“Thanks again for opening alone,” Ellie said as she stuffed her feet into her boots. They weren’t her winter boots, just a pair of rubber ones, but they were most likely warm enough for the suddenly dropping temperatures. The day before had been unseasonably warm, but a cold front had moved in and things were getting down to the normal temperatures that Dundurn experienced during the first couple weeks of October.
“It’s no problem, sweetie,” Ma’May said as Ellie got Beau into his harness. “I’ve been doing this on my own for more years than I’d like to think of. I can handle myself for a few days if the need arises.”
“Still,” Ellie said. She pulled on her coat before she continued, “I do appreciate it. Hopefully we’ll be back before noon.”
With that, she took Beau’s leash from her grandmother and led the pooch outside into the early morning chill. For the first time in what felt like weeks, the sky had clouded over and a cold breeze was sweeping through town. Dundurn had its fair share of unseasonable weather and despite the chill, Ellie was glad to see things getting back on track.
“Let’s try to be quick,” she said to Beau as she led him down the main streets of town. They had three houses to hit and was thankful that her grandmother knew everyone in town. She had the addresses of Cynthia Baker, Margot Hume, and Katie Rollins in her phone, all because Ma’May knew exactly where to find them.
Margot’s house was the closest, which meant that Ellie’s search was going to begin there. From her phone’s map app, Ellie saw that Margot lived at 351 Birchwood Lane, and it told her that it should only take her ten minutes to walk there.
With the cool wind at her back, Ellie made it there in eight, though there was one quick stop for Beau in the middle. Birchwood Lane wasn’t the home of Dundurn’s wealthiest residents and the street was lined with small bungalows built in the sixties and early seventies. Brick facades and covered porches matched on every house. The street gave her a glimpse of how dated the new subdivision in town would look in twenty or thirty years.
“Here we go,” Ellie said as she and Beau approached 351. If not for the number on the front, there would be nothing to distinguish it from its neighbors. Margot and her husband Stephan had lived in the house for nearly forty years. From what Ma’May could remember, they were the only owners the house had ever known. Any plants growing on the property would be done with the Hume’s knowledge, so there would be no chance for any excuses or surprises if Ellie did find something.
But the second she got close to the house, Ellie knew she wasn’t going to find much. The front driveway of the house was wide enough for two cars and took up most of the front yard space. Beyond one manicured hedge in front of the house, there was no other greenery at the front of the house, but she still needed to check the back.
With no cars in the driveway, Ellie figured she was safe, but still came up with a cover story just in case. If someone questioned her, she’d just say Beau had managed to get his ball over the fence in a botched game of fetch and she was going to retrieve it. With Beau’s wagging tail and ability to get wound up over the word ‘ball’ in under half a second, Ellie figured the story would fly pretty easily.
Ellie’s assumption that Margot was most likely innocent in all this was confirmed when she peered over the fence into her backyard. Instead of grass and gardens, the whole backyard had been covered in a cement pad. Instead of greenery, there was a small fountain, a fire pit, and some nice outdoor furniture. There were no flowers, bushes, or anything else that could be considered alive back there.
It looked like Margot was in the clear.
“All right, buddy. Let’s go,” Ellie said. She led Beau back to the sidewalk as quickly as possible so no one would notice her snooping. Despite her excuse being at the ready, she didn’t want to be held up by a nosy neighbor trying to figure out what she was doing looking into the Humes’ backyard.
The next house, the one belonging to Cynthia Baker and her husband Graeme, was only a few blocks away over on Kitty Murray Court.
Kitty Murray was one of Dundurn’s more affluent streets. The houses were mostly newer builds, all being built about fifteen years before the new subdivision was built. It was a short, dead end street, with only a dozen homes circled around a large median. During the warmer months, that median was filled with local flowers planted by the town.
Those flowers were long dead for the season and would need to be replaced come spring. Like all the medians in Dundurn, it would be filled with a general assortment of short, colorful flowers. Nothing too tall to avoid causing blind spots in the road. While it was possible someone had grown the deadly flowers there, Ellie doubted anyone was brazen enough to do it somewhere that could be torn up. Or worse, discovered.
