A Dawn of Death (16 page)

Helen doubted it, but she was curious what he thought was a bigger problem than Sheryl. "What is it?"

Quattrone's broad face hardened. "It's that awful town clerk, Dale Meeke-Mason."

"She's good at her job, from what I've heard."

"You wouldn't think that if you had to work with her." Quattrone herded Helen around to the far left corner of the model where she could see an area previously hidden by the two residential buildings. There was a square of open space, mostly lawn, with gravel paths radiating out from the center to the corners and midpoints of the perimeter, cutting the area into eight wedges. In the middle, where all the paths converged, there was a shade tree surrounded by little benches.

"We tried to anticipate Dale's objections. Even threw in a sop to her current obsession with outdoor line drying." He pointed at the perfectly scaled little beach umbrellas that dotted the green space.

It was only then that Helen realized they weren't umbrellas. They were outdoor line dryers, complete with tiny T-shirts and jeans hanging from them. Dale would definitely approve of them. She could probably even calculate exactly how much energy was used by the laundry facilities at Wharton Meadows, how much was attributable to the dryers, and how much these lines would save.

"Did you tell Dale about your plans?"

"She didn't give me a chance." The last traces of Quattrone's initially pleasant demeanor disappeared, and he didn't even try to hide his anger. "Made it clear that absolutely no concessions we offered would be enough if it meant changing the garden's location. I didn't understand half of what she was talking about. Something about tradition, black gold, and organic compliance years. I can't negotiate with a fanatic. That's why you have to find a way around her for me."

Helen was tougher than she looked, but Dale rode a Harley and wore army boots that she'd earned with a stint in the military. There were times when Helen was willing to push her limits, but she wasn't about to take on Dale directly. Few sane people would, even in perfect physical health.

She decided she must have misunderstood Quattrone. "You want me to move and shake
Dale
? On an issue she's passionate about?"

"I do."

Helen hadn't paid much attention to how close Quattrone was to her, but it struck her now that he was looming over her, boxing her into the corner between the table and the wall. She was used to being much smaller than most of the people she worked with, but few had ever tried to take advantage of that fact. At least, not more than once.

She wasn't entirely sure he intended to be threatening her, so she gave him the benefit of the doubt. "I think I've seen enough. If you'll excuse me, my driver is waiting for me."

He didn't move. "Not until you agree to talk to the clerk. Annie said you were the only person who might make Dale see reason. You care about the town and its people, don't you? Wharton needs the services we'll be able to provide with the expansion."

Even if Helen were willing to sacrifice her pea plants to help out Wharton Meadows—which she wasn't—she refused to be coerced into anything.

"I can't convince Dale of something I'm not convinced of myself," Helen said coldly. "Now get out of my way. It's time for me to leave."

Quattrone's face turned red, and his hands formed fists, although he had enough self-control not to raise them.

Helen wondered if she'd miscalculated just how far he was willing to go to get his way. Maybe he really did think he could use his size and strength to intimidate her. Was that why his assistant was so timid? And what about Annie? Had he used implied threats of violence successfully with her? Perhaps even taken it a step further, from verbal abuse to actual violence? As the Domestic Violence Officer, Detective Almeida might know if there'd ever been police intervention due to an altercation between Wes and Annie.

Still, Helen stood her ground, refusing to back farther into the corner and running out of patience. If Quattrone didn't get out of her way right now, she was going to show him just how much of a mover and shaker she could be.

A knock on the door followed by the assistant timidly peeking inside saved Quattrone from Helen's wrath. Judging by the irritated look on his face, the poor woman was probably going to get a lecture from him later when he ought to be thanking her for rescuing him from a bad situation.

According to the assistant, whose voice trembled as she spoke, there was a call that Quattrone had been expecting for weeks and absolutely had to take.

He moved away from the table slowly, obviously reluctant to free Helen.

"I was just leaving anyway," Helen said as she crossed the room, quashing the urge to run.

