A Curious Incident, page 7
I have to admit, if only to myself, my cheek still tingled where he’d given me a kiss of farewell.
“I’m going out for a while,” I said to Ashleigh. “Won’t be long.”
She glanced at Donald. “That’s what you always say, Gemma.”
“Sorry. I have my phone if you need me.”
“I never do,” she said. “Isn’t that right, big boy?”
Moriarty jumped up onto the sales counter for a scratch. Ashleigh obliged.
We left the store in the nick of time. Donald had parked in the loading space, and the parking enforcement officer was heading our way, ticket pad out and a determined look on her face.
“Better step on it,” I said.
I threw fast-food wrappings, paper cups, magazines, and a copy of Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle, by Daniel Stashower, into the back seat, and jumped in.
Donald waved cheerfully to the parking enforcement officer as he pulled into traffic.
When I say “into traffic,” I do mean into traffic, as Donald never worries whether or not another vehicle is coming. Today a delivery van screeched to a halt inches from the rear bumper of Donald’s rust-chewed 2001 Toyota Corolla, and in front of us a bicycle swerved wildly.
I would have clutched the door handle, but I feared it would snap off in my hand.
We lurched up the street and took the first right turn. A woman snatched her child out of the crosswalk.
Fortunately, we weren’t going far, and only moments later we pulled up in front of Anna and Mike’s house in a burst of exhaust fumes. I leapt gratefully out of the car.
Built in the mid-seventies, the house itself was a small, neat brick bungalow with a carport instead of a garage, although it sat on a large lot. The front garden, as I’d expected, was lush and immaculate. We walked up the stone path, and Donald rang the bell. The sound echoed throughout the house. We waited.
“Did you tell him you were coming?” I asked.
“Yes.” Donald pressed the bell again. At last, the door opened and a face peered out. “Oh, Donald, it’s you. Hello. I was afraid the vultures of the press were calling again. Come in. Come in. Gemma, nice to see you.”
I smiled at Mike Nixon as we stepped into the house. “I am so sorry about your loss.”
“Thank you.” The smile he gave me was wide, but sadness filled his eyes. Those eyes were red and swollen, but dry now. All cried out, I thought with a pang of sympathy.
A Bichon Frisé ran down the hall, nails clicking on the hardwood floor, barking furiously. He ran around me in an excited ball of white fluff and tried to leap onto my legs. As I was wearing a knee-length skirt with bare legs, I danced out of the way.
“Down, Peony!” Mike said. “Down! I’m sorry about that. He simply won’t learn not to jump on people.”
“That’s okay.” I leaned over and held out my hand for the little dog to sniff. “He senses my dog, Violet, and wants to find out more about her. Is he named after the flower?”
“Peony is … I mean he was Anna’s dog. Peonies were Anna’s favorite flower. I’m sorry the season for them has passed. She would have loved an abundance of peonies on her grave.” He turned his face away from me, and I continued to fuss over the dog.
Once Peony and I had made our acquaintance, I straightened up and handed Mike the book I’d brought. “A small gift. I don’t think you’ve read this one yet. It’s rather fun and makes some original points.”
“Thank you, Gemma. It’s a nice day. Would you like to join me for a drink in the garden?”
“If you’re not busy,” Donald said.
I’d like nothing better, I didn’t say. I was interested in having a look at this garden.
Mike dropped the book onto the bench in the foyer and led the way through the house, to the back, while Peony scrambled on ahead. I peeked into rooms as we passed. The furniture was mass produced and cheap, the art on the walls the same. The beige leather couch in the living room almost disappeared against the beige walls and the beige drapes. Several magazines, their covers featuring flowers or gardens, lay on the coffee table. The bookshelves were sparsely filled. I wasn’t able to read the titles on the spines at a distance, but I recognized many of them as coming from my shop. It was possible Anna kept her own reading selections elsewhere, but judging from this room, she wasn’t much of a book reader. The carpet beneath the dining room table was faded and worn, not because it was an antique, but because it didn’t often get cleaned. A quick peek into the kitchen showed me it hadn’t been renovated for several decades; I believe that color of fridge and stove is called harvest gold and was once hugely popular, although I can’t imagine why.
