by Hillary Avis
I pretended to misunderstand his very obvious, very dumb joke. “You want gas money? It’s like three miles to Duma, and gas is three bucks a gallon. Even with the horrible mileage your rig probably gets, that’ll be, what? Fifty cents, tops?”
He put on a wounded face. “Well, I’d expect to be paid for the round trip.”
“A buck. Got it. One dollar, all yours.” I rolled my eyes and changed the subject so I’d stop staring at his lips. “I meant to ask you—did you talk to Archer today?”
He shook his head. “I mentioned it to Pansy Crisp, though. You met her at Tambra’s house. She’s the lead investigator on McKenzie’s case.”
I remembered the stern woman who’d been so insistent about filling out paperwork when I picked up the boys’ swimming trunks. With a name like Pansy Crisp, no wonder she was crabby. “Do you think she’ll follow up?”
“Of course she will.” Eli shifted his weight to his other foot and licked his lower lip thoughtfully. “Now when, I don’t know. They’re pretty locked-in on Tambra, it sounds like. I’m sure they’ll talk to Archer eventually, though.”
“Well, I hope so. I had a weird interaction with Jillian today at the farmers market. When I brought Archer up, I thought she was going to faint.”
Eli’s eyebrows shot up. “Did she mention anything about his relationship with McKenzie?”
“Not really. All she said when I showed her the picture from the paper was that ‘he wasn’t mad at her.’ But the way Jillian said it—it was like her, McKenzie specifically. It sort of implies he was mad at someone else.”
“Any sense of who she was talking about?”
I shook my head. “I got a call from Gary Edison while we were talking, and she took off before I could follow up.”
“I wonder who she meant.” Eli tapped his finger against his lips as he considered the possibilities.
“There were only three people in the picture. McKenzie, Jillian, and—”
“Tambra,” Eli finished. My heart sank. I opened my mouth to protest, but Eli stopped me with a motion of his hand. “No, think about it. It makes sense that Archer would be angry with her. She was the person standing between him and McKenzie.”
“The stupid pageant rules were standing between them,” I corrected, crossing my arms. “Tambra was just enforcing them. It’s not her fault the board hasn’t updated the comportment clause since the Sixties.”
“Well, that’s why the saying is ‘don’t shoot the messenger,’ right? Because that’s everyone’s first impulse.”
I shivered as goosebumps erupted on my skin, and Eli immediately took off his dark green hoodie and handed it to me over the fence. The old me would have handed it right back and said I wasn’t cold, but the truth was, I was chilled to the core. I slid my arms into the sleeves that still held the warmth from his body and zipped it up to my chin.
“See?” Eli nodded past me to the chicken coop. “They’re doing it again. It wasn’t just me.”
I glanced over and saw dozens of chickens roosting on the logs and perches in the run instead of inside the coop where they belonged. “What in the world?”
Eli stretched the top line of barbed wire and stepped through the fence. I winced, hoping the barbs wouldn’t catch his bare skin now that I was wearing his sweatshirt. We walked over to the coop together and stared inside. The chickens didn’t seem particularly perturbed. They were in that drowsy, half-asleep state now that the sun was down, murmuring and shifting as they settled down for a night of sleep.
But why weren’t they inside? I ducked inside and checked the temperature in the coop. Warm, but not too hot. And the air inside was fresh, too—it smelled like pine shavings.
Eli stuck his head in. “What’s the verdict?”
I shook my head, shrugging as I scanned the interior of the coop for the second time. “Everything seems normal. Nothing strange except for the sleeping outside. And the eggs today—production is still down. Maybe they’re just shaken up from the camping trip.”
“From me, you mean.” Eli grimaced.
“No—not you. You did a good job. Probably just from me being gone, from their routine being disrupted. Chickens hate change.”
Eli looked smug as I exited the coop, latching the door behind me.
“What?” I asked.
He grinned cheekily at me. “You said I did a good job.”
I bit my lip to hide my smile. “You did.”
