Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
In a way, that had worked.
Dennis clearly thrived on not having a boss to answer to. Even if his arrangements were mediocre at best, just replicas of the same old bouquets you saw everywhere.
The store I’d walked into the day before was a major improvement. Hell, I’d say it rivaled all the florist shops in the flower district. Which was saying something.
The pretty woman who was running things now clearly had an eye for the pretty shit that Dennis did not.
He had old oak cabinets with most of the sheen worn off and speckled black countertops strewn with a mix of food wrappers and old mail.
The sink was full of dishes that seemed to be vying for a science fair win for how many different kinds of mold could grow in one space.
Part of the smell, I was sure.
The rest of it, though, was coming from the kitchen table.
Where Dennis had left what seemed to be a partially eaten dinner of steak, corn, and what was probably a baked potato under a moldy pile of sour cream.
There were two glasses with his plate. An old black coffee. And a glass of amber liquid.
“Fuck,” I sighed, glancing around from the kitchen into the living room.
This wasn’t looking good, was it?
Who got up and left in the middle of dinner?
Steak dinner?
And didn’t return at least to toss it in the trash?
I knew it was pointless, but I made a round through the rest of the first floor, up to the second, checking in every bedroom, bathroom, and fucking closet, before making my way down to the eerie unfinished basement.
It seemed like the spider and mouse population was booming, evidenced by the thick webs and abundance of droppings, but Dennis was nowhere to be found.
Where the fuck was he?
“Yo,” Emilio answered as I got back out of the house and climbed into my car. “Gav sick of the snow yet?”
“With his personality, who’s to know?” I shot back, turning on the heat, making me realize that Dennis’s heat had been on. And his electric had been working too.
So he either hadn’t been gone long enough for the full cycle to turn around, or, well, he had his shit on autopay. Which wasn’t helpful.
“Fair enough. What’s going on? Figure out the problem yet?”
“To do that, I’d need to find Dennis,” I said, sighing.
“Dennis. The owner of the flower shop, right?”
“Right,” I agreed. “He didn’t answer calls or texts. I went to the shop, but the girl there said he is never around, so that was a dead end. But I just got out of his house. Car is there. Food is rotting on the kitchen table. Things are… not looking great.”
“Fuck. Alright. Do you want Lorenzo to send anyone else up there to help out?”
“Not until I figure out if that’s necessary,” I said. “I mean if it’s as simple as the guy’s car went off of a bridge somewhere, there’s no reason to interrupt everyone else’s life.”
“True. Okay. Keep us posted,” Emilio said.
“Will do,” I agreed, ending the call and driving out of the street before someone got suspicious and called the cops on me.
I wasn’t exactly sure what my next move should be.
If we were in New York, I’d have a lot of contacts I could talk to, try to get information out of.
But this was fucking Balm Harbour.
There wasn’t another crime syndicate for several counties.
I found my car heading toward Main Street, and I figured that the one thing I hadn’t done so far was snoop around in Dennis’s office. See if he was hiding some shit.
That would at least give me something to go on.
I picked the lock in the back, pausing inside the door, listening to soft, feminine voices in the front. Figuring the florist was busy with a customer, I rushed into Dennis’s office, closing the door behind myself in case someone walked into the back.
Dennis’s office was a mess. It always had been. New paperwork was mixed in with shit that was so old that the paper was yellowing. Old to-go coffee cups were sitting on some of the stacks and almost overflowing from the garbage.
Curious, I reached for one, trying to pry off the top, but it was stuck on. So it had been around for a while. Like the food on his table and the dishes in his sink at home.
The computer was powered down, but when I turned it on, it was password protected.
Which left me with… nothing.
A desk drawer full of chocolate bars and peanuts, some pens and sticky notes, and a yellow notebook.
I was considering grabbing a fresh piece of paper and rubbing a pencil over it to try to figure out what was last written on that page when I heard the door opening.
Then there she was.
The girl from the shop.
Just as pretty as before.