A Dawn of Death (11 page)

"So you don't think one of the gardeners might have killed Sheryl?"

"Garden club members aren't generally known for their homicidal tendencies," Cory said. "They tend to be pacifists. Except for Dale, I suppose."

"She does have strong feelings about the garden."

"True, but I can't really see her killing anyone outside of a military setting," he said. "She believes in causes, but she also believes in people. Murder just isn't her style. She's good at working behind the scenes, leveraging other people—mostly women—to do the dirty work, so to speak, as opposed to taking any action herself."

"Even so," Helen said, "Dale might have thought the only way she could ensure the garden's future was by getting rid of the main person interested in buying it. She told me you're the deciding vote on the sale of the garden, but she can't tell where you're going to fall."

"Nowhere in particular," Cory said with a grin. "I try to stay on my feet."

That was definitely an evasive answer, Helen thought, smile or no smile. He was a politician, after all. "You're not going to commit to anything in advance of the vote, are you?"

"There are only two things I ever commit to. Doing my best for the town of Wharton and playing golf." He glanced at the rows of clubs on the wall. "Do you play?"

"It's not really my sport," Helen said. "I used to be pretty good at softball, but that was a long time ago. After that, I was too busy to learn a new game, and then once I had some free time, I didn't have the energy for all that walking."

"Not that kind of golf," Cory said. "Miniature golf. All the fun, all the challenges of precision, but none of the exertion. Just my style."

It did sound like more fun than what her ex-husband and his cronies had engaged in, which was just networking and politics in disguise. "I'm guessing that Wharton has a particularly fine miniature golf course."

"It does." He paused to glance at a calendar on his desk. "I have an open house tomorrow afternoon, but if you can meet me here the day after at noon, I'll give you a tour."

Lunch with Tate was at noon. At least, that was when they both tended to gravitate to the corner table in the garage. It wasn't written down anywhere. She could always tell him she'd be a little late on Wednesday. Or skip their lunch together entirely.

She could, but she didn't really want to.

"How about 2:00 instead?" Helen said as she stood. "If you don't have to be in your office then."

"I'm the boss, so I can take a long lunch or even the entire afternoon off." Cory came around the desk to walk her out. "The middle of a weekday isn't exactly a hotbed of activity for house hunting. Or political calls. Gloria can take messages from my outraged constituents."

"What are they outraged about?"

He shrugged, obviously unfazed. "There's always something. Potholes to be fixed, trash that wasn't picked up on time, streetlights that are out. If it's really important, they can call the public works department or electric company directly. Otherwise, they can wait for an hour or two."

Helen stopped at the closed door and turned to face him. "What if I have a complaint about the town? I'm one of your constituents now."

"You haven't lived here long enough to be mad at me yet."

"I'm a fast learner."

He paused with one hand on the door. "What have I done?"

It really wasn't any of her business how he treated his intern, but Helen couldn't help getting involved. At least offering advice about an employee was probably safer than investigating a murder. "It's about Gloria."

Cory blinked. "My intern?"

"She's a natural salesperson," Helen said. "Have you considered letting her do something more challenging than phone messages and copies?"

"Gloria?" he said, sounding stunned. "Really? I thought she was just interested in clothes and boys."

"Ask her about Crescent Street."

"That hovel? It's a teardown."

"Not according to Gloria, and she almost had me plunking down a deposit on it."

"Hunh." He absently reached for the closest putter hanging on the wall next to him and tapped it against his shoe. "Gloria? Really?"

"Really," she said. "For starters, she'd be great at drafting the descriptions in your listings."

He nodded thoughtfully. "She couldn't do worse than I do."

"And it will give you more time for golf."

Cory's bemused expression turned into a wide grin. There was no way he was faking that, Helen thought. He felt about golf the same way Tate felt about his woodworking and Betty and Josie felt about their needlework, the way Helen hoped to feel about her gardening.

