EMS was coming, I told myself. All I had to do was wait. As I leaned against the wall again, I heard shuffling from outside.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She didn’t answer, but a moment later, the sharp smell of gasoline reached me.
Wanda Karp was going to burn me alive, I realized, breaking into a cold sweat.
“Don’t do it,” I said. “The police are on their way. Please. If you let me go, I’ll tell them it was an accident.”
She didn’t answer, but kept shuffling around. The smell of gasoline was stronger now. “Please,” I begged, but it was no use.
There was a scraping sound, then the rushing sound of flames. A moment later, the scent of gasoline was eclipsed by the hot, sooty smell of smoke.
I banged the cultivator against the door as hard as I could, hoping I could knock the door off its hinges, but it held fast. Wanda had lit the far corner of the shed; as I watched, the wall turned orange, silhouetting the shelves leaning against it.
Was there fertilizer in here? I wondered. Was it explosive? I didn’t know, but I didn’t want to find out. I crouched down in a corner of the shed by the door, trying to avoid smoke inhalation and hoping I’d find a way to get out of here before the ceiling came down on my head. Already flames were licking the top of the shed’s back wall.
What should I do? I wondered. I began beating the wall to my left with the cultivator, hoping it would knock it down so I could get out. It would probably bring the flaming ceiling down onto my head, but if I did nothing, the ceiling would come down anyway.
I hit the wall as hard as I could, but nothing happened, and the flames grew closer.
“Help!” I called out as the air around me grew thicker. My lungs burned; I knew how the puppy must have felt, I realized.
All of a sudden, I heard a voice that wasn’t Wanda’s. “Is anyone in there!”
“It’s me!” I called, hope flaring. “Please . . . help me!”
“Lucy?” It was Peter.
“Get me out of here!” I yelled.
A moment later, there were three sharp blows—the ringing sound of metal against metal—and the shed door burst open. I took a step forward and filled my burning lungs with cold winter air as Peter stood in the doorway, the light shimmering like a halo around him. I’d never been so happy to see anyone in my entire life.
“Lucy,” he said, only his voice sounded warped and strange. My stomach heaved, and the world seemed to spin around me. I let the cultivator slide from my hands and fell into Peter’s arms. “She poisoned me,” I gasped. “Oleander.”
“When?” he asked, but before I could answer, the world went black for the second time that day.
Lucy?”
I swam up from a dream involving Wanda wearing a frothy dress and goat horns, chasing me around Dewberry Farm with a teakettle, and opened my eyes to Tobias.
“Oh, thank God,” he breathed.
“Where am I?” I asked, moving my hand to touch him. I was attached to a tube—more than one, in fact. I was trying to remember what had happened, and why I was here. There was tea, and something about a dog . . .
“You’re at the hospital,” he said. “Peter brought you here himself when he found you in Wanda’s shed. She poisoned you, then tried to burn the shed down with you in it.”
It all came back to me. Thank God Peter had shown up, I thought. “And Wanda?”
“In custody.”
“Rooster knows Wanda killed Krystal and Ethel?”
He nodded. “She was raving about it when he came to pick her up.”
I felt tension I didn’t know I was carrying seep out of me.
“I’m just glad you’re okay,” he said. “If you’d had any more of that oleander, or gotten here any later . . .” He shivered.
“She’s awake!” my mother sang out from behind him as she and my dad squeezed through the door. “Oh, thank goodness. We were so worried about you!”
“I seem to be doing okay,” I said, “except for all these tubes.”
“We had to keep you hydrated,” Tobias said. “But you should be out of here in time for Christmas.”
“I didn’t have time to finish making presents—or shop!” I said, struggling to sit up.
“You’ve had enough on your plate,” my mother said.
“How long have I been here?” I asked, suddenly realizing I had no idea how much time I’d spent away from the farm. “Is Chuck all right? Are the goats and chickens okay? And Blossom?”
