by Darci Hannah
“For the simple reason, my dear, that it’s none of your business. And mostly because your life is so full already with adventures of your own. Why bother you with my affairs? I’m very little bothered with them myself.”
“I appreciate that, Gran, but since you and Jeb Carlson were more than just friends, unfortunately now it is my business. You knew that if I went to the processing sheds I’d find the cherry pits.”
She set down her glass and gave a slow nod. “When you mentioned they were at the crime scene, I knew that if you went to the main processing shed and looked in Jeb’s office, you’d find them. I had no idea you’d find my blender as well. I’d forgotten my name was on the darn thing. But you’ve only brought part of it, dear.”
My stomach was churning, and whatever appetite I might have had was now lost. It was unbelievable, the thought that this sweet old lady could have poisoned her geriatric lover. “Gran,” I breathed, “my God, why did you do it?”
She gave a little sigh. “Because he wanted to start drinking more smoothies,” she admitted. “I’ve been experimenting with a tart cherry one. I made Jeb sample it one evening, after a bout of vigorous hanky-panky. Not only did he love the taste of it, why, it perked him right up. In fact, he called it his fountain of youth. Made him feel as frisky as a twenty-year-old again.” She giggled. “Tart cherries do wonders for arthritis, you know, and with a little ginkgo biloba in the mix it keeps the memory sharp. Then too there’s all the antioxidants from the berries I add and that burst of carbohydrates from the vanilla ice cream.”
I shook my head like a dog in a bath, attempting to unhear the part about the vigorous lovemaking. That little detail I wouldn’t have minded her omitting. And, truthfully, I was a little shocked that she was using ice cream in a smoothie—it was more like a cherry milkshake. Undeniably delicious, however, and with added health benefits. I shook my head again and focused. Although she was having an affair with her former employee and pumping him with a youthful elixir clearly designed for the more physical aspect of their relationship (I shivered at the thought), on the bright side, there was no clear admission of guilt that I could tell. “Okay,” I said, “so you lent him your blender so he could make smoothies—”
“Not only my blender,” she cut in. “I measured out all the ingredients and put them in freezer bags. All he needed to add was the ice cream.”
“That’s really thoughtful of you,” I said, and meant it. “Okay, but I’m confused. Where do the cherry pits fit in? Did you add them to the smoothie as well?”
“Of course not!” she chided. “No person in their right mind should be eating cherry pits. You might not be aware of this, but cherry pits are poisonous.”
I stared at her a second too long. “I know they’re poisonous!” I said, as if I had known it forever and not just a few hours. “That’s why I went to the crime scene. That’s why I went to the processing shed. Remember when I told you and Mom that Jeb’s death was made to look like it was caused by Dad’s croquet mallet, but really he’d been poisoned first?”
“Yes, but I thought that was for Jani’s sake. We all know what a hothead your father can be when he gets a club in his hand, golf, croquet, or otherwise.”
“I wasn’t lying for the sake of Mom, Gran! Jeb was poisoned. And when I found the cherry pits at the crime scene I grew suspicious. You just admitted that the cherry pits were yours. I found a box of them in Jeb’s office.”
“Just one box?” She tilted her head. “There should be more than one box.”
“I don’t know. There probably was. I didn’t look. I was a little astonished by the fact that Jeb actually had a box of clean, dried cherry pits in his office. I’m nearly certain those pits are what killed him.”
Her hand flew over her mouth and she uttered, “Oh my God,” as if the correlation between Jeb being poisoned and the box of poisonous cherry pits had just been made. Maybe that ginkgo biloba wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
“Gran, let me be blunt,” I said, and forced her to look at me. “I’m not going to judge you. I know that men can take your heart, rip it out of your body, and dance on it without a thought to your feelings. But I need to know, did you or did you not grind up a bunch of cherry pits, soak them in rum, and put the poison-infused rum back into the bottle in Jeb’s desk, knowing he’d drink it?”
I interpreted the look she gave me to be more along the lines of incredulity rather than an admission of guilt.
“Of course not!” she cried. “Why would I poison Jeb when I loved him? He was my soulmate … although we could never live under the same roof.”
