by Molly Macrae
“We do not know what happened. We know what we saw, but we do not know what happened. And depending on who looks for answers and then quits when they find the easy and obvious ones, we might never know what happened.”
“Debbie—”
“You know that can happen. You’ve seen it happen. So please. For their sake if not for Bonny’s or mine.”
This really was irrational, and I didn’t know how to handle it. Snap her out of it by telling her how ridiculous it was? Agree with her to calm her down? Messy situations like this were exactly why I’d preferred dealing with the predictability of concrete chemical analysis and textile preservation in my professional life. Of course I was also the one who now sometimes felt emotions when I touched fibers. And then there were the one or two other less-than-normal matters waiting for me back in town—speaking of totally irrational…
“Please,” Debbie said.
I was also the one who, with the help of a “posse” that included Debbie, Thea, Ernestine, and a few others, had unraveled several mysteries and murders before the professionals. Mainly before Deputy Cole Dunbar. Breaking his nose in the process. Except that the posse wasn’t responsible for breaking Clod’s nose. That was down to me alone. Me and my fist. It hadn’t been one of my best moments.
I glanced at Ernestine and Thea. Ernestine always looked innocent no matter what went on behind her thick lenses. Thea was again uncharacteristically quiet. They’d both enjoyed being part of the posse. They both looked very slightly hopeful now.
“Please,” Debbie said.
“Let me think about it. Maybe give it a couple of days. Okay?”
“Okay. But I want you to say yes.” She clasped the top of her skull; then she put her hands to her cheeks and shook her head. “I don’t think I even know what I’m doing. This was such a beautiful day. Now it’s a nightmare. And I made lunch for all of you and what am I going to do with all of that? And isn’t that a stupid thing to worry about?”
“You can feed it to the deputies,” Ernestine said. “I believe they’ll be here with you for a while. Now, come along.” She took Debbie’s arm. “You can get me back through the fence so we don’t need to call for more help.”
After Debbie convinced us she’d be all right on her own, I was glad to give Ernestine and Thea a ride back to Blue Plum. I hoped their navigational skills would make for a shorter return trip. Ernestine insisted she’d be more comfortable in the backseat. Thea looked at my two-door Honda, didn’t argue, and held the door for her.
“Well, this has been a morning for the books,” Thea said, settling in beside me. “Of course I say that every morning. But what a terrible, horrible shame. Saying ‘poor Bonny’ doesn’t begin to cover it.”
“Does she have other family in the area?” I asked.
“They’re not close,” Ernestine said. “When I get home I’ll start the TGIF phone tree and we’ll get some casseroles going over there.”
“That’s a good idea,” I said. Visions of a hand-to-hand tuna noodle brigade went through my head. “I’m sorry about missing Debbie’s dye workshop, too. I was looking forward to it.”
“Were you?” Ernestine asked. “If you don’t mind me saying so, I was surprised to see you. After all, you’re Ivy’s granddaughter. Surely you learned at her knee, and I would have thought she’d left all her special secrets with you.”
Special secrets? My eyes flew to Ernestine in the rearview mirror. How could she know anything about the secrets Granny mentioned in her letter?
“Ivy was an artist, though,” Ernestine went on, unaware of my alarm. “That’s the simple truth. She was an artist in everything she did. Debbie is good, and her use of color is exciting, but in the end no one dyes the way Ivy dyed.” She paused. “Oh dear. There was no way for that last part to come out right, was there. I am so sorry.”
“It’s okay, Ernestine. You know Granny would’ve laughed. In fact—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Thea said.
“Whoa, what? I haven’t even started the car.”
“I know. I’m calling for a subject change because you ignored the opening I gave you when we got in. A terrible, horrible shame? Poor Bonny? You know, the whole reason we aren’t playing with painted wool. Tell us what happened out in that field.”
Ernestine tsked.
“You’re as anxious to know as I am, Ernestine. Don’t pretend you’re not.”
“But we could at least let her buckle her seat belt first,” Ernestine said.
