The Readaholics and the Poirot Puzzle (15 page)

W
hen I pulled up at Bloomin' Wonderful, Lola's nursery, she was standing in front of two rows of potted shrubs, an anxious look on her espresso-colored face. Light winked off her glasses as I stopped. Two greenhouses rose behind her, condensation clouding the panes, and several acres of trees, shrubs, and daylilies surrounded us. The Bloomin' Wonderful van squatted under a tree, its hood up, like a yawning pink-and-yellow hippo. A small lavender farmhouse with a welcoming porch sat beyond the greenhouses. I looked for Lola's grandma, frequently to be found shelling peas, shucking corn, or knitting on the porch, but she wasn't there. Misty came running from under the porch when she heard the van and twined around my ankles when I got out. I bent to pat her and she mewed.

“Thank you so much,” Lola said, hefting a five-gallon shrub before I'd even opened the van's back doors. “These have to be at the site by six. It's the first time this contractor has bought from me, and I need to keep him happy.”

I helped her load the lavender, euonymous, barberry, and Russian sage (none of which I could have identified except for Lola's tutelage over the years),
sliding the heavy pots into the van. Misty jumped in to inspect the job we were doing, nosing around.

“Where's Axie?” I asked. I knew her younger sister frequently helped out with Bloomin' Wonderful.

“At a friend's,” Lola said, grunting as she lifted a mugho pine into the van. “Move, Misty. She was supposed to put in two hours with me after school, sorting the bulbs that came in yesterday, but she said she had a group project to do for history and that the kids were getting together this afternoon. She begged me to let her go, saying she'd make up her hours on Saturday, but she's been gone long enough to have written the Articles of Confederation or the Versailles Treaty now. I suspect pizza is involved,” she added darkly.

I laughed. Lola's fifteen-year-old sister, Axie, short for “the accident,” which she preferred to her given name, Violet, was a handful, much more outgoing, social, and reckless than Lola had ever been. With their parents dead in a car crash not long after Axie's birth, Lola and her grandmother had been responsible for raising the girl.

“She should owe you two hours of work, since you're the one giving up her evening to help me,” Lola said. She wiped her brow.

“That's not a bad idea,” I said, considering it. “I've been thinking about hiring another intern. Business is brisk enough that Al and I can't handle it all. If you think Axie might be interested, and if you can spare her, I could maybe use her a few hours a week. When does she get her driver's license?”

“Two months,” Lola said. “God help us all. Out, Misty.”

Laughing, I climbed into the van and we headed for the housing development, about two miles past Heaven's eastern border. The heat had bled out of the day by the time we arrived, and the setting sun silvered a pile of metal pipes and irrigation PVC at the entrance to the development. A tracked vehicle squatted, heavy and yellow, beside a shallow ditch. A series of holes were predug around the large stone sign with the bronze lettering announcing J
UBILEE
A
CRES
. Two workers, both Hispanic, came over when we stopped and immediately began to unload the plants from the back, gesturing us away when we tried to help. When the containers were off-loaded, one of the workers signed the form Lola handed him, and we took off.

“Thanks, Amy-Faye,” Lola said as we made the turn onto the main road. “Let me buy you dinner?”

“Sure,” I said.

Since we were grubby and casually dressed, we ended up at a fast-food burger joint. It teemed with rambunctious kids and tired parents, and the table was sticky, but I was hungry enough to overlook it all. I caved to the temptation of a burger and fries, liberally loaded with ketchup. Salad tomorrow, and the rest of the week, I told myself, thinking about the enchiladas I'd had with Doug earlier.

As if she'd read my mind, Lola said, “I hear Doug's back from his cruise.”

“Sailing. He was crewing for a buddy with a yacht.”

“Must be nice to have a buddy with a yacht,” Lola said.

“Indeed.”

She sipped tea through her straw and waited. A toddler in the booth behind her started wailing and thumping the bench seat so Lola jolted with every kick.

With a put-upon sigh, I said, “Yes, I saw him. He came by at lunchtime to show me the office he's rented.” I told her about his plans.

Giving it some consideration, Lola said, “I think he'll be happier working for himself. I'm sure he was good at playing the corporate game, but Doug always was one to do things his way. Remember that game against Caprock Academy where the coach told him to pass to Donnelly and he ran the ball himself?”

