The Bluebonnet Betrayal

by Marty Wingate

  “He wasn’t thinking,” Christopher said. “He was operating in a state of panic—not a good place from which to make decisions.”

  “He had too many fires to put out—he never would’ve got away with it.” Pru looked at her husband. He wore his DCI face; she remembered it—firm, confident, unyielding. “Why aren’t you in Hereford?” she asked.

  “The question is, why did I ever leave London?” was Christopher’s prompt reply. “It didn’t feel right—Forde had offered you far too many details of his movements the evening Twyla was killed. Too much information—it bothered me. I had pulled off the road to talk to French about it. He’d just learned that Forde was not staying in Mayfair; rather he had a temporary room in Edgeware Road—practically the other end of the scale. Your text arrived while I sat there. I rang Teddy—he and his friend were in the other lorry. They met me, and his friend took the lorry I’d been driving. I got a car back here as soon as I could. I texted you—tried phoning, too, but your mobile was off.”

  “Did you come here straightaway?”

  “I rang Mrs. Miller while I was headed back, and she checked our flat. I met French at the Lamont Road house first, but no one was about. This was the next stop.”

  “Forde took our phones. Did you come back in a police car?” He nodded. “We didn’t know Forde had followed us here tonight—turns out he’s been eavesdropping on my walks with Boris.” She left that with him a moment as she drank her tea before setting it at her feet. “I had sort of been talking through things—”

  “With a dog?” Christopher asked.

  “You weren’t around,” she said. “Not that he’s anywhere near a substitute for you.” She saw that ghost of a smile. “After you left this afternoon, I read something in the leaflet we’re to be handing out during the show…” She lost track of what she was saying for a moment, but shook her head and continued. “I rang Rosette, we talked about it, and decided to look for what Twyla might’ve left. Rosette was determined—and so brave. You’re sure she’s all right?”

  “Sir?” DS Chalk called to Christopher, who turned to her with a questioning look.

  “Yes, go on,” she said.

  The two men stood talking for a moment. Christopher took a phone call, after which he directed the uniforms over to the collection of shrubs meant for the Texas-style hedgerow. They began beating them and scraping the soil away from the stems. Despair overcame Pru and she swallowed a sob.

  Well, that was it, then, she thought. She didn’t even need Arthur Nottle to tell her the facts—there would be no ARGS display at the Chelsea Flower Show. They did not have the time or the workers to repair—really, rebuild—the garden. And did it matter, as they wouldn’t have the bluebonnets anyway? Pru rested her forearm on her thigh; her wrist throbbed with a deep pain—a good companion to the ache in her heart.

  She looked up to find both Christopher and French walking over.

  “Are you all right?” French asked. She nodded. He held out his gloved hand. “Is this it?”

  She looked at the flash drive and nodded again.

  “Ms. Parke, there’s no need for you to stay—Inspector Pearse will take you to A&E,” DCI French said.

  Not even French calling Christopher “inspector” could drag her out of these depths. The end of the dream—of Twyla’s dream, which had become her dream, Chiv’s and Rosette’s, too.

  Pru slapped the pocket of her trousers. “Forde took my phone. I need it—can you get it for me?”

  “He had several phones on him, and they are all being entered as evidence,” French explained.

  “I have to call Damien— and Chiv and Ivory,” Pru insisted. “I need my phone—I’ve got all their numbers in it.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Parke—”

  “I need my phone!” she shouted as she leapt up, in no mood for police procedure. “All right, then”—she held out her right hand to French—“let me use yours.”

  “Sorry?” French said.

  “You’ve got all their numbers,” Pru said, her voice a quaver. “Let me use your phone and I’ll call them.”

  “You can’t seriously think I—”

  “Here now.” Christopher intervened, and just in time, too, as Pru had half a mind to search French’s pockets. Christopher pulled out his own mobile. “Read off their numbers to me,” he said to French. “And then you can make your calls.” He lifted his eyebrows to Pru.

  “Yes,” she said to her husband. “Thank you.” To French she said, “Sorry.”

