Swan for the Money (11 page)

Chapter 18

Horace and Sammy were in the show barn, staring at some of the tables.

“Meg, do we really have to paint all the table legs black?” Sammy asked. “I could go into town and get some paint, but we borrowed them from the New Life Baptist Church, and I think they’d rather get their tables back the same color they started out, and besides—”

“I agree,” I said. “No painting the table legs. And if Mrs. Winkleson has a problem with that, tell her to talk to me. Horace, the chief could use your help.”

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“Someone tried to knock off Mrs. Winkleson just now,” I said. “Unfortunately, they attacked someone else by mistake. The chief could use your forensic talents. Sammy, he could probably use your help, too.”

Horace hurried off. Sammy started to follow, then turned back to me.

“Who’s the, um, victim?” he asked.

“Mrs. Sechrest. One of the rose growers. Not from around here.”

Sammy nodded.

“I suppose I should be ashamed to say that’s a relief, but it is,” he said. “You said tried. Will she make it?”

“We don’t know yet,” I said. “Dad didn’t look too cheerful.”

Sammy shook his head and hurried after Horace.

No one else was in the barn. Were the volunteers all in the other barn, working on the setup there? Out helping with the search for Mimi? Or all up at the goat pasture, staring at the crime scene?

I was determined not to do that myself, so I looked around for something to do. I spotted an open box, presumably what Sammy and Horace had been working on when Mrs. Winkle-son blew through and demanded that they paint the table legs black. The label on this box read, helpfully, “labels.”

I opened the box up and looked inside. It was full of small black and white plastic labels. I picked up one. Class 130. Okay, the classes were the different categories in which the roses would be entered. I knew that much from proofing the program. I dumped the box’s contents on a nearby table and began to sort them. I ended up with labels for classes 101 through 149, and also three sets of alphabetical labels. Where were all those A– Zs supposed to go?

And why was I assuming the show would go on? For all I knew, the chief would declare the whole area a crime scene, and before the afternoon was out I’d have to pack up the little plastic labels again.

“Something wrong?”

I looked up to see one of the rose growers watching me.

“Do you know what to do with these?” I asked, indicating the labels.

“Just how much do you know about rose shows, sugar?” the woman asked.

“Next to nothing,” I said. “My mother suckered me into doing this because I have a reputation in the family for being organized. But she promised there would be someone here to help who knew how this whole thing is supposed to run.”

“I can help with that. Molly Weston.”

Since there were no roses nearby, I assumed that was her name. I shook the hand she held out, and then stood by while she started shuffling the little plastic rectangles.

“Do you have one of the programs?”

I rummaged around until I found the box of programs and handed her one.

“Okay,” she said. “This is pretty straightforward. Class 101 is for hybrid teas or grandifloras from a grower with 75 or fewer rose bushes,” she said. “And 102 is for growers with 76 and above. Those are the two biggest categories— so big that we need the alphabetical tags underneath. I’d say use the first four tables for 101 and the next four for 102. The next few are fairly small, maybe half a table each, until you get to the miniatures. That’s what the third set of alpha tags is for. I’d say another four tables for them. Here— follow me.”

She handed me a couple of stacks of plastic tags and I trailed after her, placing the tags on the tables, closer together or farther apart, depending on how popular she thought the categories were apt to be.

We had only done a couple of tables when my cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket. Michael.

“It’s my husband,” I said. “I should—”

“Go talk to the man,” she said, waving me away. “I’ll handle this.”

I flipped the phone open and strolled outside, where I could have some privacy.

“Hey, beautiful,” Michael said. “Do you miss me?”

“You have no idea how much,” I said.

“Rose show even worse than you anticipated?”

“About as bad as I anticipated up until an hour ago,” I said. “Then it took a nose dive when someone tried to kill Mrs. Winkleson.”

“Tried? She’s all right, then?”

“She’s fine. Unfortunately the attacker probably managed to knock off another one of the rose growers. Dad went with her to the hospital, but it’s not looking good.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “Who?”

“Sandy Sechrest.”

“I don’t recognize the name,” he said.

“That’s because she was never anything but polite, helpful, and cooperative in the last few weeks,” I said. “It’s only the rude, demanding, unhelpful, nasty ones you’d recognize, because they’re the ones I come home and bitch to you about.”

“Actually, the only name I can think of off the top of my head is Mrs. Winkleson.”

“That figures,” I said. “There are some others you’d probably recognize if I said the names, but she’s been the worst. Did you hear that someone abducted Mrs. Winkleson’s dog last night?”

“My God, you have had a morning. Do you think they’re related? The murder and the dognapping, I mean?”