“I did a good job.” He shimmied his shoulders and did something with his feet. Was that a jig?
I giggled as I opened the run and picked up the first two hens from their makeshift roosts. “Yeah, now you better use your new chicken tending skills to help me move all these birds into the coop.”
“Wow, accepting my compliment and asking me a favor in one night. Are you feeling OK?” Eli pressed his hand against my forehead as though he were checking my temperature.
“It was the flowers,” I said, ducking his hand and heading for the coop.
He picked up Alarm Clock and followed me inside, blinking innocently. “Flowers? What flowers?”
July 8, Day 5, Friday
THE NEXT MORNING, ELI hummed along with the car radio, drinking coffee from his travel mug and shooting me amused little smiles every so often as we drove toward Duma.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
I poked him in the arm. “What?”
He gave me another one of those glances that took in my red “Hens Before Mens” T-shirt and my clean pair of jeans. “You look cute, that’s all.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, stop. You’re just trying to butter me up.”
“I’m trying to butter you up because you’re cute.”
“Hm.” I swiped his travel mug and took a sip to hide my smile.
“Is it working?”
For some reason it was easier to come clean in the car, when he couldn’t look me in the eye. With my own sideways glance in his direction, I nodded. “Seems to be. I’m feeling pretty buttery.”
“Hm.” He echoed my earlier response but made no effort to hide his smile as he pulled into the lot at the auto shop. Gary was outside with his back to us, using a power washer to clean the side of the building. Along with removing the grime and moss that grew on the bricks, the stream of water was also flaking away the painted Edison & Sons sign.
When he saw us, Gary’s face lit up behind his safety goggles. He shut off the machine and slid off his huge headphones. “Morning!”
Eli gave him a wave and motioned to the wall. “Looks like you’re repainting.”
Gary’s face fell slightly, but then his expression rebounded. “Nah, I’m off the hook. I figure the new owner will want to slap their own name on the side of the place, so I’ll save myself the work.”
“You sold the shop?” My jaw dropped. Edison & Sons was such a fixture in northern Douglas County. It was hard to imagine anyone else running the place.
“Just thinking about it. I’m ready to kick back and relax, listen to some tunes, and day drink.”
Eli and I shared a grin. That sounded pretty much like what Gary did already. I’d bet that he had Jimmy Buffett playing through those headphones right now, with a cold one waiting for him in the minifridge inside.
“Terry going to take over the place?” Eli asked.
Gary guffawed, which I took to mean no. “He’s about done with your truck, though.” I realized a beat later that he meant my Suburban. “Alternator was bad, after all.”
I crossed my fingers behind my back as I asked, “How much do I owe you?”
Gary set down the wand of the power washer and clicked off the compressor, then pulled off his thick rubber gloves. “Let me get your invoice printed,” he said.
Eli and I followed him inside, waiting as he crunched the numbers at his desk. The door to Terry’s side of the shop was open, and the sound of AC/DC drifted into the office.
“Help yourself to coffee,” Gary said absentmindedly. Eli immediately went
out to retrieve his travel mug to refill it, leaving me alone with Gary, who pushed his safety goggles up on his head and sighed. “Sorry—this computer is fifteen years old if it’s a day. Takes it a minute.”
Through the open door to the shop, I could see Terry—or part of him. The rest of him was hidden by the Suburban’s burgundy hood. Behind him, a row of pretty girls in crowns smiled across the shop at me from where their pictures were tacked on the wall. I squinted at the photos that were hung in a neat row below racing posters and a pinup calendar. Were those—
“Miss Honeytree?” I asked aloud, startling myself a little.
“Yep.” Gary chuckled as the printer attached to his computer began chugging like a freight train as it printed my invoice. He swiveled around in his chair. “Always surprises people that a macho nacho like Terry follows a beauty contest, but his mom was the original. Go have a gander at her picture...she looks just like Terry. No mustache, though.”
