by Tonya Kappes
“Here, Roxanne!” Mom straightened her shoulders as she glared at Aunt Maxi.
“Here!” Aunt Maxi stomped her foot and fisted her hands next to her sides.
“Or you can sit here.” Mae Belle Donovan chirped from a seat in the row I was standing next to. She pulled the floppy straw hat off her chin-length grey hair that was neatly parted to the side. She reached over into the empty chair, pulling her black pocketbook into her lap. Lightly she tapped the empty seat.
I pointed to it for clarification. Mae Belle nodded and I sat down before Mom or Aunt Maxi could protest.
“Thank you,” I sat down in the seat and Pepper sat under my chair.
“Ah oh.” Mae Belle grimaced. “Which one is going to pee on you first.” Mae Belle joked at Mom and Aunt Maxi trying to beat each other to the open seat next to me.
“Got it! Got it first!” My mother plopped down in the chair. Her legs flew up in the air. She huffed and puffed, hugging her purse to her chest.
Aunt Maxi glared at her, glazed over me and stared at Mae Belle. She jerked her head to the side giving Mae Belle the you better scoot down a seat or you’ll regret it look.
“Guess I’m moving,” Mae Belle whispered in my ear before she scooted.
Aunt Maxi didn’t spare no time in getting down to the nitty gritty.
“Well I’m glad to see Penny has come to Honey Springs after all these years,” her voice was much louder than it needed to be. “Seems like she’s just twenty years too late.”
“If you didn’t make it so hard to be part of the Bloom family, then I might’ve come.” Mom harrumphed and crossed her arms across her chest.
Neither of them looked at the other.
“You couldn’t warn me she was visiting?” Aunt Maxi nudged me.
“Oww.” I grabbed my rib. “That’s going to leave a bruise.”
“We wouldn’t be in this situation if you’d told me about her.” Aunt Maxi poked her finger in my rib this time, causing me to bump into my mother. She was like a flame to the wood. Mom was the wood.
“If you didn’t act like her mother instead of her aunt, we wouldn’t be in this situation.” The wood caught fire and the flame shot out in front of me.
“If you were ever a mother.” Aunt Maxi and Mom went nose-to-nose in front of me.
“Whoa.” I pushed them apart. “What is wrong with you two? I love you both. Aunt Maxi was wonderful to me when I was here visiting, but the other nine months out of the year, you were a wonderful mother.”
My head turned back and forth between the two.
“Mom, what are you doing here?” I asked.
“Yeah. What she said.” Aunt Maxi scowled and pointed to me. “Honey Springs wasn’t good enough for you when my brother was living. Why you here now?”
“This is getting good,” Mae Belle cackled from next to Aunt Maxi.
“Hush your mouth.” Aunt Maxi’s anger turned on Mae Belle.
“I won’t do it.” Mae Belle pushed herself up to standing. She put a hand on her hip and cocked it to the side. “You don’t run this town. If you want to know how Penny Bloom found out about the Beautification Committee, then you can talk to me.”
“Yes.” My mother nodded and smiled. “My soon-to-be son-in-law was precious enough to give me a ride to your charming coffeehouse. Mae Belle was there and she just took right to me.”
“She did, did she?” Aunt Maxi’s eyes zeroed in on Mae Belle Donovan.
It was no secret that Mae Belle and Aunt Maxi have had words a time or two over silly little things and gossip. Aunt Maxi poked Mae Belle. “You did, did you?”
Mae Belle whacked Aunt Maxi with her floppy hat.
“You better hold on one cotton pickin’ minute.” Mae Belle continued to whack Aunt Maxi over the head until Aunt Maxi started flailing her hands back at Mae Belle.
“Stop it right this minute.” I jumped up and parted the two of them.
“See,” Aunt Maxi ran her fingers in her spiky hair. “See the fuss you caused.” She directed her words to Mom. “You make a mess everywhere you go!”
Aunt Maxi pushed past our chairs and darted out the door but not without saying a few words that’d make the devil blush.
When I looked up, all of the committee members had turned around and were watching everything that had gone on.
