Keeping Mum (A Garden Society Mystery)

“Oh, pish! He made a large donation once. Everybody knows him.”

“But it’s really better if the Roanoke Garden Society stays out of politics. We want to be a group everyone can feel good about.”

Samantha turned to stare at Cam, and Cam thought she was about to be fired. She was on thin ice with Samantha Hollister anyway over that little accusation of murder the previous spring. But Samantha was back with a vengeance, and even though she was no longer an RGS officer, she was wielding her power like a machete.

“This will garner a lot of publicity. We will emphasize the gardening angle, and a lot of important people will see what we can do. Think of the goodwill it will generate!”

Cam knew the truth of it. This was the party with money in Roanoke, so it was possible they had more to gain than lose . . . other than that whole “their soul” thing. She hated her beloved organization getting political. It seemed to cheapen it.

• • •

• • •

C
am sulked and didn’t manage to accomplish a thing all afternoon, so when her best friend, Annie, called at four, she was ready for a change. Unusually, though, Annie sounded as down as Cam felt.

“Meet me at Martin’s at five? Happy hour—girls for an hour, then Jake and Rob can join?”

“That sounds like the prescription I need,” Cam said. “Are you okay?”

“I can’t even get the words out until I have my swim in a pitcher of beer,” Annie said.

“Man, I hate it when we have the same day—at least if it’s a bad one.”

Cam and Annie had been best friends for more than twenty years. Cam thought of Annie as the yin to her yang. They were opposites in almost every way, but they fit well together.

She hung up and tried to brainstorm a little about how this fund-raiser should go, but it wasn’t getting any easier. Finally, at four thirty, she fed her meter, admiring her brand-new Mustang, and went into a market, bought a Heath bar, and put quarters into a machine for two toy-surprise eggs. One of their college friends had moved to Europe and occasionally sent them Kinder Eggs, but some silly U.S. law said Americans weren’t capable of telling the edible chocolate from the inedible toy inside, so she and Annie had come up with this inadequate substitute for their very worst moods. She knew her own met the criteria, and it sounded like Annie’s did, too.

• • •

• • •

A
nnie was munching chips and salsa, half of her first beer gone. Cam set the faux Kinder Egg supplies on the table and Annie grinned.

“And just when I was asking myself what you ever do for me . . .” Annie said.

“I know. You do me a lot more favors. But at least I appreciate them.”

“Well, I’m about to collect.”

“You are?”

“I am. My dad played the ‘Daddy Card’ and I’m stuck.”

Annie’s father was a former state senator, and while his relationship with Annie wasn’t bad as far as relationships with rebellious daughters go, Annie and her dad didn’t see eye to eye on anything.

“Uh-oh. What does he want you to do?”

“He’s been personally grooming Jared Koontz for his old senate seat . . .”

“Uh-oh,” Cam repeated.

“I know, right?”

“No. I mean I think your bad day and mine have the same source.”

“No!”

“Samantha wants the Roanoke Garden Society to host this big event,” Cam said.

“The event to announce his candidacy and raise beaucoup bucks at the same time,” Annie finished.

Cam reached over and gulped down Annie’s beer in spite of it being about three shades darker than she normally chose.

Annie opened the Heath bar and put her half on a napkin, then took her egg and set it in front of her. Had they been real Kinder Eggs, the chocolate would have had to be broken to retrieve the toy, so Annie used her teeth to chip part of the chocolate from the toffee, and then slammed her egg on the table in mock action. One end of it went flying and their waitress rushed over in a panic.

“Erm . . . yeah. Sorry about that,” Annie said. “But while you’re here, could we get an IPA and an Embarrassing Light?”

“Pardon?”

“Bud Light,” Cam said. “She’s embarrassed. I drink Bud Light.”

“It’s unnatural,” Annie said as the waitress walked away.

“I can’t handle the alcohol,” Cam said.

“Maybe you could if you ever remembered to eat. Look at you. Skin and bones,” Annie said.

It was true, Cam was very thin. And it was also true she forgot to eat when she was busy or preoccupied. But she didn’t think that was the only reason she couldn’t handle the alcohol.

“What I meant, though,” Annie continued, “was
us
stuck working for Mr. Scary-Jari Koontz.”

Cam snorted. “So did you come up with anything?”

Annie grinned and leaned in. “I did, actually—a little inside joke.”

“I meant for the event!”

“See, that’s the beauty of it. It
is
for the event. I say we throw one of those murder mystery dinners. We let everyone coming to the event bid on who dies—all money kept for the fund-raiser—and the highest bid names the murder victim. And see, here’s the fun stuff. We get the satisfaction of killing their favorite guy!”

Cam had to laugh. “By favorite you mean top bid? Okay. Brilliant! Though don’t you think that’s tempting fate a little, with the murder record at the events we do?”

“Yeah, but these are politicians—sad as it is, you can quit winding them up, but they seem to keep on ticking.”

