“I’m sure he will. He told me this morning that he finished reading the Lord of the Rings series for the third time.”
“A boy after my own heart.” I pushed myself off the stool. “Has it been good to be back with all of your ‘boys in blue’?” Once upon a time, before I met him, Todd had been a police officer. I still didn’t know much about that chapter in his life.
“For the most part.” His voice was firm. “It’s what I need to do, Callie.”
“I know.” I bit my tongue. I knew that’s what he thought he needed to do, and who was I to try to talk him out of it? If we were married, I’d have some say in it. But at this point, we were still testing the relationship waters. That didn’t mean I had to be happy about it, though.
I wandered over to the larger flower cooler and yanked out the bucket of irises. Frigid water slopped onto my sock feet. “Dang it,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing. I think the day is catching up to me.”
That wasn’t the truth, and we both knew it.
“God will show us the way through this if it’s meant to be.” Todd’s voice gentled. “We’re taking it one day at a time, remember?”
My throat tightened, and I glared at the rain still beating on the windows. “Yeah.”
Annie whined and nudged my hand, staring up at me with those chocolate brown eyes. I scratched her ears to let her know I was okay.
“I’ll see you tomorrow night, then,” Todd said. “Pray for me. We’re reviewing the latest statewide reports on sex trafficking in a few minutes.”
“I will.” Given what we were trying to accomplish with Hope House here in Short Creek, the report was sure to be pertinent—and heartbreaking. “See you tomorrow.”
I ended the call and laid the phone on the counter next to June Blackman’s card. I picked up the card, studying the close-up photo of the woman’s face. “Looks like she used a picture of herself from twenty years ago,” I said. I frowned, hoping she wasn’t the one we’d have to work with on the Hope House property.
I hefted the iris bucket onto the counter, this time careful not to splash any water. The secretary at the Methodist church had specifically requested the flowers for tomorrow’s event to “evoke the hope of spring” and to “engender a sense of happiness and well-being.” I wasn’t sure if I knew exactly what that meant, but when she mentioned using “lovely blues and yellows,” I figured I would be okay. I could create gorgeous spring-time flower arrangements, though I couldn’t guarantee that they would “engender” anything.
The next day, after another successful Spring Fling was in the books, I started in on creating funeral arrangements for Sister Erma. I still couldn’t believe she was gone. Karen was grieving hard, and our women’s Sunday school class yesterday wasn’t the same without Sister Erma’s spiritual insights and sassy sense of humor.
I stepped to the small closet where I kept my supply of floral foam, when I heard the pugs start growling. They didn’t growl often, and when they did, it was usually because of some terrible threat to my security, like a leaf blowing across the yard or a chickadee hopping around on the window feeder.
I turned to see Annie joyfully licking the faces of two small boys, while Purl and Intarsia danced and yipped around their legs, danger forgotten. After all, small people, close to the pugs’ size, rarely frequented C. Willikers. I smiled a kind of grimacing smile, recognizing the youngsters as one set of Karen’s twins, and instinctively pushed the basket of pricey angora yarn away from the edge of the counter.
“Hi, guys,” I said. “That’s enough, Annie.”
Annie sat back, and two identical three-year-old faces grinned up at me.
“Mama’s comin’,” one of the dark-haired munchkins said.
I thought he was John-John, but I could have been wrong. Wasn’t John-John the one with the mole on the side of his right cheek? Or maybe that was Sammy. I stared at their round, sticky-looking cheeks. I couldn’t even see a mole.
“Callie.” Karen straggled through the door, holding a hand of each of the younger pair of twins. She let them go and Annie delightedly herded them all, children and pugs, toward the book nook. Hopefully the few toys in the book nook’s “treasure chest” would keep them busy for a couple of minutes.
I took in my friend’s pale face. She looked—shaken. Much more than she had a week ago when I found her standing on her grandmother’s driveway. “What’s wrong?”
