Down on the Charm

by E L Wilder

  “No,” snarled Ruby. “I just discovered this fiasco this morning. And now the man in charge of finishing my cask room is lying in a morgue and the woman in charge of that man is in police custody. And I still have a business to run.”

  Hazel nodded. The issue was more complex than she had first assumed. While Ruby still seemed like a viable suspect, she was still one of her sister’s tenants. And if Ruby was innocent, that meant Hazel had to walk a careful line here—perhaps more careful than she had been. David had his hands full just managing the day-to-day operations. Who did that leave to ensure that everything, all her sister’s hard work, didn’t fall apart in her absence?

  “How long ago did you move in?” Hazel asked.

  “We transported the last of the inventory just after mud season—so mid-May. I should never have come here.”

  “No,” said Hazel. “You were right to come here. This is just a . . . blip.”

  “A blip?” cawed Ruby, her temper flaring.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Hazel explained. “Bennett Farms is lucky to have you here. You’ll get your money. I’ll see to that.” And she would. She was ready to write Ruby a check herself if she had to.

  “That’s the closest thing to an answer I’ve gotten in weeks,” Ruby said. “Thank you.”

  “Things will return to normal,” Hazel said.

  If she were going to get the answers she needed, this was the opportunity. “You were there yesterday. I’m hoping you can tell me what you saw.”

  Ruby tensed again. “I’ve already given my statement to the police. I saw what I saw.”

  “But what did you see?” she asked, pressing her advantage.

  Ruby continued to glare at her. When she finally spoke, it was not in the spirit of cooperation that Hazel had hoped for. “I’ll tell you what I told the detective. Your sister ran down Eric Moore with a tractor. He yelled for her to stop, and she just ignored him. I heard her mutter a few choice words about him right before she did it, too.”

  Something about this all seemed horribly suspect, but Hazel couldn’t put her finger on it.

  “Is it possible it was just an accident?” asked Charlie, finally jumping into the conversation.

  Ruby shrugged. “Or it’s possible that Eric Moore was a grade-A dirtbag, and eventually dirtbags get what’s coming to them. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t murder.” She brushed past them and headed back up the row. “And I didn’t call you in here to interrogate me.”

  Hazel tried to keep up with her. “My sister is innocent, Ruby. If there’s anything you saw that could prove it, you need to tell me.”

  Ruby pushed through the curtain and back into the showroom. “You should go,” she snarled, pushing open the barn door and holding it for them. Imagine! A Bennett being shown out of the East Barn like an unwelcome guest!

  “Sorry, Rubes,” said Charlie sheepishly, stepping outside. “Thanks for the aqua vitae.”

  Ruby grunted in reply. As Hazel passed her, Ruby blocked the door with her arm and stared Hazel down, close enough that Hazel could smell a touch of whiskey on her breath. Midmorning tasting indeed. “Listen, next time you visit your sister in the slammer,” said Ruby, “you can tell her that I want her to tear up that lease. If this is life down on the farm, then Kindred Spirits will just hightail it back up to the big bad city of Burlington.”

  Then she let Hazel pass and slammed the door behind her.

  “Phew,” said Charlie when they had crossed the courtyard. “She was all sunshine and roses.”

  “What happened to good cop in there?” asked Hazel

  “I panicked!” Charlie moaned. “I couldn’t think of anything to say other than asking her if she’d ever had prior run-ins with the law, and somebody had axed that question. But that doesn’t mean I was idle. I was watching her like a hawk.”

  “And what did your eagle eyes observe?”

  “Hawk eyes,” Charlie corrected. “For starters, she was lying through her teeth.”

  “When?”

  “The whole time! Where do I start? There’s something more going on there between her and Eric Moore and Jess Tully. Mark my words on it.”

  “Like what?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest,” she said. “But I’d bet the farm on it.”

  She paused and looked over Hazel’s shoulder, back in the direction of Kindred Spirits.

  “Did you ever notice,” she said, simultaneously pointing at Kindred Spirits and the tractor garage like a gunslinger drawing double iron. “That those two spaces share a wall?”

