Damien seemed to know which way her thoughts wandered. He responded with a bark—or a laugh, Pru couldn’t tell. “Twyla never wanted my money—is that what you’re asking? When we divorced, she wouldn’t take a penny. What she asked for now was all for the ARGS garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. I had to practically push the house on her. Yes, Ms. Parke, fine—tell Chiv to find lorries no matter what the cost.”
“Are you a rock star? Choose two of the following types of rock and describe their uses in the landscape: limestone, schist, gneiss, shale, granite. Answers over two hundred words will not qualify for this month’s prize. Turn in your papers to Rosette Taylor before the speaker begins.”
Quiz Time at the monthly meeting of the Austin Rock Garden Society
Chapter 23
No other contractor had given his crew the day off, Sunday or no. The hospital grounds were heaving—several excavators still shifted soil, the avenues teemed with traffic. Racks of plants, pushed by unseen hands, clattered along on the asphalt, their metal wheels clacking away. Large trees and shrubs were being positioned, compost ready to spread, the water pressure on fountains tested—it was all so progressive. The crane at the Aussie garden extended higher than the pavilion and the metal mountain began to resemble an enormous Christmas tree—Pru thought Skippy might want to set a star on the tip-top.
At the ARGS garden, Chiv and Sweetie stood silent on opposite sides of the trench, hands on their hips, studying the stones. They’d made progress—the wall extended another four feet or so along the trench, and rose to its proper height of three feet. Oh good, Pru thought, at this rate the wall will be finished in time for the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. In July.
The minivan rolled up with Iris, Teddy, and six more arbutus. They all helped to wrestle them to the ground, and Chiv inspected the condition of the foliage, taking a pair of hand pruners to any twig that didn’t meet his standards.
Iris stood at Pru’s elbow. Pru blushed at the thought of the woman spying on her the afternoon before, but then thought that it should be Iris doing the blushing. “How are you feeling, Iris? I heard you were under the weather yesterday.”
“How did you hear that?” Iris asked, her face and eyes clear of any shame.
Crap, how did she hear that? “Kit told me.” True, but she would need to warn Christopher.
“I was feeling a bit peaky yesterday morning,” Iris said, “and didn’t think rumbling round in that old minivan would do me any good. Had a bit of a lie-in. But I’m fine now.”
“Afternoon, all.”
Pru got whiplash her head jerked up so fast.
“Kit,” she said. “Hello. Um. Did you get my message about the day off?”
He stood there with his hands in the pockets of his trousers, looking perfectly at ease. “I got your message, but thought Chiv might be here and I could help out a bit. I didn’t realize you would be here.” You knew exactly where I’d be, she thought.
“You left him a message?” Iris asked Pru. “I thought you said Kit was the one who told you about my staying back yesterday.”
Pru felt her face tighten into a fake, stiff smile, as if rigor mortis were setting in. Her head was empty of lies, but Christopher never missed a beat.
“Yeah, I did tell her that—last evening,” he said. “Pru and Simon are hoping to book me for a fortnight next month to help them renovate their Mediterranean garden. We were working over the figures.”
“It was a terrible winter for the agapanthus,” Pru said, panting slightly in relief. “Drainage issues.” She allowed her mind to fly south to Greenoak, and began to worry about the garden and Simon. She hoped her brother hadn’t started the renovation on his own—she should ring him.
“Let me know if you ever fancy a move to Hereford, Kit,” Chiv said. “We could use you at the nursery.”
“And you, Pru,” Kit said. “You’re not taking the day, either.”
Teddy had left to park the minivan off the grounds. Pru looked behind her and saw that Iris, Chiv, and Sweetie were only a few feet away.
“Yes, well, there you are,” she said. “Ivory told me Chiv and Sweetie were working here”—she raised her eyebrows at Christopher and mouthed alone—“and I thought why not join them. And then here came Iris and Teddy.”
Christopher lifted his chin—message received. “Ah, yes. Good of you.”
