Max & Me Mysteries Set

by Patricia H. Rushford

  “Oh, I never leave the windows on the main floor unlocked.”

  “Maybe he used a ladder and came in through one of the upstairs windows.” His tone softened. “Mrs. Truesdale, did you see or hear anyone?”

  “No, but the girls told me …”

  “Maybe the girls thought they saw something. You know how kids are. Maybe they were sneaking around in the attic and dropped the jar, then made up the story.”

  “We were not in the attic,” Max insisted. “And we did not make this up.”

  “We didn’t,” I said. “We both heard him and we saw him get into his boat. He had something in his hands.”

  She nodded. “I believe you.” To the deputy she said, “I’d like you to leave now, Jack. I’ll call the sheriff if I have to, but I want that CSI person out here as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll talk to the sheriff myself, ma’am. He’ll have to okay the crime scene investigation.” Jack shook his head. “And frankly, I don’t think he’ll see much point either.”

  Amelia didn’t like his response. “You tell Howard he’d better have someone out here in the morning or he’ll not be getting my vote come election time. He won’t be getting a lot of votes if I have to tell people how uninterested his deputy was about a break-in.”

  I almost felt sorry for Deputy Keagan, but he deserved it. He shouldn’t have been brushing it off, or worse, trying to blame Max and me.

  “I’ll see what I can do, ma’am. But with summer here, we’re shorthanded. You know how it is.”

  “I know. All I’m asking is that you take this seriously.”

  Jack Keagan eyed Max and me. “Oh, we will.” He started to leave then, and my stomach got all queasy. At the door he looked back at us. “You have a dog, don’t you?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Doesn’t she usually bark when people come around?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded as if he’d just proved his point and left.

  “He thinks we did it and made up the story,” Max said. “Well, we didn’t. You believe us, don’t you, Mrs. T?”

  “Of course I do.” She said the words with conviction, but I thought I saw a flicker of doubt in her eyes. “Why don’t we all go back to bed? Let’s see if we can get a few more hours of sleep before sunup.”

  Max didn’t say much when we got back to bed, but I could tell she was worried. Maybe she’d noticed the same hesitation in Amelia’s eyes that I had. Not that I blamed Amelia for doubting us. Deputy Keagan had a point. Where was Molly and why hadn’t she barked? Come to think about it, she hadn’t barked when the deputy came either. Of course, Molly, might have known both men. She didn’t bark when Fred came. I made a mental note to talk to Amelia about that possibility in the morning.

  I was worried about the break-in, but something else too. If Amelia didn’t believe us, she’d probably change her mind about Max living with her. Max already had a reputation for being a troublemaker, and Fred Truesdale had called her a delinquent. Would Amelia change her mind?

  I’d like to have Max come back and live with us, but not because she had to. Max is a totally honest person, and it made me furious to see people accuse her of being a delinquent, a thief, or a liar. Unfortunately, I had no idea what to do about it.

  Waking up early wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I lay there for a while enjoying the quiet and letting the scent of something yummy drift into my nostrils. Max was already up and had made her bed. I heard a dog barking and wondered again why Molly hadn’t barked last night. That thought got me out of bed and into my clothes in under two minutes.

  Molly met me at the foot of the stairs and sniffed at my bare feet. I sat down on the second step from the bottom and petted her black-and-white head. When my hand touched the left side of her head, she yelped and pulled away. “Did that hurt?” I gently touched the tender spot again and felt a lump. “What happened?” I stroked the silky hairs along her throat.

  “Good morning, sleepyhead.” Amelia stood in the kitchen doorway, wiping her hands on a towel. “I see you’ve discovered Molly’s injury.”

  “That must be why she didn’t bark last night.”

  “It’s a good guess.”

  “Poor Molly.” I leaned back when she tried to lick my face.

  “She was lying on the front porch this morning, crying and wanting in. Her hair was matted and bloody. I cleaned her up. She seems all right now, but I’ll call the vet as soon as the office opens.”

  I bit my lower lip. “Who would want to hurt Molly?”

