How Does Your Garden Grow

by April Hill

  CHAPTER SIX

  "Those are all yours?" Adam asked when she came into the kitchen the next morning. He was at the stove, doing something, and indicated with a wave of his hand the collection of cats that sat here and there around the small kitchen.

  Beth sighed. "I suppose so. I don’t go out and look for them, though, or buy them. They all just seem to find their way here. There are six at this point, maybe seven. One of them is very secretive. I think he may be visiting the country on an expired visa or something. Do you think the word is out on the street that I'm an easy touch?"

  "You may as well put a sign on the door " he said. "Midnight Mission for Cats."

  "They always seem grateful, though."

  "Yeah, I stepped in a sample of that gratitude in the hallway."

  "Oh, God, I'm sorry. I've been so…okay, let's just call it distracted, for the last couple of days. They get upset when their boxes aren’t clean. I need to change the…"

  He turned around, grinning. "Don’t worry. I've already got it covered."

  Beth glanced at the neat row of litter boxes in the small alcove off the kitchen. Each of them had been cleaned and filled to the top with fresh cat litter. "Thank you."

  "No problem. I know the drill. My daughter, Amy, has the same stray cat kink. I'll bet I've paid more vet bills over the years than the San Diego Zoo."

  "So, you like cats?"

  He chuckled. "I'm not sure. I've never had the luxury of deciding about it, one way or the other. Your only kid brings home stray cats, you have cats." He nodded to a line of paper plates on the floor. "Everybody's been fed. Except the black one. He bit me twice and left a six-inch scratch on my arm. I don't think he likes what's on the menu—or cops, either."

  "Don't take it personally. She doesn’t like anyone. It’s a good thing I don't have… you know, like the Czar of Russia had? Not the gorgeous one with the beard who looked like George the Fifth or Sixth or Whatever, but his son. Oh, come on; you know what I mean. Where when you get cut, you can't stop bleeding? Remember the old movie, Anastasia, with Yul Brynner and…"

  "Are you talking about hemophilia?" he asked finally, following her garbled clues.

  "That's it."

  "Did anyone ever tell you you're sometimes a little hard to follow?" he asked, smiling.

  Beth sighed. "All the time. I think it’s because I talk fast. Faster than my brain works, that's for sure." She opened a bottom cupboard and looked inside. "What did you feed them?"

  "I found some cans of tuna on the bottom shelf."

  "Well, I hope they enjoyed your generosity, Saint Francis. Those six cans of tuna were supposed to be my dinner for the next week. Eighty-nine cents a can—on sale. This is theirs." She held up one of several smaller cans. "You're very hard on a working girl's budget. Of course, I may not be working at all, after today. I just called in sick, and they didn't sound very happy about it."

  "I'm sorry. Looks like I'm a bad influence, and I'm sorry about the tuna. Maybe they'll return the favor and share theirs, until payday."

  "No thanks, I can always afford to take off a couple of pounds."

  He drew her into his arms. "Funny, but I didn't notice that."

  Beth blushed. "Thank you, but I do feel bad, falling asleep again, after the last…and about leaving you to take care of the cats, of course." When he turned back to the stove, she yawned. "I don't know why I'm so tired."

  He went back to what he'd been doing, with his back to her. "I can give you a detailed rundown, if you want," he said, and Beth blushed a shade deeper.

  "What are you doing now?" she asked, coming closer to peek around him.

  "Trying to make lunch."

  She laughed. "Using what for food?"

  "Yeah, I noticed that the fridge was a little bare. And the bread that's left has blue spots on it. Looks like we're having hot dogs. No buns. No mustard."

  "I'm not what you might call a domestic goddess. And I'd be wary of those hot dogs, if I were you."

  "I was going to chance it, but of you’d rather, we can get dressed and go out for lunch."

  "Now?" Beth asked, shyly.

  He smiled and turned off the burner. "I was thinking a little later."

  "So, maybe a late lunch?"

