The Garden Club Murder

by Amy Patricia Meade

  ‘I’m sorry you had to go to all that trouble, Orson.’

  ‘No reason for you to be sorry. It’s Shackleford’s fault. Why, I think he instructs that dog to piddle in our gardens as a way of ensuring he wins the competition.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Ainsley urged. ‘The man just needs to get his dog under better control, that’s all.’

  Tish watched silently as Orson gripped the army knife until his knuckles went white.

  ‘When you see Shackleford, you tell him he’d best do that. Otherwise, the next time I see that poor excuse for a canine near my property, I’m going to shoot him,’

  ‘Orson. He’s only a little dog. It’s not as if he knows any better.’

  At this, Orson fell silent and it appeared that Ainsley’s calm reasoning was successful. Appearances were deceiving, for seconds later Orson threw his knife, blade first, into the ground. ‘You know what, Ainsley? You’re right. You tell Shackleford that if he doesn’t lock up that dog of his, then his head’s apt to meet the blunt end of my hammer.’

  ‘I must apologize for Orson Baggett’s behavior,’ Ainsley expressed. ‘He’s always been on the ornery side, but never more so than when he feels his garden is under fire, be it from garden club judges, locusts, or wayward pets.’

  ‘That’s understandable,’ Tish allowed. ‘He nurtures those plants from seed, waters them every day, pulls weeds, prunes them when necessary. That’s a tremendous investment of time, energy, and cash. It would be like me cooking for a three-hundred-person event, only to have something go hideously wrong.’

  ‘Oh, don’t even joke about that, Tish,’ Jules exclaimed. ‘Could you imagine?’

  A slack-jawed Tish stared in utter bewilderment at her clueless friend. ‘Yes, actually, I could.’

  Jules’s mouth formed into a tiny ‘o.’ ‘The Binnie Broderick fundraiser. That was an engagement for three hundred, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It most certainly was.’

  ‘Ah, well, compared with that, this should be easy-peasy,’ Jules giggled awkwardly.

  ‘Mmm,’ Tish sounded in agreement.

  ‘Thank you for being so understanding, Ms Tarragon.’ Ainsley led Tish and Jules away from Wren Harper’s house. ‘Orson Baggett has always been something of the town grump, but he’s liked well enough. Indeed, everyone here at Coleton Creek gets along quite fine. Quite fine. There are neighborhood potlucks, community picnics, and dozens of group activities. The only thorn in people’s side seems to be Sloane Shackleford. I hate to say it, but I truly believe the man derives pleasure from winding people up.’

  ‘Any idea why?’ Tish asked.

  ‘If I had that answer, I’d be more successful in keeping his dog away from our contestants’ gardens.’

  Similar in scale and design to other adjacent homes, Sloane Shackleford’s residence found uniqueness in the form of two bay windows on either side of the main entrance and an open, rather than enclosed, front porch.

  Ainsley led his guests along the asymmetrical concrete walk, lined on either side with lollipop-shaped ligustrum privet topiaries, and on to the sleekly furnished and carpeted front porch, where he proceeded to ring the doorbell.

  ‘One of those wireless door ringers,’ Ainsley noted as a jazzy saxophone riff emanated from inside the house. ‘Plays tracks from your phone or whatnot. As you can see, Mr Shackleford’s tastes are rather contemporary.’

  When there was no answer, Ainsley again pressed the bell, this time with a look of disgust. ‘Saxophone in lieu of a doorbell … sounds like a singles’ lounge.’

  ‘And a sleazy one, too,’ Jules offered.

  Tish pulled a face at Jules, but Ainsley found the comment amusing. ‘Yes, well … apparently, Mr Shackleford’s not home.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Tish pardoned as they retraced their steps back down the walkway. ‘We’d better get on with decorating, anyway.’

  ‘Wait.’ Ainsley pointed toward an opening in the horizontal wood-slat fence at the top of the driveway. ‘Looks like the gate is open. Shackleford must be back there, preparing for the contest. Let’s go.’

  Tish and Jules exchanged wary glances. Although they had thoroughly enjoyed their garden tour, it was going on a quarter to one and there was still staging, decorating, and initial food prep to perform. Likewise, given his neighbors’ descriptions of him, a meeting with Sloane Shackleford didn’t promise to be the most enjoyable encounter.

