Death in the Garden Read online

  She looked up at her. “I try to keep things neat and in order.”

  She nodded. “You know, I’ve been growing zucchini for ages. Decades, really. I do love how big and lush the plants grow. Don’t you?”

  Amelia smiled absently. Susan had never been so chatty. “They are nice.”

  “One time, I found a kitten hiding in the middle of four large zucchini plants. Can you believe it? Poor thing had been looking for shelter. You never know what you might find in the middle of those plants when they grow together so closely.” She chuckled again.

  Amelia’s hands stopped with a weed pulled partway out of the ground and slowly looked up. Susan was watching her.

  “Really? I would never have thought of that.”

  She nodded. “Oh, yes. You never can tell.”

  Amelia swallowed; her mouth had suddenly gone dry. “I wonder what else one might find in the middle of a zucchini plant?”

  Susan smirked. “I’ve wondered that myself.”

  Amelia’s heart began to pound. “You killed Patty, didn’t you?”

  Without answering, she swung the new garden hoe at Amelia’s head as she ducked. The hoe whistled past her ear and she screamed and ran toward the garden shed. The pounding of Susan’s footsteps behind her echoed in the morning quiet and Amelia slipped inside the open shed door, slamming it behind her. The darkness enveloped her as she heard the hoe slam against the shed door. She felt in her jeans pocket and pulled out her phone, quickly dialing 911.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Amelia sat in Detective Jackson’s office huddled on the old brown visitor’s chair in front of his desk with a Styrofoam cup of cold black coffee in her hands. She hated black coffee, but she was so tired she hadn’t had the energy to ask for cream. She occasionally took a sip of the noxious brew and grimaced. She was sure whoever had made the coffee had put triple the amount of grounds into the machine. The one good thing about it was that each slow sip temporarily perked her up again.

  Detective Jackson was tapping on his keyboard without paying any attention to her and she wondered if he had forgotten she was there. After they had interviewed her, she had called Walter, and he had come down to the station immediately, but he was currently in some other part of the station discussing who knew what with his former coworkers.

  She took another sip and grimaced again. She wished she had thought to have Walter pick up a coffee from The Coffee Bean on his way over, but at the time she had been so shaken by what had happened at the community garden that she hadn’t thought of it.

  The old dot matrix printer next to the detective’s desk suddenly sprang to life and began churning out a report, the paper being fed from a cardboard box that sat near his feet. One thing was for sure, the Gabardine Police Department was no-frills.

  When the report had finished printing. he ripped it off the printer and set it in front of her. “I need you to sign on that line right there.” He pointed a thick finger at the line at the bottom of the page and slapped a black pen smudged in ink next to it.

  Amelia didn’t like him. There was something about him that made her think he might suddenly change his mind and charge her with the murder. She picked up the pen and the paper and quickly scanned what he had typed in. Everything seemed in order and so she signed her name quickly on the line.

  “Am I free to go?” she asked, shoving the paper and pen back toward him.

  He shrugged. “Let me check with the chief.” He got up without another word and stomped out of the office, leaving the door open. A draft blew across her body and she shivered and took another sip of her coffee. She was almost certain he was disappointed that she hadn’t committed the murder.

  A moment later Walter appeared in the doorway. “How are things going?”

  She looked up at him and suddenly wanted to cry. Why now of all times, she didn’t know nor care. She just knew she wanted to go home where everything was safe. “Okay, I guess. I want to go home.” She silently cursed herself when she felt her eyes tear up.

  A look of surprise crossed Walter’s face, and he hurried over to her and knelt down beside her, putting his arms around her and pulling her to himself. He kissed the top of her head. “It’s all right. Everything’s all right. Susan has confessed, and she’s going to go away for a long time, and we’re going to go home and live our ordinary lives just like we planned.”

  She nodded, her head against his chest, and took a deep breath. “I know. I’ve never been so thankful for a boring life.”

  He chuckled and laid his cheek on her head. “We should take a trip somewhere soon. Someplace fun. How does that sound?”

  “That sounds good.”

  On the drive home Walter filled her in on what he knew. “Susan swears she didn’t try to frame you on purpose, but your locker never did lock properly, and she had been borrowing your tools all along. She just returned them before you got there. So she had your garden hoe when she was working on her own plot, and when Patty came to the garden that morning, they argued about the seedlings that Susan had dug up. Patty said she was going to get her kicked out of the community gardens. That was when Susan flew into a rage and struck her with the hoe.”

  “I just can’t imagine an argument over seedlings escalating to that point,” Amelia said looking out her window at the passing buildings.

  He chuckled lightly. “Right? Once she’d struck her once she realized that she would be in a lot of trouble when she called the police on her, so she hit her several more times until she died. She says she can’t remember how many.”

  Amelia shuddered. “How awful.”

  “She panicked. And she hid Patty’s key in your zucchini hoping the police would find it when they searched the grounds. But they overlooked it somehow.”

  Amelia nodded, taking this in. “Just think if they would have found it when they did their investigation. They would have arrested me.”

  He grimaced. “There weren’t any usable fingerprints on the hoe itself.”

  She nodded again. “I always use my gardening gloves whenever I use any of my gardening tools. I didn’t want calluses or blisters on my hands.” She looked at her manicured hands. Her nails were painted a light pink, and she kept them reasonably short. She always had. Typing with longer nails was something she had never really gotten the hang of, but she liked her hands to look nice.

  “At least that’s over with now and we can relax.”

  “I swore that Gary and Ruth had something to do with her death,” Amelia said looking out the window again. “Can we run through the drive-through at The Coffee Bean? That coffee at the police station was vile. I can't get the taste out of my mouth.”

  He laughed. “Sure thing. They like making the coffee thick enough to stand a spoon in it down at the police station. You can’t blame them, they work long shifts and deal with things they would rather not deal with.”

  She nodded. “I would imagine so.”

  The two of them drove toward The Coffee Bean and she reached across and put her hand on his as he steered the car with his left hand. He gave her hand a squeeze, and he chuckled. “You know, you’re all right. I think I’ll keep you.”

  She laughed. “I feel the same way about you.”

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