  He leaned down to kiss her. "Let's make it an early dinner. Maybe not even that early. We’ll play it by ear."

  * * * * *

  When Beth woke up again, it was almost dark, and Adam was nowhere in sight. She crawled out of bed, pulled on an oversized T-shirt and went downstairs. Through the small window in the kitchen door, she saw him standing in the backyard, looking toward the house. Curious, she went out to join him.

  "What are you doing?" she asked.

  "Turn around," he said quietly. "Not too fast, just very casually. And put your arm around my waist."

  "Happily. But why out here?"

  "Kruger's looking out his bathroom window, watching us."

  She shrugged. "Big deal. I see the sonuvabitch all the time. And when I'm out in the yard—which isn't often—he sees me, too. It makes my flesh crawl when I know he's looking over this way, but there's not much I can do about it."

  "I didn't mean like that. He's been watching me through a crack in the blinds since I came outside."

  "Why did you come outside?" she asked sweetly. "Did you lose interest?"

  He grinned. "Hey, it wasn't me who lost interest. You fell asleep, and when I tried to wake you up, you pulled the covers over your head and dozed off again. There are rules about what a nice guy can and can't do in situations like that. Besides, I figured you’d earned the rest."

  She slipped her arms around his waist, and placed a kiss on his bare chest. "I'm wide awake now, and very well rested, in case you’re still interested."

  "I'm still interested. You know what I noticed earlier, while you were still asleep?"

  "The little birthmark on my…?"

  "Nope. I'd already found that. It's adorable. I came out to get some air, and walked around the house a couple of times. The front of your house is different than the back."

  "Hence the terms, 'front' and 'back'," she said, brightly. "You wouldn't be stalling about coming back to bed, would you?"

  "No, I wouldn't. Go take a cold shower, or stand there for a minute and pay attention. The two basement windows at the front of the house are real, with glass panes you can look through. But the two windows at the back are fake. Dummies."

  "Why would someone want a fake basement window?"

  "Good question."

  "I've got a better question," she said. "Why is Kruger watching us?"

  "I'm not sure, but I think he's worried about something."

  "What's he got to worry about? He's probably got health insurance and four tires on his car that still have tread on them. I've got a house with fake windows and a man who's more interested in them he is in me."

  Adam shook his head. "Would you please shut up and get serious for a minute?"

  She sighed. "Will you come back to bed, then?"

  "I've been meaning to ask you something."

  "Yes," she said. "The answer is definitely yes.

  "I haven't asked the question yet," he said irritably.

  "Doesn't matter. The answer will still be yes." She giggled. "After last night, I'll never deny you anything. Not ever."

  Adam rolled his eyes. "Thank you. Then how about giving me a hand cutting a few nice, sturdy switches? Good, supple ones, with those little nubs on them that leave…"

  "Never mind, " she grumbled. "What happened to your sense of humor?"

  "See if you can tell if he's still there," he said. "Pretend to drop something, and try to get a quick look as you stand back up."

  "That's pretty lame. He’ll know what I'm doing."

  "He already knows. Or thinks he knows. I just want him to sweat a little."

  "Okay, I'm confused," she said. "What is it he thinks he knows?"

  "He thinks we may have figured out what he's been doing."
r />   "Of course!" she cried. "Like in that movie."

  "Like in what movie?"

  "You remember the one I mean. The teenaged thing. 'I Know What You Did Last Summer'."

  "I didn't see it. Go back inside now. It's getting too dark. He'll stop watching, now."

  "I don't want to go inside."

  He chuckled. "What happened to that promise you just made to never deny me anything?"

  "I'm rethinking my promise," she pouted.

  When they were back inside, McCann paused for a moment at the sink and picked up a bar of soap. "Have you ever had your mouth washed out with soap?" he asked affably. "I hear that's what happens to little girls who lie, or make promises they don't plan to keep. They can get spanked, too, I understand. Bare-assed, and bent over the bathtub. With a big plastic bath brush like the one I noticed upstairs in the bathroom."

