The Azalea Assault

by Alyse Carlson

  “I just hate her kind,” Petunia said, though again, she wasn’t meeting Cam’s eye. “And that John-Jock kept going up to her and whispering, like they were old buddies.”

  Nick frowned. He was never cuddly to look at, but usually he did a better job of maintaining a nonchalant, tough-guy expression.

  “What did you think of him, Nick?”

  “Didn’t see him.” He had joined his wife in failing to meet Cam’s eye.

  “Anyone else scandalized? I want to know how many feathers will need smoothing tomorrow.”

  “May want to bring a whole goose,” Petunia answered darkly, but just then, Rob returned. They were done cleaning, so Cam and Annie helped load the last few things into Nick’s van and then left with Rob.

  “Shoot!” Annie blurted as Rob’s Jeep pulled out of the long driveway.

  “What?”

  “I forgot one of my good pans at the Patricks’ this morning, and I have a mountain of orders tomorrow. Think they’re still up?”

  Cam called and Evangeline said they were on their way to bed. However, she assured Cam someone would be up and able to give Annie her pan by six thirty in the morning.

  Annie nodded at the news, resigned to starting a little earlier than she’d planned.

  CHAPTER 3

  Rob drove Cam to the Patricks’ the next morning, since Annie’s busy day required her to be at her shop by seven. Annie had several special orders for the coinciding Vinton Dogwood Festival and a charity bicycle race. Between the two, people had ordered hundreds of cupcakes. Cam’s real work would begin today, too, and, after the night before, she had some trepidation about how things would go.

  They turned off of Blue Ridge Parkway and rounded the corner. Cam spotted an ambulance parked in the gated driveway of La Fontaine. Rob pulled over to the opposite side of the road and got out with her, concern etched on his face.

  Cam’s first thought was that Mr. Patrick had had a heart attack. She sprinted across the street toward the front door, barely registering the two police cars. The door stood ajar, so she ran in and hustled up the stairs two at a time, calling for the Patricks.

  Cam didn’t find either of them. Instead she felt the chilly spring morning air and found a wide open window on the second floor, through which she heard voices. The screen was missing, so she leaned out to see what was going on. Below were half a dozen official-looking people, including police officers and a guy in a plastic suit carefully picking at… a body.

  Her chest knotted painfully. There was a body sprawled facedown across the azaleas. Her brain kept arguing one didn’t die from jumping out a second-story window, but judging by the scene below, that was what had happened.

  Behind the official-looking people, a few yards back, was a mass of others, those either staying or working at La Fontaine. They loitered nervously, except Rob, who had joined the official group and was talking to one of the policemen.

  She looked more carefully at the sprawled body, noting the slightly rumpled clothes. They seemed so familiar.

  Jean-Jacques Georges.

  “Miss, you’ll need to come down from there. There may be evidence,” one of the police officers called to her.

  “Oh, right. I didn’t touch anything.” It was surreal; she was in a fog.

  “Very good. Now…”

  “Coming!” She finally pulled her brain into focus and her body into motion, which took great effort.

  To Cam’s confusion and irritation, Rob didn’t meet her when she joined the crowd. He kept talking to the police officer who was directing things. It was only then she recognized the officer as Jake Moreno, Rob’s friend from his city league baseball team. The man looked different in a police uniform than he did in sliders and a baseball cap, sadly. Then again, Rob looked better in sliders, too. At that thought, she scolded herself. This was a tragedy.

  She approached Rob and stood behind him, hoping to catch part of the conversation, morbid curiosity and horror dueling for her attention. Jake diligently kept the bystanders back as the plastic-suited man assessed time of death. “Between oh-six hundred and oh-seven thirty,” he said, sounding official. He couldn’t narrow it further until the autopsy was done. The other things he said to the notetaker went mostly over Cam’s head.

  She felt queasy so near what she now knew was a dead body, so she peeked farther around the corner into the backyard and spotted Neil Patrick, who held his arms around his sobbing wife. Jake wasn’t saying much aside from the commands necessary to hold back the crowd, and Cam couldn’t bear to look anymore, so she made her way to the Patricks. Giselle hovered near the doorway, ready to respond if needed, but she seemed determined to give them privacy. Evangeline had red-rimmed eyes and looked like she’d been rather hysterical until very recently.

