A Root Awakening: A Flower Shop Mystery (14 page)

I unlocked the door and let her in. “What are you doing here so early?”

“I have to use the bathroom,” she said, practically running through the shop.

“That’s why you’re here?”

“No, silly,” she called over her shoulder. “I have news that just couldn’t wait.”

I
paced in front of the worktable wondering what had gotten my cousin out of bed before ten in the morning. Lottie and Grace waited calmly in the kitchen doorway.

Jillian emerged wiping her hands on a paper towel. If she’d come to share a serious problem, she certainly wasn’t showing it. “Sorry,” she said with a shrug. “My bladder was duressed to the max.”

I sighed. “There is no such word, Jillian. You mean stressed.”

“Do you know what it feels like to have a seven-pound dumbbell lying on your bladder while you’re trying to sleep?” she countered.

“Of course not.”

“Well, your time will come,” she said, tossing the towel in the wastebasket. “Then you’ll see how duressed a bladder can be.”

“Honey,” Lottie said, “I had four dumbbells lying on my bladder. You want to talk about discomfort? Try having quadruplets.”

“Excuse me, Lottie, dear,” Grace said, to move the
conversation along. “Jillian, what news did you bring us, love?”

Jillian waddled over to one of the stools at the worktable and sat on it. “Sorry. My feet are duressed, too. Anyway, I heard about you not getting the model house, Abby, so I contacted the developer about the cost of new construction and he dropped off the information a little while ago.”

“You got up early for me?”

She held out her arms for a hug. “You’re welcome.”

“Thank you, Jill. I’m touched.” Seriously.

“I was up anyway. Dumbbell on the bladder, remember?” Jillian dug through her enormous tote bag and pulled out a manila envelope. “All the specs on the model you saw are in here, along with information about the subdivision.”

“I appreciate your efforts,” I said, taking the envelope, “but the problem is that we can’t wait for a house to be built. We need to move soon.”

“That’s what you said six months ago. You’re not going to find what you want in an existing home, Abs. You have way too much meticulosity.”

“Seriously, Jill?”

“It’s a word,” she said with a pout.

Right. Another Jillian word. I opened the brochure and showed the photos to Grace. Lottie had slipped out of the room.

“It’s a lovely home,” Grace said.

I sighed. “Isn’t it?”

“They put these houses up in five months,” Jillian said. “I’ll bet Marco’s landlord would give you a month-to-month lease.”

“Five months would be August. Even if he let us extend the lease, I don’t think we’d want to stay in that cramped apartment for that long.”

Lottie slipped in beside me and showed me the information on her cell phone’s dictionary:
Meticulosity: Being meticulous.
Jillian had finally gotten it right.

“Anyway,” I said, “our Realtor is taking us to see a little cottage today that she promises we’ll love.”

“Sure,” Jillian said, rolling her eyes. “Because you’ve had great luck with her so far. At least show the information to Marco and see how he feels about it.”

*   *   *

“Build a house?” my gorgeous groom said as we pulled up behind Lorelei’s car. “It would be next winter before we could move in.”

“Jillian said five months, but I agree with you, Marco. We need something soon, and we don’t know the first thing about having a house built. We’re better off buying a house that’s available now and affordable—like Lorelei said this one would be.”

We turned to look at the cottage to which our Realtor had sent us, and my hopes fell. It was made of brick that had been painted white, and much of that paint had worn off. It had no landscaping—not a shrub or a tree or even any decorative grass—not much of a lawn, either, and no porch. Basically, it had zero character. But that could be added.

Lorelei was waiting inside the front door and waved excitedly as we walked toward her. “You’re going to love this charmer,” she said, practically bouncing as she held the door open for us.

We stepped straight into the living room
entranceway, which consisted of four square feet of linoleum made to look like red bricks. The rest of the small rectangular room was carpeted in forest green shag that had seen better days—make that decades. If that wasn’t disgusting enough, the walls had been papered in a floral print of gigantic mauve and white orchids on a shiny forest green background, with the ceiling painted pastel green.

