by Eryn Scott
Ansel moved over to rub and purr around Hadley’s legs. She bent to pick him up and stroked his soft fur. Between the way he relaxed in her arms and the white noise of his purring, the cat served to calm her from the slightly agitated state she’d gotten herself in thinking about her failed marriage to her high school sweetheart.
Suzanne pushed aside the ice cream. “Now that we’re talking about Tyler, I’m regretting buying some of his cousin’s ice cream.”
Hadley scoffed. “Oh, I’m not.” She set Ansel down on the floor so she could pull two spoons from the drawer and stuck them into the bowls Suze had dished up. “After being married to one of the Henleys, I’d become dependent on their ice cream. Going these months without it has been like torture.”
Suze laughed and sunk her spoon into the delicious soft-serve after Hadley. They popped a spoonful each into their mouths and both closed their eyes, letting out groans of appreciation.
“I don’t even care if they spit in it.” Suze scooped a second spoonful out.
Hadley laughed. “Yeah, I’m surprised they even let you inside.”
“There were glares.” She nodded. “And the service was definitely subpar, but I’d do anything for my best friend, you know.”
“As would I for you.”
Suze paused. “There is one thing you can do for me, actually.”
Eyebrows raising, Hadley asked, “What’s that?”
“Tell me I was right.”
“Okay, you were right. About what?”
She cleared her throat. “You’ve never thanked me for convincing you to keep your maiden name when you got married.”
Hadley sighed. “Oh, that?”
Suze had been adamant, along with most of the town, that Hadley Henley was not a flattering name. Tyler hadn’t cared either way—saying in such a small town, everyone was going to know they were married anyway—so she’d stayed a James, rather than hyphenating.
“Psh.” Suze scoffed. “That? I saved you from a major headache. You would be having to redo your business license and change back right now, on top of everything else.”
Hadley put a hand up. “You’re right. You’re a very good friend. Thank you.”
Suze beamed.
They finished off the small container of ice cream in a matter of minutes. Then, after refreshing their wine glasses, they headed into the small sitting room which held Hadley’s favorite view of all: a straight shot of the North Cascades mountains. Her house had tall windows, great natural light, and even better views, all musts in Hadley’s book, but it also held too many memories of the years she’d been married to Tyler. She welcomed company to keep her mind off those thoughts.
The women settled onto opposite sides of Hadley’s tweed couch as they watched the sun dip below the mountaintops, tossing reds, oranges, and purples out into the sky in some last-ditch effort for attention. Ansel jumped onto Hadley’s lap, curling up within seconds as if they did this every night. She smiled.
“Luke looks good, huh?” Suze asked in the silence.
Hadley’s smile fell flat. “I hadn’t noticed.”
She had.
While Tyler had been the tall, dark, and devilishly handsome type—literally, the guy was as bad boy as Stoneybrook got and the mastermind of most of their worst decisions growing up—Luke had always been solid. He was shorter than Tyler, his sandy blond hair always a mess and his strong arms reflecting his farm-centric upbringing. He had also been the pragmatic one, the person who cleaned up when everyone else had left a party, and the person who checked to make sure everyone got home safely after all the shenanigans.
As frustrating as she found the man, her soul couldn’t seem to throw away their time growing up. There had been a long time when Luke had been as important to Hadley as her brother and Suze were. They’d spent summer nights lying out in the wheat field staring up at the stars while they caught fireflies, and spring days racing bikes down the dirt road, neck and neck for second place when Paul had obviously already won first. Luke was the one who always dared her to do things she didn’t think she could—like jump into the river from Dari’s rock.
But he’d changed as they grew up. It hadn’t just been the betrayal of him urging Tyler not to ask Hadley out. By their senior year, he’d turned his back on Stoneybrook completely, telling anyone who would listen how excited he was to leave for college and never come back.
Suze shot a sidelong glance at Hadley from her end of the couch, and Hadley realized she must’ve been silent for too long, looking contemplative.
