Bloom and Doom (25 page)

She straightened her shoulders. “I have been Derek’s lover since three days after I moved to this stinking town,” she said with unmistakable pride. “He was the first person who was nice to me at the health club. He bought me a smoothie and we talked. Then he parked his car behind the club and we made out. Most of those other girls were his parents’ idea. I was just never good enough for them, but Derek didn’t think so. I knew him, you see. I was the one he trusted with his secrets.”

“You wrote him letters.”

“Of course.” She gave a vacant nod. “He didn’t appreciate the effort.”

“He kept them.”

She scowled. “To hurt me. You know, I only pretended to take a shower when I got home that night. I listened to Jenny and Derek talking. I always listened to them. I heard them break up. They didn’t belong together. And then when Derek left . . .”

“You gave her those pills. Told her they were sleeping pills.”

“They
are
sleeping pills! Like I said, that’s all they’re good for. They make you groggy . . . knock you out for hours. Jenny had been taking them for weeks. Said they calmed her nerves.” Sarah laughed. “And they knocked her out completely. She had no idea that whenever Derek dropped her off I’d wait until she took a pill and fell asleep, then Derek and I went out. What a sap.”

“Is that what you did the night they broke up? Went out with Derek?”

“Jenny went to sleep. Now that they weren’t engaged anymore, I figured it was my chance to be with Derek. He could take
me
to dinner with his parents, put
my
picture in the paper. He could marry me, and then we’d be together forever. I didn’t even care if that ring was used. I knew it fit me. I tried it on lots of times when Jenny left it lying around.

“So I put on my white dress, my white shoes, and those white gloves Carolyn made us buy. I saw the bouquet sitting in a glass of water on the table. It was beautiful, Audrey. Really pretty. All purply. I always wanted a bouquet like that when I got married, so I took it. Why should Jenny have that, too? So I was all ready.”

“But Derek wasn’t.”

She winced and sniffled. “He took one look at me, and instead of telling me how pretty I looked in my dress, he said I was demented. ‘A real psycho.’ He called me a psycho.”

“I’m sorry.” She did have my sympathy.

“He said he never wanted to see me again. Now that he was free of Jenny, he could move to Las Vegas and gamble full-time. And if I tried to contact him there, he’d take my letters to the police. Said they’d prove I was nuts.”

And they would have.

“I couldn’t face that again. Couldn’t go back there.”

“Back there?”

“All that poking and prodding and answering questions and taking pills I didn’t need and feeling foggy all the time. I would never go back there.”

A mental hospital.

“So I had to stop him,” she said. “I didn’t want to, you understand. I loved him. But he hated me for it, and I wasn’t going back there.” Her hands started to tremble.

“Did you take a knife with you?” I asked, almost in a whisper. I hoped she’d find my tone calming. “With the white dress and gloves and bouquet?”

“Of course not,” she said. “Who takes a knife with them when they’re getting married? That would be crazy.

“I wasn’t sure what to do, you know, how I would go on without Derek. I sat in his car and cried for a good long time, not that he cared. Not that he took me in his arms and patted me on the back and told me everything was going to be all right. He just sat there, still as a rock. But then I looked down and saw the knife on the floor of the car. Don’t you see, Audrey? It was meant to be.”

I swallowed hard. My voice came out husky. “How did you know where to . . . ? I mean, the carotid artery . . .”

“Artery? Is that why it bled like that? Remember, I’m an exercise instructor. I just aimed for the place where you take the pulse. I felt bad right away. I tried to stop the blood. But there was so much. And then he died and left me—he left me alone—sitting in the car in a white dress covered with blood. Gloves covered with blood. Shoes covered with blood. Pretty purple flowers all covered in blood. Everything ruined.”

“How did you clean up without anyone seeing you—without leaving any blood in the apartment?”

“Ramble goes to sleep at nine thirty. I just waited until two a.m.”

“In the car with Derek’s body?”

“Nobody could see me in the dark in that car with the tinted windows. Then I took off my shoes and ran to the health club. I had my own set of keys and know the alarm codes, so I showered and changed there. I wrapped up the dress and gloves and tossed them into the Dumpster.” She laughed and shook her head. “I was in plain sight of the club’s security cameras almost the whole time. But unless there’s a break-in, they record over themselves in twenty-four hours, and garbage collection was due the next morning. I was home and in my own bed before anyone found Derek.”

