Summerkill Read online

  COPYRIGHT

  SUMMERKILL. Copyright © 2001 by Maryann Weber. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Hachette Book Group

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  New York, NY 10017

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  The Warner Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-0-7595-2665-5

  First eBook Edition: December 2001

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Dear Reader:

  We are especially proud to be bringing you this book, which is an iPublish.com original publication.

  That means this book was discovered and endorsed for publication by readers like you.

  The author submitted the manuscript to iPublish.com, where it received ratings and reviews from other writers and readers. Their overwhelming enthusiasm for the submission brought it to the attention of the iPublish.com editors. We agreed this is a book that deserves to be enjoyed by many readers.

  And one of them is you! We hope you agree it’s a real find.

  Sincerely,

  The iPublish Editors

  P.S. If you’re interested in submitting your own work for publication consideration, visit us at www.ipublish.com to find out how!

  Gerhard Weber © 2001

  When I got the idea of writing the story that became Summerkill, iPublish was probably not even a gleam in anyone’s eye. Fortunately, by the time I felt that I had told this story about as well as I could, iPublish was up and running—and best of all, receptive.

  There was no one starting point for Summerkill. I wanted to write about the area in which I live (a bit rearranged, in geographical detail, to suit my story). I wanted to write about the concerns people who live in such areas have about their quality of life in the face of pressure for more and more development. And I am deeply appreciative of the positive contributions landscape and garden designers make to the environments on which they work their magic.

  MARYANN WEBER was born in Michigan and has loved gardening and nature since her early childhood. Even while dwelling in relatively urban environs like Venice, Florida, and New York City, Maryann has maintained her green thumb, becoming a Cooperative Extension Master Gardener and a National Garden Clubs Landscape Design Consultant in her free time. She’s also worked in the editorial departments of several publishers.

  Maryann currently resides in upstate New York concentrating full-time on her gardening and her writing. Summerkill is her first novel.

  CHAPTER 1

  The mid-August day that was to scramble so many of our lives got off to a bumpy start, a not uncommon occurrence in the months since I’d become a head of household. I hit the floor running at first light; my nine-year-old nephew is emphatically not an early morning person. Long since finished with breakfast and tired of watching him spoon his cereal around in the bowl, I said impatiently, “It’s Thursday, Alex. Garbage duty, remember? Better get a move on.” An expression of alarm flashed across his dark, sharp-planed face as he checked out the microwave clock. It was supplanted by one of hostility. “I don’t have time!”

  “Try hustling,” I said unsympathetically. I had scarcely overburdened him with chores.

  “No way!” he insisted fiercely. “It takes forever to wheel that can all the way out to the road. I’ll miss the bus.”

  “So? I can drop you by the park a little later when I go to Mrs. Hansen’s.”

  “It’s next to last day of softball!” He pushed back hard from the table and sprang up. “I’m not taking out the stupid garbage. Come on, Galen,” he barked to his seven-year-old brother, “we got to get over to Donnellys.”

  Galen, a genial little night owl who doesn’t need appreciably more sleep than I do, tossed off an it-wasn’t-me smile, grabbed his backpack, and followed his brother out across the living room toward the porch.

  “That means no TV tonight, Alex,” I felt compelled to call after him.

  “I don’t care!” he shouted back. And then the porch door banged and they were gone.

  “Shit!” I exclaimed to my golden retriever–whatever mix Roxy. The possibility of drops or handouts down the tubes, she abandoned her station between the boys and ambled over to me, always-hopeful tail on the wag.

  So who was it let them stay up till one watching television? Could it be the very same person who hadn’t grabbed a couple of easy bonding points just now by volunteering for the garbage run she’d end up doing anyway?

  My sister Vicky has a feel for stuff like that; it comes to me in hindsight, if at all. Her love for her kids is organic, all-encompassing. I do love them, but …

  Sometimes necessities override. Given her deteriorating health and her oldest son Jason’s violent outbursts, getting the two younger boys away from Albany in February had to be the right decision. Neighbors talk; we weren’t many steps ahead of Social Services. But right doesn’t necessarily mean well-taken, and as I knew from experience, you can’t just tell somebody “This is your home, now” and expect them to believe it. All three of us would need to start believing that, somewhere along the line.

  “Come Saturday, though …,” I told Roxy, brightening. For a week and a half, with the boys gone camping, I’d be free to move to my own rhythms again. I didn’t dare let myself hear how much I was looking forward to that.

  I stacked the dishes, schlepped them to the kitchen, disposed of the abused cereal, did a quick rinse, and tucked everything away in the dishwasher. Fishing into their assigned drawer for my car keys I announced, “Come on, mutt, it’s your lucky morning.”

