A Root Awakening: A Flower Shop Mystery (11 page)

“This is my first break today,” I told Marco. “Business is so good, I’m almost afraid to talk about it for fear of jinxing myself.”

We sat down on a bench while Seedy explored. “I just got off the phone with Reilly,” Marco said. “I asked if the detectives had decided whether to call Sergio’s accident attempted murder, but there’s been no decision yet. I did have some luck when I called the Art Barn. I spoke with a woman who teaches there, and she remembered Jericho as a painter of abstract art. She said she can’t remember anyone ever painting or displaying nude portraits.”

Seedy saw a man strolling across the lawn and hobbled back to us, ducking behind my legs and watching the man warily. “It’s okay,” I said, picking her up. “He’s not going to hurt you.”

“Do you have time to join me for lunch?” Marco asked as we crossed the street to go back.

“I wish I did. We’re on for dinner, though.”

He gave me a kiss and then headed back to the bar. I watched him for a moment, feeling my heart expand with love. “How did we get so lucky, Seedy?”

She licked my chin, clearly in complete agreement with me.

*   *   *

My plan was to follow Norm Jones home from the school where he worked so I could interview the Joneses
together. So as soon as Marco and I finished dinner, I stopped at Bloomers to pick up the arrangement, took Seedy back to the apartment, then headed west on the highway toward Maraville. I wasn’t familiar with the sprawling urban city except for the big shopping mall just off the highway, so when my GPS led me north and then west and then north again, I started to lose track of where I was.

When I finally spotted Central Elementary School, nestled deep in a subdivision, I breathed a sigh of relief. A long brown-brick building, it had a playground in the back surrounded by a chain-link fence, a shallow parking lot in front, and a bigger one on the side. Unfortunately, Norm’s beat-up blue van was in neither. I drove around the school twice just to be sure he hadn’t parked at the curb, but with no luck. Had he driven something else?

Taking the arrangement with me as my excuse to ask questions, I went through the front entrance and saw the glass-fronted office up the main hall to my right. But it was locked and there was no one around to ask for help. I heard far-off voices and followed them toward the back of the building, then up a hallway to the right, coming out onto a lobby with three sets of double doors. I opened one door and saw a roller rink inside filled with kids and adults skating, laughing, and calling to one another, making it hard to hear anything else.

An older man in brown coveralls was leaning against a broom inside a glass-walled snack room watching the skaters with a smile. Guessing him to be a maintenance man, I headed his way.

“Do you work here?” I asked him.

“You brought flowers for me? Gee, you shouldn’t have.” He winked.

“Sorry, maybe next time. These are for the Joneses. Is Norm around?”

“Someone’s sending Norm flowers
here
?”

“Actually, they’re for Sandra. I would have delivered them to their house, but I don’t have their new address.”

The man rubbed his neck and glanced around the rink. “You know, I don’t think Norm is here tonight. Seems like he told me he had to go see his kid’s karate class perform this evening.”

“You don’t happen to know where he lives, do you?”

“Sure don’t. You’d have to check with the office, and they won’t be in until Monday.”

A little girl skated in and around the room, calling, “Mr. Paisley, Mr. Paisley, watch me skate backward!”

“I’m watching, Amber,” the janitor said. “Go ahead.”

“Norm’s wife is an old friend of mine,” I said, before Mr. Paisley could walk away. “We lost contact after high school, and I’ve been trying to get in touch with her ever since I heard she moved to Maraville. Do you know Sandra?”

“Just to say hi. Only time I’ve seen her is when Norm’s old beater quits on him and I have to give him a ride home. I keep telling him to junk that van and get a truck like mine, but he says he can’t afford it. So I let him use my pickup when he needs to transport things. He used it just last week, in fact.”

“How long has he worked here?”

“About a year, give or take.”

“Has he ever said what he did before he came here?”

“Janitorial work—somewhere in Ohio from what I
remember.” He gave me a puzzled look. “Why all the questions?”

“I just want to be sure my old friend Sandy has herself a good man. Know what I mean?”

“Sure do. Yep, sure do. Tell you what. Give me your name and number and when I see Norm I’ll have him give you a call.”

That idea made me uncomfortable. “Actually, I’d rather he not know.” I held up the arrangement. “I want this to be a surprise. Thanks for your help.”

“Just call the office on Monday, then,” he said.

I left disappointed that my trip hadn’t been productive. The only new piece of information was that Bud was taking karate. I returned the arrangement to Bloomers and walked Seedy, then got on the Internet and used the databases that Marco always used when he was trying to track someone down. I plugged in as much information as I could about the Joneses—their names, his occupation, their Bowling Green connection, their two past addresses—but nothing came up.

