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“Can you tell me if you have any clue where Natalie is?” Dela asked Quinn when he finished telling her to be careful and don’t go anywhere alone.
“I did get a hold of a man who was one of the phone numbers that Athena had called six times in the last month before her death. It sounds like he may be Harper’s father. He is a public figure. I have an agent interviewing him today. I should know more by tonight. I’ll send someone to check out this florist.”
Dela ended the call and stared into her mom’s concerned face. “It’s okay, both Quinn and Heath are looking into who purchased the flowers.”
“Who is this Natalie you asked about?” Mom walked into the kitchen and came back with two glasses of iced tea.
“You heard about Athena Kindale being murdered, didn’t you?” Dela asked. There was no sense in not telling her mom what they knew. She told her mom all they knew about the victim and that they suspected Natalie of possibly being the murderer.
“If Heath knows all of this, why can’t he arrest her?” Mom asked.
“Because no one has seen her since before she rammed Alex’s truck into my car.” Dela wondered if Natalie ever told Dexter anything about her friends or family or a place she liked to go. “I need to call Kenny.” Dela picked up her phone and scrolled for his name and number. Tapping on the name, she dialed her second in command.
“Hey, how are you feeling?” he answered.
“Not bad. I hope to be back to work in a couple of days.”
Her mom cleared her throat but Dela ignored her.
“I’m presuming Natalie hasn’t been to work since the police and FBI can’t find her,” Dela started.
“Yeah, personnel had to hire on two new full-time waitresses for the Pony,” Kenny said.
“If Dexter is bartending, would you go in and ask him if Natalie ever talked about visiting any friends or family on a trip and if she ever talked about a place she liked to go?”
“Is she a suspect in Athena’s murder?” Kenny asked.
“Possibly, but we also believe she was driving the vehicle that T-boned me.” Dela tried hard to keep the anger out of her voice. She didn’t need Kenny to feed off of her frustration and resentment.
“Yeah, I can do that. Call you back when I get done.”
“Thanks, Kenny.” She ended the call and received the ‘Mother’ look. “What?”
“You heard what the doctor said. You aren’t to go back to work for a week.” Mom crossed her arms and tapped one foot.
“Tomorrow is Monday and it will be a new week.” Dela knew she was being flip and counterproductive to getting back in her mom’s good graces.
“You know—”
Someone knocked on the door. Dela thanked whoever it was, hoping it was Molly and not another bouquet of flowers.
Mom answered the door.
“Mrs. Bolden, I forgot you would be here watching Dela. I have some wedding things I wanted Dela’s help with.” Molly’s voice made Dela grin. Finally, someone who wouldn’t glare at her.
“Come in Molly. You must have so much to do with the wedding only a couple of months away.”
Molly walked in, spotted Dela in the recliner, and took the seat on the couch closest to her chair. “Hi. Do you mind helping me?”
“I have nothing else to do since I don’t have a car and no one will let me do anything other than sit here.” Dela threw a glance at her mom and then smiled at Molly.
“Would you like something cold to drink?” Mom asked.
“Iced tea would be great,” Molly answered and opened up the box she was carrying.
As soon as Mom was in the kitchen, Dela leaned closer and whispered. “Thank you for coming. She’s making me say and do things I don’t want to do, but I turn into my teenage self when I’m around her too long.”
Molly laughed. “I understood the code when Travis relayed the message. I went through some of that last night at my mom’s. She has some really tacky ideas for the reception decorations. And she seems set on that is what we will have, forgetting it is mine and Marty’s wedding, not hers.”
“What’s this about the wedding?” Mom asked, carrying in Molly’s iced tea and a plate with cinnamon buns.
“Yum! I love your cinnamon buns! Thanks.” Molly picked up the sweet roll and took a bite. She chewed, swallowed, and smiled. “I can never make them taste as good as yours.”
“It’s my special ingredient,” Mom said, pulling a kitchen chair in to sit facing the two younger women.
“She hasn’t even told me the ingredient,” Dela said.
“That’s because you would never make cinnamon bunss. When you marry Heath, I will tell him.” Mom smiled and sipped from her tea.
Molly laughed.
Dela felt as if that was a challenge. Her mom knew she never backed down from a challenge but marrying someone just to get a special recipe... Dela didn’t think she could do that.
“What is in the box that you need my help with?” Dela asked.
“We need to bead these bands. They will go around the glasses holding a candle in the centerpiece for the tables.” Molly produced pieces of soft leather and small seed beads. Dela only knew this because she had watched some of her friends and their mothers and grandmothers beading when she was younger.
“You want me to hold a needle and bead on your reception decorations?” Dela peered into her friend’s eyes. “Wouldn’t you be better off asking your older relatives to do this?”
Molly shook her head. “Marty and Farley, his best man, made the leather from a deer hide my father gave them to tan. Now they need to be beaded and I want my maid of honor, or best woman, to help me do the beading.” She handed Dela a piece of leather and a little bag with black, yellow, red, and blue beads. “I have an easy pattern, you’ll be fine.”
Molly took a piece of leather and a bag out of the box and handed the box to Mom. “Mrs. Bolden, would you be so kind as to count how many of each color I have and then dump one bag of each color altogether into one bag? That’s how many it takes to bead each one of these.”