  Hazel looked back across the courtyard to the west arm of the barn. Charlie was right. Kindred Spirits and the tractor garage split the entire ground level between the two of them. They were near mirror-images of each other, the only difference being the tractor garage was still cordoned off with crime-scene tape.

  “Did Eric Moore get crushed on the other side of the wall from Ruby’s cask room?” Charlie asked.

  “So what?”

  “Just seems like a weird coincidence, don’t you think? You have the solve the riddle, Sherlock,” Charlie said. “I’m just your Watson.”

  And, with that, she bounded back up the stairs and into the bakery.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Hazel made her way around the side of the East Barn, where the Ladle Creek Construction trailer stood. She felt moderately guilty about proceeding without Charlie, but she was in character and it would be a shame to not capitalize on it by finding Jess Tully. But she found the trailer locked and her knocks went unanswered. She peered through the little window in the door. She could make out a few desks piled high with paperwork and a filing cabinet stuffed so full, a few of the drawers wouldn’t fully close.

  “Nobody’s home,” somebody called out to her. She turned and saw Tyler approaching, hands stuffed in his pockets, a ball cap pulled down too tightly over his face, obscuring his eyes.

  Hazel sighed. She didn’t want to blow Tyler off again, but with Jess Tully currently MIA, she wanted to find a quiet place to think through everything that had just happened. Maybe head back to the chapel and put some notes on her crazy wall.

  “Good morning,” she called. “Still basking in your newfound free time?”

  “I’ve found a few ways to fill it,” he said. He grabbed a notebook tucked under his arm and waved it in the air at her. A notebook!

  “You’re still writing,” she said, unable to mask the tinge of sadness in her voice.

  “I’m not sure I could stop if I wanted to. I’ve always been a fool like that.”

  “I’d like to read your work sometime,” she said.

  “And you can,” he said. “For a mere fifty cents a day. Haven’t you heard I’m living the high life as a reporter for the Larkhaven Scryer?”

  “And yet you’re here painting barns in your free time.”

  “Small-town journalism doesn’t pay the bills,” he said. An awkward silence stretched out between them. He spoke first. “Hey, with all this free time I’ve had, I’ve done more than writing. I’ve come up with a great idea for the grand opening. The tractor might not be an option, but I’ve thought of an alternative.”

  She was curious. “Do tell.”

  “What about the Carriage House?”

  She smiled. “Clever boy.”

  “For all the good it’s done me.”

  * * *

  Hazel and Tyler found the Carriage House pad-locked.

  She cursed. She barely had time for this side adventure, never mind drawing it out tracking down a key.

  “I’m not entirely disappointed,” Tyler said archly. “This place has always scared the wits out of me.” He cast weary glances up to the eaves as if something might pounce on them at any moment.

  Tyler had been a homeschooler, too, one of a handful of kids from the area that comingled from time to time. He and Hazel had taken to each other immediately. Once they’d tired of playing in Bennett Manor, the Carriage House had become their base of operations—fir
st for intense rounds of hide-and-seek, and then a secret place to have parties, and, eventually, a place to sneak away to and make out.

  To find out now that it had scared him this whole time would be like finding out that Charlie had a longstanding gluten allergy.

  “This place scared you?” she asked, incredulously. “Why?”

  “Oh, I dunno,” he said. “Could it be the proximity to the Haunted Forest? The weird sounds and shifting shadows? I’m pretty sure ‘unsettling’ is part of the architectural design.”

  Tyler was partly joking, but he was more right than he could have known. The Carriage House bordered the Tanglewood, a primordial forest now imprisoned in a few hundred acres. Once Vermont had been carpeted with forest like this, but at some point in the distant past, the old trees had fallen to the drums of progress and the axes of farmers, loggers, and industrialists. And while Vermont had since recovered, aptly earning its name as the Green Mountain State, only a few patches of the primordial forest remained. One of them, the Tanglewood, was located here, hidden as it were between the lake and the rest of civilization. And somewhere within the Tanglewood hid the Postern.

