“Yes . . .” Tate had read yesterday’s article the evening before, after Amber left. He was wondering if she’d seen it.
“The report also mentioned that what was left on her house was Scripture.”
“It was.”
“Also from the book of Daniel?”
“Yes.”
They’d reached the pastor’s sedan. The day was sunny, bright, and warm. Tate welcomed the change in weather after the storm of the night before.
“And you saw what was painted on the trail?”
“Sure. I found it and alerted Amber. It was on the border of our properties.”
“A quotation from Daniel?”
“Yes.” Tate wasn’t sure how much he wanted to share with Mitch, how much the man even needed to know. He had an entire flock to look after. Their problems weren’t something he needed to be involved in any more than necessary. “Amber found both of the Scriptures. They don’t make much sense to us, but they were both from the Old Testament, from the book of Daniel.”
Tate hesitated as he thought about the letters from Ethan they’d read. He’d mentioned finding a slip of paper at the coffee shop. “There’s more. Someone may have left a note for Ethan with verses from Daniel, and then there’s the odd cross-stitch found in one of the Village shops. It also referenced Daniel.”
Mitch’s eyes crinkled as he stared off into the distance. Finally he turned to Tate. “Promise me you two will be very careful.”
“Of course.”
“The Scripture was given to us to teach and to uplift. To provide a path to God. Occasionally a person fixates on a certain portion, a portion that many of us would consider narrative history—such as the book of Daniel. It is a record of Daniel’s experience in exile, in the court of Babylon. We can see God’s sovereignty over kings, in this case Nebuchadnezzar.”
Tate jingled the change in his pocket, unsure where Mitch was headed.
“In addition to the historical aspects, there are spiritual lessons to be found within this portion of the Scripture—God’s faithfulness to his people and his omnipotence.”
“But . . .”
“But when someone fixates on one portion versus the Scripture as a whole, confusion sets in. They pick and choose certain words and use them to justify almost any action.”
Tate hesitated, then asked, “Even murder?”
“Especially murder.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“If there’s anything you need, anything I can do—”
“I’ll let you know. In the meantime, pray that the person who is responsible is caught soon. The vandalism is disruptive, and the longer it continues, the more dangerous work is for Amber.”
Tate’s phone vibrated, and he pulled it from his shirt pocket. He read the text once, then again. It made no sense.
“I need to go, Mitch.”
“Call if I can do anything.” Mitch added, “And go in grace.”
Tate thanked him as he trotted toward his truck. He would need grace along with a giant dose of restraint if the message on his phone was true.
Amber had enjoyed the early morning worship service at her church, especially the praise portion. She had a special place in her heart for music. She’d taken to making playlists on her tablet, filled with music from church, from the radio, and even songs she’d grown up hearing. During the morning’s service, she’d been particularly moved by a young girl’s solo, accompanied by an acoustic guitar and keyboard. The old hymn “Showers of Blessings,” played with a new syncopated rhythm, had soothed her soul.
She had many blessings in her life, and the words the young girl sang helped to remind her of them. She had a good job, a sister who was closer than any friend, faithful employees like Hannah, and she had Tate.
The last thought jumped into her mind unbidden.
But as she bowed her head for prayer, she knew it was true—Tate was a blessing. Not just because he helped her when others hesitated. She liked being around someone she was comfortable with. Someone who occasionally told her how pretty she looked, kissed her when she least expected it, and made sure she ate when she’d probably forget.
As the pastor ended their prayer time, Amber was comforted by those thoughts, by those truths.
Then Pastor Ann stood and began to preach.
She always spoke in a soothing, encouraging voice, but today the Scripture she’d chosen did not soothe or encourage Amber. Instead it started her mind to spinning.
Their reading came from 2 Samuel, the eleventh chapter. King David had fallen in love with Bathsheba, but she was a married woman. This didn’t stop David from lying with her, and Bathsheba became pregnant with the king’s child. So David sent Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, into the heart of battle. The king arranged to have his lover’s spouse, a man serving in his own army, killed.
Pastor Ann went on to speak of David, a man with weaknesses, a man who had sinned, but ultimately a man after God’s own heart.
The entire thing disturbed Amber. Why couldn’t the Bible be clearer? Good people should be good, and bad people should be bad. David’s story seemed to suggest otherwise. It spoke more of the nature of God and how his capacity for forgiveness was unlimited.
As she drove home, she thought of the sermon and Ethan and Patricia. Her mind relaxed completely as she passed a field with ewes grazing beside newborn lambs. The sight was so natural, so right, that for a moment she forgot to worry. And that was when she thought of the one person whom she had allowed to slip from her mind. The one person who might hold the answers they needed.
Thirty-One
Amber had been driving back toward the Village, toward home. When she realized the piece of the puzzle she’d overlooked, she moved to the center turning lane, waited for oncoming traffic to pass, and made a U-turn.
Fortunately she remembered where Margaret lived, or she thought she did. When she reached the neighborhood, she turned the wrong way—left instead of right. It took another five minutes to straighten herself out. By the time she pulled up in front of Margaret’s home, her stomach was growling. Lunch would have to wait. She was close to solving the identity of Ethan’s murderer. She could feel it as surely as she could feel spring in the air.
