Death of a Gardener (Book 3 Molly Masters Mysteries)

by Leslie O'Kane

  Since his eyes were focused on his shoes, I couldn’t tell if he meant his wife or one of us had “gone overboard.” Maybe he’d only just now noticed how badly he was dressed.

  “Mom, could you take the kids upstairs, please?”

  My mother shot me a worried look, but Karen and Nathan were so startled by the sudden onslaught of adult-sized tension, they merely took my mother’s proffered hands and headed up the stairs with her.

  Joanne was breathing so heavily her large nostrils were flaring like a bull’s. As soon as I heard a door shut upstairs, I asked her, “Who told you that I’d accused you of killing Simon?”

  “Some police officer.”

  “Sergeant Newton?”

  “No. Some young kid in a uniform. He claimed to be an officer, but he looked fifteen or sixteen, at the most.”

  “Well, he’s wrong. I didn’t say anything at all about you. How could I? I wasn’t even home at the time. I was here, at my mother’s house.”

  “So,” Jim said to Stan. He left the word hanging.

  Stan met Jim’s gaze, then rolled his eyes and set his jaw. Who was he rolling his eyes at—his wife or me?

  In my most appeasing voice, I said, “I assure you both that I did not accuse you of having anything whatsoever to do with Simon’s death.”

  Joanne put her hands on her hips and tossed her head back. “Then how did the officer know how upset I was about Simon’s cameras? You were the only one who knew that!”

  Since this was the absolute truth, I told her in no uncertain terms that I had said nothing to any officer about how either Abbott reacted upon learning about Simon’s cameras.

  After a few minutes of going over the same ground, Joanne gradually calmed down. Stan apparently felt his role in all of this was that of detached observer; for he said nothing whatsoever. Jim asked him whether the police had spoken to him, but Stan merely nodded, keeping his eyes on Joanne all the while.

  Finally; as if suitably convinced that I hadn’t committed some horrible act of betrayal, or whatever sin it was that Joanne thought I’d committed, Joanne looked at her husband and gave him a small smile.

  To this, Stan said, “Okay, dear?” She nodded.

  He put his arm around her and said to us, “Sorry to bother you.” Joanne, who was taller than Stan, dropped her head onto his shoulder.

  “This has been most upsetting for her, as I’m sure you can understand.”

  “Of course,” Jim replied I studied his face, momentarily persuaded that Jim was sincere in his claim that he understood. But his eyebrows were knitted, which reassured me that he was every bit as confounded as I was.

  “By the way, how did you know where we were staying?” I asked Joanne.

  Joanne didn’t look at me. Her head still rested rather awkwardly on her husband’s shoulder. Her cheeks were still flushed. “Sheila told me.”

  And how did she know? I let Jim escort them out while I dropped down on the couch. Maybe there were bugging devices throughout all of Sherwood Forest.

  “Gee-Zeus,” he said as he reentered. “What in heaven’s name was that all about?”

  “It occurs to me that we must be doing something dreadfully wrong. We’re leading normal lives. We have our two children, our house, our lawn. Okay, we have a half-dozen frogs and a pair of gay guinea pigs instead of the requisite dog or cat...but still. We work hard at our jobs. Though I don’t make much of a profit. Everyone in the cartooning industry knows the real money isn’t in original art, but licensing and merchandise. So far, nobody’s offered to put my mug on a cartoon. Cartoon on a mug. Anyway, the point is, day in, day out, we follow the rules.”

  Jim raised an eyebrow. I shrugged and continued, “Okay. You follow the rules, and I follow most of them. The ones that make sense to me. And yet, at times like this, I just want someone to tell me why. Why us? Why did our former home owner have to turn out to be a bank robber and jewelry thief who buried loot in our yard and then got murdered on top of it? Would it have spoiled some vast, divine plan if it had been in someone else’s yard? And why was our next-door neighbor a Peeping Tom who thinks he’s James Bond? Why did he have to die, right after he said he’d give me evidence?”

