“Here comes trouble,” Al muttered. “Excuse me. You folks wait right here. We’ll need to talk to each of you about what happened.”
Everyone waited until Al was gone, then they formed a circle around Peggy and threw questions at her the way children throw snowballs in the winter.
“This is terrible.” Mrs. Waynewright’s frown on her eighty-plus face expressed her displeasure. She was a sturdy woman with pale skin and thin, gray hair. “Does that man believe one of us hurt Lois? None of us even knew she was out here, did we?”
“And along those lines,” Dorothy Myrick said, “where is Lois’s car? She must’ve driven out here. If we’d seen her car, we would’ve known she was here.”
“Of course!” Grace Kallahan slapped her hands together. “She was kidnapped. Someone probably pushed her into their car and drove her out here. Check the records on her ATM card. Those people always go after the ATM card.”
“If they aren’t after something else.” Geneva lowered her voice dramatically, dark eyes saying what her words didn’t.
All the women gasped in dismay, and their hands flew to their faces. “This can’t be happening,” Grace said. “Not to us. The Shamrock Historical Society has been together for more than fifty years, and nothing like this has ever happened to us before.”
“We need a lawyer.” Annabelle Ainsley’s voice was decisive. “Dorothy, isn’t your son-in-law the district attorney? He could represent us.”
“Don’t be stupid, Annabelle,” Mrs. Waynewright cautioned. “The district attorney prosecutes people! He can’t represent us if he’s accusing us of a crime.”
“Besides, my son-in-law is a corporate attorney, not the district attorney,” Dorothy added.
Peggy had heard enough. “No one is being accused of anything yet. We don’t know what happened to Lois. She may have had a heart attack and died out here before we arrived. The police are here to figure that out.”
“Then where’s her car?” Geneva demanded. “She didn’t walk out here, not with her lumbago. If she drove out here, her car would be here now.”
“She’s right,” Lilla hissed, caught up in the investigation. “We have to find Lois’s car.”
“But which one?” Grace asked. “Lois had that silver Mercedes, the one with the gray leather trim inside. But she also had that old brown Cadillac she liked so well. The one her husband gave her for her fiftieth birthday. You know the one I mean.”
“Would she have driven either one of them out here?” Annabelle questioned. “Don’t forget; she was a stickler on keeping her cars clean. Not an easy thing to do right now. Would she have brought either one of those vehicles down here, knowing how dirty they’d get?”
Mrs. Waynewright put her skeletal hand with its plethora of diamond rings on Annabelle’s shoulder. “Look! Isn’t that Arnie? That poor boy. They were very close, you know. Let’s go over and say something to him. He needs all the support he can get right now.”
“But the police officer said to stay here,” Jonathon reminded them.
“We aren’t suspects”—Geneva looked at Peggy—“right?”
Peggy shrugged. “Not as far as I know. They’ll want to ask you some questions, so don’t go too far.”
The words were barely out of her mouth before all of the ladies swarmed to see Chief Mullis. “You think this will be all right?” Jonathon looked at her. “I mean, they have a valid point about Lois’s car.”
She agreed. “They do. There’s no point in speculating about it. We’ll have to leave it to the police. At least for now.”
TWO HOURS LATER, a rookie police officer who’d started on the force at the same time as Peggy’s son, Paul, dropped her and her mother off at historic Brevard Court. College Street was crowded, but the squad car cut through the traffic like Moses parting the Red Sea.
“Thanks for the ride,” Peggy said. “I’m glad things are going so well for you, Allan. I know your mother is very proud of you.”
“She’d like it a lot better if I wasn’t wearing this uniform,” he confessed with a smile. “She wanted me to follow in the family footsteps, you know. Everyone must be a lawyer.”
“And there’s nothing wrong with that noble profession,” Lilla added. “I don’t understand why men want to play with guns and wear uniforms. Is it the shiny buttons?”