“Won the game and we made it to states,” I said, munching on a fry.

“Didn't stop Coach Evans from chewing him out.”

We laughed at the memory. Lola, the most discreet and least pushy of my friends, didn't ask if Doug coming to see me so soon after he got back meant anything romantic. Good thing, because I didn't know. I didn't even know if I wanted it to mean anything romantic or not. Doug and I had been over for more than two years—which, admittedly, was only a fraction of the decade-plus we'd been together, off and on. Doug was recovering from being jilted and Hart and I were . . . something. I squeezed my burger so tightly that ketchup leaked out.

The family in the booth behind Lola got up to go—thank goodness—leaving the table looking like a troop
of angry baboons had descended on it. Lola checked her cell phone for what must have been the fifth time since we sat down. She apologized and said, “I'm worried about that girl. She's always been such a good student, and pretty responsible, really, but since school started a couple of weeks ago, she's just been . . .” She shrugged, unable to describe her sister's behavior.

“She's what? A sophomore this year?”

Lola nodded. “Uh-huh. And the way her grades are looking, she may be a sophomore again next year, too.”

I laughed at Lola's glum tone. “Stop! Axie's a good kid, a smart kid. She might be testing the limits a bit right now, but she'll straighten herself out. We did the same thing when we were fifteen.”

“You did. I didn't,” Lola said with a smile. “While you were sneaking out to meet Doug, I was putting diapers on Axie.”

I could have slapped myself for being so insensitive. Lola's parents died that year and her grandmother needed Lola's help with baby Axie and the house. She'd lived the life of a single teenage mother without the fun of having sex first. “Sorry, Lo,” I mumbled.

“Ancient history, A-Faye,” she said calmly, slurping the last of her Coke through the straw.

Anxious to turn the subject, I told her about the other events of the day, starting with Derek's arrest and ending with my seeing a man go into Susan Marsh's shop after hours.

“That'd be Gideon Lohmeyer,” Lola said, after asking if she could help Derek in any way. “They've been
seeing each other for, oh, six or eight months. Gran says they're getting serious.”

I stared at her. “Your gran knows the guy Susan Marsh is dating?”

Lola chuckled. “Of course she does. You know Gran! Gideon's mom is part of Gran's quilting circle and from what I can tell they don't talk about anything other than what their kids and grandkids are up to. Gran comes home and shares it all with us. Nancy Diaz and Martin Knipp, among others, would never show their faces in Heaven again if they knew what their moms have been sharing about them. I told Gran I'd leave home and stick her with Axie and the nursery to run if she ever said ‘boo' about me to her friends.”

Resisting the urge to ask for embarrassing details about Nancy Diaz, who, as Nancy Simpson, had tried to make my life miserable in high school, I asked instead about Gideon.

“He's the foreman on the Double A Ranch,” she said, naming a spread about twenty-five miles northwest of Heaven, on the other side of I-70. “Nice guy, from what I hear. Lost his wife a while back. Breast cancer, I think Gran said.”

“When you say ‘nice guy,' do you mean too nice to help Susan kill Gordon?”

“Amy-Faye!” Lola looked at me, full lips pursed
with faint disapproval. “You can't go around saying things like that about perfectly decent folks.”

“I'm not
saying
, I'm
asking
,” I said. “Big difference. Face it: Someone whacked Gordon over the head and threw him off the roof. Chances are it's someone we think of as a ‘nice' guy or gal.”

Lola looked troubled. “Since Ivy was poisoned, and now with Gordon's death, I find myself thinking about murder more than I'm comfortable with. And it strikes me that one of the worst things about it, beyond the taking of a life, is the way it rips at the fabric that binds folk together, making them look sideways at each other, question, worry. ‘Where was my husband when so-and-so got killed?' ‘My best friend had a fight with so-and-so the day before it happened. I wonder . . .' The wonderings are bad.”

With Derek in jail, I wasn't in the mood to philosophize. “A murderer walking around loose is worse,” I said, crumpling my trash together into a ball on my tray. Lola dropped the subject and looked at her silent phone again. “C'mon,” I said. “I'll bet Axie is home by now and she just hasn't called.”

