by Ellen Riggs
“I think cards are their drug of choice. All I need to do is feed them and herd them to their tables. Once they get going the house could blow down and they wouldn’t notice. Sadly, no one will miss Edna till lunch.”
“I miss her already,” I said, and strangely, it was true. “There’s a lot to be said for having a mean pig around to keep you on your toes.”
“Calm down and tell me exactly what happened,” Kellan said, as the ambulance drove away. They didn’t bother with the siren because it was already too late: Edna had taken her final flight and parked her broom for good.
“I am calm,” I said.
“Yeah? Then how come there’s so much dust I can’t breathe? Slow your pacing and talk to me. You’re stressing Keats out.”
That part was completely untrue. Keats enjoyed novelty and excitement. His ears and tail were up and his warm brown eye gleamed. That said, he wanted me to calm down and enjoy the hubbub with him. I couldn’t do that. What I’d seen would join the growing collection of horrifying images compartmentalized in my unconscious to emerge in my sleep. I’d heard it wasn’t good to repress these things, but what other option did I have if I wanted to keep going about my life as innkeeper and hobby farmer?
Sighing, I looked up at Kellan. He wasn’t as excited as Keats, but he certainly looked animated. I supposed events like this posed an interesting puzzle for cops and acted like a jolt of caffeine.
“So, I came over to get Edna this morning and bring her back to the farm, as we’d agreed,” I said.
“Why the golf cart?” he asked.
“Buttercup declined to serve,” I said. “I guess she’s not a morning car.”
“Asher had that car serviced,” he said. “How is it supposed to help if it won’t run when you need it?”
“My point exactly. Buttercup belongs in a car museum, but Mom dinged her up too badly.”
He frowned and then shook his head, as if reminding himself of the matter at hand. “So you took the golf cart?”
“Yeah, I wasn’t in the mood for Edna’s insults about my stick handling. She was on a tear last night after the Bridge Biddies battered her pride. I took the brunt of it.”
He pulled out his notepad and started writing. “And you didn’t see Edna’s unfortunate plight on your way in?”
“I took the scenic route through the trails and came out right near the house, so I missed this.” I gestured toward the pig pool. “I assume she’d already—uh—fallen by that point because her leg was… Well, you know. Like Lloyd Boyce’s. And Wilf Darby’s.”
“Cold?” Kellan asked.
“Not quite. Not yet. But… lifeless, you know?” I thought about how her boney calf had felt through her support hose when I touched her with my index finger. “She was gone, and I knew it.”
He nodded. “My forensics team will confirm time of death but I tend to agree with you.”
“If I’d thought there was hope, I’d have tried CPR,” I said. “I got certified every year at Flordale, in case Wilf had a heart attack, or caused one in his staff.”
“At least you still have your sense of humor,” he said. “I’m sure Edna died of natural causes in a most inopportune place. This swamp stinks like blazes.”
“I know. I almost got my own wings here, remember?” I sighed again and met his dark blue eyes. “Kellan, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Oh?” He was instantly on alert. “What’s that?”
I beckoned and walked toward the swamp. “I had time to look around a bit and I found these prints.”
“Footprints? Edna’s?”
“Not exactly, although I did wonder if she hid cloven feet under those Mary Janes.”
“Uh-oh.” Kellan pulled out his phone and squatted beside the prints. Then he stood and stared at me. “And which barnyard beauty fits prints like that?”
“I would bet my next cup of coffee, which I desperately need, on my sly Cinderella Wilma.”
“It couldn’t be a wild boar? There are plenty around.”
“Anything’s possible. But Keats would be off in the bushes if there’d been wildlife around.” I ran my hands through my hair and twisted it into a messy bun. “So I called Jilly and had her run down to the barn and check. Sure enough, Wilma’s on the lam.”
“Not again, Ivy. How did that happen?”
