A Root Awakening: A Flower Shop Mystery (8 page)

“I’m sorry, Rosa.”

“I have to go,” she said, her voice choked with tears. “I will see you tomorrow morning.”

She hung up before I could say good-bye. I hadn’t even had a chance to ask her about the black eye, but after hearing about Sergio’s condition, I was glad I hadn’t. I couldn’t imagine what emotional state I’d be in if Marco was in a coma. Besides, would a wife talk so lovingly about a husband who had given her a shiner?

If she wanted you to believe she was innocent she would,
the little voice in my head whispered.

I called Marco to tell him about the conversation, but he was too busy to talk, so to get my mind off Rosa I took Seedy for a walk. As we made our tour of the block, I noticed a
FOR SALE
sign in front of a big two-story and my thoughts turned back to Daisy Jones. So as soon as we were back home, I found the notes I’d
tucked away and called Mr. Kerby, the landlord of the apartment complex where the Joneses had previously lived.

Using the delivery excuse, I asked Kerby if he knew of the Joneses’ whereabouts, and he steered me toward a Mrs. Welldon, an elderly woman who lived in the apartment across the hall from the Joneses’ rental.

“Hello, Mrs. Welldon,” I said pleasantly. “I’m sorry to be calling so late. This is Abby Knight from Bloomers Flower Shop.” When would I remember to add Salvare?

“From Florida, you say?” she asked in a warbly voice.

“Bloomers Flower Shop.”

“You’ll have to speak up, dear.”

“Bloomers Flower Shop,” I said loudly. Seedy got up from the sofa and hobbled into the other room. I had disturbed her postwalk nap.

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“We’re on the square in New Chapel.”

“Well, I’ll just have to make it a point to get out there one of these days. Thanks for your call. Bye, now.”

“No, wait! I have a delivery for Sandra Jones, but I’m unable to locate her. Your landlord said you might be able to help.”

“How nice that Sandra is getting flowers. You know, I believe Sandra’s in New Chapel, too. Goodness, I haven’t heard from her in over a year. I hope she’s doing well. And that dear little boy of hers . . . what was his name? Sandra used to send him over with a plate of cookies every Friday. Bud! That was it. They were such nice neighbors, the Joneses, always willing to lend a hand. And whenever I took sick, Sandra would be right over to help. She was a nurse at one time, you know.”

“What did you think of Daisy?”

“Oh, my—of course I would love a daisy, but don’t make a special trip here just for me.”

I raised my voice. “I meant their little girl Daisy.”

“I’m not quite catching that, dear.”

“I’ll bring your daisies out tomorrow, Mrs. Welldon. Thank you.”

I hung up the phone and turned to find Seedy peering around the corner. “You can come out now. I’m done.”

She cast me a reproachful eye as she returned to her spot on the sofa.

Thursday

When I arrived at Bloomers the next morning, Rosa was already hard at work, dusting shelves in the shop, singing at the top of her lungs. She paused to call, “Good morning, Abby,” and it was only then that I heard the radio playing in the background. Her voice had drowned it out.

I slipped into the parlor for a cup of coffee with Grace and Lottie while Rosa continued her aria. Both of my assistants were smiling.

“I told you she’d liven the place up,” Lottie said.

“Her husband must be doing better,” I said.

“Actually, his condition has deteriorated from yesterday,” Grace said.

“Then why does she sound so happy?” I asked.

“Singing can be a stress-buster,” Lottie said. “Herman whistles when he’s stressed. It’s like a steam valve.”

“I hope that’s all it is,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Lottie asked.

“I believe Abby means that Rosa is a suspect,” Grace said, then took a sip of her tea.

Lottie glanced at me for confirmation.

“You know Marco’s rule,” I said. “Everyone’s a suspect until we rule them out.”

We finished our morning meeting; then I headed to the workroom to get started on orders. I checked to see what had come in overnight, printed them out, then turned to find Rosa standing inside the curtain with a Cheshire cat grin on her face and her arms behind her back, as though she was holding something she didn’t want me to see.

She had on shiny black knee-high boots and dark blue jeggings with a cream-colored sweater whose neckline was hidden behind the yellow bib apron. Perfect. Hanging over the bib part of the apron was her lightning bolt pendant.

Remembering that I was supposed to be wearing my apron, I took it off my chair and slipped it over my head as I asked her what was up.

“I have a surprise for you,” she said with an impish smile. “You know those ugly eyeball pots?”

“That my mother made?”

“Those are the ones.”

I couldn’t suppress my scowl. Why did it bother me when someone else made fun of Mom’s work?

