Nightshade on Elm Street: A Flower Shop Mystery (37 page)

A buffet table near the door was loaded with pans of meaty lasagna, risotto with mushrooms, and chicken linguine in pesto sauce, big bowls of golden potato salad and colorful bean salad, and plates of crusty Italian bread. Another table held platters of panna cotta with strawberries, tiramisu, zabaglione, and a towering cake made to look like a Roman cathedral.

The whole room, in fact, looked Italian, with large posters of Rome, Venice, Capri, Livorno, Pisa, and Milan hanging from the walls, along with the streamers I’d purchased. Yellow paper tablecloths covered the round tables, with pots of brightly colored gerbera daisies in the middle. And as favors—Mom’s sleep masks and the pinwheels I’d ordered, which some of the women were waving around, having a great time.

“Oh, my God, Abs,” Jillian cried, rushing toward me. Before I could hide behind Marco, she had grabbed my hand and was leading me toward the women’s restroom. “I thought you’d never arrive. We’ve got to get you fixed up.”

“Marco?” I called back.

He gave me a wink. “Didn’t I say you’d be fine?” And then he walked toward the buffet table, leaving me in Jillian’s hands.

My mom met us in the restroom carrying a dress bag and a shopping bag. While Mom unzipped my old sundress and slid it down, Jillian slipped the green dress over my head—the same one she’d brought to show me at Pryce’s cottage. Mom had me step into the same expensive Jimmy Choo shoes that Jillian had brought to Bloomers, while Jillian arranged my hair in a loose updo
using the tortoiseshell clip she’d tried to use unsuccessfully on me before.

“I found the best baby name of all,” she whispered in my ear. “I’ll tell you after the shower.”

I couldn’t wait.

When they were done, they turned me to look in the mirror.

“Well, Abigail, what do you think?” Mom asked, beaming behind me.

“Isn’t it perfect?” Jillian asked, pressing her hands together in excitement.

I gazed at my reflection in shock. There stood a chicly dressed and coiffed redhead who merely resembled me. And she had on kickin’ shoes, too. I couldn’t wait to show Marco.

“So?” Jillian asked, as I wobbled toward the door on heels that felt like toothpicks.

I went back and gave both her and Mom hugs. “I feel like a princess.”

“Your prince is waiting,” Mom said, then hugged me again. “I’m so happy for you, honey. You really have found your Prince Charming.”

“If you only knew how wonderful he is, Mom.”

“If you’re talking about what happened at the Osbornes’ cottage,” Mom said, starting to tear up, “Marco filled us in, but you can give us the full story after the shower. If I talk now about what almost happened to you, I’ll cry.”

Jillian sniffled, too, then ran to clutch me against her. “My wittle cuz,” she sobbed, then sniffled again, and hurried out of the washroom with a wail.

Mom shook her head. “Pregnancy hormones.”

“You know about the baby, too?”

“Who doesn’t? Jillian has been going around telling everyone, then making them promise not to say a word.”
Mom sighed. “I can’t even begin to imagine what kind of mother Jillian will be, can you?”

“No,” I said, and laughed, because we both knew what kind of mother she’d be—a fashion-conscious obsessive hovercraft of a mother.

“I’m so relieved you’re safe,” Mom said, pausing just before the hall entrance. “You’re my baby, Abigail. You always will be. If something happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.” She smiled through her tears. “That’s why I’m so happy you’ve found Marco. If anyone can keep you safe, it’s him. And if anyone can make that terrific man happy, it’s you.”

We walked into the hall, arm in arm. I’d never felt closer to my mom than I did at that moment.

Just inside, we were met by Marco and his mom, who looked gorgeous, as usual.

Marco gave me a slow once-over, his deep love for me shining in his eyes. “You look amazing, Sunshine.”

“Bella!”
Francesca said, holding me at arm’s length to admire me. “
Magnifica!
Marco, your bride-to-be puts you to shame. You should have dressed up!”

“Abigail,” Mom said, “Francesca made most of the food here today.”

“Thank you, Francesca,” I said. “The food looks delicious.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t have your festival theme,” Francesca said. “Your mother, your father, Lottie, Grace, Jillian, Claymore, and I did the best we could to decorate at the last minute.”

“The hall looks wonderful,” I said. “I feel like I’m on vacation in Italy.”