“Looking good or not, Luke’s still Tyler’s best friend,” Hadley said in summation. “And he’s probably even harder to be around now that he’s spent so many years in the city. Next thing we know, he’ll probably want to move to Cascade Ridge because it just fits his new urban lifestyle so much better.”
Cascade Ridge residents had a way of making Stoneybrookians feel like hicks, like country bumpkins, even though they weren’t. The inhabitants of the larger city to the north all seemed to be the kind of people who never ate in their cars. When they wore white it was as bright as the day they’d bought it, and Hadley doubted their shoes smelled of anything but expensive leather.
“Not what you thought in sixth grade when he was your first kiss,” Suze said under her breath, but at a volume she knew Hadley would hear.
Hadley huffed and tossed a pillow at her, waking Ansel with the commotion. “That’s not fair.”
“Hey, watch the wine, lady. And it is fair.”
“We were in sixth grade. I also used to wear overalls every day in sixth grade, and you don’t see me doing that anymore.”
“Not every day.” Suzanne tipped her head to the side, but couldn’t hold back the teasing grin that curled across her face.
They spent the rest of the night talking, laughing, and forgetting the terrible morning Hadley had experienced finding Edith. It was the first time that day that she began to let go and put the woman’s death behind her for good. Or so she thought.
7
The next two days flew by in a blur of house cleaning, yard work, and canning. Running her own business often meant working through the weekends, but Hadley tried to keep that at a minimum during spring and summer.
This spring had brought forth the usual fresh green stalks, leaves, and weeds shooting out all over her garden beds. She needed to get on top of the weeding or it could easily get out of control.
There was also Ansel to take care of. While he didn't take much work, Hadley enjoyed spoiling him with belly scratches and treats. He was obviously used to an owner who worked a lot—Edith only had Louise to help her cover the knitting shop, so she had worked most days—because when Hadley came home after working the jam kitchen most of Monday, he was sleeping happily in a sunbeam on the rug in the living room.
Ansel slunk around underneath Hadley's purple and red rhodies while she finished up the last bit of weeding left over from the weekend.
It had been two months since Tyler moved out, and Hadley was beginning to enjoy the whole living-alone thing. In fact, she liked the liberty to follow her own whims and schedule. But having Ansel around seemed to enhance every part of her day.
At night, he would curl up next to her feet on the top of her duvet, the rhythmic sound of his purring lulling her to sleep. He greeted her with short, happy mews in the morning, rubbing against her arms to let her know it was time to feed him. Everywhere she went, Ansel would follow.
And while she was sad to leave him in the morning on Tuesday as she headed out for the kitchen, she knew he'd be much happier having the run of the house than he would be locked in her office all day.
Hadley's bike was damp with morning dew. She swiped her hand across the seat so her pants wouldn't soak up all of the liquid then clipped on her helmet. The breeze was cold as she took off down her road. The surrounding mountains still had a fair bit of snow capping their peaks, and she knew it would be a couple months still until it was warm enough to go without a ja
cket in the mornings and evenings. The sweet, mulchy smell of fresh cut grass swirled on the wind as she turned from the rocky country road onto the paved one that would take her into town.
She waved to a few gardening, glove-clad neighbors who looked up as she passed by. Eyeing the road to Edith’s place, Hadley felt a chill skitter down her spine. Her weekend chores had helped her forget as well as she could, but seeing the entrance to Edith’s long road, she couldn’t help the curiosity that returned.
Her hands tilted the handlebars of her bike to the right and down her road as if of their own accord. The tires bumped over the gravel drive for a few seconds, but then smoothed out as the road evened out.
Besides the access to the Fenton’s old tenant house, no one drove down this way except Edith. Which was why Hadley was surprised to see two cars parked in front of the yellow house when she pulled up. Correction: not just any two cars, but her brother’s truck and Kevin’s cruiser.
