The HoneyPot Trap IV The Showdown

 Back at the hotel, I spent half the night learning about flowering shrubs, and honey production. By noon, I had responses from the life insurance companies. I was ready to go.

Azalea

Doris Jenkins waved me over to the front deck. She was still wearing surgical gloves. I handed her my card, Rick O’Shea, Private Investigator, flashed my badge and pushed her into the house. “I work for insurance companies and am investigating possible fraud and possible murder”. Jenkins did not look happy (insert joke about the other 6 dwarfs here) and let me know in unladylike terms.

We went into the kitchen, and I told her to sit down and shut up. On the table was a large glass cylinder with a tap at the bottom. There was wax floating on top, then dark red honey and then light amber honey. She was scraping the wax and honey from plastic frames in the supers and using the large cylinder to separate the different honeys. They were slowly separating because of different densities, then drawn off at the bottom.

I had identified the flowering shrubs in the back yard as Yellow Azalea (Azalea pontica), a reddish Rhododendron (Rhododendron ponticum), and Oleander (Nerium oleander). Everything about the oleander is deadly poisonous except the honey which is light amber.  Azalea and Rhododendron produced a dark red honey known as Mad Honey.  

Rhododendron

Mad Honey lowers blood pressure and heart rate. It can also produce dizziness, nausea and vomiting. Some Turkish men use it in small amounts to enhance their performance. (Shaking my head at the lunacy of middle-aged males).

 “Alright, Doris, here is the deal as I see it. You came here 20 years ago with some money, I assume from your previous husband, bought this house and started your gardens front and back. Ten years ago, you remarried and made your husband take out a life insurance policy for $200,000. Four years later he dies of heart failure. Nothing suspicious and the company pays out.

“A couple years later you remarry. Your new husband has a life insurance policy for $500,000 in his niece’s name. You make him split it between you. Four years later he dies of heart failure. If the niece had not been a nurse, co-beneficiary and suspicious, you would have got away with it again.  

“You persuaded them to eat the Mad Honey, to “enhance their performance” until they consumed enough at one time for their blood pressure and heart rate to flatline. Basically, you murdered them. And just to make sure you added some “tea” made from oleander leaves to the honey. Very clever and very deadly. I’m turning you over to the police.”

Oleander

Her eyes gleamed with madness. While I was speaking, she quietly turned on the stove. There was a saucepan on the burner. Smoke started to rise and before I could stop her, she jumped up, held her face over the fumes, took several deep breaths and collapsed dead on the floor. It held oleander leaves. I held my breath and raced outside.

I called the cops and EMT, warning them to come with hazmat suits. Disposing of the shrubs in the backyard would be a problem as smoke from burning oleander leaves is poisonous. That was their problem now.

I checked out of the hotel, texted an invoice to my client and headed back to my office. I occurred to me that if she had called my bluff, she would have got away free and clear as nothing I said would have stood up in a court of law. Why I am not a cop.