Poison, Perennials, and a Poltergeist (The Petal Pushers Mystery Series)

by Hayes, Tina D. C.

  Every child is born a naturalist. His eyes are, by nature,

  open to the glories of the stars, the beauty

  of the flowers, and the mystery of life.

  ~ R. Search

  “Um . . . No to the pink streaks. They’d look great on Charlotte, though.” Darci flipped through the magazine Donovan had bookmarked with her in mind. “I like this one, if we could do a longer version. Chin length would make my face look fatter than it is, and now is not the time to cut back on my donut fetish. I can’t let Charlotte snack alone this close to her due date.”

  “A shorter cut would show off those great cheekbones of yours, but I can go longer if that’s what you want.” Donovan put the magazine down and picked up his scissors. “So how much can I take off? Two inches?” He indicated the length with his comb, a few inches down from her shoulder.

  Darci fidgeted with the stitching on the chair arm, trying to make up her mind. She’d struck up a friendship with Donvan over the past three months, after Wade talked her into taking just a little time for herself. Celia Kemp gave The Hair Dare Your ‘Do Salon a rave review in the county paper, but the thing that hooked Darci was listening to the latest gossip as Donovan’s fingers worked their magic on her hair, and took her mind off her responsibilities for a while. He’d already talked her into growing out her bangs and she’d gotten a lot of compliments on the caramel streaks he put in a few weeks before.

  “It’s basically the same style you have now, just a tad shorter, with chunkier layers.” Donovan winked at her reflection in the mirror. “Your husband will love it.”

  “Okay.” Darci nodded, but then bit her lip. “But just an inch and a half.”

  Donovan had just started razoring her layers when an older gentleman came in. He looked familiar as he walked past them toward the back of the salon.

  Darci giggled at Donovan’s dramatic eye roll.

  A girl strutted toward the front door arm-in-arm with the older man. “I might be a little late tomorrow.”

  “You did finish cleaning up, right?” Donovan wore an exasperated expression, but kept his tone even.

  “Oh my God,” Darci said when the door closed behind them. “Was that who I think it was? Belinda Blanford and that guy, that Morty who broke up her wedding ceremony?”

  “I’m afraid so. Feel sorry for me. Very, very sorry.” Donovan shook his head, but the way his eyes were dancing meant he was fixing to give her an earful. “Her dad called in a favor and asked me to hire her when we opened, or trust me, I never would have. At least she’s only part time, when she doesn’t call in sick.”

  “I’ve never seen her cutting hair.”

  “And you never will.” His scissors paused long enough for a dramatic shiver. “She does well to answer the phone and sweep up. I let her shampoo Mrs. Jenkins once and she nearly drowned the poor woman.”

  “I’m kind of surprised to see she’s still running around with ole Morty. Didn’t his wife leave him after that scene at the church?”

  “Yes, and good for her.” Donovan had worked his way to the back of her head after finishing the sides. “But that old guy isn’t the only one. Some biker picked her up last week, and I’ve heard she’s seeing Roy Nolan.”

  “He runs M & N stables now, right?” Darci thought she remembered him from the funeral.

  “I believe so, and she’s been screwing around with him since before she broke it off with Matthew. Gwen saw her kissing him in front of the stable one day on her way to work. Belinda came in late that day, no big surprise, smelling like pork and vinegar. I remember it was the day after Bradley’s birthday, February nineteenth, and her stench didn’t go well with my hangover. Anywho, she said she took her boyfriend lunch and one of the boxes leaked on her sweater sleeve. That food smell mixed with her Eau du Ho perfume nearly made me hurl, so I told her to take the rest of the day off.”

  Donovan gave her a hand mirror. “All done. What do you think?”

  “I think I love it!” Darci tousled her hairdo, then pulled a face, pooching her lips out at her reflection. “I bet Wade just might send Paxton to bed early tonight.”

  On the second Saturday morning in July, Darci sat at the counter listening to Daisy chirp behind her. Sunshine streamed through the windows, splashing the yellow walls with golden rays.

