Peaches and Scream (Georgia Peach Mystery, A)

by Susan Furlong

  Charlotte sat up a little straighter. “A present?”

  Ida chuckled. “Yes, darlin’. And, if you ask me, you girls are lucky to have an auntie who’s willing to work so hard to make sure you get that present one day.” She cast a brief but warm smile my way and, just like that, I knew Ida was on board with my ideas. Still, I could tell something was eating away at her. Something she didn’t want to bring up in front of the girls.

  “Let’s see what we’ve got here,” I said, reaching across the table for a picture Charlotte had drawn. It was one of those classic kid pictures where the horizon cut straight down the middle of the paper, dividing the green grass and the blue sky. In the center was a very good copy of the farm’s large red barn with a grinning sun, complete with sunglasses, hanging over its roof. “Well, isn’t this the sweetest!” I said, fussing over her drawing.

  “That ain’t all that good,” Savannah piped up, eyeing the picture from across the table.

  “Isn’t,” Ida corrected.

  “Isn’t,” Savannah echoed, sliding her own paper my way. “Look at mine.”

  I picked hers up—a simple drawing of a large, somewhat lopsided peach with a huge green leaf attached at the top—and gave it an equal amount of fussing. “Well, look at this. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a beautiful peach. Why, it looks good enough to eat.” I pressed my lips to the paper and made gobbling sounds, bringing on a raucous round of giggles from the girls.

  Charlotte’s little voice cut across the table. “Do you like mine better?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Savannah said, hushing her sister. “What does a barn have to do with peaches? Right, Auntie Nola?”

  I paused, staring down at both pictures, feeling the heat of Ida’s glare bearing down on me. My brilliant idea of the girls coming up with a cute little logo was looking less brilliant all the time. Suddenly, an idea struck me. “You know what, girls? I’m going to use both.” I scrounged up my own crayon and paper and went to work sketching out my idea. When I finished, I held up a giant peach with a smiley face. “See? It’s Savannah’s peach with the smiley face from Charlotte’s sun. It’s perfect! When people see it, they’ll feel so happy, they’ll want to buy up tons of peachy things.”

  Whoops and cheers boomed out in stereo, until Ida threw up her hands, clasping her ears and shouting, “Enough! Settle down, now, ya hear.”

  The room fell into instant silence, my nieces looking stunned at their mama’s outburst. It wasn’t like Ida to lose her patience. I eyed her closely, noticing just how drawn and sallow her face looked. She’d gone back to fanning herself again. “I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I’m just having a bad day, that’s all.”

  “Why don’t you two run along and play in your rooms. Let your mama and I talk a little,” I told the girls. But they stayed rooted, hesitant to leave their mother. “It’s okay. Your mama just needs a little rest. Go on, now. Go play. I’ll pick up this mess.”

  The idea of not having to clean up must have been enough of an enticement, because they jumped right out of their seats and scurried out of the kitchen. “What’s going on?” I asked Ida as soon as they were out of sight.

  Ida busied herself getting us some tea. “That pesky Frances Simms again. She called here this morning and was asking all sorts of questions.”

  “Questions? Like what?” I was trying to cram crayons back into the box, ending up with about ten extra that didn’t seem to fit. Why couldn’t someone invent a better crayon box, anyway?

  “All about that fire up at the mill. You know they found a bottle of Peach Jack in the weeds right by where the fire was started?”

  I nodded but kept quiet. Of course I’d known. I’d seen the sheriff find it, but I was hoping Ida wouldn’t hear of it so soon. Glancing over, I watched how slowly she moved about the kitchen, getting ice and pouring tea. All this stress couldn’t be good for her. Or her baby.

  “Then there’s that car thing,” she went on. “Ray told me all about it. You heard, right? Someone vandalized Millicent Wakefield’s car.”

  Grabbing the dishcloth, I went to work on scrubbing marker off the tablecloth. “Yeah, I heard.”

  “Well, they found a bottle of Peach Jack there, too.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. Lots of people drink Peach Jack.” Not as much as Hollis, but that was better off left unsaid.

