Dastardly deeds, p.1
Dastardly Deeds, page 1
part #5 of Smithwell Fairies Cozy Mystery Series
Contents
Title
Copyright
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Smithwell Fairies Cozy Mystery Series
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Counterfeit Corpse Cover
From the Author
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DASTARDLY DEEDS
A SMITHWELL FAIRIES COZY MYSTERY
KARIN KAUFMAN
Copyright © 2019 Karin Kaufman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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SMITHWELL FAIRIES COZY MYSTERY SERIES
Dying to Remember (Book 1) — Out Now
Dead and Buried (Book 2) — Out Now
Secret Santa Murder (Book 3) — Out Now
Drop Dead Cold (Book 4) — Out Now
Dastardly Deeds (Book 5) — Out Now
Counterfeit Corpse (Book 6) — Coming Soon
CHAPTER 1
“Maybe I should explain what’s going on,” Angie Palmer said. She sniffed and ran a liver-spotted hand through her cropped gray hair.
Please don’t, I thought. True, I’d been getting suspicious stares from Angie’s friends since sitting down for afternoon tea in a brick-paved corner of her enormous greenhouse, but that suspicion would turn to anger if Angie revealed why she had invited me. But Angie was a no-nonsense woman in her sixties, and she preferred anger and hurt feelings to time wasted in useless speculation.
“Why don’t we eat first?” I suggested. “I’ll pour the tea.”
“I suppose,” Angie said. “There’s always later.”
Before she could change her mind, I grabbed the teapot. “Who wants tea? What kind of tea is it, Angie? It smells delicious. Where did you get it?” Angie knew me to be a tea aficionado, so she didn’t find my questions odd, but Maya Estabrook seemed to realize I was stalling for time, and she didn’t try to hide her incredulity. I could have planted corn in the furrows creasing her brow.
“What do you do for a living, Kate?” she asked, trying to uncover my purpose by approaching the matter from an employment angle.
“I retired ten years ago,” I said. “My goodness it’s warm in here.”
Maya persisted. “Then what did you do?”
“I hope it’s not too warm for you,” Angie said, “but we do enjoy our twice monthly teas in the greenhouse. It seems an appropriate place to have them, even in summer.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “I’d kill for a greenhouse like this.”
“Don’t let the butterflies land on your teacakes,” said Harry Jelinek, the only male member of the Smithwell Garden Society in attendance. He needn’t have gestured at the couple dozen blue butterflies flitting about our green metal table—especially above the jam bowl—but he did, as if I hadn’t seen them. “Come in January, when it’s snowing outside.”
“Ah, yes,” Angie said. “Yes, yes. December through February, really.” She gave me a funny look, as though she’d just that moment decided against telling the group why I’d come. Too late. Maya was a bulldog.
“So what did you do before you retired?” she asked. “Your name is familiar.”
“I worked here and there, Maya. I didn’t really have a profession, but I still retired on my fortieth birthday, and now I garden a lot.”
“Hence her visit,” Angie said. With an unusual level of concentration for such a small task, she began to lather jam on her currant scone. She was a lousy liar. Too many tics and tells.
Maya took a cucumber sandwich and glanced around, no doubt looking for reinforcements. Who else was believing Angie’s nonsense about my visit? I wasn’t a member of the society, and except for Angie, whom I’d met several years earlier at a party, I was a stranger to the group. “Weird,” she said. She took a petite bite of her sandwich. “I mean, why is your purpose such a secret?” She turned her large brown eyes on me.
“Stop being such a fidgety fuss and eat, Maya,” Angie said. “The idea is to enjoy ourselves and soak in the summer. It won’t be too long before we’re wrapped in autumn gloom. Just look at the flowers, inside and out.” Her strong Downeast accent, with its elongated vowels and Rs that went missing, commanded attention, regardless of the subject matter.
Harry swatted at a butterfly, the exertion of his movement almost popping a button on his too-tight shirt. I idly wondered if his beer belly got in the way when he gardened. Surely it must have. “Did you order more of these creatures, Angie?” he asked.
“Don’t hurt them, for goodness’ sake. And yes, I like my butterflies. I should have brought them a little bowl of fruit. They’d leave us alone then.”
“You order butterflies?” I asked.
“You’d be surprised what you can buy online,” she replied. “Caterpillars, chrysalises. I buy the caterpillars, though I collect them from my garden too. They have a lovely life in here. Longer and safer than they would outdoors.”
Annabel Baker made a sour face. In her mid-thirties, she was the youngest of the group and the first to have introduced herself to me. She struck me as open and talkative, as rather obsessed with how her long dark hair cascaded in lush waves down her shoulders, and as somewhat sharp-tongued when she chose to be. “They don’t have the home they were born into,” she said. “They don’t have freedom.”
“Freedom?” Angie said. “Do you think they’ll revolt? Overtake me in my bed at night?” She took a sip of tea. “Maybe I should set up sentries at the staircase. Or release birds in the greenhouse to prove my point about them having a longer life inside versus outside.”
