by Raven Snow
That appeared to relax Dimitri quite a bit. “Right,” he said, nodding. “Of course, I don’t mind talking about her at all. Let’s see… We met at a walk to raise—oh, what was it? Autism awareness, I believe. Veronica organizes those sorts of things. Lovely woman. Anyway, my business donated some money to the cause, and I made an appearance at the walk. I met with Veronica. Dina, of course, was with her. I remember she was wearing a black tracksuit with white stripes down the side. She had her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Veronica introduced us, and we spent the whole walk together. Of course, we were near the rear of the pack. We didn’t quite finish the whole thing. We ended up sitting together on a bench about halfway through. We chatted until Veronica pulled a car around to pick the both of us up.” Dimitri smiled wistfully at the memory. “To tell you the truth, I do believe I could have walked all the way to the finish line. I just found Dina so intriguing, I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to stay and chat.”
“That’s sweet,” said Rowen. “Was Dina athletic at all? I mean, I’ve seen her daughter. I assume that she got that from somewhere.”
Dimitri’s gaze grew a bit distant. “Not particularly. That was mostly just Veronica’s sort of thing.”
“What sort of hobbies did Dina enjoy then? What did the two of you do together?” Rowen made sure to smile as she asked the questions. She didn’t want Dimitri to think that she suspected him of anything— after all, she didn’t yet.
“The usual,” Dimitri shrugged. “We would go to the movies, nice restaurants, that sort of thing. We enjoyed each other’s company mostly.”
“That’s important,” said Eric. “You should enjoy the company of the person you’re with… Did Dina seem like her health was failing in those final days?”
Rowen glanced at her husband. She was surprised to see him getting back into the conversation. Was he getting suspicious now too? She waited for Dimitri to answer his question.
Dimitri sat there in silence for some time. He folded his hands beneath his chin as his gaze grew distant again. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I know that I asked if she wanted to go out to the movies the night before she passed. She told me she was too tired. That had happened before, though. At our age, sometimes you just get tired for no reason, you know? I didn’t think much of it. Looking back, perhaps I should have taken it as a warning sign. Hindsight is always better with these sorts of matters though, isn’t it? I suppose none of us can truly know when our time will come. There’s no helping it.”
“Well said,” Eric told him, even though Rowen thought he’d beat around the bush a bit. Eric dropped the subject to point out a few of the pictures on the wall. “You’re really giving with charities, aren’t you?”
“I feel like it’s important to share my good fortune with others,” said Dimitri, looking to the pictures in question. They all featured him at various functions. At some, he was in walks like the one he had described as where he had met Dina. In others, he was on stage, shaking hands with a presenter. “I’ve been very lucky in life… even if I’m not feeling particularly lucky today.”
Eric nodded. “You have my sympathies.” He stood suddenly. “Well, we won’t take up any more of your time.”
“We won’t?” Rowen asked, surprised by the announcement of their sudden departure.
“We won’t,” Eric echoed.
Rowen quickly put on a smile and stood as well before things got too awkward. She held out a hand. “It was nice to meet you. Maybe you’ll stop by the Lainswich Inquirer when you’re in Lainswich again? We’ll make sure you get a free copy of whatever we write about Dina.”
“I’ll make sure to do that if I can find the time,” Dimitri said in the noncommittal way that suggested he definitely would not. He still stood and shook both Rowen and Eric’s hands. He walked them the few feet to the door of his office and wished them a safe trip home.
“What got into you back there?” asked Rowen once they were both some distance from the office. “Got any gut feelings of your own about that guy?”
“No,” said Eric a little too quickly.
Rowen arched a brow in her husband’s direction. “Are you sure about that?” she asked. She knew that Eric had feelings of his own sometimes. Some witchery ran in his blood, after all. It was from his extended family and not honed in any way, but it was still there.
“I don’t not get the feeling something is going on here,” Eric grumbled, which was a complete non-answer as far as Rowen was concerned.
