by Tegan Maher
Adelaide crinkled her forehead. "I don't know, sugar. Tryphena was old when Cheri Lynn was born. I suppose it's possible. She used to have one of the most extensive herb gardens around."
I covered the rolls and put them in the warmed oven to quick-proof. I'm too busy—and too impatient—to wait three or four hours for the traditional way.
"Where did they live? I know Hank owns the trailer she lives in now."
"Oh, that's where she grew up. That property used to be Cheri Lynn's, but Hank picked it up for taxes a few years back. I suspect it's why she was so ... accommodating, though I doubt that's the only reason." Adelaide shook her head and sighed. "Her poor grandmother has about rolled herself out of her grave over that girl, I suspect."
"So, you're saying it's possible remnants of Tryphena's old garden are still around the property?"
She snorted, an odd sound coming from a ghost. "With all the stuff that woman grew, I'd say it would be almost impossible for there not to be, but she kept it hidden and warded somewhere in the woods at the back of the property."
"Well, still. Belladonna's perennial, right? So that puts the murder weapon right in the hands of one of the prime suspects."
Adelaide shivered. "I know what I'd choose if my only options were sleepin' with him or killin' him."
I couldn't agree with her more.
"You gotta tell Hunter this, Noelle. If for no other reason than to clear Anna Mae once and for all. Besides, women can't just go around killin' men when they want; otherwise, the species would die clear out."
Fair point.
I rubbed my hand over my face. "It's not that simple. I can't hardly just call Hunter and say, ‘Hey, by the way, I thought I should let you know Cheri Lynn's grandmother was a gypsy witch and had a garden out back where she grew plants for potions and spells. You should go check it out.’"
Addy scowled at me. "I don't need your sass, girl. You know good and well I didn't mean for you to do any such thing. But you need to get creative because he's going to go for the simple explanation—Anna Mae or the person in that book who had the most to lose."
I sighed. "That's the problem, Aunt. Everybody in there had reason, and Cheri Lynn doesn't appear to have any at all. Well, other than the fact that Hank was gross and I can't imagine wanting to crawl into bed with him, but then again, Cheri Lynn's ... well, Cheri Lynn."
"You'll figure it out, Noelle. And I can just hear the wheels in your mind turnin' about the other stuff too. The book, and your argument with Hunter. You're all off kilter, but they'll work themselves out. The universe has a way of puttin' things right. You'll see."
I was measuring flour and cocoa into a bowl to make brownies, and it struck me that I hadn't told her about my fight with Hunter.
I narrowed my eyes at her. "Wait a minute. How did you know about my fight with Hunter?"
She had her chest puffed out like a banty rooster and was grinning from ear to ear. "I popped into the beauty shop today. I did just what you suggested. I imagined being there, then I was."
She frowned a little. "Though I need to practice my landing. I popped in in full site right in the sink while Coralee was washing Helga Anderson's hair." Adelaide snickered.
"She squealed and sprayed the old bat right in the face. I figure that was Karma's gift to me for the day."
Helga is Olivia's grandmother. We have a multi-generational disdain for each other. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a feud; it's just that skanks beget skanks—proof that even evolution isn't a perfect process. We Flynns just feel it's our place to remind them of their true natures.
Just the visual of Coralee squirting the pretentious old bat right in her over-made-up face made me laugh until I cried. Addy was wiping ghostly tears from her eyes when Shelby came slinking into the room, blinking her eyes as they adjusted to the light. Her hair was standing on end, and she scratched her hip as she glared at us.
"What's wrong with you people? I heard you laughing like lunatics clear up in my bedroom. You woke me up."
While she poured a cup of juice and a bowl of cereal, we told her the story, which caused another round of hysteria. Shelby went to school with Olivia's youngest sister, Sarah, and proudly carried on the family tradition.
I explained the problem about Cheri Lynn.
Shelby thought for a minute. "Has he questioned her yet?"
"Yeah. The day after Hank was killed."
