Page 73 of The Botanist's Assistant
“Nothing,” Purdy says defiantly, even though her fingers with their long, manicured pink nails are clearly curled around something.
“You can either let us see or I could help you let go of what you’re holding.” Joe’s voice is calm, which makes his words sound even more threatening.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Who knows? A man like me.” Joe turns his face slightly so Purdy can see the scar more clearly.
“Fine.” Purdy opens her hand. Something clatters onto the desk.
Margaret’s stomach drops. The key to the locked cabinet. Margaret would recognize it anywhere. It’s attached to a goofy redwood-tree key chain that one of Dr. Deaver’s admiring students had given to him.You’re Burly, reads the inscription, a play on the bulging burls found on redwood trees. Dr. Deaver had loved it.
“You took the key to the cabinet from Dr. Deaver’s desk,” Margaret says. “Then you took the atropine and made it look like Dr. Deaver had checked it out.”
Even as Margaret says it, pieces of the puzzle begin to click into place: the looping handwriting on Purdy’s note, which was similar to the initials “JMD” written in the cabinet log book, the empty soda bottles and fast-food wrappers in Purdy’s car (she didn’t see a specific Diet Coke label but soda was obviously her drink of choice), the tight purple dress Margaret had seen in Purdy’s vehicle and now remembers as the outfit Purdy wore to the reception for the philanthropist/inventor who’d snubbed Margaret. The memories rise like shoots from daffodil bulbs: Purdy standing a little too close to Dr. Deaver that night and touching his sleeve in an intimate way. Her fetching drinks for him. Dr. Deaver looking glassy-eyed, then disappearing from the room with Purdy in his wake. Purdy coming back through the ballroom door later with her dress slightly askew and a self-satisfied look on her face.
Why hadn’t she seen it until now?
“You slept with Dr. Deaver,” Margaret says. “It was you who sent him that text.”
“I loved him,” Purdy says.
“But he didn’t love you,” Joe says. A good deduction in light of the threat Dr. Deaver received, which, Margaret now realizes, hadn’t come from any chemist. Dr. Deaver had been covering his earlier indiscretion from his new love, Rachel Sterling. Such a tangled web he’d woven.
Purdy’s eyes narrow. “He said what happened between us was a mistake, but it wasn’t. How could our passion be a mistake? Once I came into his office and we made love right on his desk.”
Uncomfortable and, also, very unhygienic, Margaret thinks.
“He told me I was nothing like his wife, that she was so rigid and uptight. Then, suddenly, he tells me we need to call things off. He says he won’t leave Veronica Ann. She’s stood by him and done so much for him, et cetera, et cetera.” Purdy waves a hand dismissively. “So, I figured, what if she left him instead? That’s when I phoned the little wifey-wife and told her that her husband had been unfaithful. I gave her time and place. I even texted a selfie I took of the two of us in bed when Jon fell asleep. I’m sure she told you about that.”
At the surprised look on Margaret’s face, Purdy says, “I followed you to her house in my car. You were carrying a journal like this one. You two looked all chummy.”
A “fling,” Veronica Ann had called it, but it wasn’t Rachel Sterling’s relationship with Dr. Deaver that Veronica Ann referred to. It was Purdy’s.
“Jon was furious that I called her, but instead of the battle-ax throwing him out, he threw me out,” Purdy continues.“Like I was a piece of garbage or something. Nobody treats me that way.”
“Then you poisoned him,” Joe says.
“Of course not.”
Another puzzle piece drops.
“You found out he’d filed for divorce after all, but when you went to him…” Margaret lets the sentence hang.
“He said he was in love with someone else.”
“And you were really hurt.”
“Wouldn’t you be? Oh, wait, I forgot. No man would look twice at you, so how would you know what it felt like? You and your stupid blouses and your horse face.”
“My blouses aren’t stupid.”
“You broke into his office, got the key to the cabinet and poured atropine into his scotch bottle,” Joe says. “Then you watched him die.”
“Nice try,” Purdy says. “Nobody can prove I was there.”
“Oh, yes we can.” Margaret takes a step closer to Purdy. “Check the top button on your jacket.”
Margaret knows it’s a long shot. She must try, however.
