by J. J. Murray
Keep what quiet? “So Mr. Simmons dies of old age, and then …”
“And then life goes on, I guess. Maybe we get the lake.”
“But Mr. Simmons’ will ruined all that.”
“Tell me about it.” Thomas blows smoke above his head. “That will gave just about everything to the Hemmings—the Buffs, who are the least scandalous people on planet Earth. No scandal, no possibility of murder, maybe Sheriff Q and Mayor P … wait, that’s too close to his last name.”
“Go on, Thomas.”
“Maybe the sheriff and the mayor can convince the Buffs to sell the land to make the lake anyway. If the Buffs believe someone murdered Mr. X so the land could turn into a lake, they’d never sell it because of the scandal. Heck, they’d never sell it because their buffalo could use all that good green grass.”
“And the will stipulates that the Buffs have to use the land for grazing their buffalo and Mr. X’s cows,” I say.
“Ah, but the will didn’t say how long,” Thomas says. “That’s what Sheriff Q said. The will didn’t say how long those buffalo and cows have to graze. In maybe a year or two, the mayor, the town council, and the county commissioners can approach the Buffs to ask them to do the right thing.”
“Which is?”
“Sell the land for the lake and bring prosperity back to Gray County. Sheriff Morris even said they would have named it Hemmingsford Lake or Augie Lake or something like that. But because I called the coroner—which was the right thing to do and it’s in the manual—none of that can happen now. He said it’s all my fault this town and this county are poor.”
“That’s the most ridiculous …” I shake my head. “It’s not your fault at all, Thomas.”
“Sheriff Morris made it seem that way.”
And some people like Billy, Brenda, and Hanley are blaming me for it anyway. “Where was Sheriff Morris on vacation?”
“He has some timeshare on Pine Lake.”
Pine Lake.
Where Melville Taylor allegedly took a boat.
To the sheriff as a payoff? For what? For sweet-talking the Hemmingsfords? No, the will hadn’t been read yet.
“The sheriff paid something like twenty grand so he could get to use that timeshare for two weeks a year.” Thomas takes another drag. “Wish I had that kind of money. I could afford a house instead of a trailer with that kind of money.”
But Sheriff Morris already has a cabin off Spectacle Lane.
On the shores of that invisible lake.
The sheriff’s cabin would have been on a peninsula on the waterfront of the new lake. His land would have shot up in value. The value of Billy Parsons’ land would have gone up, too. Solitude’s land would have been the most valuable land of all for use as a marina.
“When did the sheriff leave for his vacation?” I ask.
“Except for making an appearance at the funeral, Sheriff Morris was out from Memorial Day until yesterday. One of the perks of his job. He gets to go on vacation during busy times like that.”
So Sheriff Morris wasn’t around to do his job … so he could have an alibi that would allow him to come back to town, get the mayor and Hen to carry out Melville’s wishes—
No. The sheriff would have had a better alibi if he were here not doing his job as usual.
“Thomas, have you read the coroner’s report?”
“I looked at it.”
“What did it say? Hypothetically speaking. Please? I got your AC working.”
Thomas shrugs. “I don’t know what good it will do. It had a bunch of medical words in it, and you know I barely understand regular words.”
“Try to remember. It’s important to me. Especially the cause of death.”
“Tiny drowned.”
“I know that, Thomas, but did it have the word ‘drowning’ or ‘drowned’ under cause of death?”
“No. No, it didn’t. It was, um, a long word beginning with P and … enema.”
What? “Enema?”
“No, not enema.”
“Did it say something like pulmonary edema?”
Thomas smiles. “Yeah. That was it. Enema sounded funny. What’s pulmonary …?”
“Pulmonary edema. A person’s lungs filling up with fluid.” Nonna had to have her lungs drained several times because of pulmonary edema. “So Mr. Simmons didn’t necessarily drown in water.”
“Drowned is drowned, right?” Thomas asks.
