by Gin Jones
"Detective Almeida was here looking for you," he said. "She told me about your latest dead body."
"It's not my dead body." Helen removed the drop cloths that protected the chairs from sawdust. Those basic coverings, along with the leather-upholstered armchairs she'd brought in to replace the ratty old director's chairs, were the extent of the "woman's touch" she'd brought to his workshop. Tate obviously didn't care about the decor, and she only cared about comfort. She'd spent too much of her time in the Governor's Mansion worrying about appearances, but things were different then. Just like Tate didn't argue unless he was paid for it, she didn't do homemaking unless she was paid for it.
A nearby section of the built-in shelving that ran from floor to ceiling across the entire back wall of the garage held a stack of round wooden trenchers. Helen lifted the cloth that kept out the sawdust, retrieved two of them, and laid them out across from each other.
Tate dropped into one of the chairs and peered inside the bag from the sub shop. "So you won't be getting involved?"
"If I did, it's got nothing to do with you." Helen pulled out her phone and laid it beside her trencher in case her nieces called to let her know that Laura's labor had begun. "You can't give me legal advice any longer, remember?"
"Telling someone to stay out of a police investigation isn't legal advice," he said. "It's common sense."
"In that case, what does common sense say about interpreting a will that left property to the town?"
The only indication Tate had even heard her was the way he'd clenched his fist around the top of the takeout bag. Helen suspected he was struggling against his legal training, which urged him to quote chapter and verse—or perhaps it was chapter, section, and subsection, complete with big and little Roman numerals—on trusts and estates and the rules of construction for probate documents.
Finally, he released his grip on the top of the bag and unloaded it onto the center of the table. There were two wrapped sandwiches, a container of pickles, and a little box of brownies.
"Common sense says that for something as specialized as probate law, you should get legal advice from a lawyer. One who isn't retired and who is able to represent you. I believe my nephew's schedule isn't terribly busy this afternoon. He has more experience than I do with wills and estates in any event."
"I'll give him a call." Helen took her seat across from him and claimed one of the sandwiches, leaving the second one and the kosher dill pickle for him. It might be the last one Tate got from her in the foreseeable future. Once her garden was underway, the only vegetables she intended to eat were the ones she grew herself. She might be able to supply the cucumbers, but if Tate wanted them pickled, he was going to have to do it himself. "Aren't you even curious about what happened to Sheryl Toth?"
"Not particularly," Tate said, unwrapping his sandwich. "I'm more curious about what you're going to do to prove that it was murder instead of the accident it appears to be."
"You're going to be disappointed then," Helen said. "I might go talk to Sheryl's crew to see if they know what the bulldozer was doing at the garden, but that's all. I'm hoping there's a perfectly reasonable explanation so everyone will know her death was just an accident. I don't want it to have been murder. That wouldn't be good for the garden's future."
"Why do you even care about the garden?"
"I think it may be the retirement activity I've been looking for."
"What about your crocheting? And volunteering at the library?"
"Those are nice enough," Helen said, "but I don't feel the same about them as you do about your woodworking. I want a hobby I'd be willing to kill for."
"So investigating murders is really just displaced jealousy? You're studying killers, perhaps figuring out the perfect crime so you can knock off anyone who threatens your tomatoes?"
"I don't want to kill anyone, and I'd like to think that I wouldn't act on the impulse if I did get that angry, but I do want to find an avocation that I feel that strongly about." Helen gestured at the lathe where yet another round wood trencher was being made. They'd supplanted lamp stems as Tate's favorite project, and he was experimenting with joining layers of different woods for the starting blank, which created a multicolored pattern in the finished product. "If someone messed with your tools or your wood stash, I bet you'd be enraged. You'd feel the urge to lash out at whoever was to blame. I know you wouldn't actually do it, but you'd feel the temptation, even if only for the briefest of moments."
"I suppose." He glanced around the room as if to confirm no one had messed with his stash. "On the other hand, I didn't intentionally look for an activity I could get homicidal about."
"It's not like I'm hoping someone will enrage me," Helen said. "I just want to feel that strongly about whatever I'm doing."
"I suppose it would be a step in the right direction if it turns out that being obsessed with your vegetables will keep you from meddling in police investigations."
"That's the plan," Helen said. "I've had enough of dealing with killers."
"About time," Tate muttered.
"Hey, I saved your niece's bacon when she was accused of murder."
"You're never going to let me forget that, are you?"
"Nope." Helen grinned and then grew serious. "Are you regretting the decision to have a personal relationship with me instead of a professional one?"
"It would take more than a little gloating on your part to scare me off," he said. "You're the one who ought to be wary. I've been divorced twice, after all. That doesn't reflect well on my relationship skills."
"We all make mistakes," Helen said. Not that her ex-husband had been a mistake. They'd just grown apart over the years, and their divorce had been amicable. "Besides, I've got some baggage that makes me just as much of a high risk when it comes to personal relationships."
"Like the way you're always on the verge of getting either arrested or killed?"