“What did you sense?”
“I didn’t sense anything,” Eric insisted. “I just… maybe I have the impression that there’s something more to all this.”
“See!” Rowen said just a little too loud. Shoppers looked in her direction. “I told you.”
“Exactly. You told me. And not in a good way.” Eric led his wife down an empty aisle so they wouldn’t be stared at. “You’re influencing me here. We need to remain objective. We don’t have any proof that there was foul play.”
“Who needs proof when you know there’s something afoot?”
“The police.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll get it.” Rowen felt confident of that. What she didn’t feel confident about was how they would get it. She was still waiting for that shoe to drop. “All right, well, I guess we’ve got all we came here for. Let’s go home.”
“I dunno,” Eric mumbled. “We came all this way, we might as well shop… Do you think they have hummus here?”
“Eric, Honey, look at this place. Of course they have hummus here.”
Chapter Six
Rowen didn’t quite make it home after they made it back to Lainswich. Her phone rang as soon as they crossed the Tarricville border. Rowen frowned down at her phone. It looked to be Willow calling. She was tempted not to answer at all. Whatever her cousin had to say, it couldn’t be good.
“Don’t answer,” Eric suggested.
Rowen’s finger hovered above the decline button. Finally, she just sighed and brought the phone to her ear. There was no point in letting it go to voicemail. If Willow was going to come at her with some task she would rather not do, Rowen could always just tell her no to her face. Easy enough. “Hello?” Rowen answered. Eric groaned but kept his eyes on the road. Hopefully he wasn’t about to have some kind of ‘I told you so,’ moment.
“Hey,” Willow began. The lilt of her voice already suggesting there was something she wanted from her cousin. “Do you think you could come down to the Inquirer?”
“Why?” Rowen asked. “Is there even any big news right now?” She could usually get by when there wasn’t something major going on. Her cousins could manage that much on their own. Rowen spent her time with Eric and the private detective agency when things were like that.
“It’s not really that,” said Willow. She paused before continuing. “Well, I guess it’s kind of that. We’re all stuck doing flower arrangements for Nadine and Rose’s wedding— I mean… Not—I mean, you know, their respective weddings.”
“Yes, Willow. I know what you mean.”
“Yeah, so we have a lot of flower arrangements to do, and there’s still articles to finish. It would be really nice if you could come here and… I dunno. Do one or the other? I don’t mind flowers, so you can work on articles if you want. I’ve got one half-finished already.”
“You can work on your half-finished article then,” Rowen told her. “I’ll come down and help, though. Give me a minute to get there.” She hung up before Willow could make any requests for snack food or a coffee run.
“You should have let it go to voicemail,” Eric said in a singsong voice.
Rowen was in no mood for that sort of attitude from her husband. She really wasn’t. “It’s wedding stuff,” she told him with a short glare in his direction. “What am I supposed to do? Just ignore it until it’s supposed to happen? These things take a lot of work.”
“It shouldn’t take that much work,” Eric insisted. “This is just a small wedding, isn’t it?�
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“You should remember from our wedding. Even small ones cost too much.” Rowen left it at that. She climbed out of the car and motioned for him to follow her. “You know, this will probably go a lot faster if you come inside and give me a hand.”
“No thanks,” Eric said as he got out of the car. “I think I’ll go next door and get some work done. I still have some things I need to mull over. Come and get me when you’re finished.”
Rowen rolled her eyes, but she didn’t argue with him. It wasn’t like she could just demand that he help. He had already done quite a bit. “Hopefully, this won’t take too long.”
“Hopefully,” Eric echoed.
“I can’t imagine that it will,” Rowen grumbled, mostly to herself, as she got out of the car and headed for the door of the Lainswich Inquirer building. She let herself in and was immediately struck by how every desk was covered in a heap of flowers. At least there was no cloying, flowery smell in the office. Instead, there was just lovely color everywhere. It looked like they had gone for a mixed bag of summery shades. Even if Rowen wasn’t in the mood to put together bouquets, she had to admit that the flowers chosen were quite pretty.
