“No idea,” Earlene said.
“Ummmmm,” said Edith.
“Hold on,” said Nan. “It seems to me, Edith, that I recall you fingering Sproot as the culprit here. Or were you doing that to cover your own tracks?”
“I think it was her,” said Edith. “I have no actual proof. It was not me. Who else could it have been? I mean, everything was so scrambled up, and the rain was pouring down soooo hard.”
“C’mon,” said George. “Level with us. All is forgiven, though we might ask for a little settlement to clean off the carving and fill in that nice little groove that was made in the top.”
“Okay, it was me,” said Dr. Sproot, who was tugging at a strand of her sticky hair and licking the lemonade off it as one yellow jacket alighted on her left ear and another on her right shoulder. “I did it when I first got here, before everything went all to hell. It kind of went along with the Indian burial grounds theme. I thought it would be a nice touch. As for the tomahawk, I found it in the history center gift shop over there in Bemis; you know, down near the old restored Indian village. It’s just a cheap replica. You’re welcome to keep it.”
“And the blood gushing out of poor Miguel’s head?” Nan wondered.
“Gobby oil paint that’s been sitting around in my basement for months. Lucky for me it didn’t wash off.” Another yellow jacket hovered two inches over Dr. Sproot’s head.
“Lucky for you it wasn’t merlot,” Nan said. “Otherwise we would have nailed your hide to that trellis over there. Now, let’s get you cleaned up before our little visitors start using you for a pincushion.”
28
Genocide and Retribution
A pickup truck pulled up along Payne Avenue. Out of the bed of the truck jumped Shirelle, who opened the tailgate and pulled out a couple of cages. Earlene emerged from the driver’s side of the pickup and waved at the Fremonts, who were sitting on the patio. The passenger door opened to reveal Dr. Phyllis Sproot, who only smirked in their general direction. Edith had been dispatched to comb the gardening stores in St. Anthony for those replacement flowers none of them had in their own gardens and which Burdick’s no longer had in stock. She was also assigned to work the odd-day watering shift. Dr. Sproot and Earlene, deemed the most culpable of the four, got the even-day shift in addition to their transplanting and rabbit-catching duties.
“Now, George,” Nan said. “No more gin. We’re in a sort of a law-enforcement situation here, and we have to keep our wits about us to properly supervise this mish, these mish . . . these . . .”
“Mish-creants?” said George.
“Thank you, dear,” said Nan, patting George’s hand. “Now, no more for me either. And by no means offer them anything to drink. They’ve got work to do.”
For the next three hours, with the vocal, gesticulating, and good-natured encouragement of George and Nan, who had switched over to ice water, Earlene, Dr. Sproot, and Shirelle baited and set rabbit traps, dug out the damaged hosta and a few petunias that had gotten trampled, and replaced them with their own, then watered the transplants.
“Don’t they have anything better to do than just sit there and watch us?” said Dr. Sproot to Earlene as they tamped the loose soil into place around the last transplanted variegated hosta. “It’s as if they’re mocking us. And they’re nothing more than drunks. And the hibiscus! Who came up with that idea?”
“Oh, keep your shirt on, Sproot. Look at it this way, you and I are now criminals in the eyes of the law. If it weren’t for the indulgence of the Fremonts, we’d be cooling our heels in the workhouse now. So, just put a lid on it.”
“I keep wondering who the idiot was who hired an incompetent like you,” said Dr. Sproot. “Who could be that stupid?”
“You didn’t exactly succeed either, did you, Sproot.”
“I would have if it hadn’t been for you, and your stupid intern, as you call her. Who was your client?”
Earlene was about to drop a shovelful of dirt on Dr. Sproot’s shoes when Shirelle yelled from the edge of the woods, where the four baited traps had been placed.
“You need to see this, Mrs. McGillicuddy!” Shirelle yelled. “You too, Mr. and Mrs. Fremont! Come over here!”
Once everyone except the subdued and sneering Dr. Sproot was gathered next to the excited and panting Shirelle, she pointed into the woods.
“Over there,” she said. “See it? And over there, too.”
