A Murder in Hope's Crossing

by Brooke Shelby

  Maggie decided to go and look for him. She was not going to let her confection go to waste on just one small helping and an absent cat. Barefoot, she walked up the stairs while the wooden floors creaked under her weight. The dark wallpaper and soft ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway looked and sounded desolate, but she had to find Bramble.

  “What are you doing?” she called again as she heard that familiar scratching she had heard once before when she’d freed him from the closet where he was trapped. “Bramble? Are you caught again?”

  He was not, but he was in the same wardrobe, scratching at that very floor where he had been lying exhausted when she first found him. Pawing the thin, pressed wood incessantly, he meowed when she discovered him.

  “What is this?” she asked. “Are you trying to tell me something? Are you trying to show me something?”

  Maggie crouched to see what was there. Where Bramble was scratching, the panel was loose. It looked like a hidden compartment, but on one of the sides of the rectangular panel, Maggie saw a small keyhole.

  “Hey,” she marveled, “I know what would fit in that keyhole, Bramble.”

  With that, she quickly rushed to the mantle where she kept the little key her cat had brought her. Upon returning, she unlocked the secret compartment in Clara’s old wardrobe and found a number of old journals stacked inside.

  “Wow,” she gasped as she reached in to retrieve the books, bound in black and brown leather and clasped at the side, “this stuff looks old!” She turned the volumes over to assess their overall condition, bar the dust. “And valuable!”

  There were six books in all. One was labeled The Journal of Clara Corey—20th and 21st Century—and it was magnificent. Black leather adorned the covers, with the once-gilded inscription now reduced to flaked bronze letters. Maggie marveled at the craftsmanship of whoever had fashioned this handstitched book while Bramble looked on with great satisfaction.

  The blue-eyed niece of Clara Corey flicked her roughshod braid back over her shoulder and took up the other books. Each was marked with the same title, save for the particular generation pertaining to each book.

  “Five volumes of Corey Family History across so many generations,” Maggie whispered in awe as she examined the brown leather books that all resembled one another. “You know, Bramble, I literally know nothing about my family history besides what my mom told me in drips and drabs through the years. Auntie Clara’s funeral is only tomorrow, so I think I am going to serve your lunch and then take some time to read through this stuff.”

  Bramble thought it was an excellent idea and already started towards the corridor. Maggie gathered up the heavy old books and closed the closet door, adamant to find out more about Aunt Clara’s life here in Hope’s Crossing. She had never known her aunt very well and with the rumors about how she was treated in this town, it would only be informative to read her journal. After all, that was what journals were for—to educate in the subjective view of incidents and events during a certain lifetime.

  When the midday sun passed over the stately old Corey house, Bramble curled up on the bay window cushions and enjoyed the warmth on his full belly. Maggie was nibbling on popcorn as she settled on the couch near the hearth to read Clara’s journal, which had started recording the local goings-on in Clara’s life only as recently as a year before.

  “She must have some other journals lying about, right, Bramble?” Maggie asked the cat, but he was snoozing. “No worries. This one will do for now. At least it is the latest.”

  In the journal, Maggie read about Clara’s toils with the townspeople and how she was treated as an outsider in the very town her own family founded. She spoke of that same preacher the funeral director told Maggie about, the somber and bigoted Reverend Mason, and how he was behind all the hate and discord between her family and the residents of the town. The journal also reported on silly little things like the day Clara burned her hand on the edge of the pot and Bramble’s rough tongue took to licking the sore skin. Clara wrote about how sweet he was in trying to heal her that way (though she did not say why or conveyed the outcome) and how she could not imagine life here without Bramble.

  “I am beginning to see why you would say that, Auntie Clara,” Maggie muttered through a mouthful of popcorn, casting a quick glance to the sleeping cat that resembled a hairy shadow in the window.

  There was something almost human about him, Maggie thought. Although she knew that most pet owners thought of their animals as people, this one was a tad too perceptive to just be considered an intelligent species. Whenever she addressed him, he seemed to understand not only her words, but the context of it, something most pets were not capable of as far as she knew.

  She carried on reading amidst the tick-tock of the mantle clock and the old doowop radio station in the kitchen as the sun gradually lengthened the shadows in the garden. In the journal Maggie found some odds and ends of recipes jotted down, some in part, some squeezed into the margin.

