by Melissa Hill
‘Wait a minute.’ Alex said, her tone stopping Leonie in her tracks.
‘Yes?’
‘You said you’d refund ‘his’ credit card. Which means you must know who sent them, right?’
Again Leonie wasn’t sure what to say. ‘Well…’
‘It’s anonymous, but they had to leave a name when placing the order, didn’t they? Especially when using a credit card.’
‘Well yes, but I’m not sure if we can give out that kind of information…’
‘Listen honey, this is no joke, I’m dying here.’ Alex indicated her watering eyes as if to push home the point. ‘I have no idea who’s been sending me all these flowers – well maybe I do have an idea – but I need to find out for sure. So tomorrow, why don’t I call to your store… what’s it called again?’
‘Flower Power. It’s just a few of blocks away – off Van Ness.’
‘Flower Power,’ Alex repeated with a faint smile, and even with the red-rimmed eyes and blotchy face Leonie could tell that she was a really beautiful woman. ‘Let me guess, the florist is an ex-hippy?’
She smiled back. ‘That’s what I thought too, but nope, just someone with an ironic sense of humour.’
‘Oh, OK. So how about you guys tell me who placed the order, and then I’ll go and wring his neck – hey just kidding,’ she added quickly, seeing Leonie’s horrified look.
‘Right.’ Now she wished she hadn’t so willingly offered to drop off the bouquet this evening. This was more than a little weird. She’d have to talk to Marcy about whether or not they could give out a sender’s details though; it wasn’t as simple as just handing over the information. Still, something told her that this Alex Fletcher wasn’t the sort of person who’d take no for an answer!
‘Well, I’d better go,’ she told her, turning again to leave, the bouquet still in her hand. ‘I’ll take these back to the shop tomorrow and see what I can do about helping you find out who sent them.’
‘Off Van Ness, you said?’ Alex repeated, referring to the shop’s location.
‘That’s right. I’ve just come from there.’ She paused then, trying to decide whether or not to tell her they were actually neighbours. Well, she supposed Alex would find out sooner or later. ‘I don’t normally do deliveries actually; it’s just, well I live upstairs and today was really busy with Valentine’s Day and everything, so I thought, seeing as it was on my way…’
‘So someone has moved in then,’ Alex said, nodding sagely to herself. ‘I knew I wasn’t hearing things.’
Leonie was mortified. ‘Sorry, I hope I’m not being too noisy…’
‘No, no, I guess I only noticed because it’s been a while since anyone’s lived up there. Well, welcome to Green Street,’ she continued, a smile quickly lighting up her face. ‘Good meeting you…?’
‘Leonie,’ she supplied, shaking Alex’s hand while at the same time trying to keep the flowers at arm’s length.
‘Well, with that accent, I’m guessing you’re not from the Bay area?’
‘No, I’m Irish – from Dublin,’ Leonie told her.
‘Great country. Well, I’ve never actually been there, but it certainly sounds great.’ She smiled again and Leonie was struck by how utterly stunning she was. Her huge bambi brown eyes gave her features a delicate almost fragile appearance, which seemed completely at odds with her self-assured demeanour and rapid-fire chatter. ‘So as I said welcome to Green Street. This is a great neighbourhood and I hope you’ll be really happy here.’
‘Thanks.’
There was a short pause, as neither woman seemed to know what to say or do next.
‘So hey, do you want to come inside for a coffee or something?’ Alex asked eventually.
Leonie was delighted. ‘You don’t mind? I don’t want to intrude or anything.’
‘Not a problem. I was just making myself a cup and some company would be nice. And I guess I kind of owe you one, for all that shouting and stuff. Sorry about that.’
‘Not at all. I’d love to, but I suppose I’d better get rid of these first,’ she said, indicating the flowers. ‘I’ll drop them up to my place, and then come back down OK?’
‘Sure.’
