Or maybe the speeding ticket had shaken her up and Caroline Sturgis had started to feel exposed, the protective layers falling away. One of my mysterious strangers was in the clear. Whatever had troubled Caroline, it probably wasn’t a suburban priest, however clumsy and pushy. Maybe seeing a priest at just that moment made her want to confess. Who knows?

I thanked Father Damon and walked him to his car, a white SUV crammed with his belongings.

“I’m still something of a nomad,” he explained, “staying with one friend and then another until I find a permanent place.”

“What are you looking for?” I asked. “I have some friends in the real estate business.”

“Some place between five and ten acres that we can use as a retreat house. Nothing fancy, mind you. But preferably somewhere with a lot of greenery. Where people can come to reflect.”

“Like a former nursery?”

“Yes, do you know of one?”

Sixteen

Why all this sudden interest in Guido Chiaramonte’s old nursery? It had been virtually abandoned for years and now there were two interested parties? Right after Caroline Sturgis announces her intention to buy it in a crowded diner? Had the recession ended and Gretchen Kennedy and I hadn’t gotten the e-mail? Or was the two men’s interest in the property more complicated than a love of greenery and contemplative spaces?

“Rhodes Realty”

“It’s Paula Holliday. Any chance Roxy can see me today for a few minutes?”

A few minutes was all Roxy Rhodes would spare unless she smelled the blood of a client with deep pockets. Maybe she had agreed to the meeting because of my relationship with the Sturgises. It wasn’t because I was a high roller.

Rhodes Realty was a stone and clapboard building with a wraparound porch in a good neighborhood and would have commanded a high price itself if it had been for sale. Fat chance. Town lore had it Roxy acquired the house as part of the settlement from her first divorce decades ago and that had sparked her love of real estate. Three husbands later, she owned quite a lot of property in Springfield and even more in neighboring towns, as well as in Boca Raton and San Diego.

Roxy’s waiting room was filled with postmodern furniture, meant to impress but not to be comfortable. The walls were covered with plaques honoring her for this or that real estate accomplishment and as many for service to the community. Her assistant had me cool my heels for about ten minutes, presumably so I could read them all, then she led me into a room four times the size of the first. It, too, had a collection of Danish modern furniture mixed with chrome and black leather accents. Roxy sat curled up on a red velvet loveseat behind a sleek glass desk that could have accommodated twelve for dinner. Her leopard print flats were tucked underneath.

“Paula, what can I do for you?” She extended limp fingers in my direction but didn’t get up or lean forward, so I had to stretch my upper body over her desk to reach her powdery hand. “Has Grant Sturgis finally sent you to make an offer on the Chiaramonte place?”

I hated it when people put words in my mouth.

“Not exactly. But I am here to talk about the nursery.” I took that exchange to mean I could sit down, so I did, balancing my butt on one of the less comfortable spaghetti chairs and trying not to let my butt cheeks slip through. “I understand there’s been another offer on the place.”

“You’re rather well-informed yourself.”

“Just doing some reconnaissance for my friends. Is it true?”

Roxy loved competition-it got her juices flowing. Yes, she had shown the property to another gentleman, an out-of-town buyer who had specifically asked if there was a nursery for sale.

“Was he, by any chance, a priest?”

“If this man was a priest, it would be an absolute tragedy. It was a week or so ago. Maybe two, my calendar is so full it’s hard to remember. He was looking for a business opportunity. He certainly wasn’t a clergyman, but I wouldn’t have guessed he’d be a gardener, either. Still, you never know about people.”

There was an insult in there somewhere, but I chose to let it pass.

“What did he look like?”

Roxy ticked off the man’s assets as if she’d written them down in a ledger. “Elegant, well-spoken, beautifully dressed, but with that broken nose he looked like a gorgeous linebacker or one of those French boxers from the forties.”

It sounded like the man at the diner who had charmed the Main Street Moms, not Ellis Damon.

“He said he’d been in sales before, but the nursery property would be a departure for him. He was vague about how he was planning to use the space. I thought it might be as a banquet or meeting facility, not a nursery.”

“Did you happen to mention there was another party interested in purchasing the property?” I asked.

“Do I look stupid, Ms. Holliday? Of course I did. I may have even mentioned Caroline’s name and yours-at least, your company, Dirty Business. Very provocative, by the way. He was definitely considering the place,” she said, fingering a crystal paperweight. “I could see him working out something in his brain…something. I have a sixth sense for the serious buyers. It’s my famous mojo, you see.”

To go with her famous ego. I shifted in my seat.

“He didn’t ask about financing. Just said he’d be back. And he will.” She drove now the point with a well-manicured finger.

“Can you tell me his name?” I asked.

“I don’t see why not. It was Brookfield, Kevin Brookfield. Easy to remember because of Brookfield Road.”

“Was he the only man you showed the property to? Could someone else have taken out another client? A priest?”

“No one else. It’s an exclusive and only I handle the AAA properties. What is this obsession with priests? Is Oxygen airing The Thorn Birds again?”

I wasn’t obsessed with priests, and if I’d been Meggie Cleary I’d have figured out a way to make it work with the handsome sheep-shearer. But what were the odds that the two newcomers to Springfield would both claim to be interested in purchasing a nursery? Unless they thought that saying they were would somehow lead them to Caroline.

I stood up and thanked Roxy for her help.

“I don’t suppose Grant is in a position to do anything now. I can’t sit on the property for another twenty years.”

Ouch. Did she really say that? Harsh, very harsh.

“Don’t go. Who’s the other prospective buyer?”

She was still mumbling when I left the outer office and headed for my next stop.

Seventeen

The central police station in Springfield was located downtown at a busy intersection in the shape of a Y. On one side stood a fleet of silver and blue patrol cars; on another was the visitors’ parking area. I couldn’t see what was in the back.

It never occurred to me they’d have anything as mundane as visitors’ parking. I suppose I thought trips to the station house were made by people who were marched in, gnashing their teeth, the way Grant and I had been.

I parked out front and was checking myself out in the rearview mirror when I heard a tap on the driver’s side window. I lowered the window.

“You look good,” he said. “You’re early.”

“If you’re here, that makes you early, too.”

Three blocks away was Sabatini’s, the restaurant where Mike O’Malley and I had agreed to have lunch.

“Should I leave the car here, or should we drive?”

“Drive.” He walked around to the passenger side door and I popped the lock to let him in. “Good safety measure.”

“Habit, I guess, from living in New York.”

When I’d invited Mike for lunch, I’d had an ulterior motive. I wanted to pick his brain, and I wanted to do it in neutral territory, not at the police station or the Paradise Diner. Being around Babe didn’t automatically make me more sarcastic, but for some reason I always was. Maybe it was something in the coffee, but most of our exchanges at the diner started out fun and wisecracky and then escalated, or descended, depending on how you looked at it. I wanted to have a civilized conversation with Mike that lasted as long as an entire meal and quietly, unemotionally get some answers.