Blue Dahlia by Nora Roberts Page B

her worries about their adjustment to living in a new house with strangers. It appeared that most of the adjustments were going to be on her end.
    She dressed more appropriately this time, in sturdy walking shoes that had already seen their share of mud, jeans with considerable wear, and a black sweater. With her briefcase in hand, she headed into the main entrance of the garden center.
    The same woman was at the counter, but this time she was waiting on a customer. Stella noted a small dieffenbachia in a cherry-red pot and a quartet of lucky bamboo, tied with decorative hemp, already in a shallow cardboard box.
    A bag of stones and a square glass vase were waiting to be rung up.
    Good.
    “Is Roz around?” Stella asked.
    “Oh ...” Ruby gestured vaguely. “Somewhere or the other.”
    She nodded to the two-ways behind the counter. “Would she have one of those with her?”
    The idea seemed to amuse Ruby. “I don’t think so.”
    “Okay, I’ll find her. That’s so much fun,” she said to the customer, with a gesture toward the bamboo. “Carefree and interesting. It’s going to look great in that bowl.”
    “I was thinking about putting it on my bathroom counter. Something fun and pretty.”
    “Perfect. Terrific hostess gifts, too. More imaginative than the usual flowers.”
    “I hadn’t thought of that. You know, maybe I’ll get another set.”
    “You couldn’t go wrong.” She beamed a smile, then started out toward the greenhouses, congratulating herself as she went. She wasn’t in any hurry to find Roz. This gave her a chance to poke around on her own, to check supplies, stock, displays, traffic patterns. And to make more notes.
    She lingered in the propagation area, studying the progress of seedlings and cuttings, the type of stock plants, and their health.
    It was nearly an hour before she made her way to the grafting area. She could hear music—the Corrs, she thought—seeping out the door.
    She peeked in. There were long tables lining both sides of the greenhouse, and two more shoved together to run down the center. It smelled of heat, vermiculite, and peat moss.
    There were pots, some holding plants that had been or were being grafted. Clipboards hung from the edges of tables, much like hospital charts. A computer was shoved into a corner, its screen a pulse of colors that seemed to beat to the music.
    Scalpels, knives, snippers, grafting tape and wax, and other tools of this part of the trade lay in trays.
    She spotted Roz at the far end, standing behind a man on a stool. His shoulders were hunched as he worked. Roz’s hands were on her hips.
    “It can’t take more than an hour, Harper. This place is as much yours as mine, and you need to meet her, hear what she has to say.”
    “I will, I will, but damn it, I’m in the middle of things here. You’re the one who wants her to manage, so let her manage. I don’t care.”
    “There’s such a thing as manners.” Exasperation rolled into the overheated air. “I’m just asking you to pretend, for an hour, to have a few.”
    The comment brought Stella’s own words to her sons back to her mind. She couldn’t stop the laugh, but did her best to conceal it with a cough as she walked down the narrow aisle.
    “Sorry to interrupt. I was just ...” She stopped by a pot, studying the grafted stem and the new leaves. “I can’t quite make this one.”
    “Daphne.” Roz’s son spared her the briefest glance.
    “Evergreen variety. And you’ve used a splice side-veneer graft.”
    He stopped, swiveled on his stool. His mother had stamped herself on his face—the same strong bones, rich eyes. His dark hair was considerably longer than hers, long enough that he tied it back with what looked to be a hunk of raffia. Like her, he was slim and seemed to have at least a yard of leg, and like her he dressed carelessly in jeans pocked with rips and a soil-stained Memphis University sweatshirt.
    “You know something about grafting?”
    “Just the