Delighted by the prospect of getting to know her neighbour, Leonie hurried up the stairs to her own apartment. Setting the flowers down on floor beside the sofa, she tried to dust any stray pollen off her clothes and was just about to go back out again when the box of letters lying open on the window seat caught her eye.
Hmm, she thought closing the apartment door behind her. Seeing as Alex had lived in this building for a while, getting to know her might be a good idea for more reasons than one.
‘Wow, this place is really nice,’ she said, stepping inside Alex’s apartment.
Although it was similar in size and layout, it looked a lot more homely and lived in than Leonie’s. Colourful cushions of various shapes and sizes were strewn across an old but very comfy-looking sofa, and the walls were dotted with funky contemporary art canvases. An open laptop computer lay on the carpeted floor, its cursor blinking where Alex must have left off typing when Leonie disturbed her with the flowers. A half-used packet of hay-fever tablets on the coffee table further confirmed her allergies, which in the absence of the flowers, Leonie noticed, seemed to have subsided a little.
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Alex urged, pushing aside a sheaf of papers from the sofa – one of many that were strewn around the living area. ‘I’m sorry about the mess, but the hay-fever was so bad earlier I needed to try and catch up. I refused this morning’s delivery but then I got another one at work,’ she added with a shake of her head.
‘And you have no idea who sent them? Why would anyone do that when you suffer from hay-fever?’
‘Oh, I could think of one in particular,’ she replied cryptically. ‘Which is why I’d appreciate taking a look at your records tomorrow.’
‘Well as I said, I’ll see what I can do.’ Leonie wondered if Marcy would allow this. ‘So how long have you been living here?’ she asked while Alex made coffee.
‘A few years now,’ the other girl replied. Which meant she must have known Helena, Leonie thought. ‘It’s close to where I work and the rent’s pretty good, although as you can see it’s a little bit on the small side for all my stuff.’
Leonie smiled. There was indeed plenty of ‘stuff’. ‘What about you?’ Alex asked, handing her a cup of coffee and taking a seat on the armchair across from her. ‘When did you move in upstairs?’
‘Just a few weeks ago. It took me a while to find somewhere I liked, but I must admit I fell in love with this place on sight. I just adore these Victorian houses.’
‘Yeah, the painted ladies are great,’ Alex agreed, using the same term Marcy did to describe this type of house. ‘Hell on the heating bills, but better than some of those ugly old tower blocks you get down by the wharf.’
‘Or the Holiday Inn,’ Leonie grinned, filling her in on her previous living arrangements.
They chatted for a while about their respective lives, and Alex told Leonie about her job at the TV news station.
‘Today By the Bay? Wait a minute, I think I’ve seen that!’ she gasped. ‘Wasn’t there something on recently about a bear being rescued from the water?’
Alex smiled proudly. ‘Yep, that’s us.’
‘Wow, what a fantastic job!’ And although Alex was at pains to point out that she never actually appeared on camera, Leonie still felt a little star-struck. Imagine meeting a real live TV person… Grace would be goggle-eyed when she heard!
‘So what’s your story then?’ Alex asked. ‘What brings you all the way to the West Coast?’
Leonie stiffened a little, unwilling to get into that. ‘I just needed a change of scenery,’ she told her airily. ‘Ireland’s great, but I find it hard to stay in one place for long. And the weather’s a bit of a drawback too,’ she added, forcing a smile.
Alex looked directly at her, and for a second, Leonie thought that t
he other girl sensed that there was a lot more to it. But just as quickly, she smiled too. ‘So I’ve heard,’ she said with a roll of her eyes. ‘Green fields are all very well but give me blue skies and sunshine any day of the week.’
‘Exactly.’ Leonie agreed, feeling stupid for even thinking that a complete stranger, someone she’d only just met, would have any clue about her life. But in any case, she thought it best to change the subject. ‘Tell me something,’ she said, deciding now was a good time to ask. ‘The tenant who lived upstairs before me, would you by any chance happen to have a forwarding address for her?’
‘You mean that couple?’ Alex frowned. ‘To be honest, I didn’t really know them, just enough to say hi to really.’
