by ACF Bookens
I didn’t explain via text because I didn’t want to risk the message being accidentally forwarded to anyone. I knew my friends would come if they could. Then, I spent the rest of the afternoon, between customers, searching out housing options in the area. I found only three that I thought would work.
By seven, Stephen and Walter, Mom and Dad, Josie, Woody, Pickle, Bear and Henri, Elle, Cate and Lucas, Tuck and Luisa, and Daniel had joined Marcus, Rocky, and me in the café with Mart on FaceTime from her consulting gig in Virginia. Everyone had brought food for our usual Friday night feast, and so we ate while I caught them up on Ariel’s situation. Before I even had time to ask, they were brainstorming.
An hour later, we had a plan, and it involved Elle’s farm, a whole lot of flowers, and the help of our favorite customer, Galen, and his Instagram followers. I was excited, and exhausted, so when Tuck asked to speak to me as everyone headed home, I almost groaned.
As usual, I telegraphed my feelings right through my face, so Tuck said, “I know. It’s been a long day. This is a good thing, Harvey. But we still need to be careful. There’s a killer out there, remember?”
I actually had almost forgotten for once in the past week, but there was Wilma’s face in the park, and I knew he was right. “I know you don’t want to tell me, but are there persons of interest?”
Tuck laughed. ‘You and your police TV speak. Yes, and I may actually need your help with that. But not yet. Just be wise, Harvey. Be wise.”
I tried to focus on his admonition to be wise, but mostly I just kept replaying the idea that he might need my help again. Nothing made me happier than to be helpful, which sounded altruistic to most people. But sometimes, for me, helping was just about making myself feel valuable. It was a trait I constantly needed to watch in myself.
And yet, I couldn’t help but get excited about what role I just might have to play.
* * *
Saturday morning, bright and early, Daniel and I drove out to Elle’s farm. Marcus covered the shop on Saturday mornings, so I didn’t need to worry about rushing in. But I still had work to do for our big plan. The night before, we’d decided we would hold an old-fashioned “Secret Admirer” Flower Sale. We’d done them in high school with red roses at Valentine’s Day, and it was always a popularity contest masked as a fundraiser for the cheerleading squad. I hated that stupid sale.
But we had agreed this one would be different. For our fundraiser to cover Ariel’s deposit and first month’s rent, we wanted to encourage people to send flowers to anyone they wanted to thank or show appreciation for. Romance was definitely one possibility, but so was gratitude or apology or just downright kindness. We were calling it the “Love, St. Marin’s Flower Exchange,” and we hoped that people from the community, and visitors, too, might participate.
The way it would work was simple. People would come to any of the participating Main Street businesses – Cate and Henri were talking to the merchants – and purchase a flower to be delivered the next day to anyone within town limits. They’d have the option to attach a small note if they liked, or they could simply send the flower. Elle was giving us the flowers at cost, so at the sale price of five dollars a flower, we’d have the twenty-two hundred dollars we needed for Ariel if we sold five hundred and fifty stems.
The hope, though, was to raise far more than that and be able to start a fund that would assist people out of homelessness in the area. Mom, Dad, and Pickle were meeting with the mayor and the president of the chamber of commerce to see how that fund might be managed and administered. I had no doubt they’d have a plan by the end of the day, and I also suspected that Mom would gladly manage the fund if offered the chance. It was the kind of thing she excelled at.
The apartment we’d settled on was a few miles out of town in a very small apartment complex that was on our one local bus route. Just a one-bedroom in a slightly older building, but the place looked clean and tidy. Josie was going over to check it out today.
With Marcus and Rocky at the shop and Mart off consulting, that left Daniel, two hounds, and me to do the grunt work of harvesting flowers. Despite the fact that Elle and I had become good friends over the past couple of months, I had not yet been out to her farm. So when the truck turned the corner onto her land, I gasped.
Before me were fields and fields of color. It looked like a painting but better. Burgundies and soft pinks, golds and the purpliest purple I’d ever seen. I couldn’t believe Elle ever left with this much beauty around her.
