by Vicki Delany
“You said the old man had been ill for a long time. I guess he lost interest in the garden.”
“There’s a lack of interest, and then there’s serious neglect. I wonder if the inside of the house is as bad as the outside.”
Jayne might have muttered something like “I don’t want to find out.”
We crept around the house. Spacious lawns, an acre at least, stretched down a slight incline to end at a patch of heavy woods. A large fountain dominated the center of the lawn. A tall, graceful woman clad in classic flowing stone robes poured water out of a Greek vase into a pool at her bare feet. The woman had no nose and numerous cracks ran through her stone garments. No water spilled from her jar, and dead brown leaves floated in the mucky rainwater in which she stood.
“Sad,” Jayne said.
A wide staircase led from the back lawns to a veranda running the entire width of the house. I imagined partygoers sipping champagne and chatting while light spilled through the French doors and a round, white moon hung over beautiful gardens and water tinkled in the fountain. Occasionally a couple would slip away from the party to talk softly and exchange stolen kisses in the deep shadows beneath the ancient trees.
Wasn’t my imagination getting away from me.
The veranda appeared to still be in use. Terracotta pots containing multicolored coleus and yellow and white begonias, lush with blooms, lined the stone walls. A thoroughly modern glass-and-aluminum patio table was set up by the doors, six chairs arranged around it. The furled sun umbrella and matching chair cushions were bright with color. Three ceramic pots of yellow begonias sat in the center of the table. I put my finger into the dirt and it came out slightly moist. As there had been no rain in this part of Massachusetts for several days, the plants had been watered by hand.
“Now we really are trespassing, Gemma,” Jayne said.
“Anyone home?” I yelled, rapping on the French doors. “It’s Jayne and Gemma from West London. We tried the bell, but no one answered. Hello?” Nothing moved, inside the house or out. I began to turn away, thinking we could do nothing more here but creep out again, when a shimmer of light coming from the far side of the house caught my eye. Water. A swimming pool perhaps. I crossed the veranda and turned another corner. It was a pool, and it was full. The water was slightly cloudy and a few leaves floated in it, but it wasn’t totally neglected. Lounge chairs were laid out, and a book and a white mug rested on a small round glass table. The chair beside the table had its back to me, but I could see the bottom of someone’s feet and bare legs. Judging by the hairless calves and brightly painted red toenails, it was a woman.
“Sorry to bother you,” I said in a good loud voice. “But we did knock. Perhaps you didn’t hear.” I marched across the patio to the chair. “I’m Gemma Doyle and . . .”
The woman lying there was in her midsixties, five foot five, plump but not fat. Her ash-blonde hair was expensively cut and colored. She wore what at first appeared to be a white sundress with a pattern of red flowers.
Only when I got closer did I realize the red flowers were splashes of blood. A knife pierced the woman’s chest, and she was very dead.
Chapter 10
It took all of my considerable powers of persuasion to convince Jayne to return to the Miata and get the heck out of town.
“Don’t touch anything,” I yelled, as she ran toward the woman and stretched out her hand as though to remove the knife.
“We have to help her.”
“We’re too late.” Drops of blood had fallen down the woman’s chest and splashed onto the patio stones, where they’d dried in the sun. There wasn’t a lot of blood on her clothes, and what little there was had also dried. I knelt beside her and, taking great care as to where I put my hands, leaned over her and lightly touched the side of her neck with the back of my hand. Cold and still. The blade had pierced her heart, and she’d died instantly.
I studied her face. Her eyes were open in shock, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt she’d been in the Emporium on Tuesday, purchasing a copy of How to Think like Sherlock and pretending to be part of a bridge group holiday.
I got to my feet. I held my hand over the coffee mug on the small side table but felt no warmth. The cup was about half full, and cream had formed into a skin on the top.