At the end of the hallway, we walked down two narrow steps. Mike opened a door and we stepped outside.
I’d been looking forward to seeing this garden, and it didn’t disappoint. The property was about a quarter of an acre, every inch filled with lush perennials, perfectly trimmed bushes, emerald-green grass, and magnificent old trees. More flowers, annuals mostly, filled iron urns, and various stone statues peeked around corners and out from under branches. Birds hopped about under feeders or drank from the artificial pond in the center of the yard.
A gray jay flew overhead and landed beneath a feeder. Snip snip snip came from my left, and I turned to see a man in brown overalls, trimming a boxwood hedge.
Mike gestured to the stone-floored patio to our left, and Donald and I took seats around the glass-topped table beneath an open red umbrella.
“Can I offer you something to drink?” Mike asked. “The sun’s over the yardarm somewhere.”
“Water, please,” I said. “We don’t want to keep you.”
“I have no place better to be.” He swallowed heavily and turned his face away from me.
“A glass of water would be nice,” Donald said.
Mike went to get the drinks. Peony took a seat under the table.
Donald and I sat in companionable silence for a long time. Snipping and trimming, the gardener came closer. He was a young man, dark eyed and dark haired, his thin face and heavily muscled arms browned by the sun. Peony leapt off the deck and ran over to him. The gardener momentary stopped his work to give the dog a pat.
“Beautiful garden,” Donald said at last.
“It certainly is,” I said.
“Anna’s pride and joy.” Mike had returned. He put the glasses on the table, water for us, a beer for himself. “She won the best-in-show trophy this year. For all the good it did her.” He lifted his glass. “To Anna.”
“Anna,” Donald and I said.
“Is the garden an interest of yours as well?” I asked. “Will you keep it up?”
“No. It was Anna’s passion. All I did was admire it. Early days yet, but I’ll probably sell the house.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I’m sure you’ll have no trouble getting a good price,” Donald said. “Not from a keen gardener.”
“I hope so. To be honest, I’d have preferred a nicer, more modern house. If not that, then I wanted to build an extension and update this one, but Anna wouldn’t dream of losing an inch of garden space. The size of the property was, to her, the entire point of living here.”
I didn’t know what Mike did for a living. Whenever he came into the shop, all we talked about was what books were new and might be of interest to him.
“Are you a doctor?” I asked. I’d noticed a couple of medical journals on the coffee table in the living room, next to a library copy of Elevator Pitch by Linwood Barclay.
“No. I work for a medical supplies company. We sell heart monitors and pacemakers. I travel to medical conferences all over the country. My hobby’s tennis. I’d love to play at the West London Country Club, but membership there’s well out of my price range, so I play at the community courts. Do you play, Gemma?”
“Never had the time, I’m afraid.”
“I suppose that store keeps you on the hop all summer. I was always glad Anna had the garden to keep her busy when I was away.”
More than busy, I’d have said. But I didn’t. “She was also an author, wasn’t she?”
He shrugged. “She wrote a couple of books on gardening. They did okay. And she had her blog. It was very popular, I’ve been told. Anna tried to interest me, but the gardening bug never bit me. Just as well; I wouldn’t have had the time.” He sipped his beer.
Snip snip snip. The gardener came closer, Peony trotting along behind.
“Do you have any idea who killed her?” I asked.
Startled, Mike looked up. “Sheila Tierney, of course. Everyone knows that.”
“Because they were gardening rivals?”
“That sounds silly, I know. But you have to understand the depth of passion, the love, Anna had for this garden.” He lifted his arm and swept it from side to side. “It was as though every flower, every plant, every bush was her child. We never had children ourselves. No, maybe love isn’t the right word. Gardening was a competitive sport to Anna. Winning the trophy was everything. I can only assume Sheila’s the same. If someone had destroyed Anna’s garden, she’d have gone after them with a vengeance.”
