Greenthumb's Garden

Gardening has always been the nice weather priority for Dorothy Granger. If not out in the back garden toiling in the earth, she is taking a break in the shade with a cold drink, enjoying the aesthetic bounty of what she’s encouraged nature to create. During the long winter months, she reads journals and plans around her three big plots with the beautiful flowers; she turns the comfortable chair to face outwards and watch the snow create white mounds of earth while she pictures what lies beneath. As soon as thawing permits, she is preparing the garden for the upcoming seasons. Since her children left the nest and her husband provides a comfortable income, gardening has been the primary focus of her life. In some circles, she might be considered a kept woman, but she's never liked that term.

Out in the garden, there is always something that requires her time and attention. The garden still depends on her, needs her. Every few years she has the young people from Morales Nurseries come and use their Kubota digger to rearrange the earth for her. Then she goes and picks a lucky specimen to inhabit the plot. The young men work at her bidding, to increase and decrease elevations for her to get the right light for what she chooses to go there. First was the signet marigold with its gorgeous lemon-yellow and pumpkin-orange flowers, so healthy-looking, each season growing fuller. They are robust, like the vigorous nineteen-year-old cadet she had seduced, and who had inspired that very patch of garden development. She will often throw a soft salute towards that particular plot.

Dorothy had to wait a couple of years and traveled far out of town to meet the guy who inspired the black iris plot, she hadn’t wanted Mr. Granger to become suspicious, but wow, what a specimen he was. Big for his nineteen years. Then, finally, just a year ago, Mr. Red Button Ginger had joined the garden. Waiting over two years between enjoying the pleasure of each, as her preferences lead her to younger and younger men. The species of ginger was planted for a ginger, her secret joke. Dorothy remembered that shock of copper hair against his pale-white skin. For him, she'd driven through the night and in the opposite direction, telling her husband a lie about a tulip festival and stayed in a motel for the night with the ginger, paying cash.

Sometimes people ask her to volunteer to help them with their gardening projects. Mrs. Granger-Greenthumb, they call her. She always tries to set them up with the easy things; big hostas and hearty perennials - plants that don’t require the devotion needed for the kind of setup she has. Three seasons ago, before the ginger was in the ground, Dorothy’s niece shot her engagement photos in the yard and all her friends were envious. Inquiries for photo shoots have come trickling in ever since. But Dorothy covets the beauty of the garden and doesn't want her flowers splashed all over social media.

She tends the garden daily, loving the flowers as surrogates for the young men who have quenched her thirst and inspired the best parts of the garden. While weeding the patch of beautiful black iris, she gently sings a song her daughter sent her because irises are mentioned in the lyrics.

“Lord, it’d be great to find a place we could escape sometime,

Me and my Isis growing black irises in the sunshine

Every version of me dead and buried in the yard outside

Sit back and watch the world go by”

Dorothy thinks her daughter, Daisy, casually sent the tune because of the mention of the rare flowers. But for a moment, on first listen, Dorothy felt her heart rise to the back of her throat. ‘Every version of me dead and buried in the yard outside”. Could Daisy know about her mom’s other version? No, she decided. She would have told her father.

Daisy’s parents usually have smooth jazz on as background music for dinner and nothing much else. News on the radio in the car. They were both surprised when Dorothy loved the song her daughter sent. She even looked up the band, Hozier, to see if she would like other music from their catalogue. She connects to the idea of having a different version of herself and choosing to stick to the one that attracts the life you want. Bury what does not fit. Deep as not to toil in its remains.

Dorothy smiles as she weeds, remembering the last time she dug up another version. A little more patience, and she will be able to have another young man to play with. Anyone who knows the person she pretends to be would absolutely lose it if they knew what the gardener got up to every few years. Too risky to seduce young men more frequently than that.

Nothing, though, to stop her from making a trip to her favourite garden store, Morales Nurseries. She’ll wear the utility style pencil skirt that hugs her curves exactly right. The pheromonal response from the young men is almost palpable.

“Can we help you, Mrs.Granger?” they all ask, desperation oozing from their permanently damp golf shirts.

“You know me, Kyle” she’ll say, or maybe it’s Sanjay or Lewis or Rick, whichever new flavour of the season has latched on, “I’m just looking, sweetheart, I’ll let you know if I need a little muscle, though.” She’ll say this with a wink and do her best to walk away with the kind of slow, fluid sway she knows drives them crazy.

Another visit to Morales might be on the docket, she thinks. Dorothy scans the garden for her needs. She could always use some topsoil.

“Not quite time for a new neighbour, but maybe just a pick-me-up - a little flirting.” She whispers to the iris. Now, what should I wear under my skirt? She thinks, to tease herself to a soft arousal.

***

“Lawrence Morales,” the man states his name and holds out his hand for Rodney.

“Detective Rodney Banks,” smiles and takes the offered hand.

“As I said on the phone, I can’t have anyone know about this - me calling you - Mrs. Granger is one of our best clients. Granger-Greenthumb. She is a large account for us. I can’t be sure of anything and even any questions, they all have to be.... tactful,” Lawrence finishes, nervously scanning Rodney’s face.

“Not to worry. I’m glad you called. False alarms are easier to deal with than five alarms, that’s what I always say. Could be the volunteer firefighter in me talking, though. I never want to see anymore boys go missing, which is why I called you a couple of years ago. Just to keep your eyes open. I'm surprised to hear from you,” Rodney says.

