To Catch a Leaf (27 page)

“And that didn't motivate Burnsy to look for employment?”

“He considers his winnings to be earnings, believe it or not. And he said his mother had made similar threats before. He figured it was simply a matter of time before she followed through on one of those threats.”

“What was your other reason for putting Burnsy on the bottom of our list?”

“He gave the detectives ticket stubs that prove he was right here on Monday from eleven a.m. until four p.m., and had witnesses sign affidavits.”

“Then I'd call this a successful trip. We've eliminated one of our suspects, and I finally picked a winner.” But for Jillian, two winners.

Marco gave me a quizzical glance as he opened the car door for me. “Finally?”

“That came out wrong. I meant that I picked a winning horse on my first try.”

“Thank you.”

It had taken me
two
tries to pick a winning man.

As we headed back to New Chapel, Marco said, “I quizzed Burnsy about the other members of his family, but he was tight-lipped about his sister and his wife as well as about Guy. He acknowledged that Guy was competent, but then he clammed up. They only new information he gave me was that he once witnessed the housekeeper pocket a valuable crystal figurine from his mother's collection.”

“I can't picture Mrs. Dunbar doing anything that would jeopardize her job, Marco.”

“Burnsy told me he didn't think it was her first time either.”

“What makes him think she's taken other things?”

“He said the curio cabinet used to be full of the bird figurines his mother had collected for years. Now the collection is half of what it was. He would have thought his mother was giving them away except that he caught Mrs. Dunbar in the act.”

“His mother still might have given some away. Maybe that's why Mrs. Dunbar helped herself. She seems so loyal and kindhearted, I just can't imagine her stealing.”

“Trust me, Abby. Employee theft isn't unusual and doesn't mean Mrs. Dunbar didn't like her employer, only that she has sticky fingers.”

I watched the flat farmlands whiz by, letting my mind relax so I could absorb the events of the past hour. “Did Burnsy happen to mention whether his wife was at the races at all today?”

“No, why?”

“I could have sworn I saw her friend in the crowd. Anyway, what's next on our list?”

“A trip to Chicago to talk to Professor Francis Talbot. When I was searching for him on the Internet this morning, I came across an article from a Chicago newspaper about a man by the name of Frank Talbot who was suspected of fencing a valuable piece of stolen art. I couldn't find anything about him being charged with the crime, so I'm guessing there wasn't enough evidence to make anything stick. But the fact that a Frank Talbot was involved in any kind of art theft makes me suspicious.”

“How do we find him?”

Marco pulled a folded paper out of his jacket pocket. “White-pages listings. There are two Francis Talbots in Chicago proper and twenty Frank Talbots. We'll start with the Francises and see where that takes us.”

 

When I got back to Bloomers, I was relieved to see it was business as usual. Lottie was assisting a customer in the flower shop, and Grace was serving tea and scones to three full tables. There was no cat on the armoire, no manikin head in the display window, no mess on the floor, and not even one pair of funky sunglasses to be found. As long as there was no Francesca either, all was right in my world once again.

I gave Lottie and Grace a wave, then headed straight back to the workroom, pausing at the curtain to listen. Hearing no sounds from the other side, I peered in. No Francesca, but she had been there. A plate of chocolate biscotti sat on the worktable. I took one and bit into it, savoring the slightly sweet, crunchy chocolate flavor. Then I checked the spindle on my desk and saw that there was only one order waiting. Where had all my business gone?

“Hey, sweetie,” Lottie said as she headed for one of the big walk-in coolers, “have any luck at the racetrack?”

“Yes, but not in the way you mean. I took a chance on a horse named Abby Rose and won fifty bucks.”

“Wow, sweetie. Aren't you the lucky one?”

“Finally!” I pulled the order from the spindle to study it.

The arrangement was for a customer's mother's birthday, so I started gathering my tools and supplies while Lottie loaded up a basket with roses and daisies from the cooler to restock the display case out front.

The customer wanted a spring basket, so I pulled pink amaryllises, hyacinths in hues of pink, purple, and a peachy beige, bicolor tulips in orange sherbet and yellow, glory lilies in white, and long pussy willows for added texture and dimension.

Next I hunted for a basket, scouting the shelves on the back wall until one seemed to jump out at me, a flat, lime-green colored one with a broad handle. The green matched the broad leaves of the bicolor tulips.

“Were you able to interview Connie's son?” Lottie asked, closing the cooler behind her.

“Yes, and we've moved him to the bottom of our list.”

“I didn't think Burnett would harm his mother,” Grace said, gliding into the room. “He's really an old softie.”

Clearly a side of him we hadn't seen.

“Were you able to learn anything useful at all?” Grace asked.

“Only that Mrs. Dunbar stole a crystal figurine from Connie's collection,” I said.

“That's not sporting of her, is it?” Grace asked. “I suppose this only proves what William Shakespeare said . . .” Grace paused, then shook her head. “I can't remember.”

“Don't push yourself, Grace,” I said.

She cleared her throat and stood taller. “As William Shakespeare said, ‘Beauty provoketh thieves . . .'” Her mouth opened, but no words came out. She pulled out a stool and sank onto it, holding her head in her hands. “I simply can't remember.”

“Gracie, how do you know all those quotes, anyway?” Lottie asked. “I can't tell you what I ate for breakfast.”

Grace drew a shaky breath and lifted her head. “It happened when I was stationed in Germany in the 1960s. I had one book in my possession—a book of quotes—that I read to pass the time. One tends to remember something one reads several hundred times . . . or so I've always imagined.”

