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  Flowers and Foul Play

  A MAGIC GARDEN MYSTERY

  Amanda Flower

  For Mariellyn and Laurie Ellyn

  Leave no Go-Go Girl Behind

  and

  David

  “Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden—in all the places.”

  —Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

  Acknowledgments

  Memories have always been more important to me than possessions, so as a teenager, I promised myself that I would travel the world and make as many memories as possible while I could. Even as a young adult with very little money, I traveled, sleeping in luggage compartments of train cars and eating candy bars and potato chips because it was what I could afford. Many years later, I am so happy to share with all my dear readers one of favorite countries, Scotland, and bring that mystical place to life in a new and magical way.

  This book wouldn’t have happened if it had not been for the support of my super agent and beloved friend, Nicole Resciniti, who encouraged me to write about my travels. She particularly liked the idea of Scotland. Nicole, thank you always.

  Thanks too to Crooked Lane Books and my editor, Anne Brewer, for giving Flowers and Foul Play a cozy home in your impressive list of mysteries. I’m so excited to be working with all of you, and I could not think of a better place for this book that is special to me.

  Thanks to my friend, David Seymour, for his unfailing encouragement while I was writing this book. The chocolate helped a lot too.

  Love and gratitude to my dearest friend, Mariellyn Grace, and her beloved daughter, Laurie. When I said that I had to return to Scotland to research this novel, Mariellyn did not hesitate, and we took little Laurie on her first of undoubtedly many Go-Go Girl adventures across the world. It was a perfect trip with two of my favorite people on this earth.

  Love, as always, to my family, Andy, Nicole, Isabella, and Andrew, for cheering me on.

  And to my mother, Rev. Pamela Flower, who is in heaven, thank you for raising me to be a fearless adventurer. I wanted to see the world because you saw it first, and you are with me everywhere I go.

  And finally to my Heavenly Father, thank you for so many unexpected dreams come true. I am grateful that some of those dreams can include a hint magic too.

  Chapter One

  I will never eat cake again. This is a vow that I can keep. Unlike my wedding vows that I will never have a chance to uphold or say because I’m not getting married—maybe ever. I’m certainly not marrying Ethan Easton, the next big thing in country music—or so I was told he would be, more times than I cared to count.

  “Passport and customs form, miss!” A firm female voice broke into my muddled thoughts and, okay, the personal pity party that I was hosting inside my head. I would give anything to be able to expel the thoughts about Ethan that plagued my mind, so much so that I would even move halfway across the world.

  “Passport,” the voice repeated, not without a little bit of irritation. The woman behind me in line sighed loudly. I shuffled forward and blinked at the young, serious-faced woman inside the bulletproof glass booth. I handed her my passport and customs form. “Why are you entering the United Kingdom?”

  I swallowed. “I’m on holiday.” I didn’t see any need to tell her that I planned to move there. If I said it aloud, then it would be real, and reality wasn’t something I had a great handle on at the moment, right after my heart had been broken by Ethan; and then it was stomped on for good measure when my flower shop in Nashville folded because of competition from a discount flower shop that moved in across the street. Besides, I didn’t have the necessary paperwork to move to the country. Paperwork and visas were the last things on my mind when I fled Nashville.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “Near Bellewick,” I answered. “In County Aberdeen.”

  She raised her eyebrows but made no further comment on my lodging choice. She stamped my passport with far more force than was needed. “Welcome to Scotland,” she said, sliding it back to me.

  I stepped back from the window and followed the other weary travelers, like a lost lemming, through the Edinburgh Airport to ground transport.

  An hour later, I had collected my suitcase and my rental car, and I was outside the city, navigating the roundabouts that opened up into the Scottish countryside, where the rolling green hills and brown mountains were shadowed in a late morning mist. Along the highway, gorse, a vibrant yellow flowering shrub, burst so brightly, I felt like I needed sunglasses to avoid the glare coming off the flowers. During the first week of May, they were in their glory. As beautiful as they were, I knew not to get too close to them. Gorse is covered in thorns that would tear your skin to shreds if you had the misfortune to land on one of the beautiful plants. Like many beautiful things, they were dangerous.

  The scenery reminded me of summers gone by, when my family would come to Scotland to visit my father’s old college roommate and my godfather, Ian MacCallister, whom I had always considered my uncle. Uncle Ian had been a career army man and never married. As far as I knew, my parents and my younger sister, Isla, and I were the closest to family that he had, and I loved him dearly. Dad and Uncle Ian had gone to St. Andrews together. My parents also met at St. Andrews when my American mother was there for a study-abroad program. When my mother’s year in Scotland ended, my father followed her back to Tennessee and never moved back to the U.K. I was born shortly after they moved stateside. Despite the distance, they had remained close to Uncle Ian, and I, as Ian’s goddaughter, was the bond that held their friendship together when distance and busyness might have otherwise torn it apart.