"Oh. Well that isn't helpful at all," she said around a mouthful of cereal. "I was going to suggest that you go with him and you could look for it, but I guess he probably wouldn't take you anyway."
"No. Especially not now. He's not exactly speaking to me."
"Well," Adelaide shrugged, "go to work. You'll figure something out."
While the rolls finished proofing, Shelby and I went and fed the horses and turned them out in the pasture.
We had a routine, so it didn't take long. She cleaned the stalls on one side of the barn and I cleaned the other, sharing a wheelbarrow that was in the aisle.
Once we finished the last stalls and emptied the wheelbarrow for a final time, we headed back to the house. Thinking about work reminded me of the property investor who had shown up the last time I worked, so I told Shelby about him.
"Has anybody ever came around asking any questions about the farm when I'm not here?"
"No. I mean, I'm not here much, but I would have told you if something like that happened."
"I figured, but I thought I'd better ask anyway. Are you and Cody doing anything today?"
"Yeah. He wants to take the horses out, so we'll probably just head to the lake again. Or he talked about maybe finding that place you talked about."
I thought about the privacy of the cabin and decided that might not be the best place for two handsy teenagers to go alone.
"I think the lake is a better idea. The cabin is a good place to think, but there's probably snakes and other creepy crawlies around there."
Her face blanched. She was deathly afraid of snakes, so unless I missed my guess, they'd head to the lake, where there were plenty of eyes to make sure they behaved themselves.
That was one worry off my plate, anyway.
Chapter 24
T
hroughout my shift, I tried to think of a realistic way to get Hunter to go to Cheri Lynn's place, but drew a blank. I finally just texted him and told him Cheri Lynn's grandmother was an herbalist so Cheri might have had access to belladonna. After almost an hour, my phone vibrated. I went to the waitress station and pulled it out of my pocket.
H: Believe it or not, I'm perfectly capable of doing my job. I now have an entire book full of better suspects. It's police business.
Well then. I guess that was that. I wanted to text back that he wouldn’t have the book if it weren’t for me, but I bit back the urge and stuffed my phone back in my pocket.
I talked to Bobbie Sue about it and she agreed with me; it had to be a female killer. "My Earl's one of the best cooks in the country and even makes a mean pie when he wants, but watch this."
She motioned my back to the kitchen.
"Hey, Earl. Name the top five ways you'd kill somebody, besides me that is."
"Shoot 'em, beat 'em, bash 'em in the head, cut 'em."
"That's only four," she pointed out.
"If none of those work, then I reckon I shouldn’t be out killin' folks, then."
I figured I better ask directly, just in case. "You wouldn't poison them?"
He shook his head, appalled. "If I'm gonna kill somebody, I want 'em to see it comin’ and know it's me."
Bobbie Sue looked at me with her I-told-you-so smirk. "Wasn't no man that killed Hank. Mark my words. That's the work of a woman. And a fed-up one, at that."
I sighed, at a loss. "I completely agree, and so does Adelaide. But obviously, Hunter doesn't. So now what?"
"Not that I'm sayin' it's a good idea, but it is Friday night." Bobbie Sue reminded me. "She'll be at Tassels all night. I reckon if you want to know
for sure, your only option is to see for yourself. If you find anything, then figure out what to do from there."
Hmm. Sneaking into the bad part of town to search the woods for a dead gypsy's warded and spelled prize garden. That had bad horror movie written all over it, but she had a point. If I found something, then I'd figure out what to do next. If I didn't, then I'd quit worrying about it.
"I AM NOT SNEAKING OUT to East Keyhole to traipse around in the woods on a gypsy's property tonight—or any night for that matter—and neither are you!" Raeann shook her head so hard her ponytail brushed the sides of her face.
To be honest, it really was a bad idea, but now I'd gotten it in my head and I couldn't get it out.
She huffed, but lowered her tone. She knew by now she couldn't browbeat me into—or out of—anything, so she tried to be reasonable. "Why do you even care? He's dead. Frankly, that's a good thing. Let Hunter deal with the cleanup."
