Fatal Frost (Dewberry Farm Mysteries Book 2)

by Karen MacInerney

  “Word is that he broke things off with her.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” she said. “She wasn’t quality, and Pastor Matheson is a quality man. Besides, he’s a man of the cloth. He must have come to his senses.”

  Right. More likely he was worried discovery would interfere with his broadcasting contract. “So the pastor’s wife knew about them?”

  “Of course she did,” she said. “She’s not blind.”

  “Did Krystal and Phoebe ever have words about it?”

  Wanda’s eyes glittered. “I did see them arguing, now that I think about it. Yes. Mrs. Matheson told Krystal if she didn’t keep her hands off her husband, she’d make her regret it.”

  “So she threatened her,” I said. “When was this?”

  “Oh, a few weeks ago,” Wanda said.

  “And you didn’t tell the sheriff?”

  “I guess I didn’t think it was important. I figured the sheriff already found the killer. The police know what they’re doing, after all. We should leave them to their work,” she said in a tone of voice that indicated the subject was closed.

  I sat in awkward silence for a moment, then said, “I noticed you were doing some digging in the front yard. Planting something new?”

  “That wasn’t me,” she said. “It was a—” She stopped herself. “An animal. It seems to have let up, thank the Lord. It got to a whole row of daffodil bulbs.”

  The kettle whistled, and she poured water into a flowered teapot.

  I glanced around; the hutch drawer was slightly ajar, and I spotted something sparkly and pink inside. I looked closer; it was a cell phone. As Wanda busied herself with the tea things, I reached in and grabbed the phone. When I touched the “On” button, a beaming picture of Krystal and Brittany showed up on the screen. A blue-sapphire cross hung from a chain on Krystal’s neck. Goose bumps rose on my arms, and I tried to look neutral as I lowered the phone beneath the table. I watched Wanda squeeze half a lemon into two cups before bringing them and the teapot to the table along with a plateful of cookies from a foil packet. I’d been barking up the wrong tree all along.

  “Thanks,” I said, eyeing the cookies and trying to act as if I hadn’t just found a dead woman’s cell phone in Wanda’s hutch. A moment later, Wanda poured tea into the cups and pushed one over to me.

  “I’m not really a big tea drinker.”

  “You should try it. It’s my special blend,” she said.

  I raised the cup to my lips and pretended to take a sip as Wanda watched me with keen eyes. “To be honest,” I told her as I put the cup down, “I’m here because I was hoping you could tell me what you think of Phoebe Matheson.” Maybe if she thought I suspected the Mathesons, I could get out of here in one piece.

  “What about her?”

  “Do you think she might have been jealous enough of her husband to kill someone?”

  Wanda gave me a grim smile. “You think Mrs. Matheson killed Krystal Jenkins? It could be,” she said, staring at me in a way that made me want to squirm in my seat. “But it really doesn’t matter what we think, does it? The police said it was Molly Kramer,” she said. “They found her recipe card, and her poppy seed bread.”

  “Was it poppy seed bread?” I asked, trying to sound casual. “I never got my loaf.”

  “The one Molly dropped off at the church office was poppy seed,” she said, her fingers playing with the chain around her neck. “I just assumed they all were.”

  “Is that a new necklace?” I asked.

  “Oh, no,” she said, dropping her hand. “I’ve had it for ages.”

  I couldn’t resist. “I’d love to see it.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then seemed to make a decision. “It belonged to my mother,” she said, and withdrew a sapphire cross from the neck of her blouse.

  It was a dead ringer for the one in the picture of Krystal.

  “Very pretty. So,” I said, “who owned that black dog that was digging up your garden, anyway?”

  “I think it was just a stray,” she said, then clamped her mouth shut. “How did you know it was a black dog?”

  “Someone mentioned seeing it,” I said. “Glad it’s not bothering you anymore.” I felt a bit queasy as I looked down at the tea. What had Ethel found out that made her friend kill her? I wasn’t about to ask; it was time to get out of here. “At any rate,” I said, standing up, “thanks for the tea. I should let you get to your appointment.”

