Nipped in the Bud

by Susan Sleeman

  I shoved a large coffee filter into the bag. The tiny grounds clinging to the paper reminded me of Lisa’s lice situation. My fingers crept toward my head. I forced them down. No more scratching. My hands were filthy, and I had to focus on my own problem. I could pay Ned back. Yes, that was it. Once the landscaping business was up and running, I’d send him a check for the full amount.

  “You’re in luck,” Ned said. “One of my drivers just came in. Give me a chance to load the truck, and I’ll drive out while he takes an early lunch break. Does that work for you, princess?”

  “Yes, thank you,” I squeaked out, my voice wavering from his willingness to make the hour-long drive from Portland, not to mention forgiving the huge price tag associated with a rental fence.

  “Ah, c’mon now, Paige. You really are going all girlie on me.”

  “Sorry, this just means so much to me.”

  “Still no need to act like that, if you ask me. Next thing I know, you’ll be wearing dresses and all that other girlie stuff.” He chuckled, perhaps at the vision of me dressed in anything that slightly identified me as a female. “Look, I gotta run if I’m gonna get the fencing out there. I’ll call you when I’m a few miles out.”

  “Use my cell number. I’ll be at the park waiting for you, and I can give you directions.”

  We said good-bye, and I looked up at the startling blue sky to thank God for the break. Okay, so my methods for getting the fence were creative and manipulative perhaps, but God still came through. I didn’t deserve the fence. Face it, I didn’t deserve anything, but God still provided and put joy in my heart.

  Enough joy to make the rest of my cleaning seem to speed by even though it took nearly ninety minutes to scrape up every tiny piece of soggy paper. There. The last can was righted with the lid firmly settled. I took off my gloves and sighed over a big blue blotch right in the center of my uniform top. I couldn’t let the stain set in, or it’d ruin the fabric. At the cost of these custom-embroidered polos, I had to go home and toss it in the wash.

  For the first time that morning, I easily succeeded in my plan. I rushed down the alley that ran behind the main businesses on Oak Street. Fortunately, none of the employees at either of the antique stores, the Bakery, or the Crazy Curl were outside to spot my disheveled condition. I cut left at the pharmacy and charged up the outside stairs to my apartment, where I kept a spare key under a variegated hosta on the back landing. The jade and lime colored leaves should still be rolled and barely above ground this early in the season, but the height of the staircase, coupled with the warmth of container gardening, had the plant’s giant leaves open, completely concealing the container.

  Once inside, I tossed a frozen sandwich into the microwave for lunch and set off for the bedroom. I ripped off my shirt as I walked over the aged oak floors and then pulled a fresh polo from the closet. After slipping into the soft yellow cotton garment, I dialed Little Susie Homemaker on my cell and pushed my headset back onto my ear.

  “Hey, Lisa,” I said and snatched up my dirty top. “How do you get a dark stain out of clothing?”

  She sighed, her usual reaction to a question that she thought I should know the answer to by this point in my life. “Depends on what caused the stain and the fabric it’s on.”

  “Blue dye from scrapbook paper I spent the last ninety minutes cleaning up. It’s on my work shirt.” I set out for my stacked washer and dryer in the kitchen.

  “Velma strikes again, huh?” Her tone lacked any real sympathy for my plight with my absentminded neighbor.

  “She had that big scrapbooking party last week, and there was a huge mess. This is happening too often. I think I’ll start going by on Sunday when she puts out the garbage to make sure the cans are closed.” At the large picture window in my living room, I stopped walking and peered through the tall swaying pines into the park. Something. . .something white was moving through the bushes. “Are you at the park waiting for me?”

  “No, I’m at Mom’s house, why?”

  Wishing I had binoculars, I squinted and searched through the thick foliage. “I can see someone inside my fence. Looks like they’re wearing something white.”

  “How can you see them? Where are you?”

  “At home. Washing my shirt.”

  “Well, I’d use a basic stain spray,” she said, as if the stain were more important than another break-in on my project. “Then soak it and wash like usual.”

  I looked at the shirt then back at the park one last time. Seeing no further movement, I went into the kitchen. “I wonder if someone is over there messing with my things.”

