Death of a Gardener (Book 3 Molly Masters Mysteries)

by Leslie O'Kane

  “That’s all right, Molly. But thanks for offering. And for bringing these tapes. I’ll let you know if we get anywhere.” He opened his center drawer, snatched up a handful of pencils, and jammed the first one into the electric pencil sharpener on the shelf beside his desk. “Thanks for stoppin’ by.”

  Tommy’s nonchalance bothered me. He hadn’t poked fun at me for all of my he vs. she verbal flubbing. That was out of character. I sat there and watched until Tommy had sharpened the last of his pencils. Still, he kept his eyes averted as he blew the dust off of each of them, “You already know who Helen is, don’t you?” I asked.

  Tommy replaced the pencils in his drawer, laced his fingers, and only then met my gaze. “One of the two masked gunmen fit ‘Helen’s’ general physical build, and he had possession of the real Helen Raleigh’s wallet. He was tentatively identified as Frank Worscheim, a habitual criminal. The second gunman was never identified, but was Caucasian, trim, and approximately six feet tall.”

  “And what about the fingerprints of Helen Raleigh’s corpse?”

  “ Which Helen Raleigh?”

  “The male Helen who owned my house. Were the fingerprints Frank Worscheim’s, or weren’t they?”

  “Yep. They were Frank Worscheim’s.”

  “So there’s no ‘tentative’ about it,” I said testily. “You’ve IDed him. And what about the poodle?”

  “No known criminal record for the poodle.”

  “Ha. Ha. What I meant was, did you do an autopsy on the dog?”

  “It, uh, had been in the ground a bit too long for that. Even Tupperware has its limits as far as keepin’ things fresh.”

  “As my daughter would say, ‘Eeww! Sick.’ Could you at least tell if the dog could have been run over by a car?”

  “Yep. Likely cause of death. Why?”

  “That’s how Roger Lillydale told me the dog was killed—that Helen’s imposter had accidentally run over him in the driveway. But I was thinking that Frank might have shot the dog, for some reason. Maybe’ the dog’s body was just a cover, so that if Mr. Helen had been caught in the act of digging his yard, he could claim he was burying a dog, when he was actually trying to dig up the jewelry underneath.”

  Tommy shook his head. “We already had to dig down more than three feet to find the dog. If the guy dug a whole lot further, it’d be like digging a well. And we went over your property using a powerful metal detector. It would have detected gold from the jewelry. Didn’t come up with a thing. Not countin’ your water and gas mains.”

  “Maybe the settings had been removed so the diamonds wouldn’t get traced as easily.” A revelation hit me. “What if...what’s-his-face used the dog as a...whatchamacallit? What if he stuck the dog right on top of something he’d hidden? Nobody would think to dig below the dog, right? Did you?”

  “Er, no, once we uncovered the dog, we stopped digging.”

  I rose and grabbed the doorknob. “Now’s the time, then. Are you coming with me?”

  “S’pose you’re going to dig again, one way Or the other.”

  “Yeah.”

  Tommy stood up and locked his desk. “Let’s go, then.”

  “You’re coming, too? Cool. You can help me dig.”

  Tommy followed me to my house in his cruiser. I toyed with the idea of speeding just to see what he’d do, but quickly decided he might go ahead and ticket me.

  After grabbing a large shovel from the garage, we headed to the yard. “So, my theory is what we’re looking for is a couple of feet or so below the dog. That Frank Floorshine—”

  “Worscheim,” Tommy corrected.

  “Whatever, had deliberately placed the poodle’s body directly over the diamonds so anyone digging would stop there and not think to keep digging.”

  “Uh-huh,” Tommy merely said.

  “I remember exactly where the dog was, because I noticed it was exactly where my son had planted a pumpkin plant. And it’s right where my mom put in the new one.”

  The new plant was still decidedly flat and its branches, vines, or whatever you called those green thingamabobs on plants, were partially broken. So I dug up and tossed the plant without hesitation. I took another couple of shovelfuls of dirt and tried to mentally calculate just how many of these I would have to dig to develop a four-feet deep, three-feet in circumference hole. I could estimate that it would be more than ten and less than a hundred.

