Murder Crops Up

by Lora Roberts

  The man wore a billed hat pulled low over his eyes and a fleecy vest with the collar up around his ears, despite the mildness of the November day. While I watched, a pair of women approached the clinic, the younger one moving slowly, her older companion supporting her. The older woman—her mother?—took one horrified look at the sign the man carried and averted her eyes. The man gestured with his sign, and the younger woman shrank away, hesitating.

  I barged out the door, but the older woman was already coping with the problem. “Please move aside, sir,” she said with gentle dignity. “My daughter has had a miscarriage and needs to see her doctor.”

  I tapped the man on the shoulder. “Excuse me.”

  The woman hustled her daughter past as the man turned to face me. It was Tom Dancey.

  “Mr. Dancey. What a surprise to see you here.”

  He pulled the hat lower over his eyes. “Do I know you?”

  “I’m one of the community gardeners. You gave a very affecting speech at the garden last night.” I looked at the sign he carried and nearly threw up. Under a huge, stomach-wrenching, color picture of mangled tissue and blood, large red letters asked ARE YOU A MURDERER? It was no wonder the young woman had hesitated to pass by.

  “That’s really nasty.” I noticed that cars on Middlefield Road were slowing down to read the sign, maybe hoping we were going to have a Confrontation with a capital C. “Why are you doing this, Mr. Dancey? I mean, the women who come here face hard enough choices.”

  His face was stony, his gaze turned away. “What happens in there is murder, plain and simple. Are you here to murder a baby?” He glanced at me briefly, then turned away, his sign facing toward Middlefield Road.

  “I don’t think you have a clue what happens inside.” I wanted to shake him, but contented myself with moving around to face him. “The woman you just harassed had a miscarriage. Does that sound like abortion? Maybe she wanted that baby desperately and having to pass your sign is just more torture. I sat next to a girl—not even sixteen. She had a tiny baby that will take over her life for the next twenty years. I didn’t see the father there.”

  He shook his head as if shaking off my words. I stepped closer, impelled out of my usual observer status by some emotion I couldn’t quantify. “Tell me, Mr. Dancey. Tom. If you want to have a positive effect on this problem, why aren’t you over at the middle school, at the high school, asking the fathers of those babies what they were thinking of? Why are you bothering these women?”

  He didn’t even look at me. “You have your views, I have mine. Freedom of speech guarantees me a hearing.”

  “I call this harassment, not freedom of speech. You’re picking out the most vulnerable segment of society and persecuting—”

  Stung, he raised his voice. “I’ll tell you who’s vulnerable. Those babies! What about them?” He shook his sign at me. “What gives a woman the right to flush my baby away?”

  Amy came out of the clinic. I didn’t want her to see Tom Dancey’s horrible picture, but by arguing with him, I had made sure to draw her attention to it. I made a vain attempt to block her view. “Don’t look, honey.”

  She looked anyway, and quickly averted her eyes.

  Tom Dancey regarded her sadly. “So, young woman. Are you going to murder a baby?” He shook his head. “Death everywhere. Everyone dies. Are you ready to die?”

  The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. Amy shrank away. I wanted to hurry her to the car, but I had to lay to rest the horrid suspicion that leaped into my head.

  “Why do you say that, Tom?” I spoke in my gentlest tone of voice, gesturing to Amy behind my back to go wait for me in Babe. “Did you know that someone else died at the garden last night?”

  Behind me, I could hear Amy’s gasp. So much for keeping her out of it. I should never have started my inquisition, but having begun, I couldn’t leave until I had some answers.

  Tom stared at me blankly. “Someone else dead?” He frowned. “Rita died there. At the garden.”

  “I know.”

  “She said it was nothing to do with me.” His eyes were earnest, fixed on mine. “But I told her that was wrong. I told her—”

  “What? What did you tell her?”

  He shook his head again, quickly, as if to clear away some foreign influence. When he looked at me again, his gaze was shuttered. “Who did you say you were?”