Cynthia’s house offered no further indication that she could have had anything to do with the cultivation of deadly plants. While the greenery around her large home was lush in spite of the weather, it was just that – green. Perfectly manicured hedges lined her property and her yard, front and back, was covered in lush green grass. There was not a flower in sight, only the hedges and grass that were still a vibrant green, despite the falling temperatures.
Just to be sure, Ellie made the same dash to the backyard to see if she had missed anything, but beyond a barbeque and some patio furniture, the Bakers’ backyard proved to be another miss in her investigation.
There was one more house on her list. Ellie led Beau to White Oaks Lane, one of the oldest streets in town. All the houses along that stretch had been built in the late eighteen hundreds, right around when the town was becoming more than a simple intersection. Beautiful brick Victorian houses lined the street, while hundred year old maple and oak trees dotted the yards. The autumn colors of the leaves were at their peak and each one was a blaze of reds, oranges, and yellows.
Beau snapped at the falling leaves as they made their way toward Katie’s house. Ellie was certain that people had mentioned Katie’s green thumb and her gut told her that she would find her answers at her house. She envisioned the front yard to be a blanket of flowerbeds, with plants in all stages of life. It had to be her, she just knew it.
But her heart sank when they got close. Ellie and Beau were only a few houses away from Katie’s home and even from a distance, she knew her assumption had been wrong. There were no fabulously and meticulously cared for flower beds in her yard. Only a perfectly manicured blanket of grass.
Ellie didn’t get to be disappointed for long. She still wanted to check the backyard, but before she got a chance, the front door of Katie’s house opened. Messing with something in her purse, Katie’s eyes were focused down and Ellie took the opportunity to duck around one of the large oak trees on a neighbor’s lawn. Beau, being the ever attentive dog that he was, imitated his mistress and parked himself at her feet. His tail wagged, but she couldn’t fault him for that. She doubted that Katie could see it from a few houses away.
Taking a chance, Ellie poked her head out to see Katie walking away from her house and toward town. She had her purse in the crook of one elbow and a canvas bag in her hand. Ellie hoped that meant she was going to go get some groceries or something else in town, which should give her more than a few minutes to take a peek in her backyard.
As she approached the house, Ellie realized there was another roadblock in her way. Well, maybe not a roadblock, but a very high fence. Katie Rollin’s entire backyard was surrounded by a very tall, very sturdy looking wooden fence. At five and a half feet tall, Ellie had to stand on her tiptoes to see over it, and even then she could only see a patch of grass while the rest of the yard was blocked by the house.
Several not very nice words ran through Ellie’s head. No one needed a fence like that, not in Dundurn at least. There had to be something back there that Katie didn’t want seen, which meant that Ellie had to find out what it was.
Ellie glanced around the neighborhood to see if anyone was watching her. She thought about going over the neighbors’ fences and trying to look into Katie’s yard from there, but thought better of it. If she was in Katie’s yard and found something, at least she’d have a good excuse. With one of her neighbors, it might not be so easy to explain. She only had one choice.
“Beau,” she said in her most commanding voice as she looked down at her beloved pooch. “Stay. Stay!”
Hours upon hours of obedience school were about to show their worth. Beau had excelled in the classroom setting, but Ellie never had too much cause to use the training in a setting like this.
“Stay,” she said once more before she dropped his leash and moved for the fence. She glanced over her shoulder to check that he’d stayed put on Katie’s front lawn. His tail wagged, but he kept his butt on the ground. Satisfied that he’d do as he’d been commanded, she hoisted herself up and over the fence.
It had been years since Ellie was a teen and jumping fences to get into neighbors’ pools with her friends back in high school. Her upper body strength wasn’t nearly as good as she’d remembered and it took more effort than she thought it would to get herself over the fence.
She’d entered the yard at the side of the house and quickly crept forward into the backyard so she could see just what – if anything – Katie was hiding back there.
At first glance, Ellie was more than a little disappointed. Frustration bubbled up in her stomach as she looked over the perfectly green, perfectly mowed lawn. Not a blade of grass was out of place, and that’s all there was. Grass. No bushes, no flowers, no trees, nothing but simple, ordinary sod across the whole fenced in area.
