Murder Crops Up

by Lora Roberts

  “I’m a writer, as Carlotta no doubt told you.” Carlotta was not currently enrolled in the writing workshop I taught for the senior center downtown, but that didn’t stop her from coming by to harass me. Anyone who sold to such a motley collection of magazines, she’d tell my students after the class, couldn’t be much of a writer. It’s true that Organic Gardening and True Confessions—both of which had bought pieces from me, though not on the same subject—don’t pay well. But I had sold an article to Smithsonian, and that, I felt, boosted my stock considerably.

  “Where do you get your ideas?” Lois sipped daintily at her water. She eyed one of the red vinyl seats, as if planning to settle in for a cozy afternoon’s gossip. In light of Rita’s death, it was too surreal.

  “Lois, what did you mean about Rita? You started to say that someone was angry at her, didn’t you?”

  Lois set the water down on the table. “For your information, I know nothing about Rita’s death. All I know is, however she died, she’s desecrated my beloved Sidney. I should have known a low-class girl like that was trouble from the get-go.”

  “Sidney?” I interrupted what promised to be the usual tirade on Rita’s bad behavior. “What does Sidney have to do with this?”

  “He can’t do anything. He’s been dead for over a year.” Lois was indignant. “And I’ll thank you not to mention him so disrespectfully. You barely knew him. He’s Mr. Humphries to you.”

  “Mr. Humphries, as you point out, is dead. So how does Rita’s death relate to his?” I started to have wild ideas about Lois as some kind of twisted, elderly serial killer.

  “So you hadn’t guessed. I thought you had. Rita did.” Her lips pinched together.

  “Guessed about—”

  “About Sidney. Being there.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “In the shrine. You know—that little wooden chest. You called it a shrine one day. That’s why I thought you knew. I’ve been so worried that you would tell. Rita said—” She bit her lip.

  It was all starting to come clear. “You have your husband buried in your community garden plot?”

  “Just his ashes,” she said quickly. “He wanted it, you know. He spent hours every day at our garden.” Her eyes shone with tears again. “It was the happiest time of our lives. He built the little shrine before he died and made me promise, and of course I’ve kept my promise.” She drew herself up, putting the hankie away again. “No matter what Rita said, Sidney stays, and that’s that. And whoever profaned his resting place by killing her there is going to pay.”

  I watched, dumbfounded, as Lois stalked from the room. I was just in time to catch the front door after she flung it open.

  “Lois, wait—”

  “I’m busy,” she snapped over her shoulder. “Some of us want to know what really happened, you know.”

  She crunched her way down the drive. Barker and I looked at each other, and then I went out to finish my weeding.

  Chapter 8

  It was nearly dinnertime when I finished weeding. I let Barker into the house and was following him when I heard, faintly, Drake’s ringing telephone. I hadn’t expected to hear from him until later that evening, but I didn’t want to miss his call if he was early.

  Keys in hand, I raced for his back door, and picked up the phone just before the answering machine did.

  “Did you, like, run all the way from your house?” My seventeen-year-old niece, Amy, answered my breathless greeting. “This is so cool, because I didn’t think I’d actually, like, be talking to you, since you don’t even live there. I was just going to leave a message. You should get your own phone, Aunt Liz.”

  I said, through gritted teeth, “Hi, Amy. I ran for the phone because I’m expecting a call.”

  “Oh. Well—”

  “But it’s nice talking to you.” I tried to sound more enthusiastic. “What’s happening?”

  Amy hesitated. “See, there’s this amazing thing. Our school burned down.”

  “What?” I pictured the high school, the same one I had attended in Denver in my own far-off youth. The last time I’d been back, it hadn’t looked the same, though—it had sprawled into a huge complex of more than a dozen buildings. “All of that’s gone?”

  “Not gone exactly.” I could almost see Amy’s shrug, her wide grin. “I mean, the fire started in the cafeteria, and it’s, like, gutted, along with the gym. Everything else is just smoke-damaged and all wet and stinky and stuff. So we get off until after Thanksgiving, while they clean it up.”

