Berry Murderous

by Katherine Hayton

  At least, they had been neatly raked. Mavis swapped the joy of a moth hunt for that of tramping into a soft bed of future mulch.

  “Oh, no. Come on, kitty. Time to be getting home, I think.”

  Willow stepped forward, trying to push some of the leaves back into a semblance of order. Mavis was delighted she’d joined in the same game, and promptly undid her feeble efforts.

  “That’s not being a good kitty,” Willow said, her scolding lost amid the usual helping of admiration, so the words sounded closer to praise. “Come on, Mavis.”

  As the kitten danced out of reach again, Willow gave one last desperate try. “Fish!”

  Mavis ran over and let herself be picked up. As Willow cradled the animal up against her chin, she noticed a very strange branch sticking out of the river. Before, it had been hidden from view behind the large leaf pile. Now, she walked closer, wishing she still had the keen eyesight she’d taken for granted thirty years ago.

  “That’s an odd color, isn’t it?” Willow asked Mavis in a high voice, her mind trying to put the branch into a pattern she desperately didn’t want to be true.

  Two steps farther forward and it couldn’t be denied any longer. Willow slapped a hand over Mavis’s eyes so the sight wouldn’t haunt the kitten’s memory.

  Up ahead, poking out of the river right where the bank dipped down low, was a human arm. As Willow turned and ran up to her neighbor Phillip’s door, screaming all the way, she thought it looked very cold and blue indeed.

  Chapter Four

  Before Phillip would let Willow inside or phone the police, he insisted on going down to the river’s edge to investigate the matter for himself. Willow chose to stand and wait at his front door. A decision she was pleased she’d made as the man returned, his face so white it seemed a shade of gray.

  “Come inside, it’s cold out,” Phillip said in a strangled voice, holding the entrance open for her. Willow gave him a courteous nod and ducked through, wishing she was safely back home, this experience a distant memory. Even with the wait, her heart was still beating in a faster rhythm than it should. Me finding a dead body is just like exercise, she thought, then her knees gave way.

  “Take a seat,” Phillip cried, pushing one underneath just in time to stop a tumble to the floor.

  “I’m sorry.” Willow put a hand up to her face to cover the tears that had started flowing. “It was such a shock.”

  “I can imagine,” Phillip said, his lips pulling down at the corners. “Well, I don’t need to imagine. The next time I insist on seeing something for myself, I’m going to remind myself of this to give me a kick in the pants!”

  That made Willow chuckle a little before she remembered there was a person not far from here who deserved more dignity than that.

  “I need the sheriff,” Phillip instructed sternly into the phone. “No, I don’t care he’s at breakfast at the moment. This is a matter of great urgency.”

  Willow closed her eyes for a moment, holding Mavis up close to her face and listening to the pitter-patter of the kitten’s heart. “You had a shock, too, didn’t you?” she whispered into the soft fur of Mavis’s side. The cat responded with a meow before sleepily closing her lids.

  “He’s coming down immediately,” Phillip announced, hanging up the phone. “He said we’re not to go anywhere until he’s secured the scene and had a chat with us.”

  Willow nodded, thinking she should definitely have run home to report the incident. The wait would be more pleasant in her kitchen than sitting on a neighbor’s stool.

  “I’ll make us a cup of coffee. That’ll warm us up.” Phillip clapped his hands together and set about changing the filter in his machine. “You like it strong?”

  “No, thanks. I like my coffee weak. Otherwise, it makes me too jumpy,” Willow admitted. “I’m used to my cups of herbal tea now, so it has a greater effect.”

  “Mm.” Phillip set the pot going, then turned to her with a frown. “I don’t hear the usual ruckus from over at your place. Have the builders finished up, then?”

  “I haven’t got a clue what’s happening. They’ve certainly not finished the job, but the boss was a no-show this morning.”

  “Yeah. Did anybody tell you to have a word with Shelby Causer before you hired him?”