I giggled, trying to imagine Terry in a crown and sash. I couldn’t do it—I’d have to look. “Maybe just a peek,” I said to Gary, who nodded toward the printer.
“This’ll be a few more minutes anyway.”
Terry looked up at the sound of my footsteps on the concrete floor. “Ain’t quite done,” he said. “You can wait in the office. Too much mess in here.”
“I just wanted to see your mom’s picture,” I said apologetically. “Gary said she was the original Miss Honeytree.”
Terry stood up too quickly, cracking the top of his head on my hood. He rubbed his head ruefully. “Sorry, I just get excited when someone shows an interest.” He set down the wrench he was holding and went to the wall, his expression eager as he pointed to the first picture in the row, a black-and-white, full-length photo of a tall, elegant woman in a familiar glittering crown.
“Wow, it looks just like the crown McKenzie wore!” I said. I scanned the row of photographs. They went from full-length and black-and-white to head shots and color, the hairstyles so iconic I could almost guess the years without looking at the small labels pinned under each photo. Each wore a sash and the same tall, elaborate crown.
“Yes.” Terry’s voice was tight. “It is the same—almost the same. Some repair work had to be done a few years ago, otherwise it’d be perfect.”
I leaned closer to examine the photos. The crown looked the same in every picture to me. After I studied the pictures a little more closely, I noticed that all the Miss Honeytrees after 1995 had a light pink stone in the center of the crown. Before that, it was white. “What happened in 1996?” I tapped the photo in the middle of the long row, the first one with a pink stone.
Terry frowned at the memory. “You mean 1995. She broke it after her photos was taken. She was irresponsible. Never should have gotten the crown to begin with. A lot like—” His eyes darted to the end of the row and then back to me.
“McKenzie, you mean?” Her photo wasn’t on the wall—it was on the workbench underneath where it belonged. Either he hadn’t put it up yet, or he’d taken it down.
He nodded. “With all her issues, we never should have let her compete.” He reached out and brushed a cobweb from a photo near the one I had pointed out, and I realized it was a very young Tambra, her red hair curled and teased into a glorious mane underneath the Miss Honeytree crown.
“You know Tambra?”
Terry gave a slow nod as he stared at her picture. “Met her when she won the crown. She represented us well back then, and even better now. She does a great job with the girls.”
“Women,” I corrected. “They’re all over eighteen.”
“Sure. But some of ’em still have some things to learn.”
“Don’t we all?”
“Some more than others.” Terry turned to me, his forehead creased. “You happen to know the Wynwood girl?”
“Jillian? Sure.”
“What’s she like? I don’t want to put my mom’s crown on a girl—sorry, woman who doesn’t deserve it. With everything that’s happened, we need someone of character representing Honeytree.”
I nodded. “She’s a good person. Good family. She works hard at the diner, and I know she has goals beyond waitressing. I’ve never seen her be anything but kind to people. I think she’ll represent the town well.”
Terry’s shoulders relaxed and he let out a relieved breath that I hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He smiled at me. “Glad to hear it. I really am. That puts my mind at ease. Well, as much as it can be with Tambra in jail. They’ll let her out soon, though.”
“I hope so,” I said, a lump rising in my throat. “Her boys need her.”
Terry clapped me on the back, smiling behind his impressive Hulk Hogan mustache. “Things are always set right in the end. Speaking of, let me get your battery hooked back up and you can hit the road. It’ll just be a minute.”
I thanked him and went back to the waiting room, where I found Eli sitting contentedly in the one of the grimy waiting area chairs, flipping through an issue of Road & Track. Gary was nowhere to be seen. Judging from the dull roar of a compressor running outside, he was back at power washing.
I spotted my invoice laying in the printer tray and scanned it to see whether I could cover it with the few hundred bucks left in my checking account. The alternator was cheaper than I expected, but the labor costs were still going to hurt. I braced myself for the total at the bottom.
To my surprise, the last line of the invoice read, “$0.00, Paid in Full.”
