The Devil's Bones Read online

  It was possible Slay had accidentally ingested some spotted water hemlock. Maybe. “I’ve heard you have a lot of that hemlock growing around your place,” I said.

  “Yeah, here and all over any of the marshy areas. But Slay was a turkey hunter. He would know to stay away from that plant.”

  “Unless he was drinking heavily,” Tinkie said. She was making a guess at Slay’s personal habits, but chances were she was right.

  “Slay liked to tipple the bottle, that’s for sure,” Cosmo said. “But he wasn’t so stupid he’d eat hemlock. He was too damned mean to off himself.”

  “It seems almost everyone in the area had a reason to want Slay dead. Did you?” Tinkie asked.

  “Sure I did. That lowlife filed a nuisance lawsuit against me. He claimed I was breeding fire ants or termites or some such ridiculous thing. He had half the county ready to come out here and burn me out because I was infesting their homes. Moron.”

  “Were you?” Fire ants and termites were ugly insects. I believed all things had a right to live—just not around me.

  “I wouldn’t have brought the fire ants here for any amount of money. They’re smart, industrious insects, but they aren’t native to this land. You know they came in on a ship at the Port of Mobile. But the ecosystem is delicate. So many species have been badly damaged by herbicides, poisons, development, and the flooding of natural habitat. It has to end. Without insects, all life on this planet will die.”

  “But the Garden of Bones is a garden, a place where insects and wildlife can thrive,” Tinkie pointed out. “Why do you have such a burn on for Daniel Reynolds and his project?”

  “Oh, the gardens are lovely and he does an excellent job of promoting natural species. Have you seen his wild azaleas—the orange is so vibrant. And he has a native holly that the birds love. He does remarkable work with the plants.”

  “And yet you interrupted his service to make a point that you wanted him gone.” Tinkie wasn’t going to let it go.

  “He brings all those people here. That’s the problem. They climb around, disturbing the natural barriers to flooding, stomping tender young plants. Those little hellion kids scream and run around hunting eggs. Do you know how much litter they throw on the ground? They have no upbringing.”

  Tinkie put a hand on her stomach. “Children need space to run and play. Do they really do permanent damage?”

  He’d apparently guessed at her condition and was smart enough to back off. “Well, they could be quieter and less destructive.”

  “Does Reynolds have a reason to want Slay dead?”

  He shrugged. “Ask him.”

  “And Erik Ward? Would he kill Slay?”

  “Erik has a reason to hate Slay, but I can’t see him killing a man over something that will eventually be sorted out in a court of law. I mean what Slay did wasn’t just unethical, it was illegal. It likely contributed to Erik’s dad’s death, too. Still, Erik knew he’d win that land case in court. He didn’t have a need to kill Slay. And certainly not on Easter Sunday.”

  “Who would you put your money on?” Tinkie asked.

  “That Snaith. Man, he hated Slay. But it could be anyone. Think about who might be setting Erik up as a killer. Or even Reynolds, for that matter. I mean the body was found in the middle of his miniature Holy Land. Maybe someone left Slay’s body there to implicate Reynolds, not Erik.”

  “You’re implying that Slay was collateral damage in an attempt to frame Erik or Dr. Reynolds for murder,” Tinkie said.

  “Reynolds knows as much about poisonous plants as Erik or Snaith. The man has researched all the native plants. I don’t know when the coroner deduced that Slay died, but I’ll bet there’s a window of time when Reynolds could have done it. So he could be the killer, or, as I first posed, perhaps he was the intended victim of a frame.”

  Cosmo was right. Reynolds had means and opportunity. “Would Reynolds have a motive to kill Slay?” I asked.

  “I don’t know any specifics, but everyone in the region has a motive to want Slay dead. A man like Slay made a lot of enemies.”

  “It would seem Dr. Reynolds has made some enemies, too.” And I was talking to one of them. “I mean why kill Slay here?”

  “That’s a good question,” Cosmo said. “If Reynolds did it, I don’t have an answer. And frankly, I don’t care. Slay’s dead and that’s a good thing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some water quality testing to finish.”

