by Blythe Baker
“Don’t change the subject.” I pointed at her but she ignored the warning.
“Good luck finding a match for lonely, broke and desperate.” The old woman cackled and retreated back into her room. She shut the door. A second later, I heard the television come on.
That was enough for me. I closed my laptop and went upstairs.
Every night I spied on the tea garden and every night I just saw nature being nature. Tomorrow the second round of inspectors was supposed to come by and make sure my property was hunky-dory. It wasn’t that I minded the inspectors. It was just that the whole ordeal was a nuisance and reminded me that someone was trying to run me out of business.
“Why?” I asked my reflection in the bedroom mirror. “It’s such a beautiful place. If they’d just take a look around, they’d see how important it was to have.”
Did I dare invite the workers at the stone quarry to come and take a look at my garden? Maybe an olive branch could get them to leave me alone, if they saw the birds fluttering and the beauty of the butterfly gardens. I wasn’t going to run over there and invite the entire crew over. I had a feeling there would be several “accidents” all at once. But maybe I could offer to give them a guided tour? That way I could keep an eye on them, as they saw how pretty and important the land was.
“I’ll think about it in the morning. Sometimes the sun makes us see things differently,” I muttered.
I slipped into my pajamas and climbed into bed, where I lay awake, considering, for a long time. What had I been thinking? Extend an olive branch? The only real use for that branch might be to beat Zane Jones over the head with it.
8
“Did you happen to see the footage from last night?” Kelly asked over the phone. She had called at seven in the morning, waking up the whole house.
“No,” I said, my voice still heavy with sleep.
“You need to take a look at it. Right now. I mean, this minute.”
“Why?” I asked. “Did we catch a vandal? Can you see his face? Tell me you can see his face.”
I was up and out of bed, pounding down the stairs in my bare feet to my messy dining room table. As soon as I plopped down in the seat, I heard Mamma Jackie’s door open.
“What’s all the excitement? Did one of those desperate men reply to your ad?” Mamma Jackie called out.
I pinched my cell phone between my ear and shoulder and ignored the old woman. I heard her shuffle into the kitchen to get the coffee going. My mouth was dry from sleep, as I rubbed my eyes before punching in my password.
Quickly, I logged on and followed the handwritten notes Kelly had given me so I could rewind the footage.
“Go to 12:17 a.m.” she told me.
I recited the instructions quietly until I finally found what I was looking for. I scrolled along the timeline at the bottom of the page until I reached 12:17 a.m.
“What am I looking for?” My eyes darted to all corners of the screen.
“Just wait. Keep watching at the left hand side,” Kelly said. “Tell me when you see it.”
“What am I looking for, Kelly?”
“Just watch.”
“Am I looking for a shape, or shapes, or…”
Then I saw it. Behind a patch of trees at the left hand side, there were lights. They appeared as green spheres through the night vision camera. One floated wildly behind the trees. The other maintained a steady forward motion. I couldn’t see anything else.
“What is that?” I murmured.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Kelly answered. “This is freaking me out, Maddie. I’m not trying to start any conspiracy theories, but right after they found that hand you’ve got near misses with visitors having accidents and now mysterious orbs floating around.”
“Orbs?”
“Orbs are what the ghost hunters catch on film when they visit a haunted place. We’ve caught them on film, too.” Kelly’s voice squeaked nervously.
“The tea garden isn’t haunted.” Although I said it, the words didn’t sound convincing. Not even to me.
“Right,” Kelly replied. “There has got to be an explanation. Something normal and not freaky.”
I squinted hard and studied the lights, rewinding the footage several times. If only the trees weren’t in the way, I might be able to see what was pushing the lights along. It was the way one orb seemed agitated while the other rolled on the breeze that made it truly unnerving. I couldn’t see anything past the branches.
“There’s a reasonable explanation for all of this, Kelly,” I insisted as much to myself as to her.
I turned around to see Mamma Jackie at Moonshine’s cage. Before, the bird had been squawking for his breakfast, like he usually did. But with Mamma Jackie there, he was suddenly chirping and cooing, like a spoiled child receiving a reward they didn’t deserve.
I was glad to see her changing the bird’s food and water so I wouldn’t have to do it. I had no time for such ordinary tasks now. I was going to have to throw on some clothes and go out to the tea garden to explore near the pagoda, where the camera was facing. I knew exactly what I was going to find. A whole lot of nothing. But someone was out there last night. Someone or something was on my property while I was at home sleeping.
“Do you want me to come over and look around the garden with you?” Kelly asked.
“No,” I said. I could tell by the sound of her voice that she didn’t want to go back to the garden right now. She was spooked. So I wasn’t going to make her do anything she didn’t want to. “I’ll go check it out. You can stay home. There isn’t anything for you to do anyway, while I have the improvements and inspections going on.”
“Okay.” I heard the relief in her voice.
After hanging up, I rubbed my face and yawned.
“Mamma Jackie?” I asked. “Did you hear anything outside last night? Like, maybe you went out onto the veranda and heard voices or something coming from the direction of the tea garden?”