The way to Cory's heart wasn't Dale's path, by way of a family member or significant other. No, it was through his real passion. Golf.

Now, all Helen had to do was figure out how to convince him that not selling the garden would somehow improve his golf game. That meant she was going to have to spend some more time with him. Not exactly a hardship. After all, her first impression was that he was a good-looking, reasonably honest, and generally cheerful person. She was going to enjoy the upcoming golf game, whether or not she succeeded in swaying his vote.

"I'll see you day after tomorrow then," Helen said as they reached the front door.

It wasn't until she was about to tell Jack that she'd need a ride back to the strip mall on Wednesday that it struck her that just as she'd had the wrong idea of what the community garden would look like on Saturday, she'd had several other mistaken expectations about her life after leaving the Governor's Mansion. Foremost among them was that she never would have thought, not even in her wildest imaginings, that this stage of her life would involve either murder investigations or networking on the golf course.

*   *   *

Helen spent the evening curled up with Vicky, reading the magazines Dale had given her. After breakfast, she read some more while she waited for Tate to show up to use his woodworking studio. He wouldn't answer any legal questions, but she was curious what he'd make of the fact that Sheryl had been an unlikely accident victim since she was an experienced bulldozer operator who took safety precautions seriously.

Tate usually arrived around 10:00, but shortly before then, he texted to say that something had come up to keep him away from the studio, and he wouldn't be able to have lunch with her. She was disappointed but didn't take it personally. Whatever it was, it had to have been something serious if Tate was willing to give up his woodworking time.

Now she had her whole day free, at least until her late-afternoon appointment with the visiting nurse. Perhaps she could find out the latest news on the police investigation from someone at the garden. Detective Peterson didn't want her anywhere near the bulldozer, but he didn't have the right to keep her from checking on her pea seedlings.

It didn't take long for Jack to pick her up and deliver her to the garden. Once again, there were no convenient parking spaces, so Jack stopped near the center of the garden and turned on the hazard blinkers while Helen got out.

"I won't be long," she told him, shouting to be heard over the sound of a car alarm. It came from the same little black sports car parked in the same spot in front of the Averys' house as the last time, and its owner was just as slow in disarming it as before. "Just checking my peas."

Except, as Jack left to find a legal parking spot, Helen ignored the center path that would have taken her to her own plot or even to the back corner where Paul Young was working. Instead, she felt drawn toward the bulldozer in the corner of the garden.

Helen thought it was probably just her imagination, but it looked like the area blocked off by police tape had expanded and now encompassed several more gardening plots. If Peterson really thought Sheryl's death was an accident and he was just going through the motions of ruling out other possibilities, why would he expand the crime scene's boundaries?

Perhaps it was just to irritate Dale. Except Peterson had never struck Helen as that petty. Sure, he held a mean grudge against her, but she sort of understood that. She had shown him up by catching the real killer when he'd been pursuing the wrong person, after all. And not just once.

Helen peered at the crime scene from the safety of the sidewalk. She didn't need Tate to tell her that Peterson couldn't arrest her for walking on a public right-of-way.

One length of the tape ran parallel to the sidewalk and close enough that Helen could have touched it if she'd truly wanted to irritate Peterson. It started about halfway to the center path and ended where the Averys' grass began. That was at least twice as wide as it had been originally. The tape continued in a straight line parallel to the center path on one side and along the Averys' property line, the same as before, but now the tape went back farther. If she remembered correctly, there had been about twenty or thirty feet between the bulldozer and the final side of the crime scene, but at least from this angle, it looked like that distance was more like fifty or sixty feet now.

Helen made her way along the Averys' grass—trespassing, she supposed, but RJ wasn't likely to threaten her with arrest, and Peterson couldn't do anything if RJ didn't pursue the matter—to get a better look at the far side of the bulldozer and the distance to the back strip of police tape. She peered at the bulldozer, trying not to think of how deadly it could be. It wasn't like it could come chasing after her. It was safely parked, and presumably
,
the key had been confiscated so no one would steal or tamper with it.

