African Violet Club Mystery Collection

by Elise M Stone

  “Well, as you say, we all have to indulge in something.” Lilliana was surprised Lenny had noticed her buying the chocolate and tried to remember when that could have happened. Usually, she had a small piece of chocolate in the evening with her tea, in her apartment, alone. She couldn’t recall Lenny ever being in the grocery when she’d bought it. Ah, well. With so many idle hours to fill, gossip must take up quite a few of them. She supposed there were few secrets kept in Rainbow Ranch.

  “Have you decided what you’re going to raise for the fall show?” Lenny asked.

  Lilliana shook her head. “I’m not sure we’ll do a fall sale. This one was so expensive and took so much time to organize.”

  Lenny raised his eyebrows. “Don’t most of us have too much time?”

  He had a point. On the other hand, Lilliana was looking forward to not having the show tasks to work on. In addition to reading Shakespeare, she wanted to try a new mystery author. She also wanted to visit the sewing and craft store, perhaps start a crewel embroidery project again. Or join the church choir. She missed singing.

  Despite all those idle hours, she’d been the one to do most of the work for the African violet show. “Well, yes, but not too many people wanted to help with the planning. Besides, with so few members, it hardly warrants two events in a year.”

  “There must be more people who would like to join the club,” Lenny said. “We should look for some way to encourage them.”

  “Frank has an idea about that,” Lilliana said. She proceeded to tell Lenny about Frank’s plan for the flyers.

  “It sounds like a good start. When’s our next meeting?”

  “Thursday. We decided to have one shortly after the show to discuss the results.” Lilliana raised her cup to her lips and drank the last of her juice. “Well, I’d better take this plant food back and water my African violets.”

  “And I should start working on that statement.” Lenny sighed and his face took on a hang-dog expression. “I’m not very good at writing. Never was. I can tell you something, but my brain clogs up when I pick up a pen.”

  Lilliana saw another opportunity to learn more about what Lenny knew. “You know, I could help you with that.”

  Lenny’s face brightened. “You could?”

  “Surely. You could talk to me, and I could take notes and type it up on my computer.”

  “That would be great, Lily. When can we start?”

  Lilliana was tempted to say right now, but there were plants to water now that she had fertilizer. “How about we meet in the library after dinner?”

  “Sounds good to me.” A broad smile spread over his face. “You’re a lifesaver, Lily.”

  LILLIANA had seen the label on the box Lenny had taken the fertilizer from. He used a cheap brand from one of those big box stores, not the better quality fertilizer most of the African Violet Club members used. She decided to visit Frank and see if he could spare some fertilizer. After a quick visit to her apartment to drop off the container Lenny had filled, she crossed through the lobby to the north wing of the building, where Frank lived.

  Lilliana knocked on the door and waited. No one answered. She knocked again, a little louder. She was debating knocking a third time when Frank, wearing a grocer’s apron that covered the entire front of his body, opened the door. Smudges of dirt stood out against the pristine white of the apron fabric.

  His mouth fell open before he spoke. “Lilliana,” he said, quickly recovering. “What can I do for you?”

  “I was wondering if I might borrow some fertilizer. I’ve run out and won’t be able to get more until the club order arrives next week.”

  “Why, of course. Come in.” He backed away from the doorway.

  Frank’s apartment appeared to be a mirror image of Lenny’s. Most of his living room was taken up by a chocolate-colored leather sofa and a big screen television on the opposite wall. Two industrial-style end tables on either end of the sofa held blocky brown lamps with square white shades. Definitely a man’s home.

  “Follow me,” Frank said in a mock command. He led the way to the bedroom.

  Lilliana gasped when he opened the door. The room was filled with shelves of African violets. Brightly lit from all the plant lights, and with a large humidifier humming in the corner, it was like stepping into a jungle. A riot of color surrounded her, and a slightly musty odor from the damp soil hung in the air. A workbench sat in the center of the room, a stack of newspaper on one side and an assortment of tools on the other.

