Mulch Ado About Nothing jj-12 Read online

  Mulch Ado About Nothing

  ( Jane Jeffry - 12 )

  Jill Churchill

  When Jane and neighbor Shelley Nowack sign up for a gardening class at their local community center, they end up with a substitute, the pompous Dr. Stewart Eastman, after an unknown intruder sneaks into the home of the regular teacher, Julie Jackson, and knocks her out, leaving her in a coma. Suspects in the attack include everyone taking the gardening class: fastidious computer programmer Charles Jones, persnickety librarian Martha Winstead, lonely widower Arnie Waring and loony aging hippie Ursula Appledorn. But in this leisurely, talky tale, Jane is less concerned with crime solving than with visiting the gardens of her classmates, tending to her injured foot, worrying about her teenage son's unsuitable girlfriend and buying herself a new TV for her bedroom. Only near the end does a murder occur. Dr. Eastman is found strangled with green twine in a compost pile, after which Churchill brings the plot to a tidy conclusion, with the killer's motive turning on Dr. Eastman's patented pink marigolds.

  Jill Churchill

  Mulch Ado About Nothing

  One

  Note on Jane Jeffry's kitchen door: Jane, you got flowers but you weren't home. I've got them. They're beautiful! Where are you? Shelley

  Note on Shelley Nowack's kitchen door: Shelley, just phoning in my summer PTA excuse. Couldn't hang up to answer the door when I was beg‑ ging off. I want my flowers.

  Jane Note on Jane's kitchen door: Just ran to drop off a couple books before the library police send out a squad car for them. What's the occasion for the flowers? I wouldn't dream of opening the card, of course.

  Shelley Note on Shelley's door: Had to drive to Jenny's house to give Katie lunch money. What kind of flowers? And don't you dare open the card!

  Jane Note on Jane's door: Sorry, I wasn't gone. I was washing the dog after he got loose and rolled in something revolting. I want to know why you're getting flowers.

  Shelley Note on Shelley's door: I want to know, too. I've got to make a smash and grab at the grocery store or we'll have stale bread and crystallized jelly for dinner. Mike's getting cranky about having so much mac and cheese.

  Jane Note on Jane's door: I haven't opened the note yet. But I've held it up to a strong light and the envelope is too thick to read through. I'm following you to the grocery store. Shelley

  Note on Shelley's door: Didn't you hear me honking at you in the parking lot? If you didn't drive twice the speed limit, I'd have caught up with you. So I came home and you aren't here. Do you have flower preservatives? They're going to need it if I'm ever going to see them. I'm going to sit in a lawn chair in my driveway until you get home. Jane

  Jane didn't do quite what she'd threatened, but she settled in to read the paper on the top step of her kitchen-door deck. When Shelley's minivan turned in — not quite on two wheels, but almost — Jane flung down the paper. "Where are my flowers?" she demanded.

  “In the kitchen," Shelley said. "I'll fetch them for you. What are they for? Who are they from? What have you done to deserve flowers that I don't know about?"

  “I have no idea," Jane said. She hoisted herself up, grimacing at a twinge in her knee, and went into her house, leaving the door open for Shelley, who reappeared a moment later, almost concealed by a huge flower arrangement.

  “Oh, they are beautiful!" she exclaimed as Shelley set them on the kitchen table.

  “Read the card," Shelley said, shoving it at Jane. The card looked a bit worn and was scorched on one corner. Jane started laughing. "What's so funny?" Shelley demanded.

  “What a spy you'd make! You spent the day trying to find out what the message was and didn't read the envelope. The flowers are for Julie Jackson, that stylish woman who lives at the same number address as mine, but two blocks west. You know, the one who's doing that garden class we're starting on Monday.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment, then Jane said, "Have you tried steaming the envelope open?”

  Their "better selves" prevailed and they didn't steam open the envelope, but instead Shelley drove to Julie Jackson's house with Jane clutching the flower arrangement and sniffing the heady odor of the white lilies in it.