The sharp-tongued Annabel, realizing she was no match for Angie, sighed and changed tack. “Is the cress in these sandwiches from your garden? It’s so fresh.”
“Thank you. Yes, the watercress and the parsley are both from the backyard herb corner.”
“Delicious.”
At that we all fell silent, as if the six of us had simultaneously exhausted all possible conversational detours. The only sounds were cutlery on plates, a nearby fly or bee buzzing, and Harry’s grunts as he tried to keep the butterflies at bay. When a lovely blue one parked itself on his shoulder, I had to bite back a grin.
But then I reminded myself that I had a job to do and that Angie was paying me in valuable orchids. I’d run into her a week earlier in the Hannaford supermarket, and there she’d told me about the thefts at her house and what she’d described as vandalism. The latter amounted to plant poisonings in her greenhouse and flower beds. After four months of meticulous inventory taking that she’d cross-referenced with her lists of members in attendance at Garden Society meetings, Angie had discovered what she’d suspected all along: the thefts had coincided with those meetings. I could have guessed that. Aside from her gardening acquaintances, my friend wasn’t a sociable woman, so other visitors to her house were rare.
To make my job easier, Angie had invited only her suspects to this afternoon tea. Every single one of them had been present when something had been stolen or destroyed. The items taken ranged from old botanical books from Angie’s voluminous library to small decorative ornaments from the library or greenhouse. These were not earth-shattering crimes, but finding the “betrayer,” as Angie had put it, was important to her, and after reading how I’d helped the Smithwell Police solve a murder case on a birdwatching tour bus, she was convinced I could help.
But I wasn’t convinced. Though I thought I might be able bring an unbiased eye to the thefts and vandalism since I’d never laid eyes on the suspects before. I might see or hear things Angie had overlooked. When she said she’d pay me in orchids for my opinion, I’d readily agreed. Decent orchids were expensive. The cheap ones I found in supermarkets always seem to die soon after I brought them home, and anyway, they weren’t Minette’s favorites by a long shot. She preferred terrestrial orchids—the cool-weather types that grew in forests—and Angie owned quite a collection of them.
So there I was, spying on Angie’s friends so I could take a few orchids home to Minette, the four-inch fairy I’d discovered hiding under a terracotta pot last October. If one of my friends had told me that in the space of nine months my husband would die, I’d help solve a murder, and I’d find a fairy for a friend, I would have phoned the nearest mental hospital to carry him or her away.
“It’s suddenly gone very quiet,” Harry said.
“We’re eating,” Deborah Wetherbee replied. “And we’re all wondering when Angie is going to spill the beans on Kate Brewer here. Obviously
Annabel made a gagging sound. “No way. I’m next in line.”
Angie clicked her tongue in reprimand, paused until she got the attention she wanted, then pointedly turned to me. “Kate, did I tell you that Deborah, Maya, Harry, and I created a natural products company using some ingredients from my garden? We call the company Ivy Cottage.”
“We’re not a conglomerate yet,” Harry said with a grin, “but we’re expanding. Right now we make an organic, beeswax-free lip balm, and this fall we’re launching a hand cream and two natural oils. We have plans to hire three employees. Maya collects the ingredients, I’m the marketer, Angie is the financial backing, and Deborah is the master cook.”
“The cheap labor,” Deborah corrected.
“You know how to combine the ingredients,” Harry said, “which is more than the rest of us do. It’s a unique skill, and we’re grateful.”
“Do you sell your lip balm in town?” I asked.
“In five shops so far,” Angie said, growing animated. “And we just obtained contracts in Rumford, Augusta, and Bangor. I can hardly believe it, but at sixty-three I have a brand-new career.”
Maya tossed her honey-colored bob and puffed out her cheeks, making her already full, round face look like a pink balloon. “We’ll give you a free sample, Kate, if you tell us what’s going on between you and Angie,” she said.
“Speak for yourself,” Deborah said. “It’s a lot of work to make a batch.”
“And it stinks up your kitchen,” Harry said. “We know, we know.”
“I’ll have a scone now,” Angie said, sticking out her hand. “Plate, please.”
Harry passed Angie the scone plate, and to avoid looking at Maya, I topped off my cup with more tea. I’d been in the greenhouse for twenty minutes and I hadn’t learned anything of use about the people in front of me. Maybe Angie spilling the beans on my reason for being present wasn’t such a bad idea. At least then we could get the ball rolling and I could ask some pertinent questions. For now, Maya and Deborah were stuck on who I was and why I was there, Harry wanted to swat the butterflies, and Annabel wanted to free them into the wilds of Smithwell, Maine.
“I brought back the book I borrowed,” Harry said. “It’s in the front hall in case you didn’t see it.”
“Thank you,” Angie said. “Did you want to borrow another?”
