Slay it with Flowers (11 page)

“No!” Onora snapped.

I knew Jill was on the verge of telling her, so I trained my eyes on Onora’s face to catch her reaction.

“Punch is dead,” Jillian said, right on cue.

Onora was good, if she was acting. Pulling off the cloth, she sat up and looked at each one of us in turn, as if trying to verify the information. “You’re kidding, right?”

“For God’s sake,” Claymore said from the doorway, “why would we kid about that?”

For a long moment Onora sat there, frozen. Then she got up and went to the window, parted the drapes, and stared down at the parking lot. The only sound in the room was my scratching.

“Who killed him?” she asked in a monotone, her back to us.

My ears perked up. No one had said he was murdered, only that he was dead.

“That’s what everyone wants to know,” Jillian said.

Onora turned to look at me, then Sabina, then Ursula. “Do you think I did it? Is that why you’re here? Oh, my God, it is! You think I killed Punch!” Her voice became shrill and her fingers curled into her palms. “Have you all lost your minds? Why would you think that about me? I loved Punch!”

“We’re not accusing you, Onora,” Sabina said. “We came because we were concerned about you.”

“She’s right,” Jillian added. “I mean, who knows what we could have found here? You might have been murdered, too.”

I could always count on Jill to make a bad situation worse. “Time to go,” I said to my obtuse cousin. I hooked her arm and dragged her out of the room. It was pointless to stay anyway. If Onora had killed Punch, she wasn’t going to admit it to us.

 

It was after one o’clock in the morning when Claymore, Jillian, Ursula, Sabina, and I huddled in the lower family room at my Aunt Corrine’s house. We had left Onora behind at her insistence. She’d wanted to be alone to grieve for the not-so-dearly departed Punch. But the rest of us needed to talk about what had happened. After seeing such a gruesome sight, none of us felt much like sleeping.

While Jillian went to find an ointment for my bites, I sat on the carpet, stripped off my sandals, and rolled up my chinos to take a look at the damage the little fleas had wrought. Ursula and Sabina curled up on opposite ends of the leather sofa behind me, and Claymore poured orange juice from a pitcher and handed out glasses.

“Who could possibly have done such a terrible thing?” Sabina asked, her lower lip starting to tremble, threatening a new wave of tears.

“Let’s look at our possible suspects,” I said. “So far we have Flip, Onora, and the mystery woman. Anyone else?”

“Bertie,” Ursula said. At my surprised look she said, “He hated Punch. He vas fired from a big Manhattan ad agency because of Punch.”

“But he says he’s happier in his new job,” Sabina argued.

As I recalled, Bertie had also told me he didn’t always tell the truth. “Did he have the opportunity?” I asked Claymore, who had taken a seat in the oversized leather chair.

He sipped the juice, thinking. “When I took the guys to the dunes the other day, Bertie spotted a bar just off the highway called the Luck o’ the Irish. That’s where he went this evening. It’s a ten minute walk from there to the dunes, five minutes by car.”

“Are you positive he was at the bar?” I asked him.

“Most assuredly. After Punch called us, we phoned Bertie, and he asked us to pick him up there on our way to the park, which we did.”

“He could have walked back to the bar before ve arrived,” Ursula reasoned.

“Then we have to put Bertie on the list.” I was reluctant to do it because I liked him. “What about Onora. What would her motive be?”

“Revenge,” Ursula said. “Onora gets angry, then she gets even.”

“Did she have the opportunity?”

“She could have slipped out of the hotel without anyone seeing her,” Claymore said. “We got in without being noticed.”

“How would she have found her way to the dunes?” I asked.

“She could have asked for directions, or taken a cab,” Ursula said.

I dug my nails into a particularly nasty bite on my ankle. “We’re assuming she knew Punch was there.”

“Which means it would have been premeditated.” Claymore held the cool juice glass to his forehead, looking faint again.

“She couldn’t have known where Punch was,” Sabina said. “We dropped her off at the hotel before Jillian got Punch’s call.”

“Maybe Punch called Onora first,” Ursula said.

