NOTE: "How Does Your Garden Grow" is a work in progress. I invite you to follow this story and participate as a beta reader, providing feedback along the way. For more details, see the Author's Note.
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Chapter 1
May, 1979
Ding, Dong!
Eleanor, always a high-strung cat, leapt from Agnes’s lap when the doorbell rang.
“Oh, sweetie, look what you did. You’ve made me spill my tea. Bad kitty.”
Even when she was upset with her aging Siamese cat, Agnes’s admonishments were always delivered with the soft patient tones reserved for new born babies. At eighty-five herself, she knew what it meant to grow old and it wasn’t pleasant.
She had been sipping her drink from a small flower-patterned china cup and reading the final chapter of an Agatha Christie novel when Eleanor stirred.
It was a paperback book with the cover torn off that she got from her son, Simon, the assistant manager at the A&P. Agnes put it down and took up a paper napkin to dab at the cool tea that had spilled down the back of her hand and along the side of the cup. She dabbed, as well, at a tea stain that formed on the flowered print of her house dress.
As she did this, Agnes looked out through the large windows of her enclosed back porch at the dormant and weed infested garden beyond. She wished her frail form would still allow her to be out there tending to the hydrangeas and the azaleas, and her special favorites, the trumpet lilies; but those days, and the days of winning ribbons for her work from the Blackwater Ladies Garden Club, were long past. Now there was nothing left for her beyond reading paperback mysteries and using her decades of nursing experience to poke holes in the latest episode of Jack Klugman’s TV series, Quincy, M.E.
Ding, Dong!
Oh, right; the door, she needed to get the door. She knew there was something.
She replaced the tea cup in its saucer and with the aid of her wooden cane, rocked and pushed herself up from the chair. She teetered a bit, but with some effort, negotiated the one step up from the porch into the main house and headed for the front door. Eleanor, despite her cataract clouded eyes, always knew where Agnes was and in which direction she was headed, and she instinctively walked alongside her keeper like a silent shadow.
Ding, Dong! Ding, Dong!
“I know, I’m coming,” Agnes said. “Hold your horses before I get my buggy whip.”
Ding, Dong! Ding, Dong! Ding, Dong! Ding, Dong!
The frantic ringing turned to pounding, each thump caused the glass on the storm door to rattle.
Then came the voice; Agnes’s hearing aides were on her night table in the bedroom because she only wore them to watch television, so it was a distant and muffled sound, as if she were hearing it under water.
“Help me, please,” a young girl’s voice called from outside. “Oh, God, help me!” Even Agnes could tell the voice was becoming shrill and it made her uneasy. At hearing the cry for help, Eleanor paused, one paw still hung in the air waiting, uncertain about the next step.
Ding, Dong! Bang, Bang, Bang-rattle.
“Help me, Please!”
“Alright! Stop! You’ll break the glass!” Agnes called out, an edge creeping into her voice.
YOU ARE READING
How Does Your Garden Grow
Mystery / ThrillerWhen Detective John Harper learns that Lilly Sumner, his dead daughter’s best friend, has been found delirious, covered in someone else’s blood, and mumbling fragments of a nursery rhyme, he must unravel the strangest, darkest case of his crumbling...
