Fed up

shelter you volunteered at.“
    “Haven’t you done enough good in the world today?” I teased. “Now you’re just showing off!”
     

 
    WHEN I got home, I hauled the bag of clothes up to my apartment and put it in the living room, where it served as a reminder of what a lovely person my mother was: kind and generous to her family, her friends, her daughters’ friends, and even to the strangers at the women’s shelter; considerate to everyone; respectful of privacy; and, in short, the kind of fine human being who would return someone’s forgotten cell phone without so much as thinking of turning it on and exploring its contents. Bad luck for Robin that it hadn’t been my mother who’d found her phone. I should’ve been calling the shelter to arrange to drop off the clothes, but first things first: I turned on Robin’s cell, plopped down on the couch, and started scrolling through her list of contacts. Inga settled in next to me and began purring melodiously. I stroked her with one hand as I tapped through names on the phone.
    One stood out: Leo.
    Unless Robin knew Leonardo DiCaprio, I had a strong suspicion that this Leo was Francie’s husband and not a famous movie star. Because Leo’s number was still stored on my own caller ID, it took me all of thirty seconds to confirm that Robin’s Leo was, in fact, Leo the widower. When had I Robin added Leo to her list of contacts? On the day of the filming? In other words, on the day of his wife’s murder? Or could Robin have known Leo before the show?
    Leo. Hmm. As I knew from carefully studying thousands of TV shows, murderers were often spouses or lovers, so unless Francie had had a lover, Leo should have been the prime suspect from the beginning. Did the police agree? Did they watch as much TV as I did? And what about motives? What about love and money? Maybe Leo had wanted to get rid of Francie because he had a lover or because he stood to inherit oodles of cash when Francie died. As to access to digitalis, for all I knew, he had foxglove growing right in his weed-choked garden. Under other circumstances, I could have gained access to his yard by trying to sell him a rain barrel, but as it was, I couldn’t very well call him up and say, “So sorry your wife died a grisly death, but would you like to conserve water by recycling rain?”
    Still, I could follow him to see whether he did anything suspicious. Such as? I didn’t know exactly. But there was nothing wrong with my keeping an open mind. And how hard could it be to tail someone? I was too wiped out from Adrianna’s shower to set out on a spying expedition today, but I resolved to pursue the investigation the next morning.
    I checked my messages. There was a brief one from Josh to ask how the shower had gone. He said that tonight he was again working late and working an early shift on Sunday, but could he come by in the late afternoon? I returned his call and left him a voice mail saying that unless he showed up tomorrow, I was going to kidnap him from Simmer and, like some sex-starved cave woman, drag him back here. I was on my way out, I said, to buy a loincloth, a club, and a bone for my hair, so he’d better watch out.
    Early on Sunday morning, I drove to the warehouse in Waltham where my parents stored equipment and supplies. They did most of the landscape design and planning work from home, but the rest of the company ran out of the second location, which was only a twenty-minute drive from my place. The deep red building gave the impression that a tornado had dropped a barn in the middle of Waltham, and the stacks of hay and the smell of garden manure only fueled that fantasy. I can’t say that I was a fan of the manure aroma, but I did love the smell of hay and soil and the sawdust aroma from Emilio’s lumber. I parked my Saturn in the small parking lot, let myself into the building through a large red door, and got the keys to the oldest of the five vehicles used for deliveries, a beat-up gray Chevy van with seats in the front and all sorts of shovels, rakes, and hoes in racks on the walls of the rear. The other two vans were new, as were the two pickup trucks. As I drove toward Leo’s house, the stick shift gave me a hard time, and I regretted my choice of the beat-up gray van, which I’d picked because it was the smallest of the vehicles and would presumably be the easiest for me to maneuver. As it was, although I’d driven the gray van a few times before, everything about it