  Shelley said, "You've got pollen from the lilies all over your face. You look jaundiced.”

  Jane tried hanging on to the arrangement with one hand while hastily brushing her face off. "Better?" she asked, looking at her hands, which were bright orange with pollen.

  Shelley had just turned the corner on the street they needed and slowed almost to a stop. "Jane, look."

  “Look? I can't even see around these flowers. What?"

  “There's a police tape around Julie Jackson's yard. And three police cars and an ambulance." "Oh, no!”

  Shelley pulled over to the side of the street one house away. Jane got out and set the flower arrangement on the grass and dragged a tissue out of her pocket to wipe more pollen off her face. Two people came out of the house Jane and Shelley had been heading for. A woman who looked like Julie Jackson and a man who was a headtaller than she and wearing a suit that looked too hot for such a warm day.

  A uniformed police officer was following them, almost herding them out of the house.

  “Rats!" Jane said. "I just caught a glimpse of Mel inside that window by the door. What do you suppose is going on? And who are that couple?”

  Shelley, having no more information than Jane, said nothing. They just stood there, transfixed and wondering what to do with the huge flower arrangement.

  Detective Mel VanDyne had spotted Jane as well, and came out the front door a moment later. Scowling fiercely, he had a brief word with the unknown couple and the officer with them and turned and headed toward Jane and Shelley.

  “What are you two doing here?" he snapped. "Gawking?”

  He should have known from the sizzling silence that met this inquiry that he was going to be sorry for that remark. But he compounded the looming problem by adding in an unfortunately demanding tone, "Well?”

  Jane said coldly, "I don't normally carry around a huge vase of florist flowers when I'm just out for a 'gawk.' Perhaps you've noticed that about me over the years? These flowers," she said, pointing at the arrangement, "were delivered to me by mistake and were meant for Julie Jackson. Shelley and I were merely bringing them to her.”

  Shelley was about to butt in, but thought better of it. Jane was doing fine by herself. She picked up the flower arrangement and handed it to Mel.

  He was trying to figure out how to apologize without actually saying the word "sorry" and feeling very stupid holding a vast arrangement of flowers at the crime scene. In a more pleasant voice, he said, "I see."

  “They're probably evidence," Jane said, turning on her heel dramatically to get back into the car. She tripped over the curb and came down hard on her right foot, and her shoe turned sideways with a sickening popping noise that made her yelp involuntarily.

  Mel set down the flowers, and he and Shelley rushed to scoop her up.

  “Are you okay?" Mel asked.

  “Aside from ruining my exit, I think so," Jane said, grimacing with pain. "I'm feeling a tad faint.”

  Mel opened the car door, shoved her into the passenger seat, and made her take off her shoe and felt her foot. "No obvious break. Can you move your ankle?”

  Jane felt like crying, not only because her foot was hurting horribly, but because she'd made a bit of a fool of herself by flouncing off like that. She wiggled it around and said, "My ankle's fine. Just leave me alone.”

  To her dismay, Mel and Shelley took her at her word. Jane put her shoe back on, muttering to herself, "Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  Mel looked at the flower arrangement sitting unevenl
y on the grass. "Who are the flowers from?”

  Shelley shrugged. "We don't know. The envelope is sealed.”

  He pulled out the little clear plastic stake and glanced at the card. "Why's it scorched?"

  “How would I know?" Shelley said airily.

  Mel held the envelope by one corner, slit it open with a penknife, pulled out the card with a pair of tweezers, and glanced at it. "Hmm.”

  Shelley craned her neck to see what the card said. There was no signature.

  “What does it say?" Jane asked from inside Shelley's van.

  “It says, 'You're next,' " Shelley reported. "No name. Jane, you need to go home and get some ice on your foot to keep it from bruising." Shelley walked around the front of the van and got in.

  Mel came to Jane's window. "I'm sorry," he admitted.

  “So am I," Jane said, but her words drifted on the wind as Shelley took off like a rocket.

  “So what do you think happened?" Shelley asked when she'd helped Jane up the steps, into her house, and onto the sofa.

