by Nic Saint
I took the bus back to the store, and texted Sam that Stanley Chariot was now my new favorite suspect. The man was obviously delusional, if he thought that his iPhone was going to provide him with an alibi. Sam texted back, ‘Good job!’
Arriving at the store, I saw that someone had dumped a bucket of red paint in front of it. Customers stood staring down at the yucky substance, both horrified and puzzled. The paint had been evenly distributed along a perimeter about three feet from the store entrance, which seemed like a weird place to dump the stuff. And then I got it. Gran had provided a layer of protection around the store, which probably extended about a foot beyond the exterior. Someone must have wanted to chuck a bucket of paint at the storefront, but instead of landing on the window and the flowers that stood outside, it had landed on the sidewalk.
I shook my head as I headed inside, and almost collided with Ernestine, armed with a bucket of soapy water and a mop, headed out. “Hey, hon,” she said. “Did you see the mess?”
“What happened?”
“No idea, really. Strel and I were busy with a customer when we heard a loud yell. When we hurried out to look, we saw that someone had doused the sidewalk in red paint for some reason.”
We both eyed the mess. “Do you think it’s Tisha again?”
“No idea. Strel thinks it’s some kind of hazing ritual. Because we’re new on the block and all.”
“A hazing ritual for new stores. That’s the first time I’ve heard of it.”
“Yeah, it seems a bit odd that they would do that to newcomers. Not very welcoming.”
I darted a look across the street, and my eyes narrowed. “Why don’t we find out once and for all?” Without waiting for Stien’s response, I stalked in the direction of Pretty Petals. I pushed open the door and flounced inside. “Is that your handiwork out there?” I asked without preamble.
Tisha Lockyer, who’d been busy with a customer, frowned. “And a good afternoon to you, too, Edelie. What are you talking about?”
I pointed at Ernestine and Estrella, cleaning up the mess. Well, Stien was cleaning up—Strel was standing next to her, giving her instructions. “That red muck. Did you dump that on our sidewalk?”
The customer left the store, giving me a look of excitement. It’s not every day that two business owners butt heads. And since Haymill is basically a small town that just happens to be wedged within Brooklyn’s city limits, I was pretty sure tongues would soon be wagging up and down the street and beyond.
Tisha gave me a critical look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was here all day, serving my customers. Minding my own business. I suggest you do the same.”
I approached the counter and glanced behind it. And that’s when I saw it. Red paint splashes all over Tisha’s shoes. She was wearing white Crocs, which made the spatters stand out. “Aha!” I cried, pointing my finger at her footwear in an accusing fashion. “Busted!”
She lifted her chin. “I have no idea what you mean. Those are my shoes. They’ve always looked like that.”
“With the red splashes? No way!”
“Yes, way. That’s the way I got them. They’re limited edition Crocs. They’re called… Red Crocs. The Red Cross sold them last year, all proceeds from the campaign going to Syrian refugees.”
I shook my head. “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
She lifted her chin a little more. Any further, and I could look down her nostrils all the way into her brain. “I’m not a liar. And whatever you think I did, you’re mistaken. Just like your grandmother is mistaken when she accuses me of whatever.”
“You used to work for her. And then you stole her customers and stabbed her in the back.”
Her face had taken on a reddish hue. “I didn’t stab anyone in the back. I took the job of managing Cassie’s store with a firm understanding that one day I’d be managing all her stores. When she didn’t keep her word I had no choice but to start out on my own.”
“And taking all of her customers along with you?”
“I never forced anyone to follow me to this store. Can I help it that my customers liked me? By the time I launched Pretty Petals, Flor et Bloom had become a corporation. People don’t buy from corporations, Edie. They buy from people. People like me.”
“It was still a douche move.”
“Look, I didn’t force anyone’s hand. If my customers followed me to this store, it’s because I did something right. And if they abandoned Cassie it’s because she did something wrong. Flower shops are not law firms, Edie. You don’t get to transfer a customer list from one business to another.”