  “Oh, it can wait,” she said, with an edge to her voice I didn’t like. “Why don’t you finish your tea? I’ll get some more cookies.” She stood up and walked over to the counter.

  “I’m good, actually,” I said, heading toward the hallway, Krystal’s phone in my back pocket. “Plus, my parents are in town . . . I really should go.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said as she lifted the lid of a canister on the counter. Something about her voice gave me chills. “Sit down.”

  I turned to see her aiming a small gun at me.

  “It’s loaded,” she said. “I keep it in the cookie jar, just in case. And my daddy taught me how to use it. Now. Be a good girl. Sit down and drink your tea.”

  I sat down slowly, chastising myself for getting it all wrong—and for not telling anyone where I was going. “Why Krystal?” I asked. “She’d already broken up with Pastor Matheson.”

  “She was planning to tell that Mandy Vargas at the Zephyr that Ben O’Neill had an affair in Houston—a one-night stand with one of her friends,” she said. “She was probably going to ruin the pastor’s career next. Now, drink.” She gestured toward the cup.

  “Oleander?” I asked.

  “I had extra from my visit to Ethel. I can shoot you, but this is easier.”

  I picked up the cup and pretended to take a sip. She was satisfied—for now.

  “How did you find out Krystal was going to spill the beans about O’Neill?”

  “I hear lots of things in the church office,” she said. “The walls are thin between the pastor’s office and mine.”

  “I guess that would have blown the big donations the O’Neills were making to the church . . . no point in giving money if it’s not buying political support. And once she and the pastor broke up, you were afraid she was going to do the same thing to him?”

  “Exactly. First she seduced him, and then she was going to ruin his career.”

  “He gave her that necklace you’re wearing,” I pointed out. “He must have had some feelings for her.”

  “She bewitched him.”

  “Why did they break up?”

  “He came to his senses, like I said. Besides, if it came to light, it would interfere with the mission the Lord sent him to do.”

  “The television show?”

  “Yes. She was a wicked woman,” Wanda said, her eyes narrowing. “She deserved to die.”

  “Just like the dog that was digging up your garden?”

  “That was just convenient,” she said. “Drink more.”

  I took another fake sip and set the cup down. “You were in love with him, weren’t you?” I asked, looking at the picture on the sideboard. “And Ethel figured it out.”

  “Ethel had secrets of her own,” Wanda told me with a twisted smile.

  “Like ‘BK’?” I asked.

  “Her daughters,” she said. And it all clicked.

  “Brandi and Krystal,” I said. “She was their mother. But what was the ‘1-2’ about?”

  “Their birthday,” she said, and I remembered Brandi telling me Krystal’s birthday was the day after New Year’s. “Ethel knew the pastor and Krystal were having an affair. She was trying to save her from what happened to her: pregnancy out of wedlock, and the shame of it. That’s why she wrote all those letters, too—trying to save people from themselves.”

  Funny way to do it, I thought. But not something to die for.

  “Ethel was always buddying up to Krystal. She even sent her an anonymous cashier’s check when she found out she was having mo
ney troubles.”

  That explained the mysterious windfall. “Was she planning on telling her?”

  “I think the shame was too much for her, to be honest.”

  “Why did you kill her? Did she figure out you’d poisoned her daughter?”

  “At first she thought it was Phoebe who did her in, just like you. But she saw the friendship bread in my kitchen, and found out the pastor hadn’t gotten his. She invited me over to ask me what I knew.”

  “And you poisoned her.”

  “I didn’t plan to,” she said. “But she figured things out . . . she knew about the dog digging in my garden. When she found out there was a dog in the house that burned, she put two and two together. She was going to tell the police.”

  “But she didn’t.”

  “Fortunately, I brought some oleander with me, just in case. I’d sensed she might be a problem. I had to stay for hours until she passed, though. Had to keep her from calling anyone.”

  “Why did you go back to Krystal’s to burn the place down?” I asked.

