Jewels in the Juniper (Lovely Lethal Gardens Book 10)

by Dale Mayer

  “Yes, who is this?”

  “I understand you have some jewels you want appraised,” the man said.

  Her back stiffened. “I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are. You must be mistaken. I don’t know anything about any jewels.”

  “Did you find jewels in a little jewelry bag from Johnson and Abelman?” the man asked, his tone turning harsh.

  Doreen tried to listen intently, wondering who it was and whether it was the same man she’d met at the jewelry store. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Do you always phone strangers and talk about things like that?”

  “I heard you have some jewels to be appraised.”

  “You don’t know anything about it,” she said calmly, then looked down at the number and knew she needed to write it down for Mack. She got up from her table and walked inside. “And please don’t bother me again.”

  “I’m not trying to bother you,” he said, “but those jewels are worth a lot of money. I’m quite prepared to pay handsomely for them.”

  “You haven’t even seen them,” she said. “So you have no idea of their value or just what sort of handsome price I might ask.” She could feel her temper stirring, but she wrote down the number so she could trace it later. Or rather so Mack could.

  “Well, keep my number handy,” he said. “I have money, and I’m happy to pay for them. Quality is hard to find.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’ve already admitted you do,” he said, laughing. “Like I said, give me a call. They are worth a lot of money. You can feed yourself for a good long time on it.”

  “I don’t have your name,” she said, “and I don’t deal with people who can’t give me a name.”

  “Zachary,” he said. “Zachary Winters.” And, with that, he hung up.

  She wrote down the name, along with the number, all thoughts of her sandwich having fled her mind.

  “Now, who was he, and what relationship does he have to that jewelry store?” she asked, addressing no one in particular. Her mind was on her failed attempt to get an appraisal. Nobody else would know the quality of these jewels. Unless of course—she stopped in her tracks and looked down at the name. “Unless of course you had something to do with them going missing in the first place.”

  Chapter 13

  Sunday Late Afternoon …

  Hours later, Doreen stopped digging when she heard a vehicle drive up her driveway. She looked at Mugs. “Sure hope that’s Mack,” she said. Mugs started barking and racing around to the side of the house. She dug the fork into the ground, picked up the wheelbarrow by its handles, and pushed it steadily out front. She got there just in time to see Mack hopping out with bags of groceries in his hands.

  She smiled. “Before you take that in, any chance you can give this compost bin a good hard shake and see if I can pack more in? I’ve already started a pile for after it’s emptied, but I’d love to add this in too.”

  He nodded and set the bags on the hood of his truck, then gave it a shake before pressing it all down farther. Afterward he gave her a hand moving the wheelbarrow contents into the bin. “You can probably get one more wheelbarrow load in,” he said. “Then you’re done.”

  “Good enough,” she said. “I’ll take this to the backyard. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “I’ll take these groceries in and wash up.”

  “Sounds good,” she said. “I’m tired and hungry.”

  “Good because I never got that coffee earlier, and I really could use a cup.”

  “Me too. I’ll put it on in a minute,” she called back, laughing. The coffee was killing her in price, but it was such a nice social thing between the two of them that she didn’t want it to stop. She wouldn’t be at all surprised if he came here just for the coffee.

  She returned to her backyard and picked up the rest of the sod and noted she was almost there. If she was lucky, they could get it all into the compost bin. If not, she’d fill the wheelbarrow and leave it until the compost was dumped, rather than making the pile out front any bigger.

  She worked steadily until she heard the door bang and looked up to see Mack with two cups of coffee in his hands. He walked down the steps, surveyed the area, and said, “Wow, you got a lot more done than I thought.”

  “It’s so uneven though,” she said. “I hope that won’t be a problem.”

  “We’ll have to level off the blocks anyway,” he said.

  She straightened up after shaking the last dirt off the sod, throwing it into the wheelbarrow. “There. I’m done.” She smiled and accepted the coffee. “It’s great to have the physical accomplishment, but I will be sore tomorrow.”

  Mack looked around at the bag still full of plants. “Don’t you need to get those into the ground today?”

  “I should,” she said. “They’re already wilting. But I’m not sure where I want to put them all.”

  “Isn’t it better to get them in and save them, knowing you can move them later?”

  “Maybe,” she said. With coffees in hand, they wandered up and down her backyard, looking at places where she would put things.

  “Why don’t you hold my cup, and we’ll just start planting.” Grabbing the shovel, Mack said, “What was it you were just saying? You wanted to put something where?”

  She pointed out where she wanted the gladiolas. “They need a lot of space because they’ll multiply quickly, but I thought we’d put a clump in the center of each of these fence panels.” She was pointing from the creek back toward her house. She had ten panels of fence, and only three clumps of glads, but she knew Millicent had big clumps of blue ones, which Doreen hoped to get corms from.

  Mack grabbed the bags with the gladiolas, and, before long, they were in place.

  Doreen had some bone meal and a little natural fertilizer, so she put that in too. “The ground is decent here, and these things tend to grow anywhere anyway.” A few weeds were stuck in between them, so she carefully pulled them out.

