Deadly Arrangements at the Garden Club

• Chapter 1 Clipped Wings and Pruning Shears
• Chapter 2 Best in Show, Worst in Luck
• Chapter 3 Bitter Roots
• Chapter 4 The Prime Suspect's Petals
• Chapter 5 Whispers in the Greenhouse
• Chapter 6 A Thistle Between Them
• Chapter 7 Deadheading the Past
• Chapter 8 Poison in the Perennials
• Chapter 9 Midnight in the Conservatory
• Chapter 10 Stolen Seeds
• Chapter 11 Cross-Pollination
• Chapter 12 Thorny Alibis
• Chapter 13 The Gilded Trowel
• Chapter 14 Digging for Dirt
• Chapter 15 A Touch of Belladonna
• Chapter 16 Tangled Vines
• Chapter 17 Secret Arrangements
• Chapter 18 Wilting Under Pressure
• Chapter 19 Forbidden Blooms
• Chapter 20 Cold Frames and Cold Shoulders
• Chapter 21 The Overturned Terrarium
• Chapter 22 Sifting the Soil
• Chapter 23 A Gathering of Grudges
• Chapter 24 Trap in the Topiary
• Chapter 25 Unearthing the Truth
• Chapter 26 Fresh Shoots and New Beginnings

The trouble with Japanese beetles, aside from their gluttonous appetites and iridescent vanity, was their complete disregard for property lines.

Fern Hastings nudged a fat, coppery pest off a broad hosta leaf and into a bucket of soapy water with the tip of her wooden dibber. The beetle hit the suds with a faint, doomed plop. At twenty-four, Fern possessed an advanced degree in botanical science, three blistered calluses on each thumb, and a bone-deep conviction that her grandmother’s cottage nursery on the outskirts of Shady Creek could out-produce any industrial greenhouse in the county.

What she did not possess was a tolerance for petty municipal politics, which made her current assignment all the more unbearable.

"You’re missing the undersides, dear," came a shrill, bird-like voice from behind the boxwood hedge.

Fern took a steadying breath of humid May air, smelling damp peat moss and impending rain, before she straightened her spine. Standing on the manicured gravel path was Beatrice Vance, president of the Shady Creek Floral Society and self-appointed arbiter of all things petal-adjacent. Beatrice wore a sun visor the size of a satellite dish and leather gardening gloves that had never once encountered real dirt.

"Undersides are clear, Mrs. Vance," Fern said, offering a tight, professional smile. "I sprayed them with cold-pressed neem oil at dawn. The larvae won’t take hold."

"Well, let us hope so. The Annual Spring Gala is only forty-eight hours away, and the Historical Society terrace simply cannot look like a salad bar for insects." Beatrice adjusted her pearl choker with two gloved fingers, her eyes narrowing as she took in Fern’s faded denim overalls and dirt-streaked forearm. "Standards must be maintained, Fern. Your dear grandmother understood that. Though I must say, she spent less time lecturing about oil and more time deadheading."

Fern’s fingers tightened slightly on the wooden handle of her dibber. Gran had spent fifty years keeping the Historical Society’s heirloom gardens alive while women like Beatrice drank gin and tonics on the veranda and took credit for the blooms. Since Gran’s knees had finally surrendered to arthritis the previous winter, Fern had taken over the contract. It was crucial income for Hastings Heritage Nursery, especially with the roof of Greenhouse Two threatening to cave under the weight of the next heavy snow.

"I’ll have the perennial beds edged and mulched by five," Fern said, choosing peace over a lecture on soil microbiome integrity. "Is the committee still setting up the staging tables in the conservatory this afternoon?"

"They are indeed," Beatrice said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that could have easily carried across a football field. "And between you and me, the competition this year is turning out to be positively savage. Delilah King has imported three dozen Dutch tubers under refrigeration. Black Emperor dahlias, mind you. In May."

Fern raised an eyebrow. "Black Emperors don't naturally flower until late summer. Forcing them in spring ruins the root crown for the next cycle."

"Do you think Delilah cares about root crowns?" Beatrice sniffed, a sound like dry parchment crinkling. "She cares about the silver trophy. And she will stop at nothing to get it. She told Martha Higgins just yesterday that your family’s heirloom sweet peas look like ditch weeds."

Before Fern could formulate an answer that wouldn't result in her contract being immediately revoked, the distinct, thunderous rumble of a modified diesel engine shattered the midday quiet of the gardens.

A battered, moss-green pickup truck with a rusted tailgate backed down the gravel service drive with alarming speed. It braked hard, spitting gray pebbles against the neatly clipped lawn, and rattled to a halt just inches from the prize-winning hybrid rhododendrons. The door groaned open, and a pair of scuffed, heavy work boots hit the ground.

Fern didn't need to look up to know who it was. The tension in her shoulders shifted from municipal irritation to an entirely different, considerably more hazardous variety of stress.

Caleb Reynolds stepped out of the truck, a flat of heavy timber edging slung effortlessly over one broad shoulder. He was tall, lean, and wore an olive-drab chore coat with the sleeves hacked off at the elbows, revealing forearms dusted with cedar sawdust and dark, coiled hair. A jagged scar cut through his left eyebrow, giving his dark eyes a perpetually skeptical cast.

He was also the nephew of Delilah King, the head of Reynolds Landscape Design, and the single most infuriating contractor in three counties.

"Morning, Mrs. Vance," Caleb said, his deep voice carrying a dry, unhurried cadence that seemed specifically designed to raise Fern’s blood pressure. He glanced past the president’s enormous visor and landed on Fern, his mouth twitching into a lopsided half-smile. "Hastings. I see you’re already harassing the local wildlife."

"Some of us work for a living, Reynolds," Fern replied, setting her pail down with deliberate care. "Unlike others who rely on heavy machinery to compensate for a total lack of pruning technique."

