The Walleld Flower (15 page)

“Yesterday?” she asked.

“Didn’t you read the newspaper this morning?” Seth grabbed the stack on the corner of her desk.

“Just the local section. Why?” Katie asked.

Seth unfolded the front page and pointed to a picture of Rose and Katie taken at the press conference the day before.

“Oh no,” Katie groaned. “Look at my hair!”

“Even worse, I’ll bet Heather’s ex is really pissed at you for ruining his big homecoming.”

“Pissed enough to come after me?” she asked.

“It was stupid of Jeremy to lie about knowing Heather. And if he killed her…” Seth’s voice trailed off. “And I’ll
bet you annoyed Detective Davenport—again—by showing him up and asking the right questions of the right person.”

“Swell. But at least he now has a suspect in Heather’s disappearance and murder. I doubt he would’ve put two and two together if Rose and I hadn’t pointed him in the right direction.”

Seth reached out to touch Katie’s arm, his expression sobering. “Katie, please don’t poke into this anymore. I know you want to help, but I don’t want you—or Rose—to get hurt.”

“Oh, Seth, don’t be silly. We’re just asking questions.”

“Yes—and probably disturbing a snake’s nest.”

Katie frowned. “You’ll have to come up with something better than that to deter me.”

“Okay, Barbie Gordon died under suspicious circumstances. You were seen talking to her at the diner the night before she died.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I saw you there. And if I could see you, so could—and probably did—others.”

“But you left the restaurant before she arrived.”

“Rose forgot her purse. I retrieved it for her just as Barbie sat down. I was almost out the door when you returned.”

Katie frowned. “Did you happen to see a stranger, a tall man with a ponytail and a bushy mustache?”

Seth frowned. “I don’t think so. Why?”

“One of Rick Jeremy’s entourage looked very familiar to me. I thought he might be the one who frightened Barbie at Del’s the other night. She flew out the back door in a panic. This was after she’d told me someone had threatened her—and her little granddaughter.”

Seth shook his head.

“Did you recognize anyone at the diner?” Katie asked.

Seth frowned. “A couple of my clients. Some of your vendors. Nobody out of the ordinary.”

Katie chewed at her bottom lip. “I know I’ve seen that guy with the ponytail. His face was so familiar.”

Seth patted her hand. “It’ll come to you. In the meantime, will you at least consider what I said?”

Katie blinked, all wide-eyed innocence.

Seth sighed in defeat. “All right. In the meantime, how about I get a quart of soup and a couple of egg rolls from the Chinese takeout? Then we can still have lunch together.”

Katie tried without success to stifle a smile. “Make it hot and sour, and you’ve got a deal.”

The cash drawer popped open and Katie scooped up a five, two ones, three quarters, and a penny. “Your change is seven dollars and seventy-six cents. And thank you for shopping at Artisans Alley.”

The elderly woman gave her a faint smile, collected her bag of tissue-swaddled stained glass sun catchers, and headed for the exit. Crissy Hunter, McKinlay Mill’s buff, forty-something letter carrier, passed her. She held a stack of envelopes and a small brown-paper-wrapped box. “Mail call,” she said, and paused to lean against the counter.

“Is it my imagination, or are you wearing shorts?” Katie asked.

Like a diva, Crissy stood back, raised her arms, and turned in a circle to model her uniform. “It’s regulation standard. But isn’t the red piping down the seam just darling?”

“Yes, but it’s still only April—and it’s cold out! Aren’t you jumping the gun?”

“Summer can’t come soon enough for me. I’ve already started tanning. I’ll be a goddess by June.”

Katie rolled her eyes but refrained from commenting, let alone giving Crissy a lecture on the increased cancer risk of using tanning booths.

“It looks like mostly bills today,” Crissy said, handing Katie the mail. “Not that I pay attention to such things.”

Katie shuffled through the envelopes before turning her attention to the small box.

“No return address—hand-canceled in Rochester,” Crissy said.

Katie looked up at her. “Not that you noticed.”

