Evidence in the Echinacea (Lovely Lethal Gardens Book 5)

by Dale Mayer

  Doreen almost had a path cleared to the dresser when her phone rang. It was Scott again.

  “Okay, I’ve confirmed tomorrow,” he said.

  “Great. I can almost get the dresser out now. I moved up ten different pieces and put them in the living room.”

  “Send me as many pictures as you can,” he said, “of as many different items. At least it’ll give me an idea if we should go digging deeper.”

  “Okay, I can do that.” When she hung up, she took pictures of as many different pieces as she could. She did the same with all the pieces she had taken to the living room and then walked out to the garage, unlocked the doors, opened it up, and took pictures from there.

  When she was done, she went inside, downloaded all the images, and sent them in a zip file to Scott. Then she sat here in the kitchen, wondering what else she should do next. The basement and garage projects were pretty much out of her hands until she could get somebody to help her carry some of the bigger pieces. And then she remembered Penny’s place.

  Doreen made a sandwich, called Penny, got no answer, and thought, Perfect timing. She didn’t want to bring Mugs with her because she could get more stuff into her car that way, and that was what she needed to do. But, in order to do that, she had to get some stuff out of her house first.

  She went upstairs and grabbed the three new bags full of clothing she had sorted out for Wendy and the one box for Goodwill. She carried everything down in several trips, loaded the car, and, leaving the animals at home, made a drop-off at Goodwill and, after a short stop and with a fast wave to Wendy, headed to Penny’s place.

  There Penny’s garage door had been left open. Doreen loved seeing the inside of that garage and all the tools. Also this was a nice reminder that Kelowna was a safe-enough place where you could leave thousands of dollars’ worth of expensive tools on display, and yet, they were still there hours later.

  But first Doreen had to do something to make herself feel better. She walked around the fence to the crappy corner and saw the echinacea still struggling. She’d removed a piece of it, and it was doing much better out in the new front bed, but still a good chunk of ten to twenty echinacea plants needed to be moved to a better spot. She walked around the backyard garden, found a spot that looked good, raked back the mulch, and then dug out a big hole to transplant the echinacea here.

  Then she meticulously broke up the echinacea clump into smaller groupings. With great effort, she lifted each into the wheelbarrow and moved it all to the hole she had just dug. She replanted it and turned on the hose to give it a really good soaking, then moved more dirt in and around to help pack it down around the transplants.

  Although Penny may have put a lot of topsoil on when she had planted the echinacea at George’s dumping spot, the poor soil all around had taken its toll, and the echinacea itself did not have a decent root system. She walked back to the hole where the echinacea had been and looked in. Sure enough, all kinds of pieces of metal and other junk were in there. Why wouldn’t they have at least cleaned it out before they tried to plant on top of it?

  Doreen bent down to a piece of plastic, pulled it up to see something laminated on one side of it. She looked at it and then dug more to see if there were other bits and pieces. She found several pieces of the same laminated card, but they didn’t make a lot of sense. She pocketed all the pieces she could find, then grabbed her shovel, grabbing whatever dirt was nearby to fill the hole where the echinacea had been.

  When she was satisfied, she moved the wheelbarrow back into the garage, and leaned it up against a wall. There, she stopped and looked at all the tools, wondering where to start.

  Chapter 26

  Friday Noon …

  The idea of accepting George’s workshop for her own was a great idea in theory, but the execution …

  Her small car was a hatchback. She reversed it up to the large open garage and parked. Then opened the hatchback. She started with the first pegboard, carefully removed all the hammers and screwdrivers and all the hooks. The actual wallboard itself was nailed in, but, with the hammer, she popped it off the wall, and, with the first piece down, she put the tools from this pegboard in the front seat on the footwell and put the wallboard itself in the back of the car. The pegboard pieces were about four feet across and fit in easily enough. Then she went on to the next one and the next one, and, within half an hour, she had one wall empty.

  She then opened up all the doors to her car, emptied all the tools from the back wall into her floorboards or on the seats. Mostly there were saws and hand saws, a wrench set, and some other things, like pry bars. It was quite a collection of tools. Many she didn’t know what to call them.

  Doreen took everything off the remaining side wall and loaded that all up too. She stood in amazement, realizing all the garage walls were now clean, and everything had fit in her tiny car. The pegboards were in the back of her car, and, although the hatch may not close properly, she didn’t have far to go. The passenger seat and the back seats were completely full too. She had filled the rear well with several circular saws, what looked like a jigsaw, a bunch of other tools, and several small tool boxes.

  She wished she could get the three workbenches, but that would take a trip with a truck. One bench was small, and two large ones were in the back. Each had drawers. She cleaned off as much as she could of the actual workbenches and then rocked a couple of them to the side, wondering how hard they would be to move. If she could empty the drawers and lay them in her car, she would just need help to get the actual workbenches home. And, of course, she had absolutely no place to put any of this stuff. She groaned when thinking about it, and then pulled out her phone and called Mack. “I’m not sure when you’re off duty, but any chance I could get you to come to Penny’s place and help me load up these three workbenches?”

  “Already?” he asked in surprise.