  “And now?” she asked. “Are you still scared?”

  “Terrified,” he deadpanned.

  “This was your idea,” she reminded, needling him.

  “And let it never be said I didn’t have all sorts of ideas that I later regretted.”

  Was that another dig?

  He smiled innocently enough. “Got a key?” he asked.

  “Nope. We should see if Ronnie’s home. He’d have it.”

  “Wait, Ronnie is still alive?” he marveled as they set out. Hazel shot him a sour look.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’m just impressed is all. I mean good for him. I just assumed his disdain for humanity would have consumed him by now. Though they say vinegar is the best preservative.”

  “He isn’t all that bad,” she said, punching his shoulder. “He’s a loveable curmudgeon. If he seems like a bit of grump, it’s because he doesn’t suffer fools. But he’s always been confident, capable, untouchable. That’s what Gammy loved about him. They were both indomitable spirits.”

  “Sounds like a real slice of man,” said Tyler. “And I would know.” He polished his fingernails smugly against the collar of his shirt.

  She guffawed. “And don’t worry,” she said. “Ronnie won’t remember you.” Of all her friends that had trolled Bennett Farms over the years, Ronnie had cultivated a special enmity for Tyler and Tyler alone.

  “Really?” he asked, hopeful.

  “Not a chance,” she said. “He has a memory like an elephant. You’re doomed.”

  “I don’t know why the guy always had it out for me.”

  “It might have been your tendency to break everything you touched,” she said.

  “It’s not like this place isn’t falling down anyway,” he said casually, then immediately started backpedaling. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “No,” she said, shrugging. “It’s true. The farm is old and the Bennett clan hasn’t maintained it over the years. If not for Ronnie, this place would have fallen down a long time ago.”

  “But the East Barn looks great!” he said. “Juniper really has a great vision for this place.”

  “Yeah,” she sighed. “She does.” Her thoughts flitted to Juniper, currently languishing in a holding cell somewhere while the police decided whether to file formal charges against her.

  Nobody was outside when they got to the cottage, so Hazel let herself into the yard. She climbed the front steps and was about to knock when Ronnie’s voice cut through the air. “He ain’t in there.”

  She startled and turned to see him in the white wicker chair tucked in the corner of the porch, his hands folded in his lap, his face serene. Then he smiled wide enough to crack the hedge of his beard and he slapped his leg as he laughed in a dry old wheeze that ended in a coughing fit.

  “Ronnie, you scared me half to death.”

  His beard twitched. “What can I do ya for?”

  “The keys to the Carriage House, actually.”

  He grew stern and shifted his gaze to Tyler. “I’da thought yer days of breakin’ things would be behind ya.”

  Tyler cleared his throat and shifted on his feet. “They say to do what you’re good at.”

  “Still a smartass, I see.”

  “We’re looking for a new vehicle to lead the parade at the grand opening,” said Hazel. “We thought we might check inside, see what we can restore to lead the way.”

  Ronnie’s eyes darkened, but he nodded slowly and then pulled himself to his feet, the wicker chair creaking underneath him. “Suit yourself.”

  He reached for his tool belt, where, between his tape measure and hammer, jangled a ridiculous circus-sized hoop holding dozens of keys.

  Hazel reached out, but Ronnie wheezed in laughter again. “You Bennetts may own the locks,” he said between chuckles. “But I own the keys.”

  He led the way back to the Carriage House. Hazel was surprised to see how spryly he moved. He might have been a nonagenarian but he was a nonagenarian that defied his age. She hoped she might be half as spry if she lived that long.

  When they reached the Carriage House, Ronnie opened the padlock. “Don’t go breakin’ anything,” he warned, staring down Tyler. “And lock it up when you’re done. Last thing I need is to have to chase some vermit out of here because you can’t close a door proper.”

  “Ronnie,” she said. “Speaking of vermit. The farm seems a bit crowded.” Maybe she shouldn’t be broaching the topic, even slyly, with Tyler right there, but time was of the essence. Wrangling interlopers was not easy, or quick, work.

