by Meri Allen
“See you tomorrow,” I said. Wouldn’t I? What happened?
Money. Had to be. It was always money with Mike.
Oblivious, Willow threw her arms around me. “Eleven o’clock at the shop, right?”
I returned the hug. “Come at ten thirty.”
She laughed and saluted. “Yes, ma’am.”
Pru wrapped her arms around me. “I’m glad you’re here.” Her words were freighted with extra meaning and I felt the tension in the room build as the Brightwoods stepped into the night.
As the screen door closed softly, I turned to Caroline and Mike. “Okay, what’s going on?”
Mike went to the inner door and closed it, cutting off the chorus of crickets. He straddled a chair at the table and tented his fingers, a gesture he’d picked up after watching the Godfather movies.
“You can say anything in front of Riley,” Caroline said. “You know I’ll tell her everything anyway.”
Mike turned to me. “Maybe you can talk some sense into her.”
Caroline lifted her chin. “Mike wants to sell the farm and the ice cream shop.”
Chapter 4
Caroline’s words sent a shock through me and I dropped into my chair, listening with growing disbelief as Mike outlined his plan to develop the farm into a high-end residential community. My jet lag and dismay blurred his words. Buzzy had died only a week ago and now he wants to sell the farm?
“I have all the players lined up and they’re ready to move. This parcel of land is terrific, but there may be others coming on the market,” Mike said. “You were in the army once, Riley. When the time comes, you have to pull the trigger, right?”
“That’s a very bad analogy, Mike.” I ran my hand along the uneven line of my collarbone, a souvenir of the helicopter crash that ended my very short military career. I turned to Caroline. “Caroline, do you want to sell?” I asked but knew the answer.
Caroline shot out of her chair. “Riley, the last thing I want to do is sell. This is my home! The Brightwoods’ home! Mom worked so hard to make that ice cream shop work. The town loves it! But I can’t do it alone. I love my work at the gallery, and we’re about to start a project where I’m the lead. I won’t be able to come home on weekends for at least two months.” She faced Mike, her chin trembling, her eyes brimming. “And you won’t help.”
“My life’s not here.” Mike shrugged.
Buzzy had always wanted her children to get along, but these two had never seen eye to eye. Caroline’s absentminded-professor mind was tied to a heart as big as Buzzy’s. Mike was a man of action with an affinity for get-rich-quick schemes.
“Come on, Caroline,” Mike huffed. “You make me seem heartless. I love this place too.”
Caroline crossed her arms. “That’s why you’re in such a hurry to unload it.”
An angry wave of red surged up Mike’s neck and cheeks. He clenched his handsome square jaw, took a steadying breath. “There’s a lot of money at stake, but we have to act fast. Think about it. I’ll see you in the morning.” He grabbed his jacket from the back of Caroline’s chair and stormed out the kitchen door, letting the screen door bang shut behind him.
“Riley, I could kill him!” Caroline moaned. “What am I going to do?”
* * *
After Caroline went up to bed, I turned over the last hour. Caroline and Mike had presented such a united front at the funeral. He’d been so solicitous, so charming. Maybe she thought he’d turned a new leaf. They must have talked about the business deal before I’d arrived for the funeral. Perhaps she’d thought he’d change his mind.
Ha.
As I mulled Caroline’s predicament, I went into the guest room, which was Mike’s old bedroom. It was now a catchall, with a sewing table on one wall, a bureau and single brass bed on another, and overflowing shelves of colorful fabric in plastic bins on the other two. I smiled at a framed cross-stitch over the sewing machine that declared, “Whoever dies with the most fabric wins.”
The remaining shelves were jammed with sports trophies, old yearbooks, crafting materials, and a small TV with a vintage gaming system.
Over the narrow bed hung three framed, almost identical photos taken at the National High School Summer Football Camp, in Derbyshire, Indiana. I peered close at the rows of young men, all with serious faces and padded shoulders, and found Mike and Kyle. They’d attended the monthlong camp in July three years in a row. Both had excelled at football and went to UConn on athletic scholarships.
