1 A Cop and a Coop

by Hillary Avis

  A jolt ran through me. I pointed at the title. “Do you think that could be Anne Sutherland? Joe did a lot of work over at their place, didn’t he?”

  Ruth’s jaw dropped. “No. Surely not. Anne’s married.”

  “Since when did that ever stop anyone?” I asked. “It didn’t stop my husband, that’s for sure.”

  “Mine either,” Tambra added as she scanned the pages. “Plus look at these lyrics—they’re all about her quiet beauty and how the world was trying to keep them apart. It has to be her.” She looked up from the papers and gave humorless laugh. “God, how did I think ‘quiet beauty’ was about me, with my sparkles and screaming-red hair? I really was deluded.”

  Ruth giggled. “Well, quiet beauty wouldn’t have won you all those pageant crowns, would it?”

  Tambra didn’t laugh. “It might have won me Joe’s heart.”

  Ruth’s face fell. “Oh, Tambra. I didn’t mean to be insensitive. I was trying to lighten the mood.”

  Tambra nodded. “It’s fine, I just—” She broke off, startled, at the sound of a knock on the car window.

  Chapter 17

  I turned, my heart pounding until I saw it was just Eli grinning through the glass. I really do hate surprises. I frowned at him as I rolled down the window.

  “Wow,” he said, staring at me. “You look...different.”

  Just what a girl wants to hear after a two-hour makeover. Different. “What do you want?”

  “Just letting Tambra know her little one scraped his knee on the teeter-totter, but I patched him up. In case she’s curious where that Paw Patrol band-aid came from.” His grin faded as he took in the three of us: me with a scowl, Ruth anxiously plucking at Tambra’s arm, and Tambra clutching her damp tissue and staring at him with red-rimmed eyes. “Did I scare you? I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

  “No,” I snapped. “Although a little warning would have been nice. We were coming to see you anyway. We have evidence that might help in your investigation.” Ignoring the two women in the back seat, I forged ahead. “I found Joe’s guitar hidden in the barn. And it has something inside it that you might find interesting.”

  I heard Ruth’s sharp intake of breath at my lie. I hadn’t planned to lie to Eli, but in the moment I couldn’t expose Tambra to any more trauma. Eli would have what he needed. I just hoped he wouldn’t ask when I’d found the instrument or how I’d smuggled it to town without him knowing about it. I got out of the car and waited until Tambra opened the back and handed me the guitar and the roll of papers.

  “I dropped the rubber band on the floor, I think,” she said, her voice apologetic as she leaned down to search for it.

  I gave the guitar to Eli and waved the roll of papers. “These were inside the guitar. It’s his guitar tabs and lyrics—you’ll be interested to know he wrote his love songs to Anne Sutherland.”

  Eli’s eyes widened as he took them from me. “Wait—Joe was in love with Anne?!”

  “I think so. He spent a lot of time at their place, remember? She’s no beauty queen”—I glanced at Tambra, who was still feeling around for the blue rubber band—“but she has her own appeal.”

  “When Anne serves her blueberry pie, I think any man could fall in love.” Despite the joke, Eli’s face was grim. “I think you ladies just may have cracked this case.”

  Ruth looked aghast. “What? You think Anne clobbered him with her cast-iron skillet or something? There’s no way!”

  “Eli doesn’t mean Anne,” I said, realization dawning. “He means Walt. If Joe confessed his love for Anne, Walt would never let him walk out of that house alive. Think about how he treats her. It’s like she’s his property! When she came over the other day to drop off that cobbler, she said Walt was watching her. I think that’s what the telescope is all about. It’s not about watching the neighbors, it’s about watching his wife. Maybe that’s why Joe stole it to begin with—to keep Walt from spying on Anne all the time!”

  “Could very well be,” Eli said. “I might have done the same in Joe’s shoes if I’d heard Walt talking about her the way he was this morning. I need to get over to the Sutherland place right now.”

  I nodded. “I’m coming with you.”

  He shook his head vehemently, backing away from Ruth’s car. “No way. This could be dangerous.”

