Curtis, no gardener, had no idea what any of it was, except the marijuana. He’d seen that in pictures.
“Curt, I do believe you’ve got a crush on that lovely young woman across the street,” his mother called amusedly as she mashed potatoes in the kitchen.
“Why do you think so?” he asked abruptly.
“For one thing, you’ve spent the past three days staring out the window at her,” came the teasing reply.
“It isn’t a crush,” he said with pure disgust. He unwound his six-foot frame from the chair he’d been occupying and stretched lazily, taut muscles rippling down his broad chest, before he wandered into the kitchen where his mother was working at the counter. “Do you know her name?” he asked hopefully.
“Mary Ryan,” she replied. “I don’t know anything else about her.”
“Who owns that house?”
“Greg Henry,” she told him. “Why?”
“No reason,” he murmured, and pulled out a kitchen chair to straddle. He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, his dark hair unruly, his brown eyes smiling at his mother. It had been just the two of them since he was six and his father had died of an untimely heart attack. His mother had held down two jobs just to keep food on the table, working full-time as a reporter for a daily newspaper and doing feature material for a regional magazine as a district staff writer.
Curtis took a paper route when he was ten, and he’d done odd jobs to bring in a little extra money. When he was sixteen, he went to work after school to help take some of the financial burden off her. The only thing he hadn’t liked about the Secret Service job he’d had before, or the FBI job he had now, was that he had to be so far away from Matilda Russell. But she had her church work and her circle of friends, and she wasn’t a clinging parent. In fact, she still did the odd feature for her old newspaper, but no news. Although she did seem to know a lot of things that weren’t in the paper. She had contacts everywhere, in the most surprising sort of places, on both sides of the law.
“Are you still hanging out with that convicted gun runner?” he asked suddenly.
His mother, an elfish silver-haired woman with wicked dark eyes, smiled vacantly. “He wasn’t convicted,” she said pleasantly, transferring potatoes to a bowl. “Besides, he went straight. He’s a college professor now.”
“Imagine that?” he asked the table. “Teaching what?”
She pursed her lips. “Ethics.”
He almost doubled up laughing.
“Just kidding,” she added as she put the last bit of her hot, cooked lunch on the table and went to get place settings for the two of them. “He teaches criminal justice.”
“That’s still ironic.”
“Lots of young men get into trouble once,” she pointed out and gave him a speaking look as she put plates, silverware and napkins at two places. She went back for coffee cups and the carafe that held the coffee, adding a cream pitcher and sugar bowl to the menagerie on the inexpensive lace tablecloth.
“At least I had the decency to wreck my own house instead of a stranger’s,” he said with a rueful smile.
“And the good sense to know friends using illegal drugs could lead to trouble,” she added. She sighed, studying her only child. “I was never so scared in my life when you were involved in that bust and we went before the judge with your attorney,” she added somberly. “I’d covered drug-related stories for ten years. It was terrifying to see it firsthand.”
He got up and hugged her warmly. “I never messed up again,” he reminded her with a kiss. “I catch guys who do that, now,” he added.
“You go after much bigger game than teenagers experimenting with drugs,” she replied, holding him by both arms. “I’m very proud of you. That was a first-rate job you did in San Antonio, helping to track down and return that hacker from South America to trial in Texas. Even the state attorney general praised you.”
He shrugged. “Shucks, it weren’t nothin’,” he drawled.
She popped him one on the upper arm and went to sit down. “Just watch your back,” she cautioned. “It was bad enough thinking you might have to throw yourself in front of a bullet for some visiting dignitary,” she said, referring to his earlier stint in the Secret Service. “It’s worse having you working homicide cases.”
“Why is it worse?” he teased.
She leaned toward him. “Because I’m retired! Can you think of the scoops I’d have had if you’d done this when I was still an ace reporter?”
He grinned. “You could always come out of retirement and write news instead of little feature articles on some guy’s giant pumpkin.”