  They got into a routine, and, while Mack dug more holes, Doreen was busy planting. And, just like that, the gladiolas were in. She laughed. “I guess when there’s two of us, a lot of work can get done.”

  “A lot of people like to think about things first,” he said. “I tend to be the kind of person who dives in and gets it done. You can always move things around later, after you see how it goes and what you like where.”

  “Good point,” she said. “In the meantime, this was a huge help, and they all should survive.”

  They kept working until she straightened up and announced, “I think there’s only one bag left.”

  “Figure out where you want to put them,” he said. “I’ll get more coffee. Then we’ll get them planted. After that, we’ll see if we can get some soaker hoses going. Didn’t you say Nan had a bunch?”

  “I’ve got some in use already, but, yes, all of these need watering.” Doreen watched as Mack picked up the two cups and headed back inside to finish the pot of coffee. She walked over to get the last bag, the collection of daisies in all colors. A big center bed would be lovely, she thought, as she walked through the garden. She noted the fifth and sixth fence panels really didn’t have a whole lot, but the fifth was more visible to the middle of the yard because the tenth panel was up against the house and felt more like it was part of the house. She laid them all out so they each had a large space and put the painted daisies in front, as they would never grow as big or as lush as the others.

  Now with everything laid out the way she wanted, she cleaned up all the bags, put them in the garbage, and accepted the cup of coffee from Mack when he came back out.

  “Aren’t very many left,” she said, motioning toward the garden.

  “Good enough,” he said.

  Just ten minutes later, everything was planted. As Doreen held Mack’s cup, he grabbed the soaker hoses, and, with her guidance, he gently laid them through the garden until they reached the back toward the creek.
“The creek’s pretty high,” he commented.

  “It’s up now, but it’s been going up and down in this six- to ten-inch range.”

  He nodded. “It makes sense, depending on the amount of melted snow coming down off the mountains and how many of the other rivers are drifting into your little creek. The amounts will go up and down on a regular basis.”

  “It sure is beautiful though.”

  “It really is,” he admitted. “This is quite a special property.”

  “That’s what I thought. And here we are, finally getting it fixed up,” she said. “I know the deck will make a huge difference when it comes to enjoying the backyard property.”

  “Yes,” he said, “and for adding to your living space.”

  “Exactly.”

  With one final look at the creek, Doreen turned toward the garden. “I want to get these watered, now that everything’s in.” She walked back and turned on the hose, then watched as it seeped through the ground.

  “You might want to grab a hose and spray some of these down,” Mack suggested.

  She nodded and was already set up for it with the proper fittings. She just needed to screw on the second hose and grab a nozzle. Then she walked up and down the garden. Unfortunately it only reached partway, so she had to raise the stream, shooting it back as far as it could go. She was able to soak the new transplants, which was the only real goal for watering tonight. Turning that hose off, she left the soakers running, then looked at Mack with a weary smile. “Can we eat now?”

  He burst out laughing. “Maybe. Pretty tired, huh?”

  “I am,” she said. “And it’s definitely food time.”

  “Did you get sandwiches earlier?”

  “I did,” she said, “but got interrupted, and it wasn’t enough.”

  He smiled with a nod. “Okay. Let’s go get some food.”

  Cheerfully, Doreen headed up the small deck and looked down at the large area they had cleared. “Wow, we’re actually getting somewhere.”

  “Speaking of which,” Mack said, “did anybody deliver more deck supplies?”

  “No. Not that I saw.”

  “That’s fine. Maybe he couldn’t come today.” He walked inside, and, as Doreen watched, Mack put on the water for the pasta she was so desperate to have. Then he opened the fridge and took out a beautiful slab of salmon.

  She gasped with joy. “That looks so wonderful,” she said.

  “We’ll precook it slightly in the cream sauce, and then add it to the pasta.”

  Doreen nodded, set up her phone to Record, but she also watched his every move.

  While they waited for the pasta to boil, Mack turned on another burner on the stove and sautéed the salmon until it was just about ready. Making sure no bones were inside, he removed the skin and then started the sauce in the pan where the salmon had been cooking. Very quickly he had a nice cream sauce, and he gently laid in the salmon.

  “You can put this sauce onto the salmon, then put the pasta on top, or put the sauce on the pasta and put the salmon on top of the sauce. But this way is just as easy too.” He stirred it lightly, and the dill aroma came through.

  “Wow,” she said. “It smells marvelous.”

  Mack looked at her seriously. “I’m doing my part. How about you? Is the salad done?”

  “Oops.” Doreen’s cheeks turned a bit pink, and she ran to get out the salad fixings. As she washed the lettuce, she said, “Oh, by the way, I got a really weird phone call while you were gone.” She proceeded to tell him about it.

  “Zachary Winters,” he said, frowning.

  “Yeah, I don’t know him, but he was trying to buy those jewels from me.”

  “How do you think he found out about them?”

  “My first thought is the jewelry store,” she said, “but I don’t have any basis for that.”

  “Makes sense to me. I guess there’s no such thing as expectation of privacy on a deal like that.”

