The Gardener

by Michelle DePaepe

  He thought of Stevie. Such youthful energy...such vigor. If the boy did come back, it would be so easy to make his death look like an accident...another drowning in the river...or perhaps an accident in the motorcar.

  He grimaced as he felt the stabbing sharp pain multiply in his heart like the stings of a thousand angry wasps.

  Tonight, perhaps when the moon appeared high in the sky, he would take a long walk and run across a farmer cleaning his tools in a barn. Or, he might stumble across some teenage lovers parked down at the south end of the river. Barring that...there was always the old couple next door. It was a nuisance to have them so near...and he needed to make his formal introduction.

  Chapter 53

  Opal woke that morning laughing hysterically.

  She imagined telling her dilemna to Sheriff Cardale. “You see, Sheriff...I made a mistake. I accidentally used the wrong spell...and brought back the wrong spirit. He’s the man committing all these murders...and if you could just help me find his bones. Bones...you ask? Well, that’s because he’s not really alive. He died about a hundred years ago...and now he’s back and killing people left and right.” In her imaginary conversation, the Sheriff laughed so hard that he had a heart attack and had to be rushed to the hospital. Afterwards, she was run out of town by skeptics bearing torches.

  She was so lost in her miserable thoughts that when the phone rang next to her, she jumped as if two metal skillets had suddenly clanged together beside her head.

  She grasped the receiver with a sweaty palm.

  “Opal...is that you?”

  “Wanda?”

  “Yes...I’ve got news for you.”

  Her heart thumped with excitement. “You found the box?”

  “You’re going to poop a brick when I tell you where I found it. It was right up front at the inn’s reception desk!”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Nope,” Wanda giggled like a teenager. “Crazy, hunh? Ed helped to build this place many years ago, including the reception area. We still used the original old push button cash register until just yesterday. Ed finally agreed to let me pull it out and replace it with a computer. I pulled the front panel off the desk this morning to see if there was another outlet on the floor. When I did, a piece of rotten wood broke, and I saw something shiny way in the back.”

  Opal gasped.

  “There was a secret compartment under there...probably used to hide a cash box years ago. Well, the shiny thing turned out to be a brass lock on an old wooden box, and I really think this might be Crawford’s.”

  “Have you opened it?”

  “No. I’ve been waiting for Ed to go to sleep. He’s snoring like a buzz saw in his bedroom right now. Want to come over? We could sneak into an empty room and do it together.”

  “I’ll be there before you can blink twice.”

  Opal hung up then found a semi-clean dress on the floor and tossed it over her head. Her body shook so hard as she approached her car...that she had to stop for a moment and calm herself.

  A few minutes later, she followed Wanda’s instructions and parked the car on the south side of the inn to avoid going through the lobby. There, on the second floor, in front of Room 102, she saw Wanda leaning over the metal railing. Her grin was hideously mischievous.

  “Geez...that took you five whole minutes. I thought you’d hop on a broom and fly!”

  Opal walked up the staircase as fast as her plump legs would allow. On the top landing, she paused to catch her breath. “I’m a psychic, Wanda...not a card-carrying witch. So...where is it?”

  “Inside,” she said as she motioned towards the door behind her. “Are you ready?”

  “More than you can imagine. Lives may literally depend on what we find in there. You’ve heard about all the murders in town?”

  “Goodness...yes.”

  “I suspect this spirit may be behind them.

  “Ooh,” Wanda squealed. “Frightening! This is better than my daytime soap operas.”

  Opal followed her inside the room with a mood much more dour than her friend’s giddiness.

  After Wanda shut the door behind them and pulled the drapes, she pulled a red metal toolbox out from under one of the double beds. “I borrowed this from my brother. I told him I was going to rearrange some of the picture frames in the rooms. Aren’t I sneaky?”

  Opal began to twitch with anticipation. “Where’s the box?”

  “Right here...” Wanda said as she slid out a large black garbage sack.

