“Hello, Miss,” Colm and Saoirse greeted her.
Gethsemane hadn’t expected to see her student or his younger sister until the next school term began. “What are you guys doing here?”
“Father Tim took me hiking to find wild flowers to sketch.” Saoirse picked up her sketchbook from the floor by her chair and showed it to Gethsemane. Saoirse, a certifiable genius, was homeschooled and Father Tim tutored her in several subjects. “We saw Mr. Grennan in your garden and asked if we could help. He said yes, so we called Colm to bring us some tools from the church. He stayed because he’s bored at home so he’s into mischief and Ma’s threatening to send him to stay with Grandma for the rest of the summer.”
“I am not into mischief,” the green-eyed blond said. “I’m experimenting. It’s science. I’m keeping my mind active over the summer so I’ll be ready to go when school starts up again.”
“Colm Nolan,” Gethsemane said, “I’ve never been a sixteen-year-old boy but both of my brothers were. I’m not buying that ‘getting ready for school’ story.”
Frankie laughed. “Colm found out what happens when you mix hydrogen peroxide, dish soap, warm water, and yeast. Lads find it hysterical. Their mothers, not so much.”
“Especially when they find out what happens all over the kitchen counter,” Saoirse said.
“And how are you, Father Tim?” Gethsemane asked.
“Well, thank you. Trying to keep up with this one,” he nodded at Saoirse. “Keeps me young. I hope you don’t mind us helping ourselves to your kitchen.”
“Of course I don’t. Especially since I didn’t cook.”
“Seat yourself,” Frankie said. “There’s plenty. We’d have waited but I didn’t know when you’d be back.”
“Sit by me, Miss.” Saoirse moved her sketchbook from the chair where she’d set it.
Gethsemane took the thick notebook. “Where did you get this, Saoirse?” The heavy-weight paper looked and felt like the cards the flower girl used.
“From the art supply store on the village square. It’s really watercolor paper but I like to draw on it because the paper doesn’t tear so easily.”
“Is that the only place in town where you can get it?”
“Are you thinking of taking up watercolor as a hobby?” Father Tim asked.
“Um, no, I was thinking this would be a good weight to use for flashcards for the lower school boys in my intro to music class next term.” She disliked lying to Tim but she didn’t want to discuss a homicidal stalker in front of Colm and Saoirse. She put the book next to Saoirse’s chair and sat. “Pass the potato salad?”
She worked to keep the dinner conversation light and dodged questions about the specifics of her day. She listened to the others describe the work they’d done in the cottage garden.
“We haven’t set any plants out yet,” Frankie said, “but the weeds are gone and the ground is tilled.”
“Help yourself to some cuttings from the church gardens, Frankie,” Father Tim said.
“By the way,” Frankie asked, “do you have a radio going somewhere in the cottage?”
“A radio? No. Why do you ask?”
“I was working in the garden before Father and Saoirse arrived and I swear I heard music. Classical music. Don’t know who by. I’m not good with composers if they didn’t compose jazz.” He tugged at his John Coltrane t-shirt. “But it sounded modern. I mean, modern compared to Bach or Beethoven. It reminded me of something I heard you play by that Irish composer who used to live here, McCarthy.”
Father Tim and Saoirse, who knew about Eamon’s ghost, fixed their gaze on their plates. Colm, who didn’t, reached for more ham.
Frankie went on. “Sounded like the music came from the music room. When I went inside, the music stopped. I looked for a radio but I couldn’t find one.”
Gethsemane hoped her shrug was nonchalant. “Probably the wind. It sounds strange coming off the cliffs. Voices, music, you name it.”
“It’s July. It’s a fine, sunny day. What wind?”
Saoirse chimed in. “There’s a rare bird in the northeastern United States whose call sounds just like Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Chichester Psalms.’”
“We’re in Ireland,” Colm said.
“Well, wouldn’t you expect an Irish bird call to sound like an Irish composer?” Saoirse asked her brother.
