Dead Men Don't Lye (Book 1 in the Soapmaking Mysteries)

by Tim Myers

  I decided it was time to talk with my brother Bob about the information Molly had given me through her questioning. That particular brother was truly a man of limited interests; for many of us, soapmaking was a career. For Bob, it was his life. My brother even went so far as to make soap on his days off using the old-fashioned methods. Sporting his ponytail and wearing one of his 1800s outfits, Bob was always a hit at craft fairs, demonstrating the old ways to anyone who would pause long enough by his iron kettle perched over an open fire. He’d even managed to talk me into some archaic soapmaking one weekend, down to the old cast-iron pots and simmering hardwood fires, but it just seemed like a great deal of work to me.

  I found him in back staring at the production line, scratching his chin and frowning.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “This equipment was ancient sixty years ago. The layout’s all wrong; it should have been changed in the seventies. To top it off, they’ve stopped making some of the parts we need for so long that I have to forge my own sometimes.”

  I smiled. “Come on, you know that just gives you an excuse to get out your coal forge and anvil.” Bob had become a rather accomplished blacksmith and machinist out of necessity, and it was a good thing he had. Otherwise we would have been forced to shut the production line down long ago. The equipment was just too expensive to replace, especially based on the revenues it brought in. To my continuing amazement, our boutique and classroom brought in a great deal more than our line in back, but I didn’t know what my brothers would do without it Bob might be able to teach a class now and then on old-fashioned soapmaking methods, but Jim and Jeff would be disastrous at it, and I couldn’t see any of them waiting on customers up front.

  Bob shrugged and said, “That’s true, I love my forge, but I’d rather do it because I want to, not because I have to. Do you mind giving me a hand setting my equipment up in back? I’ve got to come up with a replacement for another broken shaft.”

  “I’d be glad to, if you’ve got time to talk while we do it.”

  Bob offered his crooked grin. “Bro, if you’re willing to help me lift heavy things, I’ll discuss the budget crisis in Washington with you.”

  I laughed, his good mood infectious. “It’s nothing that mundane; I need some soapmaking background.”

  Bob laughed. “Are you telling me the great eldest child needs my advice? My heart’s all aflutter.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t get too excited. This is more up your alley. I’m talking about the traditional ways for making soap.”

  ‘Then I’m your man,” he said as we moved his portable forge out back into a sandpit near the property line. I stepped back as Bob loaded the coal and coke into the forge, then watched as he started his fire. He didn’t like to have his elbow jogged, I knew that well enough, so I just stood back and enjoyed the day. I knew winter was my brother’s favorite time to work his forge, warming himself from the heat of the fire and the arduous nature of the work, but he was willing to sweat for the cause to keep the line going, and I admired him for it. At least Bob was getting a jump on it early. There was a slight breeze in the air, and it wasn’t too uncomfortable yet, but I couldn’t imagine standing anywhere near the forge in the heat of the day.

  After it was burning to his satisfaction, he uncovered his anvil, a huge blackened hunk of iron mounted on a thick oak stump. With his tools laid out next to a few pieces of iron stock ready for the fire, it was time to talk again.

  “So how can I help?” he asked. “Does it have anything to do with Sanger?”

  “It might. Molly told me they found ashes in his pant cuff, along with some herbs that could have come from our garden.”

  Bob thought about that for a few seconds, then asked, “So you think whoever killed him was a soapmaker?”

  I said, “Either that, or they want the police to believe they were. Do you know anybody in our area who still uses ashes to leach lye?”

  Bob nodded. “I know half a dozen folks who do it. I’ve leached a couple of gallons myself in the past two weeks. Does that make me a suspect?”

  It probably did if Molly knew about it, but I wasn’t about to bring it up. She was well aware of how protective the brothers in our family were of our sisters, and it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if every one of our names were on her list, including my own. Our past relationship and current friendship wouldn’t cut me any slack, not if she suspected me of murder. “It doesn’t make you one in my book, but I wouldn’t admit it to Molly.”

