I studied Cordelia and the Matilda rose that Mrs. Winkleson had stolen from several angles. A toss-up. Either one could win, depending on how the light happened to fall at the moment the judges saw them. If anything, Matilda was in slightly fuller bloom, which would give her the edge right now. But by an hour from now, when the judging began, the stolen Matilda might be a little past her prime.
It would be cheating to turn on the heat and hasten the process, I reminded myself.
“Whether we win the prize isn’t the important thing,” Dad was saying. “We have to prevent her from continuing the fraud.”
“How could she?” I asked. “It’s not as if she could keep that one Matilda rose fresh until the next rose show.”
“But it’s not just one rose,” Dad said. “I’m sure she has a bush. Maybe two. Remember, last night’s deer attack— if it was a deer attack— wasn’t the first time something happened to Matilda. I originally had three Matilda seedlings. Early this spring, I thought a deer had completely eaten two of them. It wasn’t the flowers. Both plants were pulled out of the ground and eaten whole. Or so I thought. There was a lot of obvious deer damage to the nearby plants as well. But what if the Matilda seedlings weren’t eaten? What if Mrs. Winkleson stole them?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” I said. “But how can we possibly prove it?”
Dad thought for a moment.
“Well, I understand they’re doing some interesting work on rose DNA,” he said. “So far it’s mostly focused on protecting patent rights on new cultivars, and possibly on improving resistance to blackspot disease. But there’s no reason it couldn’t be used forensically. My remaining Matilda bush still has enough leaves that I could sacrifice one. So all we need to do is get something from her so-called Black Magic rose.”
We both stared at the flower in question for some moments.
“We can’t touch it now,” I said. “People would suspect us of trying to sabotage her entry.”
“But you’ll be coming back in before the general public, right?” he said. “To supervise the runners who move the winners to the trophy table. Or at least to make sure they’ve done their job right?”
He pointed to the table where we’d arranged all the various plaques, bowls, loving cups, and other prize items, with the giant black glass swan as its centerpiece, looking rather like Gulliver among the Lilliputians.
“The judges won’t be moving the winners themselves?”
“No, no,” he said. “Judges don’t touch anything. Only the runners. So while that’s happening, you could find a chance to snag a leaf or a petal.”
“I can try,” I said.
“Meanwhile, let’s check the area around her prep table,” he said. “Maybe we can find a few bits of leaf or petal.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “I think she groomed her roses, or had them groomed, up at the house. All she did in the barn was pop them from her vases into the show vases and admire them a little.”
“But there are still the bushes,” Dad said. “You could go take a sample from her rose bushes. You know where her garden is.”
“I’ve been to her garden, once,” I said. “Finding it again’s not going to be simple.”
“You can do it,” Dad said.
“And then there’s getting in. The place is an armed fortress.”
“You can do it,” he repeated.
He was looking at me with such an expression of mingled hope and wistfulness that I gave in.
“I’ll try,” I said. “I can’t promise anything.”
“Thank you!”
“And I can’t even try till the judging starts,” I said. “I have to stick around until then. But once it does start, we’ll have a three- and-a-half-hour window. Find Mrs. Winkleson and keep an eye on her. In fact, keep her in the barns if possible. Call my cell phone if you lose her or if she takes off over the fields. I’d rather not get caught trespassing.”
“No problem!”
I hate it when people say “no problem.” It’s almost always guarantees disaster.
Chapter 40
I returned to the prep barn and strolled up and down the center aisle, glancing at all the exhibitors as I passed. Everyone was racing to finish grooming their roses. All the tables were littered with bits of leaf and petal, tiny brushes, and the Q-tips and bits of sponges they were pulling out of their roses.
Except for Mrs. Winkleson’s table. It was immaculate, and she seemed perfectly calm as she methodically moved her roses from the black glass vases into the clear.