African Violet Club Mystery Collection Read online




  AFRICAN VIOLET CLUB MYSTERIES BOX SET ONE

  Elise M. Stone

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places, and incidents in this novel are either the products of the imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or people, either living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  True Blue Murder

  Copyright © 2016 Elise M. Stone

  Blood Red Murder

  Copyright © 2016 Elise M. Stone

  Royal Purple Murder

  Copyright © 2016 Elise M. Stone

  Quotations from Shakespeare’s works are taken from http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise—without permission in writing from the copyright owner, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Published by Civano Press

  Tucson, AZ

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  True Blue Murder

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Blood Red Murder

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Royal Purple Murder

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Thank You!

  About the Author

  Also By Elise M. Stone

  True Blue Murder

  Elise M. Stone

  CHAPTER ONE

  LILLIANA Wentworth pushed the cart with the wobbly wheel toward the dining room of the Rainbow Ranch Retirement Community. Or, as most of the residents referred to it in private, “the old folks home.” She wrestled the contrary cart, which carried her plants on the top shelf and her equipment bag on the bottom, past the poster board sign announcing the First Annual African Violet Club Show and Sale. Fighting the cart’s threat to tip over, she turned into the large room that had been transformed from dining facility to exhibit hall by moving the tables into two neat rows, one on each side, with a large space in the middle. Several members of the club, already at their assigned places, busily tended their plants.

  It took her only a minute to find the table with a little gold stand holding a place card with her name on it. She was at the far end of the room, but that was all right with her. It was better than being in the middle, where the judges would have already seen so many gorgeous plants they all seemed to look alike. If you couldn’t be first, when they were eager to start their evaluations, last was almost as good, when their memory of what they’d seen was fresh as they finished the judging.

  She meticulously positioned her violets, a dozen of her best, then added the snack-sized plastic bags holding leaves she would sell to the visitors, their stems carefully swathed in moist cotton. The leaves were very popular at sales, since almost everyone could afford a dollar. Buyers scooped them up with fanciful hopes of having their own blossom-covered plants in a few weeks. And selling them gave Lilliana a little extra to spend on her African violet addiction. She would also sell the mature plants, the best ones commanding a price quite a lot more than a dollar.

  Except the True Blue hybrid. That one was her treasure, and hopefully, the one that would win Best in Show. She’d created it herself, a lush Saintpaulia with blossoms of deep purple bordering on midnight blue. She loved blue and had been trying for two years to breed a plant that would bloom in her favorite color. It was almost impossible to get a true blue. When she’d woken up one morning and seen the flowers this plant produced, she’d clapped her hands and gasped. She might have shrieked, but a retired librarian had a bit more decorum than that. The burgeoning blue blooms where only green leaves had grown the night before seemed almost magical.

  She picked up the makeup brush she used for grooming and started flicking bits of dirt from the leaves. Appearance was everything when it came to being judged in a show. She’d snipped all the less-than-perfect leaves from her plants before loading them on the cart this morning, but the bumpy ride down had left a few leaves with specks of vermiculite and soil. When the plants were clean, she stood back and evaluated the positioning, deciding to nudge one a couple of millimeters farther back so it was perfectly aligned with the others.

  “Lily!” a hearty male voice called out.

  “Good morning, Leonard.” As usual, Leonard was looking healthier than any seventy-four-year-old had a right to. An engineer before he retired, since moving to Rainbow Ranch he’d committed to being a tennis pro. Lilliana had yet to go to the exercise room and not find him there. Unless he was out on one of the two tennis courts the facility had built, giving lessons when he could find someone to take them, smashing serves over the net when he couldn’t. As a result, his body reminded Lilliana of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime, or possibly Jack LaLanne, the fitness guru who had performed amazing feats well into his nineties.

  Leonard put the box he was carrying on the table next to Lilliana’s. “I see we’re neighbors.” He peered over at her African violets with a look on his face that said he was beating the judges to their job. “Nice plants this year. Especially that blue one.”

  The warm glow Lilliana felt at his admiration for her baby made her decide Leonard wasn’t as insufferable as she’d thought
he was. “Thank you.” She took a look at the plants Leonard was lifting from the box and arranging in his spot. “That yellow one is pretty. Kind of a golden color, isn’t it?”

  A smile spread over Leonard’s face. He squared up his shoulders and ran a hand over his bald head, preening at the compliment. “It did turn out nicely, didn’t it?”

