A Dawn of Death (19 page)

"I'm sure Detective Peterson will consider every angle." It was a lie, but it would be better for everyone if Marty believed it.

"Thanks for not being upset with me," he said, finally standing and coming out from between his truck and the adjoining car. "I'm really doing the best I can in the circumstances. In fact, I'd better go talk to Cory now. I need to get it over with so I can go back to the work site before anything else can go wrong."

Helen let Marty go. She wasn't going to get anything more out of him, and she had her peas to check on.

Helen was startled to find that the entire garden was encompassed by police tape now. It hadn't done much to keep out the gardeners, though, or even the stealth weeder, Richard Avery Sr. He was in the far right corner where loose ends of police tape fluttered between two stakes. He was crawling around on his hands and knees while RJ was obviously trying to coax him back home, occasionally glancing fretfully at the tape his father must have torn while getting into the garden.

Paul Young hadn't needed to damage the police tape to get into the garden. His long legs would have let him simply step over it. He was kneeling in the path next to Helen's plot, leaning over her pea plants. Beside him was his little cart with some empty six-cell seed starters and several hand tools.

Helen stepped off the sidewalk onto the beginning of the garden path but stopped on the safe side of the police tape. Detective Peterson would just love to catch her crossing that line, and without Tate's legal assistance, she could end up in jail for the entire gardening season. Even from that distance, she could tell that another seedling was gone.

"What happened this time?" she asked.

Paul started, and his head turned fast enough to give him whiplash. "Miss Binney. I did not hear you arrive."

"Isn't it great? Just a few months ago, you could hear my joints creak from a mile away."

"I am sure that is not true." The guilty expression on his face gave way to amusement.

She wondered what he'd been feeling guilty about and whether it was the same thing that had him so engrossed in his thoughts that he hadn't noticed her approach. It seemed unlikely that he'd be that upset about the loss of another of her pea seedlings. It didn't bother her that much, but she was new to growing things. One thing she'd learned from the magazines that Dale had given her was that dedicated gardeners took the well-being of their plants pretty seriously.

"So," she asked him, "what's your verdict?"

He blinked. "The medical examiner will have to determine that. I believe Sheryl's autopsy has already been done, and the police have the preliminary report."

Now she knew what Paul had been thinking about—Sheryl's death. It still didn't explain why he'd had that guilty expression, unless it was just that he'd been caught inside the police line.

"Sorry. That wasn't what I meant," Helen said, pointing at the seedlings in front of him. "What killed the third pea plant?"

He brushed the dirt off his hands and stood. "I am afraid I do not know that either. I heard that someone spotted rabbits on the edge of the garden at dusk last night. They like pea sprouts."

She was sure Paul was lying. He wasn't very good at it. But why would he bother? It wasn't like he'd killed the plant himself. Even if he had, there was no reason for him to hide it. He'd given them to her in the first place, after all, so she couldn't be angry if he'd inadvertently killed one of them.

She must have let her skepticism show because he added, "Also, the rain was heavy at times this morning, and you can see that the dirt has been disturbed."

Maybe he could see it, but to Helen, it looked pretty much the same as yesterday. A little wetter perhaps, but that was all.

No, wait. Something did look different. Except, it was the plants themselves as opposed to the dirt. She couldn't pinpoint what it was. Something to do with the number of leaves. And they were taller, although one seemed to be growing at a funny angle. She'd read that peas were fast growers, but she hadn't thought they could change noticeably in just one day. Of course, it was only a matter of a fraction of an inch. It wasn't like they'd done a "Jack and the Beanstalk" type of transformation, growing all the way to the skies overnight.

Paul joined her on the sidewalk, stepping over the police line and pulling the cart underneath it.

"I've always wished I had longer legs," Helen said. "Probably just as well I can't get over or under the line too easily though. It's best if I don't push Detective Peterson too far. But I may have to if the police don't clear the scene soon. Do you know why they expanded it to include the whole garden now?"

