by Vickie Fee
Bryn took a couple of steps inside the building, craning her neck to see into the office.
“I know this sounds crazy, but it looks like it’s gone,” Bryn said.
I followed her back into her office and couldn’t see a trace of the fog we’d seen just moments before.
“Smoke couldn’t have cleared out that fast,” Bryn said, shaking her head. “Plus, the smoke alarm didn’t go off.”
“It was thick around our ankles,” I said. “Smoke doesn’t act like that. Smoke rises. In fact, they say the safest thing to do in a smoke-filled room is to drop to the floor and crawl out.”
“It’s gone, the phone call is gone,” Bryn suddenly said with disbelief.
“What?”
“The strange phone call,” Bryn said. “In fact, all my messages have been erased. Crap.”
The green message light I remembered seeing earlier when she played the call was no longer lit up.
I handed Bryn her purse, which was lying on the credenza behind her desk, and motioned for her to follow me out the door.
“It’s just hard to believe I accidentally deleted all those messages. I’m always so careful. There were callback numbers on there that I hadn’t written down,” Bryn said.
“I don’t think you accidentally erased them,” I said. “But someone did, and that someone could still be hiding in the building. I don’t think you should go back in there. I think you should call the sheriff.”
“You may be right,” Bryn said as we took a few more steps away from the building, closer to the street and the safety of passersby and neighboring buildings.
“Yes, I’m definitely not going back inside the office today,” Bryn said. She gingerly stepped onto the stoop and quickly locked the front door.
“I’m going home,” she said. “Our housekeeper, Myrna, is there, and nobody comes around without her noticing. I’ll talk to Pierce about what happened. He may want to have someone check the air ducts in the office. I’d feel foolish calling the sheriff if it turns out there’s a simple, logical explanation for all this.”
“Okay,” I said. “And I can back you up as a witness about the phone call, since I heard it, too. I think you should drive straight home.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Bryn said. “I will.”
Bryn got into her sports car and drove away, and I walked back to my office. I was dying to tell Di what Bryn had said and what had happened at her office, but Di doesn’t like getting phone calls while she’s working, so I decided it would have to wait until tonight.
I fought with my conscience about whether I should phone Dave about the phone call Naomi had overheard about the patents the day Morgan died. I convinced myself to wait one more day. I told myself it was only fair to allow Naomi time to tell the sheriff herself. In the meantime, I decided I would drive out to the greenhouse and talk to Dylan to try to better understand this manufacturing deal Morgan had proposed to Jasmine.
I drove to the nursery just a few miles outside the corporate limits of Dixie. A light wind rattled the trees lining the winding roads, shaking loose leaves in autumnal shades of gold, crimson, and sage that danced into the road and crunched beneath my tires. Green’s Plant Center covers several acres, with saplings, young trees, small shrubs, and herbs planted in the ground and in containers. Annuals, seedlings, and more fragile plants are nurtured in two greenhouses. A simple shingled cottage is attached to the smaller of the two greenhouses and serves as office, sales counter, and home to Dylan and Jasmine.
Dylan was walking toward the cottage wearing a lightweight jacket and camo pants and carrying a wide shovel. As I pulled up the gravel driveway, he spotted me and waved. I parked and walked over to him.
“Hi, Dylan. Looks like you’ve been hard at work.”
“Today I’ve been raking and mulching leaves,” he said. “Just finished shoveling some leaves into the fall compost bin.” He leaned the shovel against the side of the house and peeled off his thick gardening gloves.
“I’m sure you’re carrying a heavy load right now, keeping the business going without Jasmine around,” I said. “It can’t be easy—for either of you.”
“I’m okay. Working keeps me from going crazy right now. It’s Jasmine I’m worried about.”
I assured Dylan that there were a lot of people who were concerned about Jasmine and convinced of her innocence.