  “Yes,” she said. “There’s some urgency. Penny hasn’t had any viewings yet, but they’re likely to start this weekend. I’ve got all the pegboards off and all the tools loaded, but there’s three workbenches and a couple tool chests. And I definitely need a truck to move them.”

  “I’m on my way out in a few minutes,” he said. “If you’re still there, I can come by.”

  “I’ll stay here and wait, and thank you,” she cried out happily.

  She walked back to the first drawer, where she had seen the journal, and pulled it out. As she did so, something from the back fell to the floor. She reached down to find a small black book that was clearly from a long time ago. Opening it, she gasped when she saw the dates. Just as she started to read it, she heard a vehicle, knowing it would be Penny. Doreen pocketed the book and collected the tools in the drawer, but then thought she could probably fit the drawer on top of the pegboards. She moved the drawer to her car and grabbed the other two from the same workbench. By the time Penny came out here, Doreen smiled and said, “Two more drawers to load up, and then it’s just the big stuff.”

  Penny shook her head in astonishment. “I had no idea you would take all this stuff. Look at how big the garage is now.” She just smiled in delight and said, “It’s huge. That’ll definitely help to sell the house.”

  “I hope so,” Doreen said, “because now I have to figure out where to put all this stuff at my place.”

  Penny looked at Doreen’s car and laughed. “Oh, my goodness, that’s so true,” she said. “You’ve still got toolboxes and workbenches, but that’s it, right?”

  Doreen nodded. “Mack has his truck, so he’ll come and give me a hand.”

  “That’s quite a friendship you have there, isn’t it?”

  “A friendly business relationship,” Doreen corrected with a chuckle. “He’s been very helpful to me.”

  “Sure,” Penny said with a knowing smile. “But I imagine you’ve been helpful to his career too.”

  “I hope so,” Doreen said. She motioned at the walls of the garage and said, “You probably don’t have to fill in any of those hol
es, but you know? Maybe even a good brushing of the walls would clean it up a bit.”

  “It’s a garage,” Penny said with a wave of her hand. “If anybody wants to clean it up, they can fix it themselves.”

  “That’s probably a good attitude,” Doreen said.

  Penny unloaded more groceries. “I have company coming tonight.”

  “Mack said he’d be here in a few minutes,” Doreen rushed to say. “So can you give me maybe another half an hour?”

  “That’s good timing then.” And, with that, Penny disappeared inside. She stopped at the open door to the garage and grinned. “Thank you,” she said to Doreen.

  Doreen nodded and smiled. “Actually thank you.” She turned around at the sound of another vehicle, and, sure enough, there was Mack. He backed his truck up to the side of her car, hopped out, took a look at her car, and raised an eyebrow.

  She shrugged. “I didn’t want to leave anything behind, just in case,” she said.

  “I didn’t think it was possible to get this cleaned out that fast.”

  “Because George had it all hanging up so neat and orderly,” she said, “it took nothing to remove the tools, and there weren’t as many as I thought because he had them spread out.”

  He nodded. “So what have we got, three workbenches?”

  She nodded at the two in the back and said, “I haven’t pulled the drawers out of those yet. I’ve got the drawers out of this one.” She motioned to the back of her car. Then she added, “The big tool chests are coming too.”

  Mack picked up the workbench, hefted it, and said, “Okay, this one’s not bad,” and he walked it to his truck. He put it on the side and headed for the other two. He lifted the next and frowned. “This one is heavier.”

  “I have room for at least another drawer,” she said, pointing to the hatch of her car.

  He pulled out a drawer and said, “Well, this is very heavy.” He placed it in her hatchback and then grabbed the last drawer and put it there too. “We’ll put the other two drawers from the other bench inside my cab.”

  She grabbed the drawers, noting what looked like files and all kinds of stuff inside that she had no clue what to do with, and carried that to the front of Mack’s cab. Part of her worried she was becoming Nan and grabbing stuff she had absolutely no need for. Another part of her worried she was just being cheap or thought she could sell this stuff. But, with the three workbenches now empty, she grabbed the end of one, and, with Mack’s help, they lifted it up into the back of his truck’s bed. He turned it on its side, took the smaller one, and laid it on the side inside, nesting them. Then he grabbed the third one and put it on top.

  She stared at that in delight. “Wow,” she said, “I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “Those weren’t the problem.” He wheeled the tool chest toward the box. “This piece will be the problem.”

  She looked at it and frowned. “We could take out the drawers maybe?”

  He shook his head, and, while she watched, he lifted off the top half of the toolbox and set it on the ground.

  “I had no idea it came apart,” she said in delight.

  “Not really apart,” he said, “but this bottom piece will be very heavy. It should be wheeled up via a ramp. We can’t do that.” But Mack was a huge man. He reached around from the back and, moving carefully, lifted the entire tool chest up onto his tailgate. And then he wedged it in close enough up to the benches that nothing would go anywhere. He made it all look so effortless. Then he lifted the top piece too. With the smaller ones up and tucked into corners he nodded. “Knew it would fit.”

