THE HERBALIST (Books 1-5) Read online

  “How about Cindy?”

  “I’m not sure. I do remember, though, that once Lauryl said something kind of derogatory about Rhianna and Cindy defended her.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “I don’t know—a couple of weeks or so ago. Well, I guess it would be a month or so now. It was a couple of weeks before Lauryl died.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “No problem. How is the investigation coming along?”

  “We’re making progress.”

  “Well, all right then. Keep me posted.”

  “Of course, Nash. Thanks again.”

  Melissa ended the call.

  Chapter 18

  Melissa could not believe her luck when Cindy walked into the shop one afternoon. She looked like she’d been crying.

  “Can I make you a nice cup of tea, Cindy?” she asked.

  “I guess,” she said. She took a tissue out of her pocket and blew her nose then dabbed at her eyes.

  Melissa combined some tulsi leaves with some passionflower and a little St. John’s Wort and served the steaming cup to Cindy.

  “Are you catching cold?” Melissa asked, although she knew that she wasn’t.

  Cindy just looked at her tissue, shook her head and kept dabbing.

  Melissa didn’t notice Flora floating past, going to lock the door and flipping the “We’ll Be Back” sign.

  “When’s this all going to be over?” Cindy asked. “I feel like I’m stuck in limbo and can’t get on with my life.”

  Melissa sat down and curled her fingers around the back of Cindy’s hand.

  “When we find what we’re looking for,” she said in a quiet tone.

  “What? What are you looking for?”

  “We need to know how Lauryl died.”

  “She was sick!” she said, angrily, and withdrew her hand from Melissa‘s

  “She wasn’t, Cindy. Not like you think. She was worn down, and her immune system was depleted, but she wasn’t ill. Not like your mother was ill.”

  Cindy just looked at her. “Aunt Lauryl told me she was ill, and that she was going to die just the way my mom did. Only she thought that she would suffer longer.”

  “Why? Why did she think that?”

  “I don’t know. I assumed it was because her doctor told her that.”

  “What doctor? Dr. Mercer?”

  “No, the one she was seeing in Tucson.”

  Melissa paused to think about that. She remembered Dr. Mercer saying that she would have had to have a referral to see a specialist and that he hadn’t given her one.

  “Cindy, the only doctor your aunt was seeing in Tucson was a psychiatrist.”

  Cindy jerked her head toward Melissa with a look of doubt mixed with fear.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I know. But mostly, I know she wasn’t sick, because the Medical Examiner’s report showed she was in good health other than a touch of bronchitis.”

  “But she had stopped eating.”

  “I don’t know what that’s about,” Melissa said. “I did notice that she had lost weight.”

  “See?” Cindy said, breaking into sobs.

  “Try to drink some of that tea.”

  Cindy nodded and gulped some of the tea. She stopped crying, and Melissa waited until she stopped hiccupping from the crying.

  “Cindy, I’m going to ask you something, and I want you to think very carefully before you answer me.”

  Cindy looked at her, expressionless.

  “You told me that Nash had asked you when he could get his guitar and that he wanted it because of the weed. But Nash says he had no idea it was in there and has no idea where it came from.”

  “Of course he would say that,” she said. Her voice implied that Melissa was an idiot if she believed him. “He’s trying to stay out of prison.”

  “Well, I’ve talked to both him and his uncle, and I’m pretty convinced that he really didn’t know anything about it.”

  Cindy looked back at her hands and her tissue which she was working between her fingers.

  Melissa knew she was on thin ice because she really had nothing else to go on except her gut feeling that Nash was telling her the truth.

  “And Detective Byrne is convinced he didn’t know anything about it.” There. She hoped that would add a little weight of authority.

  “Okay, okay!” Cindy shouted. She jumped up from her chair and started to scream, beating her feet against the floor as if she were running in place, and flailing her arms.

  “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” she shouted shrilly.

  Flora came and she and Melissa together got her to sit down. Melissa was alarmed, but Flora looked cool as a cucumber.

