by Ann Charles
I rolled to a stop in the drive of my Aunt Zoe’s house, a spruced-up, no-fuss Victorian that my aunt was sharing with my kids and me. The sun cooked my roots as my sandals flopped and crunched along the gravel. A lawnmower growled from somewhere nearby.
On the porch, a couple of yellow jackets harassed each other, but that was it for beings—alive or dead. The sharp scent of citrus tickled my nose when I stepped inside the front door.
“Addy? Layne?” I called out.
“They’re out back.” Aunt Zoe’s voice came from the kitchen.
I found her standing at the sink, squeezing lemons into a glass pitcher. With her long, silver-streaked hair secured in a braid, the scene looked the same as it had twenty-five-plus years ago when I used to visit for a month each summer. The same sunshine-yellow kitchen, the same Aunt Zoe in blue jeans and a faded cotton shirt, the same warm and fuzzy feeling in my stomach.
“Good, I’m glad I caught you alone.” I opened the cupboard next to her, thirsty as all get out suddenly. “I need to talk to you.”
“If it’s about that foot Layne found, Harvey already called and told me the newsflash.”
I stopped mid-reach, the warm and fuzzy feeling gone. “What newsflash?”
A little over a week ago, the same day I’d played doctor with Doc in his office, Layne had found a human foot dangling from a red satin ribbon in a tree up the hillside behind Aunt Zoe’s house. The ribbon had been threaded through the Achilles heel and a sprig of mistletoe stapled to the big toe—one of only three toes still attached. Detective Cooper and his motley crew had yet to find the rest of the owner ... unless something had changed.
Aunt Zoe’s forehead creased. “Coop told Harvey someone found a hand up on Mount Roosevelt, near the monument. He thinks it goes with the foot.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know more, but I asked anyway. “What makes Detective Cooper think they’re both part of the same ...” I paused. It was easier to think of these parts as individual pieces rather than a whole person. “Same body?”
“More red satin ribbon.”
“Oh.”
“And mistletoe.”
I grimaced.
“And a little silver bell tied to the thumb.”
“Jesus!” I grabbed a glass from the cupboard and closed the door. “This is kind of scary.”
“Tell me about it.” Aunt Zoe tossed the squeezed lemon onto the pile of rinds in the sink. “We just got rid of one monster, thanks to you.”
Thanks to me? Right. That made me sound heroic. My memories of the whole Hessler Haunt climax involved a lot of shrill screaming and tail-between-my-legs scampering.
“It’d be nice to have a little break before the next one shows up to terrorize the town,” Aunt Zoe said, moving over so I could get some water from the tap.
“Or a big break.” I could feel her eyes on me as I filled my glass. “Like lifetime big.”
“How are the nightmares?”
I turned off the faucet. I wanted to deny that I was still having them, but the dark circles under my eyes most mornings undoubtedly gave me away. “Still coming.”
“How often?”
“Every now and then.” They showed nightly on the big screen in my brain, sometimes in 3-D—a special feature. But Aunt Zoe didn’t need to hear that. She had enough on her plate with creating all the spun glass pieces required to fill an order from a fancy gallery in Denver. She needed to focus, not have her creativity sapped from worrying about me. I gulped several swallows of cold tap water, quenching my thirst, wishing I could quench the nightmares with it.
“You sure you don’t want to pay a visit to that therapist the Emergency doctor recommended?”
Glass in hand, I moved to the back door and looked out at my kids, who were filling one of Aunt Zoe’s big plastic storage tubs with water from the garden hose. “I’m fine. It’s just some residual stuff still bouncing around in my head, that’s all.”
“Violet Lynn.”
The sound of my middle name made me turn her way. “What?” That came out sounding more defensive than I’d have liked.
“You experienced a very traumatic event. While most of the physical evidence has disappeared—”
I pointed at my eyebrows, or rather the patches of them.
“I said ‘most.’” She lifted the pitcher from the sink and placed it on the counter. “The mental bruises will take longer to fade.” She grabbed the sugar canister and dumped a heap into the lemon juice. “You should think about calling that therapist and setting up an appointment with her.”
