A Deadly Draught (18 page)

“It’s just all about your problems, isn’t it?” she said, her face shiny with sweat and her eyes flat with barely suppressed anger. Then suddenly, she changed and apologized, saying she was working long hours, and the shop wasn’t doing well.

“It’s okay, Honey. I am kind of into my own world lately,” I replied. We both smiled, and that was that. She was her usual perky self the rest of the day.

Regardless of her mood today, I knew she would see right through me when I began to ask her questions. To Francine, whom I had known for only several months, I had appeared transparent. There was no chance I could slide into girl talk about the night of the murder without Sally calling me on it. Oh, God. I was no good at this sleuthing thing. I propped my arms on the steering wheel and put my head on them. A knock on the window made me jump.

“Are you coming in to say hello, or are you just out for an afternoon of parking in front of my shop?” Sally wore a blue-and-white-checked apron with an appliqué on the bib that read Sally’s Tea Room and Bakery. Her face looked as welcoming as her homey costume.

“Oh, so the aprons came in. That’s a nice, friendly look, the blue and the white.”

“Don’t sit out here in the heat. Come on in, and I’ll treat you to some lavender scones I made earlier today. I’ve only got two left, so you’re in luck.” She opened the truck door and pulled me after her into the shop.

“Good day, then?” I mentally crossed my fingers for her.

“Great day. Everyone wants to get out of the heat. They take one look into my shop with its blue and white décor and think
cool
. See the sign?”

She pointed to a large chalkboard that sat to one side of her door. Passers-by could clearly see what it said: Sally’s Way to Beat the Heat—your individual twenty-four ounce pitcher of iced tea and choice of a lavender or lemon scone.

“I ran out of lemon scones about two hours ago. Here, try this.” She set a pastry on a willow-pattern plate, pushed me into a chair, and rushed out to the kitchen. When she returned, she carried a glass pitcher filled with an amber liquid in which pieces of ice floated. I bit into the scone as she poured me the tea. I took a sip. The liquid cooled my throat like breathing in on a cold winter’s day, but it did nothing to make my task any easier.

She bounced into the chair opposite mine, like a kitten pouncing on its favorite ball, plopped her elbows on the table, and propped her head on them. Drops of perspiration on her forehead told me she’d had a busy day.

“It was a good day. No, a great day.”

“You said that. Look, I don’t mean to be a wet …” I began but was cut off when she jumped up to wait on customers who entered the door.

“Back in a jiff.” She danced over to the next table, flashing her inviting smile at the four ladies who were seating themselves. “I’m out of the scones, but how would you like to try one of my lemon tarts? They’re wonderful with the iced tea, so light and fluffy. Just the kind of sweet delight for such a hot, hot day.”

The girl was on a roll, bustling around with pitchers of iced tea and pastries balanced on her tray, recommending another confection when the women finished their lemon treat. The front door opened, and yet another set of customers, a family with two young children, entered the shop.

“Sorry, Hera.” She sped by me with another full tray. “I’ll be right back.”

I sat at my table for a while, watching the ice cubes melt in the pitcher of tea, and I determined that this was not a good time to talk with Sally. Not only was she busy, but I was losing my nerve for prying information out of her. Michael was, after all, a prickly subject, so why bring him up just to ruin her good mood? What could she possibly know that would have any bearing on the night of his father’s murder?

I turned at the sound of the door closing and looked around the shop. All the customers had left, and Sally was turning the sign in the window from Open to Closed.

“So what were you saying?” She picked a crumb of scone off my plate and touched it to her tongue. “They are good, aren’t they?” I nodded.

“Okay, let me be straight with you. I’m helping Jake on his investigation.” I explained to her about the bank’s unwillingness to loan me money because of their concern I might be involved in the murder.

“Okay. So how can I help you?”

“Is there anything I should know about Michael that I don’t already know but you do?”

A cloud seemed to pass over her sunny features. “Well, you are notorious for sticking your head in the sand when it comes to Michael, but I’m not the one to ask. Try Francine.”

“Francine? I just came from her place. She didn’t seem to know anything.”

