The Bluebonnet Betrayal (7 page)

“Our annual English tea will be held in April—this is always a treat for everyone. New members, ask your mentor about the dress code.”

New Members' Corner, from
Austin Rocks!
the e-newsletter of the Austin Rock Garden Society

Pru accepted a fresh, hot cup of tea. More sugar—the police were making sure no one keeled over from shock. DCI French and DS Chalk sat across a metal counter in the middle of the room—the walls lined with cookers and two enormous refrigerators. The police had notepads out and a phone set to record. Pru told her story, beginning with meeting Twyla at the garden the evening before. Only the evening before—it seemed so long ago now.

“We arranged to meet here this morning. I went home. As I was walking in this morning, I heard Sweetie scream.”

“If you did not know Ms. Woodford, how did you become involved in the club's project?”

French said the word as if the women had decided to build a replica of the Alamo out of Popsicle sticks. Pru drew a breath to correct him, exhaled when she realized he wouldn't care, and inhaled again. This was for Twyla.

“The Chelsea Flower Show is internationally acknowledged as the most important venue for gardeners and designers, and the very fact that the Austin Rock Garden Society was awarded the opportunity to create a display that would bring an important ecological landscape to the forefront means that—”

“Fine, Ms. Parke,” French cut in. “How is it that you became involved in this venture?”

“Oh. I worked with Ivory ages ago at the Dallas Arboretum, and Twyla had read about me”—Pru felt herself creep close to a part of her life she would rather not mention to the DCI—“when I restored a garden in Sussex. They were delayed and needed someone here at the start of buildup.”

DS Chalk held his pencil poised over his notepad as if he expected her to say more. She didn't.

“Was Ms. Woodford having difficulties with someone?” French asked, pressing her. “Someone in the society? Another crewmember?”

“I met her only yesterday,” Pru said.

“And she didn't discuss any problems with you?”

Pru hesitated. French waited.

“Well, of course she was concerned about the garden—she wanted it to be its best. She had a clear vision, and I don't believe it's unreasonable to ask everyone to pitch in and…”

“Who, Ms. Parke?”

“This was her design—at least, I believe it was. But she wasn't allowed to put her name to it.” Pru felt as if she were throwing Roddy to the lions, but wasn't that what Twyla had said? “I'm sure there's a great deal of politics involved.”

DCI French flipped his notebook closed, switched off the recording, and nodded to Chalk, who left the room.

“Thank you for your time, Ms. Parke.”

She ignored the dismissal. “Did the rocks kill her?”

“We won't know that until the postmortem is complete.”

“There were marks at her throat,” Pru said, barely able to speak the words. “Bruises.”

“Did you interfere with the crime scene?”

“Interfere?” There, now she'd found her voice. “If by ‘interfere' you mean did I hope she was alive and so quickly removed as many stones as possible until I realized she was dead, then yes, I interfered.” Pru crossed her arms tightly in front of her.

The DCI drummed his pen on the table as he looked off into space. “Initial findings suggest she was dead before the rocks came down on her—she was strangled.”

Pru's hand flew to her throat. She could feel the fingers closing in, squeezing, lights flashing in front of her eyes…

She took a ragged breath and matched his even tone. “Thank you for telling me.”

He handed over a card with his particulars. “We'll be in touch.”

Pru returned to the larger room, now empty. DS Chalk must have gathered up the ARGS women for the journey to their digs on Lamont Road. Fine, let him be mother hen for a while. Pru made for the door just as it flew open.

Roddy stood with the light behind him, hands braced against the doorjamb as if to steady himself. His face was flushed, his glasses askew and his hair damp. The cuffs of his plaid shirt were unbuttoned and they flapped as he flung his arm out.

“Who did this to her?” he shouted. His eyes landed on Pru and in a split second he lunged, grabbing hold of her coat and shaking her. “Who would dare touch her?” he screamed in her face, spittle flying. She caught a whiff of gin.

