Death of a Gardener (Book 3 Molly Masters Mysteries)

by Leslie O'Kane

  Tommy sighed. “No. Can’t say as I would. Maybe he thought the way to her heart was to try to get in touch with his feminine side.”

  “Funny, Tommy. My point is, you wouldn’t disguise yourself as a woman, as Frank Worscheim did. Unless that was part of the original plan, to keep his identity hidden from Sheila’s husband and from the former partner in the jewelry heist.” Tommy made no comment, so I added, “Did she tell you she has a diamond tennis bracelet she keeps in her office?”

  “Tennis bracelet?”

  “She claims it’s just zirconias, but I don’t believe her. I’ll bet that was a gift from Frank. Plus, she has no alibi for the shooting.”

  There was a noise on the line that sounded suspiciously as though Tommy were cursing under his breath. “Listen, Moll. We can always arrest Ms. Lillydale for withholding evidence if we feel she’s a flight risk or posin’ a threat. Rest assured, we’re keepin’ an eye on her. But bear in mind, Frank Worscheim shot Helen Raleigh, an innocent bystander. He stiffed his partner and ran off with all of the stash from a string of jewelry heists. We ain’t exactly talking about a nice guy here.”

  “Granted. But that—”

  “Know who most hardened criminals blame that they’re forced to serve time? Not the judge or the jury. Not themselves for breakin’ the law in the first place. They blame their lawyers. ‘I’m here because my lawyer screwed up.’ So maybe Frank Worscheim did, as you say, come looking for Sheila Lillydale. And maybe he intentionally moved into her neighborhood. But maybe that wasn’t because they were former lovers, but because he wanted revenge for his having been in the pen.”

  I sat back on my bed and tried to put that reverse spin on my theory. If accurate, it could mean that Sheila had told me the truth tonight. “I guess that makes about as much sense as any of this does. Did you have any luck, tracking down the bogus reporter?”

  “Faxed your likeness of him to L.A. to see if they could ID the guy. Nothing so far. Could be your run-of-the-mill crackpot. Wants to play investigative reporter. Cases like this bring ‘em out of the woodwork.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  He sighed. “No. I think you’re right on this one. I think he’s Frank Worscheim’s former partner. I’m stepping up the patrols in your neighborhood, and I’ve got an APB out on his car and him. In the meantime...the boys ‘n’ me are movin’ into Lauren’s place. My house is just sittin’ empty. You and your family could stay out there for a few days, or a few weeks. However long it takes us to catch this guy.”

  My initial reaction was “Yuck,” but I kept the thought to myself. I had this vision of a little, rectangular house in dire need of cleaning. That wasn’t fair, since Tommy was undoubtedly a better housekeeper than I was. Yet I felt like a turtle being offered someone else’s shell, when all I wanted was my own. “I’ll discuss it with Jim. Thanks.”

  The next morning was Friday, and the first day of the kids’ summer vacation. Bad news kept rolling in. My cartoon about the horse and cowboy getting onto an elevator with live music had been rejected. They’d sent me an email stating, “This does not meet with our needs.” I coped with my resulting disappointment by designing another cartoon. A sad-looking William Shakespeare sits in a modern office and faces a man behind a desk, who hands him a stack of paper, the cover of which reads Hamlet. The man says to Shakespeare, “This doesn’t meet with our editorial needs. Have you ever thought about trying your hand at...oh, rap music, perchance?”

  Unlike me, Jim suffered no shortage of demand for his expertise. He had fallen behind in work and left at the crack of dawn. I needed to shop for groceries, and Mom wanted to go, too. So we loaded the kids in the backseat and started to back the car out of the driveway. Just then, a black minivan drove up and pulled in behind me, blocking my exit.

  I craned my neck and saw Stan Abbott peering at me. Joanne was in the passenger seat. Stan got out of his vehicle, but left it where it was, blocking us in.

  “Uh, morning, Stan,” I called out the window to him. “We’re kind of in a hurry.” That wasn’t true, except that when you’re going someplace with your children, you’re always in somewhat of a hurry, as you never know how long they’ll stay in a confined space together before coming to blows.

  “This will just take a minute.” He gave a quick glance to his minivan, where Joanne still sat.

  “What’s up, Stan?”