“Maybe you didn’t ask her the right questions.” Sally dropped her eyes to the tabletop and drew her finger through the condensation left by the tea pitcher. I knew this would be hard for her. Finally, she lifted her eyes to meet mine.

“You haven’t a clue, have you?”

“What?”

“Michael was sniffing around me at Christmas time, you know that. By Valentines’ Day, he was giving Cory chocolates and champagne. Come Easter, his car found parking spaces in two locations, in front of Cory’s house and in Francine’s chicken coop.”

Francine? That just couldn’t be right. Francine was so much older than Michael and she was a widow. I mentally clapped myself on the forehead. Sally was right. I was so dumb.

“You mean they’re, uh … sleeping together?”

“That, I don’t know for certain, but rumor says when he visits, he comes late at night, and he hides his car in one of the barns.” All her former joyousness at the day seemed to have disappeared. She slumped in the chair and picked at the lace on her apron. I felt guilty for ruining her day, but my curiosity made me ignore my friend’s mood, and I pressed on.

I was gnawing on an idea. Cory’s alibi for Michael seemed to break down when Jake questioned her. She could have been lying to Jake and me. Perhaps Michael had been with Francine that night.

“When did this, uh, this relationship begin?” I asked.

“This is just town talk, you know. I think I began to hear of it around the time of the murder. If you want to know more, ask Michael, why don’t you?” Her voice was beginning to take on a perturbed tone, and I knew I had pushed hard enough. She reached across the table for my plate and glass.

“I need to wash these and ready this place for tomorrow.” She turned toward the back of the shop.

“Listen, I’m sorry about all of this. I know you must still have feelings yet for Michael.“

“Oh, don’t be such a ninny. It’s not about my feelings for Michael. It’s about me and what a jerk I was to have fallen for the guy in the first place, given what a satyr he is when it comes to women. I hate being reminded of how gullible I was. Why you continue to moon after that man, I’ll never know. I’m your best friend, and you see what he’s done to me. It’s a matter of character, Hera, and he’s got none.”

“Cory must be furious,” was all I could think of to say without showing my idiocy.

“She’s playing dumb about the matter.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because she’s recently acquired another admirer of her own, one she believes is more capable of making big money. Stanley Frost.”

This was all so confusing and contorted. It was probably irrelevant to the murder anyway, but I had to know all the details, even at the cost of upsetting our already shaky relationship.

“Does Michael know about them?”

“I don’t know. I’m just passing on what I hear when people come in here. You’d have to ask Michael. You see him more than I do.” She giggled nervously. “Well, I guess I wouldn’t recommend that, especially if he doesn’t know, or it’s just rumor.” She flapped the dishcloth she held in her hand in the air with a snap. “But it would serve him right.”

“It would,” I agreed.
So who was Michael with the night of his father’s murder? Cory, Francine, someone else?
I stared out the window as Sally rushed around clearing off glasses, plates, and pitchers and wiping down tables. She turned to me with a tray full of dishes.

“Where are you? You’re off in another world.” One hand supported the tray, the other rested on her hip.

“Just thinking about Michael and that night. Who do you think he was with?”

“He said he was with Cory.” She turned her back on me. I began to wonder if my questions about Michael were making her face memories she didn’t want to examine or something else was going on. She didn’t want to meet my eyes. She was hiding something. No time like the present to turn a friend into an enemy, so I plunged ahead with a crazy idea.

“I don’t think so. I think he was here with you.”

Sally set down the tray on the counter and walked over to my table. Tears spilled from her eyes and rolled down her rosy cheeks, undeterred by the few freckles they encountered on their way toward her quivering chin.

“I’m such a fool. I still care for him, but I think he killed his father.” She sank down into the chair across from me and buried her head in her apron. I got up and went around the table to her, leaning down and putting my arms around her shaking shoulders.

“How long have you been carrying around this crazy idea?”

“No, no, you don’t understand. It’s not a crazy idea. We talked that night.” She wiped her eyes on the apron as I returned to my chair. I gripped her hands in mine.

“So he was here. Tell me. You’ll feel better.”

But I was wrong. When she was finished with her tale, neither she nor I felt better. Once I’d called Jake to ask him to come to the bakery, I knew things might get a lot worse for both of my friends.

