A Dawn of Death (7 page)

Geoff turned, only then catching sight of Helen. He started and grabbed his right forearm, rubbing where it had been broken awhile back when he'd been pursuing a story that he'd thought would make his dreams of winning a Pulitzer Prize come true. It had turned out to be his last attempt at investigative journalism.

"Are you stalking me?" Geoff demanded.

"Why would you think that?" Helen nodded over her shoulder to where Betty and Josie were sitting. "Can't I just visit my friends?"

Geoff looked in the direction of the fireplace. Betty and Josie must have waved since he stopped rubbing his arm to wave back.

"Today isn't Charity Caps Day." His voice was drenched in suspicion even as he bestowed his beautiful smile on Betty and Josie, two of his best sources of leads on stories that didn't involve any risk to him. "And you don't usually visit in the morning."

Helen hoped he couldn't see the triumph she felt. He'd given her exactly the opening she needed. "I meant to spend the morning at the community garden, but I couldn't do much there because of the ongoing police investigation, so I came here instead."

"Then you aren't investigating Sheryl Toth's death?"

"Why would I be interested in a simple accident?" Helen said. "That's all it was, wasn't it?"

Geoff glanced at the woman working on the jigsaw puzzle as if hoping she might have thawed toward him. She continued to ignore him though.

He clearly would have preferred to interview the puzzler, but deep down, buried beneath the fear of what might happen to him if he pursued a serious lead, lurked the soul of a dedicated storyteller. He preferred his stories to be entirely free of blood and guts, of course, and to have happy endings, but he couldn't resist sharing a good one.

"The police think it's an accident, and I'm more than willing to believe them, especially since it's none of my business." Geoff rubbed his arm again. "But I can't help thinking that emotions are running high over the title to the garden's land, and Sheryl was right in the middle of it all."

"Everyone keeps mentioning the possibility that the town will sell the land out from under the gardeners as if I knew what they were talking about, but I don't," Helen said. "What's that all about?"

Geoff leaned against the back of a nearby chair. "It's complicated, and the board of selectmen are pretty evenly divided on the issue."

"But why is it even an issue?" Helen said. "I thought the garden had been in that location for years and years. Why sell it now? Is the town in financial trouble?"

"No more than any other small town," Geoff said. "But windfall monies burn a hole through a politician's pocket faster than they do for a teen who's just gotten his first paycheck from McDonald's. See, the town didn't own the garden land until recently. Fred Lawson did. He was a Wharton native and dedicated gardener. One of the founders of the garden club that operates the community garden, in fact. Even after he retired to Florida, he let the gardeners use his land."

"Then how can the town sell it?"

"Fred died, leaving the garden's land to the town. Dale Meeke-Mason and the rest of the gardeners think he meant to leave it specifically for the purpose of a community garden, but apparently his will didn't put any restrictions on the use. It just gives the land to the town, no strings attached."

"I get it now. It all boils down to whether the selectmen think its best use is as a community garden or as cash for some other worthwhile programs." Helen had seen her husband weighing two potentially good options before, and it was never easy.

"Pretty much," Geoff agreed. "Fred only died a couple of months ago, and Dale was the first to hear about it. She thought she'd lined up the votes she needed to have the land immediately declared a permanent part of the town's Park and Rec Department. Once that happened, Paul Young would certainly have endorsed its use as a community garden. The town doesn't really have any other direct use for it. The ballparks next door are popular, but they're not booked anywhere near capacity. I don't know what happened exactly, but one of the selectmen, the only woman in the group, proposed getting an appraisal of the land before any decision was made, and then it snowballed to the point where Sheryl Toth was eyeing the land for development. Dale was livid, of course. Being undermined by another woman only made it worse, I think."

Geoff began sidling toward the exit. Helen let him go. If she pushed him too hard, he might never give her a chance to ask questions in the future, no matter how benign they were. Besides, it was almost noon, time for lunch with Tate. She could grill him on what he knew about the bequest and anything else he might have heard about Sheryl's death.

