Greenhouse Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1-6

by Wendy Tyson

Denver was back a few seconds later with a long, coiled hose. “We need the hook-up.”

  “Over there.” Megan pointed to the side of the church, near the entrance to the cellar.

  “Megan, please go to your car,” Denver said.

  But Megan had already taken one end of the hose and was busily unraveling it, pulling it straight. Denver shook his head and headed to the spigot. Megan could hear sirens in the distance. While the officer managed the crowd, which was newly emboldened by the containment of the fire to the wagon, Denver attached the hose to the spigot and turned the metal handle. Megan aimed the water at the fire, barely making a dent in the blaze.

  Denver took the hose from her. He ventured closer to the flames, glancing overhead at low-hanging branches. The recent rain meant the trees were saturated and less of a threat, but she was sure Denver was thinking about the danger of open flames near old trees and an old church—a potentially disastrous combination.

  Megan, unsure what to do with herself, spotted a little boy crying by the tree line. She ran over and knelt beside him.

  “I can’t find my daddy,” he said. His tricorne was crooked, his t-shirt smudged with dirt. Megan recognized him as the little guy who’d been hanging from the rope, excited by the soldiers who were charging by. He must have gotten separated from his father when the crowds panicked.

  “Wait with me,” she said. “And don’t worry. We’ll find him.”

  In short order, the boy’s father joined her, his face rash-red with worry. King and Denver walked over too. King’s mouth pressed into a stern line.

  The firefighters arrived to finish what Denver had started. Megan could see the young officer combing the tree line behind the blast, presumably looking for any other explosives. Rain began to fall. Cold, fat drops that did nothing to dispel the tension in the air.

  The boy and his father reunited. The father thanked Megan before heading toward his car.

  “Stay in the parking lot,” King called. “I’d like to ask you and your son a few questions.”

  Megan, Denver, and King watched the pair walk away, hand in hand.

  “Any idea who did this?” King asked.

  “Not Porter,” Denver said evenly. “You have the boy locked up.”

  King nodded, looking troubled—a good sign, in Megan’s estimation. If the police weren’t convinced they had their man, they’d keep looking, and clearly whoever was causing trouble in Winsome was still at it. Megan had to believe the explosion and the attacks were related.

  King looked toward the carriage, now a twisted shell. “This explosion seems more of a statement than a targeted attack.”

  “Or a distraction,” Denver said.

  Distraction. Megan’s mind flitted to the broken window at the store the night someone had been in her barn. What if she had been wrong? What if Porter had thrown that rock into her store to distract her from what was really happening?

  King said, “A distraction from what?”

  Denver shrugged. “While the police are tied up here, someone could be up to no good somewhere else.”

  King looked worried. Megan turned her attention from the police chief to the two officers bagging samples near the burned-out carriage. She was thankful no one was hurt.

  This time.

  Thirty-Three

  The police had kept the remaining onlookers for questioning, allowing them to leave one at a time. Megan and Denver gave what little information they could and then departed, both thankful to be vacating the site. There had been too much violence as of late, and that burned-out carriage was a reminder that their little town wasn’t really safe.

  Denver wanted to stay with Megan, but she insisted he return to his own responsibilities. She’d be fine. Back at the farm, she fed the chickens, checked on the fields, and made sure the goats were warm and dry, longing for a sense of routine. The drizzle had continued on and off, but now lightning flashed in the distance. Gunther accompanied Megan on her rounds, an attentive and playful guardian. He was a smidgen too interested in the goats, and so Megan had to keep him outside of their pen. His white fur, difficult to keep clean on the driest, sunniest days, was painted with streaks of mud. He didn’t seem to mind, but the furniture—and Bibi—certainly would.

  Satisfied that the animals were faring well, Megan was heading back toward the house when she decided to take another look at the old house next door. If Jeremy was determined to make something out of it, maybe she’d beat him to the punch. The house was barely livable; surely she and Bibi could scape up the funds to buy it. It was too close to her property. She didn’t like the idea of someone else’s business right nearby, especially Jeremy’s business.

