A Sip of Murder (Japanese Tea Garden Mysteries Book 1) Page 10

  “What? No. She had a…” Her voice trailed off. The smile on her face faltered and then crumbled. “Okay, yes. I knew about the will.”

  Suddenly, I wished that I had chosen a more public place to have this conversation. Confronting someone who was a possible killer in a secluded part of the garden was not one of my better plans. Still, I couldn’t live with the uncertainty anymore. “Is that why you’ve been so nice to me? So that if the garden did turn out to be yours, I might not fight it as much?” I asked.

  “No, no, no. It’s nothing like that. The truth is, I did know about the will, but I also knew that your grandmother had changed her mind about that. Near the end, we sat down and had a heart to heart. She told me that she wanted to leave the garden to her family—to you. I fully supported that decision. As much as I love this place, I felt a little odd taking it from her when I knew she still had living relatives.”

  “Then why did you offer to work here for free? It doesn’t make sense to me.” I kept studying her face, looking for anything that might signal she was lying.

  “I just really love the gardens. I wanted to see them get back to their prime again. It just brings so much joy to the community to have them here.” Kelly took a deep breath and looked at the ground. “But, if I’m being totally honest, I also wanted to see the will. I know she changed her mind, but I guess I just wanted to see it with my own eyes. I thought it would be easy since Mrs. Matsuki always kept the key to the giftshop on top of the doorframe. When you took it down and started keeping the key on you, it made things more difficult. I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to try to remain as calm as possible, okay?”

  “I’m not making any promises, but I’ll try.”

  Kelly hesitated for a moment before she spoke again. “I was the one who broke into the office that one night. I tried to make sure you were gone. I hid in the bushes until I saw you walking to the parking lot, then I doubled back and pried open the little window. I guess you came back for something and caught me. I didn’t know what to do, so I panicked and ran. I just kept thinking, who’s going to believe that I only wanted to see the will?”

  My heart pounded in my chest. “Kelly, were you the one who killed Angela?” The words were barely more than a whisper.

  “No! Oh my gosh, no! The worst I ever did was break into the office, I swear!” The alarm in her eyes made me want to believe her. Still, just because she confessed to one, didn’t mean she would confess to the other, even if she had done it.

  “Kelly, if you wanted to see the will, all you had to do was ask me. I still have a copy in my purse from when I scanned it and emailed it to my attorney.” She didn’t need to know that the attorney I sent it to just happened to be my ex-husband. “Do you still want to see it?”

  She lowered her head in embarrassment. “No, thank you. I’m too ashamed of how I acted. I really just want to go work the front gate right now. Do you think maybe we could forget all of that ever happened? I’m sorry I scared you that night.”

  “It might take me some time to adjust to everything. Just promise me that if you need anything else you’ll come to me instead of breaking and entering.”

  “Yes. I promise.” She nodded fervently and ducked back down the hill towards the main entrance gate.

  Kelly had been the one who had broken in that night? It was a little hard to believe. I certainly hadn’t expected that. Still, the unfinished murder investigation and the rock incident were hanging over my head. Maybe I should have confronted her about the rock falling, too. I wanted to believe she really was as nice of a person as she seemed to be, but until there was an arrest made, I knew I wouldn’t really be able to let my guard down.

  Suddenly, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. A primal instinct told me that someone was watching me. Maybe they had been watching the whole exchange I had just had with Kelly. A twig snapped somewhere behind me. I spun around. Adrenaline rushing through me, I was ready for anything. Through the hedges, I managed to catch a glimpse of a black sweater with red polka dots disappearing into the bushes. It was a sweater that I had seen once before. Agatha.

  Under the circumstances, I couldn’t think of a more unlikely visitor to the garden. Some part of me latched onto the fear that was swirling in my gut. Agatha had accused me of murder time and time again. No, if she was lurking nearby, it wasn’t for the fresh air. My mind whirled back to the incident with the falling rock. Agatha was convinced that I killed her sister. With the police investigation coming up empty so far, would she seek out vengeance on her own? Had her bitterness driven her to lurking around the garden just waiting for the opportunity to drop rocks on my head? I couldn’t let her get away, especially after she accused me of stalking her. If I caught her red-handed, what would she have to say for herself?