“Well, not really.” Why didn’t Dr. Henritze announce “pulmonary edema” as the cause of death? I know saying someone drowned is simpler for the public to understand and probably more dramatic for television, but it wasn’t an accurate assessment. “Mr. Simmons did ‘drown’ when his lungs filled up with fluid, Thomas.” Mr. Simmons could even have died of natural causes, but Dr. Henritze seemed so sure he didn’t. Mr. Simmons never smoked, lived outside in all that fresh air, and was barely huffing and puffing as he walked around his fields that sweltering day.
“I would have wrote down drowning,” Thomas says.
“Written,” I say.
“Oh yeah. Written.” Thomas sighs. “Break time’s over.” He stubs out his cigarette on the sidewalk and flicks it into the street.
“You’re littering.”
Thomas collects the butt. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to do that. That might get me demoted. Again. Or fired.”
“You did the right thing, Thomas.”
“And look where it got me.”
Chapter 22
I cross Front Street and enter Peace Goods, pausing to look at a “New Summer Hours” sign on the door. They’re opening at ten and closing at six Monday through Saturday when they’re usually open from seven to seven every day of the week. Their new schedule is costing them thirty-six hours a week!
I see Tina sitting on a wooden stool behind the counter. “Hey, Tina.”
“Hey.”
I shiver as I walk down the natural nuts aisle and stand in front of the counter. “AC okay?”
“Yeah, it’s great.”
I look around the shop. “Where is everyone?”
“It’s just me today,” she says softly. “Just me.”
“Where’s Hen?”
“Gone.”
“Gone to …”
“Just … gone.”
She seems so sad. “Did you two have a falling out?”
“No. We were getting along fine. He just … left me.”
“When?”
“Sometime Monday night.”
The night after the will was read. That same night Melville Taylor and family left town, Hen walked away from Solitude. Yesterday, Sheriff Morris demoted Thomas and gave Mr. Simmons’ murder case away to the state police. Today, Billy Parsons is angry at the world. What in the world is going on?
“Where do you think Hen might have gone, Tina?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
“How did he go?”
Tina sighs and takes a sip from a bottle of organic water. “He just walked off from Solitude. I got worried. He didn’t know the woods very well. At first, I thought maybe he went out hiking on the Appalachian Trail.”
“In this heat?”
“Yeah, and he really wasn’t the hiking type.” She looks at her hands. “He made me feel young again, you know? I really liked him, Gio.”
“I know you did,” I say. “Did he at least leave you a note?”
“No.”
That’s cold. “So is that why you changed your hours?”
She nods. “We’re not exactly getting much business anyway. I was thinking of scaling back before … before Hen came into my life.”
My phone rings. “Excuse me, Tina. Hello?”
“Doing anything?”
Owen. Oh, I’m only trying to investigate a murder no one cares about and getting rude treatment from people who think I murdered Mr. Simmons and changed the will, and the waters just got murkier because Hen has conveniently disappeared. “I’m at Peace Goods talking to Tina.”
<
br /> “Oh, great,” Owen says. “Could you put her on? I need to speak to her, too.”
“He wants to talk to you.” I hand Tina my phone.
“I don’t know, Owen,” Tina says. “It’s not a good time, okay? We’ll have to see … I can’t make that kind of commitment now.” She hands me my phone. “I have some things to do.” She slides off the stool and drifts into the storeroom.
“Tina? You still there?”
“She’s in the storeroom, Owen.”
“But I wasn’t through talking to her.”
“Her man left her, Owen, a guy named Hen,” I say. “She’s not taking it too well.”
“Tina will find herself another fuzzy-wuzzy.”
Nice empathy. “I know how she feels, don’t I?”
Owen wisely keeps his mouth shut.
“Why’d you want to talk to her?” I ask.
“I only wanted to pin her down about how much Swinging Bridge Flour the co-op can stock.”
“Not that again,” I say.