“Just so you know,” Francesca said with a wry smile, “everything has been prepared with love and sanitation.”

“And all that Chinese food you bought,”
Mom said, putting her arm around me, “is in the chest freezer in our garage.”

“It’s a good thing you like Chinese,” Jillian said snarkily. “You’ll be eating it for the next six months.”

“Can’t wait,” Marco said.

I turned to gaze through the wide doorway at all the guests enjoying themselves, then said to Marco, “Our wedding shower is a success after all.”

“And you didn’t have to do it all yourself,” Grace said, gliding up to stand in our circle.

“Try
any
of it,” someone added.

I turned to find Nikki standing behind me, her arms open, ready to hug me. “I came back from my conference early,” she said. “I wouldn’t have missed your bridal shower for the world.”

“As George Bernard Shaw wrote in
Pygmalion
,” Grace said, “‘We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.’”

“We did the flower centerpieces for you this morning,” Lottie said, squeezing in beside Grace.

I gazed at all their loving faces and my heart overflowed with happiness. “I don’t think anything could top this. Do you, Marco?”

He moved in next to me and put his arm around my back. “I don’t either. Thank you all for pulling the shower together at the last moment.”

“It’s the best gift anyone could have given us,” I said, eyeing a mound of wrapped presents on a nearby table.

“Ah, but that’s not your big gift,” Francesca said. “Maureen, would you like to do the honors?”

Uh-oh. Mom had made something.

“Abigail,” Mom said, “and Marco.” She took my hand and Marco’s hand in hers. “I wish your father could be here to see your faces, but I couldn’t budge him away
from the baseball game on TV. He was adamant that a bridal shower was for women only.”

Marco gave me a look that said,
I told you so.

“Here’s your surprise,” Mom said. “We—Francesca, your father, and I—got together and decided to give you—are you ready? A destination wedding in beautiful Cozumel, Mexico!”

“We’re going to cruise there on one of those big fancy ships,” Francesca said, pressing her hands together in excitement.

“You know, those megaships with an entire shopping mall inside?” Jillian asked, wedging herself into the circle. “Can you imagine what fun all your guests will have?”

I gave Marco a panicked glance.

“The return trip will be your honeymoon,” Mom added. “It’s a package deal. Your dad found it online.”

“I’ve never been to Cozumel,” Francesca said.

“It’s beautiful,” Mom said. “Jeffrey and I went there a few years ago.”

“I’ve always wanted to go,” Lottie said, rubbing her hands together. “Herman and my boys are really gonna enjoy it.”

At which point everyone began talking at once.

I took Marco’s hand and pulled him out of the circle. “Marco, this is awful!” I whispered. “Can you imagine what it would be like to have our families with us on a cruise ship for days on end? On our honeymoon?”

“I’m trying hard not to imagine it.”

“It’ll be a disaster. You know they won’t leave us alone. And here I was hoping we could go down to Key West for the honeymoon.” I sighed sadly. “That’s out of the question now.”

“Is it?”

“Of course it is. This is a huge gift for our parents to give us. We can’t reject it and hurt their feelings.”

Marco eyed the group of chattering women. “Sounds to me like they’d be going on this cruise whether we would or not, Sunshine.”

“What are you saying?”

Marco pulled me into his arms and gazed at me, a tiny grin playing at one corner of his mouth. “Think about it, Abby. What do you really want to do for your wedding and honeymoon?”

“What do I want to do or what should I do?”

“You know what I mean.”

“What you mean is, this is our wedding. Our honeymoon. Our decision.”

“You bet it is. So what do we do? Pile on board a huge luxury liner with our families and whatever guests want to attend? Or…?”

We gazed at each other for a long moment, needing no words, and then I smiled.

When we kissed to seal the deal, I knew everything was going to work out perfectly, because my gut was never wrong. Almost.

M
onday mornings are the bane of most people’s existence. I, however, view them as curtains going up on a brand-new play. So when I opened the yellow frame door with its charming beveled-glass center and stepped inside my personal theater—that being Bloomers Flower Shop, located in the heart of New Chapel, Indiana’s cozy town square—I couldn’t wait to find out what the opening scene was going to be.

I entered Bloomers stage right and feasted my eyes on the scenery—a plethora of flowers in various arrangements, a veritable artist’s palette of tones, tints, shades, and hues that covered the color spectrum. And then there were the sounds—telephone ringing, bell over the door jingling, and my assistants, Lottie and Grace, coming to greet me with their cheery voices.