*

“He stopped by here around what time?” Jake sat at the table, his notepad in hand, eyes fixed on Sally’s face. He had arrived a mere ten minutes after I put in the call to him. By the time he walked through shop door, Sally had composed herself. I’d made her a quick cup of hot tea, and she was sipping it while she picked a bran muffin into a mountain of crumbles on the plate in front of her.

“Late evening, I guess. It was sometime after I closed up. It was my late night.”

“Just a friendly visit?”

“No, I asked him to stop by some night that week whenever he found the time. I told him I wanted to talk to him, but you know,” Sally shifted around in her chair, sat up straighter and met Jake’s gaze, “I don’t think he even remembered I’d asked him to come here. In fact, I got the feeling he was avoiding me, but that night, he stumbled in here as if by accident. I think he saw me in the store as he passed and just wanted someone to unload on. I was available.”

“Go on.” I hated it when Jake used that cold, interrogation tone of voice, but Sally seemed wound up now, ready to tell him everything about that night.

“He came in here like a tornado. I asked if he wanted to sit down, but he said no and began to pace around the front of the store, waving his arms and yelling that he hated his father. Went on and on about how he had given his life over to the man, but no more. Michael said he was finished with living under Michael Senior’s boot. He was leaving just as his brother did and starting a new life somewhere else.”

“That sounds more like a man at a crossroads, about to leave, not entertain murder.” Jake didn’t know how wrong he was, but he hadn’t heard the rest of her story.

“I thought so, too, but then he said something else that worried me. ‘I’m not going to let that man have the final word on this. He needs to listen to me. And he will listen this time. I’ll make him.’ He was angry. I’ve never seen him like that before. He ran out of here as if he had the devil on his tail.”

“So you think he went to have it out with his father? Did he tell you what their earlier disagreement was about?”

“No. He wasn’t making very much sense, just said he was determined to make his father hear his side of the story. No, no, wait. Not his side of the story. He said, ‘her side of the story.’”

“Any idea who he was referring to?”

“No. Maybe Hera, maybe his mother, or Cory or …”

“Or any number of women in his life. I know, I know, butt out,” I said. I sat back in my chair, determined to keep my observations to myself.

“Time to have a showdown with Michael.” Jake got out of his chair, heisted jeans higher on his lean hips, and prepared to leave.

“Sit. She hasn’t finished yet.” Jake was jumping the gun, so despite my resolution to keep out of his interrogation of Sally, I put my hands on his chest and pushed him back into the chair.

We waited. I watched her swallow hard and take in a deep gulp of air.

“I followed him. That’s how I know he killed his father.”

“You saw him at the barn?”

“No, I followed him until his car hit the hill leading past Ramford Brewery. Then my old truck gave out and just stopped on me. It took me a few minutes before I could baby her into starting again. By then, his car had disappeared. I knew if I drove down the lane to the brewery, he would see I’d followed him. I didn’t want to take that chance. I felt really stupid chasing him down country roads like that. Now I wish I’d just turned in the drive. I could have stopped a killing.”

“More likely, you would have become another victim.” It was Jake’s observation, not mine. I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around Michael as his father’s murderer.

I sat next to Sally, rubbing her back as she talked. The backrub seemed to be calming her. I could feel her relax, and she moved into my massage as I worked her shoulder muscles in a circular motion. Suddenly, she tensed and shifted her weight forward.

“My baby’s father is a killer,” she said, “and I let him do it.”

Eighteen

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Sally twirled one of her springy red locks around her index finger. The flour on her hands deposited a light dusting on the strand of hair, making it look as if she had suddenly gone gray in one spot.

I grabbed her hand. “Quit that. You’re getting flour all over your hair. You can’t just shut me out after dropping a bomb like that one. Does Michael know?”

“No, of course not. What did you think? I would tell him, and we’d get married and live happily every after?” Her sarcasm signaled she was about to go into one of her stubborn moods, where nothing I could say would dissuade her from doing and thinking just as she pleased. I might as well go home and let her settle down, but thinking back on her abrupt mood swings over the past week, I reconsidered leaving.