“You’ve been out for about twenty-four hours, but don’t worry about the farm. Your mother and I have been taking care of everyone,” my dad said.
“Oh, thank you,” I said, sagging back into the pillows.
“It’s kind of fun being on the farm when you’re an adult,” my mother said. “I can see why you like it out here.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Really,” she said. “And to see the community rally around you . . .” She turned to point at the shelf, which was covered with vases of flowers and plates of baked goods.
“Wow,” I said. “Those are all for me? Everyone is so kind!”
“They all want you well,” Tobias said. “And we checked them all for poison, don’t worry,” he added with a grin. “Mindy says thank you, by the way. She headed back to Houston with enough evidence to make the network have second thoughts.”
“No TV show?”
“It’s not looking like it. Mindy discovered Pastor Matheson was using much of the church funding to support his personal lifestyle—plus, the network didn’t want the scandal of his affair to hit the news.”
“I wonder if the church will survive?”
“A few folks are talking about returning to the local churches,” Tobias said. “And some of the pensioners are looking to get their donations back.”
“I hope there’s still money left,” I said, looking out the window at the gray sky. “That’s a lot of news for one day.”
“Oh, there’s one more thing—Ben O’Neill has withdrawn from the mayoral race.”
“Wonder why?”
“I got the impression there was a whiff of a scandal with him, too,” he said, “but I don’t know the details. Mindy knows, I think, but she’s not saying.”
“Krystal knew O’Neill had had a fling with one of her friends. I think the pastor knew, too . . . that’s why O’Neill was donating so much. That, and the political support; I think he was planning to support rerouting Highway 71 to Buttercup.”
“Thank goodness he’s out of the race then,” my mother said.
Tobias turned to me. “Well, at least Buttercup is safe, but I can’t get over Wanda. I can see killing her rival if she was in love with the pastor, but why Ethel?”
“Ethel was Krystal’s mother.”
He blinked. “What?”
“She was trying to do right by her girls. That’s why she was so angry with Wanda when she figured out what she’d done—and why Wanda killed her.”
“What about Krystal’s windfall?”
“Ethel gave it to her, actually. Poor thing; her daughter died without knowing who her mother really was.”
“So Krystal didn’t find treasure after all. Speaking of treasure,” Tobias said, “there’s some news on those gold coins Buster brought to Fannie.”
“What about them?”
“Well, according to Fannie, one of them was bona fide, but the rest? They’re counterfeit.”
“No wonder we found some fishy certificates of authenticity at Krystal’s house,” I said. “I’ll bet he was having them sent to Krystal’s address so no one would connect them with him. And that’s why he was still digging.”
“I do wonder what became of the infamous general’s treasure, though. You think it was all a story, or do you think it’s still out there somewhere?” my mother asked.
“And then there’s that doomed man who was in love with a New Orleans girl,” I said.
“I remember that, too,” my mother s
aid. “He died before he could come get her, right? And had lots of gold from pirating?”
“That’s the gist of what Mary Jane told me,” I said.
“We’ll probably never know,” Tobias said.
“Where is Quinn, anyway?” I asked.
Tobias grinned. “Walking Pip, probably.”
“Who’s Pip?” my mother asked.
“My new dog,” Quinn announced as she swept into the room with a tray of maple twists. She smelled like bakery and lemon verbena. “You’re up! I’m so glad to see you!”
“I’m glad to see you, too,” I said. My head still hurt a bit, but my stomach seemed to be fine; in fact, it started growling as soon as I saw the rolls. “So she’s officially yours now?”
“Yes, and I’m so happy she is. She sleeps curled up next to me at night . . . she’s such a snuggler.”
“That’s wonderful!” I told her. At least someone in Wanda’s crosshairs had had a happy ending, I thought. “I know how she ended up in the house now, by the way.”
“Was she Krystal’s pet?”
“Nope. She was a stray who was digging up Wanda’s garden. When she went back to burn the evidence, Wanda put her into Krystal’s house before she set it on fire.”
