That measure of blame EV placed on herself amounted to a fraction beside that heaped upon her by Evan.
As though her thoughts of him had conjured the man himself, Evan stepped out the coffee shop door to put himself right in her path.
“EV.” Contempt dripped from his tongue like honey from a honeycomb.
“Evan,” EV sidestepped with the intention of walking past, but his hand shot out and grasped her forearm in an iron grip. Pointedly, EV looked at his hand, then back at his face, her raised eyebrows telling him to let go more eloquently than words.
Slowly he complied. “I know what you did.” He spat the words at her.
“Then maybe you’d like to enlighten me.”
“My brother. You pushed him off that ladder.”
Of course EV knew this rumor was circulating, but she’d dismissed the idea that anyone seriously believed it. Not for one minute did she believe Evan thought her a murderer. He had another game in mind.
Her level gaze met his. “I’m truly sorry for your loss, Evan, and, because I know you’re grieving, I’m going to consider this an unfortunate outburst rather than the baseless accusation that it is.”
“Baseless accusation? You argued with him in a public venue, then followed him to the church where a neighbor heard him fighting with a woman. Deny that.”
Every single person in the place could hear the conversation through the screened door and at least two of them were surreptitiously typing away on their cell phones. Texting was the one place where EV’s word of mouth grapevine and Chloe’s electronic one intersected.
“Deny what? That Luther argued with a woman on the night of his death? If someone heard them, then it is an established fact. What proof do you have that I was the woman?”
“You argued with him at the meeting, who else would it be?”
“Oh, I don’t know—his wife? Someone who was not happy with his work? One of the women who serve on the church board? It could have been anyone in town, but I can assure you it was not me.”
“You killed him to stop me becoming mayor. You knew that with Luther dead, the incorporation meeting would be postponed, giving you time to kill the whole thing and become mayor yourself. You’d do anything to stop me finding out how you’ve singlehandedly controlled everything to do with Ponderosa Pines for years.”
Evan’s voice escalated in volume until the last few words were shouted loud enough that the coffee drinkers could no longer feign ignorance. “You’d do anything to keep this place from growing into a normal town. Get out of the sixties, EV. Nobody wants to live in a commune anymore.”
As though he had become aware of his audience and intended to convert them, Evan spoke in ringing tones. “Ponderosa Pines has unlimited growth potential. We need to expand our tax base, bring in outside money and business.”
He turned back toward the woman who had once offered him a place where he was respected and cared for. “The only one standing in our way is you, EV, with your provincial thinking. I’m the one who wants what’s best, and I’m the one who can take this community and turn it into something.”
Anger lit a fire in EV. “It’s not the town that you want to elevate, but your own importance. Well, you can stop posing for that statue right now because it’s never going to happen. I promise you I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that you”—EV moved in close to poke Evan in the chest, punctuating her next words-“never.”
Poke.
“Become.”
Poke.
“Mayor.”
With the final poke, she saw his eyes light with glee and knew she’d been played.
He wanted her to fight with him in front of witnesses, had maneuvered her into it with cunning and guile. All along, he had known she was not the woman who argued with his brother, but now he had managed to plant seeds of distrust in the minds of some of the onlookers.
“This is not even close to over,” she hissed.
Chapter Fifteen
Whistling off key, Evan unlocked the door to his three-bedroom condo. As soon as the door closed out prying eyes, he took a victory lap around the kitchen island, circled back to gather the pile of mail lying on the welcome mat, and flicked on the lights. Nestled under a fragrant stand of the very pine trees the community had been named for, the brick building that housed his and three other identical but currently unoccupied units had a chalet feel to it.
Built during the ‘80s, High Acres was, as far as he knew, the only communally-owned apartment complex in the state—as an entity, the entire town owned and operated the clustered units. Rent payments went first to pay taxes and maintenance; anything left over was funneled into a communal fund that was currently earmarked for adding on to the complex.
Five brick structures now occupied the several acres surrounding a centrally located clubhouse facility that boasted free-to-use laundry facilities, a small but well-equipped gym, and an in-ground pool the entire town was welcome to use.
Rentals ranged from an incredibly cheap studio unit on the low end to considerably more expensive, top-of-the-line units. In the newest building, each apartment had three bedrooms, two baths, energy efficient appliances in a modern interior that still managed to fall under the town’s percentage of recycled materials. To look at the gleaming floors, you would never know their previous life had been as pallet boards. Even the brick exteriors were the cleaned and recycled remains of torn down buildings from when Warren updated parts of its town center.
In this goody-two-shoes of a sickeningly sweet blot on the face of the earth, Acres was modern enough for Evan to feel he was living someplace almost normal.
When his cell rang, he checked the screen and saw it was his latest conquest. The woman was becoming tiresome. They’d had their day in the sun, and now it was time to move on, but she kept clinging, hoping for more than he wanted to give.
Letting boredom seep into his tone, he answered the call, “Hello,” then rolled his eyes at the cooing of her voice in his ear.
