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It’s not the weirdest undercover assignment Ray’s ever been given – witness pretending to be a balding
Italian, or the three days he spent as a children’ clown – but it’s gotta come pretty close.
He doesn’t
even recognise himself in the mirror, which is kind of the point, but the smoothed down black hair, the fake moustache and
goatee make him look like the devil. Somehow, he doesn’t see it convincing the florist’s assistant to open up
to him about her side-line in drug dealing, but what the hell, Fraser’s been sent to some conference by the Ice Queen
and somehow police work’s just not the same when it doesn’t involve leaping off or through something on a daily
basis.
So he puts on his apron and stands at the cash desk with the florist’s assistant Sasha, who looks barely
old enough to be *in* college, never mind out of it, which she is, with a degree in horticulture, and has hair dyed in streaks
falling over her face. She actually knows something about flowers, which is more than can be said for Ray, so his first day
consists of her putting together elaborate arrangements and rolling her eyes when he hands her the wrong greenery, then thorns
in his fingers while he wraps the flowers and rings them up for an insanely large amount of money, considering they’ll
be dead in a couple of days anyway. The rest of the time, she tries to force herbal tea on him, he tries to persuade her round
to coffee, and they make small talk while Ray tries to figure out how to swing the conversation casually round to the illegal
drugs the owner’s convinced Sasha is sending out to her customers in with the flowers.
The first day’s
a total washout, and Ray goes home with eyes so itchy he’d like to scratch them out because, oh yeah, pollen and hay
fever, not a great mix. A week, Welsh said, two max. Ray stops at the drug store on his way in the next day.
He’s
just stepping out the door when he sees Frannie coming round the corner and jumps back inside, before she sees him and asks
why he’s skulking in drug store doorways when he’s meant to be on a beach in Mexico. Like he’s go back there
after the last time; he wants a bit more out of his vacations than just a poncho.
The guy stacking shelves gives him
a look that says he’s one step from calling the police, the loonie bin or both, and Ray remembers he’s got devil
hair, which, Frannie probably wouldn’t have recognised him anyway.
“Just, er, remembered I’m outta,
uh, toothpaste,” Ray offers, grabbing the closest one to hand. He’s already paid for it when he realizes he just
bought kids’ strawberry flavoured gel. He’ll give it to Turnbull, he’ll be too polite to refuse. Probably
use it as well.
He glances up and down the street before leaving the store doorway, feeling stupid. The whole setup’s
pretty stupid though, hoping no-one will recognise him cos the only one who knows where he is is Welsh, police stations being
what they are for rumours spreading and Sasha being the daughter of one of the patrol guys. He was Welsh, he’d’a
got someone in from another precinct, someone half of the residents of the 2-7 district *doesn’t* know, but the shop
owner’s some childhood friend of Welsh’s, and Ray’s kind of flattered anyway that Welsh picked him, dumb
as it sounds. Besides, he’s got nothing better to do with Fraser out of town. Who plans a conference the week of Valentine’s
Day anyway?
Sasha’s apparently decided that, since he’s going to be working with her and she says his hand
writing’s not neat enough to write the cards, she’ll give him a few lessons in floristry instead. It’s definitely
kind of girly, but then so is dancing, according to most people, and, like dancing, it’s a lot harder than it looks.
Sasha actually grins at him when he puts together a bunch of red roses with baby’s breath for a guy who comes in at
the end of the day, which is cool, but he’s still no closer to any kind of talk about little packets of white powder.
The
third day. Sasha leaves him alone for a few minutes while she runs down the street for another box of rosehip tea, even after
Ray offers her some of his coffee. He takes the opportunity to go through her little cupboard in the back office – well,
if she’s going to leave it open – and he’s just closing it when the bell over the door rings. He’s
expecting it to be Sasha, but when he goes out front, it’s not.
“Oh. Hey,” Huey says. He looks straight
at Ray for a second, without even a flash of recognition, then turns back to the display of chrysanthemums he was looking
at. “I need some flowers, something to take on a date.”
“Yeah?” Ray asks. Without him meaning
to, his voice comes out sounding like someone blended his and Fraser’s together, which is kind of weird. “For
Friday?”
“No.” Huey glances over at him again, looking horrified. “It’s not that kind
of date. She’d my mum’s friend’s daughter, but I need to make a good impression.”
“Sure,
OK.” Ray runs over Sasha’s lessons from yesterday. Roses are good, though maybe not for first dates, daisies,
carnations, tulips, basically anything familiar, unless the customer has his own ideas. Chrysanthemums are mother-in-law flowers.
