Roses Have Thorns, page 5
Sawyer had written all this down and was now staring at his notes, forehead furrowed in thought. I waited quietly, allowing him to cogitate without distraction. Finally, he drew in a deep breath and looked up at me. “I don’t know, Juniper,” he said. “It seems like a leap to me. Who told you that it was Doug Abbot?”
“Brad did, when I delivered the last bouquet to him.” I paused for a moment and then said, “It’s fair, you know, that you don’t believe me. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s kinda esoteric, someone sending hidden messages in a bouquet, but the Victorians used to do it all the time.”
“Where would Doug have learned about this?”
“Maybe from one of his ex-wives? Ellie, the last one, was into gardening. She volunteered out at the Abby Gardens at Seal Harbor. Maybe she knows something about floriography too.”
Sawyer shrugged and made a noncommittal noise before finishing off his tea. “I don’t know, Junie. It just seems too far-fetched to me. I’m not sure we’ll have the time or resources to look into it.” He stood up and extended his hand to me. “C’mon. Pot roast and baby cuddles are waiting.”
I nodded, happy to accept Sawyer’s decision. The meanings behind the bouquets were hair-thin leads, and he was probably right to not waste resources investigating it. I took the tea cups to the sink and rinsed them. Then I went upstairs to get the dogs settled in their beds in the spare room. I knew they wouldn’t stay there; they’d either sack out downstairs in the living room or sleep on my bed.
As we were leaving, I remembered the Yankees fan I’d seen in front of Rob’s house the night before. “It was strange, you know?” I said to Sawyer. “Seeing a Yankees sticker in Red Sox country.”
Sawyer paused half-way down the porch steps and dragged his little notebook out. “Did you get a license plate number? What time did you see this truck? What did it look like? Could you see the driver?”
I smirked at the barrage of questions. “It was a Maine plate,” I said, trying to remember. “I think it started 167. It was a normal one, with the chickadee in the corner, I mean. Not personalized. It was silver, the truck. Ford, I think.” I shrugged, unable to remember anything further about it. “And it was too dark to see the driver clearly. I’m sorry I’m not more help.”
“No, no. That’s good. What you gave me was really helpful, Junie. Honest,” he added when he saw the skepticism in my expression. “Let’s go.”
I followed him to his own truck with a smile and climbed in next to him, feeling a warm little glow and glad I’d contributed something helpful to his investigation.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sarah came back two days later and was horrified to learn that I’d discovered a murder victim. She felt guilty that she hadn’t been around to comfort me in the aftermath. I reminded her that she’d been in New York collecting a substantial amount of money, enough that she wouldn’t have to worry about rent or bills for at least the next nine months. That cheered her right up, and to celebrate, she treated Joss, Hazel, and I to dinner at Aubergine, a fancy restaurant owned by Joss’s cousin, Ashley Williams, who also owned the Pepper Mill Diner.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Doug’s tenuous connection to floriography. If he knew about it—either from Ellie or by reading up on it on his own—then maybe he really was the one to send the bouquets to the members of the investment club. And what did it mean that Rob didn’t get the second bouquet, the one with the slightly sinister message?
I decided to call my mother and see if she had Ellie’s contact information. After the divorce, which had been ugly and drawn-out, Ellie had moved to New Haven, Connecticut and remarried. Once I got Ellie’s number, I called immediately after saying goodbye to Mum.
“Hello? Newburgh residence,” said a woman’s cultured voice after the line rang twice.
“Is this Ellie?” I asked.
“It is. How can I help?”
“Hi, Ellie. It’s Juniper Blair, from Dawn Cove. I’m not sure if you remember—”
“Of course I remember you,” she said, her voice going from hesitant and suspicious to friendly and warm. “You own that darling little flower shop, Flower of Scotland, right? Your mother is Clementine MacKenzie?”
“Yes, that’s me. How are you doing?”
We chatted for a few moments, catching up with each other and talking about Dawn Cove gossip. “Has Doug approached the Investment Club with his latest scheme?” Ellie asked.
“I’m not sure. What’s his latest scheme?”