  We exited into the beginnings of another in our string of beautiful summer days, with temperatures climbing into the mid-eighties but falling to sweatshirt range by bedtime. Fetching the garbage can from behind the woodpile, I set it on the right-side driveway track, which runs a little smoother than the left. Somebody had graveled that long, winding driveway once, an operation way past due for a repeat. It was mostly plain dirt now. No problem in any season for my Bronco, but I’d decided to wait to straighten it out and upgrade until the front of the house was redone. People kept suggesting that should be soon. I’d ripped off the sagging porch and gotten the rusted-out cars and assorted pieces of abandoned farm machinery hauled away, but from the road the property still looked like a poverty pocket.

  By habit a no-nonsense walker, I scolded myself to slow down. There might not be any roses to smell, but the slanted light made my sparse front-yard vegetation of skinny white pines and junk shrubs about as scenic as it gets. And there was no need to rush over to my client/friend Mariah Hansen’s. She’d still be in bed for another hour at least, and I’d find nothing much to work on until midmorning, when the replacement plant shipment from Massachusetts was promised to arrive. If Ryan Jessup hadn’t tried to sneak through another of his damn cost-savers, ordering smaller plants than the ones I’d specified, I could have started getting things into the ground two day
s ago, like I’d planned.

  Back when the goodwill was still relatively free-flowing, I’d have used that found couple of hours to process some paperwork in my cubbyhole at Etlingers’ Garden Center, the nursery and landscaping firm with which I had been affiliated the last four seasons. And en route I could have swung around by Hudson Heights, the area’s new country club/golf course/residential megadevelopment, to check on some of the more doubtful plantings. Given the potential winterkill on that exposed site, they needed the best start they could possibly get. But my boss and sometimes lover Willem, the only Etlinger who still smiled at me, was out in Marysville, enjoying the aftermath of a seminar at my old alma mater. And having emerged from four straight months of the tensions permeating the Hudson Heights project, I was disinclined to volunteer for more.

  I’d known back in April it wasn’t the world’s best idea to sign on for another season with the Garden Center. For one thing, none of the principals except Willem noticeably wanted me to return. For another, I had enough potential clients to take the plunge and try to establish my own full-time garden design business. With the boys just arrived, though, I was reluctant to commit to the extra, often irregular hours that would entail. And since Ryan had driven off their one reliable crew chief, the Hudson Heights installation acutely needed someone who knew what they were doing. This could well be Willem’s breakthrough design—I wanted him to have his shot.

  Anyhow, my self-chosen season from hell was nearly over. I’d gotten the Hudson Heights hardscapes in, or at least blocked out, and even if Willem was as spotty as I expected on the follow-throughs, the plantings had a decent shot at making it. Figure another week and a half on this year’s installment of Mariah’s ever-changing garden—a purely fun assignment—and the Garden Center and I would be finished. No way would I go along with the directive Ryan had announced at our late July meeting. His idea was for me to spend the rest of the season cranking out generic designs for small-lot residential projects; he’d procure the materials and whatever cut-rate crews they could round up would execute.

  “Screw that—I don’t do Landscaping 101 anymore,” I told him, bristling. “And I’d never allow a design of mine to be processed so ineptly. My clients get what they pay for.”

  “You’re saying I plan to cheat them?” His delivery was infuriatingly soft and flat.

  “The precedent would be there. Face it, Ryan, you can’t help thinking cheap.”

  He’d shrugged, ever so slightly. “What I’m required to think about is profit margins. We’re not talking a showcase like Hudson Heights, and the last time I noticed, your name on a yard plan didn’t make it one cent more valuable. The bottom line is, we need to generate more revenues—now.”

  “Then come up with appropriate ways to do that. It’s in my contract: any design with my name on it, I have to okay the materials list, and I get to install. Check it out.”

  “By this time I could recite your contract. But, Val, in case you hadn’t noticed, the Garden Center is not the only party with obligations. We can argue this in court, if necessary.”

  I’d told him fairly colorfully, and perhaps a tad loudly, what to do with that idea. After which things got, and had remained, very quiet on the official level. Could they really take me to court if I walked? I ran it past my lawyer, who said well, yes, though she couldn’t see why they’d bother. I couldn’t see they’d dare—would they really like my assessment of their operation on public record? So Willem would indeed be minus one associate very soon, I’d reminded him yesterday before he left. “You know I’ll work something out,” he assured me.

  He refused to believe I didn’t want him to, though this was ninety-something percent true. Getting sprung a couple months early would free me to line up the contract to design another small garden down in the southern part of the county, giving Val Wyckoff, Inc., a nicer net profit for the current season and a thicker portfolio for the next one. All right, so I’d miss Willem; that hurt just thinking about it. Missing, you get over.

  “Since I’ll be boss down in Platteville, you can figure on coming along,” I called to my temporarily vanished dog. It was inappropriate to the Garden Center’s image, I’d been informed, to bring one’s animal to a work site. She’s really no problem. Roxy’s long since figured out that plantings are not something to plunge through or lie down in, she wouldn’t dream of harming the wildlife, and she’s yet to meet a person she didn’t try to adore. As long as somebody’s there, she’ll stay reasonably close by. Companionless, she’ll set out to improve her lot—it’s a bad idea to go off to work and leave her free to roam. Thus the run I made, extending out from the kitchen almost to the east boundary of the property.