  “You have to give me a ride,” I said, smirking at him. “You drove me to town, remember?”

  “STAY IN THE CAR,” ELI said as his SUV rolled to a stop in front of the Sutherlands’ white farmhouse.

  I rolled my eyes at him and got out anyway. He jogged around the car and caught my arm just as I reached the porch steps.

  “I mean it, Leona! This is law enforcement business now, not just a friendly visit. You either wait in the car or walk home.” He set his jaw and I could tell he wasn’t making a suggestion, but Eli wasn’t the only one who could dig in his heels. I was just about to make a smart remark when a meek voice drifted across the porch.

  “Is he hurting you?”

  When I turned toward the sound, I could see Anne’s faint, grayed shape through the screen door. Eli instantly dropped his arm to his side and I shook my head. “No, everything’s fine. We were just talking.”

  “Leona was just leaving,” Eli added pointedly.

  The screen door creaked open, revealing Anne in an apron that was covered with dark red splatters. Her rubber gloves were red, too, and she held them up like she was a doctor going into surgery. She held the door open with one leg as she eyed us appraisingly. After a moment, she seemed to decide that I was telling the truth that Eli wasn’t a threat to me. “Well, if you’re looking for Walt, he’s out in the shed. I’m up to my elbows processing the end-of-season berries for jelly.”

  “I’d like to speak to you first, if that’s all right,” Eli said, and I realized he was clutching Joe’s sheet music in his other hand. “May I come inside?”

  Anne’s eyes darted nervously to the shed and then back to us. “I guess he won’t mind if Leona’s here, too.”

  I shot Eli a triumphant look over my shoulder as I headed up the steps and into Anne’s kitchen. It was a homely place with worn linoleum on the floor and butcher block countertops. Crocheted potholders hung on the wall near the harvest-gold stove, where a large pot of something delicious-smelling was bubbling alongside a canner. The white cabinets had likely been there since the farmhouse was built, but they were as spotless as if they were new. A drop-leaf table with two chairs—the antique version of a kitchen island—stood in the center of the room, and behind it, bookshelves packed with cookbooks and paperback novels lined the walls.

  Anne snapped off her gloves and threw them in the sink, then took off her berry-stained apron and motioned for us to take the two chairs. “Coffee? I know it’s almost supper, but I can make a pot. I’d offer you a slice of pie, but it’s still got another twenty minutes in the oven.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself. We’ll only be a minute.” Eli took a seat, spreading the papers Ruth and I’d found inside the guitar out on the table in front of him. “Have you seen these before?”

  Anne peered over his shoulder at the scribbled lyrics and her face paled even more than usual. Her hand went to her neck and she nervously flipped her locket over and over in her fingers.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Eli said gravely.

  Anne sank onto the stepstool nearby and passed her hand over her face. “No. I’ve never even heard them. He told me he wrote songs for me, though.”

  “Joe did?” I prompted, taking the chair nearest her.

  She nodded. “He was nice, very friendly and hardworking. I was so surprised when I found out he took Walt’s telescope. He didn’t seem like the type—but then again, I had no idea that he had feelings for me, either. Maybe I’m a poor judge of character.”

  Her eyes flickered to the front door, and I wondered if she was thinking about her husband in the blueberry shed. She had to regret marrying someone so controlling and unkind, but perhaps
Walt hadn’t always been that way. I never could have predicted how Peterson would treat me twenty years down the line when we were college sweethearts. Of course, he’d say it was my fault—that if I’d taken care of myself, his feelings wouldn’t have changed.

  “You can’t blame yourself. Joe was a man with many secrets,” Eli said gently. “Can you walk me through that night? The night he told you how he felt?”

  Anne’s forehead furrowed. “It was so long ago.”

  “Just do your best.” Eli put his phone on the table. “Is it OK if I record this?”

  “I guess so,” she said hesitantly, and Eli tapped a button on the screen. Anne took a deep breath. “I was making fruit-of-the-forest pie, I remember that. The apple harvest was in, and I had blueberries in the cooler and rhubarb canned from the spring. I was on my second batch of pies so it must have been after eleven o’clock at night when Joe knocked on the door.”