“We haven’t done that much, just talked about rocks,” Sweetie said. She pulled off her gloves and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I was telling Chiv about the time my daddy and I were working on a wall near Round Top, and I found a little girl’s diary that she’d hidden inside, sort of crammed between two of the stones. She wrote it in 1923, when she was twelve. Can you imagine? It had been hidden away in there for all that time—I could still read it.”
“I was repairing a wall near Little Dewchurch,” Chiv said, “this was years ago. I came across a gold locket, all curled up like a grass snake, and in a hollow place on a through stone. Must be fifty years old, but in perfect condition. That’s a proper wall for you.”
“What did you do with it?”
Chiv shrugged and cocked his head. “Gave it to Iris.”
“Do you still have it?” Sweetie wanted to know.
Iris’s hand went to her throat and she smiled.
“Oh yeah,” Chiv said. “Never takes it off.”
Pru’s hand flew to her own neck where, under the layers of sweatshirt and T-shirt and camisole, she wore the art-deco-style fan pendant that Christopher had given her their first weekend together. Never took it off. She cut her eyes in his direction. Her heart softened a bit toward Iris.
“Good to see everyone hard at work on a Sunday—but aren’t you out of uniform?”
Forde Thomas Forde, khaki trousers and his ARGS blue under his high-vis vest—did he sleep in the sweatshirt, too?—surveyed the garden scene as if he were lord of the manor.
“Have you come to lend a hand?” Pru asked without hope.
“Like yesterday when you stopped by?” Chiv asked, and then looked at Pru. “He was looking for you.”
Forde frowned at his steel-toed boots, as if he blamed them for landing him in an unpleasant situation. “It’s the bluebonnets—I wanted to ask you about them.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll see them quite soon,” Pru said.
Chiv cursed. “I wouldn’t lay any odds on that.”
“No, really,” Pru said. “I came to tell you. Damien has approved extra funds for the budget so you can hire proper lorries.”
“Did he now?” Chiv asked. “Well, thanks for that. We’ll see what difference it makes.”
Chiv’s defeatist attitude disappointed Pru. Why did he continue working if he thought the entire venture a failure? It could be Twyla’s death had taken it all out of him, and he had no more heart for it, but he felt trapped. He couldn’t back out of a Chelsea Flower Show garden at the last minute—it was his reputation, too.
—
That afternoon, they—each of them, Forde notwithstanding—put in a good few hours on the wall. After Chiv had overcome his reluctance to have anyone touch his masterpiece, that is. No, it was more than reluctance, it was practically a standoff until common sense had prevailed. That came in the form of Teddy’s remark about how the official Chelsea Flower Show program might read “…and partial wall constructed by A. Chiverton Gardens because he was too bloody possessive to let anyone else touch the damn thing.”
It surprised Pru to hear quiet Teddy talk this way to his father—she would never in a million years have tried it with her own dad—but Chiv only said, “Ah, go on, then.” They all stuck in, with Chiv flitting from shoulder to shoulder like a dragonfly, offering copious amounts of advice and rejigging stones that seemed perfectly set.
—
Pru made straight for the shower when she arrived at the flat, letting the hot water beat on her back. She gardened almost every day at Greenoak, but she and her brother now hired out extra help for the heavy li
fting. They didn’t hire Kit, of course, but a real person. A real younger person—or two, when necessary. Building this wall for the ARGS garden rewarded her in ways she never expected—such as the permanent ache between her shoulder blades. She had left Christopher finishing up a section with Chiv. Obviously, they couldn’t leave together, but she did take a moment to look back on her way out. Apart from their deception and the investigation, and, of course, Twyla’s death, he seemed to be enjoying himself.
Pru had eaten half a piece of Evelyn’s ginger cake and opened a bottle of wine when it occurred to her that she should nip down to the specialty market, Fritz & Floyd, next to the Tube station. Those fellows offered filled baguettes, cakes, and a fine selection of fresh main dishes ready to toss in the oven. What would it be? Hodgepodge pie? Ham and leek crumble?