  Since Charlotte was due in ten days, Darci insisted she go ahead and start maternity leave. Paxton was out fishing on the Ohio River with Wade and Jimbo. The expectant father-to-be wanted to get in one last fishing trip before he started diaper duty. Paxton latched on to that comment and teased him about ‘diaper doo doo duty’.

  Hoyt also had the day off but came in around nine to pick up his paycheck. It was a huge relief to Darci when he decided to stay on after graduation. The flexible hours would be perfect for him once community college began in the fall. Hoyt was just about to walk out when the phone rang.

  “Hang on a minute, Hoyt,” she said, holding up her index finger as she grabbed for the receiver.

  “Hey Charlotte, how’s it going in Pregger Land?”

  Hoyt muttered “uh oh” as Darci felt her eyes widen to the size of flowerpot saucers. He sat down on the stool behind the counter across from where she stood.

  “Did you-” Darci paused. “Why didn’t-” Darci got up and paced as far as the phone cord allowed. As she walked, she fidgeted with the coiled wire extending from the receiver, alternately wrapping it around her finger and then straightening out a length of it.

  “Okay, don’t you worry about a thing. Wait a minute.” She swung around to face Hoyt. “Don’t you dare go anywhere.” Then back to the receiver, “Give me five minutes. Don’t even move. Just breathe, and be calm. Be very, very calm.” She forgot to say goodbye, so she picked up the receiver again, said “bye”, then realized how ridiculous that was and muttered “oh, never mind” into the phone before she hung it back up.

  “Hey, Boss Lady, you don’t look so calm.” A poo-eating grin spread across Hoyt’s face. It didn’t take a genius to figure out a hysterical phone conversation with a pregnant woman could only mean one thing.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Darci took a few steps toward the kitchen. She stopped short, then dashed behind the counter to retrieve her purse and car keys instead. “I’m cool as a cucumber. Okay a fried cucumber, but I’m trying. Where the hell are my keys?” Invoices fluttered to the ground as she searched through papers and a pile of raffia.

  My work is never done around here. That Darci pretty much knows her stuff, far as plants go, but I still have to step in and help. Like when the boy drowned them chamomile, and those sorry roses. Mercy, those were a sight. Not to mention spikin’ Charlotte’s tea with all that false unicorn bark and cramp root. She didn’t lose the baby, so I reckon it did the trick.

  Well, here we go again. I know what’s comin’ and Miss Darci ain’t never gonna make it on time if she has to stop to hunt around for her keys, the ones I see a layin’ there on the floor. Fell out of her pocketbook when she pulled out that bar of candy while ago. No wonder she didn’t notice, what with her rippin’ into it like she hadn’t ate in a week. That girl sure does have a sweet tooth. I do believe I made her see me the other night, though. ‘Bout time.

  All righty, then. I ‘bout tired myself out movin’ that key ring. I tried to put it by the birdcage, since that little critter sings so pretty every time I go near her and might be able to draw attention over there. Been able to see me from day one, Daisy has, and she’s right fond of me, too. I ought to put the notion in Darci’s head to get some honeysuckle for her cage. Poor thing gets confused as to why she cain’t hop on my hand like she tries, but that just ain’t possible. Anyway, I couldn’t make it that far, but I put the keys on the table.

  Now I just have to find a way to make her notice. Hmmmmm. That just might work. ‘This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.’ You like this song, don’t you, Daisy girl. ‘O-oh this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.’r />
  At that moment, a ray of light shined though the porthole and glinted off a crystal vase. The glare in Darci’s eyes caught her attention, and she thought it odd that the sun didn’t usually come through that window this time of morning. Stranger still, she spotted her keys on the display table beside the vase, a place she never cluttered with her personal stuff. She rushed to grab them, only to have them tumble to the floor before she took two more steps.

  “So, let me guess. Charlotte must be in labor, huh?” Hoyt picked up the key ring and handed it back to her. She nearly dropped them again as she slung her purse over her shoulder.

