Murder Crops Up

by Lora Roberts

  “That is Tamiko’s plot?” Bruno glanced across the path, then turned to look at Amy. “Let us go over and look at it more closely.”

  I had spread the rabbit poop on the back part of my plot, so by the time we reached the border between Tamiko and Webster we were out of Amy’s earshot. Tamiko had a compost pile in her front corner, by the path; Webster’s elegant plastic composter was in his back corner, by the outside fence.

  I remembered my first day at the garden, when I’d known no one. The plot I’d been assigned had been neglected for a season, and I cleared weeds and dead tomato vines for a couple of hours. Tamiko had introduced herself, asked me to let her know if the sunflowers she’d planted began to shade my garden as they grew, and offered me an extra cucumber seedling. She wasn’t chatty, but she always found time to admire something in my garden.

  I expected Bruno to ask about Tamiko’s personal life, about which I knew nothing at all. Instead he said, “What kind of gardener is she?”

  It took me off guard. Bridget was the first to answer. “Hmm. Well, she’s very neat. No weeds, no Bermuda grass. She grows a lot of flowers and herbs and some exotic-looking Japanese veggies. She’s always handing out sprigs of stuff.” Bridget looked at me.

  “She has good equipment, but not that shiny kind of yuppie garden gear. Everything well-used.”

  Bruno mulled over Tamiko’s tidy plot. “Did she ever express resentment at Ms. Dancey’s activities?”

  “Not to me,” I said.

  Bridget spoke up. “Tamiko isn’t much to gossip or complain about people behind their backs.”

  “Has she ever mentioned Ms. Dancey to either of you in any context?”

  I told him the incident I’d mentioned to Tamiko the previous night. “Once Tamiko asked if I’d gotten the latest garden letter, which was about raspberry canes. We’re not supposed to plant them anymore, or anything invasive. She said Rita should make Webster tear out those raspberries. He’d just planted them, so it would have been easy, then.” I pointed at the flourishing canes. “Not so easy now. Anyway, Tamiko said Rita wouldn’t take it up with Webster because they were dating, and he wouldn’t listen to anyone else. But last night she said she didn’t remember it at all.”

  Bruno perched the laptop on the edge of Tamiko’s compost bin and clacked away. I wondered what the sound of computer keys did to his tape recorder. “So this next one is Webster Powell’s garden?”

  “Yeah,” Bridget said. “He keeps it very tidy, I’ll give him that. But he’s not cooperative. Tamiko told him about the raspberries, but he just wouldn’t listen. She has to dig out suckers constantly. But he gets very bent if someone else breaks a rule that affects him.” Bridget warmed to her theme. “Do you know, he accused Liz of throwing Bermuda grass into his garden. Can you imagine? As if Liz could be so spiteful.”

  “Right.” Bruno looked bemused. “Bermuda grass could certainly cause hostility between gardeners. It is very hard to get rid of.”

  “Some people,” Bridget said darkly, “have resorted to forbidden chemicals to control it. Rumor has it that Lois and maybe Webster sprayed Roundup outside the fence by their gardens, and on the paths, too. Supposedly Rita looked the other way, maybe even used it herself.”

  Bruno took his cue from the horror in Bridget’s voice. “That is very bad, right?”

  “It’s not as bad as some herbicides, but it’s pretty bad.” Bridget looked to me for confirmation. “Right, Liz?”

  “It does get rid of the Bermuda grass, but it can drift onto other people’s gardens and kill stuff.” I hesitated, and added, “But the people next to the fence really have trouble getting rid of the noxious weed. You can see why they use Roundup, even though it’s forbidden.”

  “So did many people dislike Rita for allowing this to go on?” Bruno held his pen poised over his notebook.

  I looked at him. “You know, Bruno, we were all hoping that these deaths were accidental. Sounds like you have other ideas.”

  Bruno looked unhappy. He chose his words carefully. “One or both of them could be an accident. But I do not think so. This”—he tapped his chest, presumably his heart or intuition—“tells me someone meant Rita to die. And if someone meant that, it is more than likely Lois, too, was murdered.”

