I tilted my head and spotted something white clutched in her hands. Bending, I reach for her clasped fingers. They didn’t budge. Ugh. Rigor mortis was my enemy. I knelt and pried her fingers apart as carefully as I could. A loud snap echoed in the room. Hopefully the coroner would put it down to poor handling of the bodies and not a nosy person removing evidence.
“What is it?” Dave asked.
I lifted the white silky material from her hand and then dropped it. The sickly scent suddenly made sense. I grabbed a glove from my pocket and snapped it on before picking up the flower once more. I twisted it around, making sure I was correct. Unfortunately, I was.
“It’s a Datura,” I explained. “More commonly known as the devil’s trumpet. Highly toxic.”
“To the point of death?” Dave asked.
“Absolutely. It is hallucinogenic if ingested but almost always deadly. It might lend a clue as to why my ghost is very confused.”
“It doesn’t answer why you can’t get a read on their deaths,” Sebastian stated, frowning at the bodies. “It begs the question, did the murderer know you would be coming and did they do something to prevent you from using your gift?”
I stood and began making my way through the bodies to the edge of the room with the flower in my hand. “That, I do not know the answer to.”
“Is that flower responsible for the heavy floral scent saturating the air?”
I spun the flower between my fingers. “This one flower? No. That scent is the result of a mighty crop of devil’s trumpets.”
“I think we figured out how they died,” Dave said. “And given they are a small close-knit town, who band together for events, they would have been an easy target.”
“We have the means and opportunity,” Sebastian said. “Now we need the motive.”
I sighed as I scanned the room. Why would someone kill an entire town with deadly flowers and then try to clumsily cover it up? We were missing something. Perhaps following the clues would lead us to the motive, because standing here and gazing at the sea of bodies wasn’t getting us anywhere.
“We need to find the source of the flowers,” I said as I began striding toward the doors. One thing was for certain, these people had died not by their own hand, but by a cruel and sadistic murderer, and we needed to bring them to justice no matter the consequences.
Chapter Nine
If the cat gets the cream, does he stick around for seconds or go looking for his next bowl?
Three hours. That’s how long it took for us to scour the town. There weren’t any crops of poisonous devil’s trumpet growing in anyone’s backyard. That was both a good thing and a bad thing. Good, because to get rid of it, I would need to call The Order for help. Bad, because we hadn’t figured out where the hell it had come from. It clearly wasn’t an accidental ingestion, this had been planned. I couldn’t fathom why, and for someone to plant evidence directing the police to cult activities—it didn’t add up.
We’d left Harry with Caleb and the bodies. He had strict instructions to report back to me as soon as the authorities arrived and what their initial findings were.
Dave glided the Escalade down the empty highway, passing the odd trucker as we sped toward White Castle. I’d managed to find a plastic bag to store the flower in. Sebastian was snoozing in the back as I contemplated my next move. Perhaps finding the origin of the flower would lead us to the perpetrator.
Dave’s phone rang through the speakers of the car. I glared at the screen as ‘The Principal’ flashed. Dave clicked a button on the steering wheel.
“What’s happening?” Hudson boomed.
Sebastian jerked awake. “Bloody overgrown cat,” he grumbled low.
Hudson either didn’t hear him or chose to ignore him. “Cora?”
“I’m here. It’s a long story, but in summary, the whole population of Peach Tree is dead.”
“How?”
I glanced at the flower in the bag on my lap. “Poison. But they tried to cover it up with planted evidence pointing the finger at a cult.”
“That’s concerning.”
“Cora has a sample of the flower that she thinks was used to murder the residents,” Dave said.
“Will that help?” Hudson asked.
I pressed my lips together. If I could find the source perhaps. “I’ll take it to Rockhard and Lenson. They might be able to shed some light on it, if Dave can drop me off in town.”
