Chapter 18 Coffee Trouble #2
She closes and locks the windows and retrieves a broom from the storage closet.
Who would do this to a place where important work was being done?
Both Blackstone and Veronica Ann Deaver would know about research protocols and also possibly have keys to the door.
Or maybe Calvin had been goaded into anxiety-driven vandalism by Blackstone’s comments about how Dr. Deaver had misused him. He wasn’t at the safety meeting.
Margaret is dumping another dustpan full of glass and pine needles into the trash when she hears a sharp voice.
“If this is how you keep your lab, Margaret, no wonder Dr. Blackstone suspects sloppy data.”
It’s the dean.
“This wasn’t my doing. This was sabotage.” Margaret may have spoken more loudly than she intended.
“First poison, now sabotage?” The dean shakes his head. “I’m afraid you’ve gone off the deep end.”
“I can only report what I see.”
The dean’s face hardens.
“You know what sabotage I see?” He doesn’t wait for an answer.
“The sabotage I see is the email you sent and you refusing to do what I ask. You are undermining me and all my work to put this university on the map. I can’t have you contradicting me about the collaboration between Drs.
Deaver and Blackstone. And I certainly don’t appreciate you putting it in writing. ”
“It’s the truth.”
“Or is it your stubbornness and need to nitpick everything? Professor Deaver is dead and we have to move on. What if that email gets out?”
“What if I could prove there was no partnership between Blackstone and Professor Deaver?”
The idea had come to her as she cleaned the lab.
If she could get hold of Dr. Deaver’s research notebooks—a careful recording of his thoughts, discoveries and processes—she might find proof that it was he who discovered the stinging bush and not Blackstone, which would negate any claim to the research.
In addition, if she can get into the locked cabinet, she could determine whether the atropine there was the murder weapon.
Anyone using extracts or specimens from the cabinet was required to use a sign-out sheet and record how much they used.
It was a system she set up herself. So if the bottle was missing or it was nearly empty without someone signing it out, it could indicate an unauthorized person had breached the cabinet.
“You have proof?” the dean asks.
“Maybe in a few days.”
The dean’s face turns a shade of red seen only in beets and ripe cherries.
“This is exactly what I mean. You get an idea in your head, and you won’t let it go, even when you don’t have any evidence to back it up.
You’re doing yourself—and the university—no favors with this nonsense.
I want you to do what I say and do it immediately.
Otherwise, I may be forced to take action. ”
Margaret doesn’t ask what action he plans to take in case it causes him to do it immediately.
“I want you to get that data into Dr. Blackstone’s hands and finish the draft application and stop spreading rumors. You made Miss Purdy very upset with your talk of poisoning.”
“I’m sorry. I tried to deflect her questions like you asked.”
“Well, you only made it worse.”
“Has there been an official cause of death?”
“Let it go, Margaret,” the dean warns.
“A toxicology screen would—”
The dean puts up a hand. “No more. I’ve had it with this craziness.”
A different person might pretend to be contrite, but Margaret is not that person.
“I’ll do what you ask, but I need a favor from you too.”
The dean throws up his hands.
“I need to get into Dr. Deaver’s office to retrieve his research journals.
I need some of his notes to finish up the paper.
” A half-truth since his research notes about his discovery of the plant might prove her point about the collaboration and, thus, safeguard Dr. Deaver’s work from Blackstone’s meddling.
“His office is closed until we’re able to figure out who has rights to his papers and download his hard drive. Besides, you said in your email he already left you plenty of notes.”
Margaret scrambles for an answer. She’s worked herself into a corner.
“Well, then, perhaps you have the key to the cabinet where our extracts are stored. I was never issued one. I need to do some confirmatory tests and recalibrate machines and I need what’s in there,” she says just as the dean’s cell phone pings.
He pulls it out of his pocket, reading whatever text has been sent. His forehead creases. “Is everyone here incompetent?” he mutters. “Am I the only adult in this whole university?” He shoves the phone back into his pocket and turns for the door.
“Sir,” Margaret says. “The cabinet key?”
The dean doesn’t even turn around. “Why would I have the key? For Pete’s sake, just call a locksmith. I’ve got better things to do.” With that, he is gone.
By the time Calvin walks in, Margaret has already phoned a locksmith, swept up the pine needles and glass, and is disposing of the spoiled chemicals from the refrigerator.
“What happened there?” he asks.
“The refrigerator door was left open.” Margaret no longer trusts him enough to tell him the truth.
“Not by me.” Calvin can’t seem to look her in the eye.
“I’m not saying you did it” (although perhaps he did). “What I’m saying is that I need you to wash and prep the equipment, then we need to redo all of yesterday’s work. Meanwhile, I need to order new supplies.”
Maybe it’s the sternness in her voice or his guilty conscience, but Calvin throws on his lab coat and gets to work without another word about needing a smoke or not having slept.
At twelve thirty p.m., her plan to replace her coffeemaker during lunch thwarted by the mess in the lab, Margaret hurries to the breakroom, where she gobbles her meal.
She barely tastes the food. It’s as she is finishing her apple slices that the assistant biochemistry professor who seemed so upset at Dr. Deaver’s death, Rachel Sterling, comes in.
She wears a crimson lipstick that shows off her copper-brown eyes and dark hair and she seems to have recovered from yesterday’s show of grief.
She heats up a carton of ramen noodles in the microwave, pulls out her phone and settles at a table with a pair of chopsticks.
She doesn’t acknowledge Margaret, but it seems more like a desire for privacy than a snub.
At one thirty-seven p.m., the locksmith arrives, and while Calvin raises his eyebrows at the man drilling into the cabinet lock, he doesn’t say a word.
Margaret waits until Calvin is gone on his break to inspect the cabinet.
She unlocks the door with the new key and finds the bottle of atropine, the purified belladonna extract.
It’s three-quarters empty. Expectation surges.
As far as she knows, no one has used the atropine for a long time. Has she found the murder weapon?
Quickly, she pulls out the drawer where the sign-out book is kept, and there it is: the date and time, March 12, twelve thirty p.m. (the day before she found Dr. Deaver’s body).
She scans her finger across the row and sees the initials of the person to last check out the chemical: JMD.
Jonathan Matthew Deaver.