Assuming, of course, she could make the questions sound like idle curiosity. He'd always grumbled about being retired, but he'd still given her legal advice until a few months ago when he'd abruptly severed their attorney-client relationship in order to ask her out to dinner. She'd agreed to the relationship change and had no regrets about it. At least she hadn't until now. She didn't want to go back to being strictly professional acquaintances, but she would have liked to ask him about Fred Lawson's will.

Helen had never been very good at accepting limitations. Sometimes there was no point in struggling against them—like when her doctor insisted on a particular medication routine—but some were worth the effort. She was convinced there had to be a way that she could have a personal relationship with Tate without having to give up his professional expertise.

It wasn't like she'd need his legal advice very often, just when she was investigating a suspicious death. Which, contrary to what everyone seemed to think, wasn't an everyday occurrence for her.

Helen couldn't remember ever discussing it, but somehow she and Tate had fallen into the habit of sharing lunch every weekday in her garage, which he used as his woodworking studio. She provided the meals on Mondays and Wednesdays. He brought something on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and on Fridays they had takeout delivered. They weren't dates exactly, more like a daily routine they'd each adopted independently, as if it were just a coincidence that the other person was in the same place at the same time.

Today was Helen's turn to provide the food, and she hadn't planned anything ahead of time, so she called in an order to the local sub shop. When they were on the way home after picking up the sandwiches, she let Jack know she had other errands for after lunch if he had the time to drive her.

At the cottage, Jack carried the bag into the garage and pulled back the drop cloth draped over a small table in the far corner before setting down the food. "I'll be back in an hour," he said on his way out.

Tate turned off the lathe and removed his eye and ear protection. It was chilly in the unheated garage, so he was wearing heavy boots, jeans, and a thick navy sweatshirt, all of which were heavily coated with sawdust. Somehow, though, he managed to look every bit as commanding as the time she'd seen him in a courtroom dressed in a three-piece suit and wing tips. His height and lean build contributed to the image, along with the distinguished touches of gray in his dark hair.

"Detective Almeida was here looking for you," he said. "She told me about your latest dead body."

"It's not
my
dead body." Helen removed the drop cloths that protected the chairs from sawdust. Those basic coverings, along with the leather-upholstered armchairs she'd brought in to replace the ratty old director's chairs, were the extent of the "woman's touch" she'd brought to his workshop. Tate obviously didn't care about the decor, and she only cared about comfort. She'd spent too much of her time in the Governor's Mansion worrying about appearances, but things were different then. Just like Tate didn't argue unless he was paid for it, she didn't do homemaking unless she was paid for it.

A nearby section of the built-in shelving that ran from floor to ceiling across the entire back wall of the garage held a stack of round wooden trenchers. Helen lifted the cloth that kept out the sawdust, retrieved two of them, and laid them out across from each other.

Tate dropped into one of the chairs and peered inside the bag from the sub shop. "So you won't be getting involved?"

"If I did, it's got nothing to do with you." Helen pulled out her phone and laid it beside her trencher in case her nieces called to let her know that Laura's labor had begun. "You can't give me legal advice any longer, remember?"

"Telling someone to stay out of a police investigation isn't legal advice," he said. "It's common sense."

"In that case, what does common sense say about interpreting a will that left property to the town?"

The only indication Tate had even heard her was the way he'd clenched his fist around the top of the takeout bag. Helen suspected he was struggling against his legal training, which urged him to quote chapter and verse—or perhaps it was chapter, section, and subsection, complete with big and little Roman numerals—on trusts and estates and the rules of construction for probate documents.

Finally, he released his grip on the top of the bag and unloaded it onto the center of the table. There were two wrapped sandwiches, a container of pickles, and a little box of brownies.

"Common sense says that for something as specialized as probate law, you should get legal advice from a lawyer. One who isn't retired and who is able to represent you. I believe my nephew's schedule isn't terribly busy this afternoon. He has more experience than I do with wills and estates in any event."

