The Corpse with the Emerald Thumb (17 page)

Al nodded and took out his notebook. “That's thoughtful, good point,” he said, scribbling down the details and glancing at the wall planner.

“There is nothing personal here.
Everything
is related to the plants, the flowers, the business, and her professions as a plantswoman and photographer. There are no photographs of her, or of her family members—dead or alive—and there isn't even a mirror. This place is all business.
She
is all business. Her plants are her life. In fact, I get no sense of Margarita the person in this store, just Margarita the businesswoman.”

I took the five steps needed to get to the refrigerated units at the back of the shop and peered in. “Are these the type of roses that Margarita grew, or would she have ordered these at the market?” I nodded toward the two buckets of red, and one bucket of yellow, long-stemmed roses that were accompanied by a huge bucket full of baby's breath.

Al smiled. “She didn't grow those.” He looked around and spotted a photograph on the neat cork noticeboard. He pointed. “These are Margarita's roses,” he said proudly.

The photograph showed pink, shrubby roses, with full, slightly nodding heads. Some canes were trained onto arches. It was as though I could smell them—a true rose scent.

“Constance Spry,” I said.

“Pardon?”

“It's the name of the rose. Constance Spry, named after the famous English flower arranger. She was quite the woman in her day and really popularized the concept of floral arrangement as an art. How wonderful! Obviously Margarita knew her field: it was Constance Spry who changed how people thought about floral arrangements. She introduced unusual materials, containers, and shapes. She herself was very involved in the cultivation of old English roses, and when David Austin introduced his first English Rose in 1961, he named it after her. This is
that
rose: classic, a true rose pink, with a true rose scent. Beautiful.”

Al looked surprised. “You seem to know a great deal about roses, and those who arrange them,” he said quietly.

I have no idea what came over me. Maybe it was the stress of the day, maybe it was the tequila, but I could feel myself fill up with tears.
Not now, Cait!
“It's because of my mum. Her wedding bouquet was arranged by a woman who trained under Constance Spry herself, at her Flower School in London, England. The woman who made my mum's bouquet, back in the 1950s, was known throughout South Wales, and my mum and dad had to drive into the wilds of the Welsh Valleys to collect the bouquet the day before their wedding. It was quite an undertaking, they said.”

“They told you this?” Al seemed intrigued.

I sighed. “Yes. My mum spoke of it often. They didn't have much when they married—nothing, in fact, especially by today's standards. But that was one thing she spent money on. I remember she had a pressed rosebud from her wedding bouquet that she would show me when I was a child.”

“Are your parents . . . passed?” asked Al awkwardly.

I smiled. “Yes, they are. They died quite a few years ago. A stupid, tragic accident. They were driving . . . oh, it doesn't matter where they were going. All that matters is that I didn't have a chance to say goodbye . . .”

“I know how that feels,” said Al with obvious emotion. It seemed that my very personal revelations were allowing him to open up to me.
Of course!

“You and Margarita. You had feelings for her?” I knew the answer before I asked the question.

“She was a very private person, as I have said. She didn't have much room in her life for personal relationships, but I enjoyed her company, when I was able to share it. I had . . . maybe ‘hope' is too strong a word, but I hoped for hope. Do you understand?”

Al looked very vulnerable at that moment. His anger upon finding Bud kneeling over Margarita's dead body made more sense. In fact, considering that he believed Bud to be the man who killed the woman for whom he clearly felt affection, Al had behaved in a very honorable manner toward Bud, clothing and feeding him in the jail as he had.

“I'm sorry, Al. Loss is very difficult, and I know for a fact that there's nothing I can say right now to help you deal with it. But I
can
try to help you work through your emotions by being proactive, and trying to solve this mystery.”

“Yes,” said Al gently. “It will help me if I can find out who he is, and understand why he did this.”

We were both silent for a moment. I didn't look at Al—he deserved a little privacy. Instead, I took in all that I could about Margarita's store. There was literally nowhere for anyone to hide. There was no way in or out, except by the front door. So how on earth had someone managed to get into the store, kill her, and get out again, unseen, within a three minute window, when there were two cops, and at least two other people, in the street outside the door? It was
impossible
!