“He wants to turn Whippoorwill Woods into an all-inclusive golf resort. You know, cut down all the trees and replace them with a horrendous 18-hole course, put up a large hotel on the shore, attract big box stores and chain fast food restaurants. Basically suck all the charm and beauty out of Dawn Cove.”
“That sounds awful. How do you know about it? Do you two still talk?”
“I haven’t spoken to him in years. Not since I left Maine and moved here. No, I heard about it from Mayor Julian a few weeks ago. He said that Doug was hitting up all the members of the Club.”
“My dad hasn’t said anything about it, not that I really expect him to.” I paused for a moment and then jumped into the reason I was calling. “I know that when you were still living here, you were a volunteer out at the Abbey Gardens. Do they still have the reference library? I recently came across a mention of floriography in a book I was reading and became intrigued by it. I thought maybe the library out there would be a good place to further my explorations of the subject.”
“Floriography? The Victorian language of flowers? How funny you should ask. I actually learned about it from my work there. Their library does have a lovely little section about it, and I had some books on the subject as well. Maybe they’re still in the library at Beechwood,” she said, referring to the sprawling Greek Revival monstrosity that had been built by Doug’s eight-times-great grandfather, Albert Abbot, the lumber baron that made the Abbot family’s fortunes. “If you can stand it, you could talk to Doug about it. Ask him if he’s still got my books, and if he does, you can say I told you that you can have them.”
“I might do that. Does he know anything about floriography? Was he interested in it while you were still married?”
Ellie laughed ruefully. “No, he wasn’t. He wasn’t interested in anything I was. He just wanted me to look pretty and be a good hostess.”
We chatted for a few more minutes before I had to go. I promised to say hello to her friends in Dawn Cove and to give out her number to those who wanted it. I hung up feeling as though I’d accomplished something Sawyer had yet to do—tie Doug to Rob’s murder. If Brad was right and Doug had sent the bouquets, then there was also a chance that the flowers were not randomly selected. There was meaning behind the choices, and if Doug had discovered Ellie’s books, then he had deliberately chosen those flowers to convey messages of excitement and anticipation, as well as disappointment and ingratitude.
But was it enough for Sawyer to look into it? I’d have to bring it up with him the next time I saw him.
A few days after my conversation with Ellie Newburgh, Sawyer and I had dinner together at the Pepper Mill. While it was nice to spend more time with him one on one, I was far more interested in the course of the investigation into the murder I’d stumbled across.
“So have you been able to track the sender’s bank account?” I asked.
“No. It belongs to a shell company called Durham-Sylvanus AgriCorp. It’s probably owned by another shell company that’s probably owned by another shell company and on and on.”
“What’s the purpose of a shell company anyway? You hear about them in movies and on TV all the time, but I’ve never really understood what their purpose is.”
“Hiding money is really all they’re good for. They’re basically a company without any active business operations or assets. They’re mostly used for disguising business ownership from law enforcement, though I guess they can be used legitimately to raise funds for a startup or to conduct a hostile takeover.”
I stared at him in shock. “How do you know all this?”
He gave me a lopsided smirk. “I have a friend in the FBI’s financial crimes unit. She explained everything to me a couple of days ago.”
She? I nodded slowly, feeling a rising bubble of jealousy, which I immediately squashed down. I had no claim on Sawyer, hadn’t had one for 17 years. He was free to see anyone he wanted. And just because he was working with a woman didn’t mean he was seeing her or even interested in her in that way. For all I knew, she was happily married. “And why is the bank in Anguilla? Where is that, anyway?”
“The Caribbean. It’s a tax haven. Companies that are set up there don’t have to pay any US taxes. So companies that do business here don’t have to pay taxes here because they technically aren’t U.S. based.”
“That’s slimy.”
“Yep. It should be illegal, too. But it’s not.”