A text arrived from Christopher, who was at that moment standing in Fritz & Floyd. Would she like poached salmon and salad for dinner and a chocolate tart for afters? God, he could read her mind from afar, couldn’t he? Lovely, she texted back. He arrived ten minutes later to an open bottle of very good claret, and showered while she set out the food. Over their meal, they reviewed the intelligence they’d gathered.
“Iris was cautioned after she hit that young woman on the bicycle,” Christopher remarked.
“A caution? That’s a warning from police?”
“A caution is given for a crime. It’s usually for something minor. Perhaps the young woman agreed it was an accident and didn’t take it any further. But it’s still a crime and on Iris’s record.”
“French didn’t tell you that.”
“I rang Adam Harnett, the DI in Romsey.” Good thing Christopher remained on the police force somewhere.
“How was Chiv?” she asked.
“He didn’t talk, only worked on the wall.” So, fairly normal.
“The wall,” Pru said. “It has to be finished before we plant. The liner needs to be installed, the pump tested, the grating replaced. At least Chiv can now hire lorries for the plants—and bugger the cost.” She saw Christopher grin as she stabbed a tomato. “Damien has a huge chip on his shoulder about Chiv. And I’m not sure how pleased he was about Twyla doing all this, even though he has spent a great deal of money on it. At the potluck, I asked him about how he came to sponsor the garden, and he said Twyla had that way about her. At the time, I thought it was sweet, but now it sounds creepy. What if he resented her in some weird way for never wanting anything from him until now—and then he discovers she might go back to Chiv?”
“What’s this?” Christopher asked.
Pru shook her head. “It’s just sort of an idea that came to me—the way Twyla talked about him, the way Chiv talks about her. What if they’d planned to get back together? That would give Iris even more reason to kill Twyla.”
“But it might give Damien reason, too.”
“And I can’t figure Rosette out.”
She explained Rosette’s attitude toward Twyla. “Or at least, this is what I see,” she admitted. “One minute, Rosette’s complaining about her, and the next she’s being protective.”
“Were they a couple, do you think?”
Pru shrugged. “Perhaps, but that doesn’t seem to quite fit. Whatever it is, there’s a great deal of history there.”
Christopher took their plates to the counter and Pru scraped leftovers into a container. If she had stayed in Hampshire and taken Evelyn’s lessons, she’d’ve cooked this meal herself. “We can’t exist on takeaways.”
“When this is finished,” he said, “we’ll go out for Italian.”
“Gasparetti’s?” Her favorite Chelsea Italian restaurant—the site of their first dinner date, although she hadn’t been quite sure at the time that’s what it was. She imagined them sitting at a corner table with candlelight and the scent of basil and garlic rising from her spaghetti pomodoro. She longed to be transported to that moment—free of the expectations and conflict that closed in on her. But Gasparetti’s was in the neighborhood of the hospital grounds, broadly speaking, and they couldn’t risk being seen together. “I should cook one evening. I can roast a chicken,” she said.
“And I can do a fair pasta—no substitute for Riccardo’s, of course. How’s that for tomorrow evening?”
“Perfect—and this summer, I’ll get to those cooking lessons.” Cooking lessons reminded her of Greenoak. “I need to ring Simon. I’m a bit worried he’s overdoing things while I’m away.”
The phone conversation began well. They chatted about germander hedges and Grecian windflowers, but when they entered the territory of planting techniques and Simon began boasting about how much he would have finished by the time she returned, the squabbling ensued.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to move that slate around on your own, and that bin of terra-cotta bits that we’ll use on the path has grown quite heavy. Can’t you get one of the lads in to help?”
“I’m not an invalid,” Simon snapped. In the background, Pru heard her sister-in-law, Polly, call out, “He’ll be an invalid soon enough if he doesn’t cut back.”
“I’m not calling you an invalid,” Pru said. “It’s just that…I want to be a part of it, too. You won’t do it all without me, will you? As it is, I’m missing so much of the tulips.” It hadn’t taken her long to learn to play the little-sister card if need be. The tulips were a single early called “Jenny”—their mother’s name. It had been Simon’s idea, and they had planted them together the previous autumn. Fortunately, Pru had seen them at the beginning of their bloom before she’d left for London.
