only read aloud one article about it. Maybe there were never any actual daffodil bulbs involved. Maybe this diabolic person got the poison someplace else. In a bottle or something.” Lucy looked around at her friends to see what they thought.

“In a poison store, you mean?” Suzanne asked with a small smile.

“Lucy's right. The actual flowers didn't have to be involved. Nick was poisoned with digitalis, which is also found in certain flowers,” Maggie reminded them. “But it's extracted for heart medication by pharmaceutical labs.”

“So are we looking for someone who's a chemist or knows about that stuff?” Suzanne asked.

“I don't know . . . I think a knowledge of chemistry would be helpful. But people who like gardeners know a lot about flowers,” Maggie replied. “And flowers are used so much in paintings and literature as symbols.”

“The Victorians even communicated with one another following something called
The Language of Flowers.
Gifts of bouquets and cards with flower illustrations carried a special message from the sender to the person who received it,” Lucy recalled. “Violets, for instance, meant faithfulness and purity. Roses meant love, of course.”

“What do daffodils mean?” Suzanne asked.

“I'm not sure . . . but I can look it up,” Lucy offered quickly.

“I have a thought,” Maggie said while Lucy typed quickly. “Daffodils are also called narcissus, from the Greek myth. Let's see . . . Narcissus was a beautiful but very vain young man, who rejected a wood nymph, Echo. She was in love with him, but he had no sympathy for her. So he was condemned by the gods to fall in love but never have his loved returned. He looked into a pool of water and fell in love with his own reflection, and lived the rest of his life in torment, trying to grasp the false image, while it melted in his hands.”

“Hence the psychological term narcissistic personality disorder,” Dana added in a far less poetic tone. “It's hard to explain the term in a few words, but basically, people who are narcissists are grandiose, attention seeking, lack empathy, and are focused only on satisfying their own needs.”

“The way you might expect a movie star to be?” Lucy asked quietly. “Acting like the world revolves around them?”

“Yes, exactly,” Dana answered.

“But Heath wasn't that way at all,” Suzanne insisted.

“No, he wasn't. Not with us,” Maggie recalled. “Though I did expect him to be much the way you just described, Dana,” she admitted.

“I bet a lot of people did,” Dana agreed. “It's impossible to say from briefly meeting him, but I didn't get the feeling he was extremely self-centered.”

“What happened to Narcissus? Did he just hang out at the edge of the pond, staring at himself? Or did he jump in and go for it?” Suzanne asked.

“I don't remember.” Maggie turned to Lucy, who had found an entry for the term.

“This entry says, ‘He didn't move. He didn't eat or drink. He only suffered. As he pined, he became gaunt and lost his beauty and died. His body disappeared and in its place, flowers grew. The wood nymphs mourned his death.' ”

Suzanne was glassy eyed again and sniffed into a tissue. “I'm sorry now that I asked.”

“I'm sorry I read it aloud,” Lucy admitted. “But it does tell us something. I'm going to look up the poison that was in Nick's drink.”

“Digitalis,” Maggie reminded her.

“Right . . . got it.” Lucy looked up at them. “It not only comes from foxglove, it's also found in lily of the valley. Highly toxic. Every part of the flower, especially the red berries. But just like foxglove, they aren't in season around here now. Not until May.”

“And it's very expensive if you try to order it at a florist. Brides sometimes choose it for wedding bouquets. It's very traditional. It was in Princess Kate's bouquet, I think,” Dana recalled.

“You can find it, I suppose. If you're willing to pay . . .” Maggie's voice trailed off. Was she the only one who remembered the big bouquet of lily of the valley in Jennifer's trailer?

Why wasn't she reminding her friends of that? And Jennifer's knowledge of gardening . . . and the way she'd recited the poem about the daffodils?

But before she could speak, Dana said, “Jennifer Todd had a bouquet of lily of the valley in her trailer, remember? She said it was her favorite flower and people sent her bunches of them.”

“Yes, I remember,” Maggie said firmly. “She said Regina Thurston had sent her that one, to wish her luck with the movie. She knows a lot about flowers, too,” she added. “She was talking to me about gardening the other day.”

Maggie hated to cast aspersions on Jennifer. She wasn't sure why; there was just something about her that she liked, a genuine connection. Still, these connections were undeniable, too.

“Everyone in the world knows she likes flowers. You just have to read one interview. The stalker sent her bouquets all the time,” Suzanne reminded them. “Maybe he's behind all this, trying in some twisted way to send Jennifer a message. Maybe he thinks he's a Victorian gentleman?” She offered the joke in a halfhearted tone.

Dana put her knitting down. “You might be on to something. Nick and Heath were the two most important men in Jennifer's life. The stalker must have seen them as rivals for Jennifer's affection. Anyone who leaves anonymous notes and gifts is certainly a passive-aggressive type.”

“It makes sense that he would try to get all his competition out of the way, in order to have Jennifer all to himself.” Suzanne's voice rose, excited by the theory. She looked around at the others. “Do you think the police see this? That could be it.”

“I think it's someone from Jen's past. Someone she knew while growing up around here. The flowers he left on the porch that night were yellow and blue, the colors of Newburyport High School. I told Charles,” Maggie added. “I hope he took me seriously.”

“I know they're looking for the stalker,” Dana assured her. “It's definitely an important line of investigation.”

Suzanne sat back but didn't seem entirely satisfied. If she could go out and find Heath O'Hara's killer herself, Maggie knew she would. A lot of his fans probably felt the same.

