Ice Pick in the Ivy (Lovely Lethal Gardens Book 9)

by Dale Mayer

  “What’s gotten into you, Mugs?” she asked, noting he wasn’t stopping his tirade anytime soon.

  She opened the refrigerator door again to show him proof of how little was in there. But, when Mugs raced forward, he wouldn’t relent until he nosed his way onto a lower shelf. She watched him closely, wondering what he was after. When he retreated from the fridge, he seemed to smile at her, telling her, I told you so, then dropped something at her feet.

  A twig. From outside. Doreen shook her head, then had to laugh. “I don’t remember you playing with a stick outside. And I certainly don’t remember you bringing it inside. And how did you get it into my fridge without me noticing?”

  Mugs barked, did his little happy dance.

  “Yep. You got one over on me, Mugs.” Still shaking her head, she reviewed the inside of her fridge again.

  They’d eaten all the pork chops the previous night. She had a little cheese left, which Mugs would love also, but she would save that for a sandwich for her. She had more salad greens. After all the work she’d done this morning, she should have something more substantial. She had no cooked veggies or leftovers, and that was just plain sad. As far as she was concerned, Mack should cook five times as much, and then she’d warm it up throughout the week. She didn’t know if he’d go for that. Maybe it was harder to cook larger quantities.

  As soon as she had her first cup poured from her freshly made coffee, Doreen walked over to her laptop and looked for the various locations where the Darbunkle family had lived here in town. She figured they had to move with each bankruptcy, right? Yet she found only one address. With that information tucked into the back of her mind, she brought up Google and checked for that location. A residence. Wouldn’t be an easy walk from Doreen’s house; matter of fact, it would have been more of a full afternoon’s stretch to get down there. “Too far to walk.” Her ankle was back to normal but she didn’t want to push that.

  Mugs barked at that last word.

  She smiled. Better that she drive partway, and then she could walk the rest of the way. She wondered how Fred and Frank would feel about that. Then she looked up the location, where Frank’s old shop must have been, and it was about four blocks away from the Darbunkle home.

  Mugs barked at her side, jumped up, and put his heavy paws on her legs. She looked down at them and frowned. “We just came home from a walk. Surely you’re okay?” But at her repetition of the word “walk,” he woofed and started to dance. She groaned. “We don’t want to go that far though.” Thaddeus, who’d been sleeping on a little window ledge, walked over in front of her to stand on her keyboard and cried, “Thaddeus is here. Thaddeus is here.”

  She stared at him. “Right, you didn’t get to go with me and Mugs earlier, I suppose, is what you’ll say. So we all have to go.” She looked around for Goliath only to find him underneath her chair, looking up at her. “Fine, road trip it is then, but not until I eat.”

  At that, she walked back to her nearly empty fridge and sighed. “If I take you all, it means I can’t go grocery shopping,” she said, “because I can’t leave you guys in the vehicle while I go into the store.”

  But the animals just stared back at her; they didn’t give a darn. Such was her life.

  She made a tomato sandwich and then added cheese on the side and the fruit she still had left. She could do this research trip with her crew, but then she’d have to come home, lock the animals inside, and go back out to shop for groceries. She didn’t have much left for dinner.

  As soon as she was done cleaning up after her lunch, she rinsed out her mug, filled up her travel mug with more coffee, and, with the animals in tow, headed to the garage and her car.

  With everybody loaded up, she said, “We’re only going for a little trip, and that’s all.”

  Mugs, in the front seat, just woofed at her. Goliath, sitting along the back of the headrest behind her shoulder, dug his claws in. Thaddeus, however, was sitting on the gearshift. She looked down at it and sighed. “Thaddeus, you need to move.”

  He hopped up onto the shoulder brace of the passenger seat and stared at her.

  “Fine. Let’s go.”

  As soon as she started going backward, Goliath appeared to not like his perch and jumped down and into the back seat.

  She winced as his claws grazed her skin. “You could learn to move without using your claws,” she snapped at him.

  He just glared at her, his tail twitching, as if to say it wasn’t his fault.

  As soon as she headed in the direction she was looking for, she checked the traffic, but it appeared to be calm. It was a Friday morning, and she expected a lot more traffic. But, so far, most of the world had forgotten Kelowna existed. She was happy about that. She knew it got busier in the summertime with the tourists, but, for whatever reason, today was a calmer day.

  She should make an attempt to check the beaches too. So far, all she’d done was work on cold cases. She knew very little about the city. Hadn’t had a chance to play the tourist herself. As it was now her city, she really did want to get to know the ins and outs of it. As she drove, she realized it led her past Rosemoor. Mugs sat up and barked, his tail wagging. And when they went on past, he looked at her in horror. She smiled and said, “Maybe we’ll stop on our way back home.”

  He woofed several times more, but she kept going. It made sense that the brothers would live close by, with one working as a gardener for Rosemoor. At least Fred didn’t have to travel far to go to work.

  As Doreen came up to the correct neighborhood, she drove slower. The area was middle-class, nice but older homes. All fairly small, with one or two stories, not the huge monstrosities she saw everywhere else. Small houses and yet the properties themselves appeared to be slightly larger than normal.

