“Maybe I’ll start the pew-end arrangements,” I said.
“Just make one or two,” Liv said, “and I can get the girls to start working on them.”
“Is there something I should be doing instead?”
Liv and Amber Lee shared a glance.
“You’ve obviously discussed this,” I said.
Liv set down her knife and came to stand beside me, putting her arm around my shoulder. “We’ve talked about this, and we think we have a handle on the flowers.”
“What do you mean, you have a handle on them? You don’t need me?”
Liv shook her head.
“What am I supposed to do? Go home and take a nap? Did I do something wrong?” Could Liv have been upset over my lateness?
“No, no, honey.” Amber Lee rushed over. “We thought you might be more helpful over at the Ashbury.”
“How? We have this huge wedding—”
“Which won’t take place if someone out there has his way.”
“And I’m supposed to stop him?”
“Yes. Well, no,” Amber Lee said. “Bixby should stop him and throw his sorry butt in jail. But you could be there to help him. It’s practically your civic responsibility.”
“I doubt Bixby is going to think so,” I said.
“What’s he going to do about it?” Amber Lee said. “You have every right to be at the inn, since you’re working with the flowers.”
“And didn’t Grandma Mae always teach us we needed to fulfill our civic responsibilities?” Liv said.
“I think she was talking about voting and not littering in public parks.” I reached for my apron. “I might be just as curious as the next person, but—”
“But nothing.” Amber Lee tugged my apron from my hands and hung it back on the peg. “You’ll be no good to us here if all you’re doing is wondering about what’s going on at the inn.”
“And I know I’d feel safer if you were there keeping an eye on things,” Liv said, rubbing her rounded belly. “It’s not like we want you to go in guns blazing. Just watch, listen, and then tell Bixby if you figure something out.”
“Like Bixby’s going to listen to me.”
“Bixby might not be tickled that you’re involved,” Liv said. “But I think he knows you well enough by now to pay attention to anything you have to say.”
“I don’t think he’s happy about it, but I’d say he’s learning to respect you,” Amber Lee said.
I replayed my earlier confrontation with him at the Ashbury. Maybe there was some merit to the claim. “But I don’t want to leave you in the lurch here.”
“No,” Liv said. “Right now, we’re on schedule, and we’ll need you tonight. But if you want to take a few hours and poke around some more, it would help us all more in the long run.”
“Help us?”
“Eric was looking over that contract. If the wedding doesn’t take place, we don’t get our final payment. When we signed the contract, it made sense. But that was before we ordered all these flowers. If that wedding is canceled, we’re going to have to eat the cost of all that added stock.”
“And even if we had a sale,” Amber Lee said, “there’s not near enough folk in town to buy all these flowers.”
* * *
So, with everyone else busy at the flower shop working on our largest order ever, I was back at the Ashbury, drinking coffee and trying to make sense of Tacky Jackie’s latest protest slogan, which streamed in whenever someone opened a door. Eventually I decided it was “Tell the truth. Stop the lies. Fix My Wedding, I despise.” I was also fighting off the temptation to indulge in another scone.
Jenny was manning the table, setting out cups and artfully stacking pastries—not that Nick’s baked goods needed much staging to look appealing. Nick was nowhere to be seen. I suspected that when Jenny and her mother reopened the old restaurant, she’d be sorely missed.
And I was also watching Henry Easton as he sat at a table, his eyes reflecting the colors from his laptop while he barked orders into his cell phone. “Five is too late. I need it by two, even if you have to drive it here yourself.” He poked the off button with his finger, then gripped his phone as if he wanted to throw it.
I swallowed my last sip of coffee and brushed a few scone crumbs from my shirt. (I never said I won the battle against temptation.)
“The bad thing about technology,” I said as I made my way to his table, “is that it’s taken away the pure joy of slamming down a telephone.”
“You got that right,” he said. “It’s a bad habit to lose my temper like that, but it’s highly effective at times. I should be able to get the dresses in plenty of time for alterations.”
“So no delays in the filming?”
“Just some shuffling around a bit. One of the dresses Gary was going to use is unavailable, but I found an alternate.”
He turned the laptop in my direction and pointed at a lacy high-necked monstrosity with Morticia Addams sleeves that practically touched the ground. “What do you think of that?”
I raised an eyebrow. “That’s . . . ?”
“Vintage,” he said, with a note of pride. “From the seventies. Bell sleeves. Get it?”
I smiled and nodded. If Suzy flipped over foxglove, I could imagine what she’d think of sleeves she could trip over.
“But it will need some alterations to make it current, and I still need Nevena to sew the bells on the other dress. You don’t happen to speak Bulgarian, do you?”
“Sorry.”
“No matter. I was always good at charades. And I have a few people in mind if she doesn’t work out. But I suppose I should give her a chance. She seems to do beautiful work.”
“She appears rather upset at Gary’s death, don’t you think?”
“I noticed that. I tried to tell her to take a few hours off. Clear her head. But that was when her work was almost done. Now . . .” He sighed. “Now we have to do it all over again.”