“No idea. And unlike Dad, I’m trying to leave the detecting to Chief Burke. Let’s talk about something else. How’s the trip going?”

“Could be better,” he said. “I don’t suppose the attempted murder counts as a crisis for which you need me standing sup-portively at your side?”

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “I thought you felt duty-bound to see your student’s play.”

“That was when it was a play,” he said. “He didn’t tell us that during the rehearsal period it had mutated into a musical.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Used to be
Millard Fillmore and the Compromise of 1850: A Tragedy of American History
. Now it’s
Millard! The Musical!
With two exclamation points no less.”

“Actually, that sounds as if it could be an improvement.”

“I doubt it. According to a review we read on the way up, the only halfway hummable tune in the whole show is a ballad about the Wilmot Proviso.”

“Oh, dear.”

“And since we’re all professors, and hate to admit ignorance of anything, even if it’s not in our field, now we’re all frantically trying to pretend we know what the Wilmot Proviso is and what it has to do with Fillmore. You don’t happen to know, do you?”

“Actually, yes,” I said. “It was a law that was supposed to outlaw slavery in any territory the U.S. acquired from Mexico. Introduced several times in the 1840s but never passed. Often cited as one of the earliest signs of the split that eventually resulted in the Civil War. Not exactly what I’d call ballad fodder, but you never know.”

“I should have called you when the subject first came up.”

“I wouldn’t know the first thing about it if I hadn’t helped one of the nephews with a term paper last semester. Which reminds me: can you bring me—”

“Ms. Langslow?”

I looked up from the phone to find the chief looking expectantly at me. What now?

Chapter 19

“I’ll be off the phone in just a moment,” I told the chief.

He nodded, smiled, and assumed a visibly patient expression. He did not, however, move out of earshot.

“Bring you what?” Michael asked.

“Some cheesecake,” I said. “Remember that deli where we had such good cheesecake? You don’t get cheesecake like that down here.”

“I don’t actually remember where that deli was.”

“But there’s good cheesecake all over New York,” I said. “Maybe you can ask your student for a recommendation.”

“Will do,” he said. “Talk to you later.”

We said our good-byes, and I hung up

“What can I do for you?” I asked the chief.

“One of my officers found Mrs. Sechrest’s car behind some bushes along a lane that runs around the other side of the farm,” the chief said. “Pretty impossible to get good tracks after all this rain, but it looks as if she hid her car there, snuck in the back way, and was making her way toward the house when she was attacked.”

“Why do you suppose she did that?” I said.

He sighed.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” he said. “Was she on your list of volunteers?”

“No, but Mother was going to call around to guilt trip a few more people into helping. Maybe she talked Mrs. Sechrest into coming. You could ask her. Mother, I mean. Or Mrs. Sechrest if—when—she regains consciousness.”

He nodded.

“Only that’s not likely to happen, is it?” I blurted out. “We all keep correcting ourselves, saying ‘attacker’ instead of ‘killer’ and sticking attempted in front of murder, and using the present tense when we talk about Mrs. Sechrest, but we’re not really expecting her to pull through, are we?”

The chief sighed slightly and tightened his lips.

“Any of your other volunteers come in the back way?” he asked.

Okay, I wasn’t really expecting an answer to my question. Or maybe I’d already gotten my answer.

“Not that I know of,” I said aloud. “But I’m sure more of them would have if they’d known there was a back entrance. People were getting really tired of waiting for the front gate. It was supposed to have been left open for the volunteers, but Mrs. Winkleson forgot about that, or changed her mind after the dognapping, and at one time we had at least a dozen vehicles stacked up and waiting for up to half an hour.”

“I know,” he said. “Remember, Minerva and I were trying to get in to help out.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Anyway, maybe she knew the back way and decided to avoid the crowd.”

“The back way into the farm, or into the house?”

“Either.” I shrugged. “Both. Who knows?”

He frowned and looked down at his notebook.

“Sorry,” I said. “I wish I could be more help, but I don’t actually know everything about Mrs. Winkleson and her farm. Just what I’ve learned over the last couple of months while planning the rose show.”

“You probably know more about her than anyone, actually,” the chief said. “At least anyone who’s willing to talk to me.”

“What about her staff?”

“Darby claims he doesn’t pay attention to anything but the animals,” the chief said. “Can’t answer the simplest questions about her friends or her habits. He might actually be telling the truth. The man doesn’t seem to notice anything that’s not on four legs. And the rest of the staff aren’t even
that
helpful. Can’t get a sensible word out of them. The ones who even speak English, that is.”

This was more information than the chief normally shared with civilians, which must mean he was getting incredibly frustrated.

“I wouldn’t have expected them to be that loyal,” I said aloud.

