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

by Annie Adams

  Beyond the cow pens were some empty corrals made from metal fencing. Beyond those, in one corner of a small pen, were a group of large pink pigs with black spots. The pigs made loud squeals and grunts and didn’t seem like they got along very well. As we passed the pig pen my eyes watered and I clamped my hand over my nose.

  “Uhn, nat smelws awpul,” K.C. said through her pinched nose.

  I merely nodded, not wanting to take in the extra breath required for speaking. We reached the end of the packed dirt, a few feet away from the pigs, where some ancient, rusty equipment rested in piles, including giant black tractor tires that would probably have come up to my shoulder if turned upright.

  “I hear something, like a motor. Let’s just see what’s making that noise. Maybe we’ll find Clint here or maybe not, but I’m getting curious,” K.C. said.

  “Are you sure?” I said.

  “Don’t be such a worry wart. We’re just looking for Clint.”

  I sighed but didn’t say anything, knowing it wouldn’t deter her.

  A narrow path that had been stomped hard over the years led into a cluster of Russian olive trees. Russian olives were almost always found near a water source. K.C. led the way under the thorn laden gray-leaved branches.

  “Would you looky here,” K.C. said.

  A black pipe ran parallel to the path of the stream at our feet. A short walk through mushy grass on the shallow ditch banks led to a large pond encircled by reeds and grasses at least six feet high, much like the rest of the surrounding marsh. Now that I knew what they were, I noticed the prevalence of Phragmites.

  “It stinks to high heaven out here. What’s in this water?” K.C. said.

  “This isn’t regular pond stink,” I said. “Look at that!” I pointed to a spot where the end of the black pipe hooked into a miniature pump house. That’s where the mechanical noise came from. It looked like the emergency generator my dad kept in the garage.

  A yellow-green skin covered the thick, unmoving water. The marsh connected to the pond on the side opposite from where we stood.

  “I think I know what’s going on here,” K.C. said. “Let’s follow this pipe to the source.”

  We followed the pipe in the opposite direction, losing our footing and occasionally slipping into the stream. My cross-trainers and socks were totally soaked.

  The pipe ended at a sort of tank, nearly buried by tractor tires. The tank appeared to collect waste from the milking barn.

  I crouched down to tie the laces on one of my shoes, but thought better of it when I saw them up close, covered in wet, green, slime. I’d risk tripping rather than touch them. “So here’s what I don’t understand. At my grandpa’s dairy farm, the cows would stand in the milking barn, and while the machines did the milking, the cows stood there and ate and do what cows do…”

  “You mean what cows doo-doo?” K.C. said.

  “Yeah, exactly. Anyway, my uncles would hose down the cement after the cows left the barn, and all the muck would go down these slotted grates in the floor, into drains that flowed to a ditch that led to a pond. Then, what was left in the pond was spread over the fields for fertilizer.”

  “I don’t think it’s…” K.C.’s eyes panned from left to right, and she lowered her voice, “I don’t think it’s legal to dump anything, including cow manure into the marsh. In fact, I don’t think—I know. We’ve got to sneak outta here and make sure neither Clint nor any of his farm hands see us or our gooses are cooked.”

  Now didn’t seem the appropriate time to point out the proper plural form of goose. And she was right, our geese would be cooked if we were caught snooping around the illegal manure hose.

  We crept along the side of the milking barn until we reached the front. Once in front of the building, we wouldn’t be seen from the back, because of the grove of thick Russian olive trees near the stream we had just left. But if anyone drove up to the front of the property, we were toast.

  The grain barn stood about fifty yards across the lot from the milk house. Fifty yards and the length of a barn and we were home free. Once at the end of the grain barn, we could cut through the elm trees to K.C.’s hot rod. I paused at the end of the milk house and peeked around the corner. K.C. crouched next to me.

  “Okay, the coast is clear. We’re going to run to the opposite corner of that building.” I gave my head a short jerk toward Clint’s office. “Ready?”

