Backyard (27 page)

“Officer Sneed,” Sergeant Smead barked into her radio. “Why don't you join me up here in the backyard. This is getting complicated. Hurry up. These folks are all soaking wet and cold. Oh, and bring the plastic cuffs.”

“You know what?” Nan whispered to George. “I wonder if Pat Veattle is one of the creatures who got into those angel's trumpet seeds. Talk about freaked out!”

“Hey!” George gasped. “What about the kids?”

Nan snorted. “The kids? Don't worry about them. I checked on them before I came running out. They hadn't heard a thing. They were all downstairs playing
Guitar Hero
. You wouldn't believe the din down there!”

27

Restitution

G
eorge and Nan had no desire for vengeance. Neither did they show any particular interest in pursuing the sort of justice the fellow from the county attorney's office mentioned. That would mean gross misdemeanor charges carrying penalties of perhaps a few weeks in the workhouse, a pretty hefty fine, or both.

But when he suggested something called restorative justice, they perked up. What that involved was a frank conversation with the guilty parties—well, four of them—about what they had done to undermine the Fremonts' health and well-being, and how they might make restitution. Should they be able to reach some sort of agreement on that, then the charges would be dropped. That would also help to unclog a court calendar that had gotten very crowded at a time when many of the judges had scheduled their vacations.

So it was that they all gathered in the Fremonts' backyard, where Nan served her pink lemonade, gin and wine having been regretfully passed over as inappropriate for the quasi-judicial nature of the gathering.

Dr. Sproot was defiant and restlessly unrepentant, or maybe that was just the eight cups of coffee she had downed so far. The cringing Earlene McGillicuddy fretted over the collapse of her surreptitious sabotage-for-hire business. Earlene's intern, Shirelle, was bowled over on seeing the Fremonts' lavish gardens in broad daylight. She plotted to sever her ties with Earlene so she could hitch on with the bona fide gardening savants of Livia. Edith Merton was the most contrite, or at least pretended to be so. She pleaded with the Fremonts to keep her participation in the sorry affair out of the newspapers. She also pleaded with her fellow petty criminals to pledge themselves to secrecy concerning the whole sorry mess.

“Fat chance of that happening . . .
Sarah,
” Dr. Sproot sneered.

“Now, now,” said Nan. “No arguing, please. We want this meeting to be constructive. If we can arrive at some kind of settlement satisfactory to George and me, then there's no reason why this matter should go any further.”

Missing was Pat Veattle, who had been deemed a poor candidate for restorative justice. The thick rubber skin of her costume had protected both her and the Smokestack Gaines bat from George's powerful blow; her jaw had only been slightly bruised and the bat wasn't even scuffed. She was, however, intoxicated to a degree Officers Smead and Sneed had not seen before in a living person. She was turned over to the custody of her daughter and son-in-law in St. Anthony after spending the night in the drunk tank and was scheduled for a thorough psychiatric evaluation.

Dr. Sproot confessed proudly to masterminding her own personal attack with specific targets in mind. She blamed her fogged-up gas mask and the general mayhem of the night for thwarting her destruction of the angel's trumpets.

“You will notice that they are fully intact, with the exception of three or four stems,” she said. “Another five minutes and I'd have cut them down to the ground.”

“And why did you go to such great lengths to do that?” Nan wondered.

“The angel's trumpets were, to me, the sign of genius, which you, however, probably just blundered upon,” Dr. Sproot said solemnly. “I was convinced that they would win you the prize that I cherished for myself and which would crown my efforts in discovering the importance of yucca and the coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend. But I'm so far ahead of my time, and I was afraid my pioneering would go unnoticed. So, I decided to cut them down.”

“And the gas mask?”

“Angel's trumpets are hallucinogenic. A big whiff can cause brain damage and a warped sense of reality. Maybe that's what happened to you.”

“How dare you!” Nan hissed. “Are you bucking for jail time or what?”

I told you, George's inner milquetoast whispered nervously to him. I told you those things are deadly. What more proof do we need?

“I had a coconspirator, too,” Dr. Sproot said. “She was much worse than me. She was actually out here cutting up your flowers.”

“The midnight snipper!” George exclaimed.