“Hang on,” Simon said, all irritation gone from his voice. “I took a photo today—I’ll send it to you now.”
Pru rang off and exhaled loudly, blowing air upward and riffling her hair. “I wish we wouldn’t argue so much.”
“Siblings,” Christopher replied. “It’s hardly unusual.”
“True,” Pru said. “You and Claire can get into it, too, can’t you? But we always come out on the other end knowing we love each other.”
Christopher frowned and cocked his head a couple of degrees, as if listening to her words again. Pru heard them herself and gasped as the penny dropped.
“Be sure to sign up for our upcoming trip to Guadalupe Peak, where we’ll see claret cups and cholla cactus in bloom as we climb high and higher up the slopes. Don’t look down!”
Austin Rocks! the e-newsletter of the Austin Rock Garden Society
Chapter 24
“I just want a word with her,” Pru said as Christopher left the next morning. “If I can catch her in private. Why would she want to keep something like this a secret?”
“You have a notion that they are sisters,” he said. He pulled on a jacket and stashed his ARGS sweatshirt in a bag—to be donned only after he arrived on the grounds. “Now you need to follow through to find out if your hunch is true.”
Pru nodded and kissed him goodbye. “Right—notion, hunch. See you soon.” She waited thirty minutes before leaving herself, giving Kit time to arrive at the site first.
Once through the gate, Pru stood at the top of Eastern Avenue and stretched in the sun. If not for extenuating circumstances, this would be a perfectly joyous day for buildup to Chelsea—dry, not too warm, not too cold. A light breeze blew across her face. She breathed in the spring scent of new green growth and felt a tickle in her nose. Before she could stop it, a massive sneeze escaped, followed by another. From down the way off to her left she heard an answering sneeze and then another to her right. Ah, the London plane trees are in bloom.
Each May just before and often throughout Chelsea week, the London plane trees on the hospital grounds and all across the city broke into flower. Not a big showy display like magnolias. No, the male flowers of the plane tree were a yellow-green and looked a bit like a lollipop. But they held copious amounts of pollen, which any bit of wind dislodged. A strong gust blowing through on a show day meant that the trees showered one and all with their riches, and could
result in a sneezefest several thousand people strong. Pru dug for a tissue, a thrill of both delight and fear as she realized how close they were to deadline.
Both Eastern Avenue and Main Avenue were chockablock with traffic—pallets of plants, forklifts, cranes, lorries, and goods being delivered on flatbed trolleys. Pru made her way to the garden carefully and stopped short of the ARGS garden to take it in.
It may be titled “More Than Rock and Stone,” but it was not much more at the moment. The dozen evergreen shrubs that had been transported from Hereford huddled near a corner of the shed. At least almost everyone had arrived—even Forde and Roddy, although they stood about looking more ornamental than useful.
She called “Good morning” to the group and was answered by a chorus of sneezes—explosive from Ivory, controlled from Rosette. Forde had one of those vocal sneezes that began slow and rose to a crescendo before dropping into a long slow finish. Roddy stepped away from Forde with a look of distaste. Chiv’s sneeze sounded like a cross between a sneeze and a curse. Pru marveled at how oblivious people were to their sneezing styles—she included herself in that sweeping generalization. Often, as soon as a sneeze had escaped her, she thought, Next time could you sound a bit less like a teakettle overflowing?
Christopher and Teddy wrangled the black nursery pots, arranging the arbutus in a pitifully short line to represent what should be a long hedge of Texas madrones—or close to it. Teddy paused for a sloppy sneeze and wiped his nose on his sleeve before getting back to work. Rosette and Ivory were getting instructions from Chiv, while Sweetie heaved a rock up onto the dry stone wall. The fact that Chiv let her work unsupervised showed that he believed she knew what she was doing or that he, too, sensed a deadline looming. Or both. Pru glanced round, looking for Iris, who was nowhere about.
The Bluebonnet Betrayal Page 15
