A Grid For Murder Part 26

"Rob, I'm still a customer here, no matter how you feel about me at the moment. I deserve at least that basic courtesy."

"Fine," he said angrily as he shoved his desk telephone toward me. "Make it quick."

I picked up his phone, waiting for him to look away. When he didn't, I knocked the cup full of pencils on his desk onto the floor.

"I'm so sorry," I said as I made an attempt to lean down, the telephone still in my hand.

"I'll take care of it. Just use the phone and leave me alone, Savannah."

I dialed my home number as I slid the photo out of my bag and back onto his desk.

"What are you doing with that?" he asked.

Here I thought I'd been so clever, and now it appeared that I hadn't gotten away with it after all.

"I KNOCKED IT OVER WITH THE CORD WHEN I REACHED down to help with the pencils," I said.

He shook his head. "I'm not buying it. I've never seen you this clumsy in all of the time I've known you."

"What can I say? Maybe my nerves are a little on edge."

No one answered my phone at home, which was exactly what I'd been expecting. I hung up, and Rob asked, "What's the matter? Can't find your husband?"

"No worries there. If I ever lose him, I know that he'll find me. Thanks again, Rob."

"You're welcome," he said, without the slightest hint of sincerity in his voice.

I didn't care how sarcastic he was being. I was getting out of there in one piece, and that was all that mattered to me.

OUT IN THE CAR, I COULDN'T WAIT TO DIG OUT THE PHOTOGRAPH Laura had given me at Joanne's house. I'd been expecting a duplicate of the photo I'd just seen, and that was what I found. It was interesting that both people who had the same photograph had chosen to show only themselves, and not the late Becky Hastings. Was it too painful to look at that sunny smile of hers, a reminder of unhappier times, or was there a deeper reason?

I HAD A FEW VIABLE SUSPECTS LEFT WHO WERE STILL TALKING to me, so I decided to see if Laura had any interest in getting lunch with me somewhere. Maybe if I could get her to relax, she might tell me more than she meant to. It wasn't exactly a master plan, but it was the best thing I had in my dwindling a.r.s.enal.

I checked at Joanne's first, and I was relieved to see Laura's car sitting in the driveway. The stack of Goodwill donations on the porch was quite a bit larger than it had been before, and the trash she'd taken to the back now lined the curb in front of the house.

As I walked up the steps of the porch, Laura came out of the house with two more garbage bags, barely able to contain what was inside.

"Hey there," I said.

She was so startled by my presence that she dropped both bags in her hands. "Savannah, you surprised me."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to creep up on you like that," I said. "How's it going?"

"Believe it or not, this is the last load," she said. "I'm ready to turn it over to the real estate agent this evening, and then I'm out of here."

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"I can't stay in town, not with all of the tongues wagging about me. Does anyone think I don't hear their snickers when I walk past them in the grocery store? Everyone's talking about how I got a little too lucky with Joanne's death, and isn't that a little odd."

"It's understandable, but you can't let them drive you away."

She frowned at me. "Savannah, don't you know they're talking about you at least as much as they discuss me? Joanne might have been murdered, but we're both victims here, too."

"Then we need to stay here and fight for our reputations," I said.

"You fight. I don't have the energy anymore."

I picked up one of the bags and put it with the other pile. "Would you like to go have lunch before you go? My treat."

"Thanks, but no. I've got a long list of things to do before I leave town. If I were you, I'd take off, too. Think about it, Savannah. You're not like most of us in Parson's Valley. You don't have any family here or any ties at all."

I wasn't about to concede her point. "It's my home, Laura, and no one's going to make me leave it."

"Suit yourself," she said. Laura threw the last bag onto the pile, and then locked the front door of the house. "That's it. I'd say I'll see you around, but I doubt it. At seven tonight, I'm meeting my agent here, and then I'm getting out of North Carolina just as far and as fast as my car will take me."

As Laura drove off, I kept waiting for her to look back at me, but she never even glanced my way once.

It was clear that as far as she was concerned, we were finished.

But was she leaving because she had grown tired of being a murder suspect, or was she a killer leaving while she still had her freedom?

I just wish I knew which it was so I could act accordingly.

ZACH WASN'T HOME WHEN I GOT THERE, WHICH WAS NO great surprise. Though he wasn't officially on the case, he was as obsessed as he ever was when he was on the clock. Murders were mysteries for him, much like my puzzles, and he wouldn't be able to rest until he uncovered the truth and came up with a solution that suited him. Maybe we had the same personality type; I could be just as obsessed when I was working on a puzzle.

It was time to take a hard look at the three suspects I had left, and search for a solution by treating their actions as one giant puzzle.

Harry Pike had admitted openly that he wanted control of the land deal he had made with Joanne. He was in trouble financially; I knew that from the conversation I'd overheard his a.s.sistant have on the telephone with a bill collector when I'd been at the nursery. What if he'd wanted to sell their property to generate enough cash to save his business, and Joanne had refused to take the deal? If Harry was desperate enough, it could certainly be a motive for murder. It didn't help his case that he'd been in Asheville that day, according to the murder victim herself. The fact that he knew plants so well wasn't in his favor, either. If any one of my suspects knew how deadly chokecherry could be, it had to be Harry.

