Season Of Glory. Ron/Janet Benrey

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СКАЧАТЬ Chewing oleander seeds is a popular way to commit suicide in Sri Lanka.”

      “Is that what happened to Andrew Ballantine at the tea party? Did someone feed him a handful of oleander seeds?”

      “Probably not. Every part of an oleander plant is full of heart-stopping toxin. It’s simple to make a lethal infusion by soaking leaves, stems or seeds in boiling water.”

      “And I suppose it would have been equally simple for someone to add a few spoonfuls of oleander broth to the unusual dessert Mr. Ballantine ate yesterday afternoon at The Scottish Captain.” He made an indistinct gesture. “I forget its name.”

      “Strathbogie Mist,” she said. “Crushed pears topped with ginger-flavored whipped cream. Served chilled, of course.”

      “Of course.” He smirked wryly. “We’re fairly certain that the Strathbogie Mist you served Mr. Ballantine contained the poison he ingested. We’ll be entirely certain when our forensic laboratory finishes testing the…ah, ramekins that held the dessert. However, your pear concoction appears to be the only item he ate that came in an individual serving.”

      His high-powered gaze impelled her to turn away. It was probably a technique he’d perfected over the years to encourage people to tell him the truth. She focused for a while on the battered Coke machine in the corner and prayed he didn’t sense her blood beginning to boil. How dare he even suggest that she’d poisoned Andrew?

      “For your information, Agent Keefe,” she retorted, “I didn’t serve Andrew Ballantine anything. The helpings of Strathbogie Mist were set out on a buffet table—in The Scottish Captain’s backyard gazebo.”

      “And you know that because…?”

      “I put them on the table.” She looked Agent Keefe directly in the eyes to convince him she was telling the truth. “I made the dessert yesterday, a few hours before the tea party began. I crushed the pears, I whipped the cream, I even filled the ramekins.” She took a quick breath. “But despite your heavy-handed insinuation, I didn’t lace Andrew’s portion with oleandrin.”

      “What’s oleandrin?”

      “The poisonous toxin in oleander—the cardiac glycoside that nearly switched off his heart.”

      Agent Keefe smirked again. “You think I’m heavy-handed, Ms. Pickard? Look at the crime from my vantage point. You had the best opportunity to poison Mr. Ballantine, along with easy access to the toxin. There’s an oleander bush in the Captain’s back garden, less than twenty feet away from the kitchen door.”

      Sharon murmured a silent thank-you that Emma Neilson, the owner of The Scottish Captain, had married Glory’s Deputy Chief of Police. Early that Monday morning, Rafe Neilson had telephoned Sharon to explain that he’d requested assistance from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. “I had no choice,” he’d said. “It would be highly inappropriate for me to investigate an intentional poisoning at my wife’s B and B.”

      Rafe had continued. “The NCSBI is sending Ty Keefe to conduct the interviews. He’s smart, experienced and an expert at spotting evasion, so be totally open with him. Don’t even think about lying.”

      With Rafe’s safe advice fresh in her mind, Sharon took a moment to frame a response to Agent Keefe’s near-accusation. “Why would I want to poison Andrew Ballantine? He was a complete stranger to me when he walked into the gazebo. He lives in Asheville, on the other side of North Carolina.”

      “I was going to ask you about that.” Keefe gazed at her once again with an intensity she could almost feel. “Two other people who went to the tea party told me that you latched on to Mr. Ballantine like he was an old friend—that you barely spoke with anyone else.”

      Sharon felt herself blush. “At first we talked about Glory Community Church. He’d spent two hours on Sunday afternoon inside the sanctuary looking at the stained-glass windows. He had several questions about the church and Pastor Hartman. After I answered them, we discussed our shared interests, like Scotland and the Scots. The time flew by.”

      “Until he collapsed in a heap.”

      She nodded. “Oleandrin often triggers bradycardia, a dangerously low pulse rate. Andrew became pale, said he was feeling nauseated, and then fainted. I called the paramedics. Emma Neilson folded a tablecloth into a makeshift pillow to help make Andrew comfortable. One of the guests at the B and B—Haley Carroll, a physician—worked on him until the ambulance arrived.”

      “And once at the hospital Mr. Ballantine received some kind of high-tech antidote?”

      Sharon answered with an ambiguous shrug. Agent Keefe must’ve known that she couldn’t voluntarily provide specific details about Andrew’s treatment to the police, although there wasn’t much to keep private. Andrew’s overnight stay in the E.R. was a simple tale with a happy ending. The “high-tech antidote” for oleandrin poisoning was antidigoxin antibodies—a therapy originally developed to treat digitalis overdoses. Five vials helicoptered to Glory from Duke Medical Center in Durham had worked well for Andrew.

      Ken Lehman, the lead emergency room physician at Glory Regional had also followed the “old fashioned” treatment protocol throughout the night: He encouraged Andrew to throw up, treated his various cardiac symptoms as they appeared, and gave him multiple doses of activated charcoal to absorb the oleandrin left in his system.

      Agent Keefe retrieved a small notebook from his jacket pocket. “Tell me what happened yesterday from the beginning—when you arrived at The Scottish Captain. I’m curious why an emergency room nurse would spend her day off cooking a Scottish dessert in a local B and B.”

      “Two months ago an electrical fire in the sanctuary of Glory Community Church destroyed one of the church’s stained-glass windows,” Sharon explained. “The Window Restoration Committee was organized to oversee the window’s replacement. I’m the Chair of the WinReC, as we’ve come to be called.”

      “And the members decided to hire Andrew Ballantine to act as your stained-glass window guru,” Keefe interrupted. “I interviewed Emma Neilson this morning. I know that she’s also a member of the committee and that she agreed to host a welcoming tea party for Mr. Ballantine in the Captain’s garden gazebo.” He leaned against the sofa. “Let’s get back to you.”

      “I offered to pitch in because Emma is the best friend I have in Glory.”

      Sharon peered sideways at Agent Keefe. He seemed to accept her statement without any questions. Good. She didn’t want to have to explain the details of her friendship with Emma to the nosy detective.

      They’d met the previous March when Sharon, who sang alto, had joined the choir at Glory Community Church. Emma, a soprano, had recently returned from her honeymoon with Rafe. Sharon and Emma quickly discovered the many other things in addition to good voices they had in common—from a love of women’s softball, to a dislike of church politics, to the painful fact that both had moved to Glory from big cities to escape the stress of messy divorces from unfaithful men.

      Stress was the key word. Shedding her husband of six years, starting a new job and moving from Raleigh to Glory had filled her days with “stress points” a year earlier. Blessedly, her new life in Glory now seemed more or less normal—but here was Agent Keefe, trying his best to crank up the pressure.

      He would never understand, but filling her free Sunday with busy work had been a fair trade. Helping out in the Captain’s СКАЧАТЬ