When I pulled up outside the farmhouse ten minutes later, Axie came to the door and waved. I gave Lola a “told you so” grin and drove off with a toot of my horn. Getting home at a decent hour for the first time in days, I changed into my jammies, curled up in the den, and debated between the old Eighty-seventh Precinct novel I'd been reading and the Amelia Peabody book I'd read twice before. I went with the latter. I needed lighthearted, not a police procedural. There
was too much police procedure in my life right now, as it was.

T
hinking I'd start the family meeting off on the right note, I arrived at the family home the next morning with a box of assorted bagels, and coffee for everyone. From the cars pulled into my parents' driveway, I knew Derek and my sister Peri had beaten me there. There were hugs all around and I hung on to Derek extra long, until he pushed me away and said, “I didn't pull a nickel in Supermax, sis.”

He grinned at the look on my face. “A ‘nickel' is five years in prison-speak,” he explained, “and Supermax is—”

“I know what the Supermax Prison is,” I said huffily. “It's where they put people like the Unabomber.”

“Supermax—where prisoners check in, but they don't check out,” Derek paraphrased the old roach motel commercial.

I guessed it was good he could make jokes about it. He didn't look too bad, considering. No worse than when I last saw him.

“Where's Zach?” I asked Peri. The oldest of us five siblings at thirty-nine (and holding), she lived here in Heaven with her husband, an engineer with the Colorado Department of Transportation, and my only nephew and niece, Blake and Blythe. The Johnson
family red hair was more carrot on her, and her pale arms and face were freckly. She'd left college at nineteen to marry Zach and never regretted it. She managed an apartment complex and had an unending supply of funny (and sometimes gross) stories about tenants and their habits.

“Home with the munchkins,” she said, smearing an onion bagel with strawberry cream cheese.

Ick.

“Blake took a foot in the face at tae kwon do last night and we had to take him to the urgent-care place. Thought a couple of teeth might be loose. I swear those places would go out of business if it weren't for adolescent boys. We've never had to take Blythe to an ER, but it feels like Blake is in there every other month. They should engrave our names on those nasty plastic chairs in the waiting room. Dr. Dreesen and Dr. Iwata know us by name, and the staff probably has our insurance number memorized.”

“Is he okay?” I asked, suspecting I knew the answer from her breezy description of the visit.

“No permanent damage, but he'll be chewing on the left side of his mouth for a while. Zach'll drop them both at school before going to work. Hey, I saw Doug at the City Market. Did you know he's back? Please tell me that you aren't going to get hung up on him again, now that he's single and available, and looking pretty darn good with that tan. Rebound, A-Faye. Rebound. If he comes sniffing around, you keep in mind that that boy's on the rebound and steer clear. You've been
doing great since you guys broke it off for real . . . Don't backslide now. I think—”

Luckily, Mom interrupted us before I could tell Peri that I didn't give a hoot what she thought on the topic of my romantic life, or lack thereof. Sisters! I settled for glaring at her as Mom herded us into the dining room. Why did everyone assume I was going to moon over Doug again, just because his marriage fell through? Okay, there might have been one or two—well, maybe four or five—occasions in the past where a similar thing had happened, but I was older and wiser. Plus, there was Hart.

Mom, still in a fluffy pink robe that made her look like one of the old Sno Ball snack cakes, brought our family meeting to order by making us sit around the dining room table, a slab of walnut she and Dad had found at a thrift store shortly after they married. Mom sat at the head of the table with Derek on her left and Dad on her right. I sat beside Derek with Peri beside me.

“Derek's in trouble,” Mom announced.

“What's new?” Peri whispered to me. “He's been in trouble since he was two.”

I swallowed a chuckle. Even when I was pissed at her, she could always make me laugh.

“His legal issues will be taking up a lot of his time—”

Peri leaned into my ear again. Her breath smelled like strawberries. “Getting sued is a ‘legal issue.' Being tried for murder is a life-changing catastrophe. Or a great opportunity to write a book, go on the talk shows, and be set for life.”

I swatted at her thigh to make her shut up. She straightened with a grin, and Derek sent us a suspicious look.

“—and he'll need to be helping his lawyer plan his defense in case the case goes to trial, which we devoutly hope it won't.” She crossed herself. “So he won't be able to spend enough time at the pub to keep it running.”

“You're going to close Elysium?” I gasped, getting cream cheese on my elbow when I leaned over my plate to stare at Derek.

