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

He didn’t have a lot of money, then, but he had a job that required others to think he had.

I sighed and set down the faxes from the various shops. Normally, I would have bounded into the front room. I loved helping customers.

One of my simple pleasures, which might now be gone. Because as I stood in the back, my fingers stained with the ink from my cheap fax, I found myself wondering who this man, this new customer, wanted to hurt.

I helped him anyway. I made myself smile as I walked out of the back room, and I questioned him like I would any other new customer. We talked about his sister, the one with MS, and how much she loved flowers. We talked about his critically ill mother, who was worried about his sister’s care after she was gone, and we talked about his budget, which, as I expected, was tight.

Normally the conversation would have been enough for me, but my mood was so odd, my discomfort so great, I flirted with him — not obviously, but just enough to let him feel the personal interest.

He finally pulled out his wallet and showed me his sister’s latest picture. She was younger than he was — high school, still — and cute in that fresh-faced way most teenagers had.

As I studied her, as I saw that spark of intelligence in her eyes, mixed with a touch of sadness, I realized I had seen a lot of family photos over the years.

I handed the wallet back to the young man, undercharged him for two arrangements of spring flowers — one for Mom and one for the sister — and sent him on his way.

Then I stood near my cash register, trying to identify what I was feeling. It was the edge of an idea, a memory, a thought that I had nearly captured just a moment before.

When I was looking at the photograph. When I was realizing how I interviewed all of my new clients.

I would never have sold that bonsai over the phone. I always made it a policy to hand-sell special items, to make certain the customer saw them, and approved of them.

I had talked to him.

He had told me whatever story he had made up — or had he made it up? Had he convinced me of his delusion, that there was some special woman out there for him, some woman he was trying to impress, some woman that he loved?

What would I have told him? Bonsai needed nurturing, a tough hand but a gentle one. Bonsai weren’t for everyone, but the person who appreciated them had a botanist’s heart.

I wished I had found out more about Ruth-Anne Grant. Something about her, or this sick creep’s fantasy of her, convinced him to send her flowers. Convinced him — convinced me — that she deserved a plant that required a commitment.

I shut down the register and hurried to the back, stopping in front of my stack of video tapes.

I had January.

All five weeks of it.

My hand shook as I looked for the date, and when I found it, written across the label in Magic Marker, my heart nearly stopped.

“Gotcha,” I said as I pulled the tape out of the pile. “You son of a bitch, I’ve got you now.”

And the hell of it was, I remembered him.

As I watched the tape, images grainy and unfocused, not professional at all, I went back to that afternoon.

It was dark at three. A storm had threatened all day and finally hit, mixing rain, snow, and sleet. I had stood near the window for a long time, moving plants, wishing that the old building that housed the store had a better heating system and better insulation.

He had come in, black hair dusted with snow, a traditionally handsome man wearing a silk suit that looked, to my inexpert eye, like Armani. He had the body for the suit, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped — legitimately GQ.

I’d let him browse a bit — sometimes the high-end types stumbled into the wrong store to kill a moment before a meeting — but after a while I realized he was actually shopping, and I went to help him.

He had flirted with me — it was visible on the tape, his hand on my sleeve ever so casual, the way he tilted his head so that he could look into my eyes, the slight smile.

I remembered him, not just because he fit my idea of gorgeous or because we had flirted, but because I had led him to the bonsai. I had talked him into it — for his lover. The lover he had described.

A man.

My hands shook as I searched for that original order form in my stack of faxes. Mine were at the bottom, of course. I should have looked for them there. And sure enough, the evidence was before me.

I hadn’t sent that first plant to Ruth-Anne Grant. No, it had gone to R. A. Grant at Ruth-Anne’s address. R. A. A deliberate lie.

None of the others were lies. Over the phone, he had ordered flowers for a woman. In person, just that once, he’d told me, convinced me, he was ordering for a man.

I sank into my chair. I no longer try to hide who I am. I learned that lesson long ago the hard way, when I was an upscale defense attorney with an infatuation for the civil litigator down the hall.