Chapter Text
Puzzle Piece 1
Westlake began as a fairly average suburban town caught between more popular places to live, which meant it was mostly of interest to commuters, broke young families, older folks enjoying retirement away from the city, and drug dealers looking to expand their business. It has stopped being quite so suburban when a nearby gazillionaire had died and his private airfield had been bought up by corporate landlords looking for faster transport links to the nearby cities. Despite some initial protests from locals, these had died down when next day delivery became an option. Before too long, property developers had decided to take advantage before the town became too popular. Although there was a chance that would never happen; despite being well connected, Westlake wasn’t popular with tourists. There wasn’t anything much to see or do, the most exciting building in town was a five-storey office block, which wasn’t exciting at all. And that was exactly what Agatha was looking for when she chose to set up her flower shop, Wild Vines, two years ago.
Puzzle Piece 2
Lilia saw Agatha unceremoniously grabbing lilies from a bucket and stuffing them into the haphazard bouquet forming in her other hand. Her dark blue heels tapped across the floor as she slowly approached the front desk.
“I guess you heard?”
“Worse, I saw her.”
A stem snapped in Agatha’s hand.
“Not planning to say hi, then?”
“What could I possibly have to talk to her about?”
Lilia simply looked at her.
“She’s FBI! She could’ve found us if she wanted to.”
“That’s a messed-up game of hide and seek.”
Puzzle Piece 3
The bell above the door jingled softly but announced the arrival of nothing more than a cool autumn breeze. Agatha glanced up from the counter of Wild Vines, her hands instinctively reaching to adjust the lilies in the closest vase, but there was no need to feign busyness; the flower shop was empty. Sunlight filtered through the bay windows that ran along the left side of the shop floor, illuminating row after row of multicoloured blooms. Although most people wouldn’t have been able to tell, Agatha noticed that the early signs of a few too many starting to turn. With a huff of annoyance, she picked up the landline behind the counter and dialled.
“Is Fisk there? It’s Agatha.” The irritation was clear in her voice, she hated his manservant, or whatever Anthony was supposed to be, the only thing he ever seemed to do was annoy her. “Yeah, hi. We need to reduce the shipment for this month.” Despite forcing her voice to sound calm, her hands fidgeted restlessly with a ballpoint pen, clicking and re-clicking the end. “I won’t be able to move as much as usual through the shop.”
The slow, measured voice at the other end of the line was as condescending as ever. “I’m working on it, but there’s not a whole lot I can do when the FBI have just moved into town.” One of those delightful new neighbours being Special Agent Rio Vidal, her ex-wife and Nicholas’ other mother, was another thing she just didn’t have the capacity to deal with right now; one catastrophe at a time, as her long-dead mother used to say. “Look, I’m well aware, but no one’s buying flowers right now, it would look odd to have the shop reporting sales through the roof. It’ll just take a little more time to keep up appearances.”
Twirling the cord of the landline between her fingers, Agatha didn’t notice the slight movement of the curtain to the corridor to their house settling as Nicholas stood stock still behind it, hand no longer outstretched to move the curtain aside. He had been about to walk in when he’d heard his mother mention the mafia boss he’d inadvertently acquired a bomb from. For a heart-stopping moment Nicholas had thought he’d been caught; he realised he was holding his breath and slowly released it. Curiousity took over as he wondered what exactly his mother was doing. Nicholas tweaked the edge of the curtain away from the door and peered through the gap, trying to gauge a little more about what exactly was going on.
It couldn’t have been more than a minute before he saw his mother hang up, her fingers tracing the edge of the phone after putting it back in the cradle. For a moment, Agatha simply stood there, unusually still. Then, Agatha straightened and ran a hand over her bottle-green apron, as if smoothing imaginary wrinkles. The bell over the door jingled and Nicholas let the edge of the curtain fall back into place as he stepped back, with just enough time to see his mother quickly slip into a bright smile as a potential customer entered, any visible worry melting away beneath the same temporary, fake warmth she had when talking to one of the neighbours she found particularly annoying.
Puzzle Piece 4
Billy pulled his hood up, over his head as he turned and walked away from the remnants of the building scattering the pavement, thick smoke curling into the air as the sound of the explosion rang in his ears. It didn’t feel as cool as it looked in films; more than anything else he just felt nauseous. Still burning scraps of old posters which had once been layered haphazardly along the street floated down, no longer advertising gigs for local bands which had long since broken up. He slipped through the crowds and easily disappeared in the chaos of the quickly growing crowds as a far-off fire engine siren pierced through blackened air.
