A Dangerous Departure From Hillbilly Hollow

by Blythe Baker

  “I’m fine,” I said by way of a greeting. “Totally safe.”

  He sighed. “That’s a relief. I spent the last few hours wondering whether I had sent you into the company of a crazy man. Did you find him?”

  “I did.” It was crazy how busy the day had been. So many things had happened that I’d nearly forgotten about talking to Ernest.

  “And?” he asked. “How did it go?”

  I thought about it for a minute, trying to decide if it went the way I’d hoped. And really, it hadn’t. Before meeting him, I’d hoped Ernest would scream and yell at me. I’d hoped he would threaten me so I could call the police and have him arrested. But instead, he had been upset. Apologetic, even.

  “It went really well,” I said.

  There was a long pause. “You’re eventually going to elaborate, aren’t you? Because you’re giving me nothing here.”

  I laughed. “Yes, I’ll tell you everything over shakes at the diner.”

  “Good. Because as I’ve said, you owe me.”

  “I do. I owe you big, Billy.”

  There was a long silence where I wasn’t sure Billy was going to respond. The quiet between us felt loaded for some reason. Then, he let out a breath. “Well, thanks for letting me know you were okay.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Sorry it took me so long to respond to your texts.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “You called and texted earlier, but I was in the middle of taming a half-feral cat.”

  “Okay, add that to the list of things you’ll need to explain to me when you get back to Hillbilly Hollow,” he said with a laugh. “But I only called you the one time. You answered right away.”

  “Oh,” I said, brow furrowed. Then who had been calling me? “Okay. I have to get going, but I’ll let you know when my flight is.”

  “See you soon, Emma.”

  As soon as the phone beeped to signal the end of the call, I pulled down my notifications bar and saw that I had three missed texts and a call from Tucker. When we’d talked less than an hour before, he had been dead set on leaving New York City as soon as possible. I wondered if things had changed.

  TUCKER: I’m sorry about what I said. I’m coming back to sort this out. Can you let me in?

  TUCKER: I’m outside now.

  TUCKER: Are you mad at me or are you not seeing these messages?

  Tucker had sent the messages only fifteen minutes before, but he could have already grown tired of waiting and left. Still, even if I wasn’t interested in Tucker romantically, I didn’t like the way we’d left things. We needed to talk.

  The cat was still grooming itself, and I suspected it would be for the next hour at least. So, I gave it a quick scratch behind the ears, which earned me a contented purr, and then slipped out of Blanche’s apartment as quietly as I’d entered. I couldn’t lock the door behind me since I didn’t have the key, but I just had to hope Jay would blame the open door on the building’s faulty locks. Perhaps it would encourage him to update them.

  I couldn’t see Tucker through the glass front door of the building, and there was no sign of him anywhere when I walked outside and looked up and down the block.

  I called him and then pressed the phone into my ear, hoping he’d pick up. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him about breaking into Blanche’s apartment. Even though we’d just had a conversation about me lying to him, it didn’t change the fact that he was a police officer and I’d technically broken the law by going into Blanche’s apartment. Not to mention, I’d potentially contaminated a crime scene. The last thing I needed was my local Sheriff thinking I was a criminal. The phone rang five times before his voicemail picked up.

  “Hey Tucker, it’s Emma. Sorry I didn’t see your call and texts before. I don’t want you to think I was ignoring you. If you’re still close by, come back and we can talk.”

  As I hung up and turned around, I noticed something lying on the dirt beneath Mable’s shuttered window. At first it looked like a blue and white tennis ball or something, but when I moved closer, I could see the tiny orange feet coming from the bottom. It was the bluebird I’d seen eating from Mable’s bird feeder when Tucker and I had come back from talking to Ernest. But now, it was dead.

  I tip-toed towards the bird’s corpse, still afraid it was only stunned and would wake any moment, flapping off and scaring me half to death in the process. But the only movement coming from the body was the flutter of feathers in the light Autumn wind.

