Deadly Arrangements (Book Two in the Cozy Flower Shop Mystery Series) (The Flower Shop Mystery Series)

by Annie Adams

  ***

  I heard a whistled version of “Get Happy” coming from the back of the shop. K.C. had returned from deliveries.

  Daphne joined us in the back room. “Quincy, we just got this order in. They were hoping it could go out today. They’re still on the phone. What should I tell them?”

  I looked over the order. “Looks like it’s about four blocks away from Kyle Mangum’s house. K.C.’s about to leave, so I’ll take it over while you’re still here, Daphne.”

  “I’ll go with you on the delivery,” K.C. said. “No way I want to miss out on that scene.”

  I shook my head.

  “What are you shaking your head at, missy?”

  “Nothing.” I couldn’t keep from smiling. “I’ll go put the order together and we can deliver it, then see if Kyle Mangum happens to be home, or his wife, since she wrote the rubber check. Ooh, since we’ll be together, we can go look at the dress I picked out. You can give it the final approval.”

  “You and I both know that Danny gives the final approval on attire.” She winked because she was teasing, but she was right.

  The Mangums lived in a pale green post-war cottage on the southwest end of Hillside. A chain-link fence wrapped around the perimeter of the front and back yard. I called Kyle before we left and got no answer. I figured we could just swing by and see what happened.

  We found the gate unlocked at the front yard. The front door was open too, with just the screen door keeping anyone from entering the house. I knocked on the screen and we stood there in silence for a few moments.

  No one came to the door.

  “Hmm. What should we do?” I said.

  “Kyle? Lori?” K.C. shouted through the screen of the door.

  I tapped my toe and looked at the ever-present dirt under my fingernails while waiting for a response. “We should go.”

  “Wait. Do you hear that?”

  I leaned closer to the screen. “It sounds like talking—no—it’s—is someone crying? A man is crying—I think.”

  “I smell something funny,” K.C. said.

  “Me too. Now someone is yelling.”

  “We should investigate,” K.C. said.

  “No way. We aren’t cops. We can’t just go into someone’s house uninvited.”

  “Someone’s life could be in danger, and besides, where’s your sense of excitement?” K.C. said.

  “I left it at the jailhouse the last time I was there. We should just call the police.”

  “It might be too late. Listen. The voices are gone. We’ve gotta go in!” K.C. pulled the screen door open and charged in.

  I gritted my teeth, looked around for witnesses and seeing none, followed her in. I slammed into the back of her two feet inside the door.

  “What the heck?” I whispered. “Whoa.”

  “Yeah, whoa,” K.C. whispered back.

  A thousand eyes stared at us from all around the room.

  “I’ve never seen anything so strange in my life,” K.C. said.

  The room was packed from ceiling to floor with dolls. But they weren’t just any kind of dolls. They were clown dolls. Clowns covered the couch, they sat on the TV, the coffee table, and on glass shelves on the walls. It was as if they levitated in row after endless row. One doll’s giant clown feet on top of another doll’s curly multi-colored freak hair. There were old dolls and new ones in what seemed like every possible baggy clown suit style and color. Some of them smiled and some had sad faces with tears on their cheeks. There were some crazed looking evil clowns and even scarier, some of them had teeth.

  A faint wailing sound came from the back of the house. “Boss, we’ve got to go see. I think Kyle might be hurt.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “We’ve got to get out of this circus of the damned, anyway.” I grabbed K.C.’s shirttail and followed her backwards with my back to hers so I could make sure none of the little monsters jumped out and sunk their teeth into our necks.

  “What is the matter with you?” K.C. said.

  I pushed a lump down my throat. “I don’t like clowns.”

  “I gathered that. They’re just dolls, you know.”

  “Are they—just dolls? Did you ever see Circus Tent of Horrors?”

  “Can’t say that I have,” she said.

  “Well, you don’t want to.”