Grabbing her phone from off the front seat, she saw that she’d missed a call from Tate. It must have come in while she was walking from the church to her car. Sometimes she didn’t hear the phone’s ring in her purse, but the car always alerted her. In fact, she’d finally figured out how to sync her phone, and she could now talk hands-free.
She didn’t have time to talk hands-free. She didn’t have time to talk at all! Instead, she dropped the phone into her purse and hurried up the walk to Margaret’s home.
What if Ethan’s wife refused to let her in?
What if she didn’t even answer the door?
Amber breathed a silent prayer for intervention, for direction, and for wisdom. Then she pushed the doorbell.
Margaret Gray answered the door, but she barely resembled the woman Amber had met so recently. Her hair was a mess—sprouting in every direction. She wore what looked like Ethan’s old warm-ups, and she had not bothered to apply makeup—or take off yesterday’s for that matter. Dark smudges puddled beneath her eyes where her mascara had smeared. When she raised her fingers to press them against her lips, Amber saw that her polish was chipped and two of her nails were broken.
How could one person change so much in such a short amount of time?
Had grief finally caught up with her?
Or had guilt?
“What do you want?” A week ago the words would have been a snarl, but now Margaret’s voice trembled and cracked.
“I wanted to speak with you. May I come in?”
Margaret stared at her blankly for the space of a heartbeat, then shrugged and turned away from the door.
Amber glanced to her left and her right, as if someone might be waiting in the bushes. Finally she hurried through the front entryway to catch
up with Ethan’s widow. Margaret didn’t stop at the living room, but they passed it as they moved through the hall that ran the length of the house. On the floor boxes of old photos lay open, their contents spilled out in haphazard disarray. Take-out containers covered the end table, and empty cans of diet drinks filled a trash can. On the floor was a copy of their local paper.
Unable to resist, Amber walked into the room. She picked up a few of the pictures: Ethan and Margaret marrying, standing in front of the house as they removed a “For Sale” sign with “Sold” over it, kissing under a sprig of mistletoe. She returned the pictures to the container they’d fallen from and picked up the newspaper. The front story was about the recent vandalism at the Village, but below the fold on the right-hand side was a picture of Ethan and an article about his death.
Amber dropped the paper back on the floor and retraced her steps. She could hear Margaret at the back of the house, slamming cabinets hard enough to rattle the dishes. Amber entered the kitchen and immediately thought of the remodel Ethan had mentioned in his letter. A new sitting area had been added on to one side, but it still lacked paint and flooring. A skylight sat on the floor in the corner, waiting to be installed. One of the counters was missing its top.
The chaos was a surprise, but Amber had little time to dwell on it. Margaret was searching in the pantry, and soon the sound of her sobs filled the room. Amber rushed over and flipped on the light in the large closet.
Margaret stood with her elbows propped on one of the shelves, her hands covering her face.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I can’t . . . find the coffee!”
Amber didn’t know whether to laugh or be alarmed. She’d expected a confession of some sort, maybe a tearful declaration of how much she missed her husband. Instead Margaret was falling apart over her need for caffeine.
“It’s there.” Amber reached past her and picked up the package of gourmet blend.
Margaret wiped her nose on her sleeve, plucked the package from Amber’s hand, and shuffled over to the coffeepot. However, she couldn’t manage that either. First she forgot the filter, pouring the grounds directly into the coffeepot’s canister. When she realized her mistake, she tried to dump the grounds into the trash, but instead spilled them on the floor.
“I’ll do that. You sit down.”
She didn’t even argue, and that said more to her condition than anything else. Instead she sat at the table in the room with no flooring, with only the concrete slab showing. She sat and picked at her red fingernail polish. Amber cleaned the coffeemaker, added a filter, new grounds, and water, then turned on the machine. While she waited for the coffee to brew, she found a broom and dustpan and swept up Margaret’s mess.
“Have you eaten anything?”
“Eaten?” Margaret stared at her as if she were someone she’d never met.
“When was your last meal?”
Margaret looked around the room, staring at the walls in search of answers. Finally she shrugged and lay her head down on the table.
So Amber went back into the pantry. A quick search produced granola bars, raisin bread, and single-serving cans of peaches. It wasn’t the healthiest of meals, but it would do. She placed all of the items on a plate and carried it to the table. Then she went back to the cabinet and retrieved two coffee mugs.
She poured the steaming coffee into each and carried both mugs over to the table. “Do you take sugar or cream?”
“Both.” Margaret seemed to have revived at the sight of food. She carefully unwrapped a granola bar but seemed confused as to what to do with it.
Amber opened the cabinet over the coffeepot, then the one to the left, and finally the one to the right. When she did, she almost let out a scream.
Her heart pounded so loud she felt as if someone had stuck cotton into her ears so that she could hear nothing else. Everything froze in that moment, everything except the boom, boom, boom of her pulse.