  Christopher handed over his phone, primed with the necessary numbers. “I’ll leave you to it. You’ll need to get that seen to,” he told her, nodding to her wrist. “Soon.”

  “Soon—and I’ll need to give my statement. Inspector French,” she called as the two men walked back to the action. “Where are they taking Rosette?”

  French told her Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and then added, “We’ve already heard from Mr. Woodford—he’s on his way there.”

  —

  Well, then, no need to start with Damien. Pru called Ivory, who answered halfway through the first ring. She explained and then listened while Ivory told her story—they’d gone to dinner, but Damien had been distracted, eventually trying to get hold of Rosette, who did not answer. Increasingly worried, he’d phoned DCI French and learned that a search for Rosette and Pru was underway. The women had heard from Damien only a few minutes ago with the latest news.

  “Are you okay, honey?” Ivory asked.

  “Yes, really, fine. And I’ll explain more in the morning. I don’t want to keep you up.”

  Ivory laughed. “We’re all sitting around the kitchen table drinking tea—see what you’ve done to us? Okay, we’ll see you first thing in the morning, ready to get this thing finished.”

  Pru couldn’t see any benefit to telling the Austin women about the garden at that moment—give them a decent night’s sleep.

  But Chiv was a different matter. Pru laid Christopher’s phone on her knee and stared at it, hoping it would tell her what to do. Chiv knew nothing of what had happened—he and Iris were sleeping peacefully in Ealing with no inkling that the garden had been wrecked and the dream was ended. Should she wait and be on-site extra early in the morning, braced for the worst?

  No, that wouldn’t work—the first thing he’d see would be police and the telltale blue-and-white tape, and the jig would be up. He must be warned.

  Chiv did a fine impression of a bark on the fifth ring. “Yeah?”

  “It’s Pru—I’m sorry to ring so late.”

  “Pru? It’s not your phone—what is it?”

  She told the story as briefly and succinctly as possible. Chiv stayed silent throughout. The first words out of his mouth were “Are you all right?”

  He couldn’t see her nod, but it was the only sort of answer she could produce for a moment. At last, she got out something that might’ve sounded like “Yes.” He asked after Rosette, and she produced a more intelligible answer. When he asked, “Did they get the bugger?,” her tears continued, but she laughed, too.

  “They did that.”

  “Do you want me there now? I’ll come if you need me.”

  “Thank you. No, I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “We tried our best,” he reminded her.

  —

  Pru and Christopher sat in the emergency waiting room at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. A teenager across from them held a bag of frozen green peas up to one eye, and next to Pru a young mother jiggled an unhappy and quite vocal baby. Christopher grew increasingly irritated with the length of their wait—his jaw tightened and he glared at the door leading to the treatment rooms, as if willing someone to walk through. Pru, meanwhile, counted her blessings, starting with being alive. Her mind deftly leapfrogged over the garden—or lack thereof—and she ended her list by being thankful she sat next to her husband. She set her chin on his shoulder and gazed up at him. His face softened. He pushed a strand of hair off her cheek—her hair clip l
ong lost—cupped her face in his hand, and for a moment it didn’t matter where they sat. Pru sighed.

  “Did you eat that Portuguese custard tart I gave you?” she asked.

  He smiled. “I did, yes. Sorry. It was quite good.”

  “Mmm. I could just do with a packet of crisps. Or some of that lovely Spanish cheese they have at Fritz & Floyd. A Scotch egg would be nice. And perhaps a brandy.”

  Christopher went in search of food and brought her back a Kit Kat.

  At last she was called and she took Christopher with her. An X-ray revealed no breaks or severe ligament damage in her wrist, only a sprain. She pulled off her shirt and the doctor gave a passing look at the bruises on her back obtained when she fell into the wall. And her forehead?—a light concussion. In other words, Pru thought, a bump on the head. Otherwise, a sound bill of health.

  They wrapped her wrist so that her fingers stuck out like little sausages, and then they dismissed her, after which she and Christopher went looking for Rosette. Damien sat near her bed. He wore a suit, his tie pulled loose and jacket unbuttoned, and he jumped up when he saw them at the door to report that she’d been sedated and would have surgery on her foot in the morning to repair the multiple breaks.