Well, she had a point there, of course. Still… “So what’s with the paint? And the rock? Why are you trying to sabotage our business?”
She shrugged. “I had nothing to do with that. I’m not a person to throw stones at other people. Or to vandalize their stores. Like I said, I mind my own business.”
“Yeah, but you’re clearly unhappy that we opened a store across the street.”
“That’s business. I can’t possibly forbid anyone from opening a competing store. Especially since I did the same thing all those years ago.”
“Exactly,” I said, tapping the counter smartly. “So you better stop doing whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Which is nothing.”
“Either way. This stops now.”
She produced a mocking smile. “Big words for a girl who just told me there’s enough business on this block for two flower shops.”
“I stand by those words. We can both flourish. But only if we stop this open warfare.”
“If anyone is waging war here it’s Cassie. She’s obviously never forgiven me.”
“Be that as it may, this ends now—is that understood?”
“As far as I’m concerned, it never started.” Her smile widened. “Perhaps when you hold your neighborhood watch meeting tomorrow night, you should try to find out who else hates you around here. It’s obvious Cassie’s made herself more than one enemy over the years.”
“My grandmother doesn’t have enemies. She’s universally loved.”
Tisha laughed. “You’re delusional, Edelie Flummox. Everybody hates Cassie.”
“No, they don’t. Only you hate her. And that’s because she bested you.”
The smile lingered on her lips. “If it helps you sleep at night, by all means keep thinking that.”
After directing my best warning look at the woman, I left the store, hoping I’d made my point. All this rock-throwing and paint-chucking was going to stop right here. And I was still grumbling under my breath when I reached the store and helped my sisters to clean up the mess. Gran might have to consider extending the perimeter of her protection to ten feet, I thought as I scooped up the sticky muck. The paint would have landed in the gutter. Or, even better, a perimeter of thirty feet. That way that paint would have ricocheted right back to Pretty Petals.
Chapter 20
That evening, it was my turn to cook dinner. Though Gran had promised me to help out, and so had my sisters, the choice of menu was completely up to me, which made me almost giddy with the possibilities. When I remembered we had guests, and it wasn’t merely my own family I would be poisoning if I made a mistake, I sobered. So I opted for the safe choice of making beef stew with baby carrots and spring potatoes and a nice pecan pie for dessert. Sam was coming over, and so was Dunlop Bard, and then there were Leigh and Mona and Glenn, of course. All in all, a regular feast.
And as Gran helped me to peel the potatoes, I told her about what happened that afternoon with the red paint, and how I had caught Tisha in flagrante delicto with red splotches on her Crocs.
“No way those Crocs are Red Cross exclusives,” said Strel as she idly poked at the chunks of beef. “I checked all my sources and the Red Cross never cooperated with Crocs. So that story of the Red Crocs is simply baloney.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said.
“Tisha always had her own version of the truth,” said Gra
n. “Back when she was still my manager, she used to doctor the books—though I think it’s called cooking the books.” She darted a look at Stien, who was studying the recipe for pecan pie.
“Don’t look at me,” she said. “I never cooked any books in my life.”
“Tish used to add revenue she never made, hoping to increase her paycheck. I paid her a base salary and a percentage of the profits plus bonuses, and she always found ways to make the numbers look better than they actually were.”
“Why didn’t you simply fire her?” I asked.
“I didn’t have the heart. She was a very enthusiastic and dynamic salesperson, and the customers loved her. It’s just that she was never very honest.”
“When I confronted her about the paint and the rock she blatantly lied to me,” I said. “I hate it when people do that.”
“Me too,” said Strel. “Like when Macy’s said they were having a sale, and then they didn’t? I immediately wrote them a very angry tweet.” She smiled. “I’ll bet they never saw that coming.”
Gran frowned. “You wrote a very angry tweet? Who are you? Tweety?”
