by Lee Hollis
She fired her first shot. The bullet hit the beer can, sending it hurtling into the air. She shot again and again and again, taking out all four beer cans, adrenaline coursing through her veins like when she bowled three strikes in a row with the girls last week.
“You’re a natural!” Sam laughed.
She couldn’t believe she had such an accurate aim.
By the time she said good-bye to Sam and drove back down the mountain, she was already planning to download an application for a permit and make an appointment at the local firing range.
Not that she expected to ever need a gun.
But having one in her new job might be smart safety insurance.
And it didn’t hurt that Sam was turned on when she got all Annie Oakley on him.
Chapter 9
Poppy slipped out of her clothes and stuffed them in the wicker clothes hamper basket in her walk-in closet. She pulled her favorite Eileen West Moonlight Sonata nightgown off a wooden top hanger and shimmied into it before stepping into her cushiony spa thong slippers.
And then she stood there, staring at the rack of clothing on the left-hand side of the closet, which had belonged to Chester. Four business suits, twelve button-up, short-sleeved shirts, nine dress shirts in various colors, six pairs of casual slacks draped over hangers. On the floor some polished fancy shoes; a cruddy pair of sneakers for puttering around in the backyard; two sets of deck shoes, one gray and one tan; and two different pairs of leather sandals. Pretty much Chester’s entire wardrobe, besides a drawer full of underwear and a shelf stacked with five different brands of khaki shorts and ten T-shirts.
She stepped forward, closer to her husband’s hanging shirts, until her nose practically touched the fabric on a light purple golf shirt.
She breathed in deeply.
There it was.
Her husband’s distinctive scent.
She yanked one of the shirts off its hanger and brought it up to her face and closed her eyes. It was as if Chester was there in the closet with her at that moment, standing right in front of her, calming her with his puppy dog eyes and warm, reassuring smile.
Poppy knew she would have to clear out Chester’s clothing at some point, but she had kept putting it off, waiting until the escrow on the house closed and she was forced to move. In the meantime, she just honestly wasn’t ready yet to part with the last of her husband’s belongings.
Shortly after Chester’s funeral, Poppy had run into a woman she often golfed with at the club. The woman had sadly lost her husband late the previous year. Her frank advice to Poppy was, “Don’t waste too much time. You should pack up his things and donate them to Goodwill as soon as possible. What’s the point in leaving constant reminders in front of you? It just allows the grief to linger.”
She insisted it was best to move on as quickly as possible and go on living the rest of your life.
Despite her good intentions, Poppy found that advice cruel and unfeeling.
She and Chester had been married for almost twenty years.
Perhaps the whole “Stay calm and carry on” theory worked for her friend, but Poppy couldn’t just erase all evidence of Chester’s existence. Not yet. They had shared too much. And she wasn’t prepared to let him go so soon, especially given how suddenly he had been taken away from her.
Poppy padded out of the closet and over to Chester’s side of the bed, where she plopped down on the plush comforter and stared at the half-read book on the nightstand. It was a James Patterson novel. One of his heart-stomping, page-turning serial killer thrillers. Although Poppy read her detective novels on her iPad, Chester had insisted on holding a real book, with the creased paperback cover and dog-eared pages. She flipped through the book to page 263, where Chester had left off and wedged a custom bookmark that said FELL ASLEEP HERE into the binding.
Poppy giggled.
She desperately missed Chester’s silly sense of humor.
It depressed her to think he would never know how the book ended, although, as with most of Patterson’s stories, the beleaguered detective would win the day and the depraved killer would almost certainly be vanquished. And when Poppy had pointed that out to Chester, he would always answer with one of his typical trademark clichés, such as “It’s not about what’s at the end, but how you get there.”
Poppy opened the drawer of the nightstand.
She fingered Chester’s passport, the pages stamped with the destinations of their travels together. France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Germany, Austria, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, and just last year, Australia and New Zealand.
Chester loved to travel.
And there were so many more countries and cultures he had wanted to see and experience. It broke her heart that he was never going to make it to Prague or Budapest, both cities on the top of his list.
Underneath the passport was a birthday card from Poppy that he had kept from a couple of years ago. He treasured the sentiment she had written to him, that every day she got to spend with him was like a birthday of her own, a celebration with the best present in the world . . . him. Poppy remembered meaning every word when she wrote it.
It was not like they hadn’t fought every so often or had their issues and individual idiosyncrasies. They both had sometimes needed a break from each other. Poppy’s twice annual vacations with the girls, usually cruises to Mexico or the Bahamas and once even to Alaska, were key to the success of her marriage.
But by the end of the week, no matter where in the world she was, she would start missing Chester terribly and would be anxious to get home to him. And when she finally arrived back in Palm Springs and walked through the door of their home, he would always put on a good show, pretending he had enjoyed an amazingly relaxed week free of her henpecking. It was obvious, however, that he had been lost without her.
