Blue Dahlia

roughhouse with that can poke our eyes out. After that, we’ve moving on to flammables.”
    “Thanks. I feel very reassured.” She bent down to give Parker a last pat. “Keep an eye on this guy,” she told him.
     
    LOGAN KITRIDGE WAS PRESSED FOR TIME. RAIN HAD delayed his personal project to the point where he was going to have to postpone some of the fine points—again—to meet professional commitments.
    He didn’t mind so much. He considered landscaping a perpetual work in progress. It was never finished. It should never be finished. And when you worked with Nature, Nature was the boss. She was fickle and tricky, and endlessly fascinating.
    A man had to be continually on his toes, be ready to flex, be willing to compromise and swing with her moods. Planning in absolutes was an exercise in frustration, and to his mind there were enough other things to be frustrated about.
    Since Nature had deigned to give him a good, clear day, he was taking it to deal with his personal project. It meant he had to work alone—he liked that better in any case—and carve out time to swing by the job site and check on his two-man crew.
    It meant he had to get over to Roz’s place, pick up the trees he’d earmarked for his own use, haul them back to his place, and get them in the ground before noon.
    Or one. Two at the latest.
    Well, he’d see how it went.
    The one thing he couldn’t afford to carve out time for was this new manager Roz had taken on. He couldn’t figure out why Roz had hired a manager in the first place, and for God’s sake a Yankee. It seemed to him that Rosalind Harper knew how to run her business just fine and didn’t need some fast-talking stranger screwing with the system.
    He liked working with Roz. She was a woman who got things done, and who didn’t poke her nose into his end of things any more than was reasonable. She loved the work, just as he did, had an instinct for it. So when she did make a suggestion, you tended to listen and weigh it in.
    She paid well and didn’t hassle a man over every detail.
    He could tell, just tell , that this manager was going to be nothing but bumps and ruts in his road.
    Wasn’t she already leaving messages for him in that cool Yankee voice about time management, invoice systems, and equipment inventory?
    He didn’t give a shit about that sort of thing, and he wasn’t going to start giving one now.
    He and Roz had a system, damn it. One that got the job done and made the client happy.
    Why mess with success?
    He drove his full-size pickup through the parking area, wove through the piles of mulch and sand, the landscape timbers, and around the side loading area.
    He’d already eyeballed and tagged what he wanted—but before he loaded them up, he’d take one more look around. Plus there were some young evergreens in the field and a couple of hemlocks in the balled and burlapped area that he thought he could use.
    Harper had grafted him a couple of willows and a hedgerow of peonies. They’d be ready to dig in this spring, along with the various pots of cuttings and layered plants Roz had helped him with.
    He moved through the rows of trees, then turned around and backtracked.
    This wasn’t right, he thought. Everything was out of place, changed around. Where were his dogwoods? Where the hell were the rhododendrons, the mountain laurels he’d tagged? Where was his goddamn frigging magnolia?
    He scowled at a pussy willow, then began a careful, step-by-step search through the section.
    It was all different. Trees and shrubs were no longer in what he’d considered an interesting, eclectic mix of type and species, but lined up like army recruits, he decided. Alphabetized, for Christ’s sweet sake. In frigging Latin.
    Shrubs were segregated, and organized in the same anal fashion.
    He found his trees and, stewing, carted them to his truck. Muttering to himself, he decided to head into the field, dig up the trees he wanted there. They’d be safer at his place. Obviously.
    Bur first he was going to hunt up Roz and get this mess straightened out.
     
    STANDING ON A STEPLADDER, ARMED WITH A BUCKET of soapy water and a rag, Stella attacked the top of the shelf she’d cleared off. A good cleaning, she decided, and it would be ready for her newly planned display. She envisioned it filled with color-coordinated decorative pots, some mixed plantings scattered among them. Add other accessories, like raffia twine, decorative watering spikes, florist stones and