  “Great. Sounds like you’ll get a long vacation.” I glanced at the calendar that hangs above Drake’s phone. Counting the Thanksgiving holiday, she had nearly two weeks off. “It’ll be a drag making all that up.”

  “Yeah, we have to go to school right up to Christmas. The skiers and shredders are totally bummed. But I don’t care.”

  “Shredders?”

  “You know—the snowboarders.” Amy sounded impatient, but she didn’t go on with her story. It wasn’t like her.

  “Drake’s in Seattle right now,” I said, rushing to fill that unnerving silence. “His dad’s real sick. He’s supposed to call about it, and I should really keep the line free—”

  Amy interrupted, her voice urgent. “I thought it would be a good idea for me to come out and visit you—make, like, a college visit, see? Juniors on college track are supposed to visit schools we want to go to, and I definitely want to go out there.”

  “I just saw in the paper that most everyone in Stanford’s freshman class is a valedictorian.”

  “My grades are okay.” Amy shrugged away this reality check. “And there’s lots of good schools besides Stanford. I won’t be any trouble, Aunt Liz. You won’t have to drive me around—I’ll ride the bus or take the train. I’ve got some cash stashed away.”

  I tried to say something, but she talked right over me. “Mom says I have to be invited. But she wants me to leave, I think. We’re really—not getting along well right now.” She ended with a gulp that might almost have been a sob.

  I could sympathize. Amy is actually the only member of my family I feel close to. My parents have disapproved of me since I was twenty, which makes them less than pleasant companions. My sister and brothers resented my not living close enough to Denver to help in the care of my frail mother and cantankerous dad. My nephews have little to no interest in their spinster aunt. I was very fond of Amy, and the urge to help her was strong.

  “The thing is, Amy, this isn’t a good time.” That was an understatement. Being the target of a gossip campaign was hard enough without adding Rita’s death into the mix. “There are things going on—”

  “I won’t interfere. And Aunt Molly says Uncle Bill has frequent-flyer miles he never uses, so she’s going to give me enough for a ticket. I’ve never flown before, do you realize that?”

  “Many people have never flown before.” Including me. I contemplated the wonder of getting from Denver to San Francisco in two hours instead of three days of hard driving—hard on Babe, at least.

  “You don’t understand, Aunt Liz. I have to get away.” Usually she was levelheaded and sunny. But just then, Amy sounded downright hysterical. “I just can’t be here with her right now. I hate her so much!”

  Renee, Amy’s mother, was often at loggerheads with her daughter. Renee was not a sympathetic woman, and although she adored Amy, her love took the guise of constant nagging and worrying. If she’d agreed to let Amy come visit me, without insisting on coming along, it was a sure sign that she’d reached the end of her rope.

  Amy waited, not saying anything. I capitulated.

  “Okay. Come on out. But be prepared to work. I’ve got a lot of fall digging to do.”

  She didn’t gush her delight, as I expected her to. “Thanks, Aunt Liz,” she said, her voice small. “You’ll never know what this means to me.” She hesitated. “I’m going to get my plane reservation now. Can I call you back soon with the time?”

  After Amy hung up, I reviewed the conversa
tion and found it worrisome. I didn’t feel equipped to cope with teenage needs and angst, and frankly didn’t want to face any of it. But perhaps it wouldn’t involve me. I’d provided a place of refuge for Amy before, and certainly I could respect her privacy in a way that seemed impossible for Renee to do. If my niece had had a painful love affair or flunked one of her accelerated classes, I wouldn’t pry. Whatever it was, she couldn’t be any worse off with me than in the bosom of my caustic family.

  Since I had to wait for Amy’s call back, I made myself at home. Drake’s house is larger and in better shape than mine. The back door opens right into the big kitchen, which gleams with his collection of well-kept cookware. He’d replaced the appliances and cabinets a couple of months before, and added vinyl flooring embossed to look like Mexican pavers, but much easier on the occasional dropped dish. Meticulous order prevailed. I liked that.

