Featured Excerpt: The Gardener’s Plot by Deborah Benoit

Chapter Four

Silence in the garden. I gaped at the pale foot and the ankle beneath it, then the boot in my hand and the sock hanging limply from it. I looked back at the foot. The freshly turned soil enveloped whatever was beneath it.

“Oh my god,” someone gasped. A woman’s voice. Somewhere behind me.

I pushed myself back to my feet. “Someone call nine-one-one.” I choked out the words. Where was my phone? Home? I started to pat my pocket, then focused on the boot still clutched in my hand. “Does anyone have a cell phone handy?” My feet refused to move. My eyes locked on the foot and what I knew must be beneath it. Then a thought occurred to me: What if that’s all there was? I blinked. Shook my head. I didn’t want to go there even more than I wanted to not be where I was at the moment.

“Does anyone have a cell phone?” I asked again, louder this time, control returning to my voice. Of all days to forget mine. When I separated from my husband, I’d gotten out of the habit of carrying my cell phone. It was an easy way to avoid his calls. Or maybe I was channeling Greta Garbo: I just wanted to be alone. Now he was gone. That life was gone. And still, more often than not, the phone sat tethered to its charger on my desk. I’d chosen to go back to a simpler life. In the here and now, I wished the phone were tucked in my backpack. But wishes were just wishes. Just as a boot was a boot and a foot was a foot. I had to deal with them both. And whatever was beneath the soil there. I dropped the boot.

“No?” I said, my voice quavering.

“I have one,” said Jacob Goodman, the first of us to recover. He waved a small flip-style phone at me. “But the reception’s pretty poor here in this corner of town. No bars.” A few others were shaking their heads.

“Oh.” I glanced around, my gaze landing on the convenience store across the street. “Mr. Goodman, then would you and Mrs. Goodman go over to the Kwik Stop and ask to use the phone there and call nine-one-one?”

Looking relieved, he took his wife by the arm and shepherded her toward the sidewalk. The initial shock had begun to wear off and several other gardeners had pulled out their phones and were dialing, apparently without success. Lisa had moved her children over by their SUV outside the fence. No one else had moved. Even Roy had been shocked into silence by circumstances far worse than the tragic inconvenience he’d suffered with the discovery of the boot.

We stood there like that until the sound of sirens jolted us back to reality. A Marlowe police cruiser, lights strobing, skidded to a stop outside the fence. Marlowe Police Chief Sam Whitacker’s SUV pulled in behind it seconds later, followed by an ambulance. He exchanged a few words with the two officers who’d emerged from the cruiser, then moved quickly toward us, taking in the scene as he walked.

“Mags.” He nodded at me. “You doin’ okay?” He took off his sunglasses and looked me square in the eye. The world continued to spin, now whirling me back twenty years in time. Those brown eyes used to make me weak in the knees. Now they were a lifesaver I grabbed on to for all it was worth. Around us, the officers began moving the remaining gardeners to the area outside the fence.

I swallowed hard and choked out a half laugh and stared down at the foot. “I’m not sure what I am right now.”

“That’s okay,” Sam said quietly. He slipped an arm around my waist and led me toward the gate. I felt the warmth of his hand through the thin fabric of my tee shirt. And I began to tremble. When we reached the parking area, he took both my arms and turned me to face him. Same straw colored hair and mustache, same deep brown eyes. And the same old caring and concern reflected there. “I’m going to have Officer Sinclair here,” he said, nodding at the uniformed woman approaching us, “take you over to the café for a cup of tea. She’s going to ask you a few questions. You think you can do that?” When I hesitated, he added, “I can get the paramedics to take a look at you if you need it.”

I shook my head, the trembling subsiding a bit. Maybe it was Sam coming to the rescue again after all these years, or maybe it was the thought of distancing myself from the foot. Or body. Whichever it was. Whoever it was.

Officer Jan Sinclair carried on a soothing monologue as we walked along the narrow street, explaining that she understood what a shock it must have been and how a cup of tea would help me so that I could help them. We passed Howie Tucker standing in the open doorway of the hardware store.

“Maggie?” I heard him say my name, but Sinclair shook her head in response, and we kept on walking to the corner and crossed to the Marlowe Café. Once inside, Sinclair spoke briefly with one of the waitresses and we took seats at a booth to the side of the room.

