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Paige turned the Jeep toward Scott and Sarah’s house, eager to get there and relax. She thought she might even jump in the shower—it would feel great to get the water nice and hot and imagine it washing away all her stress. Aunt Nora’s memorial service had been emotional for her, but she was glad to have it over with. Her aunt would always remain in her heart and thoughts, but now Paige could figure out what she needed to do to move forward. She needed to care for the bookstore and find out who poisoned Nora.
As she’d been poring over the shop’s financials the past few days, Paige had realized Beachside Books had been slipping financially over the past year or so. She’d need to figure out what had been going on and find a way to get things turned around.
Paige pressed the button on the Jeep’s door to lower her window so she could feel the breeze. She turned the radio on and hit the scan button to try and find something upbeat to listen to. She stopped the scan when a song from the 1970s reminded her of riding in the car with her parents as a child. They had loved classic rock.
As she hummed along with the addictive tune, Paige’s mind went back over everything that had happened at the memorial service. She thought about Horace Bellevue, Jay’s invitation to Maretti’s, and her twin cousins’ huffiness over Paige’s inability to eat their herb dip. Why had they been so irritated about that? There were plenty of people around who could eat it, so why was it so important to them that she had a bite? She thought about Scott’s story of the twins’ husbands getting busted for growing weed at Bickle’s Nursery.
Could the four Bickles have something to do with the drug ring Scott’s department was working on? Could her twin cousins and their husbands possibly have been involved with Aunt Nora’s death? Her mind wanted to dismiss the idea, but Paige had to give it some consideration. After all, both of her cousins had expressed displeasure at getting Aunt Nora’s house instead of the bookstore, which they obviously felt was more valuable. They must not have known Beachside Books wasn’t doing that well financially.
Could they really have poisoned Aunt Nora thinking they would get the bookstore? She could imagine Patty and Taffy stopping by the shop in the morning just to say hello. One of them could have distracted Nora while the other spiked her mug.
Paige’s heart rate increased. She pulled into a parking lot, turned around, and started heading back the way she’d come. At the first stoplight, she turned right and drove to the end of the street where it dead-ended into Bickle’s Nursery. With no real plan in mind, she only knew she felt compelled to get out and look around.
The parking lot was deserted. Paige walked up to the front door to read a handwritten sign attached to it: Closed for memorial service. Will reopen tomorrow morning at nine.
How odd. Contrary to what the sign suggested, Taffy’s and Patty’s husbands had not been at Aunt Nora’s memorial service with their wives.
Without giving it much thought, Paige tried the front door, but it was locked just as the note suggested. She glanced around again, but there were no signs of anyone on the premises. Even the street in front of the nursery was empty. She made a snap decision and followed the sidewalk to the corner of the building and then turned left and walked along the side of the nursery to the back. A chain-link fence came off the corner of the brick building and enclosed a large backyard within which stood dozens of trees, shrubs, and flowers. Paige looked left and right before she scooted up and over the fence, landing on the grass inside.
She didn’t stop to think about her actions. Breaking and entering was out of character for her, but it didn’t really seem like that’s what she was doing. After all, she’d grown up with Taffy and Patty. They were all family, so why shouldn’t Paige be able to walk around the nursery property? She recognized a twinge of guilt in her gut. If she stopped to examine that feeling too closely, she’d realize this was the wrong thing to do, hop back over the fence, and hightail it to Scott and Sarah’s house.
Instead, she tamped down the guilty feeling, shoved it away, and began to move through the pathways in the foliage until she found the back door of the nursery. She tried it, but it didn’t budge any more than the front door had. She only hesitated for a second. If there was any evidence around here that the Bickles had had something to do with Aunt Nora’s death or were involved in the drug ring, it wasn’t likely to be out here in the open yard. She needed to get inside the building to poke around.
She searched up and down the brick wall until she found a small window a few feet to her left. Paige picked her way through a row of hedges and stopped below it. The window was high enough that she had to stand on her tiptoes to reach it, but when she gave its old bronze handle a jerk, it budged. Her heart fluttered in her chest, but she once again didn’t take time to reconsider the plan. She yanked and managed to get the window open about twelve inches. She reached up and used all her strength to pull her upper body toward the window, scrabbling on the brick wall with her toes until she got her head and shoulders through the window. She scraped her shin and bit her tongue to keep the curse words in. Some of that lovely Italian food had found its way to her hips, and she made a mental note to check out Comfort Cove’s new gym.
Ignoring the pain in her leg, Paige managed to get one knee up and over the window ledge and then she was sliding down the wall onto the floor inside the nursery.
She found herself in a small room filled with seedlings covering waist-high tables, grow lights hanging over them. She knew enough about plants from Aunt Nora and her mother to recognize these were mostly vegetables. She moved past them quickly to the door and let herself out into a hallway lined with four other doorways. The first led out into the nursery’s showroom, and Paige knew there was unlikely to be any evidence of crimes out there. One by one, Paige peeked into each of the other doorways and found similar rooms to the first one she’d landed in, containing plants in various stages of growth. The fourth door was closed, locked, and labeled Authorized Personnel Only.
