She glanced up and down the street, still a bit uneasy about the pudgy man in the parka and the weird sunglasses. But the area was deserted. Stepping inside the workshop, she slammed the door and double-locked it.

Hanging up her coat, Joanne inhaled deeply, the way she always did when she first walked inside, enjoying the myriad scents inside the shop: jasmine, rose, lilac, lily, gardenia, fertilizer, loam, mulch. It was intoxicating.

She flicked on the lights and started toward the arrangements she’d been working on earlier. Then she froze and gave a scream.

Her foot had struck something. It scurried away from her. She leapt back, thinking: Rat!

But then she looked down and laughed. What she’d kicked was a large spool of florist wire in the center of the aisle. How had it gotten there? All of the spools hung from hooks on the wall nearby. She squinted through the dimness and saw that somehow this one had slipped off and rolled across the floor. Odd.

Must be ghosts of florists past, she said to herself, then regretted the joke. The place was eerie enough and an image of the fat man in the sunglasses came back immediately. Don’t go spooking yourself.

She picked up the spool and saw why it had fallen: the hook had slipped out of the wood. That’s all. But then she noticed something else curious. This spool was one of the new ones; she hadn’t used any wire from it yet, she thought. But she must have; some was missing.

She laughed. Nothing like love to make a girl forgetful.

Then she paused, cocking her head. She was listening to a sound she was unaccustomed to.

What was it?

Very odd . . . dripping water?

No, it was mechanical. Metal . . .

Weird. It sounded like a ticking clock. Where was it coming from? The workshop had a large wall clock in the back but it was electric and didn’t tick. Joanne looked around. The noise, she decided, was coming from a small, windowless work area just beyond the refrigerated room. She’d check it out in a minute.

Joanne bent down to repair the hook.

Chapter 13

Amelia Sachs skidded to a stop in front of Ron Pulaski. After he jumped in she pointed the car north and gunned the engine.

The rookie gave her the details of the meeting with Jordan Kessler. He added, “He seemed legit. Nice guy. But I just thought I ought to check with Mrs. Creeley myself to confirm everything—about what Kessler gets because of Creeley’s death. She said she trusts him and everything’s on the up-and-up. But I still wasn’t sure so I called Creeley’s lawyer. Hope that was okay.”

“Why wouldn’t it be okay?”

“Don’t know. Just thought I’d ask.”

“It’s always okay to do too much work in this business,” Sachs told him. “The problems’re when somebody doesn’t do enough.”

Pulaski shook his head. “Hard to imagine somebody working for Lincoln and being lazy.”