“Loyal? Hell, they’re scared silly. More of her than of me. And none of them are local.”

Which meant that he couldn’t rely on his officers, all of them local, to tap the Caerphilly grapevine and bring him information witnesses wouldn’t share officially.

“If you hear anything, let me know,” he said. “Note that I said
if
you hear anything. I’m not asking you to go out and snoop around.”

“Okay,” I said.

He sighed.

“I don’t suppose I can convince you to leave the detecting to us,” the chief said. “It’s not like finding the victim obligates you to solve the crime.”

“I know,” I said. “But I am taking it a little personally that she was stabbed with my secateurs.”

“Your what?”

“The garden shears that someone used to stab Mrs. Sechrest,” I explained. “Secateurs is another name for them.”

“Why don’t you just call them garden shears, then?” the chief grumbled.

“I do, but the ladies in the garden club think secateurs sounds more elegant,” I said.

“So these— blasted things belong to you?” the chief asked.

“Not really. I made them for Mother. She wanted something more elegant and ornamental than the ordinary shears you can find in garden centers.”

The chief studied me with a familiar scowl on his face. He got very testy at anything that even hinted of interference with his criminal investigations. I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out how he felt about someone who had, however inadvertently, furnished the would-be killer with his weapon.

“So if you made them and gave them to your mother,” he said, finally, “what were they doing over here, stuck in Mrs. Sechrest’s back?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “Mother and I haven’t seen them in almost two weeks.”

“You lost them?”

“They were stolen,” I said. “By someone in the garden club.”

“The garden club?”

“It happened the Sunday before last, when the garden club all met here to go over the plans for the show,” I said. “I’d only just finished the secateurs, and Mother was so proud of them that she pretended to have stuck them in her tote by mistake. She found an excuse to pull them out and wonder why on earth she’d brought them, so she could show them off. Everybody wanted their own set.”

“Nice for your business.”

“Yes, though it would have been nicer if Mother had waited to wave them around at the show,” I said. “You have no idea what a pain it’s been, trying to find the time to make forty-two pairs of shears on top of all the things I have to do to get ready for the show.”

“How many have you made so far?” he asked.

“Seventeen.”

“Then how can you be sure this is the one your mother lost at the garden club meeting?”

“Had stolen from her at the garden club meeting,” I corrected. “I’m pretty certain for two reasons. One is that I still have the rest of them locked up in my forge, except for this pair.”

I fished through my bag and pulled out the secateurs I’d brought. The chief flinched, and I saw him reach toward his holster.

Chapter 20

“I surrender!” I said, dropping the secateurs and putting up my hands.

“You startled me,” he said. “Blast it all, put your hands down. People are staring.”

I put my hands down, then bent to pick up the secateurs, which I gave to the chief, handle first.

“And just what are you doing walking around with an identical duplicate of my murder— attempted murder weapon?” he asked.

“It wasn’t any kind of a weapon this morning, when I put it in my tote,” I said. “And it’s not identical. See this little decorative bit?”

I pointed to a small, stylized twig and leaf that curled inside the handle. The chief leaned over slightly and peered at the secateurs. From his wary posture, you’d have thought he was being asked to inspect a rattlesnake.

“On the first pair I made, the hole inside the handle was smaller, and that little sprig dug into your hands in a really annoying way. Not into Mother’s hands, which are very small, but most people would find it uncomfortable. So when I started making them in larger numbers, I rethought the design. Every pair of secateurs I’ve made since has had a hole about this size. The one I saw stuck in Mrs. Sechrest’s back was my original.”

“The pair that was stolen from your mother at the garden club meeting.”

“Yes.”

He scribbled a little in his notebook. I wondered what. Was he writing down what I just told him? Or did he use his notebook to vent things that it wouldn’t do to blurt aloud? Had he just scribbled, “Meg Langslow: found victim. Made weapon and seventeen virtually identical copies. Definitely a suspect”? Or something more like. “Blast, but I wish I were back in Baltimore, where people try to kill each other for normal reasons, like drugs and money”?

He saw me looking at his notebook and tilted it a little more toward his chest, as if he thought I was about to try to read upside down.

“Do you know who stole your shears?” he asked.

“Mother suspected the Pruitts and Mrs. Winkleson,” I said. The chief nodded, and scribbled. “Of course,” I went on, “that could just be because she doesn’t particularly like the Pruitts and Mrs. Winkleson.” The chief stopped scribbling long enough to glance up at me as if checking to see if I was joking. I shrugged apologetically. He dropped his eyes again and scribbled longer than seemed quite necessary to record what I’d just said.

“Which Pruitts?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “There are usually three or four of them at garden club meetings, trying to give orders instead of doing any useful work.”

