Free Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A Potting Shed Mystery (Potting Shed Mystery series Book 3) by Marty Wingate

phone and hit a few buttons and then, as if an afterthought, said, “I’d like to see the text involved around each of those plants—Menzies’s descriptions, location of the find. That should give you something to do.”
    Her hand gripped the door handle. She sniffed and turned to go, but her huff was lost on him as he’d turned his back on her to face the computer screen. “Joan,” he said to the phone, “how many do we have booked for the certificate course?”
    —
    A day later, they were at it again.
    She stood in his office as he threw down another challenge, “Can’t you see the problem? Haven’t you read through the journal enough times?” Pru walked out in a huff, but Iain had followed on her heels. He brushed past Murdo, who hovered over an empty bed as if keeping vigil with his shovel.
    Pru stopped just outside the door to the main building, her face red with frustration. “I don’t have to put up with this treatment,” she said.
    “Certainly not,” Iain replied, “why work when you can buy a reputation?”
    “How dare you!” she whispered fiercely, as two men in suits passed them and disappeared into the administration building. “I was asked to take this post—don’t you believe that anyone besides yourself could have the skills to work on the project?”
    Iain didn’t answer, but turned and walked straight into Murdo. “What are you doing here?” Iain asked, brushing off his lapels.
    He was a head shorter than Iain, but Murdo didn’t flinch. “Just getting ready to plant a few things. Everything all right, Pru?” he asked without taking his eyes off Iain, who tugged on the cuff of his sleeve and walked back into the building.
    “Yes, Murdo, thanks,” Pru said quietly.
    Pru took a breath, let it out slowly, and walked past him, but paused and looked back just in time to see Murdo take out his little black notebook. Over his shoulder, she caught a glimpse of pages filled with numbers and writing. Dog racing? “Murdo, how long have you worked at the garden?”
    Murdo snapped the book shut, slipped it back into his breast pocket, and paused. “How long,” he echoed, “have I worked at the garden?”
    “Yes, how long have you been here?”
    “A couple of months, I’d say. Of course, before that I worked on an estate north of here. Do you know Scotland well, Pru?”
    She shook her head. “No.”
    “Weel, I worked for many years at a large castle garden. At one time, I oversaw”—his eyes bounced from building to tree to bench—“whole sections of the landscape.”
    “Why did you leave there?” Pru asked.
    Murdo seemed to contemplate this for a moment. “Edinburgh, Pru—it was my dream.”
    —
    Instead of returning to her office, Pru headed for the Temperate Palm House. From almost her first day, it had become a favorite spot for an indoor break. Sitting on a bench off in a corner and surrounded by plants, she could watch visitors come and go. The greenhouse embodied Victorian elegance—the wrought-iron supports were painted white and rose like the bones of a dinosaur to an elegantly curved ceiling, seventy feet high at its center. The tops of a couple of palms brushed against its ceiling. About fifty feet up around the inner rim of the structure ran a metal catwalk, dotted with enormous old terra-cotta pots. The air smelled earthy and Pru detected the scent of lemon blossom, but it was cool, not warm and wet—that would be the Tropical Palm House through the far door. Pru stayed on the temperate side—not too hot, not too cold, not too wet, not too dry. Pru was Goldilocks and the Temperate Palm House her bowl of porridge, just right. Until that day.
    —
    “Ms. Parke?”
    Her partial disguise behind a large Chinese palm hadn’t worked—Iain had sussed her out. He ducked under a frond and sat beside her, slightly loosening his tie and leaning forward, resting his elbows on his thighs.
    “Have you come across a fuchsia?” he asked.
    “I may have,” said Pru with