  “What do you think of my plant room?” Frank asked.

  “No wonder you grow prize winners. This is absolutely marvelous.” Then Lilliana had a thought and glanced over her shoulder to verify that the bathroom was across the hall—the door was slightly ajar and she could see the vanity sink—and that there were no other bedrooms in Frank’s apartment. “But where do you sleep?”

  “Who needs sleep?” Frank joked. “Well, I guess I do. Did you notice the leather sofa in the living room?”

  Lilliana nodded, beginning to figure it out.

  “It’s a sofa bed. I close it up during the day. I can’t afford a two bedroom apartment like some of you richer folks, but raising African violets is my life. My beauties need a bedroom more than I do.”

  “Well, this is certainly impressive.” Lilliana thought back to her puny plant shelves and the tiny bathroom she’d let her plants claim. But she had a second bathroom.

  “Let me get that fertilizer for you.” Frank turned and opened up a large metal cabinet just behind the bedroom door. Plant supplies filled the interior, and buckets of soil mix sat on the bottom of it. He took a container from a shelf at eye level and went to the workbench. After filling a plastic sandwich bag, he returned the package of fertilizer to the cabinet and shut the door. “Here you go,” he said as he held out the bag toward Lilliana.

  “Thank you.” She reluctantly followed Frank out. She would have liked to have spent more time enjoying the plants.

  “Can I offer you a cup of coffee?”

  Much as Lilliana hated to decline the offer—she would have loved to discuss Frank’s growing techniques with him over a cup of coffee, Lenny’s healthy juice was still sloshing around in her stomach. “Perhaps another time. I’ll let you get back to your repotting.”

  “Just let me know when.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  LILLIANA scrutinized Lenny as he entered the library, examining his physique with new eyes.

  “Good evening, Lily. Missed you at dinner.” Lenny took a chair on the opposite side of the table.

  “Oh, I decided to eat early for a change.” In reality, she’d met up with Willie for an update on their investigation. Willie hadn’t been able to get Ellison to talk to him any further. In fact, Ellison seemed to be avoiding the former police officer.

  “You must have been hungry. You weren’t at lunch either, and I’m sure the juice wasn’t nearly enough.” His demeanor was wary, as if he were waiting for her to explain herself.

  Her hand strayed to the loose skin under her chin, pinched it between her fingers as she fretted over what he meant. Could he have noticed her interest in his medications? There was really no need for her to explain her actions, and she pretended not to be aware of his unspoken questions. She picked up the pen on top of the yellow legal pad in front of her. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

  “I’m not sure what to say. It’s not like I know anything.” He emphasized the I a little too strongly. Lenny crooked his arm and scratched the top of his bald head.

  Had his biceps always bulged that much?

  Always curious, Lilliana had used the Internet to look up the unfamiliar medications she’d seen in Lenny’s apartment. It appeared there was an explanation for his unusual bodybuilder physique. Unusual for someone in his seventies that is. And it had little to do with his time on the tennis court or in the exercise room.

  It turned out the box of pills labeled Striant was a drug for low testosterone. The purple pen conta
ined human growth hormone. Lilliana might not be an expert on drugs, but she had certainly heard of all the scandals in baseball over performance enhancing drugs, or PEDs. She wondered where he’d gotten them. Certainly not from the clinic, where neither Kirstie nor the doctor who came in once a month for routine physicals on the residents would have prescribed them.

  “Let’s start from the beginning, then.” Lilliana said. “You were at the show before I arrived. Did Bette come in before or after you?”

  Lenny scrunched up his face and looked off into the distance. “After, I think.” He focused on Lilliana and added, “She was on the opposite side of the room, next to Sarah Higgins, if you remember. I was much more interested in setting up my display than watching who was and wasn’t there.”