  We made our way into an orange Formica-covered kitchen. A strong chemical smell hit like a brick wall. My eyes teared and I couldn’t help coughing. Small jars of paint lined up in precise rows covered the kitchen table. Paint brushes of various shapes and sizes stood bristles up in a wooden caddy, arranged from small to large, each brush hole labeled with numbers.

  “Eck, that smell is horrible.” K.C. held her sleeve up to cover her nose. “And what in God’s green earth is on the counter?”

  A kind of waffle iron lay open, but instead of waffle squares, the plates were flat around the edges with a hole in the center, like a half cantaloupe with the seeds scooped out. Little white masks surrounded the waffle iron, like ghost faces popping out of the countertop.

  “They’re doll faces!” I said, pinching my nose. I looked closer and realized they weren’t just any doll faces, they were unpainted clown faces. “Now we know why she comes to the door with goggles and gloves on. She makes clown dolls.”

  “Ah, that makes sense.” K.C. said.

  The voice cried out again, coming from a door which led to the basement stairwell.

  “Are we really sure about this?” I said.

  “You can hear that noise, right?”

  I sighed. “Yes, I hear it.”

  We rushed down the narrow stairwell. On the left was a closed door.

  “Help!”

  I opened the door and a gray tabby cat sprinted past my feet. We walked around a half-wall that partitioned a tiny laundry room into its own space. We saw no one. “Whaddya suppose made that sound?” K.C. said

  “Help!” This time it came from behind us, upstairs.

  I returned to the landing at the foot of the stairs. The gray tabby sat on its haunches, half-way up the stairs.

  “Help!” the cat said.

  “It can’t be,” K.C. said, as she joined me on the landing.

  “Help,” said the cat.

  “Please tell me you heard that cat speaking English just now. I’m not hearing voices coming from a cat, am I?”

  “I heard it too,” I said.

  The cat watched us from its seat on the step and blinked.

  “Let’s leave before someone comes home. Obviously no one is here,” I said.

  The cat got up and came down the steps. It sat on the bottom step. “Help.” It hopped over my foot, turned back, looked at me. It walked a few steps, turned back and said, “Help,” over its shoulder.

  I didn’t move. The cat returned to my feet, hopped over them and then walked toward the laundry room. It stopped a few feet away and looked at me and then made the sound again.

  “It wants us to follow,” K.C. said.

  “We can’t follow it,” I said. “We need to get out.”

  “What if the cat is trying to tell us something?”

  “It’s asking for help because it’s creeped out by all those clown dolls.”

  “I think it just needs to use the loo.” K.C. moved toward the back door next to the washing machine.

  “What if it’s an inside only cat?” I said.

  “Help.”

  K.C. opened the door. “It’ll come ba…”

  The door hadn’t opened to the back yard, as I had assumed it would. Instead, it opened to an addition with a narrow hall lit with a dim light bulb dangling from the ceiling. Music floated on the air from somewhere ahead.

  The cat meowed again and looked up at us, then took a few steps into the hall. “I think this kitty is trying to lead us to someone,” K.C. said.

  “This is not a good idea. We are in so much trouble right now.”

  “Well then, since we’re already in trouble, it won’t hurt fo
r us to investigate some more. I think this is a tool shed. I wonder if Kyle has had an accident and he needs help. The kitty is trying to get help and we are it.”

  “How would the cat know? The door was shut.”

  “Animals can sense things. Didn’t you ever watch Lassie?”

  I shook my head. K.C. was going in whether I accompanied her or not. “Just be careful.”

  She dug around in her purse and pulled out her stun gun. “I’m ready.”

  I looked at the ceiling while I pondered whether I would follow K.C. into the unknown, or go back upstairs and face the clowns alone. I shook my head, and then followed her through the hall.

  K.C. stopped suddenly and I bumped into her.

  “Quincy,” she whispered.

  She’d stopped at the opening of a small room. I stepped around her, instantly seeing why her voice had sounded so strange.