"You're exaggerating." She knew he was just teasing her, but she needed to make sure he understood that she was at least as bad a risk for a long-term relationship as he was. They'd never really talked about it, and she didn't have either the time or the patience these days to engage in a roller-coaster ride of misunderstandings and reconciliations. "I was thinking more along the lines of having a chronic, potentially disabling disorder. Not exactly high on anyone's list of desired traits in a life partner. And then there're my nieces. They're going to meddle as soon as they catch wind of the fact that we're actually seeing each other."
"They already know, thanks to my nephew dating your niece," Tate said. "Don't forget that I've got my own nosy relatives too. Stevie has asked whether I'll hire her to do any renovations we might need if we move in together, and Adam's been trying to get me to talk about my intentions toward you. Who knew kids his age could be so old-fashioned?"
Helen couldn't quite imagine that conversation. The one way Tate resembled her ex-husband was in his belief that talking about emotions was silly. Feelings were just an inconvenient fact of life, something to ignore in his personal life and to manipulate in his professional life, using them to sway a juror to his side. They definitely weren't something to dissect.
It wasn't that Tate had no emotions. She'd come to realize it was just that he buried them, hidden behind his poker face. She didn't particularly crave any grand romantic declarations from him—she'd had her fill of them with Frank, who would briefly sweep her off her feet and then take her for granted until the next big demonstration of his appreciation—but she did want to be sure she wasn't reading more into Tate's actions than he intended.
Of course, she was reasonably sure Tate liked her at least as much as she liked him. Their first date had ended with a kiss that had convinced her of that much, and there had been quite a few more since then.
"You should do what I do," Helen said, ignoring the ping from her phone. "Threaten your family members with being disinherited if they meddle."
Tate glanced at the screen of Helen's phone where th
ere was a text from Laura to make sure that tomorrow's visiting nurse appointment hadn't been cancelled. Helen had been lobbying to reduce the visits to once a week, now that she was feeling better, but the nieces weren't convinced yet. A moment later, another almost identical message appeared from Lily.
"Yeah," he said. "I can see how well that's working for you."
* * *
After they'd eaten, Tate returned to his woodworking, and Helen went outside to find Jack waiting for her with the car's engine running. She climbed into the front passenger seat and turned to Jack. "Do you know where Sheryl Toth's current construction project is?"
"Sure," Jack said. "I've got a cousin who works for her company."
"Then take me there, please. I'd like to talk to him, find out if there was any friction between the boss and the employees."
"You think one of them might have killed her?"
"Not really, but I'd like to rule out the possibility," Helen said. "I'm hoping it was just a tragic accident, but I have a few questions that are bothering me."
"Sheryl wasn't a bad sort, according to my cousin," Jack said. "Sure, she was blunt, and she didn't tolerate incompetence, but she was fair. Most people around here would even say her developments were good for Wharton. At least as good as any cluster of town houses can be. She's built a lot of affordable housing, starting before state law gave builders special consideration if they included deed-restricted affordable units. It makes buying a house possible for the year-round residents who can't afford the prices that are inflated by the demand from the summer-only residents."
Jack turned onto a dead-end street, and Helen was immediately bombarded by the roaring engines and piercing back-up beeps of heavy construction equipment. Jack continued past five or six houses nestled among wooded lots and stopped in front of a five-acre parcel of land.
Until recently, it had apparently been a half-wild meadow dotted with the occasional weedy tree, but now, the front half of it had been completely leveled, with a backhoe knocking down the trees and a bulldozer following in its wake to take care of the smaller vegetation by pushing it to the edges of the parcel like a winter plow would do with snow. In the wake of the two vehicles, the ground was as flat, lifeless, and ugly as an empty parking lot. Helen hoped it would look better once the buildings were done, but she thought they would still clash with the cozy little houses on either side of them.
"What do the neighbors think of this development?"
"They're resigned to it, I suppose," Jack said. "A few of them tried to stop the building permit process, but Sheryl was a human bulldozer and ran right over them."
"What do her competitors think of her?" Helen said. "There must be other developers here in Wharton. Did she bulldoze her way over any of them?"
"Probably," Jack said. "I've heard complaints about her getting too much preferential treatment because of her affordable-income units. It's all legal, though, not like she's bribing anyone, so there isn't much the competitors can do about it. They could get the same treatment if they offered similarly priced housing."
Helen watched another tree fall and felt the urge to go home and hug the trees that gave her cottage its privacy. "What about environmentalists? They can't be happy about losing the natural habitat that was here."
"You've met Dale Meeke-Mason," Jack said. "She's the town's most vocal environmentalist. She and Sheryl were frequently at loggerheads, but they always found a way to work things out in the end. Dale is passionate about her causes, but she learned about compromise early on. Did you know that the Meeke family and the Mason family were among the earliest settlers of Wharton?"
Helen shook her head.
"They were. And they rivaled the Hatfields and McCoys for nursing a grudge from generation to generation. Everyone thought it would go on forever until Dale's parents came along and ended the hostilities with their marriage."
"I don't suppose Dale proposed to Sheryl in order to resolve their differences."
