“What now?” I groaned to myself as I rolled over in bed to get at my phone. The calendar notification was dinging for some strange reason, but I didn’t have anything going on today.
I looked at the screen.
Well … crap.
Yes I did. I did have something going on today.
I had forgotten that I had scheduled a time to meet Mrs. Roy at her place to discuss the flowers first thing this morning.
After Vivienne’s, I had gone back to the retreat to apologize to my mother and see how she wanted me to handle apologizing to everyone else, but I couldn’t find an opportunity to get her alone. She was always either talking to the guests or Zaki. I thought it was best to lay low. A lot of people had paid good money to come to this retreat, I didn’t want to cause any more problems. That being said, I knew I had to handle it today. My behavior was inexcusable. And I would handle it today, and get the investigation going again … somehow … once I handled this.
I mean, sure I could always text Freddie to get him to take the meeting with Mrs. Roy, but he might see that as a thinly veiled excuse to initiate contact. And I was all about respecting his space these days.
I could always cancel the meeting … but every wedding needed flowers.
That only left me with the option of taking the meeting. On the one hand it probably meant I would lose another hour of my life to a merry-go-round conversation with Mrs. Roy, but on the other hand, I had promised Candace that the wedding would be great. And it would be. Regardless of what was happening between Freddie and me.
And … wait a minute, Mrs. Roy’s place was pretty close to the gazebo.
I wasn’t thrilled about visiting the spot where Lyssa had been found, but that’s what investigators did, right? I needed to get into the headspace of the killer … see what the killer saw. It was worth a shot. I didn’t have any better ideas.
Half an hour later I was across the lake and at the Dawg asking Big Don if I could borrow the bike his nephew used for deliveries. I really needed to think about buying my own—especially if Freddie and I were going to keep fighting like this. I would have taken the boat, but Mrs. Roy’s was on a shallow part of the lake. There were lots of rocks.
It didn’t take long to cycle over. Once I got there, I laid the bike on her front lawn. I really liked this side of the lake. It was peaceful. The wind always seemed to be in the trees. Which was weird because they had actually cleared a good deal of the trees for Mrs. Roy’s gardens.… which currently didn’t have a single flower blooming in them. It was late spring, how could there be no flowers? This was bad. Who ever heard of a bride with a bouquet of tree branches? That wasn’t romantic. That was pokey. Somebody could lose an eye.
I walked up to the cottage and knocked on the door.
It was immediately answered by a loud woof and then a howl from the backyard. A second later, Carmen showed up in the fenced-in strip of yard beside the house.
“It’s okay, Carmen. I was invited.”
That just made her howl louder.
“Wow. Tell me how you really feel.”
I waited as Carmen howled for someone to answer the door. After a minute, I knocked again. Not entirely sure why. Carmen’s howling could have woken the dead. Oh … bad thought. Too soon.
Still no answer.
She wasn’t home.
Well, this had been a complete waste of time.
“You looking for Mrs. Roy?”
I whipped around. It was a boy, maybe ten, on a bike. I think his name might be Cole? I was pretty sure I went to high school with his mom, Carrie. Hey, there was another side-by-side comparison I could ponder later.
“Have you seen her?”
“She’s not home. She went out about ten minutes ago. Grocery shopping.”
“But she was supposed to meet me here now.”
He nodded with a “I totally get it” look on his face. I seriously doubted that he had been stood up that many times in his life to warrant that level of understanding, but either way I appreciated the commiseration. “She’s like that,” he said. “You’re Erica Bloom, aren’t you?”
Uh-oh, I was known for many things in this town. Most of them inappropriate for ten-year-old boys.
I nodded.
“You want to know about that woman who—” He made a slicing motion with his finger across his neck and made a gargling sound.
“No! I mean … no.” What was Carrie letting this kid watch on TV? “I just wanted to talk to Mrs. Roy about some flowers.”
“It happened over there,” he said, pointing to the gazebo in the distance.
Apparently he knew quite a bit.
“I live right over there,” he said, pointing to a cottage. Closest one to the gazebo.
Yup, that was Carrie’s place. At least it was back in high school. I probably should have thought about canvassing the neighborhood before now.
I nodded at the kid again. I had no idea what I was supposed to say. I’d point to my place—well, my mom’s—but you couldn’t see it from here. “Cool.”
“I know you and your friend like to solve all the murders in town.”
I shot him a sideways look. “I wouldn’t say like, and—”
“My mom says you’re going to get arrested one of these days for sticking your nose where it shouldn’t be.”
I shrugged. Hard to disagree with that.
“But she says you’d probably like that because you’re hot for Sheriff Forr—”
“All right. All right,” I said, holding up my hands. “You just know all sorts of things, don’t you? But shouldn’t you be in school?”
“Summer break started last week.”
“Right, well—”
“I know what happened that night. Want me to tell you?”