Chapter Three: A Very Nosy Neighborhood

Steven came back across the greenhouse before I could decide whether the miniature roses were actually telling me something useful or simply remembering someone gardening.

“What else?”

“I don’t know yet.”

His expression suggested this answer was becoming tiresome.

“Plants aren’t police reports, Steven.”

“I know.”

“They don’t organize memories according to what humans consider relevant.”

“I know.”

“And roses are particularly dramatic.”

“I did not know that.”

“They have thorns. It gives them a superiority complex.”

From the worktable, Mabel said, “She’s right.”

“You’re a maple.”

“I can still recognize arrogance.”

Reginald made a sound suspiciously like a snort. I ignored both of them and crouched beside the tray again.

The miniature roses were young enough that their thoughts were mostly impressions. They knew warmth and cold, thirst and abundance, gentle hands and rough ones. Human voices were familiar, but words rarely mattered unless they were repeated often or delivered with enough emotion to make them memorable.

Judith had been emotional. That helped. “Show me the woman again.”

The response came slowly. Sunlight. A porch. The roses had been outside, probably on a table or railing. Judith’s voice came from nearby, frightened and urgent.

Another person stood with her. Male. Cedar. Gasoline. Daniel, presumably, although that was still an assumption.

Then Judith moved away from him. Steps. Grass. Soil. Digging.

I frowned. “Was Judith digging?”

Confusion.

“Did she put something in the ground?”

A burst of recognition came strongly enough that I sat straighter.

“Yes. Okay. She buried something.”

Steven pulled out his notebook again. “Where?”

“That would be convenient, wouldn’t it?”

“I like convenient.”

“Then you’ve chosen the wrong informants.”

I concentrated on the roses.

“Was this at your house?”

Recognition.

Their home. Not Judith’s. That mattered. “Who owned you?”

Steven answered before the roses could fail to understand the question. “Where did they come from?”

“Customer return. Mrs. Larkin’s daughter brought them in when she moved her mother into assisted living," I told him, reading from the attached card.

“Address?”

“I can get it.”

I stood and went to the register, where our inventory system contained considerably more useful information than the average rosebush. The transaction took less than a minute to find.

“Evelyn Larkin. Fourteen eighteen Hawthorne Lane.”

Steven was already typing it into his phone. His eyes narrowed.

“What?”

“Judith lives on Hawthorne.”

“How close?”

“Fourteen sixty-two.”

I looked back at the roses.

“That’s what, six houses?”

“Five.”

The information rearranged itself in my head. Judith had been frightened enough to bury something on a neighbor’s property rather than her own.

“Do you know Mrs. Larkin?”

“No.”

“I do. A little. She bought from me for years.”

“Would she let us search the property?”

“She doesn’t own it anymore. Her daughter was preparing it for sale.”

Steven nodded. “I’ll deal with permission.”

His phone rang. He glanced at the screen. “My partner.”

“Tell Lena I said hello.”

He answered as he walked toward the door. “Park.”

I heard Lena’s voice faintly through the phone, too muffled to understand.

Steven stopped. “When?”

Whatever she said changed his expression. “I’m on my way.”

He disconnected.

“What happened?”

“Patrol found Judith’s car.”

My stomach tightened.

“Where?”

“Parking lot behind a closed restaurant about four miles from her house.”

“Any sign of her?”

“Not yet.” He put his notebook away. “I’ll call you.”

“You always say that.”

“And then I call you.”

“Eventually.”

“Ivy.”

“Go.”

He went.

I watched through the greenhouse glass as he crossed the parking lot, got into his car and pulled away with the uniformed officer following.

“You worry about him,” Mabel said.

I turned around. “I worry about the case.”

“Of course.”

“You are dangerously close to being put in the retail section.”

Her leaves trembled in horror. “You wouldn’t.”

“No. Customers don’t deserve that.”

Reginald chuckled. I returned to the roses.

The police had a car. Steven would find whatever physical evidence Judith had left behind.

I had something else. A neighborhood full of plants.

“Mari?”

She appeared in the office doorway. “Do I want to know?”

“I need to leave for an hour.”

“You have a supplier call at eleven.”

“I’ll be back.”

“You said that last time and returned four hours later with a detective and a bleeding fern.”

“That was an unusual day.”

“They’re all unusual days.”

She wasn’t wrong. I grabbed my keys. “Call me if you need me.”

“I always need you.”

“That’s why I pay you.”

“You pay me because you’d forget the business has customers if I weren’t here.”

“That too.”

I took my truck because the back seat contained an assortment of empty pots, gloves, soil samples and gardening tools, which made it considerably easier to explain why I was wandering around Hawthorne Lane talking to shrubbery.

Twenty minutes later, I parked in front of Evelyn Larkin’s empty house.

The neighborhood was older, comfortable rather than extravagant, with mature trees and lawns large enough that people could garden without devoting their entire existence to maintenance.

I knew more plants on Hawthorne Lane than I knew people. That was not unusual for me.