  “Cosmo, Erik has been a friend to you. He’s being cagey about an alibi for the early-morning hours on Easter Sunday. Do you have any idea where he might have been?” If the two men were good friends, Cosmo might know more about Erik’s habits. It wasn’t crucial—yet—to provide that alibi, but it would be once Sheriff Glory truly began to investigate.

  “Erik has always been smart enough to keep his personal life to himself. In a small town, it’s the only way for a bachelor to survive. Erik’s business requires that he not be the center of gossip. I could maybe hazard a guess what he was doing, but I won’t. He’ll talk when he’s ready.”

  “Is he involved with a married woman?” Tinkie asked. She’d gone to the logical conclusion.

  “Ask Erik,” Cosmo said.

  I was frustrated. “You don’t think being charged with murder is going to put him in the middle of controversy?” I asked.

  “In a small town, there are things worse than murder to be accused of.” He scoffed. “If Erik wants to tell you, he will.”

  He walked past us and disappeared in the pine woods that surrounded his house.

  “What do you think Erik is into that he would have to keep so secret?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, but we’re going to have to find out.” Tinkie brushed a few blond curls from her face.

  “Do you think Cosmo could kill Perry Slay?” I asked Tinkie as we loaded up in the car to drive back to the main office of the gardens.

  “He doesn’t strike me as a man with enough fire in his belly to kill a man, or even an insect.” She grinned. “Erik said he was gentle and that’s my reading.”

  “So Snaith is still our primary suspect.”

  “If we discount Erik and Reynolds, we’re left with Snaith.”

  “What shall we do?” I asked Tinkie. “Are you tired? Do you need to rest? What about a vitamin shake?” I’d been preparing power shakes with spinach, kale, tomatoes, and protein powder for her to drink.

  “If you push one more of those awful drinks at me, I’m going to vomit on your shoes.”

  That was a very unladylike Tinkie threat. Daddy’s Girls did not vomit in public. “I thought you liked them.”

  “Like a teenager likes an STD.”

  “Tinkie!” I was shocked. She never talked like this. She was always the proper Daddy’s Girl and she knew every rule in that handbook.

  “I’m hormonal. So sue me. I can’t drink alcohol. I can’t smoke cigarettes.”

  “Wait, you never smoked.”

  “Like I said, sue me. I want a cigarette now. And some fried dill pickles. And a foot massage.”

  “Okay, I can get you the pickles and the foot massage. For sure. No cigarettes and no alcohol.” I was dealing with a Tinkie I didn’t know.

  I pulled up in front of the B&B and asked Donna to borrow some supplies while Tinkie waited in the car. It didn’t take long to gather what we’d need, and then we drove back to the miniature Holy Land. We pulled up at the office of the gardens and got out.

  Tinkie had already forgotten her list of demands and was off on improving her garden at Hilltop. “Let’s get some cuttings of some of these plants. I think my gardener might be able to make a lot of them grow with proper placement in sunny areas. I realize Zinnia has colder winters than here, but the gardener works magic with plants, and I’d love some of these exotics to show to the baby as she’s growing up. Also we need to look for that spotted water hemlock stuff. If we can find it growing wild here, it will make a good case for accidental poisoning.” She was off on another
tangent. Hormone brain! And Jitty wanted me to conceive? Coleman would lock me in a cell and Jitty would throw away the key if I was all over the place like Tinkie.

  “Sure, we can forget all about a murder and go look for plant cuttings.” It was easier to go along with her than to argue. Besides, we’d soon have to go in. The soft dusk wasn’t far away and a bit of a walk would do us both good. When we opened the trunk to search for something to collect plants, I heard what sounded like two men arguing. Curious, Tinkie and I crept closer to the small office where Dr. Reynolds worked.

  “You can’t expand!” I recognized the voice as belonging to Cosmo Constantine. We’d left his house earlier and here he was, back at the scene of the crime.

  “These gardens and the miniature Holy Land are my life’s work,” Reynolds said calmly. “I promise you, Cosmo, that I will take the utmost care with the natural world. I don’t put out any poisons or toxins. I don’t even kill off the poisonous plants. You know this. And you also knew the expansion was inevitable. This isn’t a new conversation.”

