The Garden of Eden and Other Criminal Delights Page 2

  “Honestly, I don’t remember. Was the door jimmied open?”

  “I didn’t find any obvious pry marks, and the lock was a deadbolt. I think if someone was inside the house, he or she got in with a key.”

  “Or Cecily could have let them in.”

  “Of course. Maybe I’m on the wrong track totally. Still, I’d like to find out who had a key to her house.”

  “I’m sure her daughters do.” Rina made a face. “I can’t believe they’d hurt her. And didn’t the coroner’s investigator say it looked like natural causes?”

  “Sure, it could have been a heart attack. But what if the heart attack was brought on by a bad argument? What if she didn’t fall to the ground but was pushed? We have an unlocked door, a locked gate, and a drawer that’s askew in an otherwise compulsively neat bedroom. I’ve been a cop too long not to ask certain questions, and my first one is who has a key to her house.” Decker looked at the garden gate. Two distraught women had corraled Gloria, the coroner’s investigator. They spoke to her while waving their arms frantically. Decker put his arm around his wife. “Go on home, honey. We’ll talk later. Right now it’s time to meet the next of kin.”

  “This is dreadful!” Meredith sniffed back tears. “Just terrible.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” Dr. Goldberg, the cardiologist, told Cecily’s daughters. He had shown up five minutes after the daughters. He was in his sixties, a short, slight man with long tapered fingers. “I’ve handled many patients in my years. Your mother had a wonderful spirit. I think it was her attitude that helped her last this long.” He turned to Decker. “She’d had two prior heart attacks.”

  Edwina blotted her wet eyes with a tissue. Her gaze went from the doctor to Decker. “She gardened because she could no longer rock climb or go white-water rafting.”

  “Ah,” Decker said. He observed the sisters, noting that though there was a strong familial resemblance—both women had oval faces and hazel eyes—they were nothing alike. Edwina, who drove a new 450SL Mercedes, was precise and meticulous in her appearance: dark business suit and heels, clipped and styled blond hair, long manicured nails. Meredith wore a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Her hair was shoulder-length, brunette streaked with gray. She drove an ancient Dodge Dart. They were in their forties, not more than a couple of years apart. “Your mother was very active in the past?”

  “Until her first heart attack,” Edwina said.

  Goldberg said, “The second one came a year later. That was ten years ago. We stabilized her, but at her age . . .”

  Everyone nodded solemnly.

  “Mom was one of a kind. She did exactly what she wanted to do and always encouraged us to do the same.”

  “She certainly had a love of beauty,” Decker answered. “This place is paradise.”

  “Mom’s version of paradise.” Edwina smiled. “I live in a townhouse overlooking the ocean. No grass, no yard, just a terrace with a couple of potted cacti and a stunning view of the waves. That’s my version of paradise.”

  “That’s pretty great also,” Decker said.

  “If there’s anything else I can do for anyone, don’t hesitate to call me,” Dr. Goldberg said. “I must be getting back. I have patients waiting for me.”

  Edwina’s smile was brief. “She spoke very fondly of you, Doctor. Thank you for everything.”

  “It was a pleasure being her doctor. Again, my condolences.”

  “Thank you,” Edwina answered.

  A forlorn Meredith watched while the men from the funeral home loaded her mother into a van. She shook her head as tears leaked from her eyes. “I can’t believe she’s gone!”

  “She was old, Merry,” Edwina said. “It wasn’t unexpected.”

  “It’s still a shock, Ed! She wasn’t hospitalized or anything like that.”

  “I should start making arrangements.”

  “What do you mean by ‘I,’ sis?”

  “‘We,’ then. We need to start making arrangements. I suppose the smartest thing to do would be to contact Mom’s lawyer.”

  Meredith said, “Mr. Mortimer?”

  “Yes, Mr. Mortimer. I’m sure Mom had specific instructions. I know she had a will.” Edwina handed Decker a business card. “My phone number, if you should need to reach me.”

  “Why would he need to reach you?” Meredith asked.

