A Dawn of Death

by Gin Jones

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  A DAWN OF DEATH

  by

  GIN JONES

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  Copyright © 2016 by Gin Jones

  Gemma Halliday Publishing

  http://www.gemmahallidaypublishing.com

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  This book is dedicated to my nieces, Kate, Hannah, Jacqueline, and Sina, who have all the good qualities of Helen's nieces and none of the annoying ones.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  The Wharton Community Garden didn't look anything remotely like what Helen Binney had been imagining all winter. It was just a big, muddy, and—most damning of all—barren plot of land. Of course, mid-April was far too early for the lush green plants, bright sunshine, and abundant harvest she'd been picturing as she'd pored over gardening books and seed catalogs while it was snowing outside.

  "Are you sure about this, Ms. Binney?" her driver, Jack Clary, asked from beside her. Jack had the wiry build, broad face, and shaved-bald head typical of the entire Clary clan. He would have preferred that she sit in the back, as befitting a passenger, but he'd come to accept that she preferred the front seat and she didn't need him to open doors for her. The only thing he refused to budge on was the way he addressed her formally while he was working, despite the fact that they were friends as well as employer and employee. She'd gotten out of the habit of driving while living in the Governor's Mansion, and then when she moved to a small town in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts where there was virtually no public transportation, she'd been too affected by her lupus flares to trust herself behind the wheel of a car. Jack was more than happy to be her on-call driver, which left him with plenty of time for his video game playing and a related online business he had recently started.

  Jack peered dubiously at the community garden beyond the row of cars, trucks, and one Harley-Davidson motorcycle parked in front of him on Lee Street. "It looks like heavy rain is on the way, and it's going to flood the entire plot. I wouldn't want you to get stuck in the mud."

  The sky was gray and threatening, although Helen thought the rain would hold off long enough to complete this morning's business—the blessing of the garden and the assigning of plots. If not, Jack was right about the likelihood of flooding. Instead of the neat raised beds she'd seen in the books and catalogs, the garden was nothing but an empty square lot encompassing about two acres, although not all of it had been plowed, especially near the dozen or so tree stumps that dotted the property. The garden's topography was noticeably lower than the street itself and the abutting properties, as if it had once been a pond, possibly man-made, before the waters had drained away. She supposed the reservoir-like shape was good for collecting precipitation to irrigate the crops during dry months, but in a month as associated with showers as April was, capturing every drop of rainfall wasn't particularly beneficial.

  Still, Helen was determined to try gardening. Her lupus symptoms had gone into remission a few weeks ago, finally giving her the opportunity to engage in some more strenuous exercise than she'd been able to do for the last few years. She'd been a reasonably good softball player in high school and college, but during her years as the state's First Lady, she'd been too busy to play, except in the occasional charity event or as the guest invited to throw the ceremonial first ball. It was time that she got back into shape, and gardening seemed like a good first step. She'd looked into the possibility of joining a recreational softball league, but at forty-seven, she was too old for Little League and too young for the senior softball leagues.

  Besides, she wasn't sure how long her remission would last. Gardening had the advantage that all different levels of physical ability could be accommodated, so if she had a flare, she'd still be able to do a little with her plants. She was hopeful that it would also be the sort of activity that she could feel passionate about. Ever since her divorce and retirement from public life, she'd been searching for something to do to fill her time, but nothing she'd tried so far, from scrapbooking to photography and crocheting, had been particularly satisfying.

  Gardening, Helen was convinced, was a much more likely option than anything she'd tried before. She'd never really had the knack for crafts, after all, but she'd always liked the outdoors, and she definitely liked to eat. Besides, according to everything she'd read, gardening was a good stress reliever, which might extend her remission or at least reduce the frequency and severity of future lupus flares.

  "I'm sure, Jack." Helen opened the passenger side door and slid to the ground, reveling in the freedom of not having to turn around and grab her cane. It was back at her cottage, stuffed into a closet where she hoped it would gather dust for quite a few more months, possibly even years.

  Helen made her way along the line of vehicles. She had to walk about five hundred feet to her destination. Jack had been forced to park at the very end of the road, in front of the corner lot where there was a sprawling old two-story farmhouse. Its side yard sloped down to the freshly plowed land of the garden without anything to divide the two properties. On the far side of the garden, though, there was a white vinyl fence that separated it from a kids' ball field. Trees lined the garden's back property line, blocking the view of whatever was beyond.

  Across the street was a retirement community known as Wharton Meadows. It consisted of a bland two-story administrative building nearest the entrance and about a dozen three-story apartment buildings that Helen knew must have been designed by an architect but that were nothing more than big boxes with windows cut into them at regular intervals. She couldn't fault the landscaping, though, which made up for the lack of personality in the architecture. There were golf course-like lawns and lush gardens in front of each building and around the base of an enormous flagpole in front of the administrative building.

