“We do have a little information for you from the hospital. I wondered if we might take you up on your offer and pop round this afternoon, talk to you about your sister and maybe have a quick glance around the place?”
“Sure. Me and Grace are heading this afternoon, though. I have a work thing that they wouldn’t let me move. You could come now?” she suggested hopefully.
“Now’s fine. See you in a bit.”
“Bye,” she called back, hanging up with a speed that made me wonder if she’d spotted the cat at long last.
“Paige Whelan?” Mills asked, looking over his shoulder at me.
“She’s out this afternoon, but she’s free now. You good to go?” I asked him. He nodded, slotting the pen he was twirling between his fingers away and picking up his jacket from the coat stand, slinging it over one arm.
We left the office, nodding to Smith, who came strolling by with enough cardboard boxes in her arms to build a fort, and with an unamused expression on her face.
With Abbie’s address plugged into the satnav, I tipped my head against the seat and closed my eyes as Mills pulled out from the carpark.
“I feel like we only sat down for five minutes,” he muttered.
“We did. Should have stayed in the car,” I added. “Or called from the hospital. Though,” I opened my eyes and sat up straight. “Sharp might have had us for dinner if we didn’t get her that report as snappily as we did.”
Mills chuckled. “Dr Olsen was interesting. Imagine being in a room with her and Dr Crowe for longer than ten minutes.”
“You’d need a stiff drink for that, Mills,” I said, imagining the company to be just as bracing.
“I thought I’d take a closer look into Nerium,” he went on, casually spinning us round a roundabout with a deftness that I was slightly jealous of. “I’m guessing our suspect would have needed a large amount of it, so I could look into suppliers, large sales of it.”
“That’s a lot of time bent over a computer screen,” I told him. “But good thinking. Even if Sonia is high on the list, I doubt she’d be careless enough to steal the plants from her own lace of work.”
“Especially knowing that we’d be there,” he added. “What about the missing plant of theirs? We never did ask what it was.”
“Maybe Abbie will have all of that in her house,” I suggested hopefully. “Might be better for us to read about it ourselves than to hear whatever version of events the gardens or Lin Shui can give us.”
Mills nodded in agreement, and before we knew it, we had pulled up in the driveway of a small, terraced house. A cookie-cutter copy of the entire row of two-up two-downs, there was a small blue car in the driveway before us, and the house itself looked to be nothing special. The garden was something else. In the middle of a road of patchy grass, weedy drives and the odd sprig of lavender or ivy bushes, Abbie’s garden exploded. And it was the only front. Sunflowers towered against the wall of the house, neat little beds laid out in front that overflowed with colour and smells. Bees bounced around happily, and amongst the leaves and flowers, a few little paper windmills and some gnomes hung about. A cherry tree sat in the corner, stretching over the garage roof, and wisteria climbed up and over the front door. We climbed from the car, in awe and pushed the garden gate open, walking to the yellow front door and ringing the bell.
It opened quickly, Paige’s face faintly visible through the stained-glass window, and then she was there before us, looking better than the other day. Her face was clean from the smudged makeup she’d worn before, her hair loose around her shoulders, and she wore a bright jumper underneath a pair of dungarees.
“Come on in,” she wasted no time, stepping aside so that we could walk into the narrow hallway. Noise came from the stairs before us, and once she shut the door, Paige looked up. “Grace,” she said. “I put on a Disney film on the telly in Abbie’s room to keep her entertained.”
“Which one?” Mills asked her as she walked down the hallway to the kitchen at the end of the house.
“The Jungle Book,” she answered brightly. The kitchen was snug, as they all were in these houses, but a small table and chairs sat against the wall, a teapot and some mugs already waiting. I glanced at the window over the sink to the garden outside, pleasantly surprised to find it full mostly of Grace’s things. A tree with a swing tied to a large branch, a Wendy house in the corner, the plants all plain, mostly green. Things that I assumed were safe to let a four-year-old run wild in. The grass was long, and dandelions and daisies cropped up all over the place, attracting yet even more bees.
“Have a seat,” Paige waved to the table. “Tea?”
“Thank you,” Mills said as we sat down. “Thank you for letting us come.”
“That’s alright. Sorry, it’s a bit rushed. Work is being somewhat unfair, I think, given the circumstances.” She sat down, pouring the brewed tea into mugs and slid one to both of us, a jug of milk in the centre of the table too.
“What do you do?” I asked her.
“I work in antiques,” she answered. “There’s an auction later today that I apparently cannot miss. But I can take Grace there, and she always likes looking around.” Auctions could be interesting, something of an Aladdin’s cave at times. “You said you had some information about Abbie?” Paige asked, wringing her hands together.
“Yes. We were at the hospital earlier, speaking to the toxicologist there. She’s identified what was used on Abbie, so they can begin the proper treatment for her.”
Paige let out a long breath, her shoulders sagging as she dipped her head. “Thank God,” she breathed.
“Have you been
