While cleaning up after dinner, a silly idea for a card occurred to me. Later, I sat on the winged-back chair in the living room and worked on the cartoon in my sketch pad while Jim sat on the antique gold jacquard couch across from me and read the sports section. The drawing showed three smiling women with identical beehive hairdos and polka-dot dresses. All you could see of the fourth woman, shown from ant’s-eye view, were the soles of her shoes and her polka-dot dress as she lay on the floor. The caption read:
At first glance, the women in the four drawings below look identical, but one of them is slightly dead. Can you find the dead woman?
Nathan came skipping down the stairs. He took the last three stairs in one hop, landing on his feet with a thud on the hardwood floor near me. He was wearing his “Born to Be Wild” T-shirt and his plain white underwear.
“Where are your pajamas?”
“You forgot to pack them. That’s okay. I’ll just sleep like this.”
“No, no,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound too eager, which would alert Jim to my ulterior motive: This was a fine excuse to check on the scene at our house. “I’ll get them for you.” I tossed my sketchbook onto the coffee table.
Jim lowered the sports section and peered at me. I smiled. “We forgot Nathan’s pajamas, blast it all. I think I’ll just wander on over to the house and get them.”
“Could you water Peter while you’re there?” Nathan asked.
The pumpkin plant. It was just a few feet from the hole Mr. Helen had dug. “Peter?” I repeated lamely, filling with dread.
“My pumpkin plant. I named him Peter.”
For the last two months, Nathan had kept a two-liter soda bottle filled with water near the back door as a reminder and dutifully watered his beloved pumpkin plant. “Peter” had likely fallen prey to a policeman’s shovel, but maybe I could find “him” and get him replanted. I gave Nathan’s narrow shoulders a reassuring hug. “I’m not sure what condition Peter is in. I’ll go see.”
“What?” Nathan cried, backing away to stare into my eyes in horror.
“I’ll have to check the—”
“What?” he cried again. When a conversation wasn’t going well for him, Nathan had a frustrating tendency to yell “What?” louder and louder, as if raising his voice would change your answer.
“Nathan,” Jim said firmly, “your mom said she’d check on your pumpkin. We’ll let you know if it’s all right.”
Nathan, who tended to obey his purposeful dad better than he did his sometimes waffling mom, spun on his heel and dashed back upstairs without a word.
“I’ll come with you,” Jim said to me. While rising, he picked up my drawing pad and stared at my newest creation of the dead-woman guessing game. His brow was furrowed. Finally, he shut the sketchbook, gave me a wan smile, and said nothing. Jim has never shared my perverse sense of humor, but then, he’s an electrical engineer by occupation, and he considers The Three Stooges hilarious.
We located my mother, who was in the den watching television with Karen, asked her to keep an eye on the children for a few minutes, then left.
The evening air was still hot and muggy. This was one of the many things I missed about Colorado. There, it cools down in summer evenings. In upstate New York, the heat continues to radiate, as if the fact that the earth has rotated 180 degrees from the sun has no bearing whatsoever on temperature. Jim took my hand as we walked the three blocks to our home. Though romantic, that left us with only one free hand apiece to ward off mosquitoes.
We could see under police floodlights that no one was digging when we reached home. Their work-stoppage was no doubt influenced by the fact that there was very little ground left to dig. It looked as if they were installing an Olympic-size swimming pool; the site of the diving competition would be where Helen had first broken ground. Piles of dirt covered most of what remained of our lawn.
From the three uniformed policemen still in the vicinity, I recognized Tommy. He nodded in greeting. I responded with, “Good grief! Are you removing the topsoil from our entire yard?”
“Had a little trouble locating anything.”
“Look at all these holes and dirt piles! You’ve killed Peter!”
“Peter?”
“Our son’s pumpkin plant,” Jim explained.
“Y’all name your vegetables?” Tommy snorted.