"I'll give him a call." Helen took her seat across from him and claimed one of the sandwiches, leaving the second one and the kosher dill pickle for him. It might be the last one Tate got from her in the foreseeable future. Once her garden was underway, the only vegetables she intended to eat were the ones she grew herself. She might be able to supply the cucumbers, but if Tate wanted them pickled, he was going to have to do it himself. "Aren't you even curious about what happened to Sheryl Toth?"

"Not particularly," Tate said, unwrapping his sandwich. "I'm more curious about what you're going to do to prove that it was murder instead of the accident it appears to be."

"You're going to be disappointed then," Helen said. "I might go talk to Sheryl's crew to see if they know what the bulldozer was doing at the garden, but that's all. I'm hoping there's a perfectly reasonable explanation so everyone will know her death was just an accident. I don't want it to have been murder. That wouldn't be good for the garden's future."

"Why do you even care about the garden?"

"I think it may be the retirement activity I've been looking for."

"What about your crocheting? And volunteering at the library?"

"Those are nice enough," Helen said, "but I don't feel the same about them as you do about your woodworking. I want a hobby I'd be willing to kill for."

"So investigating murders is really just displaced jealousy? You're studying killers, perhaps figuring out the perfect crime so you can knock off anyone who threatens your tomatoes?"

"I don't want to kill anyone, and I'd like to think that I wouldn't act on the impulse if I did get that angry, but I do want to find an avocation that I feel that strongly about." Helen gestured at the lathe where yet another round wood trencher was being made. They'd supplanted lamp stems as Tate's favorite project, and he was experimenting with joining layers of different woods for the starting blank, which created a multicolored pattern in the finished product. "If someone messed with your tools or your wood stash, I bet you'd be enraged. You'd feel the urge to lash out at whoever was to blame. I know you wouldn't actually do it, but you'd feel the temptation, even if only for the briefest of moments."

"I suppose." He glanced around the room as if to confirm no one had messed with his stash. "On the other hand, I didn't intentionally look for an activity I could get homicidal about."

"It's not like I'm
hoping
someone will enrage me," Helen said. "I just want to feel that strongly about whatever I'm doing."

"I suppose it would be a step in the right direction if it turns out that being obsessed with your vegetables will keep you from meddling in police investigations."

"That's the plan," Helen said. "I've had enough of dealing with killers."

"About time," Tate muttered.

"Hey, I saved your niece's bacon when she was accused of murder."

"You're never going to let me forget that, are you?"

"Nope." Helen grinned and then grew serious. "Are you regretting the decision to have a personal relationship with me instead of a professional one?"

"It would take more than a little gloating on your part to scare me off," he said. "You're the one who ought to be wary. I've been divorced twice, after all. That doesn't reflect well on my relationship skills."

"We all make mistakes," Helen said. Not that her ex-husband had been a mistake. They'd just grown apart over the years, and their divorce had been amicable. "Besides, I've got some baggage that makes me just as much of a high risk when it comes to personal relationships."

"Like the way you're always on the verge of getting either arrested or killed?"

"You're exaggerating." She knew he was just teasing her, but she needed to make sure he understood that she was at least as bad a risk for a long-term relationship as he was. They'd never really talked about it, and she didn't have either the time or the patience these days to engage in a roller-coaster ride of misunderstandings and reconciliations. "I was thinking more along the lines of having a chronic, potentially disabling disorder. Not exactly high on anyone's list of desired traits in a life partner. And then there're my nieces. They're going to meddle as soon as they catch wind of the fact that we're actually seeing each other."

"They already know, thanks to my nephew dating your niece," Tate said. "Don't forget that I've got my own nosy relatives too. Stevie has asked whether I'll hire her to do any renovations we might need if we move in together, and Adam's been trying to get me to talk about my intentions toward you. Who knew kids his age could be so old-fashioned?"