  "Screw you."

  McCann laughed. "What did they do in the convent when you swore like that?"

  "I didn't. Not where anyone could hear me, anyway. All that's new. My new persona." She laughed. "More like my old persona, actually. The one I resumed after taking off the nun costume. I hate to admit this, but one of hardest things for me as a nun was not being able to use the 'F' word when I got mad. Of course, you weren't even supposed to get mad. I'm afraid I wasn't a very good nun," she said, morosely.

  He chuckled. "Well, now, that's a surprise."

  As they started up the stairs to the bedroom, Beth stopped suddenly and turned to face him.

  "I did my best, Adam. I really did, but I thought it would be like the old movies I loved so much. The ones with Loretta Young or Audrey Hepburn in The Nun's Story. I wanted not to be unhappy and to put away the real world and be serene and at peace, and I thought being there would give me that. But finally, I just couldn't do it any more. Not the way I wanted to. Not like the other sisters did. And if I couldn't be a good nun—the kind of nun I had always wanted to be—I guess I just didn't see the point. People always think it's the silence, or the loneliness, or maybe the poverty. But with me, the hardest part was the constant, never-ending discipline. Following the rules." She sighed. "And there were so many rules. Rules about when you could talk, and when you could sleep, and what you could think. Rules that were impossible to follow, and that sometimes didn't seem to make any sense."

  "You not liking rules—another big surprise," he said, but his tone was serious, this time. "Are you sorry you left?" he asked, softly.

  She shook her head. "Not now. I was sorry. For a long time after I left, I felt like a failure. And I was. I had failed at what I had wanted to do since I was a little girl. Failed miserably. And after failing so completely, I didn't see any future for myself—anywhere."

  "And now?"

  She hesitated. "I don't want to scare you, Adam."

  "Scare me?"

  "By saying things too soon. By making you nervous. By having you think I'm trying to….push things."

  "I'm in love with you, Beth," he said softly.

  "You can't know that for sure," she murmured. "Not this soon."

  "Yes, I can. I think I knew it the first night I met you."

  "Why? I was awful. Beyond awful. Someone should have washed my mouth out with soap."

  "You were scared," he said. "And you had a right to be, with none of us paying attention. Me included." He took her in his arms and kissed her, then grinned. "But I'll keep that in mind—about the soap."

  "What were you going to tell me about Kruger?" she asked, suddenly remembering.

  "Let me ask you a question, first," he said quietly. "When was the last time you went down to your basement?"

  McCann never got an answer to his question about the basement, because at that exact moment his cell phone rang. Sixty seconds later, he was dressed, fully armed, and pulling on his jacket. He paused for a moment in the hallway to kiss her goodbye.

  "I'll be back as soon as I can," he said. "By morning, unless it gets complicated. Ed's already on his way over. We have to drive up to Norwood County, to the sheriff's station."

  "What about?" she asked.

  "Are you currently an employee of the Norwood Sheriff's Department?"

  "No," she said sullenly, "but if this has anything to do with Kruger…"

  "It doesn't, so just butt out and wait here for me. We'll talk when I get back. In the morning."

  A less astute amateur detective would probably have missed the very small pause before Lieutenant McCann answered, but his split-second hesitation put up a bright red flag in Beth's head and a flurry of questions.

  "Why don’t I come along?" she asked. "I won't be any trouble, I promise. I'll just sit in the back seat and…"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Are we going to go through this again?" he asked wearily. "Same answer as before. Because I said so."

  "And if I argue the point," she pouted, "the same thing will happen, right?"

  He grinned. "Bright girl. I think we might be making progress. Stay home, lock both doors and stay inside the house."

  "Why?"

  "Because I said so. Sound familiar?"

  "You know something, don't you?" she asked, suspiciously. "Something you're not telling me. And what's the big deal about the basement? I don’t go down there because it smells bad and probably has a lot of creepy-crawlies that I'd rather not know about. Live and let live is my motto."

