by Jessica Beck
“Is that really your name?” I asked her with a smile. “Were you doomed to this life from the start?”
“I’m Rose, but I don’t consider it a curse. My parents were all set to name me Evelyn, but the second they saw my red hair, they changed it to Rose. Besides, I find it a fortunate coincidence. I love this place.”
Rose clearly displayed the same love of her flower shop that I did with my donut place, and I felt a little bit of the kindred spirit in her. “The question about the rosebud is important, so if you can help us, we’d greatly appreciate it.”
“Why are you asking?” she asked as she studied Grace and me carefully.
“We saw a man wearing one the other day, and it made us curious. He was dressed in a black suit, his build was kind of on the smallish side, and he obviously loved the flower he was wearing.”
I saw Rose cringe for just a second as I described Morgan Briar, and I knew that we’d hit pay dirt. “Did you sell one of your flowers to him?”
“I sell a great many blooms throughout the course of a day,” she said. “I have no idea if your friend got it from here, or somewhere else. Why do you really want to know? Would you like one for the man in your life? We can take care of that, or you can look around for something else.”
Rose started to turn her back to us, but I wasn’t about to let her brush us off that easily. “Actually, it’s the man himself that we want to talk to you about. Just how well did you know Morgan Briar?”
Rose hesitated just a second too long for her answer to be legitimate, as though she had weighed her options before deciding exactly how to reply. “I don’t have a clue who you’re talking about. Sorry. If you aren’t interested in buying anything, feel free to look around. I need to do a little inventory on our accessories.”
Rose looked around the shop, picked up a clipboard, and then she started writing on the top sheet on it. Though I couldn’t see the paper that she was working on, I had a hunch that it could have just as easily been a lunch menu from the diner across town.
“Rose, it’s important that we talk to you,” Grace said to the florist as she moved closer. I was perfectly happy to let my friend take the lead from here on out, if she could make better progress than I’d been able to so far. “You’re not alone in this. He was blackmailing my friend, too,” Grace added softly. I wasn’t at all certain that it was the right thing to say, but then again, her instincts had advanced our investigations in the past enough to earn her a little slack questioning this woman.
“I’m sorry for your trouble, but I can’t help you,” Rose said, but I could see from her expression that something was deeply troubling her.
She went back to her list, though, and it appeared that this was going to be another dead end.
Then Antonia DeAngelis walked in.
“Suzanne, Grace, what are you two doing here? I doubt that you’re shopping for flowers this far from home.”
“You know us,” I said. “We’re digging into that murder we told your mother about.”
Rose pretended to ignore us, but it was clear that she was hanging on every word.
Antonia nodded. “If there’s anything we can do to help, all you have to do is ask. I don’t have to tell you that my mother is your biggest fan.” She turned to Rose and said, “We need to change the next floral delivery to add more roses to the settings. It’s not too late to make a change, is it?”
“Of course not. Tell your mother that I’ll personally take care of it myself.”
“Excellent,” Antonia said, and then she smiled at us and added, “I just love delivering good news.”
As Antonia left, she waved to us, and then she walked back toward Napoli’s.
“Do you two really know Angelica?” Rose asked us in a soft voice ten seconds later.
“We do. If you’d like to call her to check, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings a bit,” I said.
“There’s no need to do that. Antonia’s word is good enough for me.” Rose took a deep breath, and then she let it out slowly. “To answer your earlier question, I knew him, and yes, the little weasel got that flower from me. I didn’t kill him, but I’d love to present a bouquet to whoever did.”
“I take it then that you were a victim as well,” I said gently.
“Oh, yes. He found out something about my aunt, and he used it to blackmail me. If word got out about what she’d done, it would kill her. Now, I keep waiting for someone to find the evidence that Morgan was using against her.”
“We’re searching for his stash ourselves,” Grace said. “If we find anything that will help you out, we’ll hand it over if we can.”
“You would do that for me, a stranger?” she asked.
“You’re not a stranger,” I said. “We just haven’t met before today, but if you’re friends with the DeAngelis family, then you’re our friends as well.”
A hint of relief entered her eyes, if only briefly. “I’ll tell you what I can, but it’s not much.”
“At this point, we’ll take whatever we can get,” Grace said.
“I know that ever since he got out of prison, Morgan has been drinking with a guy named Larry Landers. Larry never has been all that great a guy, but whenever Morgan was around, he got a whole lot worse. He might know what Morgan was up to that got him killed.”
Were we finally getting a real lead? It was almost too good to be true. “Thanks so much for your help,” I said.
“There’s one more thing,” Rose said before we got out the door. “I don’t know if it matters, but I saw Morgan coming out of the bus station a few days before he was murdered. He was alone, and he had a brown paper bag like they use at the grocery store tucked under his arm. It was empty, and I could swear that he was smiling. It really gave me the creeps.”
“That’s great,” I said as I handed her one of my business cards from the donut shop. One of my customers had made them the year before as a Christmas present, and I kept some in my wallet, just in case. “If you think of anything else, don’t hesitate to give me a call at the donut shop.”