Next on my list, whether I liked it or not, was Rob Hastings. It was hard to imagine him waiting so many years to avenge his wife's death, but the poisoning and its timing were both too much of a coincidence to pa.s.s up. The problem was that I knew Rob, and while I had a difficult time seeing him as a murderer, if he had decided to kill her, the ironic justice of using the same date and method of execution would be right up his alley. Rob had been in Asheville picking up supplies at the Asheville Hardware Store that morning, so he was in proximity to where the murder occurred. I knew from personal experience about his broad knowledge of everything he sold, and that included plants in his gardening section. There were books there on native flora as well, so he had a readily accessible source of information. I hated the thought that my friend might be a murderer, but Zach had told me time and time again that murder was often an aberration in someone's personality, and that there was no way to tell exactly what a killer might look like.

That left Laura. She had motive enough, if what I'd heard was true. She needed money, and not just a little of it, and killing Joanne would get her out of the debt she was drowning in. If she'd asked Joanne for a loan, I was pretty certain the woman would have laughed in Laura's face. Even if she'd come through, Joanne would have held it over her head for the rest of her life, and I couldn't imagine how humiliating that might be. It could have been a desperate act by a woman at the end of her rope. As for being in Asheville, I'd seen her there myself. In fact, she could have just as easily made a mistake and poisoned me instead.

That was it. I had three suspects left from the long list I'd started with, each with viable motives, ample opportunity, and the means to acquire enough poison to kill.

I had the facts down, but where did my gut lead me? Zach had often told me that the facts, not his instincts, were what made him so good at his job, but I didn't work that way. I had to feel it in my heart to believe that it was true.

I was still mulling over what I knew when the landline rang. I'd forgotten to get a new cell phone battery, making that phone pretty much a paperweight.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"It's your husband again. Savannah, is your phone off?"

"No, I think my battery's shot. It won't hold a charge at all. I'll get a new one tomorrow. What's going on?"

"We're close to making an arrest, and I thought you had a right to know before we made our move."

Chapter 19.

I NEARLY DROPPED THE PHONE WHEN HE SAID THAT. I HAD MY list down to three people, but evidently Captain North and Zach had already eliminated two of the names still in contention for me.

I just had to know who had done it. "Who are you arresting?"

"I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Savannah, but it looks like Rob is the one who did it."

I couldn't believe it. Not Rob. Somewhere in my heart, I'd been holding out hope that he was innocent. "What exactly are you basing that on?"

"North got a tip to check out his garden area in back. She found some evidence that he should have gotten rid of the day he killed Joanne. There was a sample of poisonous plants in one corner in a solar dryer. You could kill half of Parson's Valley with what was in there."

"I'm guessing there were chokecherry leaves there."

"That's just the beginning. According to the plant expert North brought in from UNC Asheville, we found jimsonweed, larkspur, foxglove, hemlock, yew, pokeberry, nightshade, and monkshood, too. It was a regular a.s.sa.s.sin's selection of poisonous plants. Rob had his pick, and if he'd been a little more careful, he just might have gotten away with it."

"I still can't believe it, Zach."

I could hear the heaviness in my husband's voice as he said, "You know what I always say, Savannah. You can't tell a killer by looking at him. Anyway, I thought you should know. I'm turning my cell phone off; it drives North crazy when I get a call, but I'll be in touch later."

"Thanks for calling," I said. I was still numb from the news as I hung up. My friend Rob, the man who'd helped me countless times since we moved to Parson's Valley, was a murderer. I just couldn't believe it.

I started pacing the cottage floor, flas.h.i.+ng back to all of the projects he'd helped me complete, all of the laughs we'd shared over my rookie remodeling mistakes. Suddenly, everywhere I looked, I saw his face staring back at me.

I had to get out of there before I went crazy.

Grabbing my car keys, my bag, and a jacket, I locked the cottage up and got into my car with no real destination in mind, just a desire to get away. I started driving toward town, but then I realized that I didn't want to be around people at all. I'd accused too many of my fellow townsfolk to be welcome anywhere. The more I thought about it, it might be the perfect time to take Zach and go to Uncle Barton's Alaskan refuge, regardless of the chilly weather there. Giving people in town a chance to forget how I'd interrogated them so relentlessly might be the smartest next move, and if we were secluded in the wilderness, I could catch up on my puzzles and actually buy myself some breathing room for the future. My syndicate had been running a few puzzles from my backlog, but I knew better than my syndicator how shallow that pool was becoming. As I drove aimlessly around, letting my thoughts skip from subject to subject, I found myself at Harry's nursery. An apology was in order after the way I'd browbeaten him, but I wasn't sure I was up to delivering it, until I saw Laura's car already parked in his lot.

It was long past his closing time. What was she doing there? I pulled up beside her car and started to wonder what was really going on.

