Anna Denning Mystery Series Box Set: Books 1–3

by Karin Kaufman

  20

  Anna woke early the next morning to the sound of voices somewhere in the hall outside her door. She recognized Schaeffer’s voice first, and a moment later Paxton’s. She groaned and buried her face in her pillow. She and Liz had worked until quarter after three in the morning, much of the time in stony silence. Liz wrote her post for her website in her own room, and Anna, in the Forsythia Room, never heard a sound from upstairs.

  She peeked at Jackson. His eyes open, his tail thumping listlessly on the bedspread as she looked at him, he was pleading as only a dog could for her to go back to sleep and leave him be. She plumped the pillow, flopped on her back, and pulled the blanket to her chin. She didn’t want to get up either. She was exhausted from her long hours at work, but more than that, she was sick of the Birch job, sick of Sparrow House.

  Look what the place had done to her and Liz. In the eight-plus years they’d known each other, they’d never fought like they had last night. “But it’s not just this house,” she whispered to Jackson. True, the old mansion had put them both on edge, but there was no excuse for the way she’d acted. Liz had the best of intentions. Always. Though in her eagerness to help, she sometimes spoke too easily of difficult things.

  Grace Bell understood. She was a widow, too, and the only friend Anna had who had never given her the requisite “Get on with your life” speech. Grace knew it took time, lots of it, and that sometimes for every forward step you managed, you took two steps back.

  Flinging away the blanket, she scooted to the edge of the bed, rubbed her eyes, and reached for her glasses on the nightstand. Schaeffer’s voice was quieter now. He seemed to be moving toward the other end of the hall, Paxton with him. She rose and dressed quickly.

  In the entryway near the front door, Anna looked through the sitting room and into the library, where Liz was already at work at her laptop. She paused, trying to catch her eye, but Liz didn’t look up. Jackson ran for the window to the right of the front door and pressed his nose to the pane.

  Her purse strap hooked around her neck, she set her laptop on the floor and pried open the door. With a small yelp of excitement, Jackson set off for the east lawn. For once it wasn’t raining, though a heavy mist hung in the air. Near the door, clusters of trumpet-shaped flowers in shades of violet and blue hung their heads. Shrubs and trees glistened when a single ray of sunshine poked through the clouds before disappearing again into the hazy sky.

  Schaeffer’s SUV was parked outside, but there were no other police vehicles, which meant that they weren’t searching the house—at least with a warrant. Anna wondered if she should tell Schaeffer about the old nursery or ask him to take a look at the attic rooms. But to search rooms, even with the Birches’ permission, Schaeffer needed more to go on than her bad feelings. He wouldn’t do it simply to allay her fears that something was very wrong at Sparrow House.

  “Jackson, come!” she called. She stepped to the gravel drive and looked back at the house, trying to imagine how a finished third floor, with a full row of dormer windows, would alter the face of the building.

  As Anna headed into the library, laptop under her arm, Liz looked up. Say it now or you’ll chicken out. She walked straight to the table and stood across from Liz. “I’m so sorry about last night. Please forgive me.”

  “Anna, no, I’m sorry. You’re right, I don’t know anything about it, and I don’t mean to sound like I do.” She stood. “I’ll promise I’ll keep my mouth shut from now—”

  “No, I want you to speak up. You’re my friend.”

  Anna wheeled at the sound of Schaeffer’s voice echoing in the entryway. She looked back at Liz and they both grinned. Enough had been said. A few words were all that was needed. They’d been friends a long time, and forgiveness came willingly and readily.

  “Anyway, I have to admit my problem with Gene is a good problem to have.” She switched on her laptop and Jackson hopped onto the armchair. “How long have you been working?”

  “A while before you. I woke up when I heard Schaeffer.”

  Anna navigated to a genealogy website and typed in a name. “Do you think the Birches are under suspicion?” she asked quietly.

  “Could be. Or maybe Bee or Mitch is.”

  “I wonder if Nilla told Schaeffer about Lawrence. Last night at dinner she said she would.”