  “Somebody put you up to this, Cindy. Just tell the truth. Get it over with,” Flora said.

  Cindy sat back down, gulping for air.

  “I didn’t know. I didn’t! You have to believe me that I didn’t know.”

  “What didn’t you know?” Melissa asked.

  “She gave me those beans to cook. She told me not to eat any of it myself, that Aunt Lauryl needed every bit of it. Thank God I didn’t even taste it.”

  “Go on.”

  “I didn’t know about the poison beans until after Aunt Lauryl was dead. She told me the next afternoon.”

  “Who?”

  She looked back at her hands, unwilling to speak.

  “Rhianna. Rhianna gave them to you, right?” Flora asked.

  Cindy slowly nodded her head.

  “Okay, so who planted the marijuana?”

  “I did. But Rhianna gave it to me. It was her idea.”

  “Why? What was the point?”

  “I don’t know. She just told me I better do it. She said it would get the police looking at him and the suspicion off anyone else.”

  Melissa stood. “I’m going to talk to Rhianna right now.”

  “No!” Cindy shrieked. “She’ll kill me, too.”

  “She won’t kill anyone if she’s behind bars where she belongs,” Flora said.

  “Cindy,” Melissa said quietly, “how did you get mixed up with Rhianna?”

  “She started coming around to the house a while ago. She tried making friends with Aunt Lauryl. She said she had a business opportunity she wanted to discuss with her. She wanted to open her own shop, just like yours. She said she knew more about herbs and medicine than you’d ever know. She just needed a couple of investors, but Aunt Lauryl was really rude to her.

  “I felt sorry for Rhianna. She was very nice to me. She told me Aunt Lauryl was very sick, and she hated to think that I’d have to spend the best years of my life caring for another sick relative. She said I should be having fun. She said she could help!”

  Cindy began sobbing again. Flora caught Melissa’s eye and motioned for her to go. “Slip out the back door and lock it behind you. I’ve already locked the front. I can take care of her.”

  Melissa nodded. After locking the back door, she ran around to the front and crossed the street, running down to get her car. Rhianna lived just at the end of the street, but she didn’t want to sprint all that way.

  All of a sudden, Melissa felt like she was completely out of her league—that she had no idea how she would confront Rhianna or what would happen.

  She grabbed her cell phone and called Brian. She told him what she was getting ready to do without going into detail about what Cindy had said.

  “I’m heading out of Tucson now, on my way there. Can’t you wait until I get there?”

  “No. I feel like I can’t. I’m just not sure what to do.”

  “You’ll figure it out. Just be careful. She could be armed.”

  “Oh, well thanks for the help and comfort,” she said, sarcastically.

  “You know what to do, Melissa. Remember what I told you about creativity.”

  “Suddenly, I’m not feeling so creative.” She hit the end button.

  She stopped the car in front of Rhianna’s and pockete
d the phone. She sat there a few seconds, sizing up the place, but she didn’t want to sit too long and tip Rhianna off.

  There was a walk up to the house, and a porch that ran around to the side. There was no door visible from the front, so Melissa had to enter a gate and walk back to find the entrance.

  Rhianna’s car was under the carport, but she couldn’t see her despite the fact that the sides of the house were nearly all large windows looking into three different rooms.

  Melissa stepped up to the door and listened. She heard sounds like somebody slamming drawers. She opened the screen door, and tiptoed in, following the sounds back to a bedroom. When she got to the door, she saw Rhianna bent over an open drawer. There were suitcases on the bed, in various stages of packing.

  “Going somewhere, Rhianna?”

  Rhianna whirled toward her.

  “Away from this godforsaken place.”

  “Why did you do it, Rhianna?” Melissa asked straightforwardly.

  Rhianna looked up for a second, then resumed opening drawers and pulling things out.

  “Do what?”

  “Murder Lauryl.”

  “Murder is such an ugly word.”

  “Well what would you call it?”

  “Mercy killing.”

  “Mercy killing? In what sense?”