"My technique is efficient," Caleb said, walking past her to drop the timber onto the grass with a dull thud. He wiped his brow with the back of his wrist, leaving a faint streak of cedar dust across his temple. "Two hundred feet of cedar borders in two hours, or three days with a hand trowel and an existential crisis. You do the math."

"Cedar borders that will leech tannins into the acid-loving azaleas by July," she fired back, stepping toward him. "Did you even test the soil pH along the terrace wall?"

Caleb paused, leaning his hip against the truck’s tailgate. He looked down at her, his dark eyes gleaming with an annoying spark of amusement. Up close, he smelled of crushed pine needles, machine oil, and the crisp, green scent of freshly cut turf.

"Soil's sitting at 6.2," he said softly, leaning in just an inch closer than was strictly necessary for a debate on horticulture. "Which is why I brought three sacks of elemental sulfur to dress the trenches before the wood goes in. I can read a testing kit, Fern. Even if you think you’re the only person in this valley who knows how to hold a spade."

"Oh, stop it, you two," Beatrice interrupted, waving a leather-clad hand between them like an umpire breaking up a scuffle at home plate. "Save the hostility for the judging committee. Caleb, your aunt is looking for you in the conservatory. She was having a minor fit about the humidity levels near the east entrance. She claims the draft is curling her fern fronds."

Caleb’s easy expression flattened instantly, the warmth vanishing behind a guarded, shuttered look that Fern had seen him wear only around his family. The tension between Caleb and Delilah King was an open secret in Shady Creek, though nobody quite knew the details. Delilah had financed Caleb’s business start-up four years ago after he returned to town, but rumor held that she treated him less like a partner and more like an indentured servant.

"The humidity's fine," Caleb muttered, his jaw tightening. "The conservatory vents are automated."

"Tell her that yourself," Beatrice said brightly. "I am not getting between Delilah and her foliage. That woman has the temperament of an angry hornet."

With that parting assessment, Beatrice turned on her sensible orthopedic shoes and marched off down the gravel path, her sun visor bobbing like a sail in the light breeze.

Silence descended on the garden again, broken only by the chirping of a persistent robin in the apple tree and the ticking of Caleb’s cooling truck engine.

Fern looked down at the timber, then up at Caleb. "Sulfur won't be enough if you don't lay down a gravel barrier beneath the cedar."

Caleb looked at her, the hard line of his mouth softening by a fraction. "Already got thirty bags of crushed pea gravel in the bed, Hastings. You really don't think much of me, do you?"

"I think you work too fast, cut too many corners, and you're letting your aunt push you into building that monstrosity of a water feature on the lower terrace," Fern said, crossing her arms over her chest. "The historical society bylaws specifically state that water installations must blend with the Victorian aesthetic. Delilah's fountain looks like something out of a modern casino lobby."

"It's what the client wants," Caleb said flatly, though the tightness returned to his eyes. "And Delilah holds the contract."

"And what do you want?" Fern asked, the question slipping out before she could catch it.

Caleb held her gaze for a beat longer than was comfortable. A sudden gust of wind ruffled the leaves of the overarching maples, tossing a lock of dark hair across his forehead. For a second, the cocky, defensive landscape contractor disappeared, replaced by someone who looked profoundly exhausted.

"I want to finish this job," he said quietly, his voice lower than before. "Get my equipment paid off. And be done with the King family payroll for good."

Fern blinked, surprised by the sudden flash of honesty. Despite their professional sparring over mulch types and planting seasons, Caleb had always kept his personal life walled off behind thick hedges of sarcasm and work ethic. She opened her mouth to say something—perhaps an offer of truce, or at least a concession that his pea-gravel plan was sensible—when a sharp, piercing shriek cut through the glass walls of the nearby conservatory.

Fern froze. "What was that?"

"Delilah," Caleb said, his voice dropping into immediate, weary resignation. "Sounds like she discovered a spider."

"No," Fern said, listening closely as a dull crash of breaking terra cotta echoed across the lawn. "That sounded like an argument."

Without waiting for him, Fern set down her dibber and hurried along the stone pathway toward the conservatory. The glass structure, built in the late nineteenth century, stood at the heart of the Historical Society’s grounds—an intricate palace of wrought iron, whitewashed panes, and curved arches. Normally, it was a tranquil sanctuary filled with the humid, rich perfume of orchids, citrus blossoms, and damp stone.

Today, it sounded like a disaster zone.

Fern pushed open the heavy brass-handled door, stepping into the warm, tropical microclimate. Caleb was right on her heels, his heavy boots clicking sharply against the mosaic tile floor.

At the center of the main hall, standing beside a long trestle table draped in dark velvet, was Delilah King. She was a woman in her late forties, impeccably groomed, wearing an expensive linen suit that looked utterly ridiculous in a working greenhouse. Her hair was pulled back into an aggressive, lacquered chignon, and her sharp, angular face was currently flushed a blotchy, furious red.

At her feet lay the shattered remains of a large, imported Italian pot. Soil was scattered everywhere, and a prize-winning maidenhair fern lay crumpled on the stones, its delicate fronds crushed beneath heavy shards of clay.

Standing across the table from her was a young woman in her early twenties, trembling so violently that the small watering can in her hands was rattling like a castanet. It was Chloe Bennett, a quiet community college student whom the Garden Club had hired for the summer to help maintain the indoor collections.

"You clumsy, incompetent little idiot!" Delilah was shouting, her voice echoing shrilly against the high glass dome. "Do you have any idea how much that urn cost? It was imported directly from Tuscany! And the specimen—that adiantum was propagated from an award-winning mother plant!"

