Evil In Carnations (9 page)

“Splitsville? Have you been watching sitcoms from the sixties? Of course we’re not. I merely went with Nikki to a speed-dating event to help her screen guys. Who told you about it?”

“I have my sources. So poor Nikki has lost her mojo, huh? Did you find anyone for her?”

“Is that why you’re here, Jill? To get fodder for gossip?”

“Abby, I’m hurt. Can’t I stop by to see how you are?”

That would be a first. “What do you need, Jillian?”

“A floral arrangement for a dinner party, but not just any floral arrangement. I want something spectacular. Something so awesome that mouths will drop open.”

“And you need this awesome arrangement when?”

“Tonight.”

“Are you serious? I can’t pull an idea like that out of thin air. I’ll have to study my books and floral magazines, ask Lottie’s advice. . . .”

“And I want to help you put it together.”

“Forget it.”

“Abby, I’m desperate! Claymore is bringing over his bosses and their wives, and those women are so clever and accomplished that there’s no way I can compete. But if I can say that I had a hand in creating a jaw-dropping floral arrangement, at least I have something to offer.”

“You don’t have to compete, Jill. It’s not a race.”

“But I do need to make a good impression. Claymore is up for a very big promotion. He’s counting on me to dazzle them.”

“By saying you made a floral arrangement? That’s ridiculous. Besides, you have a lot to offer on your own.”

“Like what?”

I searched for something positive to say, trying to keep my face toward the sunshine, as Grace had suggested. “Well, you’re fashionable. I mean, who knows clothing better than you? And then there’s your business as a wardrobe consultant.”

“All that makes me is a shopper, Abby. A
shopper
!” She dropped her head into her hands, her hair cascading forward like a waterfall, her shoulders shaking in silent sobs.

Add
drama queen
to that list. “Jill. Here’s a thought. Why don’t you create a spectacular, jaw-dropping, gourmet meal for them?”

She lifted her head to give me the evil eye. “That’s the caterer’s job.”

Silly me. I forgot. Jillian knew how to make only one thing: Jell-O.

She put her head down again, moaning in agony.

Hearing groans, Lottie came through the curtain in a rush, saw Jillian’s bent head, then tried to back through the curtain before my cousin noticed her.

“Lottie,” Jillian exclaimed, jumping up, “you’ll help me, won’t you?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Lottie replied warily. “Depends what you need.”

Jillian quickly filled Lottie in, while Lottie’s eyes darted between my cousin and me, as though trying to gauge my reaction. “I suppose we can do that,” she said at the end.

“Oh, thank you!” Jillian gushed, and tried to wrap her arms around Lottie, but it was a stretch. “What time should I be here to work on the arrangement?”

“Closing time,” I muttered.

“No, seriously,” Jillian said, pulling on her gloves.

“Five minutes before closing time.”

“Be here at four thirty,” Lottie said.

“Thank you so, so, so much!” Jillian blew kisses at us, then swept out of the room.

“Sorry, sweetie,” Lottie said. “It was the only way I knew to get her out of your hair. But don’t worry. I’ll figure out something she can help us with that’ll knock the socks off her guests.” She started away, then stopped to mutter, “Did I just say that?”

I kept my eye on the clock as I worked on orders, watching the hands inch toward eleven thirty. Then, with the Monday-morning coffee rush winding down, I grabbed my coat off the back of the chair and slipped it on.

“Would you mind if I dashed down to Dave’s office?” I asked Lottie and Grace. “Nikki is supposed to meet with him, and I’d like to be there.”

“We’ll cover, sweetie,” Lottie said.

“Keep your face to the sunshine,” Grace called.

 

Thick gray clouds blanketed the sky as I took a shortcut across the courthouse lawn. The grass was crunchy and brown, the ground frozen, and the temperature cold enough to make me reach for the knit gloves wadded in my coat pockets. As I waited to cross the street, I pulled out my cell phone and hit speed dial number two. Marco answered in one ring.

“What’s the news?”

“All I know is that the police released Nikki for now, and she has a meeting with Dave in five minutes. I’m on my way to his office to get more information.”