  “Was Walt home?” Eli asked.

  She shook her head. “He was gone playing poker—his weekly game in Duma. Sometimes they play all night. I was alone.”

  “Who does he play with?”

  “Mike Spence and his brother and some of their friends. They’ve had a game running for as long as I’ve been alive.” Anne smiled faintly. “Walt has a real weakness for cards.”

  “So Joe came over,” I said. “And you let him in because Walt wasn’t home.”

  Anne nodded, and she shot another guilty look at the door. “He said he just wanted to talk, but he was so anxious. I thought maybe he was coming to confess to stealing, so I gave him a piece of warm pie and a beer to settle his nerves. I told him he could tell me anything. Well—”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” I said wryly. That was becoming the theme of the day. Maybe the theme of my life.

  Anne nodded. “He took that as a sign that I felt the same way he did and spilled his guts. He said he knew from the first time he saw me that we were meant to be together. Then he asked me to run away with him.” Her forehead creased and her hand fluttered to her locket again, tugging and twisting so hard that I thought she might break the chain. “He said he thought he could be patient and wait for me to end things with Walt, but he couldn’t wait anymore. It had to be that night. I wanted to know why the rush, but he wouldn’t explain it. Just said we were meant to be, and we had to go.”

  “Rusty was about to turn him in for stealing,” I explained.

  Anne looked up, her mouth a small “O” of surprise. “Rusty Chapman told him to come see me?”

  I shook my head. “No, Joe came up with that on his own. Rusty just told Joe to leave town when he found out Joe had stolen from Walt. He knew his grandfather wouldn’t tolerate a thief on his farm. That’s why Joe came to see you—it was his last chance to tell you how he felt before he hit the road again.”

  Eli cleared his throat delicately, trying to steer the conversation back on track. “Joe confessed his feelings. You told him you didn’t share those feelings. And then?”

  “That’s not what happened. I didn’t have a chance to tell him anything.” Anne shifted uncomfortably on her perch. “Joe didn’t let me get a word in edgewise before he swooped in and kissed me! I just froze; I didn’t know what to do.” Blotchy pink patches rose in her cheeks as she stared at the floor to avoid looking at either of our faces.

  “You did nothing wrong,” I said reassuringly.

  Anne looked up at me. “I did, though. I let him in, and I never should have. That’s what Walt said, anyway. He said when you open a door, you get what you ask for. He chased Joe right out of here.”

  I whipped my head toward Eli to see if he’d heard what I heard. By his grim look, he had. “I’m sorry, I think I misheard you. You said Walt chased him out? But earlier you said Walt was playing poker with Mike Spence.”

  Anne pushed her stool back and went to the window to look out toward the blueberry shed. With her back to us, she said, “I was getting to that part—Walt came home while Joe was here. He’d blown his bankroll in the first half of the night and he wasn’t ready to quit, so he came back to raid the sock drawer. He walked into the kitchen right when Joe planted one on me.”

  My guts twisted as I imagined Walt’s face when he saw another man kissing Anne, and Anne doing nothing about it. “He must have been furious.”

  She turned back toward us, her hands still on the sink edge, and nodded. “I thought Walt was going to kill him...” Her voice trailed off as she caught a glimpse of Eli’s intent expression and seemed to remember who she was talking to. “Of course, he never would. He grabbed my kitchen knife and chased Joe outside.”

  “Then what?” I asked, leaning forward in my seat.

  Anne shrugged. “Then Walt came in, gave me grief, got his money, and went back to his poker game.”

  “He didn’t have any blood on him?” Eli asked. “Or on the knife?”

  Anne shook her head. “I don’t think Walt even left the porch. He just stood at the rail and yelled the most hateful things you’ve ever heard. And no, I won’t repeat them.” Anne glared at Eli’s phone on the table, her voice the firmest it’d been during the whole conversation.

  “And you never saw Joe again after that?”

  Anne shook her head again. “No. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to make the cornbread—Walt hates it when I forget the cornbread.” She went to the cupboard and began pulling out ingredients—more ingredients than she needed to make cornbread, but I could tell she was flustered and emotional after recalling that traumatic night so long ago.