"I'm—I'm so sorry, Mrs. King," Chloe stammered, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. "I was just trying to move the hose past the display, and the nozzle caught the pedestal—"

"You don't think! None of you think!" Delilah snapped, slamming a heavy brass watering syringe down onto the table with a force that made the other pots rattle. "You have completely ruined the symmetry of my arrangement. The judges will be here on Friday morning! What am I supposed to put in this corner now? One of those pathetic, common geraniums the Hastings nursery churns out?"

Fern’s temper, normally kept well-pruned beneath layers of professional composure, flared like dry tinder. She stepped out from behind a towering fiddle-leaf fig, her boots crunching slightly on the stray potting soil.

"There is nothing common about our geraniums, Delilah," Fern said, her voice clear and carrying an icy weight that cut right through the older woman's tirade. "And there's nothing broken here that a broom and a little basic decency couldn't fix."

Delilah spun around, her eyes flashing behind designer tortoiseshell spectacles. "Stay out of this, Fern. This is Floral Society business. You are here to edge the grass, not give lectures on etiquette."

"Chloe works for the Society, not for you personally," Fern countered, stepping between Delilah and the terrified student. "She made a mistake. The plant can be repotted, and the root system is completely intact. It’s a maidenhair fern, not fine china."

"It's ruined," Delilah hissed. She turned her venomous gaze past Fern, locking onto Caleb, who stood just inside the entryway with his arms crossed and an unreadable look on his face. "Caleb! Get over here. Clear this mess out. Now."

Caleb didn't move. He stood by the doorway, his broad shoulders squared against a white iron pillar, his dark eyes fixed on his aunt. The tension between them was palpable, thick as the humid greenhouse air.

"I’m working the terrace wall, Delilah," Caleb said, his voice level, almost conversational, but with an underlying edge of cold steel. "Hire a cleaner if you need someone to sweep up after your temper."

Delilah turned an even deeper shade of crimson. Her nostrils flared, and for a terrifying moment, Fern thought the woman might actually throw another pot.

"Don't you get clever with me," Delilah lowered her voice, though the vitriol in it only deepened. "You remember who holds the note on that little workshop of yours on Mill Street. You remember who co-signed for that truck you're so proud of. You do what I tell you, when I tell you, or I call the bank on Monday morning and have the whole lot foreclosed."

The silence in the conservatory was absolute. Even the water trickling in the small ornamental fountain nearby sounded deafeningly loud.

Fern looked at Caleb. His jaw was clenched so hard she could see a muscle jumping along the side of his neck. His hands, hanging by his sides, curled into tight, white-knuckled fists. For three long seconds, he stared at Delilah with a look of such sheer, unadulterated hatred that Fern felt an involuntary chill crawl up the back of her neck.

"Careful, Delilah," Caleb said, his voice dropping to a gravelly, dangerous whisper that barely reached Fern's ears. "You push people long enough, they push back."

"Is that a threat?" Delilah scoffed, though she took a half-step backward, her designer shoes clicking nervously on the tile. "From you?"

"It's a fact," Caleb said.

He didn't say another word. He turned on his heel and strode out through the glass doors, the heavy brass latch clattering loudly into place behind him.

Delilah let out a sharp, mocking laugh that sounded completely hollow. She smoothed the lapels of her linen jacket with jerky, agitated motions, refusing to meet Fern's gaze.

"Insolent," Delilah muttered to herself, adjusting a spray of purple freesias on the table with trembling fingers. "Uneducated, insolent boy. Thinks he can run a business without family backing. He'd be digging ditches for minimum wage if it weren't for me."

"Are you finished?" Fern asked quietly, keeping her arm around Chloe’s trembling shoulders.

Delilah glared at them both, her face a rigid mask of aristocratic disdain. "Clean this up, Hastings. If there is so much as a grain of dirt on this velvet runner by three o'clock, I'll report you to the board for negligence. And take this sniffling girl with you. She's useless."

Delilah snatched up an ornate leather tool roll from the table, tucking a heavy pair of polished Japanese pruning shears into her belt like a weapon. Without another glance at either of them, she swept toward the back doors of the conservatory, which led out toward the private estate gardens and the old tool shed.

The door clicked shut behind her, leaving Fern and Chloe alone amidst the wreckage of the Tuscan urn.

"I'm so sorry, Fern," Chloe whispered, wiping her face with the hem of her Society apron. "I didn't mean to drop it. She just... she came up behind me so quietly, and then she started yelling about the humidity, and I jumped—"

"It's fine, Chloe," Fern said soothingly, letting out a long, slow breath. "Really. It's just a plant, and it's just a pot. Delilah has been looking for an excuse to scream at someone all morning."

Fern knelt down on the stone tiles, beginning to carefully gather the broad, fragile fronds of the maidenhair fern. The root ball was dense, wrapped in damp, black peat, completely undamaged despite the shattered pottery around it. She picked up the largest pieces of terracotta, setting them aside in an empty flat.

"She's awful," Chloe murmured, retrieving a broom and a dustpan from the maintenance closet. "She talks to everyone like they're dirt. Even Mr. Reynolds. I thought he was going to hit her just now."

"Caleb wouldn't do that," Fern said automatically, though the memory of the sheer fury in Caleb's eyes made her pause for a fraction of a second. She had never seen him look that angry. He was usually exasperating, arrogant, and relentlessly stubborn, but he rarely lost his temper. Delilah had struck a nerve, and she had done it publicly and ruthlessly.

"I don't know," Chloe said, sweeping the loose potting mix into the pan. "The way he looked at her... it was scary. And my brother says Delilah's been telling people around town that Caleb's business is going under because he's incompetent. That's why he owes her money."

"Small towns have too many opinions and not enough facts," Fern said, shaking her head. "Come on, help me get this root ball into a plastic nursery pot. If we soak it in a diluted seaweed extract solution, it'll bounce back before the judges arrive on Friday. Delilah won't even know the difference."

