by Krista Davis
My heart pounded as I opened it. The bag was an expensive brand, made of good leather that lasted for years. In contrast to the outside, the interior was surprisingly clean. I reached in and removed a wallet. The plastic-encased driver’s license inside left no doubt about the owner. “Anne Fleishman,” I whispered. Wolf’s wife.
A shiver shook through me. I closed my eyes and winced, wishing I could turn back time so that I would never have found it.
The implications flicked through my head like a kaleidoscope. No matter how the facts twisted and turned, the presence of Wolf’s wife’s handbag buried in the dirt had to mean she was dead. I couldn’t think of a single innocent reason to bury her purse in the garden. My hands trembled. They held evidence that pointed to Wolf as Anne’s killer.
I placed the bag on the grass, jumped up, tore off my gardening gloves, and threw them on the ground. I knew what I had to do. I knew exactly what I should do. But I didn’t want to. Daisy bounding along next to me, I ran to my car for the cell phone I’d left inside it. My fingers shook so hard I had trouble pressing the digits to call Nina. “I’m at Wolf’s house, and I have a problem.”
“Need a mediator for a lovers’ spat?”
My voice broke. “A big problem.”
“I’ll be right there.”
I walked back to the purse, wishing it would have vanished. If it had been a snake, it wouldn’t have frightened me more. In a way, it was a snake. If I did what I should—if I turned it in to the police—that purse would bite Wolf. Just because I had never known Anne, and I loved Wolf didn’t mean I should hide evidence to protect him. Did it?
I paced the contours of Wolf’s backyard, fretting.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there was a very good reason for burying the purse in the garden. I’d been in shock and hadn’t taken the time to think it through. I sucked in a deep breath. I needed iced tea to cool off. I could go buy some. But I couldn’t take the purse with me. I would contaminate it. Could they get fingerprints off a purse? Off leather? Of course they could. They could take them off almost any surface. But Wolf’s fingerprints wouldn’t mean anything, after all, he’d been married to Anne. Husbands touched their wives’ purses, didn’t they? I felt certain Mars had held my bags for me, or handed them to me, or looked for keys in them.
But he had never buried one in the yard.
Why did her driver’s license and wallet have to be in it? If they hadn’t been in the purse, the bag would be almost meaningless. No one would know for certain to whom it belonged. But her IDs changed everything. If she was alive, she’d surely have taken them with her wherever she went. Wouldn’t she?
I collapsed to the grass, far from the horrible handbag. Daisy licked my face, and in spite of the oppressive heat, I buried my face in her fur.
And that was how Nina found me.
She placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Soph? You okay?”
“No.”
She extended her hand and helped me stand. I led her to the handbag. “It belongs to Wolf’s wife. Her driver’s license is inside.”
Nina’s eyes widened and horror spread over her face. The two of us stood over the handbag, looking down at it like it was a bomb. It was! It was a nightmare wrapped up in good leather.
“You opened it?”
“Of course.”
“Do it again.”
I pulled the gardening gloves on, reached inside the bag, withdrew the wallet, and held it out to her.
Nina screamed. She slapped a hand over her mouth and whispered, “This can’t be happening. I can’t believe it. I was completely convinced that Wolf was innocent.” She gasped and looked toward his house. “Where is he? What if he finds us here?”
“Relax. He’s at work.”
She took a deep breath. “What are you going to do?”
“I think we have to turn it in to the police.”
“Yes. It would be wrong to re-bury it and pretend it never happened.” She looked at me in all earnestness. “Right?”
“I don’t want to turn it in!”
Nina held up her hands, palms toward me. She bit her upper lip. “Let’s think this through. Are you willing to ever be alone with Wolf again now that you’ve found the purse?”
It was a valid question, no matter how much I hated hearing it. “Maybe.” That was partly a lie. Alone with Wolf? I didn’t know how I would react. I feared it would never be the same.
“When he kisses you—what will you be thinking?”
I frowned at her.