“Abby, sweetie,” Lottie said, her head of short, brassy curls shaking a warning, “we’ve got a bad situation. Nine orders came in for funeral arrangements, and there’s not a single lily in the cooler. I don’t know what happened. I thought I ordered them on Thursday, but apparently I forgot. I put in a call to our main supplier, but the truck won’t be here until later today.”

“Abby, dear,” Grace said in her lovely English cadence, “I’m sorry to add to your woes but disaster has
struck the coffee and tea parlor. The espresso machine gave up the ghost, and the clotted cream has curdled well beyond the pale. Also, the chap is here to install the security door in the rear of the shop but says the hinges are so rusty on the old one, it’ll take him twice as long and require that the door stand open for a length of time. He charges hourly, by the way.”

Not exactly the cheerful sounds I’d expected.

“Your cousin Jillian called,” Lottie said, reading from a pink memo. “She said to tell you she’ll be here tomorrow afternoon to something or other.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means she mumbled so I wouldn’t be able to understand her. I asked her to spell it and she said—and I quote—
I. T.
And then she snickered and hung up.”

“And your mum is in the back,” Grace added. “I believe at the moment she’s supervising the door installation.”

Cue the curtain guy and dim the lights. I want a refund on my ticket.

As every good thespian knows, the show must go on, and so must the floral business, for many reasons, the most important of which is to pay the bills. Besides, what could be so awful that it would take away from the joy of my upcoming marriage to the man of my dreams? Another of my mom’s horrific art projects that she expected me to sell at Bloomers? More of Jillian’s harping about my ad hoc wedding plans? Not a chance. Nothing could mar my complete and utter happiness.

“Why is Mom here so early?” I asked.

“We’ll let her go into it, shall we?” Grace suggested, getting a nod of agreement from Lottie.

Grace, a diminutive sixty-something-year-old, was wearing a pale gray skirt and a baby blue sweater set
with silver earrings and a pearl necklace, all of which set off her short, stylish gray hair. Lottie, in contrast, a big-boned, forty-something Kentuckian, had on her traditional white stretch jeans with a bright pink T-shirt and deep pink Keds. Her choice of color, she claimed, ensured she was always “in the pink,” which, as the mother of teenaged quadruplet sons, wasn’t an easy feat.

“Did Mom bring another art project?” I asked, hoping to mentally prepare myself.

“That’s why she’s here,” Lottie said. “Go talk to her. She’s upset.”

I walked through the shop, stepped through the purple curtain into my workroom, and breathed in my nirvana. Although the space was windowless, the colorful blossoms and heady fragrances made the area a veritable tropical garden. Vases of all sizes and containers of dried flowers filled shelves above the counters along two walls. A large, slate-covered worktable occupied the middle of the room; two big walk-in coolers took up one side, and a desk holding my computer equipment and telephone filled the other side. Beneath the table were sacks of potting soil, green foam, and a lined plastic trash can.

Beyond the work room was a tiny galley kitchen and an even tinier bathroom. At the very back was the exit onto the alley, guarded by a big, rusty iron door that had needed to be replaced since probably sometime around 1970. That was where I found my mother, watching a man from the door store struggling with the hinge pins.

“Abigail!” Mom called, brightening. She stepped around the installer and came toward me, putting her arms around me in a motherly hug, the kind she ends by leaning back to inspect me. “Did you have breakfast today? You look pale.”

By pale, she meant my freckles were showing more than usual. Along with being a mere five feet two inches
tall and having fiery red hair, I was also blessed—or cursed, depending upon my mood—with freckles, part of my Irish heritage. Erin Go Braugh.

“Lottie makes breakfast for us on Mondays, so I haven’t eaten yet,” I said. “Why aren’t you in school? What’s up?”

“I skipped the In-Service meeting this morning. Can we sit down?”

Uh oh. That was a bad sign.

My mother, Maureen “Mad Mo” Knight, had been a kindergarten teacher for almost twenty years and always said that after working with five-year-olds for that long, nothing could ruffle her feathers. Her caramel brown hair was always in a neat chin-length bob, her big brown eyes were a sea of cocoa calm, and her peaches-and-cream complexion glowed with good health. The worry lines in her forehead, however, were new.