Absolutely not. I couldn’t afford to pay a therapist right now, unless she accepted Monopoly money as currency. “I’ll consider it.”
I could tell by the set of her mouth as she stirred the juice that she didn’t believe me. Aunt Zoe had been able to read me like a Wall Drug billboard since I stopped wearing diapers.
“If anything, she could give you a prescription for something to help you sleep better.”
Sleep? Bah. Who needed it?
Movement out the back door caught my attention. I grinned at the sight of Layne squatting in the plastic tub, his head the only thing above water, his teeth visibly chattering. Meanwhile, Addy chased her chicken, Elvis, around the swing set and then around Layne. Addy’s red checkered one-piece bathing suit reminded me of Wanda Carhart’s red gingham dress, which in turn jogged my memory about what I’d wanted to talk to Aunt Zoe about when I walked into the kitchen.
“Aunt Zoe?”
She looked up from filling the pitcher.
“Do you know Millie and Wanda Carhart?”
The slight narrowing of her eyes spoke volumes. “A little. Why?”
“I’m going to go walk through their place up in Lead this afternoon. They want me to sell it for them.”
“That was an ugly scene.” She shook her head as she dumped a tray of ice cubes into the lemonade.
“Do you remember the details?”
“Well enough.” She grabbed the towel, wiping her hands. “Are you going to sell it?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?” I might as well solicit her opinion. Everyone else had already thrown their two cents at me.
“I think you’re going to do what you believe is the right thing.” She held out her hand for my glass. I gulped the last bit of water and obliged. “Which might not be the best thing,” she continued, “but if there is one thing I’ve learned about you in the last thirty-five years, it’s that there’s no stopping you once you get up a head of steam.”
She handed me back my glass. Ice cubes clinked and swirled in the murky lemonade. I raised it to my lips as the back door crashed open and two dripping kids slid inside with a chicken pecking at their heels.
“Hi, Mom!” Layne wrapped two wet arms around my hips and hugged my stomach. “Did you bring the glue?”
My son went through Elmer’s glue faster than a scrapbooking convention. I kissed the top of his head, the only dry spot on him. “I forgot.”
“Awww, Mom …” He pulled away.
“You can finish gluing your Zeppelin after supper.”
“Can Kelly come over tonight?” Addy asked me as I air-dried the damp spots Layne had left on my dress.
The chicken clucked toward the living room.
“Addy, what did I tell you about that chicken?”
“But Elvis is housebroken now.”
“I’m tired of picking chicken feathers off my pillow. Elvis stays outside or in her cage in the basement, and that’s final.” Addy was lucky Aunt Zoe even allowed the damned bird in her house.
“Fine.” Addy grabbed Elvis and tucked her under her arm. “But can Kelly come over, please?”
Kelly was Addy’s best friend. She also happened to be the daughter of Jeff Wymonds, whose place I was knee-deep in cleaning up so I could put it on the market as soon as possible. Jeff’s soon-to-be ex-wife wanted her half of the house’s value immediately. She had big plans for herself and her new girlfriend.
“I don’t know,” I told Addy. “Let me ask her dad.”
“Okay.” Addy shifted the chicken to her other arm. “Umm, Mom?”
“What?” I took a drink of my lemonade, savoring the sweet and sour flavors that reminded me of childhood. Aunt Zoe’s fresh lemonade came in second only to her legendary Christmas Whiskey Slush.
“Do you want to kiss Kelly’s dad?”
I nearly choked on my mouthful of lemonade. Gulping it all down at once, I coughed, cleared my throat, and then gaped at my daughter. “What?”
“Do. You. Want. To. Kiss. Kel—”
“I heard you the first time, Adelynn Renee.”
Aunt Zoe snickered and poured lemonade into two smaller cups.
“Well, do you?”
“Yeah,” Layne chimed in, his arms crossed. “Do you?”
Kiss Jeff Wymonds? “No.” The only lips I was interested in sampling were Doc’s. But nobody knew that except me, especially since my best friend, Natalie, believed herself to be in love with Doc, which was a problem I was doing my best to skirt.