  “One of the gardeners.” I hesitated. “Look, Tom. Mr. Dancey. It sounds like you know something the police should know. If Rita told you anything—if you have any idea of who might have wished to harm her—”

  “What are you talking about? Her death was an accident!” He waved his sign in agitation. “That’s what the officer told me. An accident—she tripped over a rake or something. Are you suggesting that she was—”

  “Murdered.” I glanced at his sign. “There is some question about that, I believe. Look, give Bruno Morales a call—he’s the detective in charge.”

  “I had a message from him on the office phone this morning.” Tom Dancey looked bewildered. “But—I had to come here. Now that Rita’s gone—I had to let people know.” Suddenly he lunged past me and grabbed Amy’s arm. She pulled away, but he tightened his grip. “If she hadn’t killed my baby,” he said urgently, “I’d have something now. Something of ours. Don’t do it. Don’t kill—”

  “Now, Tom.” An authoritative female voice spoke up. “You know you promised not to confront or harass our clients.” The woman who spoke was stout, middle-aged, well-groomed. She walked up to Tom Dancey and pried his hands away from Amy. “You just go on, dear. He won’t hurt you.”

  Amy scuttled a few feet. “Aunt Liz,” she said, her voice imploring.

  “I’m coming.” I turned back to Tom Dancey, but he was already walking away, his sign down, his head lowered, too.

  “Sorry about that,” the woman said. “He sometimes gets emotional. But he’s generally pretty good about leaving the younger girls alone.”

  “Is he here often?” I watched him turn the corner, the sign dragging behind him as if he’d forgotten it and its horrid message.

  “He was here every day for a few months about a year ago. That’s when we got the restraining order. Lately, he hasn’t been around. I was surprised to get a call about him today.” She looked speculative. “Something must have set him off.”

  “He seemed a bit unbalanced.”

  She sighed. “He’s really a very nice man. I actually know his family. He’s as sane as can be most of the time, but—” She shut her lips firmly, and I knew there’d be no more confidences from her.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said, and went to join Amy in the parking lot.

  She was on me the minute I got into Babe. “Who was that man? What did he mean? And what was that about murders at the garden?”

  “His stepsister died Saturday at the community garden—maybe an accident.”

  “It didn’t sound like he thought of her as a sister,” Amy said shrewdly. “Sounds like he got her pregnant and she had an abortion.”

  “It sounded like that to me, too.”

  “And now she’s dead. Is he over the edge? Did you say someone else died last night?”

  “Another woman—a garden volunteer. Heart attack, Bruno thinks.”

  “People die from having babies, too.” Amy’s voice was low. “Dr. Jones told me the risks. It sounds scary. Embolisms, hemorrhages—”

  “Women do have babies safely, too, though. Look around you. Plenty of old mothers still alive and kicking.”

  “I am going to have an abortion.” Amy’s voice was quiet but firm. “I made the appointment. I want this all over with.”

  “It’s up to you.” I felt an odd mixture of relief and regret. Certainly all our lives would be easier if Amy went ahead with her plans. Renee, I thought, had tacitly given her permission by not forcing the issue, and she would no doubt be relieved as well that her only daughter wasn’t bringing disgrace on the name of Sullivan. And certainly, no matter wh
at anyone said, I didn’t want to get mixed up in imminent babyhood. But it was impossible not to feel regret no matter what choice Amy made. In this case, the regret was for the waste of life. It is wasted every day, everywhere, by women and especially by men, by the old as well as the young, by those who do not kill but simply do not or cannot live fully. But the universal nature of such waste doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t mourn its passing.

  “It’s spooky,” Amy said, getting away from her own predicament. “That people died at the garden, of all places. Aren’t you scared to go there?”

  “Not at all. Not during the day, anyway. That’s where we’re going as soon as we pick up our tools and I get my overalls, in fact.”

  “Oh.” Amy shivered. “I never thought there’d be so many deaths in a place like this.” She gestured at the nice bungalows and tidy lawns we drove past on our way home.

  “People who live here are surprised, too. Some of them think it’s me.”