“What else is new?” the chief muttered.

“I’ve got the membership list here,” I said, raising my clipboard. “I can’t swear every member was there for the meeting, and there might have been a few non-members tagging along, but it would give you some idea. And here’s a copy of the volunteer list. It’s shorter.”

“A lot shorter,” he said.

“That’s because I only wrote down the people who actually committed to show up and work.”

The chief nodded, and scanned the lists.

“Will it inconvenience you if I keep these?” He didn’t sound as if a “yes” would change his mind.

“Be my guest,” I said. He glanced up in surprise. “Everyone knows I keep the member list with me at rose show meetings, and they’re always asking to borrow it and not giving it back, so I’ve learned to bring a few photocopies. And any volunteers who aren’t here already either aren’t coming at all or won’t be in time to do any useful work, so that list’s pretty useless by now.”

“Thank you,” he said. “But I mean it. Stay out of this.”

“I will.”

“I’m serious. There’s a murderer— attempted murderer— running around loose, and if that person thinks you can point the finger at them—”

“Got it,” I said. “Solving the murder— or attempted murder— is your job.”

For that matter, I could stop worrying about solving the theft of the secateurs. Odds were the chief would see that as an integral part of solving the larger crime. Even poor Mimi’s abduction would probably get a lot more attention because of the possibility that it was connected to the subsequent attempt to murder her owner.

But it was still my job to figure out whether or not someone was sabotaging Dad’s black roses, and if so, who.

Not that I was going to say as much to the chief.

My cell phone rang. Rob.

“Meg? I saw the ambulance leave, and Dr. Smoot just came in asking for the chief. I sent him up to the barns. What’s going on?”

“Someone tried to kill Mrs. Winkleson and got the wrong person,” I said. “Rob says Dr. Smoot’s here,” I added, to the chief.

“Damn,” the chief said. “As if he could do any good out here, with the . . . victim heading off to the hospital. Let me have that a second.”

I gathered from the chief’s side of the conversation that Dr. Smoot was already out of earshot. The chief began giving Rob instructions about keeping out unnecessary personnel, particularly reporters. I left him to it and went outside to greet Dr. Smoot.

I spotted him already up at the goat pens, leaning on the fence. At least I assumed the figure in the inky black cloak was Dr. Smoot. Mrs. Winkleson would approve if she saw him, but he wasn’t dressing in black for her approval. The county’s acting medical examiner had developed a taste for the supernatural, and had begun habitually wearing a black cloak with a red satin lining, looking like a refugee from an old-fashioned horror film.

Then again, the last time I’d made assumptions about someone in a black cape I’d been dead wrong. I began strolling toward the figure.

The chief caught up with me halfway and handed me my cell phone.

“Thanks,” he said. “Did you call Smoot?”

I shook my head.

“Probably listening to his police radio again,” the chief grumbled. “Can’t seem to get it through his head that we’ll call him if we need him. Been showing up whenever there’s a 911 call, scaring people to death with that vampire getup and that old-timey hearse he’s taken to driving.”

I noticed he kept his voice down so Smoot couldn’t hear him.

Dr. Smoot turned to greet us as we neared the fence.

“Now this is what I call a proper crime scene,” he announced. “Plenty of room to work in.”

Chief Burke closed his eyes, as if counting quickly to ten. He knew, of course, that what Dr. Smoot really liked was the fact that the crime scene was outdoors. Dr. Smoot was a severe claustrophobe, and tended to have panic attacks when asked to examine a body in any indoor space smaller than a ballroom. He was gazing over the flat field toward the distant tree line with great satisfaction.

“Yes, very nice,” the chief said. “Unfortunately, you’ve come all this way for nothing. We don’t have a body, at the moment. We just sent the victim off to the hospital. You’ll have to catch up with her there. More convenient anyway if you end up having to do a post mortem.”

“Oh.” Dr. Smoot’s face fell. Clearly he wasn’t enamored of the idea of a visit to the county morgue. Of course, the one or two times I’d been there, I’d felt a little claustrophobic myself, but I’d have thought with Dr. Smoot’s keen appreciation of all things funereal and supernatural he’d find the morgue a congenial place, even if it did have four walls.

“Well, they’ll do what they can for her at the hospital,” he said, finally. “No rush. As long as I’m here, I might as well see if I can help out in any way.”

Chief Burke didn’t look overjoyed at the offer.

“There’s still the search for the missing Maltese,” I said. “I imagine the chief will have to pull his officers off that to solve the attempted murder, so perhaps you could help out with that.”

“Maybe I can take a look at her vampire horses,” Dr. Smoot added, with a gleam in his eye.