“Not as a rule,” I snapped, making a visual search in the fading hope that I could replant it. “Our son named it. He loved that plant. Besides, pumpkins are fruits, not vegetables. They grow on vines, so they’re considered berries.”
“No way,” Tommy said. He called out into the darkness, “Hey, Greg. Is a pumpkin a fruit or a vegetable?”
“Vegetable,” came the disembodied answer.
“They’re right,” Jim told me. “It’s a vegetable.”
I clicked my tongue. “We’re standing here, where someone’s been murdered , arguing about whether a pumpkin’s a fruit or a vegetable.”
“You brought it up,” Jim and Tommy said in unison. My husband. Benedict Arnold. I turned my attention to Tommy. “Did you find what Helen had been looking for?”
“Finally. But since it was several feet from where Helen’d been diggin’, we had to check the whole area for anything else.”
“What was it?”
“Not what you were expecting.”
Just what did he think I was expecting? Then Iremembered: the real Helen Raleigh’s body. “It wasn’t a body?”
“That’s confidential.”
“Oh, come on, Tommy. This is our property. Don’t we have a right to know what you’re removing from our own yard?”
“Prob’ly so.” He pushed his cap back on his forehead, paused, and gave me a long look. Finally, he said, “It was a dog.”
“A dog? You mean a bow-wow, ‘Here, doggy’ type of dog?”
“Yeah. There’s some other kinda dog I don’t know about?”
“A stuffed dog. A hot dog.”
“This was dead dog.”
“That was all there was?”
“Uh-huh.”
“No diamond-studded collar, or packets of heroin in the doggie’s stomach?”
“Nope.”
Jim squatted down and looked at a ‘wooden stake by one of the deeper, wider holes. “Was this where they dug up the dog?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“That’s exactly where Peter used to be,” I said, as I made sure by lining myself up with the back corner of the house. I peered into the hole, curious to see if the police had drawn chalk lines around the dog’s body. They hadn’t. “What kind of a dog was it?”
“A toy poodle.” He jammed his hands into his pockets. “Your friend Helen was prob’ly an eccentric who’d returned to fetch a beloved pet’s remains.”
“That could be. I’d claimed we were going to put in a tennis court. She probably didn’t want her dog’s remains disturbed. That would explain why she didn’t ask my permission first before she started digging, and wanted to do so in the daylight.”
Now I felt guilty about having teased her. I sighed and glanced up at Simon Smith’s window. The curtains were parted, and two dark circles of binocular lenses were plainly visible. I waved.
Chapter 4
Damn. Elevator Music.
Nathan paused from eating his cereal the next morning, looked up at me, and said, “Gravity is kind of bad and kind of good. It’s good because without gravity you’d just float around, but it’s bad because if you fall off a big building, you get killed. But I guess having gravity is the best choice. Until you fall off a building.”
Having explained the pros and cons of gravity to me, he then continued eating as if he’d never spoken. In the meantime, Karen, seated across the kitchen table from him, entertained herself by adding columns of three-digit numbers.
My mother was reading the newspaper while fortifying herself with the necessary caffeine. I toyed with the idea of asking her whether my sister and I were like this as childr
en—apt to discuss gravity out of the blue and to do arithmetic for amusement. But I held my tongue. Mom never spoke of her own volition prior to her second cup of coffee. And if you forced her to speak, she never said anything you wanted to hear.
A few minutes later the children left for school, and Mom was back to her friendly, if jittery, self. To my good fortune, Nathan hadn’t asked about his pumpkin, so I was holding on to the hope that I could find a Peter imposter at the local nursery today. Jim had gone into work early this morning, having instructed Karen and Nathan to get off at “Grandma’s stop” after school.
If we decided to stay here for several days, I needed to order call-forwarding for my business line and perhaps set up my fax/scanner/printer/copier here. That would allow me to shed some guilty feelings for my most recent dealings with Ma Bell. Last week, some phone salesperson urging me to “Take advantage of this opportunity to order call-waiting!” had caught me at a bad time. I detest call-waiting. I interrupted the salesman and said, “Hang on a minute. I have someone more important than you on my other line.” Then I hung up on him.