I scowled at her and held strong. "Hunter's got his head so far up his own behind he can't even see daylight right now. Besides, he's not speaking to me and he's determined to pin it on Anna Mae or somebody in that book."
"Well you have to come up with a better plan than this. There are seven ways to Sunday this can go wrong, and I can't see a single good thing coming from it even if you're right and we don't get hacked into little pieces by some cracked-out nutjob while we're there."
I rolled my eyes. "This is Keyhole. Nobody gets hacked into little pieces." Though to be fair, people didn't usually fall over dead in their coleslaw either, so maybe we were setting some new precedents here.
"Use your imagination. Play the damsel in distress or something. Hunter may be mad at you, but he likes you and if you need him, I have no doubt he'll help. If you call and tell him you need a ride home because something's wrong with the truck or something, he'll take you home and you can talk to him about this. He'll come up with something reasonable."
She took me by the shoulders and forced me to meet her eyes. "Promise me?"
"Fine. But if he won't listen and she goes and poisons somebody else, then it's all on you."
"I can live with that."
I picked up my phone and texted Hunter. "I'm not going to lie to him, though."
N: Hey. Can we please meet up for lunch? I'd like to apologize. I really didn't mean to invade your privacy or be nosy.
I didn't receive a response for nearly twenty minutes and I'd almost given up when my phone chimed.
H: I know you didn't. It's just been a rough week. I'll pick you up in 20 and we'll go for a drive.
Raeann read the text over my shoulder and elbowed me. "See! I told you he'd be reasonable. Now just explain what you know to him. No matter what he says, Cheri Lynn still has to be somewhere on the suspect list."
"Yeah, I guess," I grumbled. I couldn't grouch for more than a couple of seconds though; I was happy Hunter was willing to talk. I really did like him even if he did think I mighta killed Hank.
My biggest problem now though was that I'd have to convince him to search Cheri Lynn's property again. The sheriff's department had searched her house the same day they'd searched Anna Mae's, but I doubted they'd gone over the whole property.
True to his word, Hunter pulled up in front of the store twenty minutes later. I'd already made a couple of iced coffees and packed a few danishes as a peace offering, so I just met him out front.
As we drove away, I started to speak, but he held up his hand.
"You don't have to say anything. I know you didn't mean any harm. It's just that this whole thing is a mess, and what you did hit dangerously close to something that happened in Indy." He raked his hand through his hair and I noticed for the first time just how rough he looked. His eyes were bloodshot and he had at least a day's worth of beard growing.
"Have you slept?"
"Not much. I spent most of the night going through the books and the contents of the binder, comparing dates with deposit amounts." He shook his head. "I don't know which is worse; the good people he was torturing or the horrible people who were paying him to stay out of prison."
I nodded my head. "I know. I didn't really read what was in the book."
He looked at me with raised brows, skepticism clear in his eyes.
"Seriously! I didn't. I mean, I caught a peek at some of them, but once I read about Will and Principal Larson, I closed it. I felt like a voyeur. That's private stuff that nobody should be privy to."
I paused and looked at him, wondering how far I could push.
"But I do have one question."
He snorted. "I should have known it. What?"
"Were there any women in the book? Because I swear to you, Hunter, a woman killed Hank."
"I'm well aware of the statistics. And no, there aren't any women in the book."
I thought about how to approach the whole gypsy thing and decided to go with the “normal” world view instead of hitting him with the whole "magic is real" thing. Most people love the perceived mysticism, but believe that's all it is—smoke and mirrors and old wives’ tales. I had no reason to think Hunter would be any different.
"About what I texted earlier ... I need you to hear me out for a minute, okay?" I paused, waiting until he agreed to continue. His jaw clenched, but he finally gave a curt nod. I took a deep breath. Here goes nothin’.