  The yard between the two properties had not been mowed, and the wet grass looked daunting, even with her muckers on. The drizzle was picking up. Megan thought about Porter holed up in the old building; she remembered the eerie feeling she’d gotten last time she visited. This was as far as she’d go today.

  On her way back toward her house, something about the barn caught her eye. Since Simon’s death and the subsequent intruder, she’d been careful with the barn. Everything had to be closed and locked, and Clay and the students knew that. Today, however, the rear door was unlatched on the outside: closed, but unlatched.

  Her stomach clenched. Not again. She’d made sure these doors were closed and latched when she and Clay had left earlier, and the students hadn’t been in today. She doubted Bibi would come down to the barn, and if she had, she would have used the front door. Megan pulled her phone out of her pocket and had it ready. She and Gunther made their way toward the rear door slowly, carefully. Megan’s heart pounded into her throat. At the barn, she listened for movement or voices. Nothing. Gunther was sniffing the door, but his hackles weren’t up. Taking that as a good sign, Megan opened the door slowly. Inside, nothing seemed out of place. She let out her breath. Gunther ran in ahead of her.

  The back door led into a small utility porch. Beyond that was an old portion of the barn. Dark and musty, with a dirt floor and crumbling stone, it didn’t get much use—and wouldn’t, unless Clay had his way about the pizza ovens. Megan was walking through this section into the larger, newer portion when she noticed Gunther sniffing excitedly in the corner of the room.

  “What is it, boy?”

  At first, she didn’t see anything. But as she got closer, she noticed that the dirt in one section near the wall was lighter, as though it had recently been disturbed. As though someone had been digging there. Her mind flashed to Simon’s skull, bashed and bloody—and the shovel that had been used for something other than its intended purpose.

  She thought about Denver’s words at the reenactment: “Or a distraction.”

  Had someone staged today’s explosion? Certainly not Porter.

  Everything appeared to revolve around Washington Acres. But why?

  Megan dialed 911. Her fingers shook. Whatever was at Washington Acres, it was apparently worth killing for.

  Not surprisingly, the police couldn’t do much. Once on her property, they asked whether she was certain the digging had been done today and she wasn’t. She was certain someone had opened the door, and calls to the high school students and Clay reassured her it hadn’t been them, but other than that, she was clueless about the timing of the excavation. The old portion of the barn was generally ignored. She suggested the police contact the Dorfmans—perhaps they’d had reason to be in there.

  The police agreed, searched the property, and took a few soil samples. Other than that, the uniformed officer in charge suggested she leave Gunther outside and call if she saw anything suspicious.

  “Anything else, you mean?” she asked.

  The officer shrugged. What could they do?

  Back at the house, Megan called the café. Bibi had left a few minutes before and would be home soon, pulling up the driveway in her Subaru wagon. The rain w
as falling harder now, leaving more muddy pools of water in the courtyard between the house and barn and streaming from the new gutters. Megan remembered Dave’s concern about flooding. She hoped the creek didn’t overflow. She hoped her grandmother wouldn’t have trouble getting home.

  She was about to go look for Bibi when she heard her grandmother coming in through the porch.

  “I heard the news,” Bibi said as soon as she saw Megan. “Truly, I don’t know what’s come over this town.”

  “Did you have trouble getting here?”

  “It’s raining hard, but the roads were mostly clear.” She scrutinized Megan’s face, looking at her the way she would when Megan was younger, in the days after Charlotte left. “What’s the matter, Meg?”

  Megan told her about the barn.

  Bibi’s frowned. “So that explains it.”

  “Explains what?”

  “They’re digging for treasure.”

  “Treasure?”

  “The cache hunters. They must think something is buried in the barn.”

