Nipped in the Bud (11 page)
We strolled side by side down
Main
and across Oak. I not only enjoyed my small victory but the spectacular May morning as well. Still in the sixties, it was cool enough to warrant the sweater I’d brought along. By the time we sat down to lunch, we should have a perfect shirtsleeve day.
I raised my face to the warmth of the sun. “I love it when summer finally gets here. I never get enough sun.”
He snorted. “Tell me about it. I moved here in the summer during the dry season. If someone told me most every day for the rest of the year I’d be ducking raindrops, I might not have made the move.”
I laughed at his dismay over our gloomy winters. “Guess that means you’re not a native Oregonian.”
He shook his head.
“Nope.
Californian born and raised.”
“That’s right, you and Perry went to law school at Stanford,” I said then turned and nodded at Mrs.
Beneford
, who was sweeping the sidewalk across the street in front of the movie theater. She nodded back and stared with the same kind of interest I had in finding out about Adam’s past. “So how did a big shot lawyer like you end up in McMinnville?”
He laughed. “Not sure the big shot fits, but I did work in a large law firm in
San Francisco
. A couple who worked with me there came up here on a winery tour one weekend and never went back to
California
.
Literally, never.
They liked
Oregon
so much, they bought a business on the coast and had their things packed and shipped. I took care of selling their house. As a thank you, they invited me up for a week. I guess I caught the bug and here I am.” He grinned, the little boy back in charge.
“So how about you?”
“Lived with all of this through high school.”
I spread my arms to encompass the final steps of
Poplar Street
before we arrived at The Garden Gate. “Then I moved to
Portland
. Got a degree in landscape design and went to work for Ten Trees Landscaping. About a year ago, I’d finally saved enough money to move here and start my own business.”
“So you’re one of the natives then?”
“Uh-huh, and proud of it.”
The impish glint in his eyes intensified. “Then you won’t mind if I ask you to clear something up for me.”
“Sure, why not.”
At the end of the alley, he tugged me to a stop. “I’ve been told—mind you it might just be a rumor—that native Oregonians are born with webbed toes so they can survive all the rain.”
I’d heard this silly
Oregon
joke lots of times, but I played along, mocking offense by crossing my arms. “Now, Adam Hayes, I don’t think you know me well enough to ask to see my toes.”
“Guess we’ll have to fix that then, won’t we?” He smiled, wide and dazzling. “I’m dying to know the truth.”
“Paige, there you are,” Velma Meyers yelled from the back stoop of her Scrapbook Emporium. “I really need to talk to you.” She shot a fawning smile at Adam.
“If you’re not too busy.”
Before Velma asked for an introduction, I nudged Adam toward the door, where I entered my code into the automatic lock. “My office is the second door on the left. Make yourself at home while I talk to Velma.”
I pushed him through the door. “I’ll be there in a few.”
Velma had hobbled halfway across the alley by the time I got to her. Her right hand, gnarled from arthritis, peeked from a berry-flowered cuff and grasped a cane made from driftwood she’d picked up at the coast.
“Is it true, Paige?” she asked, her usually warm eyes filled with worry. “Do they really think you killed Bud?”
“For now.
But it’ll be okay. They’ll find the real killer.” In thanks for her concern, I patted her slumped shoulder.
“So how about you?
Any idea who might have wanted to kill him?”
Before she could answer, Gus
Reinke
drove his battered truck down the alley, forcing us to move to the other side. She looked around furtively, as if checking to see if anyone might overhear us. “Pretty much everyone in town had a reason to do Bud in.”
Everyone?
I knew about Bud’s reputation as a brutal city manager, and I’d experienced his tyrannical behavior first hand, but
everyone
wanting to do him in?
Seemed a bit of an exaggeration.
“Could you narrow that down, Velma? Maybe think of someone Bud was extra mean to?”
She tilted her head to the left. A slip of white hair dangled from her tight bun and swung like a silver lace vine in a strong breeze. While I waited for her to run the possible suspects through her mind, I looked at my garden beds sprinkled with the dying greens from stately yellow and white daffodils and the smaller, more delicate grape hyacinths.
Still waiting, I silently hummed the final
Jeopardy
melody.
Halfway through the song a second time, she straightened as much as her curved spine would allow, and her eyes lit up. “I’ve got it. There was a group of homeowners that Bud really did wrong a few years back. Know the pickle factory?”