  “Wait. Don’t you think we should just walk? It will look like we’re just going from building to building looking for someone if we happen to be seen. We can just act casual, like we’re just stopping by for a chat. If we see Clint, I’ll just tell him we wanted to make sure he knew he was invited to my wedding.”

  “Yeah, alright. Good idea,” I said. “Let’s go—casually.”

  K.C. might have overplayed the casual act just a bit. She didn’t walk, she sauntered and whistled like the guilty party in an old Bugs Bunny cartoon.

  “Just walk normally,” I whispered.

  “I am. I whistle when I walk. Maybe I should call out Clint’s name, so it looks like we’re really looking for him.”

  “No, I don’t think—”

  “Clint. Oh, Clint, are you here?”

  Oh boy.

  As we approached the front of the grain barn, my cell phone rang, and then I heard the rumble of a diesel engine starting up.

  “Crap,” I said. I stopped and pulled the phone out of my back pocket. “Oh no, not now.”

  “What? Who is it?” K.C. said.

  “It’s Alex.”

  “Boss, that’s fantastic. Why wouldn’t you want to talk to him? Here, give me your phone.” She grabbed for the phone and I extended my arm just out of her reach.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I’m going to answer it for you. If you won’t use your brain and talk to him, I’ll have to do it for you.”

  I continued pulling the phone away from her while she tried to grab it away from me. We spun in a circle doing our phone dance. As we waltzed back around to where we’d originally been standing, a front loader with its bucket extended in the air rounded the corner of the building.

  K.C. got ahold of my phone. “Gotcha. This is gonna hurt me a lot less than it will hurt you, Boss. But it’s for your own good. You’ll thank me later.”

  “No, K.C. He’ll want to know where we are. Let’s just get in the car. I’ll call him then.” I tried to snatch the phone. As we played tug-of-war there was a loud mechanical groan.

  We looked up. “Shiiit!” We both exclaimed, as brown splatters rained down from the sky.

  I lay stunned for a moment, and realized I was pinned to the ground under a tractor load of cow dung.

  The sound of the tractor grew faint and the sound of K.C. swearing grew loud, even though muffled by the manure.

  My phone, still in hand, vibrated with a message.

  I strained against the aromatic and disgusting bonds that held me until I got one arm free. I used it to swim out until my head and shoulders emerged from the massive, steaming pile. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t steaming, but it was warm enough. K.C.’s head popped out of the manure mound like a particular rodent on Groundhog Day. We looked at each other for a long few seconds, then both of us broke out in mad laughter.

  “K.C., do you smell that?”

  She bunched up her nose and narrowed her eyes. “I may be hard o’ hearing, but I ain’t hard o’ smellin’! Are you daft? Did the pucky pile-on make you ding your gourd on the ground?”

  “No, I don’t mean that. Of course I smell the manure. I’m talking about the smell above that. I noticed it right before the tractor came, as I looked down at my phone.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s the perfume! It’s Jacqueline’s perfume. That stuff is like turpentine, it cuts through anything.”

  “Jacqueline or Clint, it doesn’t matter. We’d better skedaddle. Someone didn’t like us being here and now we’re sitting ducks,” K.C.
said.

  We dug ourselves out of the pile and ran to the grove of trees which blocked the car from view.

  We crouched on the passenger side of the car. “I don’t think anyone followed us,” I said.

  “Someone knew we were here. That weren’t no accident. But I swear no one followed us down this road. If it was Clint, I don’t know how he saw us. We were blocked by trees and marsh grass on the one side. Oh, I don’t know. I’m never going to get the smell out. My clothes, my hair. My hair is going to smell like cow pucky at my wedding!”

  I pushed the latch on the outside of the car door.

  “Wait!” K.C. said. “We can’t—we—just—can’t sit on this upholstery in these clothes.”

  “We’ve got to leave!” I said in as much of a whisper as possible when shouting.

  K.C. began to cry.

  “K.C., I’m sorry, but we have to go before Jacqueline comes back for us.”

  “Why did she do this? Was it because we were rude? Did she hate your ideas for decorating the apartment?”

  “I’ll explain in the car. Let’s just go!”

