Kneaded to Death

by Winnie Archer

  We sat in silence for a while. My stomach was in knots, in part because of the emptiness inside me, but the truth was that I couldn’t push my thoughts to some remote corner of my mind. They escaped and returned front and center. Nanette Masterson had said that she’d seen my mother talking to Jackie Makers at Jackie’s house, but as far as I knew, they hadn’t been friends. No matter how I looked at the situation, it didn’t feel right. I wanted my dad to tell me that Nanette Masterson had been mistaken. That Mom knew Jackie Makers only from the cooking classes they’d taken. That my mom’s death had been an accident.

  But deep down I suddenly wasn’t sure. My mind whirled around the idea that my mom and Jackie were connected in some way, and that what we thought we knew about my mother’s death might not actually be the truth.

  I drew in a deep breath and launched into the conversation I’d had with Nanette. “Were they friends?” I asked when I was done.

  With his elbows on the table, he folded his hands and propped his chin on them. I took the moment to study him. His hair had always been a sleek dark brown, and while his mustache had been salt and pepper for the past seven or so years, the pepper had all but vanished. New gray hair had sprouted at his sideburns and temples. I hadn’t realized it until this moment, but he’d aged ten years in the past six months. My heart broke for him all over again.

  “Not that I’m aware. We took the cooking classes, like I told you.”

  “That’s what I thought, but Nanette was sure she saw Mom and Jackie Makers on Maple Street.”

  His brow furrowed, and I could tell he’d thought of something.

  “What is it, Dad?”

  Instead of answering, he pushed back from the table and disappeared down the hall. A moment later he came back, sat down again, and slid a cloth-covered journal across the table to me.

  I stared, afraid to touch it. “Mom’s?”

  “It’s not a diary. Not exactly, anyway. Your mom jotted down notes and . . . just . . . stuff.” He pushed it toward me. “I haven’t looked at it. Haven’t wanted to. It’s too tough for me, Ivy. I hope you understand that. But if you want to know more about your mom, look in there.”

  * * *

  I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning reading my mom’s journals. Turned out the one my dad gave me at dinner wasn’t the only one my mom had. There were eight altogether. I had figured out the order and had lined them up on my bed from the earliest to the most recent. I’d been afraid that starting at the beginning would take me on an emotional journey I wasn’t ready to take. Starting with the most recent would be difficult enough, but that was the journal that could potentially tell me about her connection to Jackie Makers. And that was the thing I wanted to know about more than anything.

  But once I’d got started, I couldn’t stop. Page after page, I read about her students, her passion for everything French, sketches of the Eiffel Tower, and random pictures of birds, which had been her favorite thing to photograph. As I read her poems and snippets of ideas for stories and articles, my mom seemed to unfold before me. I saw her thoughts, her desires, her soul . . . all in new ways. I began to see her not as my mother, but as a woman.

  I’d thought that not reading the early journals would make it easier somehow, but it hadn’t. What I realized was that while I knew my mother, I knew only the part of her that she had shared with me. And she was so much more than that. She’d been a woman, a mother, a wife, a friend, a teacher, a writer.... She’d been so much more than I’d ever recognized. I could see why my dad didn’t want to read her journals yet. It was too soon, and seeing on the page all that we were missing with her not here was salt in the wound.

  I had made it to the last pages of the most recent journal and had all but given up on finding anything in it about Jackie Makers. Then I turned the page.

  Jesus. I knew I was right. Knew. It. I won’t tell Owen yet, not until I talk to Jackie. He wouldn’t want me getting involved. The problem is that she doesn’t really know me. Will she trust that I want to help?

  How to approach her? Not at cooking class. Maybe I’ll stop by her house. Yes. That’s what I’ll do. But what about Gus? That’s what I still don’t know.