Before Pru had a chance to react, three PCs jumped him and pulled him off. Roddy slumped like a rag doll and wept loudly.

“Roddy MacWeeks?” French's voice—loud and sharp—was as good as a slap in the face.

“Yes?” Roddy replied, a little boy caught by his schoolmaster.

“In here, please.” Pru watched the PCs escort Roddy into the interview room. “Are you all right, Ms. Parke?” French called across the room.

She nodded, straightening her coat—she was too out of breath to reply. Once French had shut the door, she leaned up against the wall until she'd regained her composure.

And still she couldn't get out the door. A tall man with thinning, chestnut hair ran straight into her. Pru backed off, and he stepped inside, brushing off his lapels.

“Are you Pru Parke?” He frowned at her, his face one of angles—high cheekbones and a sharp chin.

Before she could answer, a PC followed him in and said, “This way please, sir.”

“Sorry,” the man said to Pru as he let himself be led away.

She stepped out and the door closed behind her. Pru stood on the front step and surveyed the hospital grounds. Activity had returned to its normal level—off to her left along the Rock Garden Bank even the Aussies had got back to it. It made the contrast with the ARGS site—empty except for a couple of uniforms and wrapped as it was in blue-and-white tape—stand out even further. Pru didn't move any closer, but she could tell from the lack of police personnel that they had taken Twyla's body away. She called Christopher, and he answered at the first ring.

“I've been let go,” she told him. “I'll come back to the flat.”

“No, meet me at Chelsea Old Church,” he said. “At the end of Cheyne Walk.”

He had been waiting nearby—the church was only fifteen minutes away down the Embankment. The sun shone high and bright, and it had turned warm—some might think it a fine spring day for a walk.

She headed for the Bull Ring gate, almost reaching it when she thought she heard Twyla's voice behind her.

“Pru.”

She whipped round, her heart in her throat, and found Chiv.

“Pru,” he repeated.

“Yes?” She put her hand on her forehead and felt beads of sweat.

He had his hands stuck in the pockets of his denims and he still wore his ARGS sweatshirt. His face was cast in shadow as if he carried his own cloud just over his head. “I'm going to talk with Nottle,” he said. “I don't know what he'll say. But if they'll let us—the police, too—I want to continue.”

“Good.” They didn't speak for a moment, then Pru asked, “You did know her, didn't you? Before all this?”

Chiv looked away. “Yeah. But it doesn't matter now.”

“How is Teddy? Iris?”

He shrugged. “You?”

“I'm…” She nodded. How easy it was to slip into Chiv's conversation style, where a word here and gesture there could carry the topic. “When they let me go, I saw someone.” She waved toward where they'd been questioned. “The police were taking him in. He wore a suit.”

Chiv cast a glance over his shoulder. “Damien.”

Damien—supplier of the large house on Lamont Road. “He's with GlobalSynergy—the company buying Forde out?”

“Yeah, he's with Global-bleeding-Synergy” was Chiv's reply, like a quiet growl. “Damien Woodford—he's Twyla's ex.”

“Apologies to our members who were unable to hear last month's speaker due to problems with the sound system. Coming through loud and clear now!”

Austin Rocks!
the e-newsletter of the Austin Rock Garden Society

Pru stopped at the gate to switch her steel-toed boots for trainers and stuff her ARGS sweatshirt into her bag as questions began piling up in her mind. In the few words she'd heard him utter, Damien sounded British, but he must've lived in Austin—if this was the same ex-husband Twyla mentioned. Ivory had tossed Damien's name out as if she knew him. Twyla had said she called in a few chits for the Chelsea garden. Was Damien—or his company—one of those favors?

Leaving the hospital grounds, she exchanged the noise of excavators and cranes for cars, taxis, and motorbikes on the Embankment road along the Thames. As she walked, she breathed in the spring air to clear her head. But thoughts and faces began to crowd round her, and even though she tried to outrun them—finishing her journey at a trot—they seemed to arrive first and waited for her next to Christopher.

