Snipped in the Bud (10 page)

“M
y fingerprints can’t be the only ones on the pencil,” I said to Marco, trying to keep the worry—make that hysteria—out of my voice. “Reilly told you yesterday they found two sets and a partial.”

“Reilly screwed up, Abby. He spoke too soon. I think he was
hoping
to find prints other than yours.”

“
He
was hoping? I had a few hopes in that direction myself. What about the partial print?”

“Wasn’t enough there for a match.”

“But because there
is
a partial, that means another person touched the pencil, right?”

“The blurred print could be yours, too.”

So there was my third event—my fingerprints, no one else’s, on the murder weapon. The Rule of Three could not be broken.

The hysteria I’d kept out of my voice was now tunneling into my brain, so I blocked it with a dose of Knight logic. “I don’t care if my prints are the only ones. I know I’m innocent and the cops have to know that, too. I mean, they can’t actually think I’d kill anyone. Right?”

Silence. Always a bad sign. I glanced up at the phone’s base on the wall and saw a light flashing on line two. “Wait, Marco. I have another call.” I scrambled to my feet, punched the second button, and answered not quite as cheerfully as before, “Bloomers. How can I help you?”

“Abby? It’s Dave. Something has come up and I need to talk to you right away. When can you get down here?”

Oops. I had forgotten to forewarn him about my fingerprints. By the tone of his voice I was betting the prosecutor’s office had already contacted him. “Dave, I’ve got a store full of shoppers right now. Can’t we discuss this over the phone?”

“I need you here, Abby. Right away.”

I’d never heard him sound so grim, and that made me worry even more. “Okay. Give me five minutes.”

We hung up and I saw a third line blinking. I answered with a hurried, “Bloomers,” and heard, “Abby, how are you today? Connor Mackay here. Did you have a chance to read my article in today’s—”

Before I singed his eardrum with a few choice words—and risked seeing myself quoted in tomorrow’s newspaper—I ended the call and went back to Marco’s line. “Dave wants to see me right away, probably about the fingerprints. I’m going to his office now.”

“Let me know what he tells you.”

I returned to the workroom for my purse, feeling as if I were caught in a nonsensical dream and couldn’t wake up. Lottie came through the curtain, saw me put my purse on my shoulder, and asked, “What happened?”

“I have to go see Dave.”

“Why, baby?”

“Because I forgot to tell the cops I’d handled one of Professor Puffer’s pencils and now my prints have turned up on the murder weapon.”

“Oh, Lordy.” She came at me with her meaty arms outstretched and gave me a hug, rocking us both back and forth as if I were five and had just been told my tonsils were coming out. Then she held me at arm’s length and stared me in the eye. “You’re going to be fine, you hear me?”

“Of course I’ll be fine. I’m innocent.”

“That’s the way to keep those spirits up. You know we’re firmly behind you, sweetie, whatever happens.”

Whatever happens?
Why did I feel like I was about to ski down the side of a steep mountain? Without skis.

“Use the back door,” Lottie said. “There are two reporters up front asking for you.”

That was one of the problems of living in a small town. There simply wasn’t much happening, so when something as big as a murder came along, the newspapers and local cable TV stations were beside themselves with excitement. Finally, something to report other than garage sales! Great.

I jammed Jillian’s hat on my head, slipped out the back way, took the alley to the corner, then crossed the street and ducked down another alley to reach Dave’s building. I couldn’t get in the fire escape door in the rear, so I had to go around to Lincoln and use the front door. As I kept my head down and my eyes focused on the ground, two pairs of women’s sandals suddenly loomed in front of me. I stopped with a gasp and looked up into the faces of my mother’s bridge friends. Quickly, I pulled the hat lower and attempted to scuttle past, but it didn’t work.

“Oh, look! It’s Maureen’s daughter,” one of the ladies said. “Abby, dear. How are you?”

So much for the hat disguise. “Hello, Mrs. Nowlin, Mrs. Warner. Beautiful day, isn’t it?” I tried to move around them—I had only another two yards to go—but the ladies closed ranks.

“We read about the murder,” Mrs. Nowlin said in a grave voice, belying the delighted gleam in her eye. “We just wanted to let you know our sympathies are with you. It takes a brave soul to stand up for oneself against a cad such as Carson Reed.”