I nodded. Anyone who drove into town could figure out there was a pickle factory in Serendipity. If the pickle trash cans dotting the park and a Pickle Fest banner strung over
Main Street
weren’t enough clues, there were the cucumber-filled semis that frequented the streets. Still, I wondered how a pickle factory had anything to do with the death of a
Picklemann
other than in the name.
“Go on,” I said.
“Bud got the entire city to change zoning laws so that factory could locate on the outskirts of town. He said it would be good for our economy.
That kids
would stay here after graduation because they had jobs. People who lived by the site fought hard to keep the factory out, but Bud lied to get us to vote for the change. He said the company would make sure the factory didn’t affect the quality of life for local homeowners. The factory owners never did what Bud promised. The noise and activity dropped the value of the homes to next to nothing. Even though their property was worthless and they couldn’t sell the houses, most folks near the factory moved away.”
Yes! Finally, suspects.
Real suspects.
Even though I was elated, I forced the excitement out of my tone. Velma would mistake my happiness and think I didn’t care about others’ misfortune. “How many people were there, and did you know any of them?”
“Just a handful.
Didn’t know most of them.
One of the ladies, Ida Carlson, used to visit the shop. She stopped coming in a long time ago. Now that I think about it, I don’t know what happened to her.”
“Any idea how I could find more information about this?”
“I would imagine you could get it from the library. City council minutes are published every month. The
Times
should have the details.”
I thanked Velma and raced back to the shop to tell Adam about my good news—maybe to gloat a little over the fact that I, without the aid of a private investigator, had my first clue in very little time. With this kind of result, I’d know the identity of the killer by nightfall.
“And now, enjoy the best of Through the Garden Gate with your beloved host, Paige Turner.”
“Hi, Paige, this is Banned in Sisters. About six months ago you did a show about researching plant properties.”
“Right you are, Banned.
When planning a garden, research, research, research. To be successful you must discover, at a minimum, a plant’s water and sunlight needs and the heat and cold extremes it can survive. I believe I suggested a trip to the library to consult the American Horticultural Society’s A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants.”
“Yes, you did, and that’s where our problem started. Our librarian has banned us from the library.”
“Now why would she do something so drastic?”
“She said we were destroying the book.”
“I don’t understand. Was she worried that you were using it too often?”
“Not exactly.
We might have gotten a little bit of dirt on the pages.”
“Dirt?”
“Yeah, we needed to identify a few of our plants so we dug them up and laid them by the pictures in
the
book. We tried to clean it up. Honest.”
Outside my office door, I stopped and peered into the small space. Adam was seated behind my monster of a desk, and his long tapered fingers clicked away on my keyboard while he talked into the phone wedged between his ear and shoulder. He glanced at me and smiled. My face warmed over the memory of our earlier hug. How nice it would be to snuggle in that spot again.
As much as I wanted to talk to him, he had to finish up before we could go to lunch and discuss this new development. Reluctantly, oh so reluctantly, I pushed off the doorjamb and went in search of Hazel.
Lisa, eyes drooping and chin resting on her fist, delayed my search. Her index finger rested on the same magazine as earlier.
“You’re back,” I said approaching the table.
She raised her head as if it weighed hundreds of pounds.
Please, say it isn’t so.
My daisy was wilting as her morning caffeine wore off. A tired Lisa meant a contentious Lisa. She needed eight hours of sleep or she was cranky. Until her twins slept through the night, she’d been almost
unbearable .
“Don’t make such a big deal about me being here, Paige. I just wanted to find out what happened with Mitch.” She cut her gaze toward the office. “Adam already filled me in.”
Warily, I chose a chair as far from the crank as possible and slipped onto the padded seat. “That’s not all the good news I have.” I replayed my conversation with Velma. “Do you remember all of this happening?”
Lisa pondered my question then nodded slowly. “Sure, yeah, I remember. I don’t know all the details, but it was a big mess. People were mad as can be. Bud really pulled a fast one.”
“I don’t get it. If everyone around here hated Bud for that, how’d he keep his job?”
“Business, pure and simple.
He’s been good for the town.
Bringing in tourism, even the factory.
The place employs two hundred people. Kids are staying around after graduation now because they can find jobs.”
I shook my head. “Still, doesn’t seem right to me. One of the reasons I left city life was to get away from big businesses that care only about money and nothing about people. I never expected to find that kind of attitude alive and well here.”
Lisa’s eyes
widened,
and she motioned toward the back hallway. “Don’t look now, but
your
big business is on his way from the office.”
I turned and made eye contact with the advancing Adam. We locked gazes. I returned his sweet and comforting smile with what I hoped was a bold flirtatious look.