I searched the county’s tax records, tried searching for them both separately and as a couple, and even looked for them on Facebook and Twitter, but after reviewing over one hundred Sandra Joneses, and even more Norman Joneses, in all their variations, I gave up. Their names were too common.

When Marco got home, I was lying in bed with an open book on my stomach and the bedside lamp on, still puzzling over the invisible Joneses. I needed to find out what his solution was for that kind of situation without telling him why.

“What are you doing up, babe?” he asked, slipping under the covers with me. “It’s late.”

“I fell asleep watching a movie and now I’m wide awake and wondering how the movie ended.” I rolled onto my side facing him. “So what
does
a private detective do when someone he’s investigating seems to have no history?”

“Keep digging.”

“What if he’s dug all the way to China and still can’t find anything?”

Marco’s eyes searched mine. “Are you sure this is about a movie?”

“Well, it’s not about me.” Which wasn’t exactly a lie. I traced a line down his chin, down his throat, and paused at the V of his undershirt. “So how would the case be resolved?”

Marco picked up my hand and began to kiss my fingers, one by one, a good indication of where his thoughts were headed. “Here’s how I’d end it. The detective would try everything he knew, tap every contact he had on the police force, but still not find anything. Then one day, as he’s leaving his office, a black van pulls up to the curb and two men in dark suits yank him inside and tell him to stop his investigation or else. Why? Because the people he was following were in the witness protection program. Hence no history.”

Was that why I couldn’t find anything on the Joneses? Because they had fake identities?

“So in your version,” I asked, “what does your detective do next?”

“Decides not to mess with the feds.” He raised my chin to gaze into my eyes. “Forget about the little Jones girl, Sunshine.”

Apparently I wasn’t as clever as I’d thought.

It seemed I had two options, then. Option one was to keep digging and watch out for dark vans parked in front of Bloomers. Option two was to call it a day.

But calling it a day just wasn’t an option for a Knight.

Saturday

T
he sound of a door closing woke me. I lay there half asleep trying to figure out whether Marco had just come in or gone out. Then I heard a kitchen cabinet bang shut and the question became moot, so I rolled onto my back, folded my arms behind my head, and stared up at the ceiling as bits of my dream came back to me.

It had been about Daisy again. We’d been drawing pictures at a child-sized picnic table in the middle of a grassy yard, just like in the first dream. Daisy had handed me her picture and said, “Will you help me find my puppy, please?”

I’d looked at the drawing and was relieved to see that the brown-and-white dog had all four of its legs.

“Of course I’ll help you,” I’d said. Then she’d pointed over my shoulder, and I’d turned to see a black van parked at the curb.

I shuddered at the memory.

“Look who’s finally awake, Seedy,” Marco said, depositing the dog on the bed beside me. “It’s a nice, sunny
day outside and we’ve just been for a walk around the block; haven’t we, little girl?”

“Did you have fun?” I asked Seedy, giving her a hug.

Marco pressed a kiss on my forehead, then started for the door. “Coffee’s made, bread is in the toaster, and almond butter is on the counter. Anything else her highness would like this morning?”

“Nope. Sounds perfect. I’ll be right there.”

“Good,” he called from the kitchen. “I’d like to get over to Rosa’s house as soon as possible because I’m going to have a busy day at the bar.”

I tossed back the covers and slid my feet onto the floor. “Looks like we’ll have to find something to do on our own today, Seedy.” In a whisper, I added, “What do you say we work on our hobby?”

She wagged her tail and gave her familiar little yip. How nice that she was in complete agreement. And I already had a new plan of attack. I’d take a bouquet to Mr. Mallory, the owner of the old Victorian, show him my ID to prove who I was this time, and wheedle more information about the Joneses out of him. Seriously, who could resist a short, busty redhead carrying an armload of flowers, with a three-legged dog at her side? The man would have to be heartless.

An hour later Marco and I were on our way to Rosa Marin’s house, a neatly kept older bungalow on the south side of town. We parked in Rosa’s driveway and hadn’t even reached her porch before the door opened and she stepped outside. She had on a long-sleeved navy T-shirt with faded skintight jeans and black ballet slippers.

“Buenos días!”
she called cheerfully. “How nice of
you to bring me a report. This can only be good news. Come in, come in!”

Marco and I exchanged glances as we stepped inside.

She showed us into her cheerfully decorated living room and asked us to sit on a floral-print sofa while she went to find her son.

