Floral Depravity

by Beverly Allen

  Bixby blinked hard against the approaching sneeze, then relaxed and sniffed. “Is she all right?”

  I nodded.

  “Look,” he said, “when I told you to find the murder weapon . . .”

  Welcome to the self-loathing party. Instead of saying this, I sent him a reassuring smile. “She’s all right. We’re all okay, and now you likely have the murder weapon.”

  He returned the smile, but our touching Kodak moment was interrupted by trumpets.

  Bixby jumped a foot. I might have bested him by three inches.

  Soon the crowd which had gathered around parted and a regal figure appeared. By regal figure, I mean he wore a literal crown and a lavish medieval outfit in jewel-tone satin and gold. Several reenactors bowed low to the ground as he approached.

  “You’d better bow,” Carol said. “It’s King Arthur.”

  I did my requisite bow, then whispered, “He’s playing King Arthur? The whole round-table bit?”

  “Well, he’s king this year, and his name is literally Arthur. So he’s King Arthur. I think his last name is Schwartz. Dr. Schwartz. He’s a dentist.”

  I bit back a remark about him being used to pricy crowns.

  Dr. Arthur Schwartz stopped when he reached Bixby and gave him a look up and down in that regal “I am not amused” manner.

  Bixby didn’t bow, didn’t flinch, didn’t look like he had any inclination to. “May I help you?” he said instead.

  King Arthur’s face flushed (would that be a royal flush?) and his jowly jaws tightened. I half expected him to yell, “Off with his head!”

  Instead, he turned to one of the men with him. “I don’t want to see any more mundanes in camp. We allowed the cameras, that’s enough. Anyone who wants to remain will need to dress in a manner which respects the kingdom.” He waved his hand with a flourish, as if he were signing his decree into law.

  Then he turned to me. “I hear you’ve been using all of our fresh water.”

  “It was an emergency . . . sire. I . . .” I stumbled to recall anything I might have learned from old movies. Robin Hood maybe. “I beg . . . clemency, your highness.” And I ended that with a curtsy. Yes, Grandma Mae had taught both Liv and me to curtsy. I had never found it of any use until now.

  “If you dress like a man, bow like a man. But we appreciate the effort. You may stay. But you must replace the water you have used.”

  “Yes, sire,” I said, wondering how I was going to do that. And wondering if there was anything he could do if I left and never followed through on my promise. I’d be carting water through the woods all week.

  He gave a curt nod, then turned and left. His entourage remained behind.

  One of the men went immediately to Brad, and the two of them headed off to have an animated discussion. Another took Bixby by the arm.

  “I have to what?” Bixby shouted, shaking him off.

  Yet another headed to Opie, still in her sweats from our midnight romp in the woods. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but after a few moments Opie rushed away, brushing a tear from her cheek.

  I followed her. “What happened?”

  She shook her head. “I have to leave. Second strike, I guess. They weren’t happy with my dress choice. Now I have to go back. It’s going to be a research paper for me.”

  I pulled her into a hug. With a possible murderer running around the camp, maybe she was safer back in town. Maybe we all were.

  That’s when we heard the gunfire.

  * * *

  I was well behind Bixby—jogging has never really been my thing—headed in the direction from which the shot came. Chickens fluttered, half running and half flying down the pathway.

  The path, probably an old deer run, ended abruptly at a decrepit fence. Bixby got there first. “What are you doing?” he shouted.

  When I came out of the woods, I saw Larry, our main local flower supplier and dear family friend, standing next to the fence and holding a shotgun.

  “Trying to keep those dad-blamed chickens out of my fall bulbs. They’re rooting up everything.”

  “You can’t go shooting them,” Bixby said.

  “I wasn’t shooting them,” Larry said. “If I was shooting them, they’d be dead. I was shooting near them, to drive them back onto the other side of the fence. This is a zoned agricultural area. I have every right.” He turned to look at me. “Audrey? What are you doing here? And in that getup?” He snickered. “You look like Joan of Arc.”

