Digging Up Trouble

  Hmmm. What went wrong now?

  "Look, there's Gérard Depardieu!"

  Her eyes widened and she craned her neck. I pushed past her. Half my living room ceiling was on the floor.

  "Whoa," Riley said.

  I looked at my mother. "A little complication from the water leak the other day."

  I practiced Tam's Lamaze breathing again.

  Riley ran up the stairs, came back down a minute later, a hard-hatted man behind him. His tool belt jangled. "Mrs. Ceceri," he said to my mother, "the upstairs is not safe. Until we get a structural engineer in to assess the damage, the whole place really isn't safe."

  My eyes bulged. I think a vein popped.

  "Now now. Riley is staying with his father for the weekend. You can stay with us. I'm sure the problem will be cleared up by Monday."

  Mr. Hard Hat looked like he wanted to debate that point, but my mother gave him the Ceceri Evil Eye and he backed away.

  Stay with my parents. Oh, Lord.

  My mother must have read my thoughts. "Or with your sister," she said.

  A newlywed.

  She sighed. "Or with Ana."

  Not with a half-naked Dr. Feelgood hanging around.

  "Our house, then," she said. "It will be fun!"

  "You can stay with me," Jean-Claude offered.

  I almost took him up on it.

  "What's that you got there, Riley, chérie?" my mother asked. She pried open Riley's hand, stared at the mushroom.

  "Yep, that's it," Jean-Claude said.

  My mother's eyes widened. "Riley Michael. A mushie?"

  I gaped at my mother. Was I so behind the times that she'd known what one was and I didn't?

  "It's not mine," Riley said.

  "Then whose is it?"

  He thrust it toward me. "It's Nina's."

  Hmmph. So much for "Mom."

  Twenty-Six

  I drove around until I finally found myself parked in the St. Valentine's lot. I figured fate had led me here, and I should go in and see Father Keesler and get it over with. Instead I cranked up the air conditioner and tried to think clearly.

  I'd dropped Riley off at Kevin and Ginger's early. And I left Jean-Claude at TBS. He'd volunteered to man Tam's desk for the day, and I took him up on it. There had been a message from Kit, calling in sick. He had the flu.

  I'd called him back. He sounded terrible. "And BeBe won't stop licking me."

  "She just loves you."

  "You've been waiting for that, haven't you?" he said, coughing.

  "All week."

  Icy air blew my hair around my face. I gathered it back into a ponytail and held it there.

  Facts. I needed to weigh the facts.

  Bill was a drug dealer.

  Bill was being blackmailed.

  Dale was being blackmailed.

  Russ was dead.

  Greta was dead.

  Poor Boom-Boom Vhrooman was dead. I couldn't say I was going to miss her, but I still felt bad that she'd died.

  Bill's illicit activities, his blackmail, and Boom-Boom's death were definitely tied together.

  Dale's blackmail only related because his letter and Bill's were identical in appearance.

  The same person, right?

  I'd thought so. Until I found that letter in Bill's office this morning.

  I wiped sweaty palms on my jeans, reached for the blackmail letter. Slowly, I opened it.

  BILL, DEPOSIT THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS IN THE FOLLOWING ACCOUNT BY NOON FRIDAY OR I WILL GO TO THE POLICE.

  The account was to a local bank, the numbers meaning nothing to me. I thought about calling the bank to get more information, but knew I'd never get anywhere without a name to go with the account.

  Though I had a pretty good idea who it belonged to.

  My cell rang. Kevin. "Just talked to Riley," he said.

  "Oh?"

  "What have I told you about breaking into places?"

  "Not to leave my prints behind. Besides, it wasn't break ing. We had a key."

  "Nina, if I have to put you in lockup, I will. A murder investigation is going on. Stay out of it."

  "Murder? Did Russ's tox reports come back?"

  "His and Greta's."

  "That was fast."

  "I don't question. I just appreciate."

  "Was Russ murdered? Did he have hallucinogenic mushrooms in his system?"

  "No. His reports were clean. He died of a heart attack. Plain and simple."

  Surprisingly, my inner voice didn't have anything to say.

  "Not so simple if I'm going to be charged with his murder."

  "You're not."

  "I'm not? When did this happen?"

  "The prosecutor's office decided that since you weren't perpetrating a crime when Russ had his heart attack, they wouldn't charge you."

  I slumped back in pure relief. "And Greta?" I asked. "What about her tox reports?"

  "Ever hear of a death cap?"

  "The mushroom?"

  "Highly toxic."

  "Someone poisoned her with a death cap?"

  "It was in the soup she'd eaten for dinner. Evidence collected at the scene supported the findings."

  I remembered seeing the Growl soup bowl in the trash, little bits of mushrooms clinging to its sides.