  With dawning horror, Megan realized that made sense. She recalled that Roger Becker was a cache hunter. She was sure there were others—local men for whom cache hunting was simply a harmless hobby. Or had been—before it became a deadly pursuit. Her mind flitted to the glove in her goat’s mouth that first fateful day, and the one left near Simon’s dead body. She thought about the open gate on the goat enclosure, the cat in her kitchen, the light in the barn. If someone was looking for something in the barn, they’d be ghost-like residents, hiding in the shadows, biding their time. They may have even snuck up to the house, accidentally letting in Mutton Chops. The thought made her shudder. It all made sense.

  Appalled, Megan said, “Would someone really kill over war trinkets?”

  “Stranger things have happened,” Bibi replied. “Believe me.”

  The rain didn’t let up. By ten that night, the water pouring from the gutters had become torrents, and the yard and fields were a soggy mess. Megan brought both dogs inside, shutting the door against a howling, angry wind.

  “Tornado watch,” Bibi called from the parlor. “Until midnight.”

  Thunder boomed. Megan was regretting her decision to put off a generator for the farm because she’d used the funds to hardwire one for the café instead. If this kept up, she and Bibi would be in the dark.

  Feeling edgy and wide awake, and with little else to occupy her time, Megan turned on her laptop and started searching. She began with the little she knew about the farm—the names of the prior owners, the location, even the coordinates of the farm’s location, anything that might hint at a motive. She found nothing new. Frustrated, she sat back and stared into space, her eyes taking in everything in the kitchen and nothing at all.

  She knew this kitchen like she’d known the ridges and plateaus of Mick’s body, the curve of his smile, the laugh lines around his eyes. Since her mother left, and until Mick, Bibi had been her world. Bibi and the farm and everything in it.

  Since her mother left…What had Jeremy said? The original owner’s husband had abandoned his wife. Paul Caldbeck had abandoned Elizabeth Caldbeck? That certainly hadn’t been part of the family legend. Megan did a search for Paul Caldbeck, but nothing definitive turned up. She tapped into the local library’s online resources, broadening her search and adding various terms like “merchant” and “farmer.” Nothing other than a reference to Paul’s English roots, and a few references to his wife Elizabeth, the daughter of a wealthy lumber mill owner and a Patriot zealot. Her father had financed armies from Pennsylvania up through New York.

  If Lenora was right and Washington had stayed at the farm, it would’ve meant Caldbeck was important to the Patriots. Megan found no references that said Caldbeck was a soldier—so his support may have been financial. But if Jeremy was right, Caldbeck had left his family to fend for themselves after the war was over. The period after the war was a dangerous one for many people. What would have led a man during the 1700s to leave his family, especially during a time of such turmoil?

  Megan considered the look on Lenora’s face when Megan had mentioned Caldbeck in passing during the farmers market. Perhaps Caldbeck was the Washington connection—but how?

  He could have been sharing information with the Patriots. But then why would he desert his family? He’d be a hero.

  Unless he was also sharing information with the Tories. Caldbeck may have been a spy.

  Megan included the word “desertion” in her search, and it didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for. After the war, former loyalists often fled their properties out of fear of reprisal. She wondered: what if Washington had stayed here because he thought he was getting information from a sympathizer—someone who was, in fact, a loyalist? What if Paul Caldbeck had really been loyal to the Crown, and after the war, when the Patriots won, he’d fled? The Winsome area, heavy with farmers and others anxious to be rid of the British and British taxation, would have been a very inhospitable place for a Tory, especially a Tory spy.

  And a rich Tory merchant? He may have buried his treasure somewhere the locals wouldn’t find it. Somewhere like the barn.

  But would it still be here all this time later? Megan remembered the painting at Aunt Sarah’s house. Sarah had said Eddie found it at the farm. Was it original? If so, what else was here?

  Megan laid her head on her arms. It felt like a stretch, but somehow Washington’s visit to this farm and the attacks on the Duvalls were connected. Megan kept coming back to Caldbeck’s desertion of his family. If Caldbeck left, it must have been because he was no longer welcome. Which likely meant he had been on the side of the British.