Ellie gritted her teeth as she looked at the back of Katie’s large, stately Victorian house. While well maintained, everything appeared to be authentic from the time the house had been built, save one thing. One thing that Ellie had missed on first glance and couldn’t think of how she had.
Katie’s home didn’t have a back porch like most people in the neighborhood did. Instead, there was a large, glassed in area that Ellie supposed she’d first assumed to be a sunroom. It wasn’t until she looked at it, really looked at it, that she noticed that the windows didn’t look into a bright, open sitting area with wicker furniture and antiques filling the space.
No, there was nothing like that inside. Or, at least, nothing that she could see. The windows of the large, glassed in room were fogged up to the point that she couldn’t see into them. As she stepped closer to the windows, she realized it was more than just fog that prevented her from seeing inside, but a fine mist of condensation that coated the interior of the glass.
“It’s a greenhouse!” Ellie exclaimed as she figured out what she was looking at. It wasn’t a sunroom at all, but a very large greenhouse that was attached to the house. Easily twice the size of Ellie’s bedroom, and probably a shade shy of her old place in Chicago, the greenhouse was massive.
It was the perfect place for someone to grow a wide variety of plants that someone didn’t want anyone else to see. With a large setup like the one in front of her, Katie Rollins could be growing not only local plants, but anything from all over the world. It opened up the possibilities of just how many deadly plants could be at her disposal exponentially.
Ellie’s next thought was that she needed to get this information to Will as quickly as possible. She just wasn’t sure how she was going to do it. She couldn’t exactly tell him that she’d gone traipsing around in Katie’s backyard without permission. She would have to find some way of getting the information legitimately, or at least, come up with a way to make it sound like she wasn’t trespassing.
Beau’s high pitched whine interrupted her thoughts before she could come up with something. Beau rarely, if ever, made such a sound and instantly Ellie knew something was up. He wouldn’t make that noise if he didn’t need her.
Reporting back to Will could wait, if only for a few minutes. Right now her dog needed her and she wasn’t going to keep him waiting. Ellie sprinted the distance back to the gate where she’d hopped the fence to enter. To her shock, it was padlocked shut and she needed to scramble back over the fence to get back out.
Beau, despite his whining, appeared to be absolutely fine. His butt was planted exactly where Ellie had left him. His fluffy tail wagged excitedly as he pawed toward her, but he didn’t move until she picked up his leash.
“What’s the matter, boy?” she asked as she rubbed the scruff of fur around his neck. “What’s wrong?”
Beau only licked at her face in reply. There was no one else on the street, no one at all. Whatever had spooked him appeared to be gone now, and she slipped him a couple treats out of her pocket for being so well behaved.
Pushing herself up from where she’d knelt beside Beau, Ellie gave his lead a soft tug as she turned back toward home. It wasn’t until she glanced up that she realized she was about three steps from running smack dab into Katie Rollins herself.
“Katie, hi!” Ellie startled when she saw Katie. “How are you?”
“Good, good,” Katie said. There was a sly smile painted on her thin lips. “What are you two doing in my neighborhood?”
“Oh, just out for a walk,” Ellie lied. “Thought it would be nice to get a few really long ones in before it gets too cold out.”
“Same here,” Katie said. “But it appears I didn’t select a warm enough jacket.”
“Yeah, the wind can be deceptively cold,” Ellie agreed. She was doing her best to keep her adrenaline from spiking and looking guilty, but she didn’t know how good of a job she was doing.
“Exactly,” Katie agreed. Her thin smile turned less cold, but the hard glint in her eyes never faded. She was watching Ellie, examining her, or at least, that was the impression Ellie got.
“I should get back to the shop,” Ellie excused herself. “Ma’May will be waiting for me so she can take a break.”
“Of course, dear,” Katie said. “Have a great day.”
“You too,” Ellie told her as she made her way back toward the main streets of Dundurn. It would be at least twenty minutes before she got back to the shop and she hoped by then she’d have her heart rate back under control.
She was pretty sure that Katie hadn’t seen her snooping around, but there was something in the way Katie watched her that worried Ellie. Either way, she now had something to go on. Now she just needed to figure out how she was going to tell Will.