Allan laughed, his face lean and vital beneath his crew cut. “I don’t know about other men. It might sound corny, but I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to be out there helping people who really need help.”
“You sound like Paul,” Peggy intervened. “I’m glad we had a chance to talk. I’ll see you later.”
Lilla got out on the crowded sidewalk that led to the wrought iron gate opening into Brevard Court. The shops in the courtyard were arranged carefully around the brick walkway that led into Latta Arcade, a turn-of-the-century cotton marketplace upgraded for shopping. The atmosphere between the arcade and the courtyard was relaxed, almost as though it still lingered in a bygone era. Traffic on College and Tryon streets disputed that claim, but even the hectic pace of the city couldn’t budge the dose of Southern hospitality the area reflected.
Cheerful red begonias nodded in the warm breezes that swept through the courtyard. Peggy enjoyed seeing them there, survivors of the hot, dry summer. With the drought had come water restrictions, which precluded using any of the precious resource on something as trivial as plant life. She’d circumvented those rules by catching rainwater in barrels located outside her shop and using it to water what she could.
Summer was always hard on garden shops since it was an in-between season. Too late for spring planting; too early for fall bulbs. The drought had made a miserable season even worse as water restrictions forced Charlotte’s residents to give up taking care of their plants. Fall wasn’t looking much better. They were only a few weeks into autumn, but there was no relief in sight for the area’s thirst. Barely two inches of rain had fallen here in the last few months.
“I’m going to call your father and have him come get me.” Lilla took out her pink cell phone and pressed speed dial. “I know you’ll want to stay here a while. I don’t want to take you away from anything.”
“Thanks.” Peggy barely heard what she’d said. She was focused on getting to the Potting Shed. It had been a trying day since she’d joined the expedition to Lake Whitley at six-thirty this morning. It hadn’t improved upon finding Lois’s dead body. She just wanted some peace and quiet in her own world.
“I’m sorry I dragged you into all that,” Lilla continued as she waited for Peggy’s father to pick up the phone. “Who knew that would happen? I never dreamed I’d actually see a dead body that hadn’t visited the funeral parlor yet.”
Peggy stepped into the Potting Shed and took a deep breath of the sweet air. It was a mixture of plant life, mulch, and fertilizer. The scent teased her nose and was a balm to her troubled spirit.
There was no sign of the summer flood that had forced her to close the shop for a month of renovations. A pipe, probably as old as the shop, had burst, ruining the heart pine floors and damaging the walls and shelves. Good insurance and a lot of help had put it all back together even better than before.
The furniture she’d once carried samples of was gone, no longer part of her stock; she couldn’t compete with the Smith and Hawken garden store that had moved in virtually across the street in the Wachovia Atrium. In its place was a large pond, the antithesis of the drought outside. Minicattails were in full bloom alongside heavenly white lotus flowers. They perfumed the shop with their magic.
This was all possible, despite the drought, because businesses were allowed an exemption from water restrictions. It was anyone’s guess how long that would last. Everyone was nervous seeing the lake levels drop each day on television.
“So, how was the bone-gathering trip?” Selena Rogers, Peggy’s head shop assistant asked from behind the counter. Selena was a striking girl with sun-burnished brown hair and brilliant blue eyes.
She worked part-time for Peggy and was the backbone of the retail business. Selena was in her second year of college.
“It was unusual.” Peggy didn’t want to go into it any further.
“We found a dead body,” Lilla blurted out.
Selena stared for a moment, then started laughing. “I’m sorry. Really. I couldn’t help it. But it’s getting where it’s not an outing with Peggy if you don’t find a dead body.”
“What’s so funny?” Sam Ollson came in from the back storage area and took off his gloves. “You guys have all the fun up here while I’m in back shoveling manure.”
“I guess Jerry came through with that delivery.” Peggy tried hard to change the subject. Selena was right. It was as though dead bodies were attracted to her. Of course, some of that was because of her work with the police. The few times she’d been involved in situations that required her to see a dead person had been out of her control.