“I’m sorry, Abby. I know you love your mother, but they
are
ugly. So I was thinking, what can I do to them so that everyone will want one? I thought and thought until I was making myself crazy. ‘Ay-ay-ay, Rosa,’ I said. ‘Stop it.’ And then it hit me. Ay, ay, ay—or eye, eye, eye. It’s all about the eyes.”

She brought forward my mom’s hideous pot, now filled with a beautiful arrangement of silk flowers. “You see?” She began to point. “Here you have white irises. Get it? The iris is part of the eye. And here you have apple blossoms. The apple of your eye, you see? Then you have pink carnations for pinkeye, and ivy”—she pointed to her eye—“
eye
-vee for greenery. Now you can say that it is an eye-eye-eye pot.”

Ay caramba!
It was sheer genius. I stared at the flowers in astonishment as my mind continued to work with the theme.

“You don’t like it, do you?” she said in a downcast voice.

“Rosa, it’s amazing.”

She brightened immediately. “I know! I amazed myself. Lottie and Grace said maybe we could have a drawing for it to get people in the shop, and then they’d want to buy the other pots, too.”

“When did you make this?”

“This morning. After I put my son on the school bus I came here to work on it.”

The eye pot gave me an idea. I didn’t relish the idea of confronting Rosa with allegations of her ailing husband’s abuse, but since Grace and Lottie were busy getting set up for the day, now would be a good time to finish questioning her. So I said, “Maybe we could do one with black-eyed Susans.”

Rosa laughed as she placed her project on the table “Black-eyed Susans—like a black eye. I like that.”

Not the reaction I would’ve expected from a victim.

“As soon as I am done dusting,” she said, “I will fill the rest of the ugly pots.”

“Why don’t you work on them later?” I pulled out a stool, perched on it, then patted the one beside me. “I’d like to talk to you about something else right now.”

“This sounds serious.” She sat down and propped her chin in her palm, studying me with her luminous brown eyes. “Are you going to fire me?”

“N
o, Rosa, I’m not going to fire you. You’re doing a great job.”

She looked heavenward, made the sign of the cross, and whispered,
“Gracias a Dios
.
”
Then she said, “So what can be so serious?”

“This is really awkward, and I hate having to ask you, but it’s important that we know everything.”

She patted my knee. “Go ahead, Abby. Don’t be afraid. I won’t bite.”

I inhaled, then blew it out. “Did Sergio ever mistreat you?”

She tilted her head the way Seedy did when she was puzzled. “Mistreat me how?”

“Did he ever hit you?”

“Sergio?” Her startled expression changed to anger. She shook her head, her long curls bouncing around her shoulders. “Never did my Sergio hit me, Abby. Never! Who said such a mean thing?”

“All three of the men we talked to yesterday. They said that was why Adrian and Sergio didn’t get along—that Adrian didn’t like the way Sergio treated you.”

She smacked her palm against the slate top. “They are lying!”

“Just let me finish.”

She muttered something under her breath about the men, then huffed in disgust and made a forward motion with her hand. “Fine. Go ahead.”

“When we asked if they had any proof, Jericho told us that you came to pick up Sergio once and had a black eye. When he asked you how you got it, you told him it was Sergio’s fault and you said to ask him how it happened.”

“Yes, it was Sergio’s fault. He put his big work boots right in my way. I told him a hundred times to leave them outside, but would he listen? No. He is as stubborn as a mule. So one morning I came into my kitchen from the garage and tripped over them.”

“Wait,” I said, grabbing a pen and pad of paper from my desk. “Let me write this down. How did you get a black eye?”

“When I fell, I hit my face against the corner of the chair’s seat. It was Sergio’s fault that I hurt myself, but he didn’t leave his boots there to
make
me fall. He left his boots there because he was lazy. If he had ever raised a hand to me, Abby, I would have picked up my heavy skillet and hit him over the head.”

The fierceness of her expression left no doubt in my mind that she spoke the truth.

“These men,” she said scornfully, “they know only one side of Sergio, but I knew his other side, his soft side. He would do anything for me, Abby.” Her mouth began to tremble. “He was grumpy, yes, and I know that he could be a critical, demanding boss, but he was a good husband.”

Rosa got up and plucked a tissue from the box on my
desk to wipe her eyes. “What else did they accuse Sergio of? Pushing the ladder himself?”

“No, but one of them thought he might have gotten dizzy and passed out from not eating that morning.”

“How do they know what Sergio ate that morning?” She tossed the tissue in the trash can under the table and sat back down. “The doctors can tell you what he ate. They would know what was in his stomach. It was the same thing he eats every morning. Huevos rancheros. He refuses to eat anything else. Believe me, Abby, there was nothing wrong with him Monday morning. He slept well—this I know because his snoring kept me awake—and woke up as hungry as a horse.”