  “It’s a formality, Merry.”

  “Actually, I do have a few questions, if you don’t mind,” Decker said. “For both of you.”

  “What kind of questions?” Meredith asked.

  Edwina checked her watch. “How long?”

  “Not too long,” Decker said. “Who, besides yourselves, has a key to the house?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Meredith.

  Edwina glanced at her sister. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just trying to button down a few details. Anyone other than you two have a key to the house?”

  “No.” Meredith looked at her sister. “Right?”

  “The gardener,” Edwina answered.

  “He does?” Meredith’s eyes went wide. “Thanks for clueing me in.”

  “Mom gave it to him, Merry. I wasn’t consulted.”

  “You didn’t approve?” Decker asked.

  “I just thought it was weird, but Mom was insistent. She claimed he was here more than either of us.” Edwina turned to Decker. “Why are you so interested in keys?”

  “The front door was unlocked when my wife came over. Do you know if your mother had anything valuable stashed—”

  “Oh, dear!” Meredith shrieked. She bolted toward the house.

  Decker ran after her. “Hold on, hold on!” He caught up with her at the bedroom. “Don’t touch anything! This could be a crime scene!”

  Meredith folded her arms across her chest. “Mom kept cash in one of her dresser drawers. I want to see if it’s still there!”

  Edwina caught up with them. Anxiously, she asked, “Is it there?”

  “I don’t know. He stopped me from checking.”

  “Okay . . .” Decker took out several pairs of latex gloves and handed them to the ladies. “Carefully show me where your mother kept the cash. Please be neat about it.”

  Edwina slipped on the gloves and went right to the sweater drawer. She opened it with a tug. Meticulously, she rooted through the contents, picking up a stack of folded sweaters and sliding her hand to the back. Her face paled as she shook her head. “It’s not here!”

  “What do you mean it’s not here? Where else could it be?” Meredith bent down, about to check the drawer herself, but Decker stopped her.

  “Can I look for the both of you?” he asked. “If a burglary took place, I’d like to prevent any contamination of evidence.”

  “Yes, yes! Hurry up!” Meredith scolded.

  “You two watch me.” He went through the sweater drawer. There was nothing inside it but clothing. “Is there any other place she could have put the money?”

  “She’s always kept money there!” Meredith said. “That was her hiding place!”

  Edwina chimed in, “Dammit, I kept telling her to put it in investments! Something that would grow. Mom could be so stubborn sometimes.”

  “All the time!” Meredith was crying now. “I was counting on that money to pay off some loans!” She quickly gasped. “Not that I was thinking about my mother’s death to get money!”

  Decker nodded but filed her words in his memory bank.

  “I know what you’re saying,” Edwina said. “Losing all that cash is a complete and utter waste!”

  “Exactly!” Meredith blew her nose. “Exactly.”

  “I’m going to check the other drawers now,” Decker said. “Watch me, all right?” Twenty minutes of careful searching proved fruitless. He stood up, rolled his shoulders, and shook his head. “How much cash are we talking about?”

  “Twenty thousand dollars,” Edwina answered.

  Decker had to refrain from choking. “Twenty thousand dollars? Cash?”
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br />   “Can you believe that?” Edwina snarled. “It is infuriating! I should have known something like this was going to happen.”

  Decker looked around. The room overflowed with flowers and plants, dozens of botanical drawings and paintings plastered all over the walls. It made Rina’s obsession look moderate.

  “Tell me about this gardener,” he said.

  Meredith was sobbing too hard to talk. Edwina bit her lip. “His name is Lee Kwan. He’s about seventy years old. He’s small and slight, and Mom has known him for over twenty years. I can’t believe he’d ever rob her, let alone hurt her.”

  “What about the lawyer you mentioned?” Decker asked. “Mr. Mortimer. Could he have a key?”

  “It’s possible,” Edwina said.

  “What’s the name of the firm?” Decker asked.

  “Mortimer, Dratsky, and Farrington,” Edwina said.