  The house was silent except for the gentle snores of the two dogs at her feet and the occasional rumble of thunder outside. Megan’s eyes were getting heavy, but she couldn’t go to bed—not yet. There was something else, something she wasn’t quite putting together. A dead zoning commissioner, a critically injured historian, and an explosion at the reenactment. If Bibi was right and this was related to cache hunting, it would have to be a hell of a cache. But a rich Tory merchant fleeing for his life might have left something quite valuable…silver, or even gold. Maybe enough to risk your freedom for.

  Especially if you were desperate.

  Megan thought about all of the people in Winsome who had something to gain from finding a treasure like that. While everyone liked money, certainly, only one person had been working extra jobs to make ends meet. On a hunch, Megan started delving into Neil Dorfman’s financial history. Years of legal research had given her access to databases the general public didn’t know about. She rarely used them; she did tonight.

  To her frustration, Neil came up clean. No criminal history that she could find, and almost no social media presence. At least based on her search, he was living the life he appeared to live: a hard-working bachelor with a limited social life and few assets.

  There had to be something, maybe even something unsavory. A tree branch hit a kitchen window and Megan jumped. Her nerves were on edge. She started searching public court records, beginning with local files, working more to calm the jitters than because she actually hoped to find anything.

  Nothing on Neil.

  Her head hurt. A glance at the clock told her it was well after midnight. She was tired of chasing smoke.

  Megan was about to close up for the night when she decided to try one more search. Knowing the idiosyncrasies of court clerks, she put in “N. Dorfman” and then simply “Dorfman,” in case Neil had another official name.

  To her surprise, she got a hit with “Dorfman”—only it wasn’t for Neil Dorfman. It was for David John Dorfman. She skimmed the proceedings quickly. Dave Dorfman had been sued for failing to complete a construction job. The customers had paid up front; he never delivered. She kept searching and found two more suits against Dorfman, one for $8,000 (failure to de
liver windows) and one for $13,657 (failure to complete a bathroom remodel). All were relatively recent.

  Megan thought back to what she knew, shifting the puzzle pieces in her mind. What if Dave was the one in financial trouble, not Neil? He might have killed Simon over the cache. But if yesterday’s explosion was a diversion, then he had an accomplice. Neil. Neil, in typical brotherly fashion, could have been trying to help his brother by making extra money and giving it to him, and by helping him cover up a murder—or two.

  And then there was the scene with Amelia Dorfman—the public arguments, a well-heeled wife, and a bank account that couldn’t afford a well-heeled wife. Dave Dorfman’s life was unraveling. Gold and silver could be worth a lot, even sold on the black market. He could sell the business, have a new life. It all made more sense.

  Megan wished she could pull Dave’s credit score, but without his permission that was illegal. She could access property records, though, and a quick search told her what she needed to know: his house was listed as a short sale.

  Gambling? Poor money management? Drugs? Did it matter? She still felt like she was missing something.

  Lightning flashed outside, first in the distance and then closer, thunder following seconds later. Sadie was asleep, but the thunder startled Gunther, and he picked his head up, alert. Megan looked outside, but she saw only blackness and the unrelenting rain. She thought about making herself a cup of tea but decided against it. At some point, she’d need to sleep. Tomorrow would bring new challenges, including eroded fields and wind damage.

  She settled back in her chair, thinking. Did she have enough to call King?

  Yes. Better to look like an idiot and err on the side of safety. She dialed Clover’s number, figuring King would be there. A sleepy-sounding Clover answered.

  “Let me talk to Bobby.”

  “It’s almost one,” Clover said. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, but I need to talk to Bobby.”

  “He’s not here, Megan. The storms have everyone in a panic. The Sauers lost a roof, and Marshall Pond Road is completely flooded. Norm Kennedy got himself stuck in flood waters coming home from the brewery.”