Acts of Violets by Kate Collins

all the time and won’t answer the phone. I think I’ve seen her outside maybe once in the last month, late in the evening, after dark. She had some kind of hood thingy covering her head.”
    “She must be agoraphobic.”
    “Agora-what?”
    “Phobic. Afraid to leave her house.”
    Trina shrugged, then twisted to check the gaggle of toddlers in the living room. “I guess so. Are we done? The kids are getting antsy.”
    I took that to mean we were. There was a stack of orders waiting for me back at the shop anyway, so I hurriedly glanced over my notes and saw the little reminder I’d written earlier. “There’s one point I’d like you to clarify. Is there any question in your mind about Marco’s innocence?”
    “No question at all. I absolutely believe he’s not guilty.”
    Interesting choice of words. From what minuscule information my brain cells had been able to retain from my law classes, I did remember that there was a heck of a lot of difference between being not guilty and being innocent. Did Trina know that? Was she being coy again? “So you believe he’s innocent.”
    “You have to ask me that? Look, Marco is the most decent guy I’ve ever met. If he says he didn’t kill Ryson, that’s all that matters to me. And just between us girls, I don’t care who killed Ryson. All I care is that the creep is gone.”
    She wasn’t being coy; she was being difficult. “Okay, that’s all I have for now. Thanks for the information and the coffee.”
    I finished my last swallow of coffee, put away my pad and pen, and followed her out of the kitchen, betting that she had no problem finding jeans that fit.
    At the front door we were swarmed by small, whimpering bodies with oozing orifices and sticky fingers, making my ovaries shrink up in fear. I raised my purse above my head and plunged through the grasping hands out onto the stoop and into the refreshingly cool September air, where I took a steadying breath and tamped down the urge to make a headlong dash to the car. At the moment, I was very glad that Marco liked his bachelorhood.

CHAPTER EIGHT

    W hen I got back to Bloomers, Grace was in the parlor waiting on several clerks from the courthouse, and Lottie had gone to Rosie’s Diner to meet her husband for lunch. All was quiet for now, but that would soon change. At two o’clock, the members of the Monday Afternoon Ladies’ Poetry Society would flock in to take up residence in the parlor, where they would spend the next hour and a half sipping coffee and tea, munching on biscuits and scones, and reciting original poems to one another, while Grace fluttered among them refilling cups and Lottie and I hid in the workroom.
    I liked the elderly poetesses, but their rhymes of drooping jowls and sagging breasts and stiff hairs sprouting from their chins didn’t do much for me other than to give me nightmares about growing old. And poor Lottie had recently begun to check her hand mirror twice a day, tweezers at the ready, in case one of those stiff little suckers should try to sprout from her chin.
    I put my purse on my desk and pulled a ticket from the spindle for a birthday basket a group of secretaries had ordered for a coworker. They wanted something cute and playful with a fall theme. Super. I was all about cute and playful.
    I started with a ceramic vase shaped to look like a green and yellow gourd, then placed in it bright orange epidendrum orchids, vivid yellow sandersonia, sweet little white button mums, and grass green foxtail fern. Then I dug through a box of tiny plastic toys that Lottie had collected over the years, found one in the shape of a typewriter, along with a pair of miniature granny glasses, glued them on tall, wooden picks, and stuck them among the flowers. I tied a bright yellow bow around the gourd, stuck a neon pink pencil through the bow, and wrapped it all in cellophane.
    Grace breezed through the curtain with a cup and saucer in hand. “I took advantage of the lull to bring you some