“The worst kind of cad,” Mrs. Warner added. “How shameful of him to advocate for that awful cosmetics lab.”

“And have you dragged off to jail!”

“We don’t blame you for striking out against the injustice of it all.”

“Or for losing your temper.”

“He must have pushed you to the edge.”

“Could you plead insanity?”

I stared at my mother’s friends in disbelief. “I didn’t kill Professor Reed.”

“Of course you didn’t
kill
him,” Mrs. Warner said, using her fingers to put quote marks around the word
kill
. “You simply put a stop to his—”

“Baser tendencies,” Mrs. Nowlin finished. “If you need character witnesses—”

“Call us,” Mrs. Warner said.

They gazed at me like a pair of Siamese cats waiting for the mouse to make a move.

I didn’t know what to say. My mind refused to accept that these two middle-aged women who had known me for years thought I had killed a man. I stepped around them, walked the two yards to Dave’s door, and went inside. The world had gone mad.

Dave’s secretary ushered me straight into his office. Seeing the somber look on his face, I thought it might be wise to chat him up a bit. I took a seat on one of the chairs on the other side of his desk, pulled off the hat, and combed my fingers through my hair. “Can you believe that article in this morning’s
New Chapel News
? There wasn’t even a mention of Jocelyn Puffer or of Kenny Lipinski being there. And can you believe Puffer had the nerve to point the finger of guilt at me? Can he get away with that?”

Dave opened the manila file in front of him. “Professor Puffer didn’t say anything libelous. He was careful to only hint at your guilt.”

“So there’s nothing I can do to stop him?”

“Not unless he crosses the line. But that’s not why I asked you here. I just got a call from the DA. Guess whose prints they found on the pencil? And don’t give me that coy look. Why didn’t you level with me yesterday about handling the weapon? How can I defend you if you don’t tell me the truth?”

He was really steamed, something I’d witnessed probably twice in all the months I’d clerked for him, but I knew it was only because he cared about me. “Dave, honestly, I wasn’t hiding anything. I really did forget to tell you about the pencil.”

“You
forgot
that you handled the murder weapon? Is there anything
else
you forgot?”

“No, Dave,” I said, feeling like a little kid being scolded.

“Do you know how this looks to the police? Now they want to talk to you again. But I won’t expose you to that unless I’m one hundred percent certain you’re not involved.”

My mouth dropped open. If Dave thought I was involved, what chance did I have?

“I know how worked up you get over your causes, Abby, and I know this guy Reed pushed your buttons. You wouldn’t be the first one to get so angry you went off the deep end.”

“This is
me,
Dave, the little florist who loves all living things. How can you think I would kill anyone, even if he pushed these so-called buttons of mine?”

“Forget what I think and starting considering what twelve of your fellow citizens might think. I don’t care what you did, Abby, but I need you to be straight with me because I have to make sure it never comes to a matter of a dozen people deciding your fate.”

“Dave. Hello. I touched a pencil when I delivered a flower. They can’t send me to prison based on such a flimsy scrap of circumstantial evidence as that.”

“Maybe you forgot one of the more important lessons of the law. Prisons are full of people convicted on circumstantial evidence. And at this point, young lady, let me tick off the circumstantial evidence they have against you: access, motive, opportunity, and fingerprints.” He sat back and lifted his hands. “Bingo.”

Stunned didn’t begin to describe what I was feeling. “This is ridiculous. The police know me. They know my father. The prosecutor isn’t going to charge me with murder. ”

“Fine, Abby, I’ll write to you when they put you away.”

His normally cheerful face was solemn. He wasn’t kidding. I swallowed a lump of fear and said shakily, “I’ll do whatever you say.”

“Tell me how the devil your prints got on that pencil. And don’t say you merely touched it, because that would indicate just the tip of your index finger, and they found prints from both hands on it.”

“That’s because I held it with both hands, like this.” I proceeded to demonstrate.

He sat back with a frown of concentration as I related the experience of walking into Puffer’s office, spotting the infamous black pencils, and what happened after that. When I finished, Dave said, “I might be the only person who believes you, but, strangely, I do. For God’s sake, from now on tell me everything, okay?” He turned to reach for the phone. “I’ll call the prosecutor and set up an appointment. With any luck we can take their focus off you and put them on the real culprit’s trail.”

