Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
A Flower Arrangement
“This was a good idea,” Amie said as she and David walked down the street.
“Of course it was,” David said breezily. “It was my idea.”
Amie rolled her eyes, smiling. Unsure of how to proceed with Benny, she had the thought that morning to go to the grocery store in pursuit of the person who tipped off the police about David and Savannah’s argument.
If David was right about his suspicion that he was being framed, it was likely the tipster was at least involved with Savannah’s murder, if not the murderer themself.
She also knew it was possible that whoever had pointed the cops David’s way had just been innocently trying to assist with the investigation, but in order to determine that innocence, Amie first needed to find them.
The man who had been working at the flower counter that day seemed like a good place to start.
If he hadn’t been the one to make the tip, maybe he’d seen who else had witnessed the argument.
The “good idea” had been David’s.
“You haven’t seemed to be struggling much with that post-loop anxiety you said you were experiencing,” he’d commented earlier as they’d exited the stairwell into the lobby of their building. “Do you think you’re better now?”
“Mm.” Amie thought for a moment. “Yes and no. It’s still easier to do things I didn’t do during the time loop. Less expectation. The walk to the café this morning was a little better, though. I only a little bit felt like the sky could fall on my head any second.”
“ ‘Only a little bit’ sounds like an improvement.” They were descending the front steps when he suggested, “Should we try a different route to the grocery store?”
Amie paused at the foot of the stairs, considering this. “Oh.” Her shoulders loosened at the thought. She hadn’t even known how much she’d been dreading reprising their usual walk to the store.
“Unless you think it’s better to push through,” David added. “Exposure therapy and all that.”
Amie winced. “I think I’ve done enough exposure for one day.” She headed left, away from the more convenient path to their destination. “Let’s try it.”
And it had worked. Not only was Amie relaxed on their walk, she was enjoying the change of scenery.
This street had many more trees lining the sidewalk, some of them with leaves that were showing signs of early senescence in the form of reds and yellows peeking out through the green.
Amie was sure the leaves had already begun changing on Monday, but their promise of autumn was much more effectual when she knew the passage of time was operating as normal.
“So …” David said in the tone of someone attempting to speak casually and utterly failing at doing so, “how are things going with Ziya?”
“They’re going,” Amie said vaguely, pulling her attention away from the trees. “Thank you for your concern.”
“I’m not concerned. Just curious. She left her friends to be with you last night.”
“She left her friends because she didn’t want to be left out of the investigation,” Amie corrected him. “That’s different.”
“I don’t think those two things are necessarily mutually exclusive.”
“Did she, um …” Amie crossed her arms. “… did she seem, like, super worried about me, or …?”
“She was very worried about you,” David said. “She practically pushed me all the way back to my apartment when I told her what was happening.”
“Hm,” Amie murmured noncommittally. In case her response hadn’t been enough to indicate that she wanted a change of subject, she decided to initiate one herself.
“Do you remember what Savannah was upset about?” she asked. “When she was yelling at the flower counter employee on Monday?”
David let out a half-hearted scoff. “Can’t say I was paying much attention. She never proved to me that anything she had to say held much substance beyond furthering her own interests, so I’ve gotten used to drowning out her tirades.”
“I think it had something to do with her weekly flower order,” Amie said. “I remember her mentioning that. Plus she was at the flower counter, so …”
“Adds up,” David finished. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m just thinking about something Andrew said last night. That he knew Savannah was … the way that she was, but he couldn’t imagine what she could’ve said or done to make someone want to kill her.”
When Amie had returned to her apartment after speaking with Andrew, she’d opened a note on her phone and typed out as much as she could remember from their conversation.
She’d been noticing that some details of the previous couple of days were growing foggy in her memory.
Typing out the events of their conversation at least assured her that there was a backup in case her memory continued to display signs of incompetence.
Amie looked over at David. “Yelling at someone about an issue with her flower order, that’s regular for Savannah. She was an annoyance at best, and mean at worst. But murder? What could she have said or done to drive someone to murder?”
“Maybe she hurt someone so much that they felt they needed to hurt her back.” David shrugged. “Or maybe she just wore them down over time, and they’d had enough.”