I scanned the faces in the photos on the bureau and pulled up short when I recognized my teenage self in one of them. The photo was of a pie eating contest at the Penniman High Fall Fair almost twenty years ago. There was Mike, handsome even with a mouth full of pie, and next to him a laughing girl with golden shoulder-length curls. Brooke Danforth, Dandy’s daughter. I didn’t know Brooke, but I remembered the shock I’d felt when she died. Caroline and I had been at summer camp when we heard the popular cheerleader had taken an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. She wasn’t a friend—we moved in different circles—but it was the first time someone I knew, someone my own age, had died.
Next to Brooke sat Kyle, then Nina. Everyone else was spattered with pie filling, but somehow Nina’s white shirt was immaculate. There I was in the background, serving pie, and next to me … that straight-as-a-pin platinum hair was hard to miss: Emily Weinberg. I set the photo back on the shelf.
One window had an air conditioner, but there was no need for it tonight. I opened the other window and the cool night air flowed in as I leaned on the sill. There was no moon, and beyond the porch light was an inky, absolute darkness that I rarely experienced, having lived and traveled in cities for so many years.
Movement caught my eye as a small animal darted across the yellow pool of porch light. I remembered that I’d left my travel bag in my car. I could borrow Caroline’s pajamas, but I needed my toothbrush. I grabbed my keys, stepped into the hallway, and noted Caroline’s door was ajar. I could see Caroline sitting at her easel, an almost-empty canvas in front of her, painting to keep her mind occupied and the sadness at bay. I crept downstairs, placing my feet to avoid creaky steps so I wouldn’t disturb her.
Soft sounds came from the kitchen. It took me a moment to realize it was Sprinkles meowing, almost as if in conversation. Who was she talking to? I froze.
Buzzy?
No such thing as ghosts, I chided myself. Besides, if Buzzy were a ghost, she’d invite me to sit down for a cup of tea. The thought made me feel safe, protected even. Buzzy wouldn’t let anything harm me. What a wonderful ghost to have in my corner.
Sprinkles on the other hand.… What was she up to?
I went to the back door, my footsteps loud on the worn linoleum. Sprinkles sat on a table by the window, the light from the porch making her shadow loom almost the full length of the floor. She’d like that—a shadow as big and imposing as she thought she was.
She held a paw to the window and turned her flat face to me abruptly, a rebuke for rudely interrupting her.
“Forgive me, your majesty. Who’re you talking to?” I opened the back door and heard a soft thump.
That was no ghost. I peered into the darkness beyond the porch light.
Sprinkles joined me at the screen door, her tail switching, but I knew she wouldn’t go outside. She was an indoor cat through and through.
I jerked open the screen door and leaned out, but there was nothing waiting except for the sound of a million crickets. To my shock, Sprinkles slid past me onto the porch. I followed, scanning. I couldn’t see anything in the dark beyond the light from the porch, but my skin prickled.
“Who’s there?” As soon as I spoke, I felt stupid. If someone was there, they’d have spoken up—unless they didn’t want to be seen.
The sounds of the countryside were unfamiliar, unsettling. My imagination switched into overdrive. Skunks, no, rabid skunks might lurk. Or coyotes. Or—my heart beat fast—former boyfriends. Or serial killers.…
The last made me laugh. Get a grip, Riley. The only people who’d be outside here would be teenagers hoping to raid the ice cream shop.
I pulled out my car keys and beeped my car. The interior lights came on, the glow casting pale light into the shadowy yard. Sprinkles gave a forlorn, questioning miaow, then threw another irritated look at me as she turned to face the door. My dimwittedness disappointed her. Her expression said, You couldn’t get good help these days. I opened the door, and with a twitch of her tail, she went back inside. I eased the screen door closed behind her.
Sprinkles had left me to face any rabid skunks on my own. Warily, I popped the trunk and got my bag. A dark shape darted across the porch and disappeared into the shadows.
A kitten!
Sprinkles glared at me from the window.
I slammed the trunk and ran back into the house. Would wonders never cease. Sprinkles had a friend.