Oh, so they’d both lived there, Leonie realised. That was interesting!
‘What were they like?’
Alex shrugged. ‘Hard to say. Nice enough, I suppose. Why do you ask?’
‘I’m still getting mail for them – well, for her actually, and I wanted to forward it on.’
Leonie didn’t want to admit that she also knew who the mail was from. For one thing, she didn’t want Alex to think she was nosy old so-and-so and for another, as Marcy had pointed out earlier, opening someone else’s post was a bit dodgy.
‘Can’t help you there I’m afraid, but I’m sure the agency would know.’
‘I already tried that,’ Leonie said with a shake of her head. ‘The agency had no forwarding address so they reckon I should just throw the stuff away.’
‘Well then maybe you should. I mean if they didn’t bother leaving an address then they probably don’t …’ Alex paused frowning. ‘No hold on, wasn’t there something…? I remember hearing something about it at the time and as I said I didn’t really know them, but I think there was some kind of …situation.’
Situation? Almost unknown to herself, Leonie leaned closer, all ears now. ‘What kind of situation?’
‘As I said, I’m not really sure and it was a while ago now, but I remember there was a lot of activity going on around the time they moved out.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t remember what exactly, but I got the impression that things didn’t end so good.’
‘Between Nathan and Helena, you mean?’ In her eagerness to find out more about the couple, Leonie had forgotten that she wasn’t supposed to know anything about them. ‘That was their names, wasn’t it?’ she added quickly. ‘That’s what’s on the letters anyway.’
‘I couldn’t say. Again, it was some time ago.’
‘When did they move out?’ Leonie realised she didn’t know this. ‘When I first came to see the apartment, the agency told me someone was still living there.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Alex said with a shake of her head. ‘By my reckoning, nobody’s lived there for a few months.’
That was odd. ‘But there was stuff still there, all the furniture and the letters…’
‘Well, as I said something was going on around the time they left, so maybe they only moved their stuff out when the lease was up?’
‘They must have broken up then,’ Leonie said, knowing that this was exactly what had happened.
Alex sipped her coffee. ‘Well I’ve got to say that wouldn’t surprise me in the least, the noises that used to come from up there.’
‘Really?’ Leonie sat forward again. ‘You heard them arguing?’
She nodded. ‘And then some. I think she was kinda partial to flinging plates at his head.’
‘Oh.’ Now, Leonie couldn’t help but feel sorry for Nathan. From his letters he seemed to have adored the ground Helena walked on, so to think that she was cruel to him…but then again, maybe she had every reason to be?
‘You’re sure you can’t remember when they moved out?’ she asked Alex again. Hearing such little snippets about the couple now made her even more eager to find out what had happened to them. ‘And you have no idea where they might be now?’
‘Not a clue.’ Alex shook her head. ‘They could be in Timbuktu for all I know.’
Chapter 8
‘So…?’
‘So?’ Alex repeated, confused. It was the following morning and she was just about to leave for work when she got a call from Jon.
‘You didn’t get them?’ he replied dejectedly, and instantly the penny dropped.
Alex flushed from head to toe, all at once horrified at her stupidity. Of course it had been Jon who’d sent the flowers, why on earth hadn’t she even considered …
‘You mean the roses?’ she replied, not sure what to feel. ‘I did get them and yes they were beautiful, thank you, but the thing is – ‘
‘I really hope they were beautiful, Alex,’ he laughed. ‘Some florists can be a bit careless on those busy days, so I used three different places just to be sure.’
Immediately she felt guilty, and more than a little stupid.
She wasn’t sure why she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion, and really, the least likely conclusion, considering.
It was the message ‘Guess who?’ (a catchphrase Alex knew all too well) that had caused her to suspect something else was going on. So much so that she hadn’t even considered that all three bouquets might have been sent by Jon. Even though it was exactly the kind of thing he would do given how apologetic he’d been on their date about not seeing her on Valentine’s Day. And especially stupid given what had happened that very same night, Alex recalled smiling at the memory.