  “Well, anyway. That call from Frances got me all worked up again. Just when I was feeling better about things, too.” She passed me a glass of tea and we both sat down again. “You don’t suppose she’s going to paint an ugly picture of all this in the paper, do you?”

  I cringed. It was Tuesday. Time for another issue of the Cays Mill Reporter. “What can she say? There’s no evidence linking Hollis to either one of those crimes.” A ray of sun floated through the kitchen window and landed on the tablecloth, highlighting a few streaks of finger paint I’d missed. I went back to the sink for the dishrag, while Ida cleared the rest of the art supplies and picked up our empty tea glasses.

  “Oh, you don’t know Frances. She’s got a way with words, you know. She may not say anything directly slanderous, but believe me, there will be some sort of innuendo. I swear, she has it out for Hollis.” She started rinsing the glasses. “I wish she’d just stay out of our business for a couple days; I think Hollis would do much better. He’s already come up with a plan to try to salvage some of the money he’s lost on this lumber deal.”

  My muscles stiffened. “A plan? What type of plan?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She hesitated, staring off to the side and chewing her lip as she tried to recall the details. “I think it had something to do with the same old lumber deal.” She shrugged and pointed to the side of her head. “Sorry. When Hollis starts talking business, it just goes in one ear and out the other. I just know he was feeling better, kind of back in control again, if you know what I mean, and that’s all I really gathered.”

  That was probably true. Ida was more in tune with the latest fashion magazines than she was her husband’s business. Not that she wasn’t smart enough to understand the banking business, but her priorities were aligned differently: family over finances, love over labor and, above all, femininity at all times. I reached over and gave her shoulders a quick squeeze. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure Hollis has everything figured out.” Only I was worried plenty. What was Hollis up to now? And why, with all this going on, was he jumping right back into things? From what I’d heard around town, folks weren’t too happy with him. Even if he was exonerated of all charges in Ben Wakefield’s murder, the board of directors might still call for his resignation. And probably rightfully so. His drinking alone would be reasonable cause, not to mention putting the bank’s life on the line with such a single and huge investment in a company whose bottom line was already suffering. Still, what a blow that would be to Ida and the girls.

  I gathered up my pictures and headed for the door. “Girls, I’m leaving!” My call was answered with a sudden flurry of footsteps and an onslaught of hugs and kisses that quickly dissipated as Ida flipped on their favorite afternoon cartoon. I paused by the door and watched as she settled on the sofa, a girl nestled on either side, snuggling in for a mid-afternoon rest. Good, a little R & R was exactly what Ida needed.

  • • •

  Hoping to get the labels done by Friday, I drove straight to town and found a spot a few doors down from the print shop. Getting there meant I’d have to pass by the newspaper building and risk running into Frances Simms. So, as a precaution, I hunched my shoulders and hid my face behind my paperwork, sneaking as quickly as I could past Frances’s office. I would have made it undetected, too, if it weren’t for the man who came out carrying a large stack of newspapers. Curiosity made me stop. I dropped my guard and asked, “Is that today’s edition?”

  “Sure is. Hot off the press.” He picked one off the top and handed it to me with
a flourish. “Here. Be my guest. You’d best get one now; these are going to be hot sellers.”

  I thanked him and quickly unfolded the paper. The headline practically jumped off the page, “Hollis Shackleford Released on Bail.” The article was accompanied by a picture of Hollis that must have been taken at a recent black-tie dinner because he was wearing a tuxedo and standing at the head of a table making a toast. On the table in front of him, as plain as day, was a bottle of Peach Jack. My eyes then landed on the headline of the article right below it: “Sheriff Seeks Peach Jack Drinker in Connection to New Crimes.” I squeezed my eyes shut, so mad I could have kicked the brick wall in front of me. When I opened my eyes, I scanned that article, which cinched the noose over Hollis’s neck as neatly as if mentioning him by name, describing how Peach Jack bottles were discovered at the scenes of Millicent’s car vandalism and the fire at the mill.