  His telephone and answering machine were on a small desk near the door, along with neatly labeled binders of recipes, a messier one of phone logs, and a folder jammed full of scraps of paper that were in some mysterious way important. The answering machine’s blinking light indicated a message. I do not like telephones, but I do like answering machines. They keep callers at a distance, they lessen the intrusion.

  Drake keeps a notebook for recording my messages, as well as a log for his. Since I don’t get that many messages, I assumed the one on his machine would go in Drake’s log, not mine.

  The message was for me, from Drake. He’d already heard about the contretemps at the garden.

  “Dammit, Liz, you are some kind of trouble magnet. Don’t go poking around into this one. I don’t care if you know every person in that garden like the back of your hand. Just stay out of it and let Bruno do his job.” He added, as an afterthought, “I miss you. I’ll call at eight tonight.”

  Not a message I needed to write down. I reset the answering machine and put on the kettle to make tea. Drake has a supply of my homemade tea bags in a glass canister near his stove. He’s a coffee man himself, though struggling to cut back his consumption. His chrome-laden Italian espresso machine didn’t make that easier. In the evenings he’d froth up a bunch of milk for his decaf cappuccino and my hot chocolate. It seemed luxurious to me, to sit sipping our foamy drinks, watching a video if we were at his house, or talking about books in my living room. At times, I’d found it stifling, too. I had felt bad about the relief his departure for Seattle caused me, bad because his dad’s illness was a cause of distress, not relief. And while I missed him, missed those creamy cups of conviviality, I also welcomed the quiet, the lack of demand.

  Now Amy would come and shatter that. She would have to sleep in the middle of everything, on the lumpy old sofa bed in my living room. Her teenaged debris would be everywhere—hair equipment, makeup bags bulging with weird colors, jangly heaps of costume jewelry, jeans and Tshirts so frayed you would think them overdue for the ragbag. She did try to keep it all straight, but her definition of tidy and mine came from different dictionaries.

  Waiting for the water to boil, I wandered through the living room. Drake’s abrupt departure had caught his living room in its usual chaotic state. He limited his organizational efforts to the kitchen.

  This was one reason why we often sat in my living room in the evening. Years of living in my VW bus have made me very sensitive to clutter. My house is small and I don’t have a lot of stuff, so cleaning is a relatively simple process. Drake’s living room overflows with stacks—books in teetering piles, videotapes in and out of cases, newspapers and journals piled on opposing ends of the coffee table, and a sofa draped with whatever he puts down on his way through the room—a shirt, a stack of files, a basketball, a towel.

  Despite the peace and quiet I’d craved, I suddenly felt an overwhelming longing to see Paul lounging on the sofa—after having pushed all the junk down to one end.

  The kettle whistled. I was pouring hot water on a tea bag of lemon balm and peppermint when Amy called back.

  “I can be there tomorrow around noon. Is that okay?” Her voice was anxious.

  “It’s fast.”

  “I don’t care how early I have to get up. It’s worth it to get away from here.”

  “Amy, is something—going on, something I should know about? Because—”

  “Don’t worry, Aunt Liz.” Her laugh was brittle. “Everything will be fine, once I get to California.”

  That sounded like famous last words.

  Chapter 9

  “Amy’s a dear girl,” Bridget said, passing me the bowl of green beans, “but should she be coming to visit just now? It’s not a particularly good time, is it?”

  She wasn’t more specific about why it wasn’t a good time because the three adults at the Montrose dinner table were outnumbered by the four children. Corky, the eldest at seven, had his ears pricked up under his blazing thatch of curly red hair. He passionately resented the unfairness of a world where adults could know things that children could not. He frequently managed to find out, and garble, any secrets he suspected his mom of keeping from him.

  Sam, the next oldest at five, didn’t care about the meaningless bibble-babble around him. He ate stolidly through a large helping of spaghetti before beginning on his salad. The garlic bread lay on his plate, untouched. He would eat it last. I knew his patterns because I’d minded the four Montrose offspring while Bridget and Emery had been in Hawaii not long before.

  Mick, the youngest boy, had graduated at three to a booster seat on a regular chair. He loved the freedom of climbing up and down on his own during meals, and made use of it way too often for my delicate spinster nerves. Bridget was oblivious, however, and even Emery did no more than haul Mick back by his shirttail when he attempted to leave the room.

