The last few times Ben had come home from the road, he spoke about home. Family. Having a permanent roof over his head. His eyes reflected the future looming between us. Its fingers increased their grip on my throat…
“More coffee, sweetie?” Honey appeared at my elbow, snapping me out of my reverie.
“Um, yeah.” I tried to grin at her, but I think it came out as a grimace. “Fill ’er up.”
“You need a fresh bowl of gravy?” Honey gestured with the coffeepot. “Spendin’ all your time talkin’ has set yours up to pudding.”
“Sure, sure.” Although I wasn’t sure I could eat anything more.
Honey swirled away with a flash of red hair and white apron. She’d probably forget the gravy, but I knew she wouldn’t leave the table until I agreed to the fresh bowl.
“Are you upset with me?” Ben finished the last of his burger.
I shook my head. “Not at all.” His words made me realize I’d kept him at arm’s length while at the same time saying I loved him. “Love means vulnerability, and I…I have a hard time being vulnerable.”
“Why?” His forehead wrinkled. “I know I’ve been gone a lot, but since I’ve been with you, no one else makes me feel like coming home. Are you afraid of me?”
“No.” My response came out in a whisper. “It’s not you.”
Now the singer in the background was belting out a song about lovin’ and leavin’. What a fitting way to fill the silence. I couldn’t tell him I wanted to be the one to fly and be free. For a wild moment I almost considered closing the shop and running. Stop it.
“When the Lord mentioned He was teachin’ me patience through you, He wasn’t joking.” Ben shook his head.
I gritted my teeth before I replied. “Glad I could help. I can’t just wish these feelings away, even if I don’t want them.”
“That’s why I believe in us. Even though there’s been times I could’ve walked away, given into temptation…”
“What?”I hadn’t expected this.“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you think, the line of work I’m in, there are lonely women wanting to spend time with a man who’ll be gone the next day? Temptation makes some drivers cave. But not all of us. And not me.”
I squirmed in the booth. No one beat down my door while Ben was gone. But Ben had a likability about him, the kind of guy mothers love and who makes their daughters laugh, and the kind that other guys would trust to run the barbecue grill. He didn’t spend much time in town, and when he did, we were together.
“If you wanted to be free, you could have said something a long time ago.”
“That’s not what I want. I’m free with you, Andi Clark.”
“And yet I try your patience.”
“You’re worth it.”
“I’m glad you think so.” Lord, thank You for this sweet man. Few people in my life could tell me the unembellished truth without leaving me licking my wounds. Still, though, it did sting. “It’s not that I can’t commit, or I don’t want to. Feelings are hard to change. Like I said.” But give up too easy?
“I love you just the way you are, feelings and all.”
“Thanks.” What else could I say? Well-intentioned people like him and Di always tried to tell me what I already knew, and I didn’t want to be controlled. I didn’t tell him that though.
“I’m leaving Friday. I should be back in ten days.” Ben wiped his mouth with his napkin. His expression had sealed itself off again. Men like Ben don’t love halfway, and I felt like a fraud for my silence.
I nodded. “I’ll miss you.”
“Are you mad about me offering money, or me saying that you give up too easy?”
“No, I’m not mad about you wanting to help. Really. Sometimes the truth hurts.” I blinked hard, not wanting to tear up.
Ben took the check that Honey had deposited after dropping off our meals, and he stood. He extended his hand in my direction.
For some reason half a dozen tables of customers had decided to leave Honey’s en masse and were waiting in line to pay their check.
Feeling like a world-class idiot, I stood beside Ben and waited. I wanted to run outside but forced myself to wait in line. A voice that dripped with bitterness made me turn. Especially when the name “Charla Thacker” met my ears.
Mike Chandler and a few of his buddies were divvying up their check before they arrived at the register. “What irony. I wish I could have been there to see that.” He ground out the words as I stared back at them.
“Man, that’s cold,” one of his buddies commented. “Why would you want to watch her die?”