  We stood in a dim, softly lit room. To our left was a bed covered with a lace bedspread, skirt and pillow shams. On the right was an antique dressing table and matching bench, topped with a silk cushion. The walls were painted blush pink, which glowed with a yellow warmth from the many lamps scattered around the room. The music came from a small CD player on top of the chest of drawers, nestled next to a glass dome. Inside the dome was a dried flower bouquet. I realized it was the bride’s bouquet I had made for the Mangum’s wedding. I recognized the iridescent chartreuse satin ribbon. I had remarked at the time I made it how unusually pretty the ribbon was in the way it reflected different colors depending upon the angle in which it was held.

  The music grew louder and I realized it was a classical piece on a continual replay loop. A multitude of photo frames covered the remaining space on the dresser. All the photos featured the same woman.

  “I think we’ve walked into a shrine,” K.C. said with an unusually understated reverence.

  I examined the photos more carefully. Something about them told me I needed to pay attention. “We have to leave. Now.” I grabbed K.C.’s shirt sleeve and yanked her toward me.

  “What the…”

  I shushed her before she could say any more and closed the shrine room door behind us. I had to hide any evidence of our presence and hoped we wouldn’t be caught while still inside the house. The cat led our way out, always waiting until we were within a few feet before it continued. We passed through the evil clown room and stepped out onto the front porch. A wave of relief washed over me and I could breathe again. We were home free.

  “Uh, oh,” K.C. said.

  A car pulled into the driveway next to the house and Kyle Mangum stepped out.

  “Oh, crap,” I said.

  “He doesn’t know we were inside,” K.C. whispered.

  She had a point. A great point. And I was comforted by the realization that the view of the porch from the driveway was partially obscured by a lattice-work screen, which supported a climbing rose bush.

  As soon as I heard his car door open, I leaned out from our cover.

  “Oh, Kyle! What a funny coincidence. We just got here too.”

  “Quincy, it’s you. I thought that might be your van parked in front of my house.” He approached the porch with the friendly face I had been so used to at my shop as he planned his wedding. He noticed K.C. on the porch and nodded hello. “We just had a birthday. It’s not time for our anniversary roses yet is it?”

  “Um, no. We actually came here about something else. It’s a small thing really, and we can just figure something else out.”

  “What my boss is trying to say is that your check is made of rubber. It bounced like a kangaroo in the outback,” K.C. said.

  I glared at K.C. I would have told him, eventually.

  Kyle laughed. He looked at me and said, “I’m so sorry about the check.” He continued to laugh. “K.C., you’re a hoot. You just made my day. Bounced like a kangaroo,” he chuckled, “I’m going to have to use that one.”

  I laughed too, but didn’t forget where we had just been. I watched carefully while Kyle interacted with K.C.

  “Well, Quincy,” Kyle said, “I owe you some money. I just spent some cash on my last errand,” he pulled his wallet from his back pocket. “Let me see here. Not quite enough. I’ve got enough in the house. Why don’t you come in and I’ll get enough cash to cover the check and you can just give it back to me.”

  “Oh shoot.” I thunked the heel of my hand against my forehead. “I can’t believe it. I forgot the check. Tell you what, let’s just leave it for now and next month you can pay for both. That way we won’t have to come back and bother you. I’ll just shred your returned check when I get back to the shop.”

  “Are you sure?” Kyle said.

  “Yeah, are you sure?” K.C. said quietly, furrowing her brow.

  “Positive. No biggie. Well, K.C., we’d better not forget the other flowers in the van. We didn’t leave it running, so we need to get going.”

  “But Boss…”

  I stepped in front of K.C. and motioned toward the van behind my back with one arm while waving goodbye to Kyle with the other. “Thanks so much, Kyle. We really love getting to send a new bouquet to your wife every month. We’ll see you next time. Bye.”

  I rushed over to the driver’s side and started Zombie Sue while K.C. paused with her open door saying goodbye to Kyle. He laughed at the K.C. show while he waved.

