Bones in the Begonias

by Dale Mayer

  He nodded. “That’s what I thought.” He motioned toward the back door. “Let’s go.”

  She glared at him but hopped up, opened the door, and called all the animals. “Mack wants to see the location for the box you found today, guys. Come on.”

  Mugs ran out, barking cheerfully. Goliath sauntered past as if orders were beneath him, and he was only accompanying them because he felt like it. Thaddeus, on the other hand, flew to her shoulder and cheered them on with a war cry in her ear. She led the way to the back of the property.

  “You made a great start with the fence,” Mack said. “Hard work, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is,” she confessed. “I was working until the animals started acting up. Then I found the box and came back in. Why did you call me?”

  “Instinct,” he said bluntly. “It told me to get over here before you got yourself into more trouble. Apparently I’m already too late.”

  She snorted. “I don’t think even your instincts can keep me out of trouble.”

  He laughed out loud. “Isn’t that the truth?”

  They’d reached the back of the property.

  He stopped for a moment and smiled. “I can’t believe everybody has this creek view fenced off. It’s beautiful.”

  She turned enthusiastically. “See? That’s what I thought. Especially since my fence was just a nightmare.”

  They both turned to look at the mess of fallen wood and iron poles and wire. He motioned at the stack she had managed to cut up. “You’ve done more than I thought you would.”

  She shrugged. “I still have a lot of work left.” She turned and stepped behind her neighbor’s fence. She motioned at it. “You know who lives there?”

  “I met them when I was investigating the murders last week,” Mack said. “I thought you’d met him.”

  “I did. I just wondered if his wife was really there.”

  “I haven’t met her. Why?”

  “Because I thought I talked to her today. But then I couldn’t decide if it was a her or a him.” She took a few more steps, studying the creek, trying to place her animals as they were earlier today. Mugs had gone to the outcropping.

  And, as she thought about that, Mugs moseyed past her to the outcropping, parking his butt in the same position it had been in earlier. Goliath sauntered around to the far side.

  “I think they were at opposite sides of the outcropping earlier today. But their placement was similar to this.”

  Thaddeus, still on her shoulders, made a funny caw sound and flew down to sit beside Goliath.

  She motioned to where the creek had pooled in the circle between the animals. “The box was in here.”

  Mack looked at her as if he didn’t believe her.

  She held out her hands. “It was, honest.”

  He raised an eyebrow, looked at the animals, and stepped forward. “How did you get into the creek?”

  “I went in barefoot,” she explained. She glanced at his expensive shoes and socks and jeans. “Too bad you can’t go in and see if anything else is there.”

  “Did you see anything else?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No, I didn’t. I saw the box, picked it up, and brought it out.”

  “Not quite,” her neighbor from the other side of the fence said. “You also asked questions about the Betty Miles’s case.”

  She glared at the fence in front of her. “I’m not exactly sure who I’m speaking to,” Doreen snapped, “but you’re the one who volunteered the information.”

  The voice on the other side jeered. “Semantics, semantics. You’re the one who was curious.”

  “Yes, I am. But you can go back in your house anytime now,” she called out.

  “Don’t have to. It’s my yard,” the voice snapped. But it did seem to get fainter.

  She waited another few moments and then whispered to Mack, “Do you think he’s gone?”

  Mack, being over six feet fall, stepped up on the outcropping beside the dog, where he could better see over the fence, and then shrugged. “I can’t see anybody.”

  “Good,” she said. “I didn’t realize having neighbors meant having people in your business all the time.”

  He sighed. “This is hardly being intrusive.” He motioned back at the water. “You want to point out exactly where the box was?”

  She stepped out of her sandals and said, “I’ll do one better than pointing it out. I’ll show you exactly where it was.” She stepped into the water and gasped. “How can it be so cold?”

  “It’s glacier water, coming down from the mountains.”

  She shot him a look. “Are you serious? This is actually from a glacier, like, as in ice cubes?”

  “No ice cubes here,” he said patiently. “It’s water, remember? Not frozen over—at least not yet.”

  She shrugged. “Still, there should be ice cubes at this temperature.” She leaned forward and studied the water, then pointed. “Yes, see that indent from the box being here?”

  “No, not really. The creek has filled the void.” He squatted at the bank, beside her, and studied it. “You want to shift that ground a little bit and see if anything else is in there?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. It’s cold. Remember?”

  “Of course you want to because I see something silvery. If you don’t want to get it, I will.” He rested one hand on the ground and stretched out his other arm. Right in front of her, his hand disappeared into the cold water and into the space where the box had rested. He stuck his fingers right into the dirty sand and rock. “Aha.”

  “What?”

  “I found something.” And pulled his hand back out. In his palm was something shiny, metal, and very old looking.

  Chapter 7

  Mack wouldn’t show her the ring, and trying to rush him to the kitchen so she could take a look faster was like trying to push a grizzly bear with hemorrhoids. He kept snarling at her to stop prodding him. She groaned when he finally turned the corner to her property, and she danced around him, nudging the cat and dog ahead of her. Mugs barked in excitement so much that he went in circles instead of gaining any distance, and Goliath just sauntered like he didn’t care what anyone else did. He’d get there in his own time—kind of like Mack. Thaddeus was his usual talkative self but making no sense. “Body in the water. Body in the water.”