“And that’s why I never came here. I never knew when she was going to go off half-cocked.” Mom seemed pleased as a peach that Aunt Maxi had left. She put her hand in the crook of my arm and shimmied her hiney in the chair closer to me.
I sucked in a deep breath and offered a sweet smile to everyone who was still staring.
“Now if I can have your attention now that the soap opera has come to an end.” Alice Dee Spicer’s lines creased her forehead as her brows dipped when she looked directly at me. “We’ve gotten the new banners for all the carriage lights, so if we could have a volunteer that’d be great.”
Mom’s hand shot up. She waved her hand.
“Penny? Are you sure?” Alice’s face was flawless and her makeup was on point. Her brown hair was layered and glossy, not to mention, styled to perfection.
Which it should be since she owned Honey Comb hair salon. Recently, she’d been voted in as the president of the Beautification Committee after our last president had been sent to jail for killing Alexis. Alice was the perfect choice since she was already the vice president. We’d yet to fill her vacant position. I wasn’t going to suggest any nominees.
“Of course, I’m excited to get to know my new home.” Mom’s words caused me to jump up, because she obviously didn’t understand what Alice was saying.
“Wait.” I held my hand in the air. I bent down and whispered into my mom’s ear. “She’s asking for a member of the committee to have a full-time position of doing banners since it was her job as our vice president. Not just while you are here visiting.”
“Visiting?” Mom chuckled. “I’m not visiting.” She looked down at her watch and gave it a good tap with her fingernail. “In fact, I’ve got to go because I’m going to see a house to buy.” She stood up, leaving me with my mouth gaped open. My limp body sat back down into the chair. “I’d love to do it and take over the position. I’ll see you at Honey Comb at six.”
What was going on? My mind tried to wrap around what was happening. My mom took a step out of the aisle. She looked over her shoulder.
“Toodles. I’ll see you later.” She trotted out the door of All About the Details, leaving me dumbfounded.
“Your mom is a sight.” Mae Belle looked to be enjoying every bit of the idea that my mom was in town. She rubbed her hands together. “She’s going to drive Maxine Bloom plum crazy and I’m going to be sipping on my sweet tea watching it all.” She smiled. “Or coffee. Coffee is good too.”
“I’m not sure what’s going on.” I gnawed on my bottom lip. “But I don’t have time to worry about that. Do you know where I can get some good apples?”
“Hill’s Orchard of course,” she said.
“I hate to give you the bad news, but Fred Hill is dead. Someone killed him.” Images of Louise standing over Fred rolled around in my memory. I shivered.
“What? Fred Hill was murdered?” Her voice carried over the meeting. There was a collective gasp that filled the room.
Eight
“Don’t tell me that you found another body?” Aunt Maxi sat on one of the stools at the island in the kitchen of The Bean Hive. Tank was curled up in her lap fast asleep.
“Let’s just say that I found Louise standing over his body.” My brows drew together. “Oh darn. How many scoops was that?”
I looked at the whole beans of coffee in the sack with the scoop in my hand, then I looked at the cinnamon scoop. I’d completely lost count of my ratio. Many of my customers had asked how I make the cinnamon blend that I served and so I got the bright idea to package it to sell. Ever since then, it’d been flying off the shelves.
“You mean to tell me that Louise killed Fred?
” Bunny asked when she came in the swinging kitchen door from the shop in the middle of the conversation. Pepper followed behind her.
I flipped him a homemade dog treat from the jar that sat on the island. He grabbed it and took it back to his bed.
“I didn’t say that at all.” I dumped the contents of what I’d already made up and started from scratch. “Can you grab those mini hot browns out of the oven and plate them for the late afternoon lunch crowd?”
“Fred was awfully hard to get along with. Didn’t Louise and Fred have a fight at the Farmer’s Market?” Bunny pulled on a pair of oven mitts.