“When he wraps his arms around you for a hug, will you be afraid his hands might creep up to your neck and strangle you?”
“Stop that!”
“Well?” She wobbled her head around and gestured aimlessly. “I don’t want Wolf to have killed his wife, either. Soph, we don’t have the power to change his past. If he did it, then I don’t want you going out with him anymore. And I don’t want any other women to suffer his wife’s fate.”
My voice came out much smaller than I’d have liked. “I couldn’t live with the guilt. But what if we’re wrong?”
She opened her mouth and shut it again like a fish out of water.
“Turning the handbag over to the police doesn’t mean we’re accusing him of murder,” I said.
“Right. You’re not even suggesting that Wolf planted the purse there.”
“Exactly. It just happened to be there.”
“No one is making any accusations.”
Daisy barked and we swung around to look at Wolf’s house. Had he come home?
No. But Mona, who had invaded my yard only the day before, chugged toward us, her gait odd and unsteady. “I knew you would find her.” She stared at the bag on the grass. “That’s her purse,” she cried. “I would know it anywhere!” She fell to her knees and hugged the handbag like it was her baby.
“No!” I screeched. “You’re contaminating it. It doesn’t belong to your daughter.”
Mona held it at arm’s length. “Yes, it does. She saved for this bag. Wolf thought it was too expensive, but I came through with a little cash. It’s definitely her purse.”
“Wolf?” The kaleidoscope in my head swirled again. I still held the wallet and looked at the driver’s license photo again. Anne Fleishman had been very attractive, with rich cinnamon hair, and a frightening resemblance to Mona. I knew the answer, but I asked anyway. “I thought you said your daughter’s name was Linda.”
“I couldn’t exactly tell you that I’m Wolf’s mother-in-law, now, could I? I had to lie.”
I stared at her kneeling on the ground with the handbag clutched to her breast. “What if I had agreed to look for her? I would have been chasing after someone who didn’t exist.”
Mona tightened her grip on the handbag. “I was going to wing it. The important thing was that you could get me inside Wolf’s house to search around.”
Her plan made no sense to me. Either she was delusional or, more likely, so desperate that she hadn’t thought anything through.
“What’s that? Anne’s wallet?” Mona’s eyes blazed with fury. She thrust her hand toward me. “Give it!”
Against my better judgment, I handed it over.
Mona whimpered and cried out like a wounded animal. “My baby! He killed my baby!”
Tucking the wallet inside the bag, Mona staggered to her feet. “He’s not home. This is our chance to go inside and look for clues.”
“I think we can officially scrap the business about no accusations,” said Nina.
My heart sank. We were kidding ourselves to wish for even one moment that Wolf wouldn’t become the prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance. Once the handbag was in the hands of the police, everything would change. But I had no choice. Sometimes one had to do the right thing, even if it led to disastrous consequences.
I struggled to sort my mixed feelings. The last thing in the world that I wanted to do was hurt Wolf. Yet, if he’d killed his wife, the police had to know. This wasn’t something that coul
d be overlooked—the handbag was too incriminating. My feelings for Wolf were something I had to deal with. They couldn’t impact my actions, though I did wish I could have a redo of the entire rotten day. Who would have ever thought the notion of planting a rose in Wolf’s backyard would lead to this?
“Sophie! Please. There’s no telling when Wolf will return.” Mona stumbled toward the house, still clutching Anne’s handbag.
CHAPTER NINE
Dear Natasha,
I have a brand-new house and not even one blade of grass. I don’t know where to start! Everything has to be done!
—Too Much to Do in Plantersville, Texas
Dear Too Much to Do,
Start with a plan. Draw a sketch of your property and plan your gardens. Begin with trees and foundation plantings. Layer other plants in, large to small. Use a color wheel to be sure you’re planting complementary colors. Then sketch a three-dimensional view from all sides. It’s crucial to do this for each of the four seasons. Now you’re ready to dig!
—Natasha
I ran after Mona. “We’re not going inside Wolf’s house.”
“We have to.”
