A Berry Horrible Holiday

by A. R. Winters

  “Correct.”

  “But somebody did hire you to do something,” I said.

  No answer was my only response. I decided to interpret that non-answer as a yes.

  “Who hired you?” I asked.

  Lucas stared at the closed door. His expression gave nothing away.

  “What were you hired to do?”

  He didn’t say anything at first, but then, “Closure. She needed it. Never meant to fall for her. Wasn’t supposed to. She’s crazy. Her old man too. I thought… maybe after she got closure, there’d be room in her heart for me.”

  “You were hired to give her closure?”

  His head swiveled so that he could look me dead in the eye. “No, I was not hired to give her closure. I was hired to give her something else. Now go away.”

  He stood and headed for the closed door of Rita’s room.

  “Wait!”

  He stopped and turned.

  “Did you give it to her? The thing you were hired to give to her, did you give it?”

  “Yesss,” he said.

  This was my chance, maybe my only one. He was giving answers to my questions. I hoped he wouldn’t stop now.

  “Lucas, I won’t turn her in. I won’t give her up, but I need to know. I need the truth.” I took a deep breath. “Did Rita kill Doug?”

  Chapter 31

  I’ll admit, I was a little surprised when he didn’t simply turn his back to me and disappear behind Rita’s hospital room door. Instead, he stood frozen, staring with those hollow, dead eyes of his. Finally he spoke.

  “Maybe.”

  That was all he said. Just that one word. But it seemed to contain all the sound of the world, punctuated before and after by the emptiness of a vacuum.

  He then turned and was gone.

  A part of me was glad he hadn’t definitively said she’d done it. I had meant the promise that I wouldn’t tell on her when the words came out of my mouth, but the reality of the situation made that promise feel like a big ol’ lie. Because it was.

  If Rita killed Dougie Dan, I would tell. I think. Probably…

  Zoey was standing at a distance near the end of the hall. She’d been pacing back and forth with her phone to her ear, but she shoved the thing into her pocket and headed my way as soon as Lucas disappeared inside of Rita’s room. I didn’t even see her turn the thing off. I suspected her phone call had ended long ago and that she simply hadn’t wanted to interrupt.

  “Learn anything?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I learned that we’re stuck.” I got up and we threaded our way through the hospital corridors to find our way out as we talked. “Lucas is in love with Rita even though he thinks she’s crazy. He also thinks she might’ve killed Dougie Dan.”

  “Mmm, nobody’s perfect. What now?”

  “If Rita did kill Dougie Dan, we have to figure out a way to prove it. We can’t just stop with an assumption.”

  “Any ideas how to prove it?”

  I shook my head. “Absolutely none.”

  “Okay, what else don’t we know?” Zoey asked. “Maybe we can figure things out if we approach it from another angle.”

  She was right. “Lucas is a private investigator,” I said.

  “Ohhh, that’s new.”

  “But you guys weren’t able to find him in any databases. And he said there are warrants out against him. And… there’s a chance he might also be a killer for hire.”

  “And why don’t we think he killed Dougie Dan?” Zoey asked.

  “He said no one hired him to.”

  “Ominous. And what about Rita’s attack? Could he have done it?”

  “He strike you as the kind of guy who would botch it by hitting too hard—or not hard enough?”

  “No,” Zoey said.

  “Me neither.”

  “I think that Michael could’ve botched it,” Zoey added.

  “Me, too,” I said. The thought made me sad. “I don’t think we can prove he did it, though.” We didn’t have a weapon. We didn't have any evidence. We just had a bunch of possibilities. But there was one lead we could follow up on. “We’ve got to figure out who Lucas really is, and we’ve got to figure out who hired him.”

  “Follow the money,” Zoey said.

  “The money…” I parroted. “Like the money Dougie Dan stole. Maybe he hired Lucas.”

  “For what?”

  I felt the brain strain of reaching for an answer, but to no end. I couldn’t make the truth stand up and wave a hand at me. Whatever it was, it was playing Where’s Waldo? with a whole bunch of maybe this and maybe that.

