Death of a Gardener (Book 3 Molly Masters Mysteries)

by Leslie O'Kane

  “I thought she said something about her pet. Was it a cat?”

  “No, she never owned any pets, as far as I knew.”

  “Maybe she was talking about one she owned before she bought the place.”

  “That must be it.” Joanne held my gaze for a long moment, then smiled. “I suppose I should be going. You’re going to the home-owners’ meeting this week, aren’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it. You know how volatile the issue of mailboxes is. Near and dear to everyone’s hearts.” Our home-owners’ association was trying to pass an ordinance that would ban “unsightly metal mailboxes.” However, Simon Smith’s goose with the opening chest and another neighbor’s green frog with the flopping lower lip were wooden, and therefore deemed “sightly.”

  I escorted Joanne out, then scanned the mess that was once my garden. How could we even begin to reassemble this mud hole into a yard? Maybe I should have hired Sheila Lillydale to protect my property after all. Not one to choke while swallowing pride, I decided to give her a call and see what she had to say about this now.

  As I returned to the front door, an elderly voice called out, “Made a damned mess of your property, huh?” The voice had all of the endearing qualities of a rusty hinge.

  I turned, surprised to see Simon Smith peering at me over his cedar privacy fence. His sharp features and bony body befitted his screechy voice. He was not six feet, let alone eight feet tall, so he had to have been standing on a stepladder.

  “You can say that again,” I murmured. “What they find?”

  “A dog,” I answered without thinking, then winced and realized I had just “compromised the investigation.”

  “A dog? Dead, I presume?”

  That question didn’t warrant an answer, so applying the “in for a penny, in for a pound” adage, I said, “It was a toy poodle.”

  Simon snorted, shook his head, and said, “Helen didn’t have a pet dog. Poodle or otherwise.”

  “Really? Are you sure?”

  “Sure as shootin’. She was allergic to the damned things.”

  “Did you ever see Helen digging in this yard?” It was strange to have to crane my neck to speak to a neighbor, but I didn’t want to stop his momentum by suggesting he round the fence. This was the longest conversation by far the two of us had shared, and I was curious to know more about him. “By digging, I don’t mean just planting flowers, but something else.”

  “Something else? No, no. Never saw her do any heavy-duty digging.” He cackled. “Heard about how she was digging in your yard when she got shot, though. She was probably just planting a tree, or something.”

  “What makes you think that? Did she ever tell you she wanted to plant a tree in my yard?”

  He guffawed and shook his head. “She told me you was damned useless when it came to gardening.”

  Having heard enough of Helen’s and Simon’s speech patterns to differentiate between them, the “damned” part had come from Simon, not the late Helen. I gritted my teeth, but turned my grimace into a reasonable facsimile of a smile. The point, I reminded myself, was not that I was forced to bemoan the fact that plants died en masse in my presence, but that Simon’s information contradicted the image of Helen as a “complete recluse.”

  “Yes, well, she was certainly more than willing to compensate for my shortcomings in that area.”

  “Yep. Could’ve had yourself a free gardener, if you’d have just let her. That’s all she wanted.”

  “It sounds as though you knew Helen pretty well.”

  “Yep. One damned fine lady, that gal.”

  “If you ever feel like talking to someone about her, I’d love to listen.”

  “Come on over right now. I’ll brew us up some coffee and tell you all about her.”

  This was the first friendly invitation I’d received from any of my immediate neighbors, and I never would have expected it to come from Simon Smith. Something was up.

  He was already standing by his front door awaiting me when I headed up his front walkway. To my surprise, he was even shorter than I’d thought he was: my height, though his narrow shoulders were so stooped a good chiropractor might have adjusted him to five-eight or five-nine. He struck me as the sort of geeky person everyone made fun of in high school and who wound up volunteering in the audiovisual department.