“This is Peter,” Rosa said, guiding the boy into the room with her hands on his shoulders. Small of stature, he had dark hair and eyes like his parents, with his mother’s attractive features. “Petey, this is Mr. and Mrs. Salvare.”

After we’d greeted him, Rosa whispered in his ear, “What do you say?”

Shyly ducking his head, Petey said, “Nice to meet you.”

“That’s my boy,” Rosa said proudly, hugging him.

“May I watch TV now?” he asked.

“Yes, Petey, you may.” She gave him another hug, then kissed the top of his head before sending him away.

“He’s so polite,” I said once he was gone.

“Good manners will open doors, I tell him,” Rosa said.

“Who takes care of him while you’re at work?” asked Marco, always the pragmatist.

“My mother. She lives across the street. Would you like some coffee? Tea? Water?”

“No, thanks,” we said in unison.

“But you must let me bring you something!”

After settling on glasses of iced tea, Marco and I conferred while Rosa prepared the beverages in the kitchen.

“She’s expecting good news,” I said quietly. “I feel bad now about why we’ve come.”

“Why don’t you explain what you saw at Jericho’s
first,” Marco said. “I’ll pick up the questioning after we get her response.”

“It’s going to be awkward, Marco. She’s bound to be embarrassed, to say the least. She might be too surprised to speak.”

I clearly did not know Rosa Marin.

*   *   *

“Nude paintings?” Rosa barely got her glass of iced tea on the side table beside her chair before jumping to her feet and crying angrily, “Of me? And there are more than one?”

“Seven,” I said, “that I saw.”

“Un diablo!”

As Marco and I sat on the sofa with blue plastic glasses in our hands, Rosa paced from one side of the living room to the other, her hand to her forehead, her voice rising even further as she talked. “Why would Jericho have done this terrible thing?
Dios mío,
he has to be a devil!” She stopped and turned to us. “We have to do something about them.”

“Unless Jericho displays them in public or puts them up for sale, there’s nothing we can do,” Marco said.

“But they are paintings of my body!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Marco said.

Rosa wasn’t buying it. She crossed her arms underneath her bosom, her eyes angry slits. “If my Sergio were here he would burn his house to the ground!” She began pacing again. “There may be nothing you can do, but this is
my
revenge. I will take a knife to them and turn them into ribbons.”

Marco rose and stepped in her way, catching her in mid-rant. “Rosa, you can’t take this matter into your own
hands. Do you want to end up in jail? Sit down so we can discuss it calmly. Please.”

She was full of fury as she glared at Marco, her nostrils flaring. “I cannot
believe
that devil painted me!”

“We feel the same way,” I said. “Please, sit down so we can figure this out.”

“What is there to figure out?” she asked, letting Marco guide her back to her chair. “That man must pay! Justice must be done.”

Marco waited until she was settled, then said, “Did you ever pose for him?”

Her eyes widened. “You think I would pose for a man I barely know?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Marco said. “It’s my job to ask questions.”

She pointed a long red fingernail at me. “
You
believe I would do this, Abby—pose naked in front of this
demente
? Me, a happily married woman?”

“That’s kind of what you think when you see a nude painting of someone,” I said.

“Dios mío!”
She made the sign of the cross. “What is happening to my life?”

“Mama,” Petey said from the doorway, “is everything okay?”

“Everything is fine,” she said, forcing a smile. “Go watch TV. Go. Now!” She kept up the smile until he was out of the room, then sprang up and began to pace again, wringing her hands. Stopping in front of us, she whispered passionately, “I have never, never,
never
posed for Jericho—or any other man—not even with clothes
on
! I tell you, he is
loco
. Why else would he paint me? He will
not get away with this! I will report him to Mr. Appleruth and
then
I
will burn down his house.”

“No one is going to burn down anyone’s house,” Marco said firmly. “We need to figure out why he did it. Let’s focus on that for now.”

“I know why,” she said, her upper lip curling back. “It’s because he hates my husband. He was going to show them to Sergio to make him think I cheated on him.”

“Do you know that for sure?” Marco asked.

Rosa pointed at her heart. “I know it in
here
.”

Marco gave me a look that said,
Will you try to get her to sit down?

I got up and ushered her to her chair. “You sit right there so we can get back to working on your case, okay?”

“You must believe that I am an honest woman who would never let another man see me that way.”

“We do,” I said.

Marco waited until she was seated, which was on the edge of her chair, her hands clasped. Then he said, “You need to know that Jericho didn’t show us the paintings. Abby spotted them in his studio while he was out of the room.”

Rosa looked at me in surprise, and maybe even a little admiration. “You were snooping?”