  A cold wind had blown clouds over the sun, making the garden seem vast and dark. Dead leaves sifted out of the encircling plum trees, fluttering to the ground in a constant susurration.

  Bruno looked over Webster’s plot. “Tell me something about Mr. Powell’s gardening style.”

  “Well,” Bridget began, “Webster is kind of an obsessive person. He’s done some consulting work for Emery, so I know a bit about him. Everything has to be just so. He carries that over to his gardening, I guess.” She glanced at me, and I nodded.

  “A couple of months ago he claimed someone had come into his garden and touched his compost bin. The gloves he’d left on top had been knocked off. I mean, who knows how they leave their garden gloves?”

  “He shouldn’t leave them anyway,” Bridget added. “I never leave anything here. Stuff gets stolen.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “I got this rusty old wheelbarrow at a garage sale, thinking no one would bother stealing it. I was wrong.”

  Bruno looked shocked. “The gardeners steal from one another?”

  “It’s not necessarily the gardeners,” Bridget said. “A lot of people walk through every day who don’t garden here. They help themselves to anything growing near the path—especially berries. People seem to think it’s just free groceries. Maybe they feel the same about tools and such. Or maybe it’s some gardener in a hurry who borrows something without asking and forgets to put it back.”

  I pointed out Webster’s compost bin back by the fence. “That’s a really bad place to leave anything you value. Anyone using the path could have just reached over the fence and taken the gloves. Probably they were trying to do just that and dropped them.”

  “Webster especially needs to be careful,” Bridget sniffed, “because he’s got every fancy tool they sell at Smith and Hawken. Those were probably very nice gloves.”

  “You don’t like him.” At least Bruno didn’t write that observation down.

  “He’s one of those people who grub around in the dirt and never look dirty,” Bridget admitted sheepishly. “That’s really what I hold against him.”

  “I hardly know him.” I tried to leave it at that, but Bruno’s raised eyebrows compelled me to add, “He shouldn’t have been so ready to believe badly of me. That kinda soured me on him.”

  “He dated one of the programmers in Emery’s company for a while.” Bridget’s sense of fairness came to the fore. “She seemed to think he was okay.”

  “He works for Emery, you said?” Bruno made another note.

  “I heard he’s really, really good at what he does and gets paid really well for it.”

  “Perhaps I will talk to Emery.” Bruno added a note or two and closed his computer. “Now, let us go look at Lois Humphries’s plot.”

  I moved restlessly. “Haven’t you already combed it pretty well?”

  Bruno led the way down the path toward Lois’s plot, still brightly festooned with caution tape. Additional tape fluttered outside the fence, on the other side of the perimeter path. The heap of wood chips, periodically dumped by city maintenance workers near the perimeter path for gardeners to use as mulch, was cordoned off. My stomach clenched.

  Bridget stopped, looking at the pile of wood chips. “Is that where she was found?”

  “Yes.” Bruno stopped, too. “Behind, under those bushes. She held very tightly to a wooden box, which we believe holds the ashes of her husband. Our preliminary investigation has not found a cause of death.”

  “I thought she had a heart attack,” Bridget said.

  Bruno’s expression hardened. “It’s true she had recently been diagnosed with angina, according to her family doctor. He said she was in denial—would overdo, get chest pains, get fright
ened and pull back. Then she’d feel fine and overdo again. Such a person may have a fatal attack that is caused by outside forces.” He looked at us sharply. “Were you unaware of her heart condition?”

  “I knew nothing about it. She was always bustling around digging and hauling bags of stuff.” Bridget looked at me.

  “Someone ragged her a little the other morning for not digging, and she said it was her heart. But frankly, I got the idea that was just an excuse.” We had come to Lois’s garden plot by then, and I pointed to the trench. “After all, she was double-digging her garden, even though it didn’t really need it. No one would undertake that without feeling pretty healthy.”

  Bruno opened the laptop and wrote some more. “Who else was there when Lois mentioned her heart?”

  “I don’t really remember. A couple of people I didn’t know, and Rita. In fact, Rita was the one who suggested that Lois dig her own holes.” I couldn’t summon up any clearer picture. “Sorry, Bruno. I know there were several folks around. Just don’t remember them.”