“I wish I could forget what happened out there.” As if that were possible. I believed what I’d told Debbie, that we probably did know what happened. But why it happened and how it came to happen—there in her field and on this bright morning—those questions swam around in my head threatening to make me dizzy. “I’d really rather not talk about it,” I said, finally rolling down the drive.
“Right,” Thea said. Then, when I turned left onto the main road, “Where are you going? I said right.”
“I thought you were agreeing not to talk about what happened.”
“It’s a wonder you ever did get here. Which way did you come? Cherry Grove Road or Buncombe?”
“Hard to say. Maybe both.”
“Would you like me to drive, dear?” Ernestine asked.
“No, thank you, Ernestine.”
Thea got us going in the right direction, and by the time we crossed the Little Buck I had my bearings. We traveled beside the river for two or three miles in a broad, level valley and I remembered coming out this way with Granny, when I was a child, to pick strawberries at one of the farms. Later in the year there would be acres of tomatoes and more acres of pumpkins. The river was wide and smooth here, stretching and relaxing after its rough tumble through the mountains. It chuckled softly, inviting folks to fish from its gravel banks and bars, or step in for a swim, or go for a lazy paddle downstream, slipping past willows and alders.
But don’t you turn your back on that river for a minute, Granny used to tell me.
“That isn’t a river that mixes well with alcohol,” Ernestine said from the backseat.
“Are you reading my mind back there, Ernestine? Granny used to say something like that.”
“I’m practicing because two of my grandsons are getting old enough to think they know better. I don’t suppose many rivers do mix with alcohol, but there’s something about this one that seems to attract more than its share of fools.”
“That’s because fools are easily fooled,” Thea said.
Talk of the river brought some of my questions bubbling to the surface. “How far upstream is Victory Paper from here?”
“Maybe ten miles as the fish swims,” Ernestine said.
“You’d never know all that mess was up there, though, to look at the Buck down here,” Thea said. “And depending on who you talk to, that goes right along with fools being fooled. There might be fish in that river, but you won’t catch me eating them.”
“So who all was mixed up with the protests when the guy drowned two years ago? Will Embree, but was Shannon, too? Is that why Bonny is so set against him? She thinks he led Shannon astray?”
“Oh, my land, no,” Ernestine said. “Those two couldn’t have been at more opposite ends of that argument. Shannon was the spokesperson for Victory Paper.”
“What? Holy cow. No wonder Bonny reacted that way.”
“Bless her heart,” Ernestine said. “And bless theirs, too. They had their whole lives ahead of them. Here’s your turn coming up, and this will take you right on into Main Street. Goodness. It will feel good to be home.” She said that as though we’d been in another country and gone for days, but that was the way going back to Blue Plum affected the people who loved it.
When I’d driven into Blue Plum to bury my sweet grandmother, I’d looked at the town fondly but with the eyes of someone only stopping through. I’d spent many joyful summers there with Granny, playing storekeeper in the Weaver’s Cat, learning to weave on her massive floor loom, ta
king walks with her and listening to her stories of the town she’d lived in her whole life. But I’d come to say good-bye to Blue Plum’s quaint streets and antique buildings, good-bye to the Weaver’s Cat, to Granny’s house, to her friends, and to dear Granny. She’d left the shop, the building it was in, and her house to me, but I had my own career and I was following a different pattern. I planned to pack whatever memories would fit in a rented truck and take them back to Illinois, and I wasn’t sure when I’d ever be back.
Almost as soon as I’d arrived, though, my neatly organized life was upended. In so many ways. So many sad but not terribly unusual ways. And in a few decidedly abnormal ways, too. The list of abnormal ways included, though it wasn’t restricted to: losing my textile preservation job at the state museum in Illinois, discovering Granny was Clod Dunbar’s personal prime suspect in a very nasty case of murder by poison, and receiving the letter Granny wrote telling me she had certain “talents,” making her “a bit of a witch.” She’d ended that fey letter with the news that I might have inherited her “talents” and she’d hidden her secret dye journals somewhere in her attic study at the Weaver’s Cat for me to find and use. Or not. The decision to witch or not to witch being mine.
