Mulch Ado About Nothing

even as he spoke, he was moving obediently toward the cars in front.

“Not here, I think.”

Stefan was invited to sit in the back of the police car, and both it and Mel's moved off.

Jane turned around and saw Arnie sitting on the porch with his head in his hands. 'Arnie looks ill,' she said, and they all rushed forward to give aid and comfort.

“Leave me alone,' Arnie said when Miss Winstead asked him to raise his head so she could look at his pupils. Jane didn't quite understand this order. Did Miss Winstead suspect a stroke and were pupils a sign?

“You're as white as a ghost. You aren't well,' Miss Winstead insisted.

“I'm not sick,' Arnie insisted. 'Just sick at heart. Imagine how upset poor Darlene would have been if the police had come to her garden and taken someone away.”

Jane put her hand on his shoulder and spoke softly but firmly. 'Darlene didn't see it, Arnie. She's not here. She's not upset. Nor should you be. It had nothing to do with you or your late wife.”

Color started coming back to his face and he struggled to his feet shakily. 'You're right, Miss Jeffry. I was thinking of Darlene more than usual because it's really her garden I invited all of you to see.'

“We know how you feel, Arnie,' Jane said, though she really didn't understand him. 'But you would honor Darlene best if you brought her garden back to what it once was by taking all the good advice you got today. You need to get out with a sharp shovel and some knives to divide plants, and I'll bet you'll have her garden back just like it once was by next spring.”

Arnie stared at Jane for a long moment. 'You may be right,' he said before opening his front door. Slowly he went into the house and closed the door very gently.

Twenty-three

“I shouldn't have said that to him, about Dar- lene being gone,' Jane lamented on the way home. 'I think I hurt his feelings and all I meant to do was calm him down. He looked so terrible.'

“I don't see why. For one thing, what you said was true. And the poor old guy could have had a heart attack or stroke thinking about what his wife would have felt if the police came into her yard. He doesn't even know if that's accurate. She might have gotten a kick out of it,' Shelley said. 'Keep in mind that we didn't know her.”

Jane said, 'While I was upstairs at Arnie's, I peeked in the two bedrooms.'

“Of course you did,' Shelley said. 'Anybody would.'

“But only from the open doorways,' Jane amended, as if this counted toward a reputation for good manners. She described the bedroom, the ice water and carafe on Darlene's side of the bed, the pillowcase that had never been washed. The rouge tin on the vanity. The half-done afghan and sweater on Darlene's chair in the living room.

“I guess I'm not as softhearted as you. I think that's ridiculous,' Shelley said.

“But very, very sad, too. I simply can't imagine wanting to live with a dead person, no matter how much I might have loved them when they were alive. My grandmother once had a friend who did that with her son's room. He died as a child and the room stayed exactly as it was the last time he left it for about forty years. It upset the mother every time she looked in, but she kept it that way anyhow. And the ou r children resented it enormously. They were all younger and had never even known the dead older brother. Even when they were adults and came to visit, nobody was allowed to set foot in that room, let alone sleep there. My mother's friend was unhappy all her life.'

“I've heard stories like this before. I can't grasp why people would do that. Have you ever seen that commercial where the parents are bidding a tearful farewell to their college-graduate son, and the moment he's out of sight, Mom is measuring his room for where the new hot tub can go?'

“I laugh every time I see it,' Jane replied. 'And keep thinking about Mike's room. I want to turn it into my office the minute he graduates so I don't ever have to go back in the basement. I'll make the extra bathroom upstairs the laundry room when all three kids are gone. Speaking of Mike being gone, he hasn't mowed the lawn yet.'

“Don't look at me,' Shelley said. 'I've made my life's work not knowing a thing about the way a lawn mower works. And I'm also too stupid to understand the fuse box.'

“Nobody believes that.'

“True. But it's my story and I'm sticking to it.”

When they got home, Shelley's lawn service was tearing around her yard, using a wide variety of noisy machines. 'Want me to loan them to you? Just this one time?'

“I can't afford it if we're going to buy me a television.'

“I forgot about the television. How could I? Let's do that now, shall we? We'll drop the girls off at their cooking lesson first. When Mike gets home, he and a couple friends can haul it upstairs for you. And I warn you I won't let you be stingy about it. You need a nice big one with all the bells and whistles. Don't look at me that way, Jane. I know what I'm talking about. The first television we got for the bedroom was tiny and we had to sprawl in bed on our stomachs with our heads at the wrong end to see the picture.”

Shelley was true to her word. Jane came home with a box that nearly filled half the back of Shelley's van. The van also contained a new VCR and a cabinet to put everything on.

“I wish we could haul it out now,' Jane said.

“We couldn't do that if we had six women friends to help. It's one of those manly things to move televisions and furniture.”

They went first to look over Shelley's yard. Freshly mowed, it looked and smelled wonderful. 'What's that vine with the trellis in the big pot?' Jane asked.

Shelley walked over and pulled out a tag stuck in the soil. 'Brugmansia, it says. Look at the picture.'

“Good Lord! Those yellow flowers are gorgeous. The size of a child's head.'

“And it's wonderfully fragrant. I saw them once in a Southern California hotel courtyard. They grew clear up to the second-story balcony and smelled divine.'

“Southern California? That must mean you have to take it inside in the winter.'

“I'll make Paul do that,' Shelley said smugly.

“I wonder how Stefan's doing,' Jane said, gesturing for Shelley to come along inside Jane's house. 'I need a snack.'

“Stefan probably isn't a happy camper, I'd guess. And he's going to be angry that somebody tipped off the police that he was the one who sent the flower arrangement to Julie. He's sure to make the connection to one of us.'

“But he won't know which one of us, will he?' Jane hadn't thought of this before and it made her feel like a busy-mouthed tattletale even though Shelley actually made the call.

“Not unless Mel tells him.'

“He wouldn't, I'm sure. He tells us things he probably shouldn't because he knows we'll honor his confidence. I'm positive he'll do the samething for us. Stefan will probably blame the cops themselves for finding out. Or the florist. Or Miss Winstead.'

“Stefan didn't look as upset as I expected when they took him away,' Shelley said, rummaging in the bottom drawer of Jane's refrigerator looking for cold soft drinks.

“Nor did he seem to feel guilty when he told us. If he were guilty of something, he wouldn't have blurted out that he sent the flowers.'

“Unless he'd come up with an innocent explanation in the meantime. Why don't you ever keep real Coke in here? I don't like the diet version.'

“I do keep it and I drink it all. I'm sure there's at least one can left,' Jane said.

Just then the telephone rang. It was Mel, and Jane listened carefully for a long time before saying, 'Thanks for letting us know. You didn't tell him it was Shelley and me that ratted, did you?'

“What! What?' Shelley asked when Jane hung up

“They've let Stefan go. He claimed effectively that he'd just written the note saying 'you're next' because she was the most highly qualified teacher scheduled for the next week's classes. He paid cash for the flowers because it wasn't something he could claim on his job expenses. Mel said he seemed so sincere that no one could doubt him. But there was another connection he also blabbed about without even being asked. Apparently he had been one of Julie's 'escorts' for her charity do's last year. He thought at first she was inviting him to them because she liked