Chapter 3
“I hear it’s going to be three stories,” I heard Sally say as I walked onto her back patio for Wine Club. The usual suspects were there along with the newcomer that I’d heard about.
“I hope I won’t be ruining your palates by contributing a couple bottles of Elgin Ridge Chardonnay, I thought that the summer fruit tastes would complement the Rosé,” I said as I plopped down into Sally’s last unoccupied wicker chair.
“There she is,” said Peggy, “I hear that you’re not a garden virgin anymore.”
“Honey, the ship has sailed for anything that has ‘Halsey’ and ‘virgin’ in the same sentence,” I said.
Peggy looks like everybody’s favorite grandma. White-haired and fleeced in the winter, and hair under a baseball cap and madras sporting in the summer, she is someone you always want to hug. But as we learned last year, this sweet woman who is inching nearer and nearer to ninety has a past that included spying for the CIA. No, seriously, she did.
Sally decanted the wines and took a quick taste of each to make sure they were servable. At least that is how she’s explained her actions in the past. Penelope helped distribute the filled glasses.
“I see you’ve cleaned up your knees, Halsey, but you still look like a girl who’d gotten into a row at the schoolyard.”
“It’s kind of a macabre story, which I’ll get to after we’ve all imbibed a few fluid ounces,” I replied, piquing everyone’s interest.
Penelope is from England so we often find ourselves asking her to translate her indigenous words or phrases. In this case we’d already learned that “row” meant fight.
She’d moved to Rose Avenue late last year after accepting a sought-after curator position at a respected museum in town. Now the youngest in our group at twenty-eight, she brought both a degree of sophistication to the Wine Club along with a raucous appetite for fun and adventure.
“That looks sore,” said Aimee, “want me to go get you some Bactine spray?”
“She’s got some, it’s in that glass she’s holding,” Peggy retorted in a jovial mood.
Aimee has gone through a lot of struggles in the year that I’ve known her, but it appears that she’s close to coming out the other side. Her boyfriend from high school, Tom, was on his way to becoming a doctor when his mother was diagnosed with cancer. He had to take time off to care for her, leaving Aimee as the sole breadwinner. As advertised by her pink Polo shirt with the words “Chill Out” embroidered on it, Aimee owns and operates a small frozen yogurt shop nearby. She’s in her early thirties and still has the wide-eyed innocence of a child, along with cherubic cheeks that change color like a mood ring. Now that Tom was back and well along in completing his residency, Aimee can relax a little and that respite shows. She’s much less fidgety and has stopped crying as much at the least little thing. Like if she accidentally steps on a snail.
“Halsey, say ‘hello’ to Paula, our newest member. I don’t know what we were thinking not inviting her to join from the get-go. Sometimes my brain’s as useless as pedals on a wheelchair,” said Sally with one of her typical quirky expressions.
“Hi, Paula, so glad you could join us,” I said, looking at an earthy momma in her seventies wearing a purple-dyed hemp vest that battled for attention with her rampaging red hair.
Paula gave me a wide grin that turned everything around her from dusky grays to sunflower yellow.
“I am so happy to be included,” she said, hoisting a grapevine-made basket onto her lap. “I made some pesto for us from basil I grew at the co-op, and picked a bunch of apricots from my tree.”
“Perfect, this will go great with my theme today, which is the start of summer. I’ve got some grilled pineapple skewers, bruschetta with fresh tomatoes and peach chutney, shrimp satay, and of course, Peggy’s crab deviled eggs.”
Sally is my best friend here; she is a tall, lean, golden-brown woman in her early sixties, with angular features and elegant long fingers that look like they should be holding a paintbrush in front of an easel overlooking a scenic panorama. Her white hair serves to add a halo around her long neck and jawline. Her lovely oval face and broad smile exude a warm and nurturing aura. Not surprising for a retired nurse, but don’t be taken aback at her reaction if someone messes with her. This caregiver has balls.
“Why were you talking about stories when I walked in,” I asked, sucking the crab out of an egg white.
My mother taught me better....
“We were talking about the teardown over on the next corner. I spoke to the developer when I was on my walk, and he said that the remodel will have five bedrooms and a basement,” Sally explained.
“That’s going to be one ugly monster of a house,” Aimee said, shaking her head. “It’s greed is what it is, that kind of building does not belong here.”
“Yes, it worries me that these impersonal behemoth structures are cropping up more and more,” said Sally.
“Lots of changes and remodeling going on these days,” said Paula, kind of far off. “My new neighbor, a really nice young man, moved in about a month ago. He is doing renovations and also putting in a basement!”
“But I thought that with all the earthquakes we have, putting in a basement was a dangerous luxury,” I questioned.
I’d moved on to the pineapple and forced myself to resist slurping all the juice out first.
“Apparently that is an urban myth. One of Tom’s resident friends has one and he says that a basement gives your home the safest level of protection from earthquakes because you have a much stronger foundation for the whole house,” Aimee clarified.
“Wow, I want one,” said Penelope, thinking.
“Well, here’s what I heard,” Peggy said with intrigue.
We all leaned in to her.
“You need to have a city-licensed engineer come in first to test and make a soil report before any construction can happen. In the case of the new development we’re talking about, I heard from May who lives across the street that they did a pass with their own engineer first, and he suspects that there’s oil just about four hundred feet down.”
“Just under that one lot?” I asked.
“Don’t know, whole thing might be turned into an oil derrick,” Peggy answered.
