The Diva Digs up the Dirt (14 page)

She held out her left hand. “No ring yet.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Princess Mindy threw a hissy fit when she found out we wanted to marry. Apparently, she was afraid we might steal her limelight. Can you imagine? Roscoe asked us to wait a few months before we make the engagement official, but I’ve already bought the dress! All I need is a date and I’m there!”

“Is this catfish?” I asked.

“One of Roscoe’s favorites.”

I might as well be nosy, since Cricket seemed forthcoming. “I gather Violet lives here?”

“She’s been with them for years. The story goes that she’s a family friend who fell on hard times, so they took her in, and she never left.”

I glanced out the window at Violet. She hunched ever so slightly, like an animal about to launch an attack.

Cricket looked out at her before adding spoon bread to the plates. “I hope she doesn’t catch that cat.”

The sun hit Cricket’s hair through the kitchen window and reminded me of the way Wolf had looked at her gleaming tresses when we saw Cricket on the street. “I think we might have a friend in common. Wolf—”

She sucked in a little bit of air. “How is Wolf? I haven’t seen him in forever, well, not since Anne… vanished.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to say. It felt somehow disloyal to rattle off the details of my discovery of Anne’s handbag. I went with the truth. “He’s well.” Maybe it wasn’t the complete
truth. He’d been better. Then her words sunk in. “You knew Anne?”

Cricket piled biscuits into a basket lined with a rustic tan cloth embroidered with chickens. “She was my best friend. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about her. She would have been the maid of honor in my wedding to Audie.”

I carried two plates laden with food into the dining room and set them in front of Mars and Roscoe.

When I returned to the kitchen, Cricket said, “Thanks for helping, especially since you’re a guest.”

“My pleasure.” I didn’t add that I was thrilled to have a few moments alone with her. “What was Anne like?”

She paused and leaned against the tiled kitchen counter. “In a word—sweet. The opposite of me in a lot of ways. Maybe that’s why we were friends. I’m sort of bold and brassy, while Anne was timid and quiet. She was stunningly beautiful but didn’t think so. You know the type?”

I did. I usually liked that kind of person.

Cricket picked up the basket of biscuits and a bowl of kale dotted with bits of bacon.

“Just a sec,” I said. “What do you think happened to her?”

“Now there’s the million-dollar question.” She handed me the biscuits. “After we’ve eaten, we’ll take a walk in the garden.”

Forget the lunch! I wanted to grab her by the hand and run out into the garden with looney Violet. But I minded my manners and tried to focus on Roscoe for the next hour.

Worried that I might stick my foot in my mouth, I tried to phrase my concern about Violet gently. “I understand there’s a calico cat hanging around your garden.”

Roscoe swallowed a bite of crispy catfish. “Pretty thing. Size of a Jack Russell dog.”

“Does it belong to a neighbor?”

“I doubt it. Fur’s matted. It comes and goes.”

How could I bring the poison into the conversation without offending anyone? “Cricket says the cat is disturbing the birds. I’m sure Nina Reid Norwood could catch it in a humane trap. Would you mind if she brought one out here?”

Roscoe bellowed, “Now why didn’t we ever think of that, Cricket? I’ll call Nina soon as we finish up lunch.”

Violet returned as abruptly as she’d left, even grumpier than before, but her hair had been pinned in place again. When she poured coffee and served blackberry cobbler, warm from the oven, Roscoe said, “Sophie, I have got a whopping problem. My ex-wife, Olive, didn’t care too much for parties. Give her a hoe and a sun hat and she was happy. But my new wife, Mindy, has a hankering to be a little bit more social, so we’re going to be putting on the glitz for a couple of Mars’s clients.”

Pretty much what I’d expected.

Roscoe leaned back in his chair. “Mindy, bless her, wants to do it all herself. But if there’s one thing I learned from our wedding, Mindy doesn’t understand the word
budget
. Not that I want to be cheap, now, but good lord, the woman bought herself a diamond crown. A crown! I could have bought a racehorse for that money.”

He stopped talking and ate three bites of cobbler. “What I need is someone who can keep Mindy happy while staying on a budget and putting on a good event.”

