Death of a Gardener (Book 3 Molly Masters Mysteries)

by Leslie O'Kane

  “I wish he’d told me about this. He’s probably been sitting on this information since Monday afternoon, when I gave him my copies of the real-estate transaction.”

  Lauren chuckled. “Let’s not forget that you’re supposed to be a disinterested private citizen.”

  “Oh, that’s right. How silly of me to forget. Listen, Lauren, I really appreciate your help.”

  “Don’t mention it. And I mean that literally.”

  “I won’t tell Tommy how I found out about this. In fact, I’m going to the library right now to uncover this information on my own. I’ll just tell him I happened to think to run Helen Raleigh’s name through the library, and I’ll pretend that I’m doing him a huge favor in sharing the news of the robbery with him.”

  “Yeah, right,” Lauren muttered.

  “Some man was digging up my yard last night. So, if the man who pretended to be Helen was in fact a robber who had given his partner the slip….”

  “You think there’re stolen jewels buried in your yard someplace?” Lauren asked.

  “I’m not sure. But I do think somebody else thinks so. The same somebody who shot Helen Raleigh.”

  Chapter 11

  Gesundheit

  My new theory was that my former house owner, posing as Helen Raleigh, had been one of the jewelry store robbers. But, if so, why steal his female victim’s identity? Maybe he had given his partner the slip and reasoned that his partner would surely never look for him disguised as a woman living in a small suburb in upstate New York. Apparently, the charade had worked for three years. Had the missing partner then found and killed my former home owner? Wasn’t it equally possible that the murderer was one of my suspicious-acting neighbors? What about Bob Fender, the vegetable vigilante? What if Bob was the former partner, who’d made up all the hooey about plant rights as a ruse?

  Deep in thought, I drove to downtown Carlton where the library was located. Which is not to say Carlton has a “downtown” in the classic sense of the word. It’s more accurate to call it the busiest and most centrally located intersection within the immediate area.

  The library was a good-sized brick building. When I was growing up, Carlton had no library. My mother had to drive us to a neighboring town. Of course, back in those days, Carlton had no fast-food restaurants or grocery stores, either. Those days were long gone. As were the days of lengthy searches involving card catalogs and stacks of old, yellowed newspapers. The library’s CD-ROM database included articles from both The New York Times and the L.A. Times. This crime having occurred in LA., I should be able to reference it with no trouble.

  I parked, then darted through the overly air-conditioned lobby to the nearest empty computer terminal, called up the newspaper database, and typed “Helen Raleigh.” Nothing. Not even an obituary. I keyed in “jewelry.” And then I selected from the subtopics of “store” and finally “crime.” That brought up thirty article headings in descending chronological order. I paged to the end, where a heist from three years ago was likely to be located.

  Judging from the newspaper article abstracts, a couple of stories dated June three years ago seemed to concern that particular crime. A bystander had been shot to death and a half-million dollars in diamonds had been stolen. I jotted down the specific editions and page numbers to locate them on microfilm.

  I had the small, narrow room that contained the library’s microfilm all to myself. One wall supported the gray metal cabinets where the small boxes of film were filed in chronological order. I found both reels from the L.A. Times that contained the articles I wanted to read, sat down at one of the five machines opposite the cabinets, and quickly threaded the machine.

  Only the bottom two-thirds of the page were displayed on the screen, and I couldn’t figure out how to see the top third. I was too embarrassed to seek help. Numerous signs urged patrons to ask for assistance threading the film, but nary a one went on to read: Also ask for help if you can thread the machine but are too stupid to figure out how to view the top of the page.

  After pushing and pulling on everything as discreetly as possible—this despite the fact that I was getting frustrated enough to hurl the entire thing through the wall—I eventually banged into the right section of machinery. With the date and page numbers visible, I easily found the first article about the robbery, printed that page, and read:

  ...A woman patronizing the store was shot to death when she stumbled upon a robbery in progress. Police are withholding identification of the woman pending notification of next of kin.

