Penelope watched the thick black smoke billowing into the September humidity. “Poor Brice.”
“He’s insured, I guess, but the building’s history can’t be replaced.”
“Maybe it looks worse from here than it really is.”
“Could be.”
The acrid smell of smoke drove them inside. Mary Lynn showed up within minutes. “Harry’s worried the whole town is going to go up.”
“There’s no wind, and the building is on the corner,” Jake said.
“Harry worries.”
“What does it look like?”
“Like it’s all upstairs—more smoke than anything else.”
A few minutes later, Mary Lynn’s phone rang. “Oh, thank goodness,” she said. “I’m at the B&B, but I’ll come home.” She put the phone back in her purse. “That was Harry. It wasn’t much of a fire, and it’s out now.”
“Has he seen Brice?”
“He didn’t say. I’ll bet Brice is back in Little Rock. It’s odd he didn’t open up this weekend for Fall Festival.”
“Maybe Bradley told him not to open under the circumstances. I guess somebody will call him.”
“Probably.” Mary Lynn leaned her chin in her hand. “He should never have come back here and stirred up all this trouble.”
“I don’t think he meant to stir up trouble, Mary Lynn.”
“Maybe not, but he did it.”
“I can’t argue with you there.”
“Wonder what started the fire?”
Penelope grinned. “Miss Madeline’s ghost.”
“Oh, stop it!” Mary Lynn got up and grabbed her purse. “If we hurry, we’ll just make second Mass. I’ll come in the morning about nine to help you clean.”
****
Just before dusk, Penelope walked downtown to see the damage to the store. Though the smell of charred wood permeated the air, the walls and roof were intact, and only a couple of windows on the second floor were broken.
“What are you doing here, Mother?”
Penelope jumped. “Bradley! You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”
“Sorry.”
“Does Ed Briggs have any idea how the fire got started?”
“Yep. Somebody poured kerosene in the hall on the second floor and lit a match.”
“Arson?”
“He says it was easy to spot.”
“How much damage is there inside?”
“Not as much as you might think. The floor will have to be refinished or maybe even replaced. I’ve been trying to call Brice, but his wife says he isn’t home, and she doesn’t know when he’ll be back. But I think other than some smoke damage, his inventory is salvageable.”
“That’s good.”
“I went out to arrest Harvey Hadden this morning.”
“Did you find him?”
“No. I figured I wouldn’t, but I had to go through the motions.”
“Arrest him for murder?”
“Yes.”
“I know about the information Sam gave you.”
“I thought you probably did.”
“If Harvey stood to get money from that pair, why would he kill them?”
“I’ve already told you more than I should.”
“Do you think he set the fire, too?”
“Well, it wasn’t the work of a professional, and kerosene would be what he’d use because he’d have it available to use at home.”
“Had you ever heard about anything like Sam said went on in that building?”
“Chief Malone said he’d heard stories from a couple of his uncles, but he took them with a grain of salt. He says now maybe there was some truth to them after all.”
“I just can’t believe that sort of thing went on in Amaryllis.”
Brad shrugged. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”
The pickup came out of nowhere as they crossed the street. Nausea swept Penelope as she heard the bone crack when she put out her hand to break her fall. She heard gunfire and watched Bradley roll onto his back, gun drawn. Then she blacked out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“It’s not a bad break,” the doctor said, “and it’s your left wrist. Four, five weeks, and the cast can come off. Just keep it dry. Do you need something for pain?”
Penelope shook her head. “I’m fine.”
“Where’d Brad go in such a hurry?”
“After the truck that ran us down, I guess.”
“Know who it was?”
“I guess Bradley does,” Penelope hedged.
“He said he called Mary Lynn Hargrove to come after you.”
“She’ll probably be here in a few minutes.”
“I think I hear her now.” The doctor slid back the window over the reception desk and looked out. “Come on back, Mary Lynn. She’s in here.”
“Pen, what in heaven’s name—“
“Don’t ask.” Penelope slid off the examining table. “I just want to go home.”
“Mr. Kelley’s going to hit the roof when he sees you.”
“I’m fine, Mary Lynn.”
“The bone’s just cracked,” Dr. Teller said. “She’s not damaged beyond repair.”
“Where’s Brad?” asked Mary Lynn.
“He had to leave. Business.”
“He said…”
“Just get me home, Mary Lynn.” Penelope felt suddenly drained of even the desire to breathe.
****
Jake sat by her bed as she tried to fall asleep. “Nellie, I don’t like this.”
“I don’t like it either, Daddy, but Bradley will pick up Harvey Hadden, and that’ll be the end of it.”
“Harvey can hide for years out there in the Hollow. It’s been done. One of his uncles I think it was had stills all over the place back in the day. Not one of them ever got found and broken up, and nobody knew he’d died until somebody told it in town six months later.”
“I don’t think Harvey’s making bootleg hooch.”
“The money’s in pot.”
“What do you know about marijuana, Daddy?”
“Come on, Nellie, everybody knows that’s a cash crop today, and where better to grow it than a place where it can’t be seen—or even found?”
“That Hadden Clan must’ve been a bad lot from the beginning.”