  “Think you can figure out Lucas’s real identity?” I asked Zoey. If we could figure that out, we’d know something. An actual truth. It’d be a start.

  “Yeah, I can get it done. Let’s get back to the Justice League.”

  I studied the side of her face as we walked. “You like saying that, don’t you? The Justice League?”

  She smiled. “Yeah, I do.”

  We made it back to the B&B to find the Citizen Justice League guys hard at work. What they’d done to restore the functionality of the tent and the equipment inside was amazing. It looked like a mad scientist’s lab of mechanical creatures spliced together, but screens flickered with life. Some even boasted information.

  “Internet’s restored,” Gaunt-Face Paul told Zoey as soon as we arrived.

  “The subroutines I installed?” Zoey asked.

  “Lost,” he reported.

  Zoey sat down in the office chair that sat in front of the bank of screens. Its padding was charred, and its frame was heat warped. She didn’t seem to notice.

  “Our IP will be visible,” Zoey said, frowning, but her gaze was introspective. Everyone around her froze, watching, as she thought. “Got it!” she announced, and the collective breathed once more.

  Zoey’s fingers went to work, a blur across a pink keyboard sporting glittering unicorn decals.

  “Found it dumpster diving for equipment behind a three-story corporate house, all in town,” one of the guys said.

  I rewarded him with a smile that made him blush to the tips of his ears. I liked a guy who wasn’t afraid of a little pink.

  “This going to take a while?” I asked Zoey.

  “Mmmm,” Zoey answered. It wasn’t a yes or a no. She was in the zone.

  I decided to leave Zoey to her work. I’d only be a distraction.

  I headed to the kitchen. I couldn’t help it. It was the place I gravitated toward. It was my feel-good place. My sanctuary. The spot where life had a chance at being perfect. The perfect golden pie crust, the perfectly risen souffle, the perfectly baked loaf of banana nut bread—it didn’t matter that I couldn’t make any of it without botching it beyond recognition. There was that chance, that possibility, that something could be perfect. I guessed that was enough.

  Stepping in through the door from the great outside to the enormous country kitchen didn’t disappoint. Pots simmered on the stove. The tangy scent of yeasty bread rising tickled my nose. A huge batch of what had to be mulled wine steamed from an open slow cooker. And a tray of baked apples dappled with caramel and raisins cooled in one corner.

  I sighed. Content. Yep, this was the place I wanted to be.

  Mama Hendrix was there, of course, but so was the buff and burly Tim. They were standing with their heads close together, and Mama Hendrix was holding a cell phone up in front of her. It became quickly evident that they were looking at something rather than posing for a selfie.

  “Here,” Mama Hendrix said, doing a two-fingered swipe on the phone’s surface, the kind of swipe used to enlarge an image. “Make the cut right here. That’s the best place to graft the heartwood.”

  “And it’ll grow a whole different kind of apple?” Tim asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Mama Hendrix confirmed. “It’ll be just like you’ve planted a whole different tree.”

  “And all the tree’s apples will be the new kind?” Tim asked.

  “No, just the appl
es that are produced on the new grafted limb will be the new variety.”

  “This is so cool. Doug never showed me anything like it.”

  “You’ve got a lot to learn,” Mama Hendrix said, “but I’ve got faith in you. By this time next year, you’ll know more than you thought there was to know.”

  Tim chuckled. “And realize I still know next to nothing?”

  “Pretty much,” Mama Hendrix winked. “Cruel twist of the universe. The more you learn, the less you know. Soon, you and Sandra’ll be able to run this whole place. I won’t be needed around, not one bit.”

  “I can’t imagine you not being needed,” said Tim lightly.

  I wondered if that’s what Mama Hendrix was thinking when Dougie Dan was alive—that he and Sandra could take over the running of her business. Now, it was Tim who could be running it.

  Tim headed out with a nod to me as he passed. He didn’t look mad, which was a relief. He certainly had good reason to hold a grudge against me and Zoey’s crew of tech miscreants, but instead he seemed in good spirits. There was even a spring in his step and the tug of a smile on his lips.

