“Actually, Kate, I was thinking about us. We need to be careful. The person we’re searching for has already killed two people.”
“And one of them was the sweetest man I’ve ever known, aside from Michael. I’m not going to sit back and wait for a bumbling police force—or worse, a corrupt and involved one—to solve his murder.” I had a purpose now, and the strength and stamina to fulfill it. For the first time since Michael’s death. Danger or not, I was going to find Ray’s killer. “I need to do this, Emily, but I’ll understand completely if you don’t want to.”
“Hello? Did I say that?” She shook her head at me and clucked her tongue. “All I’m saying is let’s be careful. You don’t get to do this on your own. Got it?”
“Good,” I said, heaving a sigh of relief, “because I really don’t want to.”
Memoirs in hand, Emily started for my front door. “Change of plans,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m going to copy this whole thing first, then I’m going to finish reading chapter 14 in my car, and then I’m heading to the Pumpkin Festival grounds. You go do your thing with this Irene Carrick.”
“Change of plans for me too,” I said, catching up with her at the door. “First I’m going to visit Nick Foley. Irene dedicated her pamphlet to his nursery, so maybe he can give me her phone number. I’ll buy something and ask him about it, get the ball rolling.”
“Get a fern,” she said. “That’s what Alana bought the day she died.”
“Maybe not,” I replied. “I was thinking more along the lines of an orchid.”
CHAPTER 9
I climbed into my Jeep, hit the remote on the garage door, and backed up down my drive until I came to a fat turn-around Michael had dug not long after we’d moved into our house—after I’d slid backward on ice, from the top of the long, sloping driveway almost all the way to Birch Street.
Half a mile down Birch, I made a right onto the Bog Road and pressed down on the accelerator, anxious to make it to Foley’s. I rolled the window down a bit and took in the October air, smelling of woodsmoke and grasses dampened by the previous night’s rain. The sparsely traveled stretch of road was hemmed in by trees two weeks past their full autumn glory and old utility poles, and here and there were aging white or gray clapboard houses and small stores and gas stations called, in deference to geography, Central Maine This or Central Maine That.
Shortly after I passed under the Bog Road’s old train trestle, I turned west onto Route 2, and half a mile later, I was at Foley’s.
I tucked my purse under the passenger seat, headed into the retail section of the nursery, and quickly spotted Nick Foley unloading heavy-looking bags from a rolling cart onto a shelf. He saw me, too, and raised his chin in a greeting as I walked over. A big, muscular man in his late thirties, he tossed five more bags to the shelves in the few seconds it took me to reach him.
“Compost,” he said, nodding at the cart. His hands were nearly black with the soil, and his sweaty forehead was smudged with it. “People want to dress their gardens in the fall to get a head start on next year.”
“Maybe I should do that,” I said. “I didn’t put any compost around that rhododendron I just bought.”
“Top dress it,” Nick said. “It’ll do a world of good by next spring.” He tore a foot-long piece of tape from a dispenser tied to the cart handle and patched a tear in one of the bags. Little wonder his hands were so dirty; several the bags were ripped and dribbling compost.
As far as I was concerned, I had laid the groundwork and performed the preliminaries, and it was time to talk about Ray. “Did you hear about Ray Landry?”
“Yeah. Shoot.” Nick stopped unloading bags and wiped the sweat from his brow, leaving behind another soil smudge. He was beginning to look like he’d been down in the mines. “It’s hard to believe. I thought that old-timer would outlast us all.”
“The police think he ate bad mushrooms and had a heart attack.”
Nick raised a quizzical eyebrow. “You mean mushrooms from foraging?”
“Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous?”
“Ray didn’t pick bad anything.” He pushed back a lock of brown hair with his dirty hand. “He taught a class on foraging—and took the class on an outing—a few years back.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“We met here, then trekked into the woods. He pointed out the things you shouldn’t touch, and not just mushrooms but all kinds of nuts and roots and things. He knew his stuff better than anyone I’ve ever met.”