  “We can’t get cow pies in my car. Do you know how much I paid for this baby? I can’t take any more stress. I can’t! We’ll have to walk.”

  “You know we can’t walk. What if Jacqueline comes back? Who knows what she’ll do?”

  K.C. paused for a moment and looked at the ground. “Well, there’s only one way to do this, then.”

  “You don’t mean…”

  “Yes I do.”

  “No freaking way, K.C.!”

  “Strip, sister! Down to your skivvies. If I can do it, you can do it too. We’re out here in the boonies—no one will see us.”

  “Until we get into town. Then what?”

  A diesel engine started up in the distance, and then the sound of a shot or an engine backfire blasted out.

  We looked at each other for a second, then turned our backs to each other and stripped.

  Why hadn’t I obeyed my mother’s frequent admonishments about wearing good underwear “because you just never know?” My underwear wasn’t dirty, of course—at least it wasn’t when I arrived at the farm. However, it wouldn’t ever be confused with someone’s finery. And my panties just may or may not have been on inside out.

  “Throw everything in the trunk and let’s go,” K.C. said.

  I did as I was told and looked at the ground on the way back to the car door. I located the latch by feel and got in without looking up. I slid so low to the floor, my knees were touching my ears.

  “What were you going to tell me about Jacqueline? Why did she do this?”

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure it was her perfume I smelled. Maybe I was just relating one unpleasant smell with another, but I have an idea why she might want to scare us off.”

  “Oh, dear, you may as well get up off the floor. No one can see us, and besides, you look just fine. Although, you should really look into updating your style.” The car hit a bump in the road and my knees slammed against the glove box.

  “Whoopie. That was a humdinger. Sorry about that,” she shouted. “You handled that bump better than I did, though. And at least you’re wearing underwear.”

  “What?” I couldn’t help but look up.

  “Ha! Made you look.”

  She wasn’t completely nude, praises be to Spanx. Wow, they really did come in all shapes and sizes. She also wore a red and black lace bra/containment system. There was so much lace. A LOT of lace. I mean like a full bolt of lace.

  I had to look at the glove box in front of my nose in order not to be distracted by the sight in the driver’s seat. “Jenny came into the store the other day and told me about Phragmites. I thought they were interesting, so I did an Internet search and found out that there is a variety called Egyptian Phragmites that is not a legal plant in the United States.”

  “You’ll have to speak up. We’re going to be hitting city traffic soon.”

  The thought of reaching town made me nauseous, but I held it all down because we couldn’t dirty K.C.’s upholstery.

  I shouted, “It’s illegal to import Egyptian Phragmites into the U.S. because the plant is invasive. It’s used by companies to help keep the pollutants in holding ponds and from being detected by authorities. Egyptian Phragmites surrounded that pond we just saw. Jacqueline is an Egyptian specialist, so I think she’s the connection.”

  “Why would she be working with Clint?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “What? Uh-oh, what?” I said, panic rising in my stomach.

  “Guess I was speeding,” K.C. said.

  I looked up at her just as she was turning the wheel to the right. The car slowed down, then stopped.

  “No. We’re getting pulled over?”

  “Sorry, kid. Don’t worry, I’ll sweet talk us out of this.”

  Yeah, a plus-sized grandma in Spandex and lace from ankle to chest and me in my granny panties and a bra whose last pliable strand of elastic said goodbye during the Seinfeld finale. I’m sure the officer would find it all to be pretty sweet.

  “Hello ma’am. Do you, um, wow. D—do you know why I pulled you over?”

  “Officer,” K.C. replied. “Beautiful day for a drive, dontcha think?”

  He cleared his throat.

  “Have we done something wrong?” K.C. asked in a saccharin voice.

  I made the mistake of looking up.

  “Quincy McKay, is that you?” the officer said.

  “Oh, uh, hi, Chad.” I gave a little finger wave. Did I mention being sick to my stomach? Chad Fullerton had been the star quarterback of our high school football team. He was a senior when I was a sophomore and I, like most other girls, had a huge crush on him.

