Julia nodded thoughtfully. “I see what you mean. We don’t need a motive for why Stella was killed.”
“Because in her case, we’re pretty sure we know what the motive was. I wonder how long that belladonna plant was growing in her greenhouse.”
“Weeks, I imagine.”
“I don’t think Caroline’s murder was planned weeks ago. Gilroy said you can buy the seeds online but it’s very hard to find a grown plant in northern Colorado. I need your computer.” I was up out of my seat before Julia could ask me why. “Germination and growth,” I said, bounding up her stairs and into her spare bedroom. I pushed her Dell’s on button and tapped my foot impatiently as the computer booted.
I called up a search engine, typed in “belladonna,” “germinate,” and “grow,” and hit Enter. In seconds the monitor filled with results.
Most of the articles I skimmed noted that belladonna seeds, though a bit tricky, had a germination rate of at least 60 percent when started in ideal conditions: some warmth and moist, good soil. Like in a greenhouse. After germination, the plants required little attention. And belladonna flowered and bore fruit in its first summer.
“Julia, I think the belladonna seeds were planted in Stella’s greenhouse. That would be the easiest and surest method. If the plant had been grown elsewhere and then transplanted—”
“Someone might have seen it being transplanted.”
“And the plant might have suffered transplant shock and died. The killer couldn’t tell Stella to tend to it. But the killer could have carried a number of seeds to the greenhouse in the spring and casually dropped them in a corner of the raised bed. A warm, humid greenhouse. Even without care, at least one of those seeds was bound to germinate.”
“But that means Caroline’s murder was planned months ago.”
I shut off the computer and let Julia take my seat, the only chair in the room. “I don’t know. As a murder method, belladonna isn’t reliable, partly because it’s hard to get an adult to eat one of the berries. Juice from the berries, maybe, but Caroline ate the berries themselves. They look and taste sweet, so they weren’t out of place on that fruit tart, but Caroline had no idea the day before that she was going to eat them. Only Valerie knew about the tarts because she had to order them from Holly.”
“But Valerie must have ordered them at the last minute because she didn’t know she was going to win the award—”
“And thus host the party,” I finished. “I’ll tell you something else. We still don’t know how those berries got on that tart.”
“Sleight of hand,” Julia said. “The killer exchanged belladonna berries for the blueberries then pocketed the blueberries. Or dropped them on the ground. There were blueberries on all the tarts, so no one would notice a few on the grass at the party. Let’s go downstairs. I wish we had some of your lemonade.”
“We should call it a night.”
Halfway down Julia’s stairs I heard the creak of a floorboard, but muffled as though the sound were coming from her porch, not inside her house. I threw out my arm, holding her back. “Don’t move.” I leaned on the banister, listening, and heard another creak. I half hoped that someone would ring the doorbell, even at that late hour. Better a rude visitor than a skulking figure creeping along in the dark, trying to scare us.
“Who could it be?” Julia whispered. “Should we call the police?”
“That’s it!” I yelled, flying down the stairs. “Stay there, Julia.”
“Rachel, don’t you dare!”
I flew down the rest of the steps, ran for the front door, and flung it wide. “Knock it off, whoever you are!” I shouted into the dark.
There was no movement, no one running away, no figure crouching in the shrubs. Not even a car parked on that part of the street I could see from the door. But the garden gate was open and moving ever so slightly, as though it had been jarred and was slowly coming to a rest.
“Rachel?” Julia came alongside me and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Maybe it was an animal.”
“I shut and hooked your gate when I came in,” I said. “Look at it now.”
“It wasn’t an animal then. They don’t open garden gates. Or frighten people for the fun of it.” More indignant than afraid now, Julia planted her hands on her hips. “Who would do this? I’ve said it before, but you’re going to have to teach me how to shoot.”
“Not tonight,” I said absentmindedly. Something on the porch had caught my eye. I moved closer, bent low to retrieve it, and then instantly shrank back. Halfway between Julia’s welcome mat and the first step, centered for maximum visual impact, was a shiny and very dark berry.