“I've got some information on digitalis . . . want to hear it?” Lucy's head popped up again. She was eager to share her findings.

“Go on. But you'd better hurry. It's getting late.” Maggie glanced at the shop door. The sign still said “Resting our needles now . . . Please come see us again,” though it was almost nine. They'd been so engrossed in their conversation customers might have knocked already and she wouldn't have noticed.

“We already know about the physical effects of the drug,” Lucy said, skimming down the page. “But there are two legends, both interesting. A Christian legend says that the flower sprung up from the tears of Eve when she was driven from the Garden of Eden. And another, that it grew from the tears of the Blessed Virgin Mother when Jesus Christ died.” Lucy looked up at her friends. “Two very dark tales for such a light, fragrant flower.”

“I'll say,” Suzanne agreed.

“I just thought of something else,” Dana said. “Remember when I said I saw Jennifer play Ophelia in
Hamlet
? During Ophelia's famous soliloquy, she hands out flowers to her family and says what each symbolizes—‘rosemary for remembrance, pansies for thoughts.' That's all I can remember,” Dana admitted. “When she's done speaking, she drowns herself.”

“Ugh . . . no wonder I can't stand great theater . . . or opera,” Suzanne added.

“A lot to ponder,” Maggie said quietly. “I will say that I'll look at my Spring Fling: Felted Flowers Class much differently now. I didn't realize my students were sending secret messages with the finishing touches on their projects.”

Dana had gathered up her knitting and coffee cup and was getting ready to go. “It is a lot to consider, and we don't even know if the person doing this has any knowledge of all these symbols and legends. Maybe they picked toxic ingredients they knew about and found handy.”

Lucy stood up and looked outside, to make sure her dogs were all right. Still there. Maggie hoped they hadn't preferred the wicker chairs to their chew toys.

“Maybe. But I think these toxic ingredients are too obscure . . . and eccentric,” Lucy said. “The digitalis would be ordinary, if it had been smashed-up pills. But it wasn't in that form, right, Maggie?”

“No, it wasn't. Charles told me it wasn't from a pharmaceutical lab. It was in a pure state.”

“And the other poison is just bizarre,” Lucy concluded. “Daffodil bulbs? I think there's some meaning here. Some special message.”

Maggie felt the same. “A repeating theme of love and loss, if you think about the subtext of all these myths.”

“Oh boy . . . you guys are just too literary and highbrow for me. I feel like I'm in a college lit class again. But I can't stay for extra help,” Suzanne said with sigh. “I have to call the house owners and report in. And hope the police don't tear the house apart. Who knows when they'll be done? The movie company did such a good job of keeping everything nice and clean . . . and unscratched. I thought I was home free.”

Maggie felt sorry for Suzanne. Not just because of her work pressures. Anyone who had been to the gathering last night would find it very hard to return to the grand house on the beach, which she was bound to do, eventually. She was fairly certain that's what Suzanne was really upset about.

Lucy seemed to sense that, too. “Hey, want me to take a ride out there with you?”

Suzanne was surprised at the offer. “Would you? . . . You're probably too busy . . .”

“I can come. Honest. I just turned in a project and I'm looking for excuses to get out of my office. I'd just be cleaning the house or at the gym . . . Maybe we can take a walk on the beach or something, if you don't have to rush back to town.”

“That might be a good thing for me,” Suzanne admitted.

“Oh . . . if you don't mind the dogs in your car?” Lucy added.

“Are you kidding? The dogs would be an improvement over the groups I'm usually carting around. Did you ever chauffeur an entire soccer team of eleven-year-old boys? Maybe the dogs can clean up all the stale fries on the floor back there.”

“I'll ask them to work on it,” Lucy promised.

Maggie was glad Suzanne would have company. It had been sweet of Lucy to offer. She was a sympathetic soul. Maggie would have offered herself if Phoebe had been around to cover. As it was, just as her friends left, knitters in the morning class drifted in: Booties, Bibs, and Beyond. A perfect class to teach in the spring, she always found, when new life seemed to be bursting all around.

Phoebe returned from school just as the group left. She came straight into the shop and dumped her knapsack onto the counter.

“Did you hear? The police chief is going to hold a press conference in like . . . two minutes. Want to watch upstairs? Or I could DVR it for you.”

Maggie hated to lose even one customer, but this situation was too tempting. The shop was empty; maybe it would stay that way for a few minutes more.

“Okay, you turn on the TV, I'll be right up.”

She locked up the register but decided to leave the shop door open when she ran upstairs.

“It's starting!” Phoebe called to her.

Maggie hustled up the back stairway just in time to see the Essex County chief of police, Rusty Nolan, behind a podium and microphone. Maggie wondered if she would catch a glimpse of Charles. Was he there with the other detectives? Maybe not; maybe they were working steadily while Rusty got all the glamour.

Chief Nolan quickly reviewed the specifics of Heath O'Hara's death. No news there, since they were both on the scene. “Toxicology tests have confirmed a high level of a chemical compound, lycorine, was present in Mr. O'Hara's body at the time of his death. Lycorine is a highly toxic substance that affects the digestive and nervous system. Early reports of the medical examiner state that Mr. O'Hara suffered convulsions and paralysis, brought on by lycorine poisoning, resulting in his death.”

He added a short coda about the investigation, how they were working around the clock with a team of detectives on several leads and expected to have more news to release soon. “That's all I can report at this time, due to the delicate nature of this case. We will report any significant progress as soon as we're able, believe me.” He paused and looked to the side, as if waiting for a sign. “All right . . . I can take a few questions.”