  “Did you create that variety?” She tried to sound casual, but she was anxious about her competition for best new hybrid. Some of the club members had a lot more experience than she did. And, like in figure skating, judges of African violets could be swayed by their familiarity with the contestant almost as much as the expertise. Oh, not in a show that took place under the African Violet Society of America rules. In one of those, plants were carefully anonymous to prevent any kind of favoritism. But Rainbow Ranch was an informal club, not nearly large enough to form an official chapter of the AVSA.

  Leonard waved a hand. “Oh, no. I tried breeding hybrids a couple of years back, but I didn’t have the patience to make sure they didn’t get contaminated by neighboring plants. No, I bought this beauty from Rob’s Violet Barn as a Christmas present to myself.”

  Feeling slightly ashamed of herself, Lilliana relaxed a bit. “Well, I’d better put this cart back in the storage room so someone else can find it if they need it.”

  Leonard nodded. “You do that. I’ll keep an eye on your plants.”

  Lilliana’s eyes widened as she wondered why they would need watching with only the members of the club in the room. Did Leonard know something she didn’t? She wasn’t sure, but she decided not to dawdle on her errand and get back to her African violets as soon as possible.

  Most of the exhibit spots were now filled with gorgeous flowering displays. Growers usually specialized in one thing, either a type of plant or a color or something, because there were just too many kinds to grow them all. She passed Mary Boyle’s display of semi-miniatures in cute little ceramic pots. They were so sweet, somewhat like Mary herself, who looked up from her chair with a smile as Lilliana passed by. Mary gave Lilliana a thumbs-up. “We got this one covered, right?

  “Definitely.” It was easy for Lilliana to be gracious to Mary, since she knew they were competing in different categories. As a matter of fact, no one else grew semi-miniature plants as far as she remembered, so it was a good bet Mary would win a blue ribbon.

  Frank Bellandini rushed up to Lilliana’s side and clutched her arm. Behind lenses as thick as glass architectural blocks, his eyes bulged so hugely they looked as if they might fall out of their sockets and tumble onto the floor. “You’d better watch out for Bette Tesselink. She stole my red hybrid and is claiming it’s hers.”

  Lilliana sighed. Bette was a pain in the behind, if she did say so herself. The woman was always causing trouble in one way or another. “Did you tell the judges?”

  “Of course I did,” Frank said. The more he spoke, the redder his face got. “They asked me if I had any proof. Proof? I wasn’t taking pictures with my cell phone when she stole it.”

  Lilliana stifled a smile. Frank had one of those basic cell phones for the elderly, the ones with the large numbers and minimal functionality. She wondered if he realized his phone didn’t have a camera. “How do you think she managed to steal your cultivar?”

  “Remember that meeting when we all brought in the hybrids we were growing and talked about how we’d gone about creating them?”

  She nodded her head. Her seeds had barely sprouted, with four little leaves peeking out from the stem in the small plastic cup. She’d been a bit embarrassed to show it to the others, whose plants had been much further along. But she thought she could use advice in raising the hybrid for the show, so she’d brought it anyway. When Frank suggested snipping off a damaged leaf, it felt like cutting off her arm, but she did it.

  “Well, she must have taken a cutting off one of my plants then. No one but me has a red like that,” Frank said.

  Lilliana thought that would be hard to prove, but she remembered being impressed by the deep crimson Frank had achieved. More than impressed. She’d been terribly jealous.

  Lilliana glanced at the clock on the wall to see what time it was. Ten minutes remained before the show officially opened, but the hallway was already filling up with people waiting to get in. “I’m sorry, Frank. Maybe the judges will take that into account when they come to your plant.”

  “They’d better.” Frank glowered, and his face, which had almost returned to its normal color, turned so red Lilliana hoped his blood pressure was under control.

  “I should put this cart away before they start letting people in,” Lilliana said. “Good luck to you, Frank.”

  “And to you, Lilliana.” Frank headed across the room to his assigned table.

  Lilliana continued pushing the balky cart. As she drew closer to the door, she saw the dreaded Bette Tesselink at the first table on the left, right next to the entrance. Oddly for Arizona, she wore a dark blue dress instead of casual clothes. Perhaps she felt the show required more formal apparel. Bette’s mouth was much too large for her face. It looked even larger as she bared her teeth in what, for her, passed for a smile.

