by Molly Macrae
As disappointing as being snubbed by cat and ghost was the bag Ardis brought back from Mel’s. The virtuous, smug spinach salad staring out at me when I opened the bag looked nothing like the wicked galette of my imagination. But Ardis reported that Mel hadn’t been satisfied with the first galette and wouldn’t let any of it past her kitchen door. Mel did promise she’d come to the meeting, though, and bring version 2.0. I let Joe’s phone know in a text. The chance to review a new recipe might be enough to entice him to our meeting.
* * *
The Three Stooges were blaring in the den off Ardis’ kitchen when I arrived. I stuck my head in to wave hello to her daddy and found Joe there, too. The two of them sat side by side, in twin recliners, nyucking it up like old friends. Neither of them noticed me through the hilarity; I waved anyway.
“We might lose John in there, too,” I said, “if the Stooges are still on when he gets here.”
“I can’t change the channel. Laughing’s good for Daddy’s chest. Take this in to Joe, will you?” She handed me a glass of iced tea. “But tell him not to let Daddy get hold of it or we’ll both be up all night.”
I’d planned to be at Ardis’ well ahead of the others, the better to be their intrepid leader, even though I had neither called the meeting nor handed them their assignments. But the members of the posse were completely dedicated and serious, and I should have known they would all arrive early, too, ready to contribute.
Thea Green, our town librarian and the brains behind database searches, arrived shortly after I did. “I know I’m early,” she said. “But I hope the sooner we get started, the sooner we’ll be out of here. I’ve got books to read and places to go. Like my bed.”
“It’s not even seven,” I said.
“My point exactly. Let’s knock this thing out and go.”
Ardis held a chair for her. “Sit, Thea.”
Thea sat, and when I saw her kick off her three-inch heels, I knew we had her for the evening. She’d told me once that her shoes screamed high fashion while her feet just plain screamed.
Mel came in, her hair newly dyed midnight blue with turquoise highlights and spiked to attention. She hadn’t bothered to change out of her chef pants—pink-and-black houndstooth. She handed me a box that smelled of fresh pastry, cinnamon, chocolate, and something . . .
“Raspberry,” she said. “Knew you wouldn’t get it. This galette is the important part of the meeting, Red, so if you haven’t got anything momentous to tell us, we can cut straight to what makes the world get rounder.”
The bottom of the box was warm. I passed it to Ardis before I drooled on it.
Ernestine O’Dell came in on John Berry’s arm. They were the posse’s senior members—Ernestine in her seventies, John in his eighties—and they watched out for each other. Ernestine was fond of wearing grays and browns and usually reminded me of a round old grandmother mole. Tonight she was decked out in green capris and a blouson top and looked more like a Granny Smith apple. John had left the mountains for the sea as a young man, first in the navy and then on his own sailboat. He’d moved home to stay, a month or so after I had, to care for his older, ornery brother, but when he occasionally talked about his boat, the blue of the ocean still lit his eyes. The boat hadn’t been overly large, he’d told me, and it was trim and quick. That described John, too.
“Have you been shopping with that wild granddaughter of yours again, Ernestine?” Thea asked.
“She has an eye for color, doesn’t she?” Ernestine peered down at herself. “Although I’m not sure the colors do so much for me. Kath, did you bring some of your wonderful notes and diagrams for us to look at this evening?”
“It wouldn’t be an investigation without Kath’s lists and flowcharts,” Mel said.
“I only ask because I left my magnifier at home. I am so sorry.” Ernestine’s thick lenses shone at me as John steered her to a seat at the kitchen table.
I held up the messenger bag with my notes and Ardis’ spiral notebook. “I brought copies, Ernestine. There isn’t much to them, but you can take yours home and look at it when you get a chance.”
“That’s fine, then.”
“If you don’t have much for us, what are we doing here?” Thea asked.
“We are sitting down, hushing up, and letting Kath lay it all out,” Ardis said, thumping a plastic jug of iced tea on the table. “John Berry, if you’re going to stand there whistling Andy Griffith, you might as well go on in and join the other slackers. I’m closing the door, though, so you can’t have it both ways.”