For the next half-hour, Fern worked methodically. The manual labor of gardening had always been her greatest comfort. Plants were predictable; they responded logically to light, water, nutrients, and care. They didn't lie, they didn't hold grudges, and they didn't leverage mortgages over your head to force compliance.

Once the maidenhair fern was safely nestled in fresh potting soil and the conservatory floor was swept clean of every trace of debris, Fern sent Chloe back to the main office with instructions to drink a glass of water and stay out of Delilah's path for the rest of the afternoon.

Fern wiped her hands on a rag and stepped back outside into the May sunshine.

The air had grown heavier, the sky bruised with dark, purple-gray storm clouds rolling in from the west over the Shady Creek ridges. The wind was picking up, carrying the sharp, electrical smell of incoming rain.

Down on the lower terrace, Caleb's truck was still parked by the service drive, but the bed was empty. The timber edging had been stacked in neat, orderly rows along the perimeter wall, and a tarp had been secured over the bags of gravel to protect them from the impending downpour.

Caleb himself was nowhere to be seen.

Fern walked down the stone stairs toward the lower garden, intending to check the drainage ditches along the rose walk. If a storm was coming, the newly planted heritage damasks could drown if the culvert behind the tool shed was clogged with leaf litter.

The back portion of the Historical Society grounds was far less maintained than the manicured front lawns. Here, ancient boxwoods had grown tall and wild, forming dense, labyrinthine hedges that blocked out the view of the surrounding town. The gravel paths narrowed to dirt tracks, shadowed by overhanging willows and weeping birches.

At the very end of the path sat the potting shed—a weathered, stone outbuilding with a sagging slate roof that dated back to the 1920s. It was mostly used for storing heavy bags of bone meal, spare stakes, and the rusted tractor that nobody knew how to start.

As Fern rounded the bend near the compost bins, she stopped dead in her tracks.

The heavy wooden door of the potting shed was hanging half-open, swinging gently on its rusted hinges in the gusting wind. A high-pitched, metallic squeak accompanied each movement, rhythmic and eerie against the distant roll of thunder.

"Caleb?" Fern called out, her voice slightly muffled by the wind.

No answer.

She took a step closer, her boots squelching softly in the softening dirt.

Spilled on the threshold of the shed was a neat row of cut flowers—long-stemmed, velvety, and so dark a purple they appeared almost jet black.

Black Emperor dahlias. Delilah's imported prize blooms, cut cleanly at the base, lay scattered across the wet stones like dropped funeral ribbons.

"Delilah?" Fern took another step forward, a sudden knot of cold unease tightening in the pit of her stomach. "Are you in there?"

The wind died down for a brief, breathless second, leaving a heavy, suffocating silence in the narrow space between the hedges and the stone wall.

Fern pushed the wooden door open wider.

The interior of the shed was dark, illuminated only by the gray, stormy light filtering through a grime-caked window high on the far wall. The air inside was thick with the scent of damp earth, iron, and a sharp, copper tang that had nothing to do with fertilizer.

Lying face down across a pile of burlap sacks in the center of the earthen floor was Delilah King.

Her pristine linen jacket was ruined, stained with dark, spreading moisture. Her limbs were sprawled at unnatural angles, rigid and completely still.

Fern gasped, the breath catching sharply in her throat as she rushed forward, dropping to her knees beside the fallen woman. "Delilah! Can you hear me?"

She reached out with a trembling hand, her fingers pressing against the side of Delilah's neck, searching for the carotid artery just beneath the jawline. The skin was cool to the touch.

There was no pulse.

Fern’s eyes traveled down, and her heart slammed violently against her ribs.

Protruding from the center of Delilah's back, driven deep between her shoulder blades with brutal, unmistakable precision, was a pair of heavy, polished metal pruning shears. The floral-etched steel handles were slick with dark, half-congealed blood.

They were the exact shears Delilah had slipped into her belt half an hour ago.

Fern stumbled backward, her hand flying to her mouth, her boots skidding in the loose dirt of the shed floor. Her mind spun, the reality of the scene refusing to align with the mundane reality of garden club rivalries and prize-winning flowers.

Murder. Delilah King had been murdered in the Historical Society potting shed.

Thunder cracked loudly overhead, shaking the slate roof of the shed, followed immediately by the heavy drumming of rain against the glass panes.

Fern scrambled to her feet, backing toward the open door, desperate for air, desperate for light. She turned to run for the main house to call the police, but as she reached the threshold, her foot kicked against something hard half-buried in the damp leaves beside the doorframe.

She looked down.

Lying in the dirt, dropped as if in a hurry, was a heavy brass pocket knife with a worn wooden inlay. The initials C.R. were carved crudely into the handle, surrounded by a faint dusting of fresh cedar sawdust.

Fern stared at the knife, the breath freezing in her chest as the rain came pouring down in torrents, washing the dirt across the cold, unmoving steel.

The rain fell in sheets, instantly turning the dust of the garden paths into thick, reddish muck. Fern stood in the doorway of the potting shed, staring down at the pocket knife. The brass bolster gleamed dully under the gray sky, and those two carved letters—C.R.—seemed to pulse with dreadful clarity.

Panic was a weed that took root fast if you didn't yank it out by the crown. Fern pulled her hands into the cuffs of her jacket, crouching low. Every instinct honed by a lifetime of crime novels told her not to touch evidence, but every instinct tied to three generations of Shady Creek neighborliness made her chest ache with cold dread. If the police saw this knife sitting three feet from Delilah King’s body, Caleb Reynolds wouldn’t just be a person of interest. He would be in handcuffs before the storm clouds cleared.

She didn't pick it up. Instead, she stepped carefully over it, backed out into the torrential rain, and pulled the shed door shut until the rusted iron latch clicked. The metallic scrape sounded sickeningly final.

She turned and sprinted toward the main mansion.