  “They think you’re killing people?” Amy was horrified. “Aunt Liz!”

  “Not so much that.” I didn’t think even Carlotta really believed I was killing people. “Just that undesirable elements like me precipitate violence.”

  “That is so lame. They can’t say stuff like that about you!”

  “It’s nothing. The people whose opinions matter to me won’t listen to the gossip, and I don’t care about the others.”

  This piece of philosophy was not well received by Amy. “That’s just bullshit, Aunt Liz. This girl in school, some other girls didn’t like her and started this whispering thing, and she was all, like, ‘I don’t care if they say I’m a slut, I know I’m not and so do my friends.’ But it was awful for her, and there were fights in gym class, and the whole school knew, and finally she transferred.”

  “That sounds pretty gruesome. Are you afraid they’ll do something like that to you?”

  Amy shook her head. “I’m, like, not popular enough,” she said simply. “And no one will know anything about it, because the problem will be over when I get back.”

  We were both silent for a while, and then Amy roused herself. “So are we digging at the garden today? Or what?”

  “I don’t know. Bridget will be there—”

  “Great.” Amy brightened. “Mrs. Montrose is very kind, isn’t she? I got the feeling she didn’t want me to have an abortion, but she wouldn’t say anything about it. And it was nice of her to lend me that book. I found out some stuff. But it’s just so gross—really, Aunt Liz, you can’t think. I mean, I don’t know how anyone can stand to breast-feed. Milk coming out of you—yuck. And pictures of babies being born—how can anyone live through that?”

  “They have been, for the most part, since the human race began.”

  “Well, I think it’s unfair.” Amy began to wax indignant. “Why should it be up to women? Men have the fun, too, and then women have to go through all that blood and pain and stuff. And don’t give me that biblical thing. If I truly thought God wanted to punish Eve for being smarter than Adam, I’d have to, you know, reexamine everything in my life and all.”

  “But you’re still a Catholic? How can you reconcile that with what you’re going to do?” As soon as I asked the question, I was sorry.

  She didn’t answer for a moment, then her voice was low. “I don’t know, Aunt Liz. I mean, I love the church. I love the ritual. Did you know I wanted to be a nun for a while when I was ten? But now—I look at it and all I see is a bunch of old men telling me what to do. How do they know what’s the best thing? Just because something’s been written down for thousands of years, does that make it still right?” She sighed. “I haven’t been able to go to confession for a while. And if I do this abortion—will they excommunicate me?”

  “I don’t think so.” I didn’t want to say anything else. Since abandoning my natal religion, I have spent years slowly formulating my own belief system, which is so personal that it could have no meaning for anyone but me.

  I parked in the driveway, and Amy touched my arm. “I’m glad I’m with you, Aunt Liz.” She smiled at me, her eyes full of trust. “I know you’ll stand by.”

  “Yes. I will do that, Amy.”

  Chapter 18

  We went inside, since I wanted to get my garden overalls. One of my compulsive habits of thrift is to do as little laundry as possible. When I lived in the bus, my wardrobe was minimal—something like those three simple pieces that Nordstrom touts in their ad, but far lower on the fashion scale. I didn’t do temp work then, and I could wear every stitch I owned in four days, necessitating frequent trips to the laundromat.

  Now I had my own washer, but I was as stingy with it as any old miser. I had amassed a stock of aprons, which unfashionable garment I wore in the kitchen to keep off gratuitous splashes of food. And I had a fine pair of overalls for the garden. They were roomy enough to go over regular clothes, if all I had time for was some quick weeding. I hung them in the back porch and washed them only when they had been consorting with something smelly.

  While Amy foraged in the refrigerator, I put on my overalls and my work shoes—a pair of old wellies I’d found at a garage sale. The tops had been sun-damaged and had torn out at the sides where a previous owner had grasped them for pulling on. But when I cut off the tops with my utility knife, I had a pair of waterproof shoes that did the job as well as any in the upscale garden shops.

  Together Amy and I put the shovel and rake and various buckets in the car. Amy sniffed suspiciously at one lidded bucket. “This isn’t chicken manure, is it?”