  How had this happened? I’d seen the bird an hour ago and it looked as alive as could be. I walked around to the side, so I could get a look at its face and beak. There was no sign of the bird having smacked into one of the building’s windows or any other deadly trauma. It had simply…dropped dead. Much like the bird Tucker and I had seen lying on the front steps of the apartment building two days before, this bird was a perfect specimen, aside from the fact that its heart had stopped beating.

  A shiver ran down my spine, and I was becoming well versed enough in supernatural activity to recognize it as the chill brought on by a nearby ghost. I spun around expecting to see Blanche, but she wasn’t there.

  “Blanche?” I whispered. “Was that you?”

  Still no sign of her, but I could have sworn I just saw my breath in the air. Something strange was happening, and I didn’t understand it. Was Blanche trying to send me a sign, or had a low-pressure storm front suddenly moved through my block?

  I pulled out my phone and called Tucker again, mostly because I wanted to hear another human voice. It rang once and then twice, and I prayed Tucker would pick up. Just then, a wind whipped down the street, swirling my hair around my face and making me drop my phone. I yelped in surprise and tried to get my hair out of my eyes and mouth. As I did, though, I realized that even though my phone was no longer pressed to my ear, I could still hear Tucker’s phone ringing. Except, rather than coming from the speaker of my phone on the ground, the sound was coming from behind me.

  I turned around and stepped towards the building, avoiding the dead bluebird. The closer I got to Mable’s window, the louder Tucker’s phone became. I tilted my head to the side and listened as his phone rang for the fifth and final time before going silent.

  This time when I felt the chill down my back, I turned around and knew I’d find Blanche there. She was hovering above the sidewalk next to my dropped cell phone. Her lips were moving silently just as they had every time I’d seen her before, except this time there was something in her hand. Maybe she wasn’t trying to talk after all.

  “What is that?” I asked, pointing to the dark blob between her fingers. “Are you chewing something? What are you eating?”

  Blanche’s foggy shape lifted the dark square to her mouth and took a bite. Moments later, she seized, flickered, and disappeared.

  Suddenly, the pieces of the puzzle I’d been holding clicked into place. Everything made sense.

  Mable Abernathy had murdered Blanche.

  19

  Observations that had meant little to me at first glance now took on importance. There were plenty of clues pointing to Mable that I hadn’t wanted to believe earlier. Why? Because Mable was nice, and, if I was being honest, old. Elderly people weren’t murderers. Except, they were. Apparently.

  I’d seen the blue bird eating from the seed outside of Mable’s window only an hour before, and now it was dead. I’d seen another dead bird two days before. For whatever reason, Mable was poisoning the city’s animals. But did that really mean she could do the same thing to Blanche?

  In my mind’s eye, I saw the paper plate and plastic wrap on the top of Blanche’s rotting trash can. It was the same paper plate and plastic wrap that Mable had been handing out to me for years, the plate holding a variety of her baked goods—brownies, muffins, lemon squares. She didn’t hand treats out to everyone who walked by her door, but she gave them to a lot of people, including Blanche.

  How much rat poison had it taken to put Blanche down? The plate in the tras
h can was empty. Had it only been one brownie or had Blanche simply eaten them all in one sitting? Our landlady was not known for being ladylike or delicate. I wouldn’t have put it past her to eat the whole plate by herself. Either way, though, Mable had poisoned the treats and handed them to Blanche, probably with a smile.

  And now, she had Tucker’s phone.

  I stepped away from her window and picked up my phone from the sidewalk, trying not to think about what that meant for Tucker. What reason would Mable have had for hurting him? According to Jay, Blanche had been talking about getting Mable evicted so she could raise the rent on her unit, which seemed reason enough for the mildly agoraphobic woman to want Blanche dead. But Tucker was a stranger to her. A good guy without a mean bone in his entire body. What had happened between the time when he called me and when I’d finally come outside to meet him?

  As I mounted the steps to the building and stepped into the lobby, I tried not to imagine the worst. Tucker was fine. He had to be. Still, there was no time to lose.