  Simon’s house had a musty smell. Framed circuit boards, spray-painted gold or silver, hung where you’d normally expect to see pictures. The kitchen clock was merely hands mounted atop what looked like the inside of a radio. While Simon brewed the coffee, I stood in the kitchen doorway, watching the clock on his food-splattered wall, surprised that its second hand could clear all of those resistors and capacitors. An infinitesimal benefit of being married to an electrical engineer was that it gave me the vocabulary to call small electronic components something other than “doohickies.”

  Exactly three and half minutes later, he poured us coffee and handed me a plain blue mug with a chip on the rim. Then he steered me to his living room. The furniture was old and well-worn, except for the coffee table. He had made the frame of the table out of four-by-fours, and the surface area out of a dozen circuit boards soldered together. I blew on the surface of my coffee, but it needed to cool a bit. A lot, actually, because on a hot morning like this, coffee had no appeal beyond its social function.

  I was afraid I’d electrocute myself if I set my cup down on the circuitry.

  Simon noticed my hesitation and flicked a wrist at me; “Go ahead. It’s a table, ain’t it? Put your cup down.”

  I promptly set my cup down and gave him a smile.

  “You must have a hard time dusting this coffee table, with all of its solder joints.”

  “Nope. Just haul it out back ‘n’ hose it down. Comes out looking brand-new. Made it myself. Tried to patent it, but some genius at the patent office said, ‘This ain’t only unoriginal, but ugly.’ Ha! Damn thing would sell like hotcakes to computer nerds. And I got a set of coasters to go with it.” He pulled out a stack of small circuit boards and tossed them on top of the table.

  I picked up the nearest board and examined it. “Where do you get these?”

  “I got a standing order for bulk rejects from an electronic-assembly plant. Also get ‘em at junk yards.” He patted the table lovingly. “This is one-hundred percent garbage.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “So. How well did you get to know Helen when you was buying the place?”

  That was not a typical question when making small talk. After all, buyers and sellers don’t get to know one another during run-of-the-mill real-estate transactions. Simon, like Joanne, wanted to pump me for information, which, as I’d suspected, had motivated the sudden invitation for coffee. “Not at all.”

  “And why is that? Ain’t you a friendly sort?”

  “Sure, I am. She and I didn’t seem...we didn’t share many interests. You say she didn’t have a poodle?” I asked abruptly, trying to change subjects.

  “Nope.”

  “How do you suppose the dog’s body could have gotten there, then? Could the pet have belonged to the people who owned this house before Helen?”

  “You mean, the original owners? Not likely. They owned a big German shepherd. Would have eaten a poodle for breakfast.”

  Which could explain how the dog died. I kept the thought to myself, though. “Were you here yesterday afternoon when all the excitement was going on?”

  “Nope. Damnedest thing. Got a call from some damn idiot claiming to be my cousin George from Philadelphia. Said he was at the train station in Albany and had to catch the next train out, but wanted to see me to discuss something important. So I headed clear out there, and George wasn’t there. Whole damn thing was a hoax.”

  “Did you tell the police about this?”

  He nodded emphatically. “Sure did. Nothing they could do about it, though. Probably some damned kids, playing a joke.”

  “But it had to be someone who knew you had a cousin George in Philadelphia. Right
?”

  He sighed. “That wouldn’t be so hard. See, I don’t have a cousin George in Philadelphia. That’s why the whole phone call episode had me so damned confused.” He shrugged and eyed me sheepishly. “Sounds stupid, I know, but when you’re as old as me and you’ve got the last name of Smith, you start to forget who in tarnation you’re related to.”

  I chuckled in spite of myself. “I got the impression that Helen was what you might call a recluse.”

  “Oh, she was friendly. She just liked to keep to herself, that’s all. I was damned sorry when she moved out of the neighborhood.”

  “What were her hobbies?”

  “Chess. She’d come over here, and we’d play sometimes. I made a chess board. Was going to give it to her this Christmas. Would you like to see it?”