Once, when Violet asked Poppy to meet some friends at the club for drinks, one of the ladies had asked Poppy what the secret to her long-lasting happy marriage to Chester was. Poppy had jokingly replied, “Low expectations.”
The line had got a huge laugh at the bar.
And on some level, there might have been a grain of truth to it.
But she hadn’t really meant it.
She couldn’t help but love the guy, which made the recent revelations about him so tough to handle.
She had thought she knew her husband better than anyone.
He was predictable and comfortable, not the type to suddenly surprise you. No, in her mind, he was a creature of habit, incapable of living some kind of double life behind her back.
But that was exactly what he did.
And it had totally blindsided her.
She picked up a cuff link she had given him last Christmas.
His initials, CH, were engraved on the front.
She pawed around for the other one but couldn’t find it.
Maybe he had lost it and hadn’t dared tell her.
She had always scolded him about his forgetfulness.
She couldn’t remember a time they left the house when he didn’t forget his wallet or keys.
Poppy could feel the tears welling up in her eyes. She tried to fight them back but failed and soon found herself bent over, wailing, barely able to catch her breath.
After a few minutes, exhausted from crying, she sat upright and looked up to heaven.
“Chester, how could you?”
She half expected him to answer, but of course, he didn’t.
Then, after a few moments, she pulled the comforter down, crawled in between the sheets, and cried herself to sleep.
Chapter 10
When Poppy arrived at Iris’s house on a quiet palm tree–lined residential street in the Smoke Tree section of South Palm Springs, she found taped to the front door a yellow Post-it note that read IN THE GARAGE. Poppy circled around the house and knocked on the side door to the garage.
She heard Iris shout, “Come in!”
When Poppy entered, she suddenly stopped in her tracks. Th
ere were no storage boxes or golf clubs or trash cans lining the walls. No grease spot on the floor where Iris parked her 2008 Chevy. The entire garage looked like an office, with three tabletop desks and swivel chairs set up on one side, along with laptop computers and filing cabinets. In the middle was a sitting area with a couch and chairs and a large flat-screen TV hanging on the wall. There was even a kitchenette in the back, complete with a Sub-Zero refrigerator, a long marble counter, and cupboards painted a soothing canary yellow. An air-conditioning unit hummed in the one window providing light.
Iris and Violet stood off to the side expectantly, with excited looks on their faces, as Poppy slowly closed the door behind her to keep the cool air inside and the oppressive ninety-nine-degree heat outside.
“Well, what do you think?” Violet squealed.
“It looks lovely,” Poppy said, looking around. “Are you two starting some kind of business?”
Violet nodded and opened her mouth to blurt out the answer, but as usual, Iris beat her to the punch. “Yes, with you.”
That was when Poppy noticed the sign hanging above one of the desks. On it was stenciled THE DESERT FLOWERS DETECTIVE AGENCY. Just below the name were three flower prints of an iris, a violet and, of course, a poppy.
“You want to be a part of my detective agency?” Poppy asked, stunned.
“Yes!” Violet exclaimed. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Clearly, it is not,” Iris spit out, insulted by Poppy’s muted reaction. “She obviously hates the idea!”
“No, it’s not that! I think what you’ve done here is remarkable and sweet, and I couldn’t ask for more supportive friends. . . .”
“Brace yourself for a but, Violet, because here it comes . . .” Iris scoffed.
“But . . .” Poppy whispered.
“There it is!” Iris said, nodding.
“But you can’t imagine how difficult it was to obtain a private investigator’s license. Filling out hundreds of forms, studying for the exam, not to mention the years of practical experience you must have in order to even be considered . . .”
“So only one flower on the sign has an actual investigator’s license. Big deal. That doesn’t mean we can’t gain practical experience on the job, working for you . . . who, as of this week, is a licensed detective,” Iris said.
Poppy couldn’t argue with Iris’s logic.
In fact, she rarely could.
“Before I was a principal, I was a high school English teacher,” Violet said proudly.
“How does that experience translate to detective work?” Poppy asked gently.
“Do you know how many stories and excuses I heard from my students? I became quite good at being able to tell who was lying and who was telling the truth.”
“She’s basically an expert on human behavior, which can be an asset in any kind of investigation. Plus, she has a master’s in education, so it goes without saying she knows how to do extensive research,” Iris said.
“And what about you?” Poppy asked, suddenly amused.
“I worked as a bookkeeper in my uncle’s law firm in Munich during my summers while I was attending college, so I can help run the financial side of the business,” Iris boasted, chest out. “And we all know I am always at the top of anyone’s list who throws a party.”
“Yes. You’ll get no argument from me on that, but how . . . ?”
“I can charm people, get them to open up, tell me what’s really going on. I have seen things and done things in my lifetime that no one else has ever experienced, and I will use that to draw people in so I get the information I want,” Iris said, amazed that Poppy hadn’t recognized this unique and valuable skill of hers long before now.
Iris put an arm around Violet. “You’ve got book smarts and street smarts. That’s not a bad combination for a business like this.”
