Murder Crops Up (23 page)

“We will hope that is so.”

I shifted position, trying to balance the tub of ice that the nurse had insisted I keep my hands immersed in, and heard a crackling in the front pocket of my overalls. “Oh, there’s that.” I indicated the pocket with my chin. “Can you get that, Bruno?” It was the sealed plastic bag, which I’d tucked away before the ambulance had arrived.

Bruno examined it with interest. “And it was Emery he mentioned?”

“He thought I’d tell Emery, which would be bad for Webster.” I didn’t want Bruno to get the wrong idea. “It must have to do with industrial espionage. Emery had a patch of that not too long ago. I guess Webster was involved, and with some of the other companies he worked for, too. The only thing that puzzles me is why he’d use the garden as a drop spot. Why not just copy everything electronically and send it along?”

“Those transmissions are easier to trace than you might think.” Bruno looked up from the screen. “But the garden was a stupid choice. An arrogant choice, rather. Mr. Powell liked thinking that everything fell into his plans. But sooner or later at a place like the garden, someone was bound to notice something.”

“Rita must have.” I lifted my hands from the ice, letting them drip. “I’ll get frostbite if I keep this up.”

Bruno didn’t pay attention. “Rita actually went out with him for a while, didn’t she?”

I nodded. “Somehow she figured out what he was up to. Maybe he even said something, bragged about his secret life. I don’t think he could keep things to himself, not when they showed how clever he was.”

“You are probably right.” Bruno took out his cell phone again and dialed. “Did you find him?” He listened, and after a moment said, “Well, keep on it. We may have to enlarge the perimeter. And make sure they are staying on it at the airports and emergency rooms.”

“He said something about South America to me.”

Bruno passed that along and then put the cell phone away.

A doctor came purposefully toward us. “Ms. Sullivan?” He ignored Bruno, who typed away on his keyboard. “Your niece is asking for you.”

I abandoned the tub of ice thankfully, and he led me away. Bruno walked with us through the corridors. They had admitted Amy to a room—a double, not a ward, and the other bed was unoccupied. Bruno stepped back so I could go through the door alone, though I noticed he left it ajar.

Amy was propped up in the bed, wearing a hospital gown, the covers pulled up around her waist. “Did you hear?” She blinked at me, her eyes moist. “I lost the baby.”

“I heard.” I went up to the bed and put an arm around her shoulders. “I’m so sorry, honey.”

“I’m not.” Amy sat up straighter. “I feel like a creep for that, but I’m glad. The doctor said the fetus had a problem anyway—” She thought for a moment. “A neural tube defect, I think it was. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have miscarried, even with major gut trauma.”

“Poor Amy.”

She waved off my sympathy; her thoughts were still on the baby. “It could never have lived long. I would have gone through all that, torn my family up, just to provide some childless people with a baby, and then the baby wouldn’t have been the kind anyone wanted.” She slumped back. “It’s dumb to do things for other people’s reasons. You should figure out your own reasons and do what’s best for you.”

“That would work most of the time.”

She didn’t really hear me. “I don’t mind the pain so much, because it’s reminding me never to be so stupid again.”

“Will you be able to have children later?”

“They did MRIs and stuff, and they said nothing was permanently injured, just bruised. Because the fence behind me gave, you see. If I’d been up against a wall or something, I might have really gotten hurt.” She sniffled into a tissue. “The way I feel right now, I’m going on the pill and never going off. This isn’t a good world for babies. What was it about, Aunt Liz? Why did that guy have to rupture my guts?”

Bruno came in. “I will answer your questions, Miss Amy, but first, are you able to answer a few of mine?”

Amy asserted that she was suffering more from curiosity than anything else. A nurse brought her a little white paper cup of meds and she swallowed them down without question. I wondered how much pain medicine she had already gotten, and how long she’d have to be in the hospital. And how I was going to pay for it.

I sat in the chair by the window, half listening to Bruno’s questions and Amy’s answers. I would have to call the senior center and tell them I couldn’t do the workshop that day. I would stay with Amy until she succumbed to her medication, and then I could go home. I could smear a liberal amount of comfrey salve on my abraded wrists, get together some home comforts to take back to the hospital for Amy, and give thanks that we were both alive.

