Heather Webber - Digging Up Trouble

“Ursula’s okay, then?” Mr. Cabrera’s blue eyes held a hint of worry.

“Of course she’s okay,” Boom-Boom trilled. “Old battle-axes like that never die.”

My eyebrow arched. Riley’s mouth fell open. Mr. Cabrera disengaged Boom-Boom’s arm from his.

“I, er, mean that in the nicest possible way.”

“Of course,” I said.

“Nee-nah! You’re home. You’ve got to see the plans.”

Oh Lord. Maria.

I crossed the lawn. “Plans?”

“For your bathroom. What’s that in your shirt? Really, 180

Heather Webber

Nina, I could give you the name of a good plastic surgeon.

You don’t need to stuff. How . . . adolescent.”

I growled and pulled the envelopes out of my shirt.

“Do I want to know?” Maria asked.

“No.”

“Okay, then. Come see the plans. They’re gorgeous. Just gorgeous.”

I stopped dead in my living room. The ceiling where the dining room used to be before Aunt Chi-Chi renovated now had a very large, very gray stain in it. One that dripped onto a large tarp covering my hardwood floor.

“Minor,” Maria said.

“Really?”

“Not to worry.”

Oh, I was worried.

“Come, come. Come look.”

“I need a minute.” To . . . regroup. Maria wasn’t happy with the delay. She pouted.

The phone rang as I passed it, heading for the back door.

The caller ID listed a toll-free number. Telemarketer. I didn’t answer, but it did remind me that I hadn’t checked my cell lately.

I tracked it down, took it and Bill’s letters out to Mr.

Cabrera’s gazebo.

The ivy he’d started up the sides of the gazebo had taken off, nearly reaching eye level. I’d convinced him to plant it, even though he hadn’t wanted to. When I pointed out how rude it was to spy on others, he’d reluctantly put it in. But I noticed he kept trimming it back.

My voice mail had three messages. The first one was from Bobby, who told me he would be out of town for a few days, working on a hundred-year-old house near Columbus. Lots of scraping and prep work, so he’d be staying in a hotel up there.

It would give me time, he said, to think about what he’d said.

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The second message was from Tam. She’d been sprung from the hospital and was at home at Ian’s farm in Lebanon if anyone needed her.

The third message, another from Bobby, simply said, “I miss you already.”

I sighed and dropped the phone into my pocket.

For a few minutes I sat there staring at Bill’s letters, wondering why I’d taken them.

I told myself that it was none of my business, but then my sense returned. It was my business. Absolutely my business.

Bill and Lindsey duping me had made it that way. And the lawsuit and possible murder charges had cemented it.

Not that I had to worry about the lawsuit anymore. Unless there were family members eager to pick up where Greta had left off.

There was Noreen—would she pursue the lawsuit?

Both letters had been opened—by Bill, I assumed. I pulled a single piece of paper out of each envelope and stared at them long and hard.

The first thing I noticed was the font. Every little i was raised slightly above the rest of the text.

The first letter read:

I know what you are do i ng. It w i ll cost to not tell. I w i ll contact you aga i n soon.

The second curled my toes.

You w i ll call Taken by Surpr i se Garden Des i gn and arrange to have the backyard of Russ and Greta Grab i nsky landscaped at your cost.

I stared at the letters for a long time.

Bill was being blackmailed.

By whom?

What kind of oddball blackmailed for landscaping?

And what did the blackmailer know about Bill that he’d so readily do it?

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Something with the accounting books? I could easily see them sitting on the table in the Grabinsky house . . .

Right near the typewriter.

I studied the font on the letters and envelopes. That’s why it had been so unusual. It had been made by a typewriter. An old-fashioned one.

One just like Greta and Russ’s.

And since I knew Russ’s penchant for blackmail, I had to wonder if Bill had been blackmailed by Russ himself.

Twenty-One

Tuesday morning I sat at my desk, trying to massage the crick out of my neck. So far, no luck.

True to her word, the night before Ana had come over with some desperately needed ice cream. I’d stayed up too late fielding her morbid questions about Greta Grabinsky, and gotten a lousy night’s sleep on my sleeper sofa.

With all the construction in the bathroom, my room was currently unusable.

Tuesday was normally my day off, but the thought of the bathroom demo had driven me from my house and into my office.

The choice between Brickhouse and remodeling was a close one, but I had work to catch up on, namely a hummingbird garden I was designing as a mini for the Alonzos.

Rich Alonzo was a novice birdwatcher, and his wife Lena wanted to surprise him.

No matter how hard I tried, or how much I threw myself into my work, I couldn’t help but think of Bill Lockhart.

With my theory about Bill and Lindsey purposely plotting Russ’s heart attack shot to pieces thanks to those letters, I didn’t know what to think.

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Heather Webber

They hadn’t planned for him to have a heart attack. Hadn’t wanted him dead.

Maybe my Clue-playing skills weren’t as good as I’d thought.

Yet, someone was blackmailing Bill. Which meant he was doing something he wanted to keep secret . . .

Had it been Russ blackmailing Bill?

He’d been blackmailing Dale Hathaway. Why not expand?

I played with different scenarios.

Russ, with a lawsuit looming, needed to have his backyard cleaned up, cleared out.

Maybe he’d heard Riley talk about TBS at work?

Being as cheap as he was, he certainly wouldn’t want to pay my lofty fees himself, so he blackmails Bill into paying them for him.

Brilliant, actually.

And Bill, desperate to keep his secret, has Lindsey call me, setting the whole thing into motion.

Grabbing a red-colored pencil from the mason jar on my desk, I shaded blooms on a carnival weigela—a red, white, and pink flowering shrub hummingbirds loved—as one thought continued to nag at me.

Why then had Russ seemed so surprised to find my crew and me at his house if he’d planned the whole thing?

I chewed on the end of the pencil. Had his reaction been orchestrated too? Part of the grand scheme?

The pencil fell from my fingers.

It fit!

Russ finds us there, pitches a fit, and a lawsuit follows.

Not only is his yard done free of charge, but he also possibly gets money from me, in addition to Bill and Lindsey, to settle a lawsuit.

Except he went and died, ruining everything.

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Almost everything. Greta still threatened to sue. Almost immediately, as if it had been on her mind all along.

Which left me to believe that Greta had been in on it all.

I finished coloring the weigela and reached for the purple pencil for the perennial salvia.

Russ and Greta had been in it together. And if Greta knew about Russ blackmailing Bill, she must have known about Russ blackmailing Dale.

Had someone else figured this out? And decided to end the scheming for good by killing Greta since Russ had already conveniently died?

Had Dale killed Greta? Had Bill?

Setting the pencil down, I remembered that Bill’s blackmail letters hadn’t been signed. Did he even know who had sent them?