Death at a Fixer-Upper (9 page)

My phone rang just as I got back to the Volkswagen. Richard? I glanced at the number but didn't recognize it. “Hello?” I said without thinking.

“Sam?”

“Oh. Yeah. This is Sam. Who's this?”

“Merrit Brown. We met yesterday?”

“Of course.” The rose lady. “Hey, nice to hear from you. What's up?”

There was a brief silence on the other end. “I know you're busy.”

I rolled my eyes. Conversations that started this way usually led to me doing something I didn't want to do. “Nope. Not really.”

“I just wondered if you wouldn't mind stopping by. Whenever it's convenient.”

“Something wrong?”

“No. That is, I don't think so. Things are a little unsettled is all.”

I groaned inwardly. Maybe she was going to lay a sob story on me about getting pushed from her home, when I was only doing my job, and not doing it too well, frankly.

“I can swing by right now if that works,” I said.

“That'd be fine. Listen, don't bother with the big gate. If you park on Eleventh just past the fire hydrant, you'll see a little break in the shrubbery. You have to duck down a bit. There's an old gate there, which is the one we use regular. Just pull on the string to unlatch it.”

“I'll do that. See you in a few.” We hung up.

I fired up the bus and drove past the natural-foods market, where a handful of picketers were out front protesting the sale of genetically modified organisms. I would have honked my horn to show my support, but it hadn't worked for ages, ever since I yanked the little wire out of the steering column to put a stop to a long, continuous honk. Instead, I gave a thumbs-up out the window. The group waved and cheered. I was somewhat fuzzy on the whole issue of gene-tinkering, to be honest, but it didn't sound appetizing. Besides, there are certain responsibilities inherent in driving an old air-cooled van, and showing support for fringe causes is one of them.

I drove down Eleventh and bypassed Aster as instructed, spotting the hydrant about three-quarters of the way down the block. Parking a bit farther up, I went down the sidewalk on foot. The escallonia grew so thickly that it took me two passes to spot the break, just a thinning of branches that didn't look wide enough to admit a wiener dog. But once I'd pushed aside a few limbs there was the gate, a four-foot-wide plane of vertical boards set into a frame of granite pillars. A piece of twine dangled down through a hole in the rightmost board, and I gave it a tug. With a little effort, working against the clinging branches, I passed through the opening and found myself in back of the estate.

A girl appeared suddenly, as though a wood sprite had materialized out of the greenery. Her hair was loose and long, almost white in its paleness. She looked at me, eyes enormous in a thin face, with irises the color of caramel.

“Are you Lily?” I said.

She nodded, still appraising me with those age-old eyes. “You're Sam.”

“How'd you know?”

“Just did.” She pushed the gate shut behind me, checking to make sure the latch engaged. Then she turned and took my hand in an unexpected gesture that tugged at my heart. She was wearing a dress two sizes too big, some sort of cotton thrift-store creation covered in red and yellow poppies. As she led me toward the house, she began to hum under her breath, a nonsensical tune that took me back to a time when Max was small and wide-eyed, finding traces of magic in everything around him.

When we reached the rose patio, Lily released my hand and visited each flower in turn. I thought she might be examining them for aphids or mildew; then I noticed her lips moving. Was she
talking
to them?

Finishing her rounds, she approached the rusted bucket, fishing through her pocket for a penny. She scrunched her eyes shut for a moment, then dropped the coin in the well. Her eyes popped open, clear and bottomless.

“Make a wish,” she said.

I felt as though my limbs were enchanted. Fumbling in my pocket, I drew out a quarter and stepped up to the well.

She frowned. “Is that all you have?”

“I didn't know there was a minimum.” I felt around and came up with two more quarters and a nickel. “This do?”

“Uh-huh. Now close your eyes and think hard.”

I closed my eyes and thought hard. Did I think of Bernie? Possibly. The coins clunked as they hit the bottom. Lily watched them roll against the brick and rattle around until they were still.

“My daddy died,” she said.

She spoke with detachment, as if she were talking about a curious insect she'd spotted crawling across the brick.

