by Annie Adams
“Not long enough to want to do it again.”
“That good, huh?”
“Let’s talk about something else. I’d like to forget that era in my life. What about you? Have you ever been married?”
“For about two seconds. I was young and dumb and it didn’t help that I was in Europe, married to an Italian girl. It’s probably best we don’t talk about that either. There’s some complicated legal stuff.”
“Did you break some immigration laws?” I asked
“The only thing that got broken was my heart.”
“Oh, please.”
“What? I’m wounded here and you’re making fun of me?”
“Would you do it again?”
“If I met the right woman, I’d do it in a heartbeat.” He gazed at me in a sweet but serious way. I swallowed involuntarily; the weight of everything in the atmosphere felt like it had just increased. An uncomfortable silence sat between us, right in the middle of the table with the ketchup and the saltshaker.
Alex finally broke the silence. “How well did you know that florist that just died?”
“Not well, but what I knew, I didn’t like very much.”
“What didn’t you like about him?”
“Just that he was an underhanded, backstabbing moron.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“Yeah, just that. I heard he was found in a coffin.” I didn’t need to tell Alex from whom I had heard it. “It’s been all over the news, but they haven’t really given any details. Do they know how he actually died?”
“The coroner hasn’t released a report yet.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter, except for the fact that he was murdered. I’m just itching to know who put the flowers on the casket and who made them.”
“How did you know about that?” Alex asked.
Oh crap. “Oh, you know, just the regular gossip circles.”
“There shouldn’t be any gossip circles. That information wasn’t released, Quincy. Where did you hear about the flowers?”
“I’ll only tell you if you promise me I won’t have to talk to that jerk detective who called yesterday morning. I thought he was the one who would come about the hit-and-run. I was so glad to see you instead of him.”
“I would love to fully appreciate the flattery, if only it wasn’t such a weak attempt at changing the subject. It’s not my case. I can ask Detective Arroyo what the status is, but you need to be honest with me. How do you know any details about the Gibbons murder?”
Something wasn’t right here. What was Alex keeping from me and why was he asking about it now? He told me not to worry about it last night.
“How did you know that I knew Derrick?”
“It was just an educated guess,” he said. “Your turn.”
“Okay, I’ll give you a little hint that might help you with investigations in the future.”
“Oh yeah, what might that be?”
“There are two places where you can find all the gossip you need to know in a town. If one doesn’t know, the other one will. Either the hair stylist or the florist is the first to find out anything.” He wasn’t going to tell me why he knew what he knew, so I wasn’t going to reciprocate. “Of course there’s no guarantee they’ll share that information.” I said.
“How would one get them to share this privileged information?” He asked with a mischievous lilt of the eyebrows and glint in his eye.
“I’m sure there are ways one could be persuaded.”
“Really?” He asked.
“I’ll have to think of some persuasions,” I said.
“I’ll look forward to a report.” His eyes were doing that melty thing again. “Seriously though, Quincy, what did Arroyo tell you?”
“Why do you care, it’s not your case?”
“Call it maintaining professional integrity.”
“I call it being nosy.”
“Are you two finished?” Elma interrupted indelicately as she approached our table.
“We are. Delicious as usual.” Alex said.
She thumped the check down on the table. “You pay up front.” She winked at Alex then looked at me and flared her nostrils then walked to the front counter.
“I’ll be right back.” Alex went up to the counter to pay Elma. After he paid, I watched as he turned back toward me, and walked away from Elma. Suddenly, his eyes bulged open and he jumped about six inches into the air. I looked past him to Elma, who giggled like a schoolgirl. This time she winked at me then puckered her ample lips and blew a kiss to Alex.
“What just happened?” I asked when he returned to the table.
“She goosed me!”
“Elma’s got good taste.” I said.
###
As we drove home I divulged the conversation I’d had with Detective Arroyo on the phone. I felt sorry for Alex and his brush with Elma’s deadly grip of desperate spinsterhood. “I don’t know why he wants to talk to me; I didn’t know Derrick that well. And why did he tell me not to go anywhere? The jerk just decided not to show up after he scared me half to death.”
“Arroyo likes to think he’s intimidating. I wouldn’t worry too much about him.”
“You said that before.”
“You really keyed that Derrick guy’s car?”
“Yeah, I did. But it was an accident. Kind of.”
I described to him my last visit to the mortuary before they found Derrick’s corpse. I had seen Derrick the night before. I found that he had blocked the entrance to the flower door with his convertible Porsche. I fumed as I pulled up and noticed his blond tipped-dark brown spiked hair going through the door. I thought to myself, what kind of florist can afford a car like that? I cracked my shin on the rear bumper as I tried to squeeze between his car and the back wall of the building. A stupid car to drive in Utah, anyway. Just wait ‘till the first snowfall. I’m sure the look on my face was murderous as I inwardly cursed from the pain in my shin.
