Weeding Out Trouble

A commendable commandment if there ever was one. Don't get me wrong. I wasn't above bending the law every now and again, sneaking into somewhere I didn't belong, but I'd never actually
broken
anything to gain entrance.

Until now.

Shifting my weight, I swung a grub hoe over my head, hitting the window above my head full force.

I ducked as glass shattered.

My breath plumed in front of my face in an icy cloud.

A cold front swooping down from Canada had blanketed the Ohio Valley the night before. Forecasters predicted heavy snow to fall throughout the weekend, all but guaranteeing a white Thanksgiving in six days' time. A rarity around these parts.

Ordinarily, snow would throw my schedule into a tizzy. As a landscape designer I was at Mother Nature's fickle mercy.

Thankfully, come tomorrow, I had nothing planned, workwise, for an entire week. Plenty of time for the snow to melt and fifty degree temps to return to this area of Ohio.

But right now I had bigger things to worry about than snow.

Frost crunched beneath my Timberlands as I set the grub hoe aside, my feet leaving icy footprints amidst the almost naked shrubbery.

The building I was breaking and entering into sat far from the road, surrounded on three sides by dense woods. Absolutely no one was around. I didn't have to worry about being seen or heard by nosy passersby.

My fingers flexed inside a pair of leather gloves as I knocked away jagged glass along the window frame, clearing an opening for me to climb through.

Only one problem. How did I get in?

I attempted to lift myself, but I barely made it a foot off the ground. It might be time to give pull-ups another chance at the gym, despite the fact that I almost suffocated myself trying them before.

Stepping back, I gauged the distance to the window and took off running.

I jumped, I leapt, I fell on my ass. Hopefully the shrub I landed on had already reached dormancy and would recover.

Before I seriously hurt myself, I looked around for something to help me up and in. I wasn't exactly known for my grace. Or my height. I'm on the shorter side of five-footfive, and the window was a good five feet off the ground.

In the end I leaned the grub hoe against the stucco exterior of the building and used the top of the hoe's handle as a foothold.

My nerves were doing a jig in my stomach as I heaved myself up and perched on the window frame, balancing precariously. The muscles in my arms burned from the strain.

Definitely time to talk to Duke, my no-nonsense personal trainer, about strengthening my upper arms.

Wind howled as I peered inside a back room of an adorable ranch-style home that had been converted into Daisy Bedinghaus's holistic therapy business, the Heavenly Hope Holistic Healing Center.

Maybe twelve-by-twelve, the interior space looked like it had once been a bedroom, converted now into a treatment room. Angled diagonally, a padded massage table took up most of the area.

Swinging my feet through the opening, glass crunched loudly as I found my footing.

I'd have to work on my B&E skills.

No, no I wouldn't.

This was the last time I was breaking and entering. It was a commandment now and forever. And once a commandment was etched onto my mental tablet, I rarely broke it.

Nothing seemed out of place. A tray of aromatherapy bottles sat on a small granite-topped counter. According to the labels, every scent from lavender to jasmine to strawberry kiwi and eucalyptus were in the small brown glass bottles neatly aligned against the tiled back splash. Stacks of pristine white towels in every size lay folded neatly on shelves above the countertop.

The door to the room was ajar, and I crept over to it, peeking through the crack.

Every few steps I'd stop and listen, but heard nothing but my own breathing.

Quickly, I checked the reception area out front, then backtracked down the hallway, sticking my head into two other treatment rooms. Both were empty.

I nearly jumped clear out of my skin as the phone on my hip rang. My current ring tone, the theme song from the
Match Game,
echoed through the empty building.

My B&E skills definitely needed honing. I'd forgotten to silence my phone. How amateurish was that?

But wait, I reminded myself. There would be no more breaking and entering, so no honing of any kind was needed.

Well, except for the muscles in my arms . . .

The phone rang a second time before I could pull it off my hip. Quickly, I checked the caller ID screen and recognized my office number. "Did he show?" I asked, hearing the panic in my voice.

That morning, Taken by Surprise, Garden Designs, my landscaping company, had started a full backyard makeover in a swanky development near the office. Kit Pipe, my full-time landscape contractor, good friend, and current roommate, had never arrived at the job site.

It was the first time in four years he'd been a no-show.