“Yes, sir, I have not forgotten. It’s been on my mind since…those kids that went missing all worked at places like this one, you said. If anything happened to my staff it would break my heart. These are good kids, like family. The other day when I saw her, I just got a feeling...the way she was interacting with Theo, she was flirting, and being suggestive. When I asked him about it after and he said all the guys flip for it, who will serve her, or they do a round of rock paper scissors,” he says, making the motions with his hands to clarify the game Rodney currently plays with his eight-year-old. “I remember you saying that you suspected a woman who is capable of seducing a young man? Sir, this one might be a little older, but I assure you, she's still capable.” Lawrence finishes.

“Show me who we are talking about, Lawrence.”

“Yes, Sir.”

They walk through the indoor plant section to the back office of Morales Nurseries where Lawrence Morales had cued up the security footage from Dorothy Granger's latest visit.

***

Mr. and Mrs. Granger had not been told why they needed to come to the police station, only that their presence was integral to an ongoing investigation.

“Have a seat, please” Detective Rodney Banks says in his friendly, yet authoritative way. “Thank you for coming in.”

The couple settles into the molded plastic chairs which are at Rodney’s disposal. He explains to them this is not his usual jurisdiction, however, he believes he has made connections in some missing person cases and his superiors are allowing him to follow up.

He lays out the photos of the boys in order. He says their names as he does so and he watches her.

There is a long pause, in which the steady eye contact between Dorothy Granger and Detective Banks reveals to him his suspicion is correct. There is a cold and hard stare but no confusion. He raises his eyebrows to her and says, “I put the first two together because my cousin has allergies. Something as simple as that got us talking about the job, he works the job too, but we were off duty,” he explains. “Turns out Cuz had been working a missing person case. Nineteen-year-old kid. Had to question the kid’s friends and colleagues he worked with at the garden center, which made his sinus go nuts. Reminded me of the case I had worked on not three years earlier. Another kid, nineteen, another garden center.”

The next case of a missing kid Rodney found while working the case. He called around. A few garden centers every shift. Ever broadening from a point between the two original missing boys. When he called Spruce Centre, up in Montvale, the manager started sobbing right there on the phone. Wanted to know if he had finally found their ‘sweet Mitchel’. Rodney glances at the last photo of Mitchel, the shock-topped ginger.

“I’m afraid I’m still confused as to how we can help you, Detective. I don’t recognize - “

“Stop, Drew,” Mrs. Granger said to her husband, who looked startled by it.

“Dorothy?”

“These young men are mine. They needed me so much they sacrificed themselves for me. Marigold, Black Iris and Red Button Ginger,” Dorothy says, then smirks and chuckles, tapping her manicured nail under the photo of the missing ginger haired boy.

Mr. Granger nodded; it was the usual thing Dorothy had always talked about. Rocks, earth, fucking retaining walls. The goddamn flowers, always. Yet, he thought, were they not discussing the disappearance of these boys? Did she say they were hers? Were they dead and buried in his yard? Good God. His brain was screaming and begged them to laugh or break so he could forget this disgusting trick. Then he remembered that one bath time.

Drew Granger had arrived home late, after an office function. He decided to change out of his business casual clothes before decompressing a bit and he went upstairs. He found his wife bathing their then infant son. But it was too silent. The look on her face before she registered him there, watching her submerged baby, had given him nightmares for over two decades. ‘What the hell, Dorothy!' he screamed and rushed in. He had taken his baby, wrapped him up in a towel and held him as he wailed. ‘What?’ she had said to him, then, “I heard babies instinctively hold their breath underwater. He did it! He’s just startled, that's all. Give him here, I’ll dry him off, put on that special lavender lotion for bedtime and a sweet little onesie.’ And Drew had, confused, given his only son back to the monster who pretended all these years she hadn’t been drowning their baby. The truth of who she was and what she had done came down hard and fast. His son was lucky to be alive.

“I’d like to leave now,” Mr. Granger said, without making eye contact with his wife.

“Of course.” The detective gets up to let the husband out of the room. The man, whose expression is disbelief and shock, begins to crack as he approaches the door. The detective senses it would make his disturbed wife happy to see the new look that Drew Granger was collapsing into and so he steps in to block her seeing even the fracture that has taken over his posture. She will not have the satisfaction of seeing him broken. Poor man, Rodney thinks.

Mrs. Granger sits still, watching him. Long eyelashes floating clam and steady above sterling blue eyes. Looking almost impressed by him. Perhaps, he thinks, she is impressed. It would be a classic narcissistic response.

“Our own children have depended on me from the beginning,” Dorothy volunteers. “They don’t know who I really am, either. This first one was an accident,” She says, tapping the boy's photo who she had dubbed ‘Marigold’. “We had a regular affair. He started talking crazy about being with me ‘for real’. I had to stop him from talking. It's so long ago, I’d forgotten his name was not always Marigold. I tend to his resting place daily.” She nods and shrugs, offering up her impeccable gardening as if it could be reparations for taking the life of the young man.

“Johnathan Nickles, Brian Holdings and Mitchel Loel” Rodney Banks repeats her victims' names.

The detective is sick of the sight of the beautiful murderer and so leaves her to the local officers to read rights, book, and print her. He will need to have long, and exhaustive conversations with her but, that can wait. He has a judge he can call for a warrant. He will exhume the bodies and bring them home, digging deep under the lush beds of Mrs. Granger-Greenthumb’s garden.