“Ardis?” Joe said from the doorway. “Your ninety-six-year-old slacker daddy is asking for you. He wants to change the lightbulb in the lamp at the end of the sofa. He says it flickers. It looks fine to me. I can change it to humor him, though.”
Ardis stood with her eyes closed for a few seconds.
“I don’t mind sitting with him, if it’ll help,” Joe said.
“That would be a blessing, Ten.” There was nothing but affection in her voice when Ardis called him Ten. She’d known him since he was too young to be picked on because of the literary millstones around his neck. “Here.” She handed him a box of crackers. “Let him have a few of these. He thinks he’s not allowed, and he loves getting away with it. And shut that door before I come in there and shoot Barney Fife with his only bullet. Kath, are you ready to get this meeting started?”
I moved to the head of the table. Mel gave me a thumbs-up. Joe waved and pulled the door closed.
“Although,” Ardis said before I had a chance to open my mouth, “now that I think about it, I wonder if we’re jumping the gun with this cold case.” She pulled out the chair next to Mel but didn’t sit. “All we have is an elbow, and for all we know that’s all we’ll have in the end.”
“I love a short meeting,” Thea said. “Pass the galette, and let’s go home.”
“But even an elbow deserves a name,” John said. Ernestine and Mel murmured agreement.
“But maybe we should wait a few days” Ardis said. “At least until they finish digging it up and we see what we have to work with. It’s already a cold case. It won’t get any colder.” She sat down and put her own elbows on the table. “But as long as we’re here, tell them about the hot case, Kath.”
“Is this some kind of bait and switch?” Thea asked.
“It’s better,” Ardis said. “It’s bait and bait. We’ve hit the big time. We have two cases. Tell them, Kath.”
“Do you all know Ardis is talking about the death, sometime last night or early this morning, of Phillip Bell, the new assistant director out at the Homeplace?”
“How could I?” Thea asked. “I’ve been in meetings all day.”
“Pour soul,” Ernestine said.
“Thank you, Ernestine.”
“She meant Phillip Bell, Thea,” Ardis said.
“Did you know him, Kath?” John asked.
“Only slightly. I met him yesterday when I was out there for the high school enrichment program.”
“Limburger and raw onions on liverwurst,” Mel said. “That’s what he had the only time I remember him eating lunch at the café. We don’t get an order for that too often.”
I suppressed a shudder for Mel’s benefit. “That fits. Nadine Solberg called him a showman, and from what I saw, she was right. He was . . . interesting. Very dramatic and intense.”
“And you found him this morning, didn’t you?” Ardis said. “And helped the authorities with their ‘inquiries,’ as they say.”
“I believe they only say that when someone is a suspect,” Ernestine said. “Oh my. Are you a suspect, Kath? I am so sorry.”
“It’s okay, Ernestine. I’m not a suspect.”
“It sounds as though you aren’t sure you liked him,” John said.
“I think I did. I think I wanted to. He sure had most of the kids eating ou
t of his hand. But it’s funny, Nadine said the same thing about the Holstons when I asked her if she liked Phillip. She thought he was doing a fine job, and she hired him, of course. But she said the Holston jury was still out about him.”
“And Holston money makes the Homeplace go round,” Mel said.
“You only knew him by his coffee and the smelly cheese he ate,” Thea said. “And Kath thinks he was ‘interesting.’ But we don’t know him or the situation well enough to start throwing around motives.”
“I was only making an observation,” Mel said. “Legitimate and with no strings attached to any particular powerful, wealthy family. But money is a legitimate motive. We all know that. Money talks. Money giveth and money taketh away. The power of money corrupts.”
“Yeah. Okay. We get it, Mel,” Thea said with exaggerated punctuation. “I’d like to make an observation, too. The sheriff’s department is not totally incompetent.”
“The point of your observation being what?” Ardis asked.
