"When Grace is accused of murder, Abby must spring into action"
Reviewed by Leanne Davis
Posted October 27, 2011
Mystery Woman Sleuth
Abby Knight and her beloved, Marco Salvare, have announced
their engagement to the joy of both families. There is
nothing to prevent Abby from enjoying life, until a wealthy
widow is killed. Constance Newport was admired as a
philanthropist but few people seemed to like her. Grace,
Abby's friend and employee, is one of the few who did.
The fact that Grace discovered the body, makes her a prime
suspect so she asks for Abby's help. When the will is read
it is discovered that most of the Newport family fortune has
been to left the Constance's missing cat with Grace as the
caretaker with a substantial sum of money to fulfill her
duties. Consequently, the police are even more determined to
make her the
villain.
Abby will be forced to leave her wedding plans in the hands
of Mrs. Salvare to concentrate on helping Marco determine
the identity of the real killer. At the same time, Abby has
found a cat with a broken leg, that she takes in. Her
roommate's cat is jealous, causing even more trouble.
Abby and Marco will find that the Newport family and staff
all have reasons for wishing Constance dead. Exposing the
killer will put Abby in unexpected danger.
This is a great series and an exciting story. This is Abby
at her best, exposing the perfidy of family members.
SUMMARY
Before Abby can throw the bouquet, she’ll have to throw
a killer in jail.
In book 13 of the Flower Shop Mystery series, florist
Abby Knight is aglow with happiness now that she’s
officially engaged to her longtime beau, the hot and hunky
Marco Salvare. Nothing will hamper Abby’s joy – not a new
dent on her beloved, refurbished‘Vette, nor her future
mother-in-law’s micromanaging of her wedding.
Then wealthy dowager Constance Newport is killed, and
Abby’s assistant, Grace Bingham, is left a hefty sum of
money, making her the prime suspect. But while questioning
Constance’s relatives and staff, Abby finds that everyone
has a shady past and wants a piece of the fortune. The plot
thickens when she stumbles upon mysterious stolen art. It’s
up to Abby and Marco to find out whether the art thief is
also the killer and catch him or them before he/they strike
again.
ExcerptMonday
Happiness oozed from every cell in my body. No, wait.
Ooze sounded bad, and what I was feeling was definitely not
bad. Not by a long shot. I was in a zone. I radiated bliss.
As my assistant Lottie pointed out, I had a certain glow
about me.
The best part of a glow of this magnitude was that
nothing could dim it, not the ding in the paint on my
refurbished yellow Corvette, not the snarl of traffic from
a stoplight malfunction, not even the knowledge that my
mother had completed a new art project and was going to
deliver it after school let out for the day.
The reason for my blissful state was that after weeks of
having to keep my news under wraps, the secret was out at
last. I was officially engaged to the sizzling-hot man of
my dreams, my sexy neighbor, former Special Ops Army Ranger-
turned-owner of Down the Hatch Bar and Grill, Marco
Salvare. Yes, the very male who turned the heads of women
all over town, the pragmatic, enigmatic, charismatic, and,
yes, sometimes autocratic Marco, my Italian American hunk,
was now engaged to little ol’ moi.
Added to all that joy, my flower shop Bloomers was
operating in the black for the first time since I’d bought
the business from former owner Lottie Dombowski. Poor
Lottie had been drowning in debt from her husband’s
ginormous medical bills, while I was up to my freckles in
failure, having flunked out of law school and been
unceremoniously cast off by the man I thought I wanted to
marry. Instead of succumbing to despair, I took action.
Scraping together the remainder of my inheritance from
my grandpa, I plunked down enough money to ensure my
servitude to the bank forever, hired Lottie to teach me how
to be a florist, put in a coffee-and-tea parlor, lured the
foremost British authority on tea in Indiana, Grace
Bingham, out of retirement, and attempted to make a go of
it.
Needless to say, with the national economy in the tank,
it had been a struggle. But a recent spurt in business had
pushed my checking account into positive territory at last,
giving me even more reason to ooze—I mean
radiate—happiness.
Horns honked around me. People were getting impatient.
In a small town like New Chapel, traffic jams were fairly
uncommon. But I merely cranked up the volume on my CD
player and sang along until I was able to turn off the main
road and escape the congestion.
It was a gorgeous, sunny May morning, business was up,
and I was engaged to the most wonderful man in town.
Nothing on earth could dim my happiness.
Then I hit a cat.
Jamming on the brakes, I threw the car into Park and
jumped out, horrified at the thought of what I might find.
I ran around to the front and saw a ragged yellow tabby cat
crouched on the macadam a few feet in front of my car,
staring at me in fright. I hadn’t run it down after all!