He sat on the wall round the corner and away from the Embankment traffic, but stood when he saw her and took her instantly in his arms. There, that was better; the clamor in her head faded.

After a few moments, they sat, and, holding tight to his hands, she told him everything she could remember about the morning. Christopher asked a few questions, but mostly left her to it. When she'd got out her tale, she began voicing questions of her own.

“When did it happen?” she asked. “Did she leave and return this morning? If so, she got there far earlier than anyone else. What if she never left? What if it happened—” Pru leapt off the wall, but had to sit back down immediately, as she felt light-headed. “I might've seen someone.”

“When?”

“As I left yesterday. Work peters out toward evening, and there weren't too many people around. I was walking out the London gate and off to my right”—she waved an arm—“I thought I saw one of our sweatshirts. I walked that way, but it turned out to be the parakeets. At least, I thought it was. Oh, Christopher—I forgot to tell DCI French.”

“Did you see any detail? Was the person tall or short? Hair color?”

Pru shook her head.

“Still, you should ring him.”

“Yes, I will.” She looked about her—a lovely small garden surrounded Chelsea Old Church. She'd visited before. “Why did we meet here? You could've come to the gate—I might've been able to get you in.”

“As good as security is for the show,” Christopher said, “it tripled as soon as this happened. I'm no longer with the Met. I can't just muscle my way into an investigation.”

Just what the DCI had told her. “Did you know French at the Chelsea station? Was he a PC when you were there?”

That brought a smile to Christopher's face. “He was my sergeant.”

“But when you and I met, you didn't have a sergeant.”

“No, I was without one at that point. French had taken a detective inspector post in Nottingham. He did well for himself there and came back to become DCI here.”

“He took your job.”

“I had left the Met, and he assumed a vacant post.”

“Mmm. I don't see why he couldn't ask you for help with this case.”

“Because French goes by the book.”

Pru lifted her eyebrows. “I wonder where he learned that.”

“And it won't matter that I'm not involved.” Christopher took her hands again, massaging the backs of them with his thumbs. “When they've finished with your statement, we'll leave—go back to Hampshire. You don't need this.”

He offered her an escape, but running back to Greenoak meant running away. She shook her head, a little too vehemently, and had to wait a moment for her vision to settle.

“No, I can't,” she said, only realizing her conviction as she spoke the words. “I need to stay and help with the garden. They have to let us build it.” Had a garden ever canceled out of the Chelsea Flower Show? And if they couldn't continue building the Texas hill country landscape, what would happen? Would there be an enormous gap along the Rock Garden Bank next to the Aussies? Or would a champagne bar take the place of Twyla's dream? “No,” she said again. “I can't let her down. I have to stay.”

Pru held his gaze, letting him read her thoughts. He must've known what her response would be.

“All right. We'll wait and see what the police decide—what the show decides.”

That was enough for the moment. She nestled into his shoulder and they sat quiet. Pru watched the traffic on the Battersea Bridge until her eyelids drooped. She sat up and shook her head. “I can't believe I almost nodded off.”

Christopher checked his watch. “You need lunch.”

Already gone one o'clock—hours since they'd found Twyla's body. What had the police learned?

They ate in a characterless pub on nearby King's Road, sitting at one of the many empty indoor tables as everyone else took advantage of the sun and crowded outside on the pavement. Christopher ate his beef sandwich while Pru hung her head over the bowl of creamy asparagus-leek soup and breathed deeply, letting the steam and the aroma seep into her, smoothing out the rough edges, stilling the storm of questions in her heart.

She couldn't muster up the energy for conversation, and it didn't matter. They drank their pints of ale—hers a half—and finished lunch in silence. She should be building a dry stone wall or assembling the old gas station or arguing with Roddy about plants, but now the afternoon stretched out before her empty, with no end in sight.

“I'm going to make a quick stop on the way back to the flat,” Christopher said as they walked out onto the pavement.

It was the nonchalant way he said it that alerted her.