Cam debated addressing the mixed metaphor, but honestly, that was Rob’s domain and he wasn’t here yet. Her boyfriend, Rob, was a journalist, most often a sports reporter, though he had covered a few murders of late. And he was usually more laid-back than Cam, except where language was concerned. He wasn’t keen on sarcasm, slang, or mixed metaphors.

“We’ll definitely have to run it by everyone,” Cam said. “RGS may be skittish, but if we promise a setting with a lot of gardening features, they’ll be appeased. I really like it. Have you ever been to a murder mystery dinner?”

“Yeah, but it was a college party, and the supposed murderer got drunk and was in the bathroom all night, so it was impossible to solve. Have you?”

“Yeah, actually. I met Rob at one,” Cam said.

“I thought that was a young media professionals meeting.”

“It was. It was the October meeting that year—five years ago. And it was set up as a murder mystery dinner. It encouraged all of us to talk.”

“Oh, that’s wicked! How do I not know this story?” Annie asked.

“Because every time I try to tell it, you keep jumping to the sex part—and that night, there wasn’t any.”

“What, all that tension of a dead body and you didn’t need to . . .”

“Right. You’re proving my point,” Cam said. “I’m not the one who jumps into that lightly.”

“Yeah. Sad, that.”

• • •

• • •

T
he next meeting for the Roanoke Garden Society was the following Tuesday. Board member elections would also be held that day, but the acting president, Holden Hobbes, was beloved and would be listened to, so Cam felt she should start with pitching the idea to him. She arranged to meet him an hour before the meeting started at the Patrick’s. Neil and Evangeline owned a beautiful garden that their gardener, Henry Larsson, managed, and each season he created a gorgeous floral mural, identifiable from the sunroom and balcony above. Cam knew Holden Hobbes would enjoy a stroll before the meeting began, and Cam liked to guess from the colors of the flowers on the ground what the mural would look like from above. Unlike the displays Cam had seen, which normally had one dominant color with strands of one or two secondary colors shooting through, the garden now seemed to have different colors clustered in different areas, each color with a circle of yellow mums and goldenrod at the center. The mums were slightly taller than the asters and sedum surrounding them, but the goldenrod reached high, almost as tall as Cam in places. Cam thought instead of appearing as one flower from above, as was usual, it would look like a giant bouquet.

“Camellia, you look lovely, as always.”

Holden Hobbes was eighty-four as of his late-September birthday, but seemed spry and healthy.

“Senator Hobbes. Thank you so much for meeting me.”

“Senator! Ho! I haven’t been a senator since 1998. I’m in for a plea, aren’t I?”

“You are. The Roanoke Garden Society has had a request from two directions . . . hosting the announcement dinner and fund-raiser for Jared Koontz. It’s for your old seat.”

“I know who Jared is.” He didn’t look particularly pleased, which cheered Cam for a reason that was in opposition to her task. She liked Holden Hobbes, and was glad he didn’t particularly care for where his party was headed.

“The requests came from Samantha Hollister and Alden Schulz.”

“Alden?” Holden frowned. “There was a time I handpicked him to replace me.”

“Really?”

“He was disappointing.”

This wasn’t the direction Cam wanted this conversation to go either, but on that front, there was at least something she could say.

“He’s my best friend’s father,” she said.

“Annie?”

“Yes.”

He smiled then. “Well then. I suppose I can forgive him his unwillingness to compromise. She’s a delightful girl.”

Cam noticed he never mentioned Samantha, but Cam wasn’t about to bring it up. The two had coexisted in the Roanoke Garden Society since it was founded, and there was no evidence that getting between them ever solved anything.

“Annie and I thought maybe a murder mystery dinner would be a good fund-raiser. Patrons could bid on who would be killed—not really killed, of course—for the mystery.”

“Oh! Now that’s clever! I like that a lot. Yes. You definitely have my support.”

• • •

• • •

T
hey walked up the stairs to the balcony. Just inside was the sunroom where the meeting would be held, but Cam wanted to linger a minute to look out over the garden. The mural from above was a bouquet of asters. There were five flowers in the bouquet: a bright pink, light pink, violet, periwinkle, and white. Then there were the green stems, formed largely of the black-eyed Susan greens that had been allowed to remain and a variety of hostas. Cam thought she should have guessed it; then again, Henry Larsson didn’t always opt for a flower in season to be featured. She and Holden enjoyed the view for a moment before heading into the Roanoke Garden Society monthly meeting.

The board bought in easily. Holden’s endorsement and Samantha’s plea swayed the few who didn’t already support Jared’s candidacy.

Elections were the afternoon’s only disappointment. Ramona Pemberly had run for secretary and won, and Cam couldn’t think of anybody she would less care to coordinate with. Mrs. Pemberly was a nagging, nitpicky shrew, as far as Cam could see. Thankfully, her husband seemed to know about his wife’s less-than-flattering attributes and poked her back into line fairly frequently.

All that was left to do in the short term was plan a murder.