“I don’t see anything, dear,” said Earlene, squinting. “What exactly is it you’re pointing at?”
“Rabbits. At least they look like rabbits. Why are they so still?”
“Then you must have the eyes of an eagle, Shirelle,” Nan said. “I don’t see anything.”
“I do,” George said. “There’s a ball of gray, right over there.”
He pointed toward a clump of underbrush about halfway through the woods. “And there.”
George swung his arm in an arc over to the left, about 30 degrees, so that he was pointing at a little clearing in the woods.
“There’s a couple of gray clumps right at the base of that buckthorn you’ve been after me to cut down for the last five years.”
“You have buckthorns in your woods!” cried Earlene. “Why, I never would have guessed the Fremonts would have allowed such a noxious, invasive species onto their grounds, even if it is in the wild woods.”
“I see them!” cried Nan. “What are they?”
“Ohmygosh!” Shirelle gasped. “There’s two right behind your shed.”
The group walked over to the shed. George stooped over into the woods to pick up a long branch that had fallen off one of their silver maples during the last storm, and poked it at one of the clumps, turning it over.
“Well, it is a rabbit, and as we can see, it is quite dead. No sign of any wound.”
“And that appears to be a young rabbit in its prime,” Earlene said. “Not old and sickly.”
“There’s another!” said Shirelle, pointing to a sixth motionless gray form about ten feet into the woods in front of them.
“Dead rabbits everywhere,” said Nan somberly. “Why?” She turned to look at Earlene. “Why, Earlene? Is this something you know about?”
“Yeah, Earlene, what’s the story here?” said George. “If you let a bunch of sickly and diseased rabbits into our yard to spread something around, you are in for a lot more trouble than you reckoned for. . . .”
“Really, Earlene, it’s one thing to damage plants. It’s completely another to start messing around with people’s health.”
“I . . . I . . . I . . .”
“Spit it out, Earlene!” barked Nan. Earlene cringed.
“I . . . don’t have any idea what’s going on here. No idea. I swear it. I would never, never do anything like that. Never in a million years. Those rabbits were healthy when we brought them over. Healthy! Weren’t they, Shirelle?”
“I don’t know what they were, Mrs. McGillicuddy,” said Shirelle, who had now decided she would instantly cut all ties with Earlene and turn state’s evidence against her if necessary. “All I know is you wanted to half starve them so when we brought them over here they would eat everything in sight.”
Earlene blushed. Nan, arms folded, glared at her.
“We should have let you go to jail, Earlene. And to suck an impressionable young woman into your devious schemes . . . why, it defies belief! And, by the way, who was it who hired you, Earlene? Who would stoop so low as to hire a garden assassin to do her dirty work? Was it that Yelena Diggity you claimed to hate so much? Huh? Or Vanessa Stevenson? Who was it, Earlene?”
“It was me.”
“What?”
“It was me,” said Earlene, her lip curling and cheeks twitching. “I was working for no one. I only pretended to have a client so my reputation would spread. That way, word would get out about what I had done, and lady gardeners would be lining up to pay for my services. A sort of publicity stunt, I guess you might say.”
Shirelle gaspe
d.
“Mrs. McGillicuddy!”
“That beats all, Earlene,” Nan said with a snort. “It really does.”
“Please!” begged a sobbing Earlene, who had dropped down on her knees. “Please don’t send me to jail! I’ll do anything! Anything! Just don’t send me to jail!”
“Here’s what you will do,” said Nan, glowering down at the cringing, crumpled form. “You will go home now, inform Livia Animal Control of the situation here, have them or someone else haul away the carcasses, and make sure someone tests them for rabies or whatever.”
“Those rabbits weren’t rabid!” cried Earlene, who had dissolved into a writhing, howling, pathetic human representation of woe. “What kind of monster do you take me for?”
“You will have them tested!”
With the help of George and Nan, Earlene stood up. She wiped her face with the sleeve of her work shirt, and beckoned to Shirelle to follow her back to the pickup.
