Cafe Underground Presents
COMING UP ROSES
Book 2 -- Chapters 1
The Detective Andi Wicksham Series, by RL Bell
Copyright © 1997 RL BELL
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Andi Wicksham's INVESTIGATORY SERVICES
Chapter 1
Private investigator Andi Wicksham stood at the edge of a double row of small holes aligned in a field with similar rows holding miniature winter-bare roses. With the rain plastering her hair to her head and dripping down her neck, Andi cursed not bringing a hat and that she'd been so eager for a case without veterinarians or infidelity that she'd been seduced into this one. Her eyes flitted from client to client pondering their real agenda--twenty-four roses couldn't possibly be important enough to justify her daily fee.
It was an early spring downpour--with rain falling faster than it could be absorbed, the ground glistening under a sheen, running to rivulets along each row to gather into streamlets filling flooding ditches at the far edge of the garden. Big drops splashed madly in half-full holes. Her four clients stood quietly half a step back on the other side, heads bowed, each alone with their thoughts as if sharing a grave-side prayer.
Yesterday Darrel Feight, the missing rose's owner was found dead in his living room and twenty-four of his miniature roses were discovered missing. It had rained all day yesterday like it was raining now, the rain had washed all detail from the paths once over-run with crisscrossing cart-tracks and muddy footprints.
Andi watched her client's faces. Perhaps it was the water soaking her pants and socks that made her wish she had another way to make a living. Maybe the rain and overcast prejudiced her, but already she didn't like them.
She just discovered that her new yellow, thigh-length rain-coat of an impenetrable rubbery fabric leaked at its seams. Water ran down her neck--she squirmed only to feel it trace a cold, damp track down her back.
Andi stooped to look closer at the holes; two thrusts with a curve-backed shovel, one on each side, then the shovel was levered against the path side of the hole. Bits of root trailed from the sides and bottom where they'd yanked from the soil. She glanced around the soggy crime scene. It felt vaguely of standing in Liliput; all the roses in the section were stubby miniatures; bare branches with only the barest hint of budding leaves.
She rose to turn and look across to the parking lot--it was separated from the house by a thick hedge. A tree-shaking gust of wind dashed a torrent off the pavement and into a misty-aerosol that caught and streaked sideways like fog before the rain settled back to a steady downpour.
"They could still be here somewhere, couldn't they?" Andi asked, peering through the rain to fix the general lay-out of the property in her mind. "...behind a shed or something?"
"No...we searched thoroughly." Warren Laroux dismissed the idea out of hand, blinked water from his eyes and turned from the driving rain.
Andi accepted the claim without challenge; things could always be hidden; how hard would this group of overly-comfortable dilettantes look? Andi glanced over her shoulder to the shelter of the potting shed, shook her head and stepped purposefully in that direction. Despite her slicker she was soaked to the bone. She silently cursed the way the mud grabbed with clay-like restraining tugs each time she raised a foot.
"Nothing else missing?" Andi addressed Laroux as he caught up with her. He was the executor of the estate and the dead man's attorney; it was he who had called her in.
He shook his head "No" and wiped his thinning hair to the side of his forehead.
Andi reviewed her mental file. Yesterday morning Darrel Feight's body was found by his niece--no signs of violence, no suicide note. A preliminary coroner's report noted that the death appeared consistent with myocardial infarction--he was sixty-three.
The roses' disappearance was discovered late yesterday--six hours after Feight was found, maybe ten hours after his death. This morning, a call from Laroux waited on her office machine. She'd called back and flatly stated her day was crowded--Laroux insisted and finally she cleared a hour.
Darrel Feight's horticultural beneficiaries followed behind them up the path. Andi watched Laroux as he walked beside her. "If this is a commercial nursery, there must be plants dug all the time. How can you be sure these were his hybrids?" She stepped under the overhang and scraped her shoes on one of the two steel mud-irons set in cement at the edge of the covered potting shed.
Laroux stood at the other scrapper. "Not this time of year. Bare-rootstock season's mid-fall to winter, then pruning, cleanup and Christmas. There's little done mid-winter to mid-spring." He took his water-spattered glasses off and held them in his hand. "Anyway...the holes are fresh."
