Sleeping with Anemone

“PAR is behind me, Lottie. They’ve stopped Uniworld before.”

“But just how aggressive did Uniworld get those other times?”

“Why?”

Lottie left the room and returned with a letter-sized white envelope. “This was pushed under the door this morning.”

“Not another one!” As with the previous letters, my name was typed on the front in bold caps, with no stamp or return address. Inside would probably be the same demand for me to stop harassing the “poor farmer” so he could get on with the opening of his new dairy farm, which was how Uniworld was portraying their new operation. Except that this so-called poor farmer was actually a skilled manager who would be overseeing a large operation that in no way resembled a small dairy farm.

I tore open the envelope and unfolded a piece of plain white paper. Unlike the others, this missive had only one line on it: PLAY WITH FIRE, EXPECT TO BE BURNED.

Well, that was different.

CHAPTER FOUR

Both women, reading the letter over my shoulder, gasped. I wasn’t exactly delighted myself, but because of my brave speech, I made a show of marching over to the waste can and letting it fall inside.

“Um, sweetie, you might want to let the cops see that one,” Lottie said. “You know, in case someone tries to burn down the building.”

“I agree with Lottie, dear,” Grace said. “Not to alarm you unduly, but the tone of this communique is rather dire, isn’t it? It sounds as though they’re growing exasperated with you. I wouldn’t casually dismiss it.”

“With no identifying marks of any kind, how would it help the cops?”

“Fingerprints. DNA. Matching the printer ink and font,” Lottie listed. She watched way too much CSI. Our police force didn’t even have a unified computer system, let alone the technology to match printer ink. And DNA? Forget it. The state lab was usually backed up two months or more on serious criminal investigations. An anonymous letter would rank somewhere around zero on their to-do list.

They gazed at me, waiting expectantly.

Fine. If it made them happy. I retrieved the letter and put it in my purse. “I’ll give it to Sergeant Reilly next time I see him.”

A knock on the front door made us all jump. It was the FedEx driver, signaling he had a delivery. I waved at him, mouthing, Meet you at the back door.

“I’ll go let him in,” Lottie said, and headed for the curtain that separated the display area from the workshop. “I know you have trouble with that door.”

“That reminds me,” I said. “I’ve got to find out why my door request is being ignored.”

“Which reminds me,” Grace said. “I’ve got to get a new key made. Mine is bent.”

Not to be outdone, Lottie paused to say, “And that reminds me. I forgot to tell you about the UPS guy that showed up this morning.”

I picked up the phone at my desk in the workroom and dialed the city attorney’s office. I’d punched in those numbers so often I had them memorized. “Peter Chinn, please,” I said to the woman who answered.

“He’s not in right now. May I take a message?”

This was the game we played every time I phoned. “When will he be in?”

“Your name, please?”

“Abby Knight, and don’t pretend you don’t recognize my voice. You’ve got a stack of messages with my name on them and I have yet to receive a return call from your boss.”

“All I can do is leave a message for Mr. Chinn.”

“Will it do any good? Does he ever read them? Does he actually work there?”

“Will there be anything else?”

“Don’t you feel bad taking messages, knowing Mr. Chinn will ignore them?”

“He doesn’t ignore every message.”

“Oh, I see. Just mine. Wonderful. You know, all I want to do is replace a back door and put down a ramp. Is that such an unreasonable request?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Why would she? She only worked there. “Would you give Mr. Chinn one more message from me, then? Tell him I’m tired of being ignored, so I’m going to talk to a reporter with the New Chapel News.”

“I believe he’s in now. Hold, please.” All of a sudden I was listening to a Billy Joel song. Amazing what a hint of bad publicity would do.

When she came back on the line she said, “You’ll need to resubmit your request.”

“Wait. What? Resubmit it? Why?”

“We have no such request on file.”

“Yes, you do.”

“We don’t.”

“You have to have it. I delivered it myself.”

“We don’t.”

“You just now discovered that? You didn’t notice all my letters, e-mails, and voice messages asking about the status of my request and wonder what they were all about? How is that possible?”

“I don’t know.”

She didn’t know much, did she? “Fine. I’ll resubmit it, and I’m still going to call my friend at the News.”

I slammed down the phone, then took a deep breath to cool my temper. When the phone rang a minute later, I thought, Aha! My ploy worked!But it was just a pushy salesman trying to get me to carry his company’s line of candles. I told him no thanks, then plucked a slip from the spindle and studied it, forcing myself to focus on the words in front of me. Arranging flowers always calmed me down.

Okay. This order was for an anniversary bouquet, and the client wanted red and pink roses in it. Hmm. How about a few stems of red spiral ginger and blush pink callas to liven it up, along with gorgeous hanging amaranthus to give it softness? Perfecto.

“Damn dumb door,” Lottie muttered as she came back to the workroom carrying two long boxes of flowers. “I’m sorely tempted to get my boys to take it off.”

“Can we do that?” I asked as she laid one of the boxes on the table.

“It’d be just our luck someone would rat us out.” She grabbed a towel from under the worktable. “We’d better wait for a permit.”

“We’ve been waiting, Lottie. Since September. Now I’m told I have to resubmit my request because somehow the first one is missing.”

“You’re pulling my leg.”

“I wish.”

As Lottie prepped the roses so she could place them in buckets with floral solution, I worked on the anniversary arrangement, still mulling over the door situation. Was my request really missing or was I being ignored? Maybe that kind of screwup happened routinely, and I just wasn’t aware of it because I’d never submitted a request before. Maybe I should give the planning commission the benefit of the doubt and try once more before talking to a reporter.

Bang!

I jumped off the stool as the noise was followed by shattering glass. I dropped my floral knife and dashed through the curtain one step ahead of Lottie, just as Grace hurried out of the parlor. On the floor inside the shop, a few feet from my yellow frame door, was what appeared to be a brick wrapped in burning newspaper. It was lying in the midst of shards of beveled glass, the newspaper edges curling as they turned to black ash.