“Good.” Layne’s smile returned, widening further when Aunt Zoe handed him the cup of lemonade.
Addy wasn’t smiling. “Why not?”
“Because I just don’t.”
“Not even a little? Not even like as a friend? Like how Harvey and Ms. Geary are kissing friends?”
Ms. Geary was Aunt Zoe’s sixty-ish next-door neighbor who preferred to weed her flower beds in rhinestone-hemmed short shorts and fish-net stockings—usually when she knew Harvey was watching. He “watered her flowers” a few times a week.
“No, not even a little, Addy. So don’t even think about playing matchmaker with Mr. Wymonds and me.”
Addy made Cupid look like a fumbling fledgling.
“But Mom, if you and Mr. Wymonds got married, Kelly would be my sister.”
Ohhhh. Now I understood what was going on. Addy’s mission in life this last year had been to marry me off to the most qualified candidate. “Qualified” by her standards usually meant a love for all animals—especially chickens—and a deep wallet, since she was often concerned about my lack of cash.
“No, Addy. I’m not marrying Kelly’s dad. Get that through your head right now.”
“She’s never marrying anyone.” Layne faced down his sister with me, standing shoulder to my ribcage. “Right, Mom?”
Well, I wouldn’t go that far.
“But I need stuff.” Addy’s whine made my lower back tighten.
“Like what?”
“Candy.”
“You have plenty of candy.” I didn’t even know where she found half of it. I swore there was a candy fairy who stopped by Addy’s pillow nightly.
“School clothes.”
“Your stuff from last year still fits fine.”
“A new bicycle.”
“Your bike has a couple of broken spokes; that’s no big deal.”
“Some glasses.”
“Your gl—what?” Glasses? “What makes you think you need glasses?”
“The eye chart back by the pharmacy at Piggly Wiggly. When I stand behind the red line like the instructions say, I can’t read the bottom three lines.”
“Really?” At her nod, I sighed. This wasn’t going to be cheap. With no vision insurance to help me cover costs, I was probably looking at shelling out close to five hundred bucks.
“If you had a husband, you could afford me better,” Addy explained.
That stung clear down to my toes. “Sweetheart, I can afford you just fine without a husband,” I lied.
If only I had some kind of child support coming in from the kids’ father. But as soon as he’d heard I was pregnant, he’d hightailed it out of town never to be heard from again. Such was my luck with men since I started stuffing my bra and wearing lipstick back in eleventh grade.
I could borrow money from my parents or Aunt Zoe—again—to pay for the glasses, but I was tired of mooching off family.
As soon as my commission from Doc’s house purchase came in, I’d have a bit of cash to refill my bank account’s sparse coffers, but I had other bills to pay, too. Plus, Layne’s toes were beginning to push out through both pairs of his tennis shoes. I couldn’t expect him to wear his big snow boots to school every day. He’d be the laughing stock of the school.
Sheesh! I had to get some fresh air before I cowered in the corner, hyperventilating. I gulped down the rest of my lemonade and set the glass on the counter.
“Don’t worry, honey.” I squeezed Addy’s chin as I passed. “I’ll take care of everything. See you guys tonight.”
Ignoring the concern creasing Aunt Zoe’s mouth, I kissed her cheek and practically ran out the front door.
I needed to find where money was growing on trees around here, and fast.
But with my luck, I’d discover a foot or hand hanging on the tree with it.
* * *
I found the money tree.
It was sitting next to the Carhart house, which shined with Gothic-Revival-style finery, from its steeply pitched roof and even steeper cross gables and point-arched windows. While it could use a coat of paint, if the inside was in as good a shape as the outside, this place would have buyers reaching for their checkbooks.
There was just one tiny problem.
Well, maybe not so tiny.
The house overlooked one of Lead’s current claims to fame—the remnants of Homestake Mining Company’s vast open-cut gold mine.
The huge hole in the ground had always struck me as odd, not due to its manmade immensity but rather the way it seemed plunked in the middle of the small town, located at the corner of Main Street and Gold as if that were perfectly normal.
