A Tough Nut to Kill (Nut House Mystery Series) by Elizabeth Lee Read Free Book Online

mind ran to the greenhouse. The door was closed. No window to see if there was more fire, or if anyone was waiting . . .
    All my test seedlings in their yellow pods were in there. My two-year saplings. My work. No one had the right to do this.
    Maybe I could stand in the doorway and scream and scare them. Maybe I could still save something. My mind clicked fast. Turning and running wasn’t in my nature.
    But fear was.
    Still, if anyone was in the greenhouse . . . every minute I stood there, frightened or intimidated, meant more destruction.
    The last thing, right then, I could think about was my safety.
    The door was closed but not locked. It didn’t lead anywhere but to the large, open expanse of greenhouse with its light and heat—for chilly Texas nights—and my young trees and planting tables and bins of soil and tools and hoses and coolers with dormant grafts.
    I threw open the door. My body was rigid, expecting an attack. I kept my arms at my sides, fists clenched hard, nails digging into my palms.
    Nothing moved. No sound beyond the click and whirr of an overhead blower in the long, echoing building. There were the usual earth and water smells of the sprayers; the cool curls of dampness across the concrete floor—all the familiar markers of who I was and what I loved.
    I saw nothing at first, only the gleaming, stainless steel tables that should have held my neat rows of yellow tubes, and black pots with saplings—all divided by genus, and then divided again by test grafts, all neatly held straight by my green metal stakes with a number tag at the top—the numbers recorded in my log books and on my computer.
    It was all wrong.
    There were no trees on the tables closest to me. Instead, there was chaos. The neatly kept trays of baby food jars were dumped on the floor. Yellow tubes holding my new trees, all the black pots, were upended. Soil—my special mix—covered the tables and the floor like dirty snow. A slight, black haze hung in the air. I stepped into the building. Bright, clean sunlight streamed down from the greenhouse windows, growing hazy as it fell on my emptied plant tables.
    I buried my face in my hands for just a minute. That was all the grief I would allow myself. Later—I’d think about what had been done to me, and to my family. Later I’d think about vengeance. Right then prickles of panic scrambled up and down my spine.
    That fire hadn’t been burning long when I got there. Whoever did this could still be hiding. But the building felt so still and empty.
    I looked hard again. Something was wrong at the far tables, nearest the outer wall. Or—something was right. There were yellow tubes there, just as I’d left them.
    There was order—row after row. Stock for future years. Tiny, struggling plants. Little soldiers, all in their colorful, plastic tubes.
    I stepped forward then stopped to look around, make certain no one was behind me. The destruction, at those far tables, had been stopped somehow. Maybe whoever had done this heard Martin’s mower coming closer. They might have heard me pull up beyond the fence.
    If I could just touch one tiny tree, I thought. See that they were really okay . . .
    I scurried, almost skipping, toward the far tables. My sneakers stuck slightly to the concrete. I slipped once on the dirt covering the floor.
    As I turned a corner toward the untouched plant tables, I tripped hard over something and began to fall. All I could do was grab out frantically to stop myself. Unable to grip the closest table, my hands flailed in air. My body seemed launched in space. When I fell, I hit the concrete and scraped my face. The pain was fast and hard. My chest hit the floor. I couldn’t breathe; no air left in my lungs. I scrambled back up to my knees and bent forward, gasping as blood ran from my chin.
    When I lifted my head and forced my eyes open to see what I’d fallen over, a man lay on the floor beside me, half under one of the stainless steel tables, half