  “Well, there should have been,” she said, frowning. “Jewelry stores need to be attentive to such matters because most of their clients have money. Obviously you don’t want to set up your clients for robberies.”

  “I don’t know the name,” Mack said frowning. “Then it’s not an industry where I know any of the players.”

  “I’ve got his number,” Doreen said. “He told me to make sure I had his number, in case I wanted to sell the jewelry. I was also thinking,” she continued, “that maybe he had something to do with the jewel theft, or at least knew about them, because, outside of the people at the jewelry store, who else would have known?”

  “I don’t know,” Mack said. “When you think about it, the jewels were turned in to the police. So there could be all kinds of people from there who knew. And they could have mentioned them to others.”

  “That’s true. Maybe your mom was asked to sell them when she turned them in.”

  “No clue. Maybe we should find out.” While the pasta boiled, and Mack kept an eye on the sauce, he called his mother.

  Doreen listened to his conversation with Millicent but only heard half of it.

  When he hung up, he turned to Doreen and said, “She doesn’t remember much. At the time she thought several people had offered to buy them. But she wasn’t interested in selling because she didn’t consider them as belonging to her and my dad.”

  “So how long do you think she had the house before she found the jewels?”

  He shook his head. “Not too long. Not long at all.”

  Chapter 14

  Sunday Dinnertime …

  “But,” Mack said. “There are pictures of the old house, way back before they bought it, and that juniper was encroaching the driveway badly. It was pretty big already.”

  “Interesting,” Doreen said. “I wonder how long the jewels were there? Maybe they were buried in a rush with the intention of moving them later?”

  “I don’t know. The velvet bag wasn’t superdeep into the tree, according to Mom. They found it when they were trying to get the roots out.”

  “But why, if somebody hid it there, wouldn’t they have come back?”

  “The most likely reason is they couldn’t.”

  As soon as the salad was done, Doreen watched Mack drain the pasta, coat it with butter, and then served some on their plates. All the while her stomach grumbled. He gently scooped the salmon and dill sauce over the top. She stared at it in amazement. “You did that so easily,” she breathed.

  “It is easy,” he said, as he put the pan back on the stove.

  She was delighted to see there would be leftovers. He’d served himself a larger portion than hers, but she was okay with that because hers was still huge. And he’d done a lot of physical work today too. He carried both plates as she led the way, racing in front to let him out the kitchen door to the deck table. She quickly came back with the salad and cutlery. As they sat down, she marveled. “Whoever would have thought you could make something like this?”

  He chuckled and said, “There are lots of leftovers.”

  “Which is a good thing,” she said. “Now I can eat for the week.”

  Mack just shook his head at that.

  When Doreen bit in and tasted it, she moaned in joy. “Did you add lemon juice when I wasn’t looking?” she asked suspiciously.

  “You videoed when I made the sauce.”

  “But you sent me off to make salad,” she said. “So I don’t know what I might have missed out on.”

  “It’s not hard,” he said. “You saw me make it.”

  “I still haven’t cooked pasta on my own yet,” she admitted.

  “You were supposed to do that from start to finish tonight,” he said with a crestfallen look.

  “You’ll just have to come back and cook more,” she said.

  “Next time I come, you’re cooking. Somehow this went from me teaching you to cook, to me cooking and you eating.”

  “That works too,” she said with a cheerful grin.

  He rolled his
eyes at her, and the two dug in.

  By the time Doreen’s plate was empty, her stomach thought it had died and gone to heaven. “This is absolutely wonderful,” she said for the umpteenth time, as she scooped up the last of the sauce on her plate.

  “There is more, if you want it,” Mack said.

  She settled against her chairback. “I don’t think I can eat another bite. I’m pretty full.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then you have leftovers for at least tomorrow night, if not more.”

  As she thought back to the amount of sauce in the pan, she nodded. “At least two nights,” she said, “and probably more noodles than that.”

  “But you can eat the noodles plain.”

  “Or fried with eggs,” she said enthusiastically.

  “Or just with cheese,” he said.

  She nodded. “Leftover noodles are never wrong here,” she said with a laugh.

  Just then a banging at the front door reverberated throughout the house. Mugs barked. Mack looked at her, surprised. Doreen shrugged. “I’m not expecting anyone.”

  “Ah,” he said, “but I am. It could be the guy from work.” Together they walked to the front door, and Doreen opened it. Standing there was a man she vaguely remembered seeing at crime scenes. The two men greeted each other.

  Mack’s coworker looked at him. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

  “I’ve been working in the garden all afternoon,” Mack said with a groan. “Canton, Doreen. Doreen, Canton.”

  The guy laughed. “Well, give me a hand unloading this, will you?”

  The three headed to his truck full of a pile of boards and what looked like steel posts. Doreen wasn’t sure what those would be used for, but Mack was pretty happy to see it all. She helped carry the other stuff, which were weird little shapes with big screws on them, as well as other kinds of hardware, including boxes of screws. This was the deck hardware Mack had been talking about. She carried as much of it back as she could. Not wanting to leave the boxes of hardware outside, she put them in the kitchen on the table. By the time the guy left, she had her list of supplies out, trying to figure out what they had just been given.