by Wendy Tyson
“Brian,” Megan said, standing. “Why was your flask at my café?”
“I told you. I don’t know.”
“Do you remember the last time you saw it?”
He thought for a moment, eyes shifting. “No.”
“You have no idea where you left it?”
“No.” He looked down at his hands, which were dancing on the table top.
Megan sat forward in her chair, thinking. He was clearly lying, but she didn’t know why.
Porter said, “I came here to ask you questions.”
“Ask away.”
He tapped one finger nervously on the table top. “Why were you with Dr. Finn when he came to help Sarge?”
“Because we were going to have dinner together.”
“It was coincidence, then?”
“What was coincidence?”
“You coming by my house, and then you showing up again with Doc Finn.” Porter sat forward, matching Megan’s posture. His gaze darted from object to object in the kitchen, settling finally on Megan’s face. “Did you hit my dog?”
“Brian, no! I would never hurt your dog—or any dog.”
“It seemed awful coincidental, you showing up twice like that.”
“I told you, the first time I came by about the flask. It was Denver—Dr. Finn—who told me it must be yours. The second time was strictly a coincidence. I happened to be with Dr. Finn when you called.”
He eyed her with suspicion. “You’re dating Dr. Finn?”
“No.” Maybe. “Not that it’s your business.”
Porter stood abruptly. “This was a waste of time.” The tendons on his neck were taut beneath reddened skin, the portion of the dragon visible a sickly green in the dim light.
In a calming voice, Megan asked, “Why are you really here?”
“I told you. You were nosing around and I wondered—”
Megan held up her hand to stop him, exhaustion and impatience suddenly raining down on her. “The truth, please?”
His head spun toward her, eyes flaming. “What are you suggesting?”
“Someone was killed here, in case you hadn’t heard.” Megan straightened her spine, trying hard to ignore the pounding in her chest. “A man sneaks around my property, it makes me wonder what he’s up to.”
His eyes narrowed to slits. “And you think I had something to do with Simon’s death? Is that it?” He took a step toward Megan.
She held her ground, refusing to be cowed. Her pulse raced. She scanned the kitchen, her gaze fixating on the serrated knife she’d used to slice the bread, and mentally calculated how quickly she could reach the counter.
Silence stretched, and with it their game of mental chicken.
Finally, Porter said, “I knew Simon—everybody did—but I didn’t kill the old man.” His shoulders drooped, the green dragon losing its tautness.
Megan studied him, deciding whether he was playing games or being truthful. In the civil light of her grandmother’s kitchen, Brian “Brick” Porter looked more boy than man.
Upstairs, a door slammed. Sadie sat up straight, ears back and tail wagging. Echoing the dog’s posture, Porter bolted upright.
“Who’s here? I don’t need any trouble.”
“Relax. It’s only my grandmother.”
A minute later, Bonnie walked into the kitchen. She’d taken the time to put on a pink housecoat over her gray flannel pajamas. She walked with resigned purpose—an insomniac’s nod to the night.
“Hello, Brian,” she said as though it were the most natural thing in the world to have him sitting in her kitchen.
“Mrs. Birch.” Porter nodded.
“I guess you two know each other?”
They shared a look—fleeting, but noticeable—before Bibi said, “It’s a small town.”
Megan stood to make her grandmother tea. It was a small town, all right.
Thirteen
“The spinach is starting to flower.” Clay stood straight, propping his elbow on his shovel. With the back of one gloved hand, he pushed a long, lank strand of dark hair away from his eyes and glanced toward the sun. “Weather’s warming up. The spinach will go crazy. We need to pull the rest.” He leaned down, picked a spinach leaf, and flipped it over. “This one’s clear, but I saw aphids on a few in the greenhouse and down there.” He pointed to the very end of the row.
“Ladybugs,” Megan said. “Aphids’ natural enemy.”
“No time. The aphids will spread and once they do, we’ll lose the whole crop.”
“They rinse off.”
Clay shook his head. “It’s bolting anyway, Megan. We can sell it. And what we can’t sell, we can freeze.” He shrugged. “You like spinach, right? It’s too late to do anything else.”
“Nonsense.”
Megan and Clay both turned abruptly at the sound of Bonnie’s voice.
“Bibi. I thought you were napping.” It was after eleven. Bibi had been up half the night, so when she went to put her feet up at nine and dozed off, Megan let her sleep.
“Naps are for babies and the infirm.” She waved a hand in the direction of the spinach. “Get some watering wands, take off the sprinkler, and put on a hose nozzle. Then drag the hose over here and spray the unbeliever out of the spinach. Start from the bottom, especially the underside where the little critters lay their eggs.” She tapped one of the spinach plants gently with a white Keds-clad toe. “And Clay’s right. The spinach is bolting. You need to pick it and sell it or soon it will be worthless.”
Megan and Clay stared at Megan’s grandmother open-mouthed. This was the first time she’d shown an interest in the workings of the farm.
“Close your mouths and get to work,” she said. With obvious difficulty, she knelt down on the ground and started picking the healthy spinach leaves. “Clay, we need a few large, clean coolers filled with cold water. The spinach will wilt if it stays out here like this.”