Puzzle Piece 5
The FBI agents entered the quaint florist shop, where the light scents of roses and lilies clashed fiercely with the smell of chemicals and burnt building materials from their recent crime scene. Rio glanced at Jo before walking towards the counter, where Agatha was removing leaves from the bottoms of rose stems with some care. Rio stopped in front of the counter.
“Good morning.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have anything to say to you.”
Rio tucked her sunglasses into her shirt pocket. “Can’t spare 5 minutes for an old friend?”
Agatha looked at her, “if I see one, I might.”
Jo took out their notebook, trying their best to ignore the tension in the room. “We’re hoping you might help us make sense of a few things.”
“You know I would, but I’m just snowed under at the moment.”
Agatha put the rose she had just finished into the vase in front of her and made a show of rearranging the flowers. She just wanted them to leave, she was too tired for this.
“Did you see what happened, on the day of the day of the explosion?” Rio studied her gaze; it didn’t flicker. For a moment Agatha wondered if there was anything else Rio was searching for when she looked at her like that. Rio had been at the bureau long enough that surely, she could have her pick of assignments; why come here?
“Not really.”
“The faster you give us what we’re here for, the faster we’ll be out of your hair.”
Agatha refused to think about why that didn’t actually seem too appealing.
She bristled, then settled her elbows on the front desk, leaning forward conspiratorially. For a moment, it struck Jo that the way Agatha moved reminded them of an overzealous actress rehearsing for a play, too keen and ‘put on’. Jo took a moment for self-congratulations, their efforts in that body language analysis course were finally paying off and they would have useful stuff to feedback at the debrief with Rio later, double win. Caught in these thoughts, they almost missed when Agatha spoke.
“It was late afternoon. I was making some new bunches for the window display, hydrangeas if you want the really specific details, and then I heard the blast. I didn’t know what had happened until I came out front and saw the smoke. People were screaming and there was an awful smell of burning which doesn’t seem to fade when you step out the door.” She wrinkled her nose, as though she could still smell it.
“That’s great and all, but I meant just give us the CCTV.” Rio pointed to the small black camera in the ceiling, pointing towards the till, with the street in the background.
“I can’t,” she shrugged, “the camera’s been on the fritz since I took over this place.”
Jo looked at Rio, unsure what to do, but Rio didn’t falter. “Look, your shop’s the closest place to the site still in one piece. If we have to come back with a warrant we will,” Rio ducked her head slightly to catch Agatha’s gaze and succeeded briefly, despite Agatha’s best efforts to avoid it. But then, Rio always seemed to get her way, especially when Agatha was being pointlessly stubborn.
“I guess I’ll see you again when you get that warrant then.”
Agatha mentally added doctoring the CCTV to her to do list asap. It couldn’t be that hard to figure out; maybe Nick could help, he was good with technology. Or maybe it would be easier to just wipe it? A good old-fashioned magnet would probably do the trick.
“Not so fast. Did you see anyone unexpected around the shop that day?” Jo looked up from scribbling notes in their reporter-style notebook, pen still poised above the page. “Or anyone who seemed, maybe a little out of sorts?”
Agatha was silent for a moment, tapping her chin with her forefinger and making an effort to look thoughtful. “There was one guy, I only remember because he was from out of town and we don’t exactly get a lot of tourists, especially in here.” Agatha gestured around the shop, “people don’t often buy flowers on their way through town.”
“How did you know? That he wasn’t from around here," Jo barely glanced away from their notebook and another fresh page which was quickly filling up with a mess of notes in blue ink.
“He didn’t even know where the pharmacy was, came in here looking for directions. Phone must’ve been out of juice or something.”
“And-”
Before Jo could finish, Rio leaned down and whispered something to them. They nodded, then turned and left the shop, tucking their notebook into their inside pocket as they went.
“Thank you, Agatha.” Agatha thought it was unfair that the way Rio said her name hadn’t changed in 15 years. “See you around.”
Agatha’s reply didn’t make it past her lips before Rio was gone. She cleared her throat and turned back to tidying up the roses on the counter.
Puzzle Piece 5
Part of Agatha regretted asking Nicholas about the CCTV footage as soon as the words left her mouth. For a moment she’d forgotten how self-righteous her son was.