  Lilliana had forgotten all about Sarah, a quiet eighty-year-old who lived on the second floor of the south wing. Since Lilliana’s apartment was on the first floor, their paths didn’t often cross. She made a note to follow up with Sarah as well. And Pieter Joncker, who won third place in the original hybrid category. Pieter, a husky man in his late sixties, with a graying mustache that curled around his upper lip, was another member of the African Violet Club she didn’t know very well. She wondered if Bette attempted to steal Pieter’s hybrid as well as hers and Frank’s.

  “Did you notice Bette talking to anyone in particular before the show began?”

  Lenny shook his head. “I think most people tried to avoid talking to Bette. I know I did.”

  “Oh?” This sounded promising.

  His expression went from casual to worried. He rubbed the back of his neck, then leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Listen, this has to be off the record, if you know what I mean.” He paused and waited for a response.

  Lilliana nodded and put down the pen to show she wasn’t going to write anything down. She’d have to trust her not-so-reliable memory and determined to focus on every word Lenny said.

  “We all know Bette was irritating.”

  Lilliana had no argument with that statement.

  “She was also mean.” He scratched his ear, then took a deep breath. “She found out something about me, something that was none of her business, but could get me in trouble with Ellison.”

  Lilliana had a good idea what that “something” might be. The retirement home frowned on unauthorized drugs. You had to keep them informed of all your prescriptions and even what vitamins you took. It was a good bet Lenny hadn’t told them about the PEDs.

  “Anyway, she was blackmailing me. She kept threatening to tell Ellison unless I paid her off. Like I told you this afternoon, I don’t have a lot of money. At first she was content with twenty dollars a month. I could squeeze that out of my budget. But lately she’d been hinting it would take more for her to keep her mouth shut. Like twenty dollars a week.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t possibly afford that.”

  “Didn’t it strike you as odd that she was asking for money?” Lilliana asked. “After all, her late husband was quite successful.” She remembered the DeGrazia painting she’d seen in Bette’s apartment.

  Lenny shrugged. “I don’t think I ever thought about it. I was too worried about her telling Ellison and coming up with the money to keep her quiet.”

  Lilliana wondered if Bette had been blackmailing anyone else. First Frank, now Lenny. Blackmail certainly qualified as a motive. Too bad she’d promised to keep it off the record. They should get back to the official statement. She picked up the pen and poised it over the legal pad. “All right. If Bette didn’t talk to anyone inside the dining room, did she leave it at any time?”

  “She might have. I seem to remember looking over at her table and noticing she wasn’t behind it at one point, but we all left for a few minutes at various times during the show.” He stared pointedly at her. “If you remember, I watched your table for you while you ate lunch.”

  A fist squeezed her gut. Was he insinuating that she’d used that time to murder Bette? She’d thought he was her friend.

  Lilliana continued to prompt Lenny with questions, but it appeared he didn’t know anything more than the rest of them did. For the record, she wrote down his account of her conversation with Frank and the subsequent argument, but she doubted Chief Cartwright would find anything new in that.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  LILLIANA hurried along the path toward the casitas. Instead of her usual morning walk, she wanted to attempt another try at getting inside Bette’s unit before most people were up and about, and before Frank arrived for his morning cigarette. She knew she stood a better chance of sneaking in through the back at this time of day than later, when the pool area would be filled with sun worshippers and water aerobics classes.

  However, she halted once she rounded the pool and came in sight of Bette’s casita. The front door stood open.

  Several cardboard boxes were stacked on the walk in front of the entrance, the DeGrazia leaning up against them. Definitely not the respect an expensive painting deserved. As she stood inventorying the pile of possessions, a woman approaching middle age came out of the casita with another box.

  “Something I can help you with?” the woman asked after she put the box she’d been carrying beside the others.

  “You must be Susan,” Lilliana said, recognizing her from the pictures she’d seen yesterday.