  A crosswalk next to the entrance of Wharton Meadows had a sign that read Dear Crossing. Beneath the words were little icons of bent-over people leaning on canes. None of the real-life "dears" congregating in little groups along the sidewalk in front of the garden actually carried canes, and they looked nothing like the pathetic creatures depicted on the sign. In fact, several of them looked fit and strong enough to pull the sign out with their bare hands if it annoyed them as much as it did Helen. A few were running in place to stave off the chill in the spring air, warming up for the garden work. They were probably too busy with their gardening, jogging, and—Helen glanced across the street to consider the options for outdoor recreational activities at the retirement community—even playing tennis to bother with a minor irritant like the sign.

  She turned her back on the crosswalk and concentrated on getting to the center path of the garden where a short brunette in jeans and a turquoise hoodie seemed to be
answering questions and directing people to the appropriate huddle to join. On the way, Helen passed a bulldozer in the front corner of the land nearest the farmhouse. It was parked parallel to the road but facing the front, right corner of the parcel as if it were on its way out, its work complete.

  That was another thing that didn't quite live up to her image of gardening. She associated bulldozers with construction, not with gardening. There should have been a team of horses or maybe oxen harnessed to a plow. If absolutely necessary, a diesel fume-spewing tractor would have been acceptable. She supposed the bulldozer was actually there, not for the plowing, which appeared to have been done by some other equipment, but to remove the large tree stumps that dotted the plot at random intervals, including one a few inches in front of the dozer's blade.

  Helen turned her attention to the little groups in the garden, each of which consisted of a religious leader and a handful of followers. There was a pastor in a white robe—except for the hem that was soaking up the damp rusty-brown earth—embroidered with the sorts of images Helen had seen in the gardening books: lush green plants and brightly colored flowers. There was also a rabbi in more somber colors, a Wiccan with a pentagram pendant, a Buddhist monk in traditional robes, and a Muslim cleric with a full beard and a kufi.

  There was one more person off by himself. He wore well-broken-in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt with no obvious religious symbols, but Helen thought he was doing his own, more personal blessing of the garden. He appeared to be Native American, and he was extraordinarily tall, easily six foot four, with long dark hair. He cupped a clump of mud in both hands, holding it out in front of him at chest height and chanting something too low for her to make out the individual sounds. She couldn't even tell what language he was speaking.

  His lips stopped moving, and he looked at Helen, catching her watching him. He winked at her as he let the last of the dirt fall through his hands, his ceremony apparently completed.

  She reached the woman in the hoodie, and together they waited silently for the remainder of the ceremonies to end. Helen only caught snippets of the prayers, but they all seemed to boil down to the same essential message: may the religious entity of choice bless the garden and all of its creatures, from the worms to the bees to the humans. After accepting thanks from their respective congregations, the six religious leaders trudged out of the garden.

  As they were leaving, Helen and the woman in the turquoise hoodie were joined by a tall woman with a boyish figure despite being in her fifties. She had blonde hair cut into a bob and was wearing tight jeans with a pale blue sweatshirt that proclaimed it was a Good Day to Dry. Above the words was an image of a laundry line strung from shoulder to shoulder with assorted clothes hanging from it, almost like jewels on a gaudy necklace.

  The newcomer put her fingers in her mouth for a sharp whistle that caught everyone's attention. Helen took a few steps back to avoid getting trampled as the two dozen or so veteran members of the Wharton Garden Club raced to crowd around their leader and get their plot assignments. Most of them were dressed in jeans, sweatshirts, and tan construction boots, although the leader wore black army boots. Helen hadn't planned to do any actually mucking around in the dirt today, so she was vastly overdressed in business-casual navy pants, denim jacket, and leather walking shoes.

  The woman in the turquoise hoodie handed the taller woman a tablet to read off the names of the gardeners and their plot numbers. On receiving their assignments, the gardeners raced off to their vehicles and began unloading supplies into a variety of wagons, handcarts, and wheelbarrows. Helen had heard her name called, along with a number, but she had no idea how to match it up with a section of the garden.

  She waited for things to quiet down and then approached the women in charge to ask them about her plot. The one in the turquoise hoodie had taken back the tablet and trotted off before Helen got there, leaving only the taller one who'd whistled for attention.

  "Hello. I'm Helen Binney."

  "I'm Dale Meeke-Mason."

  A misnomer, if Helen had ever heard one. The woman looked neither meek nor masonic. Drill sergeant would have been more fitting.

