THE HERBALIST (Books 1-5) Read online

  He turned on the light, then opened the medicine cabinet and bent to read the labels on numerous pill bottles.

  “Why was she taking so many meds?” Melissa asked.

  Dr. Mercer shook his head. “Most of these are expired. Long expired. And they all have something in them. Chances are if she had taken any of these in a suicide attempt, she wouldn’t have put the bottle back, and the bottle wouldn’t be almost full.”

  Melissa nodded her head. “I guess we’ll just have to wait then.”

  As they walked back through the house to the living room where Lauryl lay, they passed through the dining room. A large crystal vase, which at first glance Lauryl had thought heldday lilies, stood on the table. There was just one bloom now, and several others had wilted. But she quickly saw that it was a trumpet shaped flower instead of lily-shaped, and that meant only one thing here in the desert: Sacred Datura. The moonflower, as others called it, had long been used in sacred ceremonies by the Native Americans and other people in the Sonoran Desert, but it was something that required extreme care in handling due to its poisonous nature and was not something most people would use as a decorative bouquet in their home.

  Just then the sheriff arrived with two deputies, and everyone moved back into the living room.

  Melissa looked and saw Rodney coming back from her store with Cindy in tow.

  “So, how do we know she wasn’t sick?” the sheriff asked without any preliminaries.

  “She was,” said Cindy, hearing the sheriff’s question as she came through the door.

  “And who are you?” he asked.

  Dr. Mercer stepped forward. “Sheriff Estevez, this is Lauryl’s niece, Cynthia.”

  “Has anybody taken a statement from her?”

  “We were waiting for you, Sheriff. You and your deputies are the only ones with the authority to interrogate anyone.”

  The sheriff grunted his acknowledgment. “Who was the last person to see her alive?”

  Everyone stood in silence.

  “She was in my shop just before closing,” Melissa said, “but she went somewhere after that because her car was gone when I came by.”

  He turned to Cynthia. “Do you know where she went when she left the shop?”

  Cynthia’s eyes looked big and frightened, like she was 8 years old again. She just shook her head in response to the sheriff’s question.

  “Save me some paperwork, Mija,” he said. “What do you know about your aunt’s illness?”

  “Nothing, except that she expected to be sick for a really long time.”

  “How do you know that?” he asked.

  The girl shrugged. “She told me.”

  Dr. Mercer nodded to Melissa, who took it as a cue to take Cindy to sit down.

  Dr. Mercer leaned closely to the sheriff and spoke softly.

  “Jesus, Maria y José,” he said. “Paperwork. Bien, Doc, you sign off on the report in lieu of the ME; I’ll sign my portion, then we’ll get ‘er loaded up.”

  At that point, they pulled a waiting gurney over and lifted Lauryl’s body onto it.

  “Where are you taking her?” Cindy asked, jumping up from the sofa where she had been sitting with Melissa.

  “To the Pima County morgue, Miss.”

  “Pima? Why Pima County?”

  “Our county’s too small to have its own morgue.”

  “Why can’t she go right to the funeral home?”

  Dr. Mercer stepped forward, touching Cindy’s arm. “It’s important we understand what caused her death, Cindy. Only the County Medical Examiner has the authority to do that.”

  “And we don’t have one here?”

  “No. She’ll have to go to Tucson.”

  Cindy looked at Melissa to confirm what they were telling her, following the gurney and the EMTs to the door.

  Melissa nodded.

  The sheriff looked around. “Any idea where the key is to this place?”

  Melissa started to speak up but then thought better of it. She had a key which Lauryl had given her so she could water her plants and look in on things when Lauryl was away at her art shows. But she had a feeling she just might need that key.

  “It’s on a hook near the back door,” Cindy said. “There’s one for the back door and one for the front.”

  She retrieved them and handed them to the sheriff.

  “Okay, everybody out,” said the sheriff. “We’re going to have to set this up as a crime scene.”

  Cindy walked to her car, which was parked across the street near Melissa’s shop.

  The sheriff narrowed his eyes at her. “What’s your interest in this, Melissa?”

  “Lauryl was a friend and a client. Cindy called me first when she found the body.”

  “A client? Ohhhhh, you mean some of that witch medicine you do? You and that other woman. The Kendrick woman.”

  Melissa was surprised that he would insult her profession, but she took a deep breath before she responded.

  “I’m a certificated herbalist, with a degree in nutrition.”

  “Oh, so you were making sure she was eating properly?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Melissa said, without going into further detail.

  “So, had you ‘prescribed’ anything for her recently?”

  “She had developed a cough, so she purchased some herbal cough medicine and an immune-building supplement from me.”

  “So she was sick?”

  Dr. Mercer intervened. “Her immune-system was stressed, that was all. She had developed a touch of bronchitis, I believe. I often recommend that my patients go to Melissa for their needs. Not everything requires pharmaceuticals.”

  “I trust you have records to back that up, Doc?”

  “I have complete records on the deceased. I’ve been taking care of her for several years.”

  “Why does her niece think she was really sick?”

  “Truthfully, I don’t know. Lauryl would have needed a referral to see a specialist of any kind, and I didn’t give her one.”