The cabinet was full of spices and such, including coffee creamer and a canister of sugar. But that wasn’t what she picked up with her trembling hand. Instead, she pulled out two small glass jars filled with a white substance. One was a shaker jar, like you’d use for seasonings. The other had a spout on top. She set both on the counter in front of her. The first said “Ethan’s salt” and the second “Ethan’s sugar sub.”
Was she looking at the murder weapons?
Were they filled with poison?
Wiping her sweating palms on her skirt, she picked them up again, carried both over to the table, and set them in front of Margaret.
“I don’t want those.”
Amber noticed she had eaten half of the granola bar.
“What are they? Why do you have them? What’s in these jars?”
Margaret seemed about to answer. She didn’t. Instead she reached for her coffee, took one sip, grimaced, and looked around in confusion. Amber jumped up and retrieved the creamer, sugar, and a spoon.
After she’d doctored her coffee, Margaret picked up the shaker with the label “Ethan’s salt.” She ran her finger over the label as tears rolled down her cheeks.
She was going to confess!
Should Amber call Tate?
Did her phone have a recording app?
Should she call 9-1-1?
“I killed him.” Margaret set the shaker down, brushed at her tears, and cradled her coffee mug in both hands.
Amber licked her lips, now afraid to touch her own coffee. No one knew she was there! Margaret might have poisoned all the food in the house. Perhaps that was why she was acting so strangely. Had she taken her own diabolical mixture?
“You killed him?”
“If I had paid attention, maybe I would have noticed how ill he was. I was a terrible wife.”
“Why? Why were you a terrible wife?”
“Because I never listened! I never had time for him, never made time, and now he’s gone.” She abruptly changed directions. “How could he leave me alone? How could he be so selfish?”
“Margaret, tell me about these jars. Are they from Patricia?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Margaret closed her eyes, and the next question slipped from Amber before she could consider whether she should ask.
“Were you poisoning him? Did you and Patricia kill Ethan?”
The question was like cold water splashed into Margaret’s face. She drew herself into perfect posture and ran her right hand through her tangled hair. “What did you ask me?”
“What is in these bottles, Margaret? Why did I see the same thing at Patricia’s house? What is it?”
Margaret seemed about to argue, or maybe order her to leave, but then she deflated—literally slumped into her chair. “It’s his stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“The salt—it was supposed to be a special kind of seasoning. Like a salt substitute.”
“Had he been told to reduce his salt?”
“Yes. That and caffeine. He had borderline hypertension, and then more recently a weakening of his heart muscle. The doctor said with medication and by adjusting his diet, he should be fine.”
“So he gave up caffeine?”
“And salt. Patricia was always good at chemistry, and she told him her mixture would be better than anything he could buy at the store. She also gave him some kind of sugar blend that was supposed to help keep his weight down, not that he had a weight problem.”
“So you both have been using it?”
“No.” Margaret picked up the half-eaten granola bar, looked at it as if she’d never seen it before, and then returned it to the plate. “No. Ethan did, but I didn’t want anything from that woman. I refused to touch it.”
“There were problems between you and Patricia.”
“We fought.”
“Recently?”
“Years ago.” She stared into her coffee and tried another sip. Slowly her attention came back to the room, to the present, and to the questions Am
ber was asking. “From the first I suppose, maybe even before Ethan and I were married. But it grew worse, more bitter, in the last ten years.”
“What did you argue about?”
“Everything.”
“There must have been something in particular.”
“She used him. She pretended to be sick but she wasn’t.”
Amber thought back to the night of Ethan’s viewing. Patricia had been sobbing and crying out for her brother. She’d been inconsolable. Had that been an act? Amber didn’t think so. But neither did the woman she’d seen that night jibe with the woman who lived in the duplex on the lake.
“Ethan couldn’t see it, but I knew. I tried to tell him.” She rubbed the fingers of one hand with the other, and suddenly Amber saw her for what she was.
A woman who had grown old.
A person who had dwelled on the things that were wrong in her life.
Someone filled with bitterness and regret.
But was she a killer?
“Ethan wouldn’t listen. He thought I was jealous—of her. He thought I was incapable of feeling sympathy, but that’s not true.” She raised her eyes to Amber, misery etching deep lines on her face. “I hated her, but I shouldn’t have drawn away from him. Now I’m . . . now I’m alone.”
Amber waited a moment, unsure how to respond.
Margaret pushed the jars toward her. “You take them. I have no use for them.”
“What was the sugar for?”
“She would blend white sugar with brown sugar. He used it in everything—his coffee, his cereal, even in his oatmeal.”
“Did he take it to work with him?”
“He didn’t have to. She always made sure he had extra bags of the stuff.”
Instead of picking up the jars, Amber walked across the kitchen, pulled off two paper towels, and found a drawer with brown paper sacks. Avery had been upset with the way she’d handled the framed picture, but she couldn’t leave the jars there. Whatever was in them needed to be analyzed.
She picked up the jars using the paper towels. Their fingerprints were already on them, but maybe Avery could still find a trace of Patricia’s. Maybe he could build a case from it.
Murder Simply Brewed Page 25