“The timing would be tight,” I told them. “After receiving Punch’s call, Onora would have had to speed to the dunes—a good twenty-minute drive from the hotel—find Punch, strike him, then leave before you got there.”

“Unless she didn’t have to wait for his call,” Ursula suggested. “Maybe she followed him there in her rental car.”

“Would she have been able to find her way home again?” I asked.

No one wanted to speculate on that, but neither did they say a word in Onora’s defense. Even I had to admit that the theory was plausible, especially since I was pretty sure she had followed Punch after Jillian’s soiree. “Let’s move on to Flip,” I said. “He had the means and the opportunity. What about a motive?”

“Flip was probably the only one who liked Punch,” Jillian said as she walked into the room. She handed me a bottle of calamine lotion, which I immediately applied to my bites. She’d been gone so long I had begun to think she’d fallen asleep while rooting through a medicine cabinet.

“For argument’s sake,” Claymore said, sounding like he would much rather have been in bed, curled up in fetal position, “do you honestly believe Flip could have thrown the camera hard enough to kill him?”

“At close range it’s possible,” I said. “He could have struck him hard enough to cause him to black out, and then he could have bled to death.”

“But Flip told us he didn’t know if he’d hit him,” Jillian replied. “If Flip had been standing close to Punch, he’d know that, wouldn’t he? There would be a
thunk,
or Punch would cry out or Flip would hear him fall—something.”

“Unless Flip lied to us,” I said.

They all started arguing with me at once, none of them believing he would lie.

“If the police consider him a suspect, we have to, as well,” I reminded them. “Let’s go back to the scene. From the way Punch fell, he would have been on his knees facing away from his attacker.”

“Maybe Punch vas folding up the blanket,” Ursula suggested. “Flip got angry and walked away, then came back, threw the camera, and ran.”

“I’ll bet they argued about Punch’s mystery girlfriend,” Jillian said. She just wouldn’t let the idea go.

“If there is a mystery girlfriend,” I said, “what is it about her that would make Flip so angry he’d hurl a camera at his friend’s head?”

“He probably resented Punch spending time with her and not us,” Jillian offered.

“Resented it enough to hurt him?” I asked.

“Ask Jillian about the time she chucked a plate at my head,” Claymore said, throwing my cousin an accusing glance.

“You were flirting with a waitress,” Jillian said coolly, and I could see the claws begin to emerge.

“The difference,” I said to Claymore, before they got into a spitting match, “is that Flip is Punch’s friend. A friend wouldn’t behave like that.”

“But a fiancée would?” Claymore asked.

“
Your
fiancée would.” I dodged Jillian’s hand as she tried to jab me with her fingernail.

“So vould a girlfriend,” Ursula tossed out.

“Shut up, Ursula,” Sabina said quietly.

Ursula lifted an eyebrow at me, as if she knew a secret, then she unfolded her long legs and headed across the room to get a refill of juice, leaving me to wonder what she had meant.

“Let’s say that Punch’s mystery girlfriend hit him with the camera,” I posed. “Then we’re assuming, first of all, that there
is
a girlfriend. Second, that she was there with Punch. And third, that Flip lied about being alone with him.”

That started a new round of protests as they again jumped to Flip’s defense.

“Unless,” I added, holding up my hand to get their attention, “someone came later, after Flip had thrown the camera and left.”

“That makes more sense,” Claymore said.

“It has to be the mystery woman,” Jillian said. “You have to find her, Abby.”

“Me? Uh-uh. No way. That’s police work. I don’t do police work. I do flowers.” I finished my juice and rose. “And if I want to continue to do flowers, I need to get some sleep so I can make it to work tomorrow. Good night.”

 

By the time I got back to the apartment I was in an itching frenzy. I opened the door and slipped quietly inside so I wouldn’t wake Nikki. In the darkness I failed to notice Simon sitting at his bowl just inside the kitchen doorway. As I tiptoed past I caught the end of his tail under my sandal, prompting Simon to let out a screech that must have set off earthquake sensors in San Francisco. Startled, I jumped back and hit the front door with a bang.