  “You had the weirdest culinary methods, Aunt Clara,” Maggie remarked in amusement as she looked through the unorthodox combinations of ingredients that, in Maggie’s opinion, would not make for a particularly good-tasting result. However, she trusted that Clara had a reason for her strange tastes and combinations. After all, she was known for her great recipes throughout her life. Perhaps, Maggie reckoned, this was where she’d inherited the ability to make magic in a kitchen. Even her French chef teacher at the academy said so.

  Nearer to the middle of the journal, Maggie read about herself. Clara had been very excited about her niece coming to live with her, which made Maggie smile. The words Clara used were tender and understanding, almost sympathetic, to Maggie’s crumbling marriage and the cheating husband she had to support. Clara wrote about how a scourge had hit the town and left the locals stumped and panicking—a bout of measles.

  While she read, entranced by Clara’s accounts, Maggie’s fingers blindly felt for more popcorn, but only found grains of salt and hard un-popped kernels.

  “Damn, just when I get to the good part,” she complained.

  In the passages, there was tell of the church people praying and sending thoughts, not surprisingly to no avail, yet they refused even to consider to allow their ailing children some of her remedies. Maggie could feel the frustration in Clara’s words, how she’d tried to help the poor sick children and yet had been once again maligned and shunned out of spite. Unconsciously, Maggie shook her head as she read the account, feeling exactly the same about her own persecution at the hands of the ignorant locals.

  Feeling a strange urge to page ahead, she noticed that the part she was reading was in fact the last entry in the journal before Clara passed away. This gave the words even more meaning to Maggie. Clara told of how she’d conspired with her neighbor to get her curative soup to the sick children, pretending to be just another dish at the biweekly potluck.

  “You clever old goose, you!” Maggie chuckled heartily at her lovably conniving aunt. “Well done! Looks like I inherited more than cooking skills from you, Auntie Clara.”

  With even more zeal, Maggie read on, eager to see if the children got better, but instead she was offered a nasty piece of news in the final paragraph.

  The children recovered completely, and yet I was unfortunately exposed by the very person who helped me, it said in cursive letters. But Sharon did not mean to. Her drinking has always made trouble for her, but this time it made trouble for me. Had she not gotten herself inebriated again at the party, she would not have blabbered and left me to the wolves. Alcohol really is the devil’s piss.

  “Oh my God, to that I can attest, Auntie Clara,” Maggie said, her brow lined with pity and concern. She knew what alcohol could do to a marriage, for one, but here it just about stated plainly that it was directly connected to Clara’s last days. “The neighbor, huh? I think I had better pay her a visit and get to the guts of this mystery. I know! I will invite her to the funeral tomorrow, if she was not going to com
e. Perfect cover for my own little investigation.”

  Maggie got up to go and prepare her garb for the funeral, intent on confronting this neighbor about her aunt’s fate. Bramble opened one of his eyes by a hair, watching the lean lady of the house ascend the steps, and then he closed his eye again, content that she was on the right track.

  10

  In the neighboring yard, the garden had become neglected. From the gate to the house ran a narrow concrete walkway, now cracked and overrun by weeds that claimed it. The lawn was in disarray and long grass hid the once-colorful garden gnomes that decorated the yard. Rust had eroded the fence and gate, the latter hanging from just one hinge. As for the house, the shingles were neglected and the gutters brimmed with leaves from the overhanging oak tree branches.

  Inside, however, things were quite cheery—at least superficially. Behind the yellow and green pastel curtains, the smell of rum and vanilla prevailed. Loud music was playing in the living room where the party never stopped. The sole occupant of the dismally unkempt house, Sharon Blake, was having a great time in her deluded mind. She had come home with a brand- new bottle of rum and some fresh donuts from the bakery.

  Since her friend’s death, she had abandoned all discipline and ambition in her life, little as there had been initially. Now she did not care anymore just how much she drank. It made her happy. When she drank, Sharon felt temporarily worthy. Bottles of liquor were like friends to her, nice surprises she kept for herself for when she felt down … and she always felt down.