  Tinkie and I moved closer and closer to the office until we could peek in the window. Cosmo was talking.

  “It isn’t enough to be careful. Humans foul everything they touch. Besides, you diverted the water from the spring that fed my marsh. It’s all drying up. The turtles, snakes, and water birds are hurting.”

  “I’m sorry. I had to have the water to fill the Dead Sea.”

  “What do you need a lake for? Why can’t you reduce the size of your Dead Sea? No one will know the difference.”

  Reynolds sighed heavily. “The sea is part of the biblical landscape. But I will reroute the spillover back to your property. That’s the best I can do.”

  “I’m not sure it’s enough,” Cosmo said, leaning forward. “I’m onto you, Reynolds. I don’t know how Erik Ward was arrested for killing Slay when I know it was you who killed him.”

  “I wouldn’t kill anyone. I detested Slay, but I’m not the kind of man who resorts to violence.”

  “You can sound all holier than thou, but I know what you did last summer. I won’t forget it either.”

  “What did he do?” Tinkie whispered.

  “I don’t know.” We were both shamelessly eavesdropping. “Hush so we can hear.”

  Her response was a stomach growl loud enough to wake the dead. She made an O with her mouth and clapped a hand over her face, as if that was where the noise had come from.

  “You can’t be hungry again. Can you?”

  She nodded. “Starving.”

  The door of the office opened and Cosmo came out. He threw a wave at us as he headed into the woods and disappeared among the thick pine trunks. Daniel Reynolds came out next. He took in the gloves and trowel we held.

  “I remember Tinkie admired some of my native plants. I’ll help you gather some cuttings, and I have some potted plants you’re welcome to,” he said.

  “Great.” Tinkie looked behind his back at me and mouthed the words, “Ask him.”

  I wasn’t about to. If we wanted that information we were going to have to trick it out of him.

  The three of us walked abreast as we traveled through the stories of the Old and New Testaments. We came to the Garden of Gethsemane where we’d found Perry Slay’s warm corpse. Reynolds had been busy repairing the damage to the area. There was cement mixed in a wheelbarrow where he was repairing the buildings, and new sprigs of plants to make up for the flora that Slay had crushed.

  “Hard to believe Slay was here,” he said, looking around. “I’ve found a lot of wild creatures here, from snakes to turtles to lizards and frogs. I never anticipated finding a dead body.”

  “Do you think the murder will harm the tourist trade?” It occurred to me that killing Slay here might be directed toward running the gardens out of business. Cosmo had suggested that perhaps Reynolds was the intended victim of a plot.

  “Maybe,” Reynolds said. “On the other hand, people can be ghoulish. It might help draw more tourists.”

  He was right about that—and Reynolds had a pretty good understanding of human nature.

  We wandered along the trail, taking in the magic of a land so meticulously crafted in miniature detail. I marveled at the tomb where Jesus was buried. At the large stone that was rolled away from the opening. At the sad hill with three crosses. I was completely caught up in the adventure that Reynolds was leading us on when I heard a dog barking.

  “Brutus!”

  Reynolds picked up his leisurely pace and hurried up a hill. Tinkie and I chugged along behind him. We didn’t move as fast as he did.

  “Brutus!” he called his dog. “Come on, boy.” He looked back at us. “He looks fierce but he wouldn’t harm a fly.”

  I’d seen the dog and he looked as if he could fit a whole human head in his jaws if he decided to give it a try. We ran up on Reynolds at a sign that declared THE DEAD SEA.

  This was the body of water Cosmo had been complaining about. Brutus stood at the edge of the lake, barking at something in the water. The sun was setting, and the glare made it hard to see, but I shielded my eyes with my hand and squinted. Something white floated on the water. Floated very still. Floated very much like a dead body.

  “It’s a person!” I kicked off my shoes but Reynolds was faster. He dove in the water and took off with the stroke of an Olympic champion. In a moment he had the body in a fireman’s carry and was pulling it toward the shore. I waded into the chill water to help him bring the body of a once-beautiful woman ashore.