Of course, Nikki woke up.

Lights went on and she came flying out of her bedroom wailing like a banshee, brandishing a can of hair spray. Obviously she was prepared to not only shock the intruder so his hair stood on end, but also to make sure it stayed that way.

“It’s me!” I said, waving my arms at her. “Don’t spray!”

She came to a stop, panting and staring at me with a bewildered look. I could tell I’d awakened her from a very deep sleep, so I turned her around and guided her back to her doorway. “Go to bed. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

“Why are your ankles covered in red welts?”

“It’s a long story.”

“You’d better put something on them.”

“I’m too tired for that. Good night.”

I took a cool shower, then crawled into bed and immediately dropped into an exhausted sleep, only to wake an hour later in total agony, my legs from toes to knee one massive hive of torture. I stumbled to the bathroom, dug through the jumble of ointments Nikki kept in a shoe box under the sink, found some anti-itch cream, and slathered it on. I waited a few minutes for it to soak in, then shut my bedroom door to keep Simon out and lay on an old beach towel on top of my bed so I wouldn’t stain the sheets.

Anti-itch medication, I discovered, works for about fifteen minutes. So I slept in fits and starts and, in between bouts of scratching and slathering on more cream, I dreamed about dead bodies, bloody cameras, and murderous barbers.

“Abby?”

Someone shook my shoulder. I peeled back scratchy eyelids to squint at Nikki. “What?”

“Don’t you have to go to the flower shop?”

“In the morning, Nikki.”

“It
is
morning. Eight thirty, to be exact. Did you get any sleep last night?”

“Maybe an hour,” I muttered and closed my eyes again. Then I opened them. “Did you say eight thirty?”

I was always at the shop by eight o’clock. It was my rule. In a panic I sat up and slid off the bed, a simple maneuver, as it turned out, with an inch-thick coating of goo on my legs. “Pour juice for me, Nik,” I said, starting for the bathroom. “I’m going into emergency mode.”

“I’m on it. Omigod, Abby, look at your legs! You’ve scratched them raw.”

I stopped to look down at the itchy limbs protruding from my short pj’s. Blood had oozed through the salve and run down my ankles. “Sand fleas,” I told her and went to drown myself in the shower.

As I stood over the kitchen sink gobbling a bowl of wheat flakes that Nikki had hastily assembled for me, I gave her a condensed version of the prior evening’s tragic events.

“Weird,” Nikki concluded, tossing a plastic straw for Simon to chase. “Especially since you know the suspects. You’ve got to stop scratching, Abby. You’ll infect the sores.”

“I wish I could stop.” I had put on a green print cotton skirt with a white T-shirt. Slacks, even capris, only caused more itching.

“Slap the bites.”

“My legs will be black and blue.”

“Better that than pus green.”

“You have a point.”

As I ate the last of my cereal, Simon decided to rub against my legs, which set off a whole new round of torture, not to mention that all his loose white fur stuck to the ointment.

“Simon!” I shrieked, causing him to shoot out of the kitchen and collide with Nikki’s legs as she came in holding two tablets in her palm. He dodged her and scrambled down the hallway, fur flying.

“Great,” I said, trying to pick spikes of white hair out of the goo. “I look like I’m morphing into the abominable snowman.”

“Take these tablets. They’re antihistamines. They should give you some relief.”

“I’m willing to try anything short of amputation. Maybe that, too, if the itching doesn’t stop.”

“What’s going to happen with Flip now?”

“They probably questioned and released him last night. I’ll call Jillian later this morning and get the scoop.” I swallowed the pills and glanced at the clock. “If Grace calls here looking for me, tell her why I overslept. It’ll save me a lot of explaining later.”

The phone rang. “There she is,” I said, and dashed for the bathroom, only to hear Nikki say, “Yes, she’s here. Hold on.” A minute later she appeared in the bathroom doorway with the phone in her hand.

“I thought you were going to talk to her,” I whispered.

“It’s not Grace. It’s Jillian.”

“Abby,” my cousin wailed in my ear. “Flip’s been arrested for murder!”