  Jim patted my knee and snuggled beside me on the couch. After a long silence, he said, “I don’t know. Fifteen years ago, I was sitting in the library at C.U., trying to decipher a complex power-supply circuit, when I happened to look up and spot this...skinny girl with long brown hair, the darkest eyes I’d ever seen, and a radiant smile that seemed to lift me right out of my chair. And sometimes I ask myself, ‘Why me?’ What did I ever do to deserve such good fortune? And I don’t know the answer to that question, either.”

  “That’s so sweet,” I told him, my eyes misting and my voice choked with emotion. I resisted a perverse urge to facetiously pretend I didn’t know he meant me. And to point out that that first meeting of ours was actually sixteen years ago. And that he’d been reading Sports Illustrated at the time. I gave him a deep kiss, which was interrupted by the sound of the door being flung open upstairs, followed by Karen’s plaintive, “Mo-o-omm-eeee, Nathan poked me in the eye!”

  “I did not! I was just patting her on the head and I missed! Accidentally!”

  Jim and I chuckled. Our eyes met, and I knew he felt the same rush of gratitude that I did-that however high life might have stacked the cards against us, we were in this together. And that, at times like this, our love felt like nothing short of a miracle.

  “Her eye is fine,” my mother called from the other room. “I’ll handle this.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Mom.” It was never necessary to tell me twice that someone else would deal with my squabbling children.

  I paused, thinking. “You know what’s strange, Jim? I saw the Lillydales at the school party today. They were acting out-of-character arid hostile toward me, just like the Abbotts. They’ve obviously been talking to one another, since Joanne claims to have learned my parents’ address from Sheila. Somebody must be spreading lies about us. Of all of them, Joanne strikes me as the least rational. Maybe Joanne had hallucinated something about me and told them some crazy story. Maybe that would explain why everyone is suddenly so angry at me.”

  “Let’s just keep a low profile for a while. Stay away from the house entirely.”

  While, Jim was speaking, I got up and started rummaging in the cabinet by the phone for Sheila’s business card. Though I located it, her home phone wasn’t listed. I started flipping through the phone book.

  “What are you doing?” Jim asked.

  “Making a quick phone call.”

  I dialed the Lillydales. Roger answered. I greeted him pleasantly, but was met with silence. Not to be discouraged, I asked to speak to Sheila.

  “She’s at her office,” he barked.

  I glanced at my watch. It was almost seven-thirty. “Listen, Roger, I really wanted a chance to talk to you about what happened this afternoon at school. I sincerely believe there’s been some kind of a misunderstanding that—”

  “I can’t talk now.” He hung up.

  Chapter 16

  Pardon My Faux Paws

  I was still standing next to the telephone when Nathan charged down the stairs, followed, eventually, by Karen. Karen was not a happy camper. She drooped down the stairs one step at a time like a human Slinky, but I noted that she had both of her eyes, so I was inclined not to overreact.

  I waited for one of them to ask if our guests had beaten us prior to leaving. Preoccupied with his own concerns, Nathan rushed up and gave me a big hug. A sure sign that he’d deliberately poked his sister and felt he needed an ally.

  In the meantime, Karen shuffled over to join Jim on the couch, but curled up against the arm across from him. He murmured, “How are you doing, sweet pea? Is your eye okay?” and tried to rub her back. She gave an indignant growl and jerked away from his touch. Obviously, she’d decided to give everyone the cold shoulder.

  My mother came downstairs. At the bottom step,
she paused, studied our faces, and said with a forced smile, “Did your friends leave?”

  “Everything’s fine. It must have been the shock of—” I stopped, determined to rephrase my statement to avoid the pun. “They must have been deeply upset by our neighbor’s accident and chose to vent their emotions at us.” Although I also fervently believed that Joanne was either seriously off balance, or someone had been spreading lies about us.

  Mom arched an eyebrow, but made no comment. A piece of paper was in her hand, which she lifted. “Oh, Molly,” she said pleasantly as she brought the paper over to me, “earlier today I was cleaning the basement when this came for you. I meant to give it to you sooner, but I completely forgot.”

