A Flower Girl Murder Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE Two Sisters and a Wedding

  CHAPTER TWO Blue Hydrangeas and an Incident

  CHAPTER THREE Meat Pie and Talk of Murder

  CHAPTER FOUR Coffee and a Ring

  CHAPTER FIVE Two Detectives and a Roast

  CHAPTER SIX Popcorn and a Scary Movie

  CHAPTER SEVEN Math Lesson and a Groom

  CHAPTER EIGHT Fruitcake and Clues

  CHAPTER NINE Carnations and a Father

  CHAPTER TEN Cold Soda and a Groomsman

  CHAPTER ELEVEN White Tulips and a Body

  CHAPTER TWELVE A Funeral and a Culprit

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  A Flower Girl Murder

  A Primrose and Sage Cozy Mystery: Book 1

  Ana Moure

  Copyright © 2015 Ana Moure

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Two Sisters and a Wedding

  There hadn’t been a wedding in Rosecliff for the past three years. Naturally, Primrose was beyond ecstatic that her services as the most celebrated florist in town had finally been requested for something big. Sure, she’d decorated charity events, graduation balls and fancy dinners before and her centerpieces were famous and sought after in the entire county, but a wedding was different. An entirely new stratosphere she’d been instantaneously shot into.

  “And she said she wants hydrangeas,” Primrose said, wiping the virtually non-existent sweat bead off her brow, and the way her voice rang with outrage, she might as well have told her sister that the town’s church was now running a pole dance special after hours.

  “What’s wrong with hydrangeas?” Sage said, placing a finger to mark her spot in the thick volume she cradled in her lap. It was clear that Prim was getting worked up into a rant. “They are… hmm, pretty? I’d want hydrangeas in my hypothetical wedding, I guess.”

  “You can’t be serious! Hydrangeas in this million-degree heat are just a tiny hint more attractive than a flaccid… well, you know…”

  You could count on Primrose’s ethereal, pale cheeks to burn crimson under the thick shade of her wide-brimmed gardening hat at even a suggestion of unladylike talk. Sage giggled. She’d never imagined her older sister considering the attractiveness of certain male parts, flaccid or otherwise.

  Stalled for a moment by her own odd comment, Prim started building up steam again. “You are the biology expert, aren’t you? You should know better. There isn’t a flower on earth that’s made of more water than a hydrangea. Hence the name. Hydra-ngea. Give a cut head a half hour out in the sun and it’s deader than a curl in a steam bath.”

  “Well, in fact there is a flower that contains more water—”

  “Not my point,” Prim interrupted with a sigh. “Look, Sage, I really want this wedding to turn out amazingly. I don’t even think I was that excited about my own. And the girl wouldn’t listen. I bet she saw some cute photo with a bunch of hydrangeas in a magazine and is now pestering me to recreate something that was probably shot in an air-conditioned studio. Not in a town where no one wears mascara before 8 pm for fear of looking like a tribal shaman.”

  Sage sat up in her lounger and put the book aside. She placed a blade of grass between the pages instead of dog-earing the corner, which to her would be slightly more cruel than mutilating a puppy. As insubstantial as her sister’s freak-out seemed to her, the normally composed and serene Prim was clearly flustered by the whims of the future bride and nothing would do but helping her get through the frustration.

  “All right,” Sage said soothingly, “So she wants hydrangeas. Have you thought about not cutting the heads at all? I mean, you could just use the pots and hang them here and there. Plus, you could always keep the pots afterwards, or better, let the guests take them home.”

  “She wants them on the arch, Sage,” Prim said, her brows furrowed in desperation. Sage stifled a snort. Her sister looked plain ridiculous. The way she was sitting back on her heels in front of a raised bed of lavender, her knees resting on a pristine terrycloth towel, her khakis ironed to perfection with not a spot of dirt on them and a shiny trowel glistening in her rubber-gloved hand, she looked like she had come down from the pages of a gardening magazine herself. Yet, her face was contorted in a painful expression as if the mother of all crises had landed unexpectedly on her hands.

  “Okay, I’ll help. Leave the arch to me,” Sage finally conceded, “I’ll need a few sponges and a boatload of ribbons and no one would even know most of them are potted. Oh, and I’ll need to massacre one of your laurel bushes.”

  “No, no, no,” Prim shook her head gingerly, “the last thing you came here for is to work. You need to rest and read your books and just… Well, not think about anything.”

  Sage wanted to say she hardly considered helping her sister decorate a wedding arch work, but that would have hurt Prim’s feelings. She obviously took the upcoming event as a matter of life and death, an opportunity to make a joke or a triumph of herself in front of the entire town, whose residents considered her something of a domestic goddess.

  With a population of less than a thousand people, Rosecliff was hardly an impressive kingdom to rule over, but Prim guarded her pedestal with fervor. There were no butter scones fluffier than Prim’s, no pair of sons better behaved than hers, and no garden more ripe with vegetables and flowers in the entire town. And certainly there was no other housewife in Rosecliff who managed to squeeze a million little errands in her day and appear as polished and composed as Prim, with a subtle, carefully lipsticked smile always gracing her lips.

