by Linnea West
"Well actually, I was the one that found the evidence that proved him innocent," I said as I stopped at a stop sign. I wasn't sure why I said that, but I stole a look at Candy. She looked sad and furious, all wrapped up into a little grieving, platinum blond package.
"They can't let an innocent man be punished for a crime he didn't commit," I said gently. I know she was angry, but I hadn't done anything wrong. I wasn't going to let her be mad at me.
Candy huffed and puffed a little bit in the passenger seat. She bit her lip and started to sob a little bit. This car trip was awkward enough and the crying wasn't helping. I wasn't really sure how to comfort a high school acquaintance that I hadn't seen in a decade or so.
We rolled up to her street and Candy pointed for me to turn right. I put on my turn signal and made sure no one was coming. Ever since Peter's accident, I was always very conscious of driving safely and especially of the importance of turn signals.
"It'll be on the right side of the street," she said through her tears.
Finally, I saw a little yellow house and, assuming it was hers, I pulled up to the curb outside of it. Candy looked over and nodded that it was indeed her house. By this point, the tears were streaming down her cheeks.
"Do you have any tissues?" she managed to ask through her sniffles. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. "Maybe in your glove compartment?"
Before I could stop her, she opened up the glove compartment and started to rummage around. She pulled out a wad of tissues and grabbed one off of it. I watched in horror as the watch seemed to unwrap itself in slow motion from the wad of tissues. Candy blew her nose loudly into the tissue she had pulled off and then froze as she noticed the watch.
"Is that what I think it is?" she said, the snotty tissue frozen in her hand in midair. She stared at the watch in the glove compartment, unblinking. For a moment is was like neither of us could even breathe.
I couldn't lie to her. She was Ronald's secretary. I wondered if she had noticed that Ronald's watch had conveniently been missing and here it was in my glove box. There was no lie I could come up with that would even come close to making sense.
"Yes," I said. "It's Ronald's watch. I found it out at the field near the tractor the day after Earl was murdered."
Candy's face had an odd expression on it that I couldn't quite pin down. She sat motionless, staring at the watch with the tissue still held a few inches from her face. She kept squinting and wrinkling up her nose.
"I hid it because I didn't want to implicate Ronald," I said. "I just can't imagine Ronald did it. So I hid the watch in my glove compartment and I've been trying to figure out what to do with it ever since."
"Well I did notice at one point that Ronald was missing his watch," Candy said slowly. "But I didn't think anything of it. Do you really think that he could be the murderer?"
"Honestly, I just can't," I said. I pictured Ronald sitting in his office playing with his little Halloween toys and munching on his clandestine candy corn all while clad in a sweater vest. That just wasn't the picture of a murderer in my mind.
As we sat with the warm air blasting out of the vents, the rain outside started to pick up. We both sat in silence staring at the watch as the rain plinked on the car roof. I wondered if I should try to ask her to keep it on the down low? But her boyfriend had been the one killed. She wasn't going to withhold key evidence just because I asked her to.
"Earl did mention that Ronald had been threatening him," Candy said quietly. "Ronald had been mad that Earl had mentioned being paid for the Halloween Hayride. I mean, after all, he was basically letting them rent the land for free. Didn't he deserve some compensation? But Ronald didn't think so."
I didn't think he deserved compensation for the Halloween Hayride at all and obviously his uncle hadn't either. But I couldn't believe that Ronald would threaten him over it. When Earl had burst into the planning meeting before he was killed, Ronald hadn't been the one to stand up to him, Clark had. Ronald had seemed honestly more put out and confused than angry. He had been the one trying to keep the peace between everyone.
"I'm just saying that Earl told me Ronald had threatened him," Candy said, shrugging her shoulders. "And now Ronald's watch was found at the scene of the crime. I think it all just adds up too neatly."
I nodded. Was I just blinded by the fact that I'd known Ronald for so long? Or that he was so intertwined with life in Shady Lake? Maybe I was just as bad as one of the townies of looking past one of our own, thinking I knew them better than I did.