“I’ve been there before,” she said. “My downfall is your Lemon Delight donut. How do you make that glaze so perfectly every time?”
So that’s where I’d seen her. She’d been in my shop. I couldn’t be too hard on myself for not realizing it at first. I had quite a few customers that came by so infrequently that I’d never be able to consider them regulars. “I’d love to say that it was from years of hard work and experimentation, but it was actually just a happy coincidence one day.” I’d accidentally dusted a run of lemon-glazed donuts with powdered sugar, and then I’d put them too close to the heat. The glaze and the sugar had combined in a magic way that gave everything a bigger pop, and it was now one of my best sellers. “I’ll bring you some the next time I’m in Union Square.”
“Just one,” she said. “I tend to get a little carried away with your donuts. That’s why I can’t get them very often.”
“Okay, one it is. We’ll be in touch, Rose.”
“I really hope that you find Morgan’s stash of proof before someone else discovers it and decides to use it, too,” Rose said.
“So do we,” Grace replied.
Chapter 11
Out on the sidewalk, Grace looked around for a few seconds, and then she asked me, “Should we go off in search of the mysterious Larry Landers now?”
“First, we need to go to the bus station,” I said. “I’ve got a hunch something’s up with what Rose just told us.”
“Lead on, then.”
We walked into the station and saw a half dozen rows of benches, a ticket window with a grumpy old man sitting behind it, and a double row of lockers, most of them with orange-handled keys still in their locks. “I’m willing to bet good money that Morgan’s blackmail info is in one of these lockers,” I said.
“I agree, but which one?” she asked as she surveyed them. “The numbers go up to two hundred, and at least twenty of them don’t have keys in them. We can’t b
reak into all of them.”
I laughed. “Grace, we aren’t going to break into any of them, but if we run across a key somewhere that matches the ones they use here, we know where to come.” I stepped forward, tried to pull out a key from one of the open lockers, but it wouldn’t budge.
Grace said, “Allow me,” as she pulled three quarters out of her purse. Once they were accepted, the key came out easily enough. “Do we need a locker for something?” she asked me as she handed me the key.
“No, but this might come in handy before this is all over,” I said as I tucked it into my blue jeans.
“Now do we go looking for Larry?” Grace asked me.
“I’m game if you are,” I said. “Where should we start looking?”
“You heard Rose. He and Morgan were big drinking buddies. I say we find the nearest bar and see if we have any luck. If he’s not there, I’m willing to wager that someone there will know where we can find him.”
As we got out of my Jeep at the bar at the edge of town, Grace said, “Let me handle this, Suzanne.”
“Hey, I’ve been in a bar before; maybe more than you have,” I said. That probably wasn’t true, though, for several reasons. It took a real occasion for me to drink anything even remotely alcoholic, and besides, my hours didn’t exactly make drinking a viable option, not when I had to go to bed so early every night in order to run the donut shop. I usually considered a glass of wine a cause to celebrate, so maybe Grace should lead the way.
She just laughed at my statement. “Between some optimistic dates trying to get me liquored up, and a few obnoxious buyers trying to purchase more than I had for sale, I highly doubt that.”
“Okay, your point is conceded,” I said. “You lead.”
As we walked into the bar, it took some time for my vision to get accustomed to the lower level of light inside. There was an old jukebox playing quietly in one corner, and a long bar spanned the entire length of the back with its own set of stools; tables and booths were scattered everywhere else around the room. The air conditioning was cranked up to its full capacity, and the shock of feeling the cold air after being outside in the heat was jarring at first. As my vision grew more accustomed to the dark, I noticed that there were half a dozen men and one woman already drinking, most of them in somber solitude.
Grace started to approach the bartender as we both heard one man on the end say, “Larry, you always were a blowhard. You haven’t been on a date with a woman in a year, and everybody in this room knows it.”
Grace changed her course without missing a step and headed straight for the man in question. As she approached him, she said teasingly, “Larry, there you are. I thought you stood me up again.”
I hung back and watched my friend lie with such poise and ease.
To Larry’s credit, he played right along. “You know that I wouldn’t do that to you, baby. I just lost all track of time.” He tried to kiss her, but Grace deftly turned her cheek as he moved forward.
“Now come on,” she said as she tugged at his arm. “We’re going to be late for the movie, and you know how I hate that.” Grace waved to the man Larry had been talking to, and then I saw her wink at him. He couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d handed him a hundred dollar bill and asked him to dance.
I moved outside first, amazed by the difference in the temperature from conditioned to raw air.
Larry started laughing the second the door to the bar closed behind us. “Lady, I have no idea who you are, but I owe you a drink, any place, any time. Did you see Steve’s face? I thought he was going to have a coronary.”
“I need something more than a drink in exchange for my little performance in there, Larry. Tell me what you know about Morgan Briar, and his dirty little secret.”