Andi ignored his pointing out the obvious. "You said he hadn't sold any roses in months?"
"...we checked his bookkeeping--there's no paper-trail...besides, all four of us were here sunday..." He gestured toward the others just stepping in from the rain. "...we can attest to them being there." Laroux took off his hat and ran his fingers across his damp scalp. "I think Jennifer has a photo showing Darrel and William kneeling beside them."
Andi felt her attention wandering; she pulled herself back to the problem. "Would anyone but a collector would want them?" she queried politely. There'd be no difficulty maintaining professional distance from her clients in this case. The way they could pour conspicuous amounts of money down muddy holes and rationalize it as business made her skin crawl even when the money was flowing to her pocket. Maybe she was in the wrong line of work--who but the rich hired detectives? Why investigate roses instead of their friend and colleague's death?
"Any real rose fancier might. These are the cream of Darrel's work...culmination of two decades of grafting and hybridizing...they're distinctive and unique..." Warren's voice resonated heavy with loss and he concluded with a heart-felt sigh.
Andi looked back as the others approached. "There can't be many rose experts around. If the roses turn up in a couple of years wouldn't you know they were the stolen ones?"
Jennifer Gould started scraping her shoes, but paused to look over her shoulder, "Individual bushes are seldom distinctive and we all develop similar hybrids..."
"Is it significant that the miniatures were almost bare of buds while other roses already had shoots and leaves?" Andi looked back toward the holes again.
"Its probably easier on the plants to be disturbed now than a month from now...but its just a species variation." Gould discounted the observation out of hand.
"So what made those valuable?" Andi watched Gould's face.
Jennifer Gould leaned back to give Andi a superior look. "Darrel locked unique attributes together in a stable genetic stock...a lacy-leafed, heavy-barked, tea-noisette with deep apricot color and spicy-apple scent topping off deep-rose base notes." She looked over her shoulder and gave a sad-eyed smile. "Whoever took them could adapt a new line and claim it as their own. They could do that in Santa Rosa, or Victoria, BC or anywhere..."
Andi made a performance out of trying to understand, self-consciously scuffing the edge of her shoe on the hard-packed, graveled floor like a kid asking for her frisbie back. "You know...it seems a casual collector might want a plant or two...that might be reasonable for a garden...do you think that all of them being taken points to a professional?" She trailed the word `professional' upward and looked beyond Jennifer in the direction of the rose-less rows of water-filled holes.
"You have to control all of a strain to claim it." Jennifer Gould confirmed with gruff authority. "Only a commercial hybridizer would need that..." She gave a last kick at the mud-iron, pulled at the collar of her coat and pushed past Andi to give William Tyson a turn at scraping the mud from his shoes.
Andi nodded and stepped to the rear of the open walled potting shed, watching her clients mill, shaking water from their clothes and exchanging generalities.
"You think Darrel Feight died of a heart attack?" Andi asked Laroux.
He shrugged disconsolately, "The police evidently thought so...they're awaiting lab results." Warren turned away from the others, caught Andi's eye and replied half-under his breath. "It's too much of a coincidence for me...you are keeping your eye on that, aren't you?" He shot Andi a cold stare, holding her eyes until breaking away with a little underscoring nod.
Andi chewed her lip and tried to keep on track. Stray thoughts of her partner Lena kept stirring, rising up to steal attention. Last week they argued about pets; decided no to a dog, maybe to a cat. Then they argued about time spent with friends; how much responsibility to take on when one had a hard time. Lena was back warm and dry in their office.
Andi blinked and shook her head to clear it, yanking herself back her business at hand. Laroux said the stolen roses could be worth a couple or three hundred thousand depending on how they were sold. It was hard to believe--exaggeration was a basic human trait, but what did she know of the price of roses? Still...she made a mental note to cash her checks the same day she got them.