  “Unless Lawrence came back and we don’t know it yet.” Liz gave a sigh of exhaustion, stretched her arms to the ceiling, then slouched back in her seat.

  “Would you mind coming with me to the Buffalo? You can stay in the Jimmy with Jackson or come in after me so Alice doesn’t think we’re together.”

  Liz brightened. “Sure. When are you leaving?”

  “We should go soon. I don’t know how long it’s going to take us to make it down the driveway, and there might be crews on the road doing storm cleanup.” She lowered her voice. “Plus, I don’t want to run into Schaeffer. He must think bodies fall from the trees whenever I’m around.”

  “It’s a talent you have.”

  Anna clicked on a link. She scratched her head and clicked on another. Then a third. For confirmation she clicked on a fourth, and then, pen in hand, she jotted down the details.

  “You found something?”

  “Alice Ryder has a nephew.”

  “Many people do,” Liz said. When she heard nothing in reply, she looked up. “What’s the nephew’s name?”

  “Mitchell DeBoer.”

  Anna made a right onto Aspen Road. She had finally made it down the rain-soaked driveway by running the Jimmy’s passenger-side wheels over the lawn. They’d bit into the grass, digging ruts as they gained traction. She knew she’d have to do the same thing when they returned from Elk Park. Mitch would be furious when it came time to mow the grounds.

  Leaves and twigs littered Aspen and other streets all the way into Elk Park, but crews had removed the larger tree limbs and made the streets passable—so much so that Anna and Liz were forty minutes early for Anna’s meeting with Alice Ryder.

  Anna found a vacant space on Summit Avenue a block west of the Buffalo, a safe distance from the café. Here, Alice wouldn’t see Liz waiting in the car—or connect Anna to Liz if Liz decided to enter the Buffalo later.

  Jackson wiggled in the back seat, his tail thumping on the Jimmy’s door.

  Anna shifted in her seat and looked back at him. “Jackson, you have to stay here.”

  At the word “stay,” his ears flattened and he lowered his head a fraction.

  “I can’t stand it,” Anna said. “Could you—”

  “Yes, of course,” Liz said. “I’ll take him in right after I call Dan.” Reaching down for her purse, she caught the strap on her foot. Grunting and mumbling something about exhaustion and muscles, she tugged hard, pulling her foot up along with the strap before working it loose. “Poor pup hasn’t played with Suka in ages.”

  “Thank you. You know . . . ,” she began, looking out the window on Liz’s side. She’d managed to park almost directly in front of Buckhorn’s Trading Post.

  “And since we’re early, you could talk to Gene first.”

  “How do you do that? How do you read my mind?”

  Liz grinned. “We’ve been friends a long time.”

  Anna hopped out, hitched her purse strap onto her shoulder, and made her way around the car to the curb. She hesitated on the sidewalk, looking back to the Jimmy. Liz waved her on.

  The bell sounded above the door as she entered, and Gene, writing on a notepad at the register, looked up. When his face broke into a grin, Anna let go of the door and grinned back at him, her fears taking flight. Between the door and the register, as she noticed the dark skin under his eyes and coffee stain on the front of his wrinkled shirt, they flew back to her, one by one. She knew she had to settle matters with Gene before she walked back out that door.

  “Anna, I didn’t expect you.” He gave her a peck on the lips. “Have you finished your work at Sparrow House?”

  She glanced abou
t the store. Not a customer in sight. “No, I’m meeting someone at the Buffalo, but I’m early, so . . .” She trailed off. Now she was sounding like a teenager, waffling, unable to make a declarative statement, ending her sentences with a filler word like “so.”

  She’d lose her nerve if she didn’t get right to the point. From experience she knew if she didn’t forge ahead, she’d back out. “I need to ask you why you turned your cell off last night.”

  “What?” The question seemed to bewilder him. “It was after one in the morning.”

  “You answered the night before when I called you on your cell.”

  A pair of customers entered the store—early season tourists, judging by their shorts and too-summery tops—and began to roam the aisles. Gene moved to the far end of the store, motioning for Anna to follow.