“They were. I didn’t know about Madeline Hadden until this other stuff happened, but I know the family has a history of women who run things. I guess she did. If she made her money the wrong way, the rest of the family would think it was all right to do the same.”
“Elbert makes a good living at the Garden Market.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised if he works his way up to manager someday.”
“What kept him from going the wrong way?”
“Hard to tell.”
“I’m glad he didn’t, for his sake.”
“I am, too. You think you can sleep now?”
“Yes, you go on down, Daddy. It’s late.”
“Mary Lynn said she’d bring some help with her tomorrow for the cleaning.”
“I’d forgotten about that.”
“Don’t worry about anything. Brad’ll get all this straightened out.”
“I hope he didn’t go out to the Hollow after Harvey.”
“If he did, he took some help with him. He’s too smart to let himself get in a tight spot he can’t get out of.” Jake leaned over and kissed Penelope’s forehead. “Night, honeychild.”
“Night, Daddy.”
She closed her eyes and didn’t even hear him open and close the bedroom door.
****
She woke the next morning to the sounds of someone moving around in the hall outside the door. Mary Lynn poked her head in the bedroom. “You awake?”
As Penelope struggled to sit up, she became aware of her throbbing wrist. “Who’s with you?”
“Millie said she’d help. They don’t open until eleven at the Sit-n-Swill.”
Millie appeared over Mary Lynn’s shoulder.
“I brought some ham biscuits, and there’s coffee.”
Penelope put her feet over the side of the bed. “I’m going to get a shower. Then I’ll come down. It was nice of you to volunteer to help.”
“I’m glad I was available. I almost went over to Little Rock this morning.”
“Need some help in the shower?” Mary Lynn asked. “Are you steady on your feet?”
“I think I’m okay. I’ll wrap the cast in a plastic bag or something so it won’t get wet.”
“Okay—we’ll be around. Holler if you need something.”
“Thanks, Mary Lynn.”
Penelope replayed the previous night in her mind. The truck had come from out of nowhere. Had it been Harvey Hadden’s? It had happened too quickly. Brad must have thought it was Harvey’s. The gunfire. Where did that come from? It was a pop-pop-pop, small caliber fire, she thought, not like the hunting rifle or shotgun typically used in the Hollow.
Had Bradley fired back? She didn’t think so, even though she’d seen him take out his weapon before she passed out. But he’d gotten a good look at the truck, because he’d had that huge piece he wore on his belt pointed right at it.
Downstairs, she found Jake waiting for her. “I thought you’d be getting the scoop from the Toney Twins this morning.”
“I’ll meander downtown later, but I wanted to see about you first.”
“I’m okay, Daddy. A little sore, and my wrist aches.”
“Did Doc give you something for pain?”
“It doesn’t hurt bad enough for the big guns.”
“Brad called a few minutes ago. I told him you were still asleep, and Mary Lynn and Millie had everything under control here.”
“Did he say anything about last night?”
“Not a word. And I didn’t ask either. He sounded like he was in a hurry.”
“I guess he hasn’t found Harvey yet.”
“He will. Rosie dropped by on her way to work. She said she’ll bring pizza for supper.”
“We’ve got all those left-overs.”
“That’s what I told her, so she said she’d help dish them up. That little gal’s a real sweetheart.”
“She’s that, Daddy. I hope I’ll be a good mother-in-law.”
“You’ll be the best, Nellie. You couldn’t be anything else.”
****
Rosabel Dean proved as efficient in the kitchen as she was on the street. Penelope sat at the table, nursing her wrist which felt only slightly better, and told the younger woman what to get out of the refrigerator and what to do with it. By the time Bradley showed up, supper was ready.
“Shana hollered at me from the door of the library as she was locking up,” Brad said. “Said to tell you she’d call you tomorrow.” He pecked Rosabel’s smooth olive cheek. “Are your left-overs going to look so good?”
“I doubt it. Go wash up and call Pawpaw.”
“I haven’t found Harvey Hadden,” Brad said as he served his plate from the cabinet. “Chief Malone called in the state police, and they’ve set up some roadblocks on the main road into the Hollow and the one on the other side. But if he’s holed up back in the woods, and I’m sure he is, we’re not going to find him.”
“Not ever?” Penelope asked.
“Well, not anytime soon. But at least he’s penned up in there and can’t get into any more trouble in town.”
Jake chuckled. “Or murder anyone else.”
Brad shook his head. “I wish people would go somewhere else to get themselves knocked off. Any place but Amaryllis.”
“What about Brice? Has he turned up?”
“Nope.”
“I hope Harvey didn’t do something to him, too.”
“Parnell drove over to his home in Little Rock this morning. His wife swears she hasn’t seen him since Saturday.”
“Did Parnell believe her?”
“He said she seems more relieved he’s gone than worried about where he is.”
“That says something,” Jake said.
“Yeah, it does, Pawpaw. We’ve done a little digging on him, too.”
“And?”
“I can’t tell you about that.”
Sam did some digging. Why wouldn’t he look at Brice, too? Or maybe he did.
“I remember when you were in school, Bradley, looking at law enforcement as a career, you used to talk about means, motive, and opportunity.”