I realized after I said it that it was unlikely either of us could have heard anything across such a distance, even if we had been standing out in the backyard. But it was worth asking.
“No.” Mamma Jackie poured two cups of coffee. Leaving mine on the counter, she took her own and shuffled out the doorway and onto the back porch. She didn’t ask why I was asking or what I might have seen. Instead, she picked up one of her romance novels and started to read.
“Don’t you want to know why I’m asking?”
“Not really,” she shouted through the sliding screen door.
“Someone was on the property. I’m going out there and see if they vandalized anything else.” I waited for a response but got none. “Do you want to come with me?”
I had enough faith to know there were things in this world that couldn’t be explained. Ghosts, spirits, boogeymen, aliens. Sure they were all far out concepts but who was I to say they didn’t exist? A piece of a decomposed human being was found on my property. Just because it might not have originated on my land didn’t mean its lost soul wouldn’t decide to take up residence in my garden. Just in case, I wasn’t eager to encounter any wondering souls on my own.
But it wasn’t to be.
“Why in the world would I want to come with you? If you think you can push me into an open hole and let those landscapers cover me up with a boulder, your wrong.”
“Mamma Jackie, if I was going to kill you I’d poison your peach juleps. Come on. You know me better than that,” I scoffed. “Besides, maybe you shouldn’t come after all. I can’t say I’d feel safe with you walking behind me.” I peeked through the screen door as I went to get my coffee and saw the old woman giggling.
After a few sips of strong black coffee, I got dressed and was feeling braver already. There was nothing quite like a pair of work boots and a baseball cap to hide her bed-head to make a girl feel fearless.
The weather was nice enough that I decided to leave my car in the driveway and walk the short distance down the street to the front entrance of the
tea garden. I still hadn’t gotten around to clearing a path from my backyard to cut across the overgrown back of the property, where I might’ve approached the garden from the rear. That was okay. It was a sunny morning for a little walk.
All looked well at the garden entrance a few minutes later, when my feet crunched over the gravel of the parking lot. I unchained the gate and wound my way up the hill toward the pagoda. As I climbed the steps at the end of the path and stood underneath my surveillance camera, I looked in the direction the lights had been.
From where I was, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
I descended the steps and went to the spots where the lights had been brightest.
“I don’t see anything,” I said, hoping the sound of my voice would calm my nerves. I really didn’t even know what I was so scared about. It was a bright beautiful morning. Sure, I was all alone and doubted Mamma Jackie could hear me if I screamed for help. Worse, if she did hear me, I didn’t think she would make a move to help.
“Nope. Doesn’t look like anything out of the ordinary,” I continued. “Except…”
Upon closer inspection, I noticed some odd tracks in the dirt.
“A couple of raccoons could have dragged something through here. Or maybe even a deer. It could have gotten hurt and was dragging itself across the ground. Or maybe it isn’t even a drag mark. Maybe it’s just my eyes playing tricks, wanting to see something that really isn’t there.”
I wasn’t sure if the sound of my voice alone out in the garden was comforting or concerning. I stared for a moment and decided that if this was where the lights were showing last night on the video, there was really nothing here. Nothing that would tell me what they were.
It didn’t take long for me to decide it was time I headed back to the house. Without realizing it, I was walking quicker to get home than I had been to get to the garden. Only the sweat under my arms brought that fact to my attention. Once I saw the end of my driveway approaching, I let out a deep sigh.
This would be a good day to stick around the house and do yard work, I told myself. The flowerpots in my own backyard needed some tending and there was nothing I could do out at the tea garden right now anyway.
Mamma Jackie dragged a lawn chair out of the trunk of her vintage Cadillac and propped it in the sun not far from where I was working on my plants.
She regularly toted that chair back and forth from the community garden where she was a volunteer. She hadn’t been going there as much as she used to, since an unfortunate run-in with one of the volunteers, but she didn’t stop going altogether. The remaining volunteers doted on her and that, I was convinced, meant more to her than the community project itself. I wasn’t even sure if Mamma Jackie could tend to the needs of a cactus.
“It’s about time you tended those petunias,” she grumbled at me, as she fussed with the green and white folding lawn chair. “If you don’t trim them, they become mostly green with no blooms.”
“Would you like to help? I’ve got an extra pair of clippers?” I suggested.
“No.” She wrinkled her nose as if I had offered her the hind end of a skunk. “This is your house.”
She sat down in her white shorts that showed off her varicose veined legs and a tight fitting giraffe patterned blouse. She actually looked quite regal with a wide brimmed sunhat and her huge Jackie O sunglasses. Anyone might mistake her for a wealthy widow with glamorous tales to tell about her life and loves, instead of a grouchy old woman who smelled of fermented peaches.
There was something about getting my hands dirty that made me feel a bit better about my whole situation. The inspectors would be coming in the next couple days to check things out at the tea garden. There was nothing more to be seen of those mysterious lights, so I might just have to chalk that up to the unexplained. Maybe it was swamp gas or weird lightening. Sure, that sounded stupid but it was more soothing than Kelly’s haunted orbs theory.