  “I released three lives from misery.”

  “Three? You killed three people?” Melissa asked.

  “No. I killed one, and in doing so, released two others.”

  “Do go on,” Melissa said.

  “Cindy came to me crying one day. She said Lauryl had told her she was dying, but that she was going to be sick for a long time before that happened. She needed Cindy to stay with her and take care of her like she did her mother. The girl was mortified. Her entire high school years were ruined taking care of her mother, and Lauryl was asking her to do it again.”

  “Are you absolutely sure of that?”

  “Sure of what?”

  “That Lauryl had asked her to do that?”

  “I don’t know. Why would she lie about something like that? She came to my house almost daily for two weeks crying about it.”

  “So, you ‘released’ Lauryl and apparently you think you released Cindy. Who’s the third?”

  “Why, Nash, of course.”

  “Nash? Looks to me like you did just the opposite of releasing him.”

  “Oh, well, that. Some people just don’t appreciate freedom. Don’t know what to do with it.”

  “Nash is one of those?”

  “Apparently, he was head-over-heels in love with Lauryl. Who knew? Cindy thought she and Nash were a more appropriate pairing. But Cindy was unable to convince him that they should be together. He spurned her! Well, I don’t have to tell you about the wrath of a woman scorned.”

  “So you planted the marijuana and then called the sheriff’s department.”

  “Well, that killed two birds with one stone.”

  “How so?”

  “It got rid of Nash, but because I persuaded Cindy to plant it—as an act of faith, to show her commitment—it implicated her, too. I figured she would be less likely to rat me out. She freaked when I told her about the bean soup. I thought she would be grateful. Ingrates. They’re all ingrates.”

  Suddenly Rhianna stopped spinning around the room and looked straight at Melissa. “Now you know why. Are you satisfied?”

  “Not quite.”

  “Not quite, huh? Well, perhaps if you took your profession a little more seriously, you’d understand. We heal people, Melissa, you and I. We have the power to make a difference in other people’s lives. That includes putting them out of their misery, if that’s the best option for them.”

  “So…how many times...?”

  “Oh, this wasn’t the first,” Rhianna said nonchalantly. “Not that they were all put down for altruistic reasons. When I opened my shop, I had to take on a couple of investors who weren’t of the highest caliber. When my shop floundered—due in no small part to you, dear—they became quite impatient about being paid back. Well, they got their pay back! They weren’t missed, and I reclaimed my peace of mind.

  “So, you see, once you kill somebody, it’s not that hard to kill again. You can always find a good reason for killing someone, don’t you think?”

  Rhianna turned and grabbed a heavy crystal vase. She charged Melissa, but Melissa fended her off, catching her off balance, so she hurled the vase. Melissa ducked to the side and the vase crashed into the door frame.

  Rhianna got her feet under her and ran out toward the kitchen, blocking Melissa’s exit. She turned toward the knife block, pulling out a French chef’s knife. She threw it end over end. It seemed to travel through the air in slow motion, and Melissa dodged it easily. Rhianna reacted by emitting an animal-like growl, and started throwing all the steak knives. Melissa was pinned against the wall and one of the knives caught her in the shoulder, and another pierced her flesh just above her left elbow.

  “Stop! Stop now, Rhianna,” Melissa heard Flora’s voice come from outside the kitchen door. Flora was holding a tiny revolver, pointed directly at Rhianna.

  “Go ahead, shoot me,” Rhianna said.

  Sirens could be heard in the background, and Rhianna charged Flora this time.

  “Shoot me, you old hag,” Rhianna demanded, then added. “I honestly thought you would be the one to show up instead of Melissa.”

  Flora shook her head. “Not this time, Rhianna. And shooting’s too good for you. Finally, you’re going to have to deal with the law.”

  Melissa looked back and forth between the two women. Flora just stood there calmly with the pistol leveled at Rhianna’s heart.

  Sheriff Estevez was first on the scene, his gun drawn and barrel waving among the three women. “So how many of you are coming with me?” he asked.

