by Ella White
“You’re right,” her friend realized. “That’s got to be the case.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the ceiling lights suddenly turning on. Shocked by the sudden change, the two women quickly crouched behind the shrub display, where they were least likely to be seen. Lydia peeked around one of the bushes to see Maura sauntering inside, looking through her purse as she headed for the office. She paused as she turned the knob.
“Did you lock the office door on our way out?” Lydia asked Gwen.
Her face went pale. “No. Did you?”
“No.”
Lydia cursed under her breath as she watched Maura shrug and head into the office. She closed the door behind her, and Lydia could hear her shuffling through some of the boxes inside. Lydia motioned for Gwen to follow her as she tried to move as carefully and stealthily as she could away from the tree display and to the back door they had come through. The problem was that the exit was clear on the other side of the store and they would have to pass the office door in order to reach it.
“What do we do now?” Gwen asked, keeping her voice to a whisper. “We can’t get to the back door. Maura would hear us!”
“Maybe not, if we’re really quiet,” Lydia warned her. “But we’ll lower the chances of her hearing us if only one of us goes.”
“Only one of us?” the other repeated.
Lydia passed the bottle of PestBeGone to Gwen. “Take this and go to the police station. I’ll stay here and hide until either Maura leaves or you show up with the police.”
“No way,” Gwen protested, shoving the bottle back to her. “You should be the one to take it to the cops.”
“Chief Wyatt already has it out for me. He won’t believe me,” Lydia explained. “But he likes you at least a little more. And you can threaten to print something in the paper if he ignores you.”
“But what if Maura catches you here?” Gwen inquired. “I don’t want what happened to Meredith to happen to you too!”
“Don’t worry. If she does find me I can fight back,” Lydia reassured her. “Besides, I’ve got Plan B. This might be the time to use it. That’s why we brought it after all.”
Gwen looked at her friend for several seconds before finally nodding. “Okay. Stay safe. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Be careful about that mirror,” Lydia cautioned her. “It’s a one-way window.”
“Oh great.”
Lydia smiled at her and moved so Gwen could get out of the shrub display. Gwen crawled along the ground, holding the pesticide bottle to her chest as she tried to be as quiet as she could as she moved. She made sure to stay underneath the one-way mirror so that Maura didn’t look out and spot her. The problem was that this required her to creep along pretty close to the door itself, which might alert Maura to her presence by both sound and the light blocked at the bottom of the door.
Thankfully, by some miracle, Gwen was able to get past the office door without making a sound loud enough for Maura to hear. She continued to step toward the back door, but just as she was about to reach it, she brushed by the cactus display. A few of the larger spines snagged on her coat, causing it to get stuck on the cactus. Gwen had to pull to get it free, but in the process she pulled the cactus with her, and the potted desert plant fell from its table and onto the tile floor.
Lydia cringed as she heard the sound of shattering ceramic. She looked through the shrubbery just in time to see Gwen’s panicked face before she quietly rushed out of the back door, being careful to not slam it. Just as she was leaving, Maura ran out of the office to investigate the noise. She took one glance at the shattered pot and dumped dirt from the cactus before looking around.
“All right, where are you?” she said, looking around her shop for the intruder. “Question is, did you go in or out?”
Lydia stayed behind the shrubs, not moving one bit. She didn’t even dare look to see where Maura was, and she knew that trying to move to a better hiding spot was just taking the chance of her being seen. She even kept her breathing slow; it certainly wouldn’t help if she hyperventilated.
She could hear Maura’s heel click against the tile floor. She must be looking around for anything suspicious. Lydia suddenly wished she and Gwen had been more careful and subtle in their searching. Hopefully Maura hadn’t spent enough time looking at the fine details of how the store was kept, so she wouldn’t notice if something had changed.
Luck was not on Lydia’s side, however. As she was trying to stay as still as possible, she jumped when she felt a hand reach through the shrub and grab her shoulder. She fell out of her hiding place, landing on her rear, which protested at landing on the hard tile floor. Who used tile for a flower shop anyway?
Lydia let out reluctant groan as she rubbed her tailbone. She heard someone clearing her throat, and she glanced up to see Maura glaring up at her. She held a bottle of PestBeGone in Lydia’s face, almost as if pretending it was a gun.
“Put up your arms!” Maura commanded her. She stared at Lydia for a second, and her eyebrows immediately rose. “Lydia? What are you doing here?”
Chapter Eight
Lydia couldn’t believe her rotten luck. Caught in the act of breaking and entering into her old business rival’s flower shop! She had been afraid that something like this would happen.
But she knew it wasn’t Gwen’s fault. She had only been thinking about helping her. In the end it was Lydia who had told Gwen to get out of the store. If it hadn’t been for that darn cactus!
Meanwhile, Maura was glaring daggers at her, and Lydia couldn’t break eye contact. She gulped as she sat on the floor with the nozzle of a PestBeGone bottle stuck in her face.