  The woman nodded, then brushed a length of brunette hair back from a face covered in a fine sheen of sweat. The strand wouldn’t stay put and fell back in front of her eyes which, Lilliana noticed, were also brown. The woman blew at the hair, which begrudgingly moved just far enough so her eyes could meet Lilliana’s.

  “I am.” She rubbed her hands on the front of her jeans, then extended her right one toward the former librarian. “And you are?”

  “Lilliana Wentworth.” Lilliana took her hand and gripped it firmly. Susan’s hand rested limply in hers, as if she had no enthusiasm for this encounter. “Your mother and I were in the African Violet Club together.”

  A crease appeared between Susan’s eyes, then relaxed. “I seem to remember her talking about you.”

  Lilliana wondered what Bette had said, since they hadn’t known one another very well. Nothing good, she was sure. “I’m so sorry for your loss. Is there anything I can help you with?”

  Susan looked Lilliana up and down, as if appraising the older woman’s ability to carry things. “Well, I haven’t packed up the kitchen yet. If you wouldn’t mind emptying the cabinets...”

  Surprised that getting inside was going to be so easy, she quickly responded, “Not at all.”

  The woman turned toward the apartment, and Lilliana hurried after her. As they went inside, Susan said, “My husband will be along with a truck shortly.” She turned so they were facing one another. “You know where the kitchen is?”

  “Yes, of course.” Lilliana headed for the kitchen as if she’d been there a thousand times before rather than only the one time yesterday.

  Instead of going back to her packing, Susan hung in the kitchen doorway. “We both had to take the day off from work.”

  Lilliana looked up from the counter where she’d already started wrapping dishes in newspaper. “Excuse me?”

  “Both my husband, Jack, and I had to take the day off from work. Mr. Ellison called and said if we didn’t move my mother’s things out of here by the end of the week, he was going to have them hauled to the dump.”

  “That’s terrible.” She wasn’t saying that merely to be polite. Lilliana was genuinely shocked. “You would think he would have some compassion, give you some extra time. It’s not as if this place has a waiting list or anything.”

  Surprise crossed Susan’s face before she hung her head and stared at the floor. She mumbled a few words, and Lilliana strained to make them out. “Well, to be honest, mom was behind on the rent. Ellison had been threatening to evict her for the last couple of months.”

  Now it was Lilliana’s turn to be surprised. “I was under the impression that your father had
left Bette quite well off.”

  Susan frowned. “He did. But my mother was not a good custodian of the funds. She bought stuff like that stupid painting. And then there were all those trips she went on. New York, London, even Paris. And those trips to Las Vegas with Mr. Rothenberg.”

  Bette? Taking trips to Las Vegas with Lenny?

  “Oh? I didn’t know she and Mr. Rothenberg were close.” And Lenny hadn’t thought to mention the relationship yesterday. She couldn’t remember any trips to Las Vegas—or anywhere—that Bette had taken since she’d known her. Had she forgotten?

  No. She was sure about that. If Bette had traveled over the past year, Lilliana hadn’t been aware of it. She certainly hadn’t heard that Bette had gone away with Lenny. What other secrets had Bette and Lenny shared?

  Susan looked like she’d bitten into a lemon. “I have no idea what she saw in him. There’s something obscene about a man that age looking like that, if you know what I mean.”

  Lilliana knew exactly what she meant, especially in light of her discovery about how he’d gotten that way.

  “Anyway, she liked the slot machines way too much. I told her she had to stop spending her money so extravagantly. There was still enough coming from the annuity to stay here, but she wouldn’t listen. She kept taking money out of it to buy more stuff. Which I now have to pack.” Susan sighed. “Sorry to dump on you.”

  “No, no, that’s perfectly all right.” And useful. Now she understood how Bette had found out enough about Lenny to blackmail him. It just went to show you how you never knew with people.

  “Thanks so much for offering to help.” Susan smiled.

  “It’s the least I can do,” Lilliana said, hoping she’d also have an opportunity to snoop.