Larry’s expression went from sheer joy to cold suspicion in less than a second. “Sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Larry,” Grace said gently. “Do you really want me to go back in there and tell Steve the truth?”
He was clearly horrified by the mere thought of it. “You wouldn’t do that to me, would you? Come on, give a guy a break.”
“It’s your choice,” Grace said, and I didn’t doubt for one second that she meant every word of it.
Larry must have understood it as well, because his shoulders suddenly slumped as he said, “Okay. You win. I’ll tell you whatever you need to know. Only can we get out of this blasted heat? I’m about to melt out here.”
“Do you really want to risk going back into the bar?” Grace asked.
“No way. There’s a laundromat over there, though. It’ll do.”
It was an odd place to hear his confession, but I had to agree with him. If it got us out of the heat, it was good enough for me. We followed Larry into Suds Suds Suds, and there was a corner where we could have a conversation without any of the other three patrons listening in.
“Okay, no one’s within earshot, and we’re out of the heat,” I said to Larry. “Now tell us what you know about Morgan’s dirty little side business.”
Larry sighed heavily, and then ran a hand through his greasy hair before he spoke. “Morgan and I were friends long before he went to jail, and we took right back up once he got out. That man didn’t deserve what he got, not out in the free world, and not when he was behind bars.”
I wasn’t about to debate the man’s fate with Larry. “Tell us exactly what he’s been up to since he got out of prison,” I asked.
“Why do you want to know?” Larry asked. It was clear that he was more than a little suspicious of our motives.
“The truth? We’re trying to find his killer,” Grace said.
“I don’t understand why you would, when his own sister doesn’t care about what happened to him,” he said as a hint of irritation frosted his words. “Why do you?”
“You don’t need to know the exact details,” I said. “Let’s just say that we’re helping out a friend.”
Larry seemed to take that in, and then he said, “Then it’s not out of any particular love of my dead friend. Is that what you’re saying?”
He had a legitimate point, but I couldn’t let that stop me. “Larry, does it really matter why my friend and I are looking for Morgan’s killer? Aren’t you glad that at least someone’s digging into this? How much effort do you think that the police are going to put into finding out what happened to a guy like Morgan? If he’s going to get any justice at all, it’s most likely going to be up to us.”
I wasn’t at all certain how much of that I honestly believed myself, but there was enough truth in it to satisfy Larry. “Okay, I’ll tell you what I know, but it’s not much. Morgan never really shared too much of anything with anybody.”
“You still knew him better than anybody else did,” Grace said soothingly.
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“Who knew him better than you?” Grace asked. “His sister?”
“Ellen? No way. She was always on his back about finding a job and a getting his own place to live. Morgan was going to leave as soon as he got some money he had coming to him, and that’s a fact.”
“Where was he getting it?” I asked.
Larry just shrugged. “He wouldn’t tell me, but it sounded like a pretty decent amount.”
I knew where that money was supposed to be coming from, even if Larry was pretending not to know himself. It was time to stop tap dancing around the truth. “How many people was he blackmailing?” I asked softly.
Larry was not a consummate poker player. He pursed his lips for a moment, frowned, and then he studied his hands before he spoke. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Come on, Larry. How is this going to hurt Morgan now? It’s not like he can be arrested because of anything he might have done while he was alive.”
Grace spoke up, adding, “Unless you were in on it, too, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t tell us now.”
“How do I know that you won’t go to the cops?” L
arry asked, and then added a bit too late, “Not that I know anything.”
“You have our word on it,” I said. “If you weren’t involved in his blackmailing attempts, you don’t have anything to fear from the two of us.”
Grace looked at me quizzically and asked, “Should you really be promising him something like that?”
“I meant what I said,” I answered. “It’s the only way Larry’s going to tell us anything, and information is what counts right now.” I turned back to Larry and said, “Go on. We’re listening, and it won’t go any further than this laundromat.”
He thought about it for a full minute before he finally replied. “If anybody finds out that I told you about this, it could be very bad for me; do you understand?”
“We promise,” I said, and Grace nodded as well, albeit reluctantly. “We do,” she added.
“Okay. I’m going to trust you both. I just hope that it doesn’t come back and bite me later. Morgan got drunk one night and I had to walk him home, but not right away, if you know what I mean. His sister doesn’t drink, not really, and she didn’t want him doing it, either. I had to sober him up a little. We walked for half an hour before he was in any shape to go into the house, and while we were strolling through the neighborhood, he started talking about his grand plans.”
“Did you get any names out of him?” I asked.
“Let’s see. There was a woman and her daughter in April Springs, and he also told me about a florist named Rose.”
“Who else?”
Larry shook his head as he frowned. Evidently this was tougher for him than he thought it would be. “There was a woman named Heather, too.”
“Is there anyone else that you can think of?” I asked. “Think, Larry.” I had to know how big the pool of victims really was, because that was our list of suspects in the man’s murder.
“Just one more,” Larry said. “But I think I might have said too much already.”