  “Long story, Larry. What are you doing out here?” Before he could answer, I looked past the fence to where the forest gave way to neatly planted farm rows. Behind them, I could just make out a greenhouse. “Wait, is this the back of your second location? The one you rent from the Rawlings?”

  Larry had kept the greenhouse private while he worked on cultivating a blue rose that he’d named after our Grandma Mae. He sends us all we can sell, and we ship them around the country.

  Larry smiled his signature Kewpie doll smile. “One and the same. I just started clearing the fields for spring bulbs.” His smile dimmed and his grasp on the shotgun grew tighter. “Only the livestock from that stupid camp keep breaking down the fences.”

  “Wait. Do you mean to tell me the road’s right through there?” Bixby asked.

  Larry nodded. “Private property, though.”

  Bixby sent him an incredulous sneer. “Would have helped to know that last night,” he muttered.

  “What?” Larry asked.

  “There was an emergency here last night,” I said. “They had to carry a man a mile to the nearest road. Didn’t you hear the helicopter?”

  “I did,” Larry said. “But I thought it might have been something about the fires. Wow, I would have let an emergency crew through. I just want to keep the goats and chickens and things out. I hope he’s all right.”

  I shook my head. “But may I cut through your property? I promise to avoid your plantings.”

  “Sure, Audrey. Anytime you want.”

  Bixby cleared his throat. “And may I?”

  Larry squinted at him for a second. I half expected him to say no. It seems Bixby’s allergies had put him on strained terms with anyone connected to the floral industry. Larry grunted. “I guess it would be all right. Just avoid any freshly turned dirt. And the flowers.”

  “No problem,” Bixby said.

  “Oh, and Larry?” I eyed his hose. “How far does that hose stretch? And any chance I could bum some water from you?”

  * * *

  “I would have liked to have seen Chief Bixby’s face when the sheriff deputized you, too,” Liv said Monday morning when we were going over the orders for the week. The one small wedding on our calendar for Saturday wouldn’t require much effort—at least until Thursday or Friday.

  I yawned and leaned on the workbench. It had taken most of Sunday to recover from a sleepless Saturday night, and my internal clock was off by more than a few hours.

  “It was priceless,” Amber Lee said. “I thought he was going to have a cow, especially when Foley got to the part about his buddy the mayor”—she bulged her cheeks and put on her best Sheriff Foley impression—“at whose pleasure you serve.” She picked up a completed arrangement for our self-service cooler and walked it to the front of the shop.

  Liv wiped away a tear. “Sorry I missed it. So when are you going back?”

  “Nah . . . I did my bit. Bixby wanted the murder weapon. He has it.” I hadn’t mentioned to Liv or Amber Lee my other reason for not wanting to go back. My father had managed to avoid me for about twenty years. I hoped to honor the family tradition and avoid him for another twenty.

  “You’re just going to sit this one out?” she asked.

  “Yup. Bixby might work at the pleasure of the mayor, but I’m a florist. No law says I have to protect and serve. I looked it up on the computer
before you came in.” I’d also looked up aconite poisoning, but as it would weaken my argument for not wanting to be involved in the case, I didn’t mention my research to Liv.

  “Well, maybe you don’t have to go back. What did you say the victim’s name was?”

  “I don’t recall mentioning it.”

  Liv put her hands on her hips and glared at me. It might look menacing if she weren’t five-three and cute as a proverbial button. Or as a bachelor’s button, which, thankfully, were forgotten and probably rotting in the box back at the encampment. I caved anyway. “Brooks. Barry Brooks.”

  She marched to the computer, hit three keys, and smiled. “You are such a liar.”

  “What?”

  “I type in three keys, and ‘Barry Brooks’ pops up. You’ve been searching already.”

  Amber Lee came back and tossed some floral foam into the sink.