“I like sleeping all night,” she mused, pouring coffee into both their cups. “I like not having to spend holidays looking at crime scenes or listening to politicians defend harebrained policies that don’t work. Roses,” she added, “are much less demanding than editors, and I don’t have to pack a laptop and a camera everywhere I go.”
“Good point.”
“Besides,” she added, “I make a lot more money at what I do now.”
He couldn’t argue with that.
They ate in a companionable silence for several minutes.
“Really, why are you watching the girl across the street?” she asked suddenly. “Do you know something I don’t?”
“Not yet,” he confessed. “But give me time.”
The next day, he went to see Greg Henry at his local realty company. He asked the man about his new renter point-blank.
“Is she in trouble with the law?” Greg asked sharply, because everybody in town knew what Curt did for a living.
“How would I know?” Curt asked, throwing up his hands. “That’s why I’m asking you.”
“She’s a native of Ashton, a little town south of Atlanta,” he replied, thumbing through a file. “She has excellent credit, references from some, uh, odd people, but she checks out.”
“What sort of odd people?” came the abrupt reply.
“One of her character witnesses is a former revolutionary from a third world country. Another is the minister of a very large Protestant church in Atlanta—he’s on television every Sunday, by the way. And the third is a rather notorious television anchorman in New York City who used to be managing editor for a newspaper in Chicago.”
Curt was lost for words. The woman was even more mysterious now that he knew a little about her. Greg wouldn’t tell him anything else, although he was grinning outlandishly when he ignored the probing questions about her profession. So Curt thanked him with barely contained sarcasm and wandered downtown to the local police station.
The town’s police chief, Jack Mallory, had been in his graduating class in high school. They shook hands and Jack chuckled when he found out what Curt was doing for a living.
“FBI, huh?” the other man said, shaking his head. “I never figured you for a Bureau man. You’re too unorthodox.”
“They like unorthodox,” he returned with a grin. “Ask anybody.”
Mallory pursed his lips. “Weren’t you with the Secret Service?” he mused aloud. “And wasn’t there some sort of scandal about you that got you sent to the Okefenokee Swamp to guard the vice president?”
“I volunteered!” Curt said shortly. “I love swamps!”
Jack grinned. “Really?”
“Never mind about that. Listen, there’s a woman across the street from my mother growing illegal plants,” he added. “Right on the road, for God’s sake!”
Jack was serious now. “What sort of illegal plants?”
“Third world agriculture,” came the dry reply.
Jack picked up his hat. “Let’s go see.”
Curt went along with the police chief in his unmarked squad car. They pulled up in Mary Ryan’s driveway. She stood up from her kneeling position, with dirt-covered knees and smears of mud on her face from her weeding. She gave the police car a curious, but not worried, scrutiny.
“You’re too late,” she called to Jack. “I confessed to speedin
g only last week and they let me off with a warning.”
“It’s not about speeding,” Jack said. He glanced at the flower bed and gave her a speaking look. “Do I really have to tell you to pull those up, and why?”
“But they’re only…!” she began.
“They’re illegal. And you know it.”
She sighed. “But they’re so pretty,” she sighed, her big brown eyes poignant. “And I raised them from seed.”
“The law is the law. Don’t make me send men out here to pull them up for you.”
“Okay,” she said, saluting. “I’ll do the dirty work. But I wouldn’t know how to process them,” she continued.
“Neither would any of us,” he confessed. “But they’re still illegal. If you don’t believe me, ask Jeanette,” he added, nodding toward a house two doors down. “We made her pull hers up, too.”
“I’ll do it,” she said heavily. She stared at Curtis Russell and scowled. “He made you come out here, didn’t he? I’ve noticed him standing at his mother’s picture window, glowering at me. Is he the garden police?”
Jack had to bury his face in his hand. Curt wasn’t amused.