“You made up a guy?”
“What else was I supposed to say?”
“Nothing! You could have said nothing.” Nicholas pointed out exasperated, “instead of lying to the FBI.”
“Yeah well, it’s too late now. Can you edit it or not?”
Nicholas sighed, “sure, why not, it’s not like it’s a federal offense.”
“I taught you better than that.”
Completely deadpan, Nicholas spoke in unison with his mother, “it’s only a crime if you get caught.”
“Yes, exactly. Besides, it’s a necessary distraction. We need to keep them from looking too closely at other things, for other suspects.” Agatha avoided looking at her son, but Nicholas didn’t notice, he was busy avoiding his mother in the exact same way. “So, help me figure out how to cut the video frames in half or something.”
Puzzle Piece 6
“I need to know, what would I actually see on that CCTV?” Before Agatha could respond in protest, Rio raised her hand in a ‘stop’ motion. “Today is not the day, Agatha.”
The last two weeks had done a lot to remind both of them of the way things were and why they had changed. And to remove a lot of the softness from Rio’s voice when she said her name, but, annoyingly for Agatha, she could still faintly hear it.
“It actually doesn’t work.” Rio stared at her, hard. “No, it really doesn’t. Mostly because it’s been switched off.”
“Jesus Christ, Agatha.” Rio ran her hand through her hair.
“What, no apology? Sorry for accusing you of lying?”
“Do I want to know why you turned it off?”
“It actually wasn’t me, Nick probably did it by mistake when we switched to a different system a few months ago. But let’s just say it’s a good thing for both of us that it wasn’t recording.”
Puzzle Piece 7
Rio paced back and forth in front of the three whiteboards she had set up side-by-side, each strewn with a neon rainbow sticky notes. She scanned over them again, looking for anything that jumped out at her, any piece of the puzzle that might click into place if she could just see it. Just as the previous hundred times she’d pored over the intel, nothing did.
“Will you sit down? You’re wearing a hole in the floorboards.” Sandy whined. Rio ignored him and kept pacing, it felt like her mind was filled with racing thoughts, but they just kept racing around and around in an endless loop. She sighed, maybe she should take a break.
Before she could move towards the break room and another cup of coffee, Jo walked into the room holding a short stack of chunky, old manila folders.
“We’ve been looking at it wrong,” Jo announced, they sounded almost excited and spoke with far more confidence than they usually did.
“Go on, enlighten the rest of us,” Rio leaned back, perching on the edge of the closest desk as she folded her arms. She was still getting used to having a partner, let alone a rookie who sometimes seemed to just follow her around; it felt oddly like having a puppy.
“We’ve been thinking someone wanted to kill him, specifically.” Jo gestured at the picture of the victim in the middle of Rio’ whiteboard crime spread, then started pulling out an assortment of specific files from the folders they had been carrying and spreading them out on the desk, “but what if it wasn’t about this one guy. What if the perp wanted someone, anyone, dead?”
“The same way an arsonist just wants to set a fire?” Rio turned slightly to look at the collage of pictures beside her which were slowly taking over the table.
“More or less, yes. It’s not about the victim, it’s about the dead body and the location. It makes a statement and that, is motive.”
Jo pulled one last item out the folder and held it out to Rio.
Puzzle Piece 8
“There she is!”
A man in the crowd pointed at Nicholas, his hands cuffed behind his back as Rio held his arm and guided him across to the waiting police car.
Nicholas noticed none of it, he was too busy looking back at the flower shop and his mother a few steps behind them. But there was no look of disappointment or confusion, instead Agatha was glaring at Rio like she could kill her with a look, if she only tried hard enough; the agent firmly avoided meeting Agatha’s gaze as she walked Nicholas to the car.
“You’re saving the world!”
Even amidst the chaos and confusion of being unexpectedly arrested and now being bundled into the back of a police car, this caught Nicholas’s attention. Startled, his gaze was pulled towards the voice, and the dozens of people standing on the other side of the street, outside the cordoned off remains of the office block. A couple of people even had handmade signs held high in the air, but it wasn’t until he was sat in the back and Rio had closed the car door that Nicholas realised what the closest sign said: ‘There is no planet B’.
It was at that moment several things clicked into place for Nicholas, none of which would help him escape wrongful imprisonment; everything seemed to simply prompt more questions. They thought he had blown up a building.