  Fallen, dry leaves crunched under my feet as I chased after Agatha. Low hanging branches grasped at my hair. Bushes raked their splintery fingers along my legs. The scrambling snap of twigs under Agatha’s lumbering gait told me I was gaining on her. I could see her more clearly through the greenery now. Her quick movements were panicked, as she frantically searched for a way out. She knew as well as I did that I would catch her in no time.

  “Have you come to finish the job? Are you going to take out the remaining sister now?” Agatha unexpectedly spun on me like a cornered animal. The fear in her eyes changed to rage.

  “What are you doing here, Agatha?” I was determined not to balk at the venom in her voice.

  Tears welled up in her eyes. “I have just as much right to be here as anyone else! I’ve done nothing wrong, unlike you!”

  “Agatha!” My voice rose to meet hers.

  “No! You will not silence me. You asked me why I’m here, and now you’re going to listen to me! This hateful garden is the last place my dear sister was alive. Your flowers are watered with her blood! I can’t help it if I feel drawn here just because I want to be close to her again. I wish you had never moved here. Why couldn’t this place have just died like your witch of a grandmother?” Agatha’s breath came in ragged, hate-filled heaves.

  My nails dug into my palms. “Get. Out.”

  The chill in my voice echoed the frozen daggers my eyes were shooting at her. I didn’t care how much pain she was in over the loss of her sister. There was no excuse for the way she was speaking to me. No one would talk about my grandmother like that in her own garden. Seizing her chance to escape, Agatha stomped away from me as fast as she could while still trying to hold on to her dignity.

  Once she was gone, my strength wavered momentarily. This whole ordeal had me under a great deal of stress, and it was wearing on me. I couldn’t—no, wouldn’t—take it anymore. The mystery of Angela’s death and all of the suspicious activity since then had dragged its filth through my life long enough.

  Confronting Kelly and Agatha had seemed to be an effective enough way of bringing out information—even if I couldn’t be certain that what they said was the truth. I took a deep breath. It was time for one more confrontation.

  Chapter 16

  My car bucked and bumped against the driveway to Daniel Walker’s quarry. The dirt road was pitted with missing rocks. Mud puddles belched up sludge onto my bumpers. On both sides of the driveway, neatly carved rectangle stones were stacked in cubes on top of wooden pallets. Dust billowed in the distance where workers toiled in the sun.

  The further I got down the long driveway, the more the landscape changed. The once beautiful hills were scarred where jagged chunks of rock had been blown loose with explosives. Forklifts shoved their beaten prongs under rocks that were too heavy for any man to lift. The piles of rock were haphazard now, a far cry from the neat blocks I had seen only a minute ago. Men wiped the dirt from their faces. Their sweat left streaks of mud behind on their cheeks. White hardhats glinted in the sunlight. Even with my windows up, I could hear the beeping and grinding of digging equipment.

  I parked next to some dinged up work trucks sporting Daniel Walker’s las
t name. The men were casting searching glances in my direction. The site was void of any other females. At least a lot of workers meant a lot of witnesses. Walker wouldn’t dare kill me with so many people around. Uncomfortable under their gazes, I climbed out of my car and approached a non-threatening worker. His yellow, leather gloves were worn thin along the palms from use. He squinted into the sun as my feet crunched across the ground to where he was working.

  “Excuse me?” I had to raise my voice for him to be able to hear me above the clamoring machines.

  “How can I help you, ma’am?”

  His manners caught me off guard. The thick drawl of his voice was deeper than I expected. “Can you tell me where Daniel Walker is?”

  “Should be right up there.” He pointed towards a brown, doublewide trailer.

  “Thanks!”

