‘But fortune telling? For elderly people? In a nursing home?’
Jules folded his arms across his chest. ‘OK, first off, the residents and staff prefer the term “retirement facility.” And, second, I plan on removing the death card from the deck before I even get there, so I don’t see the problem.’
Tish drew a hand to her forehead and struggled to find her next words. Although she knew Jules and Mary Jo meant well, it was not uncommon for their enthusiasm to get in the way of common sense. Thankfully, a knock upon on the frame of the café screen door rescued her from any further discussion.
Tish wandered from behind the counter to find Edwin Wilson standing on the front porch, an umbrella in one hand and the empty Finnegan’s Cake container in the other. ‘You left this at the house and Augusta wasn’t sure if you needed it back right away.’
Tish opened the door to allow Edwin admittance, but he refused. ‘Nah, I’ve gotta get going. I have to pick up some things at the store before Brenda makes supper.’
‘Oh, well, I appreciate you dropping this off.’ She accepted the container from Edwin and placed it on an adjacent table. ‘I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye, but I felt you and Augusta needed some privacy. I think I’d imposed upon you for quite long enough.’
Edwin shook his head. ‘Don’t be silly. It’s Augusta and me who should apologize. We shouldn’t have gotten into things the way we did. I thought she’d be feeling better by now, what with …’ Edwin’s voice trailed off. ‘But Augusta’s as stressed as ever, worrying that the board will follow through with Lavinia’s final wish to fire her.’
‘Lavinia’s death is still fresh. Augusta, like the rest of us, hasn’t been able to process it yet. Give her some time. I’m sure she’ll settle down.’
‘I sure hope so.’ Edwin bit his bottom lip and looked down at the porch floorboards. ‘Augusta and I have been married over thirty years. This is the first time I’ve ever seen her like this. She’s had some rough times at other jobs, what with teaching and then serving as an administrator, but nothing’s ever brought her down the way this has.’
Tish frowned. Was there more than just book purging behind Augusta’s feud with Binnie Broderick? And did Binnie have cause to accuse Augusta of being unfit for her position as board president? Or was it, as Augusta claimed, merely a case of deflection? ‘Well, I do hope she recuperates soon.’
‘Me, too. I’m not sure how much more of this she can take. Sheriff Reade called earlier, wanting to ask Augusta May and me some questions about last night, but I told him it’s too soon. Augusta needs at least another day of rest. Besides, if there’s anyone who deserves an interrogation, it’s Opal Schaefer.’
‘Who?’ Tish’s face was a question.
‘Our resident romance writer. Goes by the name of Morningstar. She had a few drinks too many last night. Came to our table, glass of wine in hand, and gave Lavinia quite an earful about not restocking her books.’
‘Restocking? You mean Mrs Broderick was supposed to replace the books she purged?’
‘No. No, nothing like that. After Opal’s books were purged from the shelves, her agent offered to restock them at no charge. Lavinia flat out refused. Called Opal’s books “filth” right there in front of everyone.’
‘Are her books that risqué?’
Edwin shook his head. ‘Never read them. According to Augusta, they’re “erotic” but nothing you wouldn’t see on basic cable these days.’
‘So how did Opal react?’
‘Oh, she was livid. Funny, it was actually the first time I’ve seen her react negatively. She’s an old hippie. Into yoga, organic gardening, incense, meditation, that sort of thing. But last night, there was no sign of any “Kumbaya” in her heart, let me tell you.’
‘What did she do?’
‘She went all Khrushchev on Lavinia.’
Tish dug through what she remembered of twentieth-century history. ‘What? You mean she banged her shoe on the table?’
‘Oh no,’ Edwin chuckled. ‘But that would have been less threatening in the long run. No, she drank back the rest of her wine and, staring Lavinia down the entire time, threatened to bury her. Those were her exact words to Lavinia; “You may be smug now, Lavinia Broderick, but mark my words, I will bury you.”’
TWELVE
Tish awoke the next morning to the sound of bells. With her eyes still closed, she reached an arm toward her bedside table and blindly smacked at the touchscreen of her cell phone. The noise persisted.
‘What in heaven’s name is that?’ Jules shrieked from the spare bedroom.