“Oh, no”—Selena held up one hand—“you’re not getting away that easy.”
“She found another one.” Sam shook his golden blond hair away from his face. “What happened this time?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Peggy said. “I came here to get away from it.”
“Well, I want to talk about it.” Her mother took a deep breath to do just that. “It was a terrible experience.”
Selena grabbed a Coke from the minifridge and settled Lilla on a bench near the pond. “You poor thing. Sit here and tell us all about it.”
“They just want to hear the lurid details, Mother,” Peggy told her. “Please don’t indulge them.”
“Hey! We’re like the Scoobies,” Sam protested. “We’ve solved a few mysteries with you, Peggy. You can’t just cut us off this time.”
“There’s nothing to cut off,” Peggy said. “A poor old woman died in a bad situation. Case closed. Nothing to solve. Could we get back to work before I fire both of you?”
Sam smiled, deep blue eyes twinkling in a perpetually tanned face. He was a giant of a man with a large chest and muscled back from his years working as the head of landscaping for the Potting Shed. “You can’t fire me, partner. We have a contract made unbreakable by my attorney-sister.”
“You could fire me, I suppose.” Selena scratched her head. “But I don’t think it’s very likely. So step aside if you don’t want to share the gory details. Spill it, Mrs. H.”
Lilla fanned herself with a large seed packet she’d taken from the shelf beside her. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. The poor woman was out in that mud for God knows how long. People poked her because they didn’t know what she was. Who could deserve such a fate?”
Peggy excused herself from the drama. Sam and Selena moved closer to hear everything.
It wasn’t that Peggy couldn’t handle what she saw, and possibly had seen worse. It wasn’t necessarily that she felt so bad for Lois. At the moment, she felt worse for herself. Maybe it was selfish, but it had just been that kind of day. Seeing the dead face in the mud amid the hundred-year-old bones of villagers made her feel old and tired. No doubt some time alone and a cup of peach tea would put things in proper perspective. But right now, Selena’s laughter was more than she could handle.
She walked through the shop, checking on her plants. Some of them were growing on shelves under ultraviolet light beside their boxes and packages. There were also hydroponic pumpkins and cucumbers spiraling down from the ceiling with their roots above the tender, green vines. The sight of them never failed to impress a customer. She was thinking about adding a few flowering vines, but couldn’t let herself use any more water for the shop than she was already using. She recycled and used whatever water would’ve been wasted, but she felt guilty using more than her share.
The bell on the courtyard door to the Potting Shed rang as it opened. She knew it had to be someone familiar, since the three by the pond never moved or stopped discussing Lois’s death.
“Hi, Grandma!” Paul’s voice rang through the shop. “Where’s Mom?”
“She’s back there sulking,” Selena told him. “Did you hear she found another dead body?”
“I heard.”
Peggy came from the back of the shop and smiled at her son. Paul was tall and lean like his father, John, who’d died while answering a domestic violence call more than two years ago. That was where their likeness ended for the most part. Paul had fiery red hair, like Peggy in her youth, and bright green eyes. He also had her temper, a fact that had put them at odds many times.
“There you are!” He hugged her. “Are you okay?”
“As good as can be expected.” She wiped away a stray tear that had somehow formed on her freckled cheek.
“I heard what happened out there. Poor Mrs. Mullis. It had to be terrible for all of you. What were you doing out there, anyway?”
“I was helping your grandmother with her group project of collecting bones for the historical society.”
“You didn’t tell us that,” Sam said. “That makes it even better.”
While Lilla explained the importance of collecting the bones from the dry lake, Paul offered to take his mother home. “You look like you could use some time on your own.”
She was surprised and pleased by his perception. This from her son whom she sometimes despaired of understanding. Was that how her mother felt about her?
Her cell phone rang, and when she answered, Geneva Curtis was on the other end. “Peggy? We need your help. Something’s wrong with what happened to Lois. We don’t think it was an accident. We’re at her house. Can you come over?”