"Like I said, Cheri Lynn comes from a long line of ... herbalists ... and her grandmother grew an extensive garden right on that property. Belladonna is a perennial, so if she was growing it for medicinal purposes even thirty years ago, it's likely still growing out there. I think you should check the property."
"Thanks. Like I said, when I need you to do my job for me, I'll let you know. We already searched her house, the same as we did Anna Mae's."
That was it. I got it that he was mad at me, but choosing to ignore something that could solve a murder was ludicrous and I told him so.
He was clenching his jaw again; that seemed to be a habit that popped up when he was irritated. "What did she have to gain from killing him? He was keeping her—he paid her rent and utilities, he gave her spending money. She would have been cutting off her nose to spite her face."
"Who knows? You're asking me to explain crazy. From what I know about her, Cheri Lynn is about as self-absorbed as they come, so it wouldn't surprise me if she killed him for buying her the wrong shade of nail polish."
When he just kept staring straight ahead like he was afraid a little old lady was going to jump out in front of us at any time, I exploded.
"What's your problem, anyway? I've never done anything to you, and I've never intentionally done anything wrong. I thought we had fun during the barbeque, and then again that day on the bikes. I was looking forward to learning more about you. Then you turn into this knot-headed jerk, and I'm starting to question my own judgment."
After a few moments, his grip on the steering wheel relaxed and his shoulders slumped. He turned dull eyes to me and my stupid heart went out to him. He probably moved here to get away from the stress, not to become acting sheriff just in time to solve the previous one's murder.
"You're right. I'm being obnoxious. Part of it has to do with my past, and part of it has to do with the freak show this case is turning out to be. It seems like every time I turn over a rock, something big and nasty rolls out from underneath it."
His phone vibrated but he ignored it.
"May I ask what this has to do with your past? If it's too personal, I understand. But I sure would like to know why I keep winding you up so I can stop doing it."
He shrugged one shoulder. "I guess that's fair enough."
There was a small turnaround point in the road, and he swung over into it and put the truck in park.
"I was working a high-profile case and the suspect was a politician just as dirty as Hank was, except on a much grander scale. Money laundering, embezzlement, loan sharking, blackmailing ... the list goes on."
He adapted a faraway look, like he was back there again,
experiencing it all.
"After investigating him for three months, I had him dead to rights on the embezzlement and money laundering, which would have cracked the whole thing open. I'd met a woman—a dental assistant of all things—who seemed wonderful. She had a great sense of humor and we had a ton in common.
"One night, after I'd gone to sleep, she slipped into my file drawer where I kept my personal files. Pretty much every cop has one. She went through my phone and found the numbers of my three star witnesses—women in accounting for his firm who were willing to testify that the books were cooked."
His eyes dropped to his lap. "The next morning, I knew she'd messed with my phone because my contacts page was open—I never do that, for obvious reasons. I have no idea how she got the password. Still, I thought she was just checking for other women. That made me mad, but I thought it was just a personal thing.
"By that evening, two of my witnesses were dead and the other recanted, then left town. Danny Bianchi is a free man to this day. Turns out she was the niece of one of his top men, and I hadn’t even bothered to check."
I let that settle for a minute. "So, you drew a parallel between what she did and what I did?”
I began ticking points off on my fingers. "She slept with you to get on your good side, went through your files and contacts while you were asleep, then shared confidential information, knowing it would likely end in the death—or at the very least, the terrorizing—of three innocent women."
I had a head of steam going just thinking about what a deplorable human being he was comparing me to. "Yeah, that's totally the same as picking up a piece of paper from your floor that fell from a file which, I might add, was open on your desk. Yeah, I can definitely see why you'd think I'm just like her."
I knew I was reaching the point where my mouth was running faster than my brain, but I couldn't help it. I had to get out of the truck before I said something I'd regret later. "Let me out."
"What?"
"I said, stop the truck and let me out." By that time, we'd reached the outskirts of town and it would take me an hour to walk back, but there was a little diner a half-mile back. I'd call Raeann and have a cup of coffee while I waited on her.