“Jilly said the lock was snapped. It looks like someone is targeting me all over again, Kellan. If Edna challenged Wilma to a duel she would have lost. I barely survived getting rolled in this swamp, as you know, and she’s got nearly fifty years on me.”
Now Kellan looked decidedly less animated. This was taking a turn he didn’t like. I wasn’t thrilled about it either. If my pig had drowned Edna Evans, I was in deep, dirty water, too.
Keats, on the other hand, was circling in ever widening loops looking for clues. Finally he came back to me and for once, his eerie blue eye looked puzzled.
“Keats smells something,” I said.
“Of course he smells something. It’s a fetid swamp.”
“Yeah, but that’s just business as usual. He smells something that confuses him, and he’s not easily confused.”
“What are you saying? This is no time to beat around the bush, Ivy. The team will be here in minutes to swarm the place.”
My face suddenly grew hot and I struggled to pull in a breath. “Do you mind if I sit down?”
Kellan instantly put his arm around me and half-carried me to the golf cart. “Put your head between your knees if you feel faint.”
“I don’t feel faint, just sickened.” I studied Keats for a moment as he resumed his investigation. “I think you’re going to find that Edna didn’t just conveniently die of natural causes face down in that swamp. Something happened.”
“You think Wilma killed her?”
I shrugged. “Wilma is quite capable, and she was apparently available for the job.” Then something struck me and I jumped out of the cart again. “Wait just one second.” I walked to the side of the road. “See that?”
He peered at a small round circle beside a footprint. “Yeah?”
“That comes from Edna’s walking stick. She hardly ever uses it, out of pride, but she probably needed something to lean on after yesterday’s mean girl beatdown. But no matter how beleaguered she was, Edna would likely have fended Wilma off quite nicely with her cane. She’s done it before, and like she told me only yesterday, she’s a survivor.”
“We’ll look for the stick,” he said, bending to take the sodden brown wool hat Keats managed to pull from the marsh while keeping his paws dry. “Whatever happened, natural or otherwise, it appears that Edna finally met something she couldn’t survive.”
Chapter Seven
It was nearly noon before I got back to the farm and the family room was pretty much silent as I walked in, with everyone focusing intently on their game.
Clearing my throat, I said, “Folks, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
Eight sets of eyes rose, all somewhat dazed. Gertrude gave her head a little shake, either to dispel the fog or rebuke me. “We’re in the middle of a game here, Ivy. What part of ‘Do not disturb’ don’t you understand?”
“Like I said, I have bad news. Important news.”
“More important than our bridge game?” Morag said. “The very reason we’re paying top dollar to be here?”
They weren’t paying top dollar at all. I’d given them a significant discount on my rates, both because I’d expected they’d be low maintenance and because any guest was a boon at this point. But no doubt they were paying top dollar to their bridge partners, which would make it an expensive vacation.
“I think it is more important, yes,” I said. “How about I share it quickly and you can decide?”
I described what had happened to Edna briefly, mentioning only her regrettable tumble into the swamp. There was no need to implicate Wilma until there was proof.
“Well,” Gertrude said, blue eyes blinking rapidly.
“That’s a surprise.”
“Completely unexpected,” Joan said, her voice oddly dry.
“A terrible shame, the poor thing,” Annamae said, groping in her blazer’s breast pocket and pulling out an embroidered handkerchief.
“I always said nothing could kill Edna Evans,” Morag said. She folded her large hands, and then refolded them in a new configuration. “I guess I was wrong.”
The ringers murmured their sympathies, and Gertrude gave herself a little shake, like a dog coming out of a bath. “Edna is gone, apparently, and there is not a single thing we can do about it. So I suggest we play on.”
“Gertrude,” Annamae said. “We’ve just lost a longstanding member of our club. We can’t just play on.”
“It’s what she would want, Annamae,” Gertrude said. “Edna was nothing if not practical. We’ve lost plenty of members over the years, and that was Edna’s own advice. Play on.”
“I— I guess you’re right,” Annamae said. “We can talk about it later.”
