To Catch a Leaf (29 page)

There stood Lindsey, gazing at me with a knowing smile.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“I
think I'm lost,” I said.

Lindsey covered her mouth to stifle a laugh. She was clearly amused by my lame attempt to defend myself. “You're not lost. You were snooping.”

“Snooping is a rather harsh word. I'd prefer
investigating
.”

“Call it whatever you want. We need to get away from here before Ginny comes out.”

“Ginny?”

“Virginia. That's her nickname.” She took my wrist and practically dragged me to the staircase. “Trust me. You don't want to talk to her when it's time for her evening cocktail. She'll eat you alive.”

“I really need to talk to her.”

“Not here. Now, come on. Hurry.”

We ran down the steps like schoolgirls heading out to recess. Not a moment later, I heard a door open and then Beethoven's Fifth filled the hallway above. “That was close,” I said breathlessly.

“I told you so.”

When we came out on the second-floor landing, Lindsey said quietly, “Yoga is over. Everyone is getting ready to leave. Go down to the kitchen and wait for Ginny there if you want to talk to her. Just don't tell her you were in her room. Now, go!”

She hurried off toward the exercise room, so I turned and ran down the next flight of steps, coming out in the hallway near the kitchen. There was no sign of Mrs. Dunbar, and I could hear footsteps on the stairs behind me, so I sat down at the kitchen table, pulled out my cell phone, and pretended to be talking to someone.

Virginia came around the corner and stopped dead in her tracks when she saw me.

“What on earth are you doing here?”

I signaled for her to wait a minute, then said into the phone, “I'll call you about this matter in the morn—”

My phone rang. I was so startled, I pulled it away from my ear and stared at it.

Jillian's name was on the screen. Fuming silently, I hit END and slid it into my pocket. “That can wait.”

Virginia folded her arms over her chest and sneered. “Just exactly how did you get inside? We have gates to keep people like you out.”

People like me? That did it. I'd had enough of Virginia's snooty attitude.

“Don't worry,
Ginny.
I didn't break in. Juanita let us in. In fact, Marco is upstairs talking to her now.”

“Did you just call me
Ginny
?” she snarled.

“That is your nickname, isn't it?”

“You have some nerve using a familiar name with me,” she said, looking me up and down. “I've never seen such rude behavior.”

“How about this man?” I opened up the piece of paper with the photo on it and held it out. “Have you ever seen him?”

Virginia snatched it from my hand and gave it a cursory glance. “Never.” Suddenly her eyes seemed to sharpen their focus, and she drew it closer. Her breathing became fast. Then, with one strangled gasp, she fainted dead away.

She really had to stop doing that.

Marco and Juanita entered the kitchen at the very moment she collapsed.
“Madre de Dios!”
Juanita said, standing with her hands on her hips. “What happened now?”

“All I did was show her the photo,” I said, as Marco and I crouched beside her.

“Well, no wonder she fainted,” Juanita snapped, standing with one hand on her hip. “It's a ridiculous picture.” Turning away, she yelled, “Mrs. Dunbar! Virginia fainted again. Bring her smelling salts.” She swung back around to blow Marco a kiss and then she sashayed out of the room as though she hadn't a care in the world.

Mrs. Dunbar came rushing in with a bottle of salts, her hair in curlers, and white cream slathered all over her face. She knelt down beside Virginia and waved the uncapped bottle beneath her nose.

At that, Virginia's eyes snapped open. She sat up abruptly and glanced around, slowly realizing what had happened. She got to her feet and straightened her clothing, clearly angry at herself for showing such weakness. “What are you staring at,” she asked me, “and why are you still here? Mrs. Dunbar, get the police on the line. These people are not welcome here and are, in fact, intruders.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but Marco said, “We were just leaving. Have a nice evening.”

On the way to the car, he said, “Sorry to cut you off, but I learned a long time ago not to throw stones at an angry dog.”

“She'd be even angrier if she knew what I found buried in her underwear drawer.”

“You snooped in her underwear?”

“Must everyone refer to what I do as snooping? When you do it, people call it investigating. Why is that?”

“Okay, let's start again. You
investigated
Virginia's underwear drawer?”

“I saw my opportunity and went for it, Marco. You would have been so proud. Virginia was painting in her studio with the door shut, and right across the hall was her bedroom with the door open. And voila! I found a diamond brooch with the letter
g
on it, which just happens to be the first letter of her nickname.

“And wait, it gets better. The initials
FT
and a date were engraved on the back—and the date was last week. There's our connection. High five!”

Marco gave me a high five and then kissed me, which I found much preferable. “Great work, Abby. Now we need to figure out how to connect the dots between Frank Talbot, Virginia, and the art theft.”

“Okay, I've been thinking about that. Remember the flowers Lottie and I delivered to the Donnelly house? They were very specific arrangements sent to a woman who we now believe is Mrs. Talbot. So were those arrangements merely gifts from a kind son, or were they some kind of code?”

“I hear another theory brewing.”

“Something is brewing, but it's just beyond my grasp. Let me work on it awhile longer. You haven't told me about the yoga session. Did you like watching Juanita flex and stretch and bend?”

“If I'm going to watch a woman flex and stretch and bend, Fireball, it's going to be you.”

