Peach Clobbered

by Anna Gerard

  “Right, yeah.”

  He glanced ahead in the direction the sisters were walking. “I’m going that way, too … to the parking lot,” he said, gesturing me forward. “We can talk while we walk.”

  “Sure.”

  I waited an extra couple of seconds to see if he’d do the gentlemanly thing and carry the signs for me, at least until we got to his car. When he didn’t make a move that way, I shouldered them again and resumed walking.

  “What did you want to talk about, Mr. Westcott?”

  “You can call me Harry. Remember I told you how someone locked me in the walk-in freezer right around the same time that Bainbridge was stabbed?”

  I nodded.

  He went on, “I mentioned that to Connie—Sheriff Lamb—while she was questioning me. She told me it was probably an accident. She seemed more interested in how Bainbridge got hold of the penguin costume. Bottom line, she’s busy looking for someone who wanted Bainbridge dead, not for the person who tried to freeze me to death.”

  “She’s the sheriff,” I replied with as much of a shrug as I could manage with the burden of my signs. “I got the feeling she’s pretty competent. Maybe she’s right.”

  “She’s not,” he flatly declared. “It’s a small enough freezer that you can’t miss someone standing inside, especially with the light on. And even if you did, it’s an old unit, so it’s not exactly soundproof. It’s a good thing Jill finally came back into the storeroom and heard me yelling and pounding on the door. She’s the one who let me out. But I guarantee you, someone was after me. They trapped me in the freezer and figured I’d freeze or suffocate in there. But when they saw Bainbridge in the penguin suit, they probably thought I’d escaped, so they decided to finish the job with a knife.”

  I considered Harry’s theory, not sure if it was just crazy enough to be possible … or just crazy. “Maybe,” I finally conceded. “But does anyone have any reason to want you dead? Maybe someone you’ve threatened to sue recently … besides me, I mean?”

  He had the good grace to look a little embarrassed at that, though I noticed he didn’t answer the question. We’d reached the parking lot, and I saw with a surprising bit of sadness that Gregory Bainbridge’s dark gray sedan was still parked there. Likely at some point the sheriff’s department would tow it away.

  “Guess I’ll see you around,” Harry said.

  I nodded. “Sure.”

  As I caught up to the nuns, I spared another glance behind me at the parking lot, morbidly curious to see which car Harry would drive off in. Three-quarters of the parking spaces were empty now, when a couple of hours earlier the lot had been almost completely full. Doubtless the whole murder thing had sent the tourists scurrying. Heck, for the moment I didn’t feel comfortable living so close to a crime scene.

  Then a worse thought occurred to me. Chances were the Savannah and Atlanta news outlets—probably HuffPost and Yahoo, too—would soon be splashing headlines about Bainbridge’s murder all across their websites. Forget our neighboring state to the south. Once word got out about the penguin suit, Georgia would rival Florida for the nation’s most offbeat crimes. For the town’s sake, Sheriff Lamb and her deputies needed to solve this murder fast!

  I tossed another look over my free shoulder. The actor was heading toward an older-model SUV with lots of rust. And then he sidestepped the SUV and made a beeline for the ancient yellow school bus parked in the furthermost spot.

  I stopped outright this time and stared. Had I simply missed seeing some low-slung vehicle alongside it? Nope, he was headed to the bus, one of those short ones with only five windows on a side. The kind of bus non–politically correct people made jokes about. And, to confirm it was his, a familiar rusty red bicycle was lashed to the bus’s backdoor rails. As I watched, he opened its bifold door and climbed inside.

  I waited for him to start it up, but instead I could see him moving down the rows toward the back. When he didn’t make any move to drive away, I threw up figurative hands and started after the nuns again.

  Mattie woofed excitedly at our return, and I felt a little stab of amused jealously when she gave me a perfunctory lick on the hand only to yip and dance in excited circles for the benefit of Sister Mary Thomas. The freckled old woman appeared equally delighted at the attention, so I pretended not to notice when the Aussie followed her upstairs to her room.