“You're going back to the station?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “The least I can do is offer, although I've little hope they'll take me up. There are no open positions, and it isn't as if the Met makes use of volunteer investigators.”

She put a hand to his cheek and kissed him. “Thank you. And I'm going to stop at the Lamont Road house and check on the women.”

Pru rang the bell on Lamont Road and waited. Two girls on kick scooters, schoolbags slung across their shoulders, glided by on the pavement, laughing. A car revved its engine three doors down. The noise did not mask Twyla's voice, which was loud and clear.

“You'll help me, won't you?”

Pru whirled round to be met with empty space. She swayed and grabbed the wrought-iron rail to keep from falling as behind her the door opened and a strong arm grabbed her.

“All right there, Ms. Parke?” DS Chalk frowned as he steadied her.

“I'm fine.” Pru glanced over her shoulder one more time to the vacant pavement. “Thank you. Am I…is it all right to come in?”

“You're not staying here, are you?” Chalk asked.

“No. I only came to check on the others.” She spied Ivory coming down the stairs. “Hello, Ivory.”

“Hi, honey.” Ivory opened the door wider. She had a tissue in her hand and paused to blow her nose. “Come on in here. That's okay, isn't it?” she asked Chalk.

“We've finished here, Ms. Braswell. You'll ring if you or the others think of anything else?” He nodded to the PCs standing near the stairs and they all walked out—one of them carrying a piece of brown leather luggage.

“What did he have?” Pru asked.

“Twyla's suitcase,” Ivory replied, and Pru followed hot on her heels to the kitchen.

“Her suitcase? Twyla was here? So, you did see her?”

“You want some coffee?” Ivory asked as she dropped into a chair, which squeaked, and her bountiful head of hair bounced slightly as her chin sank into her hands. “Or tea—is that what you drink?”

“Why don't you let me make a pot of coffee?” Pru got the coffeemaker started, searched cupboards for mugs, sugar, and took milk out of the fridge. “Twyla's suitcase,” she reminded Ivory.

“We found it when the police brought us back. I guess she'd come by while we were still working yesterday—or maybe while we were at the theater.”

“But you hadn't noticed it?”

“It was in her room,” Ivory said. “We didn't see her and so why would we look in there? She showed us this house online, and we got to choose our rooms before we ever left home. She told us which room to save for her—the little one behind the stairs at the top.” Twyla had saved the box room for herself—typically a tiny, windowless space in a house. Perfect for storing boxes, not much to recommend it as a bedroom.

Pru drew two packets of custard cream biscuits out of her own bag—she'd stopped at a shop on the way, thinking that food would be better than flowers.

The others wandered in and took seats, letting Pru act as host. KayAnn and Nell wore jeans and camis, but had wrapped blankets around themselves. Sweetie hadn't changed, but had pulled her ARGS sweatshirt over her slinky trouser suit. She sat on the edge of a chair, one leg bouncing up and down. Rosette was last. Her face had acquired a gray hue that clashed with her auburn hair.

Pru told them about meeting Twyla the evening before. “She was happy to be here, and excited about the garden. I'm so sorry that none of you had a chance to see her when she arrived.” In a far corner of Pru's mind lay a tiny thought, which she did her best to ignore—someone had seen Twyla after her arrival. Did Pru know these women well enough to say it hadn't been one of them?

“To think that she came round here and we were all out,” the blonde—KayAnn or Nell—said. “And no one knew she was in town.”

The dark-haired one—Nell or KayAnn—sat up straight. “I just thought of something. Ivory—that means you're finally president.” She immediately clapped her hand over her mouth. “I'm sorry! I didn't mean that the way it sounded!”

“Just like her,” Rosette said, as she began lining up the spoons Pru had set down in a heap, “to sneak in for a big surprise so we could all shout for joy.” Rosette suddenly snatched her hands back as if she'd been burned, and then, with the sweep of her arm, knocked the spoons onto the floor and stuck her fists in her pockets.