“Short, defenseless Julia. I can’t bear to think about it.”
“She may be short, but she’s formidable. Scary, even.”
Holly let go of her right calf and began to massage her left. “I’ve been thinking since I heard about it that Stella’s murder doesn’t make sense. Besides garden judge, what’s the connection between her and Caroline? What’s the murder motive that links them?”
“The TV show,” I said with a mouthful of croissant. “Ambition. Money. Possibly revenge.”
“Now that Caroline is dead, isn’t Lucas still host of the show?”
I wiped my hands clean on the dishcloth and told her about Royce and Julia visiting the offices of the Juniper Grove Post, hoping to prod the paper into discovering that very thing. “Royce said the paper seemed curious, what with Lucas being a celebrity of sorts. We’ll see if they turn anything up. I’m not confident they will, and anyway, I’m not sure it would help.”
“You said revenge. How is that a motive?”
“Revenge for an affair. If Caroline was having one with Lucas.”
“Right, right. Could Stella have been having an affair with Lucas?”
“Holly, please . . .”
“Don’t make that face. There’s no accounting for love.”
“I suppose not, but I don’t think Stella was having an affair. And with her it would be ambition, not love. She wasn’t the least bit interested in Lucas. I think the killer found her in her greenhouse, looking at the belladonna or getting ready to tear it out.”
“And then stabbed her with pruning shears.” Holly shivered. “You said the initials LS were on them. What kind of person puts their initials on garden tools?”
“Someone with Lucas’s ego,” I said. “But I’m betting the shears were already in the greenhouse. The person who took the belladonna ripped it out of the soil, roots and all, and then smoothed the soil over to hide that it had ever been there. The killer didn’t bring shears because he or she didn’t intend to snip out the plant. That would leave part of the stem visible. Torn out like that, sitting at the back of the raised bed, made it harder to tell something had once been there.”
“And the killer had to have been in the greenhouse at least once before, so they would know where Stella kept her tools.”
“I’ve got another question. Did Stella steal the pruning shears from Lucas? Or were they a gift?”
“She stole them,” Holly said with conviction. “You don’t give away garden tools engraved with your initials.”
“Unless Lucas thought she didn’t have enough money for a nice pair of shears. Stella never said it outright, but she gave the impression of being strapped for money. I can’t be the only one who thought she was trying to pay back a student loan by working at Grove Coffee, all while she searched for a job in her field. If Lucas had never been to her house, he might have thought she needed help with . . .” I couldn’t finish my sentence. Lucas a generous man? I didn’t believe it. He was a snob, wasn’t he? “Have you ever met Lucas Siegler?”
“Never. Just his wife. She’s a good customer. I’ve met Allegra, though. She has a sweet tooth for cheese Danish, but that’s all I know about her. That and she says ‘brekky’ for ‘breakfast.’”
“Doyle?”
“Never met him. But listen, I’ve got another hour before I leave, so I’ll ask around about all of them. With two murders, everyone’s already talking anyway. Want me to bring dessert tonight?”
“Peter’s boxing cream puffs for me, but no one will object if you bring something else. Anything but fruit tarts.”
“Hilarious.” Holly rose and with a damp towel began to clean the table of dripped icing and pastry bits. Except for those rare moments when I interrupted her, she was always working, always busy with her hands, and almost always on her feet. She was only thirty-seven, but it was still a wonder to me that she had any energy left at the end of the day.
“Well, I should go.” But I hovered, debating the wisdom of mentioning the Deer in the Headlights Incident.
“Is something wrong with you and Gilroy?” she asked.
“Huh? How did you . . . ? What?”
“You have that look on your face, and when you have a Gilroy problem, you ask me, not Julia.”
“That’s because Julia wants me to get along with him at all costs. You know I love her, but when I need an impartial opinion on Gilroy, she’s not the one to go to.”
Holly dangled her towel over a wastebasket and shook the crumbs from it. “So what’s the trouble?”
“Tell me something. How long did you and Peter date before he asked you to marry him?”
