Authors: Monica Ferris
Four
“T
HANK
you very much,” said Marge, handing the customer her credit card receipt. “Remember, plenty of water the first week.” She looked around and raised her voice. “Raymond, please help Mrs. Wacker with her tree.”
“Sure,” said an impressively tall and broad-shouldered young man in his late teens. He came over and took the handles of the wheelbarrow the tree was resting in. “Okay, which way?” he asked, and followed her out.
Marge shifted her attention from Raymond and the customer to the person who had been patiently waiting. She was dismayed to see it was a slender man of medium height with faded auburn hair and very pale blue eyes set in a face spattered with freckles: police detective Mike Malloy.
“Ms. Schultz?” he said in a tone she interpreted as gruff and unfriendly.
“Yes?” she replied, as if she didn’t know who he was.
He produced a small leather folder and opened it to show her a gold badge and photo ID. Her heart sank. Obviously he wasn’t here to buy a potted plant.
“I’m Sergeant Mike Malloy, and I’m here to talk with you about the death yesterday of your neighbor, Hailey Brent. Is there someplace private we can talk?”
The marrow in her bones turned to ice, and she struggled to maintain her composure. “Certainly,” she said and called, “Beth, can you take over for me for a few minutes?”
“Yes, I’ll be right there,” replied a slim, middle-aged woman, who was leading a man carrying a bag of potting soil to the register.
Marge showed Malloy to the small, cluttered office at the back of her store. She invited him to sit at her desk and took the armless wooden chair beside it.
“That was a terrible thing that happened to Hailey,” she said. “We were all very shocked and scared when we heard about it. Do you have any idea who would do that to her?”
Malloy produced a notebook from an inside pocket. “Nothing I can talk about as yet. How well did you know Ms. Brent?”
“She was a neighbor, of course, and so we knew
of
each other.”
“So you weren’t friends.”
“We were friendly, but no, not friends.”
“Did she buy any of her garden supplies from you?”
“Some, but not all. I think she bought a lot of things by mail order.”
“What makes you think that?”
Marge hesitated, aware of the notebook in Mike’s hand. “In the spring I would often see the FedEx truck stop by her place. Then not at all in the summer, but again in the fall. Not as often as in the spring. Bulbs, you know.”
“Okay, I see. Very observant.” Mike, smiling and nodding, made a note. “How did you get along with her?”
Again Marge hesitated. What did he know? Who had he already talked to? Hailey had been found late yesterday afternoon, so not a whole lot of people. “Well . . . we had kind of an ongoing problem. Hailey liked to experiment with natural dyes. I think most of her garden was taken up by plants she could use in dyeing. The problem was, she would sometimes see something in my inventory she didn’t have in hers, and instead of buying the plant, she would sneak over and cut flowers off it. She wouldn’t permanently damage or destroy the plants, but it would hurt my chances of selling them until they bloomed again. I spoke with her about it, but she denied taking any flowers. She seemed to think her work was more important than my business.”
“Did you ever report her to the police?”
“No, of course not. I never saw her do it, for one thing. And anyway it didn’t rise to that level of lawbreaking. It was just annoying.”
“How often would she steal flowers from you?”
“Oh, maybe four or five times a summer.”
“Are we talking a lot of flowers or just a few?”
“More than a few, but it wasn’t as if she stripped the plants bare.”
“Would she steal flowers from other people’s gardens?”
Marge, surprised at the idea, shrugged. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“Could she have been doing it out of malice toward you?”
“Oh no, I don’t think so. She was just very wrapped up in her experiments.”
“Did you ever threaten her about these thefts?”
“With what? About the worst I ever said to her was that she wouldn’t like it if I went into her garden and stole one of her plants. I know that made an impression, because she mentioned it the other day when I attended one of her demos on dyeing.”
“Angrily?”
“No, she was teasing me about it, in a sarcastic way.”
“Did you ever actually carry out your threat?”
“No, of course not.”
“Can you tell me where you were yesterday afternoon?”
“I was here from about nine till we closed at eight.”
“Long day.”
“That’s what the job calls for this time of year.”
