FATALITY IN F

by Alexia Gordon

  She made a few corrections—a trumpet came in too early; a contrabass came in too late—and led a few more run-throughs before calling it an evening. “We’ll take tomorrow off,” she announced, “but be here at seven, day after tomorrow for our final rehearsal before the performance.”

  She left the other musicians to pack up their instruments while she returned her score and baton to the manager’s safe. Time to catch up with Frankie and find out the story behind his relationship with Roderick Jacobi. She rounded a corner on her way out and ran into something hard. Coarse fabric scented with pipe tobacco and sandalwood filled her nose.

  A deep, English-accented voice spoke down at her. “Excuse me.”

  She pushed herself back and looked up at the speaker. A gray-haired man looked down at her with concern in his eyes.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She smoothed the wrinkle her nose had made in his linen suit jacket. “I’m fine, thank you. And, please, excuse me.”

  “Have you just come from the auditorium?”

  She said that she had.

  “Did you, by chance, see a tall woman, dark hair pulled back,” he mimed pulling hair into a bun, “well-dressed?”

  “Ellen Jacobi?” He’d described her spot-on. “Yes, I saw her a little while ago in the manager’s office. I don’t know where she went.”

  “She didn’t mention Gerrit Byrnes?”

  “No. We didn’t talk much. She was going out as I was coming in.” No reason to tell him about Ellen’s snooping, especially since she didn’t know who he was—Gerrit Byrnes? Someone looking for Gerrit Byrnes?—nor why he wanted Ellen.

  “Thank you. And my apologies, again, for running into you.” He hurried past Gethsemane.

  She stared after him. Should she follow and pry for answers to her questions? Or was she making too much out of an innocent accidental encounter?

  A commotion at the opposite end of the hall decided for her. Murdoch and Karl argued with a third man as they burst through the doors leading to the parking lot.

  “No, Gerrit, absolutely not.” Karl stepped in front of the third man.

  He stopped just in time to avoid tripping over Karl. “Be reasonable, Dietrich. You won’t get a better offer.”

  This must be Gerrit Byrnes. What offer? Gethsemane pressed flat against the wall and tried to make herself small enough to go unnoticed. She wished she could fade into the wall, like Eamon.

  “Reasonable?” Murdoch asked. “For the risk we’d be taking? Your offer’s an insult. Look who we’re dealing with.”

  “What’s life without risk, Big Man?” Perhaps it was the English accent, but the sobriquet sounded more like an insult than an endearment.

  “Forget it, Murdoch. You’ll get nowhere with this one. He’s—Oh!” Karl’s eyes widened as he noticed Gethsemane. “Hello, Dr. Brown.”

  “Hello.” She nodded at Karl and Murdoch and tried to play off her eavesdropping. “Just on my way out.”

  Gerrit stepped in her path. “What’s your opinion on risk?” His glacier-blue eyes challenged her.

  She didn’t flinch. Instead, she pulled herself up to her full five three and held her hand an inch from Gerrit’s nose. “I’m Gethsemane Brown. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  He stared at her for another moment, then smiled and shook her hand. “Gerrit Byrnes. Fan of bold risk-takers.”

  “Gerrit Byrnes,” she repeated. “I just ran into someone asking about you. Gray-haired gentleman. Linen suit. Bespoke. I didn’t catch his name.”

  The smile dimmed. “Which way did my brother go?”

  “Toward the auditorium.” Gethsemane jerked a thumb over her shoulder.

  Gerrit turned to Murdoch and Karl. “If you change your mind…” He shook Gethsemane’s hand again. “I bet you’d accept the offer.”

  She watched until he’d disappeared around a corner in the direction his brother had gone. “Offer?” she asked the other two men.

  “Ridiculous speculation. Pay him no mind,” Karl said.

  “Speculation like the stock market?” Gerrit hadn’t struck her as a stockbroker but Karl hadn’t struck her as a botanist, nor Murdoch as an executive.

  “Nah,” Murdoch said. “Some so-called surefire money-maker. Not worth the time to explain it.”

  She didn’t believe Murdoch’s glib answer. But with no reason to press him for a fuller explanation, she let it go.

  “Gerrit and his brother, Glendon, are co-owners of Belles Fleurs Gardens,” Karl said.