Nina caught up to us. “How would you like it if someone snooped around your house?”
Mona stopped walking. “How would you feel if you didn’t know where your daughter was?”
I could understand Mona’s motivation. If I were in her shoes, I would move heaven and earth to find any tiny bit of information that might lead to my daughter. But I wasn’t about to let her into Wolf’s house, even though I knew where the spare key was hidden. If Wolf had killed Anne, it would be highly unlikely that the murder weapon would be under the mattress all these years later. Besides, in the unlikely case that there was some sort of evidence in the house, if we entered, we might disturb it. “I’m sorry, Mona. Two things are clear to me. Whether I want to or not, I have to report the purse to the cops. And whether you like it or not, we are not going into Wolf’s house to snoop.”
She lifted her right hand to her forehead. “The heat. I feel dizzy.”
Nina grabbed Mona’s elbow and ushered her to Wolf’s back deck, where she helped her sink onto a teak patio chair.
It was hot. No doubt about that. Yet I had a feeling Mona’s dizzy spell had more to do with her desire to get inside Wolf’s house. She certainly hadn’t loosened her grip on Anne’s handbag.
“Do you need an ambulance?” I asked.
“Good gracious, no. A glass of iced tea and an air-conditioned room would do nicely.”
My guess had been right on target. “If you’ll give me your keys, I’d be happy to start up the air conditioning in your car for you.” Did that sound as mean as it felt?
Nina gaped at me like I’d lost my mind.
“She’s faking! Can’t you see that?”
The words were barely out of my mouth when Mona slid off the chair and collapsed in a heap on the deck. I dashed to her side. She still hadn’t lost her talon hold on Anne’s purse. I placed my finger over my lips in a signal to Nina to not speak. Nina gripped her head with her hands, like a mime who thought I had gone nuts. Sure enough, in a matter of seconds Mona opened one eye and looked up at us.
While Nina helped her into the chair again, I dialed Wolf’s number on my phone. I might have to report the handbag to the police, but I could at least let him know about it so he wouldn’t be blindsided. After all, the Wolf I knew wouldn’t have murdered his wife. Couldn’t have. Then why was doubt pounding at me like a jackhammer?
Although I hadn’t intended to, I walked away from Mona when he answered. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him in front of her. “Wolf, we have a little problem. I brought over a rose to plant in your yard, and when I dug in your flower bed”—I paused, trying to read his reaction, which was silly, because he didn’t say anything—“I found Anne’s handbag.”
He didn’t speak for what seemed a very long time. When he did, it was terse. “I’ll be right there.”
Although I’d been out of earshot, Mona screamed at me. “Did you call Wolf? Are you insane? He’ll leave. He’ll skip town!”
If she was right, it would bring everything to a head immediately. I decided to give him half an hour. If he bolted, like Mona thought he would, thirty minutes wouldn’t give him enough time to leave the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area. I supposed I had put him on notice, though. The minutes ticked by painfully.
He arrived ten minutes later. I hurried out to the driveway to warn him about Mona’s presence.
He bent to plant a kiss on my cheek. “What’s this about Anne?”
I explained what had happened.
“Where is the handbag?” he asked.
“Out back.” Before I could tell him about Mona, he loped around the house.
I jogged after him. He stopped short when he saw Mona. I had to give him credit, though. He didn’t fly off the handle or act angry.
“Hello, Mona,” he said. “I didn’t know you were in town. Is that the bag Sophie found?”
I couldn’t help noticing that Wolf didn’t seem perturbed by Mona’s presence, but she glowered at him. He pulled out gloves and slipped them onto his hands. For a moment, I thought she might not give him the bag, but she relented.
He examined it thoroughly. I watched his expression for signs of panic. He appeared grim and deadly serious but said nothing until he set it on the table. “Show me where you found it.”
We left Mona sitting on the deck, but Nina and Daisy crossed the expanse of lawn with us.