She was pretty sure he already knew about her allergy, but maybe not?
‘Jon, they were amazing, honestly and I really appreciate it, but, well … I’m sorry but I had to send them all back,’ she told him sheepishly. ‘It’s my fault, I should have told you before, but I suffer from really bad hay-fever.’
Jon sounded horrified. ‘I’m sorry sweetheart, I had no idea.’
So she hadn’t told him then. ‘Hey, no need to be sorry, you couldn’t have known. But thank you all the same, it was really sweet of you.’
‘I guess you didn’t appreciate three separate deliveries then,’ he said sounding shamefaced. ‘But I felt kinda guilty about not being able to see you yesterday, especially after the other night...’
‘I know.’ Alex’s face flushed at the memory. That night, all her previous hesitation had gone straight out the window once they made it back to Jon’s house. No, strike that, once they’d left the restaurant and made it into the cab.
‘So I thought a roomful of red roses might make up for it.’ Jon was still talking. ‘Guess, I read that one wrong.’
‘Honestly, it’s fine,’ Alex assured him. ‘And no need to feel guilty about working the late shifts this week. We’ll see each other again soon.’
‘I can’t wait,” he said, and Alex smiled at the promise in his tone. ‘Listen, gotta go, things are crazy here. I’ll call you at the weekend, OK? We’ll do something nice.’
‘Sure.’
‘And sorry again about the hay-fever. Some doctor I am, huh?’
Alex chuckled. ‘It’s fine – honestly.’
Saying goodbye to Jon, she hung up the phone and again remonstrated with herself for being so quick to jump to conclusions – the wrong conclusions. The new girl from upstairs, Leonie, probably thought she was a right whacko, what with her behaving like a crazy woman and demanding information from the flower store.
Alex sighed. She guessed she’d better let her know that she no longer needed it, and that her so-called ‘mystery’ had turned out to be nothing of the sort.
Leonie had thoroughly enjoyed spending time with her neighbour. Alex was good fun, and chatty and open in a way that reminded her a little bit of Grace. Last night, they’d talked so much it had been well after ten when she’d left her neighbour’s place and gone back upstairs to her own. Thinking of Grace, she felt a pang of guilt. She really should phone her, it had been over a week since they’d last spoken.
Not that she wanted too many reminders from home, but Leonie knew that no doubt her friend would still be worried about her. Well,
she needn’t worry too much. Wasn’t she getting on grand in her new life in the city, what with her nice apartment, easy-going job and new friends in Marcy and now most likely Alex?
Her neighbour had arranged to call in today to try and find out more about the mysterious sender of her flowers.
‘I’m not sure we can give out that kind of information,’ Marcy said dubiously, when Leonie outlined what had happened. Her boss was sweeping bits of broken greenery off the floor. ‘If a bouquet’s sent anonymously then we have to abide by the sender’s wishes.’
‘I know but Alex is a TV personality, what if she has a stalker or something?’ She skimmed through the store’s database, trying to find the relevant order.
Marcy stopped and frowned. ‘Didn’t you say she was just a producer? Not sure if stalkers are all that interested in the ones behind the scenes.’
‘Maybe. But I’d like to help her if I could. She seems really nice – and she was able to tell me a couple of things about my predecessor in the apartment,’ she added pointedly.
‘Really? Did she know her?’
‘Not just her – them. And no, she didn’t know much about them other than the fact that there was a them, which I thought was interesting.’
‘So I guess the guy used to live there too.’
‘And there’s more.’ She then went on to tell Marcy what Alex had said about there being some kind of incident around the time the couple moved out.
Her boss raised an eyebrow. ‘Curiouser and curiouser, huh?’
‘That’s what I thought. But I was thinking that he must have left before she did, seeing as he’s still sending her letters and doesn’t know she’s moved out.’
‘All very interesting but what are you going to do? Are you still thinking about trying to get the letters back to them?’