The Trouble with Tulip (20 page)

Jo organized the task in her mind as she drove. Once she got back to Mulberry Glen, she decided her first stop would be to get some empty boxes from behind the shopping center. She would also have to hit the dollar store, where she could grab some packing tape and permanent markers.

Just thinking about all of that activity had her in much better spirits by the time she reached the main highway. She decided not to think about Bradford for now. Somehow, someway, she would deal with the fallout from her failed wedding later.

As for her column, Jo realized that what she needed most right now was time to think, to brainstorm. If her household hints weren't relevant to the modern woman as they were now written, what could she do to change them, to
make
them relevant? Ideas flowed through her mind, from cleaning computers to day care issues. Surely out there somewhere was the right angle for the Smart Chick!

Finding that angle would require careful thought and a bit of research, observation, and testing—and the more she thought about that, the more excited she became. Something would pop up soon, she just knew it. Household hints were still relevant. She just had to figure out how to communicate that to today's modern woman.

Danny sat at the computer in his home office, staring at the figure on the bottom line. He had just balanced his bank account, and the resulting number was so low he wondered how he could pay off the stack of bills sitting next to the keyboard.

Something had to change, and soon.

Danny was used to piecing together an income from an assortment of odd jobs (like taking photos for the police), his studio job, and the sales of his stock photography. He had all of his best photos listed with different stock photo agencies around the world, and in any given month he earned from several hundred to several thousand dollars from them, depending on the leasing of the rights to his photos. Stock photography would never make him rich, but unless he started landing plum assignments from
Scene It
magazine, it would have to do.

And it was quite fun sometimes. He never knew where one of his pictures might end up, whether in a corporate brochure, a glossy calendar, or a CD or book cover. As he slowly made a name for himself, he found that more and more of his photos were being accepted by the larger agencies for representation. Sales had been steady, but if he didn't land something a little more lucrative soon, he was going to have to give some things up, like cable TV or his cell phone.

He glanced up at the sign that hung over his desk:
God has promised to meet all of our needs. God has not promised to satisfy all our wants.
Cable TV was definitely a want. For that matter, so was the cell phone. He took a deep breath, let it out, and smiled.

Thanks, God. Thanks for reminding me how it works.

Before Danny started going through the bills, he printed out the first check, ten percent of last month's income for his Sunday tithe. His non-Christian friends thought he was nuts for giving money to the church when he could barely afford to feed himself, but he knew what his priorities were. Priority number one was to be a faithful steward of all the Lord had given him.

The rest usually fell into place, one way or another.

Jo used the key Sally had given to her to unlock the door to Edna Pratt's house. It was almost dark outside, so she walked through and flipped on most of the lights. Despite the fact that Jo had murder on her mind, she didn't feel frightened to be there. There had been no signs of a struggle or a forced entry surrounding Edna's death, so whoever had purposefully mixed the chemicals that killed her was someone Edna allowed into her home willingly. Jo figured she was safe as long as she didn't let anyone in.

On the way into town, she had filled her car with sturdy cardboard boxes, but before she unloaded them, she wanted to look around and size up the task in front of her. She studied each room, opening closet doors, sliding open drawers. It was a small, two-bedroom house, though the guest room doubled as a sewing room. In fact, Edna's sewing skills were on display throughout the house, from the curtains in each of the windows to the gingham skirts around the sink and tub in the outdated master bathroom.

Besides the two bedrooms and two bathrooms, the house had a living room, a dining area, and a small, tidy kitchen. Jo finished her tour at the back door, where she looked out on the porch, the little yard, and a shed.

The job seemed simple enough, though from what Jo could see, Sally had left town without doing much more than the two of them had accomplished together the day before. Edna's food was even still sitting in the refrigerator.

Jo decided to start there, finding a garbage bag under the sink, opening it up, and filling it with everything inside the fridge and the freezer. When she was finished, she continued on to the pantry, tossing everything except canned goods. Those she bagged up to donate to the local soup kitchen. Everything else, sadly, needed to be tossed for safety purposes.

The food completely filled the garbage bag, so Jo carted it to the back porch and then came back in, located Edna's stash of cleansers and rags, and went to work on the inside of the refrigerator. It was clean already, but Jo knew she might as well get it completely scrubbed out, even putting a washcloth over a butter knife to clean the rubber tracks around the door. When she was done, she found a pencil and some paper and started a shopping list with the first item being two boxes of baking soda, for clearing out any lingering odors.

