The Heirloom Murders Read Online Free Page B

place. Over the years Eagle had crept out to meet, although not yet engulf, the farmhouse. Fortunately, it stood on the south side of the village. Most commuters headed north/northeast to Oconomowoc, Waukesha, or Milwaukee.
    Birds were singing their new-dawn songs. Chloe yawned, grabbed a foil-wrapped parcel, and climbed from the car. On a hunch, she skirted the front door and walked around the house. An enormous fenced garden stretched away from the back steps. Dellyn was on her knees behind a frilly row of carrots.
    “Hey,” Chloe called. She joined her friend. “I know you don’t need banana bread, but—“
    “I do need banana bread. Thanks.” Dellyn got to her feet and pulled off her garden gloves. “What are you doing up at this hour? You have trouble making it to the morning meeting.”
    Chloe sighed. In the summer, Old World Wisconsin opened at ten every day. The morning briefing for interpreters started at 9:30—and yes, when she was required to attend, she did usually cut it close. “I wanted to see how you were doing. I figured you’d be up.”
    “I didn’t get much sleep.” Dellyn’s eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. Her face looked thinner, as if she’d lost weight overnight. “But God knows there’s plenty to do out here.”
    “This is an amazing garden,” Chloe said. “You must harvest enough to feed Rhode Island.” The garden was at least half an acre. Individual raised beds were arranged in neat grids and mulched with straw. Plastic markers anchored each row, genus and species noted with indelible black marker. A huge compost pile filled one corner. A large potting shed stood in another.
    It was a master’s garden … but it was also sliding toward chaos. Flowers needed staking or dead-heading. Burdock and knapweed poked among the vegetables. Bean poles leaned at alarming angles.
    “My mom’s two passions were Eagle history and gardening.” A tiny smile twitched the corners of Dellyn’s mouth. “When Bonnie and I were little, Mom always gave us each our own plot. We could plant anything we wanted. Dad even built us our own garden cottage.” She pointed to a child-sized structure almost hidden behind a pea trellis. It was tired, and sorely in need of paint, but Chloe could imagine the two little girls’ delight in having their own playhouse.
    Dellyn surveyed the clumps of rhubarb, feathery asparagus fans, tomato plants bursting through cages, hilled potato plants. “Mom had already finished her planting when she died. I couldn’t just let it go. She must be appalled, though. I can’t keep up.”
    “No,” Chloe said firmly. “I bet she smiles down every time you come out here.”
    Dellyn scraped soil from her knuckles with one fingernail. “I just need to hold my own until fall. There are shoeboxes full of seeds around here somewhere. Next spring I’ll pick out some of her favorites and do something smaller.”
    “I’ve never had space of my own for a garden,” Chloe said, “but I’ve got a little packet of hollyhock seeds tucked away. They came down from my great-grandmother.”
    “Did you notice mine?” Dellyn pointed toward the garage, where a wall of spectacular ten-foot-tall, rose-colored hollyhocks stood. “ Alcea rosa . Thank God people like my mom save seeds from the old varieties. Puritans made teas of powdered hollyhock flowers to prevent miscarriages.”
    Chloe tried not to wince. “Every variety is precious,” she agreed. She and Markus had discussed historic sites’ role in preserving genetic material many times. Back before Chloe’s miscarriage ended their relationship, anyway.
    “My mom saved seeds to keep costs down,” Dellyn was saying, “but she understood how important it was to preserve old varieties, too. She was a charter member of Seed Savers’ Exchange.”
    “That’s pretty cool.” Seed Savers Exchange had been formed in the mid-seventies to document, save, and share seeds from garden plants that might otherwise disappear. Historic