  “No one that I know of.” She tipped her head to assess the Australian shepherd. “She may have been hit by a car.”

  “Or maybe it was the burglar.”

  “True. Either way, we know why your intruder came and went with no complaints from Molly.”

  “Where’s Max?” I asked.

  “Gathering eggs for our breakfast. Are you ready to eat?”

  “I’m starved.” I washed my hands in the sink and took a seat at the table just as Max came in. “Something sure smells good,” I said. “What are you making?”

  “Scones,” Max announced, setting her basket on the counter. “I made them this morning. There’s bacon in the oven.”

  “I didn’t know you could cook.”

  “Sure. I learned real fast after I moved in with Bob and Serena.” She lifted her shoulders in a deep sigh. “I had to either learn how to cook or starve to death.”

  We’d been friends for around five months, and there were still a lot of things I didn’t know about Max. It made me sad to think about how Max had been treated. I guess I’d never thought about her not having enough to eat. My mom and dad always made meals. I’d learned how to make a few things, but only because I wanted to, like Jell-O and the kind of cookies you buy already made so all you have to do is cut them up and put them in the oven to bake.

  “I got six eggs,” Max told Amelia as she washed her hands. “There are more out there, but one of the hens wouldn’t let me come near her.”

  Amelia chuckled. “That would be Elvira. She’s my best layer, but she thinks all of her eggs are fertilized and she’s very protective. I have some special feed I use to get her off the nest, and I leave two plastic eggs in her nest all the time so she doesn’t get too upset. Personally, I think she was traumatized at some time in her life. She’s a bit loony.”

  “Have your hens ever had baby chicks?” I asked.

  “Occasionally, when I need more layers.”

  The timer on the oven beeped, and Max took out her scones.

  “Lavender?” I asked.

  She giggled. “No, chocolate chip and hazelnut.”

  “Yum.”

  Max put the scones on a plate and I set the table while Mrs. T scrambled the eggs with a little cream and cheese. She put in some crumbled bacon, onion, and mushrooms so it was like an omelet only all mushed up. Max put milk and orange juice on the table, and we all sat down. Amelia asked me to say the blessing. Even though I said grace a lot at home, I was kind of embarrassed doing it in front of Max and Amelia. “Lord, thank You for this food, and thank You that Molly is okay. And please help us find whoever was in the house last night. Oh, and keep us safe. Amen.”

  “Thank you, Jessie.” Amelia smiled at me. I think she knew that Max wasn’t much interested in church stuff. Max was used to saying grace though, because she’d been at my house so often.

  When we finished eating, I offered to do the dishes.

  “I’d appreciate that,” Amelia said. “I’m going to finish up those sachets we worked on last night. I need to run them into the tea shop today.”

  “Can I help?” Max asked.

  “Of course. Why don’t you and Jessie clear the table while I bring them out?”

  I was running water in the sink when Amelia made a sound like a puppy yelping.

  Max ran to the craft room. I dried my hands and hurried after her. Amelia sank into a chair. “All that work … and … they’re ruined.”

&
nbsp; Max stood there with her mouth open. She looked over at me. “The guy from last night must have done this.”

  “What?” I came closer. “Oh, no.” The bags had been slashed, the lavendar spilling out of open wounds.

  “What a cruel thing to do.” Amelia took a hanky out of her pocket and dabbed at her watery eyes.

  I was more angry than sad. “It must have been the burglar.”

  “But why would he destroy the sachets?” Max knelt down and fingered one of them. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

  Amelia leaned forward and rested her head in her hands. “It will take me days to replace these, and that’s if I can find the time to work on them. I’ll have to call Janet Cavanaugh and tell her I can’t fill the order.”

  Teeth clenched, Max set the box on the floor and began pawing through it. “Here’s a good one.” She held up a deep red velvet heart with lace ribbon trim. “Here’s one more.” She found eleven in all that hadn’t been slashed and several that Amelia thought could be fixed.

  “I suppose that’s something.” Amelia thanked Max for going through them. “But I still need forty more.”

