Pecan Flan Murder Plan

by Nancy McGovern

  Andrew Martinez nodded. “Oh, yes, according to reports, they were there the day of—”

  “Yes,” Faith said quickly, not wanting Nathan and Robert Senior to have to hear the word that was coming next. “Some of the kids are going to come back, work on the garden, work with me in the new café. We want to give them a new lease of life. Make the place about hope.”

  Robert Senior was listening attentively, his eyes full of feeling.

  “We’re going to rename part of it Robbie’s Springs of Hope,” Nathan said. “I’d love you to come see it sometime, Robert… Rob, sorry.”

  “I’d love to, son. I’ll be there as soon as you call.”

  Andrew Martinez flashed them a winning smile. “I would be very keen to pay a visit myself. It sounds like a wonderful thing for the area, after the tragedy. Well done, Nathan. You have a real community spirit, and I think that should be applauded.”

  Nathan nodded. “I just want to see Robbie celebrated properly. And he was a guy who believed in hope, and people being together, and people encouraging each other. So the more we can bring that into Paradise Falls, the better.”

  Robert Senior got off his chair and wrapped his arms around Nathan. “Thank you, son,” he said, his voice breaking. “Thank you.”

  *****

  Chapter 7

  “Nah,” Alizee said, looking over at the stone building that would soon be the café. “Faith’s Café sounds so boring.” She gave Faith a pointed look. “And like you’re too into yourself. Anyways, what if you can’t come in one day and someone else has to run it for you? It’ll be like, Faith is gone! All our faith is gone!”

  Faith had to chuckle at Alizee’s energy.

  “Hmm,” Alizee said, twisting her blonde ponytail round and round in her fingers, which it seemed she often did when she was deep in thought. “Why not… Eat With Faith?”

  “Wow, I actually love that!” Faith said. “That’s a really good idea, Alizee. Come, let’s go set up.” Faith walked up to the doorway, a huge plastic box under her arm filled with baking supplies.

  “Not to be mean or anything, yeah,” Alizee said as she followed behind. “But I think you should talk to Laura about how you should talk to us properly.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s okay. All the new staff at the unit do it. It’s like, the way you just said, That’s a really good idea, Alizee.” Alizee repeated Faith’s phrase in a super-preppy, overexcited way that stung Faith a little, if she was honest. “It just sounds a bit… like you’re talking to a kid. We don’t respond well to that. We don’t need sunshine and rainbows and gold stars and all of that trash, okay? Just be like Laura and talk to me like I’m a normal person.”

  “I am talking to you like you’re a normal person,” Faith said, and she couldn’t keep the irritation out of her voice. Perhaps Alizee had hit a nerve. Faith couldn’t lie to herself – she did feel nervous about the kids coming again. She just hadn’t come across many people in her life who’d been through such tough experiences. Plus, her dreadful bullying experiences in high school made her wary of teens. But she did want to try to get along with them and help make a difference to them.

  “You sound irritated,” Alizee said. “Want to talk it out?”

  That was exactly how Laura spoke nowadays – it seemed they had a culture of talking through feelings at the unit.

  “No thanks,” Faith said tightly, wishing she could loosen up but totally not sure how to.

  They went inside and Faith breathed a sigh of relief – now she felt comfortable. She’d picked a white color scheme to balance out the heaviness of the stone – white curtains, white tables and chairs and tablecloths, white crockery, and white-handled cutlery. It was a pristine vision, the place, and Faith felt proud. The days of traipsing around in the van with Nathan, collecting light fittings and searching for white salt and pepper shakers, had paid off.

  “You like it?” Faith said to Alizee.

  Alizee shrugged. “Yeah, looks nice, I guess.”

  Faith felt frustrated. She wanted to build connection but didn’t know how. She was hoping when JoJo got there – he loved cupcakes, apparently, and wanted to try his hand at some, though it took some persuasion to get him away from Shane – things would be a little easier.

  “Oh! My! Gosh!” It was angry. Furious. Bursting at the seams with frustration.