“Let’s go.” I grabbed Jayne’s arm, and she turned a pale, shocked face toward me. I gave her a tug, and she stumbled after me. We ran across the veranda, skirting the table and chairs, past the empty windows, around the unseeing stone woman and her empty vase, across the remains of a once-lush lawn, through the tatters of the fence and then the hedge. We stepped out onto the street, and I kept us to a brisk, but not too fast, pace. Unfortunately, it was not the middle of winter, and we weren’t wrapped in heavy coats, scarves, and hats. I could only hope security cameras were focused on the entrance to properties, not the middle of the street.
The children’s party was still in full swing, and the Miata was just one high-end car among others. We hopped in, and I drove sedately away.
Jayne fumbled in her bag for her phone.
“Put that away,” I said.
“We have to call the police.”
“We will. In due course. We couldn’t help her, Jayne. It was too late for that, probably by several hours.” The mug on the table had contained coffee gone stone cold. Coffee, more likely to be a breakfast drink than something consumed midafternoon around the pool.
“Did you recognize her?”
“It was Elaine Kent.”
“The woman who’d been part of the bridge tour?”
“The same.”
“The guard’ll tell the police we were there.”
“He will also tell them we drove away when refused admittance. One hopes he was enough on the ball to have marked down the time of our visit. Good thing we were earlier stopped on the highway in Cape Cod, heading toward Boston, by none other than the investigating detectives.”
“If we have alibis, then why are we running away?”
“We’re not running away. We’re engaging in a strategic retreat. I do not want to have to explain my reasoning to the Boston Police—that gets so tedious—and then wait for them to contact the WLPD, who will probably want Ryan, at best, and Estrada, at worst, to come down and confirm I am a person of interest in a West London homicide.”
“I don’t think I touched anything, other than pushing a few bushes out of the way, but you rang the bell and knocked on the veranda door.”
“I used my knuckles. No fingerprints. I held my hand above the coffee cup to check the warmth of the contents. I didn’t touch it.”
“Gemma, dare I ask why you go around consciously not leaving fingerprints?”
“As I said, I find it extremely tedious to be the subject of police interest. With few exceptions, their pedestrian minds have trouble following my line of reasoning.”
“My pedestrian mind has trouble following you sometimes.”
I turned my head and gave her a smile. “But you do anyway.”
Her smile in return was strained. “Because you’re my friend. Do you have any idea who might have killed Mrs. Kent?”
“No. I simply don’t have enough information about her personal or family relationships. It might have nothing to do with the inheritance or with Mary Ellen, but I find that so impossible to believe that I’ll assume, until proven otherwise, that the two killings are directly related. I find it extremely interesting that no one answered the door.”
“Because the woman of the house was dead, Gemma.”
“No maid. Middle of the day, middle of the week? In conjunction with the sloppy security and the state of the gardens, I suspect the family has fallen on hard times.”
“Hard times?”
“As in short of funds. The patriarch is recently deceased, his will is in the courts, but I’d expect his children would still have some money. Colin should be getting a handsome salary as CEO of the companies. The state of the garden indicates the plac
e hasn’t had money spent on it for a good long time. If the old man was confined to the house, he’d naturally lose interest in the grounds, but letting it fall into such a state indicates far more than simply lack of interest. It’s not as if he was likely to have hefted a rake or pruning scissors and done the gardening himself even when he was hale and hearty. The value of the house and property is being undermined by the lack of maintenance. The gardeners and full time maids were let go when Kent couldn’t afford to keep them on, same for the security. The guard’s uniform said he was with Boston Home Protection Services. I’m going to look them up, and when I do, I suspect I’ll find the sort of outfit people only hire when they can’t get anything better.”
“Gemma, need I remind you that this is better left to the police?”
“I don’t trust Estrada. I fear she’s the sort of single-minded detective that, once she’s fixed on a suspect, won’t consider other options. However, Ryan needs to know that I can identify Elaine Kent as having been in West London on Monday. When we get home, I’ll give him a call.”