  The two white males, I went on to read, wore stocking masks to disguise their faces and were able to escape. They shot and wounded a security guard and drove off in a white pickup truck that had been stolen earlier that same day. I needed a picture of the two men. There was a grainy photograph of the jewelry store, but no composite drawings of the suspects.

  A subsequent article in the next day’s paper reported that the robbers had eluded police and were still on the loose, and that they had escaped with half a million dollars in diamonds. This article reported that the victim’s name was Helen Raleigh, a thirty-five-year-old who was a newlywed and had been going into the jewelry store to have her engagement ring appraised. The suspects had stolen both her ring and her purse. A clerk at the store was quoted as saying, “They shot that poor woman dead, just because she happened to be in their way.” It showed a small picture of the real Helen Raleigh. She did have short black hair, but was much prettier than my former home owner. Still no pictures of the suspects. Blast it! I needed a picture to see if the partner could be anyone I knew.

  A third, more recent article recapped the same information in the previous two reports and stated that three other jewelry heists, each in different locales along the West Coast, had been perpetrated by two men wearing stockings over their faces. The FBI had theorized that the robbery of the three jewelry stores could have been perpetrated by the same suspects. If so, they had amassed two million dollars’ worth of diamonds.

  There, finally, was a series of composite sketches of the suspects. A pair of drawings from the three heists supposedly showed similarities in features. The only similarities I could detect was they all had chins like Jay Leno. The Helen Raleigh I knew and disliked was not recognizable in any of the drawings. Under no circumstances could I say that either drawing looked like Bob Fender, or anyone else I knew.

  “Molly,” came a deep voice from behind me. I jumped and whirled around in my seat. “I thought that was you.”

  It was Joanne’s husband, Stan Abbott, my neighbor on the other side of Simon. “Stan. Hi. You startled me.” I turned back to the viewer and rotated the rewind knob to its highest speed before he could read the screen. “What are you doing here?”

  “My office is right across the street. I come here sometimes during my lunch break.”

  “Rather late for lunch,” I said, glancing at my watch, which showed it to be half-past two. Shoot. The kids would be home from school soon, and I still needed to speak to Tommy Newton. “Were you researching something?”

  “No, just happened to be wandering through the library.”

  Right. Wandering through the microfilm room at the back of the library. Not exactly the route most people would choose for a daily stroll. During their two-o’clock lunch break.

  I met Stan’s gaze. He seemed to be watching my actions with considerable interest. Stan Abbott was built like a pink Pillsbury Doughboy. He was pudgy and an inch or two shorter than his wife, but always wore clothes that fit him so perfectly they had to be tailor made. He had a broad face, light brown hair, and widely spaced teeth that gave him a goofy, but engaging, smile.

  “Going through microfilm, are you?”

  “Yes,” I said, stuffing this reel into its box. “Old. newspaper articles.”

  He picked up the box the first reel was in and glanced at the side, which identified the two-week period this tape spanned. “Old L.A. Times editions, hey? Does this have something to do with Helen’s murd
er?”

  “What makes you ask that?”

  He didn’t answer, just handed me back the tape as if he hadn’t heard the question. “Have you heard the scuttlebutt?”

  “Scuttlebutt?”

  Stan nodded. “The rumor around the neighborhood is that Helen Raleigh was actually a man.”

  “No!”

  He held up his palms in an exaggerated shrug. “That’s the rumor.” He grinned and shook his head. “Why would anyone do that? Dress like a woman for all that time. Kind of gives you the creeps.”

  He gave me a look that implied I, too, should be horrified at the prospect, but I was used to dressing like a woman—at least upon occasion. Besides, there were fates much worse than disguising oneself as a woman and living in an upper-middle-class suburban neighborhood. Perhaps one such fate had caught up with Mr. Helen. Plus, if he had shot to death the real Helen Raleigh, he’d met with the fate he deserved.

  “Did...Helen seem to be hiding from someone?” I asked.

  “Hiding from someone?”