  “I’m so sorry. Who found him?” Cam asked.

  “Benny, poor lamb.” Evangeline sounded strangely sympathetic for a woman Cam thought had grown used to a haughty station. Cam didn’t really know Benny, except that he was the son of Henry Larsson, an exceptional gardener. The young man, in spite of approaching thirty, seemed to find bodily functions more than a little funny, regardless of who he made uncomfortable laughing about them. Such behavior would have been more normal in a twelve-year-old, but it hardly made him a lamb.

  “Do you know how Benny found him?” She still wasn’t ready to say Jean-Jacques’s name.

  Neil took over as his wife collapsed further. “They came early to deadhead. No garden can look its best with wilted flowers in there. Has to be done daily, and with the photo shoot starting today… Henry went one way and Benny another.”

  “He was so distraught,” Evangeline added, a tear leaking from the corner of her eye. “I heard him shout. When I found him, I called for Giselle to call the police at once, of course, but still… poor dear.” Evangeline’s breath caught and she shook. Cam thought Benny wasn’t the only one who had been very upset.

  “Where is he now? I saw him and Henry from upstairs, but they were gone when I got down here.”

  “There’s a police officer asking Benny questions in the servant’s house. His father’s with him,” Mr. Patrick said.

  “Why’s his father—”

  “Cammi, you may not know this,” Mr. Patrick cut her off quietly. “We don’t talk about it out of respect for Henry, but poor Benny’s a few bulbs short of a flower box. He might need some help with the questions.”

  Cam suddenly felt like a giant heel. Mr. Patrick may have been a bit tactless in how he put it, but no wonder Evangeline spoke as she did. She was being nice. It made all Benny’s past transgressions vanish. Not being very bright excused a lot of fart jokes.

  Rob approached, looking strangely smug, and rubbed Cam’s shoulder. “Jake says he’s going to need to talk to everyone from the party last night.”

  “Heavens! Why?” Neil started.

  Rob moved in closer so only the four could hear. “When the medical examiner flipped the body over, it had a set of pruning shears through the abdomen.”

  Evangeline screamed and fainted, nearly knocking over her husband. Cam helped him lower her onto a reclining lawn chair.

  “Murder?” Cam whispered to Rob, once the deadweight she was helping with had found a home and Neil had knelt to attend to his wife.

  Rob nodded like the cat that ate the canary, or at least the catnip.

  “Why does that please you so much?” she whispered, trying to look stern.

  “Griggs is clear. Doesn’t matter what department you work for, you scoop it, it’s yours. This is a great opportunity.”

  Roger Griggs was the Roanoke Tribune’s editor in chief, and he dictated the rules of the paper. Cam had heard this one before, but it had never occurred to her it might leave her sports-reporter boyfriend investigating a murder.

  “Rob Columbus, there’s a dead man!” Her whisper was now the shouted variety, and Neil Patrick looked up at them in alarm.

  “Near as I could see it, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer gu
y. Jake says he’ll keep me in the loop, so it’s my story.”

  “I thought you liked baseball, football… an occasional hockey game?”

  “I live for them. You know that, but investigative stuff is what makes careers. Heck, even a god like Mitch Albom had to write a sappy book to get national fame, and I don’t have a sappy book in me.”

  “It’s a beautiful book—all of them are,” Cam said defensively, then wrinkled her brow and tried to give her longtime boyfriend a fresh look. She’d always thought as long as he made his living writing about sports, he would be happy. She hadn’t recognized ambition hidden in there at all. In fact, lack of ambition was part of why she had not pressed harder toward engagement.

  “Well that’s great, then. Good luck,” she said, though she wasn’t sure how she felt about it. Worry was the emotion that kept surfacing most prominently.

  Rob smiled and kissed her cheek, then returned to Jake.

  “Cammi, we need to make a decision.”

  Cam turned to Mr. Patrick. Evangeline must have recovered enough to go inside, as she was gone. “Should I start rounding up board members and such, so they’re all here?” Cam asked.