I parked the truck, and as we stepped out, Elle came out of the fields, her arms draped in blossoms. Daniel got Mayhem and Taco out of their kennels and brought them over on their leashes. “The yard is fenced, so feel free to let them explore in there,” Elle said with a toss of her head over to her adorable farm house behind the fields. “I put fresh water out for them.”
“Thanks,” Daniel said and headed that way.
I was still standing and gaping at the flowers. Elle followed my gaze and said, “It’s something, isn’t it?”
I tore my eyes from the flowers and looked at my friend. “It really is. You do all this? Alone?”
“Well, not completely alone. I hire help for planting and big events, but yeah, mostly. It keeps me young,” she said with a smile that crinkled the tanned skin by her eyes.
“I’ll say.” I took a deep breath. “Okay, what can I do?”
“Thought you’d never ask. Follow me.” She headed off toward a small, shed-like building at the edge of the closest field. When we stepped inside, the cold pushed me back. It was a refrigerator. “Keeps the flowers longer. We’ll harvest what we can today and store them here. I can supplement as we need them, but if we can get the bulk in today, then we start selling and delivering tomorrow, we’ll have most of what we need.”
I nodded. The plan was to sell one day and then distribute the next with final sales on this coming Wednesday and deliveries on Thursday. If there was one thing I’d learned in my years of work as a fundraiser it was that a deadline drives dollars. Four days would push people to act immediately rather than put it off and then forget. At least that was the hope.
In the cooler, Elle had a tall table that housed a shallow sink. She put the flower stems from her arms into the water and then quickly trimmed their bases at an angle while the tips were submerged before moving them to five-gallon buckets full of water. “They last longer that way,” she said.
I learned something new every day.
Back out in the fields, Elle put Daniel and me to work. Our job was to cut tulips and peonies, “the tough girls,” Elle called them, and I took that to mean we probably couldn’t do much harm. We knelt to the task of gathering a hundred peonies and fifty tulips. Since the tulips probably wouldn’t last as long, we didn’t want to overharvest for our first day.
Meanwhile, Elle gathered freesia, roses, and sweet peas, outpacing us quickly. Still by the time the air started to warm about nine, we had seven hundred and fifty stems of flowers on hand, and our work – at least our harvesting work – for the day was done.
Elle invited us into her house for some cold iced tea, an offer I was glad to accept, not only because my back was aching from all the bending but because I loved seeing people’s homes. The things they displayed always gave me a chance to know them in a new way, and I couldn’t wait to see what Elle put out.
I wasn’t disappointed either. Her kitchen was made up almost entirely of windows, like a greenhouse, and on each ledge, she had sculptures and geodes, tiny pieces of cross-stitch or framed quotes. It was like walking into the inside of her head. Plus on every flat surface, she had a vase, Mason jar, or shallow bowl with flowers standing or floating. The effect was one of deep welcome and beauty, and I immediately wanted to sit there and sip for hours.
As we all sat silently enjoying the sweetness of Elle’s home-brewed iced tea, I looked out over the fields of flowers around us and had a horrifying thought. “Elle, are we wiping out your business? I mean, you do weddings a
nd things. Will you have any flowers to sell?” I was mortified that I hadn’t thought of this earlier and terrified that this act that was supposed to be generous was actually going to hurt my friend.
She smiled. “You see how many flowers I have, Harvey. I’ve already harvested for this weekend’s weddings. One of the young women who works for me took those deliveries early this morning. And I didn’t give this endeavor more than my business could afford.”
I felt relief wash over me and let myself smile again. “Okay, good.”
“I’m a business woman, Harvey, same as you. I can only be generous if my business keeps going, so I make sure it does. It’s the only way I’ve been able to keep this up for ten years now.”
“Ten years. Wow. That’s amazing. I hope I make it to ten.” Business at All Booked Up had been good and steady, but I was already worried about the slower months of fall, after the tourist season. I hoped I could keep it up.