“I thought Grandpa George was your soulmate?” I said accusingly, feeling very protective of Mom’s dad. He’d died when I was young, but he was a good, kind man.
“Well, of course he was, dear.” She patted my hand to console me. “Georgie was a wonderful man, but he’s been gone a long time. A woman gets lonely, and Jeb has been a good friend nearly all my life. It was when his wife died that we found each other, in the biblical sense. But we both valued our independence, and we preferred to keep it strictly professional on the surface. For many years I was his boss, you know. That kind of thing is quite scandalous. Besides, it made all the furtive lovemaking—”
I held up a hand. “Got it. No need to elaborate. Remember, I’m not here to judge you. And for what it’s worth, I think it’s great you and Jeb found one another. But Gran, if you didn’t use those cherry pits to poison Jeb, why were they in his office?”
The pencil-darkened brows disappeared under the white hair. “I’ll show you. Wait here just a minute.” Grandma Jenn disappeared into the house and returned a moment later carrying a long, rectangular strip of what looked to be sewn fleece. She deposited it in my hands. I’d assumed it was a scarf, but it was sewn on the edges and had some weight to it.
“What’s this?” I asked, examining the brightly colored material. I saw that the ends were rounded, with little pockets sewn in for the hands.
“That’s my contribution to the church bazaar. I’ve been keeping it a secret so that nosy Edna doesn’t steal my idea and take all the credit for it. This, dear, is a therapeutic neck wrap. I felt that cherry pits had to have some use, so I came up with these. I fill them with a mix of clean cherry pits and cherry blossom potpourri and then sew them up. Pop it in the microwave for two minutes and you’ve got a warming wrap that feels and smells divine. Jeb was helping me. He cleaned and dried all the cherry pits from last summer’s harvest.” She paused, then, her robin’s egg blue eyes filling with tears. “I had no idea anyone would think to use them to poison him. I never would have asked him such a thing had I known.”
I went to her chair and held her. “Oh Gran. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, and yet I’m so relieved to learn about these,” I said, wrapping the therapeutic neck warmer around my neck. It made her smile. “But I need you to think, now. Who else knew about the cherry pits? Who knew about Dad’s croquet mallet, and his temper? Most importantly, who would want Jeb dead?”
She looked at me, her eyes vibrant with stifled tears. “No one,” she uttered. “Jeb had no enemies. Everyone loved him.” And then it hit her, that wisp of a thought, seemingly irrelevant until it wasn’t. “Oh … my … goodness,” she uttered.
“Gran, what is it?”
“I didn’t think of it until now, but Jeb might have been acting a bit strangely. Two days ago, right when we were all knee-deep in preparations for the Cherry Blossom Festival, Jeb came into the kitchen and pulled me aside. That wasn’t a usual thing for him. He seldom disturbed me at work. But I could tell something was bothering him. He told me that he needed to talk with me in private. He said it was very, very important. He used the word ‘very’ twice!”
“Did he? And what did he need to talk to you about that was so very important?”
“Well, that’s just the thing. I don’t know.” Her chin began to quiver an
d then her eyes welled with tears. “I don’t know, and I was too busy to talk with him—too busy to give him the time of day, and now he’s gone. I’ll never know!”
“Gran. Think. This could be important.”
“I know, and I just brushed him off and told him that I didn’t want to see him until after the weekend. You see, I’d assumed, as always, that he was just lonely and wanted to come over for a meal and a little … overnight affection. It had been a while since we hooked up.”
I closed my eyes and forced the image from my head. “Okay. Interesting but not overly helpful. Gran, what if Jeb had stumbled onto something he wasn’t supposed to … something he saw or overheard while preparing the orchard, or wandering the woods?” Then another thought hit me. “Gran, did you know about the wine they were making in the lighthouse?”
A sheepish look crossed her face, and she nodded. “Jeb told me,” she admitted. “We didn’t keep secrets from one another, only from the world about our relationship. I knew Jeb and Baxter were making wine. It was bringing Jeb such joy.”