Jack laughed and shook his head. "Dale's pretty committed to her causes, but I doubt even she would go quite that far. She just knew how to pick her battles with Sheryl. Dale managed to shut down one development, but that was about five years ago, and there were some serious wetlands issues, so Sheryl had to have known it was a long shot. Most of the time, though, Dale just extracted some concessions to make the project more palatable. Like setting aside some land for the residents' recreational activities and putting a right to hang clause in all of her homeowners association documents."
The fact that Dale and Sheryl had a long history of working out their differences without resorting to violence was encouraging, Helen thought. It suggested that Dale wouldn't have killed Sheryl even if their negotiations broke down. For once, the evidence was leaning in the direction Helen wanted it to. Sheryl's death was just an accident, and Dale had nothing to do with it.
Now if Helen could just get a few more questions answered about what the bulldozer had been doing at the garden, she could let go of her suspicions and concentrate on her new hobby.
* * *
Jack parked as close to the construction office trailer as he could get. Instead of staying behind to play games on his phone, he insisted on getting out to escort Helen. Normally, she would have been annoyed by the unnecessary solicitousness, but she hadn't taken two steps before realizing that the ground wasn't quite as even as it had appeared from inside the car. It was littered with rocks and rutted with the tracks of the earthmoving equipment. The last thing she needed was to trip and injure herself before she'd even had a chance to get stronger by working in the garden.
They were halfway to the construction office when Marty Drumm burst out of it carrying two hard hats. He leaped across the three steps to the ground and raced to intercept Helen and Jack.
"What are you two doing?" he shouted. As he ran, he pointed in the direction of the road. "Can't you see this is a hard hat area?"
Helen turned to see what he was pointing at. There was a large sign installed parallel to the road, a few feet in front of where Jack had parked. She hadn't paid any attention to it, assuming it was the standard advertising sign that could be seen at any construction site with the name of the builder and the bank that was providing the financing. The blank back didn't tell her any different, but from Marty's actions she assumed the sign warned against the dangers of an active construction site.
Marty skidded to a stop in front of her and didn't wait for her permission before plopping a much-too-large hard hat on her head. A moment later, Jack was wearing one too.
Helen reached up to keep her hat from sliding off. "Anyone who knows me will tell you I've got an exceptionally hard head."
Marty was bent over, trying to catch his breath after the race from the construction trailer. He pulled a phone out of his jacket pocket and glanced at it briefly before putting it away and straightening. "Everyone's got to wear a hard hat on the site. Sheryl was rigid about it. No exceptions, no excuses. She fired a few hard workers over it, but she also saved lives."
Helen was having trouble hearing him clearly between the echoes of her oversized hard hat and the noise of the distant construction equipment. She tilted her head back so she could see Marty's face while they spoke, only to have the hard hat slip forward to cover her eyes. She quashed the urge to push it up again, afraid it would slide too far in the other direction, exposing her bare head to danger and getting her kicked off the site.
Besides, another tree had just fallen, and it had sounded a bit too close for comfort. She peered beneath the rim of her hat, but all she could see was the office trailer where a muscular man in jeans and a tank top printed with Toth Construction was coming down the steps. She couldn't see all of him until he reached the ground, and then her gaze was drawn to his bright red hair, gelled to stand up like porcupine quills. He had a jagged scar that was almost the same red running diagonally down his cheek from beneath the inner corner of his eye all the way to his jaw line. Apparently, some injuries could st
ill happen, even when the crew was diligent about the use of hard hats.
Helen turned her head in Marty's general direction, although all she could see of him were his construction boots. "I'm sorry if we worried you."
"You didn't know about the danger, I suppose," he said grudgingly. "What can I do for you?"
Helen hadn't expected Marty to be the first person she saw at the site. In fact, she'd hoped to avoid him so she could question someone who might know if he had truly been at risk of being fired. She wasn't likely to get the opportunity now. Marty showed every sign of being as much of a mother hen for his crew as everyone in Helen's life was for her.
"I just wanted to pay my condolences," Helen said. "I didn't expect to see much work going on."
"It's what Sheryl would have wanted," Marty said, absently pulling his phone out of his pocket again and tapping the screen to send the call to voicemail. "Toth Construction was her life."
And her death, Helen thought. "Now it's your life?"
"I'm just keeping the work going until someone tells me otherwise."
Helen wondered if he truly felt that loyal to his boss's memory or if it was an act to keep anyone from believing the rumors about his previously imminent firing. "How'd you end up with the responsibility?"
"The usual," Marty said. "No one else wanted it. I probably wouldn't have volunteered if I'd realized how much paperwork there was. I'd much rather be operating a backhoe or hammering nails."
"Presumably, Sheryl felt differently."
"Not really." Marty's phone buzzed again. "She got the paperwork done, but whenever she could, she was out doing the real work."
"Operating a backhoe and hammering nails?"
He nodded. "She loved the heavy equipment. Said it was relaxing after a long day of dealing with paperwork, inspectors, and suppliers. At least once every two or three days, I'd find her out there doing some of the fussy precision work after the rest of the crew had left. During really stressful times, she'd be out there every single day."