The Final Arrangement (7 page)

I remembered visiting the mortuaries when I first took over the shop.  Greg Schilling looked at me with his reptilian, half-opened-eyelid gaze.  “Well we have to go to quite a bit of trouble in advertising your product for you.”  That’s how the conversation started; eventually he got to the matter of the expected discount.  Not to mention the holidays, anniversaries, and birthdays when, about three days before hand, I’d get a call from him not specifically asking, but with the intent of me offering to give free flowers.  Like clockwork, every time.  

I felt kind of wrong going to Derrick’s shop after they had just found his corpse in a coffin—before he was supposed to be dead, and in a coffin.  But the window of opportunity had just been opened a crack, and I wanted to slip through before it was slammed shut by another of my competitors

Upon first visiting downtown Ogden one is confronted by a spectrum of businesses and houses as colorful as the city’s past.  The location of Derrick’s shop was no doubt one of the many speak-easies dotting the whole of downtown during prohibition.  It was probably a drop-off site for the transport of bootleg spirits through the network of tunnels rumored to have connected a seedy, thriving underground scene.  Now it was just a shabby hole in the wall next to a vacant furniture store and a dilapidated biker bar.  Not exactly the cozy atmosphere one would think necessary for a nice flower shop.

I parked at the meter in front of the shop, although I could have parked around the corner for free, but I didn’t dare risk getting mugged or worse.  As I entered Derrick’s shop, I could see the sales counter about ten feet back from the front of the store, with a three-door reach-in cooler off to my right.  The place was dark and gloomy, with nothing but yellow florescent bulbs casting a sickly pallor over the space. 

Posters of flower bouquets hung as loners on the walls, providing most of the color in the room. Two or three planter baskets with tropical houseplants sat on laminate-covered cubes, dotting the showroom floor. 

I walked up to an abandoned counter.  The unlocked front door served as the only proof that someone might be there.  I walked noisily, with a heavy step to the back room, hoping not to frighten someone who may have been working and didn’t notice the doorbell. 

“Hello?” I called out. I peered into the back workroom and found a woman sitting with her feet propped on the design table, reading a paperback. With the immediacy of drying paint, she glanced up without moving anything but her eyes.  Her face had obviously been through some hard living, and the look on it signaled her annoyance at having to stop reading her book.  She said nothing but continued to glare at me, her eyes saying, “What the hell do you want?”

“Hi, my name is Quincy McKay.  I’m from Rosie’s Posies in Hillside.”

Her probably late forty-ish body, which looked more late sixty-ish, started to heave and rock, presumably in order to get her legs moving off of the table.  I couldn’t imagine how she got them up there in the first place.  She sighed heavily as she snapped her paperback shut and used her now free hand to grab the table after some major coaxing of her stomach muscles to lean forward.  It wasn’t exactly that her body was that much overweight, at least not to the point of being morbidly obese, it just seemed to be quite underused.  She exhaled loudly and I couldn’t tell if it was more a communication to me of her annoyance or a forcing of air out of her lungs as she rocked forward once and again in order to build up the inertia to sit up.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to bother you,” I stammered. 

“Djuh need a funeral arrangement or somethin’?”  She asked, out of breath. 

“I um…  No, I’m from another flower shop in Hillside and I thought I would come to offer my condolences.” 

“Oh.  Yeah, okay.”  She looked as if she were going to try and sit back down and kick up her legs, and while I would’ve loved to see how she could possibly accomplish that gravity-defying feat, I couldn’t ignore my mission. 

“So, do you work here all the time?”

“Eight days a week,” she deadpanned with her ten-Camels-a-day voice.

“I bet it’s been hard for you with all that’s been going on around here.” 

“Phew, you’re telling me.  People have been calling almost non-stop.  Yesterday I had to take the phone off the hook." 

She squinted and cocked her head to the side as if trying to retrieve a thought.  A long pause ensued. 

“Oh my good hell!”  She shouted, followed by a phlegmy, wheezy, cackle.  “I guess I forgot to turn that damned thing back on!”  She ambled over to the phone, where the handset sat on the counter next to the base.  She hesitated, opting not to replace it, and instead walked back to the high-legged chair and gahlumped down again.  “Yeah, it’s been quite a zoo around here.  Except that I haven’t had a single order since then.  Been able to catch up on some stories.”  She picked up the paperback.  “You ever read these romance novels?  I quite like ‘em.” 