“We know, Bibi—” Megan started to say, alarmed. Her grandmother was in great shape considering her age, but having her kneel on damp earth to pick spinach did not seem like a fantastic idea.
Clay threw Megan a “don’t bother to argue” look. “Of course, Mrs. Birch,” he said with a smile. “That’s what we typically do. But if you’re willing to help us, perhaps you’d prefer to bag the spinach. I can get you a table and chair and set them up in the shade.”
“What, and miss all the fun of watching me try to get up?” Bibi scoffed. “Stop coddling. I may be old, but I’m not dead—or useless. Let’s get to work. All of us.”
“What was that about?” Clay asked later. He and Megan were putting away the last of the spinach-picking supplies. While Clay rinsed out the large coolers used to store the freshly-picked leaves where they awaited bagging, Megan was storing the bagged lettuce in the large commercial refrigerator. Both of them avoided the barn.
“She’s been acting odd for days now.”
“It was nice to see her engaged.”
“I guess.” As Megan shelved the spinach bags neatly within the walk-in refrigerator, she considered her grandmother’s behavior, both last night and today. Something was off, and she wondered about all the things that could have occurred before she arrived in Winsome. Small towns were microcosms, and like humanity at large, Winsome saw its share of bad and good, avarice and fear. Did whatever was underlying Bibi’s behavior have its roots in something older and bigger than what she could see now?
Clay straightened. “You don’t sound convinced.”
“I’m worried about her.”
“Talk to her.”
“I’ve tried.”
Clay’s eyes traveled from Megan’s face to the car that had just pulled into the long driveway. Megan followed his stare. She watched as King climbed out of the unmarked vehicle. Mirrored sunglasses hid his eyes, but even from thi
s distance Megan could see the glower on his face. A young cop, barely out of his Little League uniform, stood beside King.
“Finish this,” Megan said to Clay before walking up the slight incline to meet the police chief. “Bob,” she said.
“Where’s Bonnie?”
“Inside. Why?”
“We need her to come with us. We’d like to ask her some follow-up questions.”
“Why can’t you do it here?”
The two officers exchanged a look. “I’m really sorry, Megan, but we need her in the station.”
“You can come too,” the young cop said quickly, but his words were met by a sharp glance from King.
King said, “It’d be best if she came alone.”
“Are you pressing charges?”
“No.”
“I’m fine,” Bonnie said from the doorway, her tone resolute. “I was expecting this.”
Baffled, Megan looked at her grandmother and then the police. “She goes, I go.”
Another exchange between the two police officers, this one less sympathetic. King shrugged finally and said, “For goodness sake, fine. Let’s get going then.”
Bibi refused to let Megan in the interrogation room, so Megan paced in the tiny police station waiting area, nursing her hurt and trying hard to quell the rising tide of anger, but it was downright impossible.
What in the world was her otherwise gentle, rational grandmother up to? She didn’t want Megan, didn’t want a lawyer, and kept insisting that she could explain everything. Explain what? Megan’s head was about to explode. She toyed with calling her father, but thought better of it. There was nothing her father could do from Italy and he would only panic. She had no choice but to wait. Bonnie was more mentally with it than ninety-eight percent of the people Megan knew.
Or had been.
Almost ninety minutes later, King and Bibi came walking around the corner into the waiting area. King gave Megan a hearty smile, shook Bibi’s hand and said, “Your grandmother is free to go.”
“Is anyone going to tell me what happened?”
Bibi started walking toward the door as though she hadn’t heard her granddaughter. King smiled and said, “She cleared some things up for us. We told her we would contact her if we have further questions.”
“I’m her lawyer.”
“No you’re not,” Bibi said over her shoulder. “I don’t need a lawyer.”
“Bibi,” Megan hissed.
But Bibi had walked outside. Megan looked at King, eyebrows raised in a mask of exasperation. “Really? You can’t tell me anything? She’s my grandmother. Wouldn’t you want to know?”
The police chief glanced down at his loafer-clad feet and then up at Megan again. His half-smile was apologetic. He wasn’t budging. “You need to talk to her. As long as everything she told us checks out, we shouldn’t have more questions.”
As long as everything she told us checks out? Even my grandmother has a double life, Megan thought. What had happened to Winsome in the years since I’d been gone?
Bibi was maddeningly cheerful the entire way home.
“What happened in there?” Megan asked again.
Bibi waved her hand in a dismissive gesture that was becoming much too familiar. “Nothing worth wasting breath on.”
Megan glanced at her grandmother from across the truck’s bench seat. “Something went down in there.”
“I remember that Bobby King when he was a toddler in plastic pants. He needs to feel important, so he’s asking questions, most of which have nothing to do with Simon’s murder, rest assured about that.” She looked pointedly at Megan. “He asked and I answered is all.”
They pulled up to a red light separating Canal Street from Baker Avenue. Megan shot her grandmother another look, taking advantage of the traffic stop to ask her the question that had been most on her mind. “Bibi, how’d you explain the bloody glove?”
