The Cider Shop Rules

by Julie Anne Lindsey

  “Nothing,” I said. “It’s on the house. You brought me home when I needed a ride, and I served you a snack. I think that makes us about even.”

  “About,” he said, focusing on the single unnecessary word. “Coffee should settle things between us, then. I’ll give you a call to set it up.” He released my fingers and was gone.

  Colton followed his brother out, promising to be in touch with me later for my written statement.

  I blinked in their absence, then hurried to collect my marbles.

  Chapter Four

  I threw myself into being the best cider shop owner on earth until the crowd waned and the sun set. Then I locked up and headed home to make a casserole.

  Two orange tabbies found me on the long dirt road home and weaved their way around my feet, arching and rubbing against my calves as I moved. It’d only been about a year since Dot had rescued them from the national forest and delivered them into my heart. Back then, they were frail, orphaned, and weak. They’d both fit into one inside pocket of Dot’s park ranger coat. Now the little fuzz balls were about eight pounds each and as healthy as a couple of very small horses.

  Dot had lovingly named them both Kenny Rogers, the name she gave all her rescues. She claimed it was easier to remember one name than forty, faster to call the herd for mealtime, and she flat-out loved the actual human Kenny Rogers, so it worked. I’d kept the name for my tomcat and chosen the name Dolly for his sister.

  They mewed up at me, begging for snuggles and their dinner. “Almost there,” I told them, picking up my pace. Much as I wanted to stop and play, I was in a hurry.

  The long shadows of a fall evening crept across the ground around me. They reached toward my feet from rows of looming trees and a scattering of outbuildings across the orchard’s landscape.

  The shadows had only recently started to bother me. Until a few months ago, I’d embraced the nights as lovingly as the days. Then I’d learned that a hired gun and current fugitive named Samuel Keller might have been stalking me. Keller blamed Colton for the life sentence he’d swiftly avoided by killing his transport guards, and he wanted to punish Colton for the inconvenience. Since I’d been spending a lot of time with Colton while investigating a summer murder, he suggested it was possible that Keller had mistaken our relationship for something more. And he might want to terrorize me as a means of hurting Colton. Fortunately, that hadn’t come to pass, but the possibility was never far from my mind.

  Members of Colton’s former police team and a handful of FBI agents had chased and tracked Keller into Kentucky months ago. In theory, I had nothing to worry about anymore. But given the man had eluded authorities once, my confidence that he’d never return was low. In fact, in my experience, people with an ax to grind usually found a stone. So until Keller was captured and tucked safely behind bars, I’d always wonder if he was out here again, watching from the trees.

  Something moved in the shadow at the edge of a building, and the cats hissed.

  I gasped, and the sudden, unbidden sound gonged in the darkness.

  A pale white goat bobbled stiff-legged into view before toppling completely over.

  “Oh, Boo!” I whispered, rushing to his side. “I’m so sorry. You scared us. What are you doing out here? You know you’re supposed to stay in your pen after dark.” I stroked his side until he rolled onto his feet again, then I patted his head and curled my fingers under his collar.

  We made a detour to Granny’s backyard. “Let’s get you home.”

  Boo was another one of Dot’s rescues. He’d stolen Granny’s heart when he came with some of Dot’s other, non-fainting goats to help mow the lawn. Apparently, the other goats picked on him, and Granny couldn’t take it, so he lived in her yard now.

  “In you go,” I told him, opening the small wooden gate outside my spruced-up childhood playhouse. The pastel pink clapboard and white trim had been refinished for him in a more masculine palette of grays and blacks. The letters of his name were stenciled in thick square-edged marks above the door. “You did a nice job on the grass today,” I told him, closing the gate carefully when he was safely inside.

  Harper had since hired an affordable and effective lawn crew to manage our grass, but Granny didn’t think we should point that out to Boo. She believed he needed to have purpose and praise to feel good and be healthy. So, she walked him while the lawn crew tended her backyard, and we complimented his work ethic and craft when he returned. Silly, maybe, but who was I to mess with a goat’s self-esteem?

  I left Boo to his hay bed and headed across the empty field between Granny’s historic farmhouse and my renovated-outbuilding home.