Seeing that I wasn’t about to do it harm, the tabby rose
unsteadily and attempted to limp to the curb, dragging its
right hind leg behind it. The leg was bent at the wrong
angle.
"Oh, no! I did hit you," I cried, blinking back a sudden
rush of tears. "I’m so sorry. I’ll make it all right, I
promise. Please don’t try to run away from me. I want to
help you."
The cat meowed pitifully, gazing at me with fearful
golden eyes, ready to attempt to flee. I glanced around for
assistance, but I’d turned off Concord Avenue onto a side
street that had no houses and only a few businesses on it,
none of which were open yet. Would an ambulance come if I
called 911? Probably not.
The cat was in terrible pain, and so was I, the pain of
horrendous guilt. I took off my jean jacket and approached
the poor animal cautiously, talking to it in a soothing
voice. "I’m going to take you to the vet, okay? I’m really,
really sorry. You don’t know how sorry I am. I’m just going
to pick you up gently now, so don’t scratch me."
The cat either understood or was too injured to fight. I
wrapped my jacket over it and picked it up, careful not to
touch the damaged leg. I placed the cat gently on the
passenger seat and prayed it wouldn’t try to escape, but it
seemed to know that I wasn’t a threat.
I buckled my seat belt, put the ’Vette in Drive, and
headed for the veterinary clinic where my roommate Nikki,
took her cat, Simon. Fortunately, the clinic was only a
five-minute drive, because the injured tabby’s plaintive
meows were breaking my heart. How could I have been so
careless? Why hadn’t I noticed the animal in the road?
As I approached the reception counter, babbling wildly,
holding the cat in my arms, the receptionist looked up in
surprise, then jumped off her chair and ran to get an aide.
Within five minutes, Dr. Christine Kelly had the cat on
a stainless-steel table and was administering a painkiller
so she could perform an exam, while I sat on an orange
plastic chair in the corner enveloped in remorse.
"Is this an outdoor cat?" she asked.
"I don’t know. I’d never seen the animal before I . . .
hit it."
She glanced at me from under nicely arched brows, then
continued her examination.
"I can feel a break in the hind foreleg," she
said. "I’ll need to get an X-ray before I set the bone to
know how bad the damage is."
"That’s fine. Whatever you need to do, Doctor, I’ll take
care of it. No problem."
"How did it happen?" she asked.
"Right after I turned off of Concord Avenue, I caught a
glimpse of the cat in the street in front of my car. It
must have been hiding under a parked vehicle or maybe in a
hedge, but whatever, I didn’t see it in time or I would
have stopped. I just felt this thump—and I knew I’d
hit it. Luckily, I wasn’t going fast. Well, not so lucky
for the cat, of course. . . ."
Babbling again.
"You didn’t run her over," Dr. Kelly said.
"What?" My brain cells were moving a little slow, no
doubt due to shock.
"She would have suffered a lot more than a broken hind
leg, trust me. This cat must have already been injured."
"Then what caused the thump?"
"You’d have to go back and look. All I know is that you
didn’t run her over or she probably wouldn’t be alive."
I felt more tears welling up and quickly brushed them
away. "I’m so relieved."
"No collar, I notice," the vet said, as her fingers
gently probed, "but it looks like she might have had one
once."
"Could she have been dumped?"
"Quite possibly. Or she got out and roamed, couldn’t
find her way back, and got so thin she slipped out of her
collar. She’s a female, around five years old is my best
guess. I’ll check for a computer chip. Smart people have
chips implanted. If that’s the case, I’ll contact the
owner. Uh-oh. I see fleas. So what would you like to do
with her if we can’t determine who the cat belongs to?"
Wait. What would I like to do? "I don’t know, Doctor.
What do you usually do in these kinds of situations?"
"Turn the animal over to the shelter."
With a broken leg? To crouch in a wire cage, alone and
frightened, until someone adopted her? What if no one
wanted her? What then? Could I live with that?
"You’re good at solving mysteries," Dr. Kelly
said. "Maybe you can find out where she came from."
I blinked in surprise. The doctor knew about me?
"I read the newspaper," Dr. Kelly said, seeing the
question on my face, "and Nikki talks about you a lot. I
have to say, you’re amazingly brave the way you go after
killers. That one murderer who tried to burn you alive?
Wow. Solving the cat mystery should be a walk in the park
after that. So what’s your decision?"
After such praise, how could I tell her no? I glanced at
the shabby tabby with the shattered leg who had suddenly
become my responsibility. "If there’s no chip," I said with
a sigh, "I’ll take her."
Dr. Kelly smiled for the first time "I was hoping you’d
say that. Why don’t you have a seat in the waiting room
while we fix her up? It’ll be about an hour."