I started with Mrs. Larkin’s roses. The parent plants were still there, lining the porch in large containers. Their greeting was subdued without Evelyn present.

“Hello.”

Recognition came immediately.

I crouched beside them. “I know. I miss her too.”

They had loved Evelyn. Plants remembered care.

“Do you remember Judith?”

Recognition.

“Can you show me?”

The same memory returned, but these plants had been closer. Judith had come across the lawn. She was carrying something. I got the impression of a small, dark object, but plant visual recollections were notoriously unreliable. Most of them couldn't see at all.

The roses showed me that she'd knelt beside a mature oak near the property line and dug beneath a bed of hostas. Then the other person appeared. Daniel.

I still couldn’t see a face through botanical memory, but the signature was unmistakable now. Fuel. Cedar. Metal.

Judith stood quickly. They argued. The roses didn’t understand the words, but one had survived long enough to recognize a few human sounds. I caught fragments.

“...can’t...”

“...police...”

Then Daniel’s name. Repeated twice. Judith left. Daniel remained.

My pulse jumped. “Did he dig it up?”

No.

He stood near the tree for a while, then walked away. Whatever Judith buried might still be there.

I stared toward the oak. “Okay.”

I absolutely could not dig up someone else’s property because roses told me there might be evidence underneath it.

Steven would murder me. Not literally. Probably.

Instead, I walked to the edge of the yard and looked down the street.

Judith’s house was easy to identify from the address Steven had given me. Brick ranch, white shutters, beautifully maintained front garden.

I crossed the sidewalk. The roses there recognized me before I reached them. Several had originally come from my greenhouse.

“Hi, girls.”

Warm recognition surrounded me.

Then worry. Judith.

“I know. We’re looking for her.”

The worry intensified.

“When did you last see her?”

That question required patience. Eventually I got Sunday. Or what I believed was Sunday.

Judith had left the house carrying the pothos. She wasn’t frightened then. Tense, perhaps, but purposeful.

A vehicle arrived. Not hers. She got inside willingly.

That changed things. “Did you know the driver?”

Recognition.

Yes.

“Daniel?”

No.

I froze.

“You’re sure?”

The roses didn’t understand sure, but the answer remained unmistakable. Not Daniel. Someone else.

I straightened slowly. The front garden had more witnesses.

Lavender. Boxwood. Hydrangeas. A Japanese maple near the driveway that had probably been there twenty years.

I went to the maple. “Who picked Judith up?”

The tree couldn’t give me a name. It could give me familiarity. The vehicle had been there before. Many times.

Judith trusted whoever drove it. That person was not Daniel.

My phone rang. Steven. I answered immediately.

“We found blood in the car.”

The world seemed to narrow. “How much?”

“Not enough to tell me what happened yet. Crime scene is processing it.”

“Steven, Daniel didn’t pick her up.”

Silence. “What?”

“I came to Hawthorne.”

“You what?”

“Don’t start.”

“I specifically didn’t tell you to go anywhere.”

“You also didn’t tell me not to.”

“Ivy.”

“Focus. Judith left her house Sunday with the pothos. Someone picked her up. The plants recognize the person, and it wasn’t Daniel.”

His irritation vanished. “You’re certain?”

“As certain as I can be when my witness photosynthesizes.”

“Did they give you anything else?”

“The driver had been here before. Often. Judith trusted them.”

Steven exhaled. “Anything on Daniel?”

“Yes.” I looked toward Mrs. Larkin’s oak.

“Judith buried something beneath the oak at fourteen eighteen Hawthorne. Daniel saw her do it, but according to the plants, he didn’t dig it back up.”

“Ivy, do not touch it.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were thinking about it.”

“You cannot arrest me for thinking.”

“Stay there.”

“I have a supplier call at eleven.”

“Reschedule it.”

“Mari will kill you.”

“I’ll risk it.” He hung up.

Rude. I slipped my phone into my pocket and walked back toward Judith’s house.

The roses were still anxious.

“I know.” I touched one blossom gently. “We’ll find her.”

A different sensation reached me. Not from the roses. The Japanese maple beside the driveway. Fear.

I turned toward it. “What?”

The tree pushed a memory at me. Judith. Several days before she disappeared. Standing in the driveway with a man. Not Daniel. Not the familiar driver. Someone else entirely.

Judith was afraid. The man stood close enough that the maple remembered the chemical trace clinging to his clothing. Sharp resin. Fuel. Cedar. Gasoline.

My stomach dropped. I had assumed the scent belonged to Daniel because he restored motorcycles. The plants had never told me that. I had.

“Oh, hell.”

The maple sent the memory again. Judith frightened. The stranger angry. And this time, buried beneath everything else, I caught something I had missed.

Judith hadn’t said Daniel’s name to the man. She had said it about him.

I pulled out my phone and called Steven. He answered on the first ring. “What now?”

“I think we’ve been looking at Daniel backward.”

A pause. “Explain.”

I stared at Judith’s empty house. “I don’t think Judith was afraid of Daniel.”

The maple’s memory pressed against my mind again, clearer now that I understood it.

“She was afraid for him.”