Garden of Death

by Karin Kaufman

  My mind raced. Had Stella been blissfully, and safely, ignorant of what was growing in her greenhouse until I asked her about it in Grove Coffee? I wondered if Gilroy and Underhill had checked Stella’s house, especially her vases, for flowering belladonna stems. Had she snipped them, along with her lilies and freesias, and brought them inside? That would prove her innocence—not that it needed proving to me—as no killer would put her murder weapon on display for anyone to see.

  And then, after we spoke, had Stella dashed home, searched the internet, and realized what she had? “After I talked to Stella at Grove,” I said. “That’s when she decided to check her greenhouse. I think that’s why she left so quickly. She probably looked for a photo of the plant on the internet, like I did. She found the belladonna just before the killer returned for the plant.”

  CHAPTER 13

  I knew that despite the late hour, Gilroy would still be at the station, so after our Mystery Gang meeting broke up, I drove downtown. I wanted to ask him if he’d found belladonna in Stella’s house, and I figured I’d relate the few details of the case I’d discovered since we’d last talked. Naturally, ulterior motives were also on my mind. Was he going to cold-shoulder me again? I needed to know. Was he going to mention the redhead I’d seen him with?

  Officer Turner, who usually pulled night duty, was standing behind the front desk when I arrived, flipping through a stack of papers while he chomped on a slice of pepperoni pizza. When he saw me, he took off the paper towel he’d tucked in his collar and wiped his hands with it.

  “I’ll have to remember that trick,” I said. “I’ve ruined more clothing with food.”

  “It’s my mom’s trick. Clever, huh? You throw away the soiled napkin and no one’s the wiser. I suppose you’re here to see the chief.”

  “He’s working late?”

  “The coroner’s report came in on Stella Patmore, so yeah.”

  “That was fast.”

  “Her cause of death was easy to determine, though he checked for belladonna poisoning too.” Turner propped his elbows on the desk. “He didn’t find any. She died quickly when the pruners struck her jugular.”

  His words made me cringe. “She was so young. If only she’d called the station when she found the belladonna. Instead, she waited for someone to show up and pull it out.”

  “Is that what happened?”

  “You know me, Turner. I’m only guessing. For all I know, she walked in on the killer.”

  “Good guess, though.”

  “It seems logical. One scenario or another, she ran into the killer in her greenhouse.”

  Turner’s mouth was set, and he was frowning in concentration, though his mind seemed a thousand miles away from the murder case.

  “What’s wrong?” I said. “You look a little downcast.”

  “Nah.” He stood straight and passed a hand over his face, in the process pulling his expression to something more neutral. “Can I ask you something, though?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s with the chief? He’s been in a strange mood over the last few days.”

  “I know. Tell me about it.”

  “Do you know what’s bugging him?”

  “Not a clue. What have you noticed?”

  “He seems distracted, and the chief is never distracted, even when we don’t have a murder case going on. He’s focused. And there’s this woman. I’ve never seen her before, and she never introduces herself to me. She’s gone into his office twice in the past week and shut the—”

  “Red hair?”

  “That’s her. Who is she?”

  I’m pretty sure I was the one now wearing the deer-in-the-headlights expression. Remarkably, I managed to squeak a few words out. “I’d like to know too.”

  “You’re the only one who can ask him.”

  “If he’d tell me, Turner. He doesn’t—” I clammed up. This was getting too personal.

  Turner’s brown eyes narrowed, and his frown was back, this time directed at me. “It’s not that, Rachel. He’s not . . . come on. Are you kidding me? Not the chief. I’m thinking she’s a”—he leaned my way and whispered—“doctor.”

  Oh Lord, I hadn’t thought of that. “Does he seem ill to you?”

  “Would he show it if he was?” Turner replied.

  No, he wouldn’t. We heard rumblings from behind Gilroy’s closed door, and when his door opened and he strode into the lobby, we did our best to look nonchalant, meaning, no doubt, that we looked like a couple of escapees from a mental institution.