  “I may have Googled him,” I admitted, “just out of idle curiosity.”

  “And yet you’re telling me you have no intention of getting involved in this case,” Liv said. “Why?”

  “Look, I don’t have to be involved.” I drained my coffee cup while I planned my argument. “I’m sure Bixby doesn’t want me involved—”

  Amber Lee cleared her throat. “Think again.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Either he had a doozy of a blowout with Mrs. Bixby and he’s thinking about buying her flowers . . .”

  “Never gonna happen,” Liv said. Kane Bixby’s allergies were legendary.

  “Or he wants to talk with one of us,” Amber Lee continued. “He’s passed the shop at least three times.”

  “You’re kidding.” I went to the doorway and peeked through the shop. Sure enough, Kane Bixby, a bulging folder tucked under his arm, stood uncomfortably in front of the bay window. Then he tented his eyes and peered inside. I waved at him.

  He waved back.

  “This just got weird,” I said.

  “Better go talk to him,” Liv said.

  I hung my apron on the hook and walked through the shop. He was still out front when I pulled open the door and joined him on the sidewalk.

  “Miss Bloom,” he said.

  “Something I can do for you?” I asked.

  “I’d like to talk with you.” He gestured down the street, where the sidewalk tables from the Brew-Ha-Ha were getting the morning sun. “Coffee?”

  He didn’t wait for me to answer, just started walking down the street in long strides that made me half jog to keep up.

  “I’m not sure I have anything to add to the statement I already gave you.”

  He opened the door. No sunny table for me today. The air-conditioning and the aroma of coffee were pleasant enough, though. We ordered at the counter, where the display of scones and other baked goods fresh from Nick Maxwell’s bakery tempted my eyes. But I was good. (I only ordered one.) We carried our drinks to a large table near the window before he spoke.

  “I didn’t actually ask you here to go over your statement.” He pushed his coffee cup to the side of the table and opened the folder. “I have the statements here from the other witnesses at that compound. I wondered if you’d be . . . well, I’d like if you’d look over them with me.”

  I practically choked on my scone. “Like, work with you?”

  “As my receptionist has pointed out to me on more than one occasion, just this morning, in fact, sometimes a fresh set of eyes on a problem helps put everything in perspective. Foley can’t or won’t offer me more men to work on this. I can’t pull mine from Ramble to work on something outside their jurisdiction. So I wondered . . .”

  “What about Lafferty?”

  “His day off. And he and my daughter are off making wedding plans. She’d kill me if I called him in to work.” Bixby sipped his coffee. “He, on the other hand, might thank me.”

  “Congratulations. I didn’t know they were engaged.” I smiled. “But yes, grooms are usually less excited about the details.”

  “I hope you’re not offended if we don’t get flowers from you. My daughter was all for it. She saw that thing in the paper about you and the language of flowers and all that. But with my allergies, we’ve been trying to talk her into silk.”

  “We do silk flower arrangements, too. But if you’d rather someone else . . .”

  “No, I wasn’t aware. She’d like that. I’ll let her know.”

  And I’d probably kick myself later, but I pulled the folder closer to me. There were five paper-clipped bundles at the front.

  “I put the most likely suspects first.”

  “Why are these the most likely, again?”

  Bixby’s face went blank as if he were trying his best to hide a scowl. I’d bet money on it. He took a sip of his coffee. “They best knew the victim. Friends. Relatives. Co-workers. Of course, we can’t eliminate the possibility that Barry Brooks was not the intended victim. For all we know, someone wanted to wipe out the whole camp. But these still seemed a good place to start.”

  “Of course.” As I skimmed through the top pages, I almost spewed my coffee across the table. “Kathleen Randolph is a suspect?”

  “Keep. It. Down,” Bixby said with a forced smile, then nodded to a patron across the restaurant before leaning in closer. “Did you know that Kathleen Randolph was once married to Barry Brooks?”