"I can't tell you what to do, Tessa, but I can tell you what I think you should do," Candy said. She covered the watch up with the tissues and pushed it back into the mess of the glove compartment. She pushed it shut with a click and looked at me. Her eyes were strangely blank. I think the day had been too much for her.
"I think you should turn that in," Candy continued. She was talking slowly, a far cry from how emotional she had been when I picked her up from work. "You turned in the evidence that let Ralph loose. I think you have an obligation to turn in some evidence that could show them who the real killer is."
She opened the heavy car door and stepped out into the rain. Candy bent down and looked into the car at me one last time. Her eyes seemed to bore right through me.
"Thank you for the ride," she finally said as she shut the car door and ran into the little, yellow house.
I hated to admit it, but I think she might be right. I had to turn in the watch.
Chapter 24
"So what you're telling me is that you found a vital piece of evidence at the scene of a murder and you picked it up and hid it?" Max asked.
We were sitting in my warm station wagon as the rain poured down. After I made sure Candy had gotten into her house, I sent Max an SOS text, telling him to meet me in the courthouse parking lot because it was an emergency and to bring an evidence bag with him. I knew I needed to give the watch to him before I chickened out and decided to keep the watch to myself.
"Well, when you say it like that, it sounds a lot worse than what I thought I was doing," I said. I squirmed in my seat. I really hadn't meant to hide evidence, but looking back, that is exactly what I did. I really just thought I had been doing what I needed to do to help Ronald and Shady Lake
"You could get in a lot of trouble for this, Tessa," Max said. "But I'll do what I can to shield you from it."
I looked into his eyes and knew that he was telling the truth. Those blue eyes were the same I had gazed into during our puppy love days in high school. Now here we were as full-fledged adults and just like back then, Max was helping to keep me out of the trouble that I managed to create. Life always manages to circle back around.
"I'm so sorry to put you in this position," I said. "But thank you. Thank you times a million."
Max took my hand and lifted to his mouth. He kissed the back of it gently, his lips were warm against my cold hands. He tenderly kissed each fingertip before wrapping both of his large hands around my hands. We sat for a few minutes, frozen in time as the rain poured down onto the station wagon. I wanted to sit in our little bubble forever, where we wouldn't get in trouble for me hiding evidence.
"I will always be there for you Sweet Thing," he said. And I knew he meant it.
Max leaned forward and gave me a quick kiss on the lips before climbing out of my car. I watched his back retreating quickly into the courthouse through the falling rain and I wondered what he would do. I suppose he would just have to say he found it from some anonymous tip. I hoped that I hadn't just gotten him into a load of trouble.
I debated whether I should go home, but as far as I knew, I didn't have to work today. Instead, I drove to the Donut Hut and parked in the alley. Before I got out of my car, I sent a quick text to Candy to let her know that I had turned the watch in to Max. I got a message back right away that just said:
Good. Thanks for doing the right thing.
I wasn't sure I had actually done the right thing, but at least it woul
d help put Candy's mind at ease. I dashed from my car to the back door of the Donut Hut and pushed my way into the warm kitchen. As always, it was warm and inviting, filled with delicious smells. I took off my wet jacket and hung it by the door. Even though I was only out in the rain for a few moments, it was raining so hard that my jacket was cold and soaking wet.
Mandy was standing at the counter, pouring glaze over some fresh donuts. Her apron was spattered with flour and she even had some in her dark hair. I loved watching Mandy make donuts because she was totally in her element as she did it. As I came in, she smiled at me and nodded towards the coffee pot.
"Will you pour me a cup too?" she asked. She knew that coffee was always my first priority when I came in.
I poured two cups of coffee and set one next to her on the metal island while I sat down and sipped mine. The hot coffee spread warmth throughout my body as I drank it, driving out the chilliness in my bones that the cold rain had seemed to set in deep. I wrapped my hands around the hot cup and let the coffee inside warm up my freezing cold fingers.