  My phone buzzed with a text message from Blake as I unlocked my front door. He’d sent a photo of himself beside a food truck outside the John Brown fort selling “West Virginia’s Best Apple Fritters.” His right eyebrow cocked in disbelief, and his thumb was distinctly pointed down.

  I laughed, then tucked the phone away and headed for the kitchen. A whole lot of people buying those fritters were going to be disappointed. Especially if they’d ever tasted one of Granny’s. Blake hadn’t had one of her fritters, but he’d made short work of her apple pie fries, and I supposed they were a solid frame of reference.

  I sprayed a 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray, then set my oven to preheat. I carried my recipe box to the couch and got down to business. It wouldn’t matter to Mrs. Potter what sort of casserole I baked, but I wanted to pick the right one anyway. She’d likely be too grief-stricken to eat and too inundated with other food deliveries to get to mine for a month, but I couldn’t go empty-handed, and on the off chance she decided to set tonight’s offerings out as a buffet for her visitors, I wanted mine to be the best.

  My phone rang, and I found Dot’s face on the screen. “Hello?”

  “Are you going to the Potters’ place tonight?” she asked. Something honked in the background, and she shushed it.

  “Was that a goose?”

  Dot sighed. “Yeah. It’s the one from Doc Austin’s office. He saved it, but he doesn’t think it’ll ever fly again. The wing will heal, but the damage is irreversible.” The sorrow in her voice was enough to break my heart. “I made a place for him to stay at my house while I take a pie to Mrs. Potter,” she said. “Do you want to ride together?”

  “Absolutely. Give me an hour to get something in and out of the oven, then I’ll pick you up.” I loved to drive, and this was the sort of thing I’d normally take Granny to, but she was still at the Roadkill Cookoff.

  Sixty-seven minutes later, I rushed out the door in jeans and a black sweater. I’d wrangled my hair into a headband and skipped the mascara. I put a ChapStick in my pocket just in case.

  The world was impossibly dark as I beat a path through the nipping wind to my grampy’s cavernous pole barn, where he used to store his classic cars. He and I had spent hours there working on his cars and talking about our days. It was where he’d taught me the hard truths in life, about being a woman in a farmers’ world. About sometimes having to work harder than the guys to get the same acknowledgment. About how it was unfair, but persistence could change anything, even stubborn people’s minds. He’d taught me everything he knew, patiently and without boundaries, because there was nothing I couldn’t do. It’d been four years since he’d gone to heaven, and I missed him every day. Sometimes so much I couldn’t catch my breath.

  I opened the barn doors wide, inhaling the familiar scents of earth and oil.

  My eyes jumped instantly to Sally, my nineteen-sixty-eight-and-a-half 428 Cobra Jet Mustang in Wimbledon White. I’d sold her sisters to Doc Austin for money to renovate the barn and open my cider shop, but I could never willingly let go of Sally. Sally sang to me.

  I climbed in and let my palms glide over the curve of her steering wheel before giving her engine a start. Together we rolled into the night.

  A shiver rocked down my spine as I reached the driveway’s end. The familiar sensation of being watched crept along the base of
my neck and curled icy fingers into my hair.

  I checked my door locks, then gave Sally’s pedal a little press and launched us onto the silent country road. She charged easily ahead, floating silently around the winding ribbon of road between the mountains and leaving my fears far behind.

  Dot’s front door sucked open as I pulled into the drive. She nearly leapt into Sally’s passenger seat with a foil-covered pie on a dish towel inside an upturned cardboard box lid. The lid and towel worked as a platter and insulator to keep the piping hot pie from burning her legs. She flipped the towel’s edges up and over the foil on top of her pie, then reached for her seat belt to buckle up. “Get moving before my pie goes cold.”

  I shifted into gear and pressed the gas.

  I had an insulated carrier for my casseroles, complete with extra padding on the bottom and Velcro handles on top, but I’d yet to find one for pies.

  “What kind of casserole did you decide to make?” she asked as I eased back onto the road and pointed us in the direction of Potter’s Pumpkin Patch.

