Blue Dahlia

percent over last year.” Stella lifted her glass in a toast. “I happen to have facts and data at my fingertips.”
    “Of course you do.” With a laugh, Roz stunned Stella by throwing an arm around her shoulders, squeezing once, then pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Damn right you do. You did a hell of a job. Both of you. Everyone. And it’s fair to say, Stella, that I did myself and In the Garden a favor the day I hired you.”
    “Wow!” She took a sip to open her throat. “I won’t argue with that.” Then another to let the wine fizz on her tongue before she went for the caviar. “However, as much as I’d love to take full credit for that ten percent increase, I can’t. The stock is just amazing. You and Harper are exceptional growers. I’ll take credit for five of the ten percent.”
    “It was fun,” Hayley put in. “It was crazy a lot of the time, but fun. All those people, and the noise, and carts sailing out the door. Everybody seemed so happy. I guess being around plants, thinking about having them for yourself, does that.”
    “Good customer service has a lot to do with those happy faces. And you”—Stella tipped her glass to Hayley—“have that knocked.”
    “We’ve got a good team.” Roz sat, wiggled her bare toes. They were painted pale peach today. “We’ll take a good overview in the morning, see what areas Harper and I should add to.” She leaned forward to spread caviar on a toast point. “But tonight we’ll just bask.”
    “This is the best job I’ve ever had. I just want to say that.” Hayley looked at Roz. “And not just because I get to drink fancy champagne and watch y’all eat caviar.”
    Roz patted her arm. “I should bring up another subject. I’ve already told David. The calls I’ve made about Alice Harper Doyle’s death certificate? Natchez,” she said. “According to official records, she died in Natchez, in the home she shared with her husband and two children.”
    “Damn.” Stella frowned into her wine. “I guess it was too easy.”
    “We’ll just have to keep going through the household records, noting down the names of the female servants during that time period.”
    “Big job,” Stella replied.
    “Hey, we’re good.” Hayley brushed off the amount of work. “We can handle it. And, you know, I was thinking. David said they saw her going toward the old stables, right? So maybe she had a thing going with one of the stablehands. They got into a fight over something, and he killed her. Maybe an accident, maybe not. Violent deaths are supposed to be one of the things that trap spirits.”
    “Murder,” Roz speculated. “It might be.”
    “You sound like my stepmother. I talked to her about it,” Stella told Roz. “She and my father are willing and able to help with any research if we need them. I hope that’s all right.”
    “It’s all right with me. I wondered if she’d show herself to one of us, since we started looking into it. Try to point us in the right direction.”
    “I had a dream.” Since it made her feel silly to talk about it, Stella topped off her glass of champagne. “A kind of continuation of one I had a few weeks ago. Neither of them was very clear—or the details of them go foggy on me. But I know it—they—have to do with a garden I’ve planted, and a blue dahlia.”
    “Do dahlias come in blue?” Hayley wondered.
    “They do. They’re not common,” Roz explained, “but you can hybridize them in shades of blue.”
    “This was like nothing I’ve ever seen. It was ... electric, intense. This wildly vivid blue, and huge. And she was in the dream. I didn’t see her, but I felt her.”
    “Hey!” Hayley pushed herself forward. “Maybe her name was Dahlia.”
    “That’s a good thought,” Roz commented. “If we’re researching ghosts, it’s not a stretch to consider that a dream’s connected in some way.”
    “Maybe.” Frowning, Stella sipped again. “I could hear her, but I couldn’t see her. Even more, I could feel her, and there was something dark about it, something frightening. She wanted me to get rid of it. She was insistent, angry, and, I don’t know how to explain it, but she was there. How could she be in a dream?”
    “I don’t know,” Roz replied. “But I don’t care for it.”
    “Neither do I. It’s too ... intimate. Hearing her inside my head that way, whispering.” Even now, she shivered. “When I woke up, I knew she’d been there, in the room, just as she’d been