  “Maybe she got a new doc.”

  “That’s entirely possible, but it would surprise me.”

  “Doesn’t she have a boyfriend of sorts?” the sheriff asked.

  “She had been seeing Nash Evans,” Melissa said.

  One of the deputies jotted that down in his notebook.

  “When’s the last time anybody saw him?”

  “Apparently he was here early yesterday morning; then one of my customers saw him heading out of town midmorning.”

  “Anybody know how we can contact him?”

  “Lauryl told me yesterday that Nash is living with his uncle out north of town.”

  “Do we know the uncle’s name?”

  “No, but I can ask Cindy,” Melissa said, motioning Cindy to come her way.

  Melissa met her in the middle of the street. “Do you know Nash’s uncle’s name?”

  “Ummm…hmm…Brady, I think. Brady Evans.”

  Melissa returned and gave the information to the sheriff.

  “So, Melissa,” the sheriff said. “You’re just a fountain of information.”

  “Just trying to be helpful, Sheriff,” she said.

  “Yeah, a little too helpful, perhaps.”

  She looked at him, no idea what he meant.

  “Like, maybe, trying to throw the suspicion off yourself by being so helpful?”

  “What?” Melissa said, her pulse racing. “I need to know why you said that, Sheriff.”

  “You are all so quick to say she wasn’t sick, and yet you were prescribing stuff for her, and you’ve given me a whole host of other suspects to work with.”

  Melissa just looked at him, not knowing what to say.

  Dr. Mercer stepped in before Melissa could answer. “Sheriff, this has been upsetting for all of us. Are there some procedures you need to do inside before we lock up?”

  “No. They’ll send a forensic team out of Tucson. We’ll just lock ‘er up and put crime tape around it.”
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  The sheriff stepped back to pull the door closed and to lock it while the deputies rolled out the crime scene tape. Cindy retreated back across the street to her car. When the sheriff finished locking up, he stood looking at them for a few moments.

  Melissa knew she had said enough, and Dr. Mercer looked anxious, hoping that the sheriff would just go.

  “I need all thereof you to come to my office to make a written statement.”

  “Could we just do it at the market?” Melissa asked. “I’ll fix lunch for everyone.”

  The sheriff considered that for a moment, and she could see the momentary look in his eye that said he wanted to make this as inconvenient as possible for everyone. But she had appealed to his stomach and his wallet, so he relented. Still, she hoped that he wasn’t still thinking that she was being “too helpful.”

  The sheriff dismissed the deputies, and he and Dr. Mercer walked over to the Market.

  Chapter 5

  The sheriff had fussed that there was nothing recognizable on the menu, but when she served him a Greek village salad and a hearty potato soup, topped off with one of Flora’s day-old muffins, he seemed satisfied.

  Doc had the Greek salad, too, and Cindy had a hummus plate.

  They finished the paperwork in short order, and the sheriff went on his way. Dr. Mercer returned to his office; only Cindy remained.

  “I think I’ll go up to Phoenix and stay with my dad for a couple of days,” Cindy said. “He’s feeling poorly, too, and this just makes me realize that I need to think about him more.”

  “Was Lauryl your dad’s sister?”

  “No, my mom’s. My mom was considerably older than Lauryl.”

  “Was?”

  “Yeah. She had cancer and passed away while I was in high school.”

  “I’m sorry, Cindy. I didn’t know. I guess that must have happened while I was in Seattle.”

  Cindy nodded. “That’s why I was so scared when Aunt Lauryl started getting sick. I was with my mom all through her illness. It was horrible watching her waste away.”

  “What kind of cancer did she have?”

  “Lung. She lingered with it for years. My high school years were spent caring for both her and my dad. My dad is in his sixties. I was a late-life child.”

  “Was your mom Lauryl’s only sibling?”

  “Yeah. All I’ve got now is my dad.”

  “Why did you have to take care of your dad when your mom was sick? Was he ill, too?”

  “He just couldn’t cope. He knew he was going to lose her, and he just got depressed.”

  Cindy stared absently, as if she were looking back across the years to those dark, sad days. Finally, she returned to the present. “So, how will I know when I can make funeral arrangements for Aunt Lauryl?”

  “They’ll let you know when her body has been released from the morgue.”

  “Okay. Melissa, let me give you my cell phone number so you can call me if you need me for anything. Otherwise, I’ll be back on Monday because I have classes.”

  Melissa wrote down the number. She came around the counter and gave Cindy a hug.

  “Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”

  “I’ll be all right,” she said. “I don’t think it’s quite hit me yet, and I just don’t want to be home alone when it does.”

  “That poor girl,” Flora said, when Cindy was gone. “She moved down here to be close to Lauryl right after she graduated from high school.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing she did,” Melissa replied.

  *

  A couple of hours later, Melissa heard a motorcycle slowly tooling through town, but didn’t give it much thought. A few minutes later, however, Nash Evans came rushing into the market.

  “What’s going on at Lauryl’s?” he asked frantically.

  Oh, no, Melissa thought. No one has told him.

  She came around the counter.

  “Did her place get broken into or something?”