“Did Anna destroy Sheila’s garden?” It was a blunt question, but it had to be asked.
Mike didn’t seem to mind. He took another sip of his beer and shook his head. “I don’t know. I’d not have thought it was in Anna’s nature to do something like that, but she could overreact sometimes. If something happened to upset her, I don’t know what it might have been. I heard what happened on Sunday morning. They say Sheila physically attacked Anna.”
“You didn’t see it?”
“Wasn’t home. I was in Vegas at a pediatrician’s conference and got in late afternoon on Sunday.”
“You weren’t here for the tour then?” I asked.
“No need. I had nothing to do, and Anna wouldn’t have wanted me underfoot at any rate. The tour was over when I got home. Anna was upset, to say the least. The day was supposed to be her triumph, and Sheila and her temper tantrum had spoiled it. Anna won the trophy, but that did nothing to mollify her. We had an uncomfortable dinner, and when it was over, Anna went to her office, saying she wanted to work on the blog, and then she took the dog out. She was still in a foul mood when they left.” Tears formed in his eyes. He wiped angrily at them. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter—not any more—if Anna vandalized Sheila’s garden. Obviously, Sheila thought she did, and she got her revenge.”
“Sheila hasn’t been charged,” I reminded him.
“Matter of time, I’m sure. It was Sheila all right. I never did like her. Cold as ice, that woman.”
“Did you know her well?”
“Not well. She was Anna’s friend, not mine.”
“She and Anna were friends?” I finished my water. I was interested in what Mike had to say, and it was so very pleasant in this beautiful oasis. We were seated under the umbrella, but the heat of the sun filled the air around us. A yellow and black butterfly fluttered about, darting from one flower to the next. An airplane flew soundlessly overhead, and one bird called to another. A patch of lavender was planted somewhere close by, and its delicious scent drifted toward me. The gardener was working at the edges of the patio now, trimming a lovely full bush about five feet tall, covered with a mass of delicate pink flowers.
Donald sat silently, looking between Mike and me.
“Anna and Sheila were good friends for a while,” Mike said. “Popping in and out of each other’s houses for coffee and gossip, having us over for dinner, or Sheila and David coming here. The usual sort of thing. Anna was fond of their little girl. What’s her name again?”
“Lauren.”
“Right. Lauren. Good tennis player, for her age.”
Mike had a deep, rolling voice, made more powerful by the emotion he was struggling to control.
“What happened to the friendship?” I asked
He studied my face. “This might sound like sour grapes, but I never liked Sheila. Sheila’s a user. A taker. She uses people and then she throws them away. That’s my impression of her anyway. She and Anna had a huge falling-out a few months ago. I never found out the whole story, but Anna said Sheila’s jealousy was becoming too much for her to handle. Sheila liked to be the center of attention, and the success of Anna’s books and blog was getting her the lion’s share of attention in the Cape Cod gardening community. It came to a head, so Anna said, when Sheila contributed something to the blog and the information was incorrect. Anna caught the mistake in time and fixed it, but she believed Sheila deliberately tried to make a fool of her.” He drained his glass.
“We should probably be going.” Donald stood up.
I cursed under my breath. I had more questions. Such as did Mike think his wife had been having an affair with David Tierney.
Mike also stood. “Thanks for coming.”
I had no choice but to get to my feet too.
Instead of taking us through the house, Mike stepped off the patio and took the flagstone path around it. The little dog didn’t try to follow.
“I’m going to Boston week after next to have dinner with some of the members of The Speckled Band,” Donald said, referring to that city’s Sherlockian society. “Would you like to come?”
“I would,” Mike said, “if I’m free. I’ve taken time off work, but you’ll understand I have arrangements to make, and the police will need to speak to me as they build their case against Sheila.”
I paused at the corner of the house and turned to take one last look at Anna’s garden. The gardener had stopped work and was watching us with his large dark eyes. He made no move to look away. Peony, the Bichon Frisé, sat in a patch of shade at his feet.
