“Don’t miss this month’s science article on page five. You Can’t Pick Your Relatives: Fabaceae—Meet members of the legume family, including bluebonnets, kudzu, and peanuts. And thanks so much to Rosette for the reprint. (Hey look, Rosette, we changed the title. Surprise!)”
Austin Rocks! the e-newsletter of the Austin Rock Garden Society
“Ima Jean Finkel?” DS Chalk called again to Sweetie.
“Yes,” she said over her shoulder. “Coming.” She whispered to Pru, “You won’t say anything to Skippy, will you?” and Pru knew she wasn’t talking about the Twyla incident.
“Not a word. And after all, what’s his first name, I’d like to know?”
Sweetie smiled. “He won’t tell me—must be a good one. You go on now, Pru, I’m okay.”
“No, I’ll wait for you.”
Pru took the opportunity to nip into the ladies’ while Sweetie was occupied. When she walked out into the lobby again, it was to see the doors glide open and Rosette walk in, accompanied by Damien.
The police station, the place to be. Pru remembered the lunchtime talk she had scheduled with Rosette. Rosette must’ve remembered too, because although Damien raised his eyebrows in recognition of Pru, and followed that with a “Good afternoon,” Rosette stopped short when she caught sight of Pru, and remained on the mat, her feet triggering the automatic doors so they attempted to close and promptly jerked open again.
Rosette started at the sound and took the final step into the building. The doors slid closed.
“Damien. Rosette,” Pru said. “I didn’t realize you would be coming in. I’m here with Sweetie.”
The desk sergeant looked up and said, “May I help you?”
Damien put a hand on Rosette’s elbow. “You go on, I’ll wait for you.”
Rosette nodded. She walked to the desk, her path describing a wide arc as she avoided getting too near Pru. Pru turned to Damien as the desk sergeant led Rosette away and said, “She acts like I have cooties.”
Damien almost smiled. “Rosie is right—you do sound like her.”
Pru frowned, a petulant drawing up of her brows in order to keep the sudden tears at bay. To cover, she took a leap of faith. “Why didn’t Rosette want me to know that they’re sisters?”
Damien nodded to the row of seats along the wall. “Shall we sit?” He unbuttoned his suit jacket before settling next to Pru. “Half,” he said. “They’re half sisters. Were.”
Pru rearranged the puzzle in her head to accommodate this information. “Half,” she repeated.
“Twyla and Rosette have the same father,” Damien said. “It was why Twyla and I went back to Texas—the father was ill and it was too much for Rosette to handle.”
“Why doesn’t she want me to know?”
Damien shifted inside his suit jacket. “She thinks that when she’s compared to Twyla she will always come up short. That isn’t true, of course. Rosette is a smart and competent woman. The two of them were close, really, in their own sort of way. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” Pru said. “And it was Rosette who came up with the idea of using the hill country—bluebonnets—for the display here?”
He nodded. “And Twyla seized on it—she believed it was a way to show Rosette her worth. Rosie is an amazing advocate for the natural habitat there—not only with the society, but the native plant organizations, and the roadworks division—what do you call that in America?”
“Department of Transportation,” Pru replied. “And Twyla hooked you up with Forde because of his research?”
Damien frowned and sat up. “Where is that boy? I’ve been trying to run him to ground for weeks now.”
“Aren’t you in touch? Because GlobalSynergy is buying out his company?”
“We’re doing nothing of the kind if he can’t even get his proposal to me. This was Twyla’s idea.” Damien shook his head. “Teaching wore her down, but when she happened upon a student who loved the science, she would go to any extreme to offer support.”
“She mentioned how smart he is.”
“About a year ago, Forde had contacted her for a reference, and it gave her the idea to try again for a garden at Chelsea, and she rang me.” A smile appeared, a real one this time. “It was good to hear her voice again.”
“And so you agreed to sponsor the garden and buy out Forde’s company?”
“I agreed to sponsor the garden and take a look at Forde’s proposal. He’s a bit ahead of himself if that’s what he’s saying.” Damien glanced at his watch—the look of a busy man.
“Did the police call you in, too?”
“No, I came along with Rosette. I didn’t want her to go through this alone.”
“Why did the police want to see her?”
“Next of kin.”
Pru glanced back to the door behind the desk and thought about Rosette somewhere in the depths of the station, filling out forms, claiming Twyla’s body. Just as she did, Rosette emerged, her face drained of all emotion.
Damien went to her, but Pru held back. How callous it would be to go on the offensive now, demanding to hear Rosette’s story. But she did want to hear it.
“Rosette, could I stop in later and see you at the house? You know, if you have the time.”