“Or not,” Morag said. “It’s unnerving losing a member just a bit older than me.”
Jilly spoke at last. “I’ll make something special in honor of Edna tonight and we can pay tribute to her.”
“All right, that’s settled,” Gertrude said. “Now if you’ll just deliver the lunch here, Jilly, we won’t trouble you again till dinner.”
The afternoon passed easily, as I spent most of it in the barn and fields with Charlie as a distraction. Wilma had returned on her own even before I did, demanding her breakfast. Charlie had replaced the lock with a stronger one and did the same with the henhouse. That lock had been tampered with too, after my morning rounds.
He let me work in silence for a while before saying, “Even if it was Wilma, it wasn’t her fault. Someone let her out. And I know Edna well enough to think she probably threatened that pig, and possibly even hit her with her cane.”
“Senna York said the same thing when I called.” The vet, who was fast becoming a friend, was on her way over to examine Wilma. “I can’t see a mark on her.”
“She was her normal greedy grumpy self,” Charlie said. “Not so different from Edna, if push came to pig.”
“Charlie! That’s terrible,” I said, although it was no worse than what I’d been saying.
“Oh, come on, you know better than most how manipulative Edna could be. Tongue like a scythe.”
“True that,” I said, trailing after him as he checked every inch of fencing around the pastures. “I’m surprised I haven’t bled out by now. But still. She didn’t deserve to go that way.”
He grunted agreement as he bent to tighten some wire with pliers. “No one deserves to land face down in a stinky swamp. But for now you need to focus on your guests. I’ll stay late and come early till they’re gone.”
“Thanks, Charlie. I feel safer with you around.”
He flashed me a glance with his twinkling blue eyes. “You could leave Keats down in the barn overnight. That’s what farmers typically do, you know.”
“Good idea,” I said, smiling. “Not. That dog sleeps by my beside to keep the nightmares at bay. If I need to get a barn dog, I will.”
Keats whined, as if letting me know that two dogs would be a crowd.
“Why didn’t the barn camera work?” Charlie asked.
I shook my head. “I’ve got a tech guy coming around later, too. I’m going to install so many cameras Florence won’t be able to sneeze without my knowing about it.”
“Great,” Charlie said. “Remind me to wear a belt. I don’t want your mother seeing any images of farmer’s butt.”
Squinting, I waited for him to meet my eyes. “We agreed never to discuss my mother.”
“You agreed with yourself,” he said. “I have no trouble discussing Dahlia. She’s a lovely lady with a great sense of humor.”
“Oh, she’s a laugh all right,” I said. “And on that note, I’ll leave you to your work.”
He chuckled. “Now I know how to get rid of you when you’re in my way.”
“The problem here is that you and I both know I would never fire you in a million years.” I turned back on my way to the house. “Ask my mom how many times she’s been fired, Charlie. Now, that’s a funny story.”
“It’s a shame that employers don’t appreciate her unique talents,” he called after me. “And by the way, I got Buttercup purring like a kitten. You just need to know how to talk to her.”
Great. Now I had another difficult animal on my hands.
Jilly outdid herself with dinner. There was a big tureen of Edna’s favorite beef stew, another with grilled root vegetables, a basket of homemade biscuits and for dessert, a simple apple crumble pie. All of these had been on Edna’s list of special requests in recent weeks. She preferred the harvest basics when all was said and done.
The Bridge Buddies were so quiet through the main course that I practically did conversational handsprings to break the silence. With 10 years of interviewing behind me in HR, I rarely had trouble getting people talking. But tonight, words were scarcer than hen’s teeth until Jilly popped the cork on a bottle of champagne.
“Let’s have a toast to Edna and say a few words,” she said. “I’ll go first, even though I only knew her for a couple of months.” She cleared her throat. “I admire people who know what they want and persist despite obstacles. Edna Evans was certainly that. When she decided I’d cook for her, she made it happen, and I think she got me to check off every item on her wish list in record time, too.”