Along with the recently departed Darrel Feight--William Tyson, Jennifer Gould, Elizabeth Dao, and Warren Laroux shared a devotion to rose breeding. They were among the Northwest's most successful hybridizers and they lived within a half-mile of each other. They were the beneficiaries of Feight's roses. Andi did a quick mental division; a few hundred grand--each share would be fifty or seventy-five--not sharing would probably make the money enough to kill for if their professional reputations and the breeding potential wasn't enough.
With no other descendants, the non-rose bulk of the estate was going to his niece Alison Simpson, a poor relative he'd taken in after her release from several years in a mental hospital. She'd answered the door when Andi came, an insecure, plain woman--but obviously with more sense than her clients--she'd declined the invitation to join them in the downpour.
Alison Simpson was rumored to have no interest in her uncle's passion, hence his will's instructions that the roses go to his rivals--they at least, would honor the fruit of his work. Simpson had kept house for Feight the last fourteen years. Now, Warren Laroux had quietly explained, Simpson was receiving the property and house with a portfolio of holdings in the comfortably upper six-figure range.
Simpson had answered the door when Andi knocked. She'd let her in without meeting eyes, simply showing her to the drawing room where her uncle's friends waited. Then, without a word to her guests, she closed the drawing room door and retired to the kitchen.
The rose breeders greeted Andi with hand-shakes and introductions while overlooking Simpson the way they'd overlook a waitress or busboy. Her uncle's will carried his obsession beyond the grave, giving these snobs a sizeable portion of what would have been hers. Andi made a mental note--if her uncle treated her like his friends did now, she had an understandable reason to hate him.
Andi had brought up the expense of investigation during the first minute together with her clients and had given her standard disclaimer--results not guaranteed. None of them seemed concerned with her fee or that it might go for naught and none excluded Darrel Feight's death from her inquiry's focus.
They insisted that she view the site the downpour. The way they'd trailed passively behind had bolstered the sense of grave-side mourning and fed the illusion of her presiding over a solemn proceeding.
Andi told them bluntly that since each had motive and opportunity, they themselves were the most likely suspects. It didn't seem to alarm or dissuade them. Andi looked from face to face to read who might be nervous, but learned nothing--each stared back interested, but unmoved.
Soaked and bad-humored, Andi finally broke away, declined an offer of coffee, curtly announcing she'd inspect each of their gardens and need forty minutes of their time for questions.
She retreated to her car, grateful to escape; started the engine and rolled down the long driveway, cursing that she hadn't gotten the new windshield wipers Lena'd suggested and trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Hoping for an insight this morning, after talking to Laroux, she'd called her mother. Doris Wicksham, now a retired political science professor had dabbled in rose breeding and knew Elizabeth Dao. Her mother first chatted about some medical tests, then offered impressions and backgrounds of her clients.
Elizabeth Dao had been a fellow academic from Lewis and Clark, with an office up the hall from Andi's mother. Dow and her mother had a collegial closeness build through parallel careers liberally scattered with committee meetings, white wine-and-brie receptions and the tedium of teaching. Dabbling in roses ranked low among her mother's retirement interests, but she'd heard significant gossip.
There had been five in Portland's inner court of rose hybridizers--a set of affluent, comfortably-intellectual retirees; Darrel Feight had been active the longest. By her mother's account, he'd retired as an engineer to perfect his reputation as cantankerous old goat.
Warren Laroux joined the group about the same time as Betty Dao, six or eight years ago, pouring himself into roses with a passion after the death of his wife. The third man, William Tyson, moved from Virginia five years before with a seemingly effortless entre to their circle. He was a tall, angular Air Force retiree vigorously dabbling in real estate, roses and right-wing politics.
Jennifer Gould joined just after Tyson, moving to the immediate neighborhood and being accepted among the inner coterie something just over four years ago. Gould was a retired bank manager, with a permanently soured expression and straight-backed, anal fussiness that rankled Andi before they were even introduced.
All had been widowed, all were economically comfortable if not affluent, carried themselves with a condescending air of disapproval and shared a passion for miniature roses. All had come out and withstood the downpour to accompany her. In all probability though, one of them had twenty-four roses hidden away among their own. She had a gut-feeling about Darrel Feight's death--eat least one of those people behind her knew more than they were saying.