  “Just the officers. Go ahead and print a list with names and addresses of everyone who was at Samantha’s last night for the police. We need to cooperate, but it would just be best if all… this… wasn’t… here.”

  “The photo shoot?”

  “The photo shoot.” He sighed.

  Cam went inside, wondering if the position of Jean-Jacques Georges’s body meant he had really been inside and fallen, or if there was some other explanation for the open window and missing screen. She was distracted, but she called all the board officers, explaining only that there was an emergency and she’d like to explain it in person, since some decisions would be necessary. As she worked her way through the list, Samantha Hollister couldn’t be reached, either at home or on her cell phone. It struck Cam that this was the first time in nearly two years of her RGS presidency that Samantha had not been reachable, though admittedly, there had only been a half dozen “emergencies.”

  The argument of the night before came to mind, but Cam swallowed it back. She didn’t plan to lie when questioned, but it was really nobody’s business except the police’s. She may have liked to hear gossip, but she wasn’t in the practice of spreading it—that would have been counter to her instinct for damage control.

  By ten o’clock the ambulance and medical examiner had carried off the body. All of the Roanoke Garden Society officers, minus Samantha, had gathered. Madeline Leclerc and Cam—the key hired staff—were also present. Giselle brought in coffee and leftover muffins and other treats from the previous day’s catering.

  “We can’t lose this photo shoot. It’s generated thousands in charitable donations, and is sure to drive up membership,” Madeline said. She looked strained.

  Cam owed her job with the Roanoke Garden Society to Madeline Leclerc. The RGS had hired Madeline as coordinator, charged with increasing publicity, membership, and revenue, which Madeline swore she could do, but only with a public relations team. “Team” was a bit of an exaggeration, as it consisted of only Cam, but the job combined Cam’s three loves: gardening, her hometown, and PR.

  “Lose? Madeline, in case you weren’t paying attention, there was a murder—a world-famous photographer was murdered,” Joseph Sadler-Neff said, looking anxious and tired. Sweat glistened from under his comb-over.

  “The magazine staff is already here, and the feature visibility will help us with all our goals!” Madeline’s voice was shrill, invoking panic.

  It was unnerving to have her unshakable boss so flustered. Cam wanted to calm everyone, but she needed them to vent first so she’d know what she was dealing with. Then she could calm them more effectively, or so she hoped.

  “But with no photographer—”

  “There are other photographers,” Madeline insisted.

  “Not so talented. That was how Cammi convinced the magazine to come, wasn’t it, Cammi?” Mr. Patrick said.

  Plans to stall aside, she couldn’t ignore the question.

  “Yes, sir. His fame. I’m sure there is other talent, but his fame brought them here.”

  “Where’s Samantha?” Madeline asked, seeking the board president for leadership.

  Everyone looked around, as if Samantha were hiding in the room. Cam could have sworn Neil Patrick looked under the table.

  “I couldn’t reach her,” Cam said. “I left messages at her home and on her cell.”

  “It was a distressing party,” Joseph conceded, his concern apparent. He seemed near tears, as if overcome with empathy, either for the deceased or, more likely, for the upset hostess. At that moment, it occurred to Cam that Joseph had a crush on Samantha, but she supposed that made sense. Samantha was beautiful, gracious, and single. And as far as Cam knew, Joseph was alone. His emotional display was unusual; normally, he was just terribly proper.

  “Maybe she had a breakfast date,” Mr. Patrick offered hopefully.

  Cam smiled at Mr. Patrick, then looked at Joseph. The man waxed poetic when telling an official story, but rarely said a word otherwise. Cam was glad someone was defending Samantha, though she couldn’t help wondering why Samantha needed defending. She stifled the thought that maybe Joseph knew why.

  The police had been interviewing the magazine and household staff while the RGS officers held their half-hour meeting. Now, as the meeting broke up, they began their interviews with the Garden Society staff and officers. As Cam left the library, she ran into Nick and Petunia.

  “Shoot! I forgot to call you! Well, I guess everyone will still need to eat, and they’ll want to talk to you.”