  “Something awful for sure. I'm still mad at Mel for accusing us of going over there to 'gawk.' There I am, with about three tons of lilies and baby's breath in my arms, and he thinks we just horned in to take a looky-loo.”

  Shelley went to Jane's refrigerator, found ice, a plastic bag, and a dish towel. She was putting together an ice pack while saying, "There wasn't a body brought out. That must mean that somebody was just hurt and was being treated. I hope."

  “Or that they were waiting for the photographers before moving the body."

  “Don't be depressing," Shelley said.

  “I am depressed. My foot really hurts again. It was kind of numb for a while, but…"

  “Take off your shoe and put it up on the sofa.”

  Wincing, Jane removed her sneaker. The foot was red and swollen and had an imprint of everything on the inside of the shoe on her skin. A deep purple mark was along the outside of her foot.

  “Jane, that doesn't look good."

  “Just give me an hour with the ice bag. It'll be okay."

  “Not if you've broken something."

  “I didn't fall that hard. Really. I have iron bones. I've never broken one before.”

  Shelley sighed with exasperation. "You're going to have to get an X ray. And there's no point in even arguing with me. I'll haul you bodily from that sofa if I have to.”

  Jane knew Shelley meant it. She tried to put her shoe back on, but her foot, in mere minutes, had swollen so much she couldn't cram her foot in.

  Four hours later they returned home. Two hours had been spent waiting in the emergency room of the local hospital where most of the other patients were elderly people who seemed to regard it as a community gathering place and called cheerfully to one another. One hour had been spent waiting in a room that looked like a prison cell for the X ray to come back, and another hour for the orthopedist to explain Jane had broken the long bone at the outside of her foot and truss her up in a toes-to-knee cast. Then they had to stop at a pharmacy so Shelley could go in and buy crutches.

  “They would have given me crutches at the hospital," Jane said.

  “And charged your insurance about a thousand dollars. I know where to buy a pair for thirty-five dollars."

  “How do you happen to know that?" Jane said, staring down at her leg.

  “Had to provide some for a school play once. The kids played with them until they were in splinters. That was in the old days when they were made of wood. Remember? Your Katie and my Denise spent half of one summer seeing how far they could fling themselves by putting them way out in front and swinging forward. Here we are. I'll come around to help you. Stay right where you are.”

  Jane managed to bash her other leg twice with the crutches just getting out of the car when they got home.

  “Don't hang on them by your armpits, Jane. Hold the handle and barely touch the bad foot to the ground while you bring the good one forward."

  “I wish you'd let me at least shave my leg before we went. Think how hairy it'll be by the time this is taken off." She tried to follow Shelley's instructions and lost one of the crutches, which went spinning off down the driveway.

  Shelley picked it up and patiently handed it back. "Now, with the steps—”

  Jane interrupted. "I'm not doing steps. I'm going up backwards on my butt."

  “For several weeks?" Shelley asked.

  “If need be." Jane hobbled to the bottom of the three steps up to her deck outside the kitchen and demonstrated how well she could haul herself backwards.

  “I hope you don't have any social engagements coming up where there are stairs," Shelley commented.

  “Social engagements? No. I'm going to take every advantage of this and lie about looking wan and frail and ask people to bring me ginger ale and Cheez-its at regular intervals.”

  TWO

  “You did call Katie and Mike, didn't you?" Jane asked when she was installed on the sofa in the living room.

  “All you have is Wheat Thins. No Cheez-its. Want wine or soda?" Shelley called from the kitchen. "And yes, I called your kids. Told them not to worry. I didn't call the soccer camp where Todd is, though, because you didn't have the number with you."

  “How could you tell them not to worry about me?"

  “You want them to worry?"

  “It's their turn," Jane said. "I've been the sole worrier in this house for twenty-one years.”

  Shelley brought in a plate of crackers and cheese and a soft drink. Somewhere she'd actually found a nice little silver tray and a doily. "Where on earth did you find that?" Jane asked, astonished.

