“Has he told you anything more about Julie Jackson?"
“He's being silent as the grave about it. Says things are coming along in the investigation.”
Shelley took a sip of her iced tea she'd brought along in a big, remarkably ugly purple plastic carafe. "Doesn't want us meddling in a neighborhood crime?”
Jane nodded. "I guess so. But we've been so much help to him before, you'd think he'd appreciate our skills," she said with a wry smile.
The door of a vehicle slammed in Shelley's driveway and she got up, saying, "Just a minute. I'll be back.”
It was actually fifteen minutes before Shelley got back, saying, "That was the garden place." "What garden place?"
“The one where your Mike works. I called them out to spruce up my yard."
“Shelley!" Jane exclaimed. "That's cheating! The class is coming to our yards the same day. You're going to show off and make me look even worse."
“You could have thought of it," Shelley said calmly. "Come see what they've done.”
The formerly rather bland backyard had two young men mowing and using a Weed Eater around the edges of the lawn. A multitude of gorgeous plants in planters of every variety were sitting around the edge of the patio. A replica of an old-fashioned wooden wheelbarrow was full of yellow nasturtiums; a large watering can spilled out purple petunias. There was a cupid statue surrounded by little pots of lobelia, and about ten of those fake pottery pots that look real were scattered artfully about. From one pot sprouted a trellis covered with a coral wild rose. Tall spikes of veronica were next to the rose, and there was a huge pot of dark red sunflowers the color of good burgundy. Verbena was tucked in between, filling the gaps between the large pots.
Jane gaped at the transformation. "You — you! You don't even know what most of this is. How are you going to take care of this?"
“Easy. I just water for a couple days and when the garden tour is over, these nice boys come back and take it all away."
“You RENTED a garden?"
“Why not? It wasn't all that expensive. And it was easy. One plant catalog and one phone call." Jane glared at her friend. "I was just going to send Mike out with the pooper-scooper and a lawn mower the night before, and keep the cats inside so they didn't leave mangled chipmunks on the patio. I even considered getting a tablecloth for the patio table and a little arrangement of flowers from the grocery store. And you go and re-create the Biltmore gardens for yourself. I call that cheating. I really do.”
Shelley brushed this insult off. "As I say, anyone could have thought of it.”
Jane made a raspberry noise.
“Mrs. Nowack," one of the workers asked, "do you want your shrubs trimmed?”
Shelley made a flighty gesture and said, "Yes. Soldier on, my good man.”
Jane clumped home and took another critical look at her yard, noting the bug-chewed white petunias in the south corner, the straggling butterfly bush that had never bloomed, the stingy little marigolds. Then she went inside and called the nursery where Mike worked. Maybe since she was the mother of an employee, they'd give her a discount.
She was hardly off the phone when, a moment later, the doorbell rang. It was Arnold Waring holding a square pan with foil over it.
“Come in… Arnie," Jane said, remembering that he'd asked the class to call him that.
“Ms. Appledorn was telling me today about the awful food she brought you." He paused. "I hope you didn't like it, but maybe it was to your taste."
“Not my taste at all. I threw it all away. Though she meant well.”
He looked relieved to hear this. "Well, I got home and took to thinking that it might be nice to have something better around. These are brownies from my wife's recipe file. Where would you like me to put them?"
“You made them yourself?" Jane said, leading him to the kitchen and indicating the counter.
“Oh, Miss Jeffry, I have to cook for myself. Never cooked for one person until Darlene passed on. But I used to cook for a gang at the fire station before I retired. At least twice a week now, I go to Darlene's little recipe box. She was such a good cook. It makes me feel — well, a little bit as if she's still with me. In spirit, anyway."
“That's sweet of you," Jane said. "I'm sure she knows. you're doing that and is pleased.”
Suddenly he was bustling back to the front door. Speaking over his shoulder, he said, "Mustn't keep you. Just thought you might like the brownies.”