3
Zinnia
Botanical: family Asteraceae
These flowers, which have grown to be tremendously popular in the United States, are native to Mexico, where the Spaniards called them mal de ojos (ugly to the eye). They were first cultivated in Austria in 1613. In the language of flowers, zinnia means thoughts of absent friends.
“I THINK IT IS PERFECTLY right for me to come with you,” Lilla said. “Even though I wasn’t invited, I was the one who introduced you to the group in the first place.”
“That’s fine, Mother,” Peggy said for the tenth time since they’d left the Potting Shed. She hadn’t been happy about leaving the shop so soon, but her mother had convinced her that the ladies needed her. Unfortunately, there was no foot traffic coming through Latta Arcade. With a sigh, she agreed to close early so Selena could go home and study for a test while she went to meet with Geneva and the other ladies of the historical society.
Paul, who’d made the decision to ride along with them, drove them to their destination in his new Jeep. He was proud of his new toy, even though it went against his mother’s beliefs in conservation. He didn’t have a problem with the internal combustion engine, a fact his grandfather found perfectly fine.
“So, where are we going again?” Ranson Hughes, Peggy’s father, asked from the backseat as he held on to the roll bar. He’d arrived at the Potting Shed to pick Lilla up just as they were leaving. “I thought we were going out to supper with Steve.”
“That’s next Tuesday, Dad,” Peggy reminded him.
“I told you,” Lilla began, “we have to go and see the historical group. Margaret found a dead body, and they think there’s something at the dead woman’s house she should see.”
“Then why aren’t we going in Paul’s squad car?” Ranson laughed. “I think we should have our sirens blazing for this emergency!”
“Grandpa, I told you I can’t chauffeur my family around in a car that belongs to the city,” Paul said. “My boss wouldn’t take kindly to that.”
“It sounds to me like you need to have a man-to-man talk with your boss,” Ranson replied. “He obviously undervalues you. You could go anywhere and get a job. You could go to Charleston!”
“Not now,” Lilla whispered. “We just moved up here to see him and Margaret more often. What good would it do us if he moves back home?”
Peggy put her hand to her sunburned
forehead. She was starting to get a headache. It was just the day for it. She wished she could be more concerned about what the Shamrock Historical Society had to say about Lois’s death. But she was more worried about the lack of customers at the Potting Shed.
She couldn’t afford a massive advertising campaign. The shop had received good coverage on its grand reopening, but that was two months ago and long forgotten. She’d tried to think of nonexpensive ways of getting the word out. But just as she came up with some clever idea, the new drought report was issued. How could anyone make money on something that depended on water right now?
Even worse, the few times before when traffic to the shop had been slow, Sam’s part of the landscape business was booming. That was not the case this fall. Many of their regular clients were cutting back on the work they usually had done this time of year. Sam and Keeley Prinz, his helper in all things landscaping, were keeping up with their indoor plantscaping at apartments, offices, and some retail establishments. It just wasn’t enough.
All this came on the heels of her decision to give up teaching at Queens University to work as a contract botanist for the police. It was interesting work and she enjoyed the challenge, but it came only from time to time. The shop had been doing so well, she’d felt justified in her decision. Now she was starting to regret it. That gnawing fear she’d felt when she’d first opened the business after John’s death was returning.
She looked out at the passing scenery as they drove toward the Plaza-Midwood area of the city. The azaleas were brown and crisp next to wilting oaks drooping in the gas fumes and heat. There were no signs of the colorful flowers that had made the city famous. The drought had driven them all underground to wait for cool, damp weather. How could she expect anything less for her garden shop?
“Are you sure this is the right way?” Lilla scanned the same scenery. “I don’t see anyplace that looks like somewhere Lois would’ve lived. Maybe we should go back to Myer’s Park.”
A Corpse for Yew Page 3