Murder Crops Up (8 page)

Now Amy would come and shatter that. She would have to sleep in the middle of everything, on the lumpy old sofa bed in my living room. Her teenaged debris would be everywhere—hair equipment, makeup bags bulging with weird colors, jangly heaps of costume jewelry, jeans and T-shirts so frayed you would think them overdue for the ragbag. She did try to keep it all straight, but her definition of tidy and mine came from different dictionaries.

Waiting for the water to boil, I wandered through the living room. Drake’s abrupt departure had caught his living room in its usual chaotic state. He limited his organizational efforts to the kitchen.

This was one reason why we often sat in my living room in the evening. Years of living in my VW bus have made me very sensitive to clutter. My house is small and I don’t have a lot of stuff, so cleaning is a relatively simple process. Drake’s living room overflows with stacks—books in teetering piles, videotapes in and out of cases, newspapers and journals piled on opposing ends of the coffee table, and a sofa draped with whatever he puts down on his way through the room—a shirt, a stack of files, a basketball, a towel.

Despite the peace and quiet I’d craved, I suddenly felt an overwhelming longing to see Paul lounging on the sofa—after having pushed all the junk down to one end.

The kettle whistled. I was pouring hot water on a tea bag of lemon balm and peppermint when Amy called back.

“I can be there tomorrow around noon. Is that okay?” Her voice was anxious.

“It’s fast.”

“I don’t care how early I have to get up. It’s worth it to get away from here.”

“Amy, is something—going on, something I should know about? Because—”

“Don’t worry, Aunt Liz.” Her laugh was brittle. “Everything will be fine, once I get to California.”

That sounded like famous last words.

Chapter 9

"Amy's a dear girl,” Bridget said, passing me the bowl of green beans, “but should she be coming to visit just now? It’s not a particularly good time, is it?”

She wasn’t more specific about why it wasn’t a good time because the three adults at the Montrose dinner table were outnumbered by the four children. Corky, the eldest at seven, had his ears pricked up under his blazing thatch of curly red hair. He passionately resented the unfairness of a world where adults could know things that children could not. He frequently managed to find out, and garble, any secrets he suspected his mom of keeping from him.

Sam, the next oldest at five, didn’t care about the meaningless bibble-babble around him. He ate stolidly through a large helping of spaghetti before beginning on his salad. The garlic bread lay on his plate, untouched. He would eat it last. I knew his patterns because I’d minded the four Montrose offspring while Bridget and Emery had been in Hawaii not long before.

Mick, the youngest boy, had graduated at three to a booster seat on a regular chair. He loved the freedom of climbing up and down on his own during meals, and made use of it way too often for my delicate spinster nerves. Bridget was oblivious, however, and even Emery did no more than haul Mick back by his shirttail when he attempted to leave the room.

“Do you need a high chair again?” Emery spoke sternly when he plunked his son back into the booster seat, but his hand smoothing Mick’s straight brown hair was tender. “We all sit at the table during meals. That includes you."

Mick looked at him thoughtfully. “Okay,” he said at last. He rarely spoke in more than monosyllables, although Bridget had been assured by his preschool teacher that he had a perfectly adequate vocabulary when he needed it.

Moira was conducting an art project on the high chair tray, involving swirls of spaghetti and sauce, tastefully ornamented with garlic bread crumbs. She had been using her face as a palette to mix her materials. “More,” she demanded. For a toddler, her voice was surprisingly strong.

“Not until you eat some,” Bridget said. “How about a green bean?”

“No want.” Moira’s little mouth snapped shut.

“It’s not a great time for Amy to visit,” I said, keeping an eye on Corky, who was keeping an eye on me. “But she has an unexpected school holiday and she really, really wanted to get away. Renee’s even agreeing to let her come. They must really be mixing it up lately.”

Corky sucked up a few stray strands of spaghetti. “Is Amy gonna stay with you again? Is that what you’re talking about?”

“She’s coming for a few days.”

“Cool!” He nudged Sam in the ribs. “Amy’s coming. Did you hear that?”

“Amy with the purple hair?” Sam looked up from his plate. “She baby-sat us.”