  “No. I remember how you didn’t like the chicken manure experience.”

  She sniffed again. “This has a very similar stink.”

  “It’s rabbit manure. Supposed to be very mellow and smell-free. And I’ve been composting it for a while.” I took the bucket from her and put it in the back of Babe. “Have we got everything?”

  “We’ve got a lot, for sure.” Amy’s mood was not bettered by the bucket of rabbit poop. She dusted off her hands ostentatiously and reached into her pocket to extract a paper towel-wrapped bundle. Inside were stacks of crackers and some of the presliced cheese she liked, folded into quarters. She offered me one of the stacks, but I declined.

  “So you’re going to want me to dig that junk in at the garden, aren’t you?” Amy spoke through a mouthful of cracker.

  “Yes, I’m going to try planting potatoes early and gamble that we’ll have a mild winter and they won’t freeze.” Turning onto Middlefield, I ran through a mental checklist of the equipment we’d loaded. “Dang! I forgot the potatoes.”

  “We can go back and get them.”

  “No, I told Bruno we’d be there at eleven.”

  “Bruno? Mr. Morales?” Amy stopped chewing to stare at me. “Are the police going to be there?”

  “It’s no big deal. He wants Bridget and me to go around the garden with him and tell him whose plots are whose. I don’t really know all that many, but he’s probably got other people doing the same thing for him.”

  “Well, maybe I shouldn’t come.” She looked at me, worried. “Maybe he won’t want me in the way.”

  “You won’t be in the way. You’ll just be digging.” I glanced at her. “If you think it’s okay in your condition.”

  “I’m not sick or anything. Exercise is good for me.” Amy didn’t look at me. She watched the houses go by out the window. “It’s funny how I stopped feeling sick and everything after I got here.”

  “A whole day ago.”

  “Well, even before, really. Except for the airplane, my stomach hasn’t bothered me for a few days.” She scowled. “But my guts still feel so weird. Like really heavy-duty PMS, you know?”

  I knew, because I’d been pregnant once for a very little while. I hadn’t been driven to the extreme Amy was thinking about, though. My pregnancy had ended of its own accord, with a little help from my then-husband. And I wasn’t sorry that getting pregnant again was no longer an option in my life. I was just sorry th
at Amy had to do her learning on the subject the hard way.

  She seemed relatively cheerful, however, maybe because she’d made a decision and taken steps. At the garden, she carried in the bucket of rabbit manure without protest. I had time to spread it over the patch I wanted dug, and to top it off with the bucket of homemade compost, before Bruno showed up. Bridget came through the gate a few minutes later, rushing from her preschool commitment.

  Bridget greeted Amy warmly. I could see she wanted to ask how it had gone at the doctor’s that morning, but Bruno was in a hurry. He pulled out his laptop and herded us over to the path, leaving Amy shoveling in my plot.

  “Do either of you mind if I tape this conversation?” Bruno reached into his breast pocket and showed us a tiny tape recorder, already going. “I will be putting the pertinent things directly into the computer. But the tape is useful in case I miss something the first time. If anything on the tape is necessary to enter as evidence, you will be asked to sign a typed transcription. You are at liberty not to answer any question if you do not wish to.”

  “This sounds serious.” Bridget watched as Bruno put the little tape recorder back in his pocket. “I don’t know how we can help you.”

  He pulled one of my empty plastic buckets into the path, turned it over, and sat on it. Amy slowed her digging, her head cocked, but with his back to her, Bruno must have been barely audible. He opened the laptop and set it on his knees. “You have used a plot at the community garden for how long?” Bruno looked at me, then Bridget. I answered first.

  “More than three years.”

  “I’ve been here for a couple of years,” Bridget said. “I was at the downtown one before.”

  “Have you had the same neighboring gardeners the whole time?”

  I shook my head, and Bridget nodded. “New people next to me,” I told him. “But some people have the same plot for many years. Tamiko’s been across the way since I’ve been here. And Webster Powell, next to her. And Lois around the corner there.”