“Mr. and Mrs. Fremont,” said Shirelle. “Is it okay if I stay here and look at your gardens for a while? They are so AWESOME! I can get a ride later.”
“Sure, Shirelle,” George said. “Stay as long as you like and look around to your heart’s content. I’m sure Mrs. Fremont will be happy to give you a guided tour.”
“You won’t be needing me anymore, Mrs. McGillicuddy,” Shirelle said. “You will have to find another intern.”
Earlene absorbed this news silently, her eyelids and lower lip twitching. She slouched off toward Dr. Sproot, who, all this time, had been sitting on the patio bench, mulling over the inequities of life, and wondering why the fickle gardening fates had chosen her—the estimable Dr. Phyllis Sproot, Ph.D.—as the victim of their cruel whims this year.
She was also beginning to fret that planting the hibiscus was not as gauche a move as she initially believed. In fact, it could be another stroke of genius that, along with the angel’s trumpets, could be the Fremonts’ passports to victory. Too bad she hadn’t gotten a few more whacks at those things!
“What was all that bawling about?” she said as Earlene retrieved her shovel and steel-toothed rake, which were propped against one of the ash trees. “My goodness, you’d have thought they were demanding your firstborn the way you were carrying on.”
Earlene glared at Dr. Sproot. Then, without a word in response, she took off at a trot toward the pickup truck.
“Hey!” yelled Dr. Sproot. “Wait for me!”
She bounded down the steps, flinging Nan’s pea gravel everywhere, but was too late; by the time she got to the street, Earlene had tossed the shovel and rake in the bed of the pickup, peeled out with a shriek of tires, and screeched through the intersection of Payne and Sumac. Then, she slowed down.
With her home two miles away and with no intention of further debasing herself before the Fremonts by asking them for a ride, Dr. Sproot took off at a sprint in pursuit. Earlene, cackling maniacally, had slowed down enough to allow her to catch up. Then, she stepped on the gas, shooting ahead about fifty yards before stopping. Dr. Sproot jogged toward her. This time, Earlene let her get to the passenger door and blurt out something about really having to go to the bathroom before gunning it, leaving Dr. Sproot standing in the middle of the street, screaming something inaudible and shaking her fist.
On the way home, Earlene tabled her resolve to follow the straight and narrow gardening path from now on. She would take the high road, but not until she had done one more sabotage job. It would be the crème de la crème of garden destruction, a no-holds-barred, damn-the-torpedoes suicide assault. No real planning required for this one. No effort to cover her tracks here. Everyone would know she did this job and it would go down in Livia lore. She’d launch her assault on the first day of the judging for the contest.
What better way for Earlene McGillicuddy to go out in a blaze of glory than by taking down Phyllis Sproot’s gardens.
29
Devastation
“I think I can solve our dead rabbit mystery,” George said.
Nan was only half listening. She was too busy balancing herself on the pedestal onto which Shirelle had lifted her. Over the past two hours, Shirelle had treated Nan as the golden goddess of gardening, lavishing upon her the kind of fulsome praise she had not heard since performing a flawless rendering of “Chopsticks” at the age of twelve on the family piano. Nan had given Shirelle the full, heavily annotated tour of the gardens, complete with anecdotes and silly asides about George, and the young woman lapped it up, bug-eyed and panting for more.
And all the questions! Why didn’t she plant zinnias? When would she prune her climbing roses? What did the bridal wreath spirea look like in full bloom? Would she start planting more ornamental grasses mixed in among the rocks? How had she managed to turn her backyard into paradise? Did she have a daughter? How would she feel about acquiring another one? Well, that last question really didn’t get asked but it might as well have been. By the time Shirelle called her brother to come pick her up and take her over to Earlene’s to get her car, a bond had grown between the two women that it takes some friends ten years to seal. There were proffered good-byes and hugs and promises to keep in touch. Shirelle wondered if she could come work for the Fremonts as a gardening intern.
“Well, we wouldn’t be able to pay you anything,” said Nan. “And there’s not very much left to do now but maintain everything and keep our fingers crossed for the contest. But we should have a burst of new blooms any day now. Come see them! You’re welcome to come over any time, Shirelle, and I will teach you whatever I can!”