“I tried to tell the police that.”
“Ray would have known if any mushrooms were bad. Bet on it.” Nick rubbed the dirt from his hands then brushed his fingers on his dirty jeans. “But he could’ve had a heart attack. He wasn’t a young man.”
It was time to go for it, lay it out there, and see what sort of reaction I got. “He didn’t have a heart attack,” I said in a low, stern voice. “I think he was murdered.”
My sharp shift in tone was matched by an equally sharp shift in Nick’s body language. His head jerked and he folded his arms about his chest. “Ray? Who would want to kill Ray Landry? Everyone liked him. He lived in Smithwell his whole life, and he never had an enemy as far as I know.”
“Well, he made one, and I think I know why.” With Nick being on Emily’s suspect list, it was a risky move to take, but the subject of Alana Williams wasn’t going to raise itself. “He was writing about the Alana Williams murder six years ago.”
A frown crossed Nick’s face.
“Ray found her body and called the police. He was writing his memoirs, and he wanted to put down in black and white what he remembered from that day.”
“It broke Ray up.” Nick began to rub his right arm with the fingers of his left hand, like a child trying to comfort himself. “I’ve always wondered if he ever got over the trauma of it. Guess he didn’t.”
“He was over it, Nick. All he was doing was writing down what he remembered. That’s what you do in memoirs.”
“And did he remember?”
“He never forgot.”
“What good did it do him, dredging all that up?”
“It bothered him that no one was ever charged, though according to the papers, the police questioned a few people.”
“Yeah, they did.” Nick tossed the last four compost bags to a shelf. “And my hunch is you know I was one of them.” He straightened, looking at me with a mixture of disappointment and disdain.
Nick’s change in demeanor was a red flag, and I should have been cautious, but ignoring my growing unease, I pressed on. “Can you tell me anything about Alana’s death?”
“That was a terrible period in a lot of people’s lives. I’d hate to see it start up all over again.”
“Regardless of what you want, it has started up again. Except for her students and fellow teachers, you were the last person to see Alana alive.”
“I told the police. She came in to buy a fern that morning. We said hello because I talk to all my customers if I can.”
“Did she take the fern to school with her?”
“How should I know?”
“She must have bought it just before classes started. I wonder why she didn’t wait until after school or the weekend.”
“I wish I could help you,” he answered, spreading his hands. “But I don’t know what to say. I didn’t ask her what she was going to do with it.”
“You must have wondered why she stopped by first thing in the morning for a fern.”
“No, I didn’t. I never have.”
“But—”
“Leave it alone, Kate. Know what I mean?”
A tingle crept down my spine. “Someone murdered Ray Landry. One of the best men I’ve ever known. Don’t ask me to leave it alone.”
“Take it to the police.”
“The same police who couldn’t solve Alana’s murder? Who think Ray ate bad mushrooms?”
“Then go buy another rhododendron. Gardening, Kate. It’s good for all kinds of ills
.”
“You sell orchids, don’t you?”
“Huh?”
He looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. In a way, I couldn’t blame him. I was changing subjects faster than Minette could fly. “I just wanted to see your orchids. I might get one.”
“Any kind in particular you’re interested in? They all have different needs.” He began to chew on his lower lip.
“No, I think I’ll just browse, read the tags, and learn as I go.”
As if realizing he was betraying his emotions, he stopped chewing and fixed a smile on his face. “Head back that way.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “Almost to the rear of the greenhouse. Let me know if you have any questions.”
At that he grabbed the cart, wrenched it around, and made for the front of the garden center, up by the cash registers. The man couldn’t leave fast enough.
I walked for the back of the greenhouse, threading my way through a maze of long tables toward the orchids. Fifteen feet away, I spotted them—I knew enough to recognize common orchid flowers—but before I reached the table, another display brought me to a halt. The sign on the table read “Fairy Gardens.”