  She looked at the garage and said, “It’s almost completely empty. That’s unbelievable.” There was a broom in the corner. She grabbed it and swept up the empty room, so Penny wouldn’t have to do it. But there was no dustpan. With everything in a corner, she knocked on the inside door.

  Penny stepped out and looked at the empty room. “Wow,” she said.

  Doreen pointed at the dust pile and said, “I swept it up, but I don’t have a dustpan or a place to put the garbage.”

  Penny nodded. “No problem,” she said. “I’ll clean that up.” She turned and looked around the garage. “This is big enough for two cars, maybe even three.”

  “It’s a big garage,” Mack said. “It looks huge now. That should be a big selling point for you.” He secured the tailgate, gave the top bench a shake, and said, “Good thing we’re not going far.”

  Doreen walked over to her car, waved at Penny, hopped into the driver’s seat, and then slowly pulled out. With all the tools lying everywhere in her moving car, there was an incessant clinking and rattling of steel on steel. But she drove carefully to her place and then parked off as far on the right side of her driveway as she could. She had absolutely no idea what she was supposed to do with the stuff Mack was bringing.

  He backed into her driveway and stopped a good twenty feet away from the garage doors. He hopped out and said, “Did you really think about this?”

  “I really didn’t,” she confessed. “Wouldn’t be so bad, but the garage …”

  He nodded and said, “Let’s take a look at the garage.”

  She went inside the house and opened the doors for the animals, who all raced out to say hi to Mack. He bent down to scrub Mugs’s ear, when Thaddeus jumped up onto his shoulder. Chuckling, he gave Thaddeus several moments of cuddles too. Goliath just sat there and stared up at him. Mack went down on one knee and reached to pet Goliath, but Thaddeus bit him on the ear. “Ow,” he said.

  Doreen chuckled as she came back out of the house with the garage key in her hand. “That means Thaddeus doesn’t think you’ve given him enough attention.”

  “Well, it’s not exactly making me eager to give him more,” Mack snapped.

  With a smile, Doreen unlocked the garage door and opened it. Mack stared at the contents and groaned. “How will you put any of George’s shop stuff in there?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “On a good note, I did contact Scott, and he is excited about the tallboy down below, at least he’ll get to see it tomorrow,” she said.

  Mack nodded. “That’s great, but we have to get to that door first.”

  “The weather looks to be decent for the next day and a half, and, if we could have Scott at least look at whatever is here, we could possibly get in a dump trip or hire somebody to take this stuff to the dump or maybe even get one of those Dumpsters.” Although she winced at that.

  “That’ll cost you a few hundred dollars,” he warned.

  She nodded and said, “I know. I do have the money, if needed, but, if I can get away without one, I’d like to.”

  Mack walked forward into the garage and said, “Some of this is just junk.” He carefully pulled out a table missing a leg, and the table looked like cheap pine with a big scratch on the top. He moved that outside off to the grassy spot alongside the driveway, and Doreen pulled out several chairs that looked like they went with it, but they were in bad shape too.

  She shook her head. “Nan did say a lot of junk was in here.”

  “Let’s get as much of the junk out and see what’s left,” he emphasized after a sigh.

  She helped him move out a dozen pieces, and they were now a good ten feet in.

  “It’s going better than I thought,” he said, “but I don’t understand what this is.”

  Doreen looked over at the pallet and groaned. “Nan said she bought this lot sight unseen and then got really upset when it was just car parts.”

  He sighed. “We should take a look at it to see if it’s got any value. But let’s get the rest of this busted-ass furniture out of here.”

  “And, if anything is good or decent,” she said, “I’m a little short on furniture inside now.”

  He chuckled at that. “Serves you right for getting rid of it all,” he said.

  “And I’d get rid of all this too if I could.”

  They moved out several more pieces. A table crumpled as soon as they put
it down on its legs. Mack looked at it and asked, “Did you get a sledgehammer from Penny’s house?”

  Doreen nodded and pulled one out of the front footwell of her car. She dragged it back toward him.

  He just laughed, picked it up, and tapped a couple of the table legs from the junk furniture pile, and it all just collapsed. Within minutes, he had a small pile of expensive kindling. “That’ll make it a little easier to haul out of here.” Then he went back into the garage and brought out several more pieces.

  She got into the rhythm of things, hauling them out, and, if they were busted already or scratched up, he just destroyed them, further adding it to the pile of junk. Very quickly they were down to having almost a cleaned-out garage.

  She stood in the middle of the room. “Just like that, I now know how Penny feels. This space is huge.”

  He nodded. “Still a lot of stuff is on the walls.” He pointed to a bunch of hanging tools and some stuff leaning against the back wall. He looked over at the pallet again and said, “The question is, what will we do with this?”

  Chapter 27

  Friday Afternoon …

  “I have no idea,” Doreen said. The large pallet was still wrapped in clear plastic. She opened up one of the boxes and pulled out some sort of silver pipe. “Nan said it was all car parts, so I don’t know what that means.”

  Mack looked at that piece she held and whistled. “That’s not exactly a car part,” he said. “That’s a stovepipe for a Harley.”

  “Stovepipe? How does this hook onto a stove?”