  “She was so brave,” Pru whispered.

  “Yes,” he agreed gravely. “She has a lot of strength. She filled in a few more details. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine, just this.” She waved her wrist. Pru noticed Damien’s glance over her shoulder. Now for it—the first confession. “Damien, this is my husband, Christopher Pearse.”

  “Yes, Kit—we met, didn’t we? But I don’t remember that you two are married.”

  “We kept that quiet,” Christopher replied. “I hope you don’t mind. As I’m with the police, I was only doing a small bit of undercover work. Keeping an eye on things.” He said it in such a matter-of-fact way, it took all the deviousness out of their plan and made it sound like an everyday affair.

  “Pearse—yes, Inspector French mentioned you were on the case,” Damien said. “Thank you.”

  “Did you tell French what you’d been up to?” Pru asked Christopher later as they made their way out of the hospital to the waiting panda car.

  “I told him I’d been…keeping an eye on things. He didn’t ask for details.”

  “Inspector Pearse,” she said, “you are a sly one.”

  “…and in conclusion, remember we are each of us ambassadors for good gardening. Now get out there and tell the world—Austin Rocks!”

  The President Speaks, from Austin Rocks! the e-newsletter of the Austin Rock Garden Society

  Chapter 43

  Early the next morning, Pru heard Christopher on the phone. She hoped it was nothing bad—worse, that is. She would ask him when he walked back into the bedroom, but as she waited, snug under the duvet with her wrapped wrist propped on an extra pillow, she drifted off again into a light dream in which she sat in the backseat of her parents’ old green Ford Galaxy as they rumbled along a bumpy back road in Texas in search of bluebonnets. When the car reached the top of a rise in the hill country, they saw below them that the ground had turned blue—the blue of a lake, the blue of the sky—with ribbons of tickseed, blanketflower, and paintbrush swirled throughout. She gazed out the car window and then turned to her backseat companion, Christopher, and said, “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  An aroma teased Pru’s nose—a scent of dark coffee and a sweet smell of egg and crust. She opened her eyes and on the bedside table sat a cappuccino—its foam peeking above the rim of the takeaway cup—and a Portuguese custard tart.

  Upon arrival at their flat the night before—about two o’clock in the morning, as she recalled—the desire for food and drink had left her. She had taken ibuprofen and a bath, and gone straight to bed. But now, now she could eat—except surely there was no time for that?

  She pushed herself up with her good hand. “This is so lovely,” she said to Christopher, who sat on the edge of the bed. “Thank you. But I told Chiv I would be there early—I told Ivory, too.” She took the coffee in her good hand and breathed greedily before taking a sip. She could allow herself coffee, couldn’t she?

  “I spoke to them both—they understand you need the rest and they know you’ll be there soon,” Christopher said.

  “Ivory—did you tell her who you were?”

  “I did, and she laughed. She said wasn’t that the best sort of affair to have. What did she mean by that?”

  “She thought Kit and I had something going,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows at him.

  Christopher rested his hand on her thigh. “Well, she was right, wasn’t she?”

  —

  The cab dropped Pru and Christopher at the Bull Ring gate at midday, where they showed their work passes and entered. They pulled on their high-vis vests—a token health and safety precaution now that all the gardens were finished, or almost. The Chelsea Flower Show grounds, although still busy, had acquired an air of polishing, just sorting out those last few details. The Great Pavilion stood before them. Not the looming alien form Pru had imagined the night before, for now it bustled with high nerves and good fun as the nursery stalls set up. She caught a glimpse of a mass of clematis in full bloom, cascading down a pyramid, terraced rows of roses, and walls lined with violas, auriculas, foxgloves, and delphinium. Lupine, too—but the tall pillars of color for gardens, not Texas bluebonnets. No bluebonnets in sight. Pru sighed.

  She took Christopher’s hand, seeking an infusion of courage. They turned right and her heart dropped—dead ahead at a hundred yards, Chiv stood alone at the edge of desolation. Yes, she’d seen the damage already, but that had been in the middle of the night, and she’d been exhausted and hurt and mostly happy to be alive. Now the harsh light of day accentuated not only the wall, which looked as if a bomb had gone off, but also the emptiness of the space and the sense of finality.

