Bleeding Heart (23 page)

“Okay,” he said. “What can you tell me about digitalis?”

“What?” I asked, uncertain if I’d heard him correctly.

“Di-gi-tal-is,” he said. “What can you tell me?”

“Well, it’s a tall spikey plant with fingerlike flowers,” I replied, trying to make sense of this line of questioning. “Its common name is foxglove. If grouped properly, it can be a nice choice for a garden border. But I find it often doesn’t last more than a season or two in our climate zone.”

“Did you use it in Mackenzie’s garden?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, frowning as I tried to remember. We’d been forced to make several last-minute additions to fill areas where some of the late-blooming perennials had not yet leafed out. But digitalis would not have been my first choice. “No, wait—
maybe we did. Mara, didn’t we end up planting some in that shady area behind the tennis court?”

“I don’t know,” she replied.

Erlander closed his notebook and got up. As he started to move toward the door, Ron rose as well.

“Thanks for your time,” Ron said, shaking my hand warmly. “You’ll call us if you think of anything else? You have our cards, right?”

“Yes,” I said. They’d handed them to me when we first sat down.

While Ron and I said good-bye, Erlander waited in front of the screen door, looking out across the peaceful, sunlit morning. Then he turned back to me and asked, “Isn’t digitalis considered toxic?”

“Well . . . yes,” I told him.

“So don’t you think it’s a little dangerous to use it in a garden you know is going to be open to the public?”

“Not at all!” I replied, unable to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “Hundreds of plants are considered toxic. Hollies, lupines, lily of the valley, wisteria . . . The list goes on and on. We wouldn’t
have
gardens without them.”

“But it
is
dangerous.”

“For heaven’s sake, yes! But only if you ingest it.”

I
had a meeting that afternoon with one of the potential clients Mara had lined up at the Open Day. Their place was over in Monterey, so I had to take off right after Ron and Erlander left. The house was a rambling nineteenth-century white clapboard beauty with wide porches and a lovely view of Lake Garfield. The owners, two scientists who seemed oblivious to the news about Mackenzie’s death (thank heavens), wanted me to help them rethink their overgrown long front border which had deteriorated into a wild tangle of rugosa roses and tumbling fieldstones. By the time I left, we’d agreed that I should draw up some designs and an estimate, and that we’d meet again in a week or two. I liked the couple and came away with a good feeling about the project.

I stopped in Great Barrington on the way home to do some shopping and didn’t get back to the office until nearly six. Mara was already gone, so I didn’t have a chance to talk to her about the interview with Erlander until the following morning.

She arrived an hour later than usual, the screen door slamming
behind her. She walked over to her desk without so much as a glance in my direction.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Bad night.”

“I hope nothing’s wrong with Danny. You know, you can always call in and ask for a day—”

“Danny’s fine,” she said, cutting me off.

I’d become so used to Mara’s moodiness that I didn’t think twice about her attitude. We worked in silence, both of us busy at our computers. I was scheduled to meet with Brook Bostock that afternoon to show her my AutoCAD plans for the new terrace garden, and I decided to go over the designs again page by page, thinking through how I was going to present them. I’d forgotten all about Mara until she abruptly announced, “That detective called me at home last night.”

“Who—Erlander?”

“Yeah. He said he had some ‘follow-up’ questions for me and wanted to arrange a time to come over. But no way was I going to have that man snooping around my place! I told him I’d just prefer get it the hell over with. So we did it on the phone.”

“Hadn’t we already covered everything here?” I asked her.

“No,” Mara said, getting up and coming around to lean against the side of her desk. She folded her arms over her chest in what seemed to me a defensive posture. I remembered her hostility earlier, and it dawned on me that she was angry about something. “He had me on the phone for over an hour. Thank God I got Danny down before he called.”

“I’m sorry, Mara. What in the world did he want?”

She stared at her feet for a moment or two, though I sensed she wasn’t really seeing the black-painted toenails or the worn leather ankle bracelet.

“He told me I shouldn’t talk to you about any of this,” she said, looking up and meeting my gaze. “I wasn’t supposed to even mention that he called me behind your back.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Like I wouldn’t tell you? Just because he told me not to?” She snorted derisively and shook her head.

“It’s totally up to you,” I said to her, trying to keep my tone nonchalant, though I was dying to know what they’d discussed. “I don’t want to get you into any sort of trouble.”

“Yeah, well, I think I can handle that. He hardly asked me anything about myself. And he really didn’t even ask that much about Mackenzie and the Open Day. It was actually all about you. Like did you ever talk to me about your husband? Did you tell me about him running away with all that money, and some babe? Did you ever get calls from overseas? Any suspicious e-mails? One question after the next—bam, bam, bam—all about you and your marriage.”

“And? What did you tell him?” I asked, trying to figure out what Erlander was up to. It was Mackenzie who had been murdered, so why all this interest in Richard?

“That you didn’t tell me
anything
!” Mara burst out. “The first time I heard about any of this was yesterday. I mean, what’s that all about? I felt like—I don’t know—like a real idiot. And even worse, I don’t think Erlander believed me. Of course he thought I knew. I mean, we’ve been working together for almost two years now.”

“Oh, Mara,” I said, finally realizing what was wrong. She was hurt. “I’m sorry. I thought you’d heard. Everyone in Woodhaven seems to know. They’re just too polite to say anything.”