“Yes, that again. Come on over, and I’ll fill you in. Big doings. And I’ll treat you to lunch while Kimiko is in Calhoun for a checkup.”
“Why didn’t you go with her?”
“Someone has to run this restaurant.”
Helen Humphreys can run that restaurant in her sleep. “I already saw the story in the Current. You say you’re going to be operational by Halloween, so what’s to fill in? It sounds like a done deal.”
“There’s more to tell.”
“You won’t change my mind, Owen.”
“But at least you’ll get a free lunch out of the deal,” he says.
I wish I wasn’t hungry. “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes. Bye.”
“See you soon.”
I walk through the recycled paper goods section to the storeroom door. “Tina? You okay?”
She comes to the door with tears in her eyes. “I’ll be all right.”
“Really?”
She nods and wipes her eyes with her fingers. “It wasn’t as if I expected him to stay with me, you know? He was so young. I know everyone thinks I’m a cougar.”
“I don’t.”
“It was all so new and exciting.” She smiles. “I knew it couldn’t last. I shouldn’t have been so rude to Owen, though.”
“He’ll get over it,” I say.
“Owen is certainly persistent,” Tina says. “He’s been calling me all week about this flour of his. He’s going to sell it to me for two-fifty and suggested I sell it for five bucks a bag. I’d be lucky to get three.”
“You say he’s been calling you all week?”
“Since we opened Monday morning,” Tina says.
Since before the will was read.
“He has probably called today, but I haven’t been answering,” Tina says. “Hey, are you okay?”
Not really. “Yes.”
“I mean, with all the rumors flying around,” Tina says. “I don’t believe any of them. I want you to know that.”
“What rumors are you hearing?”
“Mrs. Simpkins came in for her herbal tea,” Tina says. “And she said something about you sweet-talking Mr. Simmons into changing his will, and that maybe you had something to do with his death.”
“First of all, my grandfather tried sweet-talking Mr. Simmons for fifty years and it didn’t work. No one could sweet-talk that man. And second of all, there is no way—”
“But you did get something in the will, Gio,” Tina interrupts. “That’s all Mrs. Simpkins seemed to be stuck on.”
“Six rusty tractors, a truck, and some money to fix them,” I say. “And it will cost more than the money we got to restore them all.”
“Like I said, I don’t believe any of the rumors, Gio,” Tina said. “When people have nothing better to do, they gossip, right?”
I still don’t like it. “Right.”
“I hope it doesn’t affect your repair business,” she says.
“It won’t,” I say. “Something always breaks. I’ll see you later, Tina.”
On my way to The Swinging Bridge, I think back to the last time anyone called me to repair something. I fixed Peace Goods’ AC unit the day before the state police searched the creek. That was last Thursday. It has been five days since anyone has called me. Ferrari Repair has gone through droughts before, so I’m concerned but not worried. Something will break. And if I get bored, I may have to “borrow” some broken appliances from the landfill to restore so I can stay busy. My great-grandfather and his brothers often went to the Gray County landfill or down the sides of mountains where folks tossed and still toss out old appliances for some odd and environmentally stupid reason and reclaimed washers, dryers, and refrigerators, repaired them, and sold them—sometimes to their unsuspecting original owners.
I hope it doesn’t come to that.
I call Ayana. “Are you busy?”
“Just checking the oil before I take a trip over the mountain,” Ayana says. “I’m going to Advance Auto in Calhoun to pick up a thermostat, oil cooler, and a fuel pump for this beast.”
“Make sure the parts are new and not rebuilt,” I say. “Rebuilt parts are cheaper, but you sometimes inherit the reason they’re not inside a vehicle anymore.”
“Okay.”
“I heard about Hen leaving.”
“Yeah. Fool just walked out and didn’t come back.”
“When did he leave?”
“No one knows for sure,” Ayana says. “Sometime during the night.” Ayana sighs. “Because of him, Tina was bathing regularly, and now I’m going to have to burn incense again since she’s in the bedroom next to me.”