"No one's seen or heard from him," Tam Oliver said. I could hear the panic in her voice too.

The jig in my stomach commenced to a full-blown hokey-pokey, shaking all about. It hurt.

"I take it he's not there?" she asked. Tam was my parttime office manager, full-time friend, and all around go-to girl. I couldn't run my business without her. Our friendship was just icing. She bore an uncanny resemblance to a young Queen Elizabeth, right down to the mannerisms and elocution. Except for her down-home Kentucky accent, she'd be a dead ringer.

A hanging water feature burbled on the wall next to me; meant to soothe, I imagined.

Soothing would be nice. But only one thing would calm me now.

Finding Kit. Making sure he was okay. Something was terribly wrong. I could tell.

I leaned against the wall. "Doesn't seem like anyone is here," I told her.

For a second the ramifications of breaking and entering flitted through my head. How was I going to double-talk my way out of this? Worry for a friend just didn't seem like a good excuse.

I could practically hear Tam's nervous twitch through the phone. "And he didn't come home last night either?"

"No." I edged away from the wall. "Last I knew, he was dropping Ana off at the airport. I haven't seen him since."

"Have you talked to Ana?"

My cousin, Ana Bertoli, had a close relationship with most of my employees. At one time or another she'd been their probation officer. The people she particularly liked, she sent to me for jobs. Through the years, close friendships had formed.

"I spoke to her last night after she landed." She'd gone to California to spend Thanksgiving weekend with her mother, my aunt Rosetta, lovingly known by me as Aunt Rosa. "Nothing seemed out of the ordinary."

"I wonder why he'd gone to see Daisy?" Tam asked.

The question had gone through my head a time or two since I found Kit's Hummer in Heavenly Hope's parking lot.

Until recently, Kit and Daisy Bedinghaus had been dating for years. They'd been broken up for about a month now, and Kit and his enormous dog, BeBe, were staying with my stepson Riley and me. It was supposed to have been a temporary thing, but Kit ended up staying while trying to get his life together.

"No sign of Daisy either?" Tam asked.

"No one is here." I'd never actually met Daisy. I'd seen the back of her head once, and heard her voice because I'd been shamelessly eavesdropping, but never had a face-toface meeting.

Kit was extremely private, and liked to keep his personal life to himself. I respected that, though my nosy side would have liked to meet the woman who broke his heart. To see if she really was as crazy as I thought. She had to be. Kit was as good a man as they came.

Tam said, "Maybe they got back together and eloped, Nina."

"Maybe," I lied. It was a nice thought, but I didn't think that was the case at all.

If nothing else, Kit was responsible. No way would he go off without telling me.

And leave his beloved Hummer behind.

Out Heavenly Hope's front windows I could see Kit's look-at-me yellow Hummer in the parking lot, covered in a fine layer of frost—it had obviously been there overnight.

I might not have broken into Heavenly Hope if not for seeing that truck there.

And spotting tiny bloodstains on the driver's seat and steering wheel.

Kit kept his car immaculately clean, so the blood had to be new. The rational part of my brain kept thinking the stains could have come from a nosebleed. Or a paper cut. And that I shouldn't overreact and call the police immediately, which had been my first instinct.

My second instinct had been to break into Heavenly Hope.

I was seriously beginning to doubt my judgment.

However, I did have some insight into police investigations. I had once been married to a policeman, and knew the police could do little at this point. Kit hadn't been missing all that long, and the bloodstains were so small they'd probably be dismissed without anything further to go on.

So I'd kinda-sorta taken it upon myself to make sure Kit wasn't inside Heavenly Hope, bleeding to death.

I must have been on speaker phone, because Ursula "Brickhouse" Krauss, my other part-time office manager, piped in. "Ach. Is Daisy's Lexus there?"

Once upon a time Brickhouse had been my high school English teacher. These days she was my full-time nemesis, all-around pain in my butt, and somewhat neighbor. In her sixties, she had short spiky white hair, ice blue eyes, and never hesitated to speak her mind. She currently had an onoff relationship with my next door neighbor, Mr. Cabrera, who loved every inch of her short, squat, brick-shaped self. Right now they were on, and I'd been seeing a lot of Brickhouse in the Mill, the nickname of the small neighborhood of Freedom, Ohio, where I lived.