  Faith looked up to see Nathan in the doorway, actually shaking with anger. His face was flushed red. His eyes shone with fury. Faith had never seen him so.

  “What in the heck is going on?” Faith asked.

  “Someone’s…” Nathan’s voice shook, too. “Someone’s…”

  “What?”

  “Someone’s done something in Robbie’s garden. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this.”

  “Let’s go see,” Alizee said, a little bit too cheerfully for Faith’s liking. “Come on.”

  “Darn right we’re going to go see.” Nathan couldn’t stand still. He kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “We’re going to lock this place up first. Looks like around here’s not safe. Not safe at all. Let’s go.”

  Alizee bounded out the door, and Faith followed quickly, locking the door behind her. Nathan stormed through the shortcut that cut the bush, not even bothering to use the path. He flung vines aside with fury. A branch scratched all along his arm, and Faith watched the graze spring beads of blood, but he didn’t even notice.

  “What happened, Nathan? Seriously?”

  “I can’t even say. You’ll just have to see.”

  “Maybe someone else got killed,” Alizee speculated.

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Alizee sounded somewhat disappointed, like she was ready for the drama. “Someone was injured?”

  “Just wait and see,” Nathan said gruffly. “I’m gonna get whoever did this. They’re going to be seriously sorry.”

  Faith hadn’t heard Nathan talk like that in a long time. If ever. His rage radiated out of him like an electrical current, ready to shock anything in its radius. For placid Nathan, who usually took everything in his stride and rarely batted an eyelid, this was really quite something.

  When they got to the huge entrance door, Faith remembered how excited he had been, leading the kids in. Now he thrust it open. “Look,” he raged. “Just look.”

  What was now known as Robbie’s Springs of Hope looked normal to Faith, as far as she could see. In truth, she had been expecting some flower massacre, with heads snipped off everywhere and strewn sadly on the ground, and foliage trampled and slashed. But all the flowers and plants were untouched. She peered around, trying to find something out of place.

  “What?” Alizee said. “I can’t see nothing.”

  Nathan strode back and forth. “Look harder.” He nodded toward the bathing area.

  “Oh, why didn’t you say so?!” Alizee began to run down the path, and Faith followed behind, her stomach churning with dread.

  Soon they came upon the baths, and Faith’s stomach sank down to her feet.

  “Oh, that’s nothing,” Alizee said. “Just a bit of graffiti. Nothing to get upset about.”

  But it wasn’t the graffiti itself that had Faith’s heart racing and her vision narrowing – it was what the graffiti said. He deserved to die. Right there in big red letters. In a few places, the paint had dripped down, looking eerily like blood.

  “I’m going downtown and buying a security camera system now,” Nathan said, looking like he was ready to tear someone limb from limb. “I’m not closing down. Robbie’s memory has to live on. Capability Moses is coming this afternoon, and that’s that. Over my dead body will I cancel. This coward can’t intimidate us. They’ll see what we’re made of. They’ll see!”

  *****

  Chapter 8

  “Now, my name might be Capability after the late great Capability Brown,” Capability Moses said. “But that name was bestowed upon me because of my influence, not because of the similarity in our styles.”
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  He strode in front of his audience, a formidable figure. Of mixed parentage, or perhaps Hispanic heritage, it was hard to tell, he had tight curls and a caramel color complexion. He was far too many stone overweight, and was immaculately, if eccentrically, dressed. A pale blue trilby hat matched the pale blue accents on his geometrically patterned pants, which also featured sea green, light gray, and a pale yellow shade. A gray linen shirt completed the look, along with a pair of gray shiny shoes that looked altogether unsuitable for gardening.

  “Capability Brown was all about the natural. I’m all about the flamboyant. He wanted to make it look like nature itself had carefully and gently sculpted itself into the gardens he created. Now, sure, I like things to look natural as the next guy. But the kind of natural I like, is WILD! I want it to look like nature is throwing a goshdarned party and when we walk into the garden, we caught it having a blast.”

  Faith smiled. There was something about him that put her at ease. Sometimes she felt uncomfortable around intense people, but Capability was warm, and something about him felt so safe.