Aw
. Marco was so adorable. And wise. Very, very wise. “If you're lucky, Salvare, you might get your chance for some flexibility tonight.”

“Exactly what I had in mind.”

 

It was not flexibility Francesca Salvare had in mind, however, as we discovered when we got back to the bar.

“Here you go,” Rafe said, handing a thick binder to Marco. “Mom says you and Hot Stuff here have to pick out a few invitations tonight, and she'll help you narrow it down tomorrow when you meet her for lunch.”

I turned toward Marco. “We have a lunch meeting?”

“It's news to me, Abby,” the adorable wise one said.

“She's bringing Filetto alla Rossini,” Rafe continued. “You'll love it, Abby. Won't she, bro?”

“I'm sure I will,” I said wearily, plunking my chin on my hand.

“And,” Rafe said, “she said to tell you both no more stalling. If you don't pick an invite for the Salvare shower, she will.”

Marco tucked the binder under his arm and ushered me toward his office. “Looks like we'll have to be flexible with our plans tonight, Sunshine.”

Wait a minute! No way was his mother going to ruin our evening. “I think we'll find a way to do both,” I said with a smile.

“Both what?” Rafe asked from behind, startling me.

We swung around in surprise. “What?” Marco asked.

“What else do
you
have to do?” Rafe asked. “
I'm
running the bar.”

Marco and I exchanged glances. “Yoga,” we said together.

“Yoga?” Rafe glanced at us skeptically, then turned and walked away. “Whatever. I've got work to do.”

It took us ten minutes to pick out an invitation we both liked. Lucky for us, our tastes were very similar. Even luckier, we snuck out the back way and had the rest of the evening to ourselves . . . to practice our yoga poses.

One of these days, I'd have to sign up for a class.

 

 

 

On the way to Bloomers the next morning, I kept pondering the puzzle of those flower arrangements, wishing I had an answer. It seemed to hover right at the edge of my mind, just out of my grasp. I parked the car in the public lot and was walking toward Franklin Street when I saw two of the college girls who'd bought Mom's sea glasses hurrying across the street toward me.

“Remember us?” one of the girls asked. “We bought those janky sunglasses from you.”

“Do you have any left?” the other one asked. “We need twenty more pairs.”

Twenty more? I was stunned. Then the image of the two young women I'd seen wearing Mom's sea glasses popped into my head, giving me an uneasy feeling. Before I committed Mom to making more, I needed to find out why.

“I'm all out at the moment, and I hope you don't think I'm being nosy, but what makes them so popular?”

“We make sorority initiates wear them,” the first girl said with a giggle. “It's part of their hazing.”

“We're stocking up now for next semester,” the other girl said. “So when will you get more in?”

My stomach dropped. Poor Mom! There was no way I was going to sell her glasses to be used as instruments of torture. Mom would be crushed if she found out.

“Unfortunately,” I said to the girls, “the artist just retired.”

Now I had to figure out how to stop Mom from making more.

 

When I got to the shop, I saw Grace in the parlor, setting up for the day. I stopped to say good morning and spotted a large, coffee table–sized book lying on a nearby table. It was covered in burgundy leather and inscribed:
The Language of Flowers
by Leticia Goodwin
.

“That was Connie's gift to me, love,” Grace said. “I brought it for you to see.”

“What a nice remembrance,” Lottie said, coming in behind me.

I ran my fingers over the book's textured surface. It felt like smooth pebbles and smelled of old paper and leather.

“Just look at the illustrations,” Grace said, turning pages. “You'd swear they were photographs. But what I found intriguing is the flower dictionary. One can look up a name of a flower and find the meaning that was in vogue at that time. Look here.”

She pointed to a name and read aloud, “Alyssum. Worth beyond beauty.”

My inner antennae began to rise.

“Amaryllis,” she read. “Splendid beauty. Isn't that lovely?”

The antennae were up and waving, and I suddenly remembered the art appraiser talking about the forged paintings.

“First we have
Splendid Beauty
,”
Mr. Ventury had said,
“portraying a single red amaryllis—”

It was coming back to me.

“—
then
Magnificent Beauty
portraying—”

“A white calla,”
I had said. At Ventury's quizzical look I had told him that I was a florist.

“Lottie,” I said, “would you look up the meaning of a calla?”

She turned a few pages. “Here it is. Calla means magnificent beauty.”

“And hibiscus?”

“Delicate beauty.”

Just like the paintings in the Beauty collection.

Lottie glanced at the clock on the wall. “Ladies, we'd better get ready. We open in twenty minutes.”

“May I borrow your book?” I asked Grace.

While my assistants prepared to open the shop for the day, I returned to the workroom and pulled the Donnelly house orders from the filing cabinet where Lottie had stowed them.

 

 

Researching the meanings of the flower combinations, it became apparent that Frank had used the first flower in each arrangement to name one of the Beauty paintings. But what had the other part of the arrangement meant?

I put in a call to Marco, got his voice mail, and left him a message to call me back. Maybe he would have an idea.

“Abby,” Lottie said, coming through the curtain, “I hate to interrupt, but I went to open up and saw a bunch of people with cats waiting outside.”

“As if our day wasn't busy enough,” I said with a sigh.

“There's good news, though,” Lottie said. “Francesca called to say she was coming in. I'm sure she'll be glad to lend a hand.”