A Root Awakening: A Flower Shop Mystery (10 page)

“You’d have to rehabituate it, that’s all.”

My Harvard-educated cousin liked to make up words, a habit that annoyed me no end. “
Rehabituate
isn’t a word. You mean
rehabilitate
or
renovate
.”

“I mean you buy this for a song and put some money into it, open it up, and make it your dream house.”

“More like my nightmare house. Does it even have a basement?”

She shined her light around the porch, then opened the back door and looked out into the yard. “There it is.”

I leaned out and saw double doors built into the ground à la the tornado shelter in
The
Wizard of Oz
. All it needed was a squadron of flying monkeys and a pair of red shoes. I backed into the house, turned around, and headed for the front door.

“Wait, Abs.”

“Don’t tell me not to judge it yet,” I called back, “because the jury is in and the verdict is a big thumbs-down.”

“Abby, wait!”

I stopped at the front door. “No, Jillian. I’m done.”

“Abs.”

“I’ve told you what I’m looking for, but you’re not listening to me.”

“You’re not listening to me, either! Help me, you idiot.”

“Y
ou are not having a baby, Jillian.”

“I am
so
having a baby. Don’t tell me what I’m suffering isn’t labor, because this is laborious! Can’t you speed it up? You drive like Grandma.”

“Grandma passed away five years ago, Jill.”

“Exactly.”

“Fine, I’ll go faster. Last time you said I was driving too fast.”

“Apparently you learned that lesson too well.”

I gritted my teeth and made the fifteen-minute drive to the hospital in silence while my pregnant cousin groaned, moaned, panted, and gasped. I couldn’t not take her. What if she really was in labor?

“Pull up to the ER,” she directed.

“Let’s use the front door this time.”

Between pants she ground out, “Pull. Up. To. The. ER!”

When I went around the circular driveway to get to the big glass doors, an ambulance was parked ahead of me and two paramedics were unloading a patient. Holding her bulging stomach with one hand, Jillian reached
over and leaned on the horn, causing the paramedics to turn and give us dirty looks.

“I’m having a baby!” she called, rolling down her window. “Bring another stretcher.”

They rolled their patient inside and a minute later a woman came out, peered at the occupant leaning out of my window, and stood with arms akimbo. “Jillian, what you up to, girl, making all that racket?”

“Bring a wheelchair, LaBrea. I’m in labor.”

I stared at my grimacing cousin. “You know her, too?”

“Don’t look so surprised. I got to know some of the staff when we took Lamaze classes. Here she comes. You’d better get around to my side so you can help her.”

As soon as Jillian was on her way inside, I drove around to the front of the hospital, found one empty parking space in a far back row, and made the trek in the gusty wind, muttering unflattering things about my cousin. And then I felt bad. How could I be angry at her for having a baby?

I took the elevator to the fifth floor and headed to the nurses’ station. “I’m looking for Jillian Knight—I mean Osborne,” I said to an aide sitting at a computer.

“A nurse is in with her right now. You can have a seat in the waiting room.”

I texted Marco to let him know what was going on, then bought a cup of cocoa to warm myself up.

He texted back:
Should I call Claymore?

I replied:
Let me get more information first.

I went to the nurses’ station and said to the aide, “Can you find out how my cousin’s doing?”

“You’re Jillian’s cousin?” Giving me an appraising glance, she said, “I guess I should have known by that red
hair. You know, I had thoughts of dyeing my hair your color. I always thought it would be such fun to be a redhead. You know what they say. Reds are wild.” She looked at me again. “You don’t look wild.”

“My cousin, please?”

“Right behind you.”

I turned and saw Jillian waddling toward me. “Oh, you have cocoa! Give me some!” She stretched out her arms and wiggled her fingers like an impatient child.

“You’re not having the baby?” I asked as she slurped my hot beverage.

She shook her head.

“You said you were in labor.”

“I
was
in labor. False labor.” She noticed my glare and handed my cup back. “It’s still labor. So, are you ruling the cottage out?”

When we got onto the elevator, I had a sudden thought, so I punched the button for the second floor, where the intensive care unit was located. “We’re going to take a little side trip, Jillian. I want to see how my client’s husband is doing.”

