Sleeping with Anemone (16 page)

“Food’s here,” he announced, carrying in a big sack. He put it on the worktable and began to unload the contents. “I told Lottie to give us ten minutes to eat; then we’d come up front so she could take her lunch break. Grace should be able to take hers when Lottie comes back. Does that sound like a plan?”

Yes.
His
plan.

“Here’s your sandwich.” Marco handed me a big, greasy bundle of something wrapped in white butcher’s paper.

I sniffed suspiciously. “Is it turkey?”

“The turkey didn’t look good today. I thought you’d like the pork cutlet instead.”

He thought wrong. But what could I say? It was free, and the delivery boy was sexy. I watched him take out two small bags of salt-and-vinegar potato chips and put one in front of me. “You like this kind, don’t you?”

Wrong again. Wasn’t going to complain, though. Not one word of complaint. Didn’t want to seem ungrateful. Not going to think about adding to Marco’s minus column, either. But if I were to think about adding to it, the word
presumptuous
might have to go on it. Bad Abby for thinking about it.

“Did you just zip your lips?” Marco asked.

I stopped unwrapping the greasy sandwich. “What?”

“It looked like you made that motion to zip your lips.”

I gave him an innocent gaze. “Why would I do that?”

“Maybe because you don’t like the chips.”

I shrugged apologetically. “I eat only the baked kind.” Which he should have remembered from our romantic weekend in Key West. He eyed my bag, as though fearing I might toss it in the trash, so I pushed it toward him. “Be my guest.”

Being hungry enough to eat just about anything, I downed half the sandwich, then wrapped the rest for another day—actually for another person. Marco and I went up front so Lottie could take her lunch break and found her on the phone and Grace in the parlor, bustling between several tables of customers, pouring tea and coffee and replenishing plates of scones.

“Our regular supplier is out of anemones,” Lottie told me as she ended her call. “I’ll have to shop around for another source.”

“Didn’t we place an order for anemones recently?” I asked.

“That was a few weeks back,” Lottie said. “Now that I think about it, I don’t recall receiving that order. I’ll have to check the records.”

“Aren’t anemones sea creatures?” Marco asked.

“Flowers, too.” Lottie shook her head, chuckling. “When I first came to Bloomers all those years ago, I placed an order for
an-ee-moans.
There was dead silence on the other end of the line; then the guy started laughing. ‘You’re saying it wrong. It’s
a-NEM-o-nee,
like
an enemy
said backward. ’ Well, you can imagine my embarrassment. There I was, trying to act like I knew what I was doing—”

The phone rang and she picked it up. “Bloomers Flower Shop. How can I help you?” She listened a moment, then said, “Hold on.” Then she handed me the phone. “Detective Maroni.”

I took the receiver from her. “Hi, Detective. This is Abby.”

“I’d like you to come down to the sheriff’s office to take a look at a lineup. Can you be here in an hour?”

M
arco drove me around the square to the tan brick building on Indiana Street that housed the sheriff’s department. It was located next to the New Chapel Savings Bank and across from the entrance to the courthouse. Once inside the building, we went through security; then I was taken to a room no wider than a hallway, where I sat in front of a one-way glass mirror, Detective Maroni beside me.

“Any questions before we start?” he asked.

I nodded eagerly. “Did Dwayne Hudge confess to the kidnapping?”

“I meant questions about the lineup.”

“Oh, I understand how that works. What I need to know is whether Hudge was operating independently or hired to do the job.”

The detective gave me a look of disbelief.

“Don’t worry,” I assured him. “As I mentioned in my interview, I’ve helped with investigations before, and after all, this is my case, too, so I’d appreciate it if you’d brief me.”

He rose and said into an intercom, “We’re ready.”

Fine. I’d get my information somewhere else.

Six men, all of similar height, weight, coloring, and clothing, down to their hooded sweatshirts, filed into the room on the other side of the glass, then turned to face the glass. Behind them, height markings were painted on the wall.

“Take your time,” Detective Maroni told me. “If you want to hear a voice or have them say a phrase, let me know. Mainly, we need to know if you’ve seen any of these men in your shop or outside your shop, or otherwise near your person.”

I studied the men for several minutes. “I’ve seen number three before. His face is very familiar.”

“Okay. Anyone else?”

I took a long look at each one. “Just number three.”

He stood up. “Well, then, thanks for your time.”

“Is the third man Dwayne Hudge?”

“No, he’s one of my deputies.”

No wonder he looked familiar. Number three was the cop who’d threatened to arrest me if I led the protesters onto Uniworld property.

Okay, then. Feeling a bit foolish, I left the room and found Tara waiting outside with her mom. Tara seemed relieved to see me and gave me a fierce hug. “Was it scary?”

“Not at all,” I told her. “They can’t see you behind the glass. You can only see them.”

The detective called her in then, allowing Kathy to accompany her. I sat down on a bench against the wall just as Marco strode up the hallway toward me. He radiated such virility, confidence, strength, and genuine concern for me, I couldn’t help thinking that I’d made a mistake starting a minus column. I’d delete it the moment I got back to the shop.

He sat down beside me. “How did it go?”

“I wasn’t much help. I picked a cop out of the lineup.”

“Don’t sweat it. That happens. People see cops around town in uniform, but don’t recognize them in regular street clothes.”

“That was probably it.”

“Ready to go back to the flower shop?”

“Tara’s in there now. I’d like to wait to see how she does.”

“No problem.”

I leaned back against the wall. “I tried to find out if Hudge had confessed, but Detective Maroni didn’t want to share that information with me.”

“Did you really expect him to?”