  Although we had lived half a world away, Uncle Ian had stayed in touch and had taken his title as my godfather seriously. He never forgot a birthday or a Christmas. His presents had come from his travels all over the world as a soldier and an adventurer. He never stayed in any place for long except for his ancestral home of Duncreigan, a cottage just west of Bellewick, a tiny village tucked away in northeastern Scotland on the sloping hillside, in view of the rocky coast. It was thirty minutes south of the city of Aberdeen on the A90 and just north of the famous Dunnottar Castle. Duncreigan was a cottage that I now owned—or so Uncle Ian’s attorney had told me repeatedly on the telephone. The attorney repeated it because I couldn’t quite process what he said.

  My father, who was Uncle Ian’s best friend, hadn’t even known about his friend’s death until I got the first call from the attorney. We weren’t family, at least not blood relations, and the British army hadn’t known to notify us of Ian’s passing.

  The biggest shock had been that he left his cottage to me and not to my father. Maybe he had known I would need a place to escape my life. He’d seemed to be intuitive in that regard. He knew so many things and called at all the right times, like when I failed chemistry in high school, on my first day of my first real job as an adult, and when my beloved grandmother died. There had been something about Uncle Ian. He had known when I needed him. He would joke that his Gaelic ancestors whispered in his ear to tell him when I was feeling low.

  Tears gathered in my eyes. There had been so much loss in my life in such a short period. However, the end of my relationship with Ethan was not nearly as great as the loss from Uncle Ian’s death. When Ethan had broken off our engagement, Uncle Ian had been the first person I had wanted to call and tell about the breakup. I should have known something was wrong when I couldn’t reach him after Ethan left me for the cake decorator eight days ago or when my business closed its doors for good ten days ago. Not that I
was keeping track of the days or anything. The Uncle Ian that I knew would have known. I should have known then that he was dead. Maybe I had and just hadn’t been able to face it. The lawyer’s call had forced me to.

  I wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand and took a deep breath. Every time I thought I didn’t have any more tears, another round overcame me.

  * * *

  After almost three hours of driving, Duncreigan came into view. The sun hovered just above the roof of the cottage, wrapping it in a halo of light. It was as I remembered it, with its thick stone walls cut out of the granite the region was famous for, the two chimneys on either side of the cottage, and the black slate roof. A large fir tree to the right of the house offered the cottage protection from the fierce Scottish wind that roared across the rolling glen. The cold wind could cut right through you even on the warmest of summer days. The glen itself was peppered with large rocks breaking through the thick carpet of impossibly green grass. A cobblestone path led the way from the gravel drive, speckled with weeds and grass, to the forest-green front door and its brass knocker, shaped like the head of a fox. Everything was just as I remembered it when last I was here three years ago. I found comfort in the fact that one spot in the world seemed to be caught in time, remaining as it always had been.

  The tires of my rental car crunched on the gravel as I slowed the car to a stop and shifted it into park. A stout, elderly man in blue work shirt and black suspenders that held up his flannel trousers came around the side of the cottage just as I was climbing out of the car. He had a pug-like nose and bright green eyes, and wore a golf cap low on his forehead. “Hello, lass.” His words rumbled in his deep Scottish accent.

  “Hamish?” I blinked. The last time I’d visited, Hamish, the caretaker of my godfather’s garden when Uncle Ian was away, seemed to have been over one hundred years old. Even at his advanced age, he moved across the yard with ease. His arms and legs swung with the assurance of a man in constant motion. “Master Ian said that you would come, and you have. We will be rescued now.”

  I blinked at his comment. Rescued? I was the last person who was able to rescue anyone. At the moment, my life hung together by loose threads and whimpered prayer. Before I could ask him what he meant, a red squirrel catapulted from the lone tree and landed on Hamish’s shoulder.

  I screamed, and both Hamish and the squirrel gaped at me. The squirrel stood on his two hind legs and cocked his head.

  “Something wrong, Miss Fiona?” Hamish asked.

  I pointed at the animal. “Squirrel.” That was all I could get out.

  He glanced at the squirrel and shrugged, and I would be lying if I didn’t say that the squirrel shrugged back. “Him? That’s just Duncan.”

  “Duncan?” I squeaked.

  Duncan the squirrel settled back into a more comfortable position on Hamish’s shoulder.

  Hamish patted the creature on the top of his head. “Aye. He’s my friend. My only friend now that Master Ian has gone on to be with his Maker.” His voice held a melancholy lilt to it. He shook his head as if in the process of moving on from the memory, and his face broke into a wide smile, revealing slightly crooked teeth. “My, you have grown up to be a lovely Scottish lass.”

  I laughed. “Can I come across as a Scottish lass with a Tennessee accent?” And I self-consciously touched my long and wavy black hair. I could only guess how tangled it must be after the transatlantic flight or how bloodshot my blue eyes might be.

  “Ah, that might be true, but Scottish blood runs in your veins no matter how funny you may talk, and you are as fair as any Scottish lass I’ve ever seen.” His grin widened. “And I bet many a young man would be proud to have you on his arm.”

  I winced as Ethan’s face came to the forefront of my mind. “Not every young man.”

  Hamish and Duncan cocked both their heads to the right in unison, and I couldn’t help but chuckle at the image they created.

  Hamish pointed a meaty index finger at me. “There’s a story there, to be sure. You will tell it when you are good and ready.”