I took a few more bites of my food before saying, “I know you think the floriography angle is a dead-end, but I talked to Ellie Newburgh the other day. She’s Doug’s most recent ex-wife. Remember how I said that she might know something about floriography?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, it turns out she does. You know the Abbey Gardens has this wonderful, extensive research library that’s filled with all kinds of books and periodicals pertaining to flowers and plants and gardening?” He nodded. I don’t think he actually knew about the library—or even cared about it—but he was a darling for humoring me. “She got interested in floriography while she was volunteering out there and even bought books for her own library at Beechwood. She said that they might still be there.”
“Okay. So... Doug might have read them and created the bouquets following Ellie’s books?”
I shrugged and toyed with my food for a moment. “I mean, it’s possible, isn’t it?”
“Sure. But it’s more likely that he didn’t send the flowers, that someone else did, and that there was no hidden meaning in the bouquets.” I made a sour face at him and he gave me an apologetic smile in response. “I’m sorry, Junie, but it’s a tenuous lead at best. I’m worried that we’d end up wasting valuable time and resources on it, only to have it be a dead-end. If we can discover concrete evidence that Doug sent those flowers—or even that the sender, whoever that turns out to be, hid messages in them—I’ll definitely look into it more. But for now, it’s just not worth it.”
My mood tanked with those words, and I pushed away my plate. After a few moments of silence, I picked up my fork once again. I was being petulant and ridiculous. I asked, “So where does the investigation go now?” I tried forcing myself to be in a better mood. After all, I was on a date with a handsome man who had been the love of my life once. “Did anyone find the truck I saw the night before?”
“We tracked it down, yes. But we’re still waiting to get in contact with the owner to verify his whereabouts for the time of the murder.” He took another bite of his food. “The coroner put the time of death at about eight,” he said, carefully looking at me.
“Oh, no,” I said. My fork clattered against my plate, dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers. I whispered, horrified and fighting tears, “I was there at eight. I could have stopped it? I could have done something?”
“No, Juniper. You might have been hurt, too. It’s a good thing you didn’t go to the kennels.” I nodded, trying to take comfort in his words but failing. He reached across the table and took my hand. “Listen to me. You couldn’t have done anything, okay? I’m serious, June. If you’d interrupted the murder, you could have been hurt. Or worse.” He kept my hand, holding it tightly as he searched my face. I took a deep breath and nodded. He was right; it was a good thing I hadn’t gone around to the kennels that night.
After a moment, Sawyer said, “Anyway. We’ll work to confirm the bouquet sender’s identity and start poking around Rob’s life. See if he had enemies, look into motives, track down alibis, that kind of thing.”
“What about fingerprints and DNA and stuff like that? Did you find anything?”
He pushed his empty plate away and took a sip of his beer. He wasn’t on duty tonight, and we’d agreed to head across the street to the Dawn Cove Theatre to check out a movie after dinner. “Want dessert?”
“Sawyer.”
“Juniper. I can’t talk about it, and I could get in a lot of trouble for even telling you what I have so far. You cannot tell anyone else. I mean it.”
“I won’t tell anyone. Not even Joss.”
He studied me for a moment or two longer, scrutinizing my face as if he could tell just by looking at me whether he could trust me. He must have decided that he could because he nodded and said, “So. Dessert?”
I shook my head, and abandoned the hope of getting any more information out of him. “I ate too much as it is. Though there might be room for popcorn,” I added with a smile.
He chuckled and checked the bill, putting down some money before standing and helping me into my coat. We left the restaurant and crossed the street to join the short line for an eight o’clock showing of the latest superhero movie. As we waited, Sawyer turned to me and asked, “Are you planning on going to the big Halloween dance on Friday?”
“I’m doing the table centerpieces and the decorations for the stage. I haven’t really thought about actually attending the dance. Why? Are you going?”
“I’d need a date. And a costume. And I don’t have either of those things right now.”
“Why, Sawyer Callum Livingston,” I said with a tiny smirk. “Are you asking me to go with you to the dance?”
“Why, Juniper Marie Blair, I do believe I am.”
“I’ll go with you, but only if you agree to do a couple’s costume.”