  I stowed away the signs in the laundry room and headed for the kitchen. I didn’t know about the nuns, but cookies and water for lunch weren’t enough to sustain me. I cut up some cheeses and sandwich meat, adding them to a tray along with crackers and fresh veggies. That, and a pitcher each of lemonade and iced tea, went on the sideboard. The remaining cookies from my plastic bin rounded out the repast.

  “Mother Superior … Sisters,” I called up the stairway. “I’ve got some munchies for you in the parlor if you’re hungry.”

  Apparently, just like teenage boys, elderly nuns never turned down a snack, for a few minutes later they’d all trouped back downstairs again and were filling plates. Satisfied that I’d fulfilled my hostessing duties for the afternoon, I left them to it. Whistling Mattie away from the snack tray before she tried to join in, I headed with her out to the backyard.

  With all the excitement of getting the place ready for my B&B guests, I’d not had much chance to relax in my gardens the past few days. That had been one of the draws of owning the place. In addition to the porch along the front and sides of the house, a vine-covered pavilion and a brick patio lay right off the back door. Every view was different, but all were equally picturesque.

  Of course, when I said “my” gardens,” that was really not the case. The grounds pretty well belonged to Hendricks, and we both knew it.

  The stooped, foul-mouthed old geezer had, by his account, been caring for the property’s gardens for a good three decades. He had appeared on my doorstep within days of my moving in to inform me that he was willing to remain at his post, even with Mrs. Lathrop now gone. His one condition was that I wouldn’t mess around with his plants.

  I was allowed, however, to mow and edge and weed the lawn. And he’d graciously given me free rein to harvest all I wanted once the peach tree in the front yard bore fruit.

  The result was that the rest of the property that wasn’t grass was sculpted and pruned within an inch of its life. In addition to a parameter of showy hedges and specimen trees, the brick walkway leading from the patio and pavilion outside the back door ended in a fancy circular garden that was quartered into pie-shaped plots, with a three-tiered fountain in its center. That formal garden was one of my favorite spots to read or simply lounge with a glass of lemonade … or something stronger in the evenings.

  There was, however, an exception to the “sculpted and pruned.”

  With the front door facing north, the east side of the property included the strip of lawn than ran the length of the house and that my bedroom overlooked. This would soon be Mattie’s domain once I’d put in a little cross-fencing. The west side of the property had a narrow gated driveway instead of lawn. The drive led to the property’s former carriage house turned detached garage. The area flanking the garage and a portion of the driveway had been left to its own devices … that is, as much as Hendricks would allow.

  Instead of neat hedges or tidy raised flower beds, several immense rose bushes had been allowed to run amuck there. Almost as broad as they were tall, the ramblers covered one side of the detached garage like a thorny green blanket. Depending on the time of year, the sprawl of green might be overrun with red or pink or yellow blowsy blooms. A few smaller varieties clung to wooden trellises.

  With Mattie literally dogging my steps, I entered the side door of the old carriage house. The section that once served as a stall area for horses had long since been walled off from the actual garage area where I parked my Mini and was set up as a workshop. Praying Hendricks wouldn’t put in a surprise appearance and catch me borrowing his tools, I grabbed gloves, garden shears, and an old buck
et.

  I’d learned from Hendricks that my roses were not your garden variety. Rather, they were part of a class known as heirloom roses—hardy, nonhybrid types that had been brought over to this country by its early settlers and carried westward. Even when the cabins and shotgun shacks had long since vanished from the former homesteads, the rosebushes the pioneer women had so carefully planted to remind them of home continued to flourish. Rescued out of the wild many decades later and propagated by rose enthusiasts, they could stand up to the summer heat and drought.

  I clipped a few blooms from the nearest bush and added the stems to my bucket. Hendricks had called this variety an Infant Something-or-Other. The ragged-edged blossom reminded me of a peony, with an ombré palette that started out dark pink in its center and faded to a pale blush at its edges.

  “Oh, how lovely!”

  I’d heard the back screen door slam shut a few moments earlier, so I wasn’t surprised to find Sister Mary Thomas walking up to join me. She stared in admiration at the array of rosebushes, and then nodded at the bloom I held.