“You were breaking the law,” he said shortly. “And doing it blatantly. I’m with the FBI,” he added deliberately.
“Yeah. The Flower Bureau of Investigation.” She smiled haughtily.
He wasn’t blushing, he wasn’t blushing, he wasn’t…
He got back into the police car and slammed the door. He refused to even look at her. That didn’t faze her. She was still smiling when Jack, choking on laughter, backed out of her driveway.
It didn’t take long for the grapevine to serve the encounter up to his mother. She came into the den where he was watching television that night and sat down beside him on the sofa.
“Working for the DEA now, are you?” she asked.
He shot her a glance. “Excuse me?”
“Making women pull up flowers. Honestly!”
“They weren’t flowers,” he pointed out. “They were marijuana.”
“You’re sure about that?” she persisted.
“I’ve seen pictures of it,” he shot right back.
“Julie Smith has a little Japanese maple in her front yard. It’s almost bald now because some idiot told a friend it was marijuana. Teenagers sneak into her yard at night to rip off leaves to smoke.” She grinned. “I’d love to know what effect smoking maple leaves has on them.”
He laughed, too. “Okay, maybe mistakes get made. But she didn’t deny it, and Jack recognized what it was, too. He told her it was illegal and that she had to pull up every stalk.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know how I’ll ever face Mary again,” she said with a sigh.
“You didn’t go after her, I did,” he reminded her. “Besides, everybody likes you.”
“That’s because I have a sense of humor,” she said, giving him a meaningful look.
“I have a sense of humor,” he informed her.
“Right.” She got up and left him with his television program.
He got up the next morning, had breakfast, and went barefoot in his jeans and T-shirt to the front door to get the newspaper.
He looked across the street and his temper exploded. Those damned marijuana plants were still there!
He didn’t even think. He just marched right across the street and jerked the first plant he came to out of the ground.
“You stop that!” came a furious voice from inside the house.
A minute later, a little blond tornado exploded out the side door in a white bathrobe, rushing straight toward him. She was barefoot, too, and the ground was rough, but she kept coming.
He started to speak. She ran into him at top speed, grabbed for the plant in his hand, and managed to knock them both to the ground. They rolled around in the dirt, fighting for possession of the vegetation.
“You give…me…that!” she exclaimed, and punched him in the stomach, hard.
He jerked her arm behind her and pinned her to the ground, his breath coming as unevenly as hers. She had the most beautiful skin, he thought irrelevantly as he looked down at her. And her mouth was just perfect…
She kicked him. He groaned and while he was helpless, she tore out of his grasp, jerked up her plant and moved back a couple of steps, fuming.
“Don’t you touch my plants! This is trespassing. This is vandalism. It’s tomato assault! I’ll have you up before a circuit judge before you can say ‘criminal prosecution'!” she raged.
“I’d like to see that,” he said sarcastically as he got to his feet and faced her. His immaculate white T-shirt was now brown and white striped, and his jeans had patches of mud. It had rained the night before.
“Would you? Well, you certainly can!” She grabbed a cell phone from her pocket and dialed a number. “Hello, this is Mary Ryan at 123 Cherry Boulevard. I’ve got a vandal here. He’s destroying my property! I’ve made a citizen’s arrest. I want you to send a squad car to pick him up, right now!”
“Send one for her, too, she’s growing marijuana in her front yard!” he yelled at the phone.
She closed it and gave him a shocked stare. “I am not!”
“You’ve got it in your hand!” he argued.
“This?” She held up the mangled vegetation. “This is one of my prize tomato plants I grew from seed!” She gave him a hot glare. “And if you can’t tell the difference between a tomato plant and a marijuana plant, you should leave drug detection to the experts!”
He pulled himself up to his full height. “I belong to the FBI,” he reiterated.
“Oh, lucky them,” she drawled. “Wait until they see tomorrow’s headlines!”
“The police officer told you to pull those plants up yesterday,” he continued, hating to lose ground.