  My hand was shaking as I knocked on Mable’s door. Part of me felt silly for being so scared. Mable was an elderly woman. I could overpower her if anything went wrong. But another part of me knew I had to stay alert. Poison was a sneaky act of murder. I couldn’t let Mable catch me off guard.

  I heard a chain lock on the other side of the door slide open and then Mable’s face appeared in the narrow crack of the door.

  “Hello sweetheart,” she said, her dry lips pulled into a smile.

  If I hadn’t been paying attention to the details, I might not have noticed anything out of the ordinary. But I was paying attention. Mable’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. Her chest was rising and falling faster than normal, air puffing from between her lips like she was struggling to catch her breath.

  “Hi Mable,” I said, trying to sound casual. “I’m going to be leaving again soon, and I just wanted to stop in and say goodbye.”

  “Oh,” she said, mouth pulling into a frown. “That’s too bad. It has been good to have you back. I’ll have to send you home with a plate of goodies.”

  Yeah, right. There were two dead birds outside who showed me what eating Mable’s goodies could do. Not to mention Blanche at the morgue. But I kept the thoughts to myself.

  “Of course, that would be great.”

  Mable smiled and nodded, and then took a step back into her apartment, the door closing half an inch. “I’ll have them ready for you in the morning. Just knock on the door before you leave.”

  I heard what sounded like a low moan from deep in the apartment, though it also could have been the wind whistling through the building’s leaky windows or a footstep on the next floor. Mable turned back towards her living room, letting me know she’d heard the noise too. When she looked back at me, her face had gone pale.

  “Are you feeling all right, Mable?” I asked, stepping forward and pressing a hand on her front door.

  Mable stiffened and began to nod incessantly. “Oh yes. Perfectly fine. Don’t worry about me. I’m old, but sturdy.”

  “Okay,” I said hesitantly. “You just seem out of breath and pale. I would hate to leave you alone and then have something happen.”

  “I’m fine,” she snapped. She followed the harsh words with a smile. “Just tired and a little busy. I have some treats in the oven now actually. I ought to check on them. Goodbye dear.”

  The smell of treats baking in Mable’s oven always wafted into the lobby. It was impossible not to know when she was baking something. But I didn’t smell anything, and I was standing in front of her open door. Except, it wouldn’t be open for long. Mable was stepping back and pushing it shut.

  I had a split second to decide what to do. I could bring my suspicions to the police and hope they made it in time to save Tucker, who was likely inside Mable’s apartment. Or, I could take matters into my own hands, trusting that I could overpower the small woman.

  Mable’s door was an inch from closing when I shoved my foot against the base of the door and threw my shoulder against the flimsy wood.

  Mable cried out in surprise from the other side of the door, and I heard her stumble back. “What are you doing?”

  As soon as the door was thrown wide, it became obvious why Mable had been trying to hurry me away. Sprawled across her plastic-covered floral sofa was Tucker. His head lolled to one side and his hands were limply flopped in his lap. If it hadn’t been for the slow rising and falling of his chest, I would have been sure he was dead.

  I ran across the room and knelt in front of him, grabbing his hands in mine. His fingers felt cold.

  “Tucker.” I shook his arms and reached up to pat his tan cheek. “What did you do to him, Mable?”

  The old woman didn’t answer, but I heard the door click shut.

  Tucker’s eyelids lifted slightly, and I could see his eyes rolling around, fighting to focus.

  He tried to say my name, but it came out like a long sigh instead. “Mmmm-ha.”

  “I’m here,” I said. “You’re okay. Do you remember what happened?”

  I lifted Tucker up by his shoulders, trying to get him to sit up straight, but as soon as I let go, he slid back down again.

  “Ate sumting,” he said, his tongue refusing to cooperate.

  “What did you give him, Mable?” I asked. “Tell me now. Is he going to be okay?”

  Mable was still near the front door, but her back was turned to me now and the closet door was open. Suddenly, she turned around and I saw the gun in her hand. It was a handgun, nothing flashy or showy, but it would get the job done. It would silence me and Tucker forever if I didn’t do something to stop her.