  I reread the entry, trying to read between the lines. What was she right about? If she’d ended up telling my dad whatever had been on her mind, he would have mentioned it, so maybe whatever she’d thought hadn’t panned out. I read the entry again, zeroing in on Gus’s name. What about him? Could my mother have discovered an affair? It was possible, but my mom was not a gossip. She’d always made a point to steer clear of the riffraff in her school, staying above the fray. I didn’t think she’d get involved in an affair that Jackie or Gus had been having. She didn’t know them, so why get tangled in anything they were doing? Plus, they were divorced, and this journal entry of hers had been written long after Jackie and Gus had called it quits.

  I turned to the next page, but it was blank. So this was the last entry. Flipping back, I checked the date of the last thing she’d written, but she hadn’t noted it. I turned to the previous page. I read the date. Blinked. Reread it. It couldn’t be.

  But it was.

  My heart caught in my throat.

  The last dated entry had been written two days before my mother died.

  I tossed and turned the rest of the night, mulling things over, trying to talk myself out of what I now suspected. But I woke up the next morning more sure than I’d been a few hours ago, and I made the call I’d wanted to make at two in the morning. I worried that 6:00 a.m. was still too early, but the bright, clear tone of Emmaline Davis’s voice erased that concern. Ever since college, she’d been an early bird. Earlier than me, and that was saying something, since my favorite thing to do, even back then, was to photograph the sunrise. That meant I was often up before the sun. Even so, Emmaline usually beat me.

  I launched in the second she answered the phone, and told her about my mother’s journals and the entry about Jackie Makers. “Em, she knew something, and that’s why she died. I’m sure of it.”

  “I don’t know, Ivy—”

  “I know I’m right. I feel it in my gut. I didn’t think my mom knew Jackie Makers outside the cooking classes she and my dad were taking—”

  “Which is so cute, by the way. I love that they did that.”

  I had, too. After thirty-seven years of marriage, they’d still loved each other and been sweet with each other. Another nail in the coffin of my dad’s misery.

  “But maybe she did know her,” I said. “She learned about something. And she was . . . was . . . killed for it.”

  I stumbled getting the sentence out. I didn’t know why, but I knew in my heart that her death hadn’t been accidental. My mother . . . my mom . . . had been murdered.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I looked for Gus Makers at the antiques mini-mall. I hadn’t been in the building in years and years. Under different circumstances, I would be drawn to the vintage treasures. I would be educating my taste, which was all I could do given that I didn’t have a house in which to put anything.

  For now I walked straight to the front counter, bypassing the nooks and crannies of the shop, each filled with old china, crystal, record albums, bags and purses, vintage clothing, ceramics, reclaimed wood, shutters, old doors, and more. It wasn’t Gus I found, however. It was Randy Russell.

  My heart seized a tiny bit, his volatile encounter with Miguel that night in the parking lot of Yeast of Eden resurfacing front and center in my mind, quickly followed by his assertion to Miguel and me that someone had been in the car with Jackie Makers the night she died.

  Which had proved to be true, according to Nanette Masterson.

  He eyed me suspiciously as I approached the U-shaped counter. “You’re that girl who was with Baptista the other night, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. Ivy Culpepper. Good to see you again.”

  A blondish ring of hair ran like a horseshoe around his head, the top portion completely bald. He ran h
is hand over it. “Didn’t I see you at Jackie’s funeral, too? You knew her?”

  “No, not really. I’d met her only once,” I said, glad for the opening. At least I didn’t have to try to come up with some vague story line so I could try to get information. “My mom knew her, though.”

  He looked skeptical, and his voice was rough, like he’d smoked a pack a day for the past thirty years and it had destroyed his vocal chords. His was a hard life lived, from what I could tell. “Did she, now? And who is your mom?”

  “Anna Culpepper. She was a teacher at the high school in town. She, um, she died about six months ago.”

  His narrowed eyes opened wide as recognition took hold. “I remember that. She was hit by a car in the parking lot.” The gravel in his voice loosened. “Darlin’, I’m sorry for your loss.”

  I hadn’t expected any compassion from him, and it softened his rough edges in my mind, despite the belligerence I’d witnessed and Gus Makers telling me that his business partner and friend was a bit of a loose cannon. “Thank you.”