  Opal watched as she untied the knot and lifted out a heavy rectangular wood box. It was bolted shut on all sides with the brass lock dangling from the front.

  “Do you think we can get it open without damaging it?”

  “I don’t know. But...if we break it...so what? Who will ever know?”

  “I feel a little bad about this. It’s like we’re prying into a dead man’s secrets.”

  “I thought you said this was a life or death matter.”

  “It is!”

  “We’re just going to take a look. Then, I’ll put everything back together and put it back under the desk where I found it.”

  Opal ran her hands over the smooth wood. Then, she tried to lift it. “Whatever’s in here... it’s sure heavy. I wish I had the power to use my mind to find out what’s in it without us opening it. There’s hundred year-old secrets in here. It’s like breaking into a tomb.”

  “Honey, if you had that kind of psychic ability, we wouldn’t be here.”

  Opal laughed. “You’re right.”

  After a moment of silence and a deep breath from both of them, they began.

  Opal steadied the box while Wanda worked the lock with a screwdriver. After a few minutes of trying, she conceded that they might have to pry it open and risk damaging it.

  Then, Opal peered at the backside. “Hinges...”

  Wanda smiled and got out a tiny screwdriver.

  It took a few minutes to undo all of the screws. When she finished, she lifted the back edge. “I think—”

  They heard a cracking sound as Wanda forced the wood lid up too high and splintered it. “Oops...”

  Both ladies stared wide-eyed at the contents. For a few moments, neither moved and neither spoke.

  Opal felt her heart beating hard against her breast as a feather-light gasp escaped from her lips.

  They were both so excited that they didn’t hear the footsteps outside the door. When the sound of keys at the door shocked them back to reality, Wanda quickly shoved the box back under the bed.

  Chapter 54

  As Georgia drove east towards Kansas City, her mind wandered from Marsha’s tantrum...to her embarrassing run-in with Karl...to her hasty decision to allow Daniel to occupy the house. Then, she circled back to the most painful thought.

  When she had dropped her luggage onto the porch and pulled the front door shut on her grandmother’s house, her heart felt like heavy metal. In the driveway, she had taken one last look, drinking in the fading green trim, the Queen Anne turret, and the windows from the upstairs bedrooms that looked like a pair of soulfully sad eyes.

  The week in Calathia had passed by so quickly, and it felt like she had left with unfinished business.

  When she reached the airport, she returned the rental car and made it to her gate just as the attendant began closing the door to the tarmac.

  When the plane leveled out above the clouds, exhaustion overcame her and her head nodded down onto her chest. She dozed for the first hour of the flight until a brief resurgence of the horrible dream caused her to wake up with a start. The flight attendant gave her a bemused look as she jumped awake, gasping for air. She hoped that she hadn’t talked in her sleep.

  When she arrived at La Guardia, it was a busy Friday evening. After picking up her bag, it took her far longer than it should have to snag a taxi.

  The driver was a young Puerto Rican with blue-tipped hair and a pierced tongue. She held on as he darted in and out of traffic with the deftn
ess of a barracuda. After fastening the seatbelt, she braced herself against the backseat and fished for her cell phone.

  “Hey, Emily...I’m back. Just got on the Queens Expressway. How’s it been going? Any sales?”

  “No. It’s been a pretty quiet week. I sold two oils from Blanca, but we barely cleared a few hundred.”

  “That’s depressing. I’m going to have to pay you in Ramen noodles and foot massages if we don’t make more money soon.”

  “Speaking of that. I’ve got some bad news...”

  Georgia held her breath.

  “I hate to tell you over the phone, but I’m going to have to give my notice. I’ve decided to go back and finish my graduate degree, and I got a job at the university gallery.”

  She sighed. Masquerade had been taking on water lately, and her best rat was abandoning ship. “I’m going to be sorry to lose you. But, thanks for at least giving me some notice.”

  When she hung up, she cursed under her breath and rested her eyes, only opening them every few blocks to take in the blur of red taillights and gauge their progress towards her Soho loft.