The meeting was not turning out to be as tidy or friendly as our meetings usually were. It might have helped if Ardis had clued me in to her bait-and-bait tactic beforehand. Or if Thea had left her attitude in a book on a shelf back at the library. They eyed each other, Ardis’ back straightening and Thea’s shoulders squaring up. I wondered who would blink, then decided to step in before one of them spit instead.
The door to the den opened, and Joe stepped in first, accompanied by an air freshener jingle from the television.
“Sorry to interrupt, but you might want to come see this. The sheriff’s coming on the news in a few seconds. Suspect in custody.”
“We’re not interested in Andy Taylor,” Thea said. “Or Opie or Otis.”
“Our sheriff,” Joe said. “Haynes.”
“You changed the channel?” Ardis squawked. “Daddy never lets me do that. He squawks!”
“I only flipped it for a second. Your daddy’s in the bathroom. Come on, or you’ll miss it.”
Chairs scraped, and we crowded into the den after Joe in time to see footage of two deputies, walking away from the camera with a suspect between them, heading for a side door of the courthouse.
“Who is it?” someone farther in the room asked.
A “hush” came from behind me.
Clod’s posture and gait were recognizable on the right, and it looked like Darla on the left. They each had a hand around the upper arm of a woman who walked between them with her head bowed. Either we’d missed the suspect’s name in the newscaster’s narration of the footage or it hadn’t been mentioned yet. The camera cut to Sheriff Haynes and we all leaned closer, despite the television’s volume being turned up to the level of a bellow. Then Ardis’ daddy tottered back into the room and the bellowing really began. It ended with Joe flipping the channel, Sheriff Andy Taylor tousling Opie’s hair, Ardis settling her daddy back in his recliner, and her daddy telling the rest of us to clear out, sit down, or bring him a beer.
“I do not think beer is strong enough for what ails this posse,” someone behind me said—the same someone who’d shushed us from behind moments earlier. “I will consider giving you some helpful management pointers. As soon as you apologize.”
“Geneva!” I said. Out loud.
Chapter 10
I wasn’t facing anyone—anyone alive—when I had my “Eureka moment,” as Ardis called it, so no one but Geneva saw me wince.
“They are all staring at your back,” Geneva said, “except Ardis’ older-than-dirt daddy. He is throwing daggers at your back with his eyes. And I have a confession to make. I have felt like throwing daggers at your back with both hands.”
“Come on along, all of you,” Ardis said, trying to be heard over Aunt Bee, but not so loud that she irritated her father. Avoiding that was a lost cause.
“Who are all these people, Ardie?” he shouted. “And why’d they let all the flamin’ fireflies in the house?” He was looking toward Geneva. She preened.
“There are no fireflies, Daddy,” Ardis said, kissing his bald head. “Ten, you stay with him, will you? And Kath, you come on back to the kitchen and we’ll all try to behave better.”
“Well, this is awkward,” Geneva said, following me. “Now you will not be able to call me by name when you pretend to talk to me on your phone. You did not think of that when you started bandying my name about, did you? Our perfectly good ghost communication system scuttled like so much rubbish or some poor soul’s left arm in a family garbage dump. And that was only your first mistake. I have been keeping track of your mistakes for you, and you can thank me later. But what are we going to do now? Of course, you could call me Ginger. That is what my daddy called me.”
She followed me like a swarm of gnats—nattering gnats that I wanted to swat. I sat down at the table and tried to look normal, but probably didn’t achieve it because my shoulders kept creeping up to my ears.
“Debbie just texted,” Mel said. “The suspect we saw with Cole? It’s Bell’s ex-wife.”
“Oh no, no,” I said. Of course that was Grace we’d seen walking between Clod and Darla.
“Calling me by my daddy’s pet name was merely a suggestion,” Geneva said. “There is no need to be so theatrical about your aversion to it. People stare at you enough as it is. On the other hand, you could text me and I can read over your shoulder.”
