Death of a Blueberry Tart

by Lee Hollis

  I quickly put Dustin down in the pack and play and ran to the kitchen for some towels, and that’s where I found Gemma on the floor making snow angels in five pounds of flour, which she had somehow gotten down from the cupboard, the same cupboard that I had been begging her father to put a safety latch on for the past two years. I stood there for a moment, feeling horribly overwhelmed, and then I did what any new mother would do—I started to cry.

  Then I called my mother.

  My mother arrived within twenty minutes and immediately brought my house back to order. My two babies were clean, fed, and put down for a nap, and my mother insisted that I go lie down and get some rest too, while she prepared supper for that evening.

  I was finally able to relax, knowing everyone was clean, quiet, and happy. Just as I was drifting off to sleep, my thoughts turned to Danny and I quickly jolted up in bed. Danny! He would be home soon. And he was not a big fan of my mother’s! They had had a huge falling-out right after I came home from the hospital after giving birth to Dustin. Mom had offered to come and stay with us for a few days to help us settle in with the new baby and look after Gemma, but Danny put a stop to it before she even got one foot in the door. The problem was Mom and Danny never really liked each other. But now that he was refusing to allow her in the house for an extended period of time, well, that just added fuel to the fire.

  I decided that Danny was a grown adult and was tough enough to make it through one evening meal with his mother-in-law. He would just have to grin and bear it for the sake of the kids, since she was going to always be their grandmother.

  Dinner that evening was surprisingly uneventful, and Mom and Danny were actually acting civil toward one another, so I was starting to feel a little more relaxed. Mom had made her special warm blueberry snack cake and Danny was clearly enjoying it.

  And that’s when the trouble started. Danny was happily scarfing down his second piece of cake when my mother unexpectedly announced that she was definitely going to be staying for a while to help out, because I obviously needed her help adjusting to having two children, and with everything I had to do alone around the house, since Danny was obviously no help, she was not going to take no for an answer. She stared pointedly at Danny as she spoke, and he did open his mouth to protest, but in the end he thought better of it, and just choked down the rest of his blueberry snack cake in silence.

  I pretended to be asleep when Danny finally came to bed later that night because I didn’t want to hear him complain or start a fight between us about my mother. I just prayed that it would all work out.

  It didn’t.

  I woke up late the next morning because my mother let me sleep in while she attended to the kids. I had a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach, like something bad was about to happen. I got out of bed and made my way downstairs. I could practically hear the familiar drumbeat of war.

  Danny was stretched out on the couch in the living room, casually reading the newspaper while my mother was vacuuming all around his feet. It was clear from their stiff body language that neither one of them was willing to budge for the other. I could see the battle lines being drawn. I knew at that point the situation was only going to get worse. Danny was not a happy camper.

  I, on the other hand, loved having my mother around, helping out during the day. It was fun and we were enjoying each other, taking walks with the kids, sitting around catching up; and having her there doing all the cooking and cleaning was literally a dream come true. But as soon as Danny walked through the door at the end of his shift, the two of them were like attack dogs ready to pounce on each other. But giving credit where credit is due, they both did try their best to hold their tongues, at least until the kids were tucked safely into their beds. Then the barbs and jabs began to fly!

  My mother relished saying things like “You’re lazy,” “You’re such a slob,” “Why don’t you want to work like most able-bodied men?” Danny came back with “You meddle too much,” “You’re overbearing,” “You are a real pain in the . . .” Well, you get the picture.

  It all came to a boil about a week later, when I came down the stairs after putting the kids to bed and found the two of them shouting at each other about how to do the dishes properly.

  Enough was enough. I stormed into the kitchen just as my mother was pestering Danny about how he was washing the pan wrong and Danny’s face was so red I thought his head was about to explode. I was just about ready to hurl my body in between them before they went for each other’s throats when suddenly, in what felt like slow motion, Danny grabbed the sink sprayer, turned around, and nailed my mother with a torrent of water squarely in the face. And he didn’t stop. He kept dousing her until she was sputtering and coughing and throwing her hands up in front of her face to protect herself.

  “Danny!” I cried.

  That snapped him out of it and he stopped. It’s as if he had been in some kind of trance, like his whole body had been momentarily taken over by a devilish spirit. He looked surprised at what he had done and dropped the sprayer into the sink.

  My mother stood there with her hair and face dripping wet, a shocked look on her face. For a full minute it was deadly silent in the kitchen as the two of them simply stared at one another. I considered calling the police, fearing they might kill each other.

  But then my mother started to laugh. Danny looked more than a little relieved and started to chuckle too. Well, the next thing I knew, they were collapsing in each other’s arms, barely able to breathe because they were laughing so hard.

  I just wanted to throttle the both of them as I stared at my practically flooded kitchen floor.

  I wish I could say Mom and Danny became best friends after that, but they didn’t. There were more slights and insults and sharp comments over the next few years, but I will say as far as the kids were concerned, the two of them were always on their best behavior around them and I am grateful for that. I am also thankful for the two recipes my mother shared with me during that brief time that she stayed with us—her delicious blueberry snack cake and her refreshing blueberry smoothie, both featuring her favorite fruit—you guessed it—blueberries!

