Chapter 26 Mad Honey
Mad Honey
According to Google Maps, it’s a twenty-minute drive in the opposite direction from her home to Dr. Deaver’s house.
When Margaret adds that to the time she might spend talking to Veronica Ann Deaver plus the resulting sixty-five-minute commute back home (forty-five plus twenty), she will definitely be late for her dinner.
More vexingly, however, she can’t stop thinking that she will also be late to let the cat into the house, and thus expose him to predators like coyotes and mountain lions.
The tough feline had been fine before she took it in—capable of hunting and apparently dodging potential killers—so why does it send an arrow of anxiety through her to think of it outside and exposed as darkness fell?
She orders herself to be rational—what are the odds something would happen to the cat in exactly those two hours she will be late—but apparently having an animal under your care sandpapers the edges off reason. Maybe she should install one of those cat doors.
Traffic is terrible so it becomes a thirty-minute drive to Dr. Deaver’s house, enough time to realize that, as long as she’d worked for Dr. Deaver, she’d never been to his home.
Of the two parties to which she’d been invited (both birthday parties for Dr. Deaver), one had been at a fancy restaurant in town and the other around a country club pool.
Everyone had showed up to the pool party in sundresses and shorts and she’d arrived in one of her work outfits, a skirt and the California poppy blouse.
She’d spent the whole party sitting by herself under a large patio umbrella.
Deaver’s home is an attractive, modern-but-not-modern single-story house with interesting roof angles and lots of windows, painted in artistic shades of charcoal and tan.
What Margaret notices most, however, is the garden that runs along the side of the structure.
Even from where she parks, she can see it bursts with fuchsia, impatiens, hosta, begonia and several varieties of fern under the shade of four tall crepe myrtles.
A wonderful example of a shade garden. Is this Dr. Deaver’s doing or does Veronica Ann have a green thumb and an appreciation of plants too?
The answer comes as she gets out of the car and takes a few steps to the left to admire more of the garden, for there is Veronica Ann Deaver bent over a Japanese painted fern with a spray bottle in her hand.
She is clad in white jeans and a black T-shirt (who gardens in white jeans?) and her dark hair is pulled back in a long ponytail.
The woman is alarmingly thin, either from training for the race Dr. Deaver mentioned or from the stress of all that has happened to her recently.
Divorce and death will do that to a person.
For a moment, Margaret feels a wave of shame for what she is about to do.
Seeking truth is one thing, rubbing salt into wounds is a whole other deal.
She thinks of her mother at the end of her life—gaunt, incontinent, shivering, mistaking Margaret for her ex-husband, Gordie—and decides no one should have to go through that suffering and if even one person could benefit from the research being done in the Deaver Lab, she must do what is needed.
“Mrs. Deaver,” she calls as she approaches the house.
Veronica Ann straightens. Her brow furrows. “What are you doing here?”
She puts the emphasis on the word “you,” so Margaret knows the hostility is aimed directly at her and not at a general dislike of solicitors, polltakers and unannounced guests.
“I need a very important favor from you. One that can save uncounted lives.” Margaret continues to advance toward Veronica Ann, who now holds the spray bottle as if it were a weapon.
Margaret hopes the bottle is not filled with insecticide.
Maybe she should tell Veronica Ann there are alternative ways to get rid of pests.
Beneficial insects like ladybugs and green lacewings, for instance.
The look on Veronica Ann’s face quickly dissuades her from that idea, however.
“Go away,” Veronica Ann says.
“I just want…,” Margaret starts, but the sentence dissolves as she more carefully appraises the long garden, which stretches into the backyard. There are lilies of the valley, azaleas and, beyond that, a patch of foxglove. There are castor bean plants, oleander and a swell of rhododendrons.
Margaret stops and sucks in a breath as realization dawns.
This isn’t just a shade garden. It’s a poison garden.
Oleanders contain toxic cardiac glycosides.
Castor bean plants contain ricin, a chemical warfare agent sometimes used in political assassinations.
Rhododendrons produce grayanotoxins and were the source of the first biological weapon, something called mad honey.
She recalls her botany professor enthusiastically telling stories about how a Turkish king used mad honey to stupefy invading Roman soldiers in 65 BCE before slaughtering them and how, in 946, allies of Queen Olga of Kyiv reportedly sent several tons of mad honey to her enemies, then killed them as they lay in a daze.
