“The guy came over,” Winston said over his shoulder. “David. He started scolding her, telling her to leave me alone. I appreciated the gesture, but honestly, I think it just made things worse.”
“I told him it would,” Amie muttered as they stopped by a group of buckets holding stalks of fuzzy-tipped pussy willow. “Did you notice anyone else watching the argument?”
“I was just trying to keep my head down,” Winston said, examining the flowers. “Can’t say I saw who else was around.”
He glanced up. “Your friend didn’t say anything threatening. Nothing like ‘I’m gonna kill you!’ or anything like that. Honestly, the police didn’t seem very invested. They left pretty quickly.”
Amie looked around to see if David was nearby. Between this and Andrew sharing the police’s theory about the murderer beinga thief, she had a feeling that David no longer had to worry about being a prime suspect. But seeing as how Amie wasn’t ready yet to grapple with her primary, guilt-motivated reason for looking into Savannah’s death, she decided to ignore that feeling for the time being.
“Were you able to sort out Savannah’s order?” she asked absently, her mind already wandering as she tried to determine her next steps.
“Oh, yeah.” Winston began picking out the flowers he needed. “The system glitched the day before and canceled her regular order. She had me put the order back in and schedule the next delivery for the following morning.”
Amie recalled the fresh flowers scattered about the shop the day before. Little did Savannah know the flowers from that order would be used to decorate her own memorial.
“Then she called back later and rescheduled them to be delivered that evening.”
Amie jerked her head up to look at Winston, who was still delicately selecting pussy willows from the bucket. “What?”
“She called back later to reschedule. I put in the change right before clocking out.” Finishing his selection, he headed back to the front counter with an implicit invitation for Amie to follow. “I was just relieved she didn’t come back in to do it. I don’t know if I would’ve been able to handle seeing her twice in one day.”
“Did she say why she was rescheduling?” Amie asked. “What time was this?”
“A little before three? And no, she didn’t say.” Winston reached the counter and began placing the pussy willows into the bouquets. “Just gave her name and said she wanted her flowers delivered at seven.”
Amie’s mind raced as she circled back around the front of the counter. This was why Savannah had returned to the shop thatevening, to retrieve the rescheduled flower order. Andrew must have seen her outside of their building right before she remembered she’d changed the delivery.
Either that, or …
“What’s that?” Winston asked, giving her a concerned glance as he continued arranging. Amie realized she’d been muttering under her breath.
“Sorry, um …” She took another moment to organize her thoughts. “Is there some sort of alert or something your customers get when their flowers are delivered?”
Winston nodded. “Yeah, they get an email confirmation when the flowers are dropped off.”
“And would they have just been dropped off?” Amie continued eagerly. “Or did someone need to sign for the flowers?” Had the delivery person seen Savannah right before she died?
“That’s above my pay grade,” Winston said, shaking his head. “Or, at least, it’s a lateral move from my pay grade. Either way, not my job.”
The disappointment on Amie’s face was seemingly effective enough to make him add, reluctantly, “I can see if I can ask someone about it, if you want.”
Amie perked up. “Really?”
The man opened a drawer underneath the counter and began digging around. He extracted a pen and a sticky note, placing them on the counter in front of Amie. “Write down your contact info. I’ll let you know if I can find anything out.”
Amie frowned, picking up the pen. She was hoping he’d be able to go ask someone, like,right then. Not wanting to turn down what could possibly be useful information, she wrote her phone number and email address on the sticky note.
“Ooh, are those my flowers?” exclaimed a voice from behind Amie. A woman was approaching the counter, beaming happily at the arrangements sitting on it.
“Thanks for your help,” Amie said to Winston before stepping out of the way. Relief washed over his features as the woman began cooing over the flowers. Amie felt almost proud of him.
She found David closely comparing the prices of two jars of salsa.
“All done?” he asked, pulling his gaze from the shelf as she walked up.
“All done,” she confirmed.
“Success?”