“Dave isn’t going to let you butt into their meeting, Sunshine.”

“I won’t be butting in. I just want to know what’s going on.”

“That’s butting in. And you’re forgetting about lawyer-client confidentiality, not to mention that Nikki might not even want you there.”

“Why wouldn’t she want me there? Besides, it’s a little late for me not to be involved, don’t you think, considering that I got her into this predicament?” I stopped in front of Dave’s door. “I’ll call you afterward and let you know what happened.”

Tucking the phone in my coat pocket, I pushed open the door and trotted up the stairs to Dave’s second-floor suite in the early 1900s building. “Hi,” I said to Helen, as I entered the small reception area. “Has Nikki arrived yet?”

“Yes,” she said, her fingers flying over the keyboard.

“Good. I’ll just slip quietly inside the office—”

She threw out an arm to stop me. “No, you won’t, not without Dave’s okay.” Then she picked up her phone and buzzed Dave. “Abby is here.” She listened a moment, then hung up. “Dave says to have a seat in the waiting area.” She pointed to the row of chairs against the wall.

Why was he keeping me out of the meeting? Surely Nikki would want me at her side.

A few minutes later, Dave’s office door opened and he motioned for me to come in. I sprang out of the chair and hurried in to find Nikki seated in one of the chairs facing Dave’s desk. She had changed her outfit and styled her hair, so obviously she’d been home to clean up. Upon seeing me, she stood to give me a hug.

“Are you all right?” I asked, leaning back to study her face for signs of stress. “Did the cops try to rattle you? Did they mistreat you in any way?”

“I’m okay, just jittery.”

“What’s this nonsense about them releasing you
for now
?”

“Abby,” Dave said, “Nikki’s had a rough morning. Sit down and I’ll fill you in—with Nikki’s permission, of course.”

At Nikki’s nod, I sat down and clasped my hands tightly in my lap. “Okay. Shoot.”

“Here it is,” Dave said, “and please hold your questions until I finish. The cops received an anonymous tip alleging that Nikki was at the crime scene with the victim. They were also able to match her boot prints to prints found at the scene. Now they’re analyzing clay samples from the soles to see if they’re a match, too.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, massaging my temples. “Nikki went out to dinner with Jonas—the victim—so I’m sure a lot of people saw them together. That’s no big secret. And I don’t understand about the clay on her boots. Where was Jonas killed?”

“At the site of his latest development,” Dave said. “A subdivision called Chateaux en Carnations. His body was discovered in his sales office inside a model home. He’d been stabbed in the neck several times and apparently bled out there.”

“Back up a minute,” I said. “The murder happened at his development? Then how did they find Nikki’s boot prints there?”

Dave cleared his throat, casting a glance at Nikki as though waiting for her to speak up, but she seemed preoccupied with chipping dark purple polish off her thumbnail. It was a nervous habit she’d carried over from childhood. As I remembered, it meant she was hiding something. Was she more involved than she was letting on?

“
N
ikki?” I asked with growing suspicion, watching her working furiously on her thumbnail. “What am I missing? How did the clay get on your boots? Did you go to the development with Jonas?”

She hesitated a moment, then nodded, confirming my fear. At least now I understood why the police hadn’t released her.

Practically holding my breath, I asked, “Did you go inside the model home?”

She lifted her head, gazing at me with wounded eyes. “Are you asking if I killed him?”

“Of course not. But why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

She shrugged again, glancing away, probably to avoid seeing my disappointment.

“Abby,” Dave said, “you can talk to her about that later. We have more important matters to discuss right now.” Turning to Nikki he said, “Were you able to come up with any witnesses?”

Nikki shook her head, chewing on her thumbnail now. “It was after midnight when Jonas dropped me off at our apartment building. I didn’t see a soul around.”

Dave frowned in thought, tapping his pen on the yellow pad. “If the detectives are able to prove you were at the murder scene, it’s imperative that we establish a solid alibi for you during the time the murder took place”—he paused to check his notes—“which, by the coroner’s estimate, was between one and two o’clock Monday morning.”

While I was flying home from Key West. I glanced at Nikki in concern. “I can’t vouch for you.”