When it comes to floristry, the customer is definitely not always right. “How about some nice roses?” Ray asks,
grabbing a decent sized bunch of pink roses, just to see the look on Huey’s face.
“No,” Huey says
firmly. “Too, you know.”
Ray doesn’t, but he pushes on anyway. “We’ve got a nice selection
of carnations,” he offers instead. Huey hmms over them for a while, suggests chrysanthemums again, which Ray pretends
not to hear, and finally leaves with a nice, if Ray does say so himself, arrangement of white and pink carnations against
fern leaves.
They get busier as the day goes on, and by Thursday they’re pretty much constantly occupied. Ray’s
heard so many variations on ‘roses are read, violets are blue’ that he’s like to scratch the words from
the English language, most of them from the surprisingly large number of cops who come in to buy roses for their wives and
girlfriends, half of which Ray would have tagged as terminally single, like he’s one to talk.
The only good thing
about it being so busy is that Sasha forgets he’s there most of the time. Ray sees her slip a little packet of white
powder into a couple of arrangements as she hands them over, but he can’t figure out where she’s getting them
from. Maybe in the pocket of her apron, which she takes home with her every evening.
When the bell over the door rings
and Ray looks up to see Frannie slip inside, he’s so used to familiar faces that he doesn’t give it a second thought
before going over and asking if he can help her.
“Yeah.” She fingers the waxy petal of a large orange daisy,
not looking at him. “You do deliveries, right?”
“Yeah. Ten dollars in central Chicago, twenty further
out.” There’s a guy with a van who picks up all the bouquets at lunch-time and takes them round. The owner thought
he might be in on whatever Sasha’s doing, but she always leaves Ray to deal with him, saying only that things ended
badly. Ray knows all about that, and glares at the guy on principle.
“Great.” Frannie fingers the flower
again, looking unsure. Ray’s tempted to tell her that Fraser won’t like the daisies, at least not the orange ones.
They’ll clash with his tunic, for one thing. “All right. Can you send a dozen of these to this address?”
She shoves a scrap of paper at him.
“Sure.” Ray opens it up, expecting to see the address of the Consulate.
Instead, there’s an apartment number that he doesn’t recognise. Huh. Not Fraser after all. “You wanna write
a card to go with them?”
“Yeah.” Frannie looks at him, finally, and frowns. “You don’t
usually work here.”
“Nah, just helping out with the Valentine’s rush,” Ray explains. He hands
her a little white card and a pen. “You write your message, I’ll ring this up.”
“You look familiar
though.” Frannie taps the pen against the counter a couple of time. “Have we met?”
“Definitely
not. I’m sure I’d remember you.” Although Ray means it sincerely, for his character, it still comes out
sounding like a line. Frannie glares at him – that, at least, is familiar – and shields her card with her other
hand while she writes.
When she’s gone, Ray sneaks a look at the name on the delivery docket, Elaine Besbriss.
Learn something new every day, he thinks, and goes to help Sasha wrap the largest bunch of roses he’s ever seen.
On
Friday, Valentine’s Day, it rains. Sasha turns up half an hour late with the keys, complaining about the bus service,
by which point Ray’s dripping, even standing under the canopy, and unimpressed with the start to this Valentine’s
Day. Bad enough that he didn’t sleep well, that he was up half the night debating whether he should call Stella or not.
He did last year, which she kind of seemed to like, for a little while, until he said something wrong, he doesn’t remember
what, at which point she hung up on him. In which case, not a great idea for this year, but it’s a kind of tradition
now, and he just wants to wish her happy valentine’s, for old time’s sake. Trouble is that she’s more likely
to see it as him returning to his stalking ways, which wouldn’t be great, specially after she made a point of telling
him, in the middle of complaining about him not signing his paperwork, that she had a date.
“Here.” Sasha
finally gets the door open and steps inside, shaking out her umbrella, not a hair out of place or even damp. “Go in
back and dry off a bit. Have some ginger tea.”
Ray shudders at the thought, but dry sounds pretty good. He locks
himself in the bathroom with a cup of coffee, and towels his hair until it’s mostly dry. There’s not a lot he
can do about his clothes, but he leans against the heater for a while until they start steaming, catching a glimpse of himself
in the mirror. Steam rising all round him, devil hair slicked down with water, apart from a bit over his left ear which is
sticking up… thank God no-one he knows is gonna recognise him.
