The Final Arrangement Read online

  The Final Arrangement

  By

  Annie Adams

  AMAZON KINDLE EDITION

  PUBLISHED BY

  Annie Adams

  The Final Arrangement © 2012 Annie Adams

  All rights reserved

  Amazon Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. The ebook contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, or stored in or introduced into an information storage and retrieval system in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This ebook is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Art © 2012 Kelli Ann Morgan / Inspire Creative Services

  Formatting by Bob Houston eBook Formatting

  Dedication

  This novel is dedicated with love to the real Aunt Rosy and to all the strong women in my life, past and present.

  Acknowledgements

  The journey to writing this book only began because of the encouragement of my dear friend, L.L. Muir, without whom I would still be one of those people who is going to write a book someday.

  Many thanks to readers and friends in the URWA and to Alabama Heather, Texas Linda and Idaho Julie. Thank you to Lieutenant Atkin, Sergeant Joseph, Sergeant Dixon and all the fine folks at Layton City Police Department for answering my many questions and for keeping a straight face when hearing my scene ideas. Any mistakes or inconsistencies within this novel pertaining to police work are of my own making. To my flower friends and my mortician friends, thank you and don’t worry—you are not in this book.

  Thank you most of all to J.D. for everything!

  CHAPTER ONE

  There was nothing unusual about the beginning of the day they found the Vulture dead. I arrived at work at two minutes to nine, which is completely usual. Rosie’s Posies, a flower shop, opens at nine a.m., and I am not an early riser. I’m not Rosie either. My name is Quinella McKay, Quincy to anyone who knows what’s good for them. I’m Rosie’s niece.

  I took over my aunt’s flower shop in northern Utah when she decided to travel the world. It happened to be at the same time that I needed a job. And a car, and a life. I got two out of three—the white zombie delivery van didn’t do much for the getting-a-life part.

  So there I stood that morning, struggling to unlock the front door. Nothing unusual about that, either. The ancient key was so ground down that part of my daily ritual included doing the unlocking dance while cars buzzed past on the busy intersection in front of my corner shop.

  The hot exhaust belching from commuter cars accentuated waves of heat broiling off of the asphalt of the parking lot. Just before I finally muscled the key far enough to tumble the lock, I heard the phone inside the shop ring. The hand not turning the key held a giant Coke; another of the regular props in the opening dance, and off of that same arm dangled a tote bag. The bag was big enough to carry a small child and weighed about the same. Something at the bottom of it vibrated and chimed in alternating syncopation with the phone in the shop. It sounded a lot like my cell phone ring-tone. Using the key as a handle, I pulled the door open and stumbled into my store.

  A wave of heat slapped me in the face as I continued in. The acrid smell of dried leaves and stems hung in the air. Apparently the air conditioner wasn’t working properly—not unusual at all. I let the bag drop to the floor, probably crushing the cell phone and sprinted to the telephone on the back wall of the design room, the drink clutched in one hand. I tripped over a potted azalea left too close to the walkway but managed to keep my precious elixir of energy from spilling while I regained balance.

  I slowed just long enough to put the drink on the design table then finished the race to the phone counter. I lifted the receiver and croaked out, “Rosie’s Posies, how may I help you?”

  “Hi, Quincy,” Danny Barnes said in a chirpy voice. He was my nearest competitor and oddly enough, one of my closest friends. “Sorry to call in the busy morning but O.M.G., have you heard?” Years of conditioning made it impossible for anyone brought up like Danny or me, as Mormons in Utah, to utter the phrase “Oh my God.” This just wasn’t done. One could say, “Oh my gosh,” “Oh my heck,” or even go as far as to say, “Oh my hell,” when provoked, but never the forbidden phrase. Given the choice of either saying it or slamming my fingers in the car door, I’d choose the latter. The discomfort would be shorter lived.

  “Did I hear what?”

  “Oh this is big, this is so big, My Fair Lady. You haven’t heard about Derrick?”

  “Derrick—oh, you mean, flower Derrick, Derrick the hated, Derrick the Vulture?”

  “Yes, yes that Derrick.”

  “What, is he selling flowers to all of the wedding reception centers in the state now too?”

  Derrick Gibbons, the Vulture, had been responsible for the near death of my business, about a year before. Mysteriously, he emerged as the sole provider of all sympathy flowers to mortuaries in the entire area. At the same time, the flow of referrals from said mortuaries stopped coming my direction, which obliterated half of my sales.

  “I haven’t heard anything. I just got here.” I glanced up at the clock on the fresh-grass-green-painted wall. “In fact, can I call you back later?”

  “No! You have to hear this!”

  “Wow. Okay, you were telling me about Derrick…” I wedged the phone between my chin and shoulder and switched on the nearby computer and printer.

  “They just found him—at the mortuary—dead as a doornail.”

  “What?”