“Oh, no,” he said, holding up both of his hands. “No no no. We are not dressing up in some ridiculous, cutesy, matching couple’s costume. No doctor and nurse. No bride and groom. No Betty and Barney Rubble.”
I laughed and paid for our movie tickets. “What about Alan and Ellie from Jurassic Park? Or Beetlejuice and Lydia?”
“Those have possibility.” He bought a tub of popcorn and two Cokes, and we filed into the theater to find seats. We sat down in the dead center of the theater, and Sawyer immediately put his feet up on the seat in front of him. I smacked his knee and he put his feet down, but not before giving me a dirty look. I giggled at the look. Half-way through the film, right when all hope seemed lost and the bad guy was certain to win, he snaked his arm around me and pulled me closer to him. I settled my head on his shoulder and couldn’t quite keep the well-pleased smile off my face.
After the movie was over, Sawyer drove me home and walked me to my door again. This time, before leaving, he leaned in and pressed a soft, gentle kiss against my cheek and whispered, “Wayne and Garth.”
I cracked up and hugged him tightly. “Peggy Carter and Steve Rogers,” I whispered back, thinking about the movie we’d just seen.
“Deal,” he said with a smile. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Try not to get into trouble between now and then, okay?”
“No promises,” I replied and stepped through my front door. He waited until he heard me lock up before turning and jumping down my front steps and bounding to his truck parked at the curb, fighting off imaginary foes with a shield as he crossed my yard. I watched him pull away, and when he was gone, went immediately to call Joss to dissect the date.
CHAPTER NINE
Over the next two days, Sarah and I hollowed out medium-sized pumpkins and filled them with blocks of florist’s foam that had been soaked in water. Then we added sunflowers, orange roses, red and yellow gerbera daisies, and burgundy mums to the blocks, accenting the arrangements with delicate stalks of wheat, dried oak leaves, and curly willow branches. Paper spiders and bats hung from the willow branches, adding a little whimsy to the flowers.
On the day of the dance, Sarah, Hazel, Joss, and I went over to Abbot Hall at the Penobscot Maritime College to set up the flowers for the party. Each of the twelve round tables got a flower-filled pumpkin and three small white votive candles. Two large plastic skulls with the same flowers went on the buffet tables, along with brass candelabras with tall white taper candles. On the stage where a live band would be playing 1940s tunes went larger pumpkins carved with a variety of faces. Each jack o’ lantern contained a battery-operated tealight that would hopefully stay lit for the entire night.
Satisfied with our work, the girls and I decamped back to our houses to get ready for the party. Joss and Brad had decided to dress up as Morticia and Gomez Addams, while Hazel and Mike had chosen to honor Mike’s Mexican heritage with their costumes. Hazel was dressing as La Calavera Catrina, a high-society skeleton woman dressed in a fancy floral hat and a long dress with wide skirts. Mike had chosen to be a calavera charro, a skull-faced cowboy in a fancy black suit complete with silver buttons and a large black sombrero. Sarah was staying home that night since she hadn’t found a date, saying that she felt awkward around all the couples that were sure to attend. We tried to convince her to go stag, but she said she’d rather stay in with a good book and a cup of cocoa, snuggled fireside with her menagerie and a fluffy blanket. I promised to bring her some of my mother’s first pumpkin pie of the season.
Hazel had helped me set my hair in big, fat rollers the night before, then brushed it out and gave it a few twists to add volume before pinning it in place and spraying it with approximately half a can of hairspray. While she put on her amazing calavera makeup, I did my own significantly less intricate makeup, emphasizing my eyes with thick black liner and mascara and finishing the look with a cherry-red lipstick. Then I slipped into a thrifted 1940s-era, military-green skirt suit, a white blouse, one of my father’s black ties, and a pair of my grandmother’s brown leather pumps.
Sawyer arrived at seven o’clock, dressed in his Steve Rogers-inspired best. He had on a brown leather jacket, khaki cargo pants tucked into WWII-era canvas gaiters, brown combat boots, probably leftover from his time in the Navy, and a blue t-shirt with a large white star on it. He was carrying a homemade shield and even wore a helmet with a white star on it, too.