“You two have really thought this through,” Poppy said, still reticent but certainly intrigued with the idea of forming a team, especially with her two best friends.
“It’s a no-brainer, Poppy,” Iris said. “So hire us already so we can get to work.”
“That’s the problem. I have nothing to hire you with yet. I have no cases, and I certainly have no start-up money. I spent my last dime paying the fee for my license, and I still had to borrow most of it from you two.”
“Not to worry! We will work for free,” Violet offered.
“At least in the beginning!” Iris quickly interjected. “And then as you start to take on clients and collect your retainer fees, we can discuss splitting a percentage of the gross. Of course, as the licensed investigator, you will get most of the money, because, after all, this is your operation, not ours.”
“You’re the queen. We’re just the worker bees!” Violet said.
Iris shot her an annoyed look. “I wouldn’t go that far, Violet.”
Poppy glanced at the three flowers on the sign.
Iris. Violet. Poppy.
In that order.
“We put all three of us on the sign only because the flowers looked so pretty next to each other, right, Violet?”
“Right. And also, you said it would save us money replacing the sign down the road, once we got our own investigator’s licenses.”
Iris glared at Violet.
“And you don’t mind me working out of your garage?” Poppy asked, looking around, impressed by the detail they had put into the office.
“Of course not! It was my idea!” Iris replied. “You can’t meet with clients at your place, wherever that may be. The last thing you need is for them to know where you live. And once we are . . . I mean, you are successful, then we can talk about you paying a monthly rental fee for this office space.”
Suddenly, it appeared as if Iris had been thinking about this crazy plan for a while. Ever since Poppy first confided to them that she might be serious about this whole private-eye scheme.
The idea of her two best friends being on call to back her up, being around so she could bounce theories off them, and helping her with the legwork sounded infinitely reassuring. Both Iris and Violet were a calming influence, she trusted them and, hell, they always had fun together. And three of them working a case was definitely better than one. Not to mention that old saying “There’s safety in numbers.”
Poppy’s hesitation about involving the two of them in this new endeavor slowly began to melt away, and with a grin on her face, she walked over to the largest desk and sat down. “Okay, then let’s get to work.”
“That’s my desk,” Iris said quietly.
Violet threw her an exasperated look. “Iris . . .”
Iris shot back, “I thought she’d want the one nearest to the window. It’s fine! I’ll move my things to that one!”
Poppy was flushed with an enthusiasm she hadn’t felt since long before Chester died as Iris gathered up her pens and knickknacks and framed photographs of herself with famous people and carried them over to the smaller desk by the window.
The Desert Flowers Detective Agency was officially open for business.
And three weeks later, they still had not received one inquiring call or e-mail that might lead to an honest-to-goodness case.
Chapter 11
Poppy had never seen Heather so furious, not even when she was sixteen and Poppy caught her smoking pot and immediately grounded her, which forced Heather to miss the big homecoming dance at her high school, where she was crowned homecoming queen in absentia after a landslide victory. Heather accused her mother of cruelly robbing her of an adolescent memory that she would have cherished for the rest of her life. Thanks to her mother’s unnecessarily harsh sentencing for such a tiny infraction, now she would never get to experience the thrill of accepting her crown to the adulating applause of her peers. If Heather had inherited one trait from her mother, it was her flair for overdramatizing.
But that little dustup almost fifteen years ago was nothing compared to what was unfolding at Poppy’s house today.
Heather had s
hown up at the door, waving a Pennysaver she had picked up at the supermarket while shopping for dinner. Inside, while scouring the rag for coupons, she had come across a small corner ad touting a new private investigation firm, the Desert Flowers Detective Agency, which had recently opened its doors in Palm Springs. She might have brushed right past it if the e-mail address hadn’t caught her eye. It belonged to her mother, as did the accompanying phone number.
When she called Poppy on her cell phone from the parking lot, fearing her mother’s contact information might have somehow been hacked, her mother confirmed the news, albeit reluctantly, that she had opened up shop as a local private eye. After hearing a brief scream and a scuffle, Poppy asked her daughter if she was still on the line. Heather claimed her mother’s bombshell announcement had nearly killed her as she had carelessly stepped off the curb and in front of a car, almost getting run over.
Poppy sighed, knowing her daughter was probably slightly exaggerating, and steeled herself for the inevitable showdown that was soon to come.
In fact, it kicked off twenty minutes later, which was the length of time it took for Heather to jump behind the wheel of her own car and race over to her mother’s house.
And now, standing in the living room, her face wild with fury, Heather had not taken a breath since her mother had opened the door and ushered her in the house, because she had not stopped yelling.
“I don’t know what could have possessed you to believe you were remotely qualified to do something like this! Mother, this is not some TV show where a highly paid writer feeds you clever lines or tells you where to look for clues. This is a real, serious line of work, one that takes a lot of brainpower and deductive reasoning and a degree of physical strength.”
Poppy tried to ignore the fact that her daughter was basically saying she was borderline stupid, lacked any kind of logical thought process, and was hopelessly out of shape.