“What are you doing in here?” Maura demanded. “Were you going to steal from me? Or were you going to sabotage the store?”
“I wasn’t doing anything like that!” Lydia declared. “I was just…just…”
“Just what?” Maura repeated. “You were just breaking into my store? You were just looking for something? Did you forget your brain when you visited earlier?”
“Hey, I came over today to tell you about Bethany!” the florist argued. “I thought that, as Meredith’s cousin, you should know about how Bethany would have the means and the motive for killing her!”
“Just to take the blame off yourself, clearly!” Maura yelled back.
Well Lydia couldn’t exactly argue about that. It had been her driving force to clear her name.
“Well can you really blame me?” Lydia debated. “I swear I didn’t hurt Meredith! I argued with her and I certainly didn’t like her, but I would never kill someone!”
“That is exactly what the murderer would say!” Maura accused her, looking furious. “Do you think you can just go anywhere you want? You’re not any better than the rest of us.”
Lydia couldn’t stop her face from turning into a snarl. “I don’t think that!”
“Meredith was right! You are full of yourself!
“I could have said the same thing about her!”
“Don’t you dare talk bad about her!”
This wasn’t getting Lydia anywhere. She wasn’t really sure if she should try to find a way out of the store (which she was sure she would have to go through Maura to accomplish) or if she should just stall for time and hope that Gwen would be back with the police soon. She had told Gwen that she would be able to hold her own against Maura if they did end up fighting, and she was fairly confident that she could, but that didn’t mean that ending up in a skirmish was such a good idea.
Lydia was certain about one thing: Maura was trying to get her to confess to being Meredith’s killer, and right now it wasn’t helping that she was getting angry at the allegations. She needed to get back control of the situation if she was going to make it out of this in one piece.
Then a thought came to her mind. Maura was trying to deflect the accusations off herself. That had been why Lydia and Gwen had come to The Purple Petal to begin with: they were hoping they could find
some evidence that Maura was the murderer rather than Bethany. Maybe Lydia could turn the tables on Maura, making her lose her cool and admitting to the crime.
“At least I didn’t move in on her business and her office the day she died!” Lydia reproached her. “I’ve been actually trying to find out what happened! You’re happy to just forget about Meredith and take over!”
“Shut up!” Maura commanded, pushing the PestBeGone bottle closer to her face. “You don’t know what it’s like to be in someone’s shadow your whole life!”
Maura was practically shoving the spray bottle’s nozzle into her eye now. She crossed her eyes to stare at the inside, and she couldn’t help but frown at the sight. It was strange. The bottle was a bright green color, but this nozzle had specks of red stuck on it, along with something that looked pink. What in the world?
It hit her. Those specks of red were in fact blood, and the pink must be pieces of skin, perhaps from the inside of someone’s lips or cheeks, or maybe gum. This had to be the bottle that was forced into Meredith’s mouth when she was poisoned. She must have struggled at the time, since there was blood and skin left behind, which only further showed that there must have been at least two people involved in her murder, with one to hold her down and the other to force the pesticide down her throat.
Of course this didn’t mean anything if Lydia was in trouble with Maura. She had to get out of here, but she needed that bottle as well.
“You probably couldn’t wait to get Meredith out of the way!” Lydia accused her, looking Maura dead in the eye. She felt into her back pocket to make sure Plan B was working. It was; she could hear the tape rolling.
“You think I killed Meredith?!” Maura mocked, smirking. “You really do give yourself too much credit.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Lydia teased. “I think I’ve got it all down. You wanted Meredith out of the way, so you forced her to drink PestBeGone. You probably got it from this very store.”
“As if you didn’t want Meredith dead!” the other declared. “I know all about your competitions against her! It was the only thing she would talk about! I got really sick of hearing about it!”
“Yes, Meredith and I never got along, and sometimes I thought she took things more seriously than just being business rivals,” Lydia admitted, “but I never wanted to kill her. You, on the other hand, would have loved to have her gone.”
“Fine. I’ll admit that!” Maura shouted. “No one would think it was strange if I took over her business. I deserve it!”
Lydia glanced around, seeing what she could use to her advantage. She needed something that could help her get Maura to let go of the PestBeGone bottle as well as distract her enough so that Lydia could make a break for the door…and hope that she didn’t trip on the broken cactus pot on the way out.
On the other side of the shop, near the entrance to the supply closet, she spotted a spigot attached to a hose, which was coiled up and hung on the wall. The end of the hose was right at the bottom of the coil, where a nozzle with a handle was connected. It was within easy reach if she could get to it. Lydia turned back to Maura.
“So all that you said this afternoon? About how you felt bad about Meredith’s death?” she asked Maura. “I take it that it was all a lie? Something to just try and get some sympathy from me?”