  “Enfant de France?” she asked, giving the words what sound to my southern ears like a credible Gallic accent.

  I did a quick mental translation and realized that had been the “infant” Hendricks had referred to when he’d told me the flower’s name.

  “Uh, yes, I believe so,” I told her. “How did you know? Did you grow heirloom roses at the convent?”

  “Hardly,” she replied with a tinkling little laugh. “We had vegetable gardens, of course, but no flowers. I just happened to recognize that particular species because my mother had the same rosebush back when I was a little girl.”

  She held the bucket for me, and we spent a few minutes in companionable silence while I clipped a few more blossoms. Once that container was full, I returned clippers and gloves to their rightful spots. Then, Mattie trailing behind us, we headed for the patio.

  “I’m so happy we’re staying here,” the nun blurted. “Not that the other bed-and-breakfast establishments in town we looked at weren’t nice, but yours has such a charming, comfortable feeling about it. And the fact you have such lovely grounds to wander about makes me miss the convent a bit less.”

  “I know how painful it is to lose a place you’ve loved and lived in for many years,” I confided as we took a seat on the patio benches. “That happened with me after my divorce. My ex-husband and I had a wonderful midcentury home where we lived for almost sixteen years. It was so hard to give it up.”

  I went on, “I spent the past year renting a soulless sterile condo near downtown Atlanta. It’s only now that I’ve found this place here in Cymbeline that I’ve started to feel like I’ve got a true home again. But for you and the other sisters, it’s not just your home; you’ve lost the routine of the cheese-making business, too. It’s hard after working for a living all your life to feel at loose ends every single day.”

  “I knew you’d understand,” the nun replied, nodding. “Melissa Jane is a lovely woman, but she thought we sisters would be glad to have an excuse to retire, as she put it. But I don’t want to retire, and neither do the others,” she ended on a defiant note.

  Sensing the old woman’s dismay, Mattie came up and laid her fuzzy chin on the nun’s knee. Sister Mary Thomas smiled and gave the pup a soft scratch behind her ear.

  Then her smile wavered.

  “The hardest thing about leaving the convent was saying goodbye to our little goatherd. The other sisters took care of the cheese-making and the marketing, but Mary Christopher and I cared for the girls, as we called them. We’d feed them and brush them and clean their hooves. And milk them, of course. I know that we’re not supposed to be attached to things … and that includes livestock. But I-I truly miss them.”

  She blinked rapidly, as if to hold back tears, and then leaned toward Mattie to give her another pat. Which gave me an idea.

  “Oh, Mattie, you shouldn’t be snuggling up to the sister like that,” I mock-scolded the pup. “You’re all smelly. Why don’t you wait to bother Sister Mary Thomas until I’ve had a chance to shampoo you?”

  To the nun, I said, “I’m so sorry. In all the excitement of getting the place ready for you sisters, I didn’t give Matilda her usual Saturday bath. I promise I’ll do that tomorrow so you don’t have a stinky dog wandering after you.”

  The Aussie—who was not at all dirty or smelly—shot me a canine side-eye. Apparently, she understood that she had been unfairly dissed.

  Sorry, girl, it’s for a good cause, I mentally apologized, sending lots of who’s the good puppy? vibes her way.

  Meanwhile, the old nun’s expression brightened. “Why, Nina, I could bathe Matilda for you. That is, if you’d like. She’s about the same size as one of my girls.”

  “Oh, but that would be too much bother for you.”

  “Not at all. I could make her nice and clean again in a jiffy,” she declared, nuzzling against Mattie’s fuzzy head while the Aussie wagged her bobbed tail in happiness.

  And so, while Sister Mary Thomas made a dash inside for what she’d called her “goat apron,” I went back to the carriage house. I retrieved the shallow tub, doggy shampoo, spare towels, and brush that were all part of Mattie’s canine spa day ritual and set it all up in a sunny spot in the driveway. By the time the nun returned wearing a tan, pinafore-like garment over her gray habit, I’d used the hose to fill the tub and had plopped the long-suffering dog into the sudsy water.