  Flying rocks had bit holes in the siding of the trailer. Even from outside I could smell the nicotine that had stained its interior walls. I didn’t stop to knock. After all, he hadn’t shown any common courtesy when he sent that surveyor to the garden. I was brazened. The commanding thud of my footfalls charged the door. I shoved it open. The door banged against the inside wall.

  “What the—Ah. Miss Morgan. What can I d—”

  “Do you just not understand what the word ‘no’ means?” My words curled around my tongue like barbed wire.

  “You got something to say, Miss Morgan?” Daniel stood up so quickly that his chair fell backwards. His chest puffed out. Every muscle in his body was tensed.

  For a second, my resolve wavered. There were no witnesses in the trailer. Why hadn’t I lured him outside before I started this conversation? Still, having witnesses around hadn’t saved Angela, had it? I stood my ground. “I have refused your offer to buy my grandmother’s land repeatedly, but somehow you still think it’s okay to send over a surveyor. You need to get it through your thick skull that my land will never belong to you. Stop sending over trespassers. Stop drilling me about selling. It isn’t going to happen. Are you just as dumb as the rocks that you dig up, or what? I mean, come on!”

  As soon as I had said it, I realized my mistake. Daniel’s eyes darkened with the storm clouds of rage. “What did you just say to me?”

  My stomach bottomed out. I backed out the door into the sunlight. Daniel was advancing on me. Our situation was starting to get a few stares. His hands were balled into sledgehammer fists. If he tried to strike me, could I run? Would anyone try to stop him?

  “Let’s get something straight, Morgan. Maybe I can’t force you to sell, but I can make your land worthless. Worthless. That should be a word you’re very familiar with. I’ve just been appointed to the Board for Industry and Tourism. As a member of the board, I now have the power to advise the City Council of Little River. You see, private enterprise or not, your garden is a tourist attraction which now falls under my jurisdiction. There are certain ordinances you have to follow. At the first sign of a violation, I will make it my personal duty to shut that place down. Let’s see how stubborn you are on not selling when you can’t make any money off of the garden. How long do you think you will last then? A month? A week? I don’t think you would even last a day.”

  “You don’t intimidate me, Mr. Walker,” I lied. “It will take a lot more than insults to push me off that property.” I spun on my heel and power marched to my car.

  I didn’t let my composure break until I was back on the main road. There, I suddenly found my hands shaking so badly I had to pull over onto the shoulder. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself.

  A knock on my window made me look up. Had Daniel followed me? But no, it was Detective Sullivan who peered through my window, his eyebrows knitted together. “Now what?” I mumbled under my breath. I was getting tired of him popping up around every corner. He motioned for me to roll down my window. I cracked it just enough for us to be able to talk.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “What are you doing here, Detective? Have you been following me?”

  “Not exactly, no.”

  “Huh?” What did that mean?

  “I was going to meet you at the garden, and since we both left from the pharmacy then I guess technically you could say I followed you, but I wasn’t following you, following you if that makes sense.” His words rambled together. He looked a little flustered as he tried to explain himself.

  “Why were you going to meet me at the garden?” Suddenly something clicked in my head, and my voice rose indignantly. “Did Agatha call you again? Is that what this is about?”

  “What? No. Wait. Why would Agatha call me? Did you stalk her again?”

  “No, because to stalk someone again, you have to have previously stalked them for the first time. Nice try on tricking me though.”

  “Maddie, I wasn’t—No. Nope. It’s my day off, and I refuse to get pulled back into work on my day off. We’re getting off topic. I was just coming to return this to you. You left it at the pharmacy.” He held out my credit card and stuck the edge inside the open gap between my window and the top of the door.

  Taken aback, I slowly reached up to take the card from him. “Oh. Well, thank you.”

  “Yeah. Don’t mention it.” He shook his head and tapped the roof of my car twice with his hand before going back to his own vehicle.

  I left my card at the pharmacy? I hadn’t even realized it was missing. At least the law enforcement in this town was good for something. I took a deep breath to calm myself down and stashed my card in my purse. My hands were steady now. Gathering my strength, I finished driving the last couple of yards to the tea garden’s parking lot.