  “My wife had been feeling a little rattled. I hope you understand. She’s not a well woman.”

  “She seemed perfectly in control at the home-owners’ association meeting the other night.”

  “Depends on her meds. I don’t know if you know this, but she had a miscarriage. The whole thing led to some sort of chemical imbalance. She’s fine when she takes her Prozac, but whenever she forgets, it’s trouble with a capital ‘T’.”

  “Oh, the poor dear,” Mom said sadly.

  “I don’t want to go to the store,” Nathan said. “Greenie’s tail is gone and I want to see if he climbs onto the raft.”

  “Greenie’s mine ! Brownie is yours.”

  “You gave me—”

  “I’ll let you each pick out a pack of gum,” I said into the rearview mirror. Following the instructions for the frog kit, we had placed a small piece of wood in the punch bowl to allow the frogs to climb out of the water.

  That led to both children trying to claim ownership of the first official frog: “Yes,” I told Stan, “that’s too bad. All is forgiven. “

  “Here she is now. Ixnay on the ozacpray.” Oh, good. Pig latin. That’ll fool her.

  Joanne stepped up beside Stan to peer into my window. “Molly? I wanted to apologize for my behavior last night. I had some misconceptions, and I overreacted. Please accept my apologies.”

  Nathan was starting to spit at the window.’ Any second now, he’d direct it at Karen. “No problem. We’ve got to run.”

  “Quite the tragedy with Simon, wasn’t it?” Stan said, shaking his head knowingly, but watching us every minute.

  “Yes. He was your neighbor for ...what? Ten years now?”

  “Six. Felt like ten, though. No need to speak ill of the dead, but let’s face it. He was a mean old geezer.”

  “Yes, but he meant well.”

  “Only if you consider spying on your neighbors well-meaning.”

  “We were on our way out, until you blocked us in. By the way, Mom, do you know a good mechanic? The emergency brake seems to slip. Yesterday, I had the brake on and the car backed all the way down the driveway by itself.”

  “Well,” Stan said, casting a nervous glance at his van. “We’d better get going.”

  “Again,” Joanne said, “I’m dreadfully sorry about my outburst last night. I don’t know what got into me.”

  “Don’t mention it. I don’t know what gets into me half the time, either.”

  “You have very strange neighbors,” my mother muttered the moment the Abbotts were safely back in their own car.

  “You noticed,” I said, glancing in my rearview mirror.

  As I watched them drive off, I waited an extra minute to make sure they were out of sight, then started off slowly. “We should have known something was up when we saved tens of thousands of dollars on the house.”

  At the store, Mom grabbed a separate cart, and she went off to find the items on her carefully written list, while I went off to work on my own mental one. The children, who found shopping with Grandma to be less of an ordeal than with their mom, went off with her.

  I have my own method of shopping in which I start at the leftmost aisle and wind up and down each aisle till I reach the far end of the store. That way I combine my exercise regimen with my errands.

  I was a couple of aisles in, selecting among the brands and flavors of boxed rice, when I heard a deep “Hello, Mrs. Masters.”

  I turned and almost screamed. It was the phony newspaper reporter. “Arnold.” I was scared out of my wits to see him, and blurted stupidly, “Uh, Hark the Herald. This is a surpri
se.”

  “I’ll bet. I’ve gotten pretty good at following people in cars so that they don’t spot me.”

  I looked to either side of the aisle, panicked at. the thought that my mother and my children would cross paths with me at any moment. “Are you still looking for a story?”

  “Writing my own now.” He pulled a small, shiny handgun from the pocket of his windbreaker, then stuffed it back in his pocket, the bulging barrel pointing right at me. I glanced up, hoping for a surveillance camera, but the nearest one was far away. “Just come with me.”

  Though I was scared witless, I managed to mutter, “I’d really rather not.”

  “Either come with me or I’ll do some shooting practice at smaller targets.” He pointed behind me with his chin.

  I turned around and spotted Mom and the kids at the end of the aisle, heading our way. My eyes filled with tears. I sent up a silent prayer.

  “You tell your mom nice and calm that you have to go. Make it convincing if you want everyone to leave this store alive.”

  “Uh, Mom, this is...Tommy’s good friend, Arnold.”

  “Nice to meet you, Arnold.”