He shook his head. "All I know is that as soon as the rain ended, the police came out and ran the tape around the perimeter. They said I could finish what I was doing, but then I had to leave. I do not believe the officers knew exactly why the scene had been expanded. Just said Detective Peterson told them to do it. They all left as soon as the last strip was in place, and a few minutes later, he showed up." Paul nodded toward the Averys' driveway. "He said I needed to finish up whatever I was working on before his boss got here."

Helen turned to look in that direction. She wasn't sure how she'd missed it, but a cruiser was parked there, blocking the driveway. A uniformed officer leaned against the passenger side door, more or less facing the garden. He was sipping from a foam cup and didn't seem bothered by either Paul's or Richard Avery Sr.'s trespasses.

"The officer doesn't seem to be much better at keeping people out of the garden than the police tape is."

"My guess is that the police are looking for something concrete within that perimeter. The officer watching the garden knows what it is and believes that neither my presence nor the Averys' would present any risk to their search. Wharton is a small town, after all. Everyone knows everyone and makes assumptions about who might be trouble and who would not."

"So he's assuming that no one here might have killed Sheryl," Helen said. "I suppose that makes sense. I'd never heard of her before I found her body—the Averys are in their own little worlds, and you…well, I can't imagine you hurting anyone. You're much too kind." Of course, none of that was proof of innocence, as she had good reason to know. She wasn't discounting any possible suspect ever again.

"That is the problem with small-town thinking," Paul said. "Objectively speaking, I did have a motive to wish Sheryl dead."

"You?" Despite her surprise, she had to admit she should have considered him a suspect. He probably did have experience operating construction equipment, especially bulldozers, since they were used in landscaping too. His height would have been an advantage in any physical encounter, and she suspected that both his gardening and the hands-on help he gave his employees kept him strong.

"I would never have hurt her," he said. "I am a man of peace, after all. But Sheryl and I…let me just say that we have a long history, and she wasn't the easiest person to live with."

"You and Sheryl were a couple?"

"Not exactly. When I say 'live with,' it is a bit of an exaggeration. What we had was more a series of hookups." Paul looked in the direction of the cruiser, but the officer there didn't seem to be paying attention to anything except his beverage. "We tried to be discreet, but I am sure Dale knew. A few other people too. And they also knew that Sheryl and I recently decided to end the intimate aspect of our relationship. We were still friends, and the decision was mutual, but I am certain that if the gossips hear about it, they will be evenly divided on who did the dumping and who was dumped. Either way, you can infer a motive. Either I dumped her because she threatened my garden, or she dumped me because I opposed her purchase of the land."

For the first time since meeting Detective Peterson last year, Helen felt a bit of sympathy for him. As a relative newcomer to town, she didn't know Paul very well, nowhere near as well as the detective probably did, and she was already predisposed to think he would never have killed anyone. It had to be harder for someone who'd grown up here in Wharton to consider that his lifelong friends, neighbors, and colleagues might be killers. But Paul was right. He belonged on the suspect list.

"I really hope the police figure out what happened to Sheryl before you're implicated."

"They will," Paul said, sounding far more confident than Helen did. He looked up at the overcast sky. "I have been here longer than I intended. I need to get back to the office now, or the gossips will be talking about dereliction of duty rather than more intimate indiscretions."

*   *   *

As Paul left, Helen wondered what the police could possibly be looking for in the expanded crime scene. She doubted it was footprints. Surely they'd been obliterated by the rain, just as the evidence of what had happened to her pea plants had been. Probably not trace evidence either since it would have suffered the same fate. No, it had to be something visible to the naked eye. Something they'd missed in the initial collection of evidence when the assumption had been that the death was nothing more than a tragic accident. Something the officer didn't think would be damaged by either Richard Avery's obsessive digging or Paul Young's routine gardening chores.

