It was Sunday morning, and I was walking back into the barn at Adams Creek Farms. Unlike Friday when the festival started, there wasn't a huge line of people at the ticket booth waiting to get in, which saddened me, but I wasn’t surprised. The contest and the entire schedule of events for the festival had been pushed back to Sunday. From my understanding, based on the email Scott had sent out to everyone, the police were investigating on Saturday, which made sense. To be honest, I had toyed with the idea of telling Katy and Wendy that we should just forget it. So much had happened in the last two weeks regarding the festival that I really didn't want to be any part of it anymore. But then I was afraid other people might have the same idea, and I didn't want anyone to think that I didn't care about my community or that I wasn't willing to stick it out.
I was the first person to walk in, except for Jenni, who was sitting at her table, and Hayden, who was hovering behind Josie's table. That was kind of surprising. I’d thought for sure he would have packed up and headed home as soon as he could. I walked over to the Petal Pushers table, took off my coat and set my purse down, then tucked them underneath the skirted table. I started to walk over to the Purple Posies table, where Hayden had some tools out and was tweaking one of the decorations, but changed my mind and decided to talk to Jenni first.
"How are you holding up?" I asked.
"I haven't slept in the last two nights. All I could think about was seeing Josie on the floor, that pool of blood around her," she said and started to tear up.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."
"Trust me, I would be like this even if you weren't here. That's why I came in here early. Playing with my flowers is a good outlet for me, and last night I had a dream about something different I could do with the wreath that might just give me the little bit extra I need to win. Sorry," she said as I looked at her strangely.
"Oh, that's fine," I said. I wasn't looking at her strangely because she wanted to beat me—this was a contest, after all—but it seemed a little incongruent that she said she couldn't sleep because she was so upset about Josie, yet she had come in early with a new creative idea to win. "Sometimes inspiration can strike us at the weirdest times. For me, it's usually in the shower," I said, giving her a small smile. "I'll leave you to it."
"Thanks for coming over and seeing how I'm doing, Presley."
"No problem. I'll check in with you later," I said and turned to walk over to the Purple Posies table.
As I started to walk over to talk to Hayden, I saw Scott come out of the back and walk toward the Purple Posies table too. I thought about trying to talk to him, but part of me wanted to give him some space, and trying to talk to both of them while together might be difficult. I wasn't sure I would get any information from either one of them that way. I figured Scott would be hanging pretty closely around then event, so I should be able to catch him before the day was over.
I went back to my own table when I saw that Katy had just arrived with goodies from Betty's. On our group text with Wendy last night, she had volunteered. I was thankful for that since I had wanted to get here early but didn’t want to try and get through the day without my latte. When Katy reached the table, she took a to-go cup of coffee from the carrier and handed it to me. I inhaled the sweet vanilla-smelling steam coming out of the opening. "Now I feel fully awake."
"I see you were talking to Jenni," Katy said and motioned to the bag of pastries.
"Yeah. It was the strangest conversation. She said she was upset about Josie, then came in early because she had a creative genius idea she thought might give her enough of a boost that she could win."
"Is she still fixated on winning?"
"It sure seems like it. So I'm not crazy to think that winning should be the last thing on her mind, or on any of our minds for that matter?"
"No. But everyone grieves differently," Katy said.
"That's true."
I had just bitten into a still-warm peach cream cheese muffin when Wendy arrived. We made quick work of our pastries and then went to get our stuff out of the cooler. Not that I had been worried about it, but I breathed a sigh of relief when we got to the cooler, and everything was as we had left it on Friday. And it didn't really look like the flowers were in worse shape. Sometimes, twenty-four hours could make a huge difference in the condition of flowers, but these seemed to be long-lasting.
"These don't look bad at all," Wendy said as she handed me a box. She had reached the cooler first and was distributing boxes. I had my box, and Katy had hers, and we walked back out of the back room, setting the boxes on the table, and starting to unpack them. Katy fussed with the garland that really tied into our green forest theme when I saw Scott walking across the building, weaving between people slowly trickling in.