I hardly knew what to say. “You must miss him.”

She considered my question judiciously. “No,” she said, “I don't.”

She skipped off across the grass. Merrit had come to the door of the greenhouse, holding a pair of nail scissors. I was shocked at her frailty; she seemed to have aged ten years in two days. Her hair hung limp and brittle, and I could see every bone in her face. When she raised her hand in greeting, her fingers trembled. I opened my mouth to say something, but she shot a glance at Lily and I bit back my words.

“I see you've met my daughter,” she said.

“We made a wish.”

“Did you, now.” She looked at Lily, her eyes almost luminous. “Honey, there's cookies in the kitchen, and I made lemonade.”

“Goody,” she said, and vanished into the house. We watched her go.

“She's pretty special,” I said.

“A changeling, I sometimes think. Swapped at birth by the fairies.”

“Are you okay?”

Merrit waved off my concern. “It's nothing. Come on in here. I'm just finishing up.”

I followed her into the dim fustiness of the old greenhouse. There was a dirt corridor down the middle with rough wooden workbenches on either side. An old refrigerator snored in the corner. The air was humid, smelling of peat moss and chicken manure.

Half a dozen plastic film canisters were set out on the bench to the left. Merrit picked up the nearest one and used a white grease pencil to scrawl some words on it.

“What are you working on?” I asked.

“Making a rose. I'm crossing two species to see what the offspring looks like. Hybridizing.”

“Wow, really? How do you do it? Through grafting?”

She smiled shyly. “Nope. I can show you if you like.” She considered, then selected a labeled canister from a shelf under the bench, tucking it in her pocket. From a plastic bin she took another one, clearly empty.

“They save these for me over to Arlinda Drug,” she said. “Now. The thing about breeding is you try to emphasize certain traits, eliminate others. You know what ‘monoecious' means?”

I shook my head.

“Having both male and female characteristics. Capable of self-fertilizing. So we fix that.” She led the way back outside and over to a robust plant covered in pale pink flowers.

“This is the ‘Queen Elizabeth,' ” she said. “Common as dirt. You see a lot of these roses around Arlinda. But let's say you wanted to tinker with the color a bit, maybe go in a peach or orange direction.” She chose a bloom that was about a third of the way open and deftly peeled off the petals, leaving only the center of the flower on the stem.

“Normally I'd do this at sunrise, to minimize any pollen release,” she said.

“Duly noted.”

She flashed me a quick smile, then drew the nail scissors from her pocket. “These are your stamens,” she said, using the tip of the scissors as a pointer. “Basically your male parts. The yellow sacs on top are your anthers, which hold the pollen. What we want to do is remove them without knocking any pollen loose.” She snipped away until all the stamens were cut. Her knuckles were red and swollen. On the back of her hand and around the thumb joint, I saw rounded swellings that looked like peas pushed under the skin.

She seemed to read my thoughts. “It's autoimmune. Came on like a herd of elephants a few years back, but the doctors can't seem to put a name to it. They've tested for lupus, Lyme disease, fibromyalgia. Now they think maybe it's some form of rheumatoid arthritis, and they tell me it'll go into remission. I'm still waiting.”

“It looks painful.”

“More than you'd believe. But these things were sent to try us.” She used the tip of the scissors to maneuver the severed plant parts into the canister, then pressed a lid on it. From her pocket she took the second canister.

“These are anthers from ‘Aurora,' a nice deep yellow. Collected them a few days ago. You can see they're ready to pop.” She handed me the canister and a little paintbrush, the kind you'd find in a kid's watercolor set.

“Maybe you should do this,” I said a trifle nervously.

“Easy as falling off a bicycle. Dab your brush around until it picks up some pollen. Then apply it to the stigma, there in the center.”

I did as she told me, dabbing the yellow grains as best I could on the sticky flower center. Finally she nodded.

“Good. Now we label it with a strip of paper and wait for hips to form.”

“Just like motherhood.”

She laughed. “You got kids?”

“A boy. Just turned fifteen.”