“The bedroom door was open,” I said. “A little.”

“So he does not know you know about them?” Rosa asked.

“No,” Marco said, then cast me a reproachful glance as he added, “And we don’t want him to know. So you have to promise not to say a word about them to anyone.”

“But I tell my mother everything.”

“Not even your mother,” Marco said. “This is very important.” He was talking to her as though she were a child. “Do you promise?”

“How will I report Jericho to Mr. Appleruth?”

“You can’t, Rosa,” Marco said. “That will have to come later.”

Scowling, she folded her arms and didn’t say anything for a long time. Then with a last huff, she said, “All right. I promise.”

“Good,” Marco said. “To be fair, we haven’t verified that Jericho is the artist, but we intend to find out.”

“Who else would it be?” she asked. “They are in his trailer.”

“It appears that way,” I said, “but the first rule of investigating is to verify everything.”

“So bear with me,” Marco said, “because I need to ask you a few questions that might be embarrassing.”

She pushed up her sleeves. “I think it’s a waste of time, but go ahead.”

“Have you ever been alone with Jericho? And that could mean even while you were still working for Mr. Appleruth.”

“Not that I can remember—unless maybe he came into the office when I was there by myself. But he never talked to me. He always acted shy around me.”

“Did you ever flirt with him?” I asked.

She wrinkled her nose. “No, I never liked Jericho. He has the crazy eyes.”

“Did you ever pose for an artist?” Marco asked. “Ever have your portrait done?”

She shook her head. “Never.”

“Did Sergio ever take a photo of you naked?” I asked.

“I am too modest for that,” she said, reaching for her glass.

Seriously, had she looked in a mirror lately?

“Why do you need to know that?” she asked.

“Sometimes people share photos,” I said, trying to be tactful.

“Not my Sergio. There is no way he would have shared anything so private. He didn’t even like other men looking at me.”

“Did you ever see Jericho or any of the other men take a photograph of you?” Marco asked.

“Not that I am aware of. Why?”

“It’s always possible that Jericho painted you from a photograph,” Marco said.

“If he took a photograph of me, I did not know about it.”

Marco glanced at me to see whether I wanted to ask anything, and I gave a small shake of my head. “Okay, Rosa,” he said, “that’s all we need to know.”

“I have not changed my mind about Adrian Prada,” she said, walking us to the door. “But if Jericho is as
loco
as he appears, then maybe he and Adrian acted together to injure my husband.”

“We’ll work on that,” Marco said.

“How is Sergio today?” I asked.

Rosa’s expressive mouth curved downward. “No better. Maybe a little worse. And my poor Petey. Every evening he asks when his papa will be coming home, and I have no answer for him.”

I gave her a hug. “Thanks for the tea, Rosa. And please don’t feel obligated to come to work if you need to be at the hospital.”

“Thank you. Both of you.”

“So no burning down anyone’s house,” Marco warned her.

She fingered the lightning bolt pendant. “I won’t.”

I saw a gleam in her eye that told me she had something else in mind.

On our way home, I said, “I believe her story, Marco.”

“And yet the paintings exist.”

“Maybe Jericho carries a secret passion for Rosa and painted her from his imagination. Maybe he even caused Sergio’s accident, thinking he might have a chance with her.”

“The problem is, Sunshine, that we can’t question him without giving away that we know about the paintings, and then we run the risk of having him press charges against us for invasion of privacy. But maybe we can get one of the other men to talk. In fact”—he glanced at his watch—“here’s an idea. I’ve got time before I need to be at the bar. Let’s pay Clive a surprise visit right now.”

“I’ve got an even better idea. We’re out of groceries, and the store is on the way. Let’s stop there first.”

*   *   *

Clive Bishop rented a room by the month at the Thrifty-Inn Motel. Built in the 1950s, the one-story, white-brick, fifteen-room inn sat at the juncture of two highways on the southwest edge of New Chapel. There had been a few drug busts at the hotel in recent years, but with increased police surveillance, it was basically a low-key operation.

An old man seated on a stool behind the counter in the motel office gave us Clive’s room number and told us that he was in.

“Great guy, that young Brit,” the man said, scratching his chin through a scraggly gray beard. “Very outgoing. Usually has a funny story for me, although I can’t always catch everything he says with that
furrin
accent and all. A nicer feller you’d never want to meet. Come the weekend, though, you won’t see him leave his room at all. Just holes up there with a couple cases of beer and a bucket of chicken. And don’t try catchin’ him on a Saturday night, either. That’s when he entertains the ladies, if you get my drift.”