Carried to the Grave and Other Stories

by Leslie Budewitz

  “And I ordered you a new coffee,” he added. “Sorry about all that.”

  “Thanks. It’s okay.” Did Adam know they were together? We weren’t so old and married that we didn’t understand all-consuming new love—I pegged this couple at around twenty-five—but I knew Adam worried about staff relationships. Hormones sometimes meant staffers weren’t always the best role models for the kids. Plus, if a fling went wrong, there he’d be in the wilderness with three dozen teens and tweens and two employees spitting at each other. I waved off their concern. “Don’t worry about it. It’s only coffee.”

  They apologized again, then wandered off, glued at the hip, but not at the lip. Wendy brought me a fresh latte, and gratefully, carefully, I headed the other direction.

  The Merc is the oldest building in the village, what we call downtown. It’s a pile of century-old bricks that regularly gives me headaches and sends me scrambling to replace broken windows, repair soffits, and tinker with the locks. It’s cramped and drafty. You wouldn’t want to play marbles on the sloping plank floors. And the only space for storage and shipping is down a steep, narrow flight of stairs.

  But it’s my happy place.

  I am particularly happy when it’s busy. As it was this Saturday, starting the moment Tracy, my assistant manager and creative director, unlocked the door at ten sharp. She and Lou Mary, sales clerk extraordinaire, work full-time, and my mother helps out now and then. We focus on Montana-made food and drink, along with locally made pottery, soap, and other goodies. A pair of gardeners grow veggies for us, and I hauled the sidewalk produce cart outside.

  Then I sent Emily a quick text to make sure she was okay, since she wasn’t scheduled to work today.

  I managed to clean myself up reasonably well. Faked a pleasant smile when a customer said that a place as old and venerable as the Merc must practically run itself.

  A handful of folks mentioned the tragedy and tonight’s cancellation, and I admit, I did worry. If the shutdown went on, the lost ticket sales would be a serious drain on the theater’s finances. If it led to canceled travel plans—by those who, like the couple in the bakery this morning, didn’t know what else to do in Jewel Bay—the merchants would suffer. We’ve got the ninety days of summer to make a year’s worth of income, and if something interferes—rain, wildfire, murder—we’re in big trouble.

  By noon, we’d run out of both huckleberry and cherry jam and I dashed to the basement to restock.

  On the big worktable lay a copy of the script for Brigadoon, which wasn’t scheduled to open for another week. Emily must have left it here Friday afternoon when she finished her shift. Tucked inside the front cover was this year’s cast and crew list and their roles.

  Bianca Calderon, Wendy’s part-time barista, was listed as Fiona, the Scottish girl who charms the lost American hunter. I remembered her as a dark-haired dynamo who, like Emily, enjoyed surprising customers by singing to them. I couldn’t picture Braden, the other part-timer Wendy had mentioned, even though I’m in Le Panier far too often.

  Emily had said no other actors were coming on before intermission, and no one had been in the green room when she left the stage. In the dark, in a hurry, she hadn’t noticed that Stevenson wasn’t at his post.

  So who, or what, had lured him away? Cast or crew? Male or female? An incident or an intruder? I couldn’t even guess, not without knowing more about the cause of death.

  I tucked the list in my apron pocket and picked up two cases of jam. Upstairs, Tracy was talking truffles with an older couple—her huckleberry chocolates are to die for—and Lou Mary had stepped out for lunch. The front door opened and a woman entered. I set my boxes on the counter.

  “Dr. Cook,” I said, recognizing the vacationing doctor in an instant. “We met last night in the theater. Sort of. My husband is the medic who summoned you. I was comforting the young woman who found the body—she works here part-time. I’m Erin Murphy. Welcome to the Merc.” I held out my hand.

  “Carolyn Cook.” Her handshake was quick and firm. “Such a sad business. Did you know the man?”

  “A little. I hope he didn’t suffer.” I was fishing.

  “Most likely not,” she said, avoiding both bait and hook. “Those picnics to go, in your window. Are they available here?”