  “The night before you called at eleven,” he said as he turned toward her. “Anna, what’s this about?”

  “Eleven o’clock and you were still working. Then last night you fell asleep in the store. You tell me what’s going on. Are you trying to avoid me or do you just want to work yourself to death?”

  “Is that what’s bothering you?”

  “Bothering me? You make it sound like it’s nothing.”

  He shut his eyes and ran a hand over the dark stubble on his cheeks and chin. Gene always kept his beard short and trimmed—so much so that most people, when they met him for the first time, thought he’d only just decided to let it grow, but it was longer now than Anna had ever seen it, and on the verge of being unkempt, something Gene never was. It was one more thing about him that had changed.

  “I should have known,” he said. “This is my fault. Wait here.”

  He quickly surveyed the store, and when he spotted Jazmin, he went over to her, spoke a few words, then walked back to Anna and gestured for her to follow him into his office at the back.

  When Gene opened the office door, Riley nosed his way through it, greeted him briefly, then nuzzled Anna, demanding her attention. As she bent to scratch his chin, she caught sight of a mattress along the far wall and a small heap of blankets atop it. She straightened. Next to the mattress was a duffel bag, its opened zipper revealing clothing, towels, and an obviously seldom-used can of shaving cream.

  She turned her face to his.

  “Go on in,” he said, following her inside the office and shutting the door.

  “Your house,” she said anxiously. “Is something wrong with it?”

  “No, it’s fine.” He sat on the edge of the desk, hands clasped. “I haven’t told you the truth, and I’m sorry. I didn’t set out to lie to you.”

  Anna felt a chill. She waited, bracing herself for his next words.

  He took a deep breath, his shoulders drooping as he exhaled. “I couldn’t take the commute anymore. Leaving here at eleven or midnight, leaving Loveland at five, five-thirty in the morning. And I couldn’t stay with my dad or sister—I’ve inconvenienced them enough.”

  “Wait a minute. You’ve been sleeping here? How long?”

  “About a month. I should have told you.”

  “Whoa.” She held out a hand, stiff-armed, like a guard at a school crosswalk. “Are you kidding me? Is that why you’ve been so snarky when I talk about how much you work?”

  He stood and came close to her, gently taking her hands in his. “Every time you brought it up I had to lie to you, and I hated that. I wanted you to stop asking me, but I knew the less I talked about it, the more you’d think something was wrong. I didn’t know how to get out of the mess I’d made.” He looked away, then back to her, shaking his head. He spoke forcefully, his light brown eyes looking hard into hers. “I don’t want you to think I’m a liar. I’m not.”

  Anna felt a smile crossing her face. She bit her lip, but it was no good. She laughed, her hands flying to her face in a belated effort to hide her grin, then laughed again as she saw Gene’s expression, mirroring her own from moments before, change from one of distress to relief. “You’re laughing at me?” he said, encircling her waist and drawing her near.

  “Yeah, I am, Mr. Westfall,” she said, still laughing.

  He kissed her, and she cradled his face in her hands. “Why didn’t you tell me you were sleeping here?”

  “What would you have said?”

  She thought for a moment. “Stay at my house. And you can’t do that.”

  “It wouldn’t be wise. And you already gave me your house key—I knew if I said anything, you’d insist I stay at your house. And when I said no, which I would have, you would have felt guilty. Right? You’d have brought me soup and washed my clothes for me.”

  She glanced down at the coffee stain on his shirt. “Well, yeah.”

  He smiled. “I know you.”

  She loved this man. He was worth every risk, every emotional up and down. And he was worth the truth. He needed to know the real Anna, the hot-tempered, mandolin-crazed woman she was. It would come out sooner or later—the real her, trickling, oozing out of the mold she’d crafted, the mold that was the woman she wanted to be but was far from being. If he couldn’t love the real Anna, it was best she knew that now, before another day passed. “You’re not the only one with secrets. Remember I told you about Sean’s mandolin being destroyed?”

  “By those lunatics, yeah.”

  “Well, I still have it. I mean, I have it in a drawer. It can’t ever be played again and it’s only taking up room. It’s ruined—it doesn’t even have a neck.”