Chapter 26

"So Webster was behind that contract we lost a few months ago.” Emery was still stunned, even though a full day had passed since Bruno had spoken to him. “I didn’t even think of him. I figured it was some hacker lifting our files, not someone I knew.”

“Your company wasn’t the only one.” I scrubbed the radishes and sliced them into long ovals for the salad I was composing.

Bridget pulled a couple of big pans of lasagna out of the oven, and put in several foil-wrapped loaves of garlic bread. “If I had a double oven,” she muttered, “the lasagna wouldn’t get cold while the garlic bread cooked.”

“Maybe my company will do better now that Webster’s been arrested, and we’ll finally be able to remodel.” Emery popped the top off his beer bottle. The hum of conversation from the living room was punctuated with frequent laughter. Claudia’s deep voice boomed, telling a joke. She’d been properly “surprised” by finding a living room full of friends, instead of Emery and Bridget ready to leave her with their children. I had been glad to escape all the hearty conviviality to help finish dinner preparations in the kitchen.

“So where did they find him?” Bridget threw the question over her shoulder while she dove into a drawer for aluminum foil.

“Waiting with his arm in a sling at the San Francisco airport for a plane to South America. It turns out he has another identity already established on an island off the Venezuelan coast. They think they can recover some of the money. You should put in a claim, Emery.”

“Make it enough to remodel the kitchen,” Bridget said. “How’s Amy doing?”

“She’s better.” I fell silent, washing cherry and golden pear tomatoes. Amy was physically okay. She’d been discharged from the hospital with a supply of sanitary pads and instructions to take it easy. I had given her my bed for the duration, and she was no doubt immured there with her headphones and CD player, her stack of CDs— and Jane Austen’s
Emma,
which she’d expressed an interest in reading after finding it on my shelves.

It grieved me to see the dimming of her sparkle, the bruised look around her eyes. With time, she could surely get back that self-confident trust in her own abilities and in the world’s recognition of them. I hoped she hadn’t gone too far along the road that leads to closing off parts of yourself to avoid hurt. Those doors are the devil to open up again.

“No lasting troubles?”

“All systems will be go, the doctors said. Not that Amy wants them to go. She’s swearing eternal chastity.”

“That won’t last long.” Bridget covered the tops of the lasagna pans with foil. “The salad looks beautiful.”

“Thanks.” I regarded it with pride. Melanie would have no occasion to find me coming up short that night. I scattered the
pièce de résistance
on top—gold and orange and red nasturtiums, pink and white carnation petals, tiny white flowers culled from the bolting stems of my parsley, small blue stars of rosemary.

“A work of art.” Bridget shook up the jar of vinaigrette I’d brought and took a whiff. “This smells divine, too, though it’s almost a shame to put dressing on that.”

Melanie came in the back door, casually elegant in flowing pants and shirt, carrying a huge pink box from the Prolific Oven. “Sorry I’m late. Where can I put this? Is Claudia here yet?”

“You missed the surprise.” Bridget took the cake box and put it on the table. “Everyone’s in the other room. We’re just getting ready to serve.”

Melanie looked over the table, which had been extended with all its leaves into a long oval. It was set up like a buffet with plates, napkins, glasses, and a couple of big bottles of wine.

“Very nice,” Melanie said. “Lovely flowers.”

“Liz brought them.” Bridget leaned over the table for a long whiff of a half-open Margaret Merrill. “Aren’t they divine? Such perfume.”

“I must get you to talk to my gardener, Liz. All I have is a few pansies and some impatiens.” Melanie glanced through the kitchen door at the swarm of people in the living room, and then at the table again. “Did you need me to bring plates?”

“Not at all.” Bridget smiled blandly. “We’re using paper.’’

“I would have been glad to have the party at my house, you know, if only things weren’t so uncertain with Hugh.”

“You’re doing enough by providing me with a babysitter. And I don’t mind paper.” Bridget winked at me. “Or plastic forks.”

I intervened before Melanie could have an apoplexy.

“There is no plastic, and Bridget has plenty of plates, and I’m sure you’ll be glad to stay after and help wash up, right, Melanie?”

“If there’s time.” She frowned at me. “By the way, what’s this story I hear about you getting involved with counterfeiting?”

“Honestly, the things people will make up.” Bridget leaped to my defense, which I always found agreeable. “There’s no truth to that at all, Melanie. There were no counterfeiters. I don’t know how this kind of thing gets started. Only those deaths in the garden, and they didn’t involve Liz any more than they did your high-school crush, Tom Dancey.”