  Gilroy eyed us suspiciously, said hello to me, and walked to the coffeemaker to refill his cup. He had to have noticed we were acting strangely, but he remained mum.

  “That’s too dark,” I said.

  “What?” He turned back.

  “The coffee. It’s too dark. That means it’s been sitting around too long and it’s become bitter.”

  Holding his cup to his nose, he inhaled deeply. “It smells good, and my last cup tasted fine.”

  “No offense, Chief,” Turner said, circling around the desk, “but it stinks when it sits like that. I’ll make a fresh pot.”

  Gilroy chuckled. So he wasn’t offended by my know-it-all coffee attitude or Turner’s comment. So far, so good.

  “Have you got a moment?” I asked him.

  He said yes, so I followed him to his office. At his door, he stood to one side and took a gulp of his blacker-than-black coffee as I entered and immediately seated myself on the wooden chair in front of his desk. Can I just leap into it? I wondered. Just ask him outright? If I can’t be blunt with the man I love, who can I be blunt with?

  “The coroner’s report came in,” he said, his office chair creaking loudly as he sat. “I need some oil for this thing. Is that what you’re here for?”

  “To oil your chair?” I said.

  “Yeah, and the window’s sticking too.” His pale blue eyes twinkled.

  “Oh, that was a joke.”

  He laughed. “Not exactly. Did you want to hear about the coroner’s report?”

  “Killed by the pruners and no belladonna in her system?”

  “Turner talks too much.” He took another drink of his pungent-smelling coffee.

  “He knew you were going to tell me eventually, and anyway, I could have guessed.”

  “There were no fingerprints on the pruning shears, but we weren’t expecting any.”

  “Nope. Didn’t think so.”

  “We found some on the inside door handle we’re trying to match.”

  “Great.” I shot forward in my seat. “Are you ill?”

  I have never been one of God’s most subtle creations.

  He gaped at me. “Why, do I look it?”

  “Is there anything wrong with you that you’re not telling me about? I’m serious, James. Don’t fool with me.”

  “Where did that come from?” he asked, setting down his cup. “I had a physical three months ago for the job. I’m in perfect health.”

  “Then what’s going on?” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Stop answering my questions with questions.”

  “I’ve done that once.”

  “Today.”

  “What’s got into you, Rachel?”

  “Me?”

  “Now you’re doing it.” He stared at me, his eyes narrowing. “Are you sick?”

  “No!” As if to prove my point, I rocketed from my seat and marched to the window. “I’m twenty-five pounds overweight—yes, still—and I have a pointy chin and a weird cowlick I can never disguise, but I’m healthy. And I talk straight to you, James Gilroy. I tell you everything, usually in detail, and I don’t grunt like a bear when you need answers.”

  “Like now.”

  “Is that your humorous way of telling me I talk too much?”

  Rubbing his forehead, he gave a heavy sigh. “Rachel, let’s start again. What I meant was, you’re not telling me anything. You’re angry, and I don’t know why.”

/>   “Why don’t you know? Do you know how depressing it is that you don’t know?” I folded my arms across my chest.

  Turner, whose timing was often no better than Underhill’s, chose that moment to knock on Gilroy’s door.

  “Yup,” Gilroy called.

  “Sorry,” Turner said, popping first his head and then the rest of his body inside the office. “Just got the word. The flowers we found inside Stella Patmore’s house were belladonna. All the other plants in the vase were nonpoisonous flowers from her greenhouse. It doesn’t look like she had any idea what she was growing.”

  “Good,” Gilroy said.

  Tuner stepped closer to Gilroy’s desk. “I finally found Miss Patmore’s parents. They live in Lesterville, South Dakota. Do you want me to call them?”

  “I’ll do it,” Gilroy said.

  I dropped my arms, slowly scratched the back of my head, crossed my arms again, and shifted on my feet. In trying to appear unflustered, as if Gilroy and I had been having a normal conversation before Turner came in, I was moving too much—and with too much deliberation, like a self-aware robot.