He replied by sticking his tongue out at her.
“On that note,” Father Tim rose from his chair, “I think I’d better get these two home. Many thanks for the fine meal, Frankie. And for the hospitality, Gethsemane.”
“Any time, Tim,” Gethsemane said. Frankie echoed her sentiment.
Gethsemane escorted her guests to the door then returned to the kitchen to help Frankie clean up.
“Are you going to tell me what really happened today?” he asked. “Or, are you going to stick to the sanitized for the sake of the children version?”
“Well, let’s see.” She counted on her dish soap-covered fingers. “I looked at gruesome, fifty year old crime scene photos, watched Niall break up an argument between Murdoch Collins and Karl Dietrich, eavesdropped on enough of the argument to guess it had something to do with Avar Pharmaceuticals’ board of directors, watched Niall break up a shoving match between two women fighting over a show catalog signed by a dead man, learned at least two people think Ellen Jacobi killed her husband, crashed Ellen Jacobi’s tent and discovered she’s a terrifying woman who makes Yseult seem like a pussy cat and who hated her now-dead husband.” She paused to rub an itch on her nose.
“You left soap.” Frankie wiped it off with a dish towel. “Is that all you did? No rehearsal? You took your violin.”
“I’m getting to that. I scoped out your garden but didn’t find anything. I ran into Verna—she sends her regards, by the way—who is ashamed of the way you’re being treated in the press. Meaning the Dispatch. I tracked down the Dispatch photographer and ate his head off for running photos of Jacobi on the front page instead of the pictures he took at your photo shoot—Yes, I know the editor decides what goes on the front page, not the photographer, but I wanted to yell at someone and he was convenient. Then I learned he doesn’t really care any more about flowers than he does about sheep birthing triplets but he’s got a man crush on Roderick Jacobi because Jacobi brought a plant back from the Amazon that turned into a medicine used to treat some rare disease his sister had—Max, the photographer’s sister, not Jacobi’s—and it saved his sister’s life. Then I went to the Athaneum where I started to rehearse but I ran into Karl Dietrich again and learned there might be a plan to keep Ellen Jacobi out of Avar Pharmaceutical’s board room. But maybe not everyone is opposed to her playing an active role in the company because she has degrees in plant science—Who knew?–and she may be more in favor of plant-based pharmaceutical research, which is expensive but not as expensive as gene therapy, than gene-based pharmaceutical research, which is astronomically expensive but has the potential to earn billions. And I met a very nice, elderly lady who has great taste in suits and believes you’re innocent and a not-so-nice old man who thinks you whacked Jacobi. But the nice lady put the old man in his place.”
“I’m amazed,” Frankie said. “I thought only a ten-year-old could pack an entire day’s worth of adventure into a few run-on sentences. I stand corrected. Thirty-eight-year-old women can do it, too.”
“Apologize or I won’t tell you the best part. Parts.”
“Are you codding me?”
She turned her back and started drying dishes.
“All right, I apologize. What else could possibly have happened today?”
She put down the dish towel. “One: someone sprayed weed killer on Roderick Jacobi’s prize roses. Two: your secret admirer left a calling card in my violin case.”
Sixteen
Frankie sank into a chair. “Please tell me you’
re codding me. Please tell me that’s your attempt at a joke.”
“What, about the card in my violin case?”
“No. I don’t give a damn about the card. The roses. ‘Lucia di Lammermoor.’ Please tell me they’re not really dead.”
“I saw them myself, at least the ones at the theater. They looked worse than my miniature rose.”
“The specimens in the show tent? Those were spared?”
“Not according to Murdoch. Someone got them all. Karl thought they’d been sprayed with a concentrated dose. So, not an accident.”
“Damn. Who’d do that to a rose? What kind of monster? ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ was exquisite. A masterpiece.”
“‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ was your competition. The nice lady told me you still have a chance to win the rose show, even though your garden’s been knocked out of the competition.”
“Wait, what happened to my garden?”