“He did, and I have,” she almost shouted. “I pulled up poppies. Poppies, Mr. hotshot FBI agent, not marijuana!”
His lips compressed. She sounded as if she was certain that was the truth. He glanced at her garden. Flowers had been pulled up and piled at the end of a row. She said he’d pulled up a tomato plant. It couldn’t be true.
“You just wait until I get you into court,” she continued, cradling her broken plant. “My poor tomato plant. I’ll have your badge for this!”
“You and whose army? And just what do you do for a living, if one might ask?” he shot back.
“I’m a deputy district attorney in the county next door,” she said with pure pleasure.
His face went very still. “You’re kidding.”
“You’ll wish I were,” she returned. “I came up here from Ashton where I was with legal aid, to take up my new job. I expected it to be a step up. Boy, was I wrong! I think I’ve moved to Stupidville.”
“I am not stupid!”
“Tomato assassin!” she accused.
“It doesn’t look like a damned tomato plant!” he yelled back.
They didn’t notice that neighbors were pouring out their doors into their front yards. They didn’t notice the police car pulling up in the driveway, either.
It would have to be Jack, Curt’s old friend, who answered the call.
“Not again,” Jack groaned as he joined the antagonists.
“He pulled up one of my tomato plants!” Mary raged, pointing at him. “He thought it was a marijuana plant! How did he ever get a badge? He must have stolen it!”
“It looks like a marijuana plant!” Curt defended himself.
“I want him arrested, for trespassing and vandalism,” Mary demanded.
Jack moved closer and lowered his voice, mindful of the neighbors. “Can the two of you imagine how Judge Wills would react if this case went to his circuit court?” he asked them. “Miss Ryan, you don’t want your first term of office to end in public disgrace, now, do you?”
She hesitated.
“And Curt, you don’t really want to have to explain to a judge why you were pulling up a neighbor’s tomato plants? Frankly, Judge Wills wou
ld rather have a tomato sandwich than a steak. I can’t imagine how he’d react to a tomato plant killer. He grows prize tomatoes himself.”
Curt grimaced.
“So, suppose we just mark the whole episode down as a learning experience,” Jack suggested gently, “and go back to our respective houses and—” he cleared his throat “—have a nice, calming shower.”
They were both extremely dirty. Mary’s white bathrobe was mostly brown. Curt’s white T-shirt was filthy, not to mention splatters of mud on his jeans. His feet were covered in it. So were Mary’s.
Curt glared at her through narrowed eyes. She glared back at him.
“We can settle the whole matter right here,” the officer persisted. “I’m sure Special Agent Russell would be more than glad to replace the, uh, damaged plant. Right, Curt?” he added with a deliberate stare.
Curt cleared his throat. “Certainly.”
“I raised them from seed,” she said haughtily.
“I’ll grow you a replacement from seed and sit on it myself until it hatches,” Curt volunteered.
The glare got worse.
“The gardening center out on Highway 23 has bedding plants,” Jack said quickly. “All sorts, from hybrids to those yummy Rutgers tomatoes that my wife and I always plant.”
“I won’t be cheap about it, either,” Curt assured her. “You can have two Rutgers tomato plants. In fact,” he added, with a formal bow, “I will plant them for you myself.”
“Six feet deep and in somebody else’s yard, no doubt,” she said with dripping sarcasm.
“You could sit in the dirt with it, since you’re so attached to the things,” Curt shot back.
“I’ll tell you where you can sit…!” she exclaimed.
Jack held out both hands. “Lady and gentleman,” he said. “If this escalates any further, I will have no option but to arrest both of you for a domestic disturbance. That will require me to take you both into custody in your present conditions. A reporter comes by my office first thing every morning to check the arrest record,” he added with almost visible glee. “What a photo opportunity he would have. Wouldn’t he?”
With a Southern Touch: AdamA Night in ParadiseGarden Cop Page 21