  “Are you going to call her tonight?” Turner said, handing Gilroy a sticky note.

  “It’s not the kind of thing you wait on,” Gilroy said.

  Apparently, my timing was no better than Turner’s. Gilroy had more important things to deal with than my possibly overwrought imagination operating on an inferiority complex the size of Rocky Mountain National Park.

  “I’d better go,” I said, moving for the door.

  “Wait,” Gilroy commanded.

  Turner wisely chose that moment to exit the office, and perceptively, he shut the door behind him.

  “I’m sorry you have to call Stella’s parents,” I said.

  “So am I. And right now, I can’t give them a reason for their daughter’s death.”

  “You will. You’ll solve this.”

  “With your help?” he said with a faint smile.

  He rose, and we stood there like a couple of kids on a first date. Anyway, that’s what I felt like. I was a teenager again, unsure of what to say and how to act, and it was ridiculous. “I have to ask you something,” I said.

  “Good. What is it?”

  “Who’s that red-haired woman I’ve seen you with? The one who’s visited your office?”

  Deer. In. The. Headlights.

  I waited. Then I shrugged. “It’s your life and your business.” I started to leave and he stopped me again.

  “Rachel Stowe, you don’t give people a chance.”

  “You’ve told me that before.”

  “It bears repeating. You don’t trust me?” he said, jabbing a thumb at his chest. “After all this time?”

  “After eight months,” I said, almost spitting the words.

  “You don’t trust me,” he said quietly.

  “I trust you as much as you trust me.”

  “Don’t do that, Rachel.”

  “What?”

  “That clever twisting thing. Don’t do it with me. You can do it with anyone else, but not me.” He dropped back to his chair and pulled himself closer to his desk. “I’ve got a call to make. We’ll talk later.”

  I left the station, hopped into my car, and drove home gnawing on my lip and formulating reasons why I was right, Gilroy was wrong, and I deserved to be angry with him. It beat crying behind the wheel. I found strength in anger—I always had. I was a woman with her fist in the air. That attitude had helped me survive all my post-Brent years, after the nitwit asked me to marry him and then left me without a word of explanation.

  Brent had made me a distrustful woman, second-guessing people, trying to read between the lines and spot the lies, always assuming the worst. And I had let him do that to me.

  But why hadn’t Gilroy just answered my question about the woman? Grunts and monosyllabic responses were . . . well, they were evasive, weren’t they? Wasn’t that the normal reaction? His minimalist approach to talking only served to stoke my anger. Didn’t he realize that? But then, that was James Gilroy. A man of few words. No fluff, no filler, and never, ever—I had to be honest with myself—a lie.

  Rather than drive to my house, I parked in front of Julia’s, mounted her porch steps, and rang her doorbell.

  CHAPTER 14

  “There he was, about to make a call no one wants to make,” I said. I sipped my chamomile tea, hoping its reputation as a nerve soother was more than an old wives’ tale. Julia had insisted on making me a cup, and serving it in her best china, before I explained myself. The tears that had spilled from my eyes the second she opened her front door seemed to have brought out both the grandmother and mother bear in her.

  Royce, looking bushed from a full day of sleuthing, had made a gentlemanly exit as soon as I arrived. I’d forgotten we were to watch Julia—it was my turn at night—and I felt awful about that. But I could tell Royce didn’t mind.

  “You told me you were about to leave when Gilroy asked you to stay,” Julia said. “What did he expect at that point? You’re not supposed to speak your mind? He asked you to. I’m so surprised at him I don’t know what to think.”

  “He didn’t know I was going to launch into a paranoid rant.”

  “It wasn’t paranoid, and let me tell you, I would have spoken my mind, in a heartbeat.”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “You two have been going out for months.”

  “Eight,” I said.

  “So you see him with some strange woman—”

  “A stranger, not strange.”

  “And Turner tells you he’s seen this same woman in Gilroy’s office with—”

  “The door shut.”

  “Did this woman have a ring on her finger?”