“My Lily's nine years old, going on nineteen. Growing up too fast.” A shadow passed over her eyes. Her head was bent over the plant as she secured a loose strip of plasticized paper around the flower stem. She'd written “Queen Elizabeth x Aurora” on the paper in shaky cursive. “The host plant goes first on your label, then the pollen donor.”

“How long before we see what develops? Couple of months?”

“Oh, hon, no. Three years, maybe five or more. Eddie planted his ‘Arlinda Junes' more than a decade ago. Keep in mind our cross may not take at all.”

“It's a lot of work when you can't guarantee the outcome.” Like my current profession, come to think of it.

“Life don't come with guarantees,” she said.

Something in her voice made me think she wasn't referring to flowers. I looked around the estate. “I talked to Louis Klinghoffer yesterday,” I said, apropos of nothing.

She reached down and snapped the wilted head off a rose with her swollen fingers. “Is that so.”

I cleared my throat uncomfortably. “Yeah. I had some questions about the will. Its, uh, unique provisions.”

“Unique is right. Eddie loved his yard, his trees, his flowers. They were his children.”

“I'm surprised he didn't include the roses when he wrote up the trust, or whatever it's called.”

“His lawyer talked him out of it. Said it was unduly restrictive on any future use of the property, or some such nonsense. Same with allowing the sale of the property. Eddie wanted that struck out, but Klinghoffer told him the property was a liability as it stood and the Botanical Society could refuse the legacy. He warned him it might go to the state in that case. I don't think Eddie ever dreamed the society would put the place on the market straightaway like they did. He thought they'd most likely make a park or preserve of it.”

“You think Eddie was misled?”

She smiled grimly. “You tell me. I don't hold with lawyers much.”

“Tell me about the six trees.”

She shook her head. “There's only five. The white oak that's mentioned in the will? It was out front, but came down three winters ago. A branch took out the tower roof, not to mention we lost our power for three days. The two
Taxus
are really shrubs, the English yews by the main gate. More than a century old. Then there's these three.” She turned and pointed deep into the property, where three thick-trunked trees with tall crowns were visible, forming a rough triangle at the back of the property.

“That's a black walnut over in the corner,” she said, indicating a stately tree with a twisted trunk and limbs like beckoning arms. “It has a pretty flower you just missed seeing. And walnuts. Lily and me liked to gather them in the fall, and we'd have them to eat all winter. Now, this one here's something special.”

The tree she indicated had a furrowed trunk as wide around as a love seat, with scaly reddish bark. It twisted upward like a fancy candle before erupting into a crown of wide-spreading limbs. Soft green needles hung down from the branches.

“Only three types of redwoods in the world, and that's one of them,” she said. “Dawn redwood. From China. And deciduous—it drops its needles every year.”

Her finger swung round toward the southeast edge of the parcel and the third tree, which had a smooth gray trunk like an elephant's foot and a shower of oval leaves touched with orange.

“That's a copper beech. Uncommon to find one here.”

“The trees were planted when the house was built?”

“That's right,” she said. “There was a big push by the nurserymen back in the late 1800s to plant trees and shrubs in the new territory. They sent out tree peddlers with big books of color plates, touting for orders. And then they'd deliver the order come spring. If you were a property owner, you had to keep up with your neighbors. My guess is Northrup Harrington was one of their best customers.”

She returned the scissors and canisters to her pocket and we made our way back toward the greenhouse. As we passed the wishing well, I glanced inside. The coins I'd dropped in earlier were gone.

Merrit stepped through the door and gestured toward a coarse-toothed metal rake with a wooden handle that was leaning just inside the door. “This is what I called about.”

“Something special about that rake?”

Instead of replying directly, she said, “Maybe you heard there was an accident here yesterday.”

I gulped. “Yeah. I found…I was here at the time.”

She looked at me. “You were here?”

“I was supposed to meet the—the victim. I hope Lily didn't see anything.”

She shook her head. “I took her to dinner in town and we got back late. It was the listing agent who called and told me what happened. Can't say I was surprised.”