  “Lilliana,” Bette said. “All ready for the competition?” Bette lifted a pot containing an African violet covered in lovely yellow blooms from a cardboard box and put it on her table.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be. And you?” Her gaze went to Bette’s display and was immediately drawn to a lush hybrid with deep crimson blossoms. Frank was right. There was no doubt in her mind that “Bette’s” plant had been grown from a leaf of Frank’s spectacular hybrid.

  Bette pulled her last plant from the box, an intense blue violet labeled Deep Blue Sea. The same deep blue as the one sitting proudly at the center of Lilliana’s own display. The pressure in her head built until she thought it might explode. Blood sang in her ears. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Bette feigned innocence as her eyes widened to match the size of her mouth. “Why, whatever do you mean?”

  Lilliana stuck out a trembling finger and pointed at the blue flowers. “That’s my plant.” Her voice was tight and louder than she’d intended.

  “It seems to be on my table.” Bette stared past Lilliana, as if looking at something across the room.

  “But you stole it from me.” Lots of eyes had turned toward the two women, including those of some of the waiting visitors.

  A beefy man dressed in a suit rushed over to them and held a finger to his lips. “Please keep your voices down, ladies. This is an important event for Rainbow Ranch, and we don’t want to spoil it for people.”

  Lilliana turned to face Dale Ackerman, mayor of Rainbow Ranch. The overpowering scent of his aftershave forced her to take a step back before speaking. “I don’t think our guests want a cheater in the show. This woman stole my plant.”

  “I’m sure all of this can be worked out to everyone’s satisfaction,” Mayor Ackerman said. “I’ll have a word with the judges. Meanwhile, it’s almost time for us to open the doors, so could you please take your places.”

  Lilliana thought about arguing the point, but it was useless to talk to the mayor about an African violet problem. That was a decision for the judges, and she intended to have a conversation with them when they got to her table to evaluate her True Blue hybrid. Meanwhile, she was still standing with the cart in front of her. She took a deep breath and forced her hunched shoulders to relax as she exhaled. She nodded, fighting to control the fury she felt as Bette’s face turned smug. If the woman thought she’d won the battle, she was seriously mistaken.

  Lilliana pushed the cart out the door and toward the back of the building, where there was a TV room on one side and a storage room on the other. Even through the closed door to the TV room she could hear the sound. One of the residents with a hearing problem—probably Wayne Victorsson, who was always misplacing his hearing aids—had turned up the volume again.

  She opened the door to the storage room and pushed the car
t through. Shelves along one wall held cartons of toilet paper and tissues, boxes of holiday decorations, and office supplies. The astringent smell of cleaning chemicals coming from the adjoining housekeeping closet prickled her nose. She removed her equipment bag from the lower shelf in case anyone else needed to use the cart. Her plan was to head over to the baseball field at the elementary school between the closing of the show and dinner. Lilliana was an outdoorsy person, used to being active, and knew that spending the day inside would need to be offset by exercise.

  She hitched up her slacks, which had slipped down from her waist, and thought they seemed looser than the last time she’d worn them. Had she lost more weight? She’d have to stop by the clinic one day next week and get on the scale. As much as she liked exercise, she wasn’t all that fond of eating. After over seventy years of three meals a day, she’d tried just about everything, and it all tasted pretty much the same now.

  Being careful to close the storage room door behind her, Lilliana hurried back to the dining room. People were already filing in as she took her place. She fixed a smile on her face as a woman trailing two young children stepped up to her table and peered at the leaves.

  “Can you really grow a plant from one of these?” She pushed a stray strand of hair back from her face, then made a quick grab for the little boy, who had reached out to touch one of the plants the minute she let go of his hand.

  “Of course you can. African violets are easy to grow from leaves. If you take one over to the education table,” she paused and pointed across the room to the table directly opposite hers, “they can pot up the leaf for you and tell you how to care for it.”

  The woman looked doubtful, with a touch of longing in her eyes. “I really like that dark purple one,” she said, looking at the True Blue.

  “So do I.” Lilliana smiled. “That’s one I bred myself. I only have a few leaves of that one, but I’d be happy to sell you one.” She picked up one of the plastic bags and held it out to the woman.

  The doubt on the young woman’s face changed to determination. “I’ll take it.” She let go of the little boy again to get her wallet out of her purse, and the boy promptly stuck his hand out to stroke the leaves on a variegated pink Saintpaulia.