  “No, Thaddeus. There was no body in the water,” she said. “We didn’t find any bones or a body. Nothing to do with a human body. Nada.”

  Thaddeus cocked his head at her and started his stiff-legged walk forward. “Body in the water. Body in the water.”

  She raised both hands in exasperation. “Okay, so my body fell in the water. Why can’t you say things once and then never again?” she scolded the bird as she walked forward. But she kept an eye on Mack. He studied the ring in his hand and took his sweet time about it. She stopped, waited until he caught up, slipped her arm through his, and tried to speed him up toward the kitchen. “I don’t know why you won’t let me see until we’re inside,” she grumbled. “I saw enough to know it must be a ring, but I want a closer look at it.”

  He slanted his gaze down at her and grinned.

  She rolled her eyes. “That look of yours …”

  “What look?” he protested.

  From the dancing laughter in his eyes, he knew exactly what she was talking about. She sighed. They were almost at the bottom of the deck steps. She stopped as she looked at the disturbed dirt in her garden. “Your men should have replanted my garden,” she announced. “Look at the mess they left me.”

  He snorted. “Good luck with that.”

  “You guys are the ones who made the mess,” she said as she stomped across the deck and then up the few risers leading to the porch and to the kitchen door. “Why shouldn’t your men have to clean it up?”

  “You had a body hidden in your garden,” he said with exaggerated calm. “That’s not our fault.”

  “Well, they could have taken better care when they r
emoved the body. Besides, I wasn’t responsible for the body, so why should I be responsible for the mess you and your men made?”

  He sighed, put his hands on his hips, motioned at the door behind her, and said, “Are you not going in now? You’ve been pushing me the whole way back from the creek, and, now that we’re finally here, you’re blocking my entrance.”

  She glared at him but stepped inside. Instantly the aroma of fresh coffee hit her nose. She laughed. “There’s enough for me to have a second cup.” She raced over to the pot and poured herself a cup.

  He leaned against the doorway and just stared at her.

  She frowned. “What?”

  He shrugged. “If I don’t get any coffee, I don’t have to show you what I found.”

  “That’s blackmail. There’s a law against that. Besides, now, if I give you coffee, I’m bribing you, and that’s illegal too.”

  He snorted. “I think you’re a little confused over the value of coffee.”

  She raised her hands, palms up. “I don’t know what to call it. The bottom line is, you won’t let me see the ring.”

  He motioned toward the coffeepot. She walked to the table, grabbed his cup, and refilled it. That finished the pot. She placed both cups on the table.

  Mack sat, taking a sip of his coffee.

  “Now may I take a look, please?” she asked with careful enunciation.

  He laughed and placed it carefully on the table.

  She gasped when she saw the bright red shine. “Is that a ruby ring?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I didn’t see the ruby earlier.” Now that it was on the table, she could see it clearly. She picked it up, studying the old Victorian-type setting and the massive ruby in the center. She held it up to the light, letting it shine and twinkle. “It’s real, isn’t it?”

  He shrugged. “The experts will determine that. I don’t know enough about gemology to understand if it’s real or just a really good fake.”

  She studied the setting. “It’s also real silver.” She rubbed the inside, feeling for an inscription. And something was written there, but it was hard to see. Everything was filled in with dirt. She handed it to him. “May I clean up the inside with some silver cleaner?”

  He nodded. “If you have some.”

  “Nan left some. Apparently at one time she had a silver tea service.”

  She rummaged in the front closet, the catchall for everything. There she found a small black jar and grabbed a couple blue cloths and returned to the table. She sat down, opened the jar, dipped her cloth-wrapped finger into it, then held her hand out for the ring. He gave it to her. “I wonder how long it was there.”

  “I don’t know. I wonder if it was inside the box.” He motioned at the one she had found, sitting off to the side of the table.

  She considered the placement of both of them in the creek and nodded. “It’s possible.” She wished she’d taken a closer look in the creek and had found the ring herself. She cleaned the inside of the band, taking special care to clear out the dirt from the lettering. When it was clean, she tried to read it and then shook her head. “Either my eyes aren’t what they used to be, or that’s really hard to decipher.”

  He took a look, then held the ring higher, directly underneath the light over her kitchen table. When he moved it to one angle or the other, he said, “I can’t read it, but it looks like initials of some sort. Likely the original owner’s initials.”

  She smiled. “It’s antique looking. Depending on its age, it’s probably a real ruby.”

  He handed it back to her.

  “Is it okay if I clean the rest of it?”

  He considered the ring in her hand for a moment and then nodded. “Depending on how long it was in the creek, any forensic evidence could have been washed away.”

  “What aren’t you telling me?” she asked. When he refused to answer her, she offered her own opinion. “You recognized this ring, didn’t you?” She gave him another moment to share with her, but, when he didn’t, she huffed out a sigh. “Fine. Be that way.” She polished it, and the band brightened to a warm silver. She handed it back to him with a sigh. “That’s a lovely piece.”