  "I'm new here," Helen said, "but I'm really looking forward to getting to know everyone."

  Dale nodded. "You should have mentioned your special needs in your application."

  "I don't have any special needs."

  Dale's gaze flicked down to Helen's shoes. "You've never gardened before, have you? That's a disability in my book. But never mind. I recognized your name on the sign-up list, and I heard that you usually carry a cane, so I made sure you'd have a safe spot. I'm the town clerk, you know, so I hear about everyone in town."

  "I didn't know," Helen said. "And I really didn't expect any special treatment."

  "No problem. I assigned you one of the two plots closest to the entrance." She pointed to the area to the left of the path that ran the down the middle of the garden's land from the road to the woods at the far end. "That front spot's yours as soon as we get it marked. We reserve them for novices and others who might need special assistance, sort of like the gardening equivalent to handicapped parking."

  "Thank you."

  "We're always glad to add to our ranks. Strength in numbers and all that," Dale said. "You're going to be a great addition to the Wharton Garden Club. I've been telling everyone about you."

  "Must have been a short conversation."

  The woman in the turquoise hoodie returned to Dale's side. She had a small, pointed face, and her wispy haircut reinforced the pixie-ish image. The only thing that was missing was an impish expression. Instead, her face was tight with worry.

  Dale was distracted by something on the phone she'd pulled from the back pocket of her jeans and didn't seem to notice the woman in the turquoise hoodie until she coughed softly for attention.

  Dale glanced away from her screen. "Helen Binney, meet Annie Quattrone. She works across the street at the retirement community and sneaks over here whenever she can during the growing season. She's lucky to be married to the boss, which gives her a lot of freedom."

  Annie looked like she might have disagreed with that description, but she just took a deep breath and said, "Nice to meet you."

  Helen would have offered to shake Annie's hand, but the woman's arms were loaded to overflowing with a pile of twelve-inch-long wooden stakes. The ends had been sharpened into lethal-looking points that even Helen's woodworking friend Ambrose Tate and all his tools couldn't have improved upon.

  "Are you expecting vampires?" Helen asked.

  Annie stared pointedly down at the twine dribbling out of the front pocket of her hoodie. "We need to mark the perimeter of each individual bed. It's been too wet to plow until yesterday afternoon, and then it was too late to do the marking, so we've got to do it today. And fast, before anyone claims more than her fair share of land."

  "How can I help?" Helen said.

  Annie looked at Dale for instructions.

  Dale tucked her phone away and said briskly, "Just watch this time, it being your first year and all. Annie knows the system, and it won't take her long at all to get it done."

  Annie nodded. "We've got plenty of volunteers already."

  In other words, Helen thought, even without her limp and her cane, she'd somehow given both women the impression that she was useless, someone who couldn't do anything at all. She'd proven otherwise before, and she'd do it again. Just not by interfering with work she didn't understand—she supposed Annie and Dale were right to think she'd just hamper their efforts, mostly due to ignorance, not lack of physical strength and agility.

  She could wait until harvest time to prove herself. She wouldn't even have to say anything on her own behalf. Her garden, overflowing with vegetables, would show everyone just how much one short, frail-looking, middle-aged woman could do.

  * * *

  Helen debated going back to the car where Jack was waiting for her with the heat on but decided she could learn something by watchi
ng the marking of the plots, even if she couldn't actively help. They started with the left side of the garden, the one that wasn't obstructed by the bulldozer. The Native American man who'd been chanting over a clump of mud led one team of Dale's volunteers, efficiently pounding stakes at each end of the garden's central path and then in the two remaining corners of that half of the garden. Another team ran twine between the stakes while the first team pounded more stakes along the line of the twine at thirty-foot intervals. More twine connected opposite stakes, and more stakes went in at the intersections of the widthwise and lengthwise twine.

  Much as Helen hated to admit it, Dale and Annie had been right; she would have been more of a hindrance than a help trying to keep up with the rest while she was out of shape and wearing shoes more suited for an office than the damp, recently plowed ground.

  Her glum thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a car alarm over in front of the house on the corner of the street. It belonged to a little black sports car, and it seemed to go on forever before its owner finally disarmed it and everyone stopped glaring at it, impatient to return to whatever the noise had interrupted.

  When the noise finally stopped, Helen turned to see what the gardeners were up to. The Native American man had handed off the sledgehammer to someone else and headed over to his truck parked a little distance down the street in front of the ballpark. He unloaded some supplies and stacked them in a garden cart that looked like a child's old-fashioned metal wagon, except heavier and green, with a mesh bottom for drainage. As he approached Helen, she could see that his cargo consisted of trays of two-inch-square peat pots with two seedlings in each one.