“The experience of finding those dresses must have been very traumatic.”
“Oh, honey, that took two years off my life. The first thought that popped into my head was that they were going to cancel the show for sure. The next was that something happened to Gigi.”
Nice to know he had his priorities in order. “Gigi?”
“Well, she did get that first threatening note. And now I’ve been targeted.”
“You think this latest threat was directed at you personally? That someone might have wanted you to pull out of the show?”
“Honey, if they killed me, I’d come back as a zombie to do this gig. Of course, they’d have to film me in soft focus.” He chuckled.
“So it’s actually advantageous for you that Gary is dead.”
“Yes, I suppose it . . . No. Now, wait a minute. You’re not suggesting that I had motive to kill Gary.”
“You did just step into a job that you seem pretty excited to get.”
“Well, I am excited. I’m sure you would be, too, if they had reality shows about flower arranging, or whatever else you do, and you got high billing. But, sweetheart, I didn’t have to kill Gary to get this job.”
“No?”
“No. He called me weeks ago to let me know he was thinking about not renewing his contract. He told me he didn’t want to let Gigi down, and would I consider stepping in and taking his place on the show? Said he’d back me to the network. Would I? I almost wet myself.”
“Did Gary say why he wasn’t going to renew?”
“I asked him. Why step down when you’re on the top? He said he had a sure way back into professional journalism. Claimed it was the chance of a lifetime. Then he talked as if what he did on the show . . . as if fashion wasn’t important. I guess that should have been my first clue.”
“That someone was going to kill him?”
“No.
That he was straight.”
* * *
When Henry rushed off to work on the dresses, or rather dump his work on Nevena, I scanned the room. Gwyneth the intern was leaning over a table looking at a screen the sound guy was showing her, exposing her considerable assets in a way that would have been blurred out on daytime TV. Maybe even cable. One thing’s for sure: she never got Grandma Mae’s lecture on the proper wearing and fitting of foundation garments.
She was another of the crew that I couldn’t account for during the time Gary was killed. So when she headed toward the door, I rushed up to her.
“Gwyneth, I believe?” I said, then introduced myself. “I’ve been wanting to talk with you.”
“Well, I’ve wanted to talk to you, too, and explain.”
“Explain?”
“I feel terrible about everything, and now that I know, I wish I hadn’t done it.”
Was she confessing? “Done what, exactly?”
“Somebody told me that you and Brad . . . Well, I suppose you must have heard me flirting with him and somehow gotten the wrong idea. Trust me, Brad’s a very nice guy, but it was all innocent. I’m no threat to you.”
“Well, thank you, Gwyneth. I didn’t think you were.” I scribbled a mental note to ask Brad about this “harmless flirting.” Then crossed it off my mental to-do list. If Brad and I were over, it was really none of my business.
“Besides,” I said, “Brad and I broke up quite a while ago.”
She clapped a hand to her considerable chest, which started a mound of mammary tissue jiggling in a complex wave pattern. “I’m so relieved.”
“But you’re not really interested in Brad, are you?”
She looked around the room, then gestured me to a far table. She kicked off her impractical heels as she sat, and I took a chair next to her so we wouldn’t have to shout across the eight-foot diameter.
“You see, it’s like this,” she said. “This is my second internship—my second and last chance to get some real hands-on experience in the film business before I graduate. I thought I’d lucked out on a primo assignment last year. Sounded like a great opportunity. Man, that was a wasted summer.”
I tilted my head and waited. In my experience, people always shared their stories of wasted summers.
“We were supposed to film the surfers who braved the shark-infested waters off certain Hawaiian beaches. How cool is that?”
“Sounds like a fantastic experience.”
“And it might have been. Except I listened to my mother. ‘It’s time to grow up and act like a professional,’” she mocked in a snooty voice. “Worst mistake of my life.”
“It doesn’t sound like such bad advice.”
She snorted. “She took me to her favorite store and bought me a whole wardrobe of professional business casual clothing. When I met the crew, they looked me up and down. Do you know what I did that summer in Hawaii? I fetched coffee and made photocopies, and then they had me alphabetizing their take-out menus. I was shut up in some office building nearly all day. And the only marketable skill I left with was how to make a decent pot of joe.”
“So you changed your image.”
“My image, and my whole approach.” She tugged up her tank top. “It’s the only way any of these men will teach me anything. Think about it. Why should they spend time with an intern? What’s in it for them? They don’t earn any more money for showing me how to do stuff. And if I end up being good at what they teach me, I’m just more competition in an already competitive job market. And I’ll never break into the business without good contacts. I need solid recommendations and people in the business who remember me and want to work with me again.”
“But will they respect you?”
“I think so. It may not look it, but I do have certain lines I don’t cross. And I make sure to take an interest in the job and stroke the guys’ egos by telling them what great teachers they are. And I am learning.”
“How did that work with Gary and Gigi?”