I’d heard of fairy gardens, of course. Those wide, shallow pots crammed with tiny plants, miniature garden implements, and little houses, fences, and stone paths. Lilliputian creations meant to suggest fairy homes and gardens—or what humans imagined such to be.
There were twenty or so pots on the table, and every single one held an exquisitely detailed garden, some of them complete with fairy figurines. Some of the figurines looked like cherubs, others like cartoon figures, but one of them was different. It was four inches high, intricately made, with wings like butterfly wings. I was about to pick it up when a woman appeared at my elbow.
“Aren’t they pretty?” she said.
I nodded in agreement. “Beautiful. How do you know what to put in the gardens?”
“Oh, anything small will work. Alpine plants are good. You can make your own fairy garden if you’d rather choose what to put in it.” She pointed at another table. “We have pots, pebbles, miniature paving stones, benches, and so forth, and on the next table some plant suggestions.”
“What about orchids?”
She smiled. “Orchids are perfect. Especially the mini varieties.”
“Everything keeps coming back to fairies,” I said under my breath. A sentiment I never imagined I’d think, let alone utter in public.
“Excuse me?”
I grinned—idiotically, I’m sure—told her I was just thinking out loud, and headed for the orchids. What was I doing here? What was my life turning into? What if Ray had indeed died of a heart attack and I was indeed losing my tenuous hold on reality?
Now that I was at the orchids, I could see that fewer than half of them were in bloom. “Phalaenopsis Nemo,” “Dendrobium Nobile”—their names were as enchanting as their foliage and flowers. I scanned the table until I found it: “Paphiopedilum Maudiae,” thirty-two dollars. And it was in bloom.
The orchid’s single flower was lime green and creamy white, and its leaves were a mottled green. My head was telling me to leave it on the table, but my heart was telling me to take it home.
I picked it up.
The woman at the cash registered cooed when she saw my orchid—a “Paph,” she called it, pronouncing it like paff—telling me I was lucky it was in bloom. Then she told me it was the second one she’d sold in a week, which, I gathered by the way she said it, was out of the ordinary.
“My friend Ray Landry wanted to buy one,” I said. “Did you hear he died yesterday?”
“Sure I did.” She pouted briefly, demonstrating her sorrow. “Everyone knew Ray. He was in here last week asking about orchids. He was thrilled to find our Paphs, but he didn’t buy one. He said he wanted to think it over. He and that gardening writer came in looking specifically for it.”
“The gardening writer?”
“That woman. What’s her name? You wouldn’t think it, but she loves orchids. She looks like more of a lilac kind of person.” She tilted back her head, rummaging through her memories. “What’s her name again?” She snapped her fingers and lowered her head. “Yeah, that’s it. Irene Carrick.”
CHAPTER 10
After a little coaxing, I’d prevailed upon the cashier, who knew Irene Carrick from the Smithwell Garden Society, to look up her phone number and dial it for me. “Tell her I need to talk to her about Ray Landry and orchids,” I’d said.
Irene had readily agreed to meet me at her house. An “old white clapboard you can’t see from the road for all the trees,” was how she’d described it. There was no mailbox or number marker, so I was to drive north on Whitcomb Hill Road until I saw an asphalt driveway flanked by two six-foot spans of green fence with a chain stretched between them.
Carefully wedging my orchid between the back of the passenger seat and my purse, I drove off, glad that Irene was willing to talk to me but wondering how much I should tell her. I’d driven less than a mile when my phone rang. Seeing it was Emily, I pulled to the side of the road and answered.
On the off chance that the police had news on Ray, Emily had just called the Smithwell station. Certain that Ray had been careless and eaten foraged poison mushrooms, the detective in charge had encouraged the medical examiner to test the mushrooms in Ray’s soup. But the mushrooms were harmless. Ray’s death was being ruled a homicide.
“Detective Rancourt wouldn’t give me any details,” Emily said. “When I asked him if neighbors should be worried, he said there were no signs of a struggle or break-in at Ray’s house. That’s it. Then I asked what made him call Ray’s death a homicide, and he clammed up. The guy’s not giving out any information.”