“Give me your cocoa, then. I’ll wait downstairs in the lobby. Oh, wait! Cocoa! Wouldn’t that be a great baby name?”

“If the baby was a kitten.” I handed her my cup, stepped off the elevator, and followed signs to the ICU wing. The nurses’ station was the central hub of a giant wheel, with patient rooms around the outside of the circle.

“I hate to bother you,” I said to a nurse at the station, “but can you tell me how Sergio Marin is doing?”

“Are you family?”

“A friend.”

“I’m afraid I can’t give out that information unless you’re immediate family,” she said.

“I understand, but is he holding his own?”

She looked past me and said, “Hey. What are you doing? You can’t go in there.”

I turned to see who she was talking to, but saw only two nurses’ aides moving a medicine cart from one room to the next, an old man on a cane doing a slow walk around the circle, and a young woman standing outside a room crying into a tissue.

“What’s happening?” a nurse at the back side of the station asked.

“Some man I’ve never seen before just went into room nine.”

The other nurse took off.

“I really can’t tell you anything about your friend,” the first nurse said to me. “Those were his wife’s wishes.”

“Okay. Sorry to have bothered you.”

I turned away just as a hulk of a man in a black overcoat came out of a room, followed by the second nurse. “Next time bring ID with you,” she said crossly.

When she got back to the nurses’ station, she said to the other nurse, “He claimed to be a brother, but didn’t have identification on him to prove it.”

“Who doesn’t carry a driver’s license or credit card?” the first nurse asked.

Who, indeed?

My curiosity aroused, I turned to look at the man. He was striding rapidly around the back side of the circle, the brim of his black baseball cap pulled down low as though to shield his eyes. He turned up his coat collar,
glanced back at the nurses’ station, and saw me watching, then quickly exited through a door to the stairwell.

I felt a familiar tightening in my gut, a signal that my internal radar had just gone on full alert. “Who’s the patient in room nine?” I asked.

“Your friend,” the nurse said without looking up.

Sergio. With an unauthorized visitor.

My heart beat faster. I called across to the other nurse, “What was the man doing when you went in?”

“I couldn’t tell. His back was to me.”

“Was he near Sergio?”

“He was leaning over him.”

“Call security,” I told her as I took off toward the stairs. “That man may have tried to hurt Sergio. And check to make sure he’s breathing!”

I tugged open the heavy door to the stairwell and stood on the landing trying to decide which way to go. I could hear someone’s shoes pounding the cement steps, but I couldn’t tell whether it was coming from above or below. I decided to try the logical direction and go down, but when I exited onto the main floor, the lobby was filled with people and I couldn’t find him.

I pulled out my cell phone and called Marco. “It’s me. I’m still at the hospital. Listen to what just happened.”

I gave him a quick rundown, and he said loudly, “I can barely hear you over the noise here, Sunshine, but first thing I need to know is, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Next time you think there’s danger, would you do me a favor and have a nurse call security instead of going in pursuit?”

“I did that, too.” I glanced around the crowded lobby.
“But I haven’t seen even one security guard hurrying toward the stairwell or the elevators.”

“It’s possible the nurses checked on Sergio before they called for security and he turned out to be fine. Just to be on the safe side, call Reilly and let him know what happened. Maybe he can get a security detail out there.”

“Okay. See you later.”

“There you are,” Jillian said, waddling up to me. “Let’s go home. My back hurts.”

Because of the gusty wind, I held Jillian’s arm as we exited the hospital. We were just about to cross the street to get to the parking lot when a pickup truck came roaring out of the lot and headed in our direction.

I pulled Jillian back to the curb, then waved my arms at the driver. “Hey!” I shouted. “Slow down!”

“There’s a pregnant lady at risk here!” Jillian called, patting her abdomen.

As the truck passed by, I saw a large man wearing a baseball cap and coat with the collar turned up sitting in the passenger seat. A smaller man wearing a hoodie was driving. Neither one looked my way.

I dug for my phone as I ran to the middle of the pavement, hoping to get a photo of the back of the truck, but by the time I had the app open, the vehicle was too far away to get much of a shot. “Could you read the license plate, Jill?”

“It looked like three-four-one, but I couldn’t make out the letters that followed.”