  Gethsemane tried not to show she’d heard the name.

  Karl went on. “They’re one of the show’s sponsors. Not a major sponsor but large enough to only have to share a tent with two others.”

  “Tent?” she asked.

  “At the show grounds. The sponsors are in tents. The more significant the contribution, the fewer sponsors per tent. Jacobi and Fortnum have a tent to themselves.”

  “And don’t think for a minute that doesn’t tick ol’ Gerrit off,” Murdoch said. “He’d love to knock J and F off their rose-covered perch.”

  She remembered something Mr. Greevy said. “Bet the Byrnes brothers would be able to afford their own tent if they licensed some of Mr. Jacobi’s rose varieties.”

  Karl went pale and Murdoch blushed. Karl made a show of consulting his watch. “If you’ll excuse us, Dr. Brown, we have to meet with a potter about some custom flowerpots we ordered. Come on, Murdoch.” The two men excused themselves and scurried away as fast as their bulk allowed.

  “Sure-fire money-maker.” She smiled after them. “Selling your boss’s roses to his wife’s competitor is a sure way to get fired.”

  She reached St. Brennan’s at dinnertime. A smattering of people roamed the campus’s dignified grounds. Few students boarded at the school during the summer; their reduced numbers created a bucolic atmosphere within St. Brennan’s walls. Faculty members who lived on campus year-round relaxed with picnic baskets in courtyards or with books on benches lining paths leading to Georgian classroom buildings, devoid of boys for the next few months. Several people she passed on the way to Erasmus Hall wore badges suspended from colorful lanyards around their necks. They paused by various flowers and trees to point or snap photos or scribble notes in pocket-sized notebooks. Early arrivals for the garden show, Gethsemane assumed. Several gardens on St. Brennan’s campus, including Frankie’s and the Shakespeare Garden, were stops on the program’s itinerary.

  No one answered her knock on Frankie’s door. She stopped the English teacher as he passed in the hall. He hadn’t seen Frankie since he’d returned his blazer after the photo shoot. She texted Frankie but received no response. She searched in her bag for paper to leave him a note when a scream from outside behind the building ripped down the corridor. Gethsemane’s stomach dropped and her heart leapt. She stared dumbly for a moment at the pen and scrap of paper she held in her hand, as the ridiculous thought that the scream had been aimed at her flashed through her head. She chided herself for foolishness then ran in the direction of the horrible noise. She rushed out the back door but froze at the foot of the steps, a few feet from Frankie’s rose garden. A group of people clustered around something—someone—lying on the ground. All Gethsemane could see were the handles of hedge pruning shears protruding from what she judged to be the someone’s back.

  Six

  She crept up to the onlookers, breath held, forbidding herself to think who might be—who she feared it was—lying in their midst. She checked her phone again. Why didn’t Frankie answer his damned text? She noticed the roses, perversely, looked exceptionally spectacular this evening, each blossom full and round, with inner petals seeming to burst forth like arils from a ripe pomegranate. Their heady fragrance suffused the air to the point of becoming cloying. She tried not to vomit. A man turned aside as she reached the group, enough so she saw—blond hair. R
oderick Jacobi lay face down at the foot of Frankie’s most beautiful ‘Sandra Sechrest’ hedge rose with a pair of hedge shears buried to the hilt in the center of his back like a flag atop a sand castle.

  She sighed relief, then closed her eyes in a quick prayer of thanksgiving that Frankie wasn’t the one who’d met his untimely end, followed by a quick prayer for forgiveness for feeling more joy that Frankie had been spared than horror at the sight of Jacobi. He hadn’t been her friend—hadn’t even been likeable—but he didn’t deserve murder. No one did.

  Murdered. Gethsemane looked away from the body and looked around at the scene. Murdered in Frankie’s garden. She inched close enough to Jacobi, without touching anything, to make out the letters “FG” on one of the shears’ handles. Murdered with Frankie’s hedge trimmers. She moved to the rear of the cluster and pulled out her phone. Damn and double damn. Why didn’t Frankie answer his text?

  “I’ve already called 999,” a woman next to her said.

  “What?” Gethsemane started and nearly dropped her phone.

