A Garden of Vipers by Jack Kerley

wasn’t in the driveway. I walked to her porch and rang the bell. There was no response, and I considered letting myself in with my key and waiting.
    â€œCarson?” I heard my name called in a quavering female voice. I turned to see Leanna Place, Dani’s elderly next-door neighbor. She gestured me over like I was a servant.
    â€œCome over, Carson. Look what’s here.”
    I sighed, not in the mood for Ms. Place. She thought dating a cop was too coarse for Dani, below her station. Ms. Place always pretended to be solicitous of my health and welfare, all the while launching small, backhanded missiles.
    I followed her inside her tidy home. Beside the threshold was a huge vase of flowers. At least I assumed a vase was beneath the explosion of color and scent. Roses and tulips and carnations reached to my waist.
    â€œIt’s for DeeDee,” Ms. Place said. Like most, she used Dani’s television name. “The flowers came an hour ago. DeeDee wasn’t home so I took the delivery. Aren’t they gorgeous?” She gave me a wry eyebrow. “I wonder who they’re from.”
    It rankled that the old shrew thought me incapable of sending flowers.
    â€œMe, maybe?”
    She fluffed the blooms like a pillow, then tapped the small envelope wagging from the vase. “The flowers are from Jon-Ella’s, Carson. I’d guess three hundred dollars’ worth. Not something one gets on a policeman’s salary.”
    Jon-Ella’s was Mobile’s most hoity-toity florist, over in Spring Hill. I once priced a half dozen roses at Jon-Ella’s, gasped, got them at Winn-Dixie for a quarter of the price.
    I avoided telling Ms. Place that euthanasia’s not such a bad idea and toted the flowers back to Dani’s. I let myself in, set the massive arrangement on her dining room table. The sender’s card fluttered before my eyes, a small dot of tape holding it closed.
    I left it untouched.
    I made it all the way to the bottom of the porch steps before turning back. The tape peeled loose with ease and I slid the card from the envelope to my sweating palm.
    Dearest DeeDee…
    The beauty of these flowers pales beside your beauty.
    Love and Hot Kisses,
    Buck
    I left the flowers in the small vestibule outside the front door, where a delivery person would set them. I don’t remember driving home.
    Â 
    I was sitting on my deck in the dark, clothing optional this time of night, nearing midnight. The wind had picked up, a hot breath keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Far across the water a drill rig flamed off gas, orange fire pressing indigo sky. There was a high whine in the back of my head.
    My dining room table was filled with my half of Rudolnick’s files. I’d put in a half hour of reviewing, pushed them away, come outside to think about nothing, Dani included.
    My cell phone rang from the table beside me. Dani, her voice a tight whisper.
    â€œCarson, I think someone’s been in my house.”
    â€œA break-in? Are the cops there?”
    A hesitation. “I didn’t call them.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œIt’s that there’s no…that is, the alarm didn’t go off.”
    â€œWhere’d they get in? Door? Window?”
    â€œIt’s not that there’s actually, uh…I’m scared, Carson. That much I know. Can you come over?”
    When I pulled to the curb in front of Dani’s house, I saw her at the window, backlit, the curtain pushed aside. Her outline was hauntingly beautiful, and I felt an ache simultaneously within me and far away. She opened the door as I stepped to the porch.
    â€œThanks for coming so fast.”
    I brushed past and left her hug hanging in the air. Her front closet held the alarm center. No lights were flashing to indicate a breach.
    â€œYou haven’t reset anything, have you?” I asked. “Moved the parameters higher?” The detection modes were set to thresholds so the system