I noted that Margarita must have had a lot of money tied up in stock: the most valuable, and delicate, blooms were in the refrigerated unit at the back of the store. I noted the still-plump heads of the almost two dozen red and dozen yellow roses. Then I noticed something glinting between the dark green leaves.

“What's that?” I said, pointing at the shiny object and bobbing my head about to try to make it out.

Al drew himself from his reverie and stepped forward. He slid open the floor-to-ceiling door of the refrigerated unit and moved one of the buckets of roses. There was a chrome handle in the back wall. He pulled it, and the wall swung out.
A door! Yay!

“It's a
door
!” I tried to sound surprised rather than jubilant.

Al stepped into the refrigerator, then right out through the narrow opening. It was tight, but it was clearly big enough for most people to fit through. Once he'd stepped out over the foot-high lip, he looked around. “It's the lane. Her van is here. I guess this is where she loaded in her chilled stock,” he said. “I had no idea. I've driven along the lane many times, and it's quite obvious that the spa, the bodega, and the restaurant all have rear entrances that lead out onto it, but I wasn't aware that this existed. Not that it matters except . . .” he stepped back into the refrigerator, shut the door, then joined me in the store again, sliding the glass door shut, “that it means the murderer didn't know about the way out.” He smiled. “That's useful to know, right?”

“I certainly think we've learned something very useful in the past few moments,” I replied truthfully, though, for me, the discovery of a way to access the crime scene that avoided the street meant I now had a way forward. I had to stop myself from getting overexcited. I took a deep breath, then one last long look around. I like gardens, but I'm not a big fan of cut flowers. The idea that Bud was coming to this store to buy flowers for me meant a great deal. It's the
idea
of flowers that's lovely, rather than having them. I hate to think of them dying, little by little, in the vase. As I looked about, I saw death all around me. There must have been hundreds and hundreds of dollars' worth of flowers, all about to wilt, then rot. What a shame. Like Margarita herself. A terrible waste.

As though he'd picked up on my feelings, Al said, “If you're done, let's go. I'd like to find out what it was that Margarita said to Callie. It might be nothing, but it could be something.”

“Hoping for hope?” I said.

He nodded. “We can
at least
do that,” he replied, and we left the store as we'd found it, full of death, decay, and silence.

AL PARKED THE CAR AT
the open back door of Amigos del Tequila. The kitchen was deserted, and there were no aromas of food—which was just as well because I was still feeling quite full.

“Hello?” called Al.

Footsteps descended the staircase in the corner of the kitchen, and Tony appeared, shh-ing us as he did so. “She's asleep.” He nodded toward the apartment upstairs. “Let's go into the bar,” he added, heading off through the swinging doors. We followed. Tony flicked switches, and the lighting behind the rows of bottles that stood in front of the mirrored bar came on. “Drink?” he asked us. “I'm having one, so, please, let me get one for you guys too.”

“Pacifico,” said Al and I in unison. We all smiled.

As Tony poured the beers, I could see that he seemed to have aged since I'd met him earlier in the day.
Shock will do that.

“How is your wife?” I asked.

Tony smiled. “She's fine, physically. They checked her out at the roadside, but she wouldn't let them take her to the clinic. She hasn't got a scratch on her, which is a miracle, but mentally, she's a mess. She said she'd been crying as she was driving and just misjudged things a bit. She came off the road and crunched the car up. She called me when it happened and I just ran out of the place. I don't even remember driving there. I saw her on the far side of the highway, but I had to pass her, because of the median, then drive back again. It was awful. I was so close to her, and yet she was out of reach.”
I know that feeling.

“You said she wanted to speak to me?” asked Al.