Crissy smiled and turned on her heel. “See you tomorrow,” she called as she headed for the exit, already sorting through her leather mail pouch for the next address’s mail.

Katie worked at the tape sealing one end of the box. Peeling it back, she unwrapped the package—a videotape. She slipped it from its cardboard case, but there was no note inside. She examined the wrapping. Block letters, addressed to her personally, with no hint of who the sender might have been. She set it aside to study the old beta-formatted videotape. It did not appear to be professionally recorded, and had no label—although a gummy residue stuck to where one had been until recently.

She was still turning the tape over in her hands when Rose and Edie returned from their lunch break. “Hey, I haven’t seen one of those in years,” Edie said.

“My first video machine was a Betamax,” Rose chimed in, motioning Katie aside and resuming her post at the cash register. “A much better picture than VHS, if you ask me—almost DVD quality. Where’d you get it?”

“It came in today’s mail. Do you still have your old beta machine?”

“Oh, no. It died years ago. They didn’t make them anymore so I had to replace all my tapes. And now they have DVD players. Before we know it, Blu-ray will eclipse DVD and I’ll have to replace everything once again. I never seem to catch up.”

“Who do you think sent it?” Edie asked.

“I have no idea,” Katie said. She stared at the tape. “I wonder…”

“Wonder what?” Rose asked.

“Beta machines weren’t as popular, but were still being
used when Jeremy Richards was a film student at the university.”

“So?” Edie asked.

“So what if his early work was done on video—not film? It’s a lot cheaper.”

“Do you think this could be one of his student films?” Rose asked.

“Who knows. We’d have to watch it to see.”

Rose didn’t look convinced. “Why would someone send it to you?”

“Maybe somebody in Jeremy’s entourage sent it,” Katie suggested, thinking about the man with the ponytail. “But why?”

“That press conference was only yesterday. Somebody sent that tape out awful quick,” Edie said.

“Katie’s name was in the paper on Tuesday,” Rose said. “In the story about finding Heather’s—” She paused, her voice catching. “About finding Heather.”

Katie felt a pang of sadness for her friend as Rose pulled a handkerchief from the sleeve of her blouse, blew her nose, and dabbed at her damp eyes. “I’m sorry. Heather’s been dead for twenty-two years. I shouldn’t fall apart every time I say her name.”

Katie stepped closer and touched her friend’s hand. “There’s no time limit on grief, Rose. If you want to cry, you go right ahead.”

Instead, a wan, grateful smile crept across Rose’s pale lips.

“Maybe you can find a place to rent a machine,” Edie said, which seemed to distract Rose from her grief.

“I can sure try.”

“But first, we’d better pin that dress up. Are you doing anything now?” Edie asked.

Katie shook her head.

“I’ll meet you in the vendors’ lounge,” Edie said, and paused to pat Rose’s shoulder before she trotted off.

“Are you okay, Rose?”

She nodded. “You go ahead. I’ll be fine.”

Katie, too, patted Rose’s shoulder and headed for her office. She found Edie standing over her desk, perusing the list of official duties of a bridesmaid. “Are they kidding? ‘Take care of the emotional needs of the bride. Help her in any way you can to avoid the pre-wedding jitters’?” She shook her head in disgust. “I say slap Gilda upside the head and tell her to get on with it.”

Katie refrained from saying so, but she felt exactly the same way. Or in retrospect, did she just feel cheated that she’d let Chad talk her out of some kind of celebration after their own wedding. After their marriage at city hall, they’d gone out to lunch. Their honeymoon was a weekend at their apartment, drinking champagne and eating cheese and grapes while making more plans for the English Ivy Inn on Victoria Square. They’d been so focused on that one aspect of their married lives that when Chad had impulsively taken their savings and invested it in Artisans Alley, their marriage had foundered.

Katie didn’t like to dwell on that. But if she was honest with herself, a day didn’t go by that she didn’t think about her dream, and despite the reality of her situation, she still one day hoped to own that crumbling piece of property and bring it back to life.