“She taught us that cool card game, remember? Seven-card stud,” Corky said with relish. He helped another massive forkful of spaghetti into his mouth, rendering him speechless while he tried to contain it.

Bridget and Emery appeared unconcerned at this revelation of their offspring’s corruption. Emery even smiled. “How’s she doing with her stock market investing?” He leaned back, pushing the lock of red hair out of his eyes. In the past few months, I’d noticed more and more gray in his hair, though he wasn’t forty yet. An aura of energy surrounded him, even when he was sitting down with tired-looking eyes. “She’s quite the go-getter for a high school student. Girl’s got a jump on her future already.”

“I didn’t ask her how the investing goes. She was pretty overwrought, really. That’s why I couldn’t say no.” I met Bridget’s worried gaze.

Corky had seized on the word
overwrought.
“She’s not, like, rotting or anything?” His eyes were filled with dread.

“No, hon. It just means too emotional, like you get when you’re tired and something happens that you don’t like.”

“Oh.” Corky thought it over, stuffing in the last of his spaghetti. “CanIbescused?” He was sliding off his chair before Bridget nodded.

Sam followed him, and Mick, staring at his dad, said, “Me, too,” and slid off the booster seat. Moira set up a screech.

Emery had to shout to make himself heard. “You boys wash your faces and hands before you touch anything, especially the TV.”

At the sink, Bridget passed a washcloth ruthlessly over Moira. She was done before Moira even started to howl about it. I marveled at this. When I tried, ever so gently, to wash her, she screamed like a banshee. Bridget’s no-nonsense approach really seemed to work. She put the baby down, and Moira made a beeline for the living room.

Bridget finished rinsing out Moira’s bib and came back to the table with the bottle of Merlot we’d been working on. “Here’s to college,” she said, topping off our glasses and lifting her own. “A mere sixteen and a half years until they’re all gone.”

“I won’t last that long,” Emery said. “What are they watching?”

“Aladdin.
Should be okay.” Bridget turned to me. “I didn’t want to ask in front of Corky, but how are you doing? What have you heard since this morning?”

“I’ve heard nothing.” I sipped the wine, admiring its dark, rich color. “However, Lois came to see me this afternoon. She’s in a swivet.”

I filled them both in on Lois’s visit, and they agreed it was strange. “But not any stranger than someone getting killed at the garden,” Emery added.

“Strange is one word for it.” I shivered.

“Actually,” Bridget said, “the gardeners aren’t as bad as sports parents.” She and Emery exchanged looks. “The soccer coach and a couple of the parents from that game last Saturday sounded like they were ready to start a rumble.”

“It’s the volunteer syndrome.” Emery sounded like this continued some previously fought skirmish with his wife. “Like I said when that site council thing broke out, volunteers always get bent out of shape about something at any given point. They get into turf battles.”

“Literally, in this case.” Bridget topped up my glass. “I mean, most of the time the gardeners cooperate with each other. If your neighbors plant something tall that shades your plot, you tell them about it, and they don’t do it the next season. But some people take sheer thoughtlessness as a hostile act and get themselves totally lathered up over it. The whole Bermuda grass thing—” She shrugged.

“But none of that is enough to kill over.”

“I’m sure it will turn out to be a freak accident,” Emery said in a soothing voice. “People who garden just aren’t the kind of people who kill.”

“All kinds of people garden,” I said. “They’re not all nice, by any means.” I thought of Carlotta’s round, sweet-looking face. She seemed so comfortable, until you noticed her mean little eyes.

“That’s true,” Emery said. “After all, Webster isn’t my idea of a gardener.” He drained his glass and leaned back in his chair. “He’s such a funny guy.”

“Funny-peculiar, Emery means.” Bridget went over to the sideboard to cut slices of a toothsome-looking apple pie that had been calling to me all during dinner.

“He’s a good worker,” Emery amended. “When I have to bring him on board because we’re slipping our deadlines, he really whips things out. But he wants us to jump through all these weird hoops—a dedicated phone line just for him, all kinds of security codes, have his check ready right there, not mailed to his P.O. box, et cetera. I don’t really know where he lives.”

“Maybe he’s homeless.” I knew the tricks to living without an address.

“Not with the rates he charges.”