Tish, Jules, and Mary Jo had spent the previous night baking enough rosemary madeleines for Jules to sell to hungry journalists and Tish to distribute to suspicious neighbors. Needing to shuttle her children to church and then sporting activities the next morning, Mary Jo left for home around eleven p.m., leaving Tish and Jules to bake the last batch of madeleines and then clean up. By the time the pair climbed the narrow staircase to Tish’s apartment and crawled into their respective beds, it was well after two in the morning.
Opening her eyes, Tish caught a glimpse of her cell phone display: eight a.m.
‘It’s the bells of St John the Baptist next door,’ she called to Jules as she stretched and kicked the covers off her feet. After a relatively cool night, the morning promised to be bright, hot, and muggy. ‘It’s Sunday morning, remember?’
‘What? They hold services this early? I mean, what time is it anyway?’
‘Eight o’clock,’ she yawned. ‘Service is at eight thirty. This is a wake-up call.’
‘Now I know why I don’t go to church anymore.’ Jules clicked his tongue. ‘Personally, I believe in a kinder God. The God I believe in wouldn’t expect us to leave the comfort of our beds so early on a Sunday morning. My God understands that after working all week, Saturday is our only day to clean the house, mow the lawn, exfoliate, and drink Cosmos with friends, leaving Sunday as the only true day to unwind. My God wants us to be fully rested before engaging in prayer. My God is a brunching God.’
Tish rose from her bed and, after adjusting the straps on her tank top and yanking the elastic waistband of her boxer shorts well over her hips, gazed through her bedroom window and down at the crowd of people gathered outside St John’s in anticipation that the church doors would soon open. Amid the sea of faces, Tish was able to identify Roberta Dutton, Daryl Dufour, Augusta May and Edwin Wilson, and, surrounded by a group of elderly ladies who took turns hugging, frowning, and shaking his hand in clear expressions of sympathy, a red-faced, yet morose-looking John Ballantyne.
Feeling too much like a voyeur, Tish stepped away from the window. ‘Yes, well, before you go off starting the cult of St Eggs Benedict, why don’t I make us some coffee?’
‘To be administered intravenously, I hope,’ Jules grumbled from the other room.
‘Yeah, sorry, but I let my nursing license lapse years—’ Tish’s sarcastic comment was interrupted by the popping of gunshots coming from the street below.
Tish ran from her bedroom and into the adjacent living room, only to be met by Jules, who immediately pulled her to the floor. ‘Get down!’
When the gunfire had ceased, Tish hurried back to the bedroom. As women, children, and a small number of men huddled in the doorway of the church, a crowd gathered around a man lying prone upon the concrete.
Grabbing her cell phone and dialing 911, Tish followed Jules downstairs and out of the front door of the café. The silver-haired man on the ground was dressed in a lightweight seersucker suit and a white dress shirt that was rapidly becoming stained with blood.
As Tish described the scene to the emergency responder on the other end of the line, she struggled to recall where she had previously met the victim. ‘Yes, there’s been a shooting outside St John the Baptist’s … No, I don’t see the shooter … Yes, there’s a man down. I don’t see anyone else who may be injured … The victim? He’s, um, roughly sixty years of age and …’
<
br /> Tish paused as she envisioned the wounded man standing over the body of Binnie Broderick.
‘Oh my God … it’s the doctor. It’s Doctor Livermore. He’s been shot in the chest. Please hurry!’
Tish and Jules watched as emergency medical technicians loaded Dr Livermore and a compendium of life-saving wires, tubes, and machinery into a waiting ambulance. Before the vehicle left, Tish took note of a tall, dark-haired man in a tailored navy suit and red tie being ushered into the back seat of a black Lincoln Continental idling just in front of the ambulance. Within seconds, both the Lincoln and the ambulance pulled away from the curb. The van carrying Dr Livermore took off for Bon Secours St Mary’s Hospital, its lights and sirens providing both visual and audio warning to any vehicles that might block its path. The Continental, however, made a sudden U-turn and headed down Main Street toward the opposite end of town.
‘Mayor Whitley,’ Jules told Tish. ‘Running in the opposite direction, as is his modus operandi.’
‘I take it you didn’t vote for him.’
‘Nope. Too much of a holy roller for my taste.’
‘I take it his God isn’t a brunching God,’ Tish teased.