“Cold?” His voice rose, and now I wasn’t the only one staring. “You know why she broke up with me? She didn’t like the sound of the name Charla Chandler, and she decided she didn’t want to be tied down to a farmer.”
“I don’t get it. What’s the big deal?”
“She almost put me out of business last summer. Said I tried to poison her with strawberries. And now she’s dead from an allergic reaction. Served her right. Like I said, part of me wished I could have seen that.”
Ben’s touch on my hand made me whirl back around. We moved up in line. I sucked in a breath at Mike’s words. He had intense brown eyes and a goatee and rarely smiled, but he’d just spoken more than I’d ever heard him say in all the years I’d stopped by Chandler’s Farmer’s Market.
I took a deep breath, then leaned forward and whispered at Ben. “Hey.”
He half turned in line. “Hey, what?”
“Mike just said Charla accused him of trying to poison her last summer…with strawberries.”
“Baby, stop.” Ben stepped up to the counter and handed our check to the woman at the register who would somehow make sense of Honey’s scribbles and numbers.
“Stop what?”
“You can’t accuse people of murder just by overheard conversations.”
“You heard?”
Ben’s eyes glinted as he looked at me. “I heard a few things. I figured I’d mind my own business and not listen.”
“I’m not a busybody.”
“Nobody said you were.” We walked into the blaze of summer outside, damp with humidity and making good on the weatherman’s promise of a mid-June scorcher.
Ben pulled me close once we’d stopped at his truck. “I’m leaving soon. Think you could pay me a little attention?” His dimples came out and coaxed me to relax in his arms.
“I think so.”
He leaned in for a quick kiss. A car’s honk made me spring back, my face flaming. Why did I go from feeling strangled to never wanting him to let me go? Lord, I could really use some help with this one. Di oughta be good for some advice.
“I’ll miss you.” My throat caught.
“I’ll be home again before you know it.” Ben gave me another hug. “I have a feeling my days on the road are numbered. So don’t give up on us.”
“I won’t.” I smiled at him. “And I won’t give up trying to find out how someone tried to kill Charla Thacker.”
Ben groaned and shook his head, then kissed me again.
Chapter Seven
Madam, your books are done—in under twenty minutes.” Di snapped the Tennessee River Soaps ledger shut and grinned. My sister has this sick love affair with numbers, which is why I paid her to do my books, so I could feel free to be creative. Although today, I felt anything but creative as I looked at my showroom floor, brimming with inventory.
“Don’t look so happy.” I sank onto the stool behind the counter. “If business were better, you’d be taking longer.” As it was, my Saturday morning rush had already come and gone. All two of them.
“Wish you were paying me by the hour?”
I shrugged. My stomach growled, too soon for lunch.
“What is it?” She leaned closer. “What’s wrong?” We have a unique role reversal, my sister Diana and I. Her listening heart helped me through my rocky teen years and young adulthood, and I helped her not take herself too serio
usly.
I sipped my coffee and sighed. “Remember when I suspected someone tried to murder Charla by sabotaging my facial scrub? Well, now I’m sure of it. And I’m sure the lab is going to take forever on testing the scrub, since Charla’s death was ruled an accident. But after what I heard Mike Chandler spew at Honey’s the other day, I’m going to keep looking around on my own.”
I outlined the whole scenario for her, from finding the strawberry seeds in the scrub, to hearing Mike at Honey’s. Like Ben, Di let me ramble on, only punctuating my story with a few sympathetic “ummhmm’s.” Her eyebrows would have shot to the ceiling had they not been firmly attached to her forehead.
“Wow.” She started to pace the store. “So, let’s put on our Hardy Girls’ caps again.”
“I thought you didn’t want to be the Hardy Girls.”
“I changed my mind after this latest development. From what you said, Mike’s not someone who’s merely disgruntled, but someone who seemed genuinely tickled pink that Charla died.” Di strode past me and into the back office. Her voice trailed to the front. “Okay, we’ll make a list of suspects.” She emerged with paper and pen, then hopped onto the stool next to mine.