“Are you going to tell him what we found here?”
“I’ll say we were refused admittance and drove away. That is the absolute truth.”
“But not the whole truth.”
“I’ll decide at the time what to reveal. If I have to.” I took a quick glance at Jayne. She was staring out the window, watching the scenery whip past. A lock of hair had freed itself from her ponytail and blew around her face. She lifted a hand and tucked it behind her ear, whereupon it promptly worked itself lose. Trapped in her hair, a dead leaf fluttered behind her head like a flag, and a streak of blood had dried on her cheek where she’d been scratched by the bushes.
I checked my own hair and found twigs and leaves. I pulled them loose and threw them to the wind. “If the police talk to you, don’t even try to lie. Lay the whole story out and tell them I forced you to leave the scene.”
“You forced me?” That strained smile again.
“Convinced you, then.” Jayne had the most open, honest face I’d ever seen. If she tried to lie to Estrada, she’d be clapped in irons before she knew what was happening.
Leave the lying to me. Every time.
“Use the GPS,” I said to her. “Find the location of the nearest high school.”
“We’re going to school?”
“On further reflection, I’ve decided that we can’t simply drive away. Someone needs to call nine-one-one, but I don’t want it to be from our phones.” Mrs. Kent had a family. Her husband would be home from work soon, perhaps her daughter. She might have young nieces and nephews, or children of friends, stopping by later for a visit. I couldn’t leave her body to be found by kids or someone who loved her. Even worse would be if no one cared that she hadn’t been seen for a while, and she wasn’t found for some time. It was spring, but the forecast for the next few days was for temperatures in the high seventies.
“Found one,” Jayne said. She gave me directions.
I turned into a pleasant middle-class neighborhood. The houses had been built in the ’50s or ’60s, big lots with small houses for large families. Most of the properties were well maintained—grass cut, flowers planted, picket fences painted. Mailboxes formed a straight line at the end of driveways and a few flags fluttered from white porches.
I drove past the high school, again keeping strictly to the speed limit. It was three thirty, and classes were getting out. Groups of teenagers clustered at the school gates or walked singly or in pairs down the sidewalk. Some of them were smoking, and almost all were on their mobile phones.
Excellent.
I turned the corner and parked the Miata in the shade of a huge old oak tree. I put the top up. A convertible is a very noticeable car. “Stay here,” I said to Jayne.
“Gemma, what are you doing?”
“I’ll explain later.” I dug in my wallet and counted out a grand total of five dollars in one dollar bills. “Do you have any money?”
“I might. Are you buying us snacks for the drive home? I’m not hungry, Gemma, but I could use a bottle of water.”
“Fifty bucks should do it.”
“Fifty dollars for water?”
I held out my hand, shaking it impatiently. She gave me two twenties and a ten.
“I’ll be right back. Please don’t use your phone while I’m away.”
“Why not?”
“Better not to have any record of it being in Boston at this time.” I stuffed the money in my pocket. “Just a precaution. In the meantime, you might want to tidy up a bit. You look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backward. Which, come to think of it, you have.” To the sound of Jayne’s screech when she pulled down the visor mirror and saw her reflection, I popped the trunk of the car. I found a Boston Red Sox ball cap and a long blue scarf, and slammed the trunk shut. I pulled the hat low over my face and wrapped the scarf around my neck. Not much of a disguise, but all I could do at a moment’s notice. I trotted down the street, turned the corner, and walked toward the school. A light wind lifted the edges of the scarf and it trailed behind me. I didn’t have to wait long before two boys came my way. They were fourteen or fifteen, sauntering along with not a care in the world. They carried bulging backpacks and wore their trousers slung low but not obscenely so.
“Hi,” I said, Boston accent firmly in place. “Sorry to bother you, but I need to use your phone. Do you mind?”
They eyed me. The taller one had the barest touch of whiskers on his upper lip. The shorter one sneered openly at me. “As if.”