  She handed me a fax. I leaned back against the cabinet and read it. A prospective customer wanted an eye-catching faxable flyer to advertise an upcoming office party. If possible, they wanted to see something from me by four p.m., more than three hours ago. The time stamp in the margin indicated they’d sent the fax at 9:43 this morning.

  Annoyed, I glanced over the top of the paper at my mother. “You got this off my fax machine and forgot about it?”

  She patted her perfectly neat hair. “’Fraid so. I must admit that I read it, though, and you can send them that cartoon of yours I just love. Remember? The one you sent to me a few months ago when we were in Florida. About the bears with the paws?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She was right. That cartoon might do quite nicely for this customer. “I’d forgotten about that one.”

  “I think I’ve got a copy of it in my desk.” She opened the antique drop-lid desk in the corner and managed to retrieve the cartoon in all of three seconds. This was my mother’s typical efficiency and didn’t necessarily guarantee that she’d already located my cartoon this morning, when she first read my fax. “And if you want, you can include a note blaming me for you not getting back to them sooner.”

  Blame my mother? That’d sure impress a prospective customer with my professionalism. I excused myself and trotted downstairs. I used my low-tech security system of putting a large X over the cartoon and faxed it to them, not anticipating a response until tomorrow or Monday.

  In the cartoon, a batch of bears are standing around at a cocktail party, mingling and sipping from martini glasses. All of the bears look virtually identical, except for one who’s wearing what looks like enormous, furry gloves. A couple of other bears are looking at the gloves with disdain. One of these bears whispers to the other, “I don’t know why they invited that guy. He has the world’s worst faux paws.”

  When I returned to the family room, my mother was about to head upstairs. “I’m going to bed early tonight,” she explained. “I’ve just started reading a wonderful novel, and I’m dying to get back to it.”

  “Okay. By the way, I’m curious as to how the Abbotts knew we were here. Have you ever met my neighbor, Sheila Lillydale? Her son’s in Karen’s class. Sheila’s petite, very pretty, with long dark hair.”

  Mom smiled. “Oh, yes. We met at the school party for spring break. What a nice person. So perky and friendly.” Friendly to everyone but me. “Did you happen to tell her your address?”

  “No, though I remember introducing myself as your mother, and I probably did tell her I lived in Sherwood Forest.”

  That would explain how she could have gotten the address. If she remembered Mom’s last name, she could have looked up the address in the directory. I shifted my attention to the children, who were starting to antagonize each other again. Nathan had squeezed between Jim and Karen; and Karen was trying to shove him off the couch with her feet. “Tell Grandma good night, guys.”

  They mumbled good night. The moment Mom left the room, Karen started to cry.

  “Does your eye still hurt, sweetie?” I asked her gently.

  She shrugged. Nathan, however, immediately shouted, “It was just an accident! It doesn’t mean she has to stay mad at me forever!”

  Karen began to sob full force. “First he puts gum in my hair. Then he pokes me in the eye. Why do I have to have such a stupid brother?”

  “I’m not stupid! You’re stupid, you stupid-head!”

  My son had better not follow in my footsteps. He was not going to get anywhere in the greeting card industry with such limited use of adjectives. Good emotional content, though.

  I pried the children apart just before Nathan could land a blow, then unenthusiastically began my usual litany: You two need to separate—blah blah—time out to get control of yourself—blah blah. Some parenting counselor had recommended the technique, which I swear was designed to bore your children into submission.

  Jim, in the meantime, was reading the newspaper as if none of us existed. How annoying.

  With the children momentarily quiet and seated in opposite corners of the room, it occurred to me that this was the perfect opportunity to do some sleuthing. Sheila might still be at her office and, by speaking to her while she was away from her husband, I might be able to get her to tell me what horrendously upsetting thing it was she thought I’d done.

  I swept up my purse. “I’m going to Sheila Lillydale’s office. I should be back in an hour, at the most.”

  “Maybe we both should go,” Jim protested, folding the newspaper.

  “One of us needs to stay and get the kids to bed, and I’ve already got the car keys in my hand.”

  He glared at me, which I pretended not to notice. Just because you revel in the miracle of your love for your spouse doesn’t mean you have to be nice to him all of the time.