Once outside Quattrone's office and around the corner out of sight of the assistant, the adrenaline began to dissipate. Helen realized her hands were shaking and her legs were wobbly, although not as badly as in the aftermath of the near accident yesterday. She pushed the button for the elevator and then leaned against the wall to wait for it.

By the time the doors opened, she was feeling more herself. Stepping out into the lobby, she decided she ought to stop and thank Annie for arranging the tour and even for setting up the appointment with her husband. It certainly wasn't her fault that Wes was, as Jack had warned, a jerk.

According to a floor plan mounted on the wall beside a directory, Annie's office was in a far corner of the first floor, so Helen headed in that direction.

Along the way, Helen was stopped twice by people asking if she was lost, which she hadn't been, but now, after the last turn down a dimly lit hallway, she thought maybe she was. She was on the verge of retracing her steps when she heard a male voice ahead of her down yet another hallway to the right. She could ask him for directions.

Then she recognized the voice as belonging to Marty Drumm. What was he doing here? Employees of Toth Construction weren't likely to be welcome around here, considering how Wes Quattrone felt about Sheryl. Of course, Annie didn't have the same hatred for Sheryl. Perhaps she'd arranged to talk to Marty about the possibility of buying the unbuildable land for the garden. In that case, Marty was probably heading for Annie's office, and all Helen had to do was follow the sound of his voice.

She'd only taken a few steps when she heard Annie speak from somewhere out of sight. Her voice carried across the distance and was tinged with irritation. "You're not supposed to have anything with the Toth name on it while you're here."

"I forgot I was wearing the jacket," Marty said.

Helen didn't want to intrude, so she peered around the corner to see if it looked like their conversation was just getting started or was winding down. Annie stood in the only doorway at the end of a short stub of a hallway. A dozen turquoise T-shirts and matching baseball caps were stacked on her outstretched hands.

"I'm counting on you to make sure it doesn't happen again," Annie said. "It's not that big a deal when it's just your jacket, but you absolutely, positively have to make sure you cover up the name on the earthmoving equipment, right?"

"Sure. That's easy. It's just…" Marty reached toward the shirts but paused uncertainly with one hand above and one below the pile. "Are you sure about this contract? I mean, the cash will come in handy to keep the crew paid while the legal stuff gets straightened out, and Sheryl always said you were a good customer, but can Wharton Meadows afford it? It's an expensive project, and we could do it in stages, spread out the payments a bit."

"No," Annie said with the sort of conviction that Dale's voice usually carried. "I want it done now."

Marty's hands still hovered uncertainly. "It's just that I heard you've had some cash flow problems recently."

"Nothing you need to worry about." Annie shoved the shirts into his chest and let go of them.

He caught them automatically. "Maybe I should speak to the boss."

This time, Annie didn't bother to hide her irritation. "
I
am the boss on this job. Just remember to keep the Toth name out of it, and give the invoices to me and no one else. Unless you don't want the contract. I can find someone else."

"No, no," Marty said, still sounding uncertain. "It's just that I'm not used to this part of the work. Sheryl always arranged the contracts."

Annie patted his hand, her good humor restored. "And you're doing a great job of carrying on her work. I'm sure she'd be proud of you."

Their odd little negotiation session seemed to be over, so Helen ducked back around the corner before they could look up and realize she'd been eavesdropping. With all the conspiring over hiding the Toth name, they probably wouldn't appreciate a relative stranger knowing about their deal.

Helen waited until Marty started to talk again, confirming that the work would begin next week, so his voice would cover the sound of her approach. Then she resumed walking around the corner as if she'd never stopped to listen.

"Annie," Helen called out. "I'm so glad to see you. I was sure I'd gotten lost."

Annie gave Marty a look of dismissal.

"Morning, ma'am." Marty nodded at Helen and seemed torn between trying to stuff the turquoise shirts inside his jacket and using them to cover the Toth Construction logo on the chest of the jacket. He settled for rushing off. "Sorry I can't stay. Can't even be away from the construction site for a decent lunch-hour visit to my grandmother these days."