I mean, really. And on top of all that I’d somehow ended up with a depressed…
“Are you going to the Cat?” Ernestine asked.
“I can swing by your house,” I said, happy she’d interrupted my manic reminiscence.
“No, dear, the Cat is fine. I’ll enjoy the walk home. What about you, Thea?”
“Sure, the Cat’s fine. This was supposed to be my day off, but I might as well head over to the library. Maybe if I slip in the back door, I can put in some stealth time in the office and no one will ever know.”
“So Shannon and Will and Debbie all knew each other?” I asked, slipping into my own metaphorical back door.
“The way I heard it, Shannon and Will dated in high school,” Thea said.
The image of her in his arms came back to my mind along with the confusion of feelings, the love and the terror. “That explains a lot and nothing at all.”
“Well, we can’t help you sort through it,” Thea said, with exaggerated patience, “because you still haven’t told us what happened.”
“Let me park.”
We waited behind a tour bus as several dozen seniors creaked down its steps onto the sidewalk and steadied themselves for an assault on the shops. Then I turned the corner and pulled into the lot across the side street from the Weaver’s Cat. Thea turned toward me when I shut off the engine. Ernestine moved to the center of the backseat so she could see between the headrests.
“First,” Thea said, “have you thought about it, like you told Debbie you would? Are you going to investigate? Are you redeputizing the posse?”
“There hasn’t been time to think about that. I was busy driving without getting lost or crashing, remember? But really, I meant it when I told Debbie I don’t think there’s anything to investigate.”
“She thinks there is,” Ernestine said.
“She’s distraught. That’s wishful thinking. And poor Bonny’s in shock and wants the whole thing to not be true. No one and no amount of investigating can help her with that.”
“Then convince us Debbie’s wrong,” Thea said. “Tell us what you saw.”
“Okay. Basic description only, though.” I was surprised by how choked up I suddenly felt. I hadn’t known Shannon Goforth or Will Embree. But their broken lives had just shattered two women in front of my eyes. I held my breath for a moment, then breathed out slowly, using a trick I’d learned to calm myself before speaking in front of large groups.
“It looked like a murder-suicide, like he shot her and then himself. There was a gun on the ground near his hand. I’ve never seen anything like that before, though, and I’ve never seen gunshot wounds, and I don’t really know what a murder-suicide looks like. I just know I don’t want to see anything like it again. But here’s what I don’t understand. It looked like he was cradling her in his arms. Why would he do that if he shot her? Unless maybe he was sorry he’d killed her? I don’t know. And I’m not sure, and I don’t know why I think this, but maybe I shouldn’t have told you that much. And if investigating means digging around in their private lives, into things that aren’t anyone else’s business, then I’m not sure that’s something I want to do.”
“Bless their hearts.” Ernestine put her hand on my shoulder and nodded. “Thank you for telling us. Don’t worry about spreading stories, though. All of that and more will be around town before you sit down for supper tonight, with details you never saw and more that never existed. Well. I believe I’ll go on home now and start the phone tree. Bonny’s going to need strength and kindness.”
Thea helped Ernestine out, then came around to my window with a different look in her eyes. “You can’t fool me,” she said. “You’re already on the case.”
“No, I’m not, because it isn’t a case. There aren’t any suspects. It’s a murder-suicide, Thea. There’s nobody to suspect of anything—even if I do wonder about why he was cradling her and even if Debbie insists he’d never kill her. Neither of those sentimental interpretations changes the facts. If that’s what they are.” I wished I’d quit throwing in qualifiers.
“See? I told you. You are on the case. You’re looking at this from your ivory tower scientific perspective. That’s good. And don’t worry about suspects. You’ll come up with some or you’ll come up with something else.”
“The Illinois State Museum is not an ivory tower.”
“But you are on the case.”
“I don’t think so.” I meant that to come out with more certainty and shook my head at that failure. “I haven’t made up my mind yet.” Rats, I hadn’t meant that to come out at all.