“At least they recognize Ray was murdered,” I said.
I hung up and continued to Irene’s house, by some miracle spotting her green fence and chain in a stretch of Whitcomb Hill thick with pines. Irene was right about her house not being visible from the road. It wasn’t until I’d gone a hundred feet up her drive—wondering all the while if it was her drive—that I broke through the trees.
When I pulled up to the house, a white-haired woman rose from a rocker. Even with the sun out and the rain long past, she wore a yellow slicker over her jeans. Another woman, maybe a few years younger, remained seated in another rocker, and she too was dressed for a rainy October day.
I got out of my Jeep and walked to the porch steps. “Irene Carrick?”
The woman slipped off her glasses, letting them dangle around her neck from a beaded chain. She was twenty-five years older and two inches shorter than me, with slender arms and toothpick legs, yet somehow she didn’t give the impression of being frail. “You’re at the right place. You’re Kate?”
“Yes. Thanks for meeting me.”
“If this is about Ray, I’ve been wanting to talk to someone who knew him. Come on inside. Mind the jack-o-lanterns. This is Norma Howard from the Smithwell Garden Society.”
“Hello, there,” the woman said in a throaty voice.
I sidestepped a number of carved pumpkins on the steps and by the door and followed the women to the kitchen, taking a seat at the table with Norma while Irene turned to the task of making tea. The room felt ice-box cold, so I kept my jacket on, as did Norma and Irene.
“I don’t use teabags,” Irene said. She looked back at the table as if challenging me to argue with her.
“Neither do I,” I replied. “Loose leaf only, unless I’m in a rush.”
“Capital. We’ll get along fine.”
While she waited for the kettle to boil, she joined me and Norma, and before I could tell her Emily’s news about Ray, she said, “I knew that man for thirty-two years. As long as I’ve lived in Smithwell. Everyone knew him. Word’s spread in town that he ate bad mushrooms in a soup and that’s what killed him.”
“Beyond ridiculous,” Norma said, lacing her short, fleshy fingers together.
“What have you heard, Kate?” Irene as
ked.
I told her what Emily had told me—that the police had sense enough to declare Ray’s death a homicide. “But they haven’t issued an official cause of death yet. They won’t say how he died, only that there were no signs of a struggle or break-in at his house.”
“I don’t understand it,” Norma said. “Number one, Ray Landry was a gentle and kind man.”
“I agree,” I said.
“Number two,” Norma continued, “he didn’t have any enemies. Never did in all his years. He never made a single enemy in this town or state.” She shook her head vehemently, puckering her lips as if to say, And that settles the matter.
“Norma thinks you can’t make brand-spanking-new enemies and not even know it,” Irene said. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her glasses before putting them on. “Mugs fine for you? I don’t have fancy teacups. They only end up broken. A waste of money.”
“Yes, fine,” I said.
By the time Irene had pulled mugs from a cabinet and put milk and a bowl of lemon slices on the table, the kettle was boiling. She spooned tea leaves into a blue pot, poured the water, and brought the pot and a strainer to the table.
“I suppose you have fancy teacups,” Irene said, looking askance at me as though I’d already answered in the affirmative.
“I do like my china,” I said. “I have some Wedgwood I inherited from my mother, and my husband bought me several beautiful teapots. My favorite has an amazing purple vinca design.”
“A veritable collection,” she said.
“With Irene, one of everything will do,” Norma said. “Not two, one. Even if it’s cracked like this old pot she’s had forever. The only reason she has enough mugs for guests is because I gave them to her.” Norma nudged Irene with her elbow and Irene, properly brought down to earth, laughed.
“What can I tell you?” Irene said. “I’m an old Mainer.”
“Lots of old Mainers have collections,” Norma said. “Can I pour?” She latched on to the blue teapot and filled all three mugs, pouring tea through the strainer.
“You’re not from Maine, are you, Kate?” Irene asked.
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