  8

  “It’s Patrice Pepperdine,” Reynolds said as he sat on the edge of the Dead Sea, shivering and gasping for air. We were both winded and freezing. “I know her from town.”

  “What would she be doing out here at dusk?” Tinkie asked the logical question even as she was dialing the sheriff’s office.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was she a regular at the gardens?” I asked. Finally I stood and started jumping around to warm up.

  Tinkie held up a hand for quiet as she spoke with Sheriff Glory. She described how we’d found Patrice in the water, dragged her to shore, and were waiting for Sheriff Glory, an ambulance, and a coroner. Maybe not in that order.

  “She’s safely out of the water, meaning she can’t float off or sink.” Tinkie was giving the details.

  The Dead Sea wasn’t that big, but in the growing dark we could have lost the body had Brutus not alerted us. I didn’t want to look at her, but I did. I was no judge of dead people in water but my guess was that she’d been dead less than a few hours. The wear and tear of water decomposition weren’t yet visible to my eye. The coroner would be able to determine a more accurate time of death.

  “Do you know this woman well enough to say if she may have been depressed?” It was possible this was a suicide.

  “She never struck me as someone likely to … drown herself. Even if she chose to take her own life, why here? The gardens have no meaning to her as far as I know.” He hesitated. “What do you think happened?” Reynolds was pretty shaken.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing. Who is Patrice Pepperdine? What’s her story?”

  Reynolds rolled his eyes. “You aren’t going to like this at all. She’s Erik Ward’s neighbor, and they’ve been in a violent feud.”

  “What kind of feud?” Erik didn’t need this new connection, but if there was something here, I wanted to know all the details.

  “Oh, it’s not good. Erik had the oldest camellia bush in the Southeast in his yard. It was a magnificent version. In fact, he’s given me several cuttings and I have them here in the gardens, which is a good thing because I can make sure Erik at least has a part of that magnificent plant.”

  “Okay, okay, so he had an old bush. How does this relate to Patrice?”

  “Someone poisoned the bush. Poured enough herbicide on it to take it down to the root despite all that Erik did to save it. He accused Patrice, who denied it, but the consensus of opinion in town is that Patrice did
it. Erik and Patrice had some kind of vendetta going.”

  “And Erik would kill her over a bush?”

  “Those heritage camellias are better than gold. They’ve endured all kinds of weather changes and attacks by insects and fungus.” Reynolds gave me a look that let me know he realized I had a black thumb instead of a green one. “A non-plant-lover can never understand how some of the magnificent plant creations are like our children. Equally beloved.”

  I could grasp that. I loved my cat, dog, and horses as much as most people loved their children. It didn’t seem too far-fetched to extend that sentiment to plants. I loved the sycamore trees that lined the driveway to Dahlia House. They were my sentinels. Sometimes the wind sang a lullaby in their leafy branches. Who was I to judge another person’s love?

  “Maybe Erik and Patrice had a war going on between them, but this is also the second murder here at the gardens.” I wasn’t really defending Erik, because he didn’t need defending. I was only pointing out the facts. “Maybe it’s someone with a burn on for you.”

  Reynolds looked truly taken aback. “No one hates me enough to kill two people just to … to…” He threw up his hands. Brutus came over to make sure his master was not in distress.

  “To put you out of business? To ultimately frame you for murder? Like it or not, if the gardens get a reputation for being the grounds for a serial killer, it will put off the tourist trade. If they suspect you of being the killer, that’s the end of your business no matter how innocent you are.”

  “I was talking to my congregation when the first body was found,” he said.

  “When the body was found. Not when the murder occurred.” It was an important distinction.

  Tinkie finally got off the phone. “You’d better call Coleman, Sarah Booth.”

  I was reluctant to tell him about the murders. He’d be justifiably upset. And five hours away, which would only make him fret. “He can’t do anything here. We aren’t in any danger.”

  “You need to call him and keep him abreast, just the way I do Oscar. It’s what caring people do.”

  I felt like a bug pinned to a page. “Right.” I’d thrown my phone on the bank of the lake before I jumped in, so I searched around until I found it. I walked down the trail toward Jerusalem as I called my lover. Coleman answered on the first ring. “What’s wrong?” he asked.