  Bob shrugged, then said, “Who knows what I would have done if I’d known what was going on? I didn’t like Sanger, but I wouldn’t kill him. Not that way, anyway.” My brother was so matter-of-fact in his statement that I believed him. I was certain he’d be able to come up with a much more creative way of dispatching the supplier if he had to. Bob looked at me a moment, then asked, “Did you tell Molly what the ashes could mean?”

  I shook my head. “No, there’s no way to be sure I’m right. After all, they could have come from somebody’s fireplace.”

  Bob shook his head, and the disapproval in his voice was pretty obvious. “You’re treading on dangerous ground, Bro. You know how she’s going to react when she finds out you were lying to her.”

  “I never said a word to her that wasn’t true,” I protested.

  He wasn’t buying it. “Omission’s just as bad as commission, you know that.”

  I hadn’t felt like I had a choice at the time, but I wasn’t going to stand there justifying my behavior to one of my little brothers. “I’ll deal with that when it comes up. Any chance you can think of anyone who might have been dealing with Jerry Sanger and leaching their own lye?”

  “Do you mean besides me? Let me think.” He moved the coal around some with one of his handmade tools, then said, “I know the Kents over at A Long Lost Soap make their own lye every now and then. Melissa Higgins does, too. You know her, she runs The Crafty Corner.”

  “Since when has she needed soapmaking supplies from Sanger?”

  “Melissa carries some of the basic soapmaking kits in her shop, and she uses scents in her candle kits. I know for a fact she and Jerry were friendly.” Bob added, “I wonder if she was dating him, too?”

  “From what I’ve been hearing, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit. Anyone else? How about Monique White?”

  Bob laughed. “Come on, Ben, you think the owner of The Soap Bubble’s going to mess with homemade lye? I sincerely doubt it. I mean, can you see Monique grabbing a bucket of ashes and filtering rainwater through it?”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.” She might have used lye to throw Molly off her trail, though. Monique certainly seemed capable of shifting the blame to someone else if she had to.

  Bob poked the fire again, then said, “Listen, I’d love to chat, but I’ve got to get this thing forged before we can get started with today’s run.”

  “Can I help?” I asked.

  “No, this is a one-man job. I purposely came in early so Jim and Jeff wouldn’t get in my way, and I don’t need your fumbling help either.” He grinned as he said it, and I felt a twinge of regret knowing my three brothers were closer to each other than they were to me. It wasn’t just that they worked together every day. They’d been born fourth and fifth and sixth in line, and the three of them had been playing together since they could crawl; they had formed a bond between them that I couldn’t touch. Louisa and I were close, and Cindy and I had a special tie—being the oldest and the youngest of our clan—but nothing like Jim and Bob and Jeff shared.

  “I’ll let you get to it then,” I said as I patted my brother’s shoulder.

  Ignoring his forge for a moment, he said, “Thanks, Ben. Listen, don’t give up on this. We’re all counting on you to figure out who killed that weasel.”

  “I’m doing my best,” I said, knowing that it was true, hoping that it would be good enough. At least my brother had given me another lead to follow.

  I knew Melissa Higgins liked to open her c
raft store early in the morning, but not because I frequented her shop; it was on my walking route every morning before I went to work. I decided to pull the Miata off the road and walk the last hundred yards to her place. That way she wouldn’t get suspicious when I showed up behind the wheel of my Miata instead of on foot.