“Well, I’m not all that friendly with people in Woodhaven. I come over here to work, and that’s all I have time for. And anyway, I’m not one of those types who sits around gossiping, okay?”

“I know that. I’m—”

“What—like you didn’t trust me?” Mara said. “Like you thought I didn’t know how to keep a secret? Well, you don’t know me very well, that’s for sure.”

“No, you’re wrong!” I said, getting out of my chair. I came around to stand in front of my desk, too, hoping to make the point that we were equals. This was important, I realized. Mara needed and deserved a full explanation. “Of course I trust you. Probably more than almost anyone else I can think of right now. And I count on you so much—more than I can say. I’m sorry if I never told you about Richard. I honestly assumed you’d heard about it elsewhere. It’s something I have a hard time talking about, frankly. It was so horrible! It ruined my life. I had to start all over again after it happened. And I guess more than anything else I just wanted to put it behind me. Haven’t you ever felt that way about anything?”

She looked at me for a moment or two. Then she nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve felt that way.”

“And I thought I was so happily married,” I said as I began to tell the story one more time.

“I’m sorry,” Mara said when I had finished. “That really sucks. But you know what? I think you’re a whole lot better off without him. Look at what you’ve been able to do on your own! I bet you never would have started Green Acres if you were still some suburban housewife.”

“You’re right,” I told her with a smile, confident that things were okay between us again. And I was beginning to realize how much that mattered to me these days. It was true what I’d told Mara about my counting on her. I’d also come to respect her opinion. “So what do you think Erlander was after—asking you about all this?”

“Obviously he thinks there’s some kind of connection between your husband’s disappearance and Mackenzie’s death.”

“I’m the only connection that I can think of,” I said.

“Yeah,” Mara said, “I’m afraid so.”

“What’s his theory, then? That for some reason I helped my husband and his lover abscond with the funds and then—having developed a taste for crime—turned around and murdered Mackenzie because he stiffed me?”

“You could have murdered your husband and his girlfriend, too,” Mara pointed out. “I mean, didn’t they, like, disappear off the face of the earth? Nobody knows what happened to them or all the money they stole, right?”

“That’s true!” I said, laughing. “And honestly? I probably would have if I’d had any idea where to lay my hands on them!”

“Listen . . . ,” Mara said, hesitating briefly before she continued. “You know, maybe this really isn’t anything you should be joking about. I mean, sometimes things can come out sounding one way when you really mean for them to sound another. And this Erlander guy? I think he’s actually sort of serious about you as—well—as a suspect. He asked me a lot of questions about your whereabouts during the Open Day. And what your reaction was when you heard about the check bouncing.”

I stared at Mara. “And what did you tell him?”

“Only that you seemed kind of upset,” she replied. But I could tell by the look on her face that she recalled just as vividly as I did how I had responded when she told me the news that night.

I’d gotten back late that evening after showing Vera and Lisbeth around Mackenzie’s garden for the first time. Their enthusiasm had really buoyed me, and I was flying pretty high. But when I saw that the lights were still on in the office, I’d felt bad. I’d been awfully heavy-handed with Mara that afternoon about helping with the garden tour the next day, and I decided I needed to tell her I was sorry. But she insisted on apologizing to me first—something about
a check we’d written to Nate that hadn’t cleared our account. After some back-and-forth between us, she finally got around to explaining to me why.

“Mackenzie’s check. It bounced,” she told me.

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said,” Mara replied slowly, no doubt aware that I needed some time for the bad news to sink in.

“All of it? The whole thing?”

“Yeah. That’s the way it works.”

“But—it has to be a mistake, right? Some sort of oversight on Mackenzie’s end? He’ll just have to issue us a new one.”

“It was returned for lack of funds over a week ago,” Mara said grimly. “And nothing’s happened yet. I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

“Well, he has to pay us, Mara!” I said. “He’d better pay us! If he doesn’t come through with that money, I’ll kill him!”

It was so hard to tell with Mara, but I sensed some sea change in her attitude toward me after our conversation about Erlander’s questions—and Richard. It might have been my imagination, of course. Occasionally, though, I would catch her looking at me. Weighing something. She’d glance away whenever I caught her at it. But it made me feel uneasy. And sad. Could she
really
think I had something to do with Mackenzie’s death? Surely she knew me better than that! And yet I realized she felt I hadn’t been forthright with her about my husband. So I suppose she had every reason to wonder what else I might be keeping from her.

And it wasn’t just Mara. When I walked into the post office later in the week, I felt a sudden hush fall over the little lobby, and I guessed they’d been talking about the murder. And me, too, perhaps. I knew from Gwen that Erlander was making the rounds, interviewing everyone who’d been at the Open Day or who knew Mackenzie in some other capacity. According to Gwen, her own
interview with the detective had gone just the way she’d wanted. Apparently, she’d laughed off his questions about rumors that Mackenzie and she were more than friends.

“I told him Mackenzie was way too old for me!” she said, batting her eyelashes.

“Oh, God, you flirted with Erlander?”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it? Before he even brought it up, I told him I knew Mackenzie’s pledge was in jeopardy because MKZ is in such a financial mess. He didn’t question me very closely, so I didn’t have to tell him
when
I found out. He seemed a lot more interested, actually, in asking me about you.”