  “You!” Mama Hendrix said, her full focus shifting to me.

  I jumped. My mind raced, wondering what I’d done that might have upset our host.

  Found an employee dead? Check.

  Forcefully interrogated another employee? Check.

  Delivered news that made yet another employee run away in tears? Made discoveries that had officials of various natures invading her property multiple times? Check and check.

  I wasn’t sure what else I could do to the woman. I supposed there was always blowing up her home.

  “Yes, ma’am?” I asked.

  “Don’t you yes, ma’am me. ‘Mama Hendrix’ will do nicely. Now sit. I don’t even know what you’re doing up and about. You can be my taster. Nothing more. You’re not stirring a bowl, flipping an egg, or icing a cake. It’s shameful how hard I’ve been working you. Now, you sit right down. I want you to sample some apple-cranberry trail mix I’ve been working on. You tell me what you think.”

  I sat at the end of the long table and watched Mama Hendrix fetch a bowl of goodness from a dehydrator I hadn’t even spotted. She then pulled a tray out of one of the oven cubbies and mixed a scoop of its contents in with what she’d claimed from the dehydrator.

  It felt weird having her take care of me. I wanted to get up and help, but she’d made it clear that such an act would be unacceptable.

  “Here, try this,” she said, sliding the small, lovely blue bowl in front of me.

  Visually, I could make out dried chunks of apples and cranberries. There was also toasted pecans, pumpkin seeds, and—I took a nibble—crystalized maple syrup. But there was also more, so much more. The mix was rich with spices. There was salt, of course, but I challenged myself to figure out what the other spices could be.

  I leaned over the bowl and breathed deep.

  Chapter 32

  I smelled Cinnamon…

  Cloves…

  Cardamom…

  Lemon zest…

  And…

  I looked up at her in surprise. “Cayenne pepper?”

  Mama Hendrix rewarded me with a big, plump-cheeked grin. “Very good!” She then added in a conspiratorial voice, “The cayenne gives a little warmth so that people don’t notice how cold it gets when they’re out on the trails.”

  Wow. I wished I’d had some of the mix during my midnight jaunt.

  “You’re so good at this,” I said.

  “Good at what, dear?” she asked, sitting down in the chair catty-corner to me.

  “Everything,” I lamented. I hadn’t meant for the moment to turn into a pity party for me but couldn’t help but compare myself to her. I fell way, way short.

  “Oh, honey,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I’ve been at this for years. Decades, if I’m being honest about how long in the tooth I’ve gotten. You’re just getting started. Why, how long you been a chef? Five years? Eight, tops?”

  I sagged in my chair. “Uh, sounds about right,” I lied, minus either four and a half or seven and a half years, whichever one a person wanted to go with. I really was just starting out, and all of a sudden all that there was to learn stood before me like an insurmountable Everest.

  But I had figured out how to make a pretty good steak, thanks to Brad. Jack had taught me how to make gourmet pancakes. I’d gotten decently good at making coffee and lasagna. And I’d nearly mastered three different soup recipes slipped to me by Agatha. She’d said something about the benefits of having dated royalty, but we’d gotten interrupted before I could pry.

  Everything that there was to learn still loomed like Everest over me, but now one thing was different. I no longer saw myself as being tucked away in a nearby village scared to even take the first steps. Instead, I was actually on the mountain itself making the slow hike upward. I hadn’t climbed very far, for sure. In fact, I’d barely made any progress at all. But I was climbing, one step at a time.

  “How did you get the cranberries to taste like oranges?” I asked, eager to learn from someone who had so much to teach me.

  Mama Hendrix winked. “Soaked them in a mix of orange liqueur and orange juice before popping them in the dehydrator.” She tossed one into her mouth, and I nibbled at a salt dusted candied pecan. “Want the recipe?” she asked.

  My eyes went wide, and I nodded vigorously. I smiled so big my cheeks hurt.