Upon hearing this, I choked on my generous sip of Rosé of Pinot Noir, sending its crisp finish with hints of citrus and sea breeze straight up my nose.
Everyone took a moment to ponder what Peggy had said and to dream about what to do with all the money they would make as oil baronesses.
“You were going to tell us how you hurt your knees, honey,” Aimee reminded me.
Like Pavlov’s dogs, that was the stimulus the Wine Club girls needed, and they were soon gathered around me. After all there was a dead body involved.
“And Peggy’s news is the perfect segue,” I said.
“The girls gave me a garden plot up on the hill for my birthday,” I explained to Paula.
Her face immediately animated. “I have four plots up there; I grow sweet peas, kale, rhubarb, Brussels sprouts, melons, squash, pineapple, asparagus, and the basil we are enjoying today!”
Okay, right now she looks like she too sprouted from the earth.
“Go on, sugar, tell us your story,” Peggy urged.
So I did, leaving out the part about keeping the ring and deed from the detective. Let them think that he has all the evidence. This was a respectable occasion after all, and I’d planned on telling Sally and Peggy later in private.
“Holy dingleberries,” Sally said.
So now they’ve been blessed????
“Does this mean that you could own all the oil under Rose Avenue?” Sally continued.
“I don’t know. I have a more pressing issue at the moment, which is convincing the cops that I had nothing to do with the body that Bardot dug up.”
“I was thinking you meant ancient bones, are they sure it was a human body?” Peggy asked.
“I saw a hand with bits of flesh still visible.” I grimaced.
“Ewwwwww,” Aimee said, teary.
“I wonder how long a body can be buried and still not be totally decomposed,” Peggy mused.
“Easy enough to find out,” Sally said, firing up her smartphone.
“People find bones all the time when working in the gardens,” Paula said. “That whole area was farmland, I’m sure cattle and horse carcasses are all over the place.”
“But they don’t have hands last I checked.” Penelope seemed a bit amused by all this.
“Everything hinges on the autopsy results. That’ll tell how this person died, and more. Until then my fate is in limbo.”
Everyone looked shocked.
“I think that we have the deed to the mineral rights under our house. I’ll have to have my husband Max check,” said Paula, eying me a little differently now.
“You don’t really think that the deed is valid after all those years? I’m sure it has been superseded twenty times over by now,” I said.
“I’m real curious about that ring, figuring out the symbols and engravings on that might tell us a whole different story,” Penelope mused.
“So what’s the plan, Halsey? Tell us what you think we need to do to solve this like you did last time.”
“That was way different, Aimee,” I said, but my wheels were already spinning.
I glanced over at Peggy and could tell that she was doing the same thing.
“Peggy, you floored me with that story of possible oil under the construction site, do you think that you could follow up on that?”
“Sure, and I’ll interrogate, er, quiz May more thoroughly.”
“Sally, do you think that you can get more scoop on the developer, if he thinks he’s discovered oil, he might be involved somehow, either with the deed or the body. Did you get his name?” I asked.
“Better, I’ve got his card right here,” she said, pulling it out of her back pocket. “Howard T. Platz, it has his cell number too. I’ll keep chatting with him.”
The rest of the girls were watching me intently.
“Great, Penelope, if I get you photos of the ring, do you think that you could do some research on your museum’s database?”
“Good God, of course, and I can access it remotely as well.”
I was grateful for her youth and natural born tech savvy.
“Aimee,” I said and saw her sit up tall, happy to not be the last team member picked.
“Do you think that during quiet times at your yogurt shop you could do some online research on the history of Rose Avenue and the surrounding area? I’ll email you a copy of the deed as well.”
“Absolutely, it will be nice to have something to occupy my brain besides sprinkles and freezer levels.”
I was mentally trying to come up with something for Paula, but I’d just met her and had no idea what she could do besides grow everything imaginable.
That’s when it hit me.
“And Paula, if you would like to help, I wonder if you could get access to records of the last four or five people who have owned my plot? I’ll get you the number.”
“I know exactly which one is yours, I’ve had my plots for over thirty years, and I know just who to ask,” she said, visibly pleased to be a part of this squad.
“Awesome, meanwhile I’m going to do some checking on the cigar box and see if that turns up any clues. Shall we have a last toast to our plan?”
We all raised our glasses, but before I could say anything else, Paula interrupted me.
“Excuse me, I just thought of something. My husband Max is a member of the local historical society and a few years back he and some others did a whole study on the origins of Rose Avenue.”
“I never knew that. I’d love a copy,” Sally said still holding her glass in midair.
“I don’t know that they kept any. See, they were never able to complete their research. They’d been looking into the story about one of the original landowners being murdered by three ‘desperadoes’ but they kept coming to dead ends. Either the files were missing or they were under seal,” Paula explained.
“Wow, do I smell a connection here?” asked Peggy.
“That’s a jump over a very wide creek,” said Sally.
“Either way, you should talk to Max. But let me test the waters first. For the longest time he refused to talk about the study.”
“Why?” I asked.
“During the time he was working on it a whole string of bad things kept happening to him. First his spare tire was stolen from his truck; next he tripped over an uneven pavement and sprained his ankle. When a dead crow fell from the sky and landed on him in the backyard, he’d had enough and called it quits. All this happened in the same week.”
“So does he think he was being haunted by the desperadoes’ ghosts?” Peggy asked, skeptical.
“That’s exactly what he thinks.”
Ay caramba.