“You didn’t take a break at all? Just worked straight through?”
She hesitated, trying to read his face, without success. “Well, yes, I went out for a couple of hours, had lunch, ran an errand.”
“What time was that?”
“From a little past eleven to, I don’t know, maybe one thirty?” She watched him write that down.
“What time did your employees arrive yesterday morning?”
She would have lied, but Green Gaia kept time sheets. “Ten or a little after.”
“Did you murder Hailey Brent?”
That very direct question made Marge feel as if the floor had opened beneath her feet.
“No, I did not.” She glanced around her office as if to reassure herself that it was still there. “I had no reason to murder her. Like I said, she was annoying once in a while, but that’s all.”
Mike finished making a note and closed his notebook. “All right, that’s all I have for right now. Thank you for speaking with me.”
“You’re welcome.”
With another sharp-eyed look at her, Mike rose and left the office, leaving Marge feeling weak and frightened.
Then a wave of indignation swept over her. How dare he seriously ask if she’d murdered Hailey! Did he really suspect her? No, of course not, he was probably asking everyone who knew her that dreadful question.
Right?
* * *
“S
HE
was not a nice person,” said Marge the next day. She had come to Crewel World right after it opened.
“Well, I’m sure you had reason to think so,” said Betsy.
“Believe it. You saw her at the dyeing demo. But the thing is, I’m not the only one who thinks that. If you check around, you’ll find others.”
“Mike is perfectly capable of doing that. In fact, I’m sure he is doing that.”
“All right, but you’ve helped him out before, haven’t you? You’ve found things he’s missed.”
“Yes, once or twice. But honestly, he’s very skilled at investigations. Which is good, because that’s his job. I’m sure he doesn’t think you had anything to do with it.”
“I hope you won’t get angry if I disagree with you. I’m afraid he’s looking very hard at me. I don’t know who he’s talked to, but he knows I was angry with her because she was stealing flowers from me.”
Betsy sighed with exasperation. “Now, Marge, I hardly think being mad at her because she stole some flowers is a motive for murder.”
“I agree! But he’s been poking around, talking to my employees, and it’s making me very nervous. Please, Betsy, can’t you just take a quick look into this? Surely you can find proof it wasn’t me. After all, what you are best at is helping people falsely accused of a crime, right?”
Betsy had her own business to run, plus the contest to get off the ground. But Marge was looking desperate, with a sheen of earnest perspiration on her forehead. “Well, yes, that’s generally how it turns out.” Betsy didn’t want to add that the falsely suspected were friends of hers or steady customers of Crewel World, neither of which described Marge. “I have to dig into the lives of people to find out what really happened and why. You may not like what I find out on my way to the truth.”
Marge hesitated but said bravely, “All right, treat my life like an open book. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
* * *
F
OR
once, Godwin wasn’t enthusiastic. “I’m sure she’s really grateful,” he said, a little doubtfully when Betsy told him about Marge’s visit later that day.
Betsy, remembering the beaming face with its tearful eyes, nodded. “She sure was.”
Marge wasn’t a stitcher; her forte was growing plants—trees, shrubs, vegetables, and flowers—for sale. Betsy knew her from working with her on the committee that put on the annual Art in the Park event. But Godwin didn’t know her at all. He had no personal connection to her plight, which explained his lack of enthusiasm.
“So where do you begin?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. I think a lot of what I’ve got to do will be just repeating things Mike has done or is doing.”
“I wish he trusted you enough to tell you what he’s found out.”
“Me, too.” Betsy grimaced, then turned to another task. “Meanwhile, let’s get set up for the template contest.”
They were ready to offer it to their customers. Betsy had copied Alix’s pattern and run fifty good-quality copies of it. The rules hadn’t even suggested what size or even what kind of fabric the pattern should be stitched on. Betsy had stitched the model outline on 18-count Aida with two strands of DMC 310—black—and put it in an inexpensive frame. Godwin had designed a poster describing the contest with its rules and a deadline—July fifteenth—to get the entries in. They put the poster on the mirror of the white chest of drawers near the entrance of the shop, where other announcements of interest to stitchers were posted. On top of the chest of drawers they put a stack of templates with the price, six dollars, penciled on the top right-hand corner of each.