“It can’t be that bad,” I say.
“It is,” Ayana says. “Where are you calling from?”
“My Jeep,” I say. “I’m on my way to The Swinging Bridge.”
“To see your first love.”
But hopefully not my last. “He’s no longer part of my life, Ayana. Besides, I met someone. Sort of.”
“How do you sort of meet someone?”
“I’ve only talked on the phone with him.” I tell her all about Rinaldo.
“So you’re dating a chef via voicemail,” she says.
I laugh. “So far.”
“Well, he sounds like the man for you, except for the messy apartment part. When is he coming to visit?”
I pout. “October.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
“He can do better than that,” Ayana says. “Give me his number, and I’ll get him here this weekend.”
“No, that’s all right.”
“No it isn’t. I’ll call him and say, ‘Rinaldo, get your butt down here before Giovanna gets snapped up by a much luckier man.’”
“There hasn’t been much snapping in my life, you know.”
“Rinaldo doesn’t know that!”
I pull in to The Swinging Bridge parking lot. “Give me a call if you think Advance Auto is trying to take advantage of you.”
“I will,” Ayana says. “And you give me a call if Owen tries to take advantage of you.”
“I won’t let him.”
But I will let him buy me lunch.
Chapter 23
Owen and I sit at one of the half dozen picnic tables squeezed onto a screened-in porch in the back of the restaurant. Two customers play corn hole toss and horseshoes on the lawn in front of us, though I don’t know how. It has to be one hundred degrees in the sun, and it’s not much cooler on this porch. Metal signs on the wall announce “Coffee 5¢” and “Coke 5¢.” Times sure have changed.
But Owen hasn’t. He’s still handsome, bright-eyed, and bushy-tailed. I can’t believe Owen is going to be a father at the age of forty-two. I can’t imagine being a mother at forty-two. I know Hollywood actresses are having children past forty, but I’m no glamor queen. I used to imagine what our children would have looked like. They would be tall, perpetually tan, hopefully blue-eyed, and gorgeous, and they would have my sens
e and his—
I really need to get over this man.
“People may start to talk,” I say.
“About what?”
“You’re having a lunch date with me when your wife is in Calhoun,” I say.
“This isn’t a lunch date, Gio,” he says. “This is a business lunch.”
“But I want no part of your business.” I smile. “And are you sure you want to be seen with the woman who sweet-talked Mr. Simmons into changing his will and then drowned him?”
“What?”
“That’s what is grinding out of the Kingstown rumor mill.”
He leans forward. “You didn’t, did you?”
“No.”
He laughs. “Just messing with you. I know you didn’t.”
“How can you be so sure? I’m smart enough to pull off the perfect crime, aren’t I?”
“You probably are, but I know you, Giovanna,” he says. “How many fish did you put back in the pond after you caught them when we were kids?”
“Most of them.”
“And when we went hunting, you didn’t shoot at a thing,” Owen says. “I know you, Giovanna. You don’t have a murderous bone in your body. And I think I know you well enough to change your mind about the mill.”
“Oh, you do?”
“Yes. What can I get you for lunch?”
“Can I order anything on the menu?”
“Anything.”
I open the menu and see new prices handwritten on white slivers of tape over the old prices. “You lowered your prices.”
“The Hemmingsfords lowered their prices on meat, and I pass on the savings to my customers.”
“Why did they lower their prices?”
“They got The Simmons Farm, didn’t they? Augie came in himself to tell me they’re expanding their herd. He and Mrs. Hemmingsford left for South Dakota yesterday to get another bull and a couple dozen heifers.”
Another bull? Oh, Big John, your days are numbered. “That was quick.”
“You know the Hemmingsfords,” Owen says. “They don’t rest when there’s work to be done and money to be made.”
People are disappearing left and right from this county! “So you’re treating me to a cheap business lunch.”
“Cheaper, not cheap.”