  The chubby blonde was jiving around to the music as a knock rattled her front door. Naturally, she ignored it. So many sounds fooled her when she was intoxicated and she had learned not to pay attention to all those silly knocks and creaks, because usually, it was just the drink talking. Again, the knock came from the front door with more urgency.

  “No!” Sharon moaned. “Go away.”

  After but a moment, the knocking became a hammering.

  “Okay, all right,” she slurred. “That sounds like an actual knock.”

  Sharon opened the door. In front of her stood an athletic beauty in her thirties, dressed in sweats and sneakers. In her hand, she held a bottle of wine. Luckily for Sharon, it was one of her favorite brands. Almost all of them was her favorite brand, actually.

  “Hello,” she said to the pretty woman with the piercing blue eyes. “Is that wine for me?”

  “Sharon? Sharon Blake?” the woman asked, but Sharon’s eyes were on the label, so she just nodded absentmindedly. “My name is Maggie.”

  “Hey, Maggie,” Sharon smiled, trying to place the familiar name.

  “Maggie Corey,” Maggie added, and her hostess literally gasped.

  “Maggie? Maggie—Clara’s niece—Maggie?” she asked, but she was fully aware that Clara’s niece had arrived in town. After all, Maggie had been the talk of the town since she arrived, so naturally Sharon was aware that she had arrived, and Maggie knew this.

  “Listen, Sharon,” she said, handing Sharon the bottle of wine, “I just wanted to drop in and invite you to attend Clara’s funeral tomorrow at Salem’s Hallows Cemetery. It would be nice to have you there, having been her friend and all.”

  Maggie wondered why Sharon had not shown herself since her arrival in Hope’s Crossing and she could not figure out why the tipsy woman would even try to pretend that she did not know Maggie was living next door.

  Sharon’s nonchalance had vanished as she asked Maggie in, but she could feel the advent of sadness and shame take hold of her. Maggie tried not to show her shock at the state of the house, but she knew this was not the display of some lazy housewife. This was a serious problem embedded in guilt, manifesting as alcoholism. She should know. She had seen it before.

  “Sorry I haven’t been around to say hi,” Maggie started, trying her best to sound cordial. “I have been so busy with the funeral arrangements and trying to fix the shop and all that stuff.”

  Maggie could see the reaction of the plump alcoholic every time she mentioned the funeral. Every time she said something that referred to the fact that Clara was dead, Sharon cringed as if someone was pelting her with rocks. There had to be a reason for such guilt and it made Maggie suspicious of Sharon’s involvement in Clara’s demise.

  “No, Maggie, I am the sorry one,” Sharon said. Her lip was quivering, but she was fighting to compose herself. “My God, you look so much like her!”

  “That is some compliment,” Maggie smiled, hoping that Sharon would explain the things she held secret. “I was shattered to arrive here and find that I was too late to save her … to ever speak to her again.”

  That did it for Sharon. The guilt was overwhelming. “Oh my God, Maggie, I can’t bear this anymore! Please, you have to forgive me! By God, you have to! I never meant it.”

  She broke down in tears, clutching at her new wine bottle for comfort, but Maggie could see that it was no act. Quickly she sat down next to Sharon on the couch, putting her hand on the women’s jerking shoulder as she sobbed and babbled away.

  “I was helping her with the kiddos and they were so sick and Clara’s magic was so good,” she rambled and sniffed, burying her face in her hands. Maggie took the teetering bottle from Sharon’s lap and gave her a tissue.

  “Her what?” she asked Sharon.

  “Her magic,” the blonde lush shrugged nonchalantly. “That was what cured those children, you know.”

  “Clara’s … magic,” Maggie frowned as she repeated the strange phrase. She reckoned it was part of the intoxicated woman’s vocabulary when she had a bit too much sauce, but it kept happening.

  “That’s right, Maggie,” Sharon sniffed. “My God, I feel so bad. So very bad for what I did. I should never have mouthed off like that about Clara’s magical abilities and her wonderful broth that she conjured up with all that ancient family knowledge.”

  Again with the magic stuff, Maggie mentioned in her thoughts. What on earth is wrong with this woman?

  It was ludicrous, but Sharon persisted with the terminology that utterly confused Clara’s niece. Sharon’s incessant babbling about how guilty she felt left Maggie with a suspicion she had hoped not to harbor, but in the presence of so much alcohol, there was bound to be some emotional outbursts with some odd references.