“But when the police arrested Jenny, you didn’t feel guilty at all? That she might be sent to prison for a long time, for something she didn’t—”

“If it weren’t for Jenny, I might be Mrs. Derek Rawling right now, living in a beautiful house, with servants to bring me breakfast. Money makes a difference, you see. If you’re poor, they say you’re sick and a hazard to society. They lock you up in a hospital, pump you up with pills, and then put you back on the street. When you have money, you have power. Everyone would look up to me, and nobody would dare call me psycho ever again.”

A happily-ever-after. “But what does that have to do with me? Why are you here now?”

“You knew about the pills. Shirley told me. Shirley tells everybody everything. I had to get them back.”

I had a thing or two to tell Shirley myself, if I ever got out of here.

“I peeked in the front window and saw you with the bag, staring at the pills and staring at the computer. You have no idea how long I searched her room for them. Finally, I figured she’d just used them all.”

“Let me get you help.” I forced my voice to be braver than I felt. “Because now I know about it, and you can’t blame Jenny if something happens to me. Sarah?”

“No, that’s just code for going back there. I won’t go back there.” She took another step forward, pinning me against the wall in the cooler.

I figured I was going to die right there, just
like Derek, my blood spattered in our walk-in cooler like so many red rose petals. I prayed that Larry or Amber Lee would find me, and that Liv would be spared.

Sarah Anderson might be petite, but I’d seen those muscles of hers, from all that working out in the gym. But I didn’t plan to go down without a fight. I looked around, grabbed a white rose from a pail nearby, and held it out like a weapon. Pretty pitiful, but at least the thorns might do some damage, maybe help Bixby identify my killer.

Sarah halted, looking confused at the long-stemmed rose.

A flash of movement came from the cooler door. Liv charged into the walk-in. Without stopping, she knocked Sarah to the ground.

Sarah squirmed and turned. She raised her hand, still clutching the knife, poised now to strike Liv in the back.

If my next actions were instinctive, I’ll admit to having strange instincts. I wrapped the rose stem around Sarah’s arm and tugged, trying to pull her arm and the knife away from Liv.

The thorns caught hold in her milky skin, sending long catlike scratches up her arm.

Sarah shrieked and dropped the knife before shriveling up into a ball.

I picked up the knife and looked around the back room before grabbing a full spool of two-and-three-quarter-inch poly satin ribbon with a taffeta embossed texture—in daffodil yellow.

When I got back to the cooler, Sarah struggled a little, but the fight was gone out of her and she mostly pouted and whimpered and nursed her scratches. I managed to hold her down while Liv used the ribbon to tie Sarah’s arms behind her and then secure her legs. Finishing up, I noticed, with a perfect bow.

I raised my eyebrows.

“Force of habit.” She stood and brushed off her hands.

• • •

Bixby looked ready
to pounce but kept to his chair like someone had chained him down. He settled for drumming the table with his fingertips.

I answered his questions sweetly, with the demure smile Grandma Mae had taught us that every Southern lady should master.

Bixby slapped his hand on the table after I finished my statement. “Just promise me, Audrey, that you’ll never do anything like this again.”

“Do what? I was only trying to help a fr—”

“Do things like withholding evidence, confronting a suspect. Putting yourself and your cousin in such a dangerous situation.”

“Believe me, Chief, it will never happen again.” I might have punctuated that with an innocent flutter of my eyelashes. It was an easy promise to make. What were the odds that I would get tangled up in another murder investigation in Ramble? About the same as having a freak snowstorm on the Fourth of July.

Then again, with global warming . . .

Not that I regretted “sticking my nose in,” as Bixby put it. Jenny would soon be released, and a dangerous murderer now sat behind bars. Hopefully she’d get the psychological help she needed.

As I exited the interrogation room, I spotted the enclave huddled around Mrs. June’s desk. Liv gathered me in a hug and held on. “Are you okay?” I asked. The idea that she could have been hurt brought tears to my eyes.

She pulled back and met my gaze. “Yes, are you?”