  “It was probably just a plastic garbage bag blowing around. You know how those things show up everywhere. Hold on a sec, Lacy is giving Mom a hard time.” It sounded like she placed her hand over the phone to cover a muffled conversation in the background.

  I located the right bottle in the cabinet and sprayed the stain before tossing the top into the washer to soak. At the microwave, I pulled out the ham and cheese sandwich and waited for Lisa to get back to me.

  “Sorry about that.” Lisa let a long sigh escape. “The girls are always so tired after preschool on Mondays for some reason. I need to get them down for a nap. Oh, but before I let you go, you’ve got to tell me what happened with Bud.”

  As I wrapped up the sandwich to eat on the run, I replayed the meeting in great detail. “Even though I got a few good licks in, he was clearly the winner.”

  Lisa snickered. “I wonder if he ran right home to report to his wife.”

  “Nah, I think she was shopping or something.” I stepped into the front stairwell and told Lisa about the dump truck nearly running over Rachel.

  “Do you think she was at the park to check up on you and Bud?” Her voice held the first excitement of the day. Nothing like some nice juicy gossip to perk her interest.

  “I think Rachel checking on me is kind of a stretch, but much as I hate to admit this, I think you were right about Bud and Rachel holding a grudge against me.”

  “What? Wait. . .let me get some paper.” She laughed. “Mom! Mom!” she shouted. “Can you hand me that notepad and a pen? Paige just said I was right about something, and I have to document it.”

  “Funny, Lisa. Very funny.” I ran down the steps.

  “So what are you going to do about the fence?”

  “My friend Ned is giving it to me for free. Soon as he gets the truck loaded, he’ll be on his way. Don’t s’pose your mom would keep the girls longer so you could come back?”

  “Seriously, Paige, you need to hire somebody.”

  “I don’t have enough time to find someone now. C’mon, Lisa, you’re always whining about still having excess baby weight. Think of the great exercise you’ll be getting.”

  She groaned but in a tone that said she’d caved. “Okay. But this is the last time. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  I exited the front of my building and stepped onto the sidewalk. Hazel came out of the Bakery, her head down, hands digging into a tote bag emblazoned with Led Zepplin in faded letters. I employed a part-timer to fill in at the shop during our lunch breaks, so Hazel never missed her daily gossip fest at the Bakery.

  “Hey, Hazel,” I called out. Her head snapped up, exposing her wrinkled face and cracked skin. My hardworking employee was a native Oregonian through and through. She loved the outdoors, no matter the climate, and to me that spelled the sedum plant. Rugged, durable, rock-hardy, often described as tough as nails, sedum fit Hazel perfectly.

  We strolled toward each other and met in front of the Crazy Curl.

  She pulled a toothpick from her mouth and stabbed it in my direction. “Well, haven’t you been a busy girl this morning. I heard all about your big blowup with Bud. Everyone in the Bakery was yakkin’ about it. Especially about the end, when you threatened him. You didn’t really, did you?”

  “Maybe. . .a little, but I didn’t mean it. I was just mad.” My face got hot. I thought about the whole town gossiping about m
y weak moment and took a bite of my sandwich. “Hey,” I said with my mouth full, “how’d those people know about it, anyway? Bud and I were alone.”

  “Ernie Hansen was lookin’ for pop cans in the park, like he always does on Monday morning. Said he heard you givin’ Bud what for.”

  “Of course he has to go and blab it all over town.” I ran a hand around the back of my neck, stopping to massage a muscle that had tightened. “Just what I need. No one is going to want to hire me to do their yards when they hear this.”

  She tossed the toothpick into a nearby trash can. “Relax. No one pays much attention to Ernie. He’s always telling stories.”

  “Then let’s hope people think this is another one of his stories.” We chatted about her morning at the shop while we walked toward the park. At the corner of Main and Oak, Hazel kept walking toward The Garden Gate to return to work, and I entered the park by the front entrance.