  “We could help you fix these and make some new ones,” Max said. “Just show us what to do.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t ask …”

  “Please.” Max started dumping the herbs out of the damaged sachets.

  Mrs. Truesdale smiled and nodded. “All right.” Standing, she said, “Max, set the ones that could be mended on the sewing machine table. We’ll form an assembly line. Jessie, as soon as you’ve finished the dishes I’ll put you to work stuffing the sachets.”

  I did the dishes (something I often had to do at home), cleaned off the kitchen table, and then hurried into the craft room where Max was cutting out shapes and Amelia was sewing them together. They already had a pile waiting for me to stuff. Since stuffing them went faster than sewing them, I asked if I could close the little opening I’d funneled the lavender into. Amelia showed me how. By noon we had made sixty-five—more than enough for the tea shop and some extras to put out at the roadside stand.

  Mom called, wanting to know when I’d be home. I told her what had happened, and she said I could stay as long as I didn’t overdo. Max and I offered to watch the stand at the end of the driveway while Amelia ran her errands in town. She needed to take Molly in to the vet, take the sachets and some lavender shortbread cookies to the tea shop, and take Randy his scone mix.

  We rode with Amelia in her pickup to the end of the driveway, and Molly rode in the back. Amelia got out and started to open the stand to let us in. The door was ajar. She held a hand out for us to stay back and pushed open the door. “Oh, my,” she cried, as she pulled on a cord, filling the stand with light. “It looks like he was in here too.”

  The shelves were empty and the floor was covered with glass, scone mix, crumbs and jams, and torn packages.

  “Why would anyone do this?” Her voice was soft and tearful. She didn’t cry though. “It’s as though someone is trying to ruin my business, or at the very least discourage me.”

  I thought about Fred wanting her to sell the place.

  Max frowned. “We have to find out who was at the house last night.”

  Max and I had made our way into the stand. I backed out when glass shards from a broken bottle of jam crunched under my shoe. “We should call the sheriff again. Deputy Keagan needs to see this. There must be some clues here.”

  Amelia shook her head and rubbed her forehead. “There’s no point. Besides, I think I may know who’s behind this, but I had no idea he’d go to such extremes to get me to retire.”

  Max frowned. “You mean Fred?”

  She closed her eyes and nodded. “I hate to think that he could do something so destructive, but who else could it be? Deputy Keagan said he didn’t see any sign of a break-in. Freddy has a key, of course. And he was terribly angry with me.”

  “No matter how mad I got with my parents, I would never ruin their things. It would be like me slashing my mother’s paintings. Doesn’t he love you?”

  Amelia’s shoulders slumped. “I … I’m sure he does.”

  “Not a great way to show it,” Max said.

  Amelia sighed. “He wants what’s best for me. Maybe he thinks this will force me to give up the farm. Without my business, I can’t afford to stay here.”

  “I’m sorry.” Amelia looked so sad, I hugged her. Now that she’d said that it might be Fred, I was having a hard time believing that her own son could be that cruel. “Maybe it wasn’t him. He might be mad at you, but do you really think he’d hurt Molly and ruin all of this? He’d have to be a terrible man. Besides,” I reasoned, “if it was him, he wouldn’t have had to hurt Molly. She didn’t bark when he came in yesterday.”

  “You know, you’re right, Jessie.” Amelia stepped back and squeezed my shoulders. “Freddy could have come and gone as he pleased. And you’re right—he’d never hurt Molly.”

  “Can you think of anybody else who’d do something like this?” I asked. “Do you have any enemies?”

  “No … at least none that I know of.”

  Max folded her arms and stood there with her legs slightly apart. “You can’t give up, Mrs. T. You can’t let this … this terrorist stop you.”

  She smiled at that, but her eyes were still sad. “I can’t imagine Freddy deliberately ruining my business. He just wants me in a retirement home where I’ll be safe. Maybe it’s time I did as he asked. I certainly don’t have the energy for this.”

  “But if you did that, what would happen to Max?” I asked. “You said you wanted to be her foster mom.”