  Willow wrinkled her nose, trying to place the name, then she got it. “I only heard of her today. Did Mr. Waterman muck up a building job for her?”

  “He did worse than that,” Phillip said, pulling a few cups out of the overhead cupboard. “The man was meant to build an extension onto her property, and not only did he not complete that to an acceptable standard, but he also left her existing house in such a state she’s living out of two rooms!”

  “The poor woman!” Willow squeezed Mavis with too much enthusiasm, and she woke with a startled meow. “Sorry, kitty. Go back to sleep.”

  “I didn’t know you had a cat.”

  “She was a gift,” Willow said. “And she’s only a few months old, now.”

  “Big breed, then,” Phillip said, reaching over to take one of Mavis’s paws gently in his hand. “If you judge by the size of these, she’ll grow into a very long cat.”

  Willow eased her pet away from his hands and turned the subject back around. “What is Shelby doing about her house? Has she taken Mr. Waterman to court?”

  “Not yet. I doubt she could afford to. All her money was invested into the extension, and there’s nothing left. Even if she’s on the right side of the law, it’s hard without the cash to fund a suit.”

  “What about pro-bono?”

  Phillip shrugged. “I really don’t know enough about it to speak on her behalf. I only got the raw facts at a community meeting a few weeks back.”

  “A few weeks?” Willow’s mouth fell open. “Is that all it’s been? He only started working for me around that time!”

  “Keep a close eye on him, then, that’s my advice. Did you have a lawyer look over his contract?”

  Willow shook her head. “Harmony checked everything for me.”

  “Is she the librarian?”

  “Pretty much,” Willow said, not wanting to launch into a discussion of her friend’s employment.

  “She’ll have steered you okay, I guess. She seems like a smart lady.”

  Willow jumped as Sheriff Wender let himself in the front door. “Where’s the body, then?” He tipped his hat to Willow. “Nice to see you’re keeping yourself out of trouble, Miss Foxglove.”

  “It’s nothing to do with me,” Willow said emphatically. “I only found the body because Mavis insisted on playing in the leaf pile nearby.”

  The two men walked outside, leaving Willow alone in the house. She walked to the door and stared after them, not wanting to revisit the scene but also not wishing to be left alone. Phillip stopped a short way from the river’s edge, pointing out the position of their find to the sheriff and leaving him to make the rest of the journey solo.

  After a few minutes, they both came back inside, Sheriff Wender looking very worried. “I’ll admit, I hoped you were mistaken,” he said to Phillip before giving a long sigh. “I’ll need to call up the pathologist to come out here, then I’ll go back to rope off the scene.”

  “How long do I have to stay here?” Willow didn’t want to interfere with the investigation, but she would also prefer if she didn’t hang around the place any longer than necessary.

  The sheriff gazed at her for a long moment, his lips pursed. “You can go along home if you want. I know where you live.” He gave her a brief smile. “Just don’t leave town, okay?”

  Willow laughed. “I’m lucky to leave the house these days. Give me a ring before you set off, and I’ll brew up a nice cuppa for when you get to my place.”

  Sheriff Wender nodded, looking pleased with the suggestion as Willow slipped out the door.

  Expecting to have a few hours to fill in, Willow placed a call through to Harmony. Since the two friends usually just stopped by each other’s houses when th
ey wanted a chat, the conversation was stilted, and Harmony soon suggested that she pop over, instead.

  While she was waiting, Willow had a snack on a couple of plain crackers. She needed something to calm her growling stomach but also didn’t want to taste anything while still recovering from the morning’s discovery. The wafers were perfect. Without a spread or topping, they resembled cardboard.

  “What on Earth have the builders been up to that’s got you so worried?” Harmony asked the minute she set foot through the door. “They aren’t leaving your conservatory in this state, are they?” She gaped in horror at the half-finished mess.

  “I don’t know what they’re doing at the moment,” Willow admitted. “The boss didn’t turn up for work this morning, and his two employees didn’t have much idea of what they were meant to do.”