Willow and Peony were sitting across from one another, spinning idly in their chairs and seemingly playing on their phones. Surprisingly, Margo was the only one going from desk to desk, putting together arrangements. She had a few put together on her own desk already. She certainly seemed to have an eye for this sort of thing. That didn’t surprise Rowen one bit. If not a PR person, Margo could have been a fashion or interior designer. This sort of thing was a real passion of hers.
Rowen came right up behind Willow’s chair and gave it a kick. Her cousin screeched as she was sent rolling, dropping her phone in her lap. “I thought you just had your hands so full I had to come over and help.”
“We do need your help!” Willow insisted. She picked her phone up from her lap. I was just looking at flower arrangement ideas. I’m not very good at this stuff. See?” She picked up her phone and showed Rowen the screen.
“Are overalls still cool?” Rowen read.
Willow snatched her phone back and quickly switched tabs. “Not that. Here.” She flashed her phone once more. This time it showed a rather generic image search of flower arrangements.
“Were overalls ever cool?” asked Peony, making a distasteful face that wrinkled her nose up.
“Why don’t you just follow Margo’s lead?” asked Rowen. She didn’t feel like arguing with Willow over whether or not they had really needed her to come here and lend a hand. She was already here, so she might as well try to help.
“We’re supposed to be making a bouquet for Mom and Rose to carry,” said Peony. “It’s not that easy.”
“I’m doing decorative flower arrangements,” Margo said without taking her eyes from her work.
Rowen sighed heavily. “All right, you two should get back to whatever article it was that you needed to write. I’ll take over from here.”
Willow and Peony exchanged hesitant looks. “Are you sure that’s what you want?” asked Willow. She had clearly been having a lot more fun on her phone and was reluctant to get off of it.
“I’m sure,” Rowen assured them.
Willow and Peony moved back to their own desks, sighing. Soon, they were clicking away at their keyboards. Hopefully, they were actually looking things up this time and not using search engines to answer inane questions.
Rowen was tempted to ask Margo for some advice, but she figured putting together a bouquet couldn’t be that hard… Could it? She began to pick out some of the flowers. It was only then that she realized something odd about them. “These are fake?”
Margo looked up. “Well, yeah, duh. I bought them at a hobby store. They’ll last this way. We don’t have to worry about them wilting before the wedding and the happy couples can keep them afterward. Stroke of genius, right?”
Rowen wasn’t all that sure about that. Her aunts had never really been keen on phony greenery. Rowen remembered the time they swore Christmas was ruined because she had brought home a plastic tree rather than a pricey real one. It was probably the old fashioned witchiness in them. “Did you ask Nadine and Rose if that was okay?”
“I didn’t ask Nadine,” Margo said with a shrug. “But, I mean, she asked me to do it. I figure she trusts my judgment. Rose said she preferred fake for her own bouquet, so silk flowers it is.”
“All right,” Rowen shrugged and went back to sorting through flowers. She got into it after a while, arranging and rearranging this and that. It probably wasn’t as good as any of Margo’s bouquets, but they looked pretty good as far as she was concerned. She was so absorbed in the task that she almost didn’t notice when the front door opened.
“Is Rose here?” asked a familiar voice.
Rowen raised her head and saw that it was Ben. He was still dressed in a button up shirt and tie, the sort of outfit he wore at work. “Yeah,” said Rowen, “Of course. She’s in her office. Why?”
“She hasn’t been answering her phone,” said Ben, already making his way in that direction. “I figured I would swing by and make sure everything was all right.”
The door to Rose’s office opened and closed behind Ben. Rowen got back to the task at hand. She was getting absorbed in her arranging again when a raised voice got everyone’s attention.
“Well, maybe you would have known that if you had actually asked me!” Rose all but shouted those words.
