Murder Crops Up

by Lora Roberts

  “No lasting troubles?”

  “All systems will be go, the doctors said. Not that Amy wants them to go. She’s swearing eternal chastity.”

  “That won’t last long.” Bridget covered the tops of the lasagna pans with foil. “The salad looks beautiful.”

  “Thanks.” I regarded it with pride. Melanie would have no occasion to find me coming up short that night. I scattered the pièce de résistance on top—gold and orange and red nasturtiums, pink and white carnation petals, tiny white flowers culled from the bolting stems of my parsley, small blue stars of rosemary.

  “A work of art.” Bridget shook up the jar of vinaigrette I’d brought and took a whiff. “This smells divine, too, though it’s almost a shame to put dressing on that.”

  Melanie came in the back door, casually elegant in flowing pants and shirt, carrying a huge pink box from the Prolific Oven. “Sorry I’m late. Where can I put this? Is Claudia here yet?”

  “You missed the surprise.” Bridget took the cake box and put it on the table. “Everyone’s in the other room. We’re just getting ready to serve.”

  Melanie looked over the table, which had been extended with all its leaves into a long oval. It was set up like a buffet with plates, napkins, glasses, and a couple of big bottles of wine.

  “Very nice,” Melanie said. “Lovely flowers.”

  “Liz brought them.” Bridget leaned over the table for a long whiff of a half-open Margaret Merrill. “Aren’t they divine? Such perfume.”

  “I must get you to talk to my gardener, Liz. All I have is a few pansies and some impatiens.” Melanie glanced through the kitchen door at the swarm of people in the living room, and then at the table again. “Did you need me to bring plates?”

  “Not at all.” Bridget smiled blandly. “We’re using paper.’’

  “I would have been glad to have the party at my house, you know, if only things weren’t so uncertain with Hugh.”

  “You’re doing enough by providing me with a babysitter. And I don’t mind paper.” Bridget winked at me. “Or plastic forks.”

  I intervened before Melanie could have an apoplexy.

  “There is no plastic, and Bridget has plenty of plates, and I’m sure you’ll be glad to stay after and help wash up, right, Melanie?”

  “If there’s time.” She frowned at me. “By the way, what’s this story I hear about you getting involved with counterfeiting?”

  “Honestly, the things people will make up.” Bridget leaped to my defense, which I always found agreeable. “There’s no truth to that at all, Melanie. There were no counterfeiters. I don’t know how this kind of thing gets started. Only those deaths in the garden, and they didn’t involve Liz any more than they did your high-school crush, Tom Dancey.”

  Melanie clicked her tongue. “Poor Tom has gone on vacation. That’s what his brother told my neighbor’s bridge partner. Dancey Construction is redoing her house, and Tom was supposed to schedule the finish work, but he’s off for a while.”

  “Rita’s death really was a shock for him.”

  “That’s what my neighbor said. She said everyone knew they were lovers for a while.”

  “It’s sad.” Bridget’s mind was elsewhere. “Emery, should we open the wine now?”

  “Only if we’re ready to eat.” Emery looked through the kitchen door. “It’ll all be gone before we even get food on our plates if you open it too soon. The snacks are almost done for as it is. The cheese is just a memory.

  “I believe we are ready to eat, if Liz will dress the salad. The garlic bread’s hot, and I’ve got more wine hidden in the pantry. So let ‘er rip.”

  “Shouldn’t we pull the table out more into the middle of the room?” Unable to resist meddling, Melanie grabbed one end of the table. Bridget, perforce, took the other end. “And let’s bring the lasagna over—just one, we’ll leave the other one on the stove.”

  “Good idea.” Bridget didn’t appear to resent Melanie taking over her party.

  Melanie peeled the foil off one of the pans of lasagna. “Shouldn’t we cut this now? And has Liz tossed the salad?” She looked over at me and squealed. “What happened to your hands?”

  “A gardening accident.” The lacerations around my wrists had responded nicely to the herbal salve. My hands were still a little swollen, and dark with bruising. Melanie shuddered and looked away.

  Claudia came into the kitchen, followed by other party-goers. “What lovely flowers!” She made a beeline for the roses, which Bridget had arranged with sea lavender in an old silver urn. “From your garden, Liz. I recognize our favorite Oklahoma.” She nodded majestically at the salad. “Very pretty. And I understand people do actually eat the flowers.”

  Bridget smothered a smile. People crowded around the table, exclaiming at the savory odors. Melanie took the top off the cake box with a flourish, revealing a rich-looking chocolate sheet cake emblazoned, in white, HAPPY 60TH BIRTHDAY, CLAUDIA!

  Claudia froze. The noise died down. Even Melanie felt the change in the atmosphere and fell back a pace.

  “How unfortunate.” When she spoke, Claudia’s voice sounded almost normal. “Someone has made a mistake in my age.”