An hour? It was already eight thirty, and Bloomers
opened at nine o’clock. My assistants were undoubtedly
wondering where I was. Plus it was Monday, which meant
Lottie’s delicious egg and toast breakfast was waiting for
me. But perhaps missing breakfast was part of my punishment
for careless driving.
I exited the clinic to make my phone call just as an
elderly couple with a yapping schnauzer was entering. The
gray dog strained at its leash, teeth bared, trying to
reach me, but the woman dragged it away, talking in a
soothing voice: "Now, haven’t we discussed your behavior
before? About being nice to strangers? Haven’t we?"
That was a discussion I would have loved to witness.
Grace answered the phone, her delightful accent a
reassuring sound to my frazzled nerves. "Good morning.
Bloomers Flower Shop. How may I help you?"
"Grace, it’s me. I hit a cat—" I paused as a woman
carrying a feline into the clinic gave me the evil eye.
"You hit a cat with what?" Grace asked.
"My car."
"Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it? I didn’t like to think
you’d gone off your rocker, running about whacking animals
with your purse."
Sometimes there was just no way to understand the
workings of Grace’s mind. "The cat’s hind leg is broken," I
said quietly, as more people walked past with their
pets, "but that may not have been my fault. I’m at the
veterinary clinic now. I should be back in about an hour."
I heard Grace whisper, "It’s Abby. She hit a cat. She’s
at the vet." Then I heard Lottie say, "Lordy, what will
that girl get into next?"
Grace said to me, "Well, that’s a bang-up way to start
the week, isn’t it? And you freshly engaged."
"You know about my engagement?"
"It would be a rather odd statement to make otherwise,
wouldn’t it?"
Damn! I’d wanted to make the announcement at breakfast.
We’d only revealed the news to our family two and a half
days ago. "Who told you? My mom?"
"Would you like the whole list?"
I heard paper rattling.
"First off, your mum rang up at eight o’clock on the
nose."
"That figures."
"And five times thereafter."
Still figured.
"Then your cousin Jillian phoned—"
The mouth that roared.
"—but said she was going back to bed so she would
call you at lunchtime. The next call was from Marco’s mum."
"She must have wanted to let me know she made it back to
Ohio safely. She was supposed to get in late last night."
"I believe she’s still here, love. She said she’d see
you later today."
What? No! That wasn’t the plan. The plan was for
Francesca Salvare to go back home so she wouldn’t be here
to pester us for wedding details. Because there weren’t any
yet.
"Then Marco called," Grace said, "but he didn’t say a
word about the engagement."
He’d probably phoned to enlighten me as to why his
mother was still here. I couldn’t wait for that
explanation. "Okay, Grace. Thank you. I’ll be there as soon
as I can."
"I hope so, dear. A large shipment of flowers just
arrived, and Lottie said many of them are damaged. She’s
trying to sort through them now, but we’ll be opening soon,
and you know the rush we always have in the coffee shop on
Monday mornings. And don’t forget today is the meeting of
the Monday Afternoon Ladies’ Poetry Society."
Twelve senior citizens waxing poetic about the benefits
of fiber. "Can’t wait. Listen, Grace, this cat appears to
be a stray. If the vet can’t determine the owner, I’m going
to have to bring her home with me unless . . . you or
Lottie want to take it?"
I heard her whispering, then heard Lottie whisper back.
Then Grace said, "Shall I keep your breakfast in the
fridge, then?"
No takers. Damn. "Yes, please."
Cold scrambled eggs and hard toast.
"Just a minute, dear," Grace said. "Lottie would like a
word."
"Abby," Lottie said a moment later, "how did you happen
to hit the cat?"
"I don’t know, Lottie. The cat must have darted out just
as I turned off Concord."
"Why did you turn off Concord?"
"Traffic jam."
"Oh, good," she said with relief in her voice. "I’ll see
you back at Bloomers."
"Wait, Lottie, what’s up? Why all the questions?"
"I just wanted to make sure you weren’t trying to shake
a tail."
"A tail?"
"Well, a stalker."
At once I felt someone’s eyes upon me. Goose bumps
dotted my arms as I glanced around. Then I saw the
receptionist standing at the glass door, motioning me over.
"Okay, that’s all," Lottie said.
That’s all? "Lottie, don’t leave me hanging like
this—"
The line went dead.
The receptionist was motioning frantically now, so I
ended the call and hurried toward the door. "Sorry," I
said, following her inside. "It was a business call."
"That’s okay. Dr. Kelly just wanted you to know that
there’s no microchip." She smiled. "Looks like you have
yourself a cat."
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