  As he had done at Wren Harper’s, Ainsley leaned through the garden gate and made his presence known. ‘Hello? You back there, Shackleford?’

  Tish peeked around the stone columns that supported the gate, but the only movement she could detect was that of tall blades of pampas grass rustling in the breeze.

  Several seconds elapsed before Ainsley called again. ‘Shackleford?’

  Still there was no answer.

  ‘No wonder that dog of his gets into so much trouble. Going out and leaving the gate wide open like that. No sense. No sense at all,’ Ainsley grumbled. ‘Well, come along. Since we’re here, I’ll give you folks a quick look around.’

  Tish was reluctant to trespass on a Coleton Creek resident’s property. ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Mr Ainsley. What if Mr Shackleford comes home and finds us here?’

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll make it snappy.’ Ainsley stepped on to the irregularly shaped concrete block patio and beckoned them to follow. ‘We’ll be out of here in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’

  Despite Ainsley’s reassuring colloquialism, Tish still had misgivings. ‘Yeah, I don’t know …’

  ‘Oh, come on. I can handle Shackleford, and we won’t be but a minute or two.’

  With a heavy sigh and a quick glance at Jules, Tish relented and followed Ainsley on to the patio. From the paved sitting area, a series of staggered square stones in varying sizes formed a path along the left lawn of the wedge-shaped property and culminated in another, smaller seating area, this one surrounded with rounded box hedges and perennials, and backed by a solid stone wall over which cascaded a gentle waterfall. To the right, lined by the swishing pampas grass and slender silver birches, a narrow canal of water glistened in the sunlight and led to a circular pool populated by lotus blossoms and a school of well-fed koi.

  It was a spot of such supreme tranquility that, for a short while, Tish stopped fretting about the workload awaiting her at the lifestyle center. Indeed, Shackleford’s garden possessed such beauty and serenity that it seemed at odds with the character of the man who built it. ‘So, Sloane Shackleford designed this garden himself?’

  ‘That’s what he says,’ Ainsley replied. ‘I looked into it myself – I’m retired Virginia State Police – and couldn’t find any evidence to refute his claim. In fact, he showed me the plans and drawings. They all bear Shackleford’s signature in the corner. I’m aware that doesn’t mean much, but how far am I supposed to go with it? It is, after all, just a garden competition.’

  Tish nodded, although she suspected that many of the residents of Coleton Creek would have objected to the word just.

  ‘Besides,’ Ainsley grumbled, ‘I have absolutely no doubt the man’s guilty of far worse things than fudging his horticultural credentials.’

  Given what she had heard thus far about Mr Shackleford, Tish couldn’t disagree, but something about the vehemence in Ainsley’s delivery gave her a chill.

  ‘Well, we’d best be getting to work, Mr Ainsley.’ Tish turned on one heel to begin to make her leave back to the lifestyle center. As she did so, she noticed a square, highly modern wicker seating set positioned several yards behind her and to the left. Resting upon the lounge chair lay the highly tanned figure of a man clad in white shorts, a tropical-print shirt, a pair of brown leather loafers, and a navy-blue ball cap that was tilted over his face.

  The man was slumped, with his left arm folded across his lap and the other dangling at his side, his fingers nearly grazing the ground below.

  Ainsley followed Tish’s gaze and smiled bril
liantly, albeit somewhat nervously. ‘Oh, Shackleford. There you are. I hope you don’t mind, but these folks were eager to see the winning garden and I just couldn’t let them …’

  Ainsley’s voice trailed off and Tish soon saw why. The concrete beneath the chaise lounge was puddled with fresh blood.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Jules shouted. ‘I’ll call nine-one-one!’

  Tish charged forward to check on the man, only for Ainsley, ever the policeman, to push her aside. ‘I’ll handle this, Ms Tarragon.’

  Tish ignored the order and followed Ainsley across the patio, where he promptly removed the ball cap from the man’s face.

  Shackleford’s forehead had been smashed open, creating a sickening tangle of hair, blood, flesh, and bone. His mouth was agape as if caught in mid-scream, and his eyes, now dilated and unseeing, were wide as if he had noticed too late the fate about to befall him.

  ‘It’s Sloane Shackleford,’ Ainsley cried as he dropped the hat and staggered backward. ‘H–he’s dead.’