So I sank my hands deeper into the dirt, pulling out weeds and planting some jasmine alongside my petunias, until I heard Mamma Jackie’s announcement.
“One of your suitors from the Young and the Desperate is here,” she informed me.
“What?” I wiped my hands on the front of my jeans and turned around.
It was the head landscaper trekking around the house from the driveway.
“He’s one of the garden workers,” I explained, as I pulled off my gloves and headed out to meet him. I didn’t want the guy to have to endure Mamma Jackie if he didn’t have to.
“Hi, Maddie,” he said politely.
“Hey. How’s everything coming along? You’ve got a beautiful day to work today,” I replied cheerily. “I’ve got the yard work bug myself.” I smiled as I jerked my thumb toward the planters on my back porch, but I could tell by the big man’s expression something important was on his mind.
“Can I talk to you, Maddie? It’s important.”
“Of course. Is there a problem with the landscaping?”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure who else you have working around the grounds but whoever it is, you’ve got to tell them not to dig near the site where we’re working.” He pushed his yellow hardhat back slightly.
“I don’t understand.”
“Whoever is out there digging holes, they’ve got to stay away from our site.” His face became serious. “We almost had a backhoe turn over because it nearly fell into a hole we didn’t dig.”
“I don’t know anyone who’d be digging holes out there.”
He scratched the side of his face. I saw him look at Mamma Jackie.
“She wouldn’t do that,” I said, reading his mind. “She’s difficult and opinionated but she’s not going to do anything to intentionally sabotage your work.”
As soon as the word sabotage left my lips I thought of Zane Jones.
“Well, all I can say is that if we come across any more holes at the worksite we’re going to close up shop. Those machines are worth more than the job. I can’t afford to lose one because someone is playing some kind of game.”
“I understand.” I looked him straight in the eyes. “I can tell you that it isn’t anyone I know doing it. I have had some problems with the guys at the quarry and…”
“You mean Daniel Walker?”
“Yes.” I was about to explain when he interrupted.
“No. I’ve done work with Daniel before. He got me a job with the park district that saved my business. I can’t say a bad word about the guy.”
“Of course.” My blood boiled. Of course he knew Daniel Walker and he probably had Zane Jones stand up at his wedding. “Can you continue working today?” I asked. I had to change the subject for fear my disdain for the quarry and anyone associated with it might show.
“Yes. We walked the area and saw a couple more holes near the area where we’d cleared some trees but we mapped them out so there shouldn’t be any more trouble. Unless, like I said, someone digs more.” His eyes went to Mamma Jackie again.
“Okay, well, I’ll be here if you have any more issues. Just come and get me.”
He nodded and touched his index finger to the brim of his hardhat before he turned and walked back the way he’d come.
After he was out of sight, I went to Mamma Jackie.
“You weren’t out digging holes in the ground near the landscaping site last night were you?”
She looked up at me, clicked her tongue, shook her head and went back to the novel she was reading.
“I didn’t think so,” I muttered.
It was obvious I’d have to go back there and check things out but I was going to wait until the crew was gone. I didn’t want to talk to the foreman or anyone else. A seed was starting to grow in my mind, a seed of suspicion and paranoia.
Could the landscaping crew be in cahoots with the quarry? Were they making it up that there were holes being dug in the ground to tip over their machines so they could quit the work? Or worse, get caught in one of those holes and sue me for damages?
> Within seconds I felt my head starting to ache.
“No. I’m not going to just sit back and wait for a lawyer to serve me with some kind of lawsuit.”
“What did you say?” Mamma Jackie hollered. “Something about wanting to bring me a cold drink?”
“That’s not what I said,” I answered. “You’re more than able to fix your own peach julep, Mamma Jackie. You know how hard it is for me not to put strychnine in it.”
I went back to my flowers while my ex-mother-in-law called me all kinds of names under her breath as she went inside to fix herself an elixir. This was going to be a long afternoon, since I’d decided without saying it that I was going on a stake out after it got dark. The tea garden was my property. If I wanted to spend the night crouched in the dark behind some bushes in order to see who was creeping around on it, I could. That was exactly what I planned to do.
9
The tea garden was beautiful during the day. Each time I went out there to tend to the flowers and listen to the waterfall by the koi pond, I was swept away to another place. I imagined a Japanese Zen garden where lotus blossoms would bloom by the thousands, filling the air with their sweet scent. To have a little piece of serenity in Little River had to have been important to my grandmother. In every direction, a person could look around the garden and see something fascinating or breath-taking, during the daylight hours.
But nighttime was a completely different story.
At midnight, my tea garden was a creepy place. The thick trees that provided just the right amount of shade during the day cast ominous shadows at night. Sounds that were comforting under the sun, took on an insidious nature in the gloom. I found myself shaking as I hurried to the spot I thought would make the best hiding area.
There was a honey mesquite tree not far from where the landscaper had been working. It had low branches that would be easy to climb and I could sit comfortably out of view until I saw the trespasser. Or until I grew so numb I couldn’t sit any longer. Whichever came first.