  While traveling the distance to the play area, I ate the last of my oozing sandwich and plotted out my afternoon. I didn’t like surprises when it came to my schedule or my life. Control of my day was priority to me, and I didn’t react well when things didn’t go as planned. Case in point, the sight before me. I was right. Someone had been here. The zip ties once again peeked from resting spots in tall blades of grass. And someone had shoveled Lisa’s mulch into a mound on the vinyl tarp.

  “Bud,” I said under my breath. Probably let his kids pile up the chips so they could add to my work. “No matter.” His trick would not ruin my day. I’d recovered from his fencing demands, I could recover from this with some fast work.

  I picked up my favorite shovel and threw my frustrations with Bud into digging. The spade penetrated the mound and stopped short on something. The reverberations of the wooden handle sent a tingle up my arm.

  “What did that prickly old globe thistle do now?” Exasperated, I moved to the other end of the mound and tried again. This time, my shovel went deep but came up holding something heavy. Like roots clinging to a tree stump, whatever I’d found was connected to something that wouldn’t budge.

  I strained the muscles in my arms and shook the shovel, sending bark flying.

  “What in the world?”

  I sucked in a breath. The air seemed to swirl around me like a vortex.

  I was mistaken. There was no way Bud made this mound because. . .Bud was this mound.

  Chapter Three

  “And now, enjoy the best of Through the Garden Gate with your beloved host, Paige Turner.”

  “Hi, Paige. This is Bamboozled in Beaverton. Several months ago you talked about selecting the right type of bamboo.”

  “That’s right, Bamboozled. I mentioned there were two main types of bamboo, clumping and running. Clumping spreads very little as it grows, while running sends out shoots that invade everything nearby.”

  “We’re looking for that nice clumping kind, but we’re new to gardening and don’t want to ask stupid questions at our nursery. So we’ve been spending a lot of time at the nursery, watching the bamboo. Every time we go, the containers are sitting in orderly rows. We haven’t seen even one container of bamboo running around, so we don’t know how to choose.”

  Careful not to jiggle the blade and reveal more than the shoulder-up view I had of Bud’s body, I lowered the shovel to the ground. My gaze locked on his face. My brain scrambled for my next move. This was all wrong. I was used to dealing with dead plants—tugging them from the heavy clay soil after careless clients forgot to water them, but I wasn’t prepared to find a dead body.

  I wasn’t prepared at all.

  I’d need to report this, but who to? 911? Or should I just run to the police station a few blocks from here? Wait, police? Did I need the police or a doctor? Was Bud still alive?

  “Think, Paige, think.” I looked around.

  Maybe it would be faster to get Doc. But if Bud was dead, fetching the good doctor would be a waste of his time. I had to check—lay my fingers against his neck and see if blood still coursed through his veins.

  I reached out my hand. Snapped it back. I couldn’t do it.

  “His wrist. Use his wrist. Pretend it’s a plant runner, not an arm.” I knelt in the moist mulch with my back to his face and dug into his chip blanket until I found his hand. I positioned my fingers at the wrist. The clammy skin told me what I needed to know.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Lisa called from outside the fence.

  I dropped Bud’s hand as if she’d caught me in the act of killing him.

  “Lacy didn’t want to go down for her nap. Wow! You’ve really been shoveling—” Lisa stopped on the other side of the fence, her mouth hanging open, eyes wide. “Oh my gosh! Paige! You didn’t? Did you. . .did you kill him?”

  The two of us were tainted by murder for the second time today. This one was real. Someone had died. Right here on my project. Someone I had an argument with and threatened earlier. Someone even my best friend thought I’d killed.

  “I didn’t kill him,” I said, forcing myself to calm down and fighting the desire to snap at her. “But he’s dead. I found him under this pile.”

  “Oh, oh, oh, what are we gonna do?” she wailed and looked around in frantic sweeps of the area. “We should call someone. Yes, that’s it. Call. We need to call. Who should we call? Maybe Perry. He’s a lawyer. He’d know what to do, wouldn’t he?” Our gazes locked, and her eyes displayed my inner turmoil in vivid Technicolor.