“I don’t know if there are a lot of people who believe Jazz is innocent, but I know of at least two,” he said. “Nell and Sindhu have brought by a mountain of food for me and have visited Jazz at the jail. I’m vegan, so I can’t eat most of the stuff they bring over, but I appreciate the thought.”
“I have a really hard time believing that Jasmine could have murdered Morgan,” I said. “But I won’t lie to you, Dylan. Things don’t look good for her. That’s why I came by. There’s something I wanted to ask you about.”
He invited me into the office area at the front of the cottage, and we sat down facing each other on bar stools on opposite sides of the sales counter.
“Jasmine told me she had turned down Morgan’s proposal to manufacture her face cream. But did she ever sign any kind of document with Morgan? Something about exploratory or preliminary research or securing a patent on the formula? Anything?”
“She did sign a permission form for a lab to test the formula to determine if it was safe for cosmetic use. Jasmine knew it was safe from using it personally for almost three years, including two years of lots of customers using it with no adverse effects. But she liked the idea of having its safety confirmed by a lab,” he said.
“Are you sure this didn’t give Morgan some legal rights beyond just the testing?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I looked over the details real close—I actually took two years of pre-law classes before we moved to Dixie. It was a pretty straightforward form.”
“Nell told me Morgan kept after Jasmine about manufacturing the face cream, didn’t want to take no for an answer,” I said.
“Yeah, she’d back off and then come in from another angle,” Dylan said. “She even offered to give part of the proceeds to some ‘Save the Planet’ charity of Jasmine’s choosing.
“Then just a few days before the retreat, Morgan came by and brought Jazz a big basket filled with organic chocolates and candies and apologized for being such a pain. She said she understood and respected Jasmine’s decision and that she wouldn’t bring it up again. She sounded sincere, but Jazz and I obviously still had our doubts.”
I fell quiet for a long moment, and Dylan offered me a cup of tea, which I accepted. While he prepared the tea, I mulled over everything Dylan had said as well as what Naomi had overheard Morgan saying, and tried to make some sense of it all.
Chapter 18
I made it home in time to whip up some spaghetti carbonara for supper. Larry Joe likes it—honestly, he likes anything with bacon in it. So I thought it might soften the blow of my leaving him to eat supper by himself. And I hoped that with his mouth full he wouldn’t be able to quiz me about what I was up to, since I had a guilty conscience and wasn’t very skilled at putting on a poker face.
I tossed a salad to go with the pasta and ate a few bites of the freshly prepared spaghetti dish, then set the table for Larry Joe. As the clock ticked toward five-thirty, I was beginning to think I’d have to just leave him a note. But about that time he came through the kitchen door.
“Hey, hon. I smell bacon,” he said with a smile. I was retrieving a glass for his iced tea when he slipped up behind me and wrapped me in a bear hug.
He washed his hands at the kitchen sink while I plated up his dinner.
“Aren’t you eating?” Larry Joe asked after noticing only one plate on the table and assuming, of course, that it was his.
“I’m afraid you’re on your own for supper tonight,” I said. “I’m going to change clothes and drive to Holly’s. I’ll probably go by Di’s, too. But I won’t be late.”
While I didn’t out-and-o
ut lie to Larry Joe, I wasn’t exactly being truthful, either. I was going by Di’s, and technically I also planned to drive past Holly’s house on my way home.
After changing into my burgling clothes, I grabbed a Diet Coke from the fridge and gave Larry Joe a quick kiss before heading out the door.
Di was waiting on her front deck when I pulled into the driveway. She walked over and got into the driver’s seat of her car, so I killed the engine, walked over, and got into the passenger’s seat of her Buick.
“I think my car will be less conspicuous in Daisy’s neighborhood,” she said.
I found it hard to believe that her vintage jalopy would be inconspicuous in any neighborhood, but I took her word for it.
“I started having misgivings earlier today about snooping around Daisy’s house,” Di said. “I actually decided just to knock on her front door and ask her to join me and some other yoga chicks for coffee after class. Talk to her face-to-face.”
“What happened?”