This being Tuesday at 8:45 a.m., my mom made her grocery list and clipped coupons. She was always at the store by 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday. She asked if I needed any groceries, which I probably did but said no. While she backed down the driveway, I located my drawing pad and the keys to her and my front doors. In exactly two hours, she would be home to put away groceries before she started to make lunch. That gave me plenty of time to decide whether or not I felt safe enough in my home to allow my family to return to it tomorrow. Maybe even enough time to purchase a new Peter.
The short walk home left me overheated. The sun was downright brutal, even this early in the day. It was cranking up to be a real scorcher. And I’d forgotten to put sunblock on the kids. Just what every mother needs: one more reason to feel guilty.
Not wanting to see just how decimated my side yard looked in natural sunlight, I went straight to the door and headed directly to my office. To my utter delight, there was a message on my recorder from a woman who was seeking ways to publicize a county fair. She wanted me to design a humorous single-panel cartoon about horses or fair entries that she could incorporate into her advertisements.
I grabbed my sketch pad to work up some roughs. Perhaps it was a result of all the craziness of late, but all I could come up with were absolutely absurd ideas. My favorite was almost embarrassingly bizarre. It showed a horse and a bow-legged cowboy about to step into an elevator. In the elevator, a man dressed in a tuxedo with tails plays a grand piano. A thought bubble shared by both the horse and the cowboy reads: Damn. Elevator music.
After completing a rough of the drawing, I called the prospective client and described the cartoon. Though she said my drawing “wasn’t exactly what she had in mind—no surprise there—she chuckled at the concept and asked to see it. I used my standard procedure of placing an X cut from black construction paper on the drawing before scanning it. That way my cartoon couldn’t be pirated. Within minutes, she sent me a return fax that said she “loved it,” but would have to discuss this with her committee chairperson, and she’d get back to me in a week or so.
The doorbell rang. It was Joanne Abbott. Joanne had green eyes, a prominent chin, and a large Roman nose that gave her an almost regal appearance. Last spring, she had spearheaded a campaign in our subdivision to pass a school referendum, though she and her husband Stan were childless. Based on my resulting admiration, I had decided she was a good person before we’d even met. Yet, with her being childless and occupied in her own pursuits, we’d had all too few occasions to strike up conversations.
I swung open the door and greeted her warmly. She was holding a loaf of bread in a disposable aluminum baking pan. She smiled somewhat sheepishly, then handed me the bread.
“Here, Molly. Stan and I got to talking last night, and we realized we never did-give you a formal welcome to the neighborhood. So I brought you a banana bread. It’s frozen, but it defrosts almost as good as new. Better late than never, I hope.”
A welcome was, indeed, always “better late than never.” But judging by the grayish, shriveled appearance, “never” might have been the better choice for the banana bread.
“Thank you. Would you like to come in?” As if I didn’t know she had really come over because she was dying to pump me for information. If I were in her position, I’d want to know all about it, too, but I would’ve simply asked, not come bearing gifts of old banana bread. Although, I’m baking impaired, so I’m disinclined to bring baked items.
She adjusted the pleats on her gingham jumper as she took a seat on my living room couch. Wearing denim shorts and a T-shirt myself, I curled my legs under me and took a much less ladylike seat on the recliner across from her. I offered her something to drink or a slice of banana bread. She declined, then said, “So. Quite the brouhaha yesterday, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was.” For some reason, I love the sound of the word, and so I smiled despite the serious nature of what that “brouhaha” really entailed. But I quickly sobered as the image of Mr. Helen’s body popped unbidden into my thoughts. “I hope I never go through anything like that again.”
“In the paper, it said they were withholding identification of...the body, until relatives were notified.” As she spoke, she gently ran her fingertips along her neck in an unconscious gesture. “It was Helen Raleigh, though, wasn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so. Were you and Helen close?”
