Lavender Lies (24 page)

Contract?
I waited, but nothing else was immediately forthcoming. “What happened was so terrible,” I said after a moment. “Just tragic. And so unexpected, too.”

Wanda’s smile faded as if it had been turned off by a dimmer switch. Her eyes became watchful. Her nose grew still. “Yes,” she said, very quietly. “It’s hard to believe he’s actually dead.”

“Actually, I wasn’t thinking of Edgar. I was thinking of Letty.”

She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, smearing dirt across the place where her left eyebrow would have been, if she’d had one. “Letty?”

“You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?” she asked irritably. “Don’t talk in riddles, China. You’ve got something to say, say it.”

“Letty Coleman is dead,” I said.

The effect of this information was really quite interesting. Wanda’s lower jaw dropped, her eyes widened, and she made an audible gulping sound, like a fish out of water.

“Would you like to sit down?” I asked solicitously, taking her elbow.

Her jaw snapped shut, her eyes narrowed, and she yanked her arm out of my grasp. “Of course not. How did it happen?”

“Broken neck,” I said. “The back stairs.”

“Oh, those stairs. Very dangerous. I nearly fell on them myself once.” Her nose twitched. “When did it happen?”

“This morning.” I paused. “I’m sure the police will be checking with you.”

Wanda was startled. “With me?”

“Well,” I said judiciously, “they haven’t wrapped up the investigation into Edgar’s murder, you know. And now that Letty’s dead—” I gave her a sympathetic look and, on a hunch, added, “People who had contractual dealings with Edgar will be on their suspect list. The police always go for the business associates. And since you’re also on the Council—”

My remark about the police was an unfounded and unconvincing assertion, and under other circumstances, Wanda would have given me a smart, sarcastic “Says who?” But her emotions had taken over for her brain. Her shoulders slumped and her eyes began, unexpectedly, to fill with tears. “Oh, God, what a mess! And just when I thought it was all over and done with.”

“A landscaping contract?” I asked, still guessing.

“The most important one of my life,” Wanda said bleakly. “It would have saved the nursery. But as things stand ...” Her nose twitched faster.

I could finish the sentence in my head. As things stood, she was going to lose Wonderful Acres. “Why don’t we sit down?” I said. There was a wooden bench in front of the cereus.

Wanda sank down on the bench with a weary sigh. I upended a five-gallon bucket and sat down on it where I could see her face. Our long silence was broken only by the metallic whir of the big exhaust fan and the manic chirping of a bird that had managed to find its way into the greenhouse and couldn’t get out. The twenty cereus were a line of silent witnesses.

“About the contract,” I prompted, and waited for her to tell me to shut up and get the hell out of there—as she would have, under other circumstances. But she didn’t. This had been tormenting her and she was ready to get it off her chest.

“A friend of Edgar’s,” she said, “a man named Shepherd, manages a five-acre office complex in San Antonio. He planned to remove the shrubs and install a xeriscaped landscape. What he wanted was low-maintenance, drought-tolerant native plants he wouldn’t have to hire a landscape service to water and weed, along with some large succulents—prickly pear and agave and some showy cacti. He wanted a desert look.” She glanced sadly at the waiting cereus, obviously destined for the project. “Edgar set it up so I was low bidder on the project.”

“So you got the job?”

“That’s what he said,” she replied dully. She wiped her twitching nose with the back of her hand. “In fact, he showed me the contract. It was all filled out—all it lacked was Shepherd’s signature.”

“And you purchased the plants for the project on the basis of that unsigned contract.”

She looked at me as though I were a mind reader. “How did you know?”

“It’s an old scam,” I said. I paused. I already knew the answer to the next question, but I had to ask it anyway. “What did Coleman want from you to persuade Shepherd to execute the contract?”

Her mouth opened, but she couldn’t seem to say anything. She put her hand to her nose as if to hold it still.

“He wanted you to change your vote on the annexation project?”

She closed her mouth, dropped her hand, and thought about it. “Yes,” she said finally.

“What did you tell him?”

“What
could
I tell him?” she wailed. Her eyes were screwed almost shut. “To get the best price, I bought the plants on a nonreturnable basis. I’ve got a lot of money tied up in them, and no way to get it out. The contract would have kept the nursery alive for another six months, maybe more.”

“So you agreed to vote his way?”

She pulled at her already spiky hair with both hands. “What other choice did I have?” she asked shrilly. “Don’t go taking the moral high road with me, China Bayles. If some sleazy snake cornered you and ordered you to do something for him if he’d save your business, you’d do it.”

“I’d do almost anything,” I said, reserving some wiggle room.

“Bullshit. I’d do anything I had to do to hold it together. So would you. What does a stupid vote matter, one way or the other? What does the Council matter? It’s all a political game.”

I’d do anything I had to do.
Her words sliced the still air. What had she done? To pry the truth out of her, I needed some leverage.

“I might be able to help you, Wanda,” I said slowly. “One of my friends practices law in San Antonio. She specializes in fraud. A letter from her would probably convince Mr. Shepherd that it’s in his best interest to sign that contract. If a letter doesn’t work, a phone call will. She can be very persuasive.”

Wanda stared at me, taking this in. Her face showed her inner struggle: She was hopeful, then afraid to hope, by turns. Finally, hope won out. “It might work. It’s
got
to work!” She leaned forward eagerly. “Oh, thank you, China. You can’t know how much this means to—”

I held up my hand. “Hang on,” I said. “Before I put my friend to work, I want to know where you were on Sunday night.”

She gave me a blank look. “Sunday night? Why, I was home. With my husband.”

“From when to when?”

