“No idea.”
We safari through our new botanical garden, but there isn’tany information attached. Not even one of those little tabs they stick into the potting soil that tells you how frequently you’re supposed to water it.
“Looks kind of like oleander,” says Melissa warily.
Zach cocks his head. “Isn’t oleander poisonous?”
Suddenly the flowers make sense. It’s an assassination attempt. We all whip out our phones and start looking up pictures of oleander, and it’s true, I can see a resemblance. Five white petals, slightly pinwheeled, in clusters of greenery.
“Why would a flower shop sell poisonous plants?” I ask. “Is that legal?”
Melissa points out that we don’t know for sure these even came from a regulated flower shop. None of us can remember if the delivery boy was wearing a particular kind of uniform. He could’ve been anyone. Maybe Nicholas hired him off Craigslist.WANTED: MURDER ACCOMPLICE.
We give our fingers a workout with frantic Googling. My ominous delivery sure does look like oleander to me, but it also looks like a million other types of flowers. They all look the same. We discover it would be really easy to kill someone with this kind of plant, and according to IMDb that very plot happened in a movie with Michelle Pfeiffer. Michelle’s character used them to kill her lover, a man named Barry. I’m being Barry’d.
Oh god. I hear the pun and nearly faint.
“According to the language of flowers,” Melissa says, “presenting someone with oleander is a way of telling them towatch out. Like, in a threatening way.”
“‘Watch out’ like we’re gonnadie, watch out?” My voice is exceptionally high.
“I’m freaking out,” Brandy cries, wringing her hands. “I’m freaking OUT, you guys. Are we sure it’s from Nicholas? I mean, he seems...” She cuts me a sheepish look. “I’m sure he’s nice.”
“Of course it’s from Nicholas,” Zach bites, “and no, he’s not nice. Dentists are monsters. He’s probably still pissed that I won every round of Clue. When you’re a monster, it takes nothing at all to trigger your dark side.”
“You yelling at him in the dentist’s office that one time could’ve been a trigger,” says Melissa, who needs no convincing. “That’s why you’re on his list.”
“And you’re his friend’s ex. You know how people are about their friends’ exes.” He points at me. “You’re a loose end. Maybe he’s cheating.”
“What about me?” Brandy asks.
“He’s got an insatiable taste for murder by now. You’re collateral damage.”
Brandy looks a bit disappointed that her demise isn’t more personal.
I should be alarmed that we’ve devolved intoNicholas is a cold-blooded killerthis rapidly, but weird, melodramatic afternoons are our normal. When you never get any customers, boredom creeps in and conspiracy theories sprout out of any tiny event, which we pass around until mass hysteria takes over. Zach is always the instigator, and he always turns out to be wrong, but the hysteria still catches on every time. When he waves his hands to gesticulate, all wide-eyed and passionate, he can make any bonkers theory sound plausible.
“The oleander,” I whisper. “In the Junk Yard. By Dr. Rose. That’s what this is! It’s some kind of calling card, like all thebig-league serial killers use. He’s the Clue Killer.” I inspect the blank message card again. No florist logo. It might as well bear Professor Plum’s demented smile.
“He wants to kill us all because he lost Clue?” Brandy says doubtfully. “This can’t be right.”
We dive back into our research.
A different website proclaims that oleander meansenjoy what’s in front of you and leave the past in the past, which is a nicer alternative towatch out, but then Zach finds a site that looks pretty legit. It informs us that oleander is universally interpreted ascautionin the flower language world. I hear the slow, somber bells of my funeral toll and hope someone competent does my makeup if it’s going to be open casket. It occurs to me that I’m a little bit morbid.
“Can you die just from being exposed to it through the air?” I ask. “Do you have to touch it or is standing too close enough?”
Zach, hunched over his phone, mutters, “Yahoo Answers is a cesspit.”
“Was the delivery guy wearing gloves?” Melissa asks. None of us can remember. At this point I don’t remember a single detail about the deliveryman. Maybe it was a woman. A figment of my imagination. I’m hallucinating in the ER.
“Your fiancé might be a maniac,” Brandy tells me. “Come home with me. Wait. I’ve got a date tonight.” She pauses. “You could stay at my sister’s place! She does have five cats, though, so you might sneeze a lot.”
It’s a sweet offer, but there’s no way I’m sleeping with cats. Their hair gets stuck to everything and I’ll get perma-red eyes that will make it look like I’ve been eating special brownies. I don’t want to stay with my own sister, either, who lives forty-fiveminutes to the east. We’ve found this to be a nice buffer distance, which is why my brother lives forty-five minutes to the west. My siblings and I don’t have much to say to each other and interact mostly on holidays at our parents’ house, which sits an hour north.
“Actually, I think I should confront him.” I’m so brave, I impress myself. “Yes, that’s what I must do. I can’t let him get away with intimidating me like this.”
Brandy gasps. “No!”
