Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1999

She didn’t waver, and for once her eyes were dry. “Sometimes,” amended that to, “not really. Perfectionists can be demanding, but Rosejoy was an angelic child. One year she was poster girl for the United Way. See, there’s a copy behind her bed. The canopy kind of hides it, but you can see Rosejoy was the very picture of a little princess.” She broke down once more. “Oh my beautiful child! How could this happen? You must bring her killer to justice!”

“We’ll do our best.” George’s expression was a mixture of grown man embarrassment and little boy sincerity. I went on with my look-see.

Rosejoy had a French provincial desk, all gold and white. It held stationery and stamps in a brass holder and a set of pens in a porcelain hold-all, a bill from Dillard’s for twenty-eight ninety-nine, and a receipt for gas from a Texaco station. I said, “Her car? Is it here?”

“Yes.” With one final sniff Fiona recovered her composure. “It’s the dark blue Toyota in the garage. Next to my Dodge. Wherever she went that last day, she didn’t drive. Someone must have picked her up.” She settled herself in the chair that faced the desk, began to open drawers. “I really don’t know what she kept in here. I never spied on my daughter.” She glanced up. “I trusted her completely.”

“Nobody saw her leave? When did you see her last? Where were you?”

“The day — the afternoon of the day — it happened, she came home from work, said she was going out and she had to change. I asked her where, but she didn’t answer; I guess she didn’t hear me. I was going out myself. I was due at my bridge club, so I left without speaking to her again.” She sighed deeply, more tears formed. “I don’t think I’ll ever play bridge again.”

I put my question again. “Did anyone see her leave? One of your neighbors? Anybody?”

Head down, she said, “No one. We have only two sets of immediate neighbors, and they’re in and out, work and play and all that. They’re what the papers call yuppies. I couldn’t find anyone who saw her. The other policeman, a lieutenant?, didn’t have any luck either. It was almost like she was invisible.”

Cornell Eps appeared in the doorway. “Fiona, your friends are asking for you.”

She pulled herself together, asked us, “Is that all?”

“Go ahead,” said George, but I had one last question. “What did she do for fun? What were her hobbies?”

“Hobbies?” Fiona looked blank. “I don’t think she — well, she did volunteer work at the church, in the pastor’s office. And she puttered around in the back garden; she liked flowers. And tomatoes. Last year she nurtured four tomato plants, actually produced some fruit. She read a lot, spent time at the library, and she enjoyed the mall. She used to say she got her exercise shopping at the mall. I guess those were her hobbies.”

“Fiona?” said Eps.

“We’ll get back to you if we need you. Thanks,” I said and watched her go. Early on I’d decided there must be a cop smell, some kind of aura, a dark shadow, something ugly; everybody always seems eager to get away.

Paul Reston, Jr., was mixing compost with potting soil when I found him. He’d told Lieutenant Gross that he’d been out of town the night Ms. Precious’s body was junked. A big plant show in Atlanta — he’d gone to pick up some exotic species. “More and more we’re getting calls for exotics,” he told me. “It’s all these Yankees coming down here. They think we can grow anything in Florida.”

“Maybe they can,” I said, “but I can’t. Tell me, can I grow azaleas in pots? I haven’t got much yard where I live.”

He straightened up. He must have been a third generation flower-growing Reston; a tall man, taller than I and I’m not short, he gave the impression he was looking down on me. “The azalea’s a member of the rhododendron family, you know; that’s why it does so well north of us in the Carolinas. They don’t sink deep roots, so pot growing’s been done — whether a plant makes it or not depends on how the plant likes its location, that’s the way I look at it. You want to try it, be my guest. It might help if you have a good-sized pot, not necessarily deep. Get some azalea food, follow the instructions, and have at it. You don’t have to be a magician to grow stuff; all you’ve got to do is pay attention. That’s the way I look at it.”

“Got any tomato plants?”

“It’s the wrong time of the year — some people can have a winter crop, but it’s tricky.”

“I don’t reckon you recall selling some plants last year to Rosejoy Precious? The girl we found in the park?”

He shook his head. “Don’t know as I ever met her. Maybe it was Pauline. My sister. She might recall.”

I indicated a couple of azaleas. “I reckon I’ll take these two. You keep some kind of security around at night, you must. We have had a bunch of cases of plantnapping in the Fairland area. Some character could bring a truck in here and sell the lot out on Route I-95 without anybody knowing.”