  “Tater tot,” I said, pulling my lips to the side and partially regretting my decision. “It’s not fancy or special, but everyone likes it. I figured it’d be easy to give away if her freezer’s full when we get there.”

  “Smart,” Dot said. “I hate that so many people use times of tragedy like this to show off in the kitchen. As if that’s what matters instead of the fact our community is grieving a loss and consoling a widow. I mean, come on, people, save your made-from-scratch pasta and canned-by-hand sauces for a party. Right? I made a pecan pie.”

  “I love pecan pie.”

  “Good, because ever since those trees I planted a few years ago matured, I’ve got pecans coming out of my ears. I might have to start selling them by the roadside before I’m buried alive in them.”

  I gaped. “I could never be buried in pecans. I’d eat them. If you need help, I’m your girl.”

  She smiled. “You’re going to regret saying that, but no take-backs. Now, we have about ten minutes before we get to the Potters’ place, and you have to fill me in on what happened with Sheriff Wise’s brother after you dropped me off.”

  I puffed out a breath. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I’ll get you started,” she said pertly, then paused to clear her throat. “Holy crow! Can you believe you gave your number to a total stranger? And he turned out to be Sheriff Wise’s brother? What are the odds? Then the sheriff saw that you’d nicknamed his brother ‘Tall, Dark, and Yummy!’ Could that have been any more awkward?”

  I cast a deep frown in her direction. “You gave him that nickname—and my number,” I reminded her. “And yes, I’m horrified, so I’m trying not to think about it.”

  “Sound strategy,” she said. “So, what’s he like? Is he always as charming as he was on the street? Did he stay awhile when he brought you home? Did he know who you were once he saw you with his brother?”

  “He stayed for cider and apple fries,” I said, “but he didn’t know who I was. Apparently Colton isn’t much of a sharer. Blake had never heard of me or that my cider shop existed. He said his brother’s a private person.”

  Dot balked. “I guess so. You’re the only person in town I’ve ever seen the sheriff spend any time with. If he didn’t tell his family about you, he must not tell them anything. Was it weird flirting with his brother? Do you think Blake thought it was weird that you knew his brother? What did the sheriff think about you calling his brother ‘Yummy?’”

  “I didn’t call him that. You did,” I repeated. Though she was right, Colton couldn’t know that.

  “Are you going to see Blake again?”

  I made the final turn onto the Potters’ street, biting my lip against a nonsensical rush of nerves. “He invited me out for coffee.”

  “No!” She gasped, swiveling to face me on the narrow seat. “Are you going to tell Colton? Will Blake?”

  “Colton heard him ask me,” I said, my voice dropping to a guilty whisper. “He showed up unexpectedly at the cider shop and overheard the whole thing. Then he sent Blake to have dinner with their mom, and he left too.”

  Dot shook her head slowly, eyes wide with disbelief. “I don’t even have words for that.”

  “It’s not like Colton and I are dating,” I said, sliding Sally in line behind what seemed like a million other vehicles on the road along the Potter property. The gate to the pumpkin patch entrance was shut. A set of heavy chains and an impressive padlock hung from the center, forcing everyone to walk around to the home’s front door.

  Dot climbed out, careful not to dump her pie. She peered at me over Sally’s roof, a strange, pensive look in her eye. “It’s not as if you aren’t dating either.”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” I said, shoving my seat forward to collect my casserole from the backseat floorboard. “It’s all just very weird and complicated.” I straightened and shut my door. “I’d rather spend my time figuring out what happened to Mr. Potter than thinking about the Wise brothers.”

  Dot met me at Sally’s side and joined me on the slow processional to the Potters’ front door. “Fine, but keep me posted. You’re quick to complain Sheriff Wise doesn’t tell you things, but pulling information out of you isn’t so easy either.”

  The door opened as we reached the porch, and a couple I recognized from town passed us on their way out. Birdie held the door and ushered us inside.

  The house was full and warm. Dozens of locals, families, couples, and kids crowded into the small rooms. Every flat surface overflowed with food, drinks, and desserts. Dot and I delivered our offerings to the first available table, moving the other dishes as needed to create more space.