While Dave was on the phone, I couldn’t help but think about the total absurdity of the whole situation, all because of some student’s stupid flower prank.

“We’re set,” he said, turning back to me. “Three o’clock this afternoon. Be here ten minutes early and we’ll walk across to the police station together.”

“I just hope they feel exceeding foolish after they hear my explanation.” With a huff, I stood up and headed for the door, then paused, remembering my encounter with my mother’s friends. “Is it okay if we take your car this afternoon?” At his nod, I pulled Jillian’s hat over my hair, then paused again. “And can I leave through the fire exit?”

As I slipped out into the alley, I phoned Marco and told him about the meeting. His advice was for me to stay composed no matter how the cops tried to get under my skin—as if I would let that happen—and above all to be open and friendly. No problem, I told him. I was always open. (Too open, if you believed my parents.) And I could absolutely do friendly.

What I couldn’t do was get back to Bloomers.

“G
race,” I whispered into my cell phone, peering around the corner into the alley behind my shop, “there are two shady characters hanging around the back door.”

“Reporters, no doubt. We’ve had them buzzing about all day. You’d best stay away if you don’t want to talk to them.”

I ducked back when one of the men turned his head my way. “But we’ve got orders that need to go out this afternoon, and I can’t put them all on Lottie’s shoulders.”

“One must exercise patience, Abby. It’s a virtue. As Shakespeare said so well in
Othello,
‘How poor are they who have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?’”

I wasn’t sure about healing wounds, but wounding a few heels sounded like a fantastic idea, and I knew who I’d start with—Connor Mackay, who was responsible for my new predicament. But that wasn’t Grace’s point. For her the issue was patience, of which I had a limited amount. So limited, in fact, that one reason I never had a manicure was that I had a difficult time waiting for the nail polish to dry. (Another reason was the cost.) But in my present situation, it was a matter of principle.

“I refuse to let a few newshounds chase me away from my shop, Grace. Bloomers is my livelihood. I’ll just square my shoulders and march past them. I’ll dare them to try to stop me.”

“Before you charge into the fray, would you allow me two minutes to try something?”

Could I refuse a woman who spoke like Queen Elizabeth? “Sure. Go ahead.”

I put my phone away and waited. Moments later the back door opened and the men moved forward, one with a camera at the ready. At once, Grace appeared, holding a big aluminum bucket. Before either man realized what she was about to do, she heaved the contents—water with lots of leaf and flower clippings in it—into their faces.

As the pair coughed and sputtered and wiped greenery out of their eyes and off the camera, I darted past them, into Bloomers, just as Grace said to them in her regal accent, “Good heavens. I didn’t know anyone was lurking about out here. So sorry.” And slammed the door.

Well done, Gracie. Huzzah.

I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon cloistered in the workroom. I didn’t want to complain, because I was doing what I loved best. Still, knowing that there were people hanging around outside, waiting for a glimpse of the “notorious florist,” I felt confined, even a little claustrophobic. For reasons only small-town minds could understand, I had become a draw for the curious, the news starved, the gossips, and a few wackos, two of whom had decided to keep a vigil in front of the shop, one carrying a sign that said
JUSTICE FOR REED
, the other one carrying a sign saying
SAVE THE FLORIST
in bloodred letters. Actually, it had read
SAVE THE FOREST
before he’d squeezed in an L and altered the E. The student protest group had yet to arrive. Ironically, business had never been better.

“Sorry I can’t help out front,” I told Lottie when she came in to gather fresh flowers for the display case. “Everything will go back to normal after Dave and I meet with the police.”

“I don’t doubt that for a moment,” she said in such a way that I couldn’t tell whether she was relieved or disappointed. I decided not to ask. Sometimes it was better not to know those things.

“Your mother phoned during her recess break looking for you,” Lottie said, “and I could tell she was working herself into a hush puppy–sized lump of worry.”

Not that I’d ever seen a hush puppy, let alone knew what to do with one, but any worry coming from my mother wasn’t good. At her worst she didn’t eat, sleep, or even create her works of, well, art. She went to school, then came home to fret and pace. Over the years she’d worn an actual—though somewhat erratic—path through the green carpet in her bedroom, flattening the shaggy pile like a lawn mower run amok.