“Yes. When we got back here, everyone was sitting around eating. Dean told me that, in my absence, they'd raided the kitchen and decided to eat. Which was fine, of course. But then Callie started crying all over again. I guess she felt relieved to be home at last, but she started blubbing that Margarita had told her something, and she needed to speak to you. Ada Taylor managed to calm her, and she and Jean took her upstairs. Dorothea went off to her house and came back with some sleeping pills. I wasn't very keen on Callie taking them, but Dorothea insisted. She can be very . . . overwhelming. To be fair, I think she means well, but you'd think she'd have learned her lesson by now. I heard that she talked a lot of her friends who shared the gated community where she lived in Florida into investing with some guy she knew. Everybody lost everything. So she sold up, moved all the way over here, and sunk every cent she had into this place. But
still
she tries to bend everyone to her will. Callie finally agreed that taking something would help her relax, and she's in a very deep sleep now, which I'm sure is a good thing. Would you mind dropping by in the morning, Al? I've got to go to the market, and I thought I'd go visit Callie's car and give it a good looking over. I got them to tow it into Bucerias. I think it might be a lost cause. It was old and battered anyway. I don't know what we'll do without it. The insurance won't buy us a replacement. Oh well, Callie's safe. That's all that matters.”

“I'm glad she's okay,” said Al, draining his bottle.

“Another?” asked Tony. Al nodded; I declined. I glanced at my watch. Almost midnight. That meant I'd already had a twenty-hour day, and I could feel myself flagging. It must have shown on my face as I drained my beer. Rutilio's grill had made me thirsty.

“How about I walk Cait to Casa LaLa, then come back and have that beer with you, Tony? You okay with that?”

“Sure, go ahead. I'm not going anywhere, and I need to wind down before I hit the sack.” He, too, looked at his watch, then added, “I've gotta be out of here at 6:30, but I've got an hour in me yet.”

I didn't want to impose. “I'm sure I can remember the way; I can get there on my own, Al. You stay here. Tony, when we were in your kitchen earlier today, there were two pots full of boiling water and, I think, pepper. Why was that?” I hoped to solve at least one of the day's mysteries.

Tony smiled. “Don't laugh—it's a thing I do.” He looked embarrassed. “I'm not really a superstitious person, not in the way that some of the older generation can be around here. The things they get up to with their ancient sayings, habits, and beliefs. They seem to mix it in with Catholicism and it's all accepted by the church. But I do have a few little things that I like to do, and one of them is to season new pots with white pepper. A Mexican guy I worked with in a kitchen years ago said it makes the pot ‘sweet'; in other words, everything it cooks will taste the best it can. You don't want to get too near the pots when they're boiling, though, 'cause the pepper in the steam can really do some damage.”

So that was it. Instead of explaining that I'd learned that lesson for myself, I asked, “Do you have a flashlight I could borrow to help me on the track back to Casa LaLa?”

Tony grinned. “I have a supply out back. Just a sec,” he said, leaving Al and me alone for a moment.

“Could I meet you here in the morning, to find out what Margarita told Callie?” I asked. I was desperate to know.

Al gave it some thought. When Tony reappeared, handing me a heavy flashlight, Al asked him if it was alright.

“I don't see why not. I suggest you give her a call around eight, or nine, and check? She should be awake by then, so if she's okay with it, you guys can come over to talk to her.”

Al and I nodded our agreement. We all said goodnight, and I made my way out into the night.

Everything looks different by flashlight, so it took me about fifteen minutes to get back to Henry's place. I got inside, turned off, then reset the alarm, and headed straight for the washroom. The bed looked very appealing as I changed, but I ignored the temptation to just slip between the sheets and sleep. I picked up the pad of paper I'd made notes on earlier in the day and curled up on the sofa. It was comfy.
Too comfy.
I got up, canceled the alarm again, and pulled open the doors to the patio and pool. I managed to find a dimmer switch for the lights and set them at just the right level to be able to sit and write. The metal chair wasn't as comfortable as the sofa, but I needed to be alert—as alert as I could be.
Come on, Cait—Bud needs you!

I'm good with lists. They help me organize my thoughts. So that's how I began. Having established that there was a rear entrance to Margarita's store, I decided to begin with a list of those I believed had the opportunity to gain access to the flower shop undetected, in the few minutes before Bud had entered it.