  “What happened after you divulged the … um, information about my aunt, Sharon?” Maggie tried to ask matter-of-factly.

  “They all looked shocked that I would just talk outright about Clara having used magic to help the children, but I must say, they didn’t look very surprised. Only looked at one another with those,” she pulled an ugly face, “judgmental, stuck-up attitudes. Idiots.”

  “Okay, and what did they say?” Maggie pressed, eager to hear if anyone made a threatening statement or implicated themselves in some plan to murder Clara.

  Sharon looked absolutely gutted. Her gaze fell to the ground as she contemplated it all, but she said nothing. All she preferred to do right now was drink, and she did.

  “Sharon?” Maggie urged, but Sharon just took another swig straight out of the bottle and shook her head. Her body began to shake violently again as sobs overcame her, but she said nothing to answer Maggie. Instead, she offered more wine.

  “No thanks, Sharon. I brought that for you,” Maggie sighed. “I had better be off. Long day tomorrow. You will be there, right?”

  Sharon looked up through her soaked red eyes and nodded, but her expression was dire and filled with sorrow. There was no doubt that she was feeling deeply contrite about something, but Maggie hoped her contrition was for babbling and not for something more than that. Although Maggie could not really see a character like Sharon orchestrating anyone’s murder, she had to have been involved in some way. Nobody cried that much over something they accidentally said, she figured. Maggie left Sharon’s messy house, where the lights and music played for nothing and the only essence in the house was that of sorrow and regret.

  11

  On the morning of Clara’s funeral,
Maggie could not help but replay the conversation with Sharon Blake repeatedly in her head. That word—magic—everywhere. It stumped her, still, but for now, she had to get her aunt Clara to rest. Bramble was purring in the morning sun as they drove through to Salem for the burial.

  “For what it’s worth, it is a far more beautiful cemetery than the flowery nonsense they have at Hope’s Crossing Graveyard,” Maggie told her cat, who sat in the passenger seat as per usual. “You will see, Bramble. It is nice and shady. I remember Aunt Clara once joking about her grave having to be in the company of oak trees and not some flat, sunny patch.” Maggie smiled in reminiscence as they arrived at the town welcome sign. She looked at Bramble and chuckled. “Imagine that. ‘Flat, sunny patch.’”

  Not surprisingly, when they arrived at the church, there were practically no attendants. Maggie had no problem with that. She only wanted people there who knew and loved Clara, not an entire town of backstabbers and charlatans coming to judge her. The old church was small for a Late Gothic Revival style building, but it only added to the personal and peaceful setting of its interior. It boasted a large round stained-glass window that invited the sunrays in to create a kaleidoscope of colors upon the white walls that bordered the pulpit and altar.

  The church organ played a somber tune that Maggie did not know and the soft breeze that stirred the entrances of the church animated the velvet trimmings that adorned the doorways. As she walked down the aisle to the front pew, her eyes fell on the modest casket topped with bouquets of flowers. To the right, there was a picture of the kind, humorous Clara, a perfect likeness of her later days. Her naughty smile and glinting, friendly eyes forced Maggie’s heart into a corner. Sadness and happiness, love and loss all danced in a circle around her demeanor, but she settled on love and sat down to listen to the organ music.

  Footsteps echoed through the vast interior of the empty church and a respectful murmuring ensued near the entrance in the back that forced Maggie to turn and see who had come. A few rows from the front, she saw the sheriff of Hope’s Crossing and his daughter. They nodded in greeting when she looked at them and Maggie immediately felt better. She smiled at them, but then a shadow caught her attention in the periphery of her eye. Sharon Blake’s podgy figure was draped in a conservative frock. Amazingly, it had taken a funeral to make Sharon abandon her pastel fetish and dress in black for one whole day. She lifted a hesitant hand to Maggie to acknowledge her from behind dark glasses. Maggie guessed that the hangover did not flatter Sharon’s complexion this morning and nodded in return, trying not to smirk. At least someone had bothered to show up and luckily it was the less rigid lot who actually tolerated Clara Corey when she lived in Hope’s Crossing.