“I’ve asked for some tea and toast for you,” Sinclair said. “It’s what my mother prescribed anytime I was feeling off. This has got to be about as off for you as any situation could be. But if you’d like something else . . .” She let her words trail off and sat there for a moment looking at me.

I shook my head in a belated response to her question. “No, tea will be good.”

Sinclair nodded and took out a notepad and pen. “If you’re up to it, I’d like to ask you a few questions about this morning’s events.”

My stomach clenched but I nodded. The tea arrived. Sinclair asked her questions and I did my best to get the words out.

I don’t know how long I sat in that booth, alternately staring down at my tepid mug of tea and out the front window. I’d reported the morning’s events to Officer Sinclair, all the while feeling as though I were passing on the details of something that had happened days before. She’d jotted down notes and encouraged me to drink the tea. I’d glanced at her over the rim of the mug. Maybe her complexion was naturally pale, but her blue eyes echoed the shock I felt. Even the no-nonsense bun keeping her frizzy red hair under control at the nape of her neck and her steady composure couldn’t entirely hide that the discovery at the garden had unnerved her, too. I took some comfort in that. I tried to drink the tea as she’d suggested, but mostly I spent the time staring into the mug. At least it had warmed my hands.

Noontime customers came into the café and were seated. A pair of waitresses dressed in crisply pressed blue shirts and black skirts made the rounds of the half dozen occupied tables and orders were placed. Maybe I was being paranoid (or maybe I just looked that bad), but I could swear I was the subject of more than one conversation. The only thing I was certain of was that once the food started to be served, my stomach protested by doing a series of flip-flops and rollovers that would have made a roller coaster proud.

I couldn’t see what was happening at the community garden from where I sat, but I could still picture in my mind the naked foot sticking out of the soil in Roy Hansen’s plot. I lifted the mug and took a sip, and grimaced at the cold, bitter brew. I’d left the tea bag in the mug far too long. My gaze drifted to Jan Sinclair, who now stood just outside the door. Whether she was waiting for Sam or a detective from the state police or just wanted to be closer to what was going on, she hadn’t said. She also hadn’t answered any of my questions. Where were the gardeners? Had they been allowed to go home? Some of them were elderly and I was concerned about their reactions to what had happened. And Violet. Had she finally arrived?

My stomach rolled again. I wondered if I looked as green as I felt. As if on cue, the waitress placed a fresh mug of tea in front of me and motioned at the plate of toast I’d pushed aside. “Can I get you some fresh toast?” she asked.

I shook my head, and she took the plate and cold tea away. I picked up the mug and took a careful sip. It calmed my stomach a little and sent a fresh wave of warmth through me. I might have mustered the will to go ask Officer Sinclair when I’d be allowed to go home, but I suspected that question, too, would go unanswered. At least until whatever or whoever she was waiting for arrived.

Strobing blue lights reflected off the café’s plate glass window. Heads turned. Outside, Sinclair straightened and took a step onto the sidewalk. A state police cruiser pulled to the curb, the passenger door opened, and out stepped a man Grampa would have described as a tall drink of water. A detective, I supposed. I knew Marlowe was too small to have its own detective division, let alone those experienced in murder investigations, so the state police would have been called in.

A moment later, Sam appeared from somewhere nearby and the three of them conversed for several minutes. No fewer than three times Officer Sinclair motioned toward the café. Toward me, I supposed. Several times she referred to the notes she’d taken when we’d talked. Finally, the detective headed across the street in the direction of the garden, and Sam came inside. I looked up hopefully as he came closer.

“Hey, Mags, how you holding up?”

“Okay, I guess,” I responded automatically.

Sam nodded. I suspected one look at me told him how okay I was not. He bent closer, his hands on the table in front of me.

“Officer Sinclair is going to give you a ride home. You get some rest and we’ll get back in touch later. Would you like us to call someone to meet you at your house?”

I could only shake my head in response, and he left me in the officer’s care.

If I expected any grand revelation about what was happening, I was sadly disappointed. The drive to my house was silent except for the occasional coded message blurted out by the police radio. Sinclair said little, though I could tell she was still trying to be helpful even if her words weren’t succeeding. Perhaps she’d exhausted her repertoire of comforting thoughts. Or maybe she knew there wasn’t much point. I’d retreated inside my own head, asking myself the same questions over and over again. Who had we found in that garden plot? And a question I was almost afraid to have answered: Where was Violet?