  Naturally, I said yes, and he brought out a large board from the closet. It was wrapped in royal-blue velveteen, and he uncovered it as if he were uncovering a rare, fragile piece of artwork. Not surprisingly, the board had been made out of dark and light circuit boards, inlaid on a plywood base. Frankly, it was “damned” ugly, but I complimented him anyway.

  “Do you make these things at home?”

  He waggled his thumb in the direction of the stairs. “Got a workshop upstairs.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “No, no,” he blurted. He gave me a nervous smile. “Nobody’s allowed in my workshop but me. Man’s got to have his space.”

  Hmm. Simon was habitually nosy and had lived next to Helen for more than two years. If anyone could have discovered Helen’s true gender, this was the person. To test his reaction, I said, “There was a rumor that you and Helen were sweethearts.”

  He straightened that stooped backbone of his more than I would have thought possible. “No! That’s a damned lie! Who told you that?”

  “I...don’t recall.”

  “Joanne Abbott, wasn’t it? I saw her going into your house, with one of those banana breads she bakes whenever she wants something from someone. Want my advice? Don’t eat the damned thing. Tastes like wet sawdust.” He snatched my untouched coffee cup up from the table, “Thanks for dropping by. I have—”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Place is suddenly Grand Central,” Simon growled. “Hang on a moment.” He shuffled off to answer.

  I rose, intending to show myself out, then took one last glance at the coffee table and noticed a red LED—which was a tiny light that looked like a glass bubble-flashing. Perhaps Simon had become hard of hearing and had rigged this to the doorbell as a visual signal. Then again, Simon had said earlier he cleaned this table by “hosing it down.” How could that have been true if the table had live circuitry?

  Curious as to how such a thing could have been powered, I crouched down and looked underneath the table. A thin black wire ran from the LED down along the inner side of one table leg and disappeared into the nap of the carpeting.

  I could hear Simon and another man’s voice from the doorway. The doorbell wasn’t ringing, yet the light was still flashing. I scanned the baseboards for wire and picked up the trail at the wall across the room that led up the stairway. The workshop! Maybe he had some sort of electronic gizmo in there that fed a signal to this table. But what had tripped it?

  I overheard Simon telling his guest to “hang on while I make myself some more coffee.” That would keep him occupied for another three and a half minutes. I decided to take a quick peek into the workshop while in the guise of searching for the bathroom.

  I snuck upstairs and followed the wire as if it were a trail of bread crumbs. It led to a doorway, open just a crack. I pushed open the door a few inches with my foot. The room had two television monitors, similar to the ones in shopping malls. I stared at them, not believing my eyes.

  Both screens were showing my yard from different angles, where a policeman was walking.

  Chapter 5

  At the End of My Rope

  Simon Smith’s “workshop” resembled the inside of one of those surveillance vans frequently depicted in cop shows. A tape recorder with a set of large earphones was hooked up to a telephone in the corner. Two television sets with video recorders were displaying my side yard, where the elderly, portly police officer from last night now stood. The flashing light imbedded in the coffee table must have been a signal from a motion detector that went off whenever anyone was in my yard.

  In a low-tech surveillance operation of my own, I parted the curtains and noted that this was the window through which Simon Smith had peered at me with binoculars last night. And he’d had two cameras on me at the time. Talk about overkill. It was like a sports fan who watched the same game on his iPad.

  As the disbelief faded, rage seeped into me. How dare he! what gave this man the right to pry into my life like this?

  Affronted and appalled at this egregious violation of my privacy, I marched downstairs and headed toward the voices, which still came from Simon’s front room. Apparently, Simon still hadn’t brewed his coffee or invited the officer into his living room. En route, I searched for more flashing LEDs. Sure enough, in the kitchen there was one built into what looked like a bizarre pop-art picture composed of recycled electronic parts.

  The young officer with the pink cheeks stood in the small foyer. His name, I remembered, was Dave. Unfortunately for me, young Dave would be harder to spur into action at this violation of my rights than Tommy would have been.