  Decker wrote it down. “Anyone else who might have a key? Think hard!” After both women pleaded ignorance, Decker said, “I’ll need to speak with Mr. Kwan. Would either of you have a phone number or address for him?”

  Edwina went over to the window and drew back the curtains. “Today’s your lucky day, Lieutenant Decker. Kwan’s truck just pulled up to the curb.”

  The man seemed completely confused as to why Decker was talking to him. His dismay also could have been the result of his limited English. Kwan’s eyes were moist. “Terrible, terrible. She was nice woman.”

  Edwina was right: Lee was old and slight of build, but there was muscle and sinew in his body.

  “You have a key to her house, Mr. Kwan?” Decker said.

  “Yes, I have key. You want the key?”

  Decker said, “That would be helpful, thank you. Have you ever used it to get into Mrs. Eden’s house?”

  “No, I never use it. Why would I use it?”

  “Why did Mrs. Eden give it to you?”

  “I don’t know,” Kwan answered. “I never ask. She give me key. I take key. You want it?” He fished it off a sizable key ring and dropped it into Decker’s waiting palm. “Here is key.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Decker smiled. “Can you tell me where you were this morning, Mr. Kwan?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “I work all morning. Three houses: one in Porter Ranch, two in Canoga Park. Why you ask where was I?”

  “Just routine questions. I need the addresses of the houses.”

  The gardener stared at him. Then he shrugged and said, “Yes, I give you address. I don’t see Miss Eden at all today. Maybe if I do, I can help her. Now is too late. How she die?”

  “Heart attack,” Decker said.

  “Yes, yes. She has bad heart. A couple times she stays outside when it’s too hot. I tell her to go inside, but she don’t listen. Only laugh. She is very stubborn.”

  “That’s what her daughters told me about her,” Decker said.

  “See, I tell you the truth.”

  Spoken with vehemence. He was anxious but probably because he was being probed. Decker handed Kwan a blank piece of paper from his notebook. “Can you write down the addresses of the places you were this morning?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Anyone notice you at work?” Decker asked.

  “They see me,” Kwan said. “I don’t know if they notice me. I’m gardener. Sometimes they see me, they wave. Sometimes no. Only Miss Eden really notice me. Only she take time to talk to me. She ask me about my children. She give me lemonade when it is hot. She pick me flowers for my wife. She ask me questions about her plants. She give me two drawing of orchid from her house because I say I like them. I don’t ask for them, she just give them to me.” His face grew solemn. “You see big green tree in the back?”

  “The magnolia?”

  “It is Chinese sacred tree. Once it was against the law to take it out of China. I get one for her because she is special lady. She thank me over and over. We planted it together fifteen year ago when it is fifteen-gallon tree. Now look at it. Just a year ago we build bench.” Again his eyes moistened. He scribbled on the piece of paper and handed it back to Decker. “Very special lady. I will miss her.”

  “You can’t search Kwan’s house or something?” Meredith shrieked over the phone. “It’s been over two weeks since my mother’s death, and the money’s still missing!”

  Decker responded in a calm voice, “I realize you’re frustrated, Ms. Eden—”

  “I’m a lot more than frustrated,” Meredith broke in. “I’m pissed! Just search his house! If you don’t find it, I’ll shut up!”

  “Ma’am, I don’t have any cause to search his house. Mr. Kwan was where he said he was—working all morning. All three homes verified his presence. The man doesn’t have a record, all his immigration papers are in order, he has a Social Security number, and he’s paid his taxes. As far as I can determine, he’s a model citizen.”

  “His lack of record means nothing! The man had a key. He could have burgled the house when my mother wasn’t home, and the neighbors wouldn’t notice, because he worked there on a regular basis.”

  “Do you have any reason to suspect that he knew about the money? I mean, as far as you know, only you and your sister were aware that the stash was there, right?”

  There was silence over the line.

  “Ms. Eden?”