  Ronnie’s beard twitched.

  “With trespassers,” she said, for emphasis.

  Ronnie held her gaze for a minute before snorting hard. “I’ll be sure to get on that.”

  With that, he shuffled off across the Carriage House courtyard. As she watched him go, she thought of the Book of Bennett. Might Ronnie know something about it? After all, he and Gammy had been fast friends for years.

  “Ronnie!” she called after him. He stopped but didn’t turn, so she ran to meet him. “Ronnie, you spent a lot of time with Gammy . . .”

  The line in his beard tightened and his eyes seemed to deepen, but he only nodded stoically.

  “Did she ever talk about . . . or did you ever see her with a . . . book?” she asked.

  “Helena loved to read.”

  “Sure. But this wasn’t a regular book. It would have been special somehow.” How could she describe a book she had never seen? She tried to imagine what a tome of great magical lore would look like, but all she could picture were movie props. “It’s an unusual book . . . somehow. Old. Large. A tome. Leather cover. Like a dictionary.” She had no idea if that was even right.

  His eyes narrowed for a moment, and she couldn’t tell if it was to get a better look at the new village idiot, or whether he was plumbing the depths of his memory.

  “Helena didn’t ever need no dictionary. She knew all the words in there. Or the ones worth knowin’.”

  “The Bennett crest!” she said. “It might have had the Bennett crest on it, but instead of a white cat, it was a black one with two tails.”

  “Nope,” he said, snorting again. “Now I got some shut-eye to finish. You mind yourself in there.” He nodded toward the Carriage House.

  She ran back to join Tyler.

  “I didn’t think it possible,” he said, “but old Ronnie has gotten even crabbier.”

  “Juniper has been asking a lot of him in preparation for the grand opening.”

  She pulled the Carriage House door open.

  The inside of the Carriage House had changed as little as the outside after all these years, and Hazel suspected it had something to do with the proximity of the Postern. Despite the overgrowth surrounding it, the building itself never seemed to age. Whatever magical force made the Tangl
ewood grow as it did must have worked to slow the decay of the building too. The closer one got to the Postern, the stranger things tended to become. Sometimes technology misbehaved. Time felt wonky. She could always feel it in the air when she came here, the tingle at the back of her neck. She’d always wondered if others felt it too, even on an unconscious level. Maybe that was why Tyler had been both drawn to and repulsed by it.

  “What did you have in mind exactly?” Hazel asked.

  “In the Carriage House? To find a carriage.”

  “Brilliant,” she said. But easier said than done. The Carriage House cut a horseshoe shape—like a smaller, one-story version of the East Barn. No sweeping turrets or anything like that. Just long spaces filled with old carriages, empty stalls, and relics of bygone eras. Growing up, they had hardly taken notice of these antiques, but now as they made their way through the barn, they stopped to marvel, shouldering open sticky doors to explore every nook and cranny. The sense of urgency she had felt before faded now as time stretched like warm taffy. The Carriage House had always possessed that sort of dreamy quality.

  They came to a long storage space housing a few cars shrouded in white cloths, stored here god only knows how long ago.

  “What is all of this?” he asked. The giddiness in his voice was unmistakable. She had to smile as he rushed forward and took hold of the corner of one sheet. But he stopped, looking back at her with questioning eyes. He was like a kid looking for the signal to open his Christmas presents.

  She nodded.

  He pulled back the sheet, unveiling the car beneath. Hazel confessed to knowing little to nothing about cars and usually assessed the quality of her ride by the number of wheels it had (Four? Check! Good to go!), but even she could tell that this was something special. Something from an era when big chrome ruled the roads.

  “This is a Duesenberg Model J,” he marveled. “It hasn’t rolled off an assembly line since the 1930s. This one’s a 1929, I think,” he said, air-patting the hood as if afraid to actually touch it. “One of its marketing slogans was, ‘the only car that could pass a Duesenberg was another Duesenberg—and that was with the first owner’s consent.’ ”