Lottie patted her shoulder. “Once this case is solved, you'll be back to normal.”

“I'm not so sure, Lottie, but thank you for your kind words.” She straightened her shoulders. “Let's talk of other things, shall we?”

“Here's a topic,” Lottie said. “Have you noticed that those mysterious orders stopped arriving?”

“I'd forgotten all about them,” Grace said.

“Seems like our
stalker
moved on,” Lottie said with a wink. “Maybe he didn't like our flowers.”

“Or his secret love affair with the woman at the old Donnelly house cooled down,” I said.

“Or the woman's sons went after him,” Lottie said, chuckling.

“Demanding a shotgun wedding,” I added, making us both laugh.

At Grace's sad sigh, I said, “I'm sorry. We were just having a little fun.”

“Don't mind me, love. I just can't focus on much else these days.”

“We'll find the killer soon, Grace, I promise. In fact, Marco found an article in a Chicago paper mentioning a Frank Talbot in connection with some kind of art theft, so we're going to Chicago this evening to see if we can locate him.”

Grace merely sighed again.

“And here's more good news,” Lottie said. “Marco's mom promised to bring in veal and mushroom risotto for our lunches tomorrow.”

Yippee?

“I'll tell you, sweetie,” Lottie said, “that woman really knows her way around a kitchen. And I have to say, Abby, I enjoyed working with her this morning. I like a woman who will roll up her sleeves and dig right in. I think she's going to make you a real good mother-in-law.”

“I like her, too, Lottie. I'm just afraid she's going to take control of our wedding plans.”

“She can't take it from you,” Lottie said. “You'd have to give it up first, and you won't let that happen. Just tell her flat out that you'll handle it.”

“We've tried that,” I said with a sad sigh. “She doesn't seem to take the hint.”

“As the great Khalil Gibran wrote,” Grace said, “‘Love has power that . . . that . . . ‘” She sighed sharply. “What I'm trying to say is that you have to show Marco's mum the love and she'll come around to your way of thinking.”

“I thought I was showing her love,” I said.

“Try just a bit harder, Abby,” Grace said. “You'll be amazed at the result.”

The bell over the door jingled, so Lottie said, “We'd better get out there, Gracie.”

“Right behind you,” Grace said.

And then I heard, “Yoo-hoo! Abigail?”

Lottie came to a stop inches from the doorway, causing Grace to put out her hands to keep from smacking into her back.

When Lottie turned, she had a sheepish look on her face. “I forgot to pass along a message from your mom. She'll be dropping off more sea glasses today.”

Every winning streak had its end.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I
was just finishing up the basket arrangement when Mom stuck her head through the curtain. “I thought I'd find you back here. Guess what I brought with me?”

“More sea glasses?” I asked, trying to appear happy about it.

“More sea glasses!” she sang out as she came into the workroom holding a box. “What a pretty basket, Abigail. Did Lottie help you?”

For some reason Mom still saw me as a florist-in-training. “It's all my doing, Mom. How many pairs of glasses did you make?” I tightened my stomach, girding myself for her answer.

“Three dozen.”

Three what? Okay, no amount of girding in the world could have prepared me for thirty-six pairs of cheap sunglasses covered with hunks of colored glass.

“And I worked half the night to finish them,” she said. “Thank goodness I've had enough practice so that the process moves along quickly.”

“Let's hope they sell fairly quickly, too,” I said.
Please, God, make them sell quickly—like now
.

“To tell you the truth, Abigail, I'm tired of making them. I need variety. I need—”

My cell phone beeped to signal an incoming message. “I need to answer this. Excuse me just a minute.” I checked the text. It was from Marco:
B ready @ 5 pm 4 trip 2 Chi
.

“Is that written in code?” Mom asked, reading over my shoulder, another bad thing about being short.

“It's texting shorthand,” I said. “We're going up to Chicago—”

“Maureen,” Lottie said, sticking her head through the curtain. She motioned for Mom to come quickly.

I sent Marco a quick reply, then hurried into the shop. What I saw floored me. Mom was surrounded by half a dozen young women, all talking excitedly as they passed around pairs of her glasses. I sidled up to Lottie and whispered, “What's going on?”

“Remember the college girls who bought the first batch?” she whispered back. “Well, those glasses were such a hit, the girls want to buy them all and resell them to other sororities.”

I was too stunned to reply.

 

When Marco picked me up at five o'clock, he told me there'd been a change in plans. We weren't going to Chicago after all.

“To make sure we didn't waste our time driving to Chicago,” he said, “I tried phoning the two Francis Talbots I'd located earlier. One number belongs to an elderly woman in an assisted living facility, and the other phone number has been disconnected. I got the address for the disconnected line—a condominium high rise in the Gold Coast area—called the management office there and gave them a story about needing to inform Mrs. Talbot of an inheritance she'd received. They told me that Mr. Talbot was currently out of the country on a business trip, and that Mrs. Talbot had been visiting relatives in Indiana for the past two months, and that they didn't know when either was expected back.”

“Francis is married? I'll bet Virginia doesn't know that.”

I was distracted by the sight of three young women striding along the sidewalk on Lincoln Avenue. They wouldn't have been remarkable except that they were wearing Mom's sea glasses, and judging by the scowls on their faces, they weren't happy about it, either.

“Then I struck gold,” Marco said, jerking me back to the conversation. “They gave me Mrs. Talbot's forwarding address. And guess where that address is? Right here in New Chapel. Quite a coincidence, isn't it?”