“Tate knew about the wine as well,” I told her.
A perfectly penciled brow arched. “Oh?” she said. “Well, I suppose that he would. Jeb and Tate were very close. In fact, Jeb relied on Tate for a good many things, including his recommendations when it came to hiring summer help at the orchard. You might not know this, but Tate coaches the high school basketball team. He’s great with the kids, and those boys were nearly undefeated this year … until their record was tainted by scandal. Tate was devastated, but you can get more information about that from your old friend Jack. Do you think whoever murdered Jeb knew about the wine?”
“It’s definitely a possibility,” I replied, thinking.
“Oh, Whitney,” Grandma Jenn suddenly gasped, resting her silver-white head on her hands. “How absolutely dreadful. Jeb must have heard something and was trying to tell me about it! I feel just terrible about brushing him off. The least I could have done was to listen to him.”
“It’s better you didn’t,” I said, placing a hand on her trembling shoulder. She’d been under a lot of stress lately and hadn’t even been given the time to properly mourn the loss of her soulmate. “Maybe if you’d listened to what Jeb had to say, whoever killed him would be after you too. Jeb wouldn’t have wanted that, and neither would I. There’s nothing you could have done to prevent what happened, Gran.”
“Maybe not,” she said, looking unconvinced. “But there’s something very, very evil going on here, and I don’t like it one bit.”
Twenty-One
Why had Jeb Carlson been murdered? Poisoned with cyanide, struck in the face with a gold-plated croquet mallet, and left in a cherry orchard with a sprinkling of cherry pits and an eerie twig-face. What was the purpose of all that?
Everyone had immediately thought Dad was to blame. For those who didn’t know him, it was an obvious leap of the imagination. After all, nobody could account for his whereabouts during the time of the murder. He’d been heard arguing with Jeb an hour before the body was found, and, to add insult to injury, his croquet mallet appeared to be the murder weapon. It hadn’t helped any that he also had a history of sudden, violent outbursts when losing at sports involving croquet mallets, golf clubs, or tennis rackets. Using a croquet mallet as a murder weapon was a violent act, a man’s swift act of vengeance. Given all these clues, it could be that the murderer was framing Dad, as Jack pointed out, and perhaps only using Jeb as a means to an end.
Then, however, there was the discovery that Jeb had actually died of cyanide poisoning and not a club to the head. Poison was a subtler way to murder a person—a woman’s way, according to Tay. The fact that the murderer used cherry pits to create enough cyanide spoke of knowledge—not just about cherries, but about cyanide poisoning as well. Was it an accident that Grandma Jenn’s blender had been used? Or had the murderer intentionally wished to pin the blame on her, making her appear the diabolical plotter?
I had to admit, finding all those clues in the processing shed had sent me into a panic sweat. Thank goodness Gran had nothing to do with it, and I truly believed that. There was an unmistakable sadness haunting the fine lines of her eyes. As we talked, she was trying to be her usual joyful self, but the deep, personal loss was hard to mask. And as much as I hated to acknowledge it (purely for my own silly reasons), I believed she really had lost her soulmate. Which raised another question: Did the murderer know that Jeb and Grandma Jenn were having an affair? Could it have been female jealousy? An old woman scorned, perhaps? Did it have something to do with the cherry pie bake-off that Jeb organized and judged every year? Or was Jeb’s murder due to another matter entirely?
Grandma Jenn said that two days before his murder, Jeb was acting strangely. He’d been nervous, agitated by something, and wanted to speak with her in private. That wasn’t like Jeb at all. So, what had he seen or heard that had made him so nervous?
Instantly a face jumped to mind, but not any human face. The face I was thinking of was made of twigs—an eerie pagan relic staring from the crime scene like a ghoul. Had Jack seen it too? I would have remembered if it had been visible in the photos, because that’s not the kind of thing a person forgets. However, just because the twig-face wasn’t in the pictures didn’t mean it hadn’t been there the night of the murder. Jack could have kept it to himself, which would be just like him. Then again, if it had been there, why hadn’t anyone else mentioned it? Tate had gone to the crime scene. Dad too, and yet no one mentioned seeing the face. Had Jeb seen it before he was murdered? Or what if that face hadn’t been there at all until today? Clearly this was a matter that begged to be explored.