  “I dropped off the bread, but I didn’t know when she’d eat it. I stole her cell phone when she was at church, and I’d cut the phone line at the house.” Another thing Rooster hadn’t figured out—or bothered to look at. “It takes a few hours to kick in,” she said, “so I had to keep checking back, just to make sure it did its job.”

  “Thorough,” I said.

  “Always. Drink,” she ordered. As I reached for the cup, I pretended to accidentally knock the handle, tipping the contents out onto the table.

  She tightened her lips and raised the gun, training it on my head. “I can see I’m going to have to take a firm hand with you,” she said. She refilled my cup from the teapot and handed it back to me.

  “Drink it,” she said, “or I’ll shoot you now.”

  “That would be hard to explain away.”

  “I’ll figure something out,” she said, nodding toward the cup. “You can shoot someone for breaking and entering, you know. I’ll say you were trying to steal my spoons.”

  I didn’t have much choice. I drank it, letting as much as I could spill down my face. I put the cup down with about two inches left in the bottom.

  “Finish it,” she said.

  I swallowed more, slopping it around, and put the cup back down again. She peered into it. “That was enough for Ethel, so it should be enough for you.”

  “What now?” I asked, feeling my heart beat fast. “How long does it take to work, anyway?”

  “A few hours,” she told me.

  “So, we just sit and chat?”

  “No.” She opened the back door and waved me toward it. “Let’s go.”

  I was wondering if I could get back to the loaner truck before she shot me when I felt the cold gun barrel nudge my back. The answer, evidently, was no.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as I stepped out into the cold December afternoon. There were no other houses in sight, unfortunately . . . and a good portion of the fenced yard was ringed with oleander bushes. She hadn’t had to go far for materials.

  “The shed,” she told me, pushing me toward a small gingerbread-decorated structure in the corner of the fenced yard. I walked over slowly, wishing I’d brought my jacket. If the poison didn’t get me first, hypothermia might.

  She opened the door. It was a gardening shed; the walls were lined with hoes, rakes, and trowels, and a stack of pots sat neatly in the corner. It didn’t look like it belonged to a homicidal maniac, but I was learning that appearances could be deceiving.

  “So, is murder part of Pastor Matheson’s Sunday sermons?” I asked. “It doesn’t seem a very Christian practice, to be honest.”

  “The goal is for his word to reach as many souls as possible,” she said.

  “Even if you have to extinguish a few?”

  “If you’ve lived a wholesome life, you shouldn’t be worried.”

  “No?”

  “You’d be looking forward to heaven,” she said. “Although in your case, I can see why you’d be nervous.”

  “I’m not the one committing triple homicide,” I pointed out.

  “The Lord will forgive me,” she said.

  “Well, I won’t.”

  “You won’t be around for me to worry about. Stand still,” she ordered me. The next thing I knew, there was a sharp crack and the lights went out.

  It was still dark when I opened my eyes. It took me a moment to remember where I was; when I did, panic set in.

  I sat up quickly, my head throbbing and nausea roiling my stomach—poison, or concussion?—and realized my hands and feet were bound together with duct tape. There was a strip of light outlining the shed door, but no windows.

  At least it was still daylight; I hadn’t been out too long. But if I didn’t get medical attention soon, I’d be in trouble—if I wasn’t already.

  I heaved myself to my hands and knees, thankful she hadn’t taped my hands behind me, and began inching around the plywood floor of the shed, ignoring my throbbing headache and searching for something to cut the tape from my hands.

  My hands landed on a plastic bag—fertilizer or mulch, probably—and I tried to remember where I’d seen the garden tools hanging. To the left of the door, I decided as my stomach churned. Was it the oleander? I wondered, feeling panic rising in me. How long did I have before the damage was irreversible?

  I lurched over to the other side of the shed, scraping my palms and knees against the rough wooden floor, then knelt and flailed my bound hands around. I could feel the smooth handles of the longer tools—rakes, hoes, and cultivators—but what I really wanted was garden shears. I felt around for another several minutes, knocking a rake onto my head in the process, before I gave up and started grabbing the long handles, hoping one of the tools was sharp enough to cut through duct tape.