Godwin had run a “tease” about the contest on Crewel World’s web site and in its newsletter, and he had talked to customers about a forthcoming contest to raise funds for a local charity. Even so, it was wonderful how strong the response was by the next morning.
“Can I stitch it on canvas?” asked the first customer to bring the pattern to the checkout desk.
“Certainly,” said Betsy. “I look forward to seeing what you come up with, Jenna,” she added. Jenna Wilson was always willing to take a pattern as merely a suggestion from the designer and to change colors, stitches, even design elements in her work. With her as an entrant, the contest was off to a fine start.
They sold six more patterns that day. The purchasers seemed excited at the prospect of making up their own designs to fill the template.
“Who are the judges?” was the question most often asked.
“We’re not saying,” replied Godwin. “We don’t want people who know them to design their projects around what they think they’ll like.”
“So, they are people we know, hmmm?” was a common, thoughtful reply.
“I’m not saying anything more,” replied Godwin with one of his famous guileless smiles, and he didn’t. Nor did Betsy.
* * *
O
N
Sundays, Crewel World was closed. This Sunday, the twenty-second, was a beautiful day, sunny with a few scattered clouds, the temperature in the upper sixties. After church and breakfast, Betsy set off in her car for Green Gaia to look at shade-loving perennials. Spring, summer, and fall were prime selling periods for greenhouses, and Green Gaia was open on Sundays, except in the winter.
Once in the neighborhood, she began to look around for a parking spot. She nearly missed one just in front of a big SUV, and braked sharply beside a little Ford Focus ahead of it to parallel park. A car sounded its horn immediately behind her. She lifted her foot off the brake—and the car whipped around and cut in front of her, missing her front fender by a whisker. It pulled into the driveway of a private residence, leaving Betsy standing on her brakes and gasping for air.
In the driveway, the passenger door opened. The car’s horn blared, and Betsy, hands trembling, quickly backed crookedly into the parking space. The passenger was shouting something, and Betsy lowered her passenger-side window to hear if it was an apology.
“I said, why don’t you watch where you’re going!” The shouter was a woman, short and slender, dressed all in black, with thick, straight, shoulder-length hair a pretty but improbable shade of blue-green.
Betsy got out of her car, pressed the button that locked it, and walked with careful deliberation toward the car and its annoyed passenger. The driver remained in her seat.
“What did you say?” asked Betsy quietly.
“I said, why don’t you watch where you’re going?” the young woman said, but much less angrily, having read something in Betsy’s face.
“I agree, your driver should watch what she’s doing,” said Betsy, amazed at how calm she sounded. Her elbows and knees were still weak from the fright she’d received, her fingers tingly. It was all she could do to keep from bursting into angry tears. “You’re lucky she didn’t hit me.”
“I wasn’t talking to her,” the woman said petulantly.
“Well, you couldn’t be talking to me. I was driving in my own lane, and below the speed limit.”
“You were driving so slowly, and Ruth was trying to pass you when I saw she was going to overshoot the driveway. I—” The woman hesitated, then confessed, “I guess I might’ve got a little bit excited when I told her to turn, turn right now.” The deepening pink of her complexion combined with her blue-green hair to give her the look of a Pixar cartoon character.
“Is this Hailey Brent’s house?” asked Betsy.
“Yes,” the woman replied, seemingly confused now by the abrupt change in topic. She turned a little so she could look over her shoulder, as if perhaps to see whether Hailey’s name was posted over the door.
“Do you know her? Who are you?” asked Betsy.
“If it’s anything to you, I’m her daughter, Philadelphia Halverson.”
“You are? Well, how do you do? I’ve been wondering how to get in touch with you. I’m very sorry for your loss. I’m Betsy Devonshire. Your mother gave a dyeing demonstration in my shop a little over two weeks ago.”
“Die—? Oh yes, she e-mailed me about that. She said you produced a good turnout.” Her mouth turned down in a sad grimace. “She loved to show people how much fun it was to dye fibers.”