“I didn’t need it to,” she said. “I mean, I’m not into chicks, and I didn’t think Gary was, either. Besides, they’re the on-camera people. I’m more interested in the camera and sound work and the behind-the-scenes stuff to start. Maybe be a producer someday.”
“It’s a pity,” I said. “The camera would love you.”
“Thanks for saying that, but I don’t want to get into a job where you peak in your twenties and then it goes downhill. Besides, Tristan is a producer, and he’s quite the attractive man.”
* * *
“So Eric is going to do those renovations for us,” Jenny said, sliding into the chair across from me. “Said he can start next week.”
The cast and crew had deserted the Ashbury. Maybe they had to get some work done. Or maybe it was time for afternoon naps. Or maybe they got tired of watching Bixby and me watch them.
“I’m glad. He does nice work. I hope to hire him myself someday, if I ever save enough to buy back Grandma Mae’s cottage . . .”
“Are you still pining after that place? Audrey, I drove past it the other day, and it looks like it’s going to fall down any minute.”
“Pining hardly seems the right word. But, yeah. I’d like to fix it up. Live there.”
“Your childhood escape?”
“I’m not sure I’d call it an escape.”
“Are you going to talk to me or argue about my choice of words? It was precisely an escape. Every summer you and Liv would go and poke around in that garden, like the whole rest of the world didn’t exist. I know things weren’t great between you and your dad—”
“Things seemed fine between me and my dad, thank you very much. Right up until the time he just wasn’t there anymore.” I had raised my voice. I looked around the still-empty room, and then lowered it. “As far as I’m concerned, he ceased to exist the day he walked out on us.”
“Walked out on your mother,” she said.
“No, walked out on us. Don’t you go picking at my choice of words, either. Did he call me? Send birthday or Christmas gifts? Take me out for caramel corn the day I got my braces off? No, not a word since that day. The only way we even knew he wasn’t in an accident or kidnapped or something was because his suitcase and half his clothes were gone. I don’t know when he packed those up.”
“And coming to Ramble helped you forget, but . . .”
“Coming to Ramble was my salvation. Grandma Mae . . .” My eyes started to tear. But I forced my words through the crack in my voice. “That little cottage was a haven. No shouting or swearing. Quiet. Peace. I never felt unloved when Grandma Mae was alive.”
Jenny clasped her hands so tightly that her knuckles turned white. “I didn’t mean to bring up . . . It’s just that it’s such a rickety old place, and the things you treasured aren’t there . . .”
“But I could fix it up. Make it the same pleasant place I remember.”
“It won’t be the same, all alone in that house. You would be living there all alone, right?”
She sat up straight, as if she’d just remembered the year the Magna Carta was signed for a history test. And no, I have no idea when it was signed, or even why it was such a big deal. History was never my subject. But if I could have remembered I’d have had the same excited glint in my eyes.
“You’re not planning on living there alone, are you?” she said slyly.
“Let’s not go there.”
She pulled closer to me. “It’s Nick, right? You and he seemed like you were getting serious.”
“Nick and I had a long talk the other night.”
“And?”
“And he told me I was free to date other people.”
Jenny’s jaw dropped. She was speechless for a good fifteen seconds. “Someone needs to hit that man upside the head. Why would he say something like that?”
“May
be he’s not all that interested.”
“He’s crazy about you,” she said. “There has to be another reason.”
“He mentioned something about not wanting to commit when he can’t make a go of the bakery, but I don’t know . . .”
“Well, that makes more sense. He is responsible to a fault.”
“But then there’s Brad.”
“Brad? Brad’s back in the picture?”
I nodded. “Possibly. Unless Bixby arrests him for murder.”
“So that’s why you’re hanging around here and not doing flower arrangements back at the shop.”
“Liv practically booted me out the door.”
“To help Brad?”
“That, and with the added motivation that if someone succeeds in their attempt to cancel the wedding, we don’t get paid.” And paying suppliers out of our own pocket would set my down-payment fund back months—if not years.
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and spotted Nick standing in the doorway. He went to the catering table.
Jenny rose to get up, but he waved her back.
“Nobody here, anyway. Might as well get a break in.” He poured himself a lemonade and joined us. “I thought you’d be slaving away over flowers.”
“Audrey’s hot on the trail of the killer,” Jenny said.
I rolled my eyes. “I wouldn’t say hot.”
“Nick has been investigating, too,” Jenny said.
“Oh?” I said. I could have sworn Nick blushed.
“Seems you guys have a lot in common.” Jenny stood and poked me in the arm. “Well, I’ll let you two intrepid investigators conference for a minute. I want to make more lemonade before the crew comes back out of the heat.”
“What were you investigating?” I asked.
Nick took a sip of his lemonade and set the glass down on a cocktail napkin. “I was looking over all that message-board material on that Pinkleman character, and then it hit me that I could go talk to the man. So I drove over to the regional jail this morning and visited for a bit.”
For Whom the Bluebell Tolls Page 16