The Gilded Hour by Sara Donati Page A

aside.”
    “Dr. Savard,” said a familiar voice. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”
    Anna stopped just where she was, unsure but curious, too. Almost afraid to raise her eyes to the man’s face.
    Detective Maroney said, “You didn’t make much of an impression, Jack. She doesn’t recognize you.”
    Jack. That small hint was enough to make her look again, to take in the flash of a smile. Detective Sergeant Mezzanotte. Giancarlo. Jack.
    “Is that so?” In one smooth movement Mezzanotte sent the peach sailing across the small courtyard, where his friend caught it in an upraised hand. Then he looked at her directly, a question in his gaze.
    “I recognize you now,” Anna said. “You are dressed very differently than you were earlier today, Detective Sergeant.” He was dressed impeccably, in fact. A well-cut short-tailed jacket in the current style, a matching vest. The color could not be made out in the half-light, but she thought it might be black. Nothing flamboyant, but something more elegant than she might have expected of a police detective, even one who worked in plain clothes.
    Anna said, “You’re on duty?”
    That overwhelming smile, again. She wondered if she still could smile herself, her face felt so oddly frozen.
    He was saying, “When we met at the church I was coming from the greenhouses at home,” he said. “I was there over the weekend, and I spent the early morning trimming rose canes.”
    He looked over her head to the roses, and she followed his gaze. He had said his parents were floriculturists, she remembered now.
    “Those? Those are your roses?” She didn’t try to hide the doubt in her voice.
    “Most of those are from Klunder’s nursery, but the very pale ones to the far right are ours. Cut yesterday, on Easter Sunday after sunset, brought in this morning before dawn.”
    Because she was uncharacteristically at a loss for words, Anna said the first thing that came to mind. “How very wasteful. Mrs. Vanderbilt wanted every flower to be had, whether she could use them or not.”
    Detective Maroney said, “Aha. That’s what my sister was on about.”
    Anna turned to look at him.
    “She wanted flowers for the Easter dinner table, but there wasn’t a daffodil or a violet to be had, so she tells me, as if I plucked them all out of the ground and hid them to vex her. The best she could find was a single rose for a dollar and a half.”
    “A dollar and a half,” Anna echoed, truly taken aback. “Our nursing students pay two dollars for a week’s room and board.” She realized that her tone was accusatory, but she found it impossible to sound otherwise. To Detective Sergeant Mezzanotte she said, “Is that right, a dollar and a half for a single rose?”
    “No,” he said. “Or I should say, no honest florist would charge that much, but some will make the best of supply and demand. I can tell you that last week my uncle had to pay fifty dollars for a hundred General Jacqueminot roses.”
    “Mrs. Vanderbilt pays such prices,” Anna said. “Her greed means Detective Sergeant Maroney’s sister had no flowers for her Easter table. She would have valued what Mrs. Vanderbilt squanders.” She sounded pompous to her own ears but seemed unable to govern what came out of her mouth.
    Instead of responding, Jack Mezzanotte walked across the courtyard and crouched down for a moment. When he stood again he had a spray of three small rosebuds in one hand and a pocketknife in the other. He trimmed thorns from the stems as he came closer.
    “Dr. Savard is right,” he said to his partner, though he kept his gaze fixed on Anna. “It is a shame for the roses to go to waste. Let me put at least a few to good use.”
    He stopped in front of her, so close that she could feel the heat of him. One brow quirked up, as if to ask permission; Anna could have stopped him with a word or a raised hand. But she didn’t. She raised her face and looked at him to show that she was not