‘Honey, his God isn’t even a square-dancing God.’
Exhausted from the late night, the sight of a man having been shot, and the calamity of yet another crime having been committed on her doorstep, Tish gave a yawn before declaring, ‘Come on, Jules. Let’s go in and get some coffee.’
‘Um, Miss Tarragon,’ Sheriff Reade called before they’d even taken a step toward the café. ‘May I have a word?’
‘Sure.’
‘Are you sure now is a good time?’ Reade eyed Tish from head to toe and then did the same to Jules before returning his gaze to the caterer. ‘If not, I can talk to the witnesses in the church first.’
Tish, barefoot, still dressed in her pajama ensemble of tank top and boxer shorts, and her face bearing streaks from last night’s eyeliner, turned to look at Jules. In all the excitement, she hadn’t noticed that he was dressed in a pair of black boxer briefs accessorized by a pair of black dress socks, a wrongly buttoned lavender dress shirt, and an unruly crop of chestnut hair that would not have looked out of place at an eighties New Wave concert.
‘Oh, um.’ Tish self-consciously wiped beneath her eyes and smoothed her hair. ‘No, this is fine. We had just rolled out of bed when we heard the gunshots.’
Reade glanced between the two of them and cleared his throat. ‘Eh-hem, so I, um, I take it neither of you saw anything suspicious prior to the shooting?’
Tish shook her head. ‘I looked out my bedroom window, but all I saw was a sea of hats, dresses, suits, big hair, and white shoes.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘I did see a few familiar faces in the crowd. You know, people I met at the fundraiser, but none of them were doing anything out of the ordinary.’
‘And you didn’t notice anyone out of place?’ Reade prompted. ‘Someone who might not have belonged there?’
‘No. I mean, I was a bit groggy. We had a late night,’ Tish explained, spurring the color to rise in Reade’s face. ‘But if there was anyone out of place, I didn’t notice.’
‘And what happened after you looked out the window?’
‘Then the gunshots rang out,’ Tish replied. ‘So I ran out of the bedroom, away from the window, and into the living room.’
‘Where I pulled her down to the ground in case there was a stray shot,’ Jules completed the thought.
‘Thanks for that, by the way,’ Tish acknowledged.
‘Of course.’ Jules shrugged.
‘And then what happened?’ Reade nudged the pair back to the case at hand. ‘After the gunshots?’
‘We got up. I looked out the bedroom window, saw someone had been injured, grabbed my phone to call nine-one-one, and then came out to see precisely what had happened. That’s when I realized it was Doctor Livermore.’ Tish frowned. ‘Is he going to be OK?’
‘Don’t know. He’s critically wounded and losing a lot of blood. According to the EMTs, it’s touch and go.’
Tish ran her hand through her hair again, this time as more of a way to ease her mind than to flatten her humidity-curled locks.
‘If his condition changes, I’ll let you know,’ Sheriff Reade offered. ‘And if you think of anything, give me a call.’ Reade handed her a card with his number, but Tish refused.
‘Don’t need it. I have one upstairs in my bag,’ she explained.
Reade, however, did not appear to be listening. His gaze was focused on something going on behind Tish.
She turned around to see Cordelia Ballantyne rushing up the road and toward the church. ‘Oh my God! I just passed the ambulance on my way here. What’s happened?’
Reade stepped past Jules and Tish to greet her. ‘There was a shooting, ma’am. Now just calm down and we’ll—’
‘Calm down? How can you expect me to calm down? First someone murders my mother and now this.’ She pushed Reade aside and called, ‘John! Where’s John? Where’s my husband?’
‘He’s inside the church, ma’am.’ Reade placed a hand on Cordelia’s shoulder in an effort to prevent her from approaching the church. ‘He’s fine. He’ll be out as soon as we take his statement.’
Cordelia remained frantic. ‘Statement? Statement about what? Who’s been shot?’
‘Doctor Livermore, I’m afraid, ma’am. Now, he’s still alive, but he’s not out of the woods yet,’ Reade answered as gently as possible.
It still wasn’t gentle enough for Cordelia Broderick Ballantyne. ‘Doctor Livermore?’ she repeated, before promptly losing consciousness.