  EASY BREEZY BLUEBERRY SMOOTHIE

  INGREDIENTS

  1½ cups milk (or almond milk)

  Half of a banana

  1½ cups blueberries

  ¾ cup Greek vanilla yogurt

  Place all your ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. Pour into a glass and enjoy a refreshing smoothie for breakfast or snack.

  BLUEBERRY COFFEE CAKE

  CAKE

  INGREDIENTS

  2 cups blueberries

  2 teaspoons baking powder

  2 cups flour

  ½ teaspoon salt

  ¼ cup oil

  ¾ cup milk

  1 egg

  1 cup sugar

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  CRUMBLE TOPPING

  INGREDIENTS

  ⅓ cup sugar

  ½ cup flour

  1 teaspoon cinnamon

  4 tablespoons butter cut into small cubes

  Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. Spray a 9-inch baking dish with nonstick spray. In a bowl mix your flour, baking powder, and salt together.

  In the bowl of a stand mixer beat together the egg, oil, sugar, and vanilla until well mixed, then alternate adding the flour and milk until combined. Batter will be thick. Gently fold in your two cups of blueberries with a spatula just until combined.

  Spread your batter into the prepared baking dish. Make your crumble topping by adding the sugar, flour, cinnamon, and cubed butter to a small bowl and mix together with a fork or your fingers to crumble the mixture together, then pour all over your batter, trying to cover as much as you can.

  Bake cake for 40 minutes until topping is golden brown and when you insert a toothpick in the center it comes out clean.

  Cool for at least 20 minutes, then slice, serve, and enjoy.

  Chapter 36

  Hayley could
feel her face burning as she sat upright in the chair across from Bruce, who was behind his desk, tapping keys on his computer. “Who is this woman again?”

  Bruce smiled dumbly as he stared at her picture on the screen. “Sofia Ortiz.”

  “And how did you meet her?”

  “One summer during college I went backpacking through South America with some buddies of mine, and I met Sofia when she was working as a local tour guide in Mendoza, Argentina, and we became friends.”

  “I see,” Hayley said tightly. “How close of a friend?”

  Bruce laughed. “I was a college kid on a world adventure and she was a beautiful girl who liked my eyes and said I made her laugh. You do the math.”

  Hayley stood up and crossed around the desk to get a look at her picture on Bruce’s computer screen. It appeared to be a recent photo since she was roughly Bruce’s age, but she was still a stunning beauty, with long raven hair and flawless skin. “She’s gorgeous.”

  “Yeah, she hasn’t aged a bit,” Bruce said absently.

  Hayley shot Bruce a look and then said, “I just find it odd you never mentioned her before.”

  “Well, she and I met so long ago and we certainly don’t communicate that often . . .”

  “Still . . .”

  Bruce looked up from his computer and gave her a broad grin. “I love it when you get jealous.”

  “I’m not jealous,” Hayley lied.

  “You’re jealous.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I know you, Hayley.”

  “Well, obviously you don’t know me as well as you think you do or you would know that I am definitely not the jealous type. Now Liddy, there’s the jealous type.”

  “Okay, let’s agree to disagree,” Bruce said with a wink.

  “I’m not jealous.”

  “You already said that. People who aren’t jealous don’t have to say it so much.”

  Hayley decided to push forward, fearing they would remain in this conversation, running in circles. “Okay, fine. So you met her in Argentina, during college, and she just reached out to you after all these years out of the blue?”

  “No, I was the one who reached out to her,” Bruce said matter-of-factly.

  “Oh . . .” Hayley said, trying to keep up a poker face and give him the impression that this revelation had absolutely no effect on her whatsoever.

  Bruce studied her, trying to gauge her level of jealousy, and although it was a struggle, she did manage to remain calm and nonplussed.

  “We’re friends on Facebook,” Bruce said.

  Hayley nodded, biting her lip to keep from commenting.

  “This is her profile picture,” Bruce said, gesturing toward the near perfect supermodel photo on his computer screen.

  “And why after all these years did you feel the burning desire to get back in touch with this old flame from South America?” Hayley said, not realizing she was tapping her foot loudly on the floor as she waited for him to answer.

  “I thought you’d never ask. Sofia still lives in Mendoza. With her husband of twenty years. And their six kids.”

  The tension slowly began draining out of Hayley’s body and she circled back around the desk and sat down in her chair again.

  “She’s now a big muckety-muck in the government, Minister of the Interior, or something like that. Anyway she has lots of contacts, so I reached out to her to see if she could help me get some information on Julio Garcia’s cousin Juan.”

  Finally there was something in this unexpected and uncomfortable conversation that Hayley could grasp onto, and it instantly sparked her curiosity. “And?”

  “I was right. She has a cousin who works in the Gendarmería Nacional Argentina . . .”

  “The what?”

  “In short, her cousin’s a cop. And he has access to all kinds of information, and as a favor to her he did a search on Juan, and came up with some very interesting statistics—”

  “Such as?”