Since Mindy had been absorbed with the details of her wedding, I hadn’t dealt with her much on Roscoe’s annual picnic, but I had a hunch she might not be easy to work
with. I’d met my share of opinionated people, though. Mindy didn’t scare me. I gazed across the table at Cricket. In that way, we were somewhat similar. I didn’t think anyone would call me brassy, but I could hold my own.

Mars and Roscoe launched into a discussion about an up-and-coming politician. Cricket cocked her head at me and muttered something about showing me the garden. We slipped through the kitchen, under Violet’s ever-watchful eyes, and out the door.

Cricket took a deep breath. “This is such a beautiful garden, but the stench does spoil it. The heat just amplifies that smell. Mindy still insists she didn’t order the manure. But…” Cricket laughed. “Sometimes she’s a real ditz.”

I wanted to move over to the subject of Anne. “I hear Anne was a big gardener.”

“She was. Just like Audie, so passionate about gardening. He putters around out here once in a while since his house doesn’t have much of a yard, and what he does have is mostly concrete. I live in an apartment with no balcony, so everything is in pots. Anne loved plants. She would do silly little things like plant a cactus in the cut-off bottom of a milk carton. But they always thrived!”

We walked under the trees, keeping to the shade.

“I like Wolf.” She closed her eyes briefly, as if there might be some pain behind her words. “I really do, but I just can’t get past the notion that he had something to do with her disappearance. They were fighting. Wolf doesn’t like to admit it, but they had some issues. Her mother and I both heard about them. Frankly, I think Anne may have admitted more to me than to her mom because, well, there are some things you just can’t talk about with your mom.”

“Do you remember what sort of things they argued about?” I steered clear of mentioning the handbag so I wouldn’t plant that idea in her mind.

“Anne hated her job. She just loathed it. She never should have been an accountant. It stifled her. Have you ever had a job you hated? The kind when you don’t want to get up in the morning because you think you can’t face
another day of it? That’s how Anne felt. She wanted to quit, but money was an issue. Plus, Wolf wanted to have kids. That was a huge problem between them. Anne wasn’t ready, and she said she couldn’t handle the demands of work
and
motherhood. Wolf had irregular hours, so she knew she would be doing the bulk of the parenting. She was already completely stressed about work, and she couldn’t see adding a baby to the mix.”

The air felt a little bit cooler as we strolled near the pond.

Cricket hadn’t mentioned the handbag or arguments about money. “Did she say anything about leaving Wolf?”

“She had certainly considered it. If you know Wolf, I guess you know he has a temper.”

Why did people keep saying that? Not the Wolf whom I knew. The only flash of temper I’d seen was about Roscoe.

“But then, if she left him,” I said, “wouldn’t she have contacted her parents?” If Anne feared Wolf’s big bad temper, she might have gone into hiding from him, but surely not from her parents.

“Exactly.” Cricket plucked a daisy from the garden. “I’ve never quite been able to wrap my brain around it. If she were alive, she would have called me, texted me, sent me a postcard!”

“So, the last time you saw her—was she despondent or anything?”

“A little bit, I guess. She was very upset with Wolf. It was a Friday night. To cheer her up, after work we went shopping and out to dinner. It got a little later than we’d intended because we wound up having drinks in a bar. I remember Anne worrying that Wolf would be angry with her for coming home so late.” Cricket pulled a leaf off the stem.

“When Mars and I were married—”

“You were married to Mars? The Mars with whom we just had lunch?”

“Yes.” We shared a last name. Why was this a surprise to her?

“He says such nice things about you. You don’t act like a divorced couple.”

I laughed. “No one ever gave us the manual on how divorced people are supposed to behave. We’re still friends.”

“I thought all divorced couples fought like crazy. Olive and Roscoe sure do! Did Mars get mad when you came home late?”

“Are you kidding? Both of us were always out late because of work. Political advisors and event planners have to expect that kind of hours. I can understand Anne’s situation at work, though. I love my job, but sometimes it absorbs every waking minute.”

