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“He looks too young for a heart attack or stroke,” Marcella said.
“Aneurysm, maybe,” Jasper Draper offered. “One thing’s for sure, this will add some interest to the blog post I’m going to do when I get back to civilization. I can see the headline now. ‘The Unplugged Experience Provides a Killer Retreat.’ ”
No one laughed.
“That’s enough,” Nathan said. He picked up the emergency kit. “I’ll get the stretcher and a blanket from the storage locker at the lodge. We’ll put the body in Keever’s cabin until the ferry gets here tomorrow.” He looked at Clive. “I’m going to need some help with the stretcher.”
Clive looked alarmed. “My back—”
“I’ll give you a hand,” Luke said quietly.
Nathan’s eyes tightened. He nodded once and hurried away toward the lodge.
Talia looked at Octavia. “Someone should notify his next of kin.”
Octavia shook her head. “We’ll have to leave that up to the Institute. Eddy didn’t provide any emergency contacts on his employment form. The gardens were the only things he cared about—well, specifically the mushrooms. He was very helpful when it came to harvesting the ones I use in the kitchen. He said there were a lot of poisonous and hallucinogenic varieties on the island.”
Talia and Marcella looked at each other. Neither said a word, but Talia had a feeling they both would be skipping the mushroom pâté in the future.
“The Night Gardener will have her hands full looking after these gardens and the conservatory on her own,” Luke said.
He might as well have lobbed a small grenade at the Venners. They stared at him with classic deer-in-the-headlights expressions.
Clive recovered first. “You met Pomona Finch?”
“Is that her name?” Talia asked. “She introduced herself as the Night Gardener.”
“Pomona is what people used to call eccentric,” Octavia said. “But she has an amazing affinity for the plants. Keeps odd hours. She works nights and sleeps days. I’m surprised you met her. When she’s awake she is usually inside the conservatory. She’s obsessed with the experimental specimens she’s cataloging.”
“Why didn’t we see her at dinner?” Talia asked.
“She doesn’t eat with the guests,” Octavia said. “She doesn’t like people and she doesn’t appreciate good food. Mostly she eats those awful energy bars. She tells me when she needs more and I order a supply for her. We see very little of her. As I said, at this hour of the night she’s usually hard at work inside the conservatory. She doesn’t like to be disturbed during the days.”
Clive grunted. “Eccentric, like Octavia said.”
Marcella glanced at the body. “Did Keever work nights, too? Is that why he was out here in the gardens at one in the morning?”
“Yes, Finch insisted that he work nights,” Octavia said. “She said it was the best time to tend to the plants. Something about their energy.”
Clive fixed Luke with a suspicious gaze. “What were you and Ms.March doing out here at one in the morning?”
“The separate-cabins thing wasn’t working for us,” Luke said. “Don’t rat us out to our couples counselor, okay?”
Jasper and Oliver snorted, amused. Marcella rolled her eyes. Clive scowled, clearly unsatisfied with the answer.
“You werebothout here?” he pressed. “Why weren’t you in one of your cabins or the other?”
“See, this is the problem you get when there are no phones in the cabins,” Luke said. “There was a misunderstanding about time and location. The result was that I was on my way to Talia’s room and she was on her way to mine. We met somewhere in the labyrinth. We had just decided to go to her cabin to spend the rest of the night when we ran into the Night Gardener. The next thing we know we’re practically stumbling over Keever’s body.”
“Nothing like a dead body to ruin a guy’s sex life,” Jasper said.
No one snickered. He shrugged.
Luke took Talia’s arm. “Gill will be back with the stretcher soon. I’ll take you to your cabin and then give him a hand with the body.”
He urged her quickly along the path. She kept silent until they were at the door of the cabin and she could be certain they would not be overheard.
“ ‘The separate-cabins thing wasn’t working for us’?” she said, shoving the key into the lock of her cabin door. “Really? That was thebest excuse you could come up with to explain why we were out in the gardens tonight?”