Water sluiced off the brim of her canvas cap, stinging her eyes as she tore past the dripping boxwood hedges. Her boots slipped on the flagstone stairs leading up to the wide veranda of the Historical Society. She hit the French doors with both hands, bursting into the foyer like a gale-force wind.

Inside, the atmosphere was a jarring picture of civic decorum. The smell of lemon wax and Earl Grey tea hung heavy in the air. Half a dozen members of the Floral Society committee were milling around a long walnut table, admiring a three-tiered silver display stand.

"Fern, darling! You’re dripping all over the parquet," Beatrice Vance chided from behind a stack of laminated score sheets. She wore a floral silk scarf pinned with a gold bumblebee, looking entirely insulated from the weather outside. "Did you finish the damasks? Because if the mulch isn’t banked—"

"Call the police," Fern said. The words came out harsh and ragged, cutting through the civilized clink of china teacups.

The room fell instantly silent. Martha Higgins, who had been delicately balancing a lemon bar on a paper napkin, froze mid-chew.

"I beg your pardon?" Beatrice’s eyebrows shot up behind her designer glasses. "Fern, if Caleb Reynolds tracked mud across the terrace again, that is hardly a matter for the authorities—"

"Delilah is dead," Fern interrupted, her voice steadying even as her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. "In the old potting shed behind the rose walk. Call Sheriff Miller right now."

Martha dropped her lemon bar. It hit the polished floor with a soft, buttery thud.

For two full seconds, nobody moved. Then Beatrice’s hand drifted slowly to her throat, her knuckles white against her pearls. "Dead? Delilah? What on earth are you talking about? She was just in the conservatory making a fuss about—"

"She’s been stabbed," Fern said bluntly, refusing to let them retreat into committee disbelief. "It wasn't an accident. Do not go down there. Call 911."

That finally shattered the paralyzing calm. Martha let out a low, strangled moan and sank into an antique settee. Beatrice, whose bossy nature was apparently backed by genuine emergency reflexes, reached across the reception desk and snatched up the landline receiver, punching three digits with a shaking, manicured finger.

Fern stepped back toward the vestibule, water pooling around her heavy leather work boots. Through the tall front windows, the world outside was dissolving into a curtain of gray. She watched the long gravel driveway, searching for the boxy silhouette of Caleb’s green pickup. The service drive was hidden behind the western wing of the house, but she knew the layout of these grounds by heart. If Caleb had taken off down the back delivery road, he’d already be halfway to the river highway.

Did he do it? The thought hit her with the cold bite of frost on tender spring shoots.

She remembered the look in his eyes less than forty minutes ago—the raw, white-hot fury when Delilah threatened his livelihood, his truck, his workshop. Caleb was proud to a fault. He had returned to Shady Creek after five years working commercial hardscaping down south, determined to build something of his own without trading on the King family name. Delilah had held every scrap of his independence in her manicured fist, and she had reveled in squeezing.

Push people long enough, they push back. His own words echoed in Fern's mind, heavy with terrible foresight.

Within ten minutes, the wail of sirens cut through the drumming rain.

Two cruisers from the Shady Creek Sheriff’s Department roared up the circular drive, tires throwing arcs of wet pea gravel across the manicured lawn. Sheriff Silas Miller stepped out of the lead car, holding a wide-brimmed Stetson against the wind. Miller was a thickset man in his late fifties with a walrus mustache, heavy jowls, and the plodding, unhurried gait of someone who had spent thirty years dealing mostly with trespassers, drunk drivers coming off the interstate, and the occasional stolen riding mower.

Behind him came Deputy Jenkins, a nervous young man whose uniform looked two sizes too large for his skinny frame.

"Alright, everybody stay inside," Sheriff Miller announced as he pushed through the French doors, shaking rain off his oilskin duster. His gaze swept over the gathered club members before settling heavily on Fern. "Beatrice said you found her, Hastings."

"Yes," Fern said, stepping forward. "In the stone potting shed at the south corner of the rose walk."

Miller sighed, a deep rumble that ruffled his gray mustache. "Anyone touch anything?"

"I checked her neck for a pulse," Fern replied, keeping her voice carefully devoid of emotion. "She was cold. I didn't move her. I closed the shed door behind me so the rain wouldn't blow inside, and I came straight here."

She didn't mention the pocket knife. The omission sat like a lump of lead in her stomach, heavy and treacherous, but the words refused to form on her tongue.

Miller nodded once. "Stay put, Fern. Jenkins, with me. The rest of you ladies sit down and don't wander off. This place is an active crime scene until further notice."

The officers ducked back out into the deluge, their heavy footsteps splashing down the flagstone terrace toward the lower gardens.

Inside the Historical Society foyer, the air grew thick with suffocating tension. Martha was quietly weeping into an embroidered handkerchief, while Beatrice paced back and forth near the grandfather clock, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.

"I can't believe it," Beatrice muttered for the fifth time, her voice tight and high. "Who would do such a thing? The Gala is on Friday! The county commissioners are supposed to be here for the ribbon-cutting!"

"Delilah is murdered, Beatrice, and you’re worried about the ribbon-cutting?" Fern snapped, her patience finally fraying. She pulled off her dripping canvas jacket and draped it over an umbrella stand. "Someone drove an iron blade into her back."

Beatrice flinched, looking genuinely wounded. "I only meant—it’s monstrous, Fern! Delilah had her difficult moments, heaven knows, but to be killed? In the society’s gardens?" She lowered her voice, darting a nervous glance toward the windows. "Where is Caleb? I saw him arguing with her in the conservatory right before she walked out."

Fern’s fingers curled into the fabric of her flannel shirt. "I don't know where he is. He was working on the timber edging along the terrace wall."

"He threatened her," Martha chimed in from the couch, sniffing loudly. Her eyes were red-rimmed behind thick spectacles. "I wasn't in the room, but Chloe came running into the pantry five minutes later shaking like a leaf. She said Caleb told Delilah he’d push back. She said he looked like he wanted to kill her."