Helen glanced at the officer, who'd finished his coffee and disposed of the cup. He was crouched down with a paper napkin, removing some of the garden's mud from his shoes. She doubted he would tell her anything about the planned search, so she'd have to find out some other way. Perhaps she could enlist RJ to keep an eye on what was happening and then call her if the police found anything.

Helen looked at the back of the garden, but RJ and his father were gone. Probably getting ready for the 4:00 p.m. medicines. The routine was rigid, RJ had said. It was a little after 3:30 now, and before doing anything else, they'd both have to clean up after getting caked in mud. RJ had enough to do without acting as her spy.

She herself didn't need to take any meds again until bedtime, she didn't need to be anywhere else for the next few hours, and she'd run out of ideas for turning up useful information about Sheryl's death. Perhaps if she loitered near the garden while the police did their search, she'd learn something. Detective Peterson wouldn't intentionally share any information, but his ego often led him to reveal more than he intended.

Helen hadn't paced the sidewalk for more than five minutes before a flatbed truck carrying twenty or thirty Jersey barriers pulled onto the street and double-parked outside the garden. A moment later, a dark SUV stopped behind it, and Detectives Peterson and Almeida climbed out.

Peterson jerked a thumb in Helen's direction, telling Almeida, "Get her out of my crime scene. And talk to her about that other thing."

While Peterson went over to the truck, Almeida ambled over to where Helen stood well outside the police tape that she wasn't anywhere close to touching. The passersby gathering to watch the unloading of the Jersey barriers weren't as careful, and some of them pushed the tape back in places. Peterson didn't seem to care that they were in his crime scene, Helen thought irritably, but he'd arrest her if he could, simply for being within fifty feet of the place.

"I'm not
in
the crime scene," Helen said.

"Don't snap at me just because Peterson annoys you."

"I'm sorry," Helen said. She did usually try to save her irritation for the ones who deserved it and not for those who were simply doing their job. "What's the 'other thing' he wants you to talk to me about?"

Almeida looked like she'd rather be somewhere else, which was surprising since she didn't shy away from uncomfortable conversations. Otherwise, she'd never have been appointed the domestic violence officer even if no one else had wanted the job. "I'm sure it's just a misunderstanding."

"That sounds like a politician's spin." If Almeida was trying to break the news to Helen gently, something had to be seriously wrong. "Just tell me what it is. I don't need it candy coated."

"Marty Drumm complained you've been harassing him, accusing him of killing his boss," Almeida said. "Now, he was pretty drunk when he said it, and normally we don't pay much attention to alcoholic ravings, but his timing was really bad. We'd just gotten word from the industrial accident expert that Sheryl's death was suspicious."

"I didn't accuse Marty of anything, but if it was murder, he's an obvious suspect. Sheryl wasn't easy to work for, and he did get a promotion of sorts when she died."

"You could be right," Almeida said. "But that's not the point. You know how Peterson feels about an amateur getting involved in his investigations. He didn't stop to consider whether Marty was a good suspect. He was too busy getting defensive about the possibility that you might have solved the case before he could."

Again
, Helen silently added to herself. "He ought to be grateful for any help he can get."

Almeida snorted. "Like that's ever going to happen. You could catch the worst serial killer in history and even let Peterson take all the credit for it, complete with national media attention, commendations, and bonuses, and he still wouldn't be grateful. For him, it's the principle, not the results."

"I hate it when people stand on principles." During her years in the Governor's Mansion, she'd known far too many politicians who'd at least claimed to be acting strictly on some high moral principle. What it really meant was that they were too pigheaded to agree to any reasonable compromise that would have actually accomplished most of what they'd wanted. Instead, by sticking to their supposed principles, they'd gotten nothing done at all. She might be stubborn herself sometimes, but she knew when to strike a deal. "If it'll make Peterson feel better and your job will be easier, I'll stay away from Marty Drumm until Sheryl's case is resolved. I should warn you though that I ran into him a little while ago—or actually, it was more like he ran into me, almost hit me with his truck."