The car alarm finally stopped, and in the sudden silence came a warning. "Don't get too close."

For a moment, Helen thought Detective Peterson had caught her snooping. She whirled to her right, in the direction of the voice. No Hank Peterson anywhere in sight. The only people in view were the Averys. Richard Senior was kneeling in an apparently unclaimed-as-yet plot of the garden just past the police tape, poking at the dirt with a wooden spoon. RJ was standing beside him, his arms crossed over his chest. Given his muscular build and camouflage shirt and pants, he looked more like a military guard than a doting son. He probably had to be both, considering his father's condition.

"Sorry," RJ said. "I didn't mean to startle you. It's just that there's a bit of a slope there and some ruts from the bulldozer. It must have come up our driveway and across the yard to get into the garden instead of damaging the sidewalks by going over them. I wouldn't want you to fall."

Peterson, on the other hand, would love that, Helen thought. If she tumbled into his crime scene, mucking it up, he could legitimately charge her with some offense or another. Tate wouldn't let her go to jail though. And then she remembered he wasn't her lawyer any longer. His nephew Adam Bancroft was smart and more than competent, but he specialized in real estate and probate law, not the litigation that his uncle had been so good at. It would probably be better if she never had to find out how much—or little—Adam knew about criminal law.

"I'm the one who should apologize," Helen said. "For trespassing."

"It's okay. You're not hurting the lawn." He glanced down at his father. "And you're not the only one who's trespassing. Dad used to have a plot in the community garden, and he thinks he still does."

Helen glanced at the senior Avery, who was humming the children's song "Inchworm" as he dug in the dirt.

"It is supposed to be a garden for the whole community," she said. "And he's not hurting anything."

"More often than not, he's actually helpful out here. Last year, there were quite a few surprised gardeners who showed up to find their beds had been weeded for them." RJ smiled at his father fondly. "On the other hand, there were a few times when Dad was out here 'helping,' and he pulled out things that weren't weeds. He didn't mean to, but they were crops he wasn't familiar with. Twenty years ago, gardens tended to be less diverse, and some of the things that people eat today used to be considered weeds."

"You've got your hands full then, keeping an eye on him."

"Yeah, especially since I was never much of a gardener. I can't tell when he's pulling out the wrong things. I'm going to have to keep him away from the garden once more of the plots are planted."

Considering how much the senior Avery seemed to enjoy his digging in the garden, keeping him away was going to upset him like the much lighter restrictions on Helen's activities irritated her. RJ had to know his work with his father was going to become even more difficult, but he didn't show any signs of resenting it. He did, indeed, as Paul Young said, have the patience of a saint.

"Do you mind if I ask you a question?" Helen said.

"About my father?" RJ said. "And why I don't put him in a facility? That's what everyone wants to know. I just can't do it. He isn't dangerous or anything. Just confused. I missed a lot of years with him when I was in the army, and this is my chance to make up for it."

"It's kind of you to take care of him," Helen said.

"It's not kindness so much as making up for lost time. We kind of lost touch with each other for a lot of years while I was in the army, and then when I was able to come home, he was already starting down this path. Every minute he can be here with me is important."

It struck Helen that if the father was essentially housebound then so was RJ, and he might have seen or heard something on the morning that Sheryl was killed.

"So you're home with him all the time?"

RJ nodded and then tugged on his father's arm. "We have to leave now." He glanced at Helen apologetically. "Time for his noon meds."

His father shrugged out of RJ's hold.

"What about this past Saturday morning?" Helen said. "Were you here when the bulldozer arrived?"

"At home, yes, but sound asleep," he said. "It would take more than a bulldozer to wake me up most of the time. Which can be a problem if I fall asleep when Dad's awake. As you saw the other day when he went walkabout in his tighty-whiteys."

"Doesn't the traffic noise bother you? Or the car alarms?"