“Why can’t I do that,” Dela asked, staring at the tiny little beads and wondering how many she was going to lose in the chair.
Molly smiled patiently. Like she did when a dog wasn’t being cooperative during an exam. “You’ll be fine. Here is your needle. I’ve already threaded this one for you. Watch what I do.”
Her friend deftly pulled the string through the leather at one edge, slid five black beads on the needle, and then pulled the needle down through the leather to the back. “That’s all you have to do all the way across the starting end of the leather. When you get one row done then you use the red beads and go all the way across. When that row is done, you start a row with the yellow beads and then the blue. When you have those four colors then you start over with the black.”
Dela had always been all thumbs with any kind of needle work, but she started stressing less as she made it halfway across the first row.
“That’s good. Try to make them bump up against the last row so it’s a snug fit and you don’t see the leather between the beads,” Molly congratulated her.
Dela was putting beads on her needle when her phone rang. She was going to ignore it until she saw it was Kenny. Setting the beading down, she picked up the phone.
“Kenny, what did you learn?”
“Natalie didn’t usually talk much about her life. She just listened to Athena complain, according to Dexter. He did remember her going somewhere on her vacation and coming back in a happy mood. But couldn’t tell me more than that.”
“I was hoping he’d know something.” Dela felt like they were never going to find the woman.
“So, I went over to the deli and talked to Rosie,” Kenny said, breaking into Dela’s thoughts.
“Oh, that was a good idea. Did she know anything?”
“She heard Natalie telling Athena about her vacation and Athena glared at her and said that was where Alex had just gone with Harper.”
“Kenny, you may have just helped the police locate Natalie. I’ll call and tell Heath to ask Alex where he and Harper went on their vacation. Thank you!” Dela ended the call and felt happier than she had since she’d learned about Athena’s death.
“Good news?” Mom asked.
“It’s the best lead we’ve had so far.” She set the beading on the table and shoved to her feet. “I’m going to call Heath. I’ll be right back.”
She crossed to the French doors and opened them, stepping out into the hot sun and smell of donkey manure and grass. Mugshot followed her out the door and sniffed the pile of donkey apples and then peed on them.
Dela found Heath in her contacts and hit the dial icon.
“Hey, how are things going there?” he answered.
“Much better.” She told Heath about asking Kenny to question Dexter and ultimately, he found out the best information from Rosie. “You should contact Alex and ask him where he and Harper vacationed. That may be where Natalie is hiding out since it was a special place for the three of them.”
“Good job to all three of you. If he knows that’s where Natalie is hiding, he may not tell me.” Heath burst her happy bubble.
“True, but if he didn’t have anything to do with Athena’s death, you’d think he’d want to be cleared of it,” she countered.
“True. I’ve been thinking about this. Do you think Natalie could have been angry enough or jealous enough of Athena to kill her in such a personal way?” Heath was stomping on her bubble again.
“Or Natalie is hiding because she knows that Alex killed Athena and doesn’t want to testify against him.” She liked that theory.
“But why ram his truck into your car if she was trying to keep from having to say anything against him? It just made him look even more guilty?”
“I don’t know. But if she’s the one who has been threatening me, I want her stopped. Did you find out anything at the florist shop?” Dela needed to know who was threatening her.
“No one purchased chrysanthemums from that florist in months. She said anyone could wander around and pick up one of the cards and envelopes. They have them in easy reach on the front counter.”
“Then where were the flowers purchased?” Dela asked, feeling like her control was unraveling. “If they purchased the flowers elsewhere and picked up a card from that florist, this was more than a mean gesture, it was premeditated. That doesn’t sound like something Natalie would do.”
“I agree with you. All the more reason you need to stay at home until we get this murder solved and your threats. Can you take a vacation?” Heath’s tone didn’t sound like a question, more like he was telling her to take a vacation.
Her back bristled. She didn’t like taking orders from anyone other than an Army superior. Because they didn’t get in your personal life. They only gave orders that dealt with your job.
“No vacation. I’m going back to work next week and whoever is doing this, most likely Gus Sanders, you’re going to catch him and get my life back to normal.” She stated it with indignation.
“Dela, we’ll talk about this when I get home.” He ended the call.
“Errrr.” She growled between clenched teeth. She wasn’t going to hide in her house until the person burned it down around her or until Heath or Quinn figured out who was threatening her. She wasn’t a coward and wasn’t going to hide.
Mugshot walked over and whined, looking up at her. Dela petted his head and soon her anger disappeared. Once she told Heath her concerns, he’d quit harping on her staying home.
“Are you going to stand out there all day? We have beading to do,” Molly said from the door.
“I’m coming.” Dela walked back into the house and plopped into the chair.
After another hour of beading, they took a break. Dela wasn’t going to admit it, but she liked the repetition and mindlessness the beading gave her.
Now that they weren’t concentrating on the beading, Mom told Molly about the threats.
“Did Heath have any news about where the flowers came from?” Mom asked.
“No. The person who sent them is smarter than we thought.” Dela didn’t want to talk about the threats or anything else that pushed her buttons. “What kind of wedding preparations will we be doing for your wedding with Lance?”
Her mother glowed as she talked about the event. Dela tried to listen as she nodded her head, but she was thinking about Natalie and how she fit into all of this.