“Ten and a half months.” To my surprise, she stopped cleaning and sat again. “Why?” she asked, elongating the word, drenching it with importance.
“You were twenty-three at the time.”
“That’s right.”
“Gilroy and I have been dating since Thanksgiving. About eight months. And we’re long past our twenties.”
“What brought this on?”
With that one question, the dam broke, and my words came in a torrent. It took all of one minute to tell Holly everything, from me asking Gilroy when he was going to make an honest woman out of me to Gilroy’s dazed look in response and the mysterious red-haired woman I’d seen him with when I was in Grove Coffee. “Stella read her lips and told me he said, ‘Not yet.’ Whatever that means. I can’t think of what it could mean. What do you think it means?”
“Rachel, you’re a dear friend, but you can be an idiot sometimes.”
“Thank you.”
“What I mean is, you don’t seriously think he’s cheating on you, do you? You can’t. He doesn’t have cheating or lying in his DNA. So why get your knickers in a royal twist? There’s no way Chief James Gilroy would go behind your back. You need to trust that there’s something else going on. Something you don’t know yet but will, because he doesn’t lie. To you or anyone else. He’s not capable of it. Besides, he is the chief of police, and he does have to talk to people on the street. It’s a part of his job.”
“Then why did time stand still when I asked him when he’d make an honest woman of me? If you could have seen his face.”
“Men are weird.”
“That’s helpful.”
“I think you caught him off guard. He didn’t know what you meant or he didn’t know what to say at that moment. You know how he is. If he says three words and grunts, that’s eloquence.” Holly grinned and we both laughed.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “But eight months and we’re still dating. I don’t know what to make of it.”
“There’s nothing to make of it. Eight months isn’t that long. Anything under a year is no cause to worry in my book. If he hasn’t asked you to marry him by Christmas, then talk to me again. I’ll light a fire under him.”
“I guess.”
“Trust me on this.”
I gave Holly a quick hug and told her I’d see her later. On the way out, feeling better about Gilroy than I had all day, I paid for my cream puffs and thanked Peter. Maybe Holly was right about Gilroy, or maybe she was talking nonsense and just trying to make me feel better, but the ball was in his court, not mine. Whatever his feelings on marriage, the man I knew was worth trusting. Not that he didn’t aggravate the stuffing out of me sometimes.
I stored my cream puffs on the floor of the passenger seat of my car, out of the late afternoon sun. As I was backing out of my parking spot, I saw Valerie and Lucas Siegler at the bakery door, Valerie giving her husband what-for in no uncertain terms. I hit my brake and watched. Valerie yanked on the door, but instead of going inside, she let it slowly close in front of her as she tongue-lashed Lucas. And then, still talking, she yanked the door open again and once more let it close while she berated the man. Wash and repeat. Not being a lip-reader like Stella, I had no idea what she was saying, but I knew it wasn’t pleasant.
CHAPTER 12
“It’s universally agreed, by both the
judges and the Sieglers, that Doyle Charming is not only not charming but a jerk,” Julia said, grabbing her favorite chair in my office—the one behind my desk. “And Holly, as always, these cream puffs are heaven.”
“The perfect dessert,” Royce said. “Thank you, Holly. And thank you for dinner, Rachel.”
“You can thank Rachel for the cream puffs too,” Holly said. “She bought them.”
“You baked them,” I said, scribbling a few more words on a three-by-five card before tacking it to my corkboard.
“And I’m eating them,” Royce declared. He pushed his glasses up on his nose, perhaps to get them out of the way, and took an unashamedly large bite of his cream puff, smiling contentedly as the filling oozed out. More than anyone I’d ever known, he took real delight in small things. It made him a pleasure to be around, unlike Doyle Charming. Though after meeting Doyle at Wyatt’s, away from Lucas, his competitor, I was beginning to think his boastful nature was part bluster. A front to hide his insecurity.
Holly took a chair and, being a more delicate eater, separated her cream puff in half before biting into it—a trick she’d taught me but one I refused to employ after trying it a few times. I liked the ooze.
“I talked to Valerie Siegler at the bakery,” Holly said. “She came in with her husband.”