“I need you to pray.” She flipped her dark hair over her shoulder. “I don’t think my grandma died of a heart attack.”
Chapter Four
Sweat prickled in my underarms. What was she saying? “What do you mean?”
She stepped over near the C. S. Lewis display case, where she had a clear view of the twins rolling around on the carpet with the dogs. “After I left her house that day, I felt kind of bad that I hadn’t gone in.”
“Gone in…before they took her out to the ambulance?”
She nodded. “Like I told you, the EMS guys arrived before I did. When I got there, they told me she was already passed, and I could go in and say goodbye. I…I guess I was in shock. I didn’t want to see her like that, you know?”
I nodded.
“But then later, when the kids were napping, I started thinking about it, and I decided I wanted to go in her house. Just to…I don’t know. Feel closer to her, maybe?”
I handed her a tissue.
“Thanks.” She took it and dabbed at her eyes. “This is the first time I’ve lost someone close to me. I know you know how it feels.”
Unfortunately, yes. “I’m so sorry.”
A wail arose from the book nook. I turned to see Annie, hovering anxiously near a melee of small children on the old couch. I winced, thinking of my prized collection of vintage Nancy Drew books on the shelf a couple of inches above their heads.
“Sammy! Let go of Bubba’s hair!” Karen’s tone of voice transported me back to my childhood and made me want to apologize for—for something. Anything to bring peace again.
The howling stopped abruptly.
“Sorry.” Karen turned back to me. “I know you’re not used to kids.”
“No worries.”
She seemed totally stressed out, and I hated to bring it up, but she had obviously come here on purpose to talk to me about her grandmother’s death.
If Mona were here, she’d simply blurt it out. I’d pretend like I was Mona. “So why do you think it was not a heart attack?”
“You know how she prided herself on her cocoa-butterscotch cookies?”
I nodded. Everyone knew how much Sister Erma loved to make her special recipe of cocoa-butterscotch cookies. In fact, it was a church joke how she couldn’t bring anything to a potluck without also bringing her signature goodies. She always had a batch on hand if anyone stopped by. They were delicious, and no one could make them like Sister Erma.
“When I went in her kitchen the other day, there was a plate of her cookies and another plate of some kind of muffins—”
“Hold on a minute.” Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Bubba—or was it Henry? —trying to stuff Intarsia into the wooden treasure box while one of the older boys attempted to close the lid on both his brother and the dog. I pulled the pug to safety. Her tiny body was rigid with indignity, and she yipped a couple of high-pitched complaints to let everyone know. I stroked the top of her smooth head.
“She doesn’t like to be in there with the lid closed,” I told the children.
I carried her back with me to where Karen still stood, leaning against the counter as if it were holding her up. She shook her head but made no move to referee her children. Apparently, some battles weren’t worth fighting.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this, Callie.” She stroked the softness of the angora yarn, then picked up a skein and rubbed her hand down it, over and over. “You know how she loved to bake, but she knows she shouldn’t be eating all of that with her diabetes. But it was more than
that. I had a weird feeling when I saw that plate of cookies. There was a half-eaten muffin on the plate, too. It looked like she had been eating them in her favorite chair but didn’t finish.”
“Is that where they found her? In her chair?”
She nodded, her eyes welling up. “With her crocheting and her Bible. She’d been making the boys matching sweaters for their birthday.”
I must be missing something. I set Intarsia down on the dog bed. “So, you think…?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m imagining things. But it’s bothered me for days now.” She laid the yarn back in the basket and stared unseeingly at her kids for a long moment, then faced me. “I took her to all of her doctor’s appointments. Last time we were at the cardiologist’s, Dr. Matthey went on and on about how strong her heart was. And she was religious about taking her diabetes mediation. A cookie or two wouldn’t have killed her.”
“Maybe she ate more than one or two. Would that be enough to send her blood sugar high enough to—?”
Karen sighed. “That’s what Justin said. But I can’t believe she’d do that.”