  When they arrived, she padded an extra five dollars onto her tip; an appreciative gesture for getting her home safely and not talking her ear off on the way.

  As she shut the cab door, she stopped and looked up at the iron-cast façade of the old warehouse building that had been refurbished into artist’s lofts decades back, although there were few starving artists left in this area that was now the home of upscale shops and boutiques. It was a jolt to return after spending the previous nights in the comforts of Grammie’s Gingerbread House.

  She lugged her suitcase inside and rode the elevator up to the sixth floor. After throwing her load down, she changed into comfortable brown velour pants and matching slippers. Then, she went to the kitchen and popped the cork on a bottle of Chablis. She plopped down on the leather sofa and took tiny mouse sips from her glass as she checked her voicemail.

  With nothing urgent to respond to, she fought off the urge to take a nap and phoned out for Chinese food. Then, she flipped on the switch to her computer. She typed the name, “AlphonsoGiovanni” into the search engine.

  The results included sites listing GiovanniAlphonsoBorelli, a 17th century Italian scientist, a review of a DonGiovanni performance in Cincinnati two years back, and a historical note about a man named GiovanniSforza who was married to LucreziaBorgia.

  After a fruitless half hour, she gave up the search when her dinner arrived.

  Later, she snuggled into bed sometime after midnight with a full stomach and a second glass of wine lulling her into its drowsy spell. But, her mind wouldn’t let go of the funeral, the house, and the strange enigmatic name of Alphonso.

  As she listened to the traffic on the street below, revelers on their way home from trendy nightclubs in Tribeca whooped and hollered as they paused at the stoplight a block away. She put a pillow over her ears. Most nights were more tolerable, but on some weekends, she felt like she was on Bourbon Street during the heyday of Mardi Gras.

  She imagined herself leaning out the window, over the fire escape, throwing the proverbial flowerpot down at the crazy kids in their convertibles and sports cars borrowed from daddy’s garage. Then, she imagined the sirens...the police coming to take her away in her terry cloth robe and slippers.

  Her mind hovered somewhere between consciousness and slumber as the image of a hoard of blue-clad NYPD turned into a single broad-chested blur with a tan uniform and sandy brown hair. Why am I thinking about him? KarlBauer is a thousand miles away, even if he did ask me to dinner. Besides, I’m definitely not looking, she thought as her eyelashes fluttered shut.

  It was 4:12 a.m. when she awoke; her body covered with a slick sheen of sweat, and the sheets twisted in a hard knot between her knees. The streets were quiet, making her panicked rapid breaths seem all the more pronounced. She untangled the bedding and stared at the shadows on the ceiling as she remembered the nightmare.

  Running. Running. The wicked man in the tall hat chasing her through the thick black mud. She couldn’t see his face when she looked back. There was only the long silhouette, a writhing shadow moving over the earth as he stalked her like a crazed animal. She screamed, but the rain drowned out the screeching out of her soul. He came faster. The dark tails of his coat flapped behind him like wings. She tripped over a log and fell face down a few inches from the bank of the river; the rainwater coursed down over her as he leaned toward her mud-soaked face. She looked up, expecting to see the Devil himself. Instead, as the hat tumbled off with a gust of wind, wild long blonde hair tumbled down, framing her sister’s oval face. Her eyes looked as deep and untamed as the raging dark blue river. Reflecting no light from the moon—they were empty like black holes about to kill her by swallowing her up inside. Before she could gurgle ‘why?’, the damp hands with long red-painted talons reached out and clamped around her neck.

  The next thing she knew, she was awake and staring into the tiny beady eyes of a pigeon sitting on the window ledge.

  She shook off the memory of the nightmare that still clung to her like the tickle of cobwebs on bare skin.

  “You’re a poor substitute for Napoleon the Rooster as far as wake up duties are concerned.”

  The bird seemed insulted as he flew off into the morning gloom.