Daniel stretched and said, “This is really great, Elle. Thank you.”
“My pleasure. I’ve always said, ‘There but for the grace of God . . . ’”
I nodded. “I know. Honestly, if Mart hadn’t come with me and helped cover expenses the first few months, I might very well have had to live in our storeroom at the shop. I feel so much for Ariel. How awful.”
“Yep,” Elle said. She took a long sip of her tea, then said, “But here’s my question, Harvey. Who killed Wilma? I mean, we don’t think Ollie did it anymore, and it doesn’t look like Ariel did since that could have put her in an even worse predicament. Obviously, Henri was always a ridiculous suspect,” she gave me a long wink, “But who?”
I hadn’t really let myself think about it much, but I did wonder. “It almost certainly has to be someone at the bank. Who else would have been able to get rid of the transfer slip but also remove the money from the account, right?”
“Ladies, this feels a bit like stepping into territory we don’t need to enter,” Daniel said. I could hear the concern in his voice.
“We’re just talking,” I put my hand on his arm. “No investigating.”
“So I suppose the sheriff is looking at all the bank employees, then?” Elle asked.
“I imagine so. But he’s keeping a pretty tight rein on the information these days.” I sighed.
“As he should,” Daniel said and squeezed my hand.
I stood and stretched, wondering how Elle, who probably had a decade on me, did this day in and day out. I felt like I’d need a three-hour massage to be able to move tomorrow. “Thank you, Elle. We better be getting back. After all, these flowers aren’t going to sell themselves.”
She walked us out, and as we drove away, I kept going back to what Cynthia had said about Wilma’s behavior. And I had an idea.
* * *
I didn’t have a chance to act on my intuition that day, because the bank wasn’t open on weekends. Instead, I put myself to work making flyers to hang around town once Cate and Henri reported in on who had agreed to be a point of purchase.
The shop owners on Main Street were amazingly generous folks, and everyone had agreed to participate, even Max Davies, a fact I was both glad about and wary of. Max rarely did things without an ulterior motive, and it seemed that ulterior motive was often getting close to me. Ugh.
By the end of the day, we had flyers up in every participating shop window explaining the sale and identifying the store as a purchase point, and we started getting sales almost immediately, even though we didn’t officially start until the next day. The plan was to distribute the previous day’s sales at mid-day the next day, so this meant we’d have to start delivering flowers at noon on Sunday. It was going to be a busy day.
Mom, Dad, and Pickle had secured a process for managing the extra funds raised, and as I had expected, Mom was going to administer the fund with Pickle as legal counsel. The money would be in a checking account at the bank, an ironic but not unexpected fact since Wilma Painter’s bank was the only one right in town. Dad, Josie, Bear, and Mart would evaluate requests for funds from individuals who needed resources and take recommendations from community members on who might benefit. Given that we had just met two people who were homeless in the last week, this felt like an important and needed resource. I was excited we could create it.
That night, Mart came home from her consulting gig, and she, Ariel, and I had a quiet evening, all of us too tired for much more than Chinese take-out and Gilmore Girls reruns. I loved that show with every fiber of my being, especially Jess. Always Jess. More and more, I felt a bit like I lived in Lorelai and Rory’s Stars Hollow, and I was not opposed to that idea in any way. I just kept wondering who our Kurt would be.
* * *
The next morning when I opened the shop, we had a line of people not only waiting for coffee and books but also to order flowers. I took over twenty-five orders in the first hour I was open, and it became very clear very quickly from the reports I was getting from the other merchants that we’d hit our goal for Ariel by day’s end. People loved the idea for its simplicity and sincerity, and the fact that it had a cause behind it gave them even more reason to participate.
About eleven, Elle arrived with her delivery truck full of flowers, and my friends descended on the café to attach the notes to the flower stems with twist ties. I was immediately grateful that we hadn’t complicated the process by allowing people to pick the type of flower they wanted to send. It was enough chaos just to get the right notes in the right buckets to go to the right places.