  On anything remotely resembling a hike she covers at least five times the ground I do, bounding off-trail and doubling back. That morning she’d gone on ahead of me. As I rounded a curve about two-thirds of the way out toward the road I saw her stopped halfway on the left track of the driveway, sniffing something, her tail wagging a bit uncertainly. “What you got there?” I asked, approaching.

  She was too absorbed to look up. Roxy can find the key to the universe in a handful of pine needles, but we were talking a more sizable object this time. An alien object also—Mother Nature never manifests in a white jogging shoe.

  “Roxy, dammit!” The force in my voice backed her off, stopped the tail altogether. Two white jogging shoes, I could see as I drew closer, and no need to wonder who they belonged to—they were still on their owner’s feet. Ryan Jessup wouldn’t be having any further use for them, though, not with the darkish brown splatters all around him and my favorite long-handled pruner sticking up from his chest.

  CHAPTER 2

  Action Plan A: delicately, wearing gloves, retrieve my pruner from the dead man’s chest. After which I could move the body off my property, dispose of pruner and gloves where they would never be found, go about my business, and remain untouched.

  Right, and no one would mention Ryan’s and my history of disputes, or the confrontation at that last staff meeting. Or happen to remember hearing something about me stabbing my stepfather, though that melodrama was now a quarter-century old. The implement had been much smaller then, and the damage less than terminal. Still …

  Twenty-five years ago, panicked by the spurting blood, I’d fled the apartment, thereby blowing whatever control I might’ve retained over the aftermath. When I resurfaced, the official version of the incident was in place. I never spent another night under my mother’s roof; my civilian childhood had come to an end.

  About time, too. It is sheer idiocy to go around feeling deprived of something that bad. Truth to tell, I lucked out, big time. This awareness did not come either easily or soon.

  That it came at all I attribute to Pete and Janey, my cottage parents at Birchwood, the state foster home cottage complex I was sent to when I left home. Sizing up this hostile, oversized thirteen-year-old with the off-the-wall temperament and well-documented history of flailing out at the world, they put together a package of survival tools. “There’s nothing wrong with getting pissed off at people,” said Pete, who often did, himself, “but if you don’t want to end up in jail, you gotta start beating them up with your mouth instead of your fists.” He kept picking arguments with me until I got good enough to win a few, and to realize that demolishing your enemy verbally could be more fun than flooring them. From Janey, a less confrontational soul, I learned that if you get the other person to crack a smile, you can probably sidestep who beats up whom and nobody has to nurse a grievance. And it was Janey’s whimsical streak more than anything else that helped me temper the leap-before-you-look approach to life Ma had never managed to beat out of me. “Visualize,” she kept urging. “Picture whoever’s bugging you buck naked, or as some animal—nine times out of ten that’ll take the sting out.”

  Okay, I conceded after sample testing, but that tenth time? Like the social studies teacher who was hassling me for no reason I could see except maybe she liked her gi
rls demure and dainty? Flabby nude or charging purple rhinoceros, she wasn’t funny. “Less easy,” Janey conceded. “But before you tear into the woman, imagine doing it. Make your scene really vivid. Enjoy the hell out of it. Then, to be fair, you’ve got to picture what happens when she gets to act out, too. If you decide to go ahead anyhow, at least you’ll know what you can expect.”

  At this stage of my life, if not always back then, I know what I would prefer to avoid. Like the major disaster I’d be apt to pull down on myself by attempting to reshape the aftermath of Ryan Jessup’s murder. Appealing as my image of unviolated yard was, the body and my pruner had to stay right where they were.

  Action Plan B then? As far as I could tell, the best of my bad options was to play things straight. Go in and call the police. Sincerely disclaim knowledge of how the body got there. Hope I’d be believed.

  Hoping is not something I’m great at. Nor do I assume the truth will out or the good guys win—those things happen, when they do, as life’s little bonuses. Caroming around in my head as I stalked back toward the house were storm-cloud visions of the effect this would have on my nephews and whatever small sense of security and safety they’d accumulated about living with me. What if I was hauled off to jail? That had to be a real possibility for the most obvious—if not the only—suspect in a murder. Even if not, the feel of the crime, the atmosphere of it, would permeate the front yard for God knows how long.

  I was working into a fine fury toward whatever bastard had set me up. My yard, my pruner, a man whom I publicly detested. If somebody felt impelled to kill Ryan, couldn’t they have dumped him out in the woods somewhere? Did they have any idea what damage they’d done me? Did they care? I didn’t try to talk myself down from that one—better anger than panic. I could still vividly recall the shriveling-inside feeling that grabs hold when the police take charge of your life.