CHAPTER 15
I woke early the next morning and made breakfast while Julia dressed. She had wanted to call Gilroy after we found the berry, but I’d talked her out of it. There wasn’t anything he could do until morning, I’d said, and besides, leaving a berry on someone’s porch was probably not illegal. We knew it was meant as a threat to her, but aside from trespassing, no one had broken the law. Belladonna was legal, and I was betting there were no statutes regarding the abandonment of a berry on someone else’s property.
We had talked until midnight, but being tired, we hadn’t come up with anything insightful. Julia had finally gone upstairs to her bedroom, relieved I was sleeping downstairs on her couch. Doubting we were in for any more excitement—the berry bully had made his or her point—I’d fallen asleep quickly. Now it was time to face Gilroy again, this time about a berry.
“I smell coffee,” Julia said, padding into the kitchen. She wore her terry robe, and her gray hair, pillow-rumpled and uncombed, was a jungle of waves and curls.
My own limp hair was plastered to my head, I was sure, though in order to preserve my even mood, I hadn’t checked a mirror.
“Toast is in the toaster, plates and cups are on the table, eggs done in one minute,” I said, handing her a tub of whipped butter from her fridge.
Julia set the butter on the table, took one of the cups, and poured herself coffee, breathing in the steam and ahhing with pleasure. “Did you throw out the berry?”
“No, I put it in a plastic bag and left it in the living room. Not that it matters. It’s not as if they’re going to pull a print from it.”
“You never know.”
“From fruit? Anyway, the creep probably wore gloves.”
“They can verify that it’s belladonna and file it away as another clue in Caroline’s murder.” Julia shuffled to the toaster. “Nothing beats buttered toast in the morning.”
“Unless it’s a cream puff. Here we go. Bring the toast.” I scooped our eggs from the frying pan to the plates and Julia distributed our toast. I couldn’t imagine why, but I was famished—and I was itching for something sweeter than toast.
After pouring myself a cup of coffee, I sat down with Julia and slathered my toast with butter, planning the day in my head. “We’ll stop at the police station first and drop off the berry,” I said between bites.
“What if Chief Gilroy is there?”
“Let’s hope he’s not. Maybe Underhill will be. He usually works mornings. We should bring him some donuts.”
Julia lifted a hand to smooth her hair. “You’ll talk to the chief after this is over?”
“Of course.” I grabbed my cup and took a long, slow drink of coffee. Please stop talking about this.
“Rachel, have your feelings about Chief Gilroy changed?”
“Of course not.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” And because I wasn’t fine and didn’t want her to know, I changed the subject. “We have to solve Caroline’s murder so Royce can stop worrying about you and you don’t get any more late-night visitors.”
“And you can sleep in your own bed.”
Change of subject achieved. I leaned back in my chair and raked a hand through my hair, willing myself to concentrate on our case. “We have four suspects. Lucas, Allegra, Doyle, and Valerie. All of them had an obviou
s motive to kill Caroline. Lucas and Doyle because of that silly TV show and Valerie because Caroline flirted with Lucas, whether or not she was having an affair with him. Either way, Valerie was distraught enough to tell us about her fears.”
“I don’t know why she married the man.”
“Then again . . . we both had the feeling that Caroline was using Lucas. What if she had an affair with him so he would hire her as an assistant? Then let’s say she went behind his back and got his job. It’s a double betrayal. She used him and she ruined his career. Both Valerie and Lucas would kill for that.”
“Allegra and Doyle would too,” Julia said. “Doyle believes that job is his by rights. He doesn’t think any of the others are qualified for it. He uses his own brand of snide humor to make fun of them, but I think he’s genuinely angry he’s been overlooked.”
I agreed with Julia. There was real anger rumbling beneath Doyle’s cynical surface. “Then we have Allegra. She was already slated to be Caroline’s assistant, and with Caroline out of the way, the station might have chosen her as the sole host of the show, even if just for an episode or two, until they found a permanent host. Unless the audience liked her, and she may have been counting on that.”