  “Yeah, what is this?” Petunia pointed at the nervous clusters of people. She then impulsively hugged Cam, picking up the ambient anxiety. Petunia often misinterpreted the cause, but she was good at detecting mood.

  When they separated, Cam got her first good look at her brother-in-law. “Geez, Nick. You look like hell warmed over.”

  “Yeah.”

  Eloquent as always, but Petunia explained. “We have three different big lunches today, and I will need to work all day long because there is also a supper, so Nick spent the whole night at Spoons, cooking.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Well, I think if you want to just tell the police where you’ll be… maybe you can request they come talk to you after all your stuff is done.”

  “You didn’t tell me what this is. Why do they need to talk to us at all?” Petunia’s raw anxiety caused Cam to twitch.

  “Oh, right. That photographer was found dead this morning.”

  “He OD?” Nick asked, suddenly alert. Petunia elbowed him.

  Nick had said he didn’t know who the photographer was. Cam narrowed her eyes. “If he did, he proceeded to fall onto a pair of pruning shears when he passed out.”

  “Murder!” Petunia went wide-eyed and covered her mouth. Fortunately, she’d mastered the muffled squeal. “Some husband get ticked he was goosing every woman in the room?”

  Her snarky tone surprised Cam. She would have thought “murder victim” qualified someone for Petunia’s pity list.

  “He didn’t goose me,” Cam pointed out, one eyebrow up, one down, in a mock leer.

  “He goosed you?” Nick scowled at Petunia.

  “He’s dead. It doesn’t matter.” Petunia patted her large husband calmly. Cam could have sworn he began to purr. She almost laughed.

  “Mighta mattered if I’d heard it last night. I mighta volunteered to kill him myself.”

  “Shush, Nick.” Cam eyed him seriously. “You say that with the police near and you’ll have trouble.”

  Petunia, though, was gazing at him fondly, happy to have a man who wanted to defend her honor. Cam knew she’d had far worse men in her life before Nick. Petunia rubbed his shoulder and smiled, then looked back at Cam. “We’ll check in. Then I’m going to call you tonight to see how this goes. Sort of exciting, isn’t it?”


  “A murder? It’s pretty horrible.”

  “Well, yes, of course. Horrible. But exciting.”

  “And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” Nick added, echoing Rob.

  He gave Cam a fond pinch on the arm as he went out the front door, leaving Petunia to check in with Officer Moreno. Seemed like maybe Nick knew Jean-Jacques after all.

  Rob had left by the time Cam returned to the remaining photography staff and the couple household workers who were still hovering. She figured he’d gone to file a story with the paper and stake his claim to the investigation. It was then Cam realized that not only did they not have a photographer to complete the shoot they’d been planning, but they also had a potential PR crisis on their hands: this story, if not properly managed, could really hurt the Roanoke Garden Society. She didn’t want to ask Rob not to cover it, but at the same time she hoped he wouldn’t print anything inflammatory.

  She then chastised herself. Rob might be a sports reporter, but he was committed to the truth. Unfortunately, the truth looked pretty bad right now. She would have to talk to him later about how to include information about the RGS.

  “Camellia Harris?”

  Cam turned with a raised eyebrow at hearing her full name. “Hi, Jake.” The people around her, mostly members of the RGS, likewise turned, noting her friendship with the police officer whose name badge read “Joaquin Moreno.”

  “Thought that was you. Come on over here. It’s just procedure. Nothing to worry about.” He led her to two facing chairs in a quiet corner of the drawing room.

  “Yeah, thanks. My only real worry is I worked hard to set up this big photo shoot and now it looks like it won’t happen.”

  “Well, your worry is understandable. Seems to me, the sooner a killer is nailed and put away, the sooner you can get back to it.”

  “That’s true.”

  Cam squinted at Jake. She’d never thought of him as smooth before—good-looking, sure; he had that soulful Latin lover thing going on. But strategically convincing a witness it was in her own best interest to cooperate—in a single line? She’d clearly underestimated him. And he was right. Solving this fast would be damage control. There was nothing she liked better than damage control, except maybe damage prevention.