  “Oh,” someone called from the sidewalk. “Good afternoon, Molly.”

  I turned. It was Joanne Abbott. She must have noticed Tommy’s cruiser and come outside to investigate. She took a few steps toward me, nodding at Tommy in greeting, then returning her attention to me. “I see you’re digging again. Are you looking for something buried in your yard?”

  Tired of these “just happened to be passing bys” on the part of her and hubby, combined with the thought of some ninety-seven more shovelfuls of dirt to go, I was in a less-than-gracious mood. “It just seemed like such a nice afternoon for digging holes. Don’t you think?”

  She held onto her large nose as if to stifle a sneeze. She gave another glance Tommy’s way, then said to me, “Don’t forget about the home-owners’ meeting tonight. We have a lot of important things to discuss. Did you see that Simon took down his cameras?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I won’t keep you. Good luck with finding the.... She let her voice trail off as if she expected me to jump in there with the name of the mystery object.

  “Thanks. I’ll see you tonight.”

  Tommy watched all of this with a mild look of amusement, but said nothing.

  I aimed the spade and hopped onto it, jiggling so that it sank in. The soil was still loose enough that getting the shovel pushed in was the easy. part. Lifting and tossing was much harder. As I worked away, I paused to note that Tommy was sitting in the shade of the house, watching me.

  He grinned at me and said, “Farewell to Pumpkins. Is that the name of a movie, by any chance? Seems to ring some sort of bell with me.”

  “Are you going to help me dig or just sit there, cooling your heels?”

  “Hey. I’m here as an officer of the state of New York. Not an old high school buddy. Keep that in mind.”

  “And officers don’t dig holes?”

  “All the time. In fact, most of the time that’s my job. Diggin’ holes. Or trying to make sense out of existing ones.”

  “Good.” I held the shovel toward him. “Because I think this job requires a professional. This is no easy task. I’ll bet you could dig a lot faster than me.”

  “Prob’ly could. But you’re doing fine.”

  As I wiped some perspiration off my brow, a movement from the window next door caught my eye: “Simon’s watching. I’ll bet he’s pretty surprised that I’m doing all the work.”

  “Don’t exactly see him rushing out here to give you a hand.”

  I returned to my digging, still determined to shame Tommy into taking over for me. I started singing a line from an old song from my childhood. I didn’t know the words, but it went something like, “Yoga Boat Man. Huh!” I sang that over and over, and tossed a shovel full of dirt over my shoulder with every “Huh.” Eventually, my song annoyed Tommy so much he yanked the shovel from my grasp and took over for me, which was, of course, the whole idea. He further pointed out that the word was “Volga,” after the Russian river, not “Yoga.” Picky picky. I liked “Yoga” better.

  It proved much more pleasant to sit in the shade and watch someone else work. “Stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” Tommy began to grumble, as he dug deeper and deeper with no luck. By now he was standing in a hole up to his waist. “S’pose I’ll keep going long enough and you’re going to say, ‘Oops. I meant to have you dig six feet farther from the house.’”

  “Oops. I meant to have you dig six feet farther from the house,” I obliged.

  He gave me the evil eye. He was sweating profusely now in the hot sun and dirt was clinging to the glistening skin on his forearms and
face. “Got a septic tank you want me to put in, so long as I’m—” He broke off as the shovel made a dull thud. “Wait. Think I’ve hit something.” He began to work rapidly, clearing the dirt away with his hands. At length he lifted a cube about one foot long on each side. It was a Tupperware tub. We both fell silent. The container didn’t seem to be very heavy.

  I cast a nervous glance at Simon Smith’s window. Though there were no immediate signs of him, I said, “Let’s block my neighbor’s view.”

  We angled ourselves shoulder to shoulder away from Simon’s windows. Tommy pulled off the blue plastic lid. Inside was a small bluish gray laundry bag. Tommy untied it, peered inside, then poured the contents back into the tub.

  The sparkling sunlight reflecting off thousands of diamonds was blinding.