  “What can I do you for? In the market for some antiques?”

  “No house to put anything like that in right now. I’m staying with my dad.”

  “Okay, so what do you need, Ms. Culpepper?”

  “I was actually looking for Gus. Is he around?”

  Randy’s eyes rolled up for a split second, and something in his expression made me think there was a lot of baggage in their friendship that neither one hid very well. “He’ll be in later.”

  I tried to hide my disappointment. “Okay. Thanks. I’ll come back.”

  He hesitated for a second and then seemed to make up his mind about what he was going to say next. “Gus hasn’t mentioned you. You’re friends?”

  “No, no. I’ve met him only once or twice. It’s just, my mom . . . her death. I’m trying to piece together some things that happened before she died, and I thought Gus could help me.”

  The creases of his weathered face deepened as he frowned. “I’ve known Gus since we were kids. He didn’t know your mother. That I can guarantee.”

  “Oh.” I felt my face fall. “How can you be so sure?”

  “We’ve worked together nearly every day of our adult lives, darlin’. Pretty hard to keep secrets. I’ve managed to have a few, but Gus? He wears his damn heart on his sleeve. He don’t know the meaning of the word vault.”

  I’d intended to try to get information from Gus about his ex-wife and whatever connection she might have had to my mother, but if what Randy said was true, then he might very well have his own information. “My mom talked to Jackie Makers right before she was ki—” I swallowed the emotion clogging my throat. “Right before she died,” I amended. “I can’t ask Jackie about it, obviously—”

  “Obviously,” he parroted.

  “So I thought I’d ask Gus about it. Since he’d been married to Jackie and all.”

  “They were divorced.”

  “I heard they were still friendly, though.”

  He shrugged. “For Jasmine’s sake.”

  I rested my elbows on the glass counter and leaned in, lowering my voice to a level that suggested conspiracy. “I’m always curious about people. Why’d they get divorced?”

  But if I’d thought Randy Russell would just spill the beans and tell me his best friend’s dirty secrets, I’d been wrong. “Not my story to tell,” he said. “I do know the meaning of the word vault, and this, Ms. Culpepper, is locked up tight.”

  “It’s my story, so I guess I can tell it.”

  I jumped at the voice behind me and turned to see Gus Makers and his affable smile entering the store, the door silently swinging shut behind him. They really needed a bell on that door to announce customers. And owners.

  I swallowed my guilt, hoping he hadn’t heard our entire conversation. “Hi, Mr. Makers.”

  “Just Gus, remember?”

  I smiled, tamping down the nerves in my gut. For all I knew, Gus Makers could have had something to do with my mother’s death. She’d specifically mentioned him in her journal. Maybe she hadn’t spoken only with Jackie. Maybe she’d sought out Gus, too. Did he have a secret worth killing for? “Gus. I was just . . . I stopped by to . . .”

  “She wants to know if her mother and Jackie were friends,” Randy said, jumping in as I stumbled over my words.

  Whereas Randy had a ring of blondish hair that still crowned his head, Gus was completely bald. If he’d had a dark covering of hair, he would have been the spitting image of Denzel Washington, complete with the wide smile and the intelligence emanating from his eyes. He wasn’t going to let his lack of hair define him; instead he had taken charge, had shaved it all, and had remained in control. The difference between him and Randy was night and day. Gus was Mr. Cool compared to Randy’s curmudgeonly persona. They were both good-looking men, but completely different from one another.

  “Your mother?” Gus asked.

  This time I was determined to get through my own story without my voice cracking or the words catching in my throat. “My mom died about six months ago. I ran into someone who said she saw her talking to your ex-wife a few days before.” I drew in a quick breath to steady my emotions. “I didn’t know they knew each other, and I’m just trying to piece together the time before my mom died.”

  Gus folded his arms over his chest. “And your mother is . . . was who?”

  “Anna Culpepper. She was a teacher at the high school. She and my dad were taking cooking classes from Jackie at Well Done.” I studied him, looking for a reaction or a sign of recognition.