“That’s terrible!”
“I know,” I said. “But what do you expect from a woman who thinks it’s okay to poison a young woman and frame a mother?”
“Not to mention murder her friend,” my mother added. “Or so I’ve heard. Why did she kill her, after all?”
“Because she was onto her,” I said. I relayed what I had told Tobias earlier.
“Ethel knew about everyone else in town, too, from what I hear,” Tobias said.
“And sent lovely little missives to them. But in a weird way, she was trying to help. She suffered from having children out of wedlock; I think she was trying to help others avoid the same thing, in a twisted sort of way.”
Quinn shivered. “To think Wanda Karp almost killed you, too. How did you get Krystal’s phone, anyway? Peter found it on you when he got you out.”
“It was in a drawer in Wanda’s kitchen,” I said. “I have no idea why she left it there, but that’s how I knew it was her. I never would have gone over there alone if I’d realized she was the killer. I thought it was Phoebe Matheson.” I thought about how the phone had leaped back to life in the shed. “I’m really lucky it worked; I thought it was dead, but it came on just long enough to call 9-1-1.”
“Think your grandma was looking after you again?” Quinn asked, and goose bumps rose on my arms.
“I think she may have been,” I said, remembering the whiff of lavender in the shed. “Although having Peter around didn’t hurt, either. How did he find me, anyway?”
“He was down at the fire station when the 9-1-1 call came in. When he and Walt Koch pulled up at Wanda’s house, he saw the smoke.”
“And all’s well that ends well, or at least as well as it can, considering the circumstances,” Tobias said. It hadn’t ended well for two of the residents of Buttercup. “You’re okay, Molly and Brittany are back with their family, and it’s looking like it might even snow for Christmas.”
“Snow? You’re kidding.”
He grinned. “I am, actually. About the last bit, anyway.”
“How long until I get out of here?”
“Now that you’re on the mend, we’ll see,” my mother said. “If you take it easy, it’ll go faster.”
“Got it,” I said, fingering the cotton coverlet. “Well, sounds like things in Buttercup are doing well without me.”
“For the most part, even though we missed you.” Tobias grimaced. “There is a bit of bad news, though—other than what happened to Krystal and Ethel.”
“What?”
“The Christmas Market fell five thousand dollars short; there’s not enough to refurbish Bessie Mae’s house.”
“Oh, no. What’s she going to do?”
“Mayor Niederberger’s still working on it,” he said. “I haven’t given up hope yet. Something tells me it’s going to come together. Teena thinks so, too. She says there’s a last piece that hasn’t fallen into place.”
“Who’s Teena?” my dad asked.
“The local psychic,” my mother answered. “She’s in high school and cute as a button; I met her at the cookie exchange the other day.”
And she’d said something about flowers, too, I thought. What could she mean? Had she been talking about Wanda’s garden, and the daffodils? Or the poison? I now knew what she meant about “two loves,” at least. Poor Krystal. And poor Ethel.
“If I’m not careful, you’re going to want to move back to Buttercup,” my dad teased my mother.
“Why move back when I can just visit my daughter?” She reached out and squeezed my hand, and I smiled at her, a bit baffled.
“I’ll have to get poisoned more often,” I joked, although I was still rattled by how close I’d come to sharing Krystal’s fate.
“Not on my watch,” Tobias said, and my dad looked at him approvingly.
They discharged me from the hospital on December 23, and as my parents bumped up the long driveway to the farmhouse, I squinted at an unfamiliar red truck in the driveway. “Whose truck is that?” I asked.
“Yours,” my mother said.
I blinked. “What?”
“Merry Christmas, Lucy,” my dad said.
“You got me a new truck?”
“It’s got twenty-five thousand miles on it, so it’s not brand-new,” he said, “but when I talked to the mechanic and he told me the repairs on your truck would cost more than the car . . .”