“Well actually, the reason I’m here, if I can be honest with you,” I changed my tone as if offering something in confidence, “I was wondering, do you know who the mortuary is going to call for flowers now that, well you know, Derrick and all?” 

“Oh hell honey, I have no idea.  Absolutely none.  To tell you the truth, I don’t even know why I showed up today.  I just wanted to see if my paycheck would get here.  I’ve been waitin’ for it for four days now.  It’s late for the second month in a row.  I’ve quit countin’ on Derrick to show up with it.” 

Especially now, I thought to myself.  “Oh, did Derrick use a payroll service?”  Unless he had, I didn’t see how she would be getting her check after her boss had been found in a box.  Maybe she expected his ghost to bring it by. 

“He used one until about three months ago.  Then they started calling everyday asking if he was here, which he never was of course.  They finally said if he didn’t pay his bill, they weren’t going to send us any paychecks.” 

“It seems like you guys were pretty busy all the time from all the arrangements I’ve seen at the mortuaries.  Are there other employees that aren’t getting their checks?" 

“It’s just me and sometimes my daughter.  Like I said, he was hardly ever around, so I did all the designs and once in a while my daughter would help.”

“Wow, that seems like a lot of work for just one or two people.  Didn’t you guys have like a whole funeral a day?”

“Oh, honey!  We had three and four funerals every day.  Mostly just blankets, but every day I was doing three or four ‘em.”  She incorrectly called the casket sprays blankets, but who was I to correct this over-flowing font of information?  “He charged a pretty penny for those things too.  My sister’s husband died and he let me have the employee discount, but there’s no way we would have paid full price.  I mean go look at them picture books; they have the prices in ‘em.  They start at six hundred dollars.  For a half-casket size!”

Six hundred dollars was extremely expensive for the minimum priced half-coach casket spray in our area.  Mine started at two hundred dollars on the low end. 

“Them flowers cost that much and he’s late with my paychecks? Too many damn toys if you ask me.  Have you seen that car he zipped around in?  A Porsche for hell’s sakes.  Fire engine red.  He’s got a truck and a big yellow Hummer too.  You tell me where he got the money for all that.” 

A yellow hummer? Like the one Linda's boyfriend drove away in?  Was he involved with the Vulture?  I put it on my mental checklist to find out more about lover boy.

“It doesn’t make sense to me,” I said.  “So how are you going to get a paycheck if the guy that gives it to you is dead?” 

“Well I was gonna see if it was laying on his desk in there or wait for the mailman to come.  He didn’t write them out himself, someone named L.D. Stanwyck always signed them.”

“Who’s L.D. Stanwyck?”

“Hell if I know, but they didn’t bounce. 

“So you don’t know what’s going to happen now that Derrick’s gone?”

“No but I got the idea he was getting ready to split.  I was thinkin’ of quittin’ soon.  I did overhear him talking to an old man that’s been coming around here a lot lately.  I think they were maybe talkin’ about him buying the business.”

My ears perked up at that; exactly the news I did not want to hear.

“You say he’s an older guy?”

“Yeah, about seventy or so.”

“Is he a florist?” 

“Well I think he owns a shop with his wife over in Plainville.”

“Oh, you mean Irwin and LaDonna.” 

“Yeah, that’s him, Irwin.  He’s a nice old man, but I don’t know what he’d be doing talking to Derrick.  I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.  Now I’ve always gotten a paycheck—eventually, but I wouldn’t ever trust Derrick in a business deal, not for a million bucks.  Hey, didn’t you say you’re from a shop?”

“Yes, I own a shop in Hillside.”

“You know I should give you my number in case you’re ever hiring.”  She reached for a piece of paper on the table and tore off the corner then pulled a pen from behind her ear and began writing.  “I’ve got design experience.”

“Thanks,” I replied as I took the paper from her hand.  Unfortunately for her I had witnessed first hand her customer service skills and her design capabilities.

“Speaking of phone numbers, you wouldn’t happen to have Irwin’s number around handy would you?” I asked.