“No, I barely knew her. Nobody knew her. She was a complete recluse.” She smirked. “Some of the neighbors used to say that she was always out working on the yard, because she had so much more in common with plant life than human life.”
“Who exactly used to say that?”
“Oh, I don’t remember. It was just a joke that made the rounds at one of the cocktail parties. You know how those things are.”
“Cocktail parties?”
“Every four months, three of us families rotate a get-together.” She paused and reddened. “Weren’t you invited to the Lillydales’ last month?”
I shook my head, feeling awkward and a little hurt.
“I’m so embarrassed. I just assumed you...were shy and didn’t want to come.” She cleared her throat. “I’m sure it was just an oversight. Sheila would never have deliberately not invited you.”
“These things happen,” I murmured, though all of this gave credence to my suspicion that Sheila didn’t like me. Ah well. It had been my experience that nothing worsened a person’s opinion of me faster than my deliberately trying to correct an unfavorable first impression. “Who was the third host?”
“The Cummings, next door to you. They’re in Europe for another two weeks.”
“Yes, they told me.” At least somebody in this immediate neighborhood had acknowledged my presence—though in their case, it had been along the lines of, “Oh, hi. You’re our new neighbors. We’re leaving for four months. See you when we get back.” Having grown up in this town and then having lived for seventeen years in Colorado, I knew this cautiousness toward “strangers” was endemic to Carlton, and I tried not to take it personally.
“Does Simon Smith go to your parties?” I asked, hoping to get a feel for the interpersonal relationships of my fellow cul-de-sackers.
“No, though we always invited him. We wouldn’t want to make him feel unwanted. Same thing with Helen. Every time, we’d extend her an invitation. Every time, she’d politely decline.”
“Did she say why?”
“She always said, ‘Thank you so much, but I’m afraid I have other plans that evening.’ Not that she ever actually went anyplace or entertained.” Joanne smiled and said in conspiratorial tones, ‘The neighborhood rumor was that she and Simon were romantically involved and didn’t want anyone else to know.’”
Helen of wig and falsies fame involved with the spy next door? I had to stifle a smile. “Somehow I doubt that.”
“Why?”
I was not at
liberty to answer: “Because Simon and Helen were both men.” Besides, they could have been gay men. “Because they were both single. They’d have had no reason to keep a love relationship secret. And I thought you just said Helen was a complete recluse.”
“True, but so was Simon. They were a great match. And Simon likes to keep everything secret.”
“So did you ever see the two of them together? Acting interested in each other?”
Joanne paused and looked thoughtful. “No, we never saw her even speak to him the whole time she lived here.”
“We?”
“The Lillydales, the Cummings, or Stan and me.”
Hmm. The three families were tight enough to gossip about their neighbors. Simon Smith and Helen had been invited to their parties, but not my husband or me. Strange. The problem couldn’t rest with my husband; Jim is one• of the most likable people you’d care to meet. Was I using the wrong brand of toothpaste or something?
“So,” Joanne said, leaning forward in her chair, “is it true that you found the body?”
“Yes.”
“How dreadful.”
“Yes, it was.”
She stared at me expectantly, but, to my disappointment, this conversation had somewhat cooled my desire to become friends with Joanne. I reminded myself that this was the childless woman who fought for school budgets the person whom, sight unseen, I’d described as “my hero.”
After waiting unsuccessfully for me to chatter, she asked, “Why were the police digging up your yard?”
“They were looking for something, but I’m not at liberty to say what they found.”
“Of course.”
She was still watching me, as if she expected me to whisper my answer. Time for some subterfuge to glean information from her . “I noticed the baseboards aren’t scratched at all in this house. Helen’s dog must have been very well behaved. Did she take it to obedience school?”
Joanne tilted back her head and peered down her sizable nose at me. “She didn’t have a dog.”
Death of a Gardener (Book 3 Molly Masters Mysteries) Page 4