  Bridget glanced at her watch. “How much longer will this take? I’ve got a lot to do this morning.”

  I looked through the clutter of trellises and cornstalks that intervened between my plot and Lois’s. Amy’s red T-shirt made a bright spot in the dun-colored foliage. “Yeah, I’ve got to go supervise my helper or she might dig up all my seedlings.

  “You are both doing very well at giving me your observations. I will not keep you much longer.” Bruno looked up from his laptop. “What kind of gardener was Lois?”

  “She was the one who rounded up people to volunteer for stuff like path maintenance,” Bridget said. “She’s been—she had been here since the garden started, and she knew everything and everyone.”

  “She and her husband were here every day,” I added. “Even when he couldn’t work anymore, he’d come and sit on that chair while she did the work.” I nodded toward the plastic lawn chair in a corner of Lois’s garden, next to a platform where the wooden chest holding his ashes had stood. “I’m pretty sure she wasn’t broadcasting her heart problem. You could ask my near-Siamese twin, Carlotta, about that. She’d know, if anyone did.”

  “So, was Lois a very good gardener?”

  “She was—strict. Had her veggies under stern control. First sign of mildew or blight, they were outta there.”

  “She didn’t cut any slack,” Bridget agreed. “Not for plants or people.”

  Bruno typed some more. After a few more questions, he let us go. Bridget bustled off, and I turned toward my plot, to help Amy finish shaping the beds. But Bridget’s final remark about Lois echoed in my brain. Lois hadn’t wanted to cut me any slack, but she’d changed her mind.

  Was there someone else she didn’t approve of, someone else breaking rules she thought were inviolable? What would have happened if she’d tried to uproot someone from the garden who didn’t want to go?

  And why would anyone murder to keep from being thrown out of the garden? It didn’t make any sense.

  Chapter 19

  Amy met me with mutiny, her hands on her hips, her mouth set stubbornly. “I’m not shoveling any more shit today,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me. “This is too totally gross for anyone, even if they weren’t pregnant and about to hurl at any minute.”

  “I’m sorry.” I hurried forward and took the shovel from her hand. “You have to admit it’s not nearly as bad as chicken manure. I guess I didn’t compost it enough.”

  She had done most of the area I’d spread, and I turned under the rest of it. After I raked in more compost, Amy felt better. We harvested some of the small golden beets and cut a lot of spinach and lettuce.

  Webster appeared while we were harvesting, carrying his tools in from the parking lot. I glanced up when he went by, but he walked briskly on without looking around. He used a fancy oscillating hoe on one of his beautifully mounded beds, shaving off weed seedlings just below the surface of the dirt. It was very efficient. I wondered for a moment what it would be like to have a variety of special tools, instead of my garage sale trio of hoe, rake, and shovel.

  I went back to clipping lettuce, but a little later a shadow fell over the bed, and when I looked up, Webster was standing there. He seemed a little uncertain. One hand was behind his back.

  “Um, Liz—”

  “Hi, Webster.” It was a good thing, I decided, that Webster hadn’t been around half an hour earlier to see Bruno checking out his plot.

  He brought his hand around from behind his back. It held a small cardboard box with several fava bean sprouts sticking up from it. “I had to thin in a couple of places. I was just going to toss these into the compost, but I wondered if you’d want them.”

  “Thanks.” I took the box, touched. Webster’s nose wrinkled as the breeze brought him a hint of what we’d been digging.

  “No problem. Hope they work for you.” He waved and went back to pick up his tools. Then he left the garden, back through the trees to the parking lot.

  Amy started watering, and I followed her with a bag of wheat bran. I was sprinkling it around the lettuce to make a snail barrier, when a man spoke from the path behind me.

  “Excuse me.” The deep voice sounded familiar. “You’re here. I just thought—I really didn’t think, I guess—”

  I looked around. Tom Dancey stood in the path. He still wore the vest and baseball cap, but this time the cap was pushed back. I could see his eyes, hesitant and defiant at the same time.

