Evidence in the Echinacea

by Dale Mayer

  She sighed and called her. “I don’t know why,” she said, when Penny answered, “but I’m looking at my echinacea, and the echinacea plants by your corner fence came to mind. You really should move them into the backyard garden, into one of those places where I took out some plants,” she said. “The current location is terrible.”

  “I put that there to help fill a spot George used to bury garbage in. I put in a whole pile of potting soil and put those plants there just to clean it up a bit,” Penny said, laughing. “Now you want me to move them?”

  “They don’t get enough sun, and the soil is really poor, and such a lovely plant will give the rest of your garden a lot of bright color,” Doreen argued. “If you plant them along the empty patches of the back wall, I’m sure the echinacea would do much better.”

  “Let me put it this way,” Penny said. “If you want to come and move it, then do so. I don’t have any intention of moving it, and I can’t afford to pay you to move it.”

  “Fine,” Doreen said, laughing. “I’ll think about it, see how much it bugs me.”

  “You do that,” Penny said, chuckling. “Feel free any time. I’m sure anybody looking at the house won’t even notice.”

  “Have you got showings lined up yet?”

  “Gosh, no,” Penny said. “The listing hasn’t even gone live. They did take all the pictures, but I haven’t seen any of them. They’re supposed to send them to me when they’ve got the listing ready.”

  “You’d think they’d have been on it a little faster.”

  “Apparently it also involves the real estate board, who gets sent everything that gets posted, but it’s not like Kelowna has its own posting service. It’s all out of Vancouver, so they take in all the Vancouver listings and then everybody else at the same time. They did say they thought it would go live on Saturday.”

  “So, if I move that bed of echinacea,” Doreen said, “it should be today.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “but it’s really not that big a deal, is it?”

  “No, it’ll just look better,” Doreen said. “I’m over at Millicent’s working on her garden today. I’ll see how I feel afterward.”

  “Good enough. I’ll be gone most of the day anyway. A girlfriend and I are going up to Vernon for the day.”

  “Okay, good. I was thinking I might pick up a few things out of your garage while I’m there.”

  “Great. Bring your car, load it up, move the plants, and carry on,” Penny said, then hung up.

  “Sounds good to me,” Doreen said to the animals. “I should have been taking stuff back every time, but I walked to Penny’s, so it’s not like I could carry much.” And she could hardly take away stuff she might need for Penny’s project, like the wheelbarrow. She herself could use a new one. She had one, but it was pretty ancient. The tire was more flat than full of air. It was frustrating in a way. But first food—for her and her family—then to Millicent’s, and afterward Doreen would drive over to Penny’s and take a look. In her mind Doreen didn’t think moving the echinacea would be that big a deal, but she also knew it could very easily become a big deal, depending on the ground at that site. It was also hard to imagine why George would have dumped all his burned garbage into that pile, and what could he possibly want to burn anyway that the city wouldn’t pick up as is, in the weekly trash run?

  On that note, Doreen heard the coffeepot beep that it was done dripping. She grabbed a cup and then grabbed George’s journal and sat outside, letting the animals wander.

  She flipped through the beginning of the journal and read an awful lot of dark thoughts. Maybe George hadn’t been all that healthy mentally throughout the years. A lot of thoughts were about his missing brother, worrying that maybe it was George’s fault and that his own actions had led to somebody terrorizing his brother. That appeared to be George’s main theme. But Doreen didn’t understand how that could possibly be. George, so far, didn’t explain who was involved or what actions he could possibly have taken that would have affected somebody else.

  He did make a notation. Helped at the church bazaar. Surely I’m building brownie points to help offset the negative points. She frowned at that, turned down the corner of that journal page, so she could refer back to it, and read on.

  She found so much more of the same, as if trying to counteract a bad deed. He did mention Penny many times but always in a good light. The journal seemed to be spottier in the last five years. There were a couple dated entries but not many. Nothing was consistent.

  Checking her watch, she was running out of time. She needed to get to Millicent’s before nine a.m., so she could get the work done before noon, particularly if she wanted to get to Penny’s. And, of course, Doreen had yet more stuff to take to Wendy’s.

  She felt like her life was crazy busy all the time, yet she knew she needed to get stuff off her plate so she could properly tackle the garage and the basement with her full focus. Resolved, she went inside and had toast and peanut butter, and then filled her travel mug and walked with the animals toward Millicent’s. The journal was always in the back of her mind. George appeared to be a strongly religious man who had loved his brother dearly. So many of his entries were about how his heart ached for what could have happened to Johnny. It didn’t appear George believed at any time that Johnny could have walked away. George was sure his brother would have contacted him if he could have.

  As she walked into Millicent’s back garden, she held the gate open long enough for Goliath to come racing through. Thaddeus had walked the whole way and looked weary. She scooped him up into her arms and perched him on one of the rocks near where she would be working. And then, grabbing her gloves, hoping Millicent wouldn’t be disturbed by her gardening, Doreen went to work weeding the backyard. She needed to spend time in the front yard too, but she’d spend an hour here and an hour there, and hopefully that would be enough to keep everything from getting any rougher looking.