  The sky never brightened that day much beyond that early hazy gray of dawn. But, it was a warm morning as she stepped onto the sidewalk in a prim navy pinstriped pantsuit and sling-back lizard pumps. With the New York Times and the latest copy of The Artist slung under her arm, she walked the three blocks to the Java Dragon for coffee.

  With a hot latte in her hand, she rushed the last two blocks to Masquerade to make it there before she was due to open.

  It turned out to be a slow morning with most of the traffic wandering in being tourists and not serious buyers.

  BarryNielsen phoned and threatened to pull his collection if nothing significant sold soon, and a sculptor stopped by to show off some of his work to some relatives who were visiting.

  The afternoon whittled itself away as she caught up on paying bills and returning calls from artists. The last hour before closing, she found herself daydreaming—wishing for some escape from the humdrum that her life had become.

  But, her mental vacation wasn’t to some island like Bora Bora. Her feet longed to feel the dusty floors in her grandmother’s house again. She imagined padding along the stepping-stones to the gardens. Then, in the vegetable garden, she squished her toes into the silky black earth. She yearned to feel the cool green summer grass and crunch the cake-like clods of earth in the field on the way back to the icy silk waters of the river. But, most of all...her feet wanted to remember the soft fleshiness of the rose petals on that day over thirty years ago that she and Marsha had plucked a couple hundred blossoms and strewn them about in the garden to make a fairy ballroom.

  The ruminations put her in the throes of complex emotions. Would she feel like a failure for throwing in the towel and ending a decade and a half in this grand city? She played devil’s advocate with herself. The gallery is hemorrhaging money...and with few friends, she rarely went out and enjoyed herself. What was there to miss?

  It had been a giant leap to move to New York with her ex-husband as a young bride. It would be another giant leap to come full circle and let her wings take her back home. It’s truly what Grammie wanted. Why else would she have left the house to me?

  By the time she turned her key in the lock of the gallery that evening, her mind was already working on a plan to fulfill her grandmother’s wishes.

  Chapter 55

  When the spirit went to get the house key from Annie and Fred...he knocked and found no one at home. Then, he noticed the note with the attached key taped to a broom. It said that they wouldn’t be back until later that evening and looked forward to meeting him.

  Pity, he thought. He had been looking forward to meeting them as well, but for more selfish and le
ss healthy reasons.

  His fatigue sent him on a walk for an alternative energy source.

  It didn’t take long to stumble upon his victim—a white-bearded bum sleeping next to the railroad tracks using a pile of hay for a bed. When the unconscious hobo died, his body seemed to explode as the essence of its existence left the flesh.

  So much blood.

  It was everywhere. Splattered upon the hay, it glistened in the sunlight like the ruby red juice of cherries.

  The old man’s heart had burst like a balloon. He supposed that it had been weak from years of emotional misery and self-abuse.

  The mess disturbed him, because he knew that the deaths around town were beginning to cause suspicion. More and more, he found windows shut and doors locked as the townspeople kept their guard up.

  But, he told himself to forget about the corpse and the bloody viscera. Hidden amongst the tall prairie grasses in a field, it would all be made quick work of by the coyotes and vultures. Surely, they’d leave little behind save a few fragments of bone before there was a chance of discovery.

  As he followed the train tracks back, he found himself skipping and humming another of his favorite tunes, one that he used to sing as a Bootblack, shining shoes for the privileged gents that he so despised.

  Walking along, he noticed the fresh pink ruddiness and tanned hue on his forearms. After the fresh kill, his skin glowed like the ruddy soft skin of a newborn. He sang louder and took in deep breaths of the musty autumn air, smelling pungent wood burning in fireplaces and the sweetness of pumpkin pie from someone’s oven floating on the wind.

  It felt so good to be alive...

  Sadly, he knew that his vigor wouldn’t last. It seemed the longer he went without re-energizing, the quicker the color drained from his skin. It turned an ashen, sickly pale mushroom shade, and the stabbing pains returned to the wound in his chest.