  One thing we had to do. Get away from Bud and fast. I stood and rushed to the other side of the fence. Slipping my hand through the crook of her arm, I directed our steps to the nearest picnic table. Ashen and perspiring, Lisa dropped onto the bench in a plop. I leaned against the tabletop, resisting the urge to climb on and curl into a fetal position. Both of us turned our faces from Bud and stared at each other without speaking. We had to do something. It was my job to take charge. Keep calm for Lisa.

  “I’ll call for help,” I finally said and flipped open my cell.

  “911, what’s your emergency?” The perky female voice that should never be allowed for a 911 operator answered on the third ring.

  “There’s a body. I mean, I found a body.” I was surprised by how stilted and lifeless I sounded.

  “Who is this?” the operator asked in a far more fitting tone for her job.

  “Paige. . .Paige Turner.”

  “Paige. Oh, hi, Paige. This is Janice Engler. You might remember me as Janice Baker. We went to school together. You helped me with my algebra.”

  “Right, yeah, school together. . .algebra.”

  “Yes, good, now how about telling me where you are.”

  “Oak and Main. The park playground.”

  I heard her fingers clicking on a keyboard, tapping into a computer and most likely onto a screen for others to see that Paige Turner found a dead body.

  “You say there’s a body at the playground?”

  I glanced across the grass to be sure it wasn’t a bad dream. I could see the mound, not Bud, yet I knew he was still there. “Yeah, I’m working on a landscaping project here, and I found a body.”

  “Is this person breathing?”

  “No, no, he’s. . .ah. . .no pulse. I touched his wrist.” My tone zoomed high like a rocket with its sights set on the moon.

  “Okay, okay, Paige. Calm down. You’re doing fine. We already have a unit on the way. They’re just down the street. Listen. You might be able to hear the siren already.”

  Willing my stomach not to empty onto the ground, I slumped against the table and planted my hands on my knees. Blood. My knees were covered in blood. Bud’s blood.

  “Lisa, look.” I pointed at my legs.

  She leaned forward and groaned. Our gazes met. Her eyes were vacant and scared. Mine likely held triple that emotion as it dawned on me that I could be considered a suspect in the killing of Bud Picklemann. No way he just up and died and mounded chips over his body. No, he was clearly murdered. But by who? And why?

  “Paige, are
you there? Paige?” Janice wasn’t nearly this persistent with her algebra homework.

  “Yeah.”

  “Stay with me now. Listen. Do you hear the siren?”

  Nearly in a trance, I listened for what seemed like hours until the wail that told me help was on the way rang through the air. “They’re coming. Thanks for the help.” Afraid Janice would decide to catch up on old times while we waited, I hung up and handed my phone to Lisa. “This has nothing to do with you. I’ll talk to the cops. You should go home. Call Perry to come and get you. You’re too upset to drive.” I tried to give her a supportive smile, but when I realized I had no one other than Calgon to take me away from all of this, I scowled.

  And I kept scowling while she sobbed our story into the phone. Kept scowling while watching the police car fly down the street and screech to a stop on Main. Kept scowling as Police Chief Mitch Lawson rushed across the grass with his hand firmly planted on his unclipped holster.

  I jerked my head toward Bud before Mitch could say anything. “He’s over by the opening in the fence,” I said, feeling as if I, too, were dead.

  “You two okay?” Mitch asked, his tone more commanding than concerned.

  I nodded and watched him charge away, crossing the grass toward Bud’s body. I hadn’t seen Mitch this close up since I’d been back in town. He hadn’t changed much since high school, except for the touch of gray at his temples. Stout, built like a football linebacker, he didn’t have the large-hanging-over-the-belt belly that I’d found to be prevalent in the other males from our class. He still sported a slight limp from when he jumped off a bridge into the river and blew out his knee in high school.

  I peered at Lisa and tipped my head in Mitch’s direction. “You think he’s ever gotten over our little misunderstanding?”

  Lisa swiveled on the bench. “I don’t know how he feels about your part in all of it, but he won’t ever get over missing his senior year of football.”

  “But surely he doesn’t still blame me. He was the one who bragged he could jump off that bridge. I just called him on it.” I watched him for a few minutes. “Look at him. He still seems just as cocky.”