  The woman nodded at it. “I’ve already called the guards. They’re on the way.”

  Law enforcement on the way. She knew how the gardaí who answered the call would react when they saw her at yet another murder scene. She looked toward Erasmus Hall. Why not leave the garden, come out when the gardaí arrived, pretend she’d been inside all along? Or not come back to the garden at all? She could slip out the front door and be back at Carraigfaire before the guards had taken their first statement. She looked back at the other witnesses. They’d already noticed her. They’d tell the guards if she left. How would she explain that?

  She spied a familiar face approaching, Inspector Bill Sutton from the homicide unit. Too late to leave now. “Good evening, Inspector.”

  The garda’s lithic features morphed into a scowl. He muttered several angry words in Gaeilge. She didn’t need them translated to know they weren’t compliments.

  “Not you again,” he greeted her.

  The woman who’d called 999 interrupted. “It’s Roderick Jacobi, Inspector, the horticulturist. He’s been murdered. Stabbed.” She pulled at the Inspector’s sleeve as she pointed toward the corpse. “He’s right over there. Stone cold.”

  Sutton shook the woman’s hand off. “Did you touch him?”

  “’Course not.” The woman bristled. “What do you think I am, a ghoul?”

  “Then how’d you know he’s cold?”

  “It’s an expression, Inspector. Any fool can see he’s dead and I’m no fool. Lying prone with his face in the dirt, stiller than the summer air. And you don’t survive being run through with hedge shears, do you?”

  “No, ma’am.” Sutton’s shoulders drooped in wearied resignation. “I don’t suppose you do.”

  “But you have to verify it, don’t you? Check his pulse and see if he’s breathing, like they do on television.”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t.” He pointed to a gray-haired woman approaching with three uniformed gardaí. “She does. She’s with the coroner’s office.”

  “You’d think I’d have met her before now,” Gethsemane said. “Considering.”

  “She’s based in Cork. Happened to be in Dunmullach for the flower show.” He pulled a notebook and ballpoint pen from his jacket pocket. “What do you know about this?”

  The other woman grabbed Sutton’s sleeve again. “I’m the one who called you. I got here before she did.”

  Gethsemane silently thanked the woman.

  Sutton narrowed his eyes at Gethsemane then turned to the eager witness. “All right, Ms…”

  “Heaney, with two e’s.” She spelled it out. “H-E-A-N-E-Y. Ms. Moira Heaney. I’m one of the judges.” Her cheeks reddened and she stammered. “F-for the junior trials, you understand. The under-eighteen group. I’m not cheating since I’m not judging the main competition.”

  “Cheating?” Sutton asked.

  “By viewing the gardens too early. The juniors don’t compete in the garden division, only cut flowers. Mind you, some of those young rosarians grow roses every bit as fine as the adults.”

  “I’m sure they do, Ms. Heaney.” Sutton closed his eyes for a moment and tapped his pen on his notebook. “How did you happen to come upon the deceased?”

  “I came around the corner and there he was. Just lying there. Good thing students aren’t around this time of year. I’d hate for one of them to have seen him. Such a shock could be quite traumatizing for a young lad. I have a strong constitution, myself. Grew up on a farm and was married to a butcher.”

  A muscle in Sutton’s jaw tightened. Gethsemane almost pitied him. Dealing with the garrulous junior judge seemed to pain him as much as seeing her at the scene every time a dead body turned up.

  “I meant, what were you doing here, on school grounds,” Sutton said.

  “Mr. Grennan’s rose garden is a highlight of the show.” The judge, defying the Inspector’s efforts to free his sleeve from her grasp, leaned toward him and lowered her voice. “Word in the judge’s tent is that he’s the man to beat for Best in Show in the garden division.” She straightened up and released his arm. “Not that I have any influence in the matter, of course.”

  Sutton appeared to have aged years since he’d arrived at Erasmus Hall. “Because you’re judging the under-eighteen.”

  Ms. Heaney nodded and went on. “And I’m only judging the cut flower specimens, not the gardens, so I didn’t see any harm in getting a peek at Mr. Grennan’s roses ahead of schedule.”

  “As you said. Because it’s not cheating.” Sutton turned to Gethsemane. “What about you? Here for a surreptitious gander at the posies?”

