Grim Shadows
Page 96

A heavy sigh inflated her chest. She just didn’t think she could survive grieving for him all over again.
“What was the name of the florist?” she asked the secretary.
“Lunde Flowers.”
Maybe it was time to admit that it was truly over between them. And time to cut the last tie to him, once and for all.
She called a taxi and left the office early, giving the driver the florist’s name. The cab carried her south of the park, into the Fillmore District. Not more than a block or so from Adam’s shop. She should’ve known.
After asking the taxi driver to wait, she strode into the florist’s, a calm resignation propelling her steps, and rang a bell at the front counter.
A blond middle-aged woman with pink cheeks appeared from a door. “Good afternoon,” she said with a heavy Scandinavian accent. “How may I be helping you?”
“A couple of months ago, someone ordered flowers to be delivered to me at my office. A daily delivery of lilies—”
“Oh! Mr. Magnusson, ja.” She smiled. “You are at the museum.”
“Yes, that’s me.”
The woman’s brow creased. “You have been getting your deliveries?”
“Yes, no problem there. I came because I want them stopped.”
“Why? Is the quality not good?”
“The quality is fine.” Hadley inhaled a calming breath. “Mr. Magnusson and I are not seeing each other anymore, and I suppose he forgot to come in here and halt the deliveries himself.”
“Oh, that is terrible. Poor man.”
For the love of God, not her, too. Was everyone cheering for Lowe today?
“He has lost so much,” the florist said solemnly. “First Mr. Goldberg, and now his sweetheart.”
Hadley tilted her head. “Did you say Mr. Goldberg? The watchmaker?”
“Ja. What a terrible tragedy. We are so sad for his passing.”
She stilled. Surely the woman’s message was lost in translation. “You do not mean he’s died, do you?”
The florist nodded. “He was killed in his shop. The police still do not find killer. You did not hear? It was in the newspaper.”
Hadley stood stiffly for several moments, desperately trying to steady her nerves and think rationally. “When did this happen?”
“A month ago.”
A month. That was . . . when she last saw Lowe. When he’d torn into her father’s backyard in a rage, and attacked Noel and—Oh, God! “What about the little girl? Did she? That is, I mean, was she killed?”
“No.” The florist intently shook her head, frowning at Hadley like she was a horrible person for even thinking such a thing.
Hadley blinked rapidly and backed away from the counter. “I have to go. Thank you.”
“Wait! What about the deliveries?”
“Never mind,” she mumbled, racing out of the shop.
Between labored breaths, she gave the taxi driver an address and clutched her handbag in her lap the entire way, her mind empty and bright with shock. When the cab rolled up in front of the Magnussons’ Queen Anne on Broadway, she nearly leapt out before he came to a full stop.
As she was racing to the front door, a familiar blond head peered from the driveway.
“Miss Bacall?”
“Astrid!” She changed directions and strode to the big gate at the side of the home. “Is Lowe home?”
Lowe’s sister scratched her ear and twisted her mouth. “Uh, well, not exactly . . .”
Winter’s assistant, Bo, walked up behind Astrid. “Afternoon,” he said, canting his head.
“I’m looking for Lowe,” she repeated.
An unspoken conversation passed between Astrid and Bo. She nodded, giving him some sort of permission.
Bo nudged the brim of his cap up with a knuckle. “Actually, the two of us were headed over to see him. If you’d like, you can ride along.”
She couldn’t even answer properly. She just nodded and ran to pay the cabbie. A couple of minutes later, she was in the backseat of a Pierce-Arrow limousine with Astrid, and Bo was driving them out of Pacific Heights.
Astrid tried to make small talk, but Hadley was too wound up to be anything more than the worst of conversationalists. An awkward, uncomfortable silence stretched out over long city blocks. It wasn’t until they passed through Russian Hill that Hadley realized she hadn’t asked where they were going.
When they started the long ascent up Filbert, snatches of memories resurfaced from the day she climbed Telegraph Hill with Lowe. Riding in the taxi with him from the Columbarium. The green and red parrots. Pretending to be a couple looking to purchase a house from that poor, bedraggled real estate agent selling the old Rosewood house. Gloom Manor, Lowe had called it.
And there it was, sitting near the top of the hill.
Trucks were parked at the curb. Workers were loading up debris and clinging to ladders, painting the trim. The twin windows on the third floor had been replaced.
Hadley stared at the window as the car slowed to park. “What’s happening here?”
“Believe me, I asked the exact same thing when I first saw this tumbledown shack of a house,” Astrid said, waving her hand dismissively at the Italianate Victorian home. “Lowe said I had no vision, and maybe he was right. Come on, we’ll take you inside.”
In a daze, she followed them down the sidewalk where she and Lowe had fought off the griffin, past workers who tipped their caps, and up the front stairs into the open door. It was so much brighter and warmer than she remembered. Electricity and heat, she realized dazedly. And she smelled fresh paint; the lewd graffiti was gone. So was the old furniture. A new Craftsman hall tree sat at the end of the foyer. And here, above a carved bench, a cap and two coats hung—one achingly familiar, and one small.