Jane followed him, thanking him, but he was gone.
Jane and her daughter were finishing a late dinner. Mike hadn't returned and Jane was wondering wildly if Mike and Kipsy had eloped. He was usually very good at letting his mother know where he was. Well… he was that way when he was in high school. A year of college had apparently put this courtesy out of his mind.
Ursula had called and said she was on the way with more food, and Jane said she was already putting her dinner on the table, and Ursula believed it even though it was only four-thirty when she called.
Katie was still speaking with a fake French accent, and Jane pretended not to notice. "The French, they would never use a plastic bag to cook meat. They use fine parchment paper," Katie commented.
“All of them?" Jane said sarcastically. "Katie, you were only in Paris with rich friends. And I doubt you got to go in the kitchen of the restaurants."
“But we did." Katie reverted momentarily to plain English. "Jenny's dad had gone to culinary school when he was young, and he always asked to see the kitchen before we ordered.”
Jane was appalled. "Jenny's dad is a banker. Culinary was twenty years in his past, and I remember him telling me it made him gain weight and he quit after the first year and took business courses. And what's more, 'nice' people from America don't insist on seeing the kitchens of restaurants. It's a wonder you weren't all thrown out.”
The argument was put on hold when Mel rang the front doorbell. Katie flounced to the hall and let him in, saying in bored tones, "She's in the kitchen criticizing my friends." She continued the flounce clear upstairs where she turned her radio on full blast.
Mel came in the kitchen smiling. "Who are you raking over the coals now?"
“No one you know," Jane said with a grin. "Sit down. There are tons of leftovers. I'll bet you haven't had dinner."
“Or lunch for that matter. Thanks.”
Jane had learned early on that you didn't try to talk to Mel when he was hungry. If he answered at all, it was merely "uh-huh" or "no." But she was anxious to pick his mind about Julie Jackson. She sat patiently as he ate four slices of the roast, and two helpings of potatoes and gravy, and passed on the broccoli au gratin.
While he was making inroads on the leftovers, she told him about Shelley renting plants. "It wasn't fair. Our yards are on the same day and it would make me look like a piker."
“But you've got more sense than to do a silly thing like that," he managed to say between bites.
“Not exactly…" Jane said softly. "Mine are coming tomorrow afternoon. And I even got a water feature to one-up her. It's only a little birdbath waterfall that I wanted anyway and actually bought outright."
“Is it the broken foot that's making you so competitive? Or something else?" Mel asked, setting down his silverware at last and really looking at Jane.
She looked at him for a long time. "It's more. And stupider. See, I've never broken any bone. It makes me feel as if I'm suddenly vulnerable and — well, getting older."
“But you might as well have broken your foot when you were eight or nine and you wouldn't have felt that way. I broke my arm about that age, and I thought it was sort of neat and made me stand out in the crowd, as I remember. Everybody breaks something, sometime. You've just been lucky."
“Yes, but there's a difference between eight and forty-something. And it reminds me, too, that I'm older than you.”
Mel looked genuinely stunned. "When has that ever mattered? It's only a couple of years and you've aged far better than I have.”
/>
Jane got teary and reached across the table, putting her hands to his cheeks. "I sometimes forget what a good man you are.”
Mel took one of her hands and kissed the palm, grinning. "You just want to pry information out of me, don't you?"
“NO! I wasn't even thinking of that. But now that you mention it—"
“Let's go sit in the living room where you'd be more comfortable, then.”
When Mel had gallantly seated Jane and put sofa pillows behind her back and was assured she was comfortable, he sat down and took her plastered leg on his lap and said, "Frankly, we're getting nowhere fast with the Jackson case. Too many suspects, too little evidence."
“What suspects?" Jane asked, glancing around for something long she could stick down her cast to scratch an itch on the back of her leg. She set‑ tied on an emery board she found in the side table.