  “Yes. Was she...or rather he jumpy, reluctant to meet new people, that sort of thing?”

  “Not es—” He stopped, then stroked his chin as if lost in thought. “Now that you mention it, yes. I just naturally took it for shyness, but that could have been exactly why Helen acted that way. Maybe Helen was hiding from the authorities.”

  “You knew Helen for three years, didn’t you?” Stan nodded.

  “You never suspected she was a man?”

  “No. I mean, why would I? How could anyone suspect that the woman who happened to live two doors down from you was really a man? Of course, I practically never saw her, except when she was outside working on her lawn or gardens. She did seem to operate that mower of hers pretty proficiently, now that I think about it.”

  “And mowing the lawn struck you as a masculine discipline?” I asked, bristling. I’d mowed many a lawn in my day and had surrendered that task to my husband only because he felt it was important to cut grass in a diagonal pattern. Jim has never once suggested we vacuum in a diagonal pattern, and, to this day, I failed to see the difference.

  Stan missed my intonation and added, “Was pretty terrific with hedging shears, too.”

  The mention of hedging shears brought to mind Betsy Fender’s declaration, “Broccoli screams when its head is cut off,” and I felt a shiver of revulsion as I pictured contorted facial features on a broccoli sprout. Though light-years from becoming a “fruitatarian,” it would be a while till I served broccoli again. The Fenders would be pleased.

  “She did have that, you know, deep voice, and thick ankles,” Stan continued. “I always thought she was ...one of the homeliest women around. No offense. I know you women don’t like to be compared to one another in terms of your looks.”

  As he said this, his vision dropped to my chest, which was one part of my anatomy I certainly didn’t appreciate having held up for comparison—so to speak. But I let the matter slide and said, “I heard that a couple of the men on our cul-de-sac had been interested in her.”

  Stan grimaced. “Really? There was Simon Smith, who took a definite shine to her, but who else?”

  “I’d rather not say. No sense in spreading unfounded rumors.”

  “No. No sense in that.” Stan’s brow was furrowed, as he no doubt mentally ran through the other men on our cul-de-sac, which left only Roger Lillydale and Mr. Cummings, my next-door neighbor currently in Europe. “Hard to fathom either—” He broke off, then gave me one of his goofy smiles.

  I rose and said, “Good seeing you, Stan. I’ll bet you’re glad Simon took down the cameras on your side of the house.”

  “We’re all glad of that.” He licked his lips as he stared at the reels in my hand. “What did you say you were looking for?”

  I pretended I didn’t know he was referring to the newspaper articles and said, while re-filing the tapes, “Just a little privacy and peace of mind, like everyone else. Say hi to Joanne for me.”

  I strolled across the library, wondering whether or not I believed that Stan had simply happened to bump into me. I had parked along the street. If he worked nearby, it was more likely that he spotted my Toyota and was nosy enough to come look for me. Just as I turned the corner to leave, I glanced back and was disconcerted to see that Stan Abbott stood motionless, watching me.

  There was a public phone in the lobby. I called my mother, told her I was at the library, and asked if she could please watch the children. I specifically mentioned my current location because my mother was such an avid reader that a visit to the library was the be-all, end-all alibi as far as she was concerned. The truth, though, was that I’d already finished. Together with my two tapes from Simon and my printouts of related newspaper articles, I drove to the police station. Now to pretend to Tommy that I’d discovered on my own the information our mutual, runny-nosed friend had actually given me.

  The thought of Lauren in her current sniffling condition brought to mind a cartoon I could draw. A woman has both hands clasped over her mouth, her eyes wide with horror as she stares in front of her where a second woman appears to have been blown backward into a tree by a tremendous wind-her hair is straight back and the tree is stripped of leaves. A man standing next to the first woman simply says to her, “Gesundheit.” Perhaps the card could be marketed as a get-well card.