Lisa twisted the flesh on my forearm, and I swiveled so fast the room spun. “Why’d you do that?”
“Thanks for sharing all the juicy details of what happened to put that kind of look on your face,” she whispered.
I sat back and waited for a forked tongue to whip out and stick me. “We’ll talk about him and your wayward fingers later.”
Oblivious to our little spat, Adam stopped behind my chair and placed his hand on my shoulder before squatting and peering into my eyes. “I need to send a fax.
It’s
long distance, and I wanted to be sure it was okay.”
Umm, brown.
No, cocoa.
His eyes are cocoa. They go well with the milk chocolate tufts of his hair. He was just plain yummy. I was going to have to get a grip or find a new lawyer.
Lisa kicked me under the table, and I willed my mind from the intensity of his eyes. “What?
A fax?
Oh, sure. Yeah. It’s okay.”
“Great.” As if he knew the effect he had on me, likely from past experience at charming women, he stood and grinned, setting that little scar to winking again. “I still have a few things to do. Can you hold out for another hour until lunch?”
Another hour?
My happy bubble melted. Then again, maybe this was a good thing. I could use the time to go to the library. When we did have lunch, I’d have concrete facts instead of a local gossip’s theory to present to him.
“Fine,” I said while rising. “There’s something I need to take care of anyway. I’ll meet you at the Bakery in an hour. Remember where that is?”
His amazing eyes clouded over.
“Hard to forget, since it’s across the street from the park.
See you in an hour.” He retreated to the office.
I grabbed Lisa’s elbow. “Come on. Two can work faster than one.” I jerked her to her feet.
“Where are we going?”
“Library.
To look at old newspapers.
I need details about the people Bud hurt when he brought in the factory.” I dragged her through the shop, toward Hazel.
“I called Teri,” I yelled as we rushed past Hazel, who looked at us as if we had escaped a loony bin. “She’ll come in to give you your lunch break. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Mr. T, asleep in his cage, woke up. Arching his back, he swung his beak from side to side and ruffled his feathers. “Quit your
jibba
jabba
.”
I shut out his echoing Mr.
T'ism
by closing the door.
“Would you please let go of me?” Lisa pulled her arm free.
“Sorry, it’s just that we have to hurry. I don’t want to be late for lunch.” I didn’t wait to see if she would follow. I was sure she would be dying to talk about my budding feelings for Adam. I was so baffled by them myself that I didn’t want to discuss it. Not until I had a better handle on my motives. I mean, he was cute, and I could fall for his charms, but that did not a real relationship make.
The dressier shoes I’d paired with my khakis for the interview clicked on the sidewalk like a woodpecker tapping on a tree. Lisa caught up. Surprisingly, she didn’t mention my tête-à-tête with Adam and pulled out her cell instead. She gabbed with her mom about picking up the twins, and I marveled at how much Serendipity had changed since I left after high school. In the sixteen years I’d been gone, wineries had sprouted up in the
Willamette
Valley
, bringing plenty of weekend tourists to town and making my plan for a small nursery and landscape business viable.
To cater to the weekenders, the locals had spruced up store-fronts, painting them bright colors. After a facelift, the old Cameo Theater sparkled in its former glory, and the brick courthouse had been nipped and tucked as well. Along the sidewalks filled with planters, antique wrought iron lamps lit the evening shopping experience on most of the main streets. Even as I turned left on Oak, I passed the renovated elementary school, now a hotel-brew pub that anchored a string of thriving antique shops.
The library was located on the back side of the fire station. I’d always wondered who came up with the
idea to
pair a quiet library with a noisy firehouse. If it hadn’t been this way since I could remember, I’d blame it on Bud’s mismanagement.
Waiting for Lisa to finish her phone call, I shoved open the glass door and looked into the simple one-room building. Our library, filled to the brim with reading materials that were an essential part of the residents’ daily activities, resembled most libraries in
Oregon
. Book circulation in this state, likely due to the continuous rain, hit record highs. Facts were facts. We were all big readers.
Lisa clamped her phone closed and trudged past me, her face fixed and determined. Though testy and irritable, her body language screamed a perfectly put together, albeit tired
Stepford
Wife.
“Do you know the librarian?” I asked as she passed me. “What’s her name? Stacey?”
“Yeah, she’s a real sweetie.
Loves the twins when I bring them in.”
I closed the door silently. “Are we talking about the same person here? She’s always been cranky to me.”
Lisa pointed at the counter. “Just look at how nice she’s being to old Frank.”