Okay. So maybe it wasn’t her diabetes or her heart. Maybe she had a stroke. Or an aneurysm. I blew out my breath. “I thought you were telling me you thought someone purposely—”
“I am.”
I squinted at her. “Why?”
“Because it looked like someone had been in there before me and gone through her stuff. I don’t think the EMS guys would do that.” She rubbed her temple. “But there was something about those goodies. I can’t explain it, but something about it bothered me.”
Uh-oh. A horrible thought made my face burn. What if my cranberry-orange muffins had contributed to Sister Erma’s demise? I had used a new recipe that my friend Lonnie had given me, but the only unusual ingredient I could think of was the chamomile tea. But that wouldn’t have killed Sister Erma, would it? Surely not.
I cleared my throat. “Like you think someone put something in the baked goods?”
“I don’t know. But I know you’ll pray about it.”
“Well, you don’t need to worry about the muffins, because I made those for her. Did you take the cookies to the sheriff?”
“I considered it. But then I thought maybe I was being silly. At least now I know it wasn’t the muffins.” She shrugged. “But Callie…”
Uh oh. There was more?
“I don’t know how to ask you this.” Karen twisted her fingers together, something I’d never seen her do.
I braced myself. Maybe she needed to unburden some ugly detail of her grandmother’s death. “It’s okay. I’ll help you any way I can.”
“It’s not that. It’s…um, about something I found in Grandma’s stuff.” She made a face. “I’ve been hunting for her will, you know, and Lord have mercy, I don’t think she ever organized her papers her entire life. Everything thrown into shoeboxes. It’s a nightmare.”
I nodded. “I can imagine.”
“I feel really bad even mentioning this, but I found some papers with…ah…with your name on them.”
I furrowed my brow. “What do you mean?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.” Misery shone in my friend’s dark eyes.
I felt my cheeks warm. Surely, she wasn’t suggesting that I was somehow involved in something shady. “I barely knew your grandma. I can’t imagine…what kind of papers?”
She shrugged. “There was one that said your name and something about Hope House. It appeared that a sizable donation had been given.”
“To me?” I sank down on the stool, shaking my head. “Hope House has garnered some pretty generous donors so far, but to my knowledge, Erma was not one of them. Unless she was one of our anonymous donors. At any rate, she certainly did not personally hand me a ‘sizable donation’ in my name.”
She shrugged again. “That’s what it looked like, so that’s why I’m asking you about it.” She pushed her hair back over her shoulder and looked me in the eye. “You’re my friend, Callie. I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to make sense of all of her paperwork.”
Karen might not be accusing me, but I wasn’t very happy about having my name mixed up in something that could even seem questionable.
“I appreciate that. I hope you know I would never—”
“I know. But I had to ask. And it is weird. I didn’t think Grandma knew you very well.”
“No, mostly I talked with her at church. Except for the morning I took her the muffins.” Now was my chance. “Speaking of those muffins—”
My land-line phone rang, and I grabbed the receiver. “Excuse me a minute, Karen. Hello, C. Willikers. How may I help you?”
Karen gathered the troops while I took an order for a dozen red roses and one white and could I please have them ready in half an hour and wrapped in the fancy C. Willikers paper? I could barely hear over the commotion, so I hoped I had gotten it right.
“Yes, sir. They’ll be ready and waiting.”
I turned back to Karen. “Must be an emergency apology bouquet. I wonder what he did?”
We both grinned, and I was happy to see her sadness lift for a moment.
“Do flowers work on you?” I asked.
She hoisted Henry onto her hip. “Depends. Chocolate is usually better.”
“Ah. I should probably think about carrying chocolate. Then if some guy has been more idiotic than usual, he could give his lady the double-whammy. Flowers and chocolate.” We laughed. I had learned that it was good to laugh at small things, even in the midst of a crisis or a tragedy. Even a momentary diversion of the thoughts from sorrow helped.