“No—” he started.

“Your dad and I are taking over the day-to-day running of the pub,” Mom announced, sounding like a general laying out a campaign plan. I tried to equate the rollers in her hair with a general's helmet, but couldn't make it work.

Peri and I looked at Dad, who confirmed it with a nod.

“Derek will still brew the beer, but I'm going to be responsible for food service, employee issues, and heaven knows what else,” Mom said. She looked determined, but nervous, too. Forty years as a librarian and writing book reviews had not prepared her for the challenges of running a pub. “Your dad's going to take over the payroll and accounting. We're hoping that you girls can pull some shifts and help out where needed, as well.” Her gaze went from Peri to me.

“Of course,” we chorused.

“Zach will help, too.” Peri recklessly committed her spouse. “Too bad the munchkins are too young to serve
liquor. On second thought, the pub will have a better chance of staying in the black if it's not being drained by constant breakage.”

“What about Nat and Rae?” I asked. My sister Natalie, the baby of the family, lived in Grand Junction and taught middle school social studies. Rae, the second oldest after Peri, lived in Denver with her partner and worked as an air traffic controller.

“We're going to talk to them about spelling us on weekends, if this drags on,” Mom said. “They're too far away to do anything on a routine basis. Derek's going to call them tonight and let them know what the situation is.”

Derek leaned forward with his forearms on the table, looking ill at ease. “I just want to say thanks,” he said. “To Mom and Dad, especially, but also to you guys.” He looked at me and Peri. “Courtney hopes this will never come to trial, but we've got to prepare as if it will, so my head's just not in the right place to be running the pub, you know? And I really need to make a go of it because Courtney's not working for free, for one thing. So, well, just thanks.”

“Anytime, baby brother,” Peri said, blowing him a kiss.

“I've made out a schedule,” Mom said, passing a sheet of paper to each of us.

I looked at it. She had me down to work tonight, which I could manage because Al was handling the library fund-raiser we had organized.

“Let me know if any of the times don't work for you. I know you'll have to play it by ear, Amy-Faye, because
of your events. That's okay. It's probably best that you concentrate on finding the real murderer. As long as you can do that without putting yourself in danger, of course. That goes without saying.”

She said it so matter-of-factly that her mention of my investigating activities almost passed me by. “What?” I said, a beat late. “You think I can—?”

Dad nodded. “Of course. You've got my logical brain, even if it doesn't work with numbers. You figured out who killed your friend Ivy and we hear you've been making progress with this case. Clarence Uggams called me just last night to ask me to ask you to keep your ‘pretty little nose'—that's a quote—out of police business, so you must be doing something right.”

“I hope you told Chief Uggams that it's my Constitutional right to stick my nose anywhere I want to, especially when the police aren't following up on leads that might clear my brother's name.” I crossed my arms over my chest.

“That's exactly what I told him,” Dad said.

Peri and I got up to go. “Keep your chin up, Derek,” Peri said, leaning down to give him a hug. “We'll run your pub so good you'll probably want us to stay on permanently. My terms are reasonable—Uncle Derek takes his favorite nephew and niece for a weekend so his favorite sister”—she stuck her tongue out at me—“and her hot husband can spend a weekend alone in Denver, doing what married couples do.” She waggled her brows suggestively.

“Argue?” my father guessed.

Mom socked his arm and he rubbed it, saying, “Ow,” with a mock-wounded look.

We all laughed, even Derek, and it felt good.

•   •   •

I worked all morning on the library fund-raiser we were in charge of tonight, finishing up the last-minute details that always leap up to bite you in the derriere. Al was going to be the on-site coordinator, the first time he'd been in charge of an event this big on his own. I'd decided a month ago that it was time to show him I trusted him to handle the tough stuff on his own. And I did trust him, mostly, but it still made me nervous to delegate such an important function. If I wanted him to sign on with me permanently, though, I needed to give him more responsibility.

“You up for this?” I asked as he headed out in his hatchback midafternoon, with a binder including the guest list, the evening's schedule, a diagram of the event area, bios for the presenters and special guests, phone numbers for the caterer, the party-supply company, and other vendors we'd hired for the evening, and more.

“I've got this, boss,” he said, sounding confident, but tweaking at his polka-dot bow tie the way he did when he was nervous. “I just wish I didn't have a statistics test tomorrow.”