Andi turned from Feight's drive onto the small lane. It was as good to get away from them as it was to get out of the rain. They reminded her of the worst parts of her mother.
Andi phoned Lena from the telephone booth in front of a convenience store/gas station on the county road just up from Feight's. "Lena...call Spinelli for me, would you? Make up something, I'm soaked and going to be twenty minutes late..."
"Yo Sherlock...I just talked to him, seems his baritone sax turned up at a neighbor's. I told him we'd still bill a minimum...he said `Fine..'"
"So what time's my next appointment?" Andi shivered as a gust of wind tore at her wet clothes. She could see her reflection in the storefront's window, her short, dark hair lay plastered to her forehead made her ears obvious, the angular lines of her face in the humorless dead-pan lines.
"You got a four-thirty in Sellwood about documenting an infidelity...remember...Mrs. Knowles?" Lena seemed to be reaching across her table for a file. "She wants you to come up with high-tech surveillance stuff...you talked twice on the phone."
"Oh yeah, the techno-freak..." Andi grumbled disconsolately at being reminded.
"She's buying and we're keeping...so don't discourage her..." Lena cautioned dryly. "Maybe push her toward an audio dish or infra-red video camera...you looked through the catalogues?"
Andi avoided looking through the magazines of Mission Impossible spy-gear the way she avoided TV evangelists. While legal to sell and own the stuff, using it treaded questionable ground. "Why doesn't Knowles just divorce him?" she complained insincerely. "Either he's screwing around or not...either she's unhappy or not...why spend six or eight grand digging up evidence?"
"Your mid-century roots are showing, Sherlock." teased Lena. "Maybe Knowles thinks black-mail will squeeze a settlement...maybe it spices their love life. For all we know she's a voyeur and they plan the exploits together...maybe they'll play your humble recordings over and over in the privacy of their bedroom. Think of yourself as a sexual aide...after all, you're charging like a therapist."
"Good-bye Watson..." replied Andi, putting as much of a droll edge on her response as she could. She returned to her car and turned the heater to max. The rain was slacking off. She'd speed home for a shower and change of clothes.
What a life--lucky her, with Spinelli crossed off her calendar she could whittle an inch or two of paperwork from her pending box before heading out to discuss high-tech surveillance with a rich matron into spy novels and intrigue.
In warm, dry clothes Andi returned to her office. There in Portland it was only a steady drizzle. On her desk was a note that her mother called.
"She sounded upset..." Lena offered with a quiet voice so unlike her usual tone that Andi got suspicious. Lena was dressed in layers of mismatched, bright-colored clothes, her hair bleached strikingly white and growing out about four inches long in an carefully un-coiffed mop.
Without even going around to her chair Andi reached for the phone and impatiently punched in the number. It was already well after lunch-time and her stomach growled objections.
"Hello...Doris Wicksham..." her mother answered.
"Hi Mom...I got a note that you called..." Andi idly looked out the window at the people walking the sidewalk across the street in the rain.
"Hi, honey..." her mother's voice sounded tired, with an edge that could be the residue of tears.
"What's up? You don't sound too good..."
"Are you sitting down, Andi?" her mother asked.
Andi wasn't, but she said "Yeah, why?"
"I just got the results of a biopsy...my breast cancer's back and...it's spreading..." There was a long, long silence in which the world seemed to contract to a pinpoint. "Andi? Are you there?" her mother asked with alarm.
Andi felt the blood drain from her face. "Yeah..." she croaked, suddenly feeling cold and clammy. "I'm here...are you sure? Are you OK? Where are you?"
"I'm in shock at the moment...I'd thought I was all done with that..." Her mother's voice broke as she subdued a sob with a gasping breath.
"Have you told Cinny?" Cinny was her sister, in Dallas now. "What do they want to do? Is there anything I can do?" Andi fought back the question--what it meant.
She was afraid that she already knew. She didn't want to ask, didn't want to hear, didn't want to know.
"...I couldn't face Cinny just now. Maybe you could call her in a few days...after the results of the next batch of tests..." Her mother had lapsed into the quiet, resigned voice she'd used when Andi's father died.