“Turned me down flat, saying she had to get home right after class. Brushed me off like I was a Jehovah’s Witness, practically slammed the door in my face. She definitely acts like someone who’s got something to hide.”
Di drove quickly to Daisy’s neighborhood. We wanted as much time as possible to snoop and still be long gone before she arrived home from yoga class.
We drove past her house and confirmed that Daisy’s car wasn’t in the driveway. Since she rarely ventures out, we knew this meant the coast was clear. Di parked just around the corner of Daisy’s block. The corner house had a towering boxwood hedge. We reasoned this would hide the car, and even though it meant we had to walk past three houses to get to Daisy’s place, we could duck behind a shrub or tree or even retreat into someone’s carport in a pinch. If Daisy came home early or one of the neighbors caught a glimpse of us and decided to call the cops, at least they wouldn’t have an easy time giving a description of the car or recording the license plate number.
It was twilight, with long shadows falling across the lawns and sidewalks. We didn’t spot anyone out in their yards or on the sidewalk on either side of the street. Di grabbed a dark canvas tote bag lying on the seat between us, which she said contained a few tools she hoped we wouldn’t need to use.
I was starting to wonder about Di’s definition of peeking in through the windows.
Clad in dark clothing, we walked quickly and quietly to Daisy’s house and darted into the backyard from the shady side of the house.
The blinds were all closed and the back door was locked. I was about to dig through our bag of tricks when we noticed there was a doggie door at the bottom of the back door.
After looking at each other for a moment, Di handed me the bag and dropped down on all fours.
“Wait,” I whispered as I squatted next to her. “What if there’s a watchdog?”
“I haven’t seen or heard a dog since Daisy moved in,” Di said. “This door must be from when the Woodleys lived here. Their dog, Boomer, died a couple years ago.”
Di wriggled through the doggie door. Things were going fine until she got to her hips. She’s slim, but her hips flared just enough to stop her from slipping through.
Di backed out and said quietly, “Let’s try this again.”
She turned around and started to slide through the opening, faceup this time. She still got caught at the hips, but was far enough through to reach up and unlock the deadbolt.
Di slid out, stood up, and turned the knob. She stepped inside the kitchen and I followed haltingly. I felt like a great big hypocrite breaking into Daisy’s house after the scolding I gave Nell and Sindhu for searching Lucinda’s room. But I didn’t let a little twinge of conscience stop me.
I took a small flashlight out of the bag, but Di grabbed my hand.
“Let’s not use any more light than we have to,” she whispered. “Mrs. Roper might see it.”
She tilted up the slats on the back door mini blinds just enough to let the last rays of the setting sun stream in.
Nothing looked out of place in the kitchen, only a few dishes stacked in the sink. I peeked in the refrigerator. Nothing unusual there: some takeout containers of Chinese food, probably delivered since she doesn’t go out much; a couple of yogurts; and the wilted remains of a tossed salad.
The sparsely furnished living room housed a leather sofa, a television, and a coffee table with a laptop computer sitting on it. On the side table next to the lamp was a graduation photo of a young woman standing with an older man and woman I presumed to be her parents.
“Is that Daisy?” I whispered.
Di took a look at the photo.
“Yeah, her hair’s a little shorter now,” Di said. “But that’s her.”
We peeked into the first of two bedrooms, with an unmade bed and clothes strewn on the floor. The bathroom was bare, except for a tropical print shower curtain and a toothbrush lying on the pedestal sink.
In the back bedroom, empty boxes were tossed in the far corner. Along the wall directly across from the door, a long table sat below the window. This single window had both the blinds and lined curtains drawn, so we couldn’t see much.
“Turn on the flashlight,” Di said in a low voice. “I don’t think much light is going to escape through that window.”
I hung the bag on the doorknob and fished out the flashlight. Scanning the beam of light across the tabletop, we saw a few knife-like instruments, some straws, and some laboratory-looking glass tubes, along with gloves and tissue.