  Kelly was waiting by the gate when I climbed out of my car. “How did it go?”

  “Ugh.” I groaned. I really didn’t want to talk about it. As much as I hated to admit it, Daniel Walker’s words had unnerved me. It was as if he had known all of my insecurities. The man sure had a vindictive side to him. Was he vindictive enough to push a rock off of a ledge and try to kill me? From what I had just seen at the quarry, it wasn’t completely out of the question.

  “That good, huh?” Kelly’s sarcasm only made my mood worse.

  “Kelly, can we not do this right now? I’m having a really crappy day. I just want to get back to work.”

  “Sure. We don’t have to talk about it.”

  I started to walk away, but she called after me. “You know, one of the perks about being the boss is you can go home early sometimes. I can handle things if you need to take a personal day. I’ve done it before when your grandmother started getting sick.”

  The idea was tempting. I could just go home and curl up on the couch with Mamma Jackie and her peach juleps. A small voice in my head tried to justify leaving the garden to Kelly for the rest of the day, but Walker’s words haunted my thoughts. “I don’t think you would even last a day.” No. I couldn’t go home early. I needed to stay and tough it out. No matter what happened, I couldn’t let his suggestion that I was weak be right. The best way to defeat him would be to make the garden as successful as I knew it could be. For that to happen, I would have to set aside my own personal shortcomings and pour all of my love and effort into the garden just like my grandmother had done.

  Feeling a little more determined, I set my eyes on the souvenir shop on the hill. “No. I think I’ll stay.”

  Kelly shrugged her shoulders, but she still looked worried about me. “Suit yourself. Just know that if you ever do need to leave early, I’m happy to cover for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  The garden seemed more welcoming as I walked to the giftshop. It was almost like it knew that I had made the conscious decision to protect it with everything I had. It wasn’t just a business to me anymore. It was part of my heritage, part of me. The garden was a living, breathing thing. In a way, I had started to think of it as a sort of surrogate child. It needed me to care for it and keep it alive. Sometimes that was all anyone wanted. To feel needed.

  My fingers reached out to caress a
few leaves as I walked past one of the plants near the stone path. The waterfall tumbled lazily down the carved rocks and bubbled into the pool of water beneath it. A koi fish slapped its tail against the surface of the koi pond. Sweet smells of flowers and moist earth filled the air around me.

  Suddenly, the picturesque quality of the landscape was shattered by a cawing crow. Black feathers sliced through the air. The bird circled a few times and then landed on the roof of the giftshop. Its dark beak glinted in the sunlight. Talons gripped the newly replaced roofing. Its black, beady eyes focused on me.

  Unconsciously, my pace slowed. Something about the way the crow was perched made me think it could swoop down on me at any instant. Thanks to Moonshine, I had already had my fill of bird attacks. The cut on my hand stung from the memory of being bitten. I held up my hands as if to show it I wasn’t a threat. The crow cawed again. The sound echoed off of the garden walls.

  “Nice bird. Good bird. I’m just going to go inside, okay? No need for either of us to do anything we might regret.” I felt silly as I tried to reason with it. The crow shifted its weight. Apprehension made me frown.

  With a girly squeal, I quickly darted inside. That was all I needed. A crow with an attitude. I shivered and decided to busy myself with a few housekeeping chores. Repositioning the merchandise, I wiped down the shelves and the counter. Tidying up had always helped me to feel more in control of my life. My mind wandered back to what Daniel Walker had said. What ordinances were in place? It seemed that I still had a lot to learn about running the business properly. My hands scrubbed the countertop more vigorously. I would have to do some research on my own. Somehow, I didn’t think ignorance would be a good enough excuse if a violation happened.

  If I left straight from work, I might be able to get to the public library before it closed. Though, after my last visit to the library, I wasn’t all that gung ho to go back. I quickly finished tidying up and formulated a battle plan in my head. Everything was in its proper place. At least one thing had gone right today.