"Mandy, I may have just done something bad," I said after a few drinks. "I need you to set my mind at ease."
Mandy stopped what she was doing and looked me up and down with one eyebrow arched. She took a sip of coffee before she spoke.
"Okay, I give up," she said. "Tell me what you did."
I paused for a moment. I felt so bad about turning in the watch even though I had to. I felt guilty, but I still had to tell Mandy. She had played a part in finding the watch. Mandy let me sit for a few moments in silence before I finally spilled the details of what I did.
"I gave the watch to Max just now," I said. "And told him about how Ronald was missing his watch. I told him I thought the watch I had found was the one Ronald was missing."
"You what?" she said. Her eyebrows furrowed and her dark eyes burnt into me. It wasn't often that I surprised Mandy with something I did. We were so alike that we could usually predict each other's moves before we did them.
"Sit down and I'll explain," I said, pulling out another stool for her.
I poured more coffee and wrapped both of my cold hands around my hot cup for some comfort. Then I proceeded to tell her the whole story. I told her about going to pick up Candy from work after she sent me a message and how distraught she was about Ralph being let go. I told her about how Candy had accidentally found the watch in the glove compartment while she was looking for tissues and how I couldn't lie to her about it because she seemed to know what it was. And then I told her what Candy had said about Ronald threatening Earl.
Mandy sat on her stool, quietly sipping coffee and listening to the whole story. One thing I always appreciated about Mandy was her ability to just sit and listen without interjecting her thoughts and feelings. Even her face was neutral, which made it much easier to tell about giving the watch to Max, since I wasn't even sure yet that it had been the right thing to do.
"Well, I understand why you turned the watch in," Mandy said when I was done talking. "It's not like you could withhold evidence forever. But I have to agree that I'm still not sure whether it was the correct thing to do or not. I just don't believe that Ronald could have done it. I don't even believe he ever threatened Earl, no matter what Candy says happened."
I raised my mug to my lips and breathed in the bitter smell before I took a big gulp. The coffee was warming me up and calming me down.
"You know that I feel the same way," I said. "I'm not sure I believe Candy, but if Ralph didn't do it, who did? I'm so confused. I feel like everything is staring me dead in the face and I just can't make sense of it."
"If it makes you feel better, I'm not sure you had any other choice," Mandy said quietly. "You couldn't lie to Candy about it. And you know that at some point, you had to do something with the watch. It couldn't just stay in your glove compartment forever."
I felt so much better. Mandy had a way of reassuring me that no matter what, I had done what I thought was best. She gave me one more knowing look and stood up to go back to her work. I stayed on the stool, slowly finishing up my last cup of coffee.
One thing I had learned since moving back to Shady Lake was that it was never a bad idea to go see Mandy at the Donut Hut, even though it was pretty bad for my waistline.
Chapter 25
After turning in the watch, I tried to push all thought of the murder investigation out of my mind. I had other things to worry about, things that I had been procrastinating on because I was just so focused on investigating. The Halloween Hayride was starting on Friday and while my role as marketing chair meant making sure that flyers were in the appropriate places in town and that the newspaper was printing our ad and columns about the Hayride, I had also been put in charge of finding a few, fun activities to have available for kids while they waited for their turn on the Hayride. So far, I hadn't even thought about what I wanted to do for the activities, even though I had less than a week to get them together.
Not only was I making sure everything was ready for the Halloween Hayride, I was also in charge of planning some fun, seasonal breakfasts for the B&B along with decorating the common areas and front porch for Halloween. I had put up a few of our more "strictly fall" decorations on October first that we put up every year, so it wasn't like I had done nothing. But I hadn't come up with anything new and I hadn't thought of seasonal breakfasts either.
My mother, Teri, had never been a fan of Halloween. Christmas? She was gung-ho to decorate and celebrate after Thanksgiving was over, just like I was. But she could take or leave Halloween. She didn't like anything about pumpkins besides how cute they were. She didn't like anything scary or creepy. And she just didn't see the thrill of dressing up. So this year, my mother was thrilled that I was around and would be happy to do the planning for this specific holiday.