“I remember our conversation differently,” Maura hissed. “I said that I felt bad that I don’t feel worse than I do. I actually don’t feel one bit of remorse over Meredith.”
“You must be a good actress,” Lydia mentioned. She began to slide away from the other woman, closer to the hose. “Since you were able to be so believably angry this morning when you burst into my shop.”
“I’ve always been a wonderful actress. I should have gone into show business,” Maura boasted, following Lydia so she stayed within a few feet of her. “I had lots of practice. Our parents never paid any attention to me. It was always Meredith this, Meredith that!”
“You did say before that Meredith was always the favorite,” Lydia recalled.
“My parents never listened to me! If I said anything against Meredith, I was being selfish and a brat!” she declared. She was practically spitting as she spoke. “I always had to pretend to be happy with Meredith’s accomplishments! Even if it was something as small and stupid as a gold star on her math test! I learned how to put a smile on my face even when I was angry!”
Maura stepped forward with a jerk, and Lydia landed on her elbows and she tried to scurry away while still sitting down. She managed to scamper to her feet, but Maura was clearly not letting her go anywhere. Perhaps she didn’t feel like she needed to rush after Lydia since she was heading toward the back of the store, away from any exits.
“And yesterday was the worst. Meredith had another success story for the family,” she continued. “She tied for first in the Annual Flower Arrangement Competition. The family was so proud of her, as usual. But that wasn’t enough for her! She wouldn’t stop complaining about you!”
Maura lowered the spray bottle to jab a finger into Lydia’s face. Lydia had to back up to keep from having her eye poked out.
“What a tragedy, that she only tied for first instead of winning first! That Lydia must have cheated! She must have bribed the judges! She fixed the voting!” Maura listed off, her voice becoming louder and louder. “It never crossed her mind that maybe, just maybe, someone might actually be better than her! She had become so used to being up on a pedestal that she couldn’t even stand the thought of anyone being better than her!”
Lydia continued to slowly make her way toward the spigot and hose. Part of her was hoping she could reach the hose and that her plan to distract Maura with it would work, and the other part of her was praying that Gwen would show up with the cops so they could take care of it.
“So then I decided I’d just had enough,” Maura resumed with a dramatic wave of her arms. “I had heard enough of Meredith’s complaints and my parents’ praises. I was going to be the one who everyone loved and admired, but Meredith needed to be gone and out of the way. Problem was, she wasn’t going to die anytime soon!”
“And you decided to take things into your own hands?” Lydia exclaimed, pretending to be more shocked than she really was. She managed to stand up and patted her pocket. Plan B was still rolling.
“I met with Meredith here after the store closed and all her employees went home. We fought, of course, but I had help. I was able to shove this PestBeGone into her mouth and force her to drink it,” she described, jiggling the bottle. “Even a small amount of this stuff can make a person sick. A whole bottle? It can kill in an hour or two without treatment. All I had to do was keep Meredith here until she was unconscious and then have her body dumped at your store.”
“So the police would think it was me instead of you who killed her,” Lydia finished for her.
“And then it would be my time to shine! My time to blossom!”
“Blossom? After killing a florist? Really?”
“And it was working just fine, until you decided to play detective!” Maura screamed, pointing the bottle at her again. At this point Lydia had backed up against the wall, with the coiled hose pressed up against her back. “You just had to get yourself mixed up in it!”
“Did you really think I was just going to take a murder accusation lying down?” she replied. She grabbed the spigot and turned it on maximum water flow. The hose was pretty long, so she knew she had to wait until the water reached the end of the hose. “It’s only circumstantial evidence that incriminates me, and that will only go so far.”
“It will go far enough.” She didn’t seem to have heard the sound of the water rushing into the hose.
“But once evidence of your involvement comes to light?
“It won’t.” Maura was insistent. “You don’t have any proof. Everything still points to you, and nothing points to me.”
“Well, that’s not entirely true,” Lydia argued, a little smug as she reached for the n
ozzle at the end of the hose.
Without giving a warning, and without giving Maura a chance to react, Lydia pointed the nozzle at her and pressed onto the handle as hard as she could, releasing a strong stream of water right at her face. Maura was taken completely by surprise, and she dropped the PestBeGone bottle in her attempt to cover her face.
Lydia reached for the bottle, grabbing it before it could touch the water and contaminate any evidence that was on it. Thankfully she was still wearing gloves, so she wouldn’t get her own fingerprints on the bottle. Silently thanking herself in her head for thinking far enough ahead to consider the gloves, she sprinted toward the back door, jumping over all the broken cactus pot pieces as she did so. She yanked the door open and rushed through, making sure to close the door behind her.
Knowing that Maura would more than likely try to follow her, she grabbed a few of the garbage cans to barricade the door. She knew she couldn’t stop Maura if she went through the front door, but Lydia knew it was locked, and it would take Maura a minute to get the key for it. As for the back door, she could only hope that the trashcans would slow her down enough for her to escape.