  “Seriously, I don’t mind,” Sage insisted. “In fact, it would be better than sitting around all day growing roots. It’ll help take my mind off… things.”

  “Oh, you are fantastic!” Prim squealed and ran over to drape her tan, well-toned arms around her sister. “And about the laurel bush, massacre all you want. There’s plenty of those around town.”

  Sage inhaled Prim’s crisp, clean lemongrass aroma and once again wondered what kind of extraterrestrial her sister was. It was impossible that she’d just spent almost an hour weeding and digging and shoveling mulch and fertilizer onto her precious plants and still she smelled like she’d just stepped out of a spa salon.

  Sage suspected she herself was as rank as a teenage boy after a football game and she’d only been lounging in the shade of the enormous cedar, reading. Her sundress was drenched with sweat and her black tresses stack flat and damp to her scalp and back on what felt like the hottest day in all of the abnormally scorching summer.

  “I might sneak in somebody else’s garden then,” Sage said, “I don’t want to ruin an inch of yours.”

  “Let’s get inside,” Prim said, enthusiastic as a little girl, and pulled Sage by the wrist. “I’ll treat you to something frosty and divine.”

  The two of them gathered the hand forks, rakes and shears that lay sprawled around the lawn and stuffed them in the wheelbarrow. Prim fussed over the hose to fill a small metal bucket with water and place the fresh bunch of blue hydrangeas and irises to take inside, while Sage collected her book and sunglasses from
her abandoned seat. Grabbing the handles of the wheelbarrow, Prim sighed contentedly at the sight of the perfectly ordered tufts of lavender, the soaked, dark soil beneath the herbs and the plump clusters of cherry tomatoes in the veggie garden and pushed it towards the tool shed.

  Sage followed, wishing she could be as carefree as her sister and have the eyes and peace of mind to appreciate the little pleasures of an ordinary day. Right now, however, her mind was clouded by far darker thoughts than the beauty of the bright ruby roses and the marigolds playfully winking at her from the sides of the gravel path to the house.

  Primrose’s kitchen was surprisingly cool despite the flood of light that streamed in through the large window above the sink. She didn’t believe in air-conditioning and the pleasant temperature was entirely achieved through a large ceiling fan that whirred sleepily in the empty room. Apparently the boys weren’t back yet, and frankly, Prim never expected them home any time before their stomachs started grumbling with hunger, which gave her and Sage at least a couple of hours alone before she needed to get started on the dinner.

  Judging by the colors of the kitchen walls and the furniture, one might suspect that Prim had never had a doll house as a little girl and was only now trying to catch up on her lost playtime through painting every surface in various shades of pink, coral and peach. Behind the stainless glass of the light cream-colored cabinets lay an assortment of carefully labeled pink metal storage containers that added to the order and the color palette of the room. There was not a bread crumb left unswept from the shiny surfaces of the breakfast bar and the kitchen counters. And of course it smelled of freshly cut fruit and something even sweeter, creamier.

  Sage slumped into a barstool, exhausted from the heat and an overwhelming thirst. She knew better than to cause her sister’s horror by slurping tap water from her cupped palm, so she waited patiently for whatever concoction Prim was designing in her head. Like a multi-handed Hindu deity, Primrose busied herself opening and closing the fridge and various cabinet doors until, within moments, she was pressing the blender’s manual switch and a green concoction was swirling inside the plastic jug.

  “What’s in it?” Sage said while taking the offered tall glass of green mystery, her nose wrinkled with suspicion. “Maybe just a glass of ice water for me.”

  “Come on,” Prim urged, “There’s no spinach in it, I swear. If you don’t like it, you can spill it on me.” She winked at her sister and waved her hand in front of herself to indicate her white silk sleeveless top.

  This wasn’t much of a challenge though. Prim was one smug little cook. She’d never doubt her ability to produce the best drinks or pastry, even when there was not much in the pantry and she was forced to improvise. Sage took a cautious sip and her eyes immediately widened in surprise. The thing was potent alright! It hit her brain like a gust of freezing wind.

  “Oh my God, Prim, did you just slip me some drugs?” she said, still feeling her whole head tingle.

  “Well, you needed a bit of a jolt, seeing how you can’t even hold your shoulders straight.” She nudged Sage between the shoulder blades with a finely manicured forefinger and her sister flinched in her seat, almost falling off. “You remember what mom used to say about straight shoulders and taking on life’s lemons, right?”

  Sage nodded. Their mother had been so much like Prim and so little like herself that sometimes she’d wondered what she was doing in their perfect little family with all her clumsiness and lack of any poise.

  “Speaking of lemons,” Prim went on, “it’s ginger, lemon and fresh mint. Simple as that.”

  “Well, it does work like magic,” Sage said, straining to maintain the uncomfortable straight pose. “I was so sleepy a moment ago and now it feels like you’ve poured an ice-cold bucket of water on top of me.”

  “Good afternoon, ladies,” an unexpected voice came from behind them, a deep velvety baritone.