We both stepped forward to get a closer look. Then suddenly from behind us we heard an unsettling hissing noise. I spun around and spotted some boxes or cages draped in dark cloth.
Di and I made a hasty retreat, both of us squeezing through the doorway at the same time.
“Let’s get out of here,” Di said, breathily.
We were of one mind on that point.
Once in the kitchen, I doused the light and dropped the flashlight in the bag, and Di closed the blinds after a quick look out. We left and pulled the door shut behind us. We took a quick peek around from the corner of the house and then power walked to the car. Neither of us uttered a word until we’d driven three or four blocks away from Daisy’s house.
“Was that a snake we heard?” I said, my heart still pounding in my chest. I couldn’t believe I was having another close encounter with a snake just two weeks after doing battle with the one on Mama’s porch.
“I don’t know, but it sure sounded like one, and I wasn’t about to hang around to find out,” Di said.
“And what about all that equipment on the table? Maybe she defanged her pet snake,” I said, groping for a plausible explanation to the implements we’d seen.
“That setup looks like some kind of ongoing project,” Di said. “I’m pretty sure you only have to defang a snake once.”
“I suppose snakes eat insects,” I said, thinking about what Mrs. Roper had said about Daisy collecting insects from the yard.
“If they’re big enough, they can eat whatever they dang well please,” Di said.
I nodded and thought that over for an uncomfortable moment.
“We may need to give some more thought to this Daisy and Ted matchup,” she added.
After we arrived at Di’s place and said our good nights, I hopped in my car and started driving home. I was almost to my street when it occurred to me that I had forgotten to drive past Holly’s house in the elaborate ruse I’d constructed to convince myself I wasn’t technically lying to Larry Joe.
As I drove toward Holly’s place I realized in all the excitement I had also forgotten to tell Di about what happened today at Bryn’s office. I briefly considered driving back to Di’s, but figured we’d both had a full day. I decided to just go home.
Larry Joe and I watched an episode of some renovation show on HGTV. I couldn’t help noticing how they managed to finish remodeling a house in a matter of months instead of years.
We were both yawning and call
ed it an early night. Larry Joe was gently snoring within minutes of getting into bed. I lay awake for the longest time before drifting off. During the night, a nightmare of that odd hissing sound menacing me from a dark corner woke me up from a sound sleep. I went downstairs and raided the fridge. After comforting myself with some leftover carbonara I went back to bed and finally fell into a fitful sleep.
Chapter 19
After a busy morning at the office on Thursday, I took time out to eat a quick lunch of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich at the diner. As I was walking back across the square to my office, Dave came charging down the courthouse steps and called out my name in that bad-cop voice that let me know I was in trouble.
“Liv McKay, when are you going to learn to keep you nose out of my murder investigation?”
Before I could answer, he continued, “And just when were you planning to tell me about your little conversation with Naomi Mawbry and what she overheard outside Morgan’s office?”
“Which is it, Sheriff Davidson? Do you want me to keep my nose out of your investigation or tell you what I find out?” I said, peeved that he wanted to have it both ways.
I could tell he was mad, because his nostrils were flaring.
“Maybe you decided not to tell me what Naomi had to say because if Morgan was going behind Jasmine’s back to patent her face cream, that would make things look even worse for Jasmine.”
“Dave, I’ll admit I’m not convinced of Jasmine’s guilt. But unlike Nell and Sindhu I’m not convinced of her innocence, either. I certainly wouldn’t try to hide evidence either way. I was just giving Naomi the opportunity to tell you herself,” I said.
“That so?” Dave said. “It seems to me you—and Miss Souther—make up the rules as you go along depending on what suits you at the moment.”
He made me so angry that I wanted to give him a good dressing down. But since he and Di seemed to be going through a rough patch in their relationship lately, I decided to go to bat for her instead.
“Dave, I went to talk to Naomi all on my own. I didn’t discuss it at all with Di. So don’t let your beef with me cause any distance between you and her.”
