“How did you meet him?” Pamela leaned back in the purple velvet chair. Perhaps an entertaining story was in the offing.
“I do voice-over work,” Nightingale said. “Through an agency. He contacted the agency. The knitting came later—the bedtime stories alone just weren’t doing the job.” She nodded toward the canvas bag on Pamela’s lap. “He gave me an old knitting magazine that had been his mom’s. At first I didn’t have a clue, but I figured it out, more or less. The main thing was for him to hear the needles clicking. The hat was probably a little overambitious, but the first one came out pretty good, so I just kept on with the hats.” She shrugged. “They make good gifts. And he paid for the yarn, so what’s not to like?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Bettina’s car was still gone when Pamela got back home. She had a lot to report, so much, that instead of distracting her friend from the nature center’s turtle presentation with a phone call, she’d wait until Bettina returned. Besides, it was nearly two p.m. and the mid-morning lemon-poppy seed cake hadn’t been sufficient to serve as an early lunch.
Catrina was dozing on the sofa as Pamela entered and looked up briefly. “How are you?” Pamela said. She stepped into the living room and studied the cat. How soon could you tell if a cat was pregnant, she wondered. Perhaps Nell would know.
In the kitchen, she poured a can of lentil soup into a small saucepan and set it to heat on the stove. She buttered a slice of the bread Penny had brought back from the Co-Op, wondering when the “Killer Aardvark” issue would finally be resolved, so that she herself could shop there again.
After her quick meal, she called Nell. The story of how she’d allowed Catrina to dash through the open door and spend the night outside felt like a confession, but Nell was kind.
“The urge to mate is very powerful,” Nell said. “Creatures find a way. When I was in college, I used to sneak out of my dorm’s laundry-room window to spend the night with Harold.”
“What I need to figure out,” Pamela said, “is how can I tell if she’s pregnant? Bettina says there’s a tomcat in the neighborhood.”
“You won’t know for a few weeks,” Nell said, “but even they can get morning sickness. You’d better hold off on getting her fixed though. Wait till you know what’s going on.”
Catrina had wandered into the kitchen. She jumped onto a chair, and from there onto the table. Pamela absentmindedly stroked her as Nell described her own recent encounters with the natural world, in the form of her garden.
“Bare spots,” Nell said. “The winter was hard on things.”
“My daylilies are quite overgrown,” Pamela said. “Why don’t I dig some tubers and bring them up the hill? I’ve got to spend the afternoon working on things for the magazine, but I’ll deliver the tubers tomorrow morning.”
Pamela had no sooner headed up to her office and turned on her computer than the doorbell summoned her back downstairs. Through the lace on the oval window she recognized Bettina, who was tapping on the glass for good measure.
“Did you know female turtles can lay thousands of eggs in their lifetimes, but out of all those eggs only a few turtles survive?” she asked as she stepped into the entry.
“I didn’t,” Pamela said. “But I’ve got things to tell you too.”
As they headed toward the kitchen, Catrina strolled by. “That reminds me—” Bettina paused and watched the cat make her slow progress toward the sofa. “Does she seem . . . different... at all?”
“It’s too soon to know,” Pamela said. “At least according to Nell.”
“Wilfred feels terrible. He thinks it was totally his fault that she got out. If there are kittens, we’ll take them. I promise. All of them.”
“Let’s wait and see,” Pamela said. She quickly made coffee and they sat at the kitchen table as she described her meeting with Nightingale.
“Sounds nutty,” Bettina commented. “But kind of believable. It looks like Reynolds is our guy. Unless Clayborn discovers that there’s really a connection between the doll full of pins and the murder. Or decides Marcus Verteel is worth looking into after all.”
“Does Detective Clayborn know about Reynolds?” Pamela asked.
“They tracked him down and interviewed him, of course, right after the murder,” Bettina said. “But he doesn’t know what we know, and I can’t tell him what we know because then I’d have to tell him about how we’ve been snooping in the house and all of that.” She added more cream to her coffee. “I’ll figure out when we can be sure Reynolds is on duty in the shop, and we’ll go back and talk to him. Maybe I can get Wilfred to call and ask when he can confer with the partner who does the buying, to discuss the houseful of furniture he just inherited.”