"Chloe was upset because Delilah had spent ten minutes screaming at her over an overturned pot," Fern said, her tone sharper than she intended. "People say things when they’re angry, Martha. That doesn't make them murderers."

"Well, somebody murdered her," Beatrice said with crisp finality. "And Delilah wasn't the kind of woman who had quiet enemies."

That, at least, was an indisputable botanical fact. Delilah King had navigated Shady Creek society like a rogue rototiller, tearing up reputations and churning through grudges with relentless efficiency. She had spent a decade using her wealth and her late husband’s political connections to control the Historical Society, the zoning board, and the regional garden exhibitions. If there was a trophy to be won or an estate contract to be awarded, Delilah found a way to secure it, usually by digging up dirt on her competitors.

Twenty minutes dragged by. The rain gradually slackened from a violent downpour to a steady, rhythmic drizzle.

The heavy front door swung open again, and Sheriff Miller walked back into the foyer, his face dark and grim. He took off his wet Stetson and slapped it against his thigh. He didn't look at Beatrice or Martha; his small, sharp eyes went straight to Fern.

"Coroner's on his way from the county seat," Miller said flatly. "State police forensics van should be here within the hour."

"Did you... did you see the weapon?" Beatrice ventured, taking a timid step toward him.

"She was stabbed with a set of heavy pruning shears," Miller said, not mincing words. "Looks like she never saw it coming. Walked into the shed, turned her back to the door, and took six inches of carbon steel between the shoulder blades."

A collective gasp went up from the women in the room.

Miller turned to Fern, stepping close enough that she could smell the stale tobacco and wet wool coming off his coat. "Fern, you said you didn't touch anything in that shed besides Delilah's neck."

Fern met his gaze, willing her heart to slow down. "That’s right."

Miller reached into his duster pocket and pulled out a clear evidence bag with thick, gloved fingers. Inside the plastic lay the brass-and-wood pocket knife, the blade closed, the initials C.R. clearly visible through the clear film.

"Found this dropped right on the doorsill," Miller said, watching her face with the cold patience of a hunting dog. "Fresh cedar sawdust caked into the hinges. Look familiar to you?"

Fern swallowed, keeping her expression as neutral as a stone birdbath. "Caleb carries a knife like that. Half the landscapers in the county carry pocket knives, Sheriff."

"Half the landscapers in the county don't carve their initials into the handle, Fern," Miller said dryly. "And half the landscapers weren't heard screaming threats at Delilah King thirty minutes before she turned up dead."

"They weren't screaming," Fern corrected quietly. "Delilah was screaming. Caleb was just trying to do his job."

Miller’s eyebrows rose. "You defending him? Word around town is you two spend half your time bickering over compost and ditch lines."

"We disagree on soil management," Fern said, crossing her arms. "That doesn't mean I want to see him railroaded for a homicide just because his initials are on a knife."

"Nobody’s getting railroaded," Miller said, tucking the bag back into his pocket. "We’re doing our jobs. And the first part of that job is talking to the man who left his calling card at the scene. Speaking of which—his truck is gone from the service lane."

Fern felt a sudden, hollow drop in her stomach. "His truck?"

"Gone," Deputy Jenkins spoke up from the doorway, shaking water from his umbrella. "Tire tracks lead out the service drive and onto the old river road. Looks like he peeled out in a hurry. Left half his timber stacked on the grass and his gravel bags untied."

Caleb had run. The realization hit Fern with the force of a physical blow. Why would he leave? Even if he were furious, even if he wanted nothing more than to wash his hands of Delilah and her toxic demands, leaving a job site in the middle of a storm right after a violent confrontation was practically an admission of guilt.

"I need to take your official statement, Fern," Miller said, pulling a small spiral notebook and a chewed pen from his chest pocket. "Every detail. From the time you arrived this morning to the moment you found the body."

For the next half-hour, Fern answered his questions methodically. She described her morning routine, Beatrice’s arrival on the terrace, Caleb’s arrival with the cedar edging, and the confrontation in the conservatory over the broken maidenhair fern. She left nothing out, describing Delilah’s threats regarding Caleb’s mortgage and Caleb’s icy departure.

"And when you went down to the shed?" Miller asked, scribbling in his notebook. "Did you see anyone on the paths? Hear anything?"

"Just the wind and the thunder," Fern said honestly. "The storm was breaking right as I walked down. If there was a struggle, the rain drowned it out."

"And you didn't see Caleb between the time he left the conservatory and when you found the body?"

"No," Fern said. "His truck was still parked by the service drive when I came out of the conservatory around twelve-forty. I didn't see him, but the timber had been moved."

Miller grunted, writing a final line before snapping the notebook shut with an elastic band. "Alright. Jenkins will take statements from the rest of the ladies. Fern, you’re free to go, but stay in town. The state investigators will want to go over this again tomorrow."

"Understood," Fern said.

She grabbed her wet jacket and slipped out the side door before Beatrice could corner her for another round of hand-wringing.

The drizzle had tapered off into a cool, gray mist that clung to the valleys of Shady Creek like wet gauze. Fern walked briskly down the long driveway toward her own vehicle—a battered, canary-yellow station wagon that had hauled more bags of manure and flats of seedlings than most farm trucks.

As she reached the car, she paused, looking back toward the western service drive.

The ground there was soft clay. Miller had been right about one thing: the deep ruts left by Caleb's heavy off-road tires were clearly visible, cutting hard across the wet grass before turning sharply onto the gravel road leading south. He hadn't just driven away; he had accelerated hard enough to kick turf ten feet into the hydrangeas.

Stupid, Fern thought, her jaw aching from clenching her teeth so hard. Stupid, stubborn man.

