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Nine acres of flowers! Yes, one day it happened. And it was an early summer day, with all the flowers in riotous bloom. A rainbow, a jungle of colors, the breeze audible with the movements of thousands of fragile petals, the air steamy with their multitude of fragrances. All except for one tiny space. The last little patch of level green, right beneath Harriet Kopping’s bedroom window.

“I want another red rose bush right there,” she instructed Anton.

He had long ago ceased to argue against her commands. In fact, he was only dimly aware that this was the last of the grass, or that when he folded this final bush into the earth that except for the space which the house and the driveway occupied, he had turned over every last square inch of Harriet Kopping’s nine acres.

But the lady herself was exquisitely aware of the occasion. She celebrated it by having a heart attack.

The housekeeper phoned for the doctor, and the doctor came. Shortly afterward a nurse followed, and several deliveries from the pharmacy. But in the midst of all the hubbub, the mistress of the house asked to see Anton Vandrak.

He was admitted to her bedroom — for the first time in his life. And according to her insistent instructions, he was alone with her. He found her very quiet, very pale, almost completely recumbent, her head raised by only one pillow. Yet he was so accustomed to her mastery over him that she was to him just as awesome as ever.

“Anton,” she began, “we have some unfinished business, you and I.”

“I have planted the rose bush,” he said, not understanding.

“But have you found Stella?”

Stella? Of late he had thought of Stella very seldom. But now he remembered her. His wife, whom he had hated and had murdered.

“No,” he said, “I haven’t found her.”

“Do you still want to know where she is?”

He hesitated. He wasn’t sure. For a time it had seemed that his whole life had been devoted to finding Stella. Now he was no longer sure. What did it matter now?

“I want to tell you,” Mrs. Kopping said. “I want to reward you for your years of faithful service.”

He listened passively, unaware of any emotion, pleasant or unpleasant.

“You should be proud, Anton. I think you have made it up to her. Never has any man so cared for, so beautified, his dear wife’s final resting place. There is no cemetery in the world, Anton, as lovely as the one which Stella has all to herself. She lies under a living monument of flowers.”

“She is buried in the yard then?” He asked it calmly.

“She has always been buried in the yard, Anton. You put her there with your own loving hands.”

He did not understand. But for the first time he felt a quickening of the old interest, a resurgence — perhaps only a memory — of his former desperation.

“But you moved her,” he argued.

“No, Anton. How could I move an object as heavy as Stella? I’m a frail old woman. I was a frail old woman then.”

He blinked his tired eyes, concentrating on the problem. “I opened the grave I had dug... between the fourth and fifth bushes. And she wasn’t there.”

“You dug in the wrong place, Anton. You dug between what were really originally the fifth and sixth bushes. You see, all I dug up and removed was one rose bush, the first in the line. I brought it into the house here and burned it in the fireplace.”

He nodded, comprehending only vaguely. He was a stupid old man, he realized. He had always been stupid.

He waited now for Mrs. Kopping to give him further instructions. Now that there was no more space to plant new flowers, should he just go on tending the old ones? But Mrs. Kopping didn’t tell him. In fact, she didn’t say anything more. Her eyes were closed. Perhaps, he thought, she’d fallen asleep.

So he left the room quietly, went back downstairs, and outside again. The pain in his back was severe today. But that mustn’t stop him from working. He had his job to do. He sank to his knees wincing at the stabs of fresh pain, and grasped his trowel. The roses needed tending. He’d been neglecting these old plants by the driveway.

As he worked with the trowel, his mind somehow refused to forget Stella. She seemed very close to him.

How Much to Kill?

by Michael Zuroy

“Money talks,” said Cummins. “A man will do anything if the price is right... even kill.”

* * *

“So this is it,” said Sam Tuttle, the public-relations man, casting diagnostic eyes over the development. From the road off which Cummins’ car was parked they had walked about a half-mile into the property. “This is the dream stuff you want me to tout. A piece of Florida at a low, low price. Anybody can afford to be a landowner now. Take that first step towards independence and retirement. What’s wrong with the deal, Sheldon? What’s your gimmick?”

The unassailable dignity of Sheldon Cummins’ square cut face did not change, but he attempted no pretense with Tuttle; Tuttle had worked for him before. He merely replied, “That concern you, Sam?”

“It does. I’d like to know what kind of trouble I might get into.”

“It’s not too bad. Not bad at all. Nice-looking property, wouldn’t you say? I’ve got roughly two thousand acres in here, mostly level, crossed by babbling brooks, dotted with charming little ponds, off a good U.S. highway, a short ride to beaches, resort areas, shopping towns and industry. Ideal location and a clear title; every buyer gets an ironclad deed. Minimum plot is one-eighth acre. Streets, as you see, are marked out.”

Tuttle bent his head to let some of the rain water spill from his hat brim. For several days the weather had been unsettled, vacillating between fine drizzles and heavy downpours. The rain was falling harder now. Still fairly dry in their raincoats, the two men stepped beneath the shelter of a tree. Tuttle glanced at the occasional rough signs projecting from the brush and tall grass. The closest sign read, “Beachcomber Drive.”

“Picturesque,” observed Tuttle. “Who wouldn’t want to live on that street. You going to actually build the streets, Sheldon?”

“Hell, no. I’ve had them surveyed and marked. That’s it.”

“Maybe someday the town that collects the taxes will build them, eh? Maybe someday next century, after a fat assessment. But meanwhile the streets are neatly drawn on your plot maps. Let the buyer beware. Well, that doesn’t throw me, Sheldon, but I think there’s more to your gimmick than that.”

“Why so?”

“I look at it like this,” said Tuttle. “Here’s two thousand acres of good-looking land in one of Florida’s more desirable locations. Empty. No buildings, no improvements on it. There are a lot of legitimate real estate developers in Florida — if you’ll pardon the distinction. Some of them sell mail-order. But none of them have touched this parcel, and they haven’t just overlooked it. You picked it up for next to nothing, if I guess right. Something’s extra special wrong about this land. What is it?”

Cummins looked at Tuttle, his thick eyebrows crawling a little closer to each other, like caterpillars. It wasn’t Tuttle’s curiosity he disliked as much as his attitude. He never had liked Tuttle, he remembered. For an instant he toyed with the idea of booting Tuttle off his property, but his keenly developed acumen as to his own self-interests stopped him. He needed the younger man right now. He needed favorable publicity. He didn’t know another public-relations man as competent and as unscrupulous as Tuttle, and anyone who would take on this job would have to be unscrupulous.

There was a lot of money involved here. This was the biggest operation he had ever promoted — by far. It was so big that it frightened him. No one would guess that under his distinguished front beat a frightened heart, but it was true. He was far out of his league — and alone. He didn’t think there was anything as lonely as manipulating a million dollar operation by yourself. Or as worrying.