  “Yep, in a big way. Her water broke a couple minutes ago.” Darci put her hands on the counter, palms flat against the cool tile surface, and took a deep breath. “Okay, here’s what’s going on. Can you, please, please, please stay at the store until closing? Sorry, I know it’s your day off and under normal circumstances I’d never ask, but I’ve got to take Charlotte to the hospital and-”

  “No problem, I got it covered.” Hoyt wasn’t miffed at all. His eyes danced as he leaned back against the wall and pulled his shoulder-length hair into a dark ponytail. “I don’t have any plans until, like, eight o’clock tonight anyway. Taking Amber to the new sushi place in Evansville.”

  “Thank you so much! I’ll even pay you time and a half,” Darci said, relieved she didn’t have to close down the shop for the day. “If Wade calls, let him know what’s going on and they should be able to figure out where to find us. Jimbo forgot his cell phone, of all things. After aggravating his wife to death before he left this morning, he walks out and leaves his phone on the coffee table. And God forbid Wade take his. His will be turned off on the truck console, in case he has an emergency. Damn that Mr. Turner for calling on Wade’s day off last year about fixin’ his leaky roof. Ever since then, Wade keeps the cell off on weekends, especially when he’s out on one of his precious fishing trips.”

  “You want me to go look for ‘em?”

  “Thanks, but you’d never be able to track them down. They’re somewhere on a stupid little boat on the stupid Ohio River, catching damn stupid little fish.” Darci wondered if her irritation showed. “They should be back around lunch. Since first babies usually take their sweet time being born, I’m thinking Baby Villines won’t pop out before late this afternoon. Jimbo should have enough time to wash up and be in the delivery room long before that, but you never know. I need to get going.”

  She trotted toward the door and dropped her keys again. “Damn stupid fishing trip. I’ll send Wade over here as soon as I hear from him, but if you haven’t heard from us by four, you can go ahead and close up. Yep, shutting down an hour early today would definitely be understandable, I think. See you later.” She waved goodbye, opened the door, then bumped into the doorframe.

  “Try to drive a little more careful than you’re walking,” Hoyt said, laughing at her slapstick performance. “Tell Charlotte good luck, or whatever the politically correct thing is to tell a chick who’s fixin’ to have a baby.”

  Her hands nearly shook off the steering wheel, but Darci managed to make it to Charlotte’s house in one piece. She found her on the couch calmly practicing Lamaze. After she ran out to the trunk with Charlotte’s suitcase, which she dropped and tripped over on the way, Darci tried to help her to the car. Charlotte remained on her feet and laughed her ass off when Darci fell off the porch and landed in the grass on the seat of her britches. In spite of all the nervous bumbling, they were on the road in less than three minutes flat.

  Webster County was too small to have a hospital of its own, so Charlotte planned to deliver at Henderson Community Methodist Hospital, located twenty minutes from her house in the next county over. She’d already called ahead to let her doctor know she was on the way. Darci kept the Volkswagen Bug between the ditches, despite her hysterics.

  “Contraction.” Charlotte huffed through the discomfort, but seemed to be holding up pretty well. After a few seconds, she relaxed, her head leaned back against the seat. “Finished. You know, it’s really not all that bad.”

  “Ha! Talk to me when the kid crowns. Then we’ll discuss your view of the pain level involved in childbirth. How far apart are the contractions?”

  “Don’t know exactly. I didn’t time ‘em, but they’re way farther than two minutes,” she said, sounding confident. “I know they said in my classes that the two minute mark is when you’re usually all the way dilated and the baby could crown.”

  “You haven’t been timing them?” Darci rolled her eyes, then tried to take her voice down a notch from the screech she’d just belted out. “Do you think a little bell in your vagina is gonna start jingling when the baby is ready? Or are you waiting for, perhaps, a little trumpet to poke out of your what-nots to herald the grand arrival?” She couldn’t help rolling her eyes again and shook her head. “Terrific. First baby and she doesn’t even time the freakin’ contractions.”

  “Okay, so I get your point. I’ll time the next one. See, I’ve got the stopwatch we practiced with.” She lifted it to prove she wasn’t totally irresponsible. “But you know, those jingle bell things would make it a lot more convenient. Maybe I’ll have some installed down there before Jimbo and me get ready for baby number two.” She broke down laughing at the sarcastic expression Darci flashed her way.

  “I don’t know how you’re so dang calm. It’s not me in labor but I’m a nervous wreck.”