  “Do you need a high chair again?” Emery spoke sternly when he plunked his son back into the booster seat, but his hand smoothing Mick’s straight brown hair was tender. “We all sit at the table during meals. That includes you.”

  Mick looked at him thoughtfully. “Okay,” he said at last. He rarely spoke in more than monosyllables, although Bridget had been assured by his preschool teacher that he had a perfectly adequate vocabulary when he needed it.

  Moira was conducting an art project on the high chair tray, involving swirls of spaghetti and sauce, tastefully ornamented with garlic bread crumbs. She had been using her face as a palette to mix her materials. “More,” she demanded. For a toddler, her voice was surprisingly strong.

  “Not until you eat some,” Bridget said. “How about a green bean?”

  “No want.” Moira’s little mouth snapped shut.

  “It’s not a great time for Amy to visit,” I said, keeping an eye on Corky, who was keeping an eye on me. “But she has an unexpected school holiday and she really, really wanted to get away. Renee’s even agreeing to let her come. They must really be mixing it up lately.”

  Corky sucked up a few stray strands of spaghetti. “Is Amy gonna stay with you again? Is that what you’re talking about?”

  “She’s coming for a few days.”

  “Cool!” He nudged Sam in the ribs. “Amy’s coming. Did you hear that?”

  “Amy with the purple hair?” Sam looked up from his plate. “She baby-sat us.”

  “She taught us that cool card game, remember? Seven-card stud,” Corky said with relish. He helped another massive forkful of spaghetti into his mouth, rendering him speechless while he tried to contain it.

  Bridget and Emery appeared unconcerned at this revelation of their offspring’s corruption. Emery even smiled. “How’s she doing with her stock market investing?” He leaned back, pushing the lock of red hair out of his eyes. In the past few months, I’d noticed more and more gray in his hair, though he wasn’t forty yet. An aura of energy surrounded him, even when he was sitting down with tired-looking eyes. “She’s quite the go-getter for a high school student. Girl’s got a jump on her future already.”

  “I didn’t ask her how the investing goes. She
was pretty overwrought, really. That’s why I couldn’t say no.” I met Bridget’s worried gaze.

  Corky had seized on the word overwrought. “She’s not, like, rotting or anything?” His eyes were filled with dread.

  “No, hon. It just means too emotional, like you get when you’re tired and something happens that you don’t like.”

  “Oh.” Corky thought it over, stuffing in the last of his spaghetti. “CanIbescused?” He was sliding off his chair before Bridget nodded.

  Sam followed him, and Mick, staring at his dad, said, “Me, too,” and slid off the booster seat. Moira set up a screech.

  Emery had to shout to make himself heard. “You boys wash your faces and hands before you touch anything, especially the TV.”

  At the sink, Bridget passed a washcloth ruthlessly over Moira. She was done before Moira even started to howl about it. I marveled at this. When I tried, ever so gently, to wash her, she screamed like a banshee. Bridget’s no-nonsense approach really seemed to work. She put the baby down, and Moira made a beeline for the living room.

  Bridget finished rinsing out Moira’s bib and came back to the table with the bottle of Merlot we’d been working on. “Here’s to college,” she said, topping off our glasses and lifting her own. “A mere sixteen and a half years until they’re all gone.”

  “I won’t last that long,” Emery said. “What are they watching?”

  “Aladdin. Should be okay.” Bridget turned to me. “I didn’t want to ask in front of Corky, but how are you doing? What have you heard since this morning?”

  “I’ve heard nothing.” I sipped the wine, admiring its dark, rich color. “However, Lois came to see me this afternoon. She’s in a swivet.”

  I filled them both in on Lois’s visit, and they agreed it was strange. “But not any stranger than someone getting killed at the garden,” Emery added.

  “Strange is one word for it.” I shivered.

  “Actually,” Bridget said, “the gardeners aren’t as bad as sports parents.” She and Emery exchanged looks. “The soccer coach and a couple of the parents from that game last Saturday sounded like they were ready to start a rumble.”