  “You bet.” I ran down the options—cheeses, crackers, wild game salami, pasta salads. And of course, wine and truffles. “Refill the basket as often as you like.” One of my innovations, and quite popular, especially for evenings when outdoor concerts were scheduled.

  She filled a basket, then chose a few soaps shaped like pine trees and bears as gifts for friends back home. But she said nothing more about Chad Stevenson or the cause of death, despite my subtle probing.

  I plucked a wedge of cheese and a green salad from the cooler and climbed up the half flight of stairs to my tiny office under the eaves. As I ate, I glanced over the cast and crew list a second time. Fingers crossed that no one quit because of the murder. Every year or two, a cast or crew member got sick or injured, left because of a family emergency, or flaked out. Most were young, college students or new graduates. The Playhouse was a training ground for crew members as well as actors—set designers, sound engineers, musicians. Stevenson was a veteran, traveling from company to company. I’m well aware, as the wife of a onetime ski bum, that the itinerant life appeals to some people, but Stevenson had to have been at least thirty-five, an age when most people choose to settle down. Loved his work, apparently.

  Emily’s cast and crew sheet listed the costume manager, the one who’d quit without warning, as Amanda Swallow. If she’d been at the welcome party, I’d missed the chance to meet her.

  I texted Chiara. Why did Amanda leave the theater company?

  No idea. Surprised everybody—to come back after all these years then wig out.

  Any theories? Where did she go?

  Don’t know. Gotta run—baby’s awake—see you tomorrow.

  Sunday. The weekly gathering was a family tradition that stayed with the house when my mother remarried last year and sold the place to Adam and me. Depending on the season and our schedules, it could be brunch, lunch, or dinner. This Sunday, we were eating early so the family could wish Adam good luck before he left. Whether he needed more luck with the kids or the wilderness was a toss-up. And now, he had a potential staff issue.

  I finished my lunch, drained my water bottle, and got back to business. It takes a lot of work to make a place run itself.

  ∞

  “Not that I’m surprised,” Adam said that evening when I told him about my literal run-in with his staffers. “But I am disappointed. She’s new, but he saw what happened last year when the cook wouldn’t leave one of the counselors alone. It was flat-out harassment. I had to let him go midsummer, but happily, the counselor stayed and didn’t sue. We didn’t get a new cook for a week. Everybody had to pitch in.”

  I remembered. He’d come home a champion pancake flipper.

  “And we’re leaving tomorrow at noon,” he continued. “I can’t afford to lose anyone.”

  With my small staff, I hadn’t had to deal with serious personnel issues, but in my days in Seattle as a grocery buyer for SavClub, the international warehouse chain, I’d witnessed both innocent coworker romance and supervisors who’d abused their power. We talked about his options as we sat outside with a glass of wine, watching the evening sun turn the tips of the waves on the lake to diamonds. We kept talking over dinner—my mother’s fresh pasta with basil pesto, and a salad Adam put together from the Merc’s produce cart.

  In the end, he decided the simple approach was best. Talk to the couple, separately and together, and make sure the relationship was what it seemed. Remind them it couldn’t interfere with their responsibilities to the kids, and warn them against tent-hopping. Kids would see and parents would hear. Adam would keep a close eye and reassess after the first session.

  The cats had come in with us after dinner, and now full-figured Pumpkin lay
on the living room rug, a late patch of sun warming her soft orange belly. From the couch, I watched sleek Mr. Sandburg, half her age and size, swat a fuzzy cat toy shaped like a piece of sushi, right down to the white stripes on the faux salmon, occasionally sending it her way. Whether he was teasing her or enticing her to play, I couldn’t tell. Human or feline, romantic or otherwise, the male-female relationship is often hard to decipher.

  But then, something struck me.

  I reached for my phone and scrolled through my crime scene pictures. My finger was poised to send a pair of close-ups—one showing a clump of lime-green felt held loosely in Stevenson’s hand, the other a strand of pink yarn—to Chiara and ask if she recognized them from any particular costume, when I thought better of it. She wouldn’t want me to get involved—she never did. Plus, she was busy with a new baby and a seven-year-old. Better to show her the pictures tomorrow, when she couldn’t ignore me.