  She kept heading toward the downtown area just behind the lakefront. She studied the houses as she drove and finally came up to the one she was looking for. At that, she parked on the opposite side of the street against the traffic and studied the house for a long moment. She took several photos, not sure what she was supposed to do with them. Just because these people had disappeared didn’t mean anything had happened to them. Or that it happened here. And neither did it mean that just because the brothers inherited the house that they still owned it—or maybe owned it but rented it out to someone else.

  If it had been her, she might have wanted to dispose of it quickly. Particularly if she was involved in something nasty to have achieved possession of it. If there was evidence to hide, then it made sense to hang on to the property. If sold, anyone could poke around and find what the brothers didn’t want to be found. But then, not everybody looked at it that way. After all, look at Steve’s case, and the several bodies found buried on his property.

  She looked at this property and wondered. The Darbunkle parents had supposedly disappeared out of the blue. Everybody thought they’d gone back east. Yet the brothers had reported them missing soon afterward. Did the brothers know more than they were letting on?

  She frowned at that, but, just then, the front door opened, and the gardener from Rosemoor walked out. He headed to the front of his garden, looked at the roses, lifted a set of clippers off the lawn, and clipped the bushes.

  She found that very suspicious too because roses were supposed to be clipped at a different time of year, not when they were just about to come into bloom.

  She knew a lot about gardening, but she wasn’t a pro about every individual plant, so his actions made her stop and consider. If he was taking off some of the blooms, it would leave more life force to go to the emerging blooms. He went through and did just one rosebush, cleaned up his mess, and put all the trimmings into the compost bins that would be picked up during the week. Kelowna had a recycling and compost system where they alternated weeks when each was picked up. She herself had made good use of the compost bins. She didn’t cook enough or eat enough to make good use of the recycling yet. Hopefully she would one day.

  As she watched, he turned hi
s back on her.

  Had he seen her? He had no reason to know her vehicle from anybody else’s, but he certainly had a reason to know her. And to dislike her, he did. And, of course, if he noted any of her animals in the vehicle with her, then he’d know for sure who she was. With that thought, she started the engine, pulled forward, and parked down the block, while she continued to watch him. He kept on trimming the roses, completely unconcerned.

  Feeling a sigh of relief, she went to the cul-de-sac, turned around, and drove slowly back. As she came up to the house again, he picked up his clippings, dumped them into the compost bin, and then walked around to the back of the house. She studied the front of the home for a long moment, then kept going. She hadn’t learned anything.

  “Maybe the brothers live there together,” she said to Mugs.

  He looked at her but didn’t answer.

  “You’d think one of them would have had a relationship that led to marriage, then gotten their own house and raised a family,” she muttered. But then again, maybe they were sharing the residence. Life could get lonely, she imagined.

  As she drove on, she searched for where the repair shop used to be. It took her several tries to come up on the right side of it, but, when she did, she could see it was attached to a garage and a mechanic’s shop, but that was a separate building on its own. It was currently a knife-sharpening business. She wondered just how much business they got, but the idea of having smooth, sharp knives was a joy she hadn’t experienced for a long time.

  One of the things her ex-husband had hated was dull knives. She was totally okay with that to a certain extent, if she didn’t have to pay any money, but, if she could get sharp knives, then she would be in heaven. Now she understood more about the beauty and utility of sharp knives as she tried to follow Mack’s cooking instructions.

  She pulled up in front of the business and hopped out with Mugs. She left the other two in the car, even though they howled at her. She walked up to the knife shop window, looking for prices. The door opened, and a man stepped out. He looked at her in surprise. She smiled and said, “I was just checking out your prices.”

  He nodded and put his hands on his hips in the open doorway. “It’s not too much. If you brought all your kitchen knives in, it probably wouldn’t take me twenty minutes to give them a good cleanup.”

  “How much would that cost?” she asked hesitantly.

  He grinned and said, “Fifty bucks?”

  She thought about it and then nodded. “That’s not too bad. Depends on how many knives I have.”

  “Best sharpening business in town,” he said, pulling a rag from his back pocket.

  She looked past him to the mechanic’s side of the lot. “Do you own both businesses?”

  He nodded. “I sure do. I bought this building a long time ago.”

  “So you own the building, you don’t just lease the space?”

  “Yep. My daddy said never to pay rent to anybody if you didn’t have to.”

  She smiled. “It sounds like your daddy was a good businessman.”

  “Better than I am, that’s for sure,” he said, “but I’m getting there.”

  “I’m sure you are,” she said. “This store used to be a tool repair shop, didn’t it?”

  “A long time ago. Frank leased it for maybe a year, a year and a half, from my dad. Frank did some good work. Won a couple awards locally. Seemed to be quite the character.”

  “I heard about that. I was perusing some old papers and saw something about him winning an award.”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t have a head for business.”

  “I guess, in a small town like Kelowna, it’s hard to keep a specialized business like that opened.”

  “If he’d work steady, it wouldn’t have been too bad. But, between you and me, he was a bit on the lazy side. Of course Kelowna was a lot smaller back then too.”