  The precaution was for naught, though. Her store was locked up tight, and there was a sign on the door that said, closed for the next few days. try me again later. Since it wasn’t dated, I had no idea how long the sign had been posted. It could have been up during my past walks and I hadn’t noticed it. What can I say, I’m easily distracted. At one time, Cindy had walked with me so we could spend a little time together away from the shop, but it hadn’t lasted long. She was a power walker, always going all out swinging her arms and pumping her legs, focused on making good time. Me, I liked to stroll, stop and look around if the occasion merited it, checking out a bird in the sky or a tree branch that grabbed my attention along the way. We’d both just ended up frustrating each other, and I’d happily gone back to my solitary walks. I couldn’t help wondering if the sign had been put up before Jerry Sanger’s death, or just after. It seemed the ripples of the man’s murder were spreading farther and farther from the moment I’d found him on our doorstep.

  There was nothing I could do except promise myself a return visit later. Since I was already away from the soap shop, I decided to drive over to Monique’s and see if she made any more sense sober than she had stone drunk the night before. She had to be experiencing the world’s worst hangover right about now, and that was fine with me. I wanted her off balance when I questioned her, and doing so through a pounding headache might be my best bet to get the truth. As I drove to The Soap Bubble, I wondered about Bob’s admission that the Kents made their own lye. Had they passed on that skill to Heather? The granddaughter, though she didn’t look like a murderer to me, had every reason Louisa had to want Jerry Sanger dead. But could she have killed him? Heather seemed as sweet as she could be, a real Southern girl bred with genteel manners and softly spoken words. But I’d been raised by a Southern Mamma with three Southern women as sisters thrown into the mix, and there wasn’t a man alive who knew the strength and capable manner of Southern women more than I did.

  When I got to The Soap Bubble, I thought Monique might have defied tradition and opened her shop early.

  Then I saw that the lock had been broken as the door swung slowly open in the breeze.

  Chapter 6

  “Monique,” I called out as I stepped cautiously through the door. “Are you here?”

  The second I was inside her shop, I knew something terrible had happened. Spilled aromas, the essences of a hundred different ingredients, assaulted my olfactory senses as I walked in. Crushed and powdered herbal additives were strewn all over the floor, making a nasty paste that clung to my shoes as I walked through the pristine surface of the spill. “Monique? Are you here?”

  I heard a groan in back, and rushed to the sound. I found Monique under a shelf of the heavy cherry wood pinning her to the floor. I tugged on the shelf, straining against its bulk, and finally managed to set it upright again. When I looked back at Monique, I didn’t like what 11 saw. There was a terrible gash on her forehead and the skin around it was crusted with crimson. She must have lost a lot of blood before the wound had stopped bleeding, if the stains on the floor were any indication. From the dried edges of the cut, I imagined she’d been there awhile. Worse yet, there hadn’t been a flicker of movement since I’d found her, and I felt my heart freeze in my chest. I couldn’t bear the thought of her dying on me, not with what had happened the day before on the back steps of my family’s soap shop.

  I almost couldn’t believe it when I saw her eyelids flutter, and then open. She looked completely disoriented as I knelt down and reached out to comfort her with my free hand. “Hang on, I’m calling an ambulance.” After telling the 911 operator about the situation, I closed my phone and we waited. After a minute, I had to ask, “Monique, what happened here?”

  “Water,” she croaked out. I couldn’t see how it could possibly hurt to give her a sip, so I hurried back to the kitchenette and filled a glass from the tap.

  “Hold my head,” she said as she struggled to get up.

  “You shouldn’t move.” I knew how serious a neck injury could be. I’d seen some straws in the cabinet near the glasses and retrieved one.

  “Sorry, it’s the best I can do.”

  She took a single sip, then started to cough as I pulled the straw away. “That’s enough for now. Do you feel up to talking?”

  Her eyelids fluttered as she said, “Attacked. Too late. Couldn’t stop it.”

  “Come on, you’re going to be all right. I promise you that. Who attacked you? Did you recognize them?”

  She seemed to lose interest in our conversation, and I didn’t have the heart to push her any more than I already had. I heard the sirens in the background, and in less than a minute the EMS unit was there. As they checked Monique, I heard another siren. Just don’t let it be Molly, I thought in a silent prayer.

  No such luck.