I snapped my head up and stared at Eli accusingly. He took a sip of from his travel mug and flipped the page of his magazine, studiously avoiding my gaze.
“Did you do this?” I shook the invoice at him.
“What?” He turned toward me as though he’d just realized I was in the room, his face the picture of innocence. But I knew better.
“This.”
“Never seen it.” He gave a slight shrug and stood, his attention back on the magazine in his hands. “Do you think Gary will mind if I borrow this?”
I made a face at him. “I’ll pay you back.”
He tucked the magazine under his arm and held the door out to the parking lot open for me. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about the money you shelled out to cover my invoice. I’m not letting you pay my way.” I poked him in the arm on the way by.
“I swear, no money changed hands!”
But I knew better.
Chapter 16
Outside, Eli waited beside me as Terry pulled my Suburban out of his bay. Terry hopped out and handed me the keys.
“My job is done.”
“Guess mine is too,” Eli said. “I better get to work.”
Before he could leave, I caught his arm. “Will you talk to Archer? Just in case Detective Crisp doesn’t? I really think he might have seen what happened.”
Eli sighed. “Even if he did, he’ll just deny it. He’ll say he left the festival right after the photo was taken.”
“What photo?” Terry asked.
“Front page of the newspaper,” I said, rifling through my purse to find the clipping. Handing it to him, I watched his expression as he scanned the photo and found Archer’s scowling face. “McKenzie told him not to go to the festival, but he did anyway. He looks upset, doesn’t he?”
Terry gave a low whistle. “Sure does. She must have done something pretty bad to make him pull a face like that.”
“He wasn’t mad at McKenzie, apparently.” I shrugged.
“Not her. The other one. He’s staring right at the Wynwood girl—young lady,” he corrected. He handed the clipping back to me with a few of his greasy fingerprints on the edges. He made a face when he noticed and whipped a pink shop rag out of the back pocket of his coveralls to scrub at his hands. “Sorry! Mechanic’s curse. I better go wash up.”
He flipped the rag over his shoulder ambled back into the shop. Eli peered over my shoulder as I looked at the photo again, where Archer stood in a tense postu
re, his eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted as he stared at the group of women from the side of the frame.
Jillian’s side.
From his angle, she would have blocked his view of McKenzie and Tambra, anyway. Maybe Terry was right. Maybe Archer’s angry expression was for Jillian, not McKenzie. That’d explain why Jillian had gone so pale when I mentioned him at the farmer’s market. Did he have some kind of grudge against her? Was she the reason he came to the Fourth of July festival even though McKenzie had warned him away?
“There’s something going on there.” Eli’s low voice in my ear made me jump. “There’s something under the surface, and I need to find out what it is.”
I refolded the clipping—it was beginning to get worn from all the scrutiny over the past couple days—and tucked it away. “I think so, too. Jillian clearly feels terrible, and it’s not just grief over the loss of her friend. She knows something about what happened that day.”
Eli nodded. “I’ll update Detective Crisp. Her team will sort it out. They follow up on everything...eventually.”
“And in the meantime, Tambra sits in jail.” I sighed, thinking of Dylan and Ollie. At some point they were going to stop having fun tormenting Auntie Ruth and start missing their mom. “Can’t you just ask Jillian?”
“I can’t. Or I shouldn’t, anyway. I’m obligated to turn over the information to the state police; this is their case.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t talk to people, does it? You could do both. Turn it over and talk to her.”
A half-dozen different emotions flickered across Eli’s face. Curiosity, irritation, hesitation, and others I didn’t recognize. When he finally spoke, his voice was gruff. “OK. Fine. But not because I want to. I’m just doing it so you won’t. You better promise me you’re not going to get involved, Leona! You’re too close to Tambra; you could end up getting in trouble yourself if the state police think you’re meddling on her behalf.”
“Meddling?!” I yelped. “I just want to know what happened.”
He sighed. “I know. But the truth is, Tambra and McKenzie were at odds. Tambra owned a gun.”
