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‘Oh, for chrissake, back off, Detective. I’m not some mouth-breathing, brainless dirtbag you picked up for lifting Twinkies at a 7-Eleven, and I don’t have to answer any of your stupid questions. Think whatever the hell you want. I could give a shit.’

Magozzi glanced quickly to his right, and was pleased to see that Gino’s gun was still in its holster. Still, it was time for him to jump in. ‘We’re trying to help you, Jack,’ he said reasonably. ‘Look at it from our side for a minute. We don’t want to believe you’re a suspect in your father’s shooting, but we are dead sure that you know something that explains why these people were killed, and why you think the murderer is after you.’

‘What makes you think it’s the same person?’ Jack scoffed.

‘Because you do.’

That shut Jack up for a minute. ‘All right,’ he finally sighed. ‘This is straight shit, Detectives. I have absolutely no idea, not the slightest clue, who killed my father, Ben, or that Rose woman, and I don’t know who was shooting at me this morning. You don’t think I’d tell you if I did, just to save my own ass?’

Gino shrugged. ‘Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn’t. Who knows? Maybe you’re trying to save someone else’s ass.’

Jack laughed out loud. ‘That’s good, Detective. Jack Gilbert, the hero. I should hire you to do my P.R. Crack a window, would you? It smells like barbeque back here.’

Magozzi drove a full half mile in stony silence before saying, ‘I didn’t suggest that you knew who the killer was, Jack. I said you knew something about why these people were killed. There’s a big difference.’

Jack met Magozzi’s eyes in the rearview mirror, but he didn’t respond.

They made a courtesy stop halfway back to the Cities. Jack said he had to use the can, but when they pulled up to a gas station, he got out of the car and veered left toward an adjacent liquor store.

Magozzi shook his head. ‘Oh, this looks good. Detectives run shuttle service to liquor store. I’m not putting this in the report.’

‘Goddamned son of a bitch beat us bloody,’ Gino grumbled.

‘He did that.’

‘I hate lawyers. Goddamned hate ’em. So what was the wife like? Did she give you anything?’

‘I don’t think that woman gives anybody anything anytime. She was really cold. Minnesota ice. She didn’t know anything about why Jack and his dad were fighting, and never cared enough to ask, as far as I could tell.’

Gino leaned his head back and closed his eyes for a minute. ‘Tell me we’ve got enough to throw him in jail for an obstruction of justice charge.’

‘We don’t.’

‘So where the hell do we go from here? He’s not going to tell us anything.’

‘Maybe Pullman can help us out.’

The front two rows of the nursery parking lot were full by the time they pulled in, and a surprising number of customers were moving through the outdoor display tables, pulling flat wooden wagons that sprouted flowers and greenery.

‘Looks like the flower business is booming,’ Magozzi said.

Jack was already sitting forward in the backseat, anxious to get out. ‘It’s eighty-two degrees. This time of year, you get an extra two cars in the lot for every degree the temperature rises over seventy.’

‘No kidding?’

‘No kidding. Stop this thing and let me out, will you?’

Magozzi glanced at him in the rearview mirror. Two seconds at his mother’s place and the cockiness was gone. ‘Hold your horses. I’m looking for a spot.’

Gino was scowling out the passenger window, still fuming over the abysmal failure of his efforts to get information from Jack. ‘Who are all these people? Why don’t they have jobs? And why can’t they park between the lines? Every one of these goddamned cars is taking up two spaces, at least.’

Magozzi pulled into a slot that faced the big greenhouse just as Marty and Lily came out the door, pulling loaded wagons toward a customer’s pickup. Marty spotted their car immediately and gave them a questioning look and a tentative wave. He looked even more puzzled when he saw Jack climb out of the unmarked and make a beeline toward his Mercedes convertible at the back of the lot.

‘Gee. He didn’t even say good-bye.’

‘Scummy bastard,’ Gino muttered.

They waited in the car, watching Marty load flats into the pickup while Lily supervised.

‘Pullman looks better today,’ Magozzi observed.

‘Hard labor and a female overseer. Builds character, according to my mother-in-law, or at least that’s the line she was feeding me last weekend when she had me up on a ladder cleaning out the gutters. She looks like a little kid in those overalls, doesn’t she?’

‘Who? Lily?’

‘Yeah. Let’s go in and rough her up a little. Maybe she’s an easier takedown than her kid.’

Magozzi snorted. ‘She’d eat you alive.’

‘I know. You take care of her, I’ll talk to Marty.’

They followed Marty and Lily into the greenhouse, then waited politely until a customer at the counter had checked out and left. There were other shoppers in the greenhouse, but all were out of earshot. Magozzi stepped up to the counter, but Jack barged in before he could say a word.

‘I need my keys.’ He glanced briefly at his mother, then at Marty. ‘Where are they?’

Marty looked blandly at the bruise on Jack’s cheek and the bandage on his forehead. ‘You mouth off to the wrong person, Jack?’

‘Ran into a tree.’

‘Figures.’

‘Trying to get away from the person who was shooting at me.’

Lily’s eyes jerked toward her son, and for the first time, Magozzi saw the mother inside the woman. ‘Who tried to shoot you?’ the words snapped out.

Jack almost shuddered. His mother hadn’t addressed him directly in a very long time. ‘I don’t know.’

And now the old woman straightened, and her eyes grew hard again.

Shit, Magozzi thought. She knows something, too.

Marty was staring at Jack, wearing a lot of expressions on his face. Anger, disgust, frustration, and maybe a little fear, too; but there was concern behind all of them. It surpised Magozzi a little to see that Marty Pullman actually cared for Jack.

‘What do you know about this?’ Marty asked Gino.

Gino eyed a woman in purple capri pants approaching the register with her cart. ‘Let’s take a walk. I’ll give you what we’ve got.’

‘Keys,’ Jack demanded just as they started to move away.

Marty turned around and pointed a finger at Jack. ‘No keys. You’re staying right here.’ He looked straight at Lily as he added, ‘All day, all night, from now on, until I say otherwise.’

Jack and Lily both blinked at him like startled children.

‘I mean it,’ Marty warned as he and Gino went out the door.

Jack opened his mouth to speak just as the woman in purple capri pants tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Excuse me, sir. Could you tell me if this is the right fertilizer for rhododendrons?’

Almost without thinking Jack turned around and looked at the green plastic jug she was holding. ‘Oh no. That’s too alkaline. You need something more acidic for a rhododendron. Should be something on the same shelf where you found this.’

‘Really? Do you think you could show me? There were so many brands of fertilizer there…’

Jack pinched his nose while he slipped from one dimension into another. ‘Okay. Yeah. Sure, I can show you.’

‘Sounds like he knows the business,’ Magozzi said to Lily.

‘He should. He grew up with it,’ she said absently, her eyes following her son past a crowd of customers overloading their wagons from a sale table of impatiens. ‘So tell me about this shooting business. Who was shooting at Jack?’

‘Maybe you should ask Jack about that.’

‘I’m asking you.’

Magozzi sighed. ‘Jack thinks somebody took a shot at him in his driveway this morning, so he shot back.’

Lily turned her head slowly to look at him. ‘He thinks? He’s not sure?’