Rosette nodded, her eyes cast down to the floor. “Sure.”
After Damien and Rosette left, Pru sat in the police station lobby with nothing to do and a year-old copy of Top Gear beside her on the table. She wished she’d kept hold of her sandwich. She scanned the walls. You’d think they’d have vending machines here—she could just do with a KitKat.
With nothing to occupy her, her mind drifted back over the conversation with Chiv. He had not told police he’d seen Twyla that evening, and Pru believed it was because he had wanted to protect Iris. But did he know Iris had killed Twyla, or did he only fear it? Christopher, she was certain, would point out that Chiv could be the murderer himself, but Pru couldn’t believe it, not seeing the pain and the longing in Chiv’s eyes. No guilt, no remorse, only sadness.
When did Twyla die? Pru had seen the CCTV cameras on the grounds put up for the show—the area was a vast, green soccer pitch the rest of the year, with no need of cameras. But now they were positioned at intersections of roadways and lanes on the grounds—the busy arterials during buildup. Had police reviewed the film and seen someone coming or going late that evening or early the next morning? Why wouldn’t French tell her anything? And who among this group that Twyla had assembled would want to kill her?
“You never know what that one might do.”
When Twyla spoke, Pru didn’t move, only cut her eyes toward the desk sergeant, who attended to his computer screen. So there you are, Pru thought. Twyla had been silent too long, and Pru had been expecting to hear from her—but this time, although startled, Pru kept her wits about her. She was even a bit relieved to hear Twyla’s voice. It gave her encouragement, it kept her on course. But who was “that one”? Pity Twyla couldn’t come out and tell Pru who the murderer was.
Pru drew in a sharp breath, realizing that last thought had gone a bit too far—as if she believed Twyla could provide fresh information to her from beyond the grave. She knew better—these weren’t messages. They were echoes of what they’d talked about that evening. Even so, Pru had phoned her sister-in-law, Polly, in Hampshire. Polly often got impressions of things—feelings, images, spiritual stuff. But although Polly was sympathetic and never one to say “It’s all in your head,” she was unable to help pinpoint just where these messages from Twyla originated. It seemed, unfortunately, Polly’s spiritual antennae got poor reception in London.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Sweetie said, coming out from the back. “I had to sit in a room forever before Inspector French came in.”
“It’s all right,” Pru said, standing. “Are you finished? How did it go?”
“He asked me the same questions he asked before. I don’t know why I had to come in.”
To see if you stuck to your story? Pru thought. Perhaps her account contradicted someone else’s.
Sweetie held up her phone. “I told Skippy I’d text him when I was finished. You don’t mind? He said we’d take the rest of the day off, he’d show me some sights, take my mind off things.”
“No, you go on. I’m going to head back to the show site, see if there’s anything left to do today.” Such as build the garden.
On the walk back to the hospital grounds, Pru toyed with her phone. Where were Christopher and Teddy—still on the road? Collecting the lorries? Already loading up plants? Would Christopher be able to ring that evening? Where would he stay—somewhere in Hereford? He and Teddy would return late morning or early afternoon the next day, and by that time, Pru worried that her mind would be so packed with details about Twyla and the others that she might overlook some important item that he would, in an instant, know to be key to solving the case. And besides, she missed him.
Pru kept her ARGS sweatshirt in her bag but drew on her high-vis vest and clipped on the work pass before walking onto the grounds. Many of the Main Avenue gardens neared completion and work had slowed. The Austin garden—obviously not near completion—was just plain empty. Pru could account for Sweetie, Rosette, Kit, and Teddy, but wondered where the rest of the lot had gone.
She reached the garden and walked through, running her hands over the top stones on the wall, which were warm from the sun, until she reached the back of the garden. At least the wall was almost finished. The arbutus at the back, thick with dark, glossy leaves, added weight to their empty landscape. Now that it had its façade of weathered boards in place, the shed truly did look like the front of an old gas station in a Texas ghost town.
A scuffling sound caught Pru’s ear, and she saw movement behind the shed, but the arbutus formed a screen and she couldn’t see through.
“Hello? Chiv?” She parted a couple of branches and then walked round to the end of the hedge. “Is that you? I thought everyone had left.”
A thump followed by more scuffling, and in the same moment that she saw what looked like a heap of clothes on the ground—topped with a flannel shirt—she caught a glimpse off to her left, through the Aussie garden, of bluebonnets disappearing through the tall grasses. Without a thought, she made to run after that flash of blue, to chase it down as she had not done the evening Twyla died, but she’d gone only two steps when a gasping and coughing at her feet stopped her. She dropped to her knees, grabbed the flannel shirt, and turned Roddy MacWeeks over.