“So we have an affair and the TV job as motives. Or both combined.”
Julia rose and cleared the plates and silverware, and I downed the rest of my coffee and set the empty cup in the sink. “Bakery first, then the police station, then we need to find Allegra and ask her when Doyle discovered Caroline had the TV job. We’re only guessing he knew on the day of the party. Then we need to ask her point-blank if she was having an affair with Lucas. She doesn’t have much of a poker face.”
“Allegra and Lucas?”
“I think Allegra may have been covering her bases. If Lucas kept his job, she wanted to stay close to him, but if Caroline got it, she wanted to stay on Caroline’s good side. I wouldn’t be surprised if Allegra told Lucas that Caroline took his job. She and Caroline were the first to know about it.
“An affair between those two? It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
“As Holly said, there’s no accounting for love. Or ambition,” I called out, heading for Julia’s front door. “I need to change—be back in five minutes.”
“i heard something this morning from Underhill,” Holly said. “Are these donuts for him?” She slid a pink Holly’s Sweets box across the counter.
“For Gilroy and Turner too, if he leaves them any. What did you hear?”
Holly didn’t answer but instead took her time ringing up my order, all the while shooting glances from me and Julia to a male customer in the bakery. She was bursting to talk. It’s either juicy or awful, I thought.
At last the man asked for a Danish, an order Holly filled swiftly, and left the bakery. Holly leaned forward across the counter. “Underhill said the coroner was still working on Caroline Burkhardt yesterday. He gave Gilroy his finished report first thing this morning. Her stomach contents weren’t what he expected, to quote Underhill.”
So it was awful. “Did he say why?”
“He wouldn’t give me details, except to say the coroner threw him and Gilroy a curve ball. Though if you ask me, they’re not making progress on finding the murderer. They haven’t called anyone in for questioning.”
“It’s been less than forty-eight hours,” Julia said, “and it’s a complex case.”
“Julia and I had a visit from the Berry Man last night,” I said. My hand dug for the plastic bag in my purse. “A belladonna berry was left on her porch.”
Holly took hold of the bag and brought it closer. “I’ve never seen one. No wonder Caroline ate it. It looks like a dark blueberry or a black currant. No one who saw that on a fruit tart would think twice about eating it. You didn’t see who it was?”
“No, but it was one of our four suspects trying to frighten me,” Julia said. “As if that’s going to happen.”
Holly handed me the bag. “It’s a distraction, Julia. Whoever left that wants you to think the killer is after garden judges, and he’s not. Or she’s not. You’re showing that to Gilroy, I assume.”
“If he’s in,” Julia said.
Holly’s eyes bored into me. “When was the last time you talked to Gilroy?”
“Yesterday.”
“Before or after you saw me?”
“A few hours after you called me an idiot.”
“Did you really?” Julia said.
Holly wagged her finger. “And a dear friend. I said that too.”
“Chief Gilroy is behaving badly,” Julia said.
“He’s stressed,” Holly said. “Take him these donuts. Sugar always helps.” She pushed the box at me.
“They’re for Underhill,” I said. “He’s the talkative one. Gilroy doesn’t communicate.”
Julia seized the box. “We’re dropping off that berry, finding out what the coroner said, and leaving.”
“At least talk to him,” Holly said.
“When one of us has caught the killer, then we’ll talk,” I said. “There’s no point doing it now. His mind is elsewhere.”
Holly sighed and palmed back a short strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail tie. “I know it is.”
“Turner thought he seemed distracted too,” I added. “He was worried enough that he asked me about it. He thought Gilroy might have a medical problem.”
Julia clutched my arm. “Does he?”
Holly groaned and tilted back her head, staring open-mouthed at the ceiling.