  “No, she hadn’t thought to mention that in any of her four consultations. You’re saying her daughter married the son of her ex-husband? Is that even legal?”

  “Not blood relatives. The kids never even lived in the same house. Granted, it’s going to make family reunions a little tricky.”

  The next file was Andrea’s. “Why would she kill her father-in-law?”

  Bixby flipped to the next file, which showed a picture of the young groom. He placed them side by side. “The happy couple will inherit. Megabucks. Not to mention the senior Brooks was reportedly not all that happy about the marriage. Insisted the bride sign a prenup. Implied that if she were anything like her mother . . .”

  “Which opens the old wounds with Kathleen.” I sighed and studied the pictures of the three of them. Kathleen’s bitterness over her ex-husbands, all three of them, was no secret, but I doubted she’d kill any of them. “She was all over the encampment that day, which is understandable since she was the mother of the bride.”

  “How’d she seem?”

  “Busy.”

  Bixby’s face froze into an unreadable expression. Apparently that wasn’t the response he was looking for. “I meant,” he went on, “did you detect any tension or anything odd about the way Kathleen was acting?”

  “Chief, you have a daughter, right? How do you think you’re going to hold up on the day of her wedding? Yes, I guess you could call Kathleen tense, but probably no more than anyone else would be, given the circumstances.”

  “Including what might have been an unpleasant reunion with her ex-husband.”

  “Sure, that had to make it even harder. But to poison her ex on the day of her daughter’s wedding? She once told me that there were easier ways of getting rid of a husband than murder.”

  Bixby sent me what seemed a patronizing smile and then went back to the counter for a refill.

  I flipped to the next bundle. The buxom woman named Raylene Quinn was apparently a longtime employee of Brooks and listed as the Director of Research and Development. She looked every bit the sexy scientist and was one of those women who was probably older than she first appeared. Her platinum blonde hair betrayed her at the roots.

  As Bixby slid into his seat, I said, “And she traveled with him regularly?”

  “You’re wondering if they had some kind of romantic relationship besides the business one.”

  “Thought crossed my mind.”

  He shrugged. “Not one that she was forthcoming about.”

&n
bsp; “She wouldn’t be.”

  The small nod I got back from him belied the impression that I was getting closer. I hadn’t come up with any new revelations, but at least we were on the same track.

  “Was there a Mrs. Brooks?” I asked.

  “On her way from Richmond as we speak. That’s where Brooks Pharmaceuticals is headquartered.”

  “She didn’t come to the wedding of her own son?”

  “Apparently the current Mrs. Brooks isn’t the mother of the groom, either, and she’s more into society parties than ‘running around in the woods’ as she told me over the phone.”

  The final entry in the most-likely-suspects category was a Chandler Hines. “Another co-worker?”

  “Not exactly. He’s the only one of our initial persons of interest who didn’t know Brooks outside of the encampment. But his name came up three times when I asked people if they knew anyone who might have wanted to kill Brooks. And after interviewing him, I could see why.”

  “He must have made quite an impression. They’ve only been at the site, what, three or four days?”

  “Ah, but both Hines and the victim were regulars, with apparently a lot of bad blood between them. Hines claims to be one of the founders of the group. Really rigid.”

  “Just the type of fanatic who might want to poison a whole camp full of people?”

  Bixby shrugged. “He is, I discovered, the one who put that King Arthur character up to the restriction that everyone has to be in medieval dress. So if you go back there—and you shouldn’t go alone—you will need to be in costume, otherwise they pretend like they can’t see or hear you.”

  “You tried?”

  He nodded.

  Underneath those first five bundles was a single page with two columns of names.

  “The minor players,” he said. “There’s a few more of Brooks’s employees in there, too.”

  “But they didn’t make the most-likely-to-murder-your-boss list?”

  “None of their names came up when we asked people who they thought might have killed Brooks. Doesn’t mean they couldn’t have. Just that nobody thought to throw them under the bus.”