“Please, stop calling,” he said, keeping his tone flat. “It’s over. How many ways do I have to say it before you understand?”
After listing to her pleas for a few moments, he cut her off. “No, I’m sorry; but I’m seeing someone else. You’re the one who said it would be a fling, that you needed some excitement in your life.”
The sobbing in his ear turned to accusation, then to anger.
“I won’t disagree with you; I am a jerk and a womanizer, but you knew that from the beginning.”
“Yes, there’s someone else and, yes, I was seeing her while I was seeing you. How can you be jealous when you’re married?”
She railed at him a bit more before he’d had enough. “Goodbye.” He hung up the phone with a short laugh. “Guess that did it. Good riddance.”
Evan leafed through his mail, pulled out one envelope, then tossed the rest carelessly onto the spotless, smoked-glass dining room table top. The sight of the now-familiar handwriting scrawled across heavy, cream colored paper turned a stomach already tender from tension into a bubbling mass of acid.
Sliding a finger under the flap, Evan managed to give himself a paper cut. Great, just the thing to top off a crappy day.
Blackmail.
Someone knew his deepest, darkest secrets and was using them against him. Three months ago, the first letter arrived with orders to perform a small task or watch his three most promising Gilmore real estate listings go up in smoke. He had ignored the letter and lost the listings. When the next letter arrived, he’d paid attention.
In no uncertain terms, the author laid out a laundry list of wrongdoing that Evan thought had been successfully covered up. The blackmailer had given him a limited number of days to convince the residents of Ponderosa Pines they wanted to be annexed by Gilmore, and his time was almost up.
Evan had spent the first week trying to figure out who had written the blackmail notes. It must be someone high up in Gilmore government who also had ties to Ponderosa Pines. If h
e didn’t deliver, his biggest secret would hit the papers and his entire life would go down the tubes. No more license, no more real estate, no chance of ever becoming mayor.
If Luther hadn’t gone and gotten himself killed, Evan might have had a shot at getting enough town members on board to make it happen. Why couldn’t it have been EV who’d taken a header off a ladder? That would have solved all his problems.
For just a minute, he let himself miss his brother. Luther had always been his ball and chain—his weight to carry. Now that he was gone, taking with him his unconditional support, maybe he hadn’t been quite as big a burden as Evan had liked to think—maybe he even missed the big lug.
A frustrated flick of Evan’s hand sent the envelope sailing. It was still fluttering downward when the heavy stone paperweight, taken from his own desk, crashed into the back of his head. Evan was dead before he hit the floor.
.
Chapter Sixteen
Anyone who has ever lived in a small town knows that gossip can follow you down the street like a specter with its bony hand on your shoulder to pull it along. And worse, like that ghost, it never dies.
Not even when the gossip is complete lunacy.
Within hours of Evan’s death, certain residents had already mentally tried and convicted EV of the murder—and without hearing any more evidence against her than that she had argued with him at a meeting and then again on the street.
Sleepy Ponderosa Pines had never known a crime spree of such epic proportions; two murders in under a month were having a profound effect on morale. One of the newest families was already talking about selling their home to move somewhere safer.
Tongues wagged, phones chirped, texts flew, and fingers tapped keyboards to create vast amounts of speculation. Anyone with a grudge against EV took the opportunity to embellish the lies so that by the next morning, two camps had formed with polar opposite opinions: both equally vocal, both aggressively fighting to sway anyone caught in the middle ground between them.
The first group, made up of levelheaded, longtime residents, declared her innocent, while the second condemned EV as a hardened criminal mastermind corrupt enough to have been the fabled second gunman on the grassy knoll.
Ashton Worth was in the second group. He and Allegra were relatively new to Ponderosa Pines, having moved there only eight years before. In a city neighborhood, eight years would have earned them dinosaur status; but small towns operate under an altered sense of time, which dropped them firmly into the sort of mid-grade category. Not quite new, yet not as trusted as a long-time resident.
Still, his middler status put him in a position where he had enough influence to sway the thinking of newer residents as well as those old timers in his immediate sphere of friends. So when he started speaking of EV’s guilt as though it were an incontrovertible fact, people listened.
“I heard she’s hated him ever since she caught him playing with one of her cats when he was just a boy,” Ashton told a small group at The Mudbucket while he was getting his caffeine fix in a to-go cup for the drive into Gilmore.
Several times that day as he waited on customers from the Pines, he planted seeds of suspicion. “My wife saw her arguing with him the day before he died, and EV said she would do anything to stop him becoming mayor. Anything.” With a knowing look, a nod of the head, an ominous tone of voice, he emphasized the word anything.
People listened and, worse, they repeated his words, his tone, and even the nod.
Some—the few residents who didn’t like her to begin with—expanded on the theme, escalating it to ridiculous flights of fancy.
I heard she got those witch friends of hers to cast a spell on him. They danced naked under the full moon and cut the head off a live goat.
She swore revenge on him at the town meeting in front of God and everyone.
Someone said they saw her walking down the road with blood on her hands and a big smile on her face.
