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       As far as I knew, being a five feet two inch green-eyed redhead wasn’t a crime.

      Yet there I was, jailed for being a five feet two inch green-eyed redhead. At least that was what the state trooper had told me when he yanked me out of my beloved old Corvette, slapped handcuffs on my wrists, and stuffed me into the back seat of his squad car.

      “Hello? Is anyone out there?” I pressed my ear between the steel bars, listening for a reply. With all that clanging metal and cacophony of female voices ping-ponging against cement block walls, it was a little hard to hear.

      “I need to talk to you,” I shouted up the hallway. At least a dozen women responded with comments that weren’t helpful, but were pretty colorful.

      “Baby, you’re wastin’ your breath,” came an easy voice from behind. “You got to wait till breakfast is over. They eatin’ now.”

      “Someone has to be up there,” I muttered. “They wouldn’t leave the post unattended.”

      “Post?” Hearty laughter followed. “Baby, this ain’t no army base. This is lock-up.”

      Lock-up. I clasped my fingers around the bars and held on as a shudder shook my spine. I’d seen the lock-up once before, but from the other side, during one of my dad’s “educational outings,” designed to scare the bejeepers out of my brothers and me. My father, then a cop with the New Chapel, Indiana, police department, had initiated it as part of his on-going effort to keep us on the straight and narrow. It had worked well. None of us had ever been on the inside -- until now.

       “Hey!” I called up the hallway again. “I need to speak to Sgt. Sean Reilly. Tell him Abby needs to see him right away. He’s a good friend of mine. Seriously. He’ll want to talk to me.”

      “Will you shut up?”someone behind me snarled. “You’re making my head pound,”

      “Matron, please?” I called softly. I waited another few minutes, then leaned my aching forehead against one cold, thick bar. Damn it, where was Dave Hammond? I’d used my only phone call on my former boss – now my soon-to-be attorney -- and had gotten his voice mail. Didn’t he check his messages?

      Then I remembered that Dave had gone out of town last week for a legal conference and wasn’t due home until later today. And Marco, my hunky knight in shining black leather jacket, the guy who was always there for me . . . wasn’t there anymore. He and I were history. Finito. My eyes filled with tears. The shock of losing him was so new and raw that I hadn’t fully absorbed it.

      Quickly I blinked back the tears so my cell mates wouldn’t think I was some wimpy little girl. I couldn’t think about Marco now. I had much bigger problems on my plate. I glanced around at my dismal surroundings -- the long, narrow room, the stainless steel sink in the corner with the short partition beside it that hid the stinky toilet, the high barred window on the back wall, the six cots on a side wall, stacked two high, jutting from the cement blocks, the single light bulb overhead . . .  I was actually incarcerated. Me, a harmless florist.

      I glanced down at the putrid orange prison jumpsuit I had been forced to put on, then shut my eyes as the walls began to close in on me. Sweat broke out on my forehead and my hands grew clammy as my claustrophobia clawed its way to the surface. My only hope was that word of my arrest would quickly reach Sgt. Reilly’s ears, because if I didn’t get out of there soon, I was going to have a serious meltdown.

      “Baby, those bars ain’t gonna bend. You might as well stop pullin’ on ‘em and have a seat. ‘Sides, they ain’t gonna let you out until you been arraigned.”

      “I know how it works,” I muttered weakly. “I went to law school.”

      “You did? You a lawyer then? Well, that’s a whole ‘nother situation. You hear that, girls? We got ourselves a bonafide--”

      “I’m not a lawyer,” I said, cutting off the sudden excited chatter. “I didn’t make it.”

      “You run outta money, or what?”

      “Brains.” Like I needed to be reminded of that particular failure now. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not go into it.”

      “So what are you in for?”

      Her questions weren’t helping my glum mood. “No one would tell me. All I know is that I didn’t do anything wrong.”

      “Sugar, that’s what everyone says.”

      “I don’t care what everyone says,” I snapped. “I’m innocent.”

      “Well, someone’s got herself some attitude.”

      There were snickers at her comment.

      “And someone’s got herself too many nosy questions,” I retorted.

      Silence.

      Ticking off an inmate probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, considering I had nowhere to hide, so I loosened my grip on the bars and turned to apologize. There were five women in with me, each on her own cot. One was a pasty-skinned, emaciated middle-aged white woman who was so blotto that her eyes kept crossing. She was lying on a second tier cot, one arm hanging limply off the side. Below her was a young Latino with long, dark hair who looked like she was barely in high school.

      On another upper cot was a woman who desperately needed a good shampoo and bath, and possibly a de-lousing. Beneath her was a woman displaying lots of multi-hued tattoos on her arms and neck. One cot over was an attractive black woman sporting an ugly purple bruise on her jaw and another around one eye. She was giving me a scowl. Clearly, this was the woman I’d offended.

      “Sorry,” I said to the scowler. “I’m getting some major claustrophobia here and it makes me extremely edgy.”

      Her expression softened. “Yep, this place’ll surely do that to you.”

      “I tried to explain my condition to the state trooper, but he didn’t care.”

      “Did you think he would?”

