Authors: Monica Ferris
Sixteen
O
N
Tuesday, Betsy left the shop in Godwin’s capable hands. The day started out gloomy, and by the time Betsy and Connor finished their breakfast it was raining. It was not a heavy downpour that might finish and clear off, but the kind of steady rain that could settle in for the day.
The temperature was in the high seventies, so Betsy dressed lightly in denim shorts, a chambray shirt, and sandals.
The rain had chased away a lot of customers from Green Gaia Gardens, Betsy noticed, as she hustled from her car to the garden center’s office. That was good; maybe she could talk to Marge without taking her away from business.
But Marge wasn’t there, either. Betsy looked around and didn’t see even an employee inside. She went back out and found a tall young woman picking up a spilled four-pack of Indian paintbrush, expertly tucking the roots into a clay pot and replacing the soil.
“May I help you?”
“I hoped to talk to Marge,” Betsy said.
“Her mother fell and they think she broke her hip. They’re at the hospital,” she said, using the rain to sluice the dirt off her hands then pushing her wet blond hair back behind her ears. She wore a short, waterproof yellow jacket and tennis shoes oozing water.
“Oh gosh, that’s awful! I hope she’ll be all right,” said Betsy.
“Yes, so do we all. Her mother is a lovely woman. I’m Katy, store manager; is there some way I can help you?”
“Well, I’m not sure.” Betsy definitely did not want to ask the woman if she knew Marge was having an affair with McMurphy. “Did you know Hailey Brent?”
Katy frowned at her. “I’m sorry, we’ve pretty much decided not to gossip about poor Ms. Brent. May I show you some flowers or vegetable plants?” Betsy started to say no—the rain was soaking into the shoulders of her shirt—when Katy said, “Wait a minute, you’re Betsy Devonshire, aren’t you?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Ohhhh.” There was a world of comprehension in that drawn-out syllable. Betsy could see Katy was shifting gears by the rearrangement of her eyebrows.
“Are you really going to help Marge?”
“I hope so. I’m trying to find out just what happened to Hailey. What she was like, who her friends—and enemies—were.”
“Well, I’ve worked here for six years, but I wasn’t either a friend or an enemy. I knew her on sight, but she wasn’t over here a whole lot. She bought her plants through the Internet or by mail, mostly. Sometimes she’d come over just for a look, to see a plant she’d been reading about in person—photographs in catalogs aren’t reliable. Just once in a while she’d buy something. What she’d do—” Katy looked around for eavesdroppers and leaned forward to continue in a murmur. “She’d steal.”
“She’d steal plants?”
“No. This is going to sound weird, but she’d steal blooms off of flowers.”
“Oh yes, Marge told me about that. She stole flowers to use in her dye-making. I bought some of her yarns to sell in my shop. Beautiful colors.”
“I remember one time she cut a lot of blooms off our new variety of marigold. Marge was really upset about that, but one good thing about marigolds, they come back fast. I think maybe Ms. Brent didn’t know they were a spendy variety of marigolds, just that they were an unusual color.”
“I think I remember hearing something about them. They’re pure red, right?”
Katy smiled proudly. “Green Gaia developed them—well, Marge did, really. I don’t know how she does it. I didn’t even notice one of the marigolds we were growing was a spontaneous new variety until I saw a whole row of them, but she’s always got an eye out for something different. She propagated it, and now she’s patenting it. The variety will be a real moneymaker, we hope.”
“You can patent a plant?”
“Sure. Then you license other greenhouses to grow them or sell the seeds. Marge’s first big expansion of Green Gaia was paid for by another patent of a new variety of aster.”
“She’s selling a lot of the red marigolds this summer, then?”
“Oh, not that big a number. We’re keeping almost all of them for seed, so we’re just selling a limited quantity to the public. That’s why Marge was so angry about Ms. Brent taking the blooms. There’s a lot of money involved. We can expand this operation again if it hits like Marge thinks it will. But we have to be able to fill the orders for seeds.”
But marigolds, red or otherwise, weren’t for sale, or even blooming, when Hailey was shot. “When did this theft of blooms happen?”
“Last year. We were charging ten dollars a plant. Even though we had a very limited quantity, I was surprised when we sold out.”