“Here here,” I said. “Edna had me wrapped around her finger and I don’t quite know how she did that, because I was very much used to managing people. But she managed me, and I have to tip my hat to her.”
Gertrude smiled. “That’s because she scared the dickens out of you through school, Ivy. There’s not a child from this town who doesn’t have nightmares about vaccination day.”
“I always planned my visits to Doc Grainer when Edna was on vacation,” Joan said, with a laugh.
“Me too,” Annamae said. “If it was urgent I drove over to Dorset Hills.”
“Same,” Morag said. “She ruled that doctor’s office with an iron fist. It was her kingdom.”
I raised my hand to stop the conversation from turning into a pile on. “She loved her career. She told me so only yesterday. Being independent was extremely important to her.”
It was a subtle way of reminding them that Edna never had the same opportunities as the rest of them, being married to successful men. Gertrude’s mouth snapped shut and of course, the others followed suit.
Finally Annamae dared to speak. “Women didn’t usually get to have careers in our day. Sometimes I envy you girls.”
“I know how hard it was even in my mom’s era,” I said. “She was only ever hired if there wasn’t a man to do the job.”
“That wasn’t Dahlia’s only challenge,” Gertrude muttered.
“Oh, I know that.” I gave her a sweet smile. “I’m just saying that Edna’s accomplishments in supporting herself and buying a home were quite remarkable for the time.”
“Granted,” Gertrude said. “She had a rough start in life, too, yet I never heard a word of complaint about it.”
“What happened?” I asked.
Gertrude shrugged. “Never got a straight answer out of her. All I know is that her family lived pretty much isolated out in the bush and a terrible fire claimed them all. Edna was the only survivor. She was on her own by age 15, and boarded in town till she could finish her schooling.”
“And then there was the terrible heartbreak,” Annamae said, tearing up again. “Everyone thought Merle Randall worshipped the ground she walked on, but then he suddenly broke things off. Edna was never the same after that. She got cold and mean.”
“What happened to Merle after that?” I asked.
“Married and still running a pharmacy in Dorset Hills, as far as I know,” Annamae said. “He did all right for himself.”
“Poor
Edna,” I said. “She had a tough go of things.”
Morag eyed Gertrude before saying, “We all make our choices, Ivy. Life deals out some manure to all of us, and we decide how to handle it. You know that as well as anyone here.”
“True,” I said. “But—”
“But Edna decided to terrorize children, including mine. Maybe especially mine.” She sighed and looked around the table. “Maybe I should have let her win more.”
“I always wondered that myself,” Joan said. “My kids used to prank her all the time and I turned a blind eye.”
“Mine too,” Annamae said. “I tried to stop them but they just got sneakier.”
“It’s not our fault we played a better game than Edna Evans,” Gertrude said. “I, for one, never let someone win just to be nice. She didn’t have the chops and we only kept her in the club because she took care of all the admin.”
“You had advantages,” I said, glancing at their hired partners, all of whom were eating without saying a word. I assumed that silence was part of the contract. Either that, or they were rightly terrified of the backlash the wrong comment could cause.
Gertrude held up her hand. “Stop right there. These so-called advantages are relatively recent. I could kick Edna’s butt at cards fifty years ago, blindfolded.”
“Bridge wasn’t her gift,” Annamae said. “No matter how clever she was in other ways.”
“We just couldn’t get her to leave,” Morag said. “And we tried for decades.”
The champagne was loosening their tongues and making them speak out of order. Jilly opened another bottle in the kitchen and refilled their flutes.
“That must have been hard for her,” I said. “To know she wasn’t wanted.”
Gertrude raised her hand again. “Edna said you were soft, Ivy. You’ve got to realize this is farm country. People need to be tough to survive out here, even now. Edna knew that and she was tough. She got back at us in dozens of petty ways.”
“I think she stole my cat,” Morag said. “I didn’t really care for it, but still. Who does that?”
