“
The
Landon Powell?” I asked.
“The one and only,” he said. “About a month ago she was here every night of the week with either Gibbons or Powell.”
“Who is Landon Powell?” K.C. asked, sounding confused.
“Landon Powell is a state senator. He grew up here and his family owns a lot of land. He’s also a real estate developer, and what his family didn’t originally own of this town, he has acquired through many years of dealings. He is very powerful and very well connected.”
Landon Powell had tried to strong-arm my maternal grandfather into selling his farmland, which would have given him enough area to get the city council to rezone it so he could build a shopping mega-destination. My grandfather wouldn’t sell and the deal fell through. Powell had resented my mom’s family ever since.
“So let me get this straight,” K.C. said. “This man Derrick, whom I gather neither of you liked very much, ends up face planting it in the final flower bed. Before this happens he’s cavorting about town, first with a boy toy, and then with the mistress of some hoity-toity, too-big-for-his-britches politician. Have I got it right so far?” Mickey and I nodded. “Well all I can say is that this Derrick character must have had a pretty massive set of cojones.”
“Except that the steroids must have shrunk them down to the size of pecans.” I quipped.
“I have just one more question,” K.C. said. Was Derrick gay or not?”
“Derrick was about as gay as my little sister with eight kids and one on the way,” Mickey said. “Honey, he tasted the wine but he wasn’t a connoisseur. Trust me, I know, I own the vineyard.”
Mickey smiled wickedly when he saw K.C. blush and put her hand up to her mouth.
“Mickey, as always you have been an informative and entertaining host. Now we need to be getting on our way. Thank you,” I said.
“Anytime love. The flowers are magnificent by the way.”
###
Once back at the shop Allie handed me the phone whispering, “It’s for you.”
“This is Quincy,” I answered.
“Hello, Quincy,” a soft, familiar voice responded. “This is LaDonna. I’ve called to offer an apology. I’m terribly embarrassed, but I heard about your recent visit and my husband’s awful behavior.”
“Well, thank you LaDonna but you don’t owe me any apologies. I’m sure Irwin was just having a bad day.” Of course I was thinking to myself that Irwin, not his wife, owed the apology I but I wouldn’t say that to the poor woman.
“Bad day or not, Quincy he shouldn’t have treated you like that. He’s a mean old grouch and I’m just about tired of having to apologize to our friends about the way he treats them. He just gets upset so fast.” Her voice trembled as she spoke.
“LaDonna, I’m kind of worried about you.”
“Oh dear, I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m just a silly old woman. I cry when I see greeting card commercials on TV. Don’t worry about me.”
“You don’t need to apologize. While I’ve got you on the phone, when can we meet so I can finish setting up your office?”
We decided on a time later that evening. I hoped Irwin wouldn’t be there at the same time. His quickness to anger was looking like a bigger character flaw than at first glance. He had been so angry at just the mention of Derrick. Could he possibly have been angry enough to kill him?
After I ended the call with LaDonna, I turned my attention to managing my shop. We had the big gala coming up at the convention center, and we didn’t need any last minute surprises.
When the fresh product arrived in a few days, the shop would process, hydrate and compose beautiful designs with the flowers. We would become rich and famous from all the buzz generated by new customers who saw what we created for the gala and wanted the same thing for themselves. Or at least, that was the plan. Not too much to expect, right?
K.C. was a huge help inventorying all the hardgoods for the big show, and she learned a lot of new terminology as she tried to locate all of the products on our master list for the event. She turned out the lights as I locked up for the night, and as she chirped out “see you tomorrow, Boss,” I thanked my lucky stars to have found such a gem at the hair salon, of all places. She had been truly reliable, and I had the gut feeling I could trust her from the start. Unfortunately I’d had the same feeling about Alex, and I was
oh
so wrong about him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The owner of Artful Blooms was
not
Derrick Gibbons, according to LaDonna Shaw.