  She nodded in understanding. “And that’s death if you have your own business.”

  “It so is,” he said, laughing. “Most people don’t realize it. They don’t see how much work it is before they get started, and then, when they’re involved, they don’t want to do what’s required to keep it going.”

  “It’s funny because I found one of his tools with a little metal plate on it,” she said, “and I was just wondering if there was any record of who bought it, so I could return it to the owner.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Frank’s still around though. You could always ask him.”

  She nodded and smiled. “If I could ever find him,” she said jokingly.

  “Him and his brother have a place around the corner,” he said. “They inherited it a while back, I think. I’m not exactly sure.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but, if his brother’s the one I know of, he won’t like me talking to Frank.”

  “Frank’s usually not too bad, but his brother’s a bit argumentative,” the guy said with a nod.

  “You think?” she said, chuckling.

  Mugs was doing a good job of quietly sniffing the front of the building.

  “I was figuring out how to return the tool to the rightful owner,” she said, “but, if there’s no other way than talking to Fred or Frank, that may not work out so well. Thank you for your time.”

  She headed toward her car, but he said, “Wait. They left behind a bunch of crap.”

  She turned ever-so-slowly. “So, did you take over directly from his shop?”

  She realized he’d gone back inside the store. Thinking it over, the guy had said his pa owned this place. So, even if this guy wasn’t ready to run the business yet, his dad had made sure he had people leasing the property, like Frank. She scampered to the doorway and stood. It had a big glass double door facing the mechanic’s shop as well as the front door she came through and a door in the back.

  “Yeah, a bunch of ledgers and stuff. Let me see if I’ve still got it because I might have thrown it out.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” she said anxiously, “I’d really appreciate it.”

  But he’d already disappeared into the back. She studied the knives he had with interest. Her ex-husband had been quite a collector. He had all kinds. But most weren’t for kitchen use. The chefs had their own sets, as they were just as particular as her ex. Of course she never got her hands on anything but a steak knife, and that was only if she could persuade her ex that she should be allowed to cut her own steak.

  In some circles he socialized in, the steak came already presliced in perfect little mouth-size portions, so she could eat delicately without having to strain her wrist. She never quite understood that. Just because you were wealthy didn’t make you as weak as a child, but apparently people had very strange attitudes as to what was proper.

  She waited in the doorway, not sure who this person was, but he seemed as friendly as could be, and it was nice to meet people willing to go the extra distance. Honestly, she’d met some really nice people in Kelowna.

  She waited, studying everything inside, her nose liking the smell of the oil from next door but not too sure about the other odd smells. She could see a car up on the left hoist through the double glass doors. Presumably having a door like that meant he could come and go between the two buildings as needed, like, if he was working on a vehicle and then to help a knife-sharpening customer. Or maybe it was his way of having that aisle of small purchase items as you headed toward the cashiers. She used to call it the trap because they used to weave you back and forth in those items, just to taunt you. Maybe the gauntlet was a better term, but stores used it to guide you toward all these gift items and candies and things you could pick up on a whim at the last moment.

  It was really two businesses under the same roof and run by the same person.

  He walked back inside the front room with a plastic bag that looked like it had seen better days. Grease was on the outside, and she didn’t know what the other smears were. He handed it to her and said, “This is all there was. I found it the other day when I
was reorganizing up there, and I meant to take it to the dump, but if you think it’s of any use …”

  “Perfect,” she said. She reached out, took the bag from him, and smiled. “I’ll go through it and see if I can locate the owner of the tool I found. This is much appreciated.”

  He gave her a wave. As she walked back to her car, he called out, “Remember now. Fifty bucks. Bring your kitchen knives in.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll remember that.” She stowed the bag and its contents in the back seat area of the car, on the floorboard, grateful she had a plastic liner there to keep whatever was on the surface of the bag off her carpets. Once inside, she drove straight home. She couldn’t stop the excitement in her gut. It could be absolute garbage in that bag, but it didn’t feel like that. Her gut was screaming at her.

  Mugs sat on the seat beside her, leaning forward, almost like he had on a racing helmet and was going at max speed.

  She just laughed. “You look great.”

  He woofed, urging her on to get home faster. And she did get home in record time. She didn’t understand why it always seemed to take so long to get somewhere, and then the way home was so much faster. Still, when she pulled into the driveway and up into the garage, she laughed with joy. She closed the big garage door and brought the animals out of the vehicle with her and headed into the kitchen. She still had her travel coffee mug and poured that into a ceramic cup, rinsed out her big travel mug, and took the bag and the mug of still-hot coffee outside onto the back veranda.

  She set her mug on the little café table, picked up the bag, and slowly tilted it so everything tipped onto the table. There were indeed ledgers. Two. She pulled those out, flipped through them to see they included sales but a bunch of other numbers too. She set them off to the side and went through that bunch of loose paperwork. These appeared to be individual bills of sale. She noted a couple little receipt books too; she frowned when she saw they were only half filled out.

  “So, obviously this was just a little hobby business—or he had no head for business or both,” she said because surely this wouldn’t work for an accountant long-term.