Page 81 of A Rose of Steel
“What do we owe this nice surprise to?” one said.
“You haven’t been over to see us since you were a teenager,” the other one said.
“Has it been that long?” I asked.
“Maybe longer.” They spoke in unison.
“Well, that’s just not right,” I said. “I’ll have to come and visit more often.”
It was hard to tell the two apart, nowadays I used the pattern of the wrinkles on their faces, a sign of their seventy plus years to aid in their identification—Leonard’s crow’s feet were etched deeper and were longer than Mark’s. but they didn’t make telling them apart easy, as usual they were both dressed in the same plaid shift dress and matching green garden jackets. They had on beige stockings and green canvas tennis shoes.
“That would nice,” Leonard said.
“But today, I came by to ask you a question, see if I couldn’t get your help.”
“We’ll be happy to help you, won’t we, Sister?”
“Of course, anything for you, Romaine.”
“It’s about your garden.”
“Our garden?”
“Yes. I know that Auntie Zanne asked you to grow castor beans.”
“How do you know that?” Leonard asked.
“It was supposed to be a secret,” Mark added. “We didn’t know why, but of course if Babet asked us to keep quiet about it, we wouldn’t question it.”
“She told me,” I said, trying to convince them to talk to me, although if Auntie Zanne knew, she wouldn’t approve of them breaking the confidence. And I didn’t know if they’d taken some kind of Voodoo herbalist oath. “I’m helping solve Bumper’s murder.”
“Yes, Babet told us you both were working on it,” Mark said. “What is it you’d like to know?”
She seemed more willing to talk, so I turned to her.
“I’m not sure if you know, Mark, that it was Doc Westin who was interested in it the castor bean,” I said.
They looked at each other.
“We knew,” Mark said.
“Doc Westin came to us,” Leonard said.
“For us to help him,” Mark said.
“He went behind Auntie Zanne’s back?” I asked.
“Oh no,” Leonard said.
“That’s not what he was trying to do,” Mark said.
“Babet was out of town,” one twin said.
“Visiting you,” the other one said.
“And because he couldn’t get to her, he tried us. I don’t know why he needed to have it so quickly.”
“I thought that he didn’t know who Auntie Zanne had growing it for him.”