  “What are you—are you okay? You’re all crammed under the dashboard.”

  “I’m fine…just fine here…out driving around—how’s your sister?” The embarrassment was physically painful. My cheeks were about to incinerate—the one’s on my face, that is.

  “She’s fine. What’s going on?”

  “Oh, well, that’s what I was just going to tell you officer,” K.C. said. “Boy, is my face red or what?”

  The look of disbelief on Chad’s face grew even more intense. “Something’s definitely red,” he quipped, staring at the red and black menace. “You were going sixty-five on Bluff Road in a thirty zone. And we got a call about trespassing on Wheeler’s farm. The description of the car fits this one…”

  “How did they describe the trespassers, hmmm? I’m sure they described someone wearing clothes, so it’s obviously not us, dear.”

  “K.C.!” I hissed.

  “No, they definitely didn’t describe—this. Where are your clothes, ma’am?”

  I couldn’t let K.C. say anything about the trunk. She had an arsenal in there, and I wasn’t sure which parts of it, if any, were legal.

  “Chad, I know this looks bad,” I looked down at myself, then at K.C. “Really bad. But if you just let us explain, we can clear this all up. I mean, obviously we were hoping not to be seen like this, and K.C.—um Ms. Clackerton here, was just trying to get home as fast as possible…”

  “Her boyfriend is a cop...” K.C. threw in.

  New realms of hell had just been discovered.

  Chad’s left eyebrow arched. That must be something they learn in the police academy. Alex was proficient in the suspicious eyebrow raise. “Yeah, Cooper, right? With the state police? Does he know you’re doing—whatever it is that you’re doing—right now?”

  “Listen, sonny. She doesn’t need permission from her boyfriend to do anything, especially not because he’s a cop. You cops just think because you wear a badge you’re rulers of the roost. My fiancé didn’t do anything, and yet you cops…”

  “K.C.!” I reached my hands out in the universal stop sign hand gesture, then looked down and realized what Chad could see. I crossed my arms over my chest and stuck my hands under my armpits. “Chad, she�
�s under a lot of stress right now. She is so sorry, and didn’t mean to be so disrespectful. We were just—cutting some greenery from the ditch banks down at Clint Wheeler’s farm and we slipped and fell in the mud. K.C. just bought this car and we didn’t want to dirty up the custom upholstery. That’s all.”

  “Smells like you fell in more than just mud.”

  “Okay, okay,” K.C. said, “you got us. Someone dumped a whole front loader full of cow pies on top of us and our clothes are in the trunk. Go ahead and look.”

  The old car had a separate key that unlocked the trunk, which was on the same key ring as the one in the ignition, so K.C. had to get out to unlock the trunk. The last thing I remember Chad saying before we were put in the back of his police car was, “Do you have a concealed permit for this weapon?” I don’t remember K.C.’s response, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the right one.

  ***

  “Hi, Kathy.” To keep from fanning the fragrance, I avoided waiving at my former classmate, who was the dispatcher for Hillside police.

  “Hey, Quincy,” she said, her voice full of question.

  While we waited for my lawyer to fix things, we had to sit in the holding cell because of—well, the smell, of course. Kathy had managed to rustle up a couple rolls of paper towels from the supply closet for us to cover up with while we waited for my lawyer to take care of everything. “Do you want me to call him for you?” Kathy asked.

  All I could do was nod.

  “Him who?” K.C. said.

  “You’ll see.” As I sat and contemplated our mess, a uniformed police officer approached.

  “Quincy? Is that you?” he said.

  I looked up. It was John Davies. I’d contacted him about the bounced check from Lori Mangum.

  “It’s me,” I said sheepishly.

  “I’ve got some news for you about that—um—bounced check you gave us.” He did an award winning performance, keeping a straight face the whole time.

  “Are we fugitives allowed to talk about other cases?” K.C. asked.

  John smiled as if he was enjoying himself a great deal. “I suppose you are. Captive audience and all that—no pun intended.”

  K.C. managed a laugh, but I was too embarrassed to speak.