  “Wow.” I tried to remember, but I had never looked at her hands. It hadn’t occurred to me. “I don’t know. What if she’s single?”

  Julia huffed. Before I could say anything, she huffed again, louder this time. “You do not do that. You do not do what he did. It’s bad manners if nothing else. And then you simply asked who that woman was and all he could say was he can’t tell you, trust him? No, you do not do that to the woman you love. What is he thinking? If he was here I’d . . . I’d . . .”

  “Good thing for him he’s not.” I’d never seen Julia like this. She had always given Gilroy the benefit of every doubt. “I’m just as worried about his reaction when I asked him to make an honest woman of me.” I winced. “What a stupid thing for me to say. It sounds like dialogue from a bad movie. But Julia, if you could’ve seen the look on his face. He didn’t want to hear those words. Though Holly says he reacted that way because men are weird.” I forced a weak laugh.

  “But Gilroy is better than that,” she said. “Or I thought he was.”

  “Ohhh.” I threw back my head and stared at Julia’s ceiling. “What am I doing? He’s chief of police, he has two murders on his plate, and I wanted him to talk to me like we were chatting on a Sunday afternoon at my house.”

  “Look at me, Rachel.”

  I did as I was told.

  “Thirty seconds. That’s all it would have taken him. He should have answered your question.”

  “Yes, he should have.” I fingered a yellow butterfly on my china cup, its wings spread wide as it rested on a pink rose.

  “But James Gilroy does not cheat or lie.”

  “That’s a quick change of tune.”

  “I’ve known him for eight years. He behaved badly, that’s all. I don’t understand it and I’d like to thump him, but he’s human. Goodness, I wasn’t sure he was.”

  This time I let go with a genuine laugh. “You idolize him.”

  “Hardly. Don’t be silly.” Julia tugged at the sleeves of her green top. “Anyway, this doesn’t mean your relationship is over. Far from it.”

  “I think he would have told me if it was.”

  Julia brightened, itching to agree with me. “That’s right. He wouldn’t have minced words.”

  “T
hat man can’t afford to mince words. He hasn’t got enough to spare.”

  “So what you need to do is wait until this murder investigation is over and then sit him down for a talk. Just a talk, not an argument with accusations thrown and both of you on the defensive. Tell him it’s not okay for him to keep things from you. He may be a quiet man, but he’s a sensible one.”

  “You’re right.” I set my teacup on Julia’s side table and relaxed, sinking further into my comfy armchair. “It’s late, isn’t it?”

  “It’s only ten o’clock.”

  “Is your insomnia back?”

  “Only in the summer, when there’s too much light. I’m nowhere near ready for bed.”

  “Neither am I. I’m not ready for your couch, either. Let’s talk about the case.”

  Julia snapped forward. “Oh, let’s! Royce and I were talking, and he’s decided to call the TV station in the morning and ask if Lucas is still the host—and if so, for how long. He’s going to pretend to be the president of a gardening society of some kind and tell them he’s heard rumors that Lucas won’t be the host for long. He’ll tell them he needs to know if that’s true because Lucas is a featured speaker at some important event—he’ll make up a good name—and they’re ready to print his bio on the program.”

  “Sneaky.” I grinned. “Royce is very clever.”

  “It is sneaky, though our intentions are good.”

  “I don’t know how else we can find out if Lucas still has his job or one of our other suspects is in the wings, ready to take over.”

  “Chief Gilroy might have asked the producers.”

  “Unfortunately, we didn’t talk much about the case.” I laced my fingers over my crossed knees. Now that I considered the matter in light of Stella’s death, I began to see that we were wasting our energy trying to find out who the permanent host of Front Range Gardening would be. “Though I don’t think it matters. We know that Caroline was going to be the new host, and it’s possible she was murdered for that reason. If she was, then Lucas, Allegra, and Doyle are our suspects. Unless one of them is killed next, it doesn’t matter if Lucas gets to keep his job, or it goes to Allegra or Doyle, or it goes to a Denver gardener. We need to establish why Caroline was killed.”