  Leaving the pair to it, I retrieved my bucket of cut roses and carried it inside to the kitchen. I found Sister Mary George at the sink drying the last of the plates she’d apparently just washed following the nuns’ snack break.

  “Sister, thank you, but that wasn’t necessary,” I told her as I opened up a lower cabinet and pulled out a mismatched trio of cut-glass vases. “You and the other nuns are my guests.”

  “Don’t worry, Nina, we’re happy to help out. You know what they say about idle hands,” she reminded me, drying hers on a second dish towel and hanging them both on the oven handle to dry. “Besides, you already put Mary Thomas to work.”

  “No, no, don’t worry,” she interrupted me as I opened my mouth to explain. “I’m sure you wanted to make her feel useful and take her mind off the goats. Believe me, the woman was happy as a clam when she came downstairs wearing that apron and telling me she was going to give that dog of yours a bath.”

  I smiled as I began arranging the roses in their vases. “Poor Sister Mary Thomas. She seemed so depressed about leaving her herd behind. I thought if she could shower a little attention on Mattie, it would cheer her up.”

  “I’m sure it has. Certainly, we can all use some cheering after what happened today.”

  The nun stacked the plates and placed them back on their shelf. She shut the cabinet door decisively and went on, “But I must say, now things are even more confusing with Mr. Bainbridge’s passing. Will the development proceed as he planned? Or do we move back and try to restart the fromagerie?”

  Mary George’s French accent, unlike the other nun’s, had more than a touch of Georgia drawl to it. She added, “Reverend Mother is on the phone right now to the archbishop’s office letting them know about the situation.”

  “I have a feeling that’s not going to be resolved with one phone call. But all of you are welcome to stay here as long as you need to.”

  By now I’d finished with my amateur attempt at flower arranging. Sister Mary George helped me carry the vases into the parlor. With my inner Martha Stewart satisfied, I left her browsing the bookcase filled with vintage novels that hadn’t sold at the estate sale. I’d hadn’t forgotten my conversation with Jack Hill and his claim that repairs were still needed around the place.

  So I made a check of the main stairway as well as the back servants’ stairs, giving the hand rails a thorough shaking. All those fixtures appeared sturdy enough to last another hundred or more years. I even checked the porch railing outside when I went to look at the steps. But
they were secure, and no wooden steps were loose.

  Maybe Jack had lied about the repairs, hoping to con a newcomer by doing work that wasn’t needed. Of course, it was possible that old Mrs. Lathrop had hired someone else for the job, but I doubted it.

  Or was this instead a ruse on Jack’s part—an excuse to get back into the house for some reason?

  I mulled over the question for a while but came up with nothing. I probably was seeing intrigue where none existed. And with a houseful of guests to worry about, I had more important things on my plate than creating drama. So why was I insisting upon assigning sinister motivations to every person in Cymbeline I encountered? Wasn’t that Sheriff Lamb’s job?

  Except that I somehow had ended up the touchstone for everyone who’d had any unpleasant connection to Bainbridge. And chances were that one of those people was his killer. Which also meant that person likely was watching to see if he—or she—was under suspicion. And not just by the local constabulary.

  But by me.

  “Hold your horses, Nina,” I sternly commanded myself, pretending that a shiver hadn’t just made its way up my spine. “No more reruns of Law and Order for you. Just stick to innkeeping.”

  I spent the rest of the afternoon admonishing myself with similar platitudes. By supper time, I’d pretty well settled myself down. Except, with a murderer out there somewhere, I wasn’t comfortable sending the nuns out to scrounge for their meal. Fortunately, Mother Superior apparently was on the same page. As it neared six PM, the nuns gathered in the parlor to mull over takeout food suggestions. Sister Mary Julian was the first to speak up.

  “We could call for someone to deliver pizza pie!” she eagerly declared. “I’ve always wanted to try it.”

  Sister Mary Christopher clapped her hands. “I’ve never had pizza before, either. That’s a wonderful idea!”

  “I agree,” said Sister Mary Paul. “I try the pepperoni one.”

  “Pizza it is,” Mother Superior declared. “Nina, perhaps you can suggest a place that we might call.”