“Right. If someone is going to commit a crime, they have to have a way to do it, a reason to do it, and a chance to do it. That’s for a premeditated crime, of course.”
“So I’ve been thinking about Harvey Hadden. I know you can’t talk about the specifics of the case, but I was just wondering—did he have all three for both murders?”
Brad’s head snapped up. “That’s pretty clever, Mother. And the answer is maybe.”
“Just maybe?”
“Sometimes that’s all we’ve got,” Rosabel chimed in. “That’s what makes it frustrating.”
“I can see that.”
“We could be looking at two separate sets of circumstances,” Brad went on.
“The Haddens were always smart,” Jake said. “Not book-smart, because they rarely went to school, but smart all the same.”
“Wily,” Brad said.
Jake nodded. “Yeah, wily. Everybody knew what they were into, but they never got caught.”
“Oh, there’s a whole drawer of files on them going back years and years, and probably more stored down in the basement, but you’re right, Pawpaw—they never got caught for anything big.”
“Used to be a bigger bunch of them, but I think Harvey and Elbert and one or two more are all that’s left now,” Jake said. “And you can’t count Elbert. He got out of the Hollow.”
“What happened to the rest?” Rosabel asked.
Jake laid down his fork. “Harvey’s wife died young, in childbirth, I think. There were six or seven kids, but most of them died young, too. The others just sort of disappeared, but they probably just migrated somewhere else.”
“Harvey’s a lot older than Elbert,” Penelope said.
“They’re half-brothers.” Jake picked up his fork again and attacked the pasta salad. “Harvey’s the oldest of the first bunch, and Elbert’s the youngest of the second crop of kids.”
“What about the other brothers and sisters?”
“Sisters married and stayed around, I guess. Who knows what happened to the rest of the kids?”
Brad nodded. “Chief Malone says he went out and talked to Harvey when one of them missed paying his property taxes for two years running. That’s one thing the Haddens were good about, because they didn’t want to lose their land or for the assessor’s office to come snooping around.”
“Can’t say as I blame them,” Jake said. “It’s all they’ve got.”
“Yeah, well, Chief Malone said Harvey told him the brother got sick and died, and the next day Harvey came into town and paid the delinquent taxes—in cash. Chief said he just let it drop. I mean, there’s probably unmarked graves all over the Hollow. No telling who died when or how.”
“And nobody cares,” Penelope said. “That’s sad.”
“That’s just the way it is, Mother.”
“The children could get out. That’s why the district put a school out there.”
“We can always hope,” Brad said. “But with people like Harvey Hadden still in charge out there, I’m not optimistic.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
With the new school year in full swing, it seemed to Penelope that things settled back into the way they’d always been. The old feed store remained closed. People talked about the murders and the fire for a while and then put it away. It was almost as if Brice Dolan had never come back to Amaryllis or brought in Wally Powers and Jill Jerome.
Rosabel announced she was planning a Thanksgiving wedding since the work at the house they’d bought was ahead of schedule. Shana spent Saturdays in Little Rock with Peter and Tabby, and on Sundays, father and
daughter hung out in Amaryllis. She wasn’t specific about wedding plans but said it would happen. The Bainbridges remained out of the picture, but there was no doubt they were lurking in the shadows.
Penelope counted two weeks since she’d seen or heard from Sam. She alternated between fury and abject despair, knowing she hid it successfully from everyone but Jake.
Mary Lynn met with the teachers at the elementary school and talked up a Christmas program to be performed in the auditorium of the old school. “Winter’s not a good time to open anything,” she told Penelope, “but we’ve got to get things started sometime.” Meanwhile, she opened the doors to a group of quilters who needed a place to leave their equipment set up, and a group of scrap bookers who brought their own cabinets for storing supplies.
The boiler came on and off without a problem. It appeared, Mary Lynn said—not altogether as a joke—that Jeremiah Bowden and company had left the building. Miss Maude Pendleton, who came to Amaryllis the first year the new school opened, volunteered her literary abilities to write brief explanatory notes for the photography exhibit, as the fledgling museum began to take shape on the second floor.
If Harvey Hadden came to town again, no one saw him. More disturbing to Penelope, was Brice Dolan’s absence. Then one morning toward the end of October, the doorbell rang, and a woman introduced herself as Darby Dolan, Brice’s wife. Dreading what might come, Penelope invited her in for coffee.
Darby sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee and looking at Penelope out of green eyes framed by frosted hair, cut short and brushed away from her face. “I heard you got hurt because of all this mess.”
Penelope shrugged. “Nothing serious.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Maybe it was. I went along with Brice’s idea to buy the building here and open a store. In fact, I gave him the money.” She didn’t shift her gaze. “I have an income from a family inheritance, not enough to classify us a ‘wealthy’, but it paid for the kids’ college and a little extra.”
“I knew you and Brice had two children.”
“Two daughters. Sara works for an advertising firm in New York, and Sydney’s in the music business in Nashville. But back to the business at hand. I told Brice he was doing well enough in Little Rock, and he was. He is. I work with him, so the business has gone on without him.”
The Feed Store Floozy (The Penelope Pembroke Cozy Mystery Series) Page 12