She pulled the cell phone out of her purse. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe she’d see an unidentifiable plant inside this room and need to look it up on a search engine. Or perhaps she’d see something obviously illegal and have to call Scott right away. Paige pushed away that uncomfortable thought, knowing if that happened, she’d have to explain to her brother why she was in a locked room inside a closed business. Even the thought of such a conversation with Scott made her squirm.
She rummaged through her purse until she found a credit card and a bobby pin. She’d used both to break into her apartments when she’d locked herself out over the years. Slipping the cell phone into her back pocket, she went to work as fast as possible, quickly finding that the credit card was the ticket past this particular lock.
The air inside the room was humid, and the lighting was dim. Paige poked her head in first, and when there was no alarm, she slipped the rest of the way inside and closed the door behind her. She was officially a criminal now, and a slight thrill surged through her. She thought about all those kids in high school who thought she was a goody two shoes. Little did they know she had been so standoffish because none of them lived up to the friendships she’d made with characters in her books.
She adjusted her eyes to the bright LED lighting and squinted. It only took her a few seconds to realize there wasn’t anything illegal in the room. It was filled with some of the most gorgeous orchids she’d ever seen, in various heights, colors, and containers. A small cupboard on one side of the room stood open, revealing gardening tools inside.
Paige didn’t know whether to feel relieved or frustrated. She’d been sure her cousins-in-law were up to something shady. Or maybe she’d just hoped they were. Taffy and Patty certainly weren’t her favorite people in the world, and she had to admit to herself it would have given her a bit of pleasure to catch their husbands in some nefarious dealings. It would have complicated the twins’ lives but made Paige kind of happy. She felt a little guilty until she remembered how fast the cousins were to hunt for Nora’s will after her death.
She sighed. This was obviously a dead end. She’d better get out of there while she was ahead. Paige turned toward the door but quickly realized it was blocked. She took a step back.
The Bickle brothers stood in front of her, their arms crossed, glaring at her.
Paige managed to smile as her heart tried to pound its way out of her ribs. “Hi, guys,” she said with a nervous laugh that sounded foreign to her. “Missed you at the memorial service.”
Harry and Leroy Bickle exchanged glances. Paige couldn’t tell them apart, and they always seemed to act as one person. The one on the left said, “We were there, in the back of the room. Had to leave before Scott was finished talking to get over to the co-op and take delivery of some special topsoil we ordered.”
The other half of the not-so-dynamic duo glared at her. But it was the first brother who spoke again. “What are you doing in here?”
Paige looked around. “Admiring the orchids,” she said. “They’re gorgeous. What do you feed them? I’ve never been able to get mine to grow. They are just so fussy. Are they expensive? I bet they’re expensive.” Great. Now she sounded just like crazy Lucy.
Another look passed between the tall, lanky men, and Paige sensed their suspicion. Their faces seemed to glow dirty gray even under the purple fluorescent lights. She had a thought. “I wanted some special flowers for Aunt Nora’s grave, you see, and I didn’t think you’d mind if I came in the back door to look for some, and it was unlocked.” She tried to tell the lie with a steady voice. It must have worked.
The Bickle on the right cocked his lower jaw to the side, but both men’s shoulder muscles relaxed a tiny bit. Paige drew in a breath and held it for a few seconds, focusing on slowing her pulse and sending out calming vibes.
“You’ll probably find something you like out in the showroom,” the left twin said.
Paige wondered briefly if the one on the right ever spoke. Maybe one was the brain and one was the voice? Neither appeared to be the muscle of the pair. With the newly acquired heft in her hips, she could probably take them both out with one shot. “Oh, of course. Silly me!” Paige moved toward the door, and the men parted to let her walk between them and out into the hallway. “Do you have any verbenas? Aunt Nora loved verbenas. I saw some in the window boxes at her house.”
One of the men snorted, and Paige glanced over her shoulder. They were both following her down the hall to the doorway leading to the front of the store.
The one on the right had a grimace on his face, but it was the guy on the left who spoke again. “That house might as well be a pile of kindling,” he snarled. “It would be worth more if it was. You got the good end of the deal in the old lady’s will.”
Paige bristled at the disrespectful term he used for her aunt. She managed to bite down on the sharp reply that tried to escape from her throat. She didn’t need to antagonize these guys when she was alone with them in the building, having broken in. It was lucky they seemed willing to believe her lie and let her go. Especially since she’d realized belatedly that Aunt Nora was to be cremated and not have a grave. Quickly she said, “The bookstore’s not doing too well. It’ll be a wonder if I can hold on to it without losing my shirt.” The still-silent brother snickered, and she hoped he wasn’t trying to picture her topless. She looked past him to the front window. “Oh, there are some lovely verbenas. I’ll take those.”
As the twins put the flowers she’d motioned at into a box and unlocked the front door of the shop to load them in her Jeep, Paige wondered if they were as innocent as her little trip through their nursery seemed to indicate. After all, they’d been busted for illegal dealings in the past. Maybe they’d learned how to hide the evidence of their crimes a little better since then.
As she started up the engine, she leaned out the window. With a wave and a smile, she said, “Thanks for not calling the cops on me.”
The other brother finally opened his mouth. “Cops?” His eyes grew wide. “No cops.”