  Gethsemane chewed her lip as she looked over at the other witnesses, either clustered around the coroner’s assistant as she completed her grim examination or being interviewed individually by gardaí. Did she admit she came to find Frankie? That would lead to questions about his whereabouts—unknown—which would lead to questions about alibis and motives and whether he had one or both. She knew Frankie would never kill anyone, but Inspector Sutton didn’t and wasn’t likely to take her word for it.

  “Well?” Sutton clicked his ballpoint so fast, he risked a repetitive motion injury.

  “Um…” She hesitated, trying to think of an answer that wouldn’t throw suspicion on Frankie but wouldn’t require lying to law enforcement, either. “I borrowed an iron.”

  “An iron?”

  “For clothes.” Not her clothes but why nitpick?

  “Yes, I know what an iron’s for.” The creases in Sutton’s trousers and crispness of his shirt endorsed his statement. The inspector may have been a thorn to Gethsemane but he was a well-dressed thorn. He eyed her slacks. “You wear linen but don’t own an iron?”

  She dodged a direct answer. “Nothing takes the wrinkles out of linen like the dry cleaners.”

  Sutton didn’t challenge her. She tried to read his stone face but couldn’t tell if he believed her or had just decided the line of questioning wasn’t worth pursuing for the moment.

  “Do you have any idea what Jacobi was doing in Grennan’s garden?” he asked.

  Gethsemane shrugged. “Spying on the competition?”

  Ms. Heaney cleared her throat.

  Sutton pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture Niall often made when irritated. Must be something they taught in Garda school. “You have something to add, Ms. Heaney?”

  The woman plucked at Sutton’s sleeve again. “Nothing certain, you understand? Nothing I’d testify to in court, if it came to that. Only a rumor.”

  “Any information you have, Ms. Heaney, that might help the investigat—”

  She cut in. “Rumor on the garden show circuit has it that Jacobi isn’t,” she glanced at the corpse, “wasn’t above sabotage.”

  “Sabotage?” Sutton wrote in his notebook. “You mean like st
ealing flowers to enter in shows under his own name?”

  “No, Inspector, that would be theft. Besides, it wouldn’t work. Judges at this level are world-class experts. They’d spot it straight away if someone attempted to pass off another breeder’s flowers as their own.” Ms. Heaney shook her head. “No. Jacobi was, supposedly, no one could ever prove anything. He’d damage competitor’s rose bushes. You lose points for anything less than perfection. Even minor damage, an errant footprint, a broken stem, can cost you the gold medal.”

  Had Jacobi come back to damage the ‘Sandra Sechrest’? Gethsemane forced herself to peer past the coroner’s assistant at the shears protruding from Jacobi’s back. The handles looked like the handles of Frankie’s shears. But Frankie didn’t keep his garden tools locked up. Anyone, Jacobi included, could have grabbed them. She scanned the roses for signs of damaged. As she did so, she spied something lying at the base of a birdbath. A bouquet of purple and white flowers. She pointed. “What’s that?”

  Sutton and Mrs. Heaney turned to look. Mrs. Heaney started toward the bouquet; this time, Sutton did the arm grabbing. “Please, allow me.”

  He led the way to the birdbath and squatted near the flowers. Gethsemane peered over his shoulder. The wrapping paper matched the paper wrapped around the bouquet left on Frankie’s windshield, the paper used by Buds of May.

  “Flowers for the dead,” Sutton said. “A message for Jacobi.”

  Or for Frankie. A warning? He’s next? Or a promise to eliminate anyone who stood between Frankie and a gold medal? How far would Frankie’s admirer go to give him what he wanted? To put him in her debt?

  Mrs. Heaney recited the names of the flowers. “Ox-eye daisy, pansy, purple columbine, carnations. Odd funerary arrangement.”

  “I’ve seen this before,” Gethsemane said. “Not this exact bouquet but one similar. This morning in the village square, someone left a floral bouquet on Frankie Grennan’s car. It was wrapped in the same paper, from the village florist.”

  “Who left it?” the inspector asked.

  “A woman who didn’t want anyone to see her face.” Gethsemane described the mystery woman and shared the information she’d gathered at the flower shop.