  Eventually, she sat down and I hit the gas as she shut the door.

  “What’s the rush?” she shouted.

  “We needed to get away from there,” I said.

  “I don’t understand. We drove all the way to his house, went inside and left, and then you tell him you don’t have his check. I saw you pick it up off your desk and put it in your bag, which is sitting right over there.” She pointed behind my seat. “And why were you in such a rush to get out of the house anyway? I mean, I’m glad you did because Kyle pulled up as soon as we got out, but—ooh, did you get a psychic premonition?”

  “No, I was psyched out by the creepiness of that bedroom, and the clown room and—every room of that house,” I shuddered at the thought of all those eyes following our every move. “But I noticed something about those photos on the dresser downstairs.”

  “What about them? They were all of Mrs. Mangum. I admit it was a strange place for a bedroom, but maybe they keep cool down there in the basement.”

  “Didn’t you find it strange that all the lamps were left on, as well as the music? I noticed it was the same music, just repeated over and over on a continuous loop. And where was she? She’s always home when you deliver the flowers.”

  “Maybe she stepped out for more supplies?”

  “Maybe. Anyway, the photos…they were all taken from the perspective of someone far off. She wasn’t posing for any of them like you would in a family photo. If your husband was taking a picture of you, you would look at the camera at least once in a while. If you knew someone was taking a picture of you, you would look toward whoever was taking the picture. None of those photos showed any kind of recognition in the woman’s face. They were all taken from afar. And they were all taken in different locations.”

  K.C. sucked in her breath. “You mean she was being watched?”

  “Something like that. Maybe even stalked.”

  “But it’s his wife…”

  “I’m not so sure she is,” I said.

  “I’m so glad you got us out of there, Boss. No telling what we would have found next. Wait a minute—the woman in the photos is not the person who comes to the door—at least I don’t think she is. The woman in the photo looks like she might be kind of tall and she’s got dark hair. Lori Mangum is barely taller than me, has blonde hair, and is more round shaped than the woman in the pictures.”

  “Are you sure it’s not her?”

  “Well no, not a hundred percent sure, but fairly certain they’re two different people. Do you suppose Lori knows about the shrine room?”

  I shrugged, “Who knows? But you’d think in her own house she woul
d know about a room with the lights on and the music playing all day.” I suddenly realized I was sweating so much my hands were slippery on the steering wheel. I cranked the AC as high as it would go.

  “What are you going to do about the check?”

  “I’m going to call the police.”

  “Help!”

  K.C. and I shrieked, and I pulled over to the side of the road. I had to make sure none of my vital organs had left my body.

  We both looked back into the interior of the van. Kyle Mangum’s cat was sitting in the middle of the floor, licking its front paws.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “What do we do now?” K.C. said.

  “We’re not going back to that house. I guess we’ll have to take it to animal control and see if the Mangums call to claim it.”

  She sighed. “I hate to do that. The poor thing. You know what happens to cats that go there. They say they try to find the owners and that they don’t euthanize until they find a home for the animal, but I know for a fact it isn’t true. I knew someone who worked there, and she told me the cats have the worst of it. If they don’t get claimed and aren’t adopted within two weeks, they’re done. Curtains.” She made a morbid slicing motion across her throat.

  “Help!” the cat said.

  “You said it, cat.” She twisted to face the back of the van. “We can’t just call you cat. What would be a fitting name for you?”

  “You can’t name it,” I said. “Whenever I would name the cows on the farm, my mom would tell me it was a bad idea and that I was setting myself up for heartache.”

  “We need to figure something out. We can’t just leave it in the van,” she said.

  “I don’t know. We can’t go back there, and I don’t want to call him either. Alex has a friend who works for Hillside police. I’m going to call him and tell him what we saw today. That way it’s in their hands. They can do something if they want to.”

  “What about the monthly deliveries?”

  “I don’t know what to do about that either. I’ll just wait to see what Alex’s friend says.”