Thea patted my shoulder, too, before turning around and heading for the library. I sat in the car awhile longer, drinking in the sanity of the symmetrical lines of the Weaver’s Cat across the street. Since the upheavals in my life, the Cat had become my refuge of choice. Granny’s lovingly tended pet occupied the three floors of a nineteenth-century row house on Main Street. The square, high-ceilinged rooms contained enough colors and textures to lure and possibly drown any fiber artist or needle crafter brave enough to look in the front windows or dip a toe inside.
“Wool, cotton, herbs, dyes, bricks, wood, women, gossip, coffee, and, if we’re lucky, a hint of cinnamon or chocolate,” Granny had rattled off when I told her I wanted to chemically analyze the Cat’s particular scent so I could reproduce it and let it loose in my museum lab back in Illinois. “I’ve spun them together for years. The proportions are a secret recipe, though. I’ll leave it to you in my will.” Instead of that secret, she’d left me a few others not quite so straightforward as a recipe for aromatherapy. And she’d left me the Cat.
I locked my car then, and ran rather than walked across the street to my refuge. Where it turned out parts of the morning’s story had arrived ahead of me.
Chapter 4
Ardis Buchanan, longtime manager of the Weaver’s Cat, gave me a subdued wave from behind the sales counter when she saw me. Ardis was at least a foot taller than either Granny or I had ever hoped to be. Every so often she made token complaints about thinning hair and a spreading waistline, but for the most part she couldn’t be bothered to worry. If the Cat was my refuge, Ardis was my rock. A rock that always smelled of honeysuckle, but steady and reliable.
“No need to be here, honey, if you don’t want,” she said when I reached the counter. “I’ve just hung up from Debbie.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Says she’ll be here in the morning as usual. But between you and me, she didn’t sound so ‘as usual.’”
“Coming in to work might be what she needs.”
“That and finding out what happened.”
“I don’t think there’s much question about what happened,” I said.
“Much.” She nodded.
“There’s no reason to think the police will miss or misinterpret anything.”
“Miss and misinterpret,” she said, shaking her head sadly.
“I said ‘or.’”
She dismissed that quibble with a flick of her wrist. “Ernestine said you’re considering reconvening and redeputizing.”
“You’ve talked to Ernestine already?”
“And Mel,” Ardis said.
“What did Mel know? She wasn’t there.”
Melody Gresham was another member of the original posse. She was also the owner and operator of the best café in town and would have been up to her talented elbows in pastry dough for hours by the time Debbie and I made our discovery in the sheep pasture.
“Quick is how word spreads in most towns,” Ardis said. “Like blue lightning is how it spreads in Blue Plum. And think about this—if information walks in here, and it sprints into Mel’s, can you imagine how much of it will be sitting around sipping iced tea and ripe for the picking at the always wonderful and often hysterical Historical Trust Annual Meeting and Potluck come Saturday night?”
“Huh. You’re right.”
“Of course I am. So what do you think? About redeputizing the posse?”
“Right now I’d like to stop thinking about all of it, so if you really don’t need me, I’ll be in the attic. Land of the never-ending opportunity to sort and organize. That’s what my brain needs.”
“Mine needs lunch,” Ardis said. “If I see Joe I’ll send him over to Mel’s.” Joe was Joe Dunbar, Deputy Clod’s brother and a complete yin to Clod’s yang. “Would you like something?”
“Sure. Popeye salad, dressing on the side. If you don’t see him, let me know and I’ll go. Has the cat behaved himself?”
“Good as gold. He came down for his bite of breakfast, asked after you, then took himself back upstairs to the land of the rarely ending naps. He needs a name, you know.”
“Still working on that.”
I loved Granny’s private study in the attic, loved its snug proportions and angled ceilings, its built-in cupboards and bookcases. It had been the place where Granny worked the bugs out of one project and designed the next; read the latest on rigid-heddle looms, hand spinning, and natural dyes; or simply put her feet up and stared out the dormer window and dreamed undisturbed.