When he steps out of the bathroom, he very nearly
ducks right back in again. That voice, chatting to Sasha about the virtues of a pinch of salt in the water to keep flowers
fresh, he’s know anywhere, even if it is still meant to be at a conference.
“Sure Benton,” Sasha
says as Ray pours himself another cup of coffee and tries to deicide whether to stay where he is or risk it. “But, honestly,
I’m not convinced these home remedies have anything to recommend them. I did my dissertation on something similar, and
there’s no scientific evidence.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Fraser says. Ray risks
a peek round the door frame and there he is, leaning on the counter – Fraser, leaning! – watching Sasha finish
wrapping a bunch of bright yellow tulips. “But science isn’t everything of course. Thank you kindly.”
And
just who, Ray wonders, is Fraser buying flowers for, on Valentine’s Day. A horrible thought strikes him – maybe
that’s why Fraser’s home early from the conference, he’s got a date with the Ice Queen and she let him come
back early.
“Hey Ben, you done yet?” Sasha calls. She sticks her head through the doorway. “That’s
weird, Benton and Ben.”
Ray follows her into the shop, trying not to blush. It was the first thing that came
to him when he needed a name. “Friend of yours?”
“Not exactly.” Sasha shrugs. “He comes
in here sometimes, works just round the corner, some kind of liaison with the police. He’s Canadian. Listen, I gotta
run out, can you hold the place down for me for a few?”
“No problem.” Ray gestures round the empty
shop. “Leave your apron here, why don’t you, no sense us both looking like drowned rats.”
Sasha eyes
him suspiciously for a minute, then shrugs and pulls her apron over her head, dropping it on the counter. “I’ll
be five minutes,” she promises, grabs the store’s umbrella and plunges into the rain.
There are, just like
Ray thought, half a dozen packets of white powder in the front pocket, sealed with tape. He peels the corner of one open,
tipping a little powder onto a cut off piece of wrapping paper. Could be cocaine…
The bell over the door goes
and he drops the packet hurriedly, but it’s too late. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sasha
demands, storming across and swiping the packets into her pocket. “You’re going through my stuff?”
“You’re
back quickly,” Ray offers.
“I forgot my purse, like it’s any of your business. What are you *doing*?”
Sasha’s eyes blaze with anger.
“What’s in the packets?” Ray asks. “Looks like cocaine
to me.”
“Oh for God’s sake!” Sasha throws her hands up. “Do I look like a complete idiot
to you – don’t answer that! My dad’s a fucking cop at the 27th, you think I’m dumb enough to deal
drugs right around the corner from where he works?”
“Maybe,” Ray says. This isn’t going the
way he expected it to, and he’s getting a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. “So what is it then?”
“It’s
none of your fucking business.” Sasha pulls her apron back on, her errand apparently forgotten. “Even if it was
drugs. I can’t believe you.”
Ray considers for a split second, then pulls his badge from the pocket of
his jeans. “Yeah, it is. Especially if it’s drugs.”
Sasha stares at the badge with wide eyes. “You’re
a cop? Wait a minute – you’re undercover? On me?” She whirls round once, agitated. “That fucking witch,
she put you up to this? The owner, right, the one who – she thinks I’m dealing drugs out of her store? God, is
the whole world insane or something?”
Ray’s kind of tempted to say yes, if this is any indication. “What’s
the powder, if it’s not drugs? She’s seen you slipping it into the flowers, so’ve I.”
“This
is mad.” Sasha shakes her head. “It’s flower food, all right? I’m working on something to keep cut
flowers alive for longer, I was trialling it here, but I didn’t want that witch to know cos she’d try and take
a cut of it. I’m not gonna be a florist forever.”
“Oh,” Ray says.
“Here.”
Sasha tears open one of the packets and shoves it at him. “Taste it, if you don’t believe me.”
It
tastes bitter and chemical and faintly of something that reminds him of soil. Fraser could probably list the ingredients for
him, but even Ray knows this doesn’t taste like any street drug around. “I’ll have to take some back to
the station for testing.” He closes up the packet again and starts to take his apron off, but Sasha catches his arm.
“Where
do you think you’re going?”
“Back to the station to tell my lieutenant I just spent four days watching
a horticultural entrepreneur,” Ray tells her, but she shakes her head.
“No way in hell. It’s Valentine’s
Day, you’re not leaving me here all on my own.” Her eyes light up gleefully. “You owe me.”