  Chiv turned to her as they approached. His face revealed nothing, and Pru admired his inner strength. He touched her wrapped wrist and said, “You didn’t use that on him, did you?”

  She smiled. “No, that was this one,” she said, holding up her right hand, bruised knuckles still evident. She glanced up at Christopher. “Look, Chiv, I need to explain why—”

  Chiv shook his head. “No need. Kit here explained it all. And good thing, too, you had him keeping an eye out.”

  Pru looked up at her husband, happy to get over that hurdle and grateful that Chiv took it so well. After all, Kit had been a valuable member of the crew. But now what did that matter? For just past Christopher’s shoulder and across the roadway Pru saw Arthur Nottle, clipboard in hand, poised to destroy her last iota of hope.

  Taking a deep breath and wiping an errant tear off her cheek, she inhaled quickly and exhaled in a huff. Christopher put his arm round her but didn’t speak. “Right, well, better get to it,” she said, pulling her shoulders back and making straight for the assistant show director.

  “Ah, Ms. Parke,” Nottle said. “Are you all right? The police have informed me of last night’s events. I am so dreadfully sorry for what you went through.”

  Pru had expected businesslike efficiency, not heartfelt concern, and for a moment the tears returned to her eyes. She blinked hard.

  “Thank you, Mr. Nottle. I’m doing fine. This”—a wave of her wrist—“is nothing, really, compared with Rosette. But she’ll be all right, too. And now that the police have Forde, we are truly finished with it. That is, I mean, the problems we encountered are finished. So, about the garden.”

  What about the garden? She held back, unwilling to chuck it all in. But what was she to say to him? Don’t worry—Chiv, Kit, and I will dig in and, given another month or so, I’m sure we can get it built? A nervous giggle threatened.

  “Yes, it’s a pity, isn’t it?” Nottle asked, first nodding and then shaking his head. “But you certainly tried your best under the circumstances. We will, naturally, need to get our own crew in here and clear out the ent
ire area so that—”

  “You’ll keep your hands off it!” Chiv roared as he advanced on Nottle from across the roadway. “This is our garden.”

  Nottle looked puzzled. “Garden? It’s a shambles, Mr. Chiverton. You’ve missed it—there’s nothing else you can do, unless you hope to pass this off as some sort of druid ruin that extraterrestrials transported to Texas and back again. I’ve been as patient as I possibly could be. You must realize that it’s over. It’s finished.”

  “Three days,” Pru said, thrilled that Chiv wanted to take a stand. “Three days until judging Sunday morning—you’ve got to allow us that.”

  “And what do we do if you fail in your impossible dream, Ms. Parke? Throw a giant tarpaulin over the entire thing and hope that the public doesn’t think it’s an enormous coat-check marquee?”

  “No,” Pru fired back. “No. You cannot do this. We have a contract—we signed an agreement. Chiv?” She had signed no agreement, but now a hot energy coursed through her veins and she wouldn’t give up without a fight, even if she had to stay awake for the next seventy-two hours and move each stone with her own two hands. One hand.

  “What do you think the three of you can do?”

  “Three?” Christopher asked. “You had better count again.”

  Pru’s heart fluttered at the teasing note in his voice. She cut her eyes at him. He smiled and pointed his chin to the end of Main Avenue, where Ivory and Sweetie waved at them. Nottle looked over his shoulder, then back at Pru. “Yes, admirable, but as the sum total of your crew is now, what—five?—you will not possibly be able to—”

  “You’ve miscounted, Nottle,” Chiv interrupted, and grinned.

  Pru’s eyes darted from Chiv to Christopher and saw they shared some secret. She could stand it no longer, and hurried over to the women, who each gave her a big—but careful—hug.

  “Your Christopher,” Sweetie began.

  “Oh listen, about that,” Pru said quickly, “it was only because—”

  “No, never you mind, honey,” Ivory cut in.