In the back of my mind I knew about the security camera pointed at my scowling face, as I ripped open the rear entrance flower door. It led to a small room with a tile floor; plant stands stacked along the sidewall, and a set of cabinets with a sink. Sometimes, in years past, before the mortuary expanded, it wasn’t uncommon to find a stretcher with an occupied black body bag sharing space with the flowers. Much like the one I had encountered earlier, containing Mr. Clark.
The security cameras had been installed to capture the goings on in the flower room, which is clear at the back of the building, and heaven forbid Gaylen Smith the two-ton mortician should have to walk anywhere outside the perimeter of his office during the day. Besides, after closing time, the flower room had to be left open for floral deliveries being left for evening viewings on the night preceding the funeral service the next day. I always thought the real reason for the cameras was to scare off florists from rearranging the work of their competitors when no one else watched, a crime of which I had been the victim a few times.
When I got into the glorified closet labeled “flower room,” I noticed two other small planters on the stands lining the long narrow space. I looked at the labels on the enclosure envelopes to determine which planter came from which shop. One came from JoAnne’s Flower Basket, and one came from Countryside Floral, the shop in Plainville owned by Irwin and LaDonna Shaw. On the left, was the garage door; the one where I met my one-minute stand in a plastic bag. Past the garage door was a set of cabinets with a small stainless steel sink and two small drawers left open, the sloppy contents left on the counter. Make-up brushes, small round tins of disturbed rouge and plastic hair combs remained to tempt or scare the imagination.
The entrance to the main part of the mortuary rested at the end of the standard issue public school linoleum squares and yellow fluorescent lighting. The door and frame were fashioned of beautiful cherry wood. On the other side of that door, thick pile carpet colored in rose, cream and peach muffled the sounds that might have bounced off the cherry wood paneling matching
all of the door frames in the funeral home. A sign posted on the wall above the employee time clock next to the door read, “No florists past this point.”
Knowing Derrick couldn’t have delivered a casket spray, let alone any matching pieces in his tiny car, I assumed his driver must have delivered everything earlier and he was just here to schmooze. I recognized the voice of Gaylen Smith coming from around the corner.
“Did you guys get that plot set-up finished?” He shouted to unseen persons.
A dull quiet voice answered “Yeah. We’ll put the chairs out tomorrow morning.”
“Wuhl yeah,” Gaylen’s belligerent voice replied, “you don’t want to put ‘em out tonight. People’ll steal ‘em if you put ‘em out tonight.” Somebody liked being in charge. “Be here tomorrow at seven,” he ordered, “the viewing’s here at nine.”
“Okay.” The answer was monotone, not reflecting any reaction to the condescension in his superior’s tone.
“Hey, Derrick what can I do ya for?” The boss was in a better mood all of a sudden.
“Just seeing if we’re still on for our two o’clock tee time tomorrow.”
Gaylen told Derrick he was still “a go” for golf.
“Great I’ll just put it in my iPhone.”
“Wow that’s quite a phone,” Gaylen said. “Is that gold plated or something?”
“Not the whole phone. Just the skin. I had it made special by a guy I know.” I rolled my eyes to the very tops of my eyelids, quietly placed my puny planter and tried to slink out of the second class quarters before the non-combative gravediggers came in to punch out on the time-clock.
I carefully opened the back door, so as not to bump into Derrick’s car, then just as carefully slid out of the opening and inched my way around his back bumper.
“Hey. Watch the paint job.” A nasty male voice yelled behind me.
“Oh. Hi, Derrick, how are you?” I asked politely.
“Who the hell are you?” He replied.
“I’m Quincy McKay. We met at the last designer’s showcase, remember?”
“I wouldn’t remember something like that. Just watch yourself, you probably scratched my paint.”
“No actually, I didn’t scratch your paint. I was very careful to avoid your car, even though you parked it as if you wanted someone to have to touch it. You must have emotional issues that make you try to force people to get close to you vicariously through your car. Or you have issues with the size of a certain thing, which causes you to buy stupid, expensive cars that you can only use for four months of the year, that make you feel validated or—something. Whichever.”
“So,” I said to Alex, “it wasn’t like I went there just for the purpose of finding his car and scratching the paint with my keys. He shoved me and my keys were in my hand as I reached out to catch myself. The keys hit his car and I didn’t end up catching myself. I hit my head really hard on the pavement. He drove off before he knew if I was okay or not. I guess I just wanted to finish my artwork as he left, since he had been so thoughtful,” I said innocently. “He didn’t even look to see if I was under one of the tires. By the way, I’m telling you this in confidence. You won’t get me in trouble, will you?”
“No worries, Quincy. Besides, there’s not a lot of complaining he can do about it now, is there?”
I laughed. “I guess not.”
“But I’d be a little more careful with what I said to a guy like that. You don’t know how a person will react. It doesn’t matter how rude they are, you gotta let it slide off your back.”
He was right. I could get “lippy” sometimes, as my mom would say, and usually it wasn’t for my own good.
“Do you think that’s why Arroyo wanted to talk to me?”
“No one else saw you?”
“No one else was there in the parking lot, but it could have been on the security camera.”
“I’ll look into it. Meanwhile, could you try not to mouth off to any more tough guys?”