Wolf studied the hole in silence, then glanced at the dead rosebush, which lay on the grass, tipped over. Instead of expressing anger or annoyance or worry, his jaw tightened and he stared into the trees. His Adam’s apple bobbed a couple of times, and I thought he might be choking back tears.
I wrapped an arm around his waist but he was stiff as a corpse toward me. He pulled out his phone, walked a few steps away, and made a call, explaining the situation briefly and ending with, “We’ll wait for him.”
Nina’s wide eyes met mine. We’d been so worried about turning him in, and now it appeared he’d done that dirty work for us.
He took a deep breath. “You always think they’ll come home.” He bit his upper lip and winced. “After all this time, I still thought I would come home from work one day and find her on the porch with a frosty root beer in her hand. Then something like this happens, and it grabs you in the pit of your stomach, because you know it was just wishful thinking, and she’s never coming back.”
I wanted to be kind, to soothe him in some way, but instinct told me this wasn’t the time, and I wasn’t the right person.
Wolf walked away from us. He crossed the yard, his head bowed.
Nina peered at me with a questioning look. I shook my head at her. He deserved to deal with his grief privately.
His solitude didn’t last long. Detective Kenner lunged around the side of the house, his long legs moving so fast that the uniformed cop with him had to run to keep up. Wolf strode across the grass to meet them.
Kenner had made no secret of his romantic interest in me, but with his sour attitude, he ought to look for someone more like Roscoe’s housekeeper, Violet. His sunken cheeks and weathered skin gave him a haggard appearance. As far as I could tell, he never slept. He seemed to turn up everywhere I went, which I found a bit disconcerting.
Mona miraculously recovered from her fainting spells and sped out to them.
When Nina and I reached them, Wolf was explaining that the evidence had been handled by Mona, Nina, and me.
“Au contraire, my friends,” cried Nina. “I have not touched anything. And Sophie wore garden gloves when she handled it.”
“I suppose your fingerprints are all over it?” Wolf asked Mona. For the first time since he arrived, I heard a tinge of anger in his tone.
She smiled pleasantly. “Of course. I had to find out if it was Anne’s.”
Kenner motioned to me. “Let’s see where you found it.”
<
br /> For what seemed like the hundredth time, I crossed the lawn and told my short story.
Daisy trotted along with us, keeping a sharp hound eye on Kenner. For some reason, she had never liked him. When we stopped at the site of the hole, she sat down and lifted her lip at him. She didn’t growl, but her skin sagged loosely, so when she snarled, she made quite a frightening face.
Kenner took a step back, away from Daisy. “Did you call Mona?” he asked.
It had all happened so fast that I hadn’t given Mona’s fortuitous arrival much thought. “No. Now that you mention it, she just showed up.”
“What did she do when she saw it?”
“She fell to her knees and clutched it to her like a baby.”
“So she knew what it was right away?”
Why this line of questioning about Mona? I thought back. “Yes, she knew instantly… or she acted like she did. She looked inside it, of course, but she immediately recognized that it belonged to Anne.”
Kenner wrote something on the back of a business card and handed it to me. “If you need anything, that’s my cell number.”
“Thanks.” Kenner was the last person I would call, but it would hurt him to know that. I tucked his card into my pocket and started to walk back to the others.
Kenner caught my elbow, causing Daisy to growl at him. “Sophie, be careful.”
That sent a new shudder along my arms. In spite of the heat, little goose bumps popped up.
Kenner conferred with the uniformed officer, who had bagged the purse. The words “Tape it from the bench all the way across the rear garden” hit me like a punch in the stomach.
Wolf had been so calm that I’d begun to think finding Anne’s purse wasn’t a big deal. But if they were cordoning off the back of Wolf’s lot, it was the alarming development I had feared.
I wanted to apologize to Wolf, but my original concerns about his involvement in Anne’s disappearance flooded back to me like a tidal wave, and I didn’t know what to say or do. There wasn’t any protocol that I knew of for a situation like this. “I guess I’ll get going. You, too, Nina?” I asked. When I pulled my car keys out of my pocket, Kenner’s business card fluttered to the ground.