You know how everyone says Mr. Demetriou went into a nursing home? He’s probably buried in her backyard.
Ashton started a few of the rumors himself, the others he perpetuated at every opportunity. Within 48 hours of Evan’s death, half the newer residents were more afraid of EV than of global warming.
Millie Jacobs and Summer Beckett wasted no time leaping into the fray and upping the ante. Between them, they accused EV of everything from adultery to stealing chickens from every hen coop in town.
“The woman is absolutely depraved,” Millie declared to anyone who would listen. “I know for a fact she’s the one behind Marlene Burnsoll taking off out of the blue.”
Everywhere she went, conversations ceased, people stared—or worse, refused to make eye contact.
None of that bothered EV as much as the looks of sympathy. She would rather be feared than pitied any day. Worse, all the speculation pushed at her stubborn nature, so instead of keeping a low profile, she decided to spend more time out and about than normal.
The only people outside her closest circle of friends who treated EV normally were the town’s children. Never having had any of her own, she tried to fill that gap in her life by going out of her way to spend time with other people’s offspring.
Miz EV, as she came to be known, was popular among the younger crowd for the outrageous games she concocted for their amusement. One summer favorite was the annual fox-and-hound day she put on with Chloe; kids from ages six to sixteen were invited to attend the all-day event.
Splitting into two groups, EV led the foxes in a loop through the town’s forests and fields, leaving a trail for Chloe and the hounds to follow. At intervals, the older kids would branch off to lay a false trail, then double back to rejoin the group. With a half-hour head start, the foxes could only win if the hounds did not catch up to them before they got back to EV’s house. At noon, wherever they were, both groups took a 45-minute lunch break and made their way to EV’s backyard, where the whole game culminated in a cookout organized by the parents.
It was a summer highlight that might have to be canceled this year if nothing changed by the end of August, unless she found a substitute leader for the foxes. This burden was weighing heavily on her mind when she ran into Horis walking toward her with a new shovel handle in his hand.
“Morning, EV.” If Horis had heard the gossip, there was no evidence of such on his face. “Beautiful day.”
Her eyes brightened at seeing the lack of guile in his. “Going to be another scorcher from the looks of things. You need any help out at the farm today?”
“Nothing special in the works, but an extra hand always makes the load lighter if you’ve a mind to stop by.”
“Could I ask you a favor?”
“Sure, ask away.” Affable as always, Horis grinned.
“Would you be willing to take over as fox leader this year if, you know, things keep going the way they are now? I’m persona non grata around here lately, and I wouldn’t want to let the kids down. You know the woods as well as I do, and the kids all like you.”
“It’s not going to come to that; but, if it does, I’d be happy to do it.”
EV grasped his arm giving it a squeeze of gratitude.
“Thanks, Horis. I knew I could count on you.” Her words encompassed more than just the subject of foxes and hounds and turned his face red.
Despite her determination to carry on as though nothing had happened, the constant stress of wondering which of her neighbors was presenting only one side of their face had begun to wear on EV’s nerves.
Chapter Seventeen
Almost everywhere EV went, conversation stopped or reduced to a whisper. Never mind that there was absolutely no physical evidence that she had ever been inside Evan’s home or that, at the estimated time of death, EV had been visiting Thelma and Louise—no relation to the movie—better known as the Weird Sisters, in their tiny cabin on the outskirts of town.
Public opinion rated low on EV’s list of worries, and she decided that not giving it any credence wa
s the way to go. She would go on about her life like nothing was happening. True friends knew her propensity for violence was limited to a severe tongue-lashing; mice left her home in a live trap to be loosed into the wild, and spiders received the paper and cup treatment. EV was no killer. Even her gardens were geared toward repelling pests. She only killed as a last resort.
None of that changed a thing.
That EV found this more amusing than concerning had Chloe worried. Two brothers dead, both involved in a scheme that EV vocally opposed, and both dying within hours of that disagreement taking place publicly? Too much coincidence.
Chloe picked up her cell and speed dialed EV who answered on the first ring.
“It’s starting to look like a frame job.” They both spoke at once.
EV chuckled but Chloe wasn’t laughing.
“This is serious,” she said, concerned that EV wasn’t giving it the weight it deserved.
“Really? Because the way I see it, it’s a comedy of errors. Think about it—how would Luther’s death benefit me? There’s no motive. At all.”
“Well, I know that and you know that, but the killer might not.”
A short pause while EV considered that. “True. Then who does have a motive?”
“See, that’s where it all falls down,” Chloe said, letting her brain wander down the trail of logic. “If the two deaths are connected, then Evan is no longer a suspect for killing Luther. Why would Talia kill Evan if they were doing the wild thing and one of them had already killed Luther because he was in the way?”
“Lover’s spat?”
Chloe hummed her disagreement. “I don’t know her very well, but I always got the impression she kept Luther’s danglies in her purse most of the time, and they were all over each other that night at the Yard. Unless that was just for show and she was trying to establish a cover. Or…maybe he was the one having an affair and she caught him.”
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