"Can you two finish preparing? I want to try and talk to Scott."
"Sure. It won't take me a few more minutes. We've got plenty of time.”
When I glanced around on my way to catch Scott, it looked like all the tables had filled up while I had been busy, which was good. I had been afraid people would drop out of the contest.
"Scott! Scott!" I yelled.
He turned around, a flash of anger across his face. I was a little taken aback, but then he’d had a rough few days. "What do you need, Presley?" he said curtly.
"I don't need anything, per se. I just wanted to see how you were doing."
"I'm fine. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm busy."
"Scott, I know."
He looked at me, his face devoid of any emotion, so I couldn't tell what he was thinking. "You know what?" he said in measured tones.
I hated throwing Jenni under the bus, but at this point, it was about getting to the bottom of who had killed Susan, and who had killed Josie. And I had always liked Scott. He had been a couple of years ahead of me in school, but I had known him pretty well. He was a nice guy, he had been the manager at Adams Creek Farms for years, and I knew my mom thought highly of him.
"I know about you paying Josie to come here, and Susan finding out."
He swore softly. "Jenni," he said matter-of-factly.
"Don't be mad at her. She just cares about you and wants to help. That's all I'm trying to do too. Do you think someone could have been angry enough that Josie was here that they would want her dead?"
"You tell me, Miss Detective."
I bristled a little but let it slide, again giving him the benefit of the doubt given the stress he was under.
"Scott, I didn't want the harvest festival to be tainted by all this. The police are no closer to finding out who killed Susan, and now this happened with Josie."
"Well, Sheriff Blackford seems to think I would make a good suspect for killing Susan."
I didn't have an immediate response to that, because honestly, yesterday, as I was able to think of nothing but this, the thought had occurred to me that if Susan had threatened to expose Scott for bribing Josie to enter the contest, the best way to stop that from happening was to get rid of her.
"You too? I should have known," he said with disgust and turned to walk away.
I grabbed his arm to stop him. "Come on, Scott. I don’t think you killed anyone. But I get that it can make sense that someone might think that. Do you have an alibi for when Susan was killed?"
"Yes. As I told the sheriff, Jenni and I were in the office doing the last of the paperwork and processing the last-minute entries."
"Then you don't have anything to worry about."
"Right. It's just that easy."
"You just need to have faith that Sheriff Blackford will find the truth."
"I really need to go, Presley."
"Okay. Let me know if I can help with anything." I watched him walk away, then turned and went back to the table. "Wow, you're really good at this. It actually looks like it might come alive at any second," I said when I reached Katy and Wendy.
"Well, that's the point," Wendy said. "Hopefully, it will be enough to impress the judges. I see them standing over by table one right now."
I looked in the direction of table one, and sure enough, the two women and one gentleman from the Floral Association were standing with their clipboards and their serious faces in front of the table with displays.
"Did you find anything out from Scott?" Katy asked.
"Not really. He's in a foul mood and very defensive, which I can understand. Apparently, he said Sheriff Blackford felt he was a suspect for Susan's murder because of what she found out, but he had an alibi. He and Jenni were doing paperwork."
"Then he doesn't have anything to worry about," Katy said.
“That's what I said."
I took a sip of my latte, watching as the judges made their rounds. I could see Hayden behind the Purple Posies table, fidgeting with some flowers, and I had to admit the Purple Posies display was pretty awesome. It was a circus theme, and the floral arrangements were put together to look like a clown, an elephant, and a tightrope walker, along with a few other elements you would see at the circus. I thought creating forest animals was hard enough; I couldn't even imagine making flowers look like that. As the judges made their way closer to our table, my nerves started building again. I didn't know if it was because, while I didn't necessarily expect to win, I wanted to do well so I could make the flower shop proud, or if I was nervous because I was afraid something else might happen to sully the Fall Festival.