  "We're interviewing people at Growl, seeing if anyone remembers Greta coming in. So far no one does."

  In a flash I saw that Growl bag, the fisted hand that held it. "You won't find anyone."

  "Why not?"

  "Russ brought that soup home the day he died. He'd been feeling sick, came home early from work, had a Growl bag in his hand. He brought the soup inside the house, came back out to yell at me and very inconveniently drop dead."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Quite sure he died."

  Kevin sighed. "About the soup?"

  Sometimes it was so fun to play with him. "Not one hundred percent. But it's too much of a coincidence and I don't believe in coincidences."

  "Yes, I know. It's a commandment."

  "Don't mock my commandments."

  "I wouldn't dream of it."

  "You know what this means, right?" I asked.

  "What?"

  "That soup was meant for Russ. Not Greta. Someone had been trying to kill him, but the heart attack beat them to it."

  After a pit stop at the parish rectory, I headed toward the Grabinskys' house. All the way there I hoped I was wrong about Noreen. I liked to think I had a good sense about people, and she'd struck me as the decent sort.

  The sort that needed a makeover, but a decent sort nonetheless.

  Even though Kevin had warned me to mind my own business and let him handle Noreen, I couldn't let it go.

  I'm not sure why, so I just accepted it as a character flaw.

  It was all there, plain as day now that I knew what I'd been looking for. Noreen had access to the Grabinskys' typewriter; she knew what was going on at Growl; she hated Russ. She'd been working the morning he'd gone home sick. Perfect time to poison his soup. Above all else, she had loved her sister and wanted her to be happy.

  By having her backyard redone. By getting rid of a jerky husband.

  How much had Greta known? Had she been in on it all along?

  I checked my dashboard clock. Almost noon now. Was Noreen waiting for that money transfer? To leave town?

  Emergency vehicles lined the street in front of the Grabinsky house. Paramedics roamed the yard. Patrol officers were roping off the sidewalk to keep gawkers at bay.

  Meredith Adams stood along the fringe. "What's going on?" I asked her, not having a good feeling about this at all.

  She stuck her nose in the air, sniffed, and said, "This neighborhood was perfectly respectable until you came along."

  Yeah, it was all my fault. "So, I shouldn't buy the Lockharts' house?"

  Her eyes went wide, her mouth dropped open. "You wouldn't."

  "I might," I lied.

  She turned on her heel, stomped away.


  A body covered with a white cloth was being carried out of the house on a stretcher.

  It was a lumpy body. Potato-shaped. "Oh no."

  Weaving and bobbing my way through the crowd, I finally found Kevin. He pulled me aside, to a quiet corner of the driveway. I handed him the blackmail letter and he slipped it into a plastic evidence bag.

  "Suicide," he said. "Left a detailed note. Couldn't live knowing she was responsible for Greta's death. She knew Greta had successfully blackmailed Hathaway and thought she'd try her hand at it with Bill. She knew about the mushrooms. Left us names and dates to help put him away. She admitted to putting the death cap in Russ's soup. She hoped his death would look like a heart attack brought on by the makeover. That no one would be suspicious. That there'd be no autopsy. She hadn't counted on Greta being so grief-stricken."

  "So Greta didn't know about the makeover?"

  "Apparently not."

  "Who was the money for?" I asked.

  "Greta's daughter. To pay off HOA's fees."

  "What's going to happen to Bill?"

  "The prosecutor's building a case against him."

  I looked over to the Lockhart house, saw Lindsey on the front porch. I thought back to why I'd taken on the makeover in the first place, just to learn more about Kevin's first wife.

  I'll admit I was still curious, but it was time to let the past go. For good.

  "You have a place to stay tonight?" Kevin asked.

  "My mother offered."

  "That desperate?"

  "Getting there."

  "I better get back." He walked away, then stopped. "We never did find those pictures Greta used to blackmail Dale Hathaway. You don't happen to know anything about that, do you?"

  "Not a thing."

  One of his eyebrows rose. He nodded once and disappeared into the Grabinskys' house.

  I made a stop at the truck, then worked my way through the crowd over to Dale Hathaway, who was sitting on his front porch.

  "I can't believe it," he said.

  "It's terrible." And rather ironic since Russ went and died on his own, making all the blackmailing and murder plans for naught.

  "Where's Kate?" I asked.

  "At the doctor's."

  "Oh no—she doesn't have that flu, does she?"

  He beamed. "No. Just a checkup. We're having a baby."

  "Congratulations."

  "Thanks." He looked down at his hands, then back up. "I'm being arraigned on Monday."

  "The breaking and entering?"

  He nodded. "With a plea deal, I'll get probation."

  Ana would probably have him in my office by the end of next week looking for a job.