  She looked over her shoulder, as though somebody else might have snuck into the house when she wasn’t looking, and dropped her voice. “The boss fired two other employees as I was getting home yesterday. Luckily, I heard him shouting from the gate so I could avoid the whole scene.”

  “That sounds dreadful,” Harmony said, taking the cup offered to her and retreating into the safety of the lounge. “If he has left you in the lurch, you’ve got recourse. I made sure the balance of your payment is kept in escrow until the job is finished.”

  Willow nodded, trying to look relieved but ending up with a puzzled expression on her face. Before she could humbly admit she didn’t know what her friend was talking about, Harmony gave a small giggle.

  “Don’t look so worried. It just means that a third party has the money until you confirm that the job is done to your satisfaction. If the builder really has run out on you, either he negotiates someone else to complete the building work, or you get your money back.”

  “Right now, I wish I could take back the last month and wipe the whole thing from my memory.” Willow took a sip of her valerian tea, feeling the mild sedative effect drift through her bloodstream.

  “Has it been that bad?”

  “Probably not,” Willow admitted. “But I’m so used to my comforts that I’ve been out of sorts since the builders moved in.” She sighed. “I keep telling myself that it will all be behind me one day, and I’ll have a thriving tea shop bustling with customers, but every time I try to visualize that, another worry gets in the way.”

  “You know,” Harmony tilted her head to one side. “I think you’re very brave doing something like this at your age.”

  “We’re the same age,” Willow protested, not understanding.

  “I know.” Harmony put a hand on Willow’s knee. “That’s why I understand how much courage it took you to embark on this adventure. People half our age start up new businesses and fail in the first year, and they’ve got about twenty times the energy I seem to have lately.”

  “You’re not saying you think I’ll fail?”

  Harmony laughed and shook her head. “No, I don’t. If I thought that you wouldn’t go through with this, or work hard to make a success, then I would’ve talked you out of it by now. I really do admire you, but you know that I also have your back. I’m not going to let you do something silly and then point the finger and say I told you so.”

  “I feel rather like saying that to myself, these days,” Willow admitted. “Every morning I wake up thinking that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.”

  “Well, you can count on Reg and me. If you ever need help chewing, give either of us a call.”

  Willow was about to ask if Reg had visited Harmony at the library the day before as promised when a tap came on the door. “That’ll be the sheriff.”

  “What?” Harmony jerked back. “Why would Sheriff Wender be knocking on your door?”

  Willow tried to think back over their conversation, feeling sure that she’d told Harmony about her morning.

  Nope.

  It appeared she’d skipped straight over that horror. “I found a body this morning,” she said quickly, scooting over to the entrance hall. “In the river, down by Phillip’s place.”

  Over Harmony’s loud exclamation, Willow opened up the front door. One look at the sheriff’s face, and she knew something was terribly wrong.

  Chapter Five

  “I’m afraid they’ve identified the body that you and Phillip found this morning,” Sheriff Wender said. “It’s your head builder, Jeff Waterman. I need to ask you to account for your whereabouts at the time it’s estimated he was killed.”

  “But you can’t think Willow had anything to do with it!” cried Harmony, shoving her chair back from the table and walking over to stand by the sheriff. “That makes absolutely no sense. She wanted the builders to finish up the job as quickly as possible, not be stuck in limbo for weeks or months while an estate figures out what to do with the company.”

  Sheriff Wender sighed and looked across the table to Willow. He raised his eyebrows and gave her the ghost of a smile. “And do you think you could repeat that in your own words?”

  Harmony gave a huff of annoyance and moved through to the lounge to slump down on the sofa. Willow cast a quick glance to see her friend was okay, then looked back to the sheriff.

  “I definitely didn’t kill Mr. Waterman.” Willow ran a hand through her hair, a losing fight to keep the fringe out of her eyes. “The man was utterly obnoxious, and I couldn’t believe the way he treated his employees, but I personally had no quarrel with him. I determined that I’d stay out of his way until the job was done, then I had no further need of him.”

