Blue Dahlia

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 basics. I cleft-grafted a camellia once. It did very well. Generally I stick with cuttings. I’m Stella. It’s nice to meet you, Harper.”
    He rubbed his hand over his jeans before shaking hers. “Mom says you’re going to organize us.”
    “That’s the plan, and I hope it’s not going to be too painful for any of us. What are you working on here?” She stepped over to a line of pots covered with clean plastic bags held clear of the grafted plant by four split stakes.
    “Gypsophilia—baby’s breath. I’m shooting for blue, as well as pink and white.”
    “Blue. My favorite color. I don’t want to hold you up. I was hoping,” she said to Roz, “we could find somewhere to go over some of my ideas.”
    “Back in the annual house. The office is hopeless. Harper?”
    “All right, okay. Go ahead. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
    “Harper.”
    “Okay, ten. But that’s my final offer.”
    With a laugh, Roz gave him a light cuff on the back of the head. “Don’t make me come back in here and get you.”
    “Nag, nag, nag,” he muttered, but with a grin.
    Outside, Roz let out a sigh. “He plants himself in there, you have to jab a pitchfork in his ass to budge him. He’s the only one of my boys who has an interest in the place. Austin’s a reporter, works in Atlanta. Mason’s a doctor, or will be. He’s doing his internship in Nashville.”
    “You must be proud.”
    “I am, but I don’t see nearly enough of either of them. And here’s Harper, practically under my feet, and I have to hunt him like a dog to have a conversation.”
    Roz boosted herself onto one of the tables. “Well, what’ve you got?”
    “He looks just like you.”
    “People say. I just see Harper. Your boys with David?”
    “Couldn’t pry them away with a crowbar.” Stella opened her briefcase. “I typed up some notes.”
    Roz looked at the stack of papers and tried not to wince. “I’ll say.”
    “And I’ve made some rough sketches of how we