  Tish brought a hand to her mouth and tried not to gag. As she looked away, she noticed a series of blood spatters and then a trail of droplets leading off the cement and toward the lawn. There, just twenty feet from the dead man’s body, an object lay partially obscured in a patch of exceedingly plush ryegrass.

  It was a bloody garden spade.

  FOUR

  As neighbors, alarmed by Jules’s and Ainsley’s shouts, milled about on the road outside Shackleford’s house, Jules placed an arm around the shoulder of his friend. ‘You OK?’

  Tish screwed up her mouth and gave a silent shrug.

  ‘At least Shackleford died before tasting your food,’ he offered.

  Tish said nothing.

  ‘You’ve also done some successful catering jobs where people celebrated and no one died. Even that ninetieth birthday party. Which, to be honest, was a crapshoot.’

  Again, Tish gave no response.

  ‘Your café seems to be a hit, too. And everyone who’s eaten there has survived, so I reckon you’re ahead of the game on this one.’

  ‘Jules?’ Tish started.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Please stop talking.’

  ‘Sorry. Defense mechanism. If there were food here, I’d be eating, but since there isn’t—’

  ‘Jules,’ Tish reminded.

  ‘Got it. Shutting up.’

  From the house next door with the ‘plain’ garden, a petite woman emerged via a sliding glass back door. She strode across the lawn and through Shackleford’s gate. ‘Jim, what’s going on?’ she asked breathlessly, setting a canvas-tennis-shoed foot on to the concrete patio. ‘I’d only just got back from my walk when I heard you and someone else shouting.’

  ‘Zadie.’ Ainsley received the woman by grasping her hands. ‘Don’t come any farther. It’s Sloane Shackleford. He’s been murdered.’

  At the mention of the woman’s name, Tish did a double take. Zadie Cosmetics had been a part of Tish’s life since she was a girl. Both Tish’s mother and grandmother had been, as advertising executives coined, Zadie’s Ladies, saving their leftover grocery shopping money to treat themselves to the newest seasonal shade of Zadie lipstick at the local Woolworth’s or splurging on fruit-flavored lip balm or bubble bath to put in Tish’s Christmas stocking. Years later, while attending her senior prom, Tish complemented her strapless, full-skirted black-and-white early-1990s gown with a pair of fingerless black gloves and an electric shade of fuchsia Zadie lipstick dubbed Magenta Madness.

  In the two-plus decades since that warm June evening, Tish’s grandmother and mother had both passed away, the local Woolworth’s had closed, and Tish had moved on from drugstore fuchsia lipstick to upmarket reds and mauves, but the thought of Zadie Cosmetics still conjured up nostalgia.

  That’s why, although still in shock at the discovery of Sloane Shackleford’s body, Tish stood transfixed by the diminutive figure currently engaging Ainsley in conversation.

  ‘Murdered?’ an incredulous Zadie repeated. ‘Oh! I’ll run back home and dial the police.’

  ‘We’ve already called. They’re on their way.’

  A distraught Zadie brought a hand to her forehead. ‘You’re sure he’s been murdered? This is a retirement community. None of us are spring chickens any longer.’

  ‘No, it’s murder all right,’ Ainsley confirmed. ‘Someone whacked him in the head with a garden spade.’

  ‘What? Here in his backyard? In broad daylight?’

  ‘I know,’ Ainsley commiserated. ‘It beggars belief, but it appears that’s what happened.’

  ‘Oh,’ the woman sighed.

  Zadie Morris bore little resemblance to Tish’s idea of how a successful cosmetics mogul might appear. Standing before her was not a brash Anna Wintour lookalike – an immaculately styled, coiffed, suited, and shoulder-padded executive – but a genteel woman with a pleasant voice and elfin-like charm. She was sporting a designer-made, yet decidedly low-key, nautical-inspired ensemble of half-sleeved navy-and-white-striped boat-neck tee and white French-terry cropped pants. Her hair, once quite dark, was now predominantly silver and cut into a simple bob, and her face, miraculously lineless for a woman in her late seventies, bore no traces of the product her company once formulated, manufactured, and sold. Ms Morris’s only concession to glamour was the double strand of pearls around her neck. ‘Who would do such a thing?’ she asked, clearly confounded by the information she was receiving. ‘And why? Was it a burglary gone wrong?’