  She wasn’t all that happy to see me when she walked into the shop. “Ben, I wish I could say I was surprised to find you here.”

  There was nothing I could really say but, “Hi, Molly.”

  She looked around the shop in disgust. “With the way you tracked this mess up, there’s no way we’ll get a decent footprint here. As a crime scene, it’s as contaminated as it could get.”

  “She needed my help,” I protested as the techs pulled Monique out of the shop, her head and neck strapped to their carrying board. “I thought it was more important to see if I could keep her alive than make it easier for you to investigate what happened here. Sorry if I messed things up for you.” I shouldn’t have been so angry, but I was being flooded with emotions, and I couldn’t seem to keep my mouth shut. Only after I’d scolded her did I realize I was taking it out on the wrong person. She hadn’t done anything to deserve my barking.

  “I know, you’re right,” Molly said. “It’s just frustrating to keep finding you one step ahead of me.”

  “You know what? I’m the one who’s sorry. I didn’t plan on this happening. She called me last night, and I came by to see what she wanted. To be honest with you, she was pretty drunk, and I half expected to find her here hung over. If it helps, she told me she was attacked before she lost her focus.”

  “I can imagine that,” Molly said as she looked around. “It’s a real mess, isn’t it?”

  Suddenly I remembered the clear surface of the spill when I’d arrived and said, “Getting here first wouldn’t have done you any good, anyway. There wasn’t a footprint in the entire mess.”

  “Ben, think about it. Are you sure?”

  I recalled the pristine spread of powder on the floor. “I’m positive. Sorry I couldn’t be more help.”

  She smiled. “But you just were.”

  “How’s that?”

  She explained, “It makes sense, along with what Monique told you. This was probably an assault made to look like a break-in. That tells us quite a bit. She’s a lucky woman: I have a feeling her assailant didn’t expect her to survive.”

  “And you can tell that how?” Then it hit me. “If the break-in had happened first, there would have been tracks on the floor when I got here. Monique was assaulted, then the spill was made to divert suspicion.”

  Molly said, “Very good, Benjamin.”

  I shook my head. “But it still doesn’t make any sense. Why would anybody come after Monique?”

  “That’s the next question we need to ask her,” Molly said.

  “We?” I asked.

  She raised one eyebrow as she stared at me. “We as in the police, not we as in you and me. Are we clear on that?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” I started to leave, but before I could get out the door, Molly asked, “Ben, are you positive you don’t know why she called you last night?”

 
“I had a feeling she wanted to trade soapmaking recipes,” I said with a smile.

  “Now why don’t I believe that?”

  I shrugged, then said, “I guess you’re just not as trusting a soul as I am.”

  I wanted to root around in Monique’s life more, but I had a feeling Molly would be treading those grounds in heavy boots. I had to find another avenue to check. The note on The Crafty Corner’s door intrigued me. Surely if Melissa Higgins had planned to be gone long, she’d have found a substitute to run her store. At the very least, she would have taken time to make a classier sign. I decided to go back and see if I could find the name of her alarm company. If it was the same one we used at Where There’s Soap, I might be able to wheedle some information from them. Dan Trenton, the man who operated Eye Spy Alarm, was a crusty old goat who rarely let his left hand know what the right one was up to, but if I could convince him I needed the information, he might give me something to go on.

  To my surprise, Melissa’s store was open when I went back to check on the alarm company. I certainly hadn’t expected to find the lights on and the closed sign taken down. Her shop was filled with sections on just about every craft imaginable, and I wondered how in the world she’d ever mastered so many different disciplines. I’d been making soap all my life, and I still didn’t consider myself an authority on the subject.

  I walked in and found her at the cash register restocking her till. She was a heavyset, middle-aged woman who obviously enjoyed her personal freedom, evidenced by the brightly colored clothes she always chose to wear. At the moment, her flaming red hair was offset by the purple and blue swirls of her peasant dress. “I thought you were closed.”