  He gave me neither.

  “So there you go,” he said. “They knew each other from the class she was taking, right? Seems logical to me.”

  I tapped my fingers on the glass. “That’s what I thought at first, but they were outside of Jackie’s house.” I didn’t mention that his daughter might have been in my mom’s English class. That was something to dig into separately.

  Gus and Randy looked at each other. Gus raised his eyebrows, as if he were silently communicating that maybe I was a bit off my rocker. “Ms. Culpepper, maybe they became friends. It happens, you know.”

  That was, of course, a logical conclusion for someone who was not privy to the entry my mom had written in her journal. “Maybe . . .”

  “Not maybe. Probably. You seem to be looking for some cryptic explanation. Let me tell you something I’ve learned over the years. The most obvious reason is usually the correct reason.”

  I sighed and spoke honestly. “I guess. I just . . . It’s been hard, you know, losing my mom. I’m sure you understand. I miss her. I’m just trying to get closer to her—”

  “I do understand. I ask myself all the time why my wife—ex-wife—did the things she did, what she thought and felt, her choices and decisions. I can never know these things, and the last year isn’t how I want to remember her. I choose to remember her the way she was when we were together. When we were raising our daughter. Before things fell apart for us.”

  He’d given me an opening, and I jumped. “What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?” It was a bold question, but I needed to know if I was right and if my mother was actually murdered, and the only way I knew how to do that was to be bold.

  Another look passed between Gus and Randy. Randy made a face, his brow crinkling, as he shrugged at his friend. The message seemed to be that it was Gus’s life, so it was up to him if he wanted to share his dirty laundry.

  “Let’s just say that relationships are complicated. Secrets and lies. Secrets and lies are nothing but destructive,” Gus said.

  I hadn’t expected that level of honesty from him, even though it was cryptic. From that response, I had no idea which one of them, Jackie or Gus, had kept secrets and told lies. Maybe both. I didn’t come away with anything that would help me understand what my mom had discovered about Jackie and if that had had anything to do with her death, but I couldn’t, in good conscience, pry any more than I already had. I said good-by
e and headed across the street to Yeast of Eden to regroup and figure out what to do next.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Olaya Solis had a style all her own. Loose-fitting dresses and caftans were her go-to apparel. I’d always classified such clothing in the housedress category, but on Olaya, they looked stylish and hip. Today she wore a flowing dress with a colorful symmetrical tribal pattern. The vibrant black, blue, and coral colors made her skin glow. She had bangles on her left wrist and gladiator sandals on her feet. She was a modern-day Aztec goddess—in her early sixties.

  We sat down at a little bistro table in front of Yeast of Eden, and I told her about my mom’s journal, the last entry, my conversation with Randy Russell and Gus Makers, and the niggling fear I had that my mother’s death hadn’t been accidental.

  Once I’d finished, we sat in silence for a minute.

  Only the sudden pallor of Olaya’s skin showed she was shaken. “Murder?” She looked stricken, her green eyes wide and clouded. “Do you really think so, Ivy?”

  “It makes sense. My mother knew something.” I recited the words I’d memorized from my mom’s journal. “Jesus. I knew I was right. Knew. It. I won’t tell Owen yet, not until I talk to Jackie. He wouldn’t want me getting involved. The problem is that she doesn’t really know me. How to approach her? Not at cooking class. Maybe I’ll stop by her house. Yes. That’s what I’ll do. But what about Gus? That’s what I still don’t know.”

  I went on. “Nanette Masterson said she saw my mom talking to Jackie on Maple Street. It had to be around the same time as the journal entry my mom had written. She knew something . . . something . . . and she went to talk to Jackie about it.”

  “But no, that does not make sense. If someone saw them talking and was worried about some secret coming out into the open, Jackie would have been killed then, too, yes?”

  “But she was.”

  That simple statement hung between us for a minute.

  “Maybe my mom told someone else what she knew. Or somehow someone, meaning the killer, found out. He or she killed my mother to keep her quiet.”