I hurried to follow the men.
Chapter Eight
The emergency meeting of the West London Garden Club would be held at the Harbor Inn at seven o’clock. Ashleigh agreed to stay late and close up so I could go to the meeting. At quarter to seven, I was standing in front of the Emporium. Traffic was heavy on Baker Street as tourists headed for dinner or returned to their hotels after a day spent exploring the seaside. Across the street, a face appeared in the window of Beach Fine Arts. I smiled and waved, and the face retreated.
I might have saved Maureen Macgregor from being sent up the river for murder last summer, but you wouldn’t know it by the way she treated me. Then again, Maureen was an equal-opportunity curmudgeon: She didn’t like anyone.
I thought about “up the river,” meaning to the big house—that is, prison. I liked that expression.
Leslie Wilson’s car pulled up to the curb, with Jayne in the passenger seat. I jumped into the back.
“Step on it!” I said.
“Step on what? And why?” Jayne said. “We’ve plenty of time.”
“I’m trying out my American expressions.”
“Okay, but we don’t say ‘step on it’ if we’re not in a hurry.”
“Whatever. Leslie.” I spoke to Jayne’s mother, “What’s the word in the ‘hood’ ’bout the Wentworth dame bein’ knocked up?”
“Was she?” Leslie replied in a shocked voice. “Did the autopsy reveal that?”
“That’s usually a precondition for undergoing an autopsy, isn’t it?” I said. “Being dead.”
“If you’re going to show off your Americanisms, Gemma,” Jayne said, “you have to get them right. Knocked up means ‘made pregnant.’ You’re thinking of knocked off, which means ‘killed.’”
“Oh, right. In English, proper English as spoken by Her Majesty the Queen’s loyal subjects, knocked up means ‘woken up.’ All highly confusing. Like what you call biscuits, which aren’t biscuits at all.”
“If I guess correctly,” Leslie said, “you’re asking me what people are saying about the death of Anna. The answer is that the general opinion is Sheila did it. Anna ruined her garden, they had a fight, and Sheila was dragged away. She then went home, spent the rest of the day nursing her grievances, and went out later and finished the job.”
“Do people believe Anna destroyed the garden?”
“My friends don’t know. They’re all in some sort of shock. More shocked at that, I’d say, than at the killing. None of them can believe a gardener as expert as Anna would have deliberately destroyed one, no matter who it belonged to.”
“People can do strange things when they’re angry or consider themselves to be provoked,” Jayne said.
“True enough,” I said.
“Did you hear the chief’s press conference?” Leslie asked. “I caught some of it on the news on the radio.”
“Irene sent me a text,” I said. “Nothing we didn’t know. Killed by a blow to the back of the head by a blunt instrument. No signs of a struggle. People asked to come forward if they were in the vicinity of the attack at the time. No arrest has been made at this time, but they are confident that … blah, blah, blah. Which usually means they haven’t got a clue, but in this case, I think it means they’re focusing on Sheila Tierney. Who, according to her stepsister Irene Talbot, wouldn’t have done something like that. At least, not in that manner.”
We arrived at the Harbor Inn. The parking lot was filling up, and people were streaming inside. “Looks like they’re going to have a good turnout,” Leslie said as she hunted for a parking spot.
“Nothing like murder and gossip to bring everyone together,” Jayne said.
We crossed the lobby quickly. The scents emanating from the outdoor restaurant reminded me I hadn’t had lunch today. Come to think of it, I hadn’t had dinner last night either.
“Want to go to the Café after the meeting?” I asked Jayne.
“Maybe for a quick drink if it’s not too late. I had dinner before Mom picked me up.”
The garden club meeting was being held in one of the conference rooms, and we could hear the excited buzz before we even reached the hallway. At five to seven, the room was almost completely full. Brian, the owner of the inn, was bringing in extra chairs.
“Standing room only,” Jayne said.
“Not for me.” Leslie dashed to snag a chair in the center of the middle row of seats.