They were standing in the front yard talking, hands held up to their eyes to shield them from the spring morning sunshine. Yellow tape still ran along the porch, barring the entrance to anyone outside the sheriff’s department. Paul glanced up as he noticed her.
Kevin headed inside the house as Paul walked up to meet Hadley. She could read her twin brother’s body language like her favorite recipes, and she could tell by the way he set his jaw and wouldn’t meet her gaze that he was hiding something.
“Hey?” His one-word question held a handful more inside it. What are you doing here? What do you want? Can’t you see I’m busy?
“Morning.” Hadley’s response held answers to all of his questions. I’m surprised to see you here too. And now I’m curious about what’s going on. Tell me what you’re doing.
They stared at each other for a few seconds before Hadley broke down and said, “I kept thinking about her. I just thought I’d ride by on my way into town. Why do you guys still have the tape up?”
Paul looked out over the Fenton’s farmland. The songbirds in the nearby trees layered different tunes together to create a beautiful symphony. But none of it did anything to calm Hadley’s worries.
“Paul?” she asked, pulling his attention back to her. “I can see the tape. Come on, spill.”
Blinking, he said, “McKay called down this morning …”
“Back in Cascade Ridge already?” Hadley tsked. “The man barely lasted the weekend.”
Normally, Paul loved trading verbal cuts at the expense of his ornery boss, but today he didn’t even smile.
“Okay. Seriously, man. What’s going on?”
Paul swallowed. “Edith didn’t die of natural causes,” he said, finally.
Hadley’s lips parted. A surprised gasp escaped them. “What? How?” She shook her head as if that might take away the ringing in her ears.
“Her autopsy showed that she died of an overdose of blood pressure medication.”
Her hand covered her mouth as she took in the news. “So it could’ve been …” Hadley gulped. “Suicide?”
She couldn’t imagine Edith Butler doing anything of the sort, but sometimes it was hard to know what other people were going through.
Paul’s jaw clenched for a split second. “No. I mean, we can’t write off the possibility, but we don’t believe that’s what happened. There were traces of the medication in her empty tea cup. If she was trying to kill herself, she would’ve just swallowed the pills rather than dissolving them into her tea.”
Feeling her shoulders slump with relief, Hadley let out the breath she’d sucked in moments ago. But any solace was short-lived as she realized what this meant.
“So there could be a murderer in Stoneybrook?”
Even the sentence felt oxymoronic coming from her lips. Stoneybrook was a place where people came to forget their hectic lives, where everyone knew their neighbors, and no one locked their car doors. It wasn’t a place where people looked over their shoulders or worried about things like crime and murder.
Did people have grudges? Fights? Sure. But Stoneybrook had always solved disputes the old-fashioned ways through rumors, gossip, the silent treatment, taking sides, and unrelenting passive-aggressive behavior. Her own experience in the last year was a testament to that.
People in Hadley’s town didn’t go around killing people.
She put a hand on Edith’s white picket fence to steady herself. Suddenly the Saturday market came to mind, how oddly some of the people had dealt with the news of Edith’s death.
“This sure sheds a whole different light on the way people acted at the market.”
Paul wrinkled his forehead. “How so?”
Hadley recounted how Louise had been a little too aloof about her boss being found dead and how Hazel had been entirely too sweet.
“Then there was the fact that Dirk and Cathy Croft showed up. I haven’t seen them at a market for years. Suze said he’s trying to rebrand Croft Development.”
“Huh,” Paul said as he rubbed his hand across his bearded chin. “Sounds like something I need to look into. You know, her sister did say something I didn’t think was weird until now.”
His statement made Hadley lean closer in anticipation.
“I asked her if Edith had mentioned anything about how she was feeling when they’d talked about her coming out to visit. The sister said no, that Edith reported feeling just fine. But she did say that she was excited to get out of town for a while, that she kept saying something from her past was bothering her.”
“Hmm … and she didn’t say what … or whom?” Hadley watched her brother.