  “You stay there,” she laughed. Getting up, she crossed the floor to the fridge where she pulled out a small, wooden folded step stool. The wood was richly hued despite its apparent age. “My George made this for me,” she said, a fond smile reaching her eyes. Its thick stubby legs clattered against the solid wood flooring when she plopped it open to the right of the sink. There, she stepped atop it and stretched one well-rounded arm high above her head to a second, smaller set of cupboards I hadn’t even noticed before.

  My eyes went wide when she flipped the cupboard door open. It was full of books of various sizes, thicknesses, and spines, but one thing was clear, these weren’t bound books. They were notebooks!

  “Are… Are all of those cookbooks, ones you’ve made yourself?”

  Mama Hendrix stepped down from the stool with a spiral bound notebook in hand. “Oh, I wish,” she laughed. “I can only take credit for—mmm—about half of the recipes. A lot of the recipes I got from people like you, folks that came here who knew recipes I didn’t.”

  I stared in awe. The recipes I could botch with those notebooks. They’d all be terrible at first, but I could get better!

  Mama Hendrix started back across the kitchen to me just as the kitchen door banged open. “We found the PI!” Paul yelled.

  Mama Hendrix clutched her recipe book to her chest and swooned backward. “Can’t you knock?” she snapped once she’d steadied herself against the counter. “Or at least enter a little slower?”

  “Sorry, Mama Hendrix,” Paul said, thoroughly chagrined. He stuck his hands deep into his front pockets and glanced around sheepishly before adding with an eye on me, “Zoey really wants you to come.”

  I looked from Paul to the cookbook clutched against Mama Hendrix’s chest. So near, yet so far! The treasures that book was sure to hold had my heart beating with eager panic to get its pages stretched out in front of me with my phone’s camera poised overtop.

  “What’s all this about anyway?” Mama Hendrix asked. “Kylie’s supposed to be resting.” Then to me, she said, “I heard about you fanning around in the cold for hours last night. It’s a wonder you don’t have pneumonia. What in the world were you thinking?”

  “She was sleuthing. She found where Doug was drowned,” Paul answered for me.

  “Drowned?” Mama Hendrix said, her eyes going wide. “That poor man was buried alive. He wasn’t drowned!””

  “Mama Hendrix, come sit down,” I encouraged, tapping the table’s top in front of where she’d been sitting before.

  “Kyl
ie, what’s all this about?” she asked, her eyes pleading.

  “I’m so sorry, Mama Hendrix. I found a… a… a spring house out in the woods.”

  “That old thing?” she asked, her brows going high.

  “You knew about it?” I asked.

  “Of course I did, but it’s ancient,” she exclaimed, her expression moving through a plethora of emotions. “The roof was rotting. One good ice storm was all it needed to cave the thing in last time I saw it, which was years ago. How could he have died there? He was found in the orchard buried. Who would kill him twice? Why would anyone do such a thing!” She covered her face with her trembling hand, and I got up to go to her, but she wasn’t done. Her hand flew from her face to point an accusatory finger at Paul. “And what’s this about a private investigator? The sheriff is handling this. She doesn’t need you bringing in somebody else to muck up her work. You tell whoever hired him to just send him packing.”

  Paul looked from Mama Hendrix to me and back again. “That’s just the thing. We don’t know who hired him. Yet.”

  “There’s a private investigator but you don’t know who hired him? Who? Who is he? Tell him to go, right now!”

  Paul opened his mouth to speak, but I detoured my path to him instead of going to Mama Hendrix. “Out!” I mouthed.

  Mama Hendrix had flipped into full rant behind us. She wheezed as she yelled. A glance behind me had me fearing for the woman’s life. Her skin had a waxy sheen and was mottled red in some spots and a greenish pale in others.

  “Out!” I hissed to Paul when I was close enough to hook his arm with mine, spin him around and march him out the door with me.

  We stood in a fearful panic on the porch just beyond the kitchen door and listened as Mama Hendrix’s raspy rant dwindled down. When it had stopped, I waited a beat, and then creaked the door back open just enough to stick my head in.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She waved for me to go back out without even looking at me.

  I bit my lip, wondering if I’d get another crack at those recipe notebooks of hers. But now was not the time.

  I pulled my head back out and quietly clicked the door closed.