* * *
Pamela finally did get to settle down at her desk, and she worked without stopping until she heard the front door open and then Penny’s voice. The words were indistinct, but as soon as she opened her office door and started down the stairs, she realized that she wasn’t the one who was being addressed.
“Did you have a nice adventure?” Penny was murmuring. She was crouching on the floor stroking Catrina, who was stretched out on her side in a pose made all the more languorous by her closed eyes and slight smile.
Penny looked up. “How does she seem?” she asked.
“It’s too soon to say.”
Penny hopped to her feet and Catrina opened her eyes, looking resentful that her rub had been interrupted. “I’ll run up and change,” Penny said. She’d dressed for work that morning in a pleated navy-blue skirt and a white blouse with red polka dots.
* * *
After dinner, Pamela ventured out into the May evening, taking with her a section of the day’s newspaper and a canvas bag that had long since been superseded by newer canvas bags. The sky was still bright, with sunset nearly an hour away. In the garage, she exchanged her sandals for an old pair of clogs and retrieved a shovel and her gardening gloves.
A clump of daylilies returned year after year in a sunny spot between the side of Pamela’s garage and the hedge that separated her backyard from Richard Larkin’s. She stepped gingerly among the long spikes of leaves and the slender stalks bearing cheery blooms shaped like fragile six-armed starfish.
Daylilies were nearly indestructible, she knew. Any bare spots would fill in quickly as the hardy plants spread. She set the curved edge of the shovel blade against the ground in a spot where one plant seemed to leave off and another begin. She stomped down hard to drive the blade into the soil, twisted the shovel, moved it to the right, and stomped again. A few more stomps and she leaned on the shovel handle to lever out the clump of loosened earth with the fingerlike daylily tubers. She laid the clump on a sheet of newspaper and moved to a spot a few feet away to repeat the process.
Soon she’d accumulated six clumps of tubers, the trailing leaves making them resemble exotic offerings in a market’s produce section. She knelt on the grass to roll each in its sheet of newspaper and tuck the rolls into the canvas bag. She’d leave the bag out in the cool night air and deliver it to Nell the next morning.
As she clambered to her feet, a rustling in the hedge caught her attention. She looked toward where a spray of leaves near the ground was vibrating, and as she watched a cat emerged. It was a huge ginger cat, and it stalked past the stand of daylilies with as much self-possession as if it weren’t countless generations removed from its wild forebears. Just before it veered off to make its way down the driveway, it turned and gave Pamela a long stare. She could have sworn that it was smiling.
* * *
The next morning, Pamela set out after coffee and toast, the canvas bag full of daylily tubers slung over her shoulder. The air was clear, the day was bright, and May was so far advanced that even at ten a.m. it was worth crossing the street if a row of trees offered a respite from the sun. By the time she’d climbed the hill and reached the corner of Nell and Harold’s street, she was sweating and panting a bit. If she hadn’t stopped right then to wipe
her forehead, catch her breath, and shift the daylilies to her other shoulder, she might not have known about the new development in the Randall Jefferson murder case until she heard it reported on the radio.
As it was, she stood on the corner waiting for her breathing to return to normal and enjoying the cooling sight of the lush foliage in the surrounding yards. Randall Jefferson’s yard was particularly lush, even overgrown, with him no longer on hand to schedule landscapers’ visits. The plantings that bordered the meandering slate steps nearly hid the steps in some spots. When she and Bettina had visited, they had zigzagged their way up, pushing foliage aside, to reach the impressive double doors . . . and—Pamela blinked—one of those doors was ajar right now.
She blinked again. Not so odd though, really. Reynolds Jefferson had used the door leading to the driveway to carry his boxes of goodies out, but perhaps someone with a legitimate errand was inside now, even a Realtor. Perhaps enough time had passed that the chores in-volved in settling the estate could begin. Or perhaps the police were scavenging for overlooked clues. Detective Clayborn might step out onto the porch at any moment.
