She went into the kitchen and set the bouquet and her purse on the center island, holding the letter in her hand, a smile on her face as she hummed to herself and waited to see whom they were from. She flipped it over and slid her thumb under the flap, opening the envelope. Inside was a piece of paper folded in half, which she pulled out and opened to read.
Her blood chilled. In a sharp, angry scrawl was written:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Drop this case,
Or I’ll drop you.
A shudder racked up her spine as she read the note again. Not very original or complex—still, there was no mistaking the threat.
Underneath, in smaller print, read:
No cops. Tell anyone at all, even your partner, and I’ll know.
There was no signature. Kelsi closely examined the paper, looking for any marks that might give away who wrote it or where the stationary came from. She even held it up to the light, but there was no watermark or any other distinguishing feature to it. It was only a plain piece of generic paper.
Regardless, she carefully took pictures of the flowers and the note and placed the note and its envelope in a Ziploc bag. The bouquet she tossed in the garbage can, slightly sad to waste the beautiful flowers, but she couldn’t stand the idea of putting them on display. She safely tucked the Ziploc into the drawer on her island that all her receipts and manuals found their way to. She would move it someplace else later, but it would do for now.
Kelsi had taken a flower arrangement class once with Abby for fun. Well, Kelsi had taken it for fun. Abby was investigating the florist because she was the mistress of a client’s husband. Either way, they’d both learned about all the different flowers and their symbolism.
So, Kelsi vaguely recalled the significance of some of the flowers. Begonias? They had stuck out to her because, although pretty and delicate, they signified warning or caution. Lilies, too, while generally positive, can sometimes be seen as harbingers of misfortune. To have both in one bouquet was a clear message.
Now she needed something to drink. She was so wound up she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep, so she walked to her bar cart and grabbed a bottle of red wine and the electric corkscrew she swore by. Careful not to get any cork in the wine, she opened it and gave herself a heavy pour.
Taking a large swig from her glass, she looked at it for a second before sighing and pouring more from the bottle. Leaving it on her coffee table for a moment, she went upstairs and dressed in a comfortable cream-knit sleepwear set, grabbed the book off her nightstand that she had been reading for the past two months, and headed back downstairs to her living room.
Sinking down into the cushions of her sofa, she grabbed the remote off the coffee table in front of her and flicked on the TV, hoping to find a feel-good movie to put on as background noise. She was unsettled by the note, and the quiet stillness of the house was oppressive and ominous. For once, she couldn’t even hear the whistle of the wind outside as it passed through the trees at the edge of her property.
The dim murmur of theLegally Blondecast was enough to drown out the quiet, and it took a few more healthy gulps of her wine for Kelsi to settle down.
She thought about what to do about the note. Should she tell the police?Probably, she thought. They would be able to run forensics to see if the sender had left any DNA or fingerprints behind, maybe track down where the flowers had come from,but if she told the police, they would tell Banksy, and would she take her off the case?
And the note had warned her away from the police ...
Not to mention how the police had already managed to lose evidence in the first place. If she couldn’t even trust that they wouldn’t lose the note, how could she trust that they would run appropriate tests?
This wasn’t the first time Kelsi had been threatened by a defendant. She regularly received hate mail at her office or calls from inmates threatening her. This was the first time one had gone directly to her home, though. Still, in her experience, it was likely all talk, no action.
She swirled the wine around the glass and zoned out as the legs of the wine slowly seeped back down into the rest of the liquid.
No, she finally decided. It was probably a prank from some stupid kids in town, maybe unrelated even to the McGuinness case, or a lame attempt to intimidate her. Regardless, she wasn’t going to let this scare her off. She knew in her gut, like Banksy did, that McGuinness was guilty as all sin.
If it wasn’t a prank, it meant that there was something to find. Some evidence or a witness out there who could blow the case wide open for her. Her pulse pounded furiously as her excitement grew. If there was some piece of evidence that the original investigators had missed, she would find it. And when she did, she would get the conviction.
For now, her mind was made up. She would keep the note as evidence, but she would not report it yet. She had a case to win. Besides, it probably wasn’t even McGuinness, but some teenager who thought it would be a funny prank to pull on thenew prosecutor. She didn’t want to cause problems where there wasn’t one.
She drained her glass and rose from the couch, bringing the wine bottle back from the kitchen. Drinking straight from the bottle now, she cracked the spine on her novel and let herself forget her reality for a few hours, instead favoring a magical world where a lost princess fights to save her friends and family from a great evil.
Eventually, aided by the wine, she drifted off into sleep, mind blissfully devoid of thoughts of McGuinness and threatening notes.
CHAPTER 16
Dylan
19 Days to Trial