  “I know! Can you believe it?” Danny asked me as if we were gossiping about something as mundane as the ugly arrangements at Joanne’s Flower Basket.

  “Wait…what?”

  “No, it gets better. They found him—on display—in a casket—in the chapel—just like it was a regular viewing. And—are you ready for this—there were flowers on top of the casket.”

  “You are shitting me!” I forgot my customer language filter.

  “I know. A fully arranged casket spray right there on top of the casket. I am stunned. I’m stunned! Absolutely speechless,” he lied, seeing as how Danny has never been speechless a day in his life.

  I absolutely was speechless for a moment.

  “Danny, you’re being totally serious right now. You’re not joking?”

  “I am not joking!” His voice increased in pitch at the end of his sentence sounding like an old-fashioned train whistle.

  As I stood at the phone counter, I thought I should be feeling some kind of sadness, or at the very least feeling sorry for the Vulture. But the only thing I could think of was his overly tanned face lying in a casket with pasty, two-shades-too-white mortician’s make-up spackled on.

  “Danny, how do you know any of this?”

  “Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but, I sent my delivery driver to the mortuary early this morning to pick up a rental piece we used for an arrangement a week ago that we need to use tonight for an enDerrickment party. You
know, the pillar with the cherub holding the bowl that I use for my waterfall design collection?”

  For Danny, unwinding a good piece of gossip was an art form not unlike creating a beautiful one-of-a-kind floral masterpiece. A complicated design that must be carefully crafted, each stem thoughtfully considered before being placed, each detail delicately, yet purposefully described. I could just see his hands waving and imitating the flow of water cascading from the top of a cliff to the ground below while he talked.

  “Isn’t it ironic that we used the piece for a funeral one day and now we’re using it for a wedding?”

  “Danny! Dead Derrick—casket spray—mortuary—remember?”

  “Oh, sorry. Anyway, my driver went to pick it up, and there were cop cars and flashing lights everywhere. So he calls me on the cell and says they’ve got the place blocked off and there’s no way he’s getting in. So I called the mortuary to tell them it isn’t bad enough they have to whore themselves out to Derrick the Vulture, who doesn’t even own a shop in our city, but they also have to inconvenience me and my staff and my customers by keeping my property hostage. I told them I would send them a bill to cover the delivery charge of having my driver return repeatedly, and that they would be charged a fee for every hour I am delayed in retrieving my property.” He stopped talking and I heard the rush of air he sucked into his depleted lungs.

  Of course I knew about one third of what he had just told me was the actual story; the rest was Danny’s usual flourish.

  “The secretary apologized for my inconvenience and told me there had been an accident. So, I called my brother and asked him to give me the scoop.”

  Danny’s brother was a county sheriff’s deputy, and at six foot three, weighing in at about three bills, he was Danny’s polar opposite. While the sheriff brother spends his days off hunting and camping, the florist brother barely breaks the six-foot barrier, is very trim and put together, and he wouldn’t be caught in public with as much as a wrinkle in his shirt or a hair out of place. Danny would rather die than wear camouflage.

  “What all did your brother say?”

  “Mostly what I’ve already told you about them finding the Vulture there at the mortuary in the coffin and the flowers. He really shouldn’t have told me anything. That’s why you didn’t hear it from me.”

  “Were they his?” I knew Danny knew exactly what they I was talking about.

  “Kevin doesn’t know a tulip from a daisy, so I doubt he would know who made the casket spray. Besides, aren’t you curious about how Derrick got there? I mean, I think he was processed and prepped like one of their customers.”

  The other line on my phone started ringing.

  “Dang it! I’ve got to go, Danny, I’ll call you later.”

  As much as I would have liked to gossip all day, I needed to run a business. I punched the button for the other line before Danny had a chance to reply.

  “Rosie’s Posies, how may I help you today?”

  “Oh, so you are there?” My mother’s voice rang with the usual guilt-imposing tone.

  “Hello, it’s good to hear your voice, too, Mom,” I said sarcastically. I grabbed my apron from a nearby hook and looped it over my head, while juggling the phone receiver. “Did you just call my cell phone?”

  “Yes, I’ve tried to call you four times at the shop, but you won’t answer your phone. How do you expect to get any orders if you won’t answer your phone?”

  “Mom, I don’t know why you keep saying won’t answer my phone. You know that the shop doesn’t open until nine, and I’ve taken the extra precaution of adding a voicemail service to my phone so that people can leave a message.” I sighed. “But you knew that already.”

  “Well, that’s why I called your cell phone.”

  “I just couldn’t get to it, Mom.” I held back the next heavy sigh welling up in my throat. My relationship with my mother would probably be classified as dysfunctional by a mental health professional. At the very least one could call it strained. I decided however, that it wasn’t worth ruining the day to fight with her. "Sorry, I guess I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.”

  “You’ve got that right, missy. Anyway, I called to ask if you’ve heard your sister’s news.”

  My heart sank. “Which sister?”

