The Gardens of Digby Green: Begonia Plug
She’d turned the key. Digby shook the dirt from his hands and wiped soil from his sharpened trowel. There was no real hurry, but he rounded the corner of the building as the laboring engine choked, and quit.
He walked behind his truck to his driver’s door, opened it, and slid his trowel between the driver’s seat and console.
Rosalie tried her key again, and again.
Digby smirked, and turned around. He walked in front of her stalled car and leaned in at the open driver’s window. “Do you need some help, ma’am?”
She startled. “Not really. I have my cell phone.” She scrabbled in the depths of a large purse until she came up with the instrument, and prepared to dial. “Oh boy, the battery’s really low.”
She punched numbers. “Arnie,” she said to someone on the other end of the call, “I’m at the Strip Shoppe, and my car won’t start. No, I don’t have any jumper cables.”
While she was distracted, Digby slunk to her rear fender, glanced once, to see if she was checking her mirrors, ducked down, and removed the begonia plug from her tailpipe. He flipped the plant away behind a dumpster.
“No, no, no,” she said.
Digby returned to her open window. “What’s wrong now?”
“The phone battery’s dead, and I left the charge cord at home. Arnie’s sending his tow truck, but I can’t reach my daughter for a ride from there.”
“I could follow the tow truck and drive you home if the work’s gonna take a while. My boss won’t mind.”
“Would you really? I suppose so—”
The tow truck pulled in. Digby settled into his truck as Rosalie spoke to the driver. After several minutes, her car sat on the tow truck flat bed. When the body shop driver left the Strip Shoppe lot, Digby followed.
The Gardens of Digby Green is a serialized story that posts on Fridays.
Next week, part twenty-two, Gas Gauge.
Find a link to purchase Heartland Treasures anthology here.
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