  “Mr. Dancey.” I glanced over my shoulder at Amy. Her back was turned; she hadn’t heard us over the noise of the water. “What are you doing here? I warn you, if you try to upset my niece again—”

  “I won’t,” he said swiftly, holding up a hand to stop my furious whisper. “I—this is about something totally different. You said—you mentioned my … sister, Rita. I wanted—”

  “How did you find me? Have you been following me?”

  “No, no.” He didn’t look dangerous. In fact, he looked abashed, backing off a step. “I was thinking. About Rita. I’ve just been … driving around. Thinking about Rita. So I thought I’d come here and see—I never dreamed you’d actually be here. I just thought maybe someone would, someone who could tell me—”

  “Tell you what? You should be asking the police about this. Bruno Morales—”

  “I know, I know. I’m going to get in touch with him. But I just wanted to know—need to know.” His voice sounded urgent. “Who, Ms.—um? Who would want to hurt Rita?”

  “Mr. Dancey, they don’t know that anyone wanted to hurt her.”

  “But someone did.” He nodded his head at me. His face was strongly shaped, with a look of intelligence, but his manner seemed demented, in a low-key way. “Yes. Someone hurt her. Someone had a hand in killing her. I’m almost sure of it. And it had to be one of these gardeners. Or maybe a rapist, coming along—”

  “In the middle of the morning, with people all around? It doesn’t sound like a rapist, and she wasn’t molested.”

  He shook his head, back and forth, as he had earlier at Planned Parenthood. “No. No. I know that. But did you know—did you see—?” He put out one hand. “Say, what is your name, anyway? I’m Tom Dancey, as you know.” He made the introduction very naturally, producing a smile of great charm.

  “Mr. Dancey.” It was Amy’s clear voice, coming from behind my shoulder. “I think you need to see a therapist or something. You’re acting totally spaced and weird, you know that?” She sounded indignant.

  Tom Dancey gaped at her. “Miss—I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry doesn’t cut it. You’re not in good shape. Why don’t you get yourself together before you go telling other people what to do?”

  “Amy—”

  She overrode my attempt to shut her down. “You know, some girl might just take you seriously some time. And she might just have a baby because of your ugly pictures. And she might just bring that baby to you, because you shoved yourself into her life and influenced the deci
sion she made. And you might just find yourself stuck with some tiny, little baby to take care of for the rest of your life. You have to find child care, you have to feed it, you have to jump when it cries. Then maybe you’d have a better understanding than you do!”

  Tom Dancey hadn’t tried to interrupt this tirade. He stood with his head bowed, hands shoved into the pockets of his fleece vest. But when Amy finally finished, he shot her a glance. “I’m sorry, Miss. I—happen to have very strong beliefs. But I didn’t come here to talk about—abortion.” He turned to me. “I want to ask you some things about Rita. I have to know.”

  “Don’t talk to him, Aunt Liz,” Amy commanded, her face still flushed. “Don’t give him the slightest speck of information.”

  “Excuse me for a minute,” I said to Dancey. Then I took Amy’s arm and urged her to the back of the garden.

  “Amy, obviously he’s having a strong reaction to his stepsister’s death. I don’t think goading and baiting him is the correct approach here, no matter how much you feel he deserves it.”

  “He deserves it, all right,” Amy muttered. “That picture was indecent!” She directed a glare over her shoulder.

  “Well, I think the right thing to do now is for you to go and call Bruno Morales. Here’s his card.” I pulled out the card Bruno had pressed on me Saturday night from the front pocket of my gardening overalls. “There’s a pay phone right by the south entrance. You have change?”

  She nodded. “You don’t think this guy is dangerous, do you?”

  “Not at the moment, no.” I gave her a little push. “I’ll tell him I’m sending you to the library. He won’t try anything, I’m sure. But I know Bruno wants to talk to him, and I think he does really need help, which Bruno can advise his family about.”

  “He’s headed for meltdown, you think?” Amy sounded worried. “Is he going to go postal on you?”

  “I doubt it, and if he does, I’ll whack him with the shovel. If Bruno isn’t back in his office yet, leave him a message. I’ll smooth this guy down.”