“Hell it’s probably on his desk in there somewhere.  I’m gonna go out for a smoke.  You can go in his office and look for it.  If you see my paycheck sittin’ around come and get me, will ya?”  She cackled herself into a coughing fit.

“Sure thing.  Oh, before you go outside, I was wondering if you might have an extra can of leaf shine that I could buy from you.”  We had run out and were getting a new shipment of plants that needed to go to the hospital gift shop.  They looked like they were coated in a gray film when they arrived at our shop because of the water spots from the sprinklers at the nursery.  The leaf shine adds what we call perceived value to the plants.  People think they’re a lot more valuable when they’re shiny and unnatural looking.  If they have natural healthy leaves that have just been sprayed with needed water, people think they look like they are unhealthy and dying.  The American culture’s screwed up perceptions of health and beauty are not limited just to people. 

“We’ve got a whole case of ‘em in the plant room.  You don’t have to pay for it.  Hell, who am I going to tattle to?”  The cackle continued with phlegm-induced interruptions caused by a lifetime of smokes.  “Just find what you need.  I’ll be outside.”

I smiled and watched as she turned to go outside, her waist long, brown-streaked-with-gray braid swaying as she rolled from right foot to left.  I had a pretty good idea this would be a long smoke break, so I figured I could look at a few things in the office.  I had permission to be there, so what if I just happened to accidentally run into some sales figures or something like that?

Derrick’s office desk was cluttered with papers, yellow envelopes and everything else one might find at a work desk.  Nothing jumped out at me and said, “Look this is why I was murdered.”  I didn’t see anything that looked like a paycheck, but I did see a three-fold glossy pamphlet with the title “Switch Grass, Bio-fuel of the Future.”  I had heard of switch grass before, it was on the list of availability from one of my suppliers.  I hadn’t known of its use as a bio-fuel, so I picked up the pamphlet out of curiosity.  A picture of a grassy looking plant with a man standing next to it covered the front fold.  The grass stood at least a foot taller than the man.  I folded the pamphlet in half and put it in my back pocket for later.  I didn’t think anyone would miss it.  Nothing else on the desk stood out. 

It occurred to me that the police had probably already been through things here, since the owner of the desk had been found mysteriously dead. 

I walked over to a little room wedged between the design area and the bathroom.  It was full of floor to ceiling shelves made of two by fours and plywood.  Four and six inch potted houseplants dotted two of the shelves.  Most of them were wilted for lack of water.  One wall of shelves was completely full with wicker and split willow baskets in all different shapes and styles.  A sink, probably never cleaned since the day it was installed, leaned on one wall and next to it, a small counter top where plants were arranged in the baskets.  A plastic garbage can full of potting soil rested under the counter.  The box next to it looked to be full of sphagnum moss. 

I looked all over the crowded little room, not finding the metal cans of leaf shine anywhere.  Then I remembered she had said a case of it, meaning there was probably a cardboard box full of them somewhere.  I noticed a cardboard box underneath the p-trap of the sink and reached down to open it.  Because of the dim lighting in the tiny room, I couldn’t see the water damage to the box where it touched the sink pipe.  I reached into a squishy, slimy, wet blob that smeared all over my fingers.  Repulsed, my immediate reaction was to jerk my hand out.  While gagging, I noticed my fingers were covered in dark green—almost black goo which was probably a product of decomposing plant and cardboard.  I decided to be a little more cautious and reached again for the cardboard box.  I pulled and slid it out from under the sink.  As I did, something fell down and slapped the floor. 

I blindly reached under the sink, toward the direction of the sound until my fingers made contact with something on the floor.  I pulled out a black three-ring binder full of paper and tabbed dividers.  I wondered why anyone would keep a binder full of paper under the sink with the drips and moisture all over the place.

Inside the binder I found a ledger labeled for February’s sales figures.  Everything was hand-written. Each day of the month had its own column, and under each column was written a number.  It was not uncommon to see $3,000 to $8,000 hand-written under each day. 

I turned the page and found a similar chart with the same titles and numbers, only, it was all typed; nothing was handwritten. 

I was looking at the official version of the February sales figures.  To make sure it had the same date as the handwritten page, I compared the amounts in each column to the previous page.  On the typed page, there were several days with no sales at all.  In fact, on the days when sales should have said $4,000, it would say $500 or $250.  Not a single column matched up between the two pages.