  All I could see was red, my pulse pounding. Even anyone who didn’t know Hollis’s drinking habits would now jump to the conclusion that he committed the other crimes. How dared Frances do this!

  Storming into the newspaper office, I waved the crumpled newspaper in my hand. Immediately, Frances’s head popped up from her desk. Her eyes—wide with surprise and magnified even wider by her heavy black-rimmed glasses—seemed grossly out of proportion with the rest of her birdlike features.

  At the sight of her, my blood boiled even further. Frances must have been able to hear it bubbling because she immediately went into defensive mode. “Every word of those articles is factual, mind you. I take pride in delivering unbiased, impartial—”

  “Impartial, my foot!” If I were brewing up a batch of Mama’s peach preserves, I’d call my current state a full rolling boil. I pounded my fist on top of the paper. Frances about jumped out of her seat. “You know darn well that a picture is worth thousands of words. Slanderous, biased, mean words.” I was so mad, I couldn’t think straight. I gritted my teeth and let out a low growling sound, my southern upbringing preventing me from letting loose with the string of cusswords floating through my head.

  I stood there growling, while she passively nodded, a little smirk tugging at the corners of her lips. “Well, as long as you’re here,” she started, reaching across her desk to realign a couple of pencils. “I have a few questions I’d like to ask.”

  My jaw dropped. The nerve of this woman!

  “Like for starters,” she continued. “Is it true that your brother-in-law ran an asset investigation on Wakefield Lumber? Because if he did, it’s my theory that the results of that report are what sparked his anger and—”

  “No comment!”

  Frances’s brow quirked above the rim of her glasses. “How about the rumors about the bank?”

  “The bank?”

  “That Hollis embezzled money.”

  “What! That’s ridiculous!” I rubbed my suddenly aching temples. Yet another fine example of malarkey straight from the town’s gossipmongers. I began reputing this latest rumor, but before I could get another word in, Frances went on firing questions like a Gatling gun, one right after another. Each question made me angrier than the one before, until finally, I’d had enough. “You know what your problem is, Frances? You’ve got a one-track mind.”

  Frances crossed her arms with a smug look. “Well, no one but Hollis had as much to lose by dealing with Wakefield.”

  I threw my arms in the air. “My point exactly! You never give a thought to who has the most to gain!”

  Her smugness dissipated with a quiver of her brow, as if she might have missed something obvious. “Oh really. And who might that be?”

  “Millicent Wakefield, that’s who!”

  Frances clamped her mouth shut.

  I kept going. “After all, with her husband dead, she gains control of Wakefield Lumber. And good timing, too. Considering he was getting ready to divorce her. What’s more, Laney Burns told me she saw Millicent in town the day Ben Wakefield was murdered!”

  Frances leaned in, eyes gleaming. “Is that so?” She reached into her desk drawer and extracted a notepad and pen. Clicking the pen, she leaned forward again, headlines dancing in her eyes. “What else can you tell me?”

  I bit my lip, regretting my outburst. That darned woman! She could get things out of me without even trying, it seemed. Knowing I had to tread carefully, or I’d end up in trouble for slander, or worse—arrested for interfering with Maudy Payne’s case—I checked myself and chose my next words carefully. “All I was saying is that there’s more than one way to look at this case and more than one suspect in it.” I tried to backtrack.

  Frances clicked her pen again and let it hover over the notepad. “Yes. Millicent Wakefield, to be exact. Are you saying she’s got control of the mill now?”

  I held up my hands. “I’m not saying it; that’s pretty much a public fact.”

  “And Laney Burns saw her the day of the murder?”

  I felt my knees weakening. “Did I say that?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Maudy Payne was going to throw me and my big mouth in jail—that was for sure. “That’s just hearsay. Don’t quote me on that.” Please don’t quote me on that.

  Frances clicked her pen again and slapped the notebook closed, a gloating smile playing on her lips. “Well, thank you for stopping in, Nola. I do appreciate these new leads. You can be sure I’ll put them to good use.”

  I’m sure you will.