I sat up straight. Texting could work, and Geneva and I definitely needed to talk, if only so I could tell her to hush up and we’d talk later. “Um, guys? I need to get hold of someone. But I also met Grace Estes—Phillip’s ex—yesterday, and I immediately liked her. I know that doesn’t count for squat and, yes, I saw friction between them, but I can’t believe she did this.”
“Why not?” Thea asked.
“She was still in love with him.” As soon as I said that, I knew it was true. That was the loss and the longing—the love and pain—that had jolted me when I touched her shirtsleeve after we collided. She might have been needling him, maybe maliciously, but she did still love him.
“That means less than squat,” Mel said.
That was true, too.
“Hang on, though, okay? Um, discuss it among yourselves. This won’t take long.”
I pulled out my phone and tapped, WHYB? WNTT. YH red hair?
“My eyes are going to cross,” Geneva said in my ear. “Please use all the letters God gave you.”
Sorry.
“I have to tell you,” she said, interrupting before I could type more, “that after the way you bludgeoned my heart, a mere ‘sorry’ is an unconvincing apology. It lacks effusion.”
Effusion later. Where have you been? We need to talk. You have red hair? It was like conducting a weird, reverse séance; instead of waiting for a spirit to rap, I was tapping messages to a ghost. It was also exceedingly uncomfortable, because she hovered right behind me and I was beginning to shiver. Why don’t I call you and not use your name in the conversation?
“Do we have time to cover your many and varied queries?” she asked.
Not really. Not now.
“You are laborious and all thumbs with that thing.”
TTYL.
She blew an unpleasant gust down the back of my neck.
Sorry. Talk to you later. Walk back to the shop with me?
“A-Y-G-I-A-S-T-Y-A?” she said, pronouncing each letter slowly, clearly, and annoyingly.
?
“Do you see why I think that is annoying?”
Yes.
“I will translate. Are you glad I am speaking to you again?” She pronounced each syllable as slowly, clearly, and annoyingly as she had the letters.
Yes.
“I will be gracious and assume that the hesitation of your thumbs before you answered was due to the upwelling of emotion you are feeling at having me once again at your side. I am overcome, myself, and
feel I must go meditate. If you need me, I will be in the other room with Ardis’ nearly dead daddy and your burglar beau.”
My burglar beau. He wasn’t one, really. Or much of one. Lately.
“Kath?” Ardis said. “Did you learn anything useful?” From the way she and the others looked at me, I got the feeling that they hadn’t discussed anything among themselves while I’d been texting.
“Possibly.” Would knowing that Geneva’s father called her Ginger help find her in the records? She didn’t strike me as a Ginger.
“That’s unhelpfully nonspecific,” Thea said. “Are we working on anything or not? One case? Two cases? I’m thinking no cases. Let’s eat Mel’s galette, tell her what we think of it, and hit the road.”
“Not yet.” I got up and went to the head of the table again. “Let me lay both cases out for you.”
“Excellent, now the way I see it—”
“Ardis, let me take it from here, please.”
She closed her mouth and sat back, hands folded in front of her. The model of comportment for all the third- and fourth-grade students she’d taught before she saw the light and became manager of the Weaver’s Cat.
“Start with the name,” John said. “Start with Geneva.”
“Yes. Maybe there’s something subconscious working with that name, and that’s why you suddenly felt compelled to shout it,” Ernestine said. “Eccentricity aside.”
“Hold on.” I took a pen from my purse, and then rooted through the messenger bag, finding the notes and notebook, but no blank paper. Great preparation.
“What do you need?” Ardis asked.
“Nothing. I’ll use these.” I turned the pages over and tapped their edges to square them. I wrote Geneva on the back of the first and Phillip Bell on the second and moved them aside. “Geneva is a name I first heard out at the Homeplace. When I stayed in the cottage, in passing—that’s as close as I can get to pinning it down. But”—I tapped the paper with Phillip’s name on it—“Phillip seemed to know the name, too. He was working on something—researching something he was excited about—and from his reaction to the bones, they meant something or tied in to that research somehow. It’s also possible that the last name we’re looking for is Bowman. Geneva Bowman. But I’m not sure.”