  “I appreciate your help, Anne.” Eli hit the pause button on his phone, then pushed back his chair and stood. I followed, and as soon as we were outside, he said in a low, urgent voice, “OK, now will you please listen to me this time? Go home. Right now. Cut straight across the field, hop the fence, and tell Blake or whoever’s supervising that I need backup over here.” The whole time he was talking, his eyes were trained on the door of the blueberry shed.

  “Are you going to arrest Walt for Joe’s murder?” I asked.

  He gave a terse nod. “Go get Blake,” he said again, still watching the shed like a hawk. “Tell him to come in quiet. Go!”

  I went. I’ll admit it now—I hadn’t been running in a good decade. I tried jogging back in my midforties, on the safety of my posh gym’s treadmill, but I never enjoyed it. When the yearlong gym membership—another one of Peterson’s birthday-gift fails—expired, I didn’t renew it. Now, as I bumbled over the rocks and molehills in the blueberry rows, my thighs jiggling with every impact of my foot on the ground, my purse bouncing against my hip, and one arm across my chest to keep the girls from hitting me in the face, I regretted not sticking with the exercise. I could only be grateful that Eli was too busy watching the blueberry shed to catch a rear view.

  The forensics crew saw me coming and one of them had the decency to hold the barbed-wire fence apart so I could shimmy through. Thank the lord I wore jeans and not leggings that could get snagged on the wire.

  “Where’s the fire?” one of them joked as I leaned forward with my hands braced on my thighs to catch my breath.

  As soon as I had gulped enough air to form the words, I said, “Eli needs backup. He’s going to arrest Walt for the murder. He said come in quiet, whatever that means.”

  The team shared a look of concern before Blake directed two deputies to take a car around while he and the remaining man, the one who’d held the fence for me, went back through the fence into the field. I didn’t fully relax until I lost sight of them in the already-reddening leaves of the blueberry bushes.

  The sweat on my forehead dried in the cool afternoon breeze, and I pondered what to do while the drama was going down next door. I’d go over and see Anne once Walt was hauled off to jail, of course, but until then, it was none of my business. I might as well finish clearing out the space for the chicks—who’d be arriving in less than twelve hours, I realized with a jolt.

  I picked up the pace toward the barn but stopp
ed in my tracks when I heard shouts echo down the hill from the Sutherland farmhouse. It didn’t sound like regular cop shouting, confident and direct. It sounded like panic.

  Chapter 19

  My phone buzzed insistently inside my purse, and I automatically pulled it out to check the caller even though I was already on my way back through the fence. It was a text from Eli.

  Stay put.

  I froze, one leg in the blueberry field and the other one in my front yard, trying not to give myself a barbed-wire wedgie. Then my phone rang. It was Ruth.

  “Eli says to stay put,” she said breathlessly when I answered.

  “What?”

  “He called me and told me to call you and tell you to stay put. He said you probably wouldn’t listen to him, but you’d listen to me.”

  With the phone pressed to my ear, I grunted the rest of the way through the fence, snagging my purse strap on the fence. After extricating it from the wire’s greedy grasp, I moved along the row of blueberry shrubs, the Sutherlands’ farmhouse grew larger in front of me and the deputies’ shouts grew clearer.

  “Call dispatch. We need forensics!” I heard Eli shout.

  “We are forensics,” Blake yelled back.

  “Call anyway. We need the spatter guys!”

  “What’s going on?” Ruth said in my ear. I pushed aside a blueberry branch so it wouldn’t whip me in the face and peered at the scene in the Sutherlands’ driveway. Eli stood in the doorway of the shed, his back to me as he looked inside. His head hung low and his shoulders slumped. What had he found inside?

  When I didn’t immediately answer her, Ruth sighed. “You didn’t stay put, did you?”

  I scoffed. “Of course not. If Eli thinks I shouldn’t be here, that means I definitely should. He probably knows that, too—by telling me to stay put, he basically guaranteed that I wouldn’t.”