Page 13 of Wrong Door

Philip nodded. "Yeah. An older lady named Agnes Parson was helping up until a few months back. The poor thing was almost ninety years old. I think Desmond gave her the job just to keep her busy. Last I heard, she had moved into an assisted living facility in Atlanta. I think there’s also a high school kid that helps clean up and do deliveries here and there."

"Did you ever see him in any kind of argument?" Miles asked. "With a supplier, a customer, anyone?"

Philip was quiet for long enough that Vic thought he was working toward something. "I've never seen him raise his voice," he said. "Not once. Not with a supplier, not with a difficult customer, not about anything. And to be honest with you, I'm not sure I can say that about anyone else I do business with."

He walked them to the door and stood in the frame as they left. Vic glanced back once to see him still standing there, looking at nothing in particular.

The third stop was Wren and Ink, a used and independent bookstore on the west end of the block. It was housed in a building with a faded green awning and a window display that had been arranged by someone who cared a great deal about the visual weight of paperback spines. The door had a small brass bell above it that rang when they pushed it open.

The interior was narrow and deep, the shelves running floor to ceiling on both sides with a reading area at the back furnished with two worn armchairs and a lamp on a side table that someone had left on. The air smelled of old paper and coffee, and the light inside was soft and slightly amber from the lamp and the filtered morning light through the front window. A small water-filled vase on the front counter held a cluster of pale-yellow dahlias. Vic wondered if they had come from Hale's shop.

The owner was a woman named Margot Finney who looked to be in her early sixties, with silver hair cut short and reading glasses pushed up on her head. She was organizing the Middle Grade Fiction section when they came in. She had already heard the news about Hale earlier in the morning through a Facebook post, so she wasn’t quite as emotional as Cecelia.

"He came in twice a week," she said, settling onto a stool behind the counter and looking at the dahlias without quite meaning to. "Tuesday and Friday. I didn't always need a new arrangement, but I always let him bring one anyway, because I liked the visit as much as the flowers." She looked back at them, shaking her head sadly. "I assume you already know he was a good man and that nobody who knew him would have wanted anything to happen to him."

"That seems to be the story, yes," Vic said. "We're actually hoping you might be able to tell us about something specific, though. Did you ever see him involved in any kind of dispute? Any confrontation, even a minor one?"

Finney was quiet for a moment as took the glasses off her head and set them on the counter. “Yes, actually,” she finally said. "And it was pretty recently.”

“How recent?” Miles asked.

“Oh, I guess it’s been about two weeks ago…maybe a little more. I was in the back unpacking a shipment, and I happened to look up through the window." She gestured toward the large front window that faced the street. From where Vic was standing, the sight line ran almost directly to the entrance of Hale's Blooms, which was visible from the bookstore at an angle. "Desmond was outside the shop, on the sidewalk, and there was a man with him. They were arguing about something."

"Arguing how?" Miles asked. He had moved slightly, positioning himself so that he could see the same sight line Margot was describing.

"Not shouting, exactly, but close. There was a lot of gesturing, you know? Desmond had his hands up, not aggressively but defensively, like he was trying to calm the other person down. The other man was leaning into him, into his space, and at one point, he put a finger up in Desmond's face. Honestly, I thought about going over there to intervene if I could." She said this with the directness of someone who had actually evaluated the option and not simply mentioned it as a figure of speech. "I almost called the police. I didn't because it seemed to de-escalate after another minute or two. The man walked away and Desmond went back inside."

"Did you know the man?" Vic asked.

"No. I'd never seen him before."

"Can you describe him?"

Finney looked at the dahlias again as she concentrated. "Well, he was a white man. I'd say he was in his forties—surely no older than fifty. On the slight side, not heavy. He was wearing a canvas hat, the kind with a wide brim. It was pulled down enough that I couldn't get a clear look at his face. Medium height, maybe a little under, actually. He had on a dark jacket, but that's about all I can give you. Sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” Miles said, already wondering if there might be store cameras in the vicinity that they could look at. “Do you recall how Desmond seemed after the man walked away?"

She nodded right away and said, "Unhappy. Not frightened, I don't think. He looked more like someone who has just had a conversation they didn't want to have and is trying to just ignore it." She looked at Miles sincerely, near tears. “I saw him twice after that and I never bothered to ask what that was all about…if he was okay. I figured it was none of my business.”

“I think that’s the same way most people would have handled it,” Vic said.

They thanked her, and Vic gave her a business card. Finney put her glasses back on and walked them to the door. She held it open for them, the brass bell ringing again as they stepped out onto the sidewalk.

Back outside, they stepped to the side of the awning. Without realizing they were doing so, they both looked to the left, toward Hale's Blooms half a block down.

“What do you think?” Miles asked.

Vic took out her phone and said, “I think we give Pruitt the description of the man Hale was arguing with…maybe put some calls in to see if there are security cameras in the area that might have caught something. How about you? What's your read?"

She watched Miles think through it for a moment, his eyes still looking in the direction of the flower shop. “My read is simple: somebody had a reason to be angry at Desmond Hale two weeks before he died. And whoever it was knew enough to leave before someone called it in. Whether or not that means it’s our killer…that’s anyone’s guess for now."

She ended the call.

Miles turned from the curb. The morning was still beautiful, the oak canopy over the street moving slightly in a warm breeze. Spanish moss on a nearby tree trailed gold in the early light. Neither of them said anything as Vic placed the call to Pruitt, though Vic looked once more to Miles and it seemed that the unsettled look she’d seen in his eyes in the hotel lobby was even more pronounced…and maybe a bit darker.

CHAPTER TEN

With a rough description of someone who had gotten into at least one of the victim’s faces in the past two weeks, Miles, Vic, and Pruitt met back up in the conference room. Miles had his laptop open and Pruitt was standing at the whiteboard with a dry-erase marker, writing down notes on the description as well as the names of other businesses in that area, hoping to find business owners or employees who had also seen the exchange between Hale and the mystery man. They had also already started to get in a few bots of security footage from nearby stores but so far, the team that had been assigned to this had come up with nothing.