Heather Webber - Digging Up Trouble

For an hour I returned phone calls from clients and potential clients. Apparently the dead guy on the news hadn’t hurt business too much, but I had to wonder what the fallout would be from Greta’s potential lawsuit and the murder charges.

On a whim, I picked up the phone and called Lindsey Lockhart to see if she’d had any luck convincing Greta not to sue. She seemed surprised to hear from me, though I couldn’t imagine why.

It wasn’t every day someone tricked me into doing a backyard makeover for someone else.

“Nina, I’m so sorry about everything that happened.

Greta’s just grief-stricken. When she comes to her senses she’ll understand.”

“Have you talked with her?”

“Well, no. I tried, but she wouldn’t open the door.”

I drew my thumb along the edge of my desk.

120

Heather Webber

Would Greta change her mind? She’d seemed more angry than grief-stricken to me, and I wondered again what kind of marriage she and Russ had had. And asked.

“They’d been married a long time, Nina. Everyone has problems when you’ve been married forty years.”

“Forty years? Really?”

A daddy longlegs crawled along the windowsill. I rolled my chair over to the window, opened it, and helped Daddy outside. He didn’t make it, but instead started crawling up the screen.

“She was eighteen when they married. She’d been an ap-prentice bookkeeper at a shoe shop and he was her boss.

Love at first sight, Greta told me.”

“How much older was he than her?”

I heard faint music playing in the background. “Ten years.”

That was a big gap when one of them was only eighteen.

She’d probably just gotten out of school. Gone from her parents’ house to Russ’s.

“I keep hearing how unkind he was. Was he unkind to Greta too?”

“She never said.”

“But you suspected, right? Isn’t that why you and Bill did the makeover? To help her because Russ wouldn’t?”

Lindsey sighed. “He treated her like a possession. Very controlling. Whenever she did something for herself, he criticized and belittled. The homeowners’ association, for example.”

“Oh?”

“Greta wanted to join because she figured it would spur Russ to do something about the yard. Only he thought it was ridiculous and refused to pay the dues or listen to the notices.

On principle, he’d said. I think it was because he was cheap.”

“Why didn’t she leave him?” I asked.

Digging Up Trouble

121

“Simple. She loved him.”

Over and over again I kept replaying the rumor I’d heard the day Russ died.

I heard his wife was hoping he’d have a heart attack when he saw the yard. That’s why she hired these people.

Was there any truth to it?

No, simply because Greta hadn’t planned the makeover.

Bill and Lindsey had.

As the daddy longlegs scampered up the screen, looking for a way out, I thought about that.

Had they wanted Russ dead? Could that have been the true motive behind the makeover? Not the lawsuit, which was the line Bill and Lindsey had fed me, but something much more sinister?

After all, Lindsey and Bill had known about Russ’s bad heart. Had they planned the makeover hoping he’d have a heart attack from the surprise?

They’d known how he felt about the HOA. They’d had to have known his reaction to a total backyard makeover.

And anticipated it?

A chill ran up my spine as the daddy longlegs found a hole in the screen and crawled to freedom.

Maybe I’d been reading too much Tom Clancy. All this subterfuge and backstabbing seemed much better suited to a spy novel.

“I just need to talk to Greta,” Lindsey said. “Get her to see reason. We were trying to help her, not harm her.”

Or were they? I couldn’t dismiss the fact that they’d both known about Russ’s bad heart. Throw in a surprise makeover and it’s a perfect recipe for heart attack.

“Whose idea was it? To do the makeover, I mean?”

I heard the low hum of a country music station come across the line, louder now in her silence. “I’m just not sure.

Let me think.”

122

Heather Webber

I let her, drumming my fingers on my stained desk blotter.

Finally she said, “You know, it was Bill. Right after Riley came to work for him. Bill was excited about helping Greta.”

I bet. Especially if he wanted Russ dead.

I knew I was jumping to conclusions.

“But twenty thousand dollars is awfully generous. Don’t you think?”

“I had sticker shock for a month, but Bill was adamant we had to do this for Greta. And for Russ too. We just knew he’d appreciate it once he set his pride aside.”

“Why Russ? I thought the whole lawsuit thing was his fault.”

“Well, Russ took a chance on Bill, trusting him with Growl, to get it going, make it successful.” She laughed.

“And he did that, plus some.”

It was true. Growl was flourishing, garnering all sorts of great press as an innovative, affordable, healthy alternative to the big burger places.

Yet . . . “Trust him? Isn’t Bill a co-owner? Fifty-fifty?

Didn’t he have as much to lose as Russ if Growl failed?”

“Not at first. It was seventy-five, twenty-five,” Lindsey said. “We couldn’t afford to go in halfway right off. It wasn’t until last year that we could buy out the other twenty-five percent.”

It sounded to me as if there was a soft side to Russ no one ever got to see. Especially if he’d taken a chance with Bill.

But I couldn’t help but wonder if it had been a mistake to trust Bill Lockhart. There was just something about him that put me off.

Maybe it was because I’d never go spending twenty thousand dollars out of the goodness of my heart.

Who had that kind of money to throw around?

Had Russ? Would he have done the same if the situation were reversed?

Digging Up Trouble

123

I thought back to differences between the Grabinskys’

house and the Lockharts’. Bill and Lindsey’s said money all the way down to the hanging baskets and freshly painted trim on their house, while the Grabinskys’ had rusting wrought-iron railings and tattered throw blankets.

Hmm.

Had Russ really been an Ebenezer? Or could it be that Bill was fiddling with the books?

The accounting books!

I bolted out of my chair, nearly choking myself on the telephone cord. Russ had taken the account books home—

and Bill desperately wanted them back.

Coincidence?

I had a strict commandment not to believe in coincidences.

I wasn’t about to go breaking it now.

Quickly saying my good-byes, I hung up and looked at my watch. I needed to get over to Deanna’s mini before she finished. Then I wanted to go see Greta Grabinsky. Maybe even get a peek at those books while I tried to talk her out of suing me.

Fourteen

I searched for a parking spot near the Sandruzzis’ house and finally found one down the block, behind an unmarked TBS truck.

The Sandruzzis were a young, married, double income couple, and it was Amy Sandruzzi’s birthday. In addition to a huge surprise party, her husband Darryl had hired TBS.

The mini was actually taking place in the front yard, spruc-ing up lackluster curb appeal.

As I walked along the street’s edge—there were no sidewalks in this older part of town—I could see that the makeover was just about done.

I stood between a parked minivan and a TBS pickup, taking it all in. The house was a traditional ranch, center entrance, low roof. Nothing too exciting, but in good condition. It had been recently painted a soft yellow, much like my new bedroom.