Even if Helen hadn't overheard the conversation, she never would have believed Marty was here to visit his grandmother. Not this deep inside the administrative building. Still, there wasn't any reason to embarrass him by calling him on his little white lie. Whatever he and Annie were up to, as far as Helen could see, wasn't any of her business since it didn't have anything to do with either the garden or Sheryl's death.

Annie helped to cover Marty's rushed exit by leading the way into an office that Helen initially thought belonged to an assistant since it was half the size of Wes's reception area and its only view was of the staff parking lot. After a moment, it became clear that this was indeed Annie's office. The desk and filing cabinets were cheap metal, rusting in spots, although she did have a nice ergonomic chair, and the room held the sort of personal touches that were missing from the more luxurious space upstairs. One of them was a picture of a row of laughing women, including Annie and Dale, over in the community garden. The plants were lush and green, much more like what Helen had seen in the magazines she'd been reading all winter than what the garden currently looked like. Annie wore turquoise overalls and held half a watermelon at an angle that demonstrated the center had been consumed all the way down to the white rind. Her face was covered with watermelon juice and bits of pulp.

"What a great picture," Helen said.

Annie laughed. "That was last year at the harvest fair. We had a watermelon eating and seed spitting contest. Dale won, of course, but I didn't do too badly."

"From what I hear, Dale always wins once she sets her mind to something."

"True," Annie said. "The trick is to make sure she sets her mind to the right things."

"Which is where you come in."

"Exactly." Annie dropped into the chair behind her desk. "What can I do for you today?"

"Nothing really." Helen remained standing since she didn't plan to stay for long. "I just wanted to say hello and thank you for arranging the tour."

"I hope you didn't let the rainy weather give you a bad impression of the place," Annie said. "Some of the interiors can seem a little dingy without sunshine, and you might not have noticed all the windows that let in tons of natural light. The plants growing in public areas of the buildings are real, you know, not artificial."

Helen's guide hadn't mentioned that, probably because it didn't matter all that much to either the staff or the casual visitor. It obviously mattered to Annie though. "I bet that's your doing."

"Not just me," she said. "Quite a few of the residents here are gardeners. They help maintain the indoor plants and make suggestions for new ones."

"Are they part of the community garden too?"

"Not as many as I'd like to see over there," Annie said. "Some prefer houseplants, and a few others are too intimidated by Dale to risk running into her."

"Dale can be a bit overwhelming."

"Especially lately," Annie agreed. "You know about her interest in line drying, right? It's almost National Hanging Out Day, and she ought to be looking forward to it, but for some reason, she hasn't been all that excited. I suppose it didn't help that the media just aren't interested in covering the event. She couldn't even get Geoff Loring to do a piece on it for the
Wharton Times
."

Geoff was probably terrified that Dale might turn the relatively benign story into something truly controversial.

"I wouldn't think that would faze Dale."

"Normally, it wouldn't," Annie said. "I think something else has been bothering her, so she's overreacting to other things. The problem with the title to the garden land would have been bad enough on its own, but there were signs that she was upset even before we heard about Fred Lawson's will."

"What signs?"

Annie laughed. "You're going to think I'm crazy, but it's her laundry line. If you know her well enough, the way she hangs her clothes can tell you a lot about her mood. If she's happy, she does silly things like make it look like the shirts are holding hands. When she's sad, she hangs all of her black clothes on the outer ring so they obscure all the bright clothes in the middle. That sort of thing is normal for her. But ever since she found out that Sheryl was trying to buy the garden land and the selectmen might be willing to sell it to her, she's been doing something with her laundry that I hadn't seen before, and it's kind of scary."

"How can a bunch of clothes be scary?"

"Maybe it's just me, and nobody else sees the pattern, but I swear she's been hanging her laundry so it looks like a shooting target. Like, there'll be something big and red in the back row, and then in front of it, she'll hang a bunch of blue clothes but with some of the red peeking out of the middle, and finally in front of that, she'll hang some gray T-shirts so you can see the inner rings of red and blue." Annie shuddered. "It's creepy. Like her subconscious is looking for things to shoot at."