"What sort of treatment will this mean?" Andi pushed impatiently. She held the phone to her ear as she circled around and sank resignedly in her chair.
"Radiation for sure...they think it's into my bones...maybe a marrow transplant...I don't really know." Her voice had ebbed to a whisper.
"Radiation again?" Andi asked, "Another surgery?"
"I don't know, honey...I don't know. I just wanted to tell you. I'm going in tomorrow for another appointment. They'll take another set of biopsies and blood. When I talk to Dr. George she'll fill in details."
"Do you want me to come down? I could be there..." Andi looked at her watch, "...in an hour...it's really no problem. What do you need?"
Mrs. Wicksham's voice recovered the tone of competency Andi always remembered it having. "I just needed to tell you, Andi. No, don't come down...stay up there with Lena. There'll be time enough to visit and discuss everything..." The assurance and strength that reentered her voice was more reassuring than anything she could have said.
"OK, Mom..." Andi replied quietly. "...shall I call tomorrow?"
"In the evening, but if I'm out just try the next day..." There was a moment of quiet as if her mother was reviewing a list. "Now I've a lot more to do so I've got to hang up. Thanks for calling back..." Her mother sounded exactly like she used to when telling about upcoming plans for a symposium on a weekend Andi had softball games.
"Is there anything I can do?" asked Andi in a helpless voice.
"Well, I suggest you put off calling Cinny for a couple of days. You'd put the wrong spin on it entirely if you called her in the state you're in now. Do what you think best, but that's my suggestion..."
"Sure..." Andi responded subdued.
"Other than that, I can't think of anything dear...I know this is going to be hard, but I want to put the best face on it that I can. OK? Until later then...I love you..."
Andi blinked. The phone line clicked off as she was saying "Goodbye," and she slowly lowered the phone to her desk.
Lena had come over. "Andi?" she asked gently. "It's bad isn't it?" She looked down into Andi's face and reached a finger to dab away a tear that formed at the outer edge of Andi's eye.
"Her cancer's back..." Andi said simply. Her voice came close to sobbing and she had a haunted look in her eyes. "...it's spread..."
Lena watched Andi's face until she realized that Andi's eyes weren't focusing on the room around them. Without another word, she returned to chair, took up her phone and rescheduled Andi's appointments.
That afternoon their office was empty.
Lena took Andi out for a walk in the rain. They walked up and down the branching paths of Mount Tabor until they were soaked and their muscles ached. Still on foot, they drifted back to their apartment, stopped for a drink of water and dry clothes and stayed to make long, needy love on the rumpled sheets of their un-made bed.
Later, as evening over-took late afternoon, Andi sat by herself under the eves of the balcony while Lena poached some sole from the freezer in lemon juice and capers and steamed broccoli and rice to go with it.
Andi could smell the fish, but her stomach felt leaden. That her mother had called her instead of Cinny was almost shocking--Cinny had always been the close one, the one her mother would confide in.
Now her mother didn't even want Andi to phone Cinny for a couple of days--Cinny who was a CPA and always a good girl in the most nauseating sense of the word. Andi could hardly believe her mother'd called her first to share the tragedy. In a depressing way it was more validation than she'd ever had before. The thought brought a cryptic smile--then she hated herself for finding anything good in the situation.
Her mother discovered a breast lump six years ago, had a lumpectomy and radiation. No mastectomy and no chemo to take her hair and drain her strength. That was it, the whole of it, she thought it a scary chapter long closed.
For it to return was bad, that it had spread, dangerous, and to her bones, worst of all. Andi fought against really knowing, but death rose unbidden behind other thoughts. Stomach-gnawing hopelessness opened its maw like a canyon. She'd have come home to drink if it were five years ago during her binge period. Now, she sat feeling the air on her skin, feeling the slow pacing pulse of time tick against the ultimate futility of life.
Lena stuck her head out the door, seeking Andi's eyes before saying anything. "Dinner's ready...want to eat out here?"
"No..." Andi didn't want any favors marking this time as special. "No, I'll come in..."
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Copyright © 1997 RL BELL.
Last Updated 5/24/97
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