“Is it an emergency?” the taller and better-mannered one asked.
“No,” I pulled my lip up to one side, in quick rapid movements. As expected the boys stared, while trying not to, at it. “I need to make an important call, and my phone’s dead. I promise you it won’t be long distance, and I won’t take more than a minute. Less, even.” I pulled a bill out of my pocket. I tried to look harmless and helpless. More lip twitches. “Twenty dollars?” If questioned by the police, the nervous tic would replace every other characteristic in their minds.
“I guess that’ll be okay,” the taller one said.
“Forty,” the short one said.
I sighed heavily and handed over forty dollars. The tall one pulled his phone out of his pocket and entered his password. I took it from him and walked a few feet away. I turned my back to them and held my head down. The taller boy stayed where he was, but the smaller one walked around me. He didn’t trust me not to run with the phone. He was a smart, although rude, kid.
I faced directly into a bush and dialed 9-1-1.
“Police, fire, or ambulance?”
“Police.” I kept the Boston accent but lowered my voice, hoping to sound like a teenage boy. “There’s a woman dead at 864 Elm Trail. I . . . I’m sorry, but I climbed the fence, just for fun, like, and there she was. Dead, I’m sure of it. She’d been knifed.” My voice trembled with emotion. “She’s by the pool. I’m sorry.”
“What is your name, sir?”
“I . . . I don’t want to say. Sorry.”
“Please stay on the line, sir.”
“Sorry.” I hung up. I tried to be surreptitious about wiping the entirety of the phone down with the edges of my scarf, but the short one gave me a very strange look.
“Thanks.” Still holding it by the scarf, I handed the phone back. Then I walked away in the direction I’d been going. I let them watch me for a few moments, and when I reached the next corner, I turned around. The boys had continued on down the street. No doubt I was already forgotten as they argued over how to use their ill-gotten gains.
I walked as quickly as I dared, well aware that a running woman would attract a lot of attention, back to the Miata.
I jumped into the car. “We’re outta here.” I took off the scarf and hat.
“You going to tell me what you were doing just now?”
“I called nine-one-one and told them what we found at the Kent home. I couldn’t leave he
r for her family to find.”
“I’m glad you did. But where did you go? Did you see a pay phone?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Won’t they be able to trace the call?” Jayne said. “And fingerprint the phone. Or did you use your tongue to press the keys?”
“Most amusing. Tracing the call will take them time.” I didn’t know if the police would even bother to do more than send a patrol car around to the house. The guard would tell them no one had gone in. Would they then consider it a prank call and drive away? It was up to them. I’d done what I could. “By then we’ll be back in West London. Now, let’s go home. I’ve had enough of Boston for one day.”
Chapter 11
As we approached the outskirts of West London, Jayne said, “Am I allowed to use my phone now?”
“Go ahead.”
She called Fiona to check in, and on being told they’d managed just fine without her, she asked me to take her home. Right now, she said, she wanted to be alone. “I’m supposed to be meeting Robbie later, but I’m going to cancel. I don’t want to have to put up a cheerful front.”
“Brilliant idea,” I said. “In that case, a quiet dinner alone at the Blue Water Café would be just the ticket.” And if Andy happened to see her there, sad and lonely, and stop by to offer her a kind word, all the better.
“No,” she said. “I’m going to stay in and watch trashy TV. They don’t need me at work, and I’m not in the mood for going out.”
She had an apartment in a well-maintained, modern townhouse complex not far from the harbor. I dropped her off. Despite the two-hour drive back from Boston, her face was still pale and her hand had shaken when she called Fiona.
I felt a sudden twinge of guilt. Poor guileless Jayne. I couldn’t put her in the position of attempting to lie to the police and, when she eventually slipped up and confessed all, possibly be charged with obstruction. “If the police question you about today, don’t even try to lie to them,” I reminded her. “Answer all their questions as truthfully as you can. And remember what I said: It’s all my fault.”