“First, we list the bridesmaids. Hang on, I’ve got the list from Charla’s party.” Now it was my turn to trot back and forth from the office. “Here it is…Melinda, Emily, Tess, Mitchalene. And the fiancé, Robert. He’s not on the list, but he knew about the party. Put Mike down, too.”
Di jotted on the paper. “What about that woman you heard in the bathroom after the funeral?”
“Kaitlyn, in the slingbacks…” My stomach turned. “I don’t know. She sounded more bitter than murderous.”
“I’m adding her to the list anyway.” Di studied the ceiling as if it would help her remember the woman’s name. “Kaitlyn…”
“Branch.” I shrugged. “She didn’t have access or immediate knowledge of the spa party…that I know of. I still say the fiancé and the bridal party are the most likely ones. Sometimes the people you think you’re closest to can hurt you the most.”
“I say we start with the fiancé.” Di circled his name. “This could have been a crime of passion.”
“True. But why kill her the week before their wedding?” I doodled a scroll with leaves on the paper.
“Cold feet.”
“Ha. Breaking up is easier than murder.” I shook my head. At that, my cell phone warbled and I snatched it from the counter. Ben!
“…checking in…” The sound of an engine roared in the background. “I miss you already.”
“I miss you, too. So where are you?” I knew enough to guess about where he’d be, but I liked hearing his voice.
The bell over the front door clanged, and a pair of ladies entered. I smiled at them and shot Di a nod. She moved across the shop floor and greeted them.
After a moment of static, Ben answered. “About halfway to Phoenix.”
Halfway to Phoenix. So I was right. “Hurry home, but be safe.”
“I will. I’ll call you when I stop.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
When I hung up the phone, Di was showing the pair of women the Build-a-Basket-of-Soap offer. She also pointed out the coordinating scents in bath fizzies.
I stayed back and watched. She moved effortlessly and chatted with them as if they were old friends. I think one of them worked at the town library, but she looked a lot older than the last time I went in. Wasn’t the other one a seamstress?
Di totaled their purchases, and I wrapped their products mutely.
“That’s twenty-nine seventy,” which they promptly paid after taking a few business cards and the rest of the sample soaps from the dish on the counter.
After the door clanged behind them, Di turned and gave me one of those looks an older sister ought to give her younger one, not the other way around.
“What?” I took up the list we’d been working on.
“Don’t ‘what’ me.” She tapped the paper. “Something’s eating at you, deeper than the store and what happened to Charla.”
I only grinned at her. “You were good out there. If only I could hire you to sell.”
Di waved me off. “You can sell this stuff without any help from me. But you’re hanging back like it’s your first day of school.”
“I don’t know… .”
“Chicken.” She stuck her tongue out.
My shoulders slumped. No arguing with that. In business, in life, in love. Chicken. My eyes burned. Ben was right, and so was Di.
“I think Ben’s going to propose.”
Di shrieked and had me wrapped in a hug before I knew what was happening. “What? You didn’t tell me until now? Greenburg’s longest-running steady couple is taking the plunge?” She stepped back and grinned.
“He hasn’t asked, but he bought old Mrs. Flanders’s property out near the river. Said something about it being time to settle down.” The vise around my neck tightened another notch. “The idea of seeing him every day for the rest of my life…I’m afraid.”
“I wish you’d gotten married fast. Older people get so set in their ways.”
“So I’m ‘older’ now, huh?” Funny how she pulled that older-sister card when she was ready to. “I’m only thirty-five.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I mean that you and Ben are both heading to the downside of thirty, and you’ve both got routines. Did you think this might be scary for him, too?”
I shook my head. “I never thought about it that way.” And here I’d wallowed in my own conflicted feelings the last time he was home. Ben had to be terribly brave to make such big changes in his life— buying property, building a home. I moved to brush some imaginary dust from the June Breeze and Peachy Keen displays. Although the bottom of my purse was a black hole of receipts and ballpoint pens, I arranged my soaps alphabetically in the store.