Shirelle was beaming from ear to ear as her brother pulled into their driveway and honked his horn long enough to spoil the mood a little; she waved her way out of the driveway into the intersection and along Sumac until she passed out of sight.
“Earth to Nan. I think I’ve solved our dead rabbit mystery.”
“What? Oh . . . really? Why bother? The animal people will do their tests.”
“Just bear with me,” George said.
Still walking on a cloud, Nan followed George over to the angel’s trumpets, which had suffered a couple of glancing blows from the ineptly wielded hatchet of Dr. Phyllis Sproot. Seeing the wounded plant again brought Nan right back to earth with a thud.
“Gosh darn her!” she said. “Look at that gash! We’ll have to prune it now, pronto.”
“That’s not really what I’m looking at,” George said. “Look at this.”
The ground around the plant had been disturbed. The seed pods he thought he had ground deeply enough into the earth seemed to have been uncovered. Dangerous, mutilated seeds now lay strewn around the plant. Not only that, but carrot ends and lettuce and spinach traces littered the area around the seeds. Something else caught George’s eye. A few feet away, lying in the fresh cypress mulch between the variegated dogwoods and chain-link fence, was another rabbit, curled up, still, with a couple of paws extended out at unnatural angles from its body and obviously quite dead.
“The rabbits have been gorging themselves on angel’s trumpets seeds,” George said. “That’s what killed them all. They were running around the yard, famished, found this, and gorged themselves. Death from rabies or some other awful and sudden scourge? I don’t think so. But what I don’t get is I mashed all this stuff into the ground. Did the rabbits dig it up? And a meticulous observer will note that additional seed pods had been cut off the plant and, perhaps, scattered around its base. I wonder who might know something about this. What I figure is this: a couple of those rabbits died from what we put down here before. But someone—who could it be?—must have added a little supplement recently to make sure the job was done right. Hmmm?”
“Hmmm,” said Nan, irritated that her buoyant mood had been disturbed by George’s petty neuroses. “Well, if that’s the case, then it worked, didn’t it? I mean, didn’t we scatter that rabbit food around here anyway as a form of pest control? I just added a little booster shot to the mix, and sprinkled on a little rat poison—just a
little teensy bit. Okay, maybe not so teensy—and, voilà, it solved our sudden, unexpected infestation. And gee whiz, George, I didn’t know what killed those rabbits . . . at least not for sure. It could have been rabies. It could have been something else. Besides, I didn’t want to let Earlene off the hook on a little technicality. What’s important is I was able to detach the seeds with a minimum of disturbance to the rest of the plants. Why, look, you can barely tell they’ve been altered except for that gash, damn that Sproot! And, if you ask me, it’s worth it. Those bloody rabbits were going to nibble us out of contention. All this reminds me that we need to police this area a little bit before the contest. It’s looking a little messy, to say nothing of this mutilated stem.”
“When? When did you do this?”
“Oh, a couple of days ago. You were gone somewhere for a few hours. What’s the problem anyway? You wanted to kill rabbits and I wanted to kill rabbits and that’s what we did. Besides, you wanted the damn seed pods cut down anyway!”
“I wanted to control the population, not commit genocide!” moaned George, visions of those orphaned rabbits beginning to populate his imagination once again.
“I say good riddance,” said Nan. “Now quit being so goddamn squeamish. You’re the one who smashed a rabbit’s head in, not me!”
“I know, but that was a horrible thing to do, and you can’t imagine the guilt. . . .”
“For Chrissakes, quit being such a hypersensitive geek. Look at it this way: they died with full stomachs.”
“They died in pain, and hallucinating, not able to tell fantasy from reality. It would have been a long, lingering, crazy-as-hell death.”
“Well, obviously we didn’t do the job as thoroughly as I would have liked.”
“Huh?”
“Look over there.”
Nan pointed to where the compost pile touched the woods. A small, silent, and still ball of fur gazed, unblinking, at them, twitched one of its ears, then, when they moved toward it, bounded off in three big leaps into the woods.
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