“Was he diabetic?”

“No. He took no medicine, Abby—nothing, not even for high blood pressure. There was no reason for him to pass out. Someone pushed him backward, and I’m telling you: It was Adrian Prada, and those other men know it. They just don’t want to get in trouble with Adrian because he will be foreman next.”

“How do you know that?”

“Everyone knows he is next in line. He will not only be boss but he will make a much bigger salary, too. Do you see why he wants Sergio dead? Money and power.”

More like money, power, and lusting after Rosa.

“Did Sergio ever get into a fistfight with any of the men?”

She shrugged. “He never told me about anything like that.”

“Then you never saw any cuts or bruises?”

“I saw cuts all the time—it was the rough nature of the job—but bruises from fights? Not that I am aware.”

“Then you don’t know about a fight between Sam and Sergio?”

“If it happened, Sergio didn’t tell me.”

I finished writing it down. “That should take care of it. Thanks for understanding.”

She put her arm around my shoulders. “That’s okay, Abby. You’re doing your job. Now I have to do mine.” She pinched her nose and pretended to wave away dust motes. “Some of those armoire shelves have not been cleaned in a long time. But I will take care of them from now on. Don’t worry about a thing.” She paused at the curtain to say, “I hope my singing isn’t bothering you. I promise I will stop when the shop opens.”

“That’s fine. And I’m sorry, but I forgot to ask how your husband is today.”

“Not good,” she said with a sad sigh. “Worse than yesterday.”

And yet she sang happy songs. So maybe I did have one more little bomb—why she seemed so cheerful when her husband’s health was failing.

“Rosa—”

“If I think about Sergio,” she continued, “I will cry, and believe me, I cry loud, and that will scare away the customers. So instead I sing something that makes everyone smile. Then I smile back and feel a little better. I’m sorry. What were you going to say?”

I grabbed the eye pot. “Would you find a good spot for this?”

*   *   *

Over my lunch hour, I made the thirty-minute trip to Maraville to see Mrs. Welldon, using my GPS to navigate the streets of the big, sprawling urban city. I pulled into
a visitor’s spot in the parking lot in front of the five-story apartment building, one of a dozen identical buildings in the complex, and entered a small vestibule where the mailboxes were located. Tenants’ names were posted on each box with a buzzer below. I found the Welldon name, pressed the buzzer, and waited.

“Yes?” I heard the warbling voice say.

“This is Abby Knight from Bloomers Flower Shop. I have flowers for you.”

“Well, aren’t you sweet? Come right up.”

She buzzed me in and I headed for the elevator. The building was old and in need of new carpeting and paint but otherwise seemed solidly built. I exited on the fifth floor and located Mrs. Welldon’s unit at the far end of the hallway.

“Come in, dear,” she said, swinging her door wide. She was a diminutive white-haired woman with an elfin face that was as wrinkled as a prune. She had on a purple jogging suit with pink stripes down the legs and fuzzy white slippers that seemed too big for her petite frame.

“Here you go,” I said, holding out the bouquet of daisies. “Compliments of Bloomers Flower Shop.”

“Oh, my! Look how many there are. Let me put them in some water.” She shuffled up the hallway in her oversized slippers. “I was just about to have lunch. Won’t you join me?”

“I wish I could, but I need to get back to the shop.” In fact, I was allowing myself only ten minutes to question her about the Joneses. I sniffed the air, my stomach growling at the delicious aroma wafting from her kitchen. “Smells like bratwurst.”

“You’re close,” she called. “It’s polish sausage and sauerkraut.”

Yum.
I hadn’t had that dish since I was a kid, when my best friend Nikki Hiduke’s Polish-descended mother would invite me over for dinner.

My stomach rumbled a warning that it needed food soon. If I didn’t eat now, I’d have to pick up something on the way back to New Chapel, and during the noon hour there was always a line at the drive-through. So what was the difference if I spent ten minutes eating Mrs. Welldon’s scrumptious lunch or waited in line for junk food?

I slipped off my jacket and followed her into the kitchen. “Maybe I’ll stay after all.”

Her kitchen had the tallest cabinets I’d ever seen, and when she opened one to take out bowls, I noticed that the shelves above the second one were empty, no doubt because she couldn’t reach them. The ceramic-tiled countertops were burgundy and the linoleum was gray with burgundy flecks. Her refrigerator was small and old-fashioned and her stove had seen a lot of use.

She dished up two bowls, poured two glasses of iced tea, and sat down across from me at a small round table covered with an oilcloth covering in a bright floral print.

