“Yes. One of the finest men that ever set foot in a garden.”
“So I’ve heard. Peculiar about his disappearance, wasn’t it?”
“Uh huh.”
“What do you think about it?”
“Who? Me?”
“Yes.”
“Why should I think anything about it?”
Mason laughed. “You do think, don’t you?”
“I’m paid for gardening.”
Mason said, “It’s an interesting family.”
“You know ’em?” Lunk asked. “All of ’em?”
“I’ve met some of them. I’m doing some work for Gerald Shore. How do you like him?”
“He’s all right, I reckon. He ain’t like his brother Franklin, though, about the lawn and flowers. He don’t seem to care much about ’em, so I don’t see much of him. Mrs. Shore gives the orders — except when that damned Jap tries to horn in. Know what that heathen devil was trying to do just a little while ago?”
“No.”
“Get her to go take a trip for her health. Wanted the whole family to get out and let him give the house a thorough cleaning inside and out. Guess he wanted to take three or four months doing it. Wanted her to go to Florida and take the niece with her. And I happen to know he’d been talking with George Alber about it. May have been Alber’s idea. You know him?”
“No.”
“He’s the fair-haired boy child right now. Seems like the old lady liked his daddy — or he liked her — ain’t sure which. I do my work and want to be left alone. That’s all I ask.”
“How is Komo? A pretty good worker?”
“Oh, he works all right, but you always have the feeling that his eyes are staring through your back.”
“You said you lived at the Shore place for a while. Have any trouble with Komo while you were living there?”
“No fights — nothing open. My brother was the one that had the trouble with him.”
“Your brother?” Mason asked, taking his eyes from the road long enough to flash a quick glance at Della Street. “You had a brother living there with you?”
“Uh huh. For about six, seven months.”
“What happened to him?”
“Died.”
“While you were living there?”
“Nope.”
“After you moved, eh? How long after?”
“Week or two.”
“Sick long?”
“No.”
“Heart trouble, I suppose?”
“No. He was younger than me.”
Della Street said soothingly, “I know just how he feels about it. He doesn’t want to talk about it, do you, Mr. Lunk?”
“No.”
Della Street went on rapidly, “It’s that way when someone near to you passes away. It’s a shock. Your brother must have been smart, Mr. Lunk.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Oh, just little things in the way you describe him. He seems to have been a man who wasn’t taken in by anybody. That is, the Japanese houseboy didn’t fool him any.”
“I’ll say he didn’t!”
“It must have been rather hard to start doing the work by yourself after having had your brother help you in the garden.”
“He didn’t help me. He was there visiting. He hadn’t been well for quite a while — not able to do any work.”
“People of that sort sometimes live a lot longer than the husky, strong people who don’t know what an ache or a pain is.”
“That’s right.”
Della said, “Mr. Shore must have been a very fine man.”
“Yes, ma’am. He sure was. He was certainly nice to me.”
“Letting your brother stay in the house that way. I don’t suppose they charged him board.”
“Nope. They didn’t,” Lunk said. “And I’ll never forget how Shore acted when my brother passed away. I’d been spending my money on doctors and things, and — well, Shore just called me in and told me how he understood the way I felt, and — know what he did?”
“No. What did he do?”
“Gave me three hundred and fifty dollars so I could ship him back East, and gave me time off from work so I could go along with him on the train. My mother was alive then, and it meant a lot to her having me bring Phil home that way and having the funeral right there.”
“She’s passed away since?” Della asked.
“Uh huh. Five years ago. Never had anything hit me quite as hard as the way Mr. Shore acted about that. I thanked him at the time. I wanted to thank him some more, but he was gone when I got back from burying Phil.”
Mason nudged Della Street with his knee so that she wouldn’t pounce on that opening and alarm the gardener. Then, after a moment or two, Mason asked casually, “That was right about the time he disappeared?”
“Just that time.”
Mason said, “Those Japs certainly are clever. The Orientals know a lot about drugs that we don’t know.”
Lunk leaned forward so he could look searchingly into the lawyer’s face.
“What made you say that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mason said. “I was just thinking out loud. I sometimes get funny ideas.”
“Well, what was funny about that idea?”
“It wasn’t even an idea,” Mason said. “I was just thinking.”
Lunk said, significantly, “Well, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking too.”
Mason waited a few seconds, then observed, casually, “If I had a Jap around and I didn’t like him — I’d sure hate to be living in the house with him... Have him fixing or serving food for me. I don’t trust ’em.”
“That’s the same way I feel,” Lunk said. “I’m going to tell you something, Mr. — what’d you say your name was?”
“Mason.”
“Well, I’ll tell you something, Mr. Mason. There was a while after I heard about Mr. Shore disappearing that I’d have bet dollars to doughnuts the Jap had something to do with it. And then, later on, I began to wonder if maybe the Jap hadn’t had something to do with the way Phil died. It could have been something, you know.”
“Poison?” Mason asked.
“Well, I ain’t saying anything. Personally, I ain’t got any use for the sneaking, treacherous race, but I want to be fair. I’ve done him one injustice already.”
“Oh, is that so?”
Lunk said, “Well, to tell you the truth, I sort of suspected him of having a hand in — well, I’ll tell you. I thought for a while that maybe he wanted to get Mr. Shore out of the way, and he sort of practiced first on my brother to see if he had the right dose and — you know, the way Mr. Shore disappeared and all that, and coming right on top of Phil’s death... I didn’t think so much of it at the time, but I got to thinking more about it later on.”
Mason again nudged Della Street with his elbow as he piloted the car around a corner toward the hospital. “Well, I don’t see that that’s doing the Jap any injustice.”
“Nope,” Lunk said positively. “He didn’t do it. But up to a few hours ago, you couldn’t have convinced me of that if you’d argued all night. Just goes to show how we get an idea through our heads and it sticks. To tell you the truth, the reason I didn’t want to live on the place any more was on account of the way that Jap was hanging around. Phil was gettin’ worse all the time. I got to feeling kind of sick myself and went to a doctor, and the doctor couldn’t find nothing wrong with me, so I up and left.”
“Did that cure you?” Mason asked.
“Perked right up,” Lunk said, warming to his subject. “I got a place of my own, did all my own cooking, and carried my lunches with me. And I’ll tell you something else. Mister, I didn’t leave my lunches hanging around where anybody could open up a box and sprinkle something on my sandwich, either. No siree!”
“And you were cured immediately?”