“That's right,” said Dr. Sproot. “Do you want to know her name? It's Marta Poppendauber, that's who. She lives at 1452 Waveland Circle. She should be sitting here right now, and you should be nailing her hide to that trellis over there.”

“In due time,” Nan said. “Let's stick to you for now, Miss Stool Pigeon. What about the archaeology thing?”

“That was a clever ruse.”

“Yes, we figured that out. Your realtor, by the way, was really obnoxious. Next time, pick somebody better. He had really bad breath, too.”

Dr. Sproot rolled her eyes.

“Yes, the sleazy idiot is a shirttail relation, but he charged me anyway, the fink! Just for paying you a visit! Not completely aboveboard, as you were probably able to tell. But for what I had in mind, he was exactly what I wanted. Anyway, if you had agreed to sell or rent the property, the transaction would have been perfectly legitimate.”

“And if you had bought it?”

“If I had bought it, I would have done enough damage to the gardens in the name of archaeology to have wrecked any chances for your winning first place. Then, once the sale was finalized, I would have made some improvements—your front yard is really sorry looking—and flipped it. No more Fremont backyard to worry about.”

“Just turned around and resold it?”

“Yes. Or I could have reneged. The contract wouldn't have bound me as buyer, or you as seller, for that matter. It was a preliminary agreement, a memorandum of understanding that would have allowed me immediate access to the backyard as a condition of the prospective purchase. Of course, if you had agreed to an easement, I would have done pretty much the same thing: inflict substantially more damage than I had initially led you to believe, and then apologized profusely for wrecking your handiwork. You would have made a few thousand dollars and had the consolation of knowing that there was no Indian burial ground under your backyard.”

“That's a lot of hard work just to win a gardening contest,” George said. “And, by the way, the property is
still
not for sale.”

“
Just
is not the word, Mr. Fremont. This is the alpha and omega of my gardening career. I deserve to win the contest. And I still shall.”

“And the $150,000 that goes with it.”

“More,” said Earlene, gesturing with her thumbs up. “Much more.”

“Really!” said George and Nan.

“They're up to $200,000 now.” George whistled. “And that's just for first place. Second is $50,000. Third is $25,000. It kind of goes downhill from there. Fourth through tenth gets you a few packets of seeds.”

“Money is not the main object,” Dr. Sproot huffed. Earlene laughed out loud. “Reputation is all that matters. Why do anything if you can't be number one at it?”

“Some other questions for you, Dr. Sproot,” George said as Nan refilled the glasses and graciously accepted compliments on her lemonade's sugary tartness. “How did you manage to ferret out private information about our tardy mortgage payments?”

“It's the talk of the town, Mr. Fremont. Besides, I have my sources but I'm not at liberty to divulge them. I ask to be granted immunity in that respect.”

“Ha!” said Earlene. “She's got a nephew in the state archaeologist's office and a sister-in-law who handles a lot of the paperwork at Homestake Mortgage. Isn't that true,
Phyllis?
”

“Dr. Sproot, if you please,
Mrs.
McGillicuddy.”

Edith Merton had been quietly sipping her lemonade, trying to project an air of shame and resignation that she hoped would get her off easy and without revealing the secret she needed so desperately to harbor. Now was the time for her preemptive strike.

“I need to make a confession,” she said tremulously. “Uh, I was working for Dr. Sproot and freely admit my complicity in this sordid affair. But listen to what I'm saying, and pity me. Dr. Sproot blackmailed me into doing this job. Blackmailed me!”

“What?” Dr. Sproot shot up out of her chair, knocking over her glass and spilling sticky lemonade all over the table and concrete patio. “What?”

“Sit down and shut up, Sproot!” barked Nan. “You're in enough hot water as it is. You can add cleaning up this mess to your restorative justice tasks, and you will do so before all the yellow jackets arrive to make life miserable for us. Now, do continue, Mrs. Merton.”

Edith took a long draw of lemonade as if fortifying herself for what lay ahead.

“As I said, Dr. Sproot blackmailed me. This is a horrible secret I'm about to divulge, but I want to make a clean breast of everything.”

George and Nan leaned forward. During the pregnant pause that followed, and except for Dr. Sproot angrily chomping on an ice cube she had picked off the tabletop and popped into her mouth, you could have heard a chickadee sneeze.