  Sheila’s office was on the top floor of a two-story building with wraparound upper and lower decks. The main lobby was locked. Lights were on in an upstairs window. Maybe I could throw pebbles at the window and see if Sheila eventually looked out. As I walked around the building, I spotted an external staircase. I went up and pounded on a door marked, LILLYDALE, ATTNY. P.C. After a half minute of pounding, Sheila came to the door, looking very surprised. She was wearing a long-sleeved blue dress with a floral print that was very flattering on her small, trim figure. She rapidly unlocked the door and leaned out.

  “Hello, Sheila. I know I shouldn’t have barged in unannounced and everything, but your husband said you were here, and I was hoping we could get our misunderstanding worked out once we had a chance to discuss it face-to-face.”

  She hesitated only momentarily, then slowly nodded and held the door for me. She let it close behind me, then locked it. Her lips were fixed in a grim line, but she seemed at ease otherwise. She faced me and frowned. “I was going to call you in the morning, Molly, to apologize. You see, Roger and I had just had a terrible fight about you before we arrived.”

  “A fight about me?” I repeated. Seemingly I’d acquired of late the ability to inspire great emotion—all of it bad—among my neighbors.

  “Why don’t we go sit down in my office?” she asked. She led me through the nondescript waiting room and into a much more lavish area. This room was done in greens and earth tones, with plush wall-to-wall carpeting and oak wainscoting below an elegant wallpaper. There were no pictures hanging, but I eyed her diploma from UCLA. At least, I had to assume it was her diploma, since the name on it read “Sheila Benitez.” Beside it was a second diploma certifying her law degree, this one from the University of California at Berkeley. She gestured at the pair of stuffed brown velveteen chairs that faced her desk. I dropped my purse beside the first one and sat down, surprised at how soft it was. I sank so far into it I half expected to bump my nose on my knees.

  “It’s a shame about Simon Smith,” Sheila said, shutting the oak door. “An officer came here and told me about it a few hours ago.”

  “You haven’t been home?”

  “I’ve been so behind at work; I’ve been here since we left the party.” She slipped behind her enormous black enamel desk and sat down in her equally large desk chair. Now I understood her choice of office furniture; her high perch more than negated our height differential. “Roger says you’re dangerous an
d that I should drop you from my client list.”

  “Dangerous? Me?” I tried to scoot forward on my seat, without much luck. Roger should see me now. No one could pose a physical threat in Sheila’s man-eating chairs.

  She nodded. “He seems to think you killed Helen Raleigh.”

  “He’s wrong. I didn’t ....What makes him think that?”

  “Roger’s point is that we’ve lived next door to the same people for at least three years without incident. Now all of a sudden both Helen Raleigh and Simon Smith are dead, after you argued with them.” She paused and looked down at her hands. “And Roger says you were coming on to him during your encounter at the mall coffee shop.”

  “That’s simply not true.” Inside I was screaming about the injustice of such a wildly incorrect accusation, but I had to be careful not to place myself squarely between husband and wife. “I was...trying to be nice because he seemed so down in the dumps. Maybe he misinterpreted my behavior.”

  Her face was a lovely but emotionless mask as she looked down at me. I couldn’t tolerate being below her line of vision when I knew full well I was telling the truth. I rose, tossed my purse on the chair as a booster, and sat back down. By keeping my back rigid, I was now at her eye level. “Sheila, all I can tell you is I love my husband. I would never have an affair. And I would never kill anyone.”

  I paused, studying her reaction, which was inscrutable. “I came over here to clear the air, but I’ve been on the defensive ever since I walked in the door. Did you do that deliberately?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “No, though I suppose it’s a professional liability.” Sheila leaned on her elbows and gazed directly into my eyes. “I got a call from Joanne a couple of hours ago. She’s terribly upset at you. She wanted me to bring a suit on her behalf against you.”

  “Oh?”

  “You don’t sound surprised.”

  “When your life is going down the drain, you tend not to be surprised by a wet hairball or two. What did you tell her?’