  “It is.”

  Something in his voice made it sound like he wasn’t terribly enthralled about the concept. She glanced over at him. “The hand originally found was also adorned with a lovely piece. Would she have had two expensive rings? Her girlfriend gave her the one but two…?”

  “We can’t know for sure she had it,” he corrected without making any attempt to misunderstand who Doreen was talking about. “No jumping to conclusions.”

  “No, but, considering it was found beside a box with her name on it, it could have been her grandmother’s ring,” Doreen said slowly. “Any family member might have passed that on to a much-younger family member.”

  He nodded, but, from the look on his face, he wasn’t happy with her suggestion.

  “Was there anything like this in her cold case file? Any photos of her that might have an image of this ring?”

  He tapped the table as he studied the ring. “No idea. But I will go to the office and take a look.”

  “You do that.” She closed the jar of silver cleaner, threw the cloth into the garbage, and took the cleaner back to the closet. When she returned, he was still sitting at her table and now held the ivory box in his hand. Her heart sank. “You’re taking it away, aren’t you?”

  He glanced at her and nodded. “If it doesn’t have anything to do with the cold case, you can have it back. But you know how this works. If it’s related to a case, I take it in as evidence.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and pouted. “I just thought it was really pretty.”

  “It is really pretty.”

  All of a sudden she wanted him to leave. If she couldn’t keep the box—and she knew it was irrational to expect to do so—she would head back to the creek and see if she could find something else. Something else she wouldn’t tell him about. Two trips that found two things. As far as she was concerned, that meant there was likely more to be found in the creek.

  Then he blew it.

  “I’ll come back in the morning. I want to return to that same place.” He shot her a hard gaze. “No more digging in the creek looking for more items.”

  She stared at him. Immovable at her table. Would he ever get up and go to his office?

  He nodded slowly. “I know exactly what you were thinking. You’re probably waiting for me to leave, so you can head back out there. And honestly it makes sense. In two trips we found two things. But that doesn’t make either of these items yours.”

  “I’ll take a receipt for them though, please,” she snapped.

  He smiled. “You can have a receipt for the box. But I found the ring.”

  She sat down back in her chair, pulling her coffee toward her. “That’s just mean.”

  “It’s valuable,” he said gently.

  She nodded. “I know. Why do you think I wanted to keep it?”

  “What would you do with it?”

  She stared at him in surprise. “Sell it and buy food.”

  She had said it so simply that he sat back in shock. After along moment, he asked slowly, “Are you that short on money?”

  Sorry she had brought it up, she mumbled something, hoping he’d just forget about it.

  But he wouldn’t forget about it. “If you really need work, I’m sure somebody in town is hiring.”

  “I’m planning to pass out résumés,” she said tiredly, “but I’ll wait a few more days. It’s pretty embarrassing when nobody gives a damn about what’s on your résumé. They just want to ask questions about the recently solved murder cases from last week.”

  He winced. “Yeah, I can see that. All these murders don’t make you the most employable person, does it?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll be fine for a week or two, as long as no more bills show up in the mail.” She ran her hand over her forehead.

  Re
ading the mail was starting to unnerve her. Who knew there was so much to pay on a monthly basis?

  She still had some of the money she’d found by going through Nan’s clothes. What Doreen really hoped for was to get something from the commission of the sale of Nan’s old clothes. She needed to contact Wendy, the store owner, and see if there had been any progress on that. She’d do that soon.

  Doreen looked around the kitchen. “I’ll go through the house and see if I can sell something. Nan has several antiques here that could be worth some serious money.” She picked up her coffee mug and took a sip. It still tasted mighty fine. She took a bigger sip before setting it down.

  He watched her over the rim of his mug. “So you want to do my mother’s begonia garden …”

  Straightening, she studied his face. She hated to think he’d do this out of pity, but she needed the money. Her pride was a small price to pay for a full stomach. Besides, he’d been talking about her helping out in his mother’s garden for a while long before her confessing to being so broke. Hopeful, she asked, “Did your mother decide to go ahead with fixing the begonia bed?”

  “I talked to my mom, and she wants the begonias moved to another spot and something new put in the empty bed.”

  “That would be good,” Doreen said. “The begonias would be much happier.” She tilted her head to the side, remembering the look of the dirt there. “But you’ll have to bring in something to nourish that bed. Otherwise anything we plant will struggle.”

  “It’s not a very big garden. I can pick up a few bags of topsoil, maybe a bag of peat moss to hold in some moisture. I’ll stop at the local gardening store on my way home, maybe tomorrow or the next day.”

  “When do you want me to start?” Inside, she was delighted. She didn’t know what he would pay her, but fifty dollars right now was fifty dollars, and she needed every dollar she could get her hands on. She wasn’t used to paying bills. These several days had been a brutal awakening as to how life really worked. And how it was for people without any money. There were gas bills and electric bills and phone bills. If you were lucky at the end of the day, there was money left over to buy food.