“I’ll try to contain myself.”
“Hey, I want to ask you something, since I’m so clueless when it comes to the habits of the natives around here.”
“What is it?”
“I heard that Mormons don’t have sex before they’re married. Is that true?”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“Wow, that’s pretty amazing. But not everyone has that kind of willpower right? I mean, I’m sure there are exceptions. It’s not possible that every adult, single Mormon isn’t having sex.”
“I guess it’s just like the alcohol and tobacco thing. People have the ability to choose.”
“So, having sex isn’t a sin before marriage either, its kind of a loose guideline more or less.”
“It’s a little different in the case of sex before marriage, but that’s a long conversation that someone like me is definitely not qualified to talk about.”
“So, I guess I should have asked before, are you Mormon?”
He had just showed his hand; that’s what this whole conversation had been about.
“You can stop with the whole innocent outsider act, Alex. That’s what all of this has been about hasn’t it? You’ve known me for what, a day and a half, maybe the equivalent of two days?”
“I guess so, what’s wrong? Did I say something offensive?”
I mimicked back, “’Hey, Quincy, I heard Mormon girls don’t have sex. You aren’t Mormon are you?’ Why didn’t you just come out and ask if we could go back to your place and get to it?”
“That’s not what I meant! I asked if you were Mormon because I didn’t want to say or do anything else to offend you. I heard some things about the religion and I wanted to know if they were true or not. I was asking you because I thought we were friends and that we could be honest with each other.”
“Oh.” I said, sickened with embarrassment.
Alex pulled over to the side of the road. I had done it again. I have this inability to shut my mouth in time to stop my thoughts from spilling out as verbal incarnations. We were about three blocks away from my house. It felt like three miles. He was probably going to tell me to get out and walk home. I deserved it.
“Quincy, I already regret what I’m going to say right now.”
Here it comes, I thought. I reached for the door handle in anticipation of getting the boot.
“What are you doing?” He asked.
“I’m getting out of the car; you don’t have to say anything. For what it’s worth, I’m really sorry. I have an overactive imagination and sometimes I don’t have a very good censor when it comes to sharing things that I’m thinking.”
“Sometimes? You mean there’s more in there that you haven’t said out loud? You’re nuts, do you know that? Don’t get out of the car, that’s not why I pulled over.”
“Why did you pull over?”
“I must be nuts too. There’s something I want to tell you and I pulled over so that I wouldn’t wreck the car. Quincy, for some strange reason, for which I’m sure I will realize later and want to strangle myself, I am very attracted to you, despite the fact that I think you might be a crazy person.”
“I...” Again, rendered speechless by Alex.
“I’ve been laying it on pretty thick since I met you. I mean, I’m not all that bad am I? Elma thinks I’m O.K., that should count for something shouldn’t it?”
“You’re so much more than not that bad. It’s just that I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to be serious with anyone again.” Tears were welling up in the corners of my eyes.
“Quincy, lighten up. I’m just looking for some friendship. It’s not like I asked you to marry me. I just don’t understand all the resistance you’re putting up. You seem interested in me; I know you’re interested in looking. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you noticing me.” He smiled at me wickedly.
I’d been caught with my hand in the cookie jar as the warm, melty, sinfully decadent double chocolate chip cookie smirked at me from the driver’s seat. I sat there w
ith my mouth hanging open.
“Okay, I’m gonna be honest with you. There was a time not long ago, when a guy who said nice things about me would have had me mesmerized. If he told me I was pretty, I would have dropped everything else and followed him around like an obedient dog as if there was no other point to my existence. I did that for a long time. It was very important for me to be the pretty one. Nobody seemed to disagree with me either.
" I wasted precious years of my life trying to be the perfect pretty daughter, and then girlfriend and then wife. I entered beauty pageants as a teenager, and I won some of them. I had no ambition other than to be pretty so that the prince who came and swept me off of my feet could feel proud to have such a trophy at his side. I almost lost my life because I couldn’t see through the lie of that fairy tale. The handsome prince turned out to be the evil monster. I still don’t know how I managed to escape, but I did, and I will never, ever go back there again.”
Alex seemed to look at me with understanding. “Why don’t we get you home and we can finish talking there?”
“Good idea. Blegh, I didn’t mean for things to turn into a Lifetime channel movie. You’re right, I need to lighten up. Let’s change the subject again. When’s your next date with Elma?”
He laughed. “I don’t know. I think she might be too much woman for me. My butt still hurts where she pinched me.”
As we turned the corner to land on my street, a little red pick up truck sped past.
“Oh shit!” Alex exclaimed.
I turned to look at what had caused him to curse, and gasped. My chest felt like someone was stomping on it and squeezing all of my air out. Orange flames about two feet high licked upward near my front porch. The fire burned from a hydrangea bush I had helped my Grandma to plant. Alex slammed the truck to a stop, jumped out and ran over to the hose. He grabbed it and aimed the sprayer full blast at the burning bush. Sirens in the distance grew louder by the second. I found out later my neighbor called the fire department after noticing the fire when she went outside to dump the garbage.