  Meredith said, “Well, even if he didn’t know it was there, he could have come earlier and seen she was dead. Then, on an impulse, he could have burgled the house and found the money. Or . . . or maybe Mom even told him about it.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Because my mother was a senile old woman. I don’t know. Can’t you just check out his bank account or something like that? See if he made a big deposit?”

  “Not without probable cause, ma’am. No judge would issue a warrant.” Decker paused. “If you have verification of the existence of the cash, maybe your mother had insurance—”

  “No, she didn’t have insurance! If she wanted the money safe, she would have put it in the bank.”

  “Then why didn’t she do just that?”

  “Who knows and who cares? The bottom line is it’s gone. And I know that this Kwan character had something to do with it.”

  “If you really think that is the case, Ms. Eden, you might consider hiring a private detective—”

  The loud click stung his ear. She had hung up on him. Decker stowed the cellular in the inside pocket of his jacket. He shouldn’t be talking on the phone and driving at the same time. It served him right for answering the call in the first place. He pulled into his driveway and turned off the motor, still thinking about the missing money. The cash could have been stolen a long time ago. Then he thought about that bit of sweater peeking out from the drawer. The cash might have been gone, but someone had been looking for the stash very recently.

  He unlocked the front door and called out Rina’s name. He didn’t get an answer, but he knew where she was—in the new greenhouse. He walked inside the plastic shed, stacked with exotic plants. “Yo.”

  She turned around, her face coated with mist. “Hi, there. Can you believe how big my babies have grown in just a few weeks? I know where Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors came from.”

  Decker regarded the orchids, ferns, African violets, and bromeliads. “It’s amazing, what you’ve done. It’s beautiful.”

  Rina beamed. “Thanks.”

  “Where’s Hannah?”

  “At a friend’s house, doing a science project. She’s sleeping over. We could either go out to the deli for dinner by ourselves or have something here, just the two of us.”

  “What do you prefer?”

  “We’ve got steaks in the freezer. I can whip up a salad and open a bottle of cabernet. Feel like barbecuing?”

  “Fantastic.” He threw his arm around his wife’s shoulders, and together they walked into the kitchen. Their domestic life had seen rare interludes of tranquillity. Decker’s older daughter seemed happily married, the boys were doing well in co
llege back east, Hannah was growing up, and Rina was happy with her life. She had been teaching part-time at the local Jewish high school for several years now. A couple of semesters ago, she had started a garden club. Initially, the school had laughed at her but had thrown her and her three students a bone in the form of a dry plot of land that was collecting weeds. Within a few months, the ground was giving forth broccoli, peas, brussels sprouts, carrots, and a variety of lettuces and cabbages. Nobody was laughing anymore.

  Rina and her loyal band of followers, now up to five members, had just finished plowing under the dying vegetables to give the ground some nutrients for the fall planting. Right before summer, she had marched into the principal’s office and asked to teach an elective class in agriculture next year:

  “Kids should know that food doesn’t grow in supermarkets.”

  Yesterday she’d been talking about getting a couple of chickens. Decker didn’t know whether she was serious or not.

  “I got an interesting call this afternoon,” she told him over dinner. “From a man named Arthur Mortimer.”

  Decker stopped chewing momentarily. “Cecily Eden’s lawyer.”

  “Exactly. Where do you know him from?”

  He took a sip of wine. “His name came up when I interviewed Cecily’s daughters. What does he want with you?”

  “Well, it seems that I’m in Cecily’s will.”

  “Really?” A pause. “Hmmm.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing,” Decker said. “Nothing at all.”

  “I don’t buy that. What’s the problem, Peter?”

  “The daughters are a strange pair.”

  “Did they ever find the missing money?”

  “The alleged missing money. And no, they didn’t find it.”

  “Why alleged, Peter? Weren’t you the one who first noticed the bit of sweater sticking out of the drawer?”

  “Yes, that would be me. You know, I did a little research online about the women. Didn’t find a thing on Meredith Eden, but I did find out a heap about Edwina, particularly her husband. His name is Garth Lettiger, and he was indicted for embezzlement about five years ago.”

  “Was he convicted?”

  “No.”