  “Don’t sweat it, Darce. What could possibly go wrong? We’re halfway there and the contractions are still pretty . . . uh oh.” Charlotte gripped the armrest.

  “What the hell does ‘uh oh’ mean?”

  “I’m having another one, the second since we left the house.” This was the first sign of worry Charlotte had shown all day. She punched a button on the stopwatch.

  “Okay, just do your breathing. That should help.” Darci shot a glance at Charlotte. “No, not hold your breath, I said breathing exercises. You know, that huffing and puffing you’ve been talking about the past four months.” Darci puffed her cheeks in and out like a spastic guppy to illustrate. That made her think of fish, which pissed her off. “What kind of idiots would pick today to go fishing, for God’s sake? I hope the moron who invented fishing died with a hook up his ass, I tell you what.”

  Darci’s sarcasm and bobbing head made Charlotte laugh again, which apparently hurt her uterus because she grabbed her belly. Then she laughed even harder. Darci broke down and joined her, and felt some of her tension seep away.

  Their glee came to a skidding halt, along with the car whisking them to the hospital.

  “What the-” Darci’s right arm instinctively flew out to pin Charlotte against the passenger seat, the same reflex she’d have used if Paxton had been riding beside her.

  The two women looked at the scene in front of them, then at each other. Confusion and worry played simultaneously in their eyes and across their scrunched foreheads.

  Traffic on Highway 41-A stood motionless in front of them. They’d just rolled up on the scene of an accident that couldn’t have occurred more than ten minutes before. A truck pulling a cattle trailer blocked the road. From the looks of things, it jackknifed in the act of trying to swerve around a deer on his way across the rural highway. The man Darci assumed to be the driver leaned unharmed against the side of his truck, talking to a highway patrolman. Unfortunately, the deer never made it to the other side of the road, as evidenced by the bloody smear that led to its carcass on the shoulder.

  Live cattle wandered everywhere. The end of the trailer faced them in its jackknifed position, the door of which must have been jarred open during the collision. While Darci was thrilled to see the herd alive, all fine and dandy as they mooed on the asphalt, she wondered how the hell she could go about driving around them and the truck. The only alternate route to the hospital would entail using graveled back roads and traveling through the adjacent county to the east, all of which would tack on an hour to their trip to the delivery roo
m. Had the accident not barred their way, they’d be able to make it in about fifteen more minutes.

  Every sappy sitcom scenario of babies born in taxicabs on the roadside played through Darci’s mind. She groaned, then let loose the most colorful expletive she’d ever used in her life.

  A tow truck pulled up beside them, its yellow lights flashing like beacons of hope.

  When she turned to Charlotte, she found her expression hard to read. It reminded Darci of when they were about twelve years old at 4-H camp and their counselor caught them smoking her cigarettes. Discovered mid-puff, Charlotte exhaled smoke in the counselor’s face and puked on her tennis shoes. Now she had that same look on her face, caught somewhere between wanting to laugh and cry, looking to Darci for a clue as to how they were going to get out of this mess.

  Darci willed herself to focus on getting to the hospital instead of on all the things that could go wrong.

  “Don’t worry. Just try to take deep breaths while I go see what’s going on.” She hopped out of the car and ran the few yards to speak with the state trooper and the truck driver, where she hastily explained that her pregnant cousin was in labor.

  The men exchanged blank looks as they shifted from foot to foot. The driver waved to Charlotte and gave her the thumbs up sign, a big silly grin decorating the features below his cap. The patrolman scooted off to his car, where he could be seen gesturing as he sputtered into his radio. When the tow truck guy walked over, Darci filled him in on why they needed to get the truck, trailer, and cattle off the road as soon as possible. Confused by the situation and the angle of the truck, he lifted his hat and scratched his head. The cows mooed around them.

  Darci slid back into the car, her face arranged in an exaggerated display of relief. “Okay, no worries. They should have the trailer moved in a jiffy, then the cop is gonna give us an escort to the hospital, flashing lights, siren, and the whole shebang.” In her mind, Darci imagined what she’d like Jimbo to do with his fishing pole.