“He’s just fine,” I said. “He passed his physical with flying colors. I’m not sure we could say the same about Holly, though. What’s gotten into you? Are you working too hard again? You and Peter need a vacation before the summer’s over. It wouldn’t kill you to hire a temp worker for a few days. Either that or close the bakery. Your customers won’t go anywhere.”
“She does work too hard,” Julia said. “You’re looked tired, Holly.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me. Now go, go,” Holly said, shooing us out the door. “I’ve got work to do—yes, work—and I can’t stand another royal minute of this. Go find the killer, and do it fast. Don’t monkey around.”
I had to laugh. Monkey around? Since when did she talk like that? As Julia and I left the bakery, I made a mental note to nudge Peter into taking Holly on a vacation, even if that meant two days at home doing nothing.
We headed up the sidewalk for the police station, me carrying the dreaded berry in my purse and the donuts in my hand, silently praying that Gilroy was out and only Underhill or Turner was manning the desk.
Halfway there, we ran into Allegra. I was relieved, since it saved us the task of finding her and delayed my possible meeting with Gilroy. She carried a large coffee-to-go from Grove and wore another flowery dress—this one with white daisies on an ivory background—and a straw hat with an extra-wide brim and a wreath of fake begonias at the crown. The hat could have given Caroline’s garden party hat a run for its money.
“Fancy seeing you two here!” she whooped, hustling toward us.
We were on Main Street, where half the town walked at some point on a summer’s day, so her surprise was both strange and forced, perhaps to disguise her discomfort. I think she knew we were about to grill her again.
“Where are you two off to?” she asked. “I see you have pastries—that famous pink box. Oh, doesn’t Holly Kavanagh make the best pastries? If I wasn’t watching my waistline, I’d have brekky there every morning. And then I’d float away like a balloon! Seriously, though, they’d have to shoot me down from the sky. She’s an amazing baker. Better than anyone else in the state. Don’t you think so?”
On my most caffeinated mornings, I wasn’t so twitchy and verbose, and I wondered what Allegra was trying to hide or avoid. “Holly’s the best, yes,” I said. “I need to ask you something, and it’s important.”
“Oh, my word.” She looked down at her shoes.
“Just indulge me for two minutes.”
>
“Shoot. Go. Say it.” She wrapped her lips around her straw and began to drain the cup.
“Did you tell Doyle that Caroline was going to take over Lucas’s job?”
“Mm-hmm,” she mumbled with a nod.
“When?”
“The evening before the party. Why shouldn’t he know? It was Lucas I was worried about. Who knew how he was going to react? It wasn’t going to be pretty. I told Stella too. It was news. Lucas Siegler won best in show, but he—”
“Gold medal, not best in show,” Julia said.
“Whatever. So he won, and we knew he was going to get all puffed up, but you know how it is.”
“You wanted to cut him down to size in the eyes of everyone else,” I said.
“Whatever.”
“So everyone knew Lucas was no longer the host?”
“Probably everyone but Lucas and Valerie. I don’t think they knew until the day of the garden party. Lucas looked shocked when he talked to Caroline, remember? I told you.”
“Did they know you were going to be Caroline’s assistant?”
“No way! I told Caroline to keep that a total secret until I actually appeared in episode one.” Allegra giggled. “She wouldn’t have to spread the word after that, I guess. Anyway, I wasn’t about to listen to complaints about why didn’t she pick Doyle or why didn’t she pick Stella or Lucas and how unfair it is and woe is me. Which is precisely what they would have done. Not congratulate me, oh no. Not that bunch, strangling each other to get to the top.”
I almost giggled myself when I caught sight of Julia staring in disbelief at Allegra the Chatterbox. “Two more questions,” I said.
“Go for it. I’m ready.” Again she drew hard and long on her straw.
“Did you know Caroline had asthma and migraines?”
Allegra scrunched up her face. “Migraines? Yuck, rotten luck. I knew about her asthma but not that.”
“Did anyone else at the party know?”
“Maybe. Don’t think Stella did. Maybe Lucas and Doyle. They knew her a lot longer than me. Years.”
Garden of Death Page 10