Read Online The Geranium Girls by Alison Preston - Free Book Online Page A

actually knew the girl.”
    “You do?”
    “Yes.”
    They called her a girl but she was really a woman. Thirty-three years old on the day she died on the spot where Beryl found her.
    “You must have just found out,” Beryl said. “It was only in the paper yesterday, who she was and all.”
    “Yes.”
    “Who is it that knew her? Someone close to you?”
    “Well, not really. I don’t actually know her. Shirley at work does. She went through pharmacy with this woman that knew the dead girl.”
    Beryl breathed an inward sigh of relief. This had nothing to do with her or Hermione. It struck her as very unreasonable that she had to hide the Hermione connection from Dhani but she knew she did, for her own sake. Dhani was definitely very odd in this particular area.
    “Wait,” she said. “Shirley at work went through pharmacy with a woman who knew Beatrice.”
    “Yes. This friend of hers, acquaintance really, remembers filling a prescription for her a year or two ago. She thought she recognized the name and looked it up in their computer and bingo.”
    “Bingo?”
    “Yes,” Dhani said. “Just as she suspected, the girl had been a customer at the pharmacy where she works.”
    “What’s this person, this pharmacist’s name?” Beryl asked. She reached in her pocket for a cigarette.
    “I don’t know,” Dhani said, “but I could find out.”
    “No,” Beryl said. “It’s not necessary. Dhani, don’t you see how tenuous a connection this is? It doesn’t matter. Surely to God it doesn’t matter.”
    She lit her cigarette with a wooden match and inhaled deeply. It was the first time she had lit up in Dhani’s presence, although she had warned him that she was likely to do so from time to time.
    “Of course it matters,” Dhani said, talking to the willow tree again. “I wish you wouldn’t smoke, Beryl.”
    “I wish you weren’t insane,” Beryl muttered.
    “Pardon?”
    “Nothing.”
    They were quiet for a while with the wind in the trees.
    “Hi, Beryl!”
    It was the little boy from two doors down on the north side, calling in from the front sidewalk.
    “Hi, Russell! How’re things?”
    Beryl was glad to see him. Maybe he would come over and blow some of his spit bubbles for them and Dhani would see that there were better things to occupy his mind than his non-existent connections.
    “Who’s that man?” Russell asked.
    “This is my friend, Dhani,” Beryl said. “Would you like to come and meet him?”
    Dhani tried to smile but it wasn’t good enough for young Russ.
    “No, thanks,” he said and pedalled his trike on up the street.
    “Bye, Beryl!” he hollered over his shoulder.
    “So long, Russell!”
    “Your glumness has scared away my neighbour,” Beryl said.
    “Sorry.”
    Beryl concentrated on blowing her smoke in the opposite direction of Dhani. He took a good deal of the fun out of having a cigarette.
    “Even if all these feeble connections do mean something,” she said, “and it’s obvious they do mean something to you, what are we, or you, supposed to do about it?”
    Dhani sighed and sipped his coffee.
    “You like your coffee very strong,” he said.
    “Yes. You don’t, I guess.”
    “No.”
    “Is it a religious thing, this thing about connections? Is it part of a religion I could read about or you could explain to me?”
    “No, Beryl, it’s just me. It’s just a thing I have.”
    For such a smart guy Dhani could be a real bonehead at times. She almost said it out loud but stopped herself in time. She figured one sentence like that could be enough for someone as sensitive as Dhani. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to lose him, not yet anyway.
    “You have a picture of her,” he said. “At least, I assume it’s her.”
    Beryl’s scalp tingled.
    “How do you know that, Dhani?”
    She was suddenly not so sure she couldn’t stand to lose this person who had obviously been rifling through her desk drawers.
    “Where did you get it, Beryl?”
    “How do you know about