  “Lots of arrests over a long period, dating back to when he was just twelve years old and got caught picking the pockets of tourists in General San Martín Park. From there, he graduated to petty theft, breaking and entering, and then went on to more violent crimes like armed robbery and assault and a number of other gang-related offenses.”

  “Juan? Really? He seems so gentle and shy when I see him at Julio’s salon,” Hayley remarked.

  “That’s usually how someone acts when they are totally trying to reinvent themselves. Anyway, according to Sofia’s cousin, Juan and Julio’s family paid off a few officials to squash his rap sheet and cover up his past so it wouldn’t follow him here. Otherwise, he never would have been allowed in the country.”

  “Julio told me Juan was just visiting when he first showed up in town a few months ago, but he never left,” Hayley said.

  “That’s because according to documents filed with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Julio is applying to sponsor Juan as an invaluable employee of the salon in order to help him get his green card so he can stay here permanently.”

  Hayley began running through her mind these new facts about Julio and Juan Garcia, and how they might relate to the Caskie Lemon-Hogg and Regina Knoxville deaths. Her concentration, however, was disrupted by a short boyish giggle.

  It was her husband, who was staring at his computer screen.

  “What now?” Hayley asked.

  “Oh, nothing . . .” Bruce said, averting his eyes from her.

  “Bruce . . .”

  “I just sent Sofia a message to thank her for all her help, and she wrote back, When will I see your handsome face again back here in Argentina? That’s sweet, she’s very nice, always was, just a lovely person all around . . .”

  “Stop gushing, Bruce.”

  “I’m not gushing. We really should go sometime though, Hayley, you’d love it. The scenery is stunning and you do love wine . . . Sofia would be happy to show us around . . . and her husband too, of course . . . I think he’s a professor at the university or something like that . . . I’m sure he’s nice too, though I’ve never met him, just her, but like I said, she looks exactly the same, you’d never believe it’s been something like twenty-five—”

  “Bruce . . .”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “You’re still gushing.”

  “Right. I’ll stop now.”

  “I think that would be best.”

  Bruce reached over and clicked out of Facebook, so the photo of the stunning Sofia Ortiz disappeared and was replaced by his usual screen saver of scenic Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park.

  As Hayley got up to leave, Bruce mumbled, “You’re nothing like Liddy, you’re not jealous at all.”

  She turned back and stared at him. “You really can’t help yourself. You always need to have the last word.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “See?”

  “I really don’t. Go ahead and say something and I promise to keep my mouth shut, and then you leave and you’ll see that I don’t always need the last word.”

  “Fine. Goodbye, Bruce.”

  Hayley whipped around to make her escape, but had barely made it halfway out the door to his office when she heard him say cheerily, “I love you.”

  She slammed the door behind her.

  Chapter 37

  Hayley stood on the threshold of Albert and Regina Knoxville’s bedroom, shifting uncomfortably, feeling strange at being in such close proximity to a deeply personal private space. But Albert didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, there was a look of relief as he opened the closet door and showed Hayley the rack of dresses and pantsuits that were crammed onto the small rack along with dozens of shoe and hat boxes stuffed on the top shelf. On the floor were more shoes and sandals.

  “She was quite the clothes horse,” Albert said softly as he stared at all of his late wife’s belongings. “I’ve been meaning to clean all this out and donate it to Goodwill, but every time I come up here to do it, I get lost in t
he memories and I just can’t seem to get anywhere.”

  “It’s totally understandable, Albert. Maybe with some more time . . .” Hayley’s voice trailed off.

  “I guess I kind of keep hoping this is all a bad dream and I’ll wake up and she’ll still be here . . .”

  His eyes welled up with tears.

  Hayley didn’t know what to say. When she had shown up at Albert’s door to ask him if he knew about Regina’s affair with Julio, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. But when confronted with Albert’s sad, distraught eyes, she just couldn’t bring herself to actually ask the question. Albert had invited her in, offered some tea, which she declined, and just stared at the walls as Hayley went on about every topic that popped into her head except the one that had brought her here. She just didn’t want to hurt the poor man any more than he already had been by his beloved wife’s untimely demise.

  When Hayley finally ran out of things to say, Albert had asked if she might be interested in some of Regina’s dresses, particularly since they were roughly around the same size. Regina had recently gone on a shopping spree in Boston and there were dresses she had not even worn. Hayley had politely declined the kind offer, but Albert had insisted she come upstairs and take a look anyway. Hayley had dragged her heels as hard as she could, but Albert wouldn’t take no for an answer, and so finally, realizing it would be easier just to pretend she might accept one, she had followed Albert up the creaky steps of their weathered albeit sprawling five-bedroom house to the master bedroom.

  Albert struggled to sift through the rack of garments, finally yanking out a glittery number that looked like it belonged in a flapper sketch from the 1970s in an old Carol Burnett Show, but she refrained from critiquing it and just said to Albert, “It’s lovely, but I’m afraid it’s just not my style.”

  Albert stuffed it back into the closet and kept searching for the right outfit for Hayley.