Mad honey was produced from the nectar and pollen of rhododendrons and caused breathing problems, lowered heart rate, dizziness and nausea.
Was this garden Dr. Deaver’s nod to the dual nature of plants—both beautiful and dangerous—or was this Veronica Ann’s doing?
Her mind tells her to turn around and get the heck out of there. Her heart, however, argues that for her work to continue, she must stay.
“I said, ‘go away.’ ” Veronica Ann’s voice grows in volume and intensity.
Shouting doesn’t bother Margaret, not when she was raised in a household like hers.
“You have a lovely garden,” she says instead. “But you might want to get some neem-oil. Your hosta has quite a few aphids.”
It’s true the plants have been affected, but Margaret’s comment is more of an attempt to stall. She needs to make a plan in light of what she’s just discovered.
“I know how to deal with aphids,” Veronica Ann snaps.
Is there a way to get into the rest of the yard to see if there are more poisonous plants there? Atropa belladonna, for instance. Or wolfsbane like the stem left at the lab door.
“I like the shades of green you’ve incorporated in your design,” Margaret says, even as her thoughts roil. “From pale to dark to almost neon. It’s quite clever. Is this your own project?”
“Jon and I did it together.” The answer is as sharp as a razor blade.
The piercing attack reminds Margaret of the little hunter’s claws, which he has already tested on the side of her upholstered footstool. An idea arrives.
“I don’t know if you’re aware, but oleander is very dangerous for domesticated animals like dogs and cats.
Every part of the plant is poisonous: flowers, leaves and stems. Since your yard is unfenced, it could be a problem for people who allow their pets to roam free.
The same with your azalea and rhododendron.
Perhaps you’d like me to look around the yard.
I can point out other problematic plants. ”
“I’m a chemist. I know about poisonous plants.”
Is that an admission of guilt?
“And if you’re done giving useless gardening advice,” Veronica Ann continues, “I’d like you to get off my property. I have nothing to say to you.”
Margaret isn’t about to budge.
“What I’m really here for—although those aphids will be a big problem unless you get them under control quickly—is a message I got from Neville.”
Neville is the leaf-supplying guide who lives in the Amazonian rainforest in Brazil.
Seeing Veronica Ann’s reaction to the guide’s name is like what happens when supercooled sodium acetate crystallizes on a surface. Her expression takes on a series of interesting shapes. First, desire. Then, worry. Then, fear.
“Is he OK? Has something happened?”
“Why don’t we sit down? I can fill you in. Maybe we should go in the backyard.”
Margaret needs to know what other poisonous plants might be on the property.
“Just tell me if it’s good or bad news,” Veronica Ann says.
Margaret sees why Dr. Deaver might have said that his wife was about as snuggly as a fence post. She seems rather fierce and very determined. Two traits that Margaret actually admires. They, however, might also be considered the attributes of a cold-blooded killer.
“Bad news in one way but good in another,” Margaret answers because the guide’s email presented not just a problem but also a solution, which is why she is here. “I would say it depends on perspective; from what point of view you would read the email.”
“Oh, for god’s sakes,” Veronica Ann says. “You sound just like Jon, always adding caveats and fussing about tiny details. Let’s go inside. I’m hot and I need a drink.”
Margaret agrees, although she reminds herself that she will be accepting a beverage from a woman who may have poisoned her husband.
“I’ll just have water,” she tells Veronica Ann.
The inside of the house is just as Margaret might have imagined. It is both sleek and tasteful, with vaulted ceilings, beautiful Scandinavian-style furniture and interesting art. She especially likes the living wall of staghorn fern, dracaena, peperomia, palm and ivy that graces the dining area.
Veronica Ann tosses her gardening gloves by the front door and walks across the blond hardwood floor to a built-in bar. She pulls the band from her ponytail and shakes her hair loose. If it wasn’t for her thinness, she would be a very attractive woman.
“Sit anywhere,” she orders, and Margaret chooses an armless leather chair, which, for all its apparent handsomeness, is astonishingly uncomfortable. How to get up and change seats without proving Veronica Ann’s statement about her fussing over details as Dr. Deaver did?
Margaret squirms in an attempt to find a more comfortable position but the chair is as unyielding as a rock. Veronica Ann arrives with Margaret’s water in one hand and what looks to be a gin and tonic in the other.