Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

I was rearranging everything when she came inside. I saw her in the big, round shoplifter’s mirror I’d installed long about 1985; before then, I thought that my mirrored cases protecting the most fragile blossoms would give me enough reflection to prevent the occasional theft.

Then I was naive enough to wonder who would steal plants. After all, resale was hard. But four teenagers with their eyes rolling inside their sockets from some drug I couldn’t identify, waving semiautomatics and shouting, Mister, hey, Mister, open the goddamn cash register, changed my focus on security forever.

She peered through the fronds of an apartment fern, bumped a bucket of past-their-prime rosebuds, and somehow managed to knock over — and catch — some pansy starts I saved for the locals who liked to put them in their window boxes.

I watched her work her way to the counter, not liking the long white box she carried under one arm. She slammed the box on the counter and looked around, hoping to find someone who would answer questions or take a complaint. I sighed as softly as I could, left the calla lilies I’d been shearing for a funeral in the Village, and headed toward her, trying not to let my reluctance show on my face.

She was slender and almost pretty, with honey brown hair that marked her as a non-native New Yorker. Her lower lip was chapped — either she bit it too much or no one had taught her about Chap Stick — and her skin was that blotchy pale most white New Yorkers managed to sustain year round.

She shoved the box at me. It was long and dented, with a dirt stain on the side, as if it’d been thrown or dropped onto the street. A gold sticker with the shop’s name in italic script held the box closed.

I touched the edge, felt the familiar ridged cardboard, wondered if I’d find the roses I customarily put inside or something else, something worse.

“What can I do for you?” I asked, pretending I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.

“Don’t send me any more of those.” She shoved the box again. Her hand was shaking. I got the sense that her anger covered a deeper emotion, one I couldn’t yet identify.

I slipped my finger between the box’s lid and its interior, felt the softness of tissue paper, just like I would have expected from our store. With a single movement, I flicked the box open.

A dozen white roses, an expensive item at this time of year. They were wrapped in red tissue, just a smattering of baby’s breath behind them, and some green fronds to give it all color.

A beautiful package. I’d worked on it myself. I had tied the white silk ribbon around the stems just that morning.

“You don’t care for roses?” I asked.

“I don’t care for him.

” She shoved the box a third time. It slid halfway off the counter, and I had to catch it before the flowers spilled onto the floor.

“Ma’am, this is probably something you should take up with the gentleman—”

“I would if I could,” she snapped, “but I don’t know who he is. He’s stalking me.”

I felt the fine hairs on the back of my neck rise. I fumbled inside the tissue for the card I remembered placing there.

I found it. One of the simpler ones with green leaves running along the side.

My heart is true, it said in my handwriting.

“You’ve seen him. You tell him to leave me alone.” Her trembling had moved from her hands to her face. Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked angrily. Her lashes got wet, but the tears didn’t fall.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t see him. This was a phone order.”

I knew that much from the fact that I had written the card.

“Taken with a credit card?” she asked.

“Probably,” I said. “I would have to check.”

“Well, don’t take any more, especially not for me.” She whirled, stumbled into one of my taller orchids, and grabbed the pot as if it were a lifeline.

I came around the desk, balanced the orchid, and put a hand on her back. Her muscles were rigid. She pulled away from me, glaring at me as she did.

“I’ll do what I can,” I said. “I’ll need your name and address just to make sure.”

She nodded, wiped a hand over her face, then mumbled, “Ruth-Anne Grant.”

“Miss Grant, I’ll make sure he doesn’t send you any more flowers from here. Would you like me to give his information to the police?”

She blinked. I saw her expression clear as the idea reached her mind. I knew what she was going to ask before she asked it.

“Can you give the information to me?”

“Not his credit card information,” I said. “I do have a name, though. Would you like that?”

“And a phone number?”

I wasn’t sure of the ethics of that. “For that, I’d have to talk to the police.”

She nodded, expression tight. “The name then. The name’s a start.”

I moved the orchid away from her, then went back to my desk. The desk was in the back, near the workstation I used for more elaborate orders. The easy orders I prepared out front so that customers and passersby could watch if they so wished.