Mom blamed it on a gene she’d inherited from her mother, and somehow I knew that little devil was lurking in my DNA, too, just waiting for a child to spring forth from my womb to keep the chain intact. Luckily, I was a long way from that stage in my life. In fact, I was so not ready for motherhood that I refused to even sit in a rocking chair in case it gave my repressed biological urges any ideas.

“Jillian was supposed to talk to my mother this morning to prevent Mom from freaking out,” I told Lottie.

“I don’t mean to intrude, dear,” Grace said, slipping through the curtain like a silver-haired phantom, “but do you actually believe your cousin has the ability to be a calming influence on your mother—or on anyone, for that matter?”

Obviously Grace
did
mean to intrude or else she wouldn’t have. But she did have a valid point. “You’re right. I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was the shock of seeing my name, not to mention my freckles, splashed across the front page of the morning paper.”

“That’d do it for me,” Lottie said with a firm nod, settling the matter once and for all.

To circumvent my mother going into a state of hysteria, I called the school right then, instead of waiting until after the meeting. I also had an ulterior motive. Since recess was long over and she was back in class, I didn’t actually have to speak with her. I simply left a message saying that everything would be fine by suppertime. Then, seeing that it was fast approaching two thirty, I decided to plan my escape route so I wouldn’t be late for the meeting.

Ten minutes later, wearing Jillian’s hat and keeping my head down, I had Grace open the back door and toss out more water, just in case any reporters were still lurking. Then I darted into the alley and ran toward Marco’s bar, intending to cut through from back to front, emerge onto the sidewalk, and make the short jaunt to Dave’s office.

The water hadn’t even finished splashing when I heard a man yell, “There she goes!” just as I ducked into Down the Hatch’s back door. With my pursuers not far behind, I flew past the kitchen, up the short hallway past Marco’s office, then continued to the bar area, where I called to Chris, “A little help, please?” and hitched my thumb over my shoulder.

As I dodged patrons in a headlong rush to get to the front door, Chris stepped out from behind the bar and purposely blocked the men’s path. My last glimpse of them was of their frustrated faces as they watched me pass the picture window outside. I chortled with glee—then ran squarely into a tall, lean body, knocking my hat askew. I stumbled back a step, then looked straight up into a pair of sea-foam green eyes, the very same eyes that belonged to the weevil who had maligned me in the paper.

Connor Mackay bent down for a look at the face beneath the hat, then said, “Abby Knight!” in a way that would have been quite flattering if I hadn’t known what a worm he was. “I was just thinking about you, and here you are.”

“Hmm. What a coincidence.” I tried to sidestep him, but he moved with me.

“You know what they say. There are no coincidences. We were destined to run into each other today.”

I darted a glance over my shoulder to see whether the reporters had broken free. “Look, I’m kind of in a hurry right now. Do you mind?”

He merely smiled, not Marco’s corner-of-the-mouth sexy grin, but a wide, engaging smile that made it impossible to ignore him, even though I was trying my hardest. “Then I’ll make this quick. Want to have dinner with me tonight?”

An ego as overinflated as this man’s needed puncturing in the worst way. And was I ever up for that. “I’m sorry,” I said, looking puzzled. “Have we met?”

He laughed the laughter of the truly amused instead of the seriously deflated. “Yes, we have, Abby—or Olga, or whomever you’re pretending to be today. Connor Mackay from the
News
—and I know you remember me because I’m an unforgettable guy.”

I hated to admit it, but he
was
pretty memorable. I pretended to ponder the matter. “Sorry. The name isn’t ringing any bells.”

“Well, I’m not one to hold grudges, so now that we’ve been reintroduced, how about that dinner? I’ll treat.”

Connor was not only egotistical, he was also as transparent as plastic wrap. “Right. Your treat. And tomorrow every bit of information you wring out of me will be in print, another chapter added to the garbage you wrote for today’s paper. I don’t know how you stand to look at yourself in the mirror.”

He gave an easy shrug of his shoulders. “I work with the information I have, which is why I keep asking you to talk to me. You remember me asking you to talk to me, don’t you?”