“I know,” Nikki said, her big doe eyes starting to tear up.

“Are you sure none of our neighbors were around?” I asked her. “What about the Samples across the hall? Sometimes they take Peewee out for a walk late at night.”

Nikki shook her head. “No one was around, Abby.”

“What about Jillian?” I asked, since my cousin also lived in our apartment building. “She and Claymore come in late sometimes.”

Nikki shook her head again, a lone tear running down her face. “I’m screwed, aren’t I?”

I grabbed her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t think that way. There has to be someone who saw you.”

“Which is why I’m going to suggest hiring a private investigator to canvass your apartment building,” Dave said, “and the neighborhood, if need be, to find witnesses to corroborate your alibi. Abby, stop waving at me. Don’t even think about volunteering for the job. This needs more time than you’ve got to give. You have a flower shop to run, remember?”

I lowered my hand.

“What if we can’t find anyone?” Nikki asked, wiping off the wet trail down her cheek.

Dave leaned back in his chair. “Then I wouldn’t be able to use an alibi defense. There’d be no way to support it.”

“What would that leave?” Nikki asked him.

“If it came to that—and I trust it won’t—we’d have to decide whether to take our chances with a jury or investigate ourselves to try to point the detectives toward the real culprit.”

Take our chances with a jury? No way was I about to leave Nikki’s fate to chance. But we were far from reaching that point. “Let’s back up a moment,” I said. “Have the police ruled out the possibility that Jonas was killed by a robber? Couldn’t someone have broken in, not realizing Jonas was there?”

“There’s no mention of it in the police report,” Dave said, “which would indicate that there was also no evidence of it—no signs of a break-in or of anything ransacked or stolen. It would also indicate that Jonas let the killer in.”

“Have they done a fingerprint check?” I asked.

“Too soon to have a report on that.”

“If Jonas let someone in,” I said, “then was killed by that person, doesn’t it make sense that the killer had it in for him? That’s a reasonable conclusion, isn’t it?”

“I’d say so,” Dave replied.

“That should automatically rule Nikki out because she just met the guy. What would her motive be?”

“Abby, think back to what you learned in your law classes,” Dave said. “A motive isn’t needed to indict someone. All it takes are means and opportunity. The prosecutor would propose his own motive.”

Since thinking back to my law classes usually brought on a migraine, I moved on to my next argument. “But look at the flimsy evidence they have, Dave. A boot print? A lot of women wear the same brand. There’s nothing unique about that. It’s circumstantial. And as for the clay, half the land in town has a clay base.”

Dave clasped his fingers behind his head and leaned back. “This isn’t the kind of clay found in our soil. It’s a distinctive blue-gray clay dredged from the bottom of a retention pond up north, near Lake Michigan. Jonas bought it on the cheap and trucked it in to use in the landscaping. He got as far as laying it around the model home; then the Indiana Department of Environmental Management got wind of it and pulled his permits, fearing any runoff would destroy the wetlands. The clay is so dense that water can’t get through and plants die. Naturally, the scrapings from Nikki’s boot will have to be analyzed before they can be presented as evidence, but together with the boot prints and the anonymous tip, the police have got enough to peg Nikki as a suspect.”

The bad news just kept on coming. “Did they find the murder weapon?”

“Not as far as I know. The report lists it as a wide-bladed knife.”

“What about the anonymous tipster?” I asked. “Why would the cops trust the word of someone who won’t even give a name?”

“If that were all they had, it probably wouldn’t be enough, but as I said, put it together with the print and the clay . . .”

I didn’t say anything to Dave or Nikki, but I suddenly had the unwelcome thought that Nikki’s being the target of this investigation might be partly my fault, too. How many of the detectives had I ticked off by stepping in and helping solve their cases? That only added to the guilt I already felt for insisting Nikki attend the speed-dating event.

“If our investigator isn’t able to establish your alibi,” Dave said to Nikki, “then we’ll have him come up with a list of possible suspects and narrow it down to the most likely, so we can point the detectives in the right direction. So my suggestion is to hire Marco for the job. He’s proven his worth many times over. But it’s your call.”