Betrayed (Rosato & DiNunzio, #2)(24)
“Thanks, honey.”
“It would be my pleasure, Aunt Barb.” Judy turned onto her aunt’s street, cruised past the houses, and turned into the driveway and cut the ignition. The dashboard clock read 10:48, so she knew her mother would be waiting up, probably tapping her foot.
“God, I’m tired.”
“Why don’t you go up to bed, and I’ll deal with my mother? It’ll take a law degree to survive the cross-examination we’re about to get.”
Aunt Barb chuckled and picked up her purse. “I’ll be right in. I have to get the cutting from the garage and bring it in the house. It would probably be fine, but it’s supposed to be cold tonight and I don’t want to lose it.”
“I’ll get it. Tell me where it is.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Believe me, I’m getting the easier job. You deal with my mother, I’ll deal with the plant.” Judy yanked the key from the ignition, and grabbed her purse. “Meanwhile, I don’t even know what a cutting looks like. Is it big?”
“No, not at all. It’s just a cane. It should still be in the box from the nursery, I didn’t take it out.”
“What’s a cane?”
“A cane is the term for the stem on a rosebush.”
“Of course it is.”
Her aunt snorted, opening the car door. “Like a lawyer has the right to complain about obscure terminology.”
“Okay, a fair point.” Judy got out of the car, chirped it closed, and cleared her head with a lungful of fresh, cool air. She glanced at the house and saw through the window that the living room was empty. “She must be upstairs already. You want me to come in and be your lawyer?”
“Ha! I can handle my own sister.” Her aunt took out her keys, unlocked the door, and handed the set to Judy. “Take this, you need them to unlock the garage. It’s the little key with the red surround. Can you lock it when you’re finished?”
“Sure. You lock the garage, in this neighborhood?”
“It was Iris’s idea, after I got the electric mower. She heard people were stealing equipment, so I figured it was better to be safe than sorry.”
“Right, so what am I looking for? A cardboard box near some gardening equipment?”
“Exactly, I think I put it on the far wall, next to the tools. You’ll see that I have the blue carryall and Iris has the purple. I think it’s in between them. I wanted it as far from the door as possible, to avoid the draft. The light switch will be on your right side when you go in.”
“Got it. Good luck with Mom.”
“Pssh. Child’s play.”
“Ha!” Judy let her aunt inside the house, then turned and continued down the driveway, the gravel crunching under her clogs. Weariness washed over her, and she slid her phone from her purse and checked the screen to see if Frank had called, but he hadn’t, which was par for the course. She was always the one doing the calling, making sure he was on track to come home, to meet her, or to run errands. If they got married and had a baby, it would be redundant.
A motion-detector light went on when she reached the garage, and she found the red key, unlocked the handle, and pulled the old metal door upward, rattling in its tracks. Her aunt’s yellow Mini Cooper sat parked in the darkness, and Judy went to the right doorjamb, fumbled for the switch, and turned it on. A bright fluorescent panel in the ceiling came to life, but she didn’t see a cardboard box. She walked beside the car to the far wall, where there was a red gardening cart with two wheels, with a rake, shovel, and a spade with a long handle. Suddenly, the fluorescent light flickered and phased off, plunging her in darkness.
“Perfect,” Judy said to herself, reaching for her phone, flicking on the flashlight function, and aiming it at the far wall, walking over to look for the box. A cone of intense brightness traveled over a green heavy-duty hose, a bag of Miracle-Gro potting soil, yellow jugs of Preen and white of Roundup, a stinky spray bottle of rabbit and deer repellent, and a red jug of something called Sevin, with a label that showed creepy pictures of ticks, worms, and God knows what.
“Gross.” Judy pointed the flashlight along the floor to the right and spotted a large purple plastic chest next to the same type of chest in blue, but still didn’t see the damn box. She went over to the wall and started rummaging around, juggling the flashlight to search through a dirty assortment of trowels, hand spades, and a weird tool that looked like it could dislodge an eyeball. But still no box. The flashlight’s beam fell on the plastic chests, which were large, and she considered that maybe the cardboard box was inside one of them. She couldn’t remember whether her aunt’s chest was the purple one or the blue, but no matter. She went over to the blue one, opened the lid, and aimed the flashlight inside, but all it contained was a pair of messy knee pads, a red Phillies cap, a kneeling pad, and a bunch of mismatched gardening gloves in wacky patterns like kittens, puppies, and daisies. The chest was such a happy clutter that it had to belong to her aunt.
She closed the lid, and just to be thorough, went over and opened the lid to what had to be Iris’s chest. She aimed the flashlight inside, but no cardboard box was there either, only a pair of oversized white cotton gloves, sitting neatly folded atop a clean trowel and spade, and underneath that was a book entitled Roses for the Beginner, with a greeting card sticking out from the cover, on top of some old newspapers. She reached for the book, opened the cover, and inside was a birthday card. Judy opened it to find her aunt’s handwriting: