Mum's the Word Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Teaser chapter

  “Kate Collins carefully cultivates clues, plants surprising suspects, and harvests a killer in this fresh and frolicsome new Flower Shop Mystery series.” —Ellen Byerrum, author of the Crime of Fashion series

  Mum’s the Word

  “This is the alarm notification center. Your alarm was triggered.”

  I gulped. Had Bloomers been burgled?

  “I’m on my way right now.” I shut the phone, stuffed it in my bag and practically sprinted to the car. Driving as fast as the weather allowed, I headed up the long, two-lane road that led back to town.

  As I neared Maple Creek Bridge, headlights came up fast behind me. I tapped on my brakes to warn the driver to slow down, but he apparently didn’t notice because he bumped me.

  I honked my horn, but that seemed to make the speedster angry, because he bumped me again, harder this time. He’d had to speed up to do it, so I knew it was intentional.

  Steering the Vette over to the side of the road, I was digging for my phone when he hit me again, pushing my car forward, so that the right front end was hanging off the narrow, sloping shoulder and I was staring down into muddy water. Fear prickled along my spine. What if this wasn’t a case of road rage? What if someone was trying to kill me?

  I heard the unmistakable sound of an engine being shifted into reverse. I glanced up at my mirror in horror.

  He was getting his car positioned to ram me again.

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, November

  Copyright © Linda Tsoutsouris, 2004 All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  eISBN : 978-1-101-09790-8

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  To my husband, Jim, and my other two J’s, Jason and

  Julie, and to my extended family and dear friends for

  tolerating me during deadline crunch, when I hide in

  the den like a mole, sticking my head out for food

  now and then. You deserve big hugs and lots of

  smooches. I couldn’t do this without you.

  To my friends Jim and Kenton at Hidden Gardens

  flower shop. I will spare you the smooches and

  simply thank you for letting me hang out and

  pester you with questions.

  To my uncle Leon, who started my love of flowers

  and of all growing things by teaching a five-year-old

  about all the yucky bugs in the garden. Thanks, Unk!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Most people hate Mondays. Not me. I see them as portals to untold prospects, gateways to golden opportunities, pristine canvases awaiting bold splashes of color. And this particular Monday seemed to epitomize all that was good about them. Robins warbled merrily in the maples along Franklin Street, a warm June sun glinted off the hood of my vintage 1960 yellow Corvette convertible, and I had nabbed a prime parking space right across the street from my shop.

  Slinging my bag over one shoulder, I climbed out of the car, pulled off my tortoiseshell sunglasses, and regarded the wooden sign mounted above the door of the old redbrick building.

  BLOOMERS

  Every time I saw it, a thrill of pride raced through me. Me, Abby Knight, an entrepreneur! Penniless, perhaps, yet soundly devoted to my new profession. Who would have guessed when I flunked out of law school a year ago that I’d be standing here today in front of my own flower shop? Certainly not my parents, who were still shell-shocked.

  I locked the car door and gave the Vette an affectionate pat before pocketing the keys. This car was my baby. I loved it with a passion I normally reserved for fine dark chocolate or a bathing suit that actually fit. It was a four-on-the-floor with a black ragtop roof, black leather seats that were cracked from age and wear, and a slightly scratched chrome-and-black dashboard. Originally, beneath a thick coat of grime and bird droppings, the body color had been white. Now, with its two-week-old paint job, the car was a bright, cheery banana yellow, my favorite color.

  Hovering like a proud mother, I flicked a leaf off the hood and polished away a stray fingerprint with the hem of my white blouse. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a man race from the alley between two buildings and hop into a black monster of an SUV parked in front of the Vette. I thought nothing of it until he gunned the motor. Then I looked up in surprise as he threw the vehicle into Reverse and backed into my car’s front end. Wham!

  I stood in the street with mouth agape as visions of the precious dollars I had just spent on the car winged fiendishly past. The SUV took off with a squeal of tires.

  “Sixty-four apple David three—damn it!” He was too fast. I didn’t have a chance
to catch the whole license plate number.

  “You’re leaving the scene of an accident!” I shouted, shaking my fist at him as he sped away. “Come back here, coward!” He had his windows down; I knew he heard me.

  “Go get ’im, honey,” someone called from a city van. A tow truck driver honked his horn and gave me a thumbs-up.

  I found a pen and scribbled the numbers on the back of my hand, then crouched in front of my car to inspect the damage. My stomach lurched at the horrible sight: shattered double headlights, dented chrome grill and hood. I stood up and glared in the direction he had gone. There was no way I would let an irresponsible moron get away with a hit-and-run on my car. No way. I hadn’t grown up as the daughter of a cop for nothing, not to mention that if my insurance payments went up, I’d go broke.

  As I dug in my purse for my cell phone, one of the warbling robins flew over and deposited a big white blob of bird poop on the trunk. With a shudder, I turned my back on the scene of the crime and called the police dispatcher, who promised to send someone out as soon as possible. My assistant, Lottie Dombowski, was watching me through Bloomers’s window, a look of horror on her face. I signaled back to let her know I had everything under control.

  This was not the colorful start I’d had in mind earlier that morning.

  Lottie had to unlock the door for me since I was too rattled to find my keys and the shop didn’t open for another hour. She was dressed in her usual summer getup—bright pink loafers, white denims that fit her size-fourteen body a little too snugly, a pink blouse that gaped where it stretched across her ample bosom, and a pink satin bow snuggled into the brassy curls above her left ear Shirley Temple style. Not exactly a trendy hairdo for the mother of seventeen-year-old quadruplets, but try to tell her that and she would hand you a hair dryer and tell you to knock yourself out. After raising those four boys, nothing fazed Lottie.

  “Are you okay, sweetie?” she asked, looking me over from my shoulder-length bob to my open-toed black mules. “I saw that pond scum ram you.”

  “I’m fine, just angry is all.”

  “He was in some hurry, wasn’t he? Come on back. I’m making breakfast.”

  Cooking was just one of Lottie’s abilities. Besides being a true genius at floral design, she was also the one who put me on to my Corvette. And she knew just about everyone on the New Chapel town square—a boon to any business person, especially a novice like me.

  I had met Lottie during the period of my fateful engagement to Pryce Osborne II, when Lottie owned Bloomers and I made deliveries for her—in between clerking for a lawyer. Holding two jobs was the only way I could afford law school. My grandfather’s trust had covered my undergraduate expenses at Indiana University, a state college, but had not been enough to pay for three years of law school, even a local one that allowed me to live at home.

  But the trust had been enough for a minimal down payment on a quaint flower shop in a small Midwestern college town.

  The inhabitants of New Chapel, Indiana, were typical in that regard, tolerating the students that flocked to the cheap eateries, coffeehouses, and dollar stores during the school year, and bemoaning their absence during the summer months. The town square had the regulation limestone courthouse set amid a huge expanse of lawn, with a tall spire and huge clock face that proclaimed it ten minutes after four regardless of the real time, along with the standard compliment of family-owned restaurants, shops, and businesses flanking the courthouse square on all sides.

  The town was unique only in its location—thirty minutes by car from the famed Indiana Dunes lakeshore on the southern tip of Lake Michigan, and an hour by train from Chicago, barring unforeseen weather conditions, such as, say, clouds. New Chapel was close enough to take advantage of the big-city highlights yet far enough away to escape the madness.

  The population was eclectic—ranging from blue-collar workers employed by a nearby steel mill, to farmers in the outlying county, to businesspeople who commuted to the Loop, to the professors and students at New Chapel University. The neighborhoods varied from sprawling areas of tract housing on former swampland, to square, flat blocks of identical ranch homes or bungalows on what had been grazing pastures, to fancy gated communities set in hilly, wooded areas, to dilapidated farm-houses that dotted the miles of rural roads connecting New Chapel to neighboring towns.

  I had always loved the charm of Bloomers—with its two multipaned bay windows displaying a colorful array of flowers and its old-fashioned yellow-framed door with beveled glass center—but I never thought I would one day own it. After my disastrous year at law school and my breakup with Pryce, I had considered moving to Chicago to find work, but the thought of all that noise and traffic congestion made me queasy. Actually, I’m slightly claustrophobic.

  My parents had urged me to stay in town. My mother was adamant about it being the best place to raise a family—like that was going to happen anytime soon—but I hadn’t seen much in the way of career opportunities for someone with a creative bent and little money.

  Then in stepped Lottie with an offer I couldn’t refuse. She’d had a modestly successful floral business going, but her husband’s enormous medical bills had wiped out her cash reserves. Since she was desperate to pay off her debts, and I was equally desperate to find something I could do well, I took a long hard look at my abilities and came to the conclusion that the only things I’d ever had any luck with were plants, so why not make a living from them?

  “You can’t be serious,” my mother had said after I’d announced my intentions. “Why not resume your law studies? Take the dean a plate of brownies. He’ll let you back in.”

  “Mother, endowing the dean with an entire brownie company would not make that happen. Besides, I don’t want to be a lawyer.”

  “You can’t keep changing your mind, Abigail, not at your age. Not if you want to make me a grandmother. How many times did you switch majors in college? Three, four?”

  “Two. And it put me only a year behind.”

  “Why didn’t you go for a medical degree? You always wanted to be a dermatologist.”

  “You always wanted me to be a dermatologist. I wanted to be a translator at the UN—until I found out I had to learn more than conversational French.”

  “But a florist, Abigail? A florist?”

  It wasn’t like I was the first person in the family to make a living from plants. My grandmother had raised a big family solely on the produce from her garden, along with a few turkeys here and there. From her I had learned how to cultivate flowers, grow vegetables, and sneak raspberries into my mouth without leaving behind telltale red stains.

  But it was while working for Lottie that I actually began to dream about arranging flowers for a living. I’d loved the fragrance of fresh blossoms, the exhilaration of helping Lottie create beautiful bouquets, and the smiles on the faces of the people who received them. So I’d closed my eyes, made the leap, and became the proud owner of a huge mortgage. And Lottie, relieved of her financial burden, was able to do what she loved without the headaches. She swore she would be eternally in my debt, as I was in the bank’s. The difference was that the bank wanted their debt paid back monthly.

  The fly in the ointment was a big new floral and hobby shop that had opened on the main highway, where fresh flowers were sold in premade bouquets for rock-bottom prices and silk flowers were to be had in every color of the rainbow. For those on a budget it was a dream come true. For a small shop like Bloomers it was a disaster.

  To curb the drain of customers, I had been trying various inexpensive promotional devices, including running a contest—What’s My Vine?—handing out free flowers at grocery stores—A Mum for Your Mum!—and adding a coffee and tea parlor. So far, the coffee and tea parlor held the most promise.

  “How many orders came in over the wires last night?” I asked Lottie, as I followed her through the shop into the workroom behind it.

  “Three.”

  Three wasn’t good. Seven was good. Seventeen
was better. Twenty-seven would have me doing handsprings over the worktable.

  We went through a doorway into the tiny, crowded kitchen at the rear of the building, where Lottie had already started preparing her traditional Monday-morning breakfast. Bloomers occupied the entire first floor of the deep, three-story, redbrick structure, from Franklin Street in front to the alley in back. Three apartments made up the second floor, accessible through a door and stairway to the left of our shop. The third floor was unfinished—full of dusty, discarded furniture and enough spiders to fuel my nightmares well into the next century, should I still be alive and kicking.

  It was a wonderful old building from the turn of the century, when ceilings were a minimum of ten feet high and the brick walls inside were real. There were the added benefits of having the courthouse right across the street and the university five blocks south, another reason why I figured my coffee and tea parlor might fly.

  Lottie tied on her black bib apron, took eggs from the old refrigerator, and cracked them on the side of a bowl. “How do you want ’em?”

  “Scrambled.” Just like my brain at that moment. I put my head in my hands and moaned at the thought of my poor car.

  “How much damage?” she asked.

  “Front end. Who knows how much it’ll cost.” With a heavy sigh, I pulled off my shades, dropped them in my slouchy leather bag—a bargain I’d found at Target—and perched on a stool at the narrow eating counter. “I’ll find the maggot somehow. He had local plates.”

  “Call Justin about the car. He’ll get you in right away.”

  Justin was Lottie’s nephew. He ran Dunn’s Body Shop and was a true genius when it came to fixing cars, though he could barely read the back of a cereal box. He’d bought my Vette from a widow who’d stored it in a barn for decades after her farmer husband died. Other than needing bodywork, new paint, and a rear bumper, the four-speed stick shift had been in relatively good shape. Most important, it had been cheap.