“You guys are amazing,” I said, feeling a swell of gratitude. Tears pricked my eyes. “But I feel terrible. I’m behind on finishing my Christmas presents!”
“Don’t worry about it,” my mother said. “You rescued a family and managed to avoid dying of poison or burning alive. From my perspective, I think that’s gift enough.”
“There’s still another day,” I said as my mother parked their rental car next to the truck. It was a zippy red, with a big cab and a cover for the truck bed.
“I can’t believe you guys did this for me,” I said, wiping my eyes as I got out of the rental car and walked over to the freshly washed truck. “It’s . . . it’s too much!”
“Nonsense. We figured you needed a bit of help getting started,” my mother said. “Hop in and see what you think!”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive,” my mother beamed, giving me a squeeze.
Even though the truck was used, the inside still had that new-car smell. It wouldn’t for long, I knew, particularly with goats, but I’d savor it while it lasted. I ran my hand over the smooth dash and sank back into the seat—no duct-tape-covered rips. “This is amazing,” I said, completely blown away by my parents’ generosity. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“Let’s go in and get some dinner,” my dad suggested. “It’s chilly out here, and I’ve got a batch of Quinn’s baked potato soup warming up.”
“Are you sure you two have to go home?” I asked as I followed him into the farmhouse and bent down to pet Chuck, who was leaping as high as his portly body would allow. Which was about two inches.
“We’ll be here until after New Year’s,” my mother said. “To help you get back on your feet.” As I stepped inside, I smelled the scent of pine needles. A tree stood in the corner of the living room, right where my grandmother used to put hers.
“It looks just like it did when I was a kid!” I said, admiring the familiar ornaments. There was a felt cardinal on a holly branch, a wooden Christmas tree, a rotund porcelain Santa . . . “Where did you find these? I haven’t seen these in years.”
“I found the box tucked away in the attic yesterday,” my dad said. “While your mom was with you at the hospital, I went out to get a tree and some lights.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said, admiring the twinkling tree.
“Tobias should be here
in a few minutes—I hope you don’t mind,” my dad said.
“Mind? Of course not . . . although I look awful.”
“Nonsense,” my mother said. “He’s a really nice man, by the way. And he seems totally smitten with you.”
I felt my face heat up. “You think?”
“She’s right,” my dad agreed. The phone rang before I could answer him. I grabbed it on the third ring; it was Molly.
“You’re home!”
“I’m home—and thanks to my parents, I have a new truck.”
“I wish I could buy you a new truck. I can’t thank you enough for finding Brittany—and for getting Rooster to drop all the charges against me. But why on earth did you go over there all alone?”
“I didn’t know she was the killer until I got there; I thought it was the pastor’s wife. After all, you gave friendship bread to her, not to Wanda.”
“How did she get it, anyway?”
“Didn’t you drop it off at the church office?”
“Of course,” she said. “Duh.”
“How’s Brittany?”
“Just fine. Apparently she and Bryce got into a big fight the first night, and neither of them could figure out how to call it off. They were embarrassed.”
“So that’s one more worry off the table,” I said. “I’m so glad everything’s working out—and in time for Christmas, too.”
“That’s why I was calling, actually. I wanted to invite you and your parents to Christmas dinner. And Tobias, too, if he’ll come.”
“That would be wonderful,” I said.
“I’ve got to run, but I can’t thank you enough.”
“Just one thing.”
“What?”
“Don’t give any more friendship bread out, okay?”
She laughed. “As long as you don’t drink any more tea!”
“It’s a deal,” I said, and we hung up.
The next morning dawned cold and clear. Frost sparkled on the tree outside my window, and the house smelled like bacon and coffee.
I slipped on my bathrobe and slippers and padded downstairs to where my dad was making breakfast. As I entered the kitchen, my mother came in from the back door carrying jars of milk, her cheeks pink.
Fatal Frost (Dewberry Farm Mysteries Book 2) Page 23