The smell of oozing cheese, warm bread, and ham created a heavenly scent as the steamed rolled out from the warm oven. Without even trying to, we all smiled and sighed. It was amazing what food did for the soul once it was eaten, but it was the smell that hooked them. My little secret was to bake something daily in a small pewter dish and set it in the air duct. When the air conditioner kicked on, the entire coffeehouse smelled of something delicious. It never failed that customers always asked what smelled so good.
“Yeah. Not to mention he’d come in Pet Palace demanding to see her when I was volunteering the other night.” I looked over the hot browns. Each little mini one was browned perfectly with the creamy sauce bubbling up around the outsides. If my stomach weren’t in knots over not only the reason for Fred’s death, but also Mom’s sudden urge to move to Honey Springs, I might’ve eaten one.
I took a couple of them off the baking sheet and put them on the cooling rack. They were perfect for a single meal and I wanted to take Jean Hill a couple along with my condolences.
“So it’s not looking good for Louise?” Aunt Maxi asked.
“What do you mean, he was awfully hard to get along with?” I asked. “He’d always been nice to me.”
“He was nice to you because you bought from him.” Bunny looked at Aunt Maxi. “Whatever happened between him and TJ?”
“You know.” Aunt Maxi looked out into the kitchen as if she were studying something. “I never heard.”
“TJ Holmes? The neighbor?” I recalled the man that’d come over to the crime scene.
Aunt Maxi nodded. “From what I remember, Doris Blankenship sold TJ the property next to Fred and I’d heard that she convinced TJ to have the land surveyed and part of Fred’s apple orchard was on his property.”
“And TJ tried to strike a deal with Fred that he’d lease the land to him or something like that.” Bunny tsked, “Oh, my mind must be going because I can’t keep all that straight.”
“Who told you about all this?” I asked.
“It’s all public knowledge and a little bit of gossip. Ida Combs is the clerk at the courthouse and she was telling book club about it.” Bunny shrugged and pushed through the swinging door butt first with the tray of mini hot browns in her hand.
“Book club?” Inquisitively I looked over at Aunt Maxi and put in the last scoop of cinnamon. “If I’d known there was a book club, I’d have joined it rather than the Beautification Committee.”
I turned on the coffee grinder and pulled empty coffee bags with The Bean Hive logo from underneath the island.
“You’ll have to ask Leslie about it. I think they still meet in Crooked Cat, but I’m not for sure.” Her voice rose above the grinder. “Speaking of Beatification Committee.”
I took a deep breath to prepare myself for what I knew was coming next. Questions about
Mom.
“Why didn’t you tell me that Penny was in town?” she asked in a calm manner that I could tell she was trying so hard to maintain.
“I had no idea she was coming to town. I’ve not talked to her in months. When Spencer dropped me off the other night, she was sitting in one of my rocking chairs.” I poured some ground cinnamon coffee into each bag before I ran the seal around the edges.
“Spencer?” Aunt Maxi questioned. “Why were you with Spencer?”
“Long story short, I’d fallen asleep during my volunteering at Pet Palace. He saw the light on later than usual and decided to stop by. It was too late for me and Pepper to ride the bike back so Spencer gave us a ride.” Why was it so hard to believe that the members of the opposite sex could be friends these days? “Anyways, after I got in the house and ready to question Mom, she was fast asleep on the couch and she was still asleep this morning.”
“You still could’ve warned me.” Aunt Maxi was going to beat it and run over it until she was satisfied. She put Tank on the ground. The little fellow yawned and stretched.
“I didn’t know how long she was going to be in town.” I finished sealing all the bags and stacked them in my arms. “You know her. She’s got a mind of her own. She always up and left with little to no notice.”
I headed into the coffeehouse with Aunt Maxi, Tank, and Pepper on my heels.
“I was just as taken aback as you when I saw her here.” I put the bags of coffee on the display case on the right wall of the shop. “I’m not even sure where’s she’s been. I guess when I find out from her, I’ll tell you.”
The rest of the afternoon was spent cleaning and restocking the glass cases. Over the last couple of months, I’d hired a couple of the high school girls to run the coffeehouse from the afternoon hours to closing time. They’d come as a recommendation from the Home Economics teacher from Honey Springs High after I’d gone to the school to post a Help Wanted ad.