“Excuse me,” said Edith, who was emitting low sobs and wiping away make-believe tears with the back of her hand. “It's a hard story to tell.”

“Try,” said Nan.

“About three and a half years ago, Dr. Sproot found me in a . . . a . . . compromising position with her husband.”

Dr. Sproot gurgled something that was unintelligible since she was still working the ice cube around in her mouth and was about to jump up from her chair again, but Nan pinned her in place with a stare that would have frozen over Kilauea Volcano.

“I've never forgiven myself for that, but if you knew him, then you'd know why I had fallen so hopelessly in love with him. I was stricken by guilt. I guess Dr. Sproot didn't want any public scandal, so, at first, she contented herself with merely hating me and hoping I'd die a very painful death someday.

“Anyhoo, she eventually told me she'd keep the secret and let me alone as long as she could call on me sometime when she needed help . . . help in anything. She would call on me, and there would be no questions asked. If I did that, helped her get out of some really big fix, she'd consider my adulterous debt paid off in full. It so happened that she was bent on destroying your gardens, though I am just now finding out the reasons why, and ordered me to help her in her wretched scheme. As you can imagine, I demurred, but there was no way out. I had to do it. Oh, yes, she made me wear that stupid costume as the mark of my sin. Sort of like being branded with the letter A, but a lot more ridiculous and a lot less permanent. So, there you have it.”

“That's a lie! Lie! Lie! Lie!” Dr. Sproot, having chewed up her ice cube by now, was shrieking and pounding on the table, shaking it violently and almost upsetting the two glasses and the half-full lemonade pitcher sitting on it. “Why, you don't even know the name of my husband, Edith! What was his name, huh? What was it? You probably don't even know that he died three years ago! Huh!”

Edith merely shook her head, seemingly reluctant to be drawn into such a scene as was now unfolding.

“You want to know the truth?” Dr. Sproot continued. “Well, here it is. Edith Merton is a witch who casts spells on gardens. I hired her to cast a spell on yours and that's what she was doing here that night. Casting a spell. Okay, so her putrid spell hasn't worked, but she did try. Oh, and she has her little witch name, too: Sarah. Sarah the Witch.”

Edith stared down into her lemonade. George quickly looked Dr. Sproot up and down to make sure she wasn't carrying any weapons. He quietly wished Nan had frisked her before admitting her to the backyard. Earlene went all bug-eyed and was gasping for air. Shirelle wasn't paying attention; she had turned her chair around to study the hibiscus and was all in raptures over them.

Nan studied Dr. Sproot in a calm, measured way for a moment. Then, she pushed back her chair and stood up, picked up the pitcher of lemonade off the table in a slow, deliberate fashion, and calmly poured the remaining contents over Dr. Sproot's head.

“There's some more for you to clean up,” she said. “And I'd do it soon. Those yellow jackets are going to love all that sticky, sugary sweetness all over you.”

Thoroughly spent, Dr. Sproot collapsed back into her chair and dropped her head onto her splayed-out arms. Convincing sobs racked her body and all present had to admit that, for all her faults, Dr. Phyllis Sproot was either a very compelling nutcase or a darn good actress.

“And now, for you three,” said Nan as the others nervously sipped their lemonade. “You might notice that a number of plants and flowers have already been nibbled at by the Mongol horde of rabbits that was unscrupulously unleashed in this yard, to say nothing of those crushed by frantic people running around all over the place. Your job will be to trap those rabbits and dispose of them in any way you choose except by releasing them in someone else's yard. You're also to dig up our damaged plants and replace them with those from your own gardens. It will have to be soon because the judges will be coming by in five days. Tomorrow would actually be good. This includes you, Dr. Sproot.”

Dr. Sproot raised her head and gasped in despair.

“You wouldn't ask
me
to do that! Why, already I almost died of fright that night. I was actually on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And then to be humiliated by being dragged off to the city jail! And now to have to rebut these terrible lies and none of you believing me, and you dumping that awful lemonade on me, and here's a bloody yellow jacket buzzing around me already. I damaged nothing—well, almost nothing—and I'm here to tell you how sorry I am. I'm sorry. Okay? I didn't release the stupid rabbits anyway. Those two did! Besides, I have my own yard to worry about. I'm a contest entrant, too, you know.”