“Nope. I’ll put it on my list to call her and see if she knows anything more.” Paul seemed lost in his thoughts for a moment, but then he focused back on Hadley. “To be honest, Had, I need to figure this out. McKay has been on me the last few days, picking apart everything I’m doing. He keeps saying his nephew is graduating from the academy next month and how much better of a job he’d do. He thinks the fact that I grew up here is negatively affecting my ability to do my job. I need something big, and catching a killer, if that’s what we’re dealing with, would be it.”
Chewing on her bottom lip out of worry as she listened to her brother, Hadley nodded. As much as they made fun of Sheriff M&M, he was Paul’s boss and therefore held her brother’s career in his hands.
“Sure, Suze and I can ask around. We’ll help you figure this out. Don’t worry.”
Paul shook his head. “No way you’re getting involved with a murder investigation.”
Hadley almost moved her hand from the fence to her hip in defiance, but instead she clenched the painted wood slat. She knew it would be no use arguing with her brother over this. It was his job, after all.
Hadley put her hands up. “Okay. Gotcha. Well, I’ll let you get back to work. I’ve got to get to making some jam.”
Plus, she thought to herself, I can’t help it if I happen to hear things around town that might be helpful in his investigation.
Before Paul could say anything in return, Hadley waved and hopped on her bike, heading back toward town, and hopefully, some answers.
Hadley’s mind buzzed with the news of Edith’s not-so-natural death on her bike ride into town. Suspects and questions made it almost hard to focus on the road, something that became important as she turned onto Main Street. Downtown was hopping, even though it was barely nine in the morning.
While Stoneybrook was a tourist destination all year long, visitor numbers grew exponentially during the spring and summer months. Between the cute, brick buildings with their multicolored-striped awnings, the artisan shops, and the kind locals, the small river valley town was a favorite vacation spot. There was an abundance of bed-and-breakfasts in town and a few out on the edges of the farmland or sitting right on the banks of the Cascade River. Visitors often had a hard time choosing between the many local hikes, rafting down the river, farm or winery tours, horseback riding through the valley, or just spending the day getting some good ol' retail therapy.<
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Hadley smiled thinking about her goal to open a small storefront where she could sell her jams from here instead of just relying on her farmers market sales and online orders.
While she’d hoped to have a retail space right away when she started renting the kitchen, there had been some complications with … well, Tyler. But Hadley was over blaming him for everything. Within the next few months, she should be at a place where she could renovate the front part of the space—currently used for extra dry storage—into a retail area. She already had Suze on standby, thinking of merchandise ideas to add to her inventory.
Pulling into the alley behind her building, Hadley took off her helmet and hooked it on the bike handle as she engaged the kickstand. As she walked inside, her gaze settled on the three large arrangements that she got each week from Valley Wildflowers to display in her front windows. Hadley pulled in a deep breath, loving the tart, sweet smell that always seemed to permeate her kitchen.
Speaking of tart, she thought and snapped her fingers, I forgot to grab the bag of lemons Suze brought me the other day.
The bag was still sitting on her kitchen counter. Luckily, she still had a bowl full of lemons, but that would only get her through the batches she was going to make today. Hadley liked to structure her workdays with jam cooking and canning time in the mornings and then fielding online orders, packing, and shipping in the afternoons.
Today, she was working on replenishing her supply of one of her favorites—strawberry rhubarb. It had been a big hit, and she knew the rest of what she had would be gone by the time she sent orders out at the end of the day. Getting right to the task at hand, she started her prep work, pulling out bowls to measure the ingredients, then washing the berries, and chopping the rhubarb.
While the berries were marinating in the sugar, she pulled out one of her large copper pots. Her heart fluttered each time she looked at the bright, metallic pots. Sure they'd been an expensive investment, but she couldn't imagine using anything else at this point, believing wholeheartedly that their ability to heat evenly without getting too hot was part of the secret to her success.
