The day spread over the land. Pia and Tania turned down a trip to the hospital. The paramedics left with Cody in the back, a broken collarbone suspected and possibly worse. They insisted on x-rays.
Pia and Tania sat on the grass near the main road, still smudged with blood and dirt, their hair smoked and caked with ashes, their clothes torn and muddy. Some of the extra PCs packed up and left. The sun rose higher and filled the morning with warm daylight. The police came back with questions and more questions. Having been through a few investigations, Pia and Tania waited and answered patiently.
An Uber pulled up to where the cottage driveway met the main road. Abby Stokes got out and stood in numbed silence, surveying the scene. Claigeann Cottage’s bullet-riddled front door hung from one hinge. A fifteen-foot circle of blackened char marred her perfect thatch. Shards of glass lay beneath every window. Crime scene investigators swarmed the exterior.
Pia walked up to her.
Abby kept her eyes on her home while she said, “What the fuck, Sabel?”
“Got a bit stuffy, so we opened a window … or two.” Pia waited, hoping Abby would laugh and knowing she wouldn’t.
Abby teared up. After a few deep breaths, she appeared to bring herself under control. She sniffled a few times, then blew her nose like an athlete. Closing one nostril with a finger, she blew the other on the ground, then switched sides. She wiped on her sleeve.
She looked up at Pia and said, “Suppose you and your lot are OK then?” She pointed at Pia’s face. “Except for that cheek.”
Pia pulled up her top, revealing bruises across her midriff.
“Bloody hell, Sabel.” Abby looked sick. “Like playing France then, eh?”
“We need to talk.”
Abby stared at her for a long, silent moment, then backed up a step and pointed back at her house. “Oh, now hang on. You don’t think I had anything to with that, do you?”
“Yes,” Tania said.
At the same time Pia said, “No.”
Pia shot a silencing look at Tania, which Tania returned with equal ferocity. Facing Abby, but speaking loud enough to include Tania, Pia said, “You would’ve been caught up in the melee if you’d been home. We’re professionals and we barely got out alive. You’re lucky as hell I gave you a free ride to London.”
Abby stood still.
“One of the guys had this,” Tania thrust the crumpled orchid petal at Abby.
Their hostess stared at it, then looked back and forth at Tania and Pia. “They were in my bloody greenhouse!”
Pia said, “Tell me you have security cameras.”
“For a bunch of bushes and trees?” Abby held up her hands.
A limo pulled up. Tanner Wyatt stepped out, his silent, steely gaze surveying the land.
Pia said, “Let’s check it out, shall we?”
“How do you do that, Sabel?” Abby said. “A limo shows up in rural England with Rambo standing guard like you summoned it telepathically.”
Pia said, “Perks.”
Abby nodded. “Must be nice. What about Claigeann Cottage? It’s historic architecture. Was.”
“Unlimited remodeling budget, on me. We’ll get the best craftspeople.”
“Yeah. That is nice.” Abby’s bitterness flowed through her words. “Wave your magic money finger around and problem solved. There never should’ve been a problem in the first place.”
“It’ll never be the same,” Pia said and put a sympathetic hand on Abby’s shoulder. “Money will never fix that part. I’m sorry.” She waited until Abby appeared to accept her apology before adding, “Maybe they can get the toaster and stove to work at the same time.”
Tanner held the door open. Tania got in.
Abby followed but stopped before putting a foot in. She looked at Tanner and said, “Do you ever speak? Like ask your boss how she’s doing? Say hi?”
He faced her, then leveled his gaze back to the horizon.
They rode in silence to Sonse End, Eric Stone’s estate. Abby called ahead. He met them and waved them through to the delivery drive. It led directly to the backside of the scaled Crystal Palace greenhouse. When they passed through, he followed them down, limping on his cane a little more than usual.
The limo stopped in the drive before the parking and delivery area to drop them off. Half an acre was filled in with gravel for delivery trucks to turn around. Opposite the glass structure sat a pile of rotting leaves the size of a shipping container: the compost heap. Next to that, the bobcat with a front-loading scoop attached. On the far edge of the gravel was an even larger pile of milky-brown clay. A series of tarps protected the top of the mound from the rain in a haphazard fashion. A couple tarps had been folded back.
Eric Stone met them at the door. He looked over Pia and Tania. “Appears you’re not fairing so well in our little corner of the country, young lady. Are you alright?”
“Is this door unlocked?” Pia asked and answered her own question with a simple twist of the knob.
“What d’you think, someone’s going to break in and steal a few Brosimum utiles?” Abby snorted.
She pushed around Pia and entered a tool and staging area. They checked the office. It hosted a battered desk with an old laptop and stacks of dogeared paperwork. On the other side, the beaten workbench where plants were lovingly examined and catalogued. Underneath was a mesh bag full of soccer balls, several Pug goals, and three pairs of women’s soccer cleats. One brand new in the box. Abby was still getting free boots from her endorsements.
The inside was significantly warmer and sunnier than their last visit. And a good deal more humid. Condensation rolled down the windows and pooled on the floor. Metal support posts had a similar problem.
“A rain forest requires rain,” Abby said and pointed to misters fixed to the rafters above them. “Need to simulate an inch of rain a day. The misters work all night. Gotta wear a raincoat to work late.”
“How many people work here?” Pia asked.
“Just me.” Abby led the group toward the Utría section where they’d found the orchid. “There’s a new crop of students come every two weeks to work a week. Supposed to study, but they’re usually out getting pissed all night and hanging in the morning. We’re done with that now ’til the summer semester, though.”
“Was there anyone here last night?” Pia asked Eric.
“Not that I saw,” he replied. Not as quick as the young women, he trailed behind. “People get by me now and again, but I see the headlights coming down the lane usually. It’s a quiet life we lead out here.”