  Simon cast a nervous glance my way over his narrow, stooped shoulder. “Mrs. Masters was just leaving. As I was telling her and told your....” He paused and did a double take at me, no doubt wondering why I wasn’t leaving. I planted my feet and, arms crossed, glared at him. He blinked a couple of times, then returned his attention to the officer. “Who was that old fellow I was talking to last night?”

  “My partner, Officer Greg Hess.”

  Old fellow? Simon was at least fifteen years older than Officer Hess.

  “As I told your partner, I wasn’t here when everything was happening. There was nobody in the house. I live alone. My wife divorced me some twenty years ago.” With a proud lilt to his voice, he added, “Couldn’t take the element of danger in my chosen field.” Simon had stepped aside so I could pass, but I had no intention of doing so. I squared my shoulders and maintained my post at the far side of his foyer. Now he cleared his throat and made little jerky motions with his head indicating for me to use the door.

  “Could I speak with you in private, Officer?” I asked.

  “He’s here to speak to me. You’re not the only person on this street who’s important to the police.”

  “Mrs. Masters, maybe I—”

  Hearing the hesitation in the young officer’s voice, I blurted, “Ask him why he’s got cameras trained on my property!”

  Simon’s jaw dropped. He put his hands on his hips. “Now, Molly. You had no right to—”

  “ I had no right? It’s okay for you to have cameras trained on my house without my knowledge or consent? Yet you think I have no right to peek through an open door after having been invited inside your house?”

  “Open door? I...always keep that door closed.”

  Oh, all right. So I’d pushed it open with my foot. No sense nitpicking.

  “Man’s got a right to his private space,” Simon continued. “And what were you doing going upstairs in the first place?”

  “Your coffee table was flashing me, and you were busy. For all I knew, that could have signaled someone’s heart monitor was on the fritz. So I followed the wire up the stairs.”

  “You have cameras trained on Mrs. Masters’s home?” the officer asked. Thank goodness that the policeman hadn’t missed the important thrust of this conversation.

  Simon’s eyes darted between the startled-looking officer’s and mine. “Er, I was just testing the equipment.”

  “Testing the equipment, my ass!” As soon as the latter phrase left my lips, I started to mentally replay those one or two occasions during the past three months where I�
�d passed my window in a state of undress. Had I ducked low enough to escape the camera’s eye?

  Officer Dave spread his hands. “I’m sure you two can work this out yourselves. Neighbor to neighbor?” He looked at both of us pleadingly. This was an officer of the law? He needed some assertiveness training.

  “He’s got video recorders on both of those cameras. He must have a tape of the shooting. You can arrest him for withholding key evidence.”

  Simon stomped his foot. His pinched, weathered features were twisted in anger. “I don’t have any evidence. Helen covered up the lenses yesterday afternoon while I was gone.”

  “But those cameras are aimed from clear up above the fence,” I said. “Did Helen climb onto your roof?”

  “She, er, used my ladder.”

  I tried to picture the series of gyrations Mr. Helen must have had to go through yesterday: find and carry Simon’s ladder to one corner of the house, tape up one lens, repeat this at the other corner of the house, then come to my yard and start digging. Tommy’s theory was that Helen was merely an eccentric and the shooting was accidental. That meant he had to have done all of this just to retrieve a poodle’s remains in private. A poodle that wasn’t even his pet. That cemented everything for me. This was no accidental shooting. Helen had been murdered.

  “I’ll need to have that video recording, Mr. Smith,” the policeman said.

  Simon winced. “My tapes just show her blocking the lenses. That’s all I got recorded.” When the officer held Simon’s gaze, he added, “And you’re welcome to it, Officer, sir.”

  “Don’t you think you should get a search warrant and confiscate the equipment, too?” I asked. “He’s got all sorts of devices upstairs, including something hooked to a phone.”

  Before the officer could respond, an unsettling thought occurred to me and I whirled toward my neighbor. “You’ve been tapping my phones, haven’t you? That’s why I keep getting error messages and crackling noises on the line!”

  “Nope. I’m tapping my own damn phone. Nothing illegal ‘bout that.”