  Chapter 12

  Wait Till the Meeting Actually Starts

  My nerves were jittery that evening as we sat at my parents’ cherry wood table. My appetite was all but gone, though my mother’s deliciously seasoned baked chicken with carrots and potatoes was normally one of my favorite meals. In Mom’s lone concession to the hot weather, she’d also served juicy, bright red tomatoes fresh from her garden.

  Mom was in her customary spot at the foot of the table. Trying not to become entrenched permanently in the patterns of my childhood, I had claimed the normally vacant ladder-back chair next to her and given Jim my sister’s seat, which, more recently, had become Karen’s spot. At first, Nathan had objected to the change. He loved routines almost as much as my mother did; but I’d managed to appease him by giving him Dad’s honored position at the head of the table.

  We all dutifully listened as Karen told us at great length about her tadpoles, whose tails were only a quarter-inch long. That quarter inch was all that separated us from needing to build a terrarium, complete with live insects. Actually, two terrariums because Karen, always good at sharing, had bequeathed three of the frogs to Nathan, who was determined to keep his new pets in his room. Neither child was willing to accept my compromise of one frog apiece and the rest set free.

  “So, Jim,” my mother said during a pause, “what’s new at your office?”

  Jim launched into a lengthy answer rife with acronyms and numbers: My eyes glazed over and my thoughts returned to the image of all of those diamonds. Moments after we’d uncovered them, Tommy had confessed to me that he’d known for two days that Mr. Helen was really Frank Worscheim, convicted felon, but had kept the information private because he didn’t “want to compromise the investigation.” No sense in letting me, his girlfriend’s. best friend whom he’d known most of his life, in on the fact that a convicted felon’s partner was on the loose. Searching for stolen diamonds. On my property.

  I stabbed at a piece of chicken with the full force of my frustration. I nearly bent the tines as my fork clanged onto my plate.

  “Your dinner isn’t too chewy, is it?” Mom asked, peering at me, a worried expression on her face.

  “Not at all. Everything’s delicious. I just wasn’t looking where I was forking.”

  I jumped a foot when the phone rang.

  “Must be a sales call,” my mother said and rose to answer on the kitchen phone. She was soon saying, “Yes, she’s right here,” into the handset, and I got up from the table, expecting the worst. Another corpse in my yard, perhaps.

  On the phone, it took me a moment to rearrange my thoughts—another mother from Karen’s class had merely tracked me down to ask how my plans were going for the school party tomorrow afternoon. I have a lot of trouble saying no—I can say the word, but unfortunately, it’s usually followed by the phrase, “I don’t mind.” Try convincing a lawyer or an accountant that creating greeting cards and cartoons was “work,” and that I didn’t have any more time to put together a class party than they did.

  I shrieked into the phone in a white lie, “Oh, no! The party’s tomorrow! I can’t believe I forgot! What am I going to do?”

  After a short pause, the woman gallantly offered to do this party for me, since I’d “spearheaded the last seven parties our children have shared for the past two years.” I thanked her profusely and assured her that, since this was the last minute, this one party counted as a year’s worth of work, so I’d be “homeroom mom” again next year to repay her.

  Jim watched me as I reclaimed my seat. “Did you just volunteer to be homeroom mom again next year?”

  “Yes, but I—”

  “We may not even be here next year. My temporary assignment’s supposed to end soon.”

  “What?” Nathan cried, dropping his fork. “We’re moving?”

  I shot a dirty look at Jim, who had forgotten our vow not to discuss the quixotic “end date” of his “temporary” assignment in front of the children. “I’ll believe that when it happens. Besides, what’s Carlton-Central going to do? Tell me I can’t leave town because I promised I’d be homeroom mom.”

  “You aren’t actually going to leave Carlton, are you?” Mom asked. Though she hadn’t dropped her fork. she’d stopped eating and her tanned features had paled. “I thought you liked it here.”

  “I do like it here. But I love Boulder.”

  “I don’t want to move!” Nathan shouted. “I want to stay here!”

  “You said the same thing when we moved from Boulder, remember? And everything worked out that time, and it will work out—”

  “I don’t want to move!” Nathan repeated, louder, his cheeks so red his freckles all but vanished.