But precisely at noon, everyone but me took off to begin deliveries all around town. It felt amazing to watch this little flurry of flowered buckets head out into the world with words of gratitude attached to them.
Sales continued –of both flowers and books throughout the day – and I was pleased to be able to send a few people down to Elle’s farm stand so they could place actual orders for purchase of flowers for their own events. I was a firm believer that generosity was good for business, and this sale was certainly proving that out, and not just for Elle. I’d had a banner day for book sales, too, especially in gardening. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one inspired to plant more flowers by the sight of all those blossoms around town.
When we closed up that night, I collapsed into the wingback chair in psychology and let out a soft groan. I felt a bit like Mayhem, who often groaned that way when she lay down, as if the bed freed all the fatigue from her mouth. Daniel was on his way over with a pizza – ham and pineapple on my half, just ham on his, and extra cheese all over. Cate and Lucas had invited us over for dinner, but I begged off, too tired to be social. I just wanted to hang out with my guy, eat grease, and then go home to a hot bath and my own bed. I planned to groan again then.
I’d turned out the open sign and shut off most of the lights in the shop but left the door open so Daniel could get in. When the bell over the door rang, I yelled, “Over here” and put a hand in the air and waved.
To say I was startled when Deputy Dillard stepped around the bookshelf filled with self-help titles would be an understatement. In fact, I shouted at the surprise.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Harvey,” he said immediately. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I ran into Daniel at the pizza place, and he said you were here. They messed up your order – something about adding green peppers – so they’re making him a new one.”
I shuddered. “Oh, green peppers make me so sick. Glad they’re starting over.” I sat up a little straighter in the chair and tried to wake myself up a bit. “What’s up?”
“You mind?” Dillard said as he pointed toward the other wingback beside me. “It’s been a long day.”
“Please, join us.” I pointed at Mayhem on the bed between the chairs and was surprised to see her sitting up and alert. She normally barely noticed when people came in. I chalked it up to excitement about the pizza and turned back to the deputy. “Everything okay?”
“Oh yeah. Just wanted to stop in and say how great what you’re doing for Ariel
is. I can’t believe she was living up in the attic above the bank. Incredible.”
For a second, I felt protective and upset with the sheriff for telling him, but then I realized her secret was probably part of the investigation now and took a deep breath. “I know. Just the idea of how dark and lonely and cramped it must have been up there. Breaks my heart.”
He nodded. “Good thing she had lots to read.”
“Amen to that. Books can get you through a lot of hard things.” I waved my arm around. “I should know.”
He laughed and stood up. “Anyway, just wanted to say thanks.” He headed back toward the door but then stopped. “Oh, and good work on not sleuthing, Harvey. You’re doing great at keeping your nose clean.”
I opened my mouth in a bright smile and said, “Doing my best.” I hated being praised for things I didn’t want to do.
I collapsed deeper into the chair again and bent down to pet Mayhem. She was still sitting at attention beside me, her gaze intent on the front door.
The bell rang again, and Daniel said, “Piping hot!”
“And without green peppers this time?”
“Dillard found you then?”
I grabbed a slice as soon as Daniel set it on the floor in front of me and placed my leg between Mayhem and the box. “He did. Just wanted to thank us for the flower sale and congratulate me on not snooping.”
A soft chuckle passed Daniel’s lips. “Bet you loved that.”
I smirked and took a bite of hot, greasy goodness.
* * *
The next morning I woke early and felt great. I’d slept like a log, a fact I attributed to lots of cheese, a long hot bath, and an eight-thirty bedtime. After I made my coffee and a bowl of cream of wheat, I settled into my reading chair with my latest read, Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander. I was dying to watch the TV show, mostly for the costumes, and I had a pretty firm rule that if I ever thought I’d read the book I had to read it before the movie or TV version since they rarely lived up to the book. I’d always rather spoil a movie than spoil a read.