I thought about Jeb and that odd twig-face as I walked along the lakeshore. After what had turned out to be, once the business of murder was cast aside, a nice lunch with Grandma Jenn, I decided to leave my car at her house and head into town. I needed to do a little thinking without the distraction of the Cherry Blossom Festival … or of Tate, Jack, and that really hot bartender guy who was popping into my thoughts far too often for my comfort. Dang it! What the heck was wrong with me? This sleuthing business was really beginning to take its toll on my nerves. And I’d only been at it one morning! I wondered if Jack was having better luck making sense of it all. Then I reminded myself not to think about Jack. Instead I took out my iPhone and sent a text to Hannah and Tay asking them to meet me.
I continued along, passing the gingerbread charm of Candy Cove, the local candy store. A little way down from this was A Yarn Good Time, a home-spun little shop containing everything imaginable for the fiber arts. I passed three charming B&Bs, two beaches, a sporting goods store, the post office, the library and town hall (both in one building), the Cove Café, notorious for serving a cinnamon roll the size of a dinner plate, and Swenson’s ice cream parlor, an old familiar haunt and the site of my first date with Tate.
A wave of nostalgia swept through me at the sight of the white wood-frame building with its cheerful red-and-white-striped awning. Swenson’s served the best ice cream, burgers, and fries on the peninsula. I made the mistake of glancing at the patio. The red umbrellas had already gone up, reminding me that summer was just around the corner. At the back sat our old table, the one Tate had always requested because it was quiet, out-of-the-way, and had a spectacular view of the cove. Did I really miss him, I wondered? Or was it just my longing for a meaningful relationship? Either way, it was best not to dwell on it. I didn’t have time to dwell on it. I was in the middle of a murder investigation.
Prying my eyes from Swenson’s, I focused instead on the old turf-roofed Scandinavian gift shop next door. I noticed that it had been altered a bit. Then, as I rounded the gentle curve of the street, I gasped. Not only had it been altered, but it was now the police station! Oh, for cripes sakes! Had the whole village gone mad? Who puts a police station in an old-world Scandinavian log cabin? Apparently Cherry Cove does, and the thought wasn’t ne
arly as shocking as spying Jack’s SUV in the parking lot. Immediately my hand came up, shielding my face as I ran along the sidewalk. I was on a mission and had no time for a run-in with Detective McNosy. And then I heard the screaming.
My legs stopped working. I turned in the direction of the hideous noise and saw, to my horror, two little billy goats. They were perched on the thick grass roof of the police station, and they were staring right at me. Then they began screaming again, not bleating like normal goats. Apparently Jack had inherited not only the old Scandinavian gift shop but its crazy, hell-spawned animals as well. Wanting to giggle and enjoy the spectacle, I began running again instead, because the police station door had started to open. I ducked into Uncle Joe’s grocery store, bought the few supplies I needed, and continued on my way. A few minutes later I bounded up the front steps of Cherry Cove’s most iconic retail destination, Cheery Pickers.
∞
I was always a little taken aback when first entering Tay’s store. It was a candy store for the senses, smelling of scented candles and filled with the most eclectic collection of boutique clothing, home décor, eye-catching art, unusual antiques, handmade pottery, and costume jewelry. I’d taken only a few steps when I spied Tay’s mom behind the counter. At the sight of her I smiled and waved, remembering, as the name formed on my tongue, not to call her Mrs. Robinson any longer. Two years ago we’d been specifically instructed to use her first name, Char. This was because the name Mrs. Robinson, as Tay had drunkenly informed us one evening, was nearly synonymous with an older woman seducing a younger man, thanks to an old movie called The Graduate. None of us had seen it, but we giggled all the same, because Mrs. Robinson—err, Char—had started dating a man four years older than her daughter. Char and Todd were now engaged, which seemed to amuse Tay more than it annoyed her, probably because whenever they were together she lovingly referred to him as Daddy.