Rowen looked around the room at her cousins. They were all exchanging looks, raising eyebrows and glancing occasionally to the office door. Rose wasn’t usually one to shout. She was a sweet person most of the time. She had her bad side like anyone else did, but she was generally pretty good about keeping it in check.
“Did you even stop to think that maybe I wouldn’t want that?” Rose’s voice was still raised and easily audible. She seemed to be responding to something Ben had said.
“I thought you wanted to get married?” Now it was Ben’s turn to raise his voice. That was doubly unusual. He probably had the calmest demeanor of anyone Rowen knew.
“I do!” Rose snapped right back.
“Then what’s the problem?!”
Their voices lowered after that question. Either they had caught on to how loud they were being or they were in the midst of an apology. Rowen crept up to the door to eavesdrop. She didn’t even explicitly realize that was what she was doing before she began to reprimand her cousins for doing the same. She fell silent instead and strained her ears.
“I’m sorry,” Rose sighed. “I don’t know what got into me.”
“It’s all right,” said Ben. There came a sound like he was kissing her. Afterward, the door opened abruptly. Rowen and her cousins all scrambled back, trying their best to look inconspicuous. It was a little late for that. Ben just raised his eyebrows at them. He glanced back to his wife-to-be. “I’ll pick up Chinese on the way home.”
Rose nodded. She stopped glaring at her cousins just long enough to give Ben a smile. “That sounds good. I’ll see you at home.”
Ben navigated his way through the Greensmith girls and left through the front door. Everyone else looked back at Rose as soon as he was gone. The door to her office was still open.
“What?” asked Rose. “Were you eavesdropping, because that’s really rude.”
“It was hard not to,” said Willow, rolling her eyes. “You guys were being super loud.”
Rowen slipped into the office before another argument could break out. She closed the door behind her. “What was that about?” she asked.
Rose sat up a little straighter at her desk. She was still frowning, something that seemed to be directed at Rowen. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
“It’s not,” Rowen said quickly. “I just… I mean, I’d like to help if I can. It sounded like the two of you got into an argument over the wedding.”
Rose wave a dismissive hand. “It’s not important. You should serio
usly stop eavesdropping, though.”
“I wasn’t,” Rowen said quickly. “Well, I mean, I wasn’t trying to. The two of you were being kind of loud. It was hard not to.”
“Just go.”
“What?”
“I said go.” Rose pointed at the door. “I appreciate the concern, but please drop it. It’s fine. Ben and I talked it out. We made up. It’s all fine.”
It certainly didn’t seem like it was fine. Rowen stood in the center of the office, trying to find the right words. She opened her mouth to say something, but Rose shut her down before she could. “Go.”
Rowen did as she was asked. Rose was right. She really didn’t have a say in any of this. It wasn’t her decision to make even if she wanted it to be. It couldn’t have been any more clear to Rowen that Rose was still upset about this whole wedding thing. How dense did Ben have to be to not realize that? What if he did but just didn’t care? That was probably unlikely. Rowen pushed those thoughts from her mind and left the room. She closed the door to the office and waved away the inquisitive looks from her cousins. She got right back to work on flower arrangements instead. Unfortunately, this time, her heart wasn’t quite as in it as it had been.
Chapter Seven
It was a phone call that woke Rowen the next morning. She awoke with a start. Her cell was on the nightstand, playing its little jingle. Outside the bedroom window, it was still very dark. Rowen’s pulse grew faster. Who would be calling her at a time like this? Was it Ben? She had been waiting for that other shoe to drop in Dina’s case. Was this finally it?
She grabbed her phone and answered it without looking to see who it was. “Hello?”
“Hey,” sighed a voice on the other end of the line. It was difficult to pick the particulars of the voice out over the sound of Eric’s snoring, but she managed it anyway. “Did I wake you up?”
“Peony?” Rowen yawned and scrubbed the sleep from her eyes. She stood slowly and left the room so that she wouldn’t wake Eric. “What are you calling me for? And yeah, you did wake me up.”