  Birdie helped. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said when our hands were empty. She squeezed us in a group hug, then stepped back to lock her gaze on mine. “Have you heard anything?” Her raised brows and wide eyes made the meaning of her words crystal clear. Had I heard anything about who had killed Mr. Potter?

  “Nothing at the cider shop,” I said. “What about you?” I dragged my gaze pointedly around the crowded room. “Seen or heard anything that didn’t add up or sit right?”

  “No,” Birdie said. “The crime scene folks poked around outside until just a bit ago, but they didn’t come in to talk to us. The sheriff and his deputies are still here, combing through the barns and grounds. The sheriff asked a bunch of nosy questions earlier, before folks started bringing food.”

  “What kind of questions?” I asked, lowering my voice to a whisper.

  She pursed her lips and sighed. “Had Hellen and Jacob been fighting? Had he been behaving strangely lately? Did he have any enemies? That sort of thing.” She rolled her eyes. “Hasn’t anyone ever told our sheriff it’s bad luck to speak ill of the dead?”

  I offered a sad smile. I knew what she meant, but I also knew Colton had to ask those questions. He had to find a thread to pull. Something to set off the investigation. “Do you mind if I slip out for a minute and take a look around?”

  Birdie’s face lit up. She motioned me through the home toward the back. “The sheriff already cleared the barns and fields nearest the parking lot. If you start there, you shouldn’t run into him.”

  Dot stopped at my side. “Keep your phone in your hand in case you need it.”

  I brought her number onto my cell phone screen. “Okay. If you get a call from me, it’s because I’m in trouble, so come immediately.”

  She nodded.

  Dot opened the back door, checking over her shoulder for lookie-loos. No one paid any attention to us.

  I slid out and stood under the cone of motion lights on the rear porch, unsure where to begin, then I saw the red barn and a memory surfaced. Mr. Potter had come from that direction today, and he’d been obviously irritated by something. Or someone.

  I headed for the barn, listening carefully for signs of Colton or his deputies nearby. Their flashlight beams bobbed and flashed in the distance, closer to
the corn maze than the petting zoo, and both were too far for me to still be visible in the night.

  A pair of four-wheeler tracks caught my eye in the moonlight, and another memory flashed into my mind. Mr. Potter had left his four-wheeler and trailer in the pumpkin patch near my truck after hauling my order to the field where I’d parked. I used the tracks to guide my path to the barn, then slowed at the flicker of light peeking around red gingham curtains on the front window and beneath the partially open doors.

  “Hello?” I called, rapping a knuckle on the wooden frame, and hoping a cold-blooded killer wasn’t inside. “It’s Winona Mae Montgomery,” I said, toeing the door open a bit further. “Anyone here?”

  A young man strode toward me in visible pain. I didn’t see any blood, or anyone else, so I assumed his pain was emotional rather than physical. “Can I help you?” he asked, throwing the door wide with a forced smile. “I think most folks are inside the Potter home. You can try the back door. Someone will let you in, I’m sure.”

  “I was just there,” I said. “Why are you out here all alone?”

  He shrugged. His ruddy cheeks and puffy eyes suggested he’d probably come to cry and be alone. “Why are you?”

  I looked around the barn. No smoking guns in sight. “I came out to get some air and saw the light. Are you hungry? There’s plenty of food and no way Mrs. Potter can eat half of it on her own. There’s a buffet set up in the dining room.”

  He rubbed a handkerchief under his nose. “I don’t really know those folks. I mean, I recognize them from a lifetime in this town, but I wouldn’t feel right going in. And I’m not hungry.”

  “I get it,” I said. “It’s fine. Most of the folks inside are older than me, and you’re still young. It’s not exactly a youthful crowd.” I eyeballed him, taking a closer look, absorbing the details. He was in jeans and a white T-shirt. His hair was combed, but longer than the fashion. The soles on his boots were thin. His hands were clean, but his nails dirty. “How did you know Mr. Potter?” I asked, already formulating a few guesses. He was probably a farmhand. Young, strong, tireless. Someone who wouldn’t mind the hard work and low pay.