“Lots of men. Dr. Jackson was quite the socialite. She'd married young, twice in a row, then went off men as marriage partners, apparently. But she had quite a social life. She was on all sorts of high-tone charity boards and went to lots of fancy dinners. Always with an escort. Her bankbook and closet are both things you'd envy. Lots of money and lots of very elegant clothes." He took the emery board away from her. "You don't want to do that."
“What about the ex-husbands?"
“No go. One was at a business meeting in Hong Kong and the other was on vacation with his third wife and four children in Martha's Vineyard. Lots of creditable witnesses. And both exes expressed what sounded like genuine sorrow that she'd been injured and asked if there was anything they could do for her."
“What about the other men? The ones that wine and dine her at the charity dinners?"
“It's quite a list. And they're all successful men who are at the top of their fields and know how to keep their heads when questioned by the police. They all also expressed their concern and sounded quite sincere. Her hospital room would be crammed with flowers and fruit baskets if they were allowed in the intensive care area.”
Jane brushed this off. "Any of them have alibis?"
“Some have good ones, a few have none. Butthat doesn't mean much. Lots of those sorts of executives work from home these days, at least part of the time, and since many of them are single or divorced, there's nobody to alibi them, and it doesn't make them guilty of anything."
“How is Julie doing, really?"
“She's coming around pretty well. Her brother-in-law says it's amazing that she was semiconscious for so long and there doesn't seem to be any permanent brain damage. She's pretty alert now."
“What has she to say about what happened to her?”
Just then the phone rang. "Want me to get it?" Mel asked. "It could be for me."
“Please, and if it's Mike, I want to talk to him.”
Mel picked up the phone and said, "VanDyne here." Then, "Yes, I am… yes, she's fine. She finished her dinner… Tofu? I don't think so.”
He came back shaking his head. "It was an Ursula asking if you'd finished the tofu. Who on earth is Ursula? And why would you eat tofu?”
Fourteen
“I'll tell you about Ursula later. Go back to where we were. If Julie's so alert, what is she telling you about the perp and what happened?"
“Absolutely nothing. She can't remember anything beyond having steak on the grill with her sister and sister 's husband the night before she was attacked."
“But she will, though, sooner or later," Jane said.
Mel shook his head. "Her brother-in-law says in a serious accident, the immediate memory of it sometimes never comes back. He explained it's natural for the brain to file it away somewhere literally unreachable. A self-defense fear mechanism, if I understood him. Sort of a self-hypnotism for protection from the memory."
“Couldn't she be hypnotized for real when she recovers?”
Mel had sat back down and was idly tapping his fingers on her cast. "Only if she would agree to it. And it might be something she can't bear to remember, or perhaps she can't be hypnotized. Some people can't, you know. And anyway, she'll have a pretty long recovery time. She's got a touch of amnesia about other things as well. The neurologist thinks the nonthreatening memories will return pretty fast."
“I guess you've taken fingerprints from her office?”
Mel raised his eyebrows and said, "You doubted that? Of course we did. But most of her files seem to have been handled by other people somewhere along the line. Lots of prints, but none matching her sister or her brother-in-law except on innocuous personal letters. And even the letters were filed in the color-coded booklets."
“So you suspect her sister or brother-in-law?"
“It's routine to suspect family members, Jane. Most violent crimes are within the family."
“Do you still think either one of them could have done it?”
Mel shook his head. "The sister had time-stamped receipts from her shopping that matched the tags on the clothes she'd bought. Her husband had a parking ticket at a garage in Chicago that covered most of the time they say they were gone, allowing for the travel back and forth."
“Does that let them off the hook?"
“Not necessarily. The time of the attack is hard to guess, so in theory they could have roughed her up before they left her house. We have only their word that she was all right when they left.
Too bad the perp didn't break her watch in the attack, so we could tell when it happened. Unfortunately, that only happens in books."
“What about her files? Could you tell if anything was missing?"