Mars shouted to us from the house. Lousy timing. I wanted to pump more information from Cricket. She turned to head back, so I hurried to zing her with two questions.

“Do you think Anne could have taken her own life?”

Her forehead wrinkled, and I thought she might tear up. “No way. The cops asked me about that way back when. She wanted to change her life, not end it.”

“So, I guess you were the last person to see her alive?”

Cricket bobbed her head. “Except for Wolf.”

“Wolf? I thought she wasn’t home when he arrived that night.”

“That’s easy to claim, isn’t it? Only two people know for sure, and one of them isn’t around to tell us.”

Those ominous words hung in my head, but the sound of a motor drawing closer distracted me.

The putter of a machine engine grew into full-fledged thunder as a backhoe rolled through the grass toward the impressive gardens. It turned around and aimed its bucket at a colorful bed of delphiniums.

Cricket gasped and tried to run toward it, waving her hands and stumbling in impractical heels. She shouted to the driver. He let the engine idle, but I couldn’t hear their conversation. Roscoe huffed his way out to the machine, and a little exchange took place between the three of them.

The driver cut the engine. Roscoe pulled a money clip from his pocket, peeled off bills, and handed them to the
man, who tucked the money into his shirt pocket, started the backhoe again, and drove it out the way it came in. The grass was crushed, but I didn’t see any irreparable damage.

What on earth? It looked as though Roscoe paid the man to leave. I wished I could have heard what had transpired. Not that it was any of my business, but I was curious. I hoped Mars might ask. It had certainly been peculiar. Hadn’t Mindy said that she wanted to dig up the garden and pour concrete?

Roscoe followed the backhoe, while Cricket stopped at the terrace and chatted with Mars. I scoped out the garden in search of the cat, no doubt extremely alarmed by the noise. Two days had passed, but no one had come to spread the mulch over the stinky manure. Bits of leaves had been scattered in the garden beds, like someone had weed-whacked bushy plants nearby, so someone
had
worked in the garden.

Even though I was concerned for the cat, my thoughts came back to Cricket and Wolf. She’d said what I didn’t want to hear—that she, too, could only come to the sad conclusion that Wolf had murdered his wife.

Neither Mars nor Cricket faced me, but I realized with a start that Mars was rubbing his jaw with his index finger and middle finger. I hadn’t seen him do that in years. It was an old gesture from our married days that meant
rescue me
. Surely gorgeous Cricket hadn’t managed to intimidate him? I stifled a giggle and returned to the terrace.

Minutes later, we’d thanked everyone and said our good-byes. Mars and I walked out to our cars.

“Thanks for getting me this gig,” I said.

“Hey, if you can deal with Natasha, you can handle Mindy.”

“Wasn’t that weird with the backhoe?” I asked. “What was that about? Did Cricket tell you?”

“Mindy and Roscoe are having a little spat. Mindy wants to sell the family homestead, but Roscoe won’t hear of it. She hates the garden, hates gardening, and hates that it represents Olive, so she hired someone to dig it up.
Seems she’s planning to pour concrete over the entire thing and make it some kind of fancy architectural thing worthy of Versailles.

“And what was this about back there with Cricket?” I mimicked the way he’d rubbed his jaw.

We stopped at Wolf’s car. Mars’s eyes widened. “She was playing footsie with me under the table at lunch!”

This time I laughed aloud. “Oh please! You flatter yourself.”

“I’m not joking. She was rubbing my foot with hers.”

“Yeah, right. I hate to tell you this, sweetheart, but she’s out of your league. Beside, she’s engaged to Audie. You probably hit her with your foot.” I cackled at the thought. “You better hope she doesn’t tell Roscoe. We’ll both lose him as a client.”

“Hah! This old guy still has it going on. Something you might take note of.”

I unlocked the door. “You wish.”

“Did something happen to your car?”

“I lent it to Wolf.”

Mars cocked his head at me. “What’s going on?”

I explained as briefly as possible.

“Brilliant, Sophie! So your car was Wolf’s getaway car.”

“He’s not on the lam from anyone but the press.” At least I hoped not. “Stop talking like that.”

“How do you get into these things? You never had problems like this when we were married.”