  “Trust me,” Nathan said to the assembled group, which included Janice, Tabby, Max, Alizee, Shane, JoJo, Allen, Faith and Laura, “this guy is going to create something crazily cool for Robbie.”

  “I really hope this doesn’t sound insensitive,” Janice said, “but I’m unsure as to exactly what’s happening. Isn’t this garden beautiful enough already? What exactly is there to add?” They were standing in Robbie’s Springs of Hope. Nathan had ordered Max to paint the stone baths in white, to get rid of the ominous graffiti.

  “Aha!” Capability said. “I was hoping someone would ask that. There are two things missing. And I want you two –“ he pointed at Shane and Allen, “-to help me put them right. You two look like fantastic lads with plenty of energy and probably too little responsibility.”

  Shane grinned. “Energy. That’s me all right. My care worker says I’m like a tornado mixed with a bomb explosion.”

  Capability grinned right back. “Sounds like my kinda person.” He gestured around the garden. “What we need here is color! Pastels are all well and good, but this is starting to look like grandma’s garden. No offense to grandma, we all love grandma, right? But we want something young. If we’re remembering Robbie, what I’m hearing from Nathan is that he was vibrant, and funny, and an all-around sunny guy. So we’re going to have some eye-achingly bright yellows and golds, for sunny, plus some playful blues and pinks, and every vibrant red we can get our hands on. This place is going to look like one heck of a party.” He looked around, as if he was imagining it in his mind, then gave a satisfied nod. “Yes, siree.”

  Faith was quite swept up in the moment, and the emotion of remembering Robbie. But then, with a jolt, she remembered that the killer could be standing there among them. Lately it had felt like she had to keep flipping her mind from one mode to another – honoring Robbie and building hope mode, and being suspicious of everyone around her. The feelings were totally different. The first felt expansive, and beautiful, and made her feel part of something bigger than her. She felt a deep trust in life, despite her devastation about Robbie, and people. But the second? It felt dark, like shadows creeping up around her, ready to devour her. A time bomb was tick, tick, ticking away in her mind, and the pressure made it feel like her mind would burst.

  What made it worse was that no one looked suspicious. The only person so far that gave her the creeps was Andrew Martinez. He was due to come later in the week, and she looked forward to that with equal curiosity and dread. But Faith wasn’t naïve enough to believe that just because he gave her the creeps, he was a killer. It could be anyone. But she was still struggling to work out why anyone would do it.

  She looked at each of them in turn, and let her imagination run wild. First, Tabby. Perhaps she and Robbie had been having a love affair, and he’d dumped her. He was always the kind of guy to stick by himself – he’d had a long term relationship in high school that had ended up badly, with her sleeping with seemingly every man under the sun without his knowledge. Since then he’d been very cautious about getting any kind of attachment. Perhaps they’d had a night of passion, and then he’d withdrawn emotionally, leaving her heartbroken. But could heartbreak really lead to brutal murder? Faith looked at Tabby, little innocent looking Tabby, with her long red hair and freckles dancing across her face. She doubted it.

  Next, Max. He said crude things. Careless things. It annoyed Robbie no end, but he’d always tried to make a joke of it, and make Max eat his own words. Could Max’s pride be so great that this offense was one to be killed for? Faith made a mental note to ask Laura about it – she was the psychologist of the group. Maybe she would have some insight about Max that Faith didn’t have.

  What about Janice? Sure, she had a nice, quiet exterior. But maybe something was lurking underneath. Still waters ran deep, as Faith’s mother Diana sometimes used to say. “Never think you truly know quiet people,” Diana had said. “Soon you’ll be blurting out your entire life story to them, while they keep all of theirs inside. Never put yourself in a situation where you’re vulnerable.” Faith suspected this had something to do with her absent father, who had upped and left one day when Diana was pregnant, leaving only a note. Diana had let Faith know he’d always been quiet, never speaking out his feelings. “If only he’d communicated he was unhappy, and why he was, maybe we’d have had a shot.”