She crossed the street and skirted the edge of Jefferson’s sloping yard, heading toward Nell and Harold’s house. As she made her way past the forest of azaleas and rhododendrons that took the place of a lawn, she glanced toward the imposing buff-colored structure, wondering who its next occupant would be. But her eyes paused midway up the rise that gave the house its imposing air. A glint of silver amid the greens and blooms seemed out of place. She stopped and stared. Something else seemed out of place as well. Just visible beneath the lowest branches of a towering rhododendron was a man’s shoe.
She backtracked to view the scene from another angle. Standing on the lowest step of the slate walkway that led to the front door, she could no longer see the silver object. But she could see what the shoe was attached to—a leg. And next to it was another shoe and another leg. The legs were wearing trousers—cuffed trousers—made of some light-colored fabric. Between the trouser cuffs and the shoes, brownish in color, were ankles sheathed in dark-colored socks.
Curiosity overcame the sudden attack of nerves that had made Pamela’s heart speed up. Ignoring the urgent thudding in her chest, she set down the canvas bag containing the tubers and continued climbing the steps. Halfway up, she stepped off the walkway and detoured around an azalea that reached nearly to her shoulders. Pushing the blossom-heavy branches of the azalea aside, she edged toward the giant rhododendron and stooped toward where the legs emerged from the thick, dark green foliage.
The trousers were seersucker, the classic blue and white stripe. The silver object that had first caught her attention proved to be a teapot, large and round as a pumpkin, with a raised design featuring an impressive dragon, and a spout and handle modeled to resemble bamboo. She stood and peered around the large shrub in order to get a better view, and realized that the teapot lay as if it had just slipped from the grasp of a hand that was now visible.
Pamela backed away from the rhododendron as her mind raced. Summon the police, obviously, but her habit when walking was to leave her phone at home and let her thoughts wander. She’d hurry on to Nell’s—that would be the best plan. Something was nagging at her though. The seersucker pants. Could it be that Reynolds Jefferson was no longer a suspect in the killing of his brother? Because he himself had just become a victim?
She stepped toward the rhododendron and slid a hand past one of its huge wine-colored blossoms. She did the same thing with her other hand. Then she grasped a branch with each hand, pushed the branches aside, and leaned into the leafy interior of the plant, inhaling its earthy, woody smell. Below she could see a torso, also clothed in seersucker, and enough of a face to recognize the man who had been filling his car with boxes of goodies looted from his dead brother’s house. But the V-shape between the jacket’s lapels, where a shirt and bow tie would have been visible, was hidden from view—not by an intervening branch, but by a splash of unexpected color. Turquoise to be exact.
Whoever was responsible for the fact that Reynolds Jefferson was now dead and reposing under a rhododendron in the front yard of his family home had finished off the job by plopping one of the Arborville knitting club’s aardvarks on his chest. Pamela let go of the branches and they snapped back into place, brushing her cheeks with their stiff leaves. She squeezed past the azalea and launched herself down the slate walkway toward the sidewalk. She’d run to Nell’s, only a few houses away. But at the bottom of the steps she stopped.
Instead of turning toward Nell’s, she hurried toward the corner and then up the hill toward Randall Jefferson’s driveway. At the driveway’s end she paused just long enough to observe that a black Mercedes SUV with New York plates was parked near the back door.
An accomplice had pulled up in the SUV the day Bettina and Pamela watched Reynolds Jefferson stage the boxes on the driveway. Loading the boxes in the SUV and transporting them to J & J Antiques had evidently been a two-person job. Had Reynolds come back alone today? Or was the accomplice lurking somewhere, afraid to meet the same fate that had just befallen his boss? Or was he perhaps the killer, observing her from the shrubbery?
That thought set Pamela in motion. She whirled around and sped toward Nell’s house, grabbing up the canvas bag with the tubers en route. Her feet struck the sidewalk with bone-jarring thuds and the bag flopped against her back. She arrived on Nell’s porch, chest heaving as frantically as if she’d run a mile rather than half a block—though the steps that led up to the front door of Nell and Harold’s substantial house were challenging—and pressed the doorbell. A faint chime echoed inside and time passed—probably no more than a second, but things were happening in slow motion now, and she found herself pounding on the door, desperate for a response.