But if I'm honest? I totally forgot that I'd promised to do more until this week. So most of my desk duty was used to search online for recipes and cute and modern ways to decorate. This was the only time I was thankful my mother wasn't a Halloween fan because she preferred if our Halloween decorations only made an appearance for a few days as opposed to the month long residency that our Christmas decorations had every year.
I was knee deep in stylishly cobwebbed mantles and pumpkin spice pancakes when my phone rang. I flipped it open to see Ronald's name on the caller ID. My stomach started turning and I felt like I was about to throw up. Did he find out that I had sort of ratted him out? I went back and forth about whether I should answer, but just as it was about to go to voicemail, I hit the green button.
"Hey there Ronald," I said, trying to sound casual. I was totally using my fake, retail happy voice but Ronald didn't seem to notice.
"Tessa, I don't have much time," he said. His frantic voice seemed to drill deep into my consciousness. "The police will be here momentarily to bring me in and I just need to make sure that you are prepared to officially take over the Halloween Hayride. No matter what happens to me, I need to know that the Hayride is safe."
"I promise you that I will make sure the Hayride is a hit," I said. I let out a silent sigh of relief. Obviously he had no idea that I had a hand in him being brought in. But immediately afterward a feeling of intense guilt settled over me. I was the one who had caused this.
"Thanks so much Tessa," he said. He sounded visibly relieved. Leave it to Ronald to be more worried about the Halloween Hayride than the fact that he was going to jail. In my mind, that was a tally in the innocent column for him. "That puts my mind at ease."
In the background, I could hear Melinda yelling at him to put the phone down and come help her figure out what she was going to do while he was away. Any other man would probably find jail to be a break from a woman like Melinda, but poor Ronald would miss her while he was away. In a way, it was sweet. I always felt it was a testament to true love.
"I have to go," Ronald said. "Hopefully I'll talk to you again soon Tessa."
I flipped my phone shut and laid my head
down on the desk. The guilt felt like it was pushing me down hard into the desk. I kept trying to remember what Mandy had said. I knew I would have to do something with the watch at some point. I was just really hoping that what I would do with it would be to give it back to Ronald after the murderer had been found and arrested. Looking back, that was a totally delusional thought on my part.
My phone buzzed again, this time with a text instead of a call. I opened it back up, afraid I'd see Ronald's name as the sender. I didn't think I could handle another conversation with Ronald.
Instead, the message was from Max. That made me feel a little bit better, but also just brought up the fact that we still had not decided on Halloween costumes even though Max had been bugging me about it for a week now. As proof his latest message simply read:
Halloween Costumes???
I cringed a little and opened a new tab on the computer to search for costume ideas. I was getting to the point of telling him to wear all red and I'd wear all yellow and we would just go as condiments. That had always been my go to just in case I didn't think of anything else. Peter had always thought it was a totally ridiculous idea, but it always meant he was the one that figured out what we were going to dress up as.
I scrolled through pages of search engine results for couples costumes, but every time I found something cute, it looked like the costume would take a number of hours to make or was something I'd have to order that probably wouldn't get here in time. Even if I hadn't been busy trying to nosily solve a murder that I wasn't supposed to, I didn't have the time to make some of these costumes.
Finally, I closed the costume tab and just made up my mind that next year, I would start earlier and do a better job. Max was just as indecisive as I was, so I finally made the executive decision and sent him a message.
Alright Max, I'm gonna level with you. We are both busy people. You find a red outfit and I will find a yellow outfit. I'll print off some signs and we can go as ketchup and mustard.
I grimaced as I pressed send, remembering how dumb Clark had thought that idea was. I mean, it was kind of a dumb idea. But it was the best I had and I was pretty sure no one else would be dressed like that. It wasn't a costume idea I was particularly excited about, but it was cheap, easy, and not over done. My phone buzzed again.