  “And?”

  “And if I don’t throw it away now, I don’t think I ever will. I’ll be a crazy woman carrying a smashed mandolin around with me for the rest of my life. But . . .” She wavered. “The problem is . . .” Spit it out. “I can’t throw it away.”

  “Why should you?”

  She stared at him. He repeated the question.

  “Because it’s splintered wood in a drawer,” she said flatly, not quite believing what her ears were hearing. He wasn’t shocked or surprised. He wasn’t even mystified. “But the thing is, it’s . . .”

  “Just say it, Anna, it’ll be fine.”

  “It’s Sean’s.”

  “Yes, it is. And you loved him, and I’m glad you still do. That means I chose well. You wouldn’t be the woman I love if you could throw away something that was so important to him without a struggle. Did I ever tell you about Daisy, my dog before Riley?”

  He kissed her again.

  Anna heard the word “Gene” from outside the door, followed swiftly by a single knock. The two leapt apart like school kids caught behind the bleachers and wheeled back as Jazmin poked her head through the crack in the door. “Some customers have questions about the cottonwood Christmas ornaments.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Gene said.

  A hint of a smirk on her face, Jazmin’s eyes shifted from Gene to Anna and back again before she closed the door.

  “Stay here with Riley,” Gene said.

  “I can’t,” she said, tapping her watch. “I need to leave. My appointment at the Buffalo is with one of the people who was at that 1970 meeting I told you about.”

  “Don’t leave.” He held up his forefinger. “Give me one minute.”

  Anna, bending sideways to scratch Riley between his ears, watched Gene through the open office door. He headed to the ornament aisle, spoke briefly with two customers, then handed them off to Jazmin.

  It was the first time Anna had seen Jazmin at the register. When did that happen? she wondered. Jazmin had never done anything but assist customers and stock the shelves—though in her off hours she drew watercolor and chalk scenes of Summit Avenue for sale in Buckhorn’s.

  Gene headed back to the office, shut the door, and continued their conversation as though there had been no break in it. “Is that safe? I’ve been reading about that meeting in 1970, and about Matthew Birch.”

  “You have?”

  “Yeah, and they weren’t good people. None of them. Birch, especially.”

  “Gene, Matt
hew Birch is dead.” She paused, remembering the sounds that came from the third floor late at night. “Unless he’s living in one of the attic rooms.” She could see by Gene’s expression that her witty retort had done nothing to lessen his concerns. She laid a hand on his arm. “I’m meeting a woman who was there, and she’s almost seventy years old.”

  “No one seventy years old has ever hurt anyone?”

  “I’m saying I think I can hold my own against a woman that age, especially in a public place.”

  “What do you know about her?” He folded his arms and leaned back on his heels. He wanted concrete information.

  “Well, she sent me two letters about working at Sparrow House before Paxton Birch even hired me, and she may have written some coded notes on family records accusing Matthew Birch of murder.”

  Gene’s persistent stare was making her uneasy. He was a rock of common sense, and she was stubborn to the point of foolishness. If he felt she was being unwise, she wanted to hear it. Overwhelmed by the sudden urge to show him the letters, she retrieved the envelopes from her purse and put them in his hands.

  A moment later, as he took the second letter from its envelope, he asked, “What does ‘like a genealogist works’ mean?”

  She opened her mouth to answer but he was already on the second letter, his face knit in concentration. He folded the second letter and slid it back into the envelope. “What’s your opinion on these?” he asked, handing the letters back to her.

  It took her by surprise. She had expected an opinion from him, a forceful one at that, not a request for her thoughts. “Well, Alice knows, or thinks she knows, what happened in 1970, and that second letter tells the story—or the beginning of it. I’m hoping she’ll tell me the rest.”

  “To what end?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you hope to gain from her telling you the rest?”

  “Money from Paxton Birch.” She gave him a tight-lipped smile. “I mean it. I need the money for my roof, among many other things. I found enough information on his family tree, so that part of my contract is covered, but he wants me to focus on the haunted house angle before I leave.”