The Yellow Dust

[SFX: Knob click. Glass vials clink]

NARRATOR: The yellow dust was pine pollen, impossible inside a filtered tropical house in winter. Tess found the same pollen in Saye's lungs, but not enough to kill him. Beneath it hid crystals from monkshood root.

DR VERA MOSS: We keep monkshood in the poison garden. Two locked gates, camera coverage, signed access.

NOAH WREN: The root inventory is short by eight grams.

FELIX CROW: Groundskeepers sign that inventory.

NOAH WREN: Directors approve it.

NARRATOR: Saye had inhaled powdered toxin through the greenhouse mist. The system normally used liquid fertilizer. Someone fitted a dry-pollen injector to the humidifier, allowing poison to enter after the door locked.

TESS ARDEN: The injector came from a pollination drone.

LILA QUINN: Felix demonstrated those here last month.

FELIX CROW: So did Emil. He wanted automated breeding until the patent dispute.

[SFX: Drone takeoff. Spray nozzle]

NARRATOR: Control logs showed Saye activated the mist himself at eleven fifty-eight. The toxin cartridge had been installed earlier, turning a routine action into delayed murder. The ghost orchids opened because the killer ran six hours of blue light before midnight, then heated their roots. The closed orchid's blue chalk blocked light from a sensor on its pot.

TESS ARDEN: This plant kept the real clock. It says the cycle began at six.

NARRATOR: At six, Felix hosted donors, Vera gave a lecture, Noah repaired a fountain, and Lila sketched alone inside the service corridor.