Edie placed the list back on the top of the desk. “Glad it’s you and not me who’s got all that work to do.”

“You’ve already done so much. And now we’ve got to deal with this.” Katie indicated the dress still hanging from her file cabinet’s drawer pull. “This”—she shuddered—“dress seems to have been made for a basketball player. It comes down to my ankles, and I don’t think it’s even supposed to be a tea-length dress.

“Why don’t you go into the ladies’ room and change into it. I’ll get my sewing box and meet you in the vendors’ lounge in five minutes,” Edie said, and scooted out the door.

Katie looked at the purple horror and sighed.

Five minutes later she met Edie, removed her shoes, and first climbed onto a chair. Edie lent a hand and she moved to stand in the center of the vendors’ lounge table.

“Turn around,” Edie ordered, and Katie made a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn. Edie shook her head. “That is the most repulsive dress I have ever seen. And sleeveless at this time of year?”

“I can’t imagine what Gilda was thinking when she picked it out,” Katie said, grateful there was no full-length mirror in the lounge. Worse, she was going to have to wear this monstrosity out in public.

“Maybe the original owner has hot flashes. She’d keep cool in this number,” Edie said.

“Well, I’m stuck with it. I’m just glad I’ll only have to wear it for a few hours and hope that Gilda doesn’t plaster her wedding pictures on any social networking websites.”

Edie opened her sewing basket, withdrawing a little strawberry-shaped pincushion. “Let’s get started,” she said, and lifted the hem of the dress. “How short do you want this?”

Katie shrugged. “Just under the knee, I guess.”

Edie nodded. “Maybe I can fashion some kind of shawl for you out of what we cut off. You’re going to need something to keep warm.”

Edie worked at a steady pace, using a measuring tape and leaving a trail of silver pins to mark the new hemline in the folds of fluffy chiffon.

They’d been at it for about ten minutes, and Katie’s back was beginning to ache when she saw Polly standing in the doorway. The older woman straightened indignantly. Did she think she was the only vendor in Artisans Alley who could wield a needle and thread?

“I hope you’re going to disinfect that table,” she huffed. “Your feet are probably full of germs, and many of us eat our lunches there.”

“Of course we’re going to wash the table, Polly,” Katie said, quelling the urge to leap down and strangle the woman.

Polly moved closer to inspect Edie’s work, walking around the table as though a nasty smell filled the air. She sniffed. “It’s crooked,” she said of the pins holding up the dress’s new hemline.

With a mouth full of pins, Edie didn’t bother to reply and concentrated on her work as Polly stalked over to the counter to pour herself a cup of coffee before leaving the lounge.

“That woman,” Edie mumbled.

“Ignore her. I’m sure she just said that to be spiteful,” Katie said.

Edie took the pins from her mouth, stabbing them into her pincushion. “All done.” She offered her hand and steadied Katie as she made her way down from the table via the chair to the floor.

“I hate to push, Edie, but when do you think you can have this ready for me?”

Edie shrugged. “A couple of days. By the end of the weekend, at least.”

“You’re a lifesaver.”

“Eh, it keeps me busy,” she said, and seemed to deflate once again. Polly’s presence always had that effect on her. It had the same effect on Katie, too.

“I’d better get out of this dress and back into my real clothes. I’ll leave it hanging on my file cabinet and you can pick it up before you leave for the day, if that’s okay.”

Edie kept looking at the open doorway leading to Artisans Alley’s main showroom.

“Edie?” Katie prompted.

“Oh, yeah. Sure.”

A wave of pity coursed through Katie. Edie had lost a lot of her confidence these last few weeks, while Polly had morphed into the sourest, most disagreeable woman Katie had ever met.

She frowned. Perhaps her pity was misdirected. She ought to pity Polly more than Edie. What had Clarence the angel told George Bailey at the end of
It’s a Wonderful Life
? No man—or woman—was a failure who has friends.

Right about then, Katie felt quite successful.