Now he was being flip. I stepped closer and put my index finger against the middle button of his blue chambray shirt, pressing it as I talked to stab home my message. “Here’s the thing, Mr. Unforgettable. I’m not wowed by your coy tactics or your creative storytelling or your college-boy good looks, and I don’t know what you hope to gain by following me around town
pretending
to run into me. I think you are an idiot of the highest order and I wouldn’t give you an interview if you flew me to
Paris
for dinner. So why don’t you crawl back into your dank little hole and spin lies about someone else?”

There was a long moment of stunned silence, then he said in a very even voice, “Actually, I was on my way to the courthouse to cover the trial of the man who robbed the jewelry store last January—but I’ll keep what you said in mind. If you have a change of heart about talking to me—no, make that
when
you have a change of heart—you know how to contact me.”

He nodded politely and strode toward the street, while I tugged my hat down as low as it would go and slunk into Dave Hammond’s office, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut. An ego had been deflated all right, but it hadn’t been Connor Mackay’s.

At three o’clock that afternoon, Dave ushered me from his car straight into the police station, where we were shown into one of the conference rooms—a small, windowless, rectangular box with dingy white walls and a black-and-white tile floor that was stained and cracked from decades of use. In the room was a standard, government-issue steel desk, gray metal folding chairs around a long table with a cheap, pecan veneer, and an old coffeepot on a hot plate on a stand in the corner. All the comforts of home.

I was surprised to see Chief Prosecuting Attorney Melvin Darnell there, but then I reminded myself that this was a murder case, and the chief prosecutor was an elected official who had to keep his name in front of the public as the Protector of the Realm so he’d be reelected. And what better way to exhibit his abilities than in a highly publicized murder case?

Mel, as he called himself, was well over six feet tall, with thinning blond hair and a wholesome, country farmer appearance. He prided himself on being a man of the people, the dependable next-door neighbor you’d entrust with your house key. His campaign slogan was “All’s well that ends Mel,” a corny play on an old saying that, sadly, had been a highly effective strategy, although Grace still shuddered when someone uttered it.

Mel was sitting beside Detective Al Corbison, a paunchy, middle-aged, bald man with tobacco-stained teeth and no sense of humor whatsoever. Corbison was inserting a cassette into an old-fashioned black tape recorder in the middle of the table. Both stood up to shake hands with Dave. They merely nodded at me.

To show them I wasn’t bothered in the least, I gave them a cool smile, pulled out a chair across from them, and sat down. As the men took their seats, I put Jillian’s hat on the table in front of me and leaned back. I wanted them to see how unconcerned I was. I wanted them to feel ashamed of themselves for what they were about to put me through. I also wanted a good cup of coffee, but by the looks of the thick sludge in the bottom of the pot, that wasn’t going to happen.

Corbison pushed the Record button, then stated the date, time, and people present. Feeling like I was an extra on the set of
Law and Order,
I had to cover my mouth to keep from chuckling out loud. It was way too surreal for me to take seriously. But when Corbison started reading me my rights, I stopped chuckling and started smoldering. They were carrying things too far.

“Do you understand your rights as they were read to you?” Corbison asked.

Did he think I was an idiot? “Gee, I’m not sure I got all of it. Maybe you’d better run through them again.”

Mel tilted his head, as if he didn’t get my sarcasm, while Corbison glared and Dave gave me a warning nudge with his elbow, so I said grudgingly, “Yes, I understand.”

Both men opposite me took a moment to read over their respective notes, then the detective handed me several typed pages that I recognized as being the information I’d given Reilly at the law school. “Look over your statement and tell me if it’s true and accurate.”

Dave bent his head to read the pages with me. I skimmed through them, then said to Corbison, “They’re true and accurate.”

“Then why isn’t there anything in your statement about you handling the murder weapon?”

Corbison looked way too pleased with himself, and I just had to put an end to that. I hated smugness. “Because you didn’t ask if I left anything out. You asked if it was accurate. It
is
accurate. It just isn’t complete.” It was my turn to look smug.
Take that, Al!

I could feel Dave’s eyeballs on the right side my face and knew he was trying to bore a hole into my brain so he could leave a message. I was guessing the message would say,
Stop that right now!
I took a quick glance at All’s Well Mel and he didn’t look quite as farmer friendly as before.