“Your Gertrude Jekyll on country houses. And when I bring that back, your Lawrence Johnston.”
“So you’re studying the greats,” Angie said.
Harry turned to me. “My wife and I are finally tackling the back garden—or should I say back yard? It’s not a garden yet. But we want to start with a great master plan. What’s your garden like?”
“Well, I’ve never had a master plan. I just find plants I like, plop them in the ground, tend them, and hope they do well.”
Maya leaned forward. “I thought you liked to garden.”
“She does,” Angie snapped. “Not everyone gardens in the same way. We’re not all Vita Sackville-West.”
“Angie, why are you so sensitive today?” Deborah asked. “It’s obvious something is bugging you. You’re acting weird.”
“Can’t we finish our tea before you analyze me, Deborah? I want to show Kate what’s new in my garden and library. Then to please Annabel we can all shout, ‘Freedom!’ as we release the greenhouse butterflies. How’s that for a plan?”
“The second Kate walked in, you started acting like some scheme was taking shape,” Deborah said. “Like you’d invited a conspirator, not a friend, to tea. We all read the paper, so we know how Kate gets involved in things—and I don’t mean gardening. So what gives? You can tell us—we’re all friends.”
At the word friends, Angie bristled. “Are we?” She dropped her scone to her plate and brushed crumbs from her hands. “I’m taking Kate on a private tour. Maya, you can examine my calendula, and Harry, you can take a book from the library. Make it two. The rest of you”—she waved a hand—“explore the back and front gardens and let me have some privacy for a minute.”
“All right,” Maya said. “Sheesh galeesh. But you’re not getting off that easy.”
“I second that,” Deborah said.
Angie’s chair scraped along the brick pavers as she pushed away from the table and stood. “You want to know what gives, as you so eloquently put it? Do you really want to know?”
In my experience, Angie was like a tea kettle without a spout. She didn’t vent—she exploded. “Maybe you could take me on that tour first,” I said, rising from my seat. “Back here in fifteen minutes?”
She clenched her jaws.
“This way?” I walked off, drawing Angie away from her friends and whatever she’d been about to say to them. Once outside the greenhouse, I headed deeper into her back garden, waited for her to catch up, and turned.
“Friends,” she sniped. “Deborah says we’re friends.”
“Most of you are friends,” I replied. “Remember, it’s probably only one of them, and there might be an innocent explanation for the thefts and plant poisonings.”
Angie tilted her head and pursed her lips. “Please quit it. I’m not a child.”
I shrugged. “We need to find a way to broach the subject without accusing anyone. You don’t want to lose friends, and I don’t want to make enemies.”
“How on earth do we do that?”
“Good question. I’m beginning to realize I didn’t think this through. We need a plan.” Looking past Angie, I saw Harry and Annabel walking toward the house and Deborah and Maya exiting the greenhouse and veering off in different directions. A person could get lost in this back garden, I thought. Delightfully lost.
“I suppose you haven’t picked up on much,” Angie said.
“The only thing I’ve learned is that four of you are in business together and Harry is borrowing your books. Does he always ask before he takes a book?”
“Yes, and he takes one book at a time. At least I think so. I don’t search him at the door, so who knows?”
“I doubt he’s shoving books down his pants.” I circled in place, taking in the grounds and feeling a major twinge of envy, though I’d seen her garden before. Two acres crowded with flowers, hedges, and fruit trees—and a greenhouse to boot. What I wouldn’t have given. “Your back yard is magnificent.”
Hearing a rhythmic rap on glass, I swung back to the house. Jack, Angie’s husband, was at an upstairs window, banging on the pane so hard I thought he’d shatter it.
“Oh, Jack, Jack,” she muttered, “you’re supposed to be sleeping.”
“Angie, he’ll put his hand through—”
“He doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore.” She rushed for the house, and I was left pondering her statement. Jack didn’t know what he was doing? Now that I thought of it, I hadn’t seen him in well over a year, and I hadn’t asked Angie about him in all that time.
Seconds later, Jack disappeared from sight and the drapes fell back into place, and I supposed that Angie had called to him from the bottom of the stairs and warned him about breaking the window. Nimble as she was at her age, couldn’t move that fast.
Deciding it would be rude to interfere by following her upstairs, I started my own tour of the garden, beginning with Angie’s white climbing roses, which sprawled over a waist-high stone wall that enclosed the grove of fruit trees.
A minute later, as I strolled through Angie’s tiny grove of mature pears, I heard a scream that froze me in place.
CHAPTER 2
I ran from the fruit grove, my eyes darting left and right as I searched for the source of the scream. The garden? The greenhouse? I saw Maya running full tilt for the house and jogged after her, hoping her sense of sound direction was better than mine.
It was. I arrived in Angie’s front room just behind Maya, and the scream, I quickly deduced, had come from Annabel Baker, who was now whimpering loudly. At her feet lay the bloodied body of Deborah Wetherbee.
I elbowed Harry aside and bent down.
