Hangman's Root Read Free Page B

coffee pot? Mass poisoning?"
    I shook my head. "Not exactly. According to folklore, you'd get people royally pissed. The root was said to turn even the mildest person into a mad dog, so back in the seventeenth century the hangman would brew a cup of tea from the root before he went out to do his deadly deed. That's how it came to be called hangman's root."
    Dottie made a sound deep in her throat. "The guys in my department don't need hangman's root. They're mad dogs without it." I didn't think she was joking.
    I stepped out of the way of a dainty-looking white cat bent on body-slamming a catnip mouse. "Just out of curiosity, how many cats do you think you've rescued over the years?"
    "Not enough." Dottie picked up a tattered black kitten and cuddled it against her face. "Did you know that just one pair of fertile cats and their offspring can produce over seventy thousand kittens in six years?"
    I goggled. "Seventy thousand!"
    "Yeah. Nature is incredibly fecund." She held up the kitten with a grin. "Hey, wouldn't this little guy make a nice herb shop kitty?"
    "Thanks," I said hastily. "I have all the pets I can handle." One, that is. He's an arrogant Siamese who permits me to share his home on the condition that I provide lightly cooked chicken livers, chopped, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. His former

    patron named him Pudding. When he came to Hve with me, he became Cat. After Ruby complained that the name was too low class for His High-and-Mightiness, I renamed him Khat.
    "Pets?" Dottie sounded irritated. "Come on, China. Cats are companions, not pets." She put the kitten down in front of a bowl of food and opened the gate for me. "No offense," she added, "but the word is anthropocentric, as well. Actually, we're their companions."
    I felt chastised, but I knew that Dottie was right. Khat's cosmology is very simple: God is a cat, the devil is a dog, and humans are handy to have around because we have opposing thumbs and money to buy chicken livers.
    Dottie closed the gate behind us. "Nice as this new cattery is," she remarked as we went back to the picnic table, "it's not nearly big enough. It only houses a hundred and fifty. There's a little money left in Mother's estate and I'm using it to buy the vacant lot next door. In fact, I've already made an offer on it. But there isn't enough money for construction and operating expenses, so I'm starting a cat rescue foundation—the Ariella Foundation."
    Ariella, Lioness of God, champion of homeless cats. I had to smile. "It fits," I said, pouring champagne. "To the Ariella Foundation." We lifted our glasses and I took a sip, glancing over the fence, where I could see a house on the other side of the vacant lot. "What about the neighbors? How are you zoned?"
    Dottie put her glass down and took a cigarette out of a pack on the table. "Falls Creek isn't incorporated, and there are no deed restrictions that would keep me from building or expanding." She lit a cigarette like a man, the match bent out of a paper matchbook, sheltered against the slight breeze with her cupped hand. "But that brings me to my question."
    "A neighbor?" I guessed.
    She leaned on her elbows and exhaled a cloud of blue smoke.

    "Yeah. Miles Harwick. Over there." She nodded in the direction of the house I had seen. "He's also got the office across the hall from mine in the biology department. I don't know which is worse."
    "Harwick. Isn't he the one who's been in the news lately?" For the past couple of weeks, the Pecan Springs Enterprise had been full of stories about some professor's animal research. There had also been a piece in the Austin American-Statesman, and a segment on the Channel 7 news.
    "Somebody leaked the protocol of his latest experiment." Dottie's mouth was sour. "Next week he's planning to hang a hundred guinea pigs in a traction device that will suspend their hind quarters off the ground. After ninety days he'll slaughter them and measure the reduction in bone density. The results are