When I arrived at the Shaw’s flower shop after work, I was greeted by a very penitent Irwin. He apologized for getting so upset and taking his anger with Derrick out on me. As I worked on finishing all of the connections between their computer, their credit card terminal, point-of-sale system and their printer, they conversed and talked with me about their lives before being florists.
“Mother and I used to cover a lot of territory in some of our old jobs,” Irwin said.
“We never went on any fancy vacations when the kids were young, but we got to see a lot of country on pick-up and delivery trips.”
“What did you deliver?” I asked.
LaDonna interjected, “It sounds so crude to say it that way. We lived out in the rural areas in Southern Idaho, and in Arizona at one time. We would help the mortuaries transport the deceased.”
“You transported dead bodies?”
“It was a great service,” Irwin said. “In those rural areas, there might not be a mortuary around for hundreds of miles. So we started out working as transport for the mortuaries.”
“How did you manage to heft the bodies?” I asked in amazement. “I mean, you both seem very strong, but a dead body is really heavy.” They both looked at me with surprise. “Or so I’ve heard.”
“We had a specially outfitted vehicle with a hoist hooked to a winch, and we had the gurney and other equipment. Plus, the mortuary taught us how,” Irwin said.
“He even got his own mortician’s license, didn’t you dear?” LaDonna smiled with pride at her husband.
Irwin blushed and looked away. “Hey, Quincy,” he said, “there’s a plate of chocolate chip cookies over there. Why don’t you bring them over and we’ll eat a few?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Don’t you dare, Quincy,” LaDonna said sternly. “Irwin Shaw, you know you can’t eat those cookies with you sugar diabetes. They can’t regulate your insulin shots as it is.”
“Oh, spoil sport.” Irwin frowned like a grouchy little kid.
I tried to cut the tension in the air by talking. “Do you still do that kind of work?”
“Oh, heavens no,” Irwin said. “That was years ago. We wouldn’t be able to do that kind of work now.”
I had all but finished figuring out login methods and easily remembered passwords for the Shaws. I just needed to compile a list of things to teach them and they could handle the system on their own. It was getting late though; both of them had heavy eyelids and they yawned as if in competition with one another.
“I think I should be on my way soon. I’ll come back one more time to train you both how to use this whole thing, and then you should be in business. How does that sound?”
“Quincy, we can’t thank you enough.” Irwin said. “And I’m so sorry again about the other day. It’s just that Derrick Gibbons caused a lot of heartache for our family. He’s one person that just got the better of me, and I have a hard time forgiving. Please excuse me.”
Irwin cleared his throat, as he was obviously emotional. At that moment a question popped into my mind, and I thought to myself that any normal person would see that now was not the time to ask that certain question. But I was not a normal person. I was a person of interest in a murder investigation, and I was a person who needed more sales, so I decided to ask.
“Irwin, I know this is probably not the right time to ask…there probably is no right time, but do you know who owns Artful Blooms?”
“Well it’s not Derrick!” LaDonna burst out.
“Mother, calm down. Derrick always acted like it was him that owned it, but when our son bought this store from him, we did some looking and found out Derrick wasn’t the owner of that other place.”
“You mean Artful Blooms?” I asked.
“Yes. I started talking to Derrick about what I thought was kind of fishy business, and then he distracted me with all of the talk about an investment opportunity. At first he was looking for investors to share equally in the profits of a switch grass farm. What with all of the green this and green that, recycling and bio-fuel I was hearing about in the news, I thought it wouldn’t be a bad investment. Except that it was with him. One night, he came to me while my son was away. He told me Bobby owed him a lot of money for this shop, and that he would tell everyone we knew about Bobby’s…condition.”
“His condition?”
“Oh," he swiped at his face and looked at the floor, "his messin' around with those…friends.”
“Oh, right,” I said, wanting him to keep talking. LaDonna’s face twisted up and I knew she didn’t agree with Irwin’s attitude about their son.