  “Forget it, Jess.” Max stepped out into the sunshine. “It’s no big deal. I’ll just stay with you.”

  But it was a big deal to Max. Her eyes told me that much. She already felt like a reject, and having Amelia change her mind would make her feel worse.

  Amelia looked at Max, then at me, and after what seemed like a long time, she said, “You are absolutely right, girls. I have always been and still am a strong woman. The good Lord has helped me weather all sorts of storms, many of them much worse than this.”

  She stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind her. “Come on. Get back in the pickup. We’re going to make our deliveries, and then we’ll stop at the sheriff’s office. And after that we’ll come back here and clean up this mess.”

  “All right!” Max gave me a high five and we piled into the cab and headed for town.

  We stopped by the veterinarian’s office where the vet told Amelia that Molly had a mild concussion and to keep an eye on her. The next stop was the tea shop, where we told Janet Cavanaugh what had happened. After that we stopped at the sheriff’s office.

  “We’ll check it out, Amelia,” Sheriff Clark said, “but it was probably vandals. Most likely that group of teenagers camping out at the Alpine Village. They’re celebrating graduation. Though if they’re not careful, some of them will end up in jail instead of college.” He laughed.

  I didn’t think it was funny. Kids got blamed for everything—especially tourists who were teenagers. At least he hadn’t implied that Max and I were responsible like Jack Keagan had.

  “Nonsense,” Amelia said. “What reason would they have?”

  “Those rabble-rousers don’t need a reason.” The sheriff made a few notes in a small pad.

  “Well, whoever it was knocked out Molly and got into the house. Your deputy didn’t even bother taking prints.”

  “He told me about it. There’s not much use in doing that. Like he said, the intruder was probably wearing gloves. From what I understand, no one was hurt and nothing is missing.”

  “This is pointless.” Amelia herded us to the door. “Let’s go clean up the mess, girls.”

  “I have my deputies checking on the break-in, Amelia. We’ll let you know if we find anything.”

  “Well, that’s something.”

  I wondered if the sheriff’s department would even look for the guy. Amelia stil
l hadn’t gone up in the attic to see if there was something missing. Maybe there’d be time this afternoon. I’d have to remind her. It seemed to me that if we found out what the guy had taken, we might have some idea who he might be. I thought again about Fred and decided he wouldn’t have any reason to break into the house to take something. All he had to do was ask Amelia.

  By the time we got back to the farm there were four cars in the driveway, one of them our van. My mom was leaning against it talking to Janet Cavanaugh and two other ladies from our church. Molly barked at them. “It’s all right, Molly,” Amelia said. “They’re friends.” Molly jumped out of the pickup bed and went to sniff at them.

  “Are you girls having a party and didn’t invite me?” Amelia slid out of the cab and closed the door.

  Janet Cavanaugh came toward us. “When you told me what happened I called around to get some volunteers. I left Ivy in charge of the shop and picked up Elsie and Marcia.”

  “We’re having a party all right,” Mom said. “A cleaning party. Bring on the mess.”

  Amelia’s lower lip quivered, and this time she actually got tears in her eyes. The women each hugged her. Mom hugged me and Max. “I think it’s wonderful how you girls helped Amelia make sachets this morning. I’m so proud of you.”

  I felt proud of us too, and even prouder when we all pitched in to work on the roadside stand. Amelia opened the front panel of the stand, letting in the daylight.

  We salvaged what we could from the mess, which wasn’t much. Amelia said she’d just close the stand for a few days until she could replenish her inventory.

  When we’d finished, Amelia invited everyone up to the house for coffee, tea, and snacks. After eating, Mom told me I needed to go home with her so I could get some rest. “You have dark lines under your eyes, Jessie. You must be exhausted.”

  I protested a little, but knew there wasn’t much point. Besides, I was too tired to put up much of a fight. We said good-bye and left. Once home I took my quilt and pillow out on the swing, and for a total of about two minutes, I lay there wondering who had been in Amelia’s attic and why. One thing I knew for sure—it wasn’t vandals.