“Tell me what you think of it,” she said as I forked a bite.

I chewed blissfully as the salty, sour, and sweet juices coated my tongue, and after swallowing I sighed. “Mrs. Welldon, this is absolutely the best sausage and sauerkraut I’ve ever had.”

“I’m so glad you like it. I don’t often have company,
so this is a real treat for me. Now tell me, dear, were you able to locate Sandra?”

“Not yet, but I did find out that her husband is a janitor at a school here in Maraville.”

“Yes, he had taken that job before they moved away.”

“Do you know why they moved?”

“Sandra said the apartment was too small for them. Frankly, I was surprised. The apartments are quite roomy.”

“So tell me about the children.”

She smiled sweetly. “Bud was a dear little boy, so thoughtful. Sandra is doing a fine job of raising him.”

“What about Daisy?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Their daughter, Daisy?”

Mrs. Welldon looked upward, as though thinking. Instead of answering, however, she forked another bite, chewed slowly, swallowed, then took a drink of tea to wash it down. She glanced up to find me watching her. “Did you want more food, dear?”

“No, this is plenty. I had asked about Daisy.”

She looked confused. “You did? I’m so sorry. My mind isn’t what it used to be. I’m ashamed to say I’ve forgotten about her. But rest assured Sandra is a fine mother, and Norm is such a kindhearted man. I couldn’t have asked for better neighbors.”

“How long did they live here?” I asked.

“Oh, heavens, seems like they were here only a short time, but as you’ll find out one day, time moves a lot faster when you’re as old as I am. If I had to guess, I’d say two years.”

“But you definitely do remember now that there was a little girl?”

“Daisy.”

“Right.”

“That’s what I’m saying. Her name was Daisy. Didn’t we already establish that, dear? Better finish your meal before it turns cold.”

I ate another bite and savored it for a moment. “This truly is the best I’ve ever had, Mrs. Welldon. But getting back to the Joneses, did Sandra ever tell you anything about how she met Norm? Where they grew up?”

“You’re a curious young lady, aren’t you?”

“Well, you know, there’s nothing like a romantic ‘how we met’ story.”

That seemed to satisfy her. “Sandra did mention Bowling Green a few times. She said it was such a cozy, friendly place to live. I remember asking her why she left if she liked it so much, and she said that their circumstances had changed. What those circumstances were, I don’t know.”

“Did you ever notice anything unusual about them?”

“Now let me think. Unusual . . . unusual . . . Well, I have to say I found it rather unusual that Sandra and Norm were against public school educations, especially since Norm worked at a school. But homeschooling is becoming something of a trend these days, isn’t it?”

“I really don’t know much about homeschooling. Did Sandra ever say why they were against public education?”

“She told me that she could do a better job, that schools weren’t focusing enough on the three R’s.” Mrs. Welldon shrugged. “To each his own, I guess.”

“Did the children seem happy?”

“Oh, my, yes. That little Bud would just skip up the
hallway singing his little songs, his blue eyes sparkling so. It did my heart good to see him.”

“And Daisy?”

“Oh, well, of course her, too.” She took another bite. “I must say, this did turn out well, didn’t it?”

“It did, Mrs. Welldon. Thank you so much for inviting me.” I took my empty bowl to the kitchen and set it in the sink, then gave her a gentle hug. “Enjoy your flowers.”

As I drove home, I reviewed what I’d learned. Clearly, Mrs. Welldon’s memory wasn’t as sharp as it could have been, but if she remembered Bud, why had she had such a difficult time recalling the cute little girl with the curious green gaze?

I wished I could share my thoughts with Marco, but I didn’t want to tip my hand. If my investigation came to nothing, it was best he didn’t know. If I did find something concrete on which to base my suspicions, I’d bring him on board at that time.

Meanwhile, I had to plan my Friday evening trip to Maraville’s Central Elementary School so that no one would know I had left New Chapel.

*   *   *

As soon as we’d had a quick dinner that evening, Marco and I headed northeast to an unincorporated part of the county, where homes were nestled into a lush valley dotted with trees and ponds, many with barns on their properties. We’d left as early as possible to make use of the remaining daylight. Unfortunately, the brief spell of warm March weather had vanished, leaving temperatures in the thirties with a brisk wind that rattled the bare tree branches and made my teeth chatter.

“Did you have any luck finding a witness this morning?” I asked Marco.

“I caught quite a few neighbors still at home, including people at the two houses directly across the street from the Victorian, but none of them saw Sergio fall. I also spoke to Appleruth and asked him to find out which painters were on the job that day so we can interview them. He said he’d talk to them individually and weed out those who couldn’t have seen the accident.”