Oops. She told him about the bloodstains, footprints, and broken stems.
“Bloody, careless wankers.”
“But whatever you submitted for the rose show is okay. At least, I haven’t heard otherwise. And with ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ out of the running—”
Frankie slammed a palm on the table. “That’s not the way I want to win a competition.”
“You weren’t this upset about Jacobi’s murder. Come to think of it, no one was that upset about Jacobi’s murder, except Max. ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’s’ death reduced Murdoch to tears.”
“Because Jacobi was a gobshite who used people and cheated them and cast them aside. He had a mean streak longer than the River Shannon buried under that phony smile and coiffed hair. His roses never harmed anyone.”
“Do you think they were really his roses?”
“I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“The lady in the suit—I wish I’d gotten her name—suggested, no, stated, Jacobi cheated. She doubted he actually developed any of his roses, himself. She thought his employees did the work and he took the credit. Kind of like the stunt he and Yseult pulled on you.”
“Possible. Probable, even. No way to prove it. Jacobi was a master at covering his tracks.”
“Maybe someone who couldn’t get justice the legal way decided to get revenge the illegal way.”
“By stabbing Jacobi—”
“In the back. Could be symbolic.”
“—to death and pointing suspicion in my direction.”
“If I’ve learned one thing over the past couple of days, it’s that the rosarian community is as in-bred as the music community. Your feud with Jacobi isn’t a secret. You’re the perfect fall guy.”
“Kill Jacobi, I understand. Blame me, I understand. But why kill the roses?”
“Maybe the murderer is the real developer of the ‘Lucia di Lammermoor.’ Maybe she preferred to destroy her creation than see Jacobi steal credit for it.”
“It’s operatic.”
“Please don’t mention opera. Things didn’t go so well when the opera came to town.” An opera triggered the curse that nearly killed Frankie, Niall, and half the males in the village.
“When Sutton hears about the weed killer, he’ll be up here to arrest me. He’ll take it as motive for killing Jacobi—to eliminate the competition. Sutton lacks anything remotely resembling a finer feeling. He’ll never believe that I’d never harm a rose.”
“Lucky for you, this time you have a better alibi than a secret garden near an abandoned insane asylum. You have a priest and two kids.”
Frankie relaxed a little.
“Want to help me decipher this card?” Gethsemane laid it in the middle of the table.
Frankie studied it. “Euphorbia, chamomile, eucalyptus, and spirea.”
Gethsemane consulted The Language of Flowers. “Perseverance, energy in adversity, protection, and victory.”
Frankie held the card closer and traced the outline of the flowers. “This is a good drawing. Skilled I mean. Where’s that other card? The one with the anemone?”
Gethsemane retrieved it from the study.
Frankie held the two side-by-side. “Both of these took some skill to execute. They’re not Redouté but they’re not weekend coloring classes at the local community center, either. Whoever drew these had some training in scientific drawing.”
“Someone with experience in scientific illustration who buys her watercolor paper at the only art supply store in Dunmullach.”
“She could be from Ballytuam or Cork or some other place nearby.”
“Why would she still be in Dunmullach if she didn’t live here? She must know she’s a murder suspect. And if art supply stores are anything like music supply stores, you never go in without chatting about what you’re working on.”
“Unless you’re plotting a murder.”
“Okay, not that. But if you were working on scientific drawings you’d probably ask the clerk for certain types of inks or a particular paper. You might show off your portfolio. The clerk might remember that.”
Frankie looked at his watch. “Too late to find out this evening. Shop’s closed. Tomorrow.”
“Opening ceremony tomorrow. I have to be there early for our final rehearsal.”
“I hope you don’t mind if I skip the hooley.”
“I don’t blame you. I wish they’d cancel the whole thing.” A few notes from “Pathétique” played in the back of her head. “It just feels wrong.”
“You’ll be fine. You’ll be brilliant. I just…”
“Like I said. I don’t blame you. Showing up would be beyond awkward.”