It had two narrow windows facing the front and a brick fireplace on the outside wall that had been painted over with a thick coat of white paint that, like the outside, had chipped off in many areas. But at least it matched the linoleum by the front door, which was more than could be said for the mantel, a thick slab of rough-hewn dark wood.

“Well?” Lorelei chirped, hugging her clipboard against her jacket.

“It’s really green,” I said.

“But it’s floral,” she said, as though I hadn’t noticed fifty giant flowers staring at me. “Right up your alley.”

Which is where the wallpaper and carpet would end up if we bought the house.

“We could strip the walls,” Marco said, looking around, “and paint the ceiling . . . and tear out the carpeting and linoleum . . . and have the brick sandblasted.”

“Let’s see the kitchen,” Lorelei said, exiting through a doorway.

When we entered the kitchen, she was leaning against the counter, smiling. “Look how roomy it is. You can fit a good-sized table in here.”

“More linoleum,” I muttered to Marco.

“More wallpaper,” Marco muttered back.

The walls were covered in what appeared to be the reverse of the living room paper—mauve background with lots of green leafy vines and white orchids, with a grass green laminate counter. The refrigerator was small and white, while the freestanding range with oven was black. There was a makeshift shelf over the range with an outlet built into the wall. I assumed it was for a microwave.

The linoleum here was brick patterned, too, but in a yellowed white with texture added, as if that would fool anyone into believing it was actual brick.

“What kind of wood is this?” I asked, running my hand across the face of a cabinet door. It was rough and not at all shiny.

“I’m not sure,” Lorelei said, although her expression said differently.

“It’s stained plywood,” Marco said.

“It could be painted,” our cheery Realtor said.

Marco looked out the window over the sink. “Not much of a backyard.”

But I was looking
at
the sink, a stainless steel variety that had lost its shine from hard scrubbing and appeared to be badly scratched. Ditto for the green counter.

“We can strip these walls,” Marco said, “and the linoleum.”

“We’d have to replace the sink and the counters and buy a microwave,” I said.

“Let’s see the bedrooms,” Lorelei called as she went through another doorway.

“I don’t like it,” I whispered to Marco as we followed her up a hallway carpeted in mauve shag.

“At least it has good bones,” he said. “We’d have to
invest some money to modernize it, but I’ll bet we could get it for a steal.”

“And it’s already at the low end of your price range,” Lorelei said. “Now, on your right is the bathroom.”

“Is this the only bathroom?” Marco asked.

Lorelei checked her clipboard. “Yes.”

I peered in, almost afraid to see what horrors lay in store. “More green,” I whispered to Marco.

The countertop was made of forest green cultured marble with white streaks running through it, the walls were a lighter green, and the floor was covered in white linoleum tiles. It had a bathtub/shower combination with a sliding frosted-glass door and a toilet with—surprise—a green seat.

“I’m starting to feel like a leprechaun,” I said.

“Oh, a leprechaun,” Lorelei said with a laugh. “Because of your red hair and being so short.”

Not what I’d meant at all. “Actually, it’s because of all this—” I opened the sliding glass shower door and it fell off its track.

“It can be fixed,” Lorelei said as Marco attempted to put it back. “Or replaced.”

“We’d have to paint the walls and get rid of this floor, too,” I said.

“On to the master bedroom,” she said, darting away.

We moved through the next doorway into a small bedroom painted pumpkin orange with brown shag carpeting. “At least it’s not green,” I said, “but it’s kind of small.”

“My furniture should fit,” Marco said. He opened the pumpkin-colored bifold closet doors and immediately shut them. “Stay back,” he said to me. “It smells like something died in there.”

Lorelei opened one side and peeked in. “You’re right. I’m not sure what that is—the Realtor told me the owner had the mouse problem under control.”