The Open Cut’s edge was not a hundred feet from the Carharts’ side porch. An eight-foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire acted as the dividing line between land and no man’s land. A buffer strip of tall, scraggly weeds bunched up along the fence’s base.
I tested the fence to make sure it wasn’t electrified, then clasped my fingers around the wire and peered down, down, down. I couldn’t see the bottom.
How could I sell this?
The answer popped in my head—territorial view.
I grinned against the wire. Perfect!
Then I remembered all of the warnings I’d been battered with this morning. I pushed away from the fence, back-peddling to the drive, hesitating in front of my Bronco.
Okay, so Addy needed glasses and Layne needed shoes. Maybe I could find a part-time job in the evenings to help pay the bills until my clientele grew and regular commission checks started pouring in.
A sheer white curtain twitched inside one of the downstairs windows, just enough to make me wonder if I’d really seen it move. I stared. It twitched again.
Someone was watching me. I might as well make my appearance, see the inside of the place, and then say my goodbyes.
I was not going to offer to list the Carharts’ house, I reminded myself on the way up the steps of the wide, one-story porch. No way, not even if their home’s interior glimmered with as much potential as the exterior. I’d catch way too much crap for even considering it.
The porch floorboards didn’t creak under my feet. I added a little extra bounce with each step. Still nothing. Hmmm. Maybe it was newly rebuilt. I could add that as a selling point ... if I were going to list their house, which I wasn’t, of course.
The front door opened before I had a chance to knock.
Millie’s owl eyes met mine through the screen door. “Come in, Miss Parker.” She opened the screen just enough to hurry me through it.
I’d anticipated a musty smell for some reason, probably because Millie and Wanda had a musty look about them. I’d also envisioned long shadows and dark wood accents—a structural version of Millie herself.
Apparently, my inner prophet needed glasses, too.
Myriad Tiffany-style stained glass lights filled the foyer and adjacent formal sitting room. From table lamps to floor la
mps to wall sconces to chandeliers, stained glass tints filled the rooms with pastel shades of red, blue, green, and yellow happiness.
Light caramel stain added warm charm. In the sitting room, islands of thick cream-colored shag rugs floated on long, narrow slabs of birch flooring. A burgundy leather sofa pinned down one rug; a matching chair and ottoman occupied the other. Millie ushered me toward the chair. Its ultra-soft leather caressed the backs of my bare legs as I settled in.
“I’ll go get Mother.” Millie spoke so quietly that I had to lean forward to hear her. “Would you like something to drink?”
“A glass of water would be great, thank you.”
Millie’s long wool skirt swished away, leaving me alone to absorb more of my surroundings. Off-white silk wallpaper dotted with flowers covered the walls. The high ceiling gleamed with a pearlescent shade of pink paint on pressed tin squares, each trimmed with decorative swirls.
The scent of vanilla filled the rooms, so rich I could almost taste it on the back of my tongue. The faint sound of a Flamenco guitar filtered down a wide stairwell trimmed with an elaborately carved banister ending in pineapple-shaped newel posts.
I settled into the soft cushions, imagining the bidding war this place could spur. If the rest of the house was as polished and enchanting, the online pictures alone would sell the property.
I wondered in which room the murder took place. It certainly couldn’t have been this one. It was too calming, too pretty for such a gruesome scene. Maybe it was in the kitchen, where the rolling pin resided close and handy.
A portrait of a couple sat on a sideboard across the room, luring me. I picked up the brass frame, recoiling as I focused on the man’s harsh features: eyes too far apart, nose bent in two places, teeth crooked and stained a gray-beige, blond hair cowlicky over each temple. The raven-haired beauty cozied up next to him made me blink, the contrast stark, mesmerizing. With her ivory skin and amethyst eyes, she would have piled up traffic on Interstate 90 during biker week.
“What are you doing?”
I tensed at the sound of Millie’s voice. She stood rigid, watching, expressionless.
“I’m, uh,” I showed her the picture, “just looking at—”