  ‘We don’t know. But I’m sure the police will get to the bottom of it,’ Ainsley stated with an air of confidence. The sound of sirens tore through the unusually warm, early-autumn air. ‘There they are now. You’d best go on back home, Ms Zadie. No need for you to get in the middle of all this.’

  Zadie waved a set of pink polished fingertips in the air. ‘I live right next door, Jim. I am in the middle of it. It’s only a matter of time before the police ask me what I did or didn’t see.’

  ‘If you’re not up to answering their questions, I can try to put them off,’ Ainsley offered.

  ‘I don’t mind them asking. I have nothing to tell. I went out for my daily walk and came back to hear shouting. I looked out my kitchen window and saw you all here. In fact, after the police ask me what I know, I would like to ask them how they plan to protect us from whomever did this.’

  ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t stay here tonight,’ Ainsley proposed. ‘The Abercrombies have a guest bedroom.’

  ‘I never once got chased out of my apartment in New York, Jim. I’m not about to let that happen now. Hmph … funny to think I moved back to Virginia because I thought it was safer.’ She looked up to see Tish and Jules lingering a few feet away. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Oh, they’re the caterers for Sunday’s luncheon. I was giving them a tour of the gardens when we came upon …’ He gestured in the direction of the chaise lounge containing the body of Shackleford.

  Tish took the liberty of introducing herself and Jules. ‘I’m sorry we’re not meeting under better circumstances.’

  ‘I didn’t know Mr Shackleford well at all, but to think someone – well, it just doesn’t seem real,’ Zadie lamented. ‘I was so looking forward to your luncheon, Miss Tarragon. It’s been ages since I’ve been to the southwest of England and I was hoping to taste a real cream tea again. But now, well …’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Ainsley admonished. ‘Mr Shackleford’s death is unfortunate, and I’m sure the community will be in shock for some time, but I see no need to cancel the garden competition or the luncheon.’

  Tish, Zadie, and Jules shared expressions of disbelief.

  ‘But, Jim,’ Zadie began to argue.

  Ainsley wouldn’t hear it. ‘Now, I appreciate that this is a sensitive issue, but you need to understand that this is a major event for the residents of Coleton Creek. Participants have been tending their gardens the past year in hopes of taking this year’s trophy. The judges have been reading up on plant varieties and garde
n styles. And Susannah Hilton has put a lot of time into selecting and purchasing trophies and plaques and hiring our catering team. I’m sorry Sloane Shackleford is dead, but I think it would be hypocritical to toss all that hard work aside for some feeble display of mourning, when no one in this community thought much of him while he was alive.’

  ‘Well, that makes my job a lot tougher,’ deadpanned the man who had entered Shackleford’s backyard while Ainsley spoke.

  A startled Ainsley twirled about in horror. ‘I beg your pardon, sir.’ He eyed with suspicion the spiky-haired man wearing a black T-shirt and motorcycle boots.

  ‘Sheriff Clemson Reade, Hanover County Police.’ The man drew a badge from the rear pocket of his jeans and held it aloft for all to see. His eyes suddenly fell on Tish. ‘Ms Tarragon, I’m surprised to see you here. The dispatcher didn’t mention anything about poison.’

  Tish ignored Reade’s feeble attempt at humor. ‘I’m here to cater a garden competition luncheon on Sunday,’ she explained.

  ‘Here in this backyard?’ Reade pointed at the ground beneath his feet.

  ‘No, over at the lifestyle center. Mr Ainsley was just giving us a tour of this year’s top gardens when we found …’ Her voice trailed off.

  Reade’s eyes then fell on Jules. ‘Mr Davis. I trust I’ll find no sandwiches in the trunk of your car today.’

  ‘Of course not. I’m here helping Tish. I’ll be serving the plonk.’

  All eyes immediately turned toward Jules.

  ‘The plonk?’ Reade asked.

  ‘The booze. I’m the bartender for Sunday’s party.’

  Reade’s gray eyes narrowed. ‘OK. Leave your statements with Deputy Croft and then you can get back to work.’

  Tish and Jules thanked the sheriff and went off in search of Deputy Croft.

  Thirty minutes later found them walking back to the lifestyle center.