  “Sandy. They just asked her and Rick to be the nursery teachers at church.”

  “Oh, really? Well good for them. I was afraid you were going to say something about Allie.”

  “Why? What have you heard about Allie? What’s wrong?” Her voice filled with panic.

  “Mom! Nothing. I haven’t heard anything. Calm down. I just worried when you said something was going on with one of my sisters.”

  “Well, of course you assumed the worst with Allie. I don’t know why you have such a problem with Brad. He is a good man, Quincy Adams McKay. You should go to the single adult ward at church. You’d be lucky to find such a catch. You’re never going to find one with the life you’re living now.”

  Ah…yes, she’d taken the gloves off. She’d used my middle name, and slipped in a dig about going to church. Or in my case, not going to church. She didn’t come out directly and accuse me of not going to church. Instead, she used the time-honored method of most mothers, which was passive-aggression with a pinch of guilt mixed in for good measure.

  “Mom, you know why I don’t like Brad; I used to be married to one of his kind, remember? You know, the guy that used to knock the shit of out of me for a hobby?”

  “Language, Quincy! You always have tended to exaggerate. I am sorry that your husband wasn’t always easy to get along with, but we all have our faults. Brad is a returned missionary, and he has a good job…” Just as Mom started her repetitive trip down the denial river, the other line on the phone started ringing.

  “Oh, sorry, Mom…” The phone rang again.

  “She’s hinted they might go ring shopping soon...” Another phone ring.

  “Mom, I’ve gotta go—the other line is ringing—Mom—I’ll call you back.” I hung up fully aware I would have to pay for it later. She probably hadn’t yet noticed I wasn’t on the phone anymore.

  I punched the button for the other line hoping I hadn’t missed a customer.

  “Rosie’s Posies, this is Quincy.” The refrigeration unit on top of the walk-in cooler started up with its loud whirring.

  “Hello, this is Betty Carlisle—I’m a volunteer with the hospital gift shop.”

  “Oh hi, Betty.”

  “I just thought you might want to know that we are out of arrangements in the cooler.”

  “Out?”

  “Out.”

  “Okay, we’ll bring a cooler full as soon as we can.”

  “All right, dear. Bye.”

  This was more like it. July isn’t exactly the greatest month for florists. It’s even slower than January, which is horrific for sales except for the fact that it’s funeral season. Not a term used with customers, but a common part of the vernacular in the business. I allowed myself just a moment of indulgence to think about where the mortuary would send its customers now that Derrick had fallen victim to funeral season in July.

  My pulse quickened as I itemized the increasing responsibilities for the day. My glances at the clock became more frequent as I hoped my helpers would arrive sooner than planned. The radio I had switched on earlier no longer played background music; instead it was screaming car commercials. Sweat began to pool on the back of my neck, and along my hairline.

  Where was that Coke? There had been far too much action already without taking a hit. I grabbed the cup and perused the order bins on the wall, dragging cold liquid comfort through the straw, making every sip count like the final pulls on a last cigarette.

  After organizing the daily orders and the hospital list, I ducked into the walk-in cooler to get more flowers and greenery and relished the relief it offered from the summer heat and the inadequate air conditioner. The whirring of the fan pushing air inside the cooler play
ed tricks on my hearing, making it sound like the phone was ringing. I ignored the phantom sound. Then I heard it ring again. I popped my head out of the cooler and realized both lines were ringing.

  “Damn it!” Saying it out loud seemed to help. Arms full, I used one foot to close the door while balancing on the other leg, then walked over to the design table, attempted to put everything down quickly without breaking any stems and rushed to the phone.

  “Rosie’s Posies, how may I help you?” My voice sang out with a tone of warmth and enthusiasm—from where it came I don’t know.

  “Hi, my name is Roger; may I speak with the person who makes the decisions about the phone bill?”

  A scream rang out within the walls of my skull. “She’s not here right now,” I lied, while hardly restraining the fury in my voice.

  “When would be a better time for me to reach her?” Roger—if that was his real name, tried to sound friendly and helpful.

  “I don’t really know, just between you and me, she’s kind of unreliable. I couldn’t really give you a time, I never know myself.”

  Painfully, yet mercifully, the other line kept ringing. I didn’t want to risk letting the voicemail pick up and lose a potential customer because I had been speaking to Roger.

  “Oh, there’s my other line, it’s probably the boss calling to say she’s not coming in.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll wait while you check.” I had to give Roger extra points for trying. Unfortunately for Roger, I neglected to hit hold. Oops.

  I answered the ringing line. My ear started to throb.

  “Rosie’s,” I answered sharply.

  “Is the owner there?” A deep male voice asked.

  “I am not interested!” I fired back. “I’m really busy right now and you guys have already called me this morning. Talk to Roger over in the next cubicle.”

  “This is Detective Arroyo with the Hillside City Police Department. I’m looking for Quinella Swanson.”