The door swung back to reveal Nell. “What is it? What’s happened?” Nell asked, hunching forward and peering intently at Pamela.
“There’s a body!” Pamela gestured in the direction of Jefferson’s house, and her arm began to flail uncontrollably. “And an aardvark! Under a rhododendron!” She felt a catch in her throat.
“Oh, my dear!” Nell reached out and drew Pamela over the threshold.
“Has something happened?” Harold Bascomb stood in the arch that led from the entry to the living room.
Still hugging Pamela, Nell turned her head. “Call the police, Harold,” she said, sounding somewhat annoyed. “There’s been another one of those aardvark killings.”
Nell insisted that Pamela accept a cup of tea. At some point the canvas bag with the daylily tubers slipped off her shoulder and was tossed to the side in the entry, and she found herself seated at Nell’s kitchen table. The tea kettle hadn’t even begun to whistle when, heading up the hill, came the sound of a siren, like the high-pitched whine of an angry animal—and then another, and another.
The kettle finally whistled and Nell set loose tea steeping in a cheerful pot. In a few minutes she pronounced the brew drinkable and prepared a cup for Pamela, adding a spoonful of sugar and a dollop of milk. “Now you sit here and drink this,” she said, slipping the cup in front of Pamela, “while I—” She stepped into the hallway. “Harold?” she called, and when there was no answer, added, “Now where has he gotten to?”
Pamela sipped the tea, feeling as comforted by Nell’s solicitude as by the sweet, fragrant liquid. She heard the front door open and Nell call, “Harold! You come back in here right now. They don’t need your help.”
Harold came panting into the kitchen, followed by Nell. “They found the murder weapon,” he announced. “Another rock, just like before. I saw them looking at it, and I heard one of them say it had blood on it, but they didn’t pick it up. They have to wait for those guys in the white coveralls, from the sheriff’s department. But Clayborn is already out there. I told him you were the one who found the body, and that you were sitting in our kitchen.”
* * *
Detective Clayborn wanted a private interview, not a c
ozy chat in Nell’s kitchen with Nell and Harold as audience. As he escorted Pamela down the sidewalk toward where his police car was parked, it occurred to her that she was in something of a predicament. It wasn’t that she could possibly be a suspect—certainly he’d already realized that this second murder, so similar to the Arborfest murder, was the work of the same killer. And he’d rapidly dismissed her as responsible for Randall Jefferson’s death.
No—the problem was that she knew much more about the victim than the police did. A wallet, which perhaps they’d already recovered, would tell them his name and address. And they’d make the connection to J & J Antiques soon enough. (She paused in her ruminations to reflect sadly that the other “J” in “J & J” had just been deprived of his partner—in life and in business, as he had put it.) But she could hasten things along for them, if only there was a way to do so without revealing her own snooping.
Sometimes it was best not to overanalyze.
“He’s Randall Jefferson’s brother,” she blurted out as Detective Clayborn reached to open the passenger-side door of his police car.
He paused, his fingers on the door handle, his eyes on her. His homely face tightened. Then it relaxed, as if he’d thought better of the expression. He smiled slightly. “Let’s talk about that,” he said, swinging the door open and gesturing for her to get in. He settled in the driver’s seat and took out a small notepad and a pen.
“But,” he said, turning toward her, “why don’t you tell me first how you happened to discover the body?”
“I was walking past Randall Jefferson’s house,” Pamela said, “on my way to Nell and Harold Bascomb’s, to deliver some daylily tubers.” Her mind flashed to the tubers, abandoned in their canvas bag in Nell’s entry. “I looked up toward the house—it is quite impressive. There was something silver in the bushes, shiny. It seemed out of place, so I stopped and looked closer. Then I saw a shoe, sticking out from under a big rhododendron bush. So I walked up the path and waded through the azaleas till I got to the rhododendron, and I pushed some branches aside, and there he was underneath, with the aardvark on his chest.”
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