“Novelty sells,” said Betsy, the voice of commercial experience.
“You bet.”
“So Hailey stole the red marigold blooms last year. Did she steal anything this year?”
“I don’t think so. There weren’t many potted plants blooming back when she was killed.”
“Did she ever steal whole plants?”
“Just blooms, as far as I know. Like I said, she’d buy whole plants once in a while.”
As the rain continued pattering down, Betsy began to feel chilled. She wished she’d brought the little umbrella she kept in the glove box in her car. Or worn her raincoat. “Did she buy any red marigold plants?”
“No. Actually three people bought all of those we put out. One came back in the fall and said she was the envy of her neighbors. They really are a pretty shade of red. They get covered with flowers, and it takes a hard frost to kill them. I like the deep orange ones better myself, but the reds do make a nice show in borders.”
“When will Marge know about the patent, whether or not it’s granted?”
“By the end of summer, probably.”
“How certain is it she’ll get it?”
“She’s already writing up the announcement to send out.”
“Do you have any red marigolds for sale right now?”
“No, not for sale. But the seed beds are out back. Want to see them?”
“Okay, thanks.” Betsy was already soaked through; a few more minutes couldn’t get her any wetter.
The back half of the grounds was marked off by a sturdy Cyclone fence with a padlocked gate. Most of the land back there was a sea of warm red, the multipetaled flowers blooming profusely on closely packed plants each about seven inches tall. Except for the color, the plants looked like ordinary marigolds, compact and with feathery leaves. “Very pretty shade of red,” remarked Betsy.
“We’re letting them all go to seed, of course,” said Katy. “One interesting feature of these new marigolds: They seed themselves better than the regular kind. If you grow a row of them, then next year you’ll get one or two volunteers.”
“Interesting.” Betsy couldn’t think of any intelligent question to ask, so she thanked Katy and started back for her car.
It was parked on the street, almost directly in front of Hailey’s house. Betsy knew that Philadelphia had reduced the asking price three times and still had no takers. So much for her desire to be unburdened of the house. Betsy stood behind her car for a few moments. She didn’t have any reason to go up there.
On the other hand, she was about out of ideas. Jill, she remembered, once said that police detectives, stymied in an investigation, started going over things they had already covered, trying to see if there was something they had missed.
What had she missed at Hailey’s house? She didn’t have the combination to the little Realtor’s box attached to the door, which held the house key, so she couldn’t go inside. Could she see something from outside? She went up on the porch and, shading the sides of her eyes against the window, tried to look inside. All she could see were pale and dark shapes barely identifiable as a couch and two chairs.
Leaving wet footprints behind, she came off the porch and went around the side of the house. She started to go up to the side door when her eye was caught by a tiny splash of color from the backyard. She walked back to the overgrown remnants of Hailey’s flower garden. And there, almost hidden by weeds, was a bravely blooming red marigold.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t tell you if my mother had red marigolds in her garden or not,” said Philadelphia on being asked. “I couldn’t even tell you for sure if she had red flowers. I don’t remember any during the estate sale, but I can’t tell a marigold from a petunia unless you give me three guesses.” Philadelphia was sounding hassled.
Betsy apologized. “I’m sorry if I interrupted you at work.”
“Yeah, well, I’m off nights right now and trying to get my clock reset and it’s not going too well. Plus, my last three knit pieces haven’t sold so I’m trying to find a new outlet for the Red Hat Ladies—though what I think is, the market’s saturated and I need to find a new theme altogether. My mind’s all clogged up. It’s like my muse died.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, well . . . How’s your sleuthing going?”
“It’s stalled. I think I have most of the pieces, they just don’t add up to an accusation.”
Philadelphia said, “I guess Mike Malloy’s in the same boat, right? He hasn’t arrested anyone.”
“That’s true.”
* * *
“A
ND
that’s the one bright spot so far as Marge is concerned,” Betsy said to Godwin before she went upstairs to change out of her wet clothes. “He may still think she did it, but he hasn’t got any proof.”
“So what’s next?”
Betsy sighed and thrust her fingers into her hair. “I don’t know.”
“How about we invite Jill over to brainstorm? You know she’s just itching to get involved.”