  “I have a feeling neither of you are going to be okay for much longer,” Mable said, her bottom lip tucked beneath her top, her chin dimpled.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Just let me take him out of here. Let me get him some help.”

  “He doesn’t need help. He needs a nap,” Mable said. “And you know why I’m doing this, don’t you?”

  I didn’t answer. The less I said, the better. Mable was clearly unstable.

  “You knocked on my door because you know what I’ve done,” Mable said, her voice cracking. “And you are coming to undo my hard work. You came back to the city to wreck everything for me.”

  “You wrecked everything already,” I said. “You killed Blanche.”

  Mable lifted her head up, the loose skin around her throat stretching. I could see that her arms were already shaking from the effort of holding the gun up, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t pull the trigger. In fact, it meant she might pull it even sooner than she would have otherwise. “That may be true, but I had a good reason. I had a very good reason.”

  “She was going to evict you.”

  Mable nodded. “Blanche knew that I couldn’t leave the apartment, but she didn’t care. She only cared about money. Greed is a sin just like murder, isn’t it? What I did to her wasn’t any worse than what she was going to do to me. A sin is a sin. Plus, she didn’t have any trouble taking baked goods from me even while she actively planned to evict me. She was a horrible woman.”

  “Evicting you would have been wrong,” I said softly. “But you killed someone. You ended a life.”

  “And gluttony,” Mable added, one finger in the air as if she’d just remembered something. “Gluttony killed her, too. There wasn’t enough poison in any one slice of brownie to put someone as large as Blanche under. It took the whole plate. If she hadn’t eaten them all so quickly, she may have survived and only experienced a stomach ache.

  I remembered the empty plate in Blanche’s trash. I didn’t know how many brownies Mable gave her, but Blanche ate every single one. Apparently, Mable believed an affinity for sweets also deemed someone worthy of death. If that was the case, she should go ahead and shoot me now. Prior to learning Mable liked to add a deadly ingredient to her desserts, I used to eat her goodie plates in one afternoon.

  “What did the birds do to dese
rve to die?” I asked, the words coming out in a grunt while I propped Tucker up against my side. I didn’t want him to collapse forward and compromise his otherwise steady breathing.

  Mable gave me a small smile, as though she was pleased I had solved that part of the puzzle, as well. “Being inside as I am, it’s nice to see some nature outside my window. I’ve always loved setting out bird seed and squirrel snacks, and they have always gone over very well with a large number of animals. But, recently, I noticed a few of the birds were eating more than their fair share. They were grotesque, fat birds that had no self-control.”

  “So, you poisoned them?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No, I laid a trap, and they fell into it. I put a very low dosage in the food—not enough to kill an animal if they only ate a small amount. But much like Blanche, a few of the birds didn’t know when to quit. They did it to themselves.”

  I wanted to tell Mable that her logic was flawed. If it hadn’t been for the poison she added to the food, Blanche and the birds would simply be a little heavier. Instead, they were dead. And the only person at fault was Mable.

  “What did Tucker do to deserve this?” I asked.

  Mable looked at Tucker and tilted her head to the side, her yellowing eyes thoughtful. “I noticed you snooping around as soon as you got back in the building. I thought maybe you’d let it go, but you kept talking to Jay, and then I saw you going into Blanche’s room this afternoon. Not to mention, you brought your own personal officer back with you.”

  “He’s just a friend,” I argued. “He isn’t here as an officer. He didn’t know I was investigating Blanche’s murder.”

  Mable didn’t seem to hear me. Or, if she did, she ignored it. “Why would the two of you care about the death of a woman you barely knew anyway? She was your landlady, but you and I both know she wasn’t a nice woman. Why did it concern you so much?”

  I wasn’t about to tell Mable that I’d been seeing spirits. First of all, the information was personal and sensitive. Second, there was a good chance Mable would think I was crazy, which would be just another reason for her to shoot me.