“Good-bye,” I said, and walked out.

“But there’s one more bedroom,” she called as I escaped back the way I’d come.

“That’s okay,” I replied. “This isn’t the house for us.”

“We’ll just keep trying,” she shouted.

*   *   *

We drove back to the town square in silence. I assumed that Marco was as depressed as I was, but as he parked the car, he began to chuckle.

“What’s so funny?”

“Your leprechaun comment. I was picturing a colony of them living there.”

“I don’t think even a leprechaun could have taken all that green.”

“If we bought it, we’d have to set off a bomb inside.”

“To get rid of the mice or the house?”

We laughed until our sides hurt. As I wiped tears off my face, Marco said, “We’ll find the right place, Sunshine. We just have to think positive.”

My thoughts exactly. I was positive we’d already found the right house, but it had gotten away from us.

*   *   *

Bloomers was so busy that afternoon that I took only one break when my mom brought in her newest objet d’art. I had hoped to have a little extra time to work on the Jones project, but by three thirty I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I was beginning to think I’d need to hire a full-time person to manage the shop so that Lottie and I could work on arrangements together.

I was definitely not complaining, however. No way. I’d hoped and prayed for my little shop to succeed, and it was finally happening.

“Get ready to be amazed, Abigail.” Mom set a shopping bag on the floor and removed two boot-sized shoe boxes. I thought I saw the curtain flutter behind her and guessed that my assistants were eavesdropping from the other side.

With a big
“Ta-da!”
Mom opened one of the boxes and laid the contents on a clear space on the slate-topped table so I could look at it.

It looked back at me. Not a pleasant experience. “You made a fish,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. “Out of all those wiggly eyes.”

She took another fish out of the second shoe box and laid it beside the first one. “I had a whole box of eyes leftover, so I decided to keep the theme going.”

By my estimate, each fish measured sixteen inches long and seven inches at its widest point. Their bodies were completely covered in wiggly white eyes with black pupils, which I supposed represented fish scales, with the fins and tails painted a shiny metallic green. What I couldn’t figure out were the one-inch metallic green cups they appeared to be trying to swallow, or the metallic green plates behind them.

“Can you guess what I call them?” Mom asked.

I knew what I’d call them, but she’d never hear it from me. “Tell me.”

“Walleyes.”

I studied them for a moment. “Because they’re fish and they have eyes?”

As Grace sailed through the curtain bearing a cup of
coffee for each of us, Mom turned one fish over so I could see the picture hanger on the back.

“How clever, Maureen,” Grace said, placing a cup in front of her. “You’ve made walleye wall art.”

“Thank you, Grace, but they’re more than that.” Mom held both fish with their mouths up and tails down. “They’re sconces.”

Better than a pair of choking fish, but still,
sconces
?

She turned to me, her eyes lit with excitement. “I know the perfect place for them, too. On the wall on either side of the armoire in place of those pewter ones you have there now.”

She put her arm around my shoulders and said to Grace, “It’s so gratifying being able to help my daughter make her little shop a success.”

Or a little shop of horrors.

*   *   *

After a quick supper Marco and I drove to the house in town that Sam Walker owned. We went over our questions on the way there, and I wrote them in the notepad so Marco could refer to them if he needed to.

Sam’s place was a ranch house with white aluminum siding, an attached two-car garage, and a patchy lawn. One of the garage doors was open, revealing Sam’s black motorcycle inside. We walked up to the garage and found the former wrestler polishing the chrome trim. A bench and a set of barbells sat behind the motorcycle, and a hook next to the interior garage door held two navy baseball caps. His black pickup truck occupied the second bay.

“Oh, hey,” Sam said, rising. “I thought I heard car doors slam.” He had on grease-stained blue denims with a dark blue sweatshirt.

“Got a few minutes to talk to us?” Marco asked.

“You kinda got me trapped here,” Sam replied, holding up a white cloth and a can of chrome polish for us to see.