“Sounds like I’d be a good suspect, then,” Amie joked. “If she’d done something even mildly cruel to me during the time loop, two years of that might’ve been enough to drive me to murder.”
David began easing toward the far side of the sidewalk, away from Amie.
“I’m kidding!”
“I know.” He closed the gap between them again, chuckling. “I don’t think you have it in you, anyway.”
“But who does?” Amie asked.
“That’s the million-dollar question.”
They entered the grocery store, cold air greeting them as they passed the shopping carts and headed for the flower counter. Amie sucked in a breath as she caught sight of the employee at the counter.
“That’s the same guy from Monday!” she whispered, patting David’s arm with excitement.
“I’m very happy for you,” he said. “I’m also going to make myself scarce to avoid implicating myself any further. Find me when you’re done; I’m going to see if there’s still a sale on condiments.”
“Mkay,” Amie murmured, not fully listening as she began crafting her game plan for approaching the employee. Then, processing what David had said, she called over her shoulder, “Sale ended Tuesday!”
“Damn it!” echoed his reply from the aisle he’d withdrawn to.
The man working at the flower counter was grimacing at several orange-and-red bouquets sitting in front of him, anxiously tugging at his hair as Amie approached.
“Hi …” Amie’s eyes darted to the name tag on the man’s shirt. “… Winston. How are you?”
Winston glanced up at her. “Fine, thanks,” he said, his tone distant as he focused on his work. “How can I help you?”
“You were working here on Monday, right?” Amie asked. She knew he had been, but didn’t want to startle him by opening with “DID YOU TALK TO THE POLICE?”
“Yeah. Do you mind walking with me?”
Amie blinked as the man stepped away from his post and headed into the labyrinth of flowers to the right of the counter. “Oh, sure.”
She hurried after him, picking her way through buckets of lilies and irises.
“Customer’s picking up this order in ten minutes,” Winston explained, stopping by a bushel of aster. “What did you ask, again?”
“You were working here on Monday,” Amie repeated. “You interacted with Savannah Harlow, right?”
Winston froze, giving her a defensive look. “Maybe. Why?”
“Sorry, I just …” How was she going to explain this? “I was just wondering if you spoke to the police about the argument she had with the man who came over. His name was David.”
“Yeah. I caught his name somewhere in between her calling him a nosy idiot and a self-righteous asshole.” Winston returned to the aster, still casting hesitant looks in Amie’s direction.
“The police didn’t ask many questions when they came by.
They just wanted to know what she was yelling about that made him come over, and what they said to each other. ”
“Sorry, the police came to talk to you? You didn’t contact them?”
“Course not. Why would I contact them?”
Amie frowned. That meant the cops had already been pursuing the tip before they spoke to Winston.
“What was Savannah yelling about?” she asked.
Winston hesitated, and Amie got a sense he was trying to figure out how to ask “Why do you care?” in a customer-friendly way.
“David’s my friend,” she explained. “I think someone might have been trying to frame him by telling the police about their argument. I’m just trying to find out more about what happened.”
She gave him a thin-lipped smile, hoping she looked sympathetic enough to help out.
The man sighed. “Savannah was upset because her flowers hadn’t been delivered.
She kept screaming at me as I tried pulling up her order, but I just started working here last week and our computer system is a million years old, so it was taking forever.
” He’d begun picking aster from the bucket, then paused.
“Pussy willows,” he murmured, returning the flowers. “Maybe that’d be better.”
“Then what happened?” Amie asked as the man strode past her, not wanting him to lose his train of thought.
“The guy came over,” Winston said over his shoulder. “David. He started scolding her, telling her to leave me alone. I appreciated the gesture, but honestly, I think it just made things worse.”
“I told him it would,” Amie muttered as they stopped by a group of buckets holding stalks of fuzzy-tipped pussy willow. “Did you notice anyone else watching the argument?”
“I was just trying to keep my head down,” Winston said, examining the flowers. “Can’t say I saw who else was around.”
He glanced up. “Your friend didn’t say anything threatening. Nothing like ‘I’m gonna kill you!’ or anything like that. Honestly, the police didn’t seem very invested. They left pretty quickly.”