  Tommy’s pint-size office was in its normal cluttered state. Tommy was paging through a thick file when I knocked on his glass door. He gestured for me to come in. While I did so, he folded up the file and put it away in a four-drawer cabinet directly behind him. The photo of Tommy’s sons and their deceased mother had migrated to the opposite side of his desk. A picture of Lauren was now in its place. I wondered if the relocation of the photographs had been inspired by Tommy’s recent altercation with the boys’ irresponsible use of their firearm. And was a pellet gun technically considered a firearm? A fire pinky perhaps.

  “Tommy, I have some important news about the case.” I’d opted to go for the direct approach, rather than first chatting with him about his boys as I would have under most circumstances.

  “Uh-huh.”

  I sat down on the marginally padded folding chair that faced his desk. “You’re not going to believe this, but I came across some articles in the library computer system that tell us who Helen Raleigh’s imposter really was.”

  “That so?”

  “Yeah. I think the imposter was a robber of a jewelry store in Los Angeles.”

  Tommy’s facial expression was inscrutable. “Uh-huh.

  And how exactly did you happen to discover articles about a robbery in California?”

  “I figured out that with all of this burying of various things in my yard, there had to be some sort of treasure there, which was probably stolen. So I searched for unsolved robberies. Here. I’ll show you the copies I printed up.” I pulled out the photocopied articles from my purse,smoothed them a little, and handed them to Tommy. While he read them, or at least pretended to read them, I also removed the two DVDs from Simon and set those on his desk in front of me.

  Tommy scanned the last of the articles, and I was now fairly certain he was merely making a show of reading them, as I happened to know he was one of the world’s slowest readers and this had only taken a half minute at best.

  “Uh-huh, And you searched through the numerous entries and came up with this one, that identifies Helen Raleigh as a victim? That’s incredible.” Again, he kept his expression blank, but I knew he was thinking that I had to have gotten this information from Lauren. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he’d left the file open in front of Lauren because he wanted to pass the information on to me, and hadn’t been at liberty to do so through conventional means.

  “Yes, well, the important thing is that last night, someone dug up my yard again, and Simon Smith caught the guy on DVD.” I patted the discs in front of me to accentuate the words.

  “You’ve got an image of the guy’s face?” T
ommy asked, failing, for once, to mask the excitement in his voice as he snatched up the tapes.

  “Well, no, not his face, exactly. You can see a little of his jaw, though.”

  “Uh-huh.” Tommy sounded deflated. He set the tapes back down.

  “You know, Tommy, I can’t help but notice that you don’t seem very surprised by any of this. So that means you must have already discovered Mr. Helen’s former occupation. Tell you what. Let’s trade surveillance videos, shall we?”

  “’Scuse me?” Tommy said with a sigh. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his thick arms across his chest.

  “Surely, in this day and age, you’ve got recordings from the jewelry store’s video cameras, right?”

  “Yep. But the images are grainy and hard to decipher. Plus the robbers were wearing stockings over their faces.”

  The image of robbers wearing stockings distracted me momentarily. Stockings were so less common than pantyhose. It would probably cut down on the fear factor for robbers to stuff their heads into pantyhose and leave the empty shriveled nylon leg dangling. “Have you got one of those contraptions that could zoom in on the face recorded on my discs?”

  Tommy scoffed. “You think we’ve got that kind of high-tech equipment here? This is Carlton. We’ll have to take ‘em to a crime lab in Albany and let their technicians see what they can do.”

  Tommy, I noted, had slipped into his friendly country cop vernacular. “Will you let me look at your recording of the jewelry heist?”

  “Nah. I’d have to deputize you first.”

  “Really?” I perked up at that suggestion. “Oh, Tommy, I thought you’d never ask!”

  He gave me a little smirk, but said in flat voice, “Fact is, I got nothin’ to gain by showin’ you the tapes.”

  “But I’m your best witness. Except for Roger Lillydale, I knew Helen Raleigh the best. I might be able to pick her out, I mean him out, on the tapes of the robbery, even though she’s wearing men’s clothing. He’s wearing, rather.” My story wasn’t true, but I was really curious about what Mr. Helen had looked like when he was a male bank robber.