  But no luck. Sunday morning, my six-month-old niece woke up feeling punk and Chiara kept her home. My brother-in-law and nephew traipsed from their place to ours through the woods, and I scooped up Landon, savoring that little-boy smell. My mother arrived with my stepfather, whom I adored and who, more importantly, adored her. My brother Nick came with his fiancée, my BFF Kim Caldwell, coincidentally a sheriff’s detective.

  “Not my case, Erin,” she said, her first words after a quick hug.

  That, I knew. It had been her counterpart, Detective Oliver Bello, late of Miami, Florida, and now practically a native after a year in Montana, who’d questioned Adam and me at the theater Friday night. I swear, I never go looking for trouble—it seems to know where I live and work without being told. And Kim had reluctantly come to admit that I have a talent for asking the right questions and seeing things the pros sometimes missed. But now that she was about to join the family, I thought it more critical than ever not to trade on the friendship that stretched back to sixth grade. If she volunteered info about the investigation, fine, but I wasn’t going to ask.

  “This season seems cursed,” my mother said. “First the costume manager quits, and now this.”

  “Don’t you need more than two bad things to call it a curse?” Adam asked. “You know, bad things come in threes and all that.”

  “Hush your mouth,” I said. “You know how much can go wrong in the theater.” Like the near-disasters the night we’d caught my father’s killer in the alley outside the building. But I wasn’t going to think about that right now. “Mom, did you know the woman who left?”

  “Mandy? I met her briefly in Dragonfly before the season started,” my mother continued. “She was picking up a torn costume Kathy had repaired. One of those skimpy skirts from Oklahoma! Turns out she was an actress here ten years ago, the last time they did Oklahoma! But then she just up and quit. No one seems to know why.”

  Mandy. Amanda.

  The plot thickened. In my imagination, anyway. As if I didn’t have enough to do without chasing after killer cats and missing costume designers.

  ∞

  The buses were already waiting when I pulled into the athletic club parking lot at eleven o’clock.

  “I miss you already.” From the passenger seat, Adam took my hand. “But I’ll be back in two weeks.” Trading the first group of kids for the next, with two luxurious nights at home in between.

  “Twelve days,” I said. There would be no cell service once they left base camp, though I knew he carried a GPS device and a radio for emergencies.

  “It’s summer in retail. You’ll be too busy to miss me.”

  I gave him a kiss I hoped proved otherwise.

  A few moments later, we spotted the staffers who’d spilled my coffee the day before. He’d spoken with them last night, but wanted another word, in person, before they all left civilization.

  “I’ll wait,” I said. I jerked a thumb toward my old friend Bunny Burns, née Bunny Easter, dropping off her oldest for her first summer at camp. “Bunny will be a blubbering mess. She’ll want to talk.”

  I watched Bunny going over the camp checklist with her daughter, who looked exactly like Bunny and her twin sister, Polly, had looked at twelve. How was it that my friends had kids going off to camp and I was still hoping for that first twinge that told me our first baby might be on the way? Because they’d gotten started early and I was getting started late.

  And because Bunny was always early for everything. Parents and kids were starting to arrive, and her daughter turned her attention to her friends, as young and adorable and nervous as she was.

  As predicted, Bunny was both chatty and choked up. “I figured as long as I was here I’d take in a yoga class,” she said, gesturing to her knee-length black exercise pants and pink T-shirt. “That’s the only way to get me out of my jammies before noon on Sunday. And there’s the new teacher arriving. She may not improve our down dogs, but she’ll up our fashion game, for sure. You should start coming to class again.”

  I followed her gaze to a slim, dark-haired woman in black leggings with mesh panels up the sides and a red-and-black bra top, a canvas duffle emblazoned “Jewel Bay Summer Theater” over her shoulder. Was that the missing Bianca, a silk scarf tied flapper-style around her temples and flowing down her back? No. This woman was a good ten years older. Close to my age. A bit taller, maybe five-six or seven, but like Bianca and Emily, she had a dancer’s grace that no amount of yoga would ever give me. Or Bunny.