  “Neither do I,” Karen said, pushing her seat back from the table and crossing her arms. “Rachel’s my best friend, and I’m not leaving her.”

  “Our house in Boulder is rented through the end of the summer, so we’ll be here another three months no matter what. In the meantime, let’s just finish dinner before we start packing. Okay?” Besides, I thought, my annual commitment for Carlton Central to run a scholarship committee required my physical presence several weeks out of every summer. I’d be summering in Carlton for several years to come, even if Jim’s “temporary” assignment ever actually ended.

  The phone rang again. I rose. “It’s probably the movers wanting to know our schedule,” I grumbled.

  “What?” Nathan cried again.

  “Just kidding.” I snarled “Hello” into the phone.

  “Managed to trace the diamonds,” Tommy began with no preamble. “They were from all three heists along the coast, just as you’d suspected. Thought you’d like to know.”

  “Thanks,” I said frostily, still angry at Tommy for having withheld information from me that could have endangered my family. “By the way, were any of the jewelry stores offering a reward?”

  “I’ll look into that for you.” He paused, then said, “Reason I’m calling is to warn you. We located Frank Worscheim’s next of kin, finally. Was from L.A. originally, and his mother flew out and IDed the body. So we had to let the press know the victim’s identity. His name’ll be in tomorrow’s Times Union. Expect some reporters to hound you for more info. Also had to let ‘em in on the fact we recovered the stolen diamonds.”

  He paused, letting this sink in. Expect some reporters, he tells me. In our little town, a convicted felon, with a stash of stolen diamonds buried in the yard, was killed while disguised as a woman. Gee, Tommy. Do you really think any reporters will think there’s a story there?

  “But it occurred to me there’s a chance this former partner of the victim’s—if that’s who was diggin’ holes at your place-could think you or Jim might still have some of the stash. You follow?”

  Of course I “followed.” The same thing had occurred to me hours earlier—that if this former partner was crazed enough to shoot Mr. Helen, he could come after one of us. But I had a roomful of eavesdroppers at the moment, so I merely said, “Yes.” My head was pounding. I massaged my temples with my free hand.

  “So I was thinking. For your own safety, maybe you and your family should consider leaving town.”

  There are moments, th
ankfully brief, in which I hate my life. This was one of them. As calmly as possible, I said, “Thanks for the suggestion, Tommy,” and hung up.

  “Here’s the thing,” I told Jim as we drove to the homeowners’ meeting later that night. “Frank, aka Helen, didn’t dig up the buried treasure, sell the house, and flee the area. Why not do that if some partner you’d fleeced had finally caught up with you? Presumably, he buried it like a pirate; hid it where he could return for it. Why didn’t Frank-slash-Helen dig up the money when he still owned the house? Why stick around and merely keep an eye on the place, hoping to prevent the new owners from finding the stash?”

  “Maybe the ground was frozen,” Jim said as he flipped on the turn signal. “So he was forced to wait until the spring to sell.”

  “Or maybe Frank had a new partner he was working with now. Perhaps someone in the neighborhood.”

  No, I decided on second thought, that made no sense. He already had the diamonds and had, apparently, run out on one partner. Why share the spoils now? “You know what I think happened?”

  Jim was paying attention to his driving and gave no response—not that he had any choice but to listen to me.

  “I think Frank suspected that Simon had gotten wise to him. What else could Frank have concluded when he saw that Simon had installed surveillance cameras? In fact, maybe Simon really was onto him. He might have been blackmailing Helen, or rather Frank, and it took Frank a long time to get the opportunity to lure Simon away from his house so that he could dig up the diamonds surreptitiously.”

  We pulled into the parking lot. “Quite a turnout,” Jim said as we slowly circled, looking for a space. “I thought your mom said hardly anyone came to these things.”

  “How would she know? She’s never been to a single home-owners’ meeting in the thirty-plus years she’s lived here.” I shouldn’t complain about that, though. Her choosing not to go tonight allowed us to use her as a babysitter. Still feeling under the weather, Lauren had elected not to join us either.