  I didn’t know if I would ever be ready to tell Hamish about my broken engagement or my failed business, but I nodded in any case.

  Duncan jumped from Hamish’s shoulder to the ground and ran to the cottage, leaping on the windowsill. He tapped on the glass with his tiny paw.

  Hamish’s craggy face broke into another smile, and he doffed the golf cap on his head, bowing slightly at the waist. “’Tis right, Duncan. We should show Miss Fiona her home.”

  My home? I took in the cottage again. Could it really be mine?

  Hamish stood beside me and held out the cottage’s skeleton key to me. I recognized it immediately from my time in Scotland with Uncle Ian. “This is yours now. This is all yours now.”

  I hesitated for just a moment but then held out my hand. He gently laid the key on my palm, and with his other hand, curved my fingers around it. I felt the heft and weight of the old skeleton key in my hand, and reality set in that this cottage could be the setting of my new life, if I chose it.

  “Now, go inside,” he said gently but firmly.

  I hesitated, not sure I was ready for this. “Is the cottage locked?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “No one has been in there since the memorial service.”

  I shuffled to the door and made eye contact with the fox knocker as I fit the key into the lock and turned it. To my surprise, the key turned easily, and the door swung inward.

  Dust particles that had been thrown into the air by my entry into the room danced like woodland sprites in the light that poured through the open door. Across from me was the cottage’s one massive fireplace, which heated the entire home. It was barren, with not even a speck of soot on the hearth. White sheets covered most of the furniture, creating odd ghostlike shapes.

  The cottage was small, almost the size of a one-bedroom apartment. The main room served as a dining room, living room, and kitchen. The small table and chairs that constituted the dining area was to my left; the living area was straight ahead; and the kitchen was to my right. Behind the kitchen were three closed doors that I knew led to my godfather’s bedroom, a bathroom, and a tiny utility closet. It was smaller than the apartment I’d left behind in Nashville.

  I stepped inside and walked toward the fireplace. Memories of huddling by its warmth while Uncle Ian told stories about the Highlands washed over me like a rolling wave. For once, the memories didn’t come with the tinge of sadness that I had come to expect when I thought of him, but with the warmth of the love in which he had shared those stories.

  On the mantle, there was a dusty, framed photograph of Uncle Ian in his army uniform. I laid the key on the one uncovered table in the room and lifted the framed photo from its spot. In it, Ian appeared to be in his thirties. He’d only been fifty-nine when he died. He had been about to retire from the Royal Army after his last tour overseas in Afghanistan as part of the United Kingdom’s forces there. He was just weeks away from flying home when he was killed.

  I set the photograph back on the mantle in the exact place I had found it, which wasn’t hard to find because of the thick layer of dust covering every surface. Again, I just felt warmth, not sadness, in this place. Maybe the peace I had so desperately wanted after my life fell apart in Nashville could be found right here in Duncreigan.

  Hamish’s voice broke into my thoughts. “Open the widows and run a broom through here, and it will be as good as new.”

  I smiled at him. “You might be right.”

  Above the mantle hung a large painting dating back to the 1700s. It was a portrait of my godfather’s four-times-great-grandfather, Baird MacCallister, who was the first MacCallister to live at Duncreigan. He wore his sailor’s uniform in the portrait. My godfather told me that Baird was a career merchant sailor, but when he found Duncreigan, he abandoned life at sea forever.

  I moved to pick up the key from the table where I had left it, when Duncan dashed into the room, snatched the key off t
he table, and leaped out the cottage door.

  “Duncan, you come back here, you beastie!” Hamish shook his fist in the air, looking very much like the picture of Farmer MacGregor from Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Hamish ran out the door.

  I joined him just in time to see Duncan dash across the green landscape with the key held between his teeth.

  “We have to get it back,” Hamish cried. “That’s the only key.”

  Without a word, I took off after the squirrel.

  Chapter Two

  “Duncan!” I cried as I chased the squirrel across the plush green grass. Dampness soaked through my sneakers and socks.

  Duncan kept going without even turning his head. I didn’t know why I expected a squirrel to respond to his name when called.

  The hillside pitched downward, and a stone wall came into view. It was so covered with ivy that the stones were barely visible. I slowed and caught my breath. Duncan scaled the ivy-covered wall that rose a good nine feet into the air. I placed a hand to my chest and felt the thundering of my heart. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d run so fast.

  From the top of the wall, the squirrel looked back at me one last time, with the key clenched in his jaws, before he leaped over the other side. I inched forward. The ivy crawled all over the face of the wall as I had remembered it, but the last time I had been there, it had been an iridescent green. Now, the leaves and vines were brown and withered. Thousands of ivy leaves lay on the ground, exposing more of the granite wall. The old dome-shaped door leading into the garden was easily found. In my memory, it had been hidden by the thick tangle of vines like a secret entrance into an enchanted world.

  The door was weather-beaten and grayed with age. The black iron handle was as long as my forearm, and the black keyhole stood out on the whitened wood. I shuffled forward to the keyhole, which was an inch high and half an inch wide. Peeking through it, I gasped at what I saw. The garden, Uncle Ian’s garden, was dead.