Chapter 4 - Half of Isabella’s Garden Had Been Dying for the Wrong Reason
The garden had begun deteriorating before Isabella’s death.
Alessio remembered it now.
Leaves browned strangely.
Several expensive flowering shrubs failed.
Sections of soil stopped producing healthy growth.
Isabella blamed “bad treatment.”
Alessio assumed she meant inconsistent maintenance.
He was wrong.
The archived soil report finally surfaced in an email attachment sent from an independent horticultural laboratory.
The laboratory found residue from a concentrated commercial vegetation-control product in several beds.
It was legal for specific professional applications.
It was not what Isabella had authorized for her ornamental garden.
More importantly, invoices from Marco’s company listed expensive specialty soil conditioners and targeted treatments that apparently had never been used.
Someone had billed the estate for one product—
and applied something far cheaper.
Isabella had discovered the discrepancy.
Her dying flowers were evidence.
The more the beds failed, the easier it would become to test the soil and prove what had happened.
Suddenly Claudia’s words to Ruby sounded different.
Her garden must die too.
At first Alessio heard cruelty toward a dead woman.
Now he heard motive.
If the remaining beds were ripped out completely, old soil removed, and the greenhouse area rebuilt—
May you like
much of the physical evidence would disappear with it.
---
Related Stories