I followed the line of her finger. Stacey slid out cards from the back of books as she conversed with irritable Frank Becker. Slender, on the fashion side of thin actually, Stacey wore a knit dress. Although her lower half was hidden behind the counter, I was positive her skirt was cut short to draw attention to her Barbie-doll legs. Her shoulder-length bottle-blond hair, alive with ringlet curls, accentuated a heart-shaped face boasting full lips lacquered in a berry frost.
If she were in my garden, I’d want to plant her front and center to show off every inch of her beauty, but she was too tall for the front. Still, even in the back of a garden bed, all eyes would go straight to her. The only flowering plant I’d ever seen with that type of power was
Crocosmia
, the ‘Lucifer’ cultivar, to be specific. This plant produces scarlet red flowers borne along the upper portions of arching stems that rise up to four feet above sword-shaped leaves.
A true beauty that no gardener should forgo.
That’s where Stacey differed. I could do without her, even though she was pleasantly entertaining Frank as if he were a neighborly man instead of a curmudgeon.
“
You feeling
better today?” Frank asked her.
Her head popped up, and she peered at him. “Fine, why?”
He jerked his head at the door.
“Came by here yesterday around eleven.
Found a closed sign on the door.”
Stacey’s mouth dropped open. Frank had obviously hit on something she didn’t want to talk about. What could she have been up to yesterday morning?
“I had a little problem to deal with.” She schooled her features then resumed checking out his books.
“Couldn’t seem to stay out of the bathroom.
By
, I was fine. You know how that goes.”
Frank snickered. “Don’t
I
ever. Wait till you get old. I
ain’t
had a regular—”
“That’s fine then, Mr. Becker.” She shoved a stack of books into his hands, preempting additional description of his irregular habits.
Maybe she was embarrassed. I didn’t buy her explanation about her supposed health problem and made a mental note to put her on my follow-up list. I turned back to Lisa. “I guess you’re right. Stacey is being nice to Frank. I still think it’d be better if you asked for the newspapers. Make sure she gives us the—”
“I know what we need,” Lisa interrupted and set off, mumbling, “I could tell by your tone that you said I was right just to make me happy. I don’t know why I do these things for you when you’re not up front with me.”
Shaking her head, my drooping daisy approached the counter. Frank greeted her with a grumbled hello. I hoped his demeanor wouldn’t force her to wilt further before we could retrieve the information we needed and get her home for a nap.
Frank spotted me and growled like a rabid dog. Turning to Stacey and Lisa, I did my best to ignore him. Lisa’s usual gentleness overcame the funk she’d embraced for the last hour and as they chatted, Stacey warmly responded. Maybe I was the problem here.
Maybe.
. .but I didn’t want to think about that right now.
I leaned on the juvenile mysteries shelf. The bold titles on colorful spines piqued my interest. I looked down the aisle at
The Secret of the Old Clock,
the first Nancy Drew I’d read, right in this room. I’d spent countless hours nestled in a monster beanbag chair under the window, with the tall pine tree outside shading my eyes. I devoured Nancy Drew novels until my mom closed up and dragged me out the door.
I went over to the books and longed for the days when my mom used to make everything okay. I was sure she could even handle murder accusations. If she were still alive, what would she do? Actually, I didn’t really need to wonder. She would tell me to speak my mind, not run and hide.
To quietly find the killer and clear my name.
Exactly what I was doing, albeit not quietly.
“She’s getting the papers,” Lisa said as she approached, banishing my thoughts to the recesses of my mind where they belonged. “See how easy that was?”
“Point taken.”
Still longing for the feeling of peace I used to find in this room, I ran a finger over the spine of
The Hidden Staircase.
“You weren’t even watching, were you?” She tapped my finger. “Nancy Drew makes an appearance and you
veg
out. Nothing changes.”
“Thanks for the idea.” I pulled the first four titles off the shelf. “If I read these at bedtime, maybe I’ll forget all about Adam and my problem and get some sleep.”
“
Argh
,” she grumbled.
Books in hand, I went to the circulation desk and waited for Stacey to return. Lisa moseyed behind, stopping at the kids’ section. She loved to read to the twins. I fished my library card out of my wallet and tapped it against the aged laminate counter, working up a good rhythm as I scanned the room.
Hold up. A white sweater hung on a chair behind Stacey’s desk. I tamped down my eagerness and strolled over to look. As I reached out to check for stains, Stacey lumbered from the back room, the muscles in her fit arms bulging from the weight of two file boxes.
I let my hand fall and followed her to the check out station.
She dropped the boxes on the counter and looked at me. “Can I help you?”