  The hoe was dull, and the rake’s teeth were about as sharp as marshmallows, but the cultivator had some promise. I positioned my hands over the sharp tines, swallowing back bile, and rubbed the taut tape over a long tine, pushing down hard.

  It punctured the tape on the third try, scraping my wrist and leading me to wonder when I’d last had a tetanus shot. Then I reminded myself that since I’d just been given a nice dose of oleander tea and was tied up in a maniac’s garden shed, tetanus really wasn’t my primary concern at the moment.

  It took longer than I expected to weaken the tape enough to pull it off; my stomach felt like it was trying to turn itself inside out, and my head seemed to be on the brink of exploding, but if I stopped, I knew I was dead.

  I fumbled until I got the tape off of my ankles, then crawled over to the door.

  Locked. Of course.

  I threw myself against it a couple of times, just to see what would happen, but only ended up with a bruised shoulder to go with the rest of my ailments. I gave up after a few minutes and paused to think, picking bits of adhesive off of my skin.

  I could wait for Wanda to come back and bean her with a hoe, but there was no guarantee that the poison wouldn’t kick in first. Ideally, I’d call 911, but my purse—and my phone—were still in Wanda’s kitchen.

  As I sat back down on the wood floor, I realized something was still in my back pocket. A moment later, I pulled out Krystal’s phone.

  The battery had been low—5 percent—when I’d opened it in Wanda’s house, but maybe there was enough juice to call for help. I gripped it hard and touched the button, hoping the screen would light up, but nothing happened.

  It was dead.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, ignoring the shivers that had begun to course through my body. The poison was setting in. “Please, God, get me out of here so I can get Molly off the hook and spend Christmas with my parents,” I prayed. A moment later, I caught the familiar scent of lavender. The hair stood up on my arms; I knew my grandmother was here.

  “What now?” I asked the darkness.

  All of a sudden, the phone in my hand vibrated and lit up.

  “Thank
you,” I whispered, and dialed 911 with a shaky hand.

  “Emergency services, can I help you?”

  A human voice had never sounded so sweet. “Yes,” I breathed. I told her my location and what was going on, hoping someone would get here in time to save me.

  “How long ago did you ingest the oleander?”

  “I don’t know,” I told her.

  “We’ll send the police and emergency services right out,” she said. “Hang in there.”

  There was just enough time to say “thank you” before the phone went dead.

  I tucked the phone back into my pocket and sagged against the wall of the shed. Help was coming. I just hoped I’d make it to the hospital in time to counteract the poison.

  Less than five minutes had passed before I heard the sound of a door slamming shut.

  It was too soon for EMS to have arrived. And if Wanda discovered I had pulled off the duct tape, she might go ahead and shoot me to be on the safe side.

  As the sound of footsteps approached, I fumbled around the floor for the cultivator. I could hear the sound of a chain rattling against wood before I found it; as quietly as I could, I stood up and crept to the wall beside the door. When it swung open, I pressed myself against the rough wood.

  She stood outside the door; I couldn’t see her, but I could hear her, and her voice made my skin crawl. “I was right about you. You are trouble,” she said as I stood with the cultivator raised over my head. After a long moment, she extended the gun into the space. I didn’t wait for the rest of her to follow.

  I brought down the cultivator on her hand as hard as I could. She swore—a most un–Christian oath—and the gun went off as it clattered to the floor. I felt a sharp pain in my leg as a bullet bit into it—but before I could do anything else, the door swung shut again, and I heard the click of a padlock.

  I fumbled on the floor for the gun, trying to ignore the pain in my leg. A moment later, my hand grazed cold metal. I picked up the gun, wondering what to do with it. I couldn’t shoot my way out of here—even if I did hit the lock on the other side of the door, the bullet might ricochet. And now that I was armed, she wasn’t coming back anytime soon.