“This petal is one of your orchids, right?” Tania asked. She held out her evidence again.
Abby looked it over more closely. “Can’t tell for certain, but not a store-bought one, yeah.”
“How’d it get hooked on that guy’s Velcro?”
Abby shrugged while her face melted down to one step short of crying. She didn’t say a word while she led them around a corner and down a narrow gap between overgrown leaves.
Tania looked at Pia as they walked. Pia understood her methods; harsh interrogations that trapped liars were her specialty. While she usually deferred to Tania’s expertise, Pia didn’t want to see Abby as complicit. Was she overlooking something?
Pia fell back and whispered, “If she was involved, how do you get past the problem that she should’ve been home last night?”
“People willing to kill constables would sacrifice one of their own—” Tania snapped her fingers “—like that.”
Ahead of them Abby stopped in her tracks. “Sod it. Someone was here last night.”
She pointed to broad leaves trampled and stems snapped in the section where they’d talked on their first visit. Abby looked more upset about her violated plants than her cottage. Pulling a pair of cutters from her pocket, she snipped away at a few stems, cutting away the damage. Tania watched her closely. In front of them, the remains of an orchid clung to the side of a larger plant.
Pia peered into the surrounding bushes. The soil was the same milky-brown clay as the pile outside. Abby had said something about her supplier shipping more soil than she’d ordered for the section. A trail of large ants crawled through stems and around saplings. She pushed back leaves with her forearm and met a swarm of gnats.
“Hey now,” Abby called out, “don’t go in there. You got a question, ask me.”
“Sorry, I thought you didn’t like bugs. There’s some healthy ants over here.”
“Gotta have bugs. It’s the beetles we worry about. Harlequin Ladybird beetles have nearly wiped out our indigenous version in little more than a decade. I find them, I squash them.”
Pia asked Tania a question with her eyes. Tania answered, “Couple boot prints in there. He went in deep.”
Abby turned around and checked the dirt. Pia saw them too.
“Nothing special in there,” Abby said. “He crunched a lot of leaves like he was looking for something, then scarpered. Nothing in there but plants.”
They stared at each other for a blank moment.
“What about that killer plant you told us about?” Tania asked.
“The what? Oh, you mean Dendrocnide moroides, suicide plant? Over in Belize.” Abby headed down the aisle. “Most dangerous thing in here, really.”
They went to the Belize section. Abby checked the ground and leaves.
Tania came up behind her and went around her, looking for boot prints.
Abby said, “Oi! Don’t touch that. I wasn’t kidding about them being deadly. Tiny needles that float on the air, each one’s a syringe full of deadly toxin. Gotta wear protective gear around the bloody thing. You can inhale the needles without realizing it. But there’s no sign of anyone being around here.”
They looked around more without finding anything.
Pia whispered to Tania, “There’s nothing here connecting her.”
“Oh, there’s something here,” Tania said. “We just ain’t seen it yet.”
“What about Eric? He’s a forensic toxicologist.”
“Could be both of them,” Tania thought for a moment. “They’re both restoring historic homes and you said that was pricey. How bad is it, out of reach for teachers? Where are they getting the money?”
“I can’t imagine either could afford it without additional sources of funding.”
“We gotta look into that. But you’re right, we’re done here.”
“Then what’s next,” Pia asked, “back to the Morpheus?”
“And ask what? No. We go for the weakest link, the Tindalls. Maybe we can shake a clue out of that tree.”
“Well, I’ve got work to do,” Abby said. She led them back the way they’d come in. “What about my house?”
“My damage control people landed in Manchester twenty minutes ago. They’re on it.”
“‘Damage control people?’ Happens that much, does it?”
Pia felt that one kick her in the gut harder than the man who’d pounded on her. It did happen a lot. Everyone she’d loved was dead. Her mother and father. Her adopted father, Alan Sabel. Too many employees. At this point, Jacob and Tania were all she had left. And Liam. Who she’d just put in greater danger than she’d intended. Six paratroopers dropped in on them. Not to mention she still had no idea how the operation killed their victims.
When they trooped back, they found Eric checking something on the workbench. Abby stopped as she walked by him. She leaned past him, picked up a trowel and scooped a couple dead beetles off the bench. She carried them outside.
Tania stopped and examined what Abby had called the “horticulturist’s chemistry lab.” She pointed the contents to Pia who glanced over her shoulder. Tania said, “Looks untouched since the first time we saw it.”
Pia nodded her agreement.
They followed Abby and watched as she flung the trowel’s contents to the top of the compost heap.
“Oh, that reminds me,” Eric said. “There was a visitor. Not last night, though. Your bug man was here yesterday noon.”
Abby’s attention turned to the mound of clay where two tarps had been pulled back. She walked in that direction. Several shovel marks were dug into the mound as if someone were sampling dirt. She got up close to one of the spaded places and tilted her head. Pia and Tania followed her and checked the turned-over soil. Tania snapped a couple pictures.
“Sorry,” Abby said to Eric. “My what?”
“Your bug man,” Eric replied. “The man who comes Sundays. Helps you with the beetle problem.”
“I don’t have a bug man.”
“You do, certainly. You know the man I mean. He’s been coming since the beginning.”
Abby tilted her head, curious, then crossed back to Eric. Pia followed her. “There’s no bug man on my payroll. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Pia asked, “Does he come on her days off?”
“Sundays most often.” He faced Abby. “But yesterday, just after you drove to town on those errands. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen you talk to the man.” He turned to Pia. “Is that what you’re getting at? He’s not supposed to be here?”
“Does he wear a diamond earring?” Pia asked.
Eric looked curious. “Now that you mention it, I believe he does.”