  “Well, somebody was annoyed enough with his obnoxiousness to hit him over the head with a blunt object, then toss his body in the river.”

  Willow felt a smile play around the edges of her own lips and fought to keep a straight face. “I said I found him obnoxious, Sheriff. I’d have to find a person a lot more despicable than that to go to all that effort. I could get Mr. Waterman out of my hair by sitting tight and waiting for him to finish the job. I didn’t need to kill him.”

  The sheriff sighed and flipped his notepad shut, then opened it again, turning to Harmony. “What about you? Why you were so quick to come over here this morning? Are you covering your tracks?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Harmony said, snorting. “I came over here to reassure Willow that her contract with Mr. Waterman was watertight if he didn’t complete the job. At that point, I didn’t even know she’d found a body.”

  Harmony glared a clear message at Willow—even though I should have!

  Sheriff Wender turned back to Willow. “You said that the victim mistreated his employees. What in particular did you mean by that?”

  Willow sighed, flicking her fringe away from her forehead again with a twinge of annoyance. “He fired two of them yesterday. Apparently, he also underpaid them badly enough that several of them needed to take other jobs to make ends meet. I don’t have a lot of specifics, I’m afraid.”

  “What? Mr. Waterman fired them, right in front of you?” The sheriff looked aghast.

  Willow pursed her lips and shook her head. “Not exactly. I was out on a walk at the time, but he was shouting loudly enough when I returned that I knew what was going on. I decided to keep walking for a while, until I saw that he’d left the house.”

  “Do you know who he fired?”

  At that question, Willow shifted on her chair. She didn’t like to tattle on people. It made her feel like she was back in the playground, reporting on cheats to the teacher.

  But this wasn’t the schoolyard. This was a murder investigation. Her own qualms didn’t matter when stacked up against the theft of a man’s life.

  “It was a young man called Lee Harrington and an older man called Charley. I don’t know his last name, but he’s got a British accent, so he shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

  “Charley Lacy,” the sheriff replied, nodding. “Yeah, I know him. Got himself into trouble a few times down at The Old Chestnut.”

  “That sounds like the same.” Willow hesitated for
a lot longer, then sighed. Sheriff Wender would find out soon enough when he started interviewing Jeff’s employees. “Reg was over here yesterday, too. He got into an argument with Mr. Waterman.”

  The sheriff raised his eyebrows. “Serious?”

  Willow shrugged. “I wouldn’t call it that, but it was certainly loud and heated.”

  When he continued to stare at her with a searching expression, Willow sighed again. “It was about the UFO sightings and governmental cover-ups. You know Reg’s pain points as well as I do. Jeff seemed determined to press on every hot button that Reg possesses.”

  “And he did this yesterday?” Harmony asked, a moue of disgust crossing her lips.

  “Why?” The sheriff glanced quickly from one to the other. “What was special about yesterday?”

  “It’s the anniversary of Reg’s wife’s death,” Willow said sadly. “He always has a tough time on that day.”

  Sheriff Wender stared at his notes for a second, then snapped the pad shut again, this time with an air of finality. “Well, as you said, the victim was obnoxious. I’m sure there’ll be a trail of enemies lining up with that attitude.”

  “Good luck with that,” Harmony said, apparently forgiving the sheriff for his earlier transgressions. “I hope you catch him.”

  “Or her,” Sheriff Wender said, letting himself out of the house.

  Now she knew the true reason behind it, the quiet in her home unsettled Willow. After Harmony left, she popped the TV on as loud as she could bear and started to clean up the space in the conservatory.

  It took a good hour before she could accurately assess the amount of work left to be done. Not much, when she looked at it from a laypersons point of view. Perhaps more detailed requirements were hidden from sight.

  The central detail had been a second kitchen and the plumbing and electricity to back that up. Although Willow could have used her existing kitchen, after the strain of having a set of builders co-using the space, she was glad she’d opted for the addition.