Before I could answer, Amber Lee pulled me into a rocking bear hug. “Don’t scare me like that,” she said. “I can’t lose my friends and my job on the same day.”

Eric was next to hug me. “I’m glad you’re both all right. When Liv called, I nearly went out of my mind.” He put his arm around his wife and kissed the top of her head. “I don’t know what possessed you to tackle the woman instead of calling the police.”

“There wasn’t time.”

“She’s right.” I smiled at her. “Liv saved my life.”

She hugged me again. “And you saved mine.”

“Still,” Eric said, “you are going to the doctor’s.”

“Yes, sir.” Liv saluted. “I will, but I’m fine. You see, I led with the shoulder.”

“I just want to make sure it didn’t hurt the—”

Liv interrupted him with a hand on his arm and looked to me. “Audrey, there’s something we’ve been meaning to tell you, but I didn’t expect this would be the place.”

“You’re expecting a baby!”

“Congratulations!” Mrs. June shouted, and then she and Amber Lee rushed Liv for a group hug.

As soon as Liv extricated herself, she raised her eyebrows in surprise. “How did you know?”

“Decaf, nausea, and you’ve been a tad . . . emotional.”

She cast me a warning glance.

“Just a smidge.”

Liv shook her head. “Well, Sherlock, maybe you do have the makings of a detective.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “Being a wedding florist is more than enough danger and excitement for me.”

“I still don’t understand what happened,” Amber Lee said. “I get that Sarah killed Derek. But why did she come after you?”

“She was after the pills I found. When Jenny took what she thought were sleeping pills, she was actually taking Sarah’s antipsychotic meds. Once I found them, Sarah decided the trail would lead to her. And also, I’d figured out that she was the mysterious woman with the red hair.”

“But she’s a blonde,” Eric said.

“But we found the red wig in her locker at the health club,” Mrs. June said. “Incidentally, that’s also where they found Jenny’s missing engagement ring. Apparently Sarah was too sentimental to dispose of them with the rest of the bloody clothing. There are traces of blood on both, so they’ve been sent to the state labs for DNA testing.”

“I guess hell has no fury, and all that,” Eric said.

“But it was more than that,” Mrs. June said. “Add in a deep-seated psychological problem and a love for money and all she thought it could buy for her.”

“Money?” Amber Lee asked.

“Another reason Sarah was so desperate to marry Derek,” I said. “She figured no one could send her away if she was Mrs. Derek Rawling. No one would dare.”

Mrs. June nodded. “And, according to her confession, she was also the one blackmailing Derek’s father. She figured if she couldn’t have Derek, she could at least have some of his money.”

“Blackmailing him for . . . ?” Amber Lee asked.

“For his son’s activities, as well as the old man’s gambling operation,” Mrs. June said.

“Which he’s now shut down,” Eric said. “Mr. Rawling plopped the file on my desk this morning. Said he wanted me to try to renovate and lease the place as a proper restaurant. I suspect any evidence of gambling has been removed.”

“Will the Rawlings be implicated in all this, do you think?” Liv asked.

Eric shrugged. “Money still does talk.”

“But I’m sure a lot of people won’t,” Mrs. June said. “I doubt there’ll be enough evidence to tie old man Rawling to the illegal gambling club. Only I suspect a lot of his high-profile political friends won’t stick around to find out.”

I nodded. “The party’s over.”

The outside door swung open. Ellen Whitney entered, dressed in teal from her head to the tips of her teal toenails jutting from her teal sandals. To see her looking more like herself made me smile.

I was shocked, however, to see her return my smile.

“It’s true, then?” she said. “My baby can come home?”

“Pretty soon,” Mrs. June said. “Bixby’s waiting on the papers authorizing her release.”

“Oh.” Ellen’s face fell.

“But she should be arriving any moment,” Mrs. June said.

Ellen glanced to the door, which opened on cue.

Jenny, looking a little gaunt, but minus the handcuffs and prison garb, walked in escorted by Ken Lafferty.

Ellen swallowed hard as she straightened her silver and teal necklace, then she ran to her daughter and embraced her, rocking her as they clung to each other.

Liv wiped away a tear.

And, despite my promise to Bixby, I knew I’d do it all over again.