“All day, actually. Our son and his wife were supposed to come for dinner, but I was feeling pretty down about this whole thing, so I called them and canceled.” She frowned, realized why I was asking, and sucked in her breath. “You want to know if I killed him, huh? Well, let me tell you, if I’d had a gun, I certainly would have considered it.”

“Where were you this morning?”

Her mouth tightened. “This morning?” she asked suspiciously. “Why do you want to know?”

I gave her a big smile. “I’d like to feel I’m getting a little something in return for my phone call to my friend in San Antonio.”

“No, I mean, what’s it to
you?
Why are you so interested in the Colemans?”

I remembered an old line that Perry Mason used when he moonlighted as a detective. “Let’s just say that I’m acting as a friend of the court.”

She thought about that and decided that it sounded right. “Well, anyway,” she said sullenly, “I don’t have anything to hide. I was in the office this morning. I had a lot of stuff to deal with.”

“Can anybody verify that?”

Her jaw was working back and forth as if she were gritting her teeth. Her nose was twitching. “Quent was with me most of the time. We were going over the books.”

By now, it was pretty plain that Wanda hadn’t had anything to do with Letty’s death. But it wouldn’t hurt to push her a little. “Where is Quent?” I asked. “Just in case he’s needed to confirm your statement.”

Wanda put her hand to her nose. “He’s not here. He won’t be back.” She swallowed hard. “He got another job, in Houston.”

“In Houston!” I said, shocked. “But why?”

“Because I don’t have the money to pay his salary.” Wanda began to cry. “I had to let him go.”

“The Meaning of Lavender,” by China Bayles
The Pecan Springs
Enterprise
Home and Garden Section

 

 

 

From time to time, I have enjoyed poking fun at Wanda Rathbottom, whose efforts to comer the nursery trade in Pecan Springs have often seemed intemperate. But now that I’ve heard her story, it won’t be so easy to be sarcastic. As I drove back along Redbud Road, I kept thinking of how tough it was going to be for her without Quent, who had single-handedly transformed Wonderful Acres into a fine nursery. Chalk one more disaster up to Edgar Coleman. I used my cell phone to put in a call to the Whiz and left a message on her answering machine. If anybody could force Shepherd to honor his contract with Wanda, it was Justine Wyzinski. The money wouldn’t bring Quent back, but it might keep Wonderful Acres afloat a little longer.

Back at Thyme and Seasons, everything seemed pretty normal. Business had picked up while I was gone, and we’d had a respectable afternoon. Laurel reported that a quartet of wandering tourists had come in, browsed for a half-hour, and gone away with a stack of books, some gift items, and a selection of essential oils, leaving a nice bit of cash behind. I was momentarily sorry that the tearoom wasn’t open yet—they might have left even more cash. Not to be greedy, of course, but I
am
in business to make a profit.

“Remember the woman who was here this morning?” Laurel asked, when she had finished telling me the news. “The one who left you the note I couldn’t find?” She took the clip out of her hair and shook her head, brown hair rippling down her back.

I picked up the mail. “Uh-huh,” I said, leafing through it. There wasn’t much—severat mail orders, a couple of invoices, a newsletter from the International Herb Association, and an envelope with an Indiana return address. “Did you find the note she left?” I asked absently, studying the envelope.

“No,” Laurel replied, pulling her hair back and clipping it into another ponytail. “I didn’t have time to look. But she’s out in the garden. She wants to talk to you.”

“What about?” I opened the envelope. There was a typed letter inside. It was from Harold Tucker, our absentee landlord.

“She says it’s personal.” Laurel paused, frowning a little. “Actually, today isn’t the first time I’ve seen her. She’s been here a time or two, although I think mostly she just walked around the garden.”

Still holding the letter, I looked up at the clock. The visit with Wanda had taken longer than I’d thought, and it was nearly four-fifteen. “I won’t have long to talk to her,” I said. “Sheila will be here in a few minutes. We’re going to see Iris Powell.”

“That reminds me,” Laurel said. “Sheila phoned to confirm. Your mother called too. She got the recipe for the cake, and she was on her way to the grocery to pick up supplies. She sounded excited.”

“I’m excited too,” I said. I folded the letter without reading it, stuffed it back in the envelope, and stuck it at the back of the stack. Harold Tucker could go fly a kite. He was not getting his house back before the first of January. And that, by damn, was that.

“Ruby is
very
excited,” Laurel said significantly. “She got her outfit for the wedding this afternoon.”

I handed the mail to Laurel. “A couple of these look like orders. If you get time, you could process them.” I paused. “I didn’t know Ruby went shopping today.”

“She didn’t. The outfit came in the mail. From one of those weird catalogs she buys from. Sexy Secrets, I think it was called.”

“Oh, God,” I said. Ruby buys her clothes from two places, the vintage shop in the Emporium next door and catalogs, some of which offer very odd items. Some of Ruby’s most exotic clothing comes from catalogs.

“Right.” Laurel’s expression was grim. “I wouldn’t be the one to tell her so, but the outfit looks like a nightgown. All she’d need is a retinue of slave girls and some palm fans and she could go as the Queen of Sheba. One good thing, though,” she added with a little laugh, “you won’t have to worry about people finding fault with your wedding dress. They’ll be too busy criticizing Ruby.” She stopped. “And then there’s Josephine.”

Josephine? I frowned. “Who’s Josephine?” Then I remembered. “Oh, yes. The tropical storm.”

“Not any longer,” Laurel said. “They’ve promoted her to a hurricane. She’s still way out in the Gulf and doesn’t show any sign of going anywhere special. But there’s a high pressure ridge to the north, and the steering winds are likely to send her in our direction. She’s getting stronger, too. They say she might be Force Three when she hits the coast.”