  By the time she was done in the back, her muscles were aching again. She moved the wheelbarrow around to the front, and there she found Millicent having a cup of tea. She was surprised at that because normally Millicent was friendly and enjoyed talking with her. But Millicent looked at Doreen in surprise and said, “My goodness, have you been in the back this whole time?”

  Doreen smiled. “Just for the last hour.”

  Millicent nodded. “I came out front this morning, for whatever reason. I just wanted to sit out here today.” She held up her carafe with her tea and said, “And I’ve probably been sitting here the whole time you’ve been out back.”

  Doreen chuckled. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m just weeding your garden.” She moved to the front bed that was prominently displayed from the street side and cleaned up the weeds encroaching along the edge. With that cleaned up, she moved to the next set of garden beds.

  “You do work hard, don’t you?” Millicent said in admiration. “It’s nice to see somebody just get out there, work, and not fuss about it.”

  “Can’t afford to fuss,” Doreen said. “These weeds are waiting for that opportunity to jump up, and, when you’re busy talking, they grow into ten weeds.”

  “Isn’t that the truth?” Millicent said. She sounded tired.

  Doreen cast her a sideways look, checking her color. “Are you okay?” she asked casually.

  “I’m fine,” Millicent said. “Just a little tired. There’s been enough excitement in this town to last me a lifetime. I don’t know how you young ones can handle it.”

  “Sorry,” Doreen said. “I didn’t want to create such chaos.”

  “I’m not sure you had a choice, my dear. And I’m certainly grateful to you for bringing out all these nasty specimens, these vipers in our bosom here. If you find any more,” she said, “I hope you purge them as well.”

  “I’m working on one right now,” Doreen said. “I’m just not sure if it’s a wild goose chase.”

  “Oh my.” Millicent looked at her in surprise. “Another one already?”<
br />
  Doreen winced at that. “Well, it started from the last one …”

  “Well, you probably don’t want to talk about it yet.”

  “Exactly,” Doreen said, chuckling. She stared at the lamb’s quarters. “You do have a lot of this weed, don’t you?”

  “I do,” Millicent said. “I know you can eat those, but I never really took a fancy to them.”

  “True enough. You can eat dandelions too,” Doreen said with a chuckle. “That doesn’t mean it’s my favorite salad green.”

  “An amazing amount of stuff in a normal garden is dangerous,” Millicent said. “And nobody ever seems to know.”

  “That’s because, most of the time, it’s not dangerous, unless you take an awful lot of it or you make a heavy distillation.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “I don’t know how many years ago it was—quite a few though—that there was a discussion about some of the more dangerous plants. I think I have foxglove in the backyard.”

  “You do,” Doreen said cheerfully. “But you know? In the right hands, that’s a modern miracle medicine. In the wrong hands, of course, it can cause all kinds of trouble.”

  “Isn’t that the truth? But then some of the most common plants are that way too.”

  Doreen nodded and said, “Yes, exactly, like the hydrangea.”

  “Really?” Millicent asked. “I heard somebody say that to me one time. We were doing a little ladies’ club a while back, people coming together with their gardening ideas. I can’t remember who it was who brought up poisonous plants. It might even have been Nan.”

  Chapter 25

  Friday Midmorning …

  That made Doreen do a double take; then she chuckled. “Oh, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Nan does have a wide and varied grasp of many subjects.”

  “I think she said she had quite a few different plants, almost like a garden of death.” Just then Millicent clapped her hands. “That’s what it was. There had been a documentary on the Garden of Death out of England. It was fascinating. We talked about it for quite a while.”

  Doreen had certainly heard of the garden. “I can’t imagine a garden where you have to suit up and be so careful that you don’t end up accidentally killing yourself by going to work each day.”

  “It sounded fascinating though,” Millicent said. “Just imagine the information you could find there.”

  “True enough,” Doreen said. But, in her mind, all she could think about were the opportunities to cause harm.

  “Of course, with the change in modern medicine and forensics,” she said, “our forensics are doing much better at catching poisoners.”

  “I don’t know,” Doreen said. “Some of the oldies but goodies are still the best bet. Some of them dissolve in your bloodstream very quickly. A couple drugs are like that too.”

  “That’s fascinating,” Millicent said. “I wonder why the police don’t take courses on stuff like that.”

  “Not sure it’s for the police as much as it’s for the coroners,” Doreen said. “Coroners and pathologists, I guess. And I imagine they do keep up with these drugs.”

  “As long as nobody is poisoning anybody around here, we’re all good.” There was an awkward silence, and she said, “Nobody is, are they?”

  Doreen looked at her, startled, her hands full of weeds. “Nobody is what?”

  “Poisoning anybody?”

  She understood the question; she just didn’t understand why Millicent was asking her. “As far as I know,” Doreen said carefully, “no.”

  Millicent sat back with a sigh of relief. “That’s good,” she said. “I know poison is considered a woman’s trick, but I think, in this day and age, anybody can get away with it.”

  “They might try,” Doreen said, “but that doesn’t mean it’s always successful.”