  “In that cabinet over your refrigerator. Left over from some party or another."

  “There's a cabinet over my refrigerator? I'd forgotten."

  “Get your mind off the kitchen. How can we find out what happened to Julie Jackson?" Shelley said, sitting down in a chair next to the sofa.

  “I've been so obsessed with myself," Jane admitted, "that I've hardly thought about her. I hope she isn't dead or even seriously hurt."

  “It looked serious to me. They don't put up crime tapes when somebody tumbles off a step stool."

  “I was looking forward to the botany class starting Monday," Jane said. "I hope this was all a misunderstanding and she'll still be teaching it. I met her at a city council meeting once when the cat-haters were yapping about laws to keep cats on leashes. She had some pretty sharp things to say about the balance of nature and I liked her a lot. That woman coming out of the house looked like her. Wonder if it's a sister.”

  The kitchen door opened and Jane's eldest child, Mike, came in. "Wow! A cast and crutches and everything. Cool! Does it hurt?"

  “Does it hurt? Of course it hurts!" She paused. "But not a whole lot," she admitted. "The problem is the crutches. I can't control them."

  “Let me try," Mike said delightedly.

  Since he was about a foot taller than his mother, he had to hunch over like an old man to even reach the handles, but managed to lurch around the room briskly.

  “So how are you going to decorate the cast?" he asked, tossing the crutches back on the sofa and lowering himself to the floor with the grace that only twenty-year-old knees can manage. "Shame it's a plain white one. The stuff they wrap it with these days comes in neon colors and with sports emblems, you know. Scott had one for a while on his hand in magenta."

  “Neither sports emblems nor magenta goes with my wardrobe," Jane said. "Besides, I wasn't offered another color.”

  The doorbell rang and Mike went to let Mel in. "Anything you want fetched, Mom?" Mike asked when he was halfway up the steps to his room.

  “Carryout dinner," Jane replied.

  Mel had seated himself in the other chair next to the sofa. "Bad break?" he asked sympathetically.

  “Just a fracture in a big bone," Jane replied. "I saw the X ray. I never knew there were so many bones in a foot. What happened to Julie Jackson?”

  Mel sighed. "She'
s alive at least. In a coma. She was attacked in her basement, which is a sort of workshop. Lots of lights over seedlings and a desk, computer, and a whole lot of file drawers. Apparently she hit her head on the corner of one that was open as she fell. She was certainly a well-organized person. Each file was labeled, and the contents in one of those paper folders with the clips."

  “That's obsessive," Jane commented.

  Shelley bridled. "No, it's not. I do that. Haven't you ever reached into a file and thought you pulled everything out, but left behind a small paper that fell out of the bunch?”

  Jane didn't dare comment on Shelley's remark. Shelley herself was pretty obsessive. Instead, she asked Mel, "How do you know she was attacked? Maybe she just tripped and fell."

  “Signs of a struggle," Mel said shortly. "Short and violent, as if the attacker was as surprised as she was."

  “How did he — or she — get in the house?" Shelley asked.

  “The back door was unlocked. Just like both of yours probably are.”

  Jane and Shelley exchanged guilty glances.

  “You said the attacker was probably surprised," Jane said. "How do you know that?"

  “I don't know for sure. I'm speculating. Her sister and the sister's husband are staying with her and left the house this morning to go into Chicago. The sister looks a lot like Ms. Jackson. If someone were watching for the house to be empty, he might have thought it was Ms. Jackson leaving with a man."

  “Was it just a burglary then?"

  “Maybe it was intended to be, but there was no sign of anything missing from the rest of the house and she has a nice collection of expensive, hockable little things in open cabinets. The desk in the basement was messed up, papers strewn every which way, but that might have been a result of a struggle."

  “Maybe the burglar got too scared to start his work," Shelley said.

  “But who would go to the basement before scooping up the good stuff on the ground floor?" Jane asked.

  “Exactly," Mel replied, helping himself to some of Jane's crackers and cheese.