“Two of the file drawers were gaping open. She might have left them that way while she was working. There isn't any huge gap and nothing's strewn around."
“Computer?"
“It's being gone over. There doesn't seem to be anything so far that indicates recent threats or personal conflicts."
“Is there something older in the files that does indicate conflicts?"
“Much older. Most of her files are letters outlining the plants she's been asked to analyze. All sorts of stuff about DNA and cell structure of the various parts of the plant, a full description, and pictures someone's provided are in each file as well. And the receipts for her work. A few people argued about her results, but fairly mildly."
“Does this have to do with disputed plant patents?" Jane said, remembering something Dr. Eastman had said in class.
“Only a very few. Most seem to be from people who intend to apply for a patent and want to double-check if their submission is too much like anything she's studied before. I'm told by an expert in the patent outfit that this happens often because getting the patent is so expensive that people often would rather pay an outside expert before submitting the patent information. Her sister said it's been a couple of years at least since she had to testify in court about a disputed patent. The rest of the time, she writes articles for botany texts and specialty magazines."
“Was there a file from Dr. Stewart Eastman?" "Who's that?"
“The guy with the pink marigolds he's patenting. Also the man who took over teaching the class when Julie couldn't do it."
“Doesn't ring a bell, but I'll check. Pink marigolds? Is that possible?"
“It seems so," Jane said. "He brought them to class to show off.”
Mel went to the phone and gave Eastman's name to someone in his office who had a list of Julie's files. Waited a long time, then said, "Thanks.”
While he was gone, Jane recovered the emery board and had a good, long, satisfying scratching session. She slipped it into the sofa cushions as he returned.
“No, Jane, no Eastman in the files. Why would you think he might be involved?"
“I don't really. It's just that he patents plants, and seemed to know Julie and her sister." "What class is this anyway?"
“It was supposed to be basic botany. Shelley and I signed up just hoping to learn what kind of plants might grow for us. It turned out that Eastman's interest is entirely in patenting plants, not t
he basics like we expected. It's sort of interestingin theory, but not something of practical value to anyone in the class."
“And is this where the strange Ursula comes into your life? Who in the world is she?" Mel asked.
Jane sighed. "Ursula is hard to describe. She's an aging hippy. All tie-dyed and madly liberal or maybe madly conservative. I haven't quite figured that out. And she thinks there are vast conspiracies everywhere."
“What does this have to do with tofu?" Mel asked, laughing.
“She says she was a nurse in Vietnam and has taken care of a lot of old ladies since she lost her nursing status. She admitted it was a drug charge, but denies that it was valid. Only herbal cures. And free-range eggs and health food.”
Mel had stopped laughing. "Oh, right. I better check her out."
“Can you do that?"
“I hope so. But why is she calling you?”
Jane smiled. "Because she's got me marked as helpless — like the old ladies. And she must not have an old lady currently to look after. You should have seen the food she brought over. Tofu was the least disgusting. Mel, I think she means well, but she sort of scares me."
“In what way?"
“I guess it's the conspiracy thing. She talks about it all the time. The government is trying to poison us with strawberries, the Denver airport is really owned by Queen Elizabeth, and the Ma‑ sons control the world, the postal service in particular. It's just all so bizarre and paranoid. And even the so-called facts she cites are entirely wrong, but she doesn't want to know that."
“Facts like what?" Mel asked.
“Are you really interested? Let me think. She had the Templars a century off and seemed to think the Dauphin had survived and was English and formed the Virginia Company, which, if my memory for history is right, was long before he was even born."
“You're making this up.”
Jane looked indignant. "I haven't the imagination to make up someone like Ursula. And if I could, I wouldn't."
“Who else is in this class? Is it a big group?"
“It might have been originally. It was scheduled in a large room," Jane said. "But the attack on Julie was in the local paper and maybe a lot of attendees assumed the class was canceled. You could ask Stefan Eckert about that."
Mulch Ado About Nothing jj-12 Page 8