Her grandmother stared straight ahead. “What bloody glove?”
“I know about the glove. Bobby King told me about the bloody glove.” The light turned green and Megan inched forward, reluctantly taking her gaze off her grandmother. “‘Stay Warm in Winsome’? Who else would own those gloves?”
“Plenty of people.”
Megan grasped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white. “Why won’t you be straight with me?” she asked, softening her tone. “What’s going on?”
But her grandmother only gave her a gentle smile. “I didn’t kill anyone, Megan, nor did you. I have souvenir shop stuff everywhere, you know that. If someone found one of those gloves and used it to do something evil, that has nothing to do with me—or you. You have a farm to get off the ground. Stop worrying about this and get to work.”
“Someone died in our barn.”
“And there is not a thing on God’s green earth you can do about it.”
For the first time in her life, Megan felt anger—true, boiling anger—toward her grandmother. “Maybe not,” she said. “But I’m not one to sit around.”
“No one is asking you to sit around,” Bibi said calmly. She reached across the center console and touched Megan’s arm, her skin dry and feathery light. “I’m only asking you to trust me.”
Megan felt her anger wane, but only for a moment. Trust was one thing—she did trust her grandmother, implicitly—but blind trust of the system was another. And that was really what Bibi was requesting.
They rode the rest of the way without talking. Bibi hummed “Amazing Grace” quietly to herself. For her part, Megan focused on the road and thought about the random patterns formed on blood-soaked gloves.
Fourteen
Early the next morning, Megan dressed quickly in jeans and a sweatshirt and headed outside. After tending to the animals, she selected a small shovel from the makeshift tool chest near the chicken coop, glaring at the police tape as she passed the barn. She sprayed a deep cooler with bleach solution, rinsed it thoroughly, and wiped it out with clean towels before heading to the herb garden, her favorite space on the farm. Today she would bundle up small packages of the herbs she’d grown in hoop houses over the winter: curry, cilantro, parsley, oregano, chives, and great, long sprigs of sweetly scented lavender. At $3.00 a bundle, they would sell. And whatever didn’t sell, she and Bibi could dry and keep for their own use or for the café.
The sun was shining through a marshmallow fluff of clouds. Megan was kneeling on the ground in front of the curry, gently clipping off strands of the fragrant herb, when she glanced up, toward the abandoned Marshall house next door. The house was a plain rectangular Colonial, one room deep, built in the solid but sparse fashion of the eighteenth century. Its stone exterior was crumbling in spots, and what had been a broad, stately porch was now a derelict appendage hanging by one peeling railing. Despite the vagaries of age and use, the house still had good posture. Its leaded windows remained intact, and the small well house a few hundred feet from the main house was in perfect condition, at least on the outside. Someone willing to invest time and money could restore the property—and even add on to the home. It sat on at least three acres of farmable land.
Maybe she’d take a look at purchasing it. She couldn’t afford it now, but she would love to add an inn to the farm. Diversification of income would be a plus, and running an inn sounded like fun.
Thinking of the old Marshall property made Megan think of her mysterious Aunt Sarah—and a possible connection to Simon’s murder. She decided she’d finish up the herbs, drop them off at the store, and take a ride over to meet her great-aunt. She might be able to find her address online. She could check with Bibi, but why risk upsetting her? Besides, sometimes it was better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.
Sarah had purchased a small cottage off Briar Bush Way, about eight miles from Winsome, only a few months before. The house, as close to a thatch-roofed English Tudor a
s you would find in these parts, sat well off the road, smack in the middle of a circle of stately oaks, and on this warm May morning, the shade from the trees’ fresh spring leaves cast lacey shadows on a thick ring of lawn. The yard itself held paisley-shaped flowerbeds spaced randomly throughout, each filled with perennials in varied states of vivid bloom, and decorative birdhouses. Glass art pieces in jeweled tones stuck up from the ground on long iron poles. An American flag waved from a post near the front door, but other than the motion of the flag’s material and the gentle flutter of the tree branches overhead, the house was quiet.
Megan took a deep breath and knocked. There was no answer. She turned around, ready to head back to her car. That’s when she heard a voice call out.
“Over here! If you don’t mind an old woman milling about in her muckers, you can join me in the garden.”
Megan glanced around. She saw a red-clad arm waving from beneath the trees, past the corner of the house, before spotting a woman kneeling on the ground beneath a great oak. Megan walked toward the older woman, careful not to tromp on any flowers along the way.
“Hello,” Megan said tentatively. “Sarah?”
“Depends. Who’s doing the asking?” The woman peered up at her, blocking the sun with one hand. She was in her late seventies, with sun-browned skin and long, straight steel-gray hair tamed into a thick braid that hung halfway down her back. Thin and sinewy, her lean body was draped in red fabric—a long-sleeved red shirt and an ankle-length red, black, and gray skirt that spread around her like a blanket. She appeared to be building a tiny dwelling at the base of a tree. The miniature house, made of sticks, walnut shells, and bits of feathers, hugged gnarly roots. A camera case and tripod sat on a blanket nearby.