  “We have to go.”

  “Go? Why? Where?”

  Where? Good question! “Um, I forgot that...it’s Tommy’s birthday today. Arnold just reminded me that... that they’ve planned a surprise party for him at his office in fifteen minutes. So he offered to give me a ride.” I cleared my throat and said, “Just let me get you the keys, Mom.” My hands were shaking like mad as I fumbled through the various compartments in my purse, Arnold staring over my shoulder. I finally got hold of the keys and gave them to her.

  The way she pushed Karen behind her left me no doubt that Mom knew I was being kidnapped. What I didn’t know, though, was what she would do now. I tried to signal her with my eyes to just play along till we were gone.

  She forced a smile. “Have a nice time at the party, dear. Do you want me to come pick you up?”

  “No,” Arnold said, “I’ll give her a ride home this afternoon. It was nice meeting you, ma’am. Let’s go, Molly.”

  I led the way out of the store. On the sidewalk, he grabbed a tight hold of my upper arm and started half dragging me toward a red Chevrolet that was parked illegally in the no parking zone.

  “You’re lucky I’m a nice guy. Your mother obviously didn’t believe that bogus story of yours.”

  “It was the best I could do under the circumstances,” I said through a tight jaw.

  He opened the passenger door and gave me a shove. I got in and fastened my seat belt, fully aware of the futility of the gesture. The air inside the car stank with the smell of cigarettes. The ashtray was brimming.

  “You don’t know my mother,” I told him as soon as he got into the driver seat. I was afraid to look back for fear I’d spot Mom chasing after us. “She’ll never catch on. She’s got Alzheimer’s. That’s why I had to take her shopping. I should never have left her alone with the children.

  She’ll probably get lost on the way home.”

  “You’re breaking my heart,” he growled as he started the engine. We pulled out of the store onto Route 146. Unable to resist, I glanced back. We were not being followed. Mom would be alerting the store management by now, and they would notify the police, but what could she tell them to look for? This was not even the same car he’d been driving before. He must have deliberately switched cars. Would anyone know anything at all about the type of vehicle we were in? Even with an APB, could anyone spot us? We turned north on Route 9. I knew only that this would take us toward Saratoga.

  I focused on breathing slowly for several minutes, the smell of cigarette smoke nauseating me. Neither of us spoke. At length, I asked, “Who are you really?”

  “Name’s Alex Raleigh.”

  “Raleigh? Some relation to Helen Raleigh?”

  “She was my wife. We hadn’t even been married two weeks when those butchers killed her.”

  “You mean Frank Worscheim and his partner?”

  The muscles in his undersized jaw flickered. “Jerome Bates. That was the name of Worscheim’s partner. I killed that slime-bucket almost two years ago back in L.A. Went down as an unsolved homicide. But I couldn’t find Worscheim. Last winter, I tracked down that little lawyer lady of his, but Worscheim’s disguise fooled me.”

  “Pardon me for asking, but you already killed Worscheim, so why are you kidnapping me?”

  “Cuz I didn’t kill him. Somebody beat me to it. Like I said. His disguise fooled me.”

  That still didn’t answer why he was kidnapping me, but I didn’t want to push any wrong buttons, so I reasoned it was best to try not to push any whatsoever. I sat in a quiet state of terror as he turned off the highway onto some small road. He took another turn, then another and another until I was totally discombobulated, except to notice that we were now on a narrow road, surrounded by cornfields. There were no sounds at all as he pulled over; no passing motorists. For all I knew, this was a tractor path. No one would hear a scream. Or a gunshot.

  I tried to swallow. My mouth was so dry it hurt. I looked at Alex Raleigh. He was staring out the windshield, wild-eyed. He turned his gaze to me. “My life isn’t worth jack shit anymore. I wanted to kill Worscheim. I was going to leave a letter saying: This was for the sake of Helen Raleigh. Then I was going to kill myself.”

  He started to go on, but started crying. “He used my wife’s name. He killed her in cold blood, then he soiled her name. My name. He had no right. I wanted to kill him.”

  The poor man. I tried to force some optimism into my voice. “Now you don’t have to. You’re a free man. You can start a new life for yourself. Surely that’s what Helen would have wanted.”