Melanie clicked her tongue. “Poor Tom has gone on vacation. That’s what his brother told my neighbor’s bridge partner. Dancey Construction is redoing her house, and Tom was supposed to schedule the finish work, but he’s off for a while.”

“Rita’s death really was a shock for him.”

“That’s what my neighbor said. She said everyone knew they were lovers for a while.”

“It’s sad.” Bridget’s mind was elsewhere. “Emery, should we open the wine now?”

“Only if we’re ready to eat.” Emery looked through the kitchen door. “It’ll all be gone before we even get food on our plates if you open it too soon. The snacks are almost done for as it is. The cheese is just a memory.

“I believe we are ready to eat, if Liz will dress the salad. The garlic bread’s hot, and I’ve got more wine hidden in the pantry. So let ‘er rip.”

“Shouldn’t we pull the table out more into the middle of the room?” Unable to resist meddling, Melanie grabbed one end of the table. Bridget, perforce, took the other end. “And let’s bring the lasagna over—just one, we’ll leave the other one on the stove.”

“Good idea.” Bridget didn’t appear to resent Melanie taking over her party.

Melanie peeled the foil off one of the pans of lasagna. “Shouldn’t we cut this now? And has Liz tossed the salad?” She looked over at me and squealed. “What happened to your hands?”

“A gardening accident.” The lacerations around my wrists had responded nicely to the herbal salve. My hands were still a little swollen, and dark with bruising. Melanie shuddered and looked away.

Claudia came into the kitchen, followed by other party-goers. “What lovely flowers!” She made a beeline for the roses, which Bridget had arranged with sea lavender in an old silver urn. “From your garden, Liz. I recognize our favorite Oklahoma.” She nodded majestically at the salad. “Very pretty. And I understand people do actually eat the flowers.”

Bridget smothered a smile. People crowded around the table, exclaiming at the savory odors. Melanie took the top off the cake box with a flourish, revealing a rich-looking chocolate sheet cake emblazoned, in white, HAPPY 60
TH
BIRTHDAY, CLAUDIA!

Claudia froze. The noise died down. Even Melanie felt the change in the atmosphere and fell back a pace.

“How unfortunate.” When she spoke, Claudia’s voice sounded almost normal. “Someone has made a mistake in my age."

Melanie was made of stern stuff, but even she quailed. “I’m sorry, Claudia. Did I make
a faux pas?
I just didn’t think—”

“No, I’m gratified, my dear.” Claudia gave Melanie a cold smile. “But you didn’t get it right. I’m sixty-one.”

Someone laughed, and then everyone was laughing. Claudia caught my eye sternly, and I shrugged. She couldn’t really have thought that I or anyone else had any influence over Melanie.

The food was delicious. I stood around Bridget’s kitchen with the rest of the party-goers, eating and listening to the swirl of conversation, immersed in the indiscriminate human warmth. Lois and Rita were dead; Webster was deprived of liberty. Amy was wounded, body and spirit, and I had only to look at my hands to realize that mortality lies in wait for us at any given moment.

Bridget finished guiding people around the food. With her own plate, she came to stand by me. “What’s the latest with Drake, anyway? How’s his dad?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t call last night. But the day before, they’d done a bone marrow transplant, which caused some kind of medical crisis, so it could be hectic today. I hope everything’s all right.” I wanted badly to talk to Paul, to tell him about the whole experience, have him absolve me of wrong choices, of putting Amy in danger through my own stupidity. I wanted to believe that I deserved absolution for that, since I was going to have to call Renee and Andy soon. Amy had begged to put it off until she felt stronger, and since the hospital had written me down as her guardian, Renee and Andy hadn’t been notified of the incident. They deserved to know that their child had been injured; in their places I’d want to know. But in this, as in everything else, I was trying to get out of Amy’s way and let her make her own decisions. Such a policy might be totally stupid, as Renee would no doubt see it, but it was the only one I had.

“Is Amy still planning to stay with you?”

“No.” I couldn’t confess, even to a forgiving person like Bridget, how relieved I was by Amy’s decision to go back home at the end of her allotted stay. “She’s going to go ahead and use her return ticket, so she’ll be leaving in just over a week.”