Read Online McCone and Friends by Marcia Muller - Free Book Online Page A

happened,” she said, “but it’ll appear an iffy scenario at best to the police. And there’d be nothing they could do. No judge would issue a search warrant without probable cause. We’ll have to see if we can get Homestead to visit the house again—in front of the right witness.”

    Shar spent the next morning in conference with Susan Cross’s attorney, an inspector from the SFPD homicide detail, and a representative of Bay Alarm; I spent the afternoon at the florist’s.
    Not just any florist, mind you, but Sylvester Piazza, arranger to the glitterati. His fancy shop on Post Street was chock-full of flowers and plants that I’d never seen before, and every customer who came in dropped more bucks than I spend on rent each month. Sylvester himself was a hoot, as Lottie would say: a tubby little guy with thinning blow-dried hair. He scurried around his workroom in his black velvet jumpsuit, plucking a blossom from here, a piece of greenery from there, and mumbling about what an honor it was to be asked to replicate Susan Cross’s masterpiece. La cross—he actually called her that—had been a divine floral “artiste.”
    I sat on a stool and watched as he consulted the color photo of Susan’s prize-winning arrangement that her lawyer had given us, and wondered why I’m always the one who gets the weird assignments at McCone Investigations. Sylvester arranged happily, humming opera and occasionally bursting into song. Finally he stepped back and eyeballed his work, nodded, and announced, “Now for the piece de resistance!” He went to one of his glass cases and rustled through the flowers stored there. Suddenly he stopped, clutched his heart, and let out a strangled howl.
    I was off the stool right away, thinking he was having some sort of attack. As he doubled over, I rushed to steady him. “What’s wrong?”
    “The Strelitzia !” he sobbed.
    A fatal disease? Some body part gone out of whack? “Say what?”
    “Bird of paradise! It’s the focal point of the arrangement, what gives it it’s meaning! And I have none! One of my dunderheaded assistants must have used it!”
    “If that’s the problem, my dad has one of those plants that he brought back from Hawaii—”
    “No, you imbecile, I’m talking about the giant bird of paradise! Strelitzia nicolai . The bananalike leaves, the purple floral envelope! Without it, this arrangement is nothing! Even if I could locate a proper plant, getting the cuttings here on time would be impossible.”
    “Can’t you substitute—”
    Sylvester’s face scrunched up and got red, and he shrieked, “Substitute?”
    Right then Lottie breezed in. “Shar sent me to—what’s his problem?”
    “No Strelitzia. I’ll let him explain.” I went outside and took a walk over to Union Square. The most zoned-out homeless guy there looked normal after old Sylvester.
    When I got back to the florist’s shop, Lottie was on the phone, and Sylvester lay on the floor doing deep-breathing exercises. “Bird of paradise,” Lottie was saying. “No, the giant variety…You don’t? Well, thanks anyways.” She hung up and gave me the evil eye. “While you’ve been out I’ve called thirty-three florists. Seems the giant bird of paradise is in short supply.”
    “So use something else.”
    Sylvester moaned dramatically. Lottie rolled her eyes. “He says the arrangement won’t look right, and that’ll ruin the effect.” She consulted a list, picked up the receiver again and punched in a number.
    Till then I’d never realized how much like Shar she is. Single-minded and stubborn in the extreme. I watched as she went through the whole list without turning up any giant Strelitzia . Then she grabbed one of Sylvester’s reference books and stuck her nose into it. “There’s got to be something,” she muttered.
    You’d think she’d give up. Wouldn’t you?

    At around ten that night I was once again hunkered down in shrubbery—this time in the yew trees at the Ingleside