“May I hide out here?”
“Sure. But invite Colm and Saoirse up to work some more in the garden. Just in case you need another alibi.” More Tchaikovsky. “I’m only half kidding.”
“Good idea. I’m not kidding.”
“I’m calling it a night.” She stood and looked out the kitchen window. “I realize it’s still light outside but when I said tomorrow’s rehearsal was early, I meant it.” She bid Frankie goodnight and climbed the stairs to her room.
She’d just pulled up the covers when Eamon appeared on the foot of her bed. An involuntary yelp escaped her lips before she could muffle her surprise with a pillow.
“Everything all right up there?” Frankie called.
“Fine,” she called back. “Stubbed my toe.”
“Liar,” Eamon said.
“You want me to tell him he’s hiding out from the law in a haunted house? Where’ve you been all day?”
“Happy to see you, too. I’m fine thanks. And how was your day?”
“Even if I believed you meant that and weren’t just throwing snark, I wouldn’t go there.”
“That bad?”
“A sociopathic, almost-ex, wife turned widow, poisoned roses, and another card from the flower shop girl.”
“And I thought my day was scary.”
“Scary? What did you do? Besides freak out Frankie with your music?”
“What music? I stayed in the village all day and gained insight into the twisted mind of the adolescent.”
“Just tell me.”
“I hung around the computer lab in the library.”
Gethsemane pulled herself up in bed. “Isn’t the computer lab new?”
“The computers are new. The lab space is in the oldest part of the library and one of my favorite hangouts as a lad. It used to be the card catalog room.”
“Do I want to know why you hung out in the card catalog room?”
“I used to rearrange the cards. I’d file Petersen before Parker or slip O’Malley in with the Molloys.”
“No, I don’t want to know. What did you do to the computers? Make all of the Google searches default to ‘I’m feeling lucky?’”
“I observed. Except for a few occa
sions when I had to dodge one of the village’s more sensitive souls—I think one of them actually saw me—I watched the little darlin’s and learned what type of websites they visit when their parents and teachers aren’t watching. By the way, does St. Brennan’s have website filters installed? They should.”
“Let me get this straight. While I spent the day running from place to place, trying to track down evidence to clear my friend of suspicion of murder, you—”
“Did the same. Climb down off your high horse. And get your mind out of the gutter. Shame on you for the assumptions you made about the websites I saw.”
Gethsemane slid down under the covers and held a pillow over her face. “Please go away. You are so, so lucky my hand would pass right through you. Else, I’d—”
The pillow flew across the room. “Where’s your phone?” Eamon asked.
“In my bag. On the chair.”
“I see it.” The bag levitated from its perch near the vanity and landed on Gethsemane’s leg.
“Navigate to Murderphile dot com. Spell ‘phile’ with a P-H.”
She woke up her phone and found the website. Her phone’s screen filled with black, white, and red graphics and hyperbolic text describing various high-profile and unsolved murders in lurid detail. “The Boston Strangler, The Black Dahlia, the Unabomber, Jack the Ripper, Son of Sam…Why am I looking at this?”
“Type ‘flower shop murders Dunmullach Ireland’ in the search box. Don’t forget the Dunmullach, Ireland. Apparently, there are lots of flower shop murders.”
She followed his instructions. One of the crime scene photos Niall showed her that morning appeared on screen. “That’s from the case file. It’s kept locked in the evidence room. How’d they get—” Eamon’s impatient turquoise aura illuminated the room. “Never mind. What am I navigating to next?”
“Scroll down to the discussion thread and read some of the user names.”
“MrdrLvr979, ChopChop12, MindHntr7422, Rppr9000.” She stopped with a sigh.
“Keep going.”
“SrialTwin, PuzzlerX, TheFlorist—” She almost dropped her phone. “TheFlorist? Could it be? Is this our flower shop girl? TheFlorist isn’t such an unusual user name for someone interested in the Flower Shop Murders.”
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