  “Just this one piece of trash, Sheriff,” Flora said. “And Melissa needs an ambulance.”

  “Indeed she does,” he said, appraising her wounds. He grunted and grabbed his cuffs. “Rhianna Kendrick, you’re under arrest for the murder of Lauryl Taylor. Anything you say, can and will be held against you in a court of law…”

  His voice faded as he pushed her out the door toward the street. Both Melissa and Flora fell back, allowing the tension to leave their bodies.

  “So where’s Cindy?” Melissa asked.

  “I called the sheriff’s office and two deputies came and got her first. They told me the sheriff was in Rio Rico and couldn’t be reached, so I just came right on over.”

  “He sure got here fast for being in Rio Rico.”

  “Oh, I think that’s just the excuse the dispatcher gives old ladies like me.”

  They started out the back door just as Brian arrived.

  “Melissa, are you alright?”

  “I’m pretty sure they’re just superficial cuts,” Melissa said.

  “It looks like you two have got things all wrapped up.”

  “Don’t say that too loudly,” Melissa said. “Our poor sheriff will feel like he’s not needed around here.”

  As they stepped out onto the porch, Melissa looked into the backyard and saw a small greenhouse in the corner of Rhianna’s yard.

  “Just a minute,” she said.

  She walked over to the greenhouse and stuck her head inside.

  “Come here, you two,” she called. “You have to see this.”

  They all stepped inside to a beautiful tropical oasis filled with plants and flowers. Melissa was pointing into a corner.

  “What am I looking at?” Brian asked.

  “Castor plants,” Flora said.

  *

  The CDC confirmed that ricin was, in fact, the cause of Lauryl’s demise. Rhianna’s plants were taken into custody. All charges against Nash were dropped and he was released from bond status.

  Cindy’s charge as accessory to murder was a little stickier to untangle, but it was eventually dropped, and the court recommended therapy for her.


  Melissa and Dr. Mercer arranged to have Lauryl’s body brought back to Catalonia, and oversaw a memorial service that both Nash and Cindy attended, although they sat carefully apart from each other. Even the sheriff attended. After the service, he expressed his thanks to both Melissa and Brian for their assistance, stopping short of offering an apology for his behavior. As he walked away, Brian just smiled, took out his comb, and ran it through his locks, as a sort of salute to the sheriff.

  When Rhianna’s method for dispatching her victims was better understood, the state police were able to close two more unsolved murder cases, with Rhianna being charged for all three.

  After a couple of weeks, life in Catalonia seemed to be returning to normal. Personnel in hazmat suits combed through Rhianna’s backyard and empty house for some time afterward, and it was decided that it would be best to tear the house down and thoroughly decontaminate the lot. In the spring, grass was planted, a few benches were added, and all traces of the former resident had vanished.

  *

  On a Saturday morning, Brian was at the market early, to beat the line for Chelsea buns. He chose one with thick yogurt frosting.

  Melissa wandered over to Brian’s table as Flora served him a cup of coffee and the bun. Brian winked at Melissa.

  “Hey, Flora,” he said. “You know, I’d have never guessed, but Melissa tells me there’s more than meets the eye with you.”

  “Not really,” Flora sniffed. “What you see is pretty much what you get.”

  “You’re being modest,” Melissa smiled.“I have a whole new level of respect for her from the past few days. She’s our Scholar-in-Residence for all things poisonous. And I’m going to find a way to publish her work, even if I have to do it myself.”

  “Really?” Flora said, a big smile spreading over her face.

  “And I pity any critics who might take any pot-shots at her,” Brian said. “I hear that she keeps a Derringer within reach at all times!”

  “That’s right,” Melissa concurred, enjoying the flushed expression on Flora’s face. “What I want to know, though, Flora, is what you meant when you said ‘not this time’ to Rhianna?”

  “Oh,” Flora said. “I wouldn’t want to overwhelm you with too many new aspects of me at once. Suffice it to say that Rhianna and I go way back. But that’s another story for another time.”