And then it hit me. Could my husband be wrong about Rob's guilt? A new way of organizing the facts started to form in my mind, dancing like the numbers from a puzzle as I worked the solution from a different angle. What if Harry was the real murderer? I knew he needed money, probably more desperately than Laura did. Could it be that he'd murdered Joanne for control of their jointly held property, only to find that Laura was stalling to sell, too? If that was the case, he wouldn't have any choice, at least in his murderous frame of mind, but to kill another obstacle in his way. Harry could have lured her to his nursery on some pretense, just to eliminate her.

I reached into my bag for my cell phone to call Zach, and then I remembered that my battery was dead, and his phone was turned off. I'd have to drive to Rob's hardware store to get him there.

I was about to put my car into gear when I caught a glimpse of Laura beckoning me from inside the tree lot. From the way she was moving, it appeared that she'd been hurt.

I knew I was taking a chance, but I couldn't just pretend that I hadn't seen her. She was in trouble, and I could very well be her only hope. I got out of my car and rushed to help her. As I neared her, I saw that there was blood on her blouse, and I was afraid that I was already too late.

"Laura, did Harry do this to you?"

"He stabbed me with a pruning knife," she gasped.

I put my arm around her to help her back to my car. "Come on. I'll take you to the hospital."

"We have to go back," she said. Her voice was calm and her breathing was tight, but she was still managing to fight me at every step.

"No, the hospital's not far. I'll drive you there, and then we can tell Zach what happened."

Only then did I see the blade in her hand as she righted herself. "Why would we do that, Savannah? After all, it's not like I want to get caught."

"YOU KILLED JOANNE," I SAID, STARING UNBELIEVING AT the blade. It was sharp steel, finely honed to a cutting edge, and now it was pointed straight at me.

"You had to keep jamming your nose into this, even after I warned you to stop," she said. "Move." The command was followed by a jab in my direction, and I didn't need any more incentive than that.

I started to piece the puzzle together yet another way, and in a split second, the new scenario began to play itself out in my mind. It had been Laura who had been greedy and driven to murder. First she had murdered Joanne, her closest living relative, and then she must have gone after Harry for his share of the property. I wasn't sure how she was planning to work it, but I had a suspicion that the deed Harry and Joanne shared was worded in such a way that if there was no direct beneficiary to either party, the surviving one got all of the land. It was the only way the facts all made sense.

"You killed Joanne for the money, and then half of the land deal with Harry wasn't enough for you when you read the actual deed," I said as we walked deeper into the nursery, past the office and toward the gardening shed. "There is a clause that allows you to inherit it all, isn't there?"

Laura laughed, and there was more than a tinge of madness in it. "Very good. Poor Harry. He had no one in the world to leave his dying business to, so as his land partner, I get his half, too. It's a tough break, wouldn't you say?"

"Then he's already dead?" I asked.

"Not yet, unless he's already managed to bleed out. I was just getting ready to finish him off when I decided to look around for witnesses. You can't be too careful, you know."

I stopped walking. There was no sense making this any easier for her. "You planted those poisonous leaves in Rob's solar dryer, didn't you?"

"Very good, Savannah. You're becoming quite the detective. I bought a book in Asheville on poisonous plants, and then it was just a matter of collecting them and planting them near Rob." She frowned as she added, "The only problem was that I was beginning to believe that no one was going to be clever enough to find them. I had to call in the tip myself before the police made their move."

"They're going to know it was you," I said.

"Keep moving," she said. As she jabbed the knife at me, I felt it bite into my arm. A sharp, burning pain took over as warm blood started to seep out, and I decided the only chance I had was to do as she asked.

"You're the killer, and my husband will figure it out and hunt you down."

"How could he possibly know I was even involved? Granted, he may be surprised by what he finds here tomorrow, but no one will be able to link it back to me, and I'll have it all." She seemed to think about that for a second, and then frowned before she spoke again. "You've ruined my suicide angle for Harry, though. I knew what kind of desperate shape he was in to sell. His business was dying, so why shouldn't he kill himself? Hmmm. How about a murder-suicide? That could work, if I stage it just right."

"You've got a problem," I said. "Why would Harry want to kill me?"

She shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe you two were having a torrid affair."

"My husband would never believe it," I said.

"I bet I could make him have doubts, especially if I strip you both and make it look like a love affair gone bad. Yes, that's what I'll do."

I knew my husband would never believe it, no matter how incriminating Laura might make it look, but knowing it and proving it would be two different things. The police might not back him, but that wouldn't stop Zach. "You don't want to kill me. Believe me on this, Laura. My husband will figure it out, and he'll make you pay."

"You have too much faith in him, Savannah."

"No, you don't have enough."

We were nearly to the shed, and my arm was really starting to hurt. That pain suddenly became secondary when I walked inside and saw Harry. He was on the floor of the dirt shed, trussed up and completely helpless. His hands and legs were bound together with silver duct tape, and there was a piece over his mouth as well. No big surprise, there was a great deal of blood welling up on his forehead, and it looked as though he'd suffered a ma.s.sive wound.

But then I looked into his eyes and suddenly felt a little better.