“Well I didn’t want him spreading the word around about Bobby, and I didn’t want him to tell Mother about it. She was already worried enough about our son and his health. So I made a deal with Gibbons. I agreed to be the primary investor in the new farm, if he would agree to sign a paper saying that Bobby wasn’t responsible for the debt from this flower shop." Irwin held his hands out, palms up, and the more he talked, the lower his arms dropped, as if he were physically trying to hold up the weight of his responsibilities.
"My son always had his head in the clouds; he thought he could run a flower shop just because his friend has one in Boise. Derrick saw him coming from a mile away. Anyway, I ended up paying for the entire farm because Derrick couldn’t find any other investors, or so he said at the time, and now he’s gone and got himself killed before we could sign the papers for Derrick to take on the sole debt for this shop.”
“You’re still paying for the flower shop now?" I asked.
"Well, no, we haven’t paid since Bobby died.” Irwin’s voice grew shaky and he stifled the show of emotion. “It’s his fault that Bobby is gone. And now he’s gone too. That puts an end to things in my book.”
“I see what you mean,” I said, even though I didn’t really understand.
I said goodnight to the Shaws and on the drive home I considered the new information I had about them and their previous work. Hauling dead bodies around? It certainly would come in handy if you were going to murder someone and then place the body in a mortuary. But Irwin was old and sometimes appeared to be feeble. I couldn’t see him being able to handle the physical nature of that kind of job.
What was I thinking, anyway? These were sweet people who’d just had their lives blasted into pieces. Their son killed himself because of a scumbag, whom they then had to contend with because he had swindled their son in business. And to top it all off, they still owed him money, even though, by dying he wasn’t around to collect the payments any more.
I would have to check Irwin Shaw off of my list of potential murderer’s of Derrick Gibbons. Unfortunately that kept my name on the short list, if I didn’t find out who the real killer was.
Since Derrick was such a swindler, I figured that following the business trail from his shop—the one he didn't really own—was the way to find out who would have wanted him out of the picture. It was obvious the funeral flower business hadn’t been taken over by the Shaws. I was going to have to go back to the source of the sales. It was time for another trip to the mortuary, and this time I wasn’t going to be stopped by the gatekeeper; I would go to the funeral director himself.
###
I stopped at my trusty local fast food restaurant on the way home. I was in no condition for healthy eating. What did I care if I gained a few pounds? I didn’t have a boyfriend to impress.
When I arrived home, I looked around extra cautiously for arsonists, polygamists or reckless drivers. The coast appeared to be clear, but I still rushed in to my house, locked the deadbolts and peered into every closet, nook and cranny to make sure nobody hid in wait for me. I lifted the phone receiver and heard that I had at least one message. The first was from my mother’s number, I skipped it for the time being. Maybe I’d skip it all together, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to deal with anything she had to say.
The last message was a surprise, as it came from Danny Barnes’ cell phone. It was unusual for him to call my home. I waited impatiently for the recording of his message to start. “Dolly, hello. I called your home phone because I didn’t want anyone at your shop to over-hear any of this. I hate to leave this on a message, but I needed to tell you something as soon as possible. My brother has a buddy at Hillside Police who knows I own a flower shop. So, a few days ago, he asked if I could come and look at something and give my expert opinion.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it earlier, but I just plain forgot about it with our wedding trauma today, and then I didn’t want to mention it in front of Mr. Hottie Pants when the two of you came in the other day.”
I made a mental note to ask him about the “wedding trauma” the next time I talked to him. It probably amounted to someone thinking his prices were too high.
“My dear, they had me come and look at the casket spray that was on top of Derrick’s casket. I went down there and had a look…and I don’t quite know how to say this, but… it looked like one of yours. The flowers look like your style, but Quincy dear… it was the ribbon with that tacky old gold lettering on the banner. You’re the only one around here who has that kind.”
Danny was talking about the lettering we put on a ribbon to recognize the deceased. Typical banners might say “Beloved Husband,” “Loving Wife,” or something similar. It was either write with glue and glitter or use the adhesive gold lettering. I didn’t think my lettering was tacky, and Aunt Rosie had left a ton of it at the shop. I didn’t see any point in buying new just because Danny didn’t like it.