  “Ben!” Prim chirped, hurrying to greet the man who’d jut come in, her strawberry-blond waves twirling about her as she turned. “That’s a surprise! I thought Sage and I had the house all to ourselves for at least a while longer.” There was a hint of mock reprimand in her voice, but the joy of seeing her husband was only too obvious in the genuine smile that spread across her face.

  At the sight of the beautiful couple sinking into an embrace that neither of them was holding off on, Sage slightly cringed against her will. In her mind she knew she shouldn’t allow herself to become cynical and bitter, but there was only so much she could tell herself after what had happened.

  The truth was she was still badly wounded and though the two weeks she’d spent at her sister’s had done a lot to soften the first sharp blow, she was still quietly agonizing after the fiasco that had cost her both her career and the man she’d been about to marry.

  The memory still made her wince with mortification and it came uninvited in the least expected moments despite her attempts to close herself off to it and keep herself distracted. It was triggered by the simplest of things - one of her nephews mentioning school, a TV program set on a stage with a judging panel evaluating the contestants, a word or a phrase that Derek used to say uttered by somebody else. Once the initial wave of shame ebbed, a flaring anger settled inside her that slowly ate at her, making her blind to ordinary life and rendering her unable to enjoy Prim’s delicious meals, a refreshing breeze blown in from the sea or anything that used to make her smile.

  In these still too frequent episodes, she saw the entire scene play out in front of her like it had happened mere moments ago. She was walking on the hardwood stage towards the lectern, her high heels clicking against the polished surface, her legs pale and defined under the well-tailored suit. As the entire Department of Biology’s faculty fixed her with their inquiring, serious eyes, she prayed she wouldn’t slip or spill the glass of water that awaited her at the stand.

  As for her presentation, she was confident. Unless she made a fool of herself physically on the stage, not much could go wrong at this point. After all, she’d spent years compiling her study and now it was time for the culmination of her labor. It was the moment she had pictured for years while taking yet another dive deep in the Indian Ocean, collecting samples, or spending yet another sleepless night in the lab, hunched over her experiments.

  Her findings about the medicinal properties of certain algae were astounding and she couldn’t wait another minute to share them with just about the only audience that would appreciate them. In a couple of short hours, she would be a celebrity in the biology circles at the university and she’d finally have time to focus entirely on the man of her dreams who’d stood patiently beside her through it all.

  That’s when things had gone horribly wrong.

  “Sage, honey?” Prim said, shaking her out of the oppressive memory, “Ben says they’ve already started setting up for tomorrow’s wedding. I’m guessing we’d better get up really early if we want to be ready by the time people start coming. I want to take their breath away! You are still up for it, right?”

  Prim was already tasting her triumph as she was trying to disentangle her shirt, which had caught on Ben’s sheriff’s badge.

  “Sure I am,” Sage said. No, she wouldn’t allow someone else’s wedding to remind her of her own failed one. She’d take this as therapy. She’d help her sister the way Prim had helped her and that was that.

  “Okay, I’ll whip something up for dinner then, so we can have the whole evening to talk details. And you… you could take a nap?”

  The last thing Sage needed after a day of lying around was a nap, but this was a tactful suggestion and she knew her sister liked to cook in silence and really concentrate. She savored each stage of the process and wasn’t much of a good company when she became engrossed in her cookbooks and recipe boxes.

  “Well, I’ll leave you ladies to it,” Ben said, “I still have a small item to check off. Tonight’s the bachelor and the bachelorette parties and I’ll need to keep an eye on the fun, though
I doubt there’d much to patrol.”

  “Right,” Prim giggled, though Sage wasn’t in on the joke, “not with those two.”

  Sage wasn’t about to ask. The last thing she needed was a story of two lovebirds who were so into each other and so impatient to marry, they’d have to practically endure a night away from each other. She grabbed a stack of old housekeeping magazines (a foreign topic to her altogether) and headed for the living room.

  It wasn’t long before the quiet and the gentle clicking of silverware against porcelain that carried through from the kitchen put her into a lull and the memory of the disaster started unraveling once more.

  Back on the university stage, things had gone smoothly up until the first slide of her presentation, when a soft murmur had swept through the lecture hall, causing Sage to lose a bit of her nerve. Her hands, holding a neat stack of index cards, had begun to sweat anxiously and she’d found herself straining her ears to discern what the noise was all about.

  She’d gone on anyway, clicking towards the second slide and trying to make out her cues through the increasing vibrations of her trembling fingers. The murmur had then evolved into an open discussion with more and more members of the audience turning towards each other, frowns creasing their foreheads, than facing her and listening to what she had to say. It had taken almost unbearable strain of willpower to progress to the third slide and that’s when the entire hall had erupted.

  A loud knock on the front door shook her back to reality.

  Sage realized that the loud noise of the meat grinder that was now coming from the kitchen made it impossible for Prim to hear anything.

  “Prim!” she called out, but when no response came, she pulled herself up reluctantly and went to answer the door.

  When she opened, she slightly recoiled at the sight of the tall, handsome man standing in front of her, holding a large box. Great, she thought sarcastically, just what I needed.