After Jo had thoroughly cleaned the fridge, freezer, and pantry, she decided to take a break and do a little digging around. She knew that over the course of the next few days she would come into contact with all of Edna's stuff. But for now she just felt like looking in the more “private” areas of the house. Under the beds. In the tops of closets. In the backs of drawers.

She didn't know what she was looking for, only that she'd know it when she found it. Sure enough, at the back of the closet in the sewing room, hidden by a pile of blankets, was a small black trunk, sealed up tight by a rusty metal padlock. Maybe it would hold something important, something relevant to Edna's death.

Jo carried the trunk to the bed and then went digging for a key, which she found in the drawer of the sewing table. She had a feeling it was the right key, though when she tried to insert it into the lock, she realized that the lock was rusted completely shut. Undeterred, Jo carried the trunk into the master bathroom and balanced it on the corner of the tub. Then she went out to the kitchen, where she retrieved a shallow bowl and a can of cola.

Back in the bathroom, Jo knelt in front of the tub. She opened the cola, poured it into the bowl, and then held the bowl directly under the lock so that the lock rested down in the brown liquid. The substance bubbled and fizzed for a few minutes, and Jo knew that the cola was eating away the rust that was freezing up the lock. Finally, she set the bowl down in the tub, used a nearby towel to wipe off the lock, and tried again with the key.

This time it worked.

Jo pulled the trunk right down onto the floor in front of her and opened it. As she did, the smell of must and dust filled the room. The trunk was filled with papers and photographs, scrapbooks and mementos—all of it obviously quite old. Jo flipped through everything, seeing pictures of Edna Pratt as a young woman, a bride, a pregnant housewife. Sally would enjoy the shots of herself as a baby, then a toddler, and then a little girl, both by herself and with other children, other adults. There were dried corsages and snips of fabric and treasured letters and documents.

But there was nothing there that was relevant to now—or that could point to murder.

Disappointed, Jo closed her eyes and leaned back against the tub. As she did, her hand bumped something just behind the gingham skirt that surrounded the tub. Sitting up, she lifted the skirt to see what it could be.

What she found was very odd indeed.

Simon walked out of the restaurant, disappointed that the three-dollar omelet had been dry and overcooked—and that it hadn't come with anything on the side except a wilted piece of parsley and a soggy orange slice. Feeling full but not satisfied, he crossed from the diner back to the pay phone at the gas station.

More than anything, he wanted to call Edna.

Simon knew Edna's phone number by heart, but he made no move to dial it. Instead, he stood there for several moments, a hand on the receiver, considering the possible ramifications of making the call.

If Edna went to the authorities on Saturday as she had threatened to do, then calling her now would be a gross miscalculation. Her phone would be silently rigged, ready to track back his number and bust him on the spot.

But if she'd had a change of heart—if she hadn't gone to the police after all—then he needed to know. He needed to hear her voice, to hear her say, “Don't worry, Simon. Come on back. The money's still in the bank. Everything's okay.”

Just imagining it, tears sprang to his eyes. Surprised, he gruffly swiped at his face. He had to admit it: He missed Edna, missed hearing her voice. In a life filled with upheaval and misery, she had been the only constant in his world. Over the years there had been times when he would dial her number only to hear her simple “Hello?” He would hesitate, not wanting to intrude, not wanting to bother, just needing that sound. Sometimes, somehow, she would know it was him.

“Simon?” she would say into the silence, a sudden softness coming into her voice.

When that happened, he would always answer, “Yes, Edna. It's me.”

Other times, she would simply repeat, “Hello? Hello?” and those times he would gently lay the phone back on the cradle and walk away. He treasured her too much to be a burden.

In the last few months he had been able to spend real time with her, to get to know her all over again. He still didn't understand how she could have betrayed him there at the end, but there were many things about Edna he had never understood. At least she'd had the decency to offer him a fair warning and a good head start.

Maybe he
should
call her now. Maybe she'd had a last-minute change of heart but had no way to let him know.

Maybe she'd decided she loved him enough to leave the police out of things entirely.

Swallowing hard, he lifted the receiver and quickly dialed her number. It rang once, then again, then again.

“Hello?” a woman's voice said breathlessly. It wasn't Edna. Simon hesitated, wondering if he had dialed correctly.
Who else would answer Edna's phone?