“Yes, and I know Lars is just itching to forbid it.”
“He wouldn’t dare!”
“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to.”
“Why is he being like that?”
“He’s afraid she’ll get into some dangerous situation.”
“That can’t happen if we just sit and talk.”
“He doesn’t want me to encourage her to even think about sleuthing.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Think of something else, I guess.”
* * *
B
ETSY
peeked in again after lunch to find Jill and Godwin sitting companionably side by side at the library table. No other customers were present to distract them.
“Come in, come in!” said Godwin cheerfully.
Jill was working on a small painted needlepoint canvas from Jelly Bean Stock. It was about a foot square, depicting a magnificent tom turkey standing behind a wicker cornucopia overflowing with white and orange pumpkins, grapes, apples, gourds, and a thin sheaf of wheat that draped over the elaborate border. She was nearly finished with it, working the scroll in the border in silver braid.
Godwin was knitting another in his endless series of white cotton socks, his fingers moving as if they had a life of their own.
“Rafael is turning into a gourmet chef,” he said, continuing a conversation. “I’m going to have to do more exercise or by Christmas I’ll weigh two hundred pounds. Sit down for a minute, Betsy.”
“All right. H’lo, Jill,” said Betsy. “How are the children?”
“Just fine. Emma Beth wants me to buy her some floss of her very own—‘and a box to keep it in, like yours, Mommy.’” Jill imitated her daughter’s tone.
“Aw, that’s sweet! And I think I have just the thing for her.”
“Terrific. Meanwhile, Goddy and I were talking about your investigation of Hailey Brent’s murder, but we discovered we’re missing one thing.”
Betsy sighed. She might’ve known that’s what this was really about. “What’s that?”
“You. If you haven’t got a ton of things you need to do, could you talk about it for a little while?”
Betsy gave Godwin a look that should have knocked him off his chair, but he returned it with only his most limpid gaze. She said to Jill, “Does Lars know you’re over here?”
“I didn’t know until an hour ago that I’d be headed this way myself. And no, I didn’t call him to tell him I was going to Crewel World. Why?”
“Oh, Jill, Lars doesn’t want you getting mixed up in another one of my cases. I feel like we’re going behind his back doing this.”
“Talk isn’t going to do anyone any harm. Besides, you and I—and Goddy—have talked about your cases before.”
“Yes, but— Well . . . that’s true.”
“And Godwin thinks you’re in a sticking place with this case. Talking about it may help, right?”
“That’s true, too.”
“So talk to us.”
Betsy sighed and settled back. “Where do we start?” she asked.
“How’s business?” asked Jill, surprising Betsy with that entirely off-topic query.
“Slow. Slower than it’s ever been. But it’s slow everywhere.” Betsy’s gesture might have included every small shop in the state. “We’re hanging on; things will get better.”
“Do you think being worried about the shop is affecting your investigation?” So Jill wasn’t as off topic as Betsy thought.
“I don’t think so. I’ve been worried about business before, and it hasn’t hampered my sleuthing.” Though right now both things were as bad or worse than they had ever been.
Godwin said, “Why don’t you just review the case from the beginning? Maybe we can see something you’re missing. Or maybe
you’ll
see something—I’ve done that, talked about a problem with someone and suddenly the solution is right there in front of me, without the other person saying a word.”
Betsy didn’t want to admit she’d been discussing the case with Connor without enlightenment happening, so she just nodded and set off on a too-familiar trail.
“Back on the seventeenth of May, Hailey Brent was found in the basement of her home, dead of a bullet wound to her head.”
“Was she shot in the front, back, or side of her head?” asked Jill.
“I don’t know.”
“Is that important?” asked Godwin.
“It could be,” said Jill. “Was she facing her murderer, or did he sneak up on her from behind? Maybe she knew him and wasn’t afraid of him, or maybe he was chasing her and trapped her in the basement.”
“She wasn’t being chased, she was in the middle of dyeing some yarn,” said Betsy. “There were pots of dye on the stove—she had what looked like a kitchen down there: stove, refrigerator, sink, cabinets. But she only did dyeing down there.”
“Tell me about it,” said Godwin, irreverently.