Toward the end of my sample collection, right after the blank space, I found something interesting. Yet another bush labeled “Black Magic,” but it didn’t look like the other Black Magics I’d sampled. The leaves were smaller, and instead of the deep, glossy green of the other Black Magics, they had a slight lime or chartreuse cast to them.
While the blossom left on it was only partially open, I could already see that it had more petals than the other Black Magic blooms. This was definitely the bush from which her entry in the show had come.
I snipped two leaves from that bush.
I checked the label again. Yes, the tag hanging from the bush said Black Magic.
Then I spotted something else peeking out from the bark mulch around the base of the bush. I brushed the mulch away to see more clearly.
It was a length of yellow plastic plant tie material, about half an inch wide. Dad used the stuff not only to stake wayward branches but also to label plants temporarily, using a waterproof marker to print on the plastic the name and planting date and any other information he wanted to remember.
In fact, this plant tie had writing on it. In Dad’s unique, meticulous printing, so like calligraphy, it said “L2005-0013.” Which, if memory served, was what Dad had been calling his new hybrid before christening her Matilda.
The stem of the rose bush had clearly grown since the label had been attached. It had grown around the plastic, so the label was inextricably enmeshed in the plant. Dad never left his temporary labels on the plants long enough for that to happen, but apparently Mrs. Winkleson wasn’t as careful.
It was Matilda. Or if not Matilda, certainly one of Dad’s hybrids.
It all fell together. The person who’d been arguing with Mrs. Winkleson up at the house— the one who’d said, “I’m tired of covering this up. And if I went public with it, you’d be the one ruined.” Could it have been Sandy Sechrest? I hadn’t recognized the voice, but I was ready to bet it was— Sandy who had been helping Mrs. Winkleson with her hybridizing. She’d have had ample opportunity to uncover the plastic label the same way I had, and I’d probably overheard her finally confronting Mrs. Winkleson about it. If so, I’d bet anything the killer hadn’t mistaken Sandy Sechrest for Mrs. Winkleson. More likely Mrs. Winkleson had killed Mrs. Sechrest, trying to cover up her theft of Dad’s rose.
That meant that Mrs. Winkleson had probably poisoned herself last night. We’d all been saying how lucky she had been, to have taken a less than lethal dose of cyanide with two doctors nearby. Nothing lucky about it— she’d been taking a calculated risk to throw off suspicion.
I had to get back to the barn and find Chief Burke. Once he saw this—
“What are you doing in my rose garden!”
I looked up to see Mrs. Winkleson standing outside the chain link fence, pointing a shotgun at me.
Chapter 41
“Taking cuttings,” I said, with what I hoped was an inane, innocent smile. “Dad was amazed at your entry for the trophy. And jealous. He begged me to see if I could snoop around and find out more about your methods. Maybe even steal a cutting. But I guess you caught me. I’ll just put them back.”
“I could shoot you where you stand,” she said. Yes, and from the look on her face, she’d enjoy it. I looked around for some kind of cover. Nothing but rose bushes. And while most of them were tall, healthy, and dense for rose bushes, they were still a long way from looking like plate iron or Kevlar or anything else you’d want between you and a bullet. Or a slug, or buckshot. Even if the shotgun was only loaded with birdshot, at this close range I suspected she could do some damage.
“You could shoot me,” I said. “But how would that look? It’s not as if I was burgling your house. I’m unarmed, and locked inside a chain link fence. Doesn’t make a very plausible self-defense case.”
“No,” she said. “But I have a small revolver in my pocket. After I shoot you, I’ll just throw it down inside the fence and claim you were trying to shoot me with it.”
Just then my pocket began vibrating. My cell phone. Was it Dad, belatedly trying to warn me that Mrs. Winkleson had left the house? I hoped so, since Dad did know, at least in theory, where I was. If the call was only from Michael, giving me an update on his ETA, it wasn’t going to help me escape from Mrs. Winkleson’s clutches.
But if it was Dad, and I didn’t answer, and he got worried enough . . . I had to stall.
“No one was trying to kill you,” I said. “You killed Mrs. Sechrest. Then you realized what a lucky break it was that she’d started dressing all in black when she came over here. People would assume the killer mistook her for you, especially after you made that big fuss about having received threats.”