  Then Bunny and I exchanged air-kisses and she bounced over to give her offspring one last teary farewell. Adam joined me after his talk with the counselors.

  “They promised to behave,” he said. “Fingers crossed.”

  I gave my tall, dark, and handsome guy another kiss, then drove into the village. Turned off Front Street and parked on Back. Inside the Merc’s rear courtyard, I stopped.

  Emily sat at one of the bistro tables we’d added last summer. She wasn’t scheduled to work today.

  I had a bad feeling, even before I saw her swollen eyes and heard her shaky voice.

  “I—I’m sorry, Erin. I hate to quit, but I have to. I need to get my things. And my final paycheck?”

  Whatever I’d expected, it hadn’t been this. I firmly believe that it’s a lot easier to get someone to talk when they have a hot drink in their hands. Plus, I needed a dose of caffeine, toot sweet, and we didn’t have time to go next door for the fancy stuff. The girl was skittish as a new colt, and as likely to bolt.

  Inside, I flipped a switch and the old milk glass pendant lights began to glow. Behind me, Emily’s clogs echoed on the plank floor. Oh, the stories this old Merc could tell.

  In the commercial kitchen in the back of the shop, I started a big pot of Cowboy Roast, the custom-blend coffee we serve as samples and sell by the pound.

  While it brewed, I gestured to the chrome stools lined up along the stainless steel counter that divides shop from kitchen. My mother rescued them years ago when an old soda fountain closed in another small Montana town and recovered them in red vinyl. They always make customers smile. Me, too.

  We sat, and I reached for Emily’s hand, half expecting her to pull away. Instead, she gripped it like a lifeline.

  “How well did you know Chad?” I asked. “And have you told Kip you’re leaving?”

  She shook her head, blond ponytail wagging, though whether in answer to my first question or my second, I couldn’t tell. The coffee was ready. I filled two cups and slid the sugar dispenser toward her.

  “Are you getting any sleep?”

  Her eyes flashed, then almost as quickly, her face closed down.

  Emily’s talent and passion for the theater shone brightly, but she was young. And I knew from our conversations that while her family was supportive, they weren’t flush. How would she get back home, thousands of miles away?

  “Are you sure you want to leave?” I continued. “It’s awful, I know, but there’s no reason to think anyone else involved with the theater is in danger.” I hoped not, anyway.

  �
��Oh, Erin. I never meant—we thought . . .” She covered her mouth with her hands, her eyes cast down, seeing—what?

  The back door opened and Tracy called out a greeting. She and Lou Mary alternate Sundays.

  I leaned forward, not quite touching Emily’s knee. “You’ve had a huge shock. But you don’t have to decide what to do right now. I know you need the money, so stay here today and help out, and we’ll talk again. Just put on a happy face.”

  Her spine straightened and the clouds disappeared. “From Bye Bye Birdie. I love that song,” she said. “I played Rosie in my high school production.”

  “Atta girl.”

  “Umm, Erin? I need a new water bottle—they took everything we’d left in the green room. Can I use my employee discount to buy one of yours? They’re super cute.”

  “Take one,” I said. “On the house. My sister designed the logo.”

  As we got the shop ready to open, my brain replayed Emily’s words. What had she never meant? What had they thought? Who was the “we”? Not that Chad Stevenson’s death wasn’t tragic enough, but was something else troubling her, too?

  Was my mother right, and a third tragedy was waiting in the wings?

  With Emily there to help Tracy, I slipped out a few minutes after we opened and walked up the street to Dragonfly Dry Goods, a totally yummy quilt and yarn shop. I have no arts and crafts skills—my sister got that gene—but I do love drinking in the colors and petting the soft wool. Kathy Jensen, the owner, came here eons ago as a costume assistant, then returned after she left theater work. Jewel Bay is the kind of town people like to come back to. Her shop is a major draw all year long, but especially in tourist season.

  After a few shopkeeper pleasantries, I got to the point. “I hear you’ve been helping out at the theater this summer, with fittings and repairs.”