*
Sasha
angry is not a woman to be trifled with, so Ray eventually capitulates, other than making a quick call to Welsh to explain
what’s happened. He does take off the moustache and goatee, to Sasha’s amusement. Once she gets over the fumingly
angry stage, which lasts until lunch-time, she’s actually not bad to be around, now he’s not looking for evidence
of drug dealing.
Even so, he was glad to escape the florist’s, and sneak off to dye his hair back to a more normal
colour, ignoring his cell phone ringing. It’ll just be Welsh, calling to demand he goes in and does his paperwork.
Instead,
he’s standing on the sidewalk outside the Canadian Consulate, arguing with himself as he paces. Fraser’s office
light is still on, which means he hasn’t gone out, at least not yet. He’s back from the conference almost a day
early though, and he still hasn’t called Ray to tell him, and he bought flowers. Has apparently bought flowers before,
but there’s just no way he’s seeing someone he hasn’t told Ray about. They spend most of their time together,
Ray’s actually surprised he hadn’t caught Fraser buying flowers before.
He should go home. Fraser’s
entitled to a life, after all, except what’s he doing keeping his secret romantic life from Ray? Ray’s told him
all his secrets, all his embarrassing experiences with women – Fraser not doing the same just ain’t right. They’re
partners and partners share.
Ray turns on his heel and marches up the steps to the Consulate to knock. It takes some
increasingly violent pounding, but finally Fraser opens the door, blinking at him in surprise. He’s out of uniform,
Ray notices, but not dressed up. Maybe not a date after all.
“Good evening, Ray,” Fraser says. “I
wasn’t expecting you.”
“I wasn’t expecting you either Fraser,” Ray retorts. Face to face
with Fraser, the mild irritation he carried around all day quickly boils up into anger. “Thought I was picking you up
from the airport tomorrow.”
“Ah, well.” Fraser actually looks almost uncomfortable. “Well,
Inspector Thatcher decided that I need not attend the final sessions, and I didn’t want to trouble you at work, so I
took a taxi from the airport.”
Which probably meant he walked. “So were you gonna tell me you were back,
or wait for me to get all the way out to the airport?”
“Of course, I was going to phone you tomorrow,”
Fraser says. “Though now of course I needn’t bother. Actually –” Fraser frowns at him slightly. “How
did you know that I was here Ray?”
“You do any shopping after you got back?” Ray asks, thinking,
go on, I dare you.
“Well, I needed some milk, and Diefenbaker did insist on stopping for a doughnut on the way
back from the market.” Fraser looks even more confused.
“That’s it?” Ray asks. “No other
stops? Nothing for, say, Valentine’s Day?”
That’s – Ray wouldn’t believe it if he wasn’t
seeing it with his own eyes, but Benton Fraser is blushing. “I don’t know what you mean, Ray.”
“Yeah
you do! I saw you, Fraser, at the florists. The one you call into all the time, according to Sasha.”
“Well,
I wouldn’t say I frequent it, as she seems to be implying, but yes, I have called in on occasion.”
“Occasion
like today,” Ray presses. “She says you buy tulips, every time you go in. No-one buys flowers just for the hell
of it Fraser, who are you giving them to?” And why haven’t you told me, he wants to add, but that just makes him
sound jealous, and he’s not jealous, he’s angry at being left out. Not jealous at all. It’s not like he
wants to buy Fraser flowers, even if he did think about how much Fraser might like one of the dragon flowers Sasha was raving
over.
“Now, tulips are a nice bright flower, it’s very pleasant to have some colour in one’s living
space sometimes.”
“Bullshit, Fraser. I’ve seen your living space, you don’t even have a vase.”
“The
Consulate actually has a great number of entirely suitable -” Fraser starts but Ray cuts him off with a wave of his
hand.
“You. Do not. Buy flowers. For you office! You come from the great white north, no colour for miles around.
What’s the big secret Fraser?”
He takes a step forward, getting right in Fraser’s space and Fraser
actually steps back. He’s never done that before, not even on their first day together.
Ray looks up at Fraser,
who’s doing the blank Mountie face. That can’t be right, it just can’t, they’ve been working together
for over a year, surely he’d know – except that Fraser obviously doesn’t know. “Fraser?”
“Yes
Ray?”
“The flowers, the tulips… Who’d you buy them for?”
Fraser looks back at
him very solemnly. Ray holds his breath. If he’s wrong, he’ll just… he’ll go back to the florists,
ask them to take him on full-time. It’ll be the only option.
“For you, Ray,” Fraser says, and Ray
nearly chokes when he lets out the breath at the same moment as Fraser leans in and kisses him.
Fortunately, things
get better after that. A lot better.
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