“I’ll have to enlarge my photo when I get home. Maybe I’ll be able to see the rest.” I typed the numerals into my notes, then went back to where Jillian stood and offered my hand.

“Oh, thanks,” she said, and handed me the empty cocoa cup.

*   *   *

“Sorry to bother you at home, Reilly,” I said into my phone as I sat on the sofa with Seedy in my lap. “I thought you should know that when I was at the hospital this evening with my cousin—”

“Did she have her baby?”

“No. False alarm. Anyway, I stopped by the ICU to ask how the painter was doing and saw a nurse chase a man out of the room.”

“Okay. And this is important why?”

Seedy was wiggling, so I set her on the floor. “First of all, he claimed to be Sergio’s brother but didn’t have any ID on him to prove it. Who doesn’t carry some form of ID? And second, the way the guy was dressed made me suspicious. He had on a bulky black overcoat with the collar turned up and a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes as though he didn’t want anyone to see his face.

“Anyway, after the nurse chased him out of the room, he glanced my way, then took the stairs instead of the elevators. And then, when Jillian and I were crossing the street, a man wearing a hoodie and a guy who could have been the same man—with a dark baseball cap pulled down low and a coat collar turned up—nearly ran us down. They were in a black or navy pickup truck, and all I could make out were the first three numbers—three-four-one. I tried to take a photo but it’s too blurry to be of any help.”

Reilly was silent, so I said, “Did you get all that?”

“Just writing it down.”

“The police need to put a guard at Sergio’s door,
Reilly. If he’s the victim of a murder attempt, that man might have been there to finish him off.”

“I’ll agree that the man’s behavior sounds suspicious, but there’s nothing I can do about a security detail unless the detectives decide his accident was a murder attempt. What I can do is search this partial plate number and see what kind of matches I get.”

“Great, because we have four suspects, and that truck might belong to one of them.”

“There’s one hitch. You said you saw the first three numbers. A pickup truck’s plate should start with the letters T-K, not a number, so that plate might have been stolen, in which case you probably won’t find one of your suspects on the list. But I’ll see what comes up and let you know.”

“Thanks, Reilly. And while I’ve got you on the phone, when you talked to the Joneses on Monday about Sergio’s fall, are you positive that nothing struck you as being off?”

“Are you still on that kick? No, Abby, nothing off or strange, and I interviewed them at some length. They were nice people with cute kids.”

“Did you know that they moved out that same day?”

“No.”

“Did you see any signs that they were in the process of packing?”

“No, and I wish I knew where you were going with this.”

“Wouldn’t you think that if someone were moving, you’d have noticed packing boxes or other signs of their leaving?”

“I didn’t get any farther than the front hallway, Abby.
I didn’t see anything but them. And so what if they moved and you didn’t know about it?”

“I just thought it was odd that they were gone when we went back early the next morning, especially because they’d paid their rent through the end of the month. Could you run Norman Jones through your criminal database and see if you get any hits?”

“Not without cause. I’ll call you when I know something about the license plate.”

I hung up with a frustrated huff. “
You
take me seriously, don’t you, Seedy?”

She placed a red rubber ball at my feet and gazed up at me with her tail wagging.

*   *   *

Friday

Bloomers was so busy all morning that Grace, Lottie, and I didn’t even have time for a tea break. I did manage to carve out fifteen minutes to put together an arrangement to take to the Joneses, one that I hoped Sandra couldn’t resist. And what could be more irresistible than roses, sweet peas, and peonies in shades of blush, pink, and cerise? I added variegated euonymus for my greenery and put it all in a crackle-finish cream ceramic vase. It was elegant and yet relaxed.

“Gosh, it’s pretty,” Lottie said as she passed through. “Someone’s gonna love opening the door to that.”

Exactly what I was counting on.

*   *   *

If I hadn’t had to walk Seedy, I probably would have worked through lunch as well, eating a sandwich on the run. But a dog had to do what a dog had to do, so I took
her across the street to the courthouse square and let her sniff out the perfect tree.

While Seedy was exploring, I called Marco and told him where I was, and in a few minutes he walked across the street to join us. Seedy spotted him coming and wagged her tail hard, then went back to sniffing.