  “No,” Millicent said. “A gunshot to the head is much better.”

  Doreen chuckled. “Speaking of that, I didn’t realize Penny’s father had been murdered, and it’s still a cold case. It’s sad that her father and her brother-in-law were both cold cases.”

  “At least her brother wasn’t,” Millicent said. “They knew who caused his death, and he paid for it.”

  “Her father, Randy, yes,” Doreen said. “I’ve learned a lot about her family over this last case.”

  “Of course you have,” Millicent said. “You do all kinds of research to find out this stuff, don’t you?”

  Doreen nodded. But the actual fact was she’d found this out after they had discovered what had happened to Johnny. “The thing is, one can never really understand what went on so long ago because it’s hard to get enough information. You know with these cold cases, some of the files are pretty darn small. Doesn’t give me a whole lot to go on.”

  “I imagine that’s true,” Millicent said. “We didn’t have computers. We didn’t have the internet. We didn’t have emails. We didn’t have the forensics like we do now. There was no DNA testing.” She just shook her head. “That’s depressing. People got away with all kinds of bad things back then.”

  “They did,” Doreen said, yet a smile took over her face. “But that doesn’t mean they’re continuing to do so.”

  “Not with you around,” Millicent said. “I’m really happy you’re here cleaning up the town.”

  “Well, not everyone is,” Doreen said. “When you think about it, it’s been a rough month.”

  “Not for you, I hope,” she said. “For everyone else, yes. It’s just amazing how many cases you’ve closed.”

  At that, Doreen didn’t say anything. What she really wanted to know was that none of the thoughts in her mind were correct when it came to Penny. The last thing Doreen wanted was to consider that her friend was responsible for her husband’s death. And yet, that whole idea wouldn’t leave her alone.

  She finished up the weeding and then slowly straightened. “I’m a little over time, but I started a tad late. It’s eleven-twenty now,” she said, rotating her shoulders and loosening out her arms. “I’ll take these weeds to the backyard and put away the wheelbarrow. If you want me to work on any particular area next week, just let me know.”

  “I will,” Millicent said. “You go on home now. You’ve done lots of work, and it looks wonderful.” So much admiration filled Millicent’s voice that Doreen believed the sentiment was heartfelt.

  She felt pretty good by the time she loaded up the wheelbarrow to take out back, with Thaddeus riding on top of the pile of weeds. Millicent was one of few people who still had a compost bin. Thaddeus was now on her shoulder, so Doreen dumped the weeds, and then she called the other two, and they headed home via the creek. It was nice to get that much work done. Now her day was more or less her own, if anything in that house of Nan’s was her own. It was such a nightmare. Still, with the living room and dining room and her bedroom cleaned out, that was something.

  She hadn’t heard back from Scott Rosten on the tallboy she’d found in the basement. Once home she made herself a fresh pot of coffee and emailed him again. In the subject line she wrote I didn’t hear from you about this.

  When her phone rang twenty minutes later she didn’t think anything of it. She’d been having coffee and writing out a grocery list. It was a very excited Scott. “I didn’t get the original email. Is that really what I think it is?”

  “I think so,” she said. “It’s in the basement.”

  “Oh my,” he said. “You sent me a couple other pictures, and it looks like the furniture is stacked almost from floor to ceiling.”

  “The garage is full too,” she said, “but that dresser looked to be part of the same set.”

  “We definitely should have a look,” Scott said. “And it is Friday again.”

  “I know, and you were just here on Tuesday. I should have contacted you before you left town, but I couldn’t even get into the basement at first.”

  He chuckled. “That’s all right. We’ve still got people unpacking and assessing your pieces. It’s not like this i
s a done deal yet.”

  “No,” she said, “but, if having this piece helps, well …”

  “If it’s part of the same set, it would be an amazing find,” he said, “and that would just help cement you getting the maximum price possible.”

  “Which, you know,” she said, “I really need.”

  He chuckled. “So it’s noon on Friday. I don’t think I can get there until tomorrow morning, maybe tomorrow afternoon.”

  She crowed in delight. “Can you come that fast?”

  “I think we should,” he said. “I want to know if that’s the last piece, so it won’t be a long visit, but hopefully we can take a few minutes and see what else you might have.”

  “In order to do that, I must empty out some of the garage, so we can move some of the pieces up from the basement.”

  She tried to explain the layout of where everything was jumbled together, and he just kept exclaiming, “That’s crazy. The more pieces I can see clearly, the easier it’ll be for me to let you know what has any value and what doesn’t.”

  “Right,” Doreen said. “That’s what I was thinking. I do have somebody helping me in the morning. Maybe we can at least get a path for you or some of this stuff cleaned out.”

  “Okay. I’ll confirm my arrival time, but I should be able to come in around noon tomorrow.”

  She hung up and sent Mack a text. Scott can come back tomorrow at noon, but he needs access to the basement stuff.

  The response that came back made her laugh. Sounds like we might need more than just me to move furniture then. We should probably haul everything out of that garage, so we can open up the stairs. Not sure I can do that on my own.