  I slipped the pictures out of my pocket, handed them to him. "An early baby gift."

  His light blue eyes widened. "Where'd you find them?"

  "Doesn't matter."

  "Why not give them to the police?"

  "Noreen's suicide note all but seals the case. There's no need to have these pictures passed around the squad room."

  "I can't thank you enough," he said.

  "No need." I stood. "Just keep loving your wife."

  "That I can promise."

  I looked up, saw Kevin standing in the Grabinskys' driveway watching me.

  After a second he turned and walked away.

  I rolled over in bed, answered the persistent ringing of my cell phone.

  Under other circumstances I'd have let it ring, but with Tam being so close to delivery and Mr. Cabrera still under observation, I couldn't ignore it.

  A warm hand reached out, rubbed my bare back as I answered. "This is Nina Quinn."

  "This is Josh Drake," the voice on the other end of the line said.

  Josh Drake? Who was Josh Drake?

  Lips pressed against my spine.

  Okay, I didn't care who Josh Drake was. I just needed him to get off the phone so those lips could press other places.

  "Sorry, I think you have the wrong number."

  "I don't think so," the man said.

  I wasn't in the mood to argue the point. "Can I call you back?"

  "Actually, I'm looking for Bobby. Is he there? Because he's not answering his phone. It's important."

  Josh . . . Oh, Josh Drake! Bobby's cousin—the lawyer.

  I looked over my shoulder, at the naked man in bed with me. "For you."

  "Now?" He grumbled about lousy timing.

  "Apparently. It's Josh."

  Bobby leaned up on his elbow, took the phone. It was my turn to distract him. Fair's fair. Besides, it was fun.

  "Uh-huh," Bobby said, unable to take his eyes off me.

  I could hear Josh talking a mile a minute, but I couldn't make out exactly what he was saying.

  "Yeah, I promise," Bobby rushed to say. "Whatever you need, Josh, I'll do. I'll call you tomorrow for the details."

  The phone landed on the floor amidst the pile of hastily discarded clothing.

  Bobby pulled me close to him. "Where were we?"

  "What did you just promise him?"

  "Don't know, don't care," he said, leaning down to kiss me.

  "Right then and there, I didn't care either.

  If we'd only known.

  Take Your Garden by Surprise

  by Nina Quinn

  Creating habitats for hummingbirds, or hummers, isn't only a rewarding gardening experience, but it can provide hours of enjoyment watching these amazing colorful creatures that average less than four inches long in size.

  To build just the right environment, you need to keep in mind what hummers need most. Food, water, shelter. Providing extras such as shade in the summer, protection in the winter, places to hide, perches to rest, and space to flutter free of worries, will increase your chances of drawing hummingbirds to your yard.

  Although hummingbirds are naturally attracted to the color red, they will be drawn to any nectar-rich plant, as nectar is their primary food source. Therefore it's important to choose the right varieties of flowers, shrubs, and trees for your hummingbird garden. Below are some good choices.

  Annuals: impatiens, begonias, petunias, red salvia, geraniums, scarlet sage, penstemons, four o'clocks, velvet trumpet flowers, phlox, nasturtiums, zinnias.

  Perennials: columbine, hollyhock, bee balm, trumpet honeysuckle, hosta, coral bells, cardinal flower, foxglove, dragonflower, monarda, aster, perennial salvia, verbena, cosmos, dahlias, delphiniums, flame acanthus, fuchsia, lupines, monkeyflower, sage, scarlet sage, butterfly weed.

  Vines: trumpet creeper, trumpet vine, scarlet morning glory, bougainvillea, cardinal climber, flame vine, lantana.

  Shrubs: Fuchsia, azalea, butterfly bush, abelia, bottlebrush, hibiscus, lilac, weigela.

  Trees: mimosa silk tree, crab apple, willows, tulip poplar, locust, eucalyptus.

  Research is a must. Not only to check to see which plants will grow in your hardiness zone, but also some varieties (such as phlox, penstemon, four o'clocks) could be annuals in some areas, perennials in others; and some perennials could be shrubs in some zones. Visit your local garden centers— they can point you in the right direction and might have additional suggestions that will make your hummingbird garden perfect.

  Additionally, it's important to supplement your hummingbird gardens with feeders for the times nectar might run dry. The standard mixture is four parts water, one part refined sugar. Be sure to boil the water before mixing to ensure proper measurement and to purify the water so the hummingbirds don't contract any illnesses. You can also buy ready-made hummingbird food at any bird store and often in your local supermarket pet section. Never add honey to your hummingbird feeder. It can grow a fungus disease that can be fatal to these birds.

  Hummers also eat insects and spiders, so be sure never to use pesticides in your hummingbird garden. Pesticides will not only remove an important food source but can also endanger a hummingbird's life.