      Well, actually, I had, but I didn’t want to admit it now for fear of showing my naivete. I’d even pulled out my ace-in-hole, telling the trooper that my dad was a twenty year veteran of the New Chapel police force, but he’d just ignored me. He’d laughed out loud when I said I hadn’t done anything wrong. The only thing he seemed to give a rip about was whether I understood my Miranda rights. I told him what he could do with those rights. It hadn’t improved my situation…

      Somewhere down the hallway a door clanged open, then I heard the sound of many heavy boots thundering toward us.

      “Stand back!” the guards were shouting, striking the steel with their clubs.

      As my cell mates fell back, allowing me my first glimpse of the hallway, the jail matron strode forward. But this wasn’t Matron Patty, the petite, gum-snapping, ball of fire my dad had introduced me to years before. This was a thick-set, no-nonsense woman who bore a striking resemblance to a pug.

      “Your name!” she barked, making me jump.

      “Abby Knight.” It came out in an embarrassing squeak.

      She glared at me as she inserted a key into the lock and slid back the cell door. “Your lawyer’s here. You’re free to leave.”

       “Thank you,” I whispered.

      At once, like a messenger from heaven, a tall, familiar cop stepped inside the cell. “Let’s go, Abby.”

      I blinked up at him in surprise, so happy to see my old buddy Sgt. Reilly that I could have kissed him. However, he didn’t seem all that pleased to see me. He was giving me a look that said, I should have known I’d find you at the center of this.

      Sticking close to my bodyguard, I walked through the open door, leaving my impoverished sisters behind.

      In a tiny cubicle just inside the main security door, I stripped off the ugly jumpsuit and donned my own clothing, never fully appreciating just how much I liked them until that moment. I checked my purse to make sure everything was there, then headed outside, where I gazed up at the blue sky and breathed in the crisp November air. Ah, the glorious smell of freedom.

      Reilly was waiting on the sidewalk with a slightly paunchy, balding man in a gray suit and white shirt, red tie loosened at the collar, and a briefcase in hand -- Dave Hammond.

   “Dave, you’re back!” I said, throwing my arms around him…

#

      Dave’s office, and my flower shop, were located on streets surrounding the big limestone courthouse in the heart of New Chapel, Indiana. Bloomers Flower Shop was on Franklin Street, on the east side of the courthouse, and Dave’s law office was on Lincoln, above a tavern on the north side. As we made our way toward his office I phoned Bloomers to let my assistants know where I was and what had happened, promising to give them the details when I got back. My only request was that if my mother or father called, they were to be told I was out on a delivery and would get back to them soon. With any luck, they wouldn’t hear the news until I’d had a chance to prepare them.

      We climbed the lop-sided stairs of the narrow old brick building to his second floor law firm. With a brief hello to his secretary, we headed straight for his office, a room with forest green carpeting and peach walls that shouted nineteen eighties. I sat in one of the two leather club chairs in front of his desk and Dave settled into his creaky, high-backed brown leather chair, slid his briefcase across the top, and leaned back with a sigh. “Coffee?”

      “I could really use some water.” I glanced at my hands and thought of those grimy steel bars. “And maybe some disinfectant.”

      Minutes later Martha bustled in with a cup of coffee for Dave and a bottle of water for me, promising to return with hand sanitizing lotion. She was always on top of things. She reminded me of my own assistant, Grace, who used to work for Dave. In fact, I’d met her in this very office when I’d clerked for him -- back in the days I thought I had a chance in law school.

      Dave had thought so, too, apparently, or he wouldn’t have hired me. But after I flunked out and found a new home at Bloomers Flower Shop, where I’d blossomed, so to speak, he agreed that flowers were my true calling. He just hadn’t realized that they weren’t my only calling. I was developing quite a little side-line solving puzzles, usually involving some very bad people.

      “End my misery, Dave,” I said, opening the screw top water bottle. “What did the trooper think I’d done?”

      “It’s nothing to worry about, Abby, a case of mistaken identity.”

      I nearly spilled the water. Mistaken identity?

      “The trooper was responding to an APB that had just gone out. He happened to be passing by the public parking lot as you were getting out of your car this morning and reacted instinctively. He’s a rookie, and right now, a very embarrassed one.”

      “He ought to be. But you still haven’t told me what my alleged crime was.”

      Dave gazed at me from under lowered brows. “Are you calm?”

      I put the bottle on his desk and showed him my unclenched fists. “Absolutely.”

      “Murder.”

      Not calm now. My fingers curled into my palms as my eyes narrowed in fury.

      “Are you okay?” Dave asked.

      “Not so much. Who was the victim?”

      He scanned the typed page in front of him. “No information on that yet.”

      “And this person the trooper thought was me, is her name Elizabeth Blume?”

      “Yes. Do you know her?”

      With a groan, I buried my face in my hands. “She’s my evil twin.”

      “Your what?”

      “My doppelganger, my deadly double -- whatever you want to call her. You’re probably the only one on the square who hasn’t met her. She’s a young woman I used to babysit, and for the past three weeks she’s been slowly making her life over into a perfect copy of mine.  I knew she was planning something, I just never expected a murder.”

      At that thought I sat forward, my whole body tensing. “Have I been cleared as a suspect?”

      “Your arrest was a mistake. You’re not a suspect, Abby.”

      “I will be, Dave. Trust me. It’s all part of her plan.”

      “You’d better enlighten me.” He took a hearty swallow of coffee and, thus fortified, pulled his yellow legal pad closer and readied his pen as I began to speak.