  He shook his head and took a stabbing swipe at his cheeks. “Doesn’t matter now. I can’t. I just want to know.” He grabbed my wrist so roughly it hurt, but I managed not to cry out. “Is it over?”

  “What do you mean? Is what over?”

  “The bastard deserved to die, but I have to know. The article said the stolen goods had been recovered. Did they find everything?”

  “I think so. Yes. Why?”

  “Everyone responsible has to pay their debt,” he said, staring at his handgun as he spoke. “My engagement ring. To my wife. She was getting it appraised for our insurance company when they murdered her. They took that, too.”

  “Dear God,” I murmured. I suddenly felt as though an emotional dam were bursting. I couldn’t stop my eyes from filling with tears. “I can’t imagine how horrible that must have been for you. To lose your bride that way. I’m so sorry.”

  He let go of my arm. He fisted his hands and took a halting breath. “Just tell me if it’s over. Are all the jewels back with their rightful owners? Other than mine?”

  I remembered that incredible diamond tennis bracelet of Sheila’s, but I pushed the thought from my mind and said, “Yes, it’s over. Everything that was stolen had been accounted for.”

  He nodded. I think he knew I was just telling him what he wanted to hear. But I also think he desperately needed to hear it anyway.

  He pulled the gun out of his pocket and pointed it at me. I closed my eyes and held my breath. “Get out,” he said.

  I looked at him, confused. He gestured through the rear window. “Head back that way. We passed a farmhouse ‘bout a mile or two back. You can call there to have someone come get you.”

  “Where are we?”

  He shrugged. “Beats me. You live in this town, not me. Now get out. Quick. Before I change my mind and take you with me.”

  His last words all but jettisoned me from the car. I ran in the direction he’d indicated. After a minute or two, I stopped and looked back, listening for the sounds of his motor, but heard nothing. I’d gone over a small hill so the car was no longer visible.

  I caught my breath and scanned the horizon. Just then, a gunshot resounded from the direction of Alex’s car. For an instant, I tried to assure myself that it was just the sound
of his engine backfiring. But that wasn’t true. I knew now what he meant when he’d threatened to take me with him.

  My heart was pounding. I started to stagger back toward Alex’s car, knowing I had to get there fast in case he was merely wounded. Somehow I had to prepare myself for the scene I was about to face.

  Then I heard the sounds of a car coming. I turned around again and started waving my hands desperately to flag it down even before the car was in full view.

  A beat-up old car neared. “Stop! Please! Stop!” I cried, hopping as I waved, dimly aware now that tears were streaming down my face. To my relief, the car slowed.

  My relief changed to shock as I recognized the driver and passenger.

  Chapter 18

  Pick up Grandma This Instant!

  Bob Fender brought his beat-up jalopy to a stop. Betsy rapidly rolled down the window. “Molly, are you all right?” she asked, her face pale and drawn, her eyes wide with concern.

  For all I knew, the Fenders could be in on this whole plot. But Alex Raleigh, if alive, needed help-fast. “A man just shot himself,” I panted. “Up ahead. In his car. On the other side of this hill.”

  Betsy was already opening her door for me. The front seat. was the old-fashioned bench style that held three. She scooted over. Bob drove off while I was still fiddling with my seat belt. I numbly realized we’d arrive before I could even get the thing fastened, and we reached Alex’s car a moment later. Bob pulled alongside it. The windows were red splattered. I took a deep breath and fought off a wave of dizziness and nausea. Beside me, I was dimly aware of Betsy gasping and burying her face in her hands.

  The three of us sat there, doing nothing, for what seemed like a long time but was probably only a couple of seconds. I willed myself to move, to stand up and check Alex for vital signs. Another part of my brain forewarned that if I were to open the door and look inside that blood-drenched vehicle just yet, I’d be flat out on the ground in a full faint.

  Bob patted his wife’s knee. “You stay here, dear. I’ll go.” I desperately wanted to stay in the car, too. With my eyes closed and my head between my knees. But I couldn’t trust Bob. At any moment, he might announce he was Mr. Helen’s killer, grab Alex’s gun, and aim it at me. So, I got out on my wobbly legs just as Bob stood up, too. Not that I’d be able to defend myself any better outside, but at least this way Bob would have to exert more effort if he, too, intended to kidnap me.