John-John snatched Karen’s umbrella from the corner near the door and wielded it like a sword. “Come on, Sammy! Let’s fight.”
“Oh, no, boys. Not now.” Karen set Henry on the floor and retrieved the umbrella. She rolled her eyes in my direction. “I’ve got to run. I’ll text you later.”
I helped herd the children out to Karen’s minivan, while Annie diligently brought up the rear. It was cold out. The rain had stopped, but enough water dripped from the bare branches of the old pecan trees that it might have still been raining. I shivered and plopped Bubba into his car seat, realizing too late that the child had intertwined his fingers in my hair. “Ouch. Let go, please, sweetie.” I disentangled myself and stepped back to close the sliding door. “We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise.”
Karen made a face, and I waved as she pulled away.
“Let’s go make a pot of hot tea,” I said to Annie. How could things get more complicated? We trotted toward the door but paused on the little front porch so Annie could shake before we entered. I really didn’t want to mop up water again today.
I glanced over across the messy hedge of nandinas to the church parking lot next door where Mona worked as the receptionist. Our dear friend, Houston Gregory, was the pastor there, though neither Mona nor I attended his church. We were both members of Short Creek Community Church, a few blocks from here.
Mona had already gone home for the day today since Rob was coming in from his trip, but Houston’s white pickup was still parked in its place under the pecan tree. I hadn’t seen him much lately. I knew he had a lot on his plate right now. Besides the church kitchen remodel that had turned into the project from Hades, he daily walked by the side of his friend, Nicole, who struggled and straggled down the difficult road of addiction recovery.
I should pray for him more than I did. I should also trim those bushes. But not now.
Now I needed to work like a crazy woman to create the funeral arrangements. I knew Sister Erma had been well-loved in this community, but the number of orders I had received was stunning. But first, the apology bouquet.
“Come on, girl,” I said to Annie. “Let’s get to work.”
I held the shop door open for her, then followed her in. I loved the warmth of the space I’d created. Exactly the right mix of some of my favorite things: flowers, yarn, and books. What was there not t
o love about that? It had a unique smell too. The slightly dusty smell of old books, the earthy fragrance of natural fibers, and the green, living scent of flowers and ferns and any other plant I could cram onto my shelves and in each sunny window.
The building was old. Much, much older than my thirty-three years. In quiet moments behind this counter or in the book nook, I often mused on the many lives lived in this building over the years. How much laughter had these painted and re-painted walls absorbed? How many tears had fallen on this wooden floor? The many nicks and scars surely held a story or two. How many prayers had been prayed, right here, in this very spot in front of the picture window? I pushed aside the crocheted-lace curtain and stared out at Main Street, thinking again of the story Mona had told me of the Janosics. Had they clung together the night they left, staring out this very same window, knowing they’d never return? Or were they abducted—whisked away without having a chance to say goodbye?
I headed to the small cooler to scout out my selection of red roses. Annie followed me. “Why did the Janosics leave, Annie-girl?”
She looked up at me and whined.
“You don’t know, either, huh?” I ruffled her ears. “I’m glad Todd let you stay with me longer.”
She glanced toward the door at the mention of his name.
“Nope, he’s not here now. Later, okay?”
What would force a family to abandon their lives in the middle of the night and never come back?
I measured out a generous square of paper to wrap the bouquet. The custom-designed paper made me happy. It was a light lavender color, with sprigs of lavender printed over it.
Maybe I was assuming things. But what if the Janosics hadn’t left town under duress?
I opened the cooler again and selected the freshest-looking white rose. One, the man had said. Why one?
I shrugged. Maybe the Janosics chose to leave. Maybe they intended to come back all along. Maybe they didn’t tell anyone they were leaving because they thought they’d return in a day or two. Then what?
I bunched together twelve of the gorgeous red roses, added a couple of fern fronds, then artfully placed the single white rose right in the middle. “Wonder what the white one stands for?” I murmured.
Where There's a Will Page 4