“Abby. Hi!” Jillian cried, sailing toward me. She was bundled into a stylishly short white faux fur coat and warm Ugg boots, with a jaunty new beret on her head. “You’ll never guess why I’m here.”

“For a lineup,” I said as Jillian eyed the bench, trying to decide if it was clean enough for her posterior.

“For a lineup,” she said one second behind me. “Wait. How did you know? Is that why you’re here? Not you, Marco. I know why you’re here. I heard about your—wink, wink—bodyguard duties.”

Marco had his arms folded across his chest and was staring up the hallway in the opposite direction, pretending not to be there.

Jillian wedged herself in between us, causing Marco to sidle to the far end of the bench. Then she nudged my boot with the toe of her Ugg. “Kind of a sneaky way to move in together, isn’t it, Abs? I mean, why not just get married and be done with it? That’s what Claymore and I did. You have to step off the cliff one of these days. Right, Marco?”

I grabbed her boot at the ankle and tried to wrestle it off her foot, while she held on to the bench to keep from sliding onto the floor. “Jillian, if you say one more word about us getting married—”

“Let go of my Ugg!”

“—I’ll tell Claymore you’ve decided you’re ready to have babies. Lots of them.”

It was merely a guess that Claymore had broached that subject, but it had the effect I wanted. My cousin sucked in her breath in horror. “You wouldn’t!”

I released her boot. “Try me.”

She glared at me as she tugged the boot in place, but when I merely glared back, she finally said grudgingly to Marco, who was now standing a few feet away trying to be invisible, “I’m sorry. I take it all back.”

Marco gave her a nod, and went back to not being there.

Jillian decided to remedy that. “Seriously, Marco, if you and Abby want to live together, it’s cool with me. I won’t say another word about it.” She winked at me.

“That’s it,” I said, pulling out my phone.

The door opened and the detective ushered Tara and Kathy out. “You did an excellent job,” the detective said to Tara. He saw Jillian and wiggled his finger at her. “You’re next.”

As though she’d been called to the stage to accept an award, Jillian smoothed back her hair, moistened her lips, and followed the detective into the room.

As soon as the door closed behind them, I hopped up from the bench and went over to Tara. “How did it go?”

“She was very brave,” Kathy said, stroking Tara’s hair. “Weren’t you, honey?”

“I identified the kidnapper,” Tara told me, her voice a bit shaky from the ordeal. “The scuzzball was number five in the line.”

“Are you sure it was him?” Marco asked.

Tara nodded. “I didn’t recognize him until the detective asked him to put up his hood and turn to the side. Then I was pretty sure it was him, because I could see his profile whenever he was talking to Blondie. But just to be sure, I asked the detective to have him say what I heard him tell Blondie right before I got away. Then I knew it was him.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“ ‘You’re a dead woman.’ He kind of screamed it at her.”

“Did you hear any more of their argument?” Marco asked.

Tara nodded again. “The scuzzball called Blondie a doublecrosser and accused her sister of turning Blondie against him. Then Blondie called him crazy and stupid, and then he yelled back that she was a dead woman. But the detective said that was too much to have him repeat, so instead he asked him to say only the last part—about her being a dead woman.”

Tara turned to me. “Did you know Blondie died? Mom said they found her body outside one of those garage doors at Uniworld, and that maybe a semitruck crushed her, but I’ll bet the scuzzball ran her down.” At a buzzing noise, she pulled a cell phone from her pocket. “Is it okay if I text now?” she asked her mom.

“I guess so,” Kathy said.

While Tara sat on the bench, tapping out her message, I said to my sister-in-law, “Did the detective mention anything about the evidence they found?”

“Only that they were analyzing it. Detective Maroni said he’d let me know when he had any updates.”

“Would you let me know if he calls you?” I asked.

“Sure.”

Tara put away her phone. “Can we go home now? My stomach feels funny.”

I glanced at the door where Jillian would emerge shortly and said, “Mine, too. We’ll walk out with you.”

 

As we headed back to Bloomers, I mulled over Tara’s revelations, trying to fit them into the puzzle. “Marco, what do you think Dwayne Hudge might have meant when he accused Blondie—I mean Charlotte Bebe—of double-crossing him?”

“That Hudge was afraid Charlotte’s sister had convinced her to cut him out of whatever their deal was.”

“Do you remember Tara saying that they were arguing about where to take her? Charlotte wanted to go somewhere they couldn’t be heard, remember?”

“Sure. That’s why we thought their intent was to kill Tara—you.”

“But if Charlotte was planning to double-cross Hudge, maybe her true intent was to kill
him
. And if Hudge suspected that’s what Charlotte’s intentions were, that would give him a motive for running her down.”

“True.”

Terrific. We were on the same page again. “I wish we could sit in on Hudge’s interview. I really want to know about those two pieces of evidence that tie Raand to Hudge and Charlotte.”

“What two pieces of evidence?”

“I forgot to tell you I called Greg Morgan today. So much is going on, I can’t remember who I told what.”

“Morgan talked to you about the evidence?”

“Sort of. Anyway, he said the cops had recovered two pieces of evidence that linked Raand to the kidnappers—a note and flowers. I got it out of him that the note was from Raand, but he wouldn’t say who the recipient was or how flowers fit into the picture, so maybe Reilly can help there.”

“We can’t keep asking Reilly to divulge information from the police files, Abby. He’s taken too many chances for us.”

“Not on this case.”

Marco gave me a frown. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Go there. Leave Reilly alone.”

Our page numbers were not lining up now. “Then what do you suggest we do to get more information?”

“Why do we have to do anything?”

“For my peace of mind.”

Marco glanced at me. “You’re going to work this like a dog with a bone, aren’t you?”

“Can you blame me?”