Chapter 5
The next morning, I rose at seven and put on my running gear. Caroline’s door was still ajar, and I pushed it open a few inches. Her room hadn’t changed since we were girls—still stuffed with books and canvases, art supplies, every wall covered with posters of the Impressionist artists she loved so much. The canvas on the easel was now completely covered with a field of brilliant sunflowers. Caroline breathed softly, her form motionless under a faded blue patchwork quilt.
I headed down the hall. Sprinkles darted out of Buzzy’s bedroom as I passed, tripping me. She’d been lying in wait. “You beast,” I muttered.
I followed Sprinkles downstairs and she slunk into the powder room off the kitchen. I made sure the automatic coffee maker was set, then I opened the cabinet in the pantry where I remembered Buzzy kept Sprinkles’ froufrou gourmet cat food. I put out Sprinkles’ breakfast, made sure her water was fresh, and headed out the door.
I crossed the yard, drinking in the view of the farm directly across the lane. Behind their sprawling farmhouse and big red barn, Darwin and Pru’s handiwork spread in bright green rows and blocks like a well-constructed quilt of organic vegetables and herbs. I turned north up Farm Lane, following the narrow road to the crest of the hill where a gravel road, barely wide enough for a car, crossed from east to west.
If I followed the road east, it cut past the Love Nest and an old barn, through a field of sunflowers, and dead-ended by a pond. To the west the road led through more sunflowers to the apple orchards and another pond, twisting past a centuries-old family cemetery.
Continuing up Farm Lane, the road curved and narrowed as it bisected heavily wooded hills. There were just a few homes back here, shaded by centuries-old oaks and bordered by gray stone walls.
Directly across the gravel road from the Love Nest, behind a virtual screen of towering, unkempt bushes, was a two-level home so overgrown by ivy and laurel it was hard to see the yellow siding underneath. This house was owned by a man everyone called Aaron the Hermit. In true New England fashion, he kept himself to himself.
Across from Aaron the Hermit’s house and a bit up the lane was the Danforth home, a red cedar shingled one-level ranch surrounded by lush English gardens. I had no idea my sour-faced high school gym teacher had such a green thumb.
A quarter mile farther up the road I passed the Fairweather homestead. Geraldine and Flo had started life as the Fairweather sisters, born into one of Penniman’s oldest families. After the deaths of their husbands, they’d returned to the family homestead, a more than two-hundred-year-old red Cape. Their family had sold the farmland to Buzzy’s family generations ago.
The road climbed uphill here and my muscles burned as I reached the end of the lane where it intersected busy four-lane Town Road. If I turned west, I’d run into town. Turning east, I passed the Penniman Ridge winery and then, a mile past that, the dairy farm that produced the milk for Buzzy’s ice cream. I wanted a short route today, so I turned and retraced my steps back to Farm Lane and turned onto the road in front of the Love Nest. The only sounds here were birdsong and the crunch of my footsteps on gravel. Mike’s car was parked by the front door of the tiny whitewashed cottage, but Angelica’s was not. I slowed my steps.
Had she left already? I glanced at my watch: 7:30. Maybe she’d realized what a terrible person Mike was. She couldn’t have missed the tension between Mike and … well, everyone after the funeral.
Too bad. I’d especially liked the way she’d pitched in at the shop. It would’ve been easy for Angelica to beg off of helping out. Certainly it was a difficult situation, the funeral of the mother of a guy you were dating, but she’d handled it well.
Sweat pooled on my forehead and I swiped it away. A small animal darted from the underbrush at the side of the road—the kitten from last night—and I pulled up short.
“Whoa!” The kitten, all black, stopped in front of me with a yowl. I crouched and beckoned to him. “Here little guy. Here.”
He tilted his chin and regarded me with wary amber eyes. His right ear was bent and ragged—a cauliflower ear, just like a boxer. Another scar ran across his back; the fur was missing and the skin visible. No wonder he kept a cautious distance. “You poor thing! You’ve been in some fights, haven’t you?”
I scooted closer but he switched his tail and trotted across the road onto the gravel path leading to the barn. He looked back at me, then ran to the side door, which was steps from the kitchen door of the Nest. He was so thin, I could see his bones move beneath his fur.