She got into the wagon, the familiar scent of potting soil, dried lavender, and old vinyl wrapping around her like an old blanket. She turned the key, and the engine coughed twice before rumbling to life. Instead of turning north toward the nursery and her grandmother's cottage, Fern put the car in gear and turned south, following the twin ruts left by the green truck.

Mill Street was barely a street at all; it was a dead-end gravel spur running parallel to the old mill race on the south edge of town, bordered on one side by the swollen, muddy creek and on the other by a row of dilapidated brick warehouses dating back to the town’s defunct textile era.

Caleb’s workshop occupied the end unit of the oldest building—a drafty brick structure with corrugated tin roofing and high, arched windows covered in chicken wire. Outside, neat stacks of flagstone, pallets of river rock, and several iron racks of commercial landscape equipment sat under lean-tos.

The green pickup was parked haphazardly in the gravel yard, the driver’s side door hanging slightly ajar.

Fern killed her engine and sat for a moment, her hands resting on the steering wheel. Her pulse was thumping loudly in her ears. She was a horticulturist, not an investigator. She knew how to graft fruit trees, balance nitrogen cycles, and nurse sickly orchids back from the brink of rot. She did not know how to handle a man who might have just driven a pair of gardening shears through his aunt's spine.

He didn't do it, she told herself firmly. Caleb Reynolds was arrogant, sarcastic, and relentlessly infuriating, but he wasn't a butcher. He had a deep, patient respect for living things. You didn't spend five years coaxing fragile saplings out of rocky mountain soil if you had murder in your heart.

She stepped out into the mist, her boots crunching softly on the wet gravel as she approached the open bay door of the workshop.

Inside, the vast space smelled of damp concrete, gasoline, cut cedar, and metallic cutting oil. A single overhead halogen light hung from the rafters, casting harsh, angular shadows across workbenches cluttered with chainsaws, socket sets, and blueprints.

At the far end of the shop, standing by an industrial sink, was Caleb.

He had stripped off his wet chore coat, wearing only a sleeveless gray undershirt and dirt-streaked work pants. His back was to her, his broad shoulders hunched over the porcelain basin. The sound of rushing tap water echoed loudly against the brick walls.

"Caleb," Fern said, her voice cutting through the hum of the pipes.

He spun around instantly, knocking a plastic bottle of dish soap into the sink with a sharp clatter. His dark hair was soaked, plastered to his forehead, and his breathing was fast and shallow.

When he saw her, the wild, defensive look in his eyes flickered, replaced by sudden shock. "Fern? What the hell are you doing here?"

Fern didn't answer right away. Her eyes dropped involuntarily to his hands.

His forearms and knuckles were slick with water and suds, but clinging to the edge of the drain, washing away in pale, pinkish swirls beneath the heavy stream of water, was a distinct trace of blood.

Fern’s breath caught in her throat. She took a half-step backward toward the open door, the cold air suddenly rushing into her lungs.

Caleb noticed her gaze. He looked down at his hands, then back at her, his face hardening as he realized what she was seeing. He reached over with a jerky, deliberate motion and twisted the brass faucet shut. The sudden silence in the drafty workshop was deafening.

"It's not what you think," Caleb said, his voice flat, gravelly, and dangerously quiet.

"Delilah is dead, Caleb," Fern said, forcing herself to hold his gaze, refusing to let the tremble in her knees show. "Someone stabbed her in the potting shed twenty minutes after you stormed out of the conservatory."

Caleb flinched. For a fraction of a second, the hard shell of defiance cracked, revealing absolute, stunned horror. "Dead? What do you mean, dead?"

"I mean she’s lying on a pile of burlap sacks with six inches of carbon steel in her back," Fern said, stepping further into the shop, watching his every reaction with clinical precision. "And Sheriff Miller is holding your brass pocket knife in an evidence bag."

Caleb's mouth parted slightly. His gaze drifted down to his right pocket, his thumb instinctively tapping the empty seam of his trousers. "My knife..."

"He found it on the threshold," Fern continued, her voice dropping to a low, urgent murmur. "With your initials on the wood and cedar sawdust on the hinges. And five minutes later, they realized your truck had torn out of the Historical Society like you were running from the devil himself."

Caleb closed his eyes, letting out a long, ragged exhale through his teeth. He turned and leaned his weight against the edge of the heavy sink, his head bowed, his wet hair dripping onto the concrete floor. "Dammit."

"Caleb, look at me," Fern demanded, crossing the distance between them until she was standing just three feet away. "What happened to your hands?"

He opened his eyes, holding them up. Along the fleshy outer edge of his right palm, stretching from his wrist to his little finger, was a deep, jagged laceration. The cut was clean and raw, still weeping blood despite the cold water he had been using to flush it out.

"Boxwood wire," Caleb muttered, his voice thick with frustration. "I was packing up the timber after I left the conservatory. I went around to the tool shed behind the greenhouse to grab my tie-down straps, and I caught the back of my hand on an old roll of rusted galvanized wire hanging by the door."

"Did you go into the stone potting shed?"

"No," Caleb said fiercely, his dark eyes locking onto hers with unmistakable intensity. "I never went near the rose walk. I loaded the truck, realized I was bleeding all over the cab, and I came straight here to wash it out and wrap it before it got infected. I didn't see Delilah. I didn't touch her."

"Then how did your knife get on that doorsill?" Fern pressed. "Miller thinks you dropped it when you ran."

"I lost it yesterday afternoon," Caleb said, his jaw tightening until the muscle jumped along his cheek. "I told Delilah I couldn't find it. I was working on the fountain pump by the terrace pool, and I set it down on her supply crate. When I went back to get it, the crate was gone. Delilah told me she hadn't seen it."

Fern stared at him, piecing the timeline together in her head. "You think she took it?"

"I know she took it," Caleb snapped bitterly. "She was always doing petty garbage like that. Hiding tools, claiming I was disorganized, trying to prove I couldn't manage a project without her riding herd on me." He looked at the floor, shaking his head slowly. "Someone took it from her crate. Or she had it on her."