Not only did it give me a much-needed break, it also gave me a good peace of mind the shop was running smoothly.
“Any questions?” I asked Emily Rich, the one of the two girls who was more interested in the baking part of the job.
“Nope.” She smiled and brushed her long brown hair behind her shoulders.
“Do you have any questions?” I asked Katrina, the other girl that was more interested in the business side of the job.
“No, ma’am. If we do, we’ll call.” Katrina’s blond hair was cut shoulder length, but was pulled back in two braids. “Have a great date.”
“I’ll take Pepper and Tank out several times.” Emily had really taken to Pepper. He loved her too.
Patrick had been trying to get me to go away for a long weekend, but I’d been hesitant because of Pepper and the shop. Now I didn’t have any excuses and thought about bringing up a long weekend tonight when we were together.
Confident everything was going well, I quickly changed my work clothes into a pair of shorts and tee since Patrick and I were going to go fishing. I’d tried to call my mom a couple of times, but she didn’t answer or return my call. I had a sneaky suspicion she was avoiding me.
I went out on the boardwalk and stood there looking out over Lake Honey Springs. The sun was starting to go down behind the tree line and a light summer breeze skidded across the calm water.
It was a good time to call Spencer and let him know what I’d found out.
“What’s going on?” he answered the phone. “You’ve not come across any more dead bodies have you?”
“That’s not even funny,” I joked and leaned up against the railing of the boardwalk with my back to the lake. “I did find out that Fred also had a beef with his neighbor TJ Holmes.”
“Yeah. I’d heard about that months ago, and after I let you and Louise leave the orchard, he was still hanging around. I asked him about that lawsuit and he said that it’d been settled in Honey Springs Courthouse months ago. Plus, he has an alibi at the time of death.” Spencer continued to tell me about how the coroner had come back with a time of death, which was about twenty minutes before I’d gotten there.
“If I’d only gotten there a half hour earlier,” I said.
“I’m glad you didn’t or you might be dead.” His words struck home. “I finally got in touch with his wife. She was away at her sister’s for the night. The strawberries they didn’t sell at the Farmer’s Market, she took to her sister’s to make homemade jams. She’s pretty devastated.”
“I couldn’t imagine.” Really I couldn’t. My mind turned
to Patrick. After all these years we finally found each other again, I couldn’t imagine losing him now. I gulped and changed the subject. “What did you say TJ’s alibi was?”
“He’s a mechanic and does all the work for the marina. He was down there working on the boats of some summer citizens. You know boats.” He hesitated. “They sit all winter and need to be worked on. TJ is a busy man the first couple of weeks of the summer because everyone wants their boats worked on first.”
“Not that I wanted TJ to be the killer, but I sure wish there was someone other than Louise,” I said and looked down the boardwalk.
“Like I said, you let me handle all the investigative work, but if you do hear something, please call me.” We hung up the phone just as another call was coming in.
It was from the landline at Pet Palace.
“Hello,” I answered not sure if it was Louise or Jeremy, her fulltime employee.
“Thank goodness you answered,” Louise’s voice cracked. “I really think I’m in trouble and I didn’t know who to turn to.”
“Louise.” A knot the size of a goose egg felt like it was lodged in my throat. “Please don’t tell me that you did kill Fred Hill.”
“For goodness sakes, no,” her voice dripped through the phone. “They think I did. That’s my problem. Spencer told me there aren’t any other suspects and that I’m the one everyone says had a bad relationship with him recently.”
“Did he say that you are his number one suspect?” I asked, knowing that it didn’t take someone with a law degree like me to figure it out. All the evidence did point to her.
“He didn’t say that in so many words. He said not to leave town.” She breathed heavily into the phone.
“Calm down and catch your breath. There’s no sense in getting all worked up until. . .”
“Until what, Roxy? Until he’s got me locked up in the county pen?” She wasn’t being very reasonable at the moment and who could blame her.
“What did you need my help in doing?” I asked.