“Hang on, I’ll take you home.” My footsteps crunched on the gravel as I followed. “We’ll get a bite to eat.”
He picked his way through the weeds at the door and went inside.
“Dumb cat, the food is this way,” I muttered, but still I followed him into the dark barn, stepping past a metal rack jammed with grimy old cans and cardboard boxes. Rusted tools, pitchforks, rakes, and shovels leaned in a corner, unused for decades.
The sweet, musty smell of hay surrounded us, and the dust made me sneeze. The kitten’s tiny sneeze answered mine. “See? This is no place for you. Let’s—”
There was another scent, one I’d experienced before. A metallic smell …
The kitten yowled, the sound making the hair on my arms rise.
I hesitated for a few moments, letting my eyes adjust to the dim light as a tendril of dread grew in me. There were two wooden stalls on either side of the barn. I pressed my hand against the rough wood as I followed the kitten’s cry to the one on the left. Steeling myself, I edged to the entrance of the stall. A pale shaft of sunlight streamed in a window, illuminating the lower half of a man’s body sprawled on the floor, his muscular legs clad in gray sweatpants.
My heart thudding, I scanned the area for threats. There was no sound, nothing moved except for the little black cat that now brushed against my ankles. I pushed down my panic as I eased into the stall.
Mike lay on his back on a pile of hay, his eyes closed, his arms splayed. A pitchfork lay just beyond reach of his outstretched left hand. He might have been sleeping but for the crimson splotches on his torso and thighs that told me he’d been stabbed more than once. I struggled to make sense of what I was seeing. As I inched closer, my vision telescoped onto Mike’s ashen face. A bit of hay had fallen against his cheek. I crouched and gently removed it. I’d seen dead men before but still I held two fingers to his cold neck to check for a pulse.
The cat yowled again. My eyes traveled down to where he sat by Mike’s waist. A bit of gray silk trailed from the pocket of Mike’s jacket. My stomach lurched as I recognized the pattern of Caroline’s scarf.
Chapter 6
I stumbled from the dark interior of the barn into the bright morning sunshine, throwing up my arm to shield my dazzled eyes. I pounded up the steps to the screen door of the Love Nest and yanked it open. The inner door was ajar.
Why hadn’t I brought my phone? There’d been a landline here ages ago—there! A black phone was mounted on the wall by the avocado green refrigerator. My fingers trembled as I dialed 911; I took a deep breath to
steady my voice as I gave the dispatcher directions. He told me to stand outside and wave down the police cars.
I hung up the phone, realizing too late that he’d probably assumed I called from a cell phone and expected me to stay on the line. My body thrummed with adrenaline as I paced in the small kitchen. Who killed Mike? Where was Angelica? What happened?
There were only four rooms in the snug one-story cottage: kitchen, living room, bedroom, bath.
On the oak kitchen table were an empty wine bottle and two glasses. The label read Penniman Ridge Special Edition in gold lettering; it was from the winery just down the road. In the clear light streaming through the lace curtains, I could see the dregs of wine in both glasses, and lipstick on the rim of one glass, deep red lipstick. Angelica’s color.
An overwhelming feeling of something missing came over me. What was it? The wooden counter and white porcelain sink were empty. I scanned the living room. There was a brown leather recliner, a plaid loveseat covered with a crocheted afghan, and an old television with a VCR set on a homey, blue rag rug. I turned back to the kitchen and caught sight of a wadded-up piece of paper on the floor next to the refrigerator.
Sirens wailed in the distance. I hurried to the bathroom to get a tissue and used it to pick up the paper. I was messing with evidence, but I couldn’t help it. Caroline had mentioned that nobody had stayed in the Love Nest since leaf peepers last fall. This paper must have to do with Mike and Angelica … and perhaps, his murderer.
I unfolded the crinkled paper which had been folded into three sections, as if to fit in a business envelope. I scanned the floor but didn’t see any envelope; the trash was empty. I turned the paper over, opening it just enough to read the typed message: “Meet me at midnight. The usual place.”