"Miller isn't going to believe that, Caleb," Fern said softly. "You threatened her in front of me and Chloe. Martha Higgins is up at the house right now telling anyone who will listen that you looked ready to strangle her."

"I was mad," Caleb admitted, his voice rough. "She’s been choking my business for two years, Fern. Every time I get close to paying off the equipment loans, she finds some clause in the contract, some hidden fee, some municipal regulation to hold over my head. Today she told me she was calling the bank to call in the loan on this building." He gestured toward the brick walls around them. "Everything I’ve worked for since I came back to this town. She was going to take it all just because she felt like proving she could."

"That gives you the best motive in the county," Fern pointed out grimly.

Caleb gave a short, humorless laugh that held no mirth at all. "Yeah. It does, doesn't it?" He grabbed a clean shop towel from a magnetic dispenser on the wall and wrapped it tightly around his injured hand, using his teeth to help pull the knot secure. "Which means Miller is going to come down that gravel road with a pair of cuffs in about ten minutes."

"Probably less," Fern agreed. "His deputy saw your tire tracks heading toward the river."

Caleb finished tying the cloth and leaned back against the workbench, crossing his arms over his chest. In the harsh glare of the hanging halogen light, he looked exhausted, the dark circles under his eyes standing out starkly against his pale skin. But the frantic panic that had gripped him when she first walked in had settled into something colder, quieter, and infinitely more dangerous: resignation.

"You should get out of here, Hastings," he said quietly, looking toward the open bay door where the mist was drifting across the threshold. "If Miller finds you here, he’ll think you tipped me off. You’ve got your grandmother’s nursery to think about. You don't need Delilah King’s mess sticking to your boots."

Fern looked at him—really looked at him. She saw the defensive posture, the scar through his eyebrow, the streak of cedar dust still clinging to his temple from their argument that morning about soil pH and pea gravel.

He was infuriating. He was reckless with heavy machinery, he had no patience for organic fertilizer, and he drove like a maniac on back country roads. But as she stood in the damp quiet of his workshop, smelling cedar shavings and machine grease, she knew with absolute, unshakable certainty that Caleb Reynolds was not a murderer.

Whoever had killed Delilah King had done so with cold, calculated efficiency, using the chaos of the approaching storm and the layout of the old gardens to strike without being seen. And by leaving Caleb’s knife on that stone threshold, the killer had neatly tied the crime to the one person in Shady Creek who had both the motive and the temper to take the fall.

"I’m not going anywhere," Fern said, setting her hands firmly on her hips.

Caleb blinked, looking at her as if she had suddenly sprouted leaves. "What?"

"I found the body, Caleb. I know what the scene looked like," she said, her voice dropping into the steady, focused tone she used when diagnosing a rare blight in the heirloom roses. "There were cut flowers on the threshold. Black Emperor dahlias. Delilah’s prize blooms."

Caleb frowned, his dark brows drawing together. "The tubers she imported from Holland?"

"Yes," Fern said. "They were cut fresh, long stems, dropped right across the stones like someone had dropped an armful of firewood. Why would Delilah cut her prize exhibition flowers forty-eight hours before judging, in the middle of a thunderstorm, and carry them to an abandoned tool shed?"

Caleb stood up straight, his cynical demeanor dropping away as his sharp mind locked onto the detail. "She wouldn't. She guarded those tubers like state secrets. She had them locked in the temperature-controlled cold frame behind the main conservatory."

"Exactly," Fern said. "Which means Delilah didn't just wander into that shed to check the lawnmowers. Someone lured her down there. Someone who had access to her prized flowers."

Before Caleb could answer, the distant, unmistakable wail of a police siren rose above the steady rumble of the nearby mill race.

The sound was coming from the north, echoing off the brick walls of the old industrial park. Miller was on his way, and he wasn't wasting time.

Caleb’s jaw clenched. He looked toward the back of the shop, where a narrow iron door led out toward the overgrown embankment of the creek. "You need to leave through the front. Tell them you just got here to pick up some nursery flats."

"Don't run, Caleb," Fern urged, stepping toward him, her hand reaching out instinctively to catch his forearm. Her fingers closed over the rough cotton of his sleeve, feeling the iron-hard tension in the muscle beneath. "If you run, Miller will put out an APB. You’ll be in the county jail by nightfall, and no judge in this district will grant you bail on a first-degree murder charge."

Caleb looked down at her hand on his arm, then up into her eyes. For a second, the space between them seemed to shrink, charged with a strange, breathless intensity that had nothing to do with garden soil or property boundaries. Up close, his dark eyes held a raw vulnerability that struck her right in the center of her chest.

"If I stay," Caleb said softly, his voice barely audible over the approaching sirens, "I'm going in a cell anyway, Fern. You know how this town works. Delilah had friends on the town council, friends in the district attorney’s office. They’ll want a neat, tidy collar before the evening news runs the story."

"Then we find out who actually did it," Fern said, the determination in her voice surprising even herself. "Miller is looking for an easy answer. We don't give him one."

The red and blue flash of emergency lights flickered against the grimy windows of the workshop, reflecting in dizzying arcs across the brick walls. The crunch of cruiser tires on wet gravel sounded right outside the bay door, followed immediately by the heavy slam of car doors.

"Caleb Reynolds!" Sheriff Miller’s voice boomed through the open entryway, rough and authoritative. "Step out where I can see your hands!"

Caleb pulled his arm gently from Fern’s grasp. He gave her a long, lingering look—a mixture of gratitude, dread, and a wry, crooked shadow of his usual half-smile.

"Worst in luck, Hastings," he whispered.

He raised both hands into the air, the white shop towel on his palm already spotted with fresh crimson, and turned toward the flashing lights.