  Back outside, I stood stewing on the sidewalk, suspended between outrage and regret. Regret for my impulsive tirade, which was undoubtedly going to lead to trouble, and outrage that Frances had once again printed something that was going to harm my family’s reputation. One look at today’s headlines and everyone in town was going to dub Hollis as some sort of Jack of All Crimes. Peach Jack, that was. I tried to glom on to the slimmest sliver of hope that my unintentional feeding of this news shark might take her off Hollis’s back. But from my experience with her so far, it was a false hope at best.

  “You’re looking fit to be tied.” It was Hawk, who seemed to appear out of nowhere. Perhaps he was better at snooping than I first thought.

  “Just got done talking to Frances Simms.”

  He squinted and cocked his head to one side.

  “She runs the Cays Mill Reporter,” I explained, shoving the crumpled paper his way. Shoot, the man’s here to investigate and isn’t even aware who the culprit is that has the town so set against Hollis. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. After all, Hawk wasn’t even from these parts. “Wait until you see this issue. The pictures she’s printed practically string the noose right around Hollis’s neck.”

  He glanced it over and gave a little shrug. Whether he expected it from any newspaper or expected Hollis deserved it, I couldn’t tell. “You’re right; that’s pretty bad.”

  I shot him a withering look. “Yes, it is, and what exactly have you been doing to help his case? Anything?” Besides gathering DNA samples from Laney Burns.

  His chin jutted out. “What? All of a sudden you have some sort of problem with the way I’m doing my job?”

  No, not all of a sudden; all along, but I didn’t say that. Instead I took a deep breath and held it for five counts before exhaling. “No, sorry. I’m just upset, that’s all.”

  “Well, to answer your question, I was just in talking to the sheriff. Seems Floyd Reeves is nowhere to be found. The sheriff thinks he’s headed back to Macon.”

  “Macon? That’s where he’s from?”

  “According to Sheriff Payne, yes.”

  “Do you think his meeting with Millicent in the alley had anything to do with Ben’s murder? Like maybe she paid Floyd to kill him?”

  His gaze turned flat. “Could be. Or it could be nearly anything else. In the meantime, Payne is working on Hollis pretty heavy for that fire. A lot doesn’t add up, though.”

  I could
feel my brows furrow. “Like what?”

  “What would Hollis have to gain by setting it? He’s already under suspicion about the murder of the mill’s owner, so arson at the mill only further points to him. He has nothing to gain.”

  Gain! Just like I’d pointed out to Frances, now much to my regret, there were other ways to look at things. “Millicent!”

  “Huh?”

  “Millicent has just taken over the mill and maybe found out it’s in financial trouble. Maybe that payoff to Floyd was for him to set fire to the mill so she could collect insurance money. A woman like Millicent probably has no desire to run a mill, and this would be a perfect way to get her money out of it quick.”

  Again, Hawk offered no facial expression in response. I figured he was thinking it over, trying to ignore the fact that I’d come up with, once again, the kind of ideas that he should have been coming up with himself. Finally he said, “If it was arson, why start the fire during the middle of the day? Before the work shift was even over. When it would be easily detected. And a woodpile? That’s not going to pay out anything.”

  I tilted my head and paused, mulling over his point. Okay, so maybe he was right. All those facts didn’t add up to arson, at least not a smart plan for arson. Then again, I didn’t have the impression that Floyd Reeves was overly smart. Another thought came to mind: maybe Millicent’s motive wasn’t to collect an insurance payout, but to frame Hollis for the murder she had Floyd commit for her in the first place. If that was the case, it would make sense to start the fire during the day, so it would be detected and put out before it spread too far and caused any real damage.

  I was about to tell Hawk my new theory when I noticed him focusing on something over my shoulder. “Looks like your boyfriend’s come looking for you again.”

  Glancing behind me, I saw Cade coming down the walk. I started to correct Hawk on the boyfriend reference, but he cut me off. “Catch ya later, Nola. I’ve got to hit the road. I’m heading up to Macon to try to track down Reeves. Ray thinks he’s the key to Hollis’s case. I should be back in a couple days.” He turned and sauntered off just as Cade caught up to me.