“I can fill in—”

“Nope.” He held up a hand to stop me. “This is mine. Time to pop my cherry.” He blushed. “Er, I mean—”

“I know what you mean,” I said, suppressing a grin.
“Call me if you need
any
thing. I'll be at the pub, but I can always get away if you need—”

“Will do, boss.”

“And stop calling me boss,” I yelled after his car as he drove off.

Before he was out of sight, my phone rang. Hart. “Hey,” I answered, a smile in my voice.

“Hey back. I saw your brother made bail. I'm glad.”

“Yeah, me, too. Anything new?”

“Amy-Faye, you know I can't—”

“I know, I know,” I said, walking into my office as I talked. “I thought you might blurt out something useful if I took you by surprise. I guess I'm not up to Hercule Poirot standards yet. Give me time.”

He laughed. “Are you doing anything tonight? With the chief back, I'll get off a bit earlier, and I thought we might—”

“I'm bartending at Elysium for Derek,” I said. “My parents have taken over running the pub while he's, well, you know. My sister and I are helping out. I'll buy you a beer if you want to drop by, though.”

“It's a deal.”

•   •   •

Clad in the orange shirt with “Sam” over the pocket, I took charge of the bar again Wednesday night. I felt more comfortable behind the bar tonight, maybe because I knew my way around, or maybe because we were all pulling together to help Derek. The orange upholstery was warmly welcoming inside, and the setting sun and cooling air made the outside patio equally hospitable. Mom was in the kitchen, talking to the cooks
and figuring out what happened back there, and Dad was in Derek's office, familiarizing himself with the accounting system. There were more customers than there'd been last Wednesday when I filled in, and I took that as a positive sign, even though I knew some of them might only have been ghouls attracted by Friday's tragedy.

Bernie reported for her shift on time, and grinned at the sight of me slicing lemons and limes. “Just can't stay away from here, can you?” she said.

I started to explain what we were doing, but she said, “Yeah, I know. Your mom called earlier. I'm guessing she called all the employees. I think it's great that you all are sticking by Derek like this. When I got myself in trouble and Billy was on the way, my folks gave me the old heave-ho.” She didn't sound bitter, but I eyed her as she pulled her round serving tray out from under the counter.

“How is Billy?” I asked.

“You know those Mayhem commercials for some insurance company? That's Billy. Things around him seem to erupt or explode or cave in, but he always walks away from it, even if on crutches or in a cast sometimes. Gawd. Take my advice: Girls are the way to go. What I wouldn't give for a daughter I could dress in those cute Gymboree dresses, who wanted to play quietly with Barbies or jacks.”

I laughed, thinking of my niece, who was anything but quiet, and who was already a standout on the baseball team where she was the only girl. Before I could
answer, a customer summoned Bernie and she took off, going into flirt-for-tips mode. The kitchen door opened and, to my astonishment, Kolby Marsh came out, clad in the orange Elysium Brewing Polo shirt and khakis. He slouched toward the bar and sent me a glance I couldn't read from the corners of his eyes.

“What are
you
doing here?” I blurted.

“I work here,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant and failing.

I searched my brain. Had Derek told me Kolby had quit, or had I just assumed it? “Why?” I asked. “Your mom told me that you're going to inherit millions and that you've quit college.”

“‘Going to,'” Kolby said, snitching a lemon from the divided dish and sucking on it. He screwed up his face. “Turns out, I don't get the money right away. It's going to take, like, months even. Probate or something. I need something to live on in the meantime. And a place to live. Mom's moving in with that dude she's been dating, and I'm out on the street. That dude Mom's marrying, the cowpoke”—he gave the word a derogatory twist—“he's convinced Mom that working is good for me, told her I should stand on my own two feet for at least a few months before I never have to work again. He's worse than Dad. Said he could get me work on the ranch, mucking stalls or some such shit. Not the Kolby-meister, nosiree. I told him where he could stick his pitchfork. Mom was giving me grief about it, but I told her the job here was as much as I could handle and that I felt a responsibility to help out since the pub was
important to Dad. She bought it.” He tried to suppress the look that said his mother was a sap, and failed. “Of course, I'll need a salary now, but I figure Derek and me can come to terms, since he only has this place because of my dad.”