  "Later. Inside, doors locked. Set one foot outside and I come back here and set your ass on fire. Got it? And no Thai food for six weeks, at least. Now that's cruel and unusual punishment."

  "One last time," she begged, "please let me go with you. I'll probably sleep all the way there. I won’t even ask any questions; I’ll just…"

  Adam turned her around, lifted the tail of the big T-shirt and smacked her rear end three times—hard and fast and without the slightest trace of playfulness.

  Outside, a horn sounded. Without waiting for a reply, he kissed her quickly, opened the front door and walked briskly to the waiting car. Beth stood in the hallway, rubbing her backside and swearing.

  * * * * *

  Beth sat in the living room for a while, going through what she knew and trying to imagine what Adam had meant about the basement. Finally, she rummaged around in a kitchen drawer until she found a flashlight and made her way down the rickety stairs to the basement. The overhead light at the bottom of the stairs had burned out months ago, and since she never used the musty basement or even ventured down there, she'd never replaced the bulb.

  Nothing in the basement seemed any different, though it was hard to tell in the dark. The weak beam of the cheap flashlight kept threatening to go out completely, and she knew that the narrow shaft of light it generated wouldn't have helped much, anyway. A small amount of light filtered down the basement steps from the hallway, but it wasn't enough to see by. Besides, the only things down there to see had been there for years—probably left there while Fred Lawrence's mother was still alive. Beth had been meaning to call someone to haul away the accumulated trash since she moved in, but there'd never been enough extra cash left over at the end of the month to waste on a lot of trash she never saw, anyway. Out of sight, out of mind had always seemed to Beth like an excellent policy—and a thrifty one.

  She knew that Adam was probably right about the basement windows. From her first guided tour of the front and back yards, she vaguely remembered seeing two little windows at the front of the house, close to the ground, and another two at the back. She had even tried to open one of the front ones that first week to get some fresh air in the musty basement. The window she tried was narrow and small, and she had to stand on a wooden crate to reach it, only to find the frame and mechanism encrusted with multiple layers of scaling lead paint. When the window wouldn’t budge, she gave up.

  By moving the flashlight beam slowly around the damp walls, she found the two front windows. Higher than she recalled, though, and grimier. Both of them were opaque with age and dirt, and in their gri
my corners generations of insects had lived and died in generations of spider webs. The skeletal remains of prey and predator alike hung suspended on the dusty filaments of torn webbing and turned slowly and unaccountably in the stale, lifeless air of the basement. A draft, she thought, but from where? Beth had never been afraid of bugs and usually found them fascinating. But that was outside and in sunlight. Here, in what amounted to a vast graveyard of deceased insects, she felt claustrophobic and oddly afraid of touching anything.

  When she couldn't find the mysterious rear windows, she decided that they had to be hidden behind something. Maybe behind some of the badly mildewed two-by-fours that were stacked everywhere, making access to the rear wall impossible. In anther place, near the stairs, she found warped pieces of heavy plywood with rusted nails sticking out. One of Felix's unfinished do-it-yourself projects, she guessed, and one more pile of trash she'd have to pay to have hauled away. No wonder the basement stank.

  It was getting harder to breathe, and she assumed it was because of the dust and mold she had disturbed by moving around. Everything she accidentally touched felt gritty and dusty, and when she brought her hand near her face, her fingers smelled strongly of mold or mildew or both. The air was heavy and dank and smelled as if it had been wet and then dried again, over and over, for God-only-knew how many years. In several places, the concrete floor had cracked and buckled, and she tripped several times on sharp chunks of what felt under her feet like broken concrete. The floor was damp, and occasionally she stepped in a puddle of water. Ground water seepage, she thought. She would need to get someone in to check that out—when she could afford it. She recalled her father's endless battle with their own leaky basement—a battle in which he had finally surrendered by handing over nine thousand dollars for waterproofing. But the seepage had never entirely stopped. Every winter without fail their basement flooded again.