“He’d have no reason to do anything to Rita, either. I think they were dating at one time, but they seemed perfectly friendly to each other whenever I saw them.” Bridget dealt us each a slice of pie. Its rich cinnamon aroma made my mouth water. “Tea?”

“Thank you.”

She poured me a cup of delicate green tea that somehow went perfectly with the apples. I savored my first bite, and said, “That’s two men we’ve heard of in the past few hours that Rita was dating. I wonder if one of her boyfriends could have come to have it out with her, pushed her, and run away when he realized she was dead.”

“It’s not even that complicated,” Emery insisted. “She must have tripped and fallen wrong. That rake across the path, maybe she didn’t see it in time to avoid it. A dive into a foot-deep trench could be unhealthy.”

Bridget’s expression lightened. “That sounds reasonable. At any rate, Bruno will get to the bottom of it. He’s very good at reading the crime scene."

Emery looked at her askance. “You’re starting to sound like someone who spends hours watching TV cop shows.”

“You know I don’t,” Bridget said indignantly. “They’re too upsetting. I can’t even watch those
Prime Suspect
shows you like.”

“Children,” I said. “Remember you are modeling the correct behavior here.”

Emery smiled, but his voice was serious. “I don’t want you ladies thinking of yourselves as sleuthhounds. Let the police take care of it. They know what they’re doing.”

“That’s not what you said a couple of months ago when all that proprietary code was leaked to your competitor. You said the police were idiots because they didn’t find out who did it.”

“Well, industrial espionage isn’t really their bag.” Emery waved that away. “This kind of accidental death looks pretty straightforward.”

I had been thinking about it. “I’m not so sure it was an accident, Emery.”

“Why not?” He didn’t seem too happy to be contradicted, and I realized he didn’t want Bridget to worry about it. But she was bound to worry, no matter what.

“Well, she couldn’t have tripped on the rake. She fell backwards into the trench. If she’d fallen forward, she probably would have fallen on her head instead of her neck, and that might not have killed her.”

He frowned. “I see what you’re saying. But maybe she was backing up for some reason—to let someone by—”

“But anyone who was with her would have reported it right away,” Bridget said. “If someone was there, they didn’t speak up. That doesn’t sound like an accident.”

“Accident or not, let the police deal with it.” Emery looked at each of us in turn. “They have the resources to figure it out. You don’t.”

“They don’t know the garden, though,” Bridget pointed out. “They don’t know the gardeners. Not like we do.”

“I don’t know them so well, either.” Now I found myself on Emery’s side. “I’ve only been gardening there for four years, and you’ve been there less time than that, I believe. Tamiko has been there since it started in the seventies.”

“You see?” Emery pushed his chair back. From the living room we could hear the frenetic strains of Robin Williams singing about friendship. “I’m going to watch
Aladdin
with the kids. You coming?”

Bridget shook her head. “We still have to plan for Claudia’s birthday party.” The children in the living room shrieked with laughter, and she raised her voice.

“In fact, could you close the door?”

“Aren’t we finished with the party?” I wouldn’t have minded taking in a few minutes of
Aladdin
before I had to leave. My taste in movies is just about at the third-grade level.

Bridget watched the door swing shut behind Emery, then leaned forward, putting a hand on my wrist. “I don’t want Emery to hear this,” she murmured. “But I’m really afraid Rita’s death was not accidental.”

“What do you mean?” Her expression chilled me.

“Because I heard her arguing with someone just before I left this morning.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I thought about going over and intervening, they sounded so nasty.” She took a tissue from the box on the counter and blew her nose. “But I didn’t. Maybe if I had, Rita would still be alive.”

“It had nothing to do with you,” I said, covering Bridget’s hand with my own. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“I called Bruno, of course. I just didn’t know if I should say anything about it to anyone else. You won’t gossip. And I just felt you should know.”

“Why? Who was arguing with Rita?”

“They were shouting at each other. Rita said that she had a right to do whatever she wanted. And
she
said—”

“She? Who?”

Bridget didn’t answer that right away. “She said, ‘Your rights may not last long, if you keep it up.’" Recounting this, Bridget shivered. “I’d never heard her sound mean like that. It gave me a chill.”

“Who? Who was mean?”