“I saw them before they went in,” I told her. “They didn’t look happy.”
“Possibly because they’d just learned about Stella. Lucas didn’t say a word, but Valerie couldn’t stop talking about her. She said Stella had nagged Lucas to let her be a co-host on his show, before she was even a garden design judge.”
Now that surprised me. Stella was not the woman she had pretended to be. “What did Lucas do?”
“He finally told her she wasn’t right for TV.”
“Yeah?”
“Her blue hair.”
I sighed. “The man is blind to his own glaring faults. She had great hair, actually, and I’d rather look at blue hair than a twitching face.”
“Stella wanted to work at the Denver Botanic Gardens too,” Julia said. “That’s ambitious for someone who didn’t know more about plants than I do.”
“Valerie said Stella didn’t like to come off as ambitious, but she was,” Holly said. “She supposedly hounded Lucas. And one more thing. I asked her about Lucas’s pruning shears, without mentioning they were the murder weapon. She very matter-of-factly told me that Lucas has initials on all his tools and he loaned Stella shears to cut flowers in her greenhouse and do a little pruning. He thought it was ridiculous that she didn’t have her own pair, but she told him she’d just broken hers and couldn’t afford good ones. And neither Lucas nor Valerie has ever been in Stella’s greenhouse, or so Valerie says.”
“Maybe she was learning how to prune,” Royce said. “Trying to catch up with everyone else.”
“Okay, let’s talk about Doyle,” I said, pointing to his name on my corkboard. I plotted my mystery novels using the corkboard, tacked my characters’ names and traits on it, jockeyed my chapters and their plot lines on the same three-by-five cards I was using for our suspects. Seeing a case laid out as a whole, as I was now—clues, remembered conversations, small facts—helped me catch connections I knew I’d miss if I looked at the clues piecemeal.
“He’s pompous,” Julia said, “but then so is Lucas and so was Caroline. Gardeners of a feather.”
“Why would Doyle kill Caroline and Stella?” I asked. “What’s his motive? We know Doyle wanted that TV job before it was given to Lucas and then taken away from Lucas and given to Caroline. Would he kill Caroline to eliminate her as a rival? Did he know the afternoon of the garden party that she had the job? Allegra did, and despite their bickering, she and Doyle seem close. Supposedly Lucas didn’t know he was out as host until the party, though he might have assumed he was on his way out. Things like that don’t stay secret for long.”
“That reminds me,” Royce said. “Julia and I stopped by the Juniper Grove Post again. If they found out who the permanent host of the TV show is, they’re not saying. But Front Range Gardening is supposed to be on the five o’clock news this Friday, so I guess we’ll see who’s hosting it.”
“Lucas won’t be the permanent host,” I said. “Viewers called in to the station and complained about his facial tics. No way they’d keep him.”
“They’ll choose someone from outside Juniper Grove,” Holly said, certainty in her voice. “There are too many good gardeners closer to Denver.”
I nodded my agreement and paused to take a bite of my cream puff before going on. “I can’t see a motive for Doyle murdering Stella. He wanted her to be a judge. Caroline didn’t.”
Holly rose from her chair, shoved both hands into her jeans pockets, and began to pace. “Rachel, why did Doyle want her to be a judge? You said he knew she didn’t have a degree. From what we know of Doyle’s character, he wasn’t being charitable.” She stopped at the corkboard and scanned my notes under Doyle’s name.
“I agree with you on Doyle’s character,” I said. “That leads me to believe there must have been a quid pro quo. Doyle got something for helping Stella.”
“Maybe not,” Julia said. “He fought to make me a judge too, and I didn’t promise him anything.”
As Holly went over my notes, she tugged at her ponytail, twisting it around her fingers, and chewed on her lower lip—all signs my friend was lost in deep and fruitful thought.
“What do you see?” I asked.
“Doyle made fun of Caroline’s hat at the party. He tormented Valerie by saying her garden win was ‘almost a slam dunk’ without telling her who voted against her. He poked fun at Lucas. And he made fun of Allegra at Wyatt’s.”