“No, it’s a thing, Gran,” Strel said. “When you don’t like something nowadays? You write an angry tweet. And then other angry people retweet your angry tweet and then it sort of snowballs into this avalanche of angry tweets. It’s really cool. Pretty soon everybody is upset at something or someone and no one knows who, what or why.”
“I think it’s ridiculous,” said Ernestine.
“No, it’s not,” said Strel. “I love Twitter. Now every John, Dick and Mary with a grudge can tear into anyone and make a big deal out of it. I love it. It’s created this whole vibe of…” She waved her hands, accidentally launching a baby carrot at me. “Well, something,” she concluded lamely.
“No, I mean this recipe,” said Stien. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Just leave the pecan pie to me, Stien,” I said. I was afraid she would ruin the pie, and since I’d only gotten ingredients for two pies, I didn’t want her to mess things up. I had my heart set on that pie. After the events of today, I needed that pie. Okay, so I like pie. Who doesn’t?
“So what are we going to do about Tisha Lockyer?” asked Stien.
Gran shrugged. “What can we do? Nothing. She will have to figure out how to deal with the competition. If she can’t, her business will fold. Because I’m not going away. Floret & Bloom is here to stay.”
“Is that why you got out of the flower business, Gran?” asked Strel. “Because you couldn’t take the heat?”
Gran laughed. “Oh, I could take the heat just fine, honey. But your parents had just passed away, and the burden of your upbringing had fallen on my shoulders. I could have foisted you off on a nanny—God knows I could afford it—but I didn’t want to do that. Besides, I’d done the whole tycoon thing, and I wanted to return to a simpler life. You can’t imagine how many moving parts are involved in running a business that big. I felt like I was being pulled in a thousand different directions all the time, my life slowly spinning out of control. So I congratulated myself on a mission well done, sold my flower empire, and dedicated myself to raising three annoying brats.”
“Hey!” I said with a laugh. “We weren’t annoying. We were perfectly lovable.”
“Yes, you were,” said Gran, rubbing my cheek with her finger.
“What about me?” asked Estrella. “I’ll bet I was the most lovable one, right?”
“Oh, you were the princess,” said Gran.
“And me?” asked Stien? “What was I like as a kid?”
“You were… precocious,” said Gran.
Strel guffawed. “I knew it! I always said you were obnoxious.”
“Precocious is when you’re smart beyond your age, Strel,” said Stien in measured tones.
“Well, she’s right. It took you years to catch up.”
“No, she means I was smarter than other kids my age.”
“Were you? I never noticed, and we’re just about the same age.”
Stien groaned. “We’re not ‘just about’ the same age. We’re exactly the same age.”
“I’m not. I’m the youngest.”
“By five minutes!”
“I’m still younger than you.”
I shared a look of amusement with Gran, and we all looked up when Sam walked into the kitchen, holding up a bottle of red wine. “I hope I’m not too early,” he said, then saw that preparations were still in full swing. He grimaced. “I am too early. Darn it.”
“That’s all right, Sam,” said Gran. “You can help Stien prepare the pecan pie.”
“No, I’ll do that,” I said hurriedly.
And as Sam and I worked side by side, me prepping the dough and he idly picking at the pecans, I told him about my meeting with Stanley Chariot.
“Yeah, I had a little chat with him myself,” said Sam. “I see what you mean about him being the perfect suspect. He’s not only totally obnoxious—”
“Hey, another obnoxious accountant, Stien,” said Strel. “Just like you.”
Stien merely rolled her eyes, not deigning the barb with a response this time.
“—he also confessed to hating Johnson with every fiber of his being.”
“He said something about Tim Cook providing him with an alibi, though I don’t think Tim Cook is going to come down from Cupertino to provide one of his customers with an alibi.” I’d since googled Tim Cook and had discovered that he was, indeed, Apple’s president.
“Well, I talked to one of the tech guys in the department, and he said that Chariot’s got a point. Every iPhone has location tracking, pinpointing your exact location, and so does an iWatch.”