  Melanie was made of stern stuff, but even she quailed. “I’m sorry, Claudia. Did I make a faux pas? I just didn’t think—”

  “No, I’m gratified, my dear.” Claudia gave Melanie a cold smile. “But you didn’t get it right. I’m sixty-one.”

  Someone laughed, and then everyone was laughing. Claudia caught my eye sternly, and I shrugged. She couldn’t really have thought that I or anyone else had any influence over Melanie.

  The food was delicious. I stood around Bridget’s kitchen with the rest of the party-goers, eating and listening to the swirl of conversation, immersed in the indiscriminate human warmth. Lois and Rita were dead; Webster was deprived of liberty. Amy was wounded, body and spirit, and I had only to look at my hands to realize that mortality lies in wait for us at any given moment.

  Bridget finished guiding people around the food. With her own plate, she came to stand by me. “What’s the latest with Drake, anyway? How’s his dad?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t call last night. But the day before, they’d done a bone marrow transplant, which caused some kind of medical crisis, so it could be hectic today. I hope everything’s all right.” I wanted badly to talk to Paul, to tell him about the whole experience, have him absolve me of wrong choices, of putting Amy in danger through my own stupidity. I wanted to believe that I deserved absolution for that, since I was going to have to call Renee and Andy soon. Amy had begged to put it off until she felt stronger, and since the hospital had written me down as her guardian, Renee and Andy hadn’t been notified of the incident. They deserved to know that their child had been injured; in their places I’d want to know. But in this, as in everything else, I was trying to get out of Amy’s way and let her make her own decisions. Such a policy might be totally stupid, as Renee would no doubt see it, but it was the only one I had.

  “Is Amy still planning to stay with you?”

  “No.” I couldn’t confess, even to a forgiving person like Bridget, how relieved I was by Amy’s decision to go back home at the end of her allotted stay. “She’s going to go ahead and use her return ticket, so she’ll be leaving in just over a week.”

  “Time to do some college visiting, after all.”

  “If she’s up to it.”

  “She will be. She’s young and resilient. She’ll learn the lesson and forget the terror.”

  “I hope so. I feel terribly guilty, like I let her get into trouble.”

  “You had nothing to do with it.” Bridget noticed someone trying to pour wine from an empty bottle. “Excuse me. I’m going to get out the reserves.”

  Claudia tapped her fork on her wineglass. It was time for the witty speech extempore, I supposed.

  “Thank you all,” she said into the fresh quiet. “It is very nice of you to remember my birthday, although I wish some of yo
u had remembered which one it is less well.” She looked at Melanie, who gave a coy wave.

  “However, something more important than my birthday happened today.” Claudia pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket—a page torn from a magazine. “I opened up Publishers Weekly, and found a review of Bridget’s first novel.”

  Everyone exclaimed. Bridget, emerging from the pantry with a bottle of wine under each arm, looked incredulous.

  “It’s not even supposed to be out until January.”

  “Reviewers are sent advance copies,” Claudia said, dismissing this with a wave of the paper. “This review is not simply good—it positively raves. ‘A luminous narrative,’ it says. ‘Montrose authentically captures the inner life of her characters.’ ‘A perfect achievement.’ It is a starred review, much coveted by authors. I congratulate Biddy. Here’s to seeing her book on the best-seller list!”

  Emery gave Bridget a big hug and took away the bottles of wine before she lost her grip on them. Claudia thrust the review into her hands, and she began to read it, her face still wearing an expression of utter astonishment.

  “Well, looks like Bridget might be able to pay for remodeling the kitchen,” Emery said, pulling the cork out of one bottle. “I’ll drink to that.”

  It was wonderful seeing Bridget so overwhelmed by her good fortune. I watched the energy of the party swirl between her and Claudia while I finished my salad. The carnation petals transformed their fragrance into the taste of vanilla in my mouth, and the peppery nasturtiums were like a series of tiny flavor explosions. I thought about the harvest I’d reap from the raised beds the next day, and the seed potatoes still waiting for me at the garden. I thought about Drake coming back from Seattle, about opening some of those doors I’d closed so many years ago.

  It was almost eight o’clock. I gave Claudia a hug, and another one to Bridget, with whispered congratulations. We would talk about it all later, at the garden or in my kitchen or hers, without so many half-drunk poets around.

  Then I set out into the damp, chilly night to walk the two blocks to my house—Drake’s house—and wait beside his telephone.

  I had a lot to say to him.

  For the menfolks

  This book is set in one of Palo Alto’s community gardens, but no other similarity exists between real life and this work of fiction. No real people were harmed in the making of this book, since none of the characters are based on real people or resemble them in any way. (Hint: Real people don’t behave in a work of fiction. They want to go their own way. So I don’t allow them in.)

  The actual community gardeners are just what you’d expect of gardeners—unassuming, nurturing, helpful to each other, and content to be left alone with their patch of earth and their seedlings. I thank them very much for the loan of their garden, and hope I give it back to them without the loss of one earthworm.