Reade, Jules, and Tish reached out to cushion the woman’s fall as EMTs from a second ambulance, which had been called out to deal with possible victims of shock, rushed to the scene with a wheeled stretcher.
As Cordelia was wheeled to the ambulance, followed closely by Sheriff Reade, Jules turned to Tish. ‘Why don’t we go in and you can make some of that coffee you promised, huh?’
Tish gave a silent nod as Jules draped an arm around her shoulders and guided her back toward the café. ‘And while you brew the coffee, I’ll pack up those madeleines for you to take round town, because, girl, with a dead woman at your banquet and a man wounded literally on your doorstep, you’re gonna need some serious baked goods behind you to get out of this one.’
THIRTEEN
‘That’s sweet of you, hon, but I don’t do gluten,’ Opal Schaefer, aka Marjorie Morningstar, took the wax paper bag bearing four rosemary cornmeal madeleines from Tish and deposited it, part and parcel, into the stainless-steel compost bin on the kitchen counter behind her.
Tish, caffeinated, coiffed, and dressed in a nautical pairing of white Capri pants, blue-and-white striped top, and red sandals, opened her mouth to protest at the disposal of perfectly edible baked goods, but the romance writer didn’t give her a chance. ‘Funny, I’m usually good with faces, but I don’t remember seeing you at the fundraiser the other night.’
Tish was sorely tempted to point out Opal’s supposed wine consumption on the evening in question, but elected to take the high road. ‘That’s because I was in the kitchen most of the time. I only went out into the reception room just before Binnie Broderick died.’
‘Binnie. What a shock, huh?’ Opal remarked as she lit an unfiltered cigarette, inhaled, and then exhaled the smoke out of the open kitchen window. Meanwhile, another cigarette still smoldered in a nearby blue ceramic ashtray. ‘I always thought she was too mean to die. Sorry if that sounds heartless, but when you get to my age, you say what you please.’
Despite her slim figure and youthful attire of Lycra yoga pants, Chuck Taylor Converse high-top sneakers, and a flowing sleeveless blouse worn sans brassiere, Opal Schaeffer was seventy years old if she was a day.
‘I didn’t know Mrs Broderick well enough to pass judgment,’ Tish maintained.
Opal laughed heartily. ‘Oh, come on. I know you’re new to H
obson Glen and trying to ingratiate yourself with the townsfolk, but let’s call Binnie what she really was: a bitch. If my editor didn’t ban me from using them, I’d even put an exclamation mark after that word to emphasize just how bitchy the bitch truly was.’
For the first time in a long while, Tish was genuinely speechless.
Opal laughed again, but this time the boisterous cackle terminated in a dry, hacking cough that shook loose the messy bun at the nape of her neck and sent tendrils of silver hair cascading down her shoulders.
‘Are you OK?’ Tish asked. ‘Should I get you some water?’
Opal raised a hand to signify that she was in control of the situation as she rushed to the refrigerator and grabbed a kombucha. She twisted off the cap, took a swig, drew a deep breath as her coughing subsided, and then offered the bottle to Tish.
Tish had never liked the taste of the fermented beverage, but after drinking more than half a pot of coffee, the thought of taking even a small sip of kombucha from the same bottle as someone she had only just met made her feel physically ill. ‘No, thanks. I’m cutting back.’
Opal took another swig before returning the bottle to the refrigerator and lighting yet another cigarette. The second cigarette lay at the bottom of the kitchen sink, the first still smoldered in the ashtray. ‘By the way, I wanted to tell you that I truly enjoyed the For Whom the Vegan Stuffed Bell Pepper Tolls. Clever name and I appreciated the fact it was gluten-free.’
‘Thank you.’ Tish was genuinely appreciative of the praise. Perhaps her catering business would survive Hobson Glen’s recent crime spree. As long as there were no more killings and shootings, that is.
‘I imagine that menu item was your idea, not Binnie’s.’ Opal smirked and took a puff on her cigarette.
‘It was,’ Tish conceded. ‘Not to speak ill of the dead, but Mrs Broderick didn’t see the need for a vegan, vegetarian or a gluten-free option.’
‘That’s because she knew I was gluten-free and vegetarian. So was Roberta Dutton. There were probably more of us, but having attended many library functions together, I can vouch that Binnie Broderick knew that at least the two of us had dietary restrictions.’
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