“But how can he prove he was wearing his watch at the time? He could have simply left it at home and gone out to murder Johnson Junqueras.”
“Well, an iWatch can detect when it’s being worn,” said Sam. “It measures heart rate, body temperature—all that stuff. So there’s a good chance that Chariot wasn’t lying when he said his gadgets could prove he was home at the time of the murder.”
“Dang it,” I said. “So he was right, after all.”
“Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. I’m still not going to rule him out just yet.”
Chapter 21
Just before dinner was served, more people came trickling into the kitchen to take a sniff: Auntie Leigh was the first one. She’d been resting upstairs. At her age, she took frequent naps, which served to invigorate her. She was still suffering from jet lag, she claimed, even though she’d already been in the States for more than a week. Maybe her healing stones were losing their powers? Or maybe the soul-to-soul connection she’d established with Mona Oats was sapping her strength.
“This all smells so yummy,” she said as she shuffled in. She was wearing an aquamarine kaftan and looked like a royal princess of the Middle East, albeit an elderly one.
She moved to the cupboard where she kept her medication and took out a bottle of pills, tipped a few into her hand and dumped them into her mouth. Once she’d swallowed them, I asked, “What are those, Auntie Leigh?”
“Kelp,” she said brightly. “It’s a kind of seaweed. Contains all kinds of very healthy things.” She took out another bottle and repeated the procedure. This time I didn’t bother to ask. Auntie Leigh was into alternative medicine and took so many pills I wondered if she even knew what they all were. She took a small bottle of water from the fridge, and took a sip. “And this is water energized by the Holy Father himself,” she said brightly.
“The Pope?” I asked.
“The Dalai Lama?” Stien guessed.
“Kim Kardashian?” asked Strel.
“Dam Dam Dam,” Auntie Leigh said with a smile. “My personal guru.”
“Dam Dam Dam?” I asked. “Who’s he?”
“Like I said, he’s my personal guru. He lives in a cave in the Himalayan mountain range, where he lives a pure life without food, only fed by light and air and the holy life.”
“He lives from the air?” asked Strel, interested. “That must be great for his complexion.” She turned to me. “I should probably add air-drying to my morning shower ritual.”
“He lives on light alone,” said Auntie Leigh. “He’s a holy man. Completely enlightened.”
“And he sends you his water bottles?” asked Stien, studying the bottle.
“Be careful with that,” said Leigh. “That bottle cost me a hundred bucks. Pounds, not dollars.”
Sam whistled through his teeth. “A hundred bucks for a bottle of water. Nice racket.”
Leigh darted a reproachful look at the cop. “It’s not a racket, Detective. The water is blessed. One sip and His Holiness’s holiness trickles through me. It’s like liquid enlightenment. It’s priceless.”
Now we all looked at the bottle. To have a hundred bucks worth of holiness trickling through your gut must be a great feeling. But Gran shook her head. “Nobody drinks from Leigh’s bottle.”
“What do you think about this Dumb Dumb Dumb?” asked Estrella.
“Dam Dam Dam,” said Leigh. “His first name is Dam, his surname is Dam Dam.”
“What do you think about this Damn Damn Damn?” Estrella rephrased the question.
“I think that whatever a person chooses to believe becomes real to them,” said Gran diplomatically. “And if Leigh chooses to believe that Master Dam is a holy man and provides her with healing and spiritual enlightenment, then that’s perfectly fine with me.”
“That’s not an answer, Gran,” Strel insisted.
“’What more do you want me to say?”
“Do you believe this guy can live on air alone?”
“Air and light,” Leigh corrected her.
“Yes, I do,” said Gran. “Just like I believe that people can be healed by a kind word and a friendly gesture. The power of the mind is greater than we can imagine, Strel.”
“Oh, I know that,” said Strel. “Whenever I think about a new dress, and I go online, I discover that Kim Kardashian has had the exact same idea as me. We’re like… kindred spirits or something.”