  “Right!” Capability announced with a clap of his hands. “You two, what are your names?”

  “I’m Shane, he’s Allen,” Shane said.

  “Let’s get in my truck and head to the plant store. We’re going to get some color explosion flowers and start this paaaar-taaay!”

  Laura turned to Allen. “Allen, you’re going to go and buy some flowers now. I’ll come along with you. Then we’re going to come back here and plant them. Then we’re going to go back to school, and your mom’s going to pick you up. Do you understand?”

  “Of course, Miss Laura,” Allen said. “Will there be pencils to buy at the plant store?”

  Laura had explained to Faith that part of Allen’s autism was his obsessing over things. The current fixation was on collecting pencils – all different colors, all different styles, some with an eraser, some without. Sometimes it was all he could talk about, or even think about, and his way of showing he liked you was showing you his extensive pencil collection, which he carried around in his knapsack. Once, Faith had found him sitting on a bench in Paradise Falls, making a neat line with all his pencils and admiring them.

  “I don’t know, Allen,” Laura said. “Maybe there might be some to buy, maybe not. The important thing to focus on is the flowers. We are buying flowers to make the garden nice, to remember Robbie. Do you remember Robbie?”

  “Yes,” Allen said. “I would have liked to show him my pencil collection.”

  Shane rolled his eyes. “Come on, Pencil Man. Let’s go.”

  Capability Moses had been watching on with interested eyes. “I like people who are passionate. You can show me your pencil collection, Allen. Perhaps later on. I’ll show you my favorite flowers.”

  Allen smiled. “Awesome.”

  “He should be locked up,” a murmur came from next to Faith. It was Max, and it was so quiet that no one heard it except her. Looking around the garden, feeling the memory of Robbie weighting heavily on her, she felt absolutely furious. Robbie would have accepted Allen exactly as he was.

  “Excuse me? What did you say, Max? I didn’t quite catch that.”

  “Nothing.”

  Another surge of anger flooded over her. “Locked up? Don’t you think Robbie’s killer should be locked up? Not a child who has autism? Who on earth do you think you are, looking down at everyone?”

  Max’s face morphed from a look of superiority, into the look of a beast. His eyes had a predatory anger in them. He opened his mouth.

  But Laura was quicker. “Come on, Shane. Come on, Allen,” she said cheerily. �
�Let’s go to the plant store with Mr. Moses.”

  “Oh, please call me Capability. Mr. Moses sounds far too formal. Anyway, I think that’s a wonderful idea. We don’t want any of this chaotic energy to be channelled into the garden. It’s meant to be a place of celebration.” He gave Nathan a pointed look. “Gardening is not just about the plants, it is about the energy of the place. The type of feeling people get when they step into the garden. With the… incident happening here already, you should make sure to keep the energy in here nothing but positive and uplifting. If that means… removing certain people from certain areas, it should be done. The sanctity of the garden has to be protected.”

  Nathan nodded with respect. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Well, now you know,” Capability said. “Come on, boys.”

  *****

  Chapter 9

  Preparations were manic throughout the week. Soon the day Robert Lewis Senior and Andrew Martinez were coming to tour the place arrived. Nathan had been running around like a headless chicken all week, trying to make everything perfect when it was already more than good enough. In fact, some of his panicked work was actually making things worse.

  The morning of the visit, he was hacking away at a bush at lightning speed, his face creased into a stressed frown. The bush didn’t even need trimming. Faith looked at her watch (teal, of course), and made an executive decision.

  “Nathan,” she said, running up to him and feigning panic. “I just realized we forgot a major piece of kitchen equipment back at Paradise Point. Stephanie and Danica won’t be in yet, and I can’t lift it alone. We need to drive down there right now and get it.”

  “Oh, man,” Nathan said, dropping his head onto his chest. Then he straightened up, with his game face on. “All right, let’s go.” He took off at a sprint toward the parking lot, and Faith could do nothing but shake her head and run after him. He still kept turning around and saying, “Come on, Faith! We don’t have much time!”