“I know Steve and I were only nineteen when we married, and we had a lot to learn about each other.” Di wore a faraway expression. “You think you know someone, and then they surprise you. Some things good, some not so good.”
“Do you ever feel like you missed out on anything?”
“Like what?”
Finally, the dam burst, the one I’d been shoring up those nights I couldn’t go to sleep—the times I wondered about Ben being the man God had for me, everything.
“I’m just so scared I’m going to wake up one day and be like everyone else, with the whole routine of work and kids and chaos and grocery shopping and leaky faucets and…” I waved a hand as if all those things were swooping down on me like evil birds of prey.
“Well, I like my life.” Di joined me and straightened the jars of bath salts. “And it has turned into all those things. But boring and stifling are what someone makes out of their life. You know what I wouldn’t trade? The walks with Steve, where he reminds me I’m the only woman for him. Seeing Taylor run up to give me a drawing he colored himself. The times we go tubing down the river on a lazy summer afternoon, just the four of us. Those moments cancel out the boring stuff.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to put down what you and Steve have.” I took a deep breath at the sweet pang of longing that stabbed at my heart. “I want those things, too. But there’s so much out there—I don’t want to look back and regret it.”
“I think you two have kept a convenient distance from each other long enough.” Di patted my hand. “So let life happen. Embrace what God has for you and make the most of it.”
“Well, first of all,” I glanced around the room as I spoke, “I’ve got to save this business. Ben said sometimes I give up too easily. Well, I’m not going to. Tennessee River Soaps isn’t going down without a fight. We’re going to make an appointment with Charla’s fiancé and do a little digging and see what comes up.”
“What about Mike Chandler? Didn’t you want to talk to him?”
“I do,” I admitted, “but I thought maybe Charla’s fiancé might shed a little light on that lawsuit.
I know, I know, there’s confidentiality and all, but cases in court are usually a matter of public record. Maybe he can save me the red tape of going to the courthouse and requesting a transcript of the proceedings.”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Plus, I’m chicken when it comes to talking to Mike. Angry men scare me, and Mike Chandler is one angry man.” I didn’t need to remind Di about the time I saw Mike throw a pallet of peaches across the farmyard last summer. Di and I had made our weekly pilgrimage to Chandler’s Farmer’s Market. I’d caught a glimpse of him by the peach groves, his face red as he shouted at an employee. Then, there were the bitter words at Honey’s.
“So, you’re going to wait to go to Chandler’s until Ben gets home again?”
“That’s the plan. And the longer the murderer thinks no one suspects what they did, the more relaxed they’ll get.” At least I hoped so.
Chapter Eight
The leather-covered loveseat squeaked underneath me as I crossed my legs. I’d donned a skirt and my favorite blouse on Tuesday morning, which was Robert’s first available appointment. The offices of Robert Robertson, Attorney-at-Law, extended to a twelve-foot ceiling, where a fan clanked and spun way above our heads.
I’d never dealt with a lawyer, other than having Steve’s cousin Drew help me when I launched the soap business. The connection practically made Drew family in Greenburg genealogy, and we’d drawn the papers up one night after a fish fry at Di and Steve’s house.
In contrast, Robert’s office screamed money and power. Was that what had attracted Charla to Robert? And Kaitlyn to Robert…and who knows who else? Even Kaitlyn hadn’t seemed impervious to Robert’s charms, and that was six months into another relationship.
“Di, you didn’t need to come with me.” Although deep down, I was glad.
“I didn’t mind tagging along. You can do the talking, and I’ll watch him answer. Then we can compare notes.” Di seemed more excited than someone ought to be in such a place. Soft music played somewhere, the sound of classical violins. It made me want to curl up on the squeaky leather and go to sleep.
A Suspicion of Strawberries (Scents of Murder Book 1) Page 6