“All true,” I said.
“That’s his character,” Holly said. She dropped her ponytail. “He fought for Stella to be a judge because he knew she would irritate Caroline. Here’s this much younger woman with blue highlights in her hair, supposedly with a degree in horticulture, and she’s invading Caroline’s territory. Stella knew Doyle was responsible for making her a judge, so she wasn’t going to threaten him. She was indebted to him. But Stella was a threat to Caroline.”
“That fits in with what Stella told me at Grove Coffee,” I said. “She said as soon as Doyle put her on the judge list, Caroline didn’t want her. She described Doyle and Caroline as siblings who hated each other.”
“Hold on a minute,” Royce said. He stood and set what remained of his cream puff on a napkin on my desk. “Leaving Lucas out for the moment, who was actively vying for the TV job?”
“They all were,” I said. “Now that we know Stella was after it too. Caroline, Stella, Doyle, and Allegra. Caroline promised to hire Allegra as an assistant, Stella was trying to hitch her star to Lucas, and Doyle was the Lone Ranger, going it alone.”
“I still think focusing on jealousy and infidelity is our best bet, but . . .” Royce waved a hand at my corkboard. “Did all of them know that? What I mean is, were they aware that everyone in their small group was contending for the same job?”
I hesitated only briefly. “Yes, they all knew. But did they know the details of the others’ plans, like Caroline promising Allegra a job? I’m not sure. I remember Lucas criticizing Allegra at the party for stepping on people as she climbed the ladder of success. I thought it was a strange comment at the time, but now I understand. Later, when Julia and I talked to him, he came straight out and said he knew Allegra wanted his job. A producer at the station told him. So yeah, they knew. Even about Stella.”
“Let’s talk about Allegra,” Holly said.
“Right.” I quickly polished off my cream puff. “She’s every bit as ambitious as the others. When I talked to her, she seemed honestly surprised that Stella didn’t have a degree. She and Doyle were eating lunch together at Wyatt’s—why? They verbally jousted the whole time they were at our table.”
Royce returned to his seat. “And Doyle assumed Allegra didn’t understand his jabs.”
> “She’s quicker on her feet than he gives her credit for,” I said.
“Allegra likes to think of herself as heading the next generation of TV gardeners,” Julia said. “When we talked, she never put it explicitly that way, but that’s what she meant. Oh, did she have plans. She thought Lucas and Doyle were old-fashioned and on their way out, and I’m telling you, she thought the same thing about Caroline, even though she wanted to work as her assistant.”
“Caroline was a means to Allegra’s end,” I said. “So why would she want to murder her stepping stone?”
Julia threw her hands in the air. “Why would any of them? What did any of them gain by murdering Caroline and Stella? Good heavens, I need another cream puff.”
Royce reached for his bite-sized leftover cream puff and handed it to Julia on the napkin. “Really, I’ve had enough to eat,” he said when she wavered. “I had sweet rolls for breakfast.”
“Thank you, dear.” Smiling, Julia plunked it in her mouth.
Their relationship had progressed to the sharing-food stage. Which meant they were moving faster than Gilroy and I had, slowpokes that we were. But I was thrilled for Julia. She had waited six decades for her sweet man.
I faced my corkboard, looking from suspect name to suspect name. “At first I thought we should find out who had reason to kill both Caroline and Stella, but the more I think about it, Stella was killed because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her death wasn’t planned, and no one is killing off garden judges.”
“I’d like to believe that,” Julia said, wiping her mouth on her napkin.
“Stella’s greenhouse was used to grow the belladonna plant, and she found out,” I continued. “She’d probably seen the plant in there before, but she didn’t know what it was and she just let it grow. Maybe she even used it for cut flowers.”
“Thank goodness she didn’t eat the berries,” Holly said. Instantly she made a face. “What am I saying? Her death might have been less painful if she’d eaten the belladonna.”
“But how did the killer know Stella found the plant?” Julia asked. “Was she guarding her greenhouse? Or did she just happen to go out there?”
Garden of Death Page 8