  “Oh, Nash, I’m so sorry. I—I would have thought the sheriff’s department would have contacted you.”

  “Contacted me? Why?”

  “Have you not been home?”

  “You mean at my uncle’s? No. I just came back from a job in Tucson.”

  There was no way to soften the blow.

  “Nash, Cindy found Lauryl dead this morning.”

  “What?

  He stood looking at her, incredulous—as though not believing the words he was hearing.

  “I don’t…” he said, faltering. “Does anybody know what happened?”

  Melissa shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “Did she pass away in her sleep?”

  “No. She was lying on the living room floor.”

  “Did she hit her head or something?”

  “There was no sign of that. The EMTs couldn’t see any visible cause.”

  He sat down at one of the tables and held his head in his hands.

  Flora brought him a cup of passionflower tea, which would help to calm his nerves.

  “That will help you to feel calmer,” Melissa said.

  “We had drinks in Sonoita before dinner,” Nash said.

  “Did she seem okay to you when she left?”

  “Well, depends on what you mean by okay. She barely ate anything. Her coughing stopped for a while, but as soon as we went outside, it started up again.

  “Nash, had Lauryl ever talked to you about being sick?”

  “You mean about whatever was causing her cough?”

  “Or anything else.”

  He shrugged. “She was always worried that she was going to get sick like her sister did, and I think this cough was worrying her.”

  “Do you know if she was seeing a specialist in Tucson?”

  He looked around the room and saw that Flora wasn’t in the room at the moment.

  “She was seeing a psychiatrist, but that’s all that I know.”

  Melissa nodded.

  As he sat there, with his arms crossed in front of him, Melissa saw tears begin to roll down his cheeks. He didn’t even wipe them for a few seconds. He just allowed them to come.

  “Whatever it was,” he said, “she didn’t deserve it. She was a kind woman.”

  Melissa nodded in agreement.

  “She told me that she was getting ready for a new show.”

  “She changed her mind last night. She said she just didn’t have the strength right now.”

  He looked down as he said it, giving Melissa the impression that what he was saying was only partially true.

  “Were you going to be able to help her loading and setting up?”

  “Probably. I never know what my schedule is going to be like.”

  He stood, “Thanks, Melissa. What do I owe you?”

  “Not a thing, Nash. My pleasure.”

  He turned to go.

  “Oh, if you find yourself needing work, Nash, I’m going to need a new shed roof before monsoon season.”

  “Yeah, Lauryl mentioned that last night. Thanks, Melissa.”

  He stood at the door looking out for a few seconds.

  “I wonder if I can get in there to get my things.”

  “Not right now, I don’t think,” she said. “You can talk to the sheriff’s department about it, though.”

  As he stepped out onto the curb, a Sheriff’s Department car pulled up. Nash went over to talk to the deputy, and it soon turned to a heated discussion.

  Melissa saw the deputy push Nash a bit, stabbing his index fingers into Nash’s chest. She walked to the door, and was going to go out, but Nash disengaged, walking toward his bike. Nash’s walk was angry, and the deputy had an amused look on his face.

  Chapter 6

  The deputy stepped up to the market door and came in.

  Melissa thought he would come up to the counter to speak with her, but he proceeded to wander around the store, picking up things, looking at them, and setting them down.

  “Can I help you, Officer?” Melissa aske
d cheerfully.

  The deputy ignored her and kept on looking, walking through each aisle, examining various items. She watched him inspecting expiration dates on the refrigerated and frozen goods, and turning over fruit and vegetables, as if looking for bad spots.

  At last he walked up to the counter.

  “Did everything pass inspection, Deputy?” she asked, trying not to sound cheeky.

  “Over in the corner, you have some blue and brown dropper bottles, with several different labels. They look like printer labels.”

  “Mm-hmmm,” she said, wondering where he was going with his line of inquiry.

  “Where do you get those? Do you use a particular supplier?”

  “Actually, I make them myself.”

  His eyebrows went up in surprise. “Really? Is that legal?”

  “Yes. I have a certificate in herbalism, and I have two kitchens here, both certified to serve the public.”

  “I see. So you make up your potions right here?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see,” he said again.

  “So, how would I know that what is in them is actually what is on the label?”

  “Well, it’s a matter of trust. My….”

  “Trust? That’s not very scientific.”

  “I value my business, Deputy. This is my livelihood. If I gave my patrons something questionable, it would damage my reputation. I prefer their trust.”

  “I see.”

  “So, are you licensed?”

  “I am a licensed nutritionist slash dietician.”

  “None of your potions are regulated by the FDA, I take it.”

  “No.”

  “That’s exactly what I thought.”

  Melissa looked at him questioningly for a few seconds.

  “I think you misunderstand what ‘regulation’ means in terms of the FDA.”

  “Do I?”

  “Well, I’m guessing you think that ‘unregulated’ implies ‘illegal.’ It doesn’t. Unregulated simply means that it is not something the FDA has investigated, sometimes at all, sometimes not fully, which simply means they won’t put their stamp of approval on it.”

  “Aha! Then how can you sell it?”

  “They are not pharmaceuticals; they do not contain poisons. They are considered nutritional supplements—in other words, food.”