Going Through the Notions (A Deadly Notions Mystery)

by Price, Cate

  “If wishes were hosses, beggars ’ud ride.” Cyril gave the cat a rub between its ears. “Now, whatever happened with that narky woman with the bee in her bonnet?”

  “Who? Oh, you mean Fiona Adams. She’s not so bad. She taught me a lot about the pens. I got an inkling of why they’re so valuable.” I realized what I’d just said and snickered. “Inkling. Pardon the pun.”

  Cyril shook his head mournfully as if doubting my ability to size up people. “If I were you, I’d go back to the scene of the crime. Where Jimmy popped his clogs. Keep yer eyes open, but more importantly, your mind.”

  “Okay. Want some help with that puzzle?”

  He shoved the newspaper toward me so violently that the paper smushed together like a concertina.

  I smiled, smoothed out the pages, and selected the largest chocolate toffee bar I could find out of the tin.

  *

  “It was a busy day at the store, and I did a lot of prep for the open house, which was quite a feat with a head that felt about three times its size and equally heavy. Determination was another good quality for a teacher, in a profession that was not for the weak of spirit. God knows teachers didn’t do it for the accolades—or the money.

  During a break in the action, I called Betty and asked her if she’d be willing to let us use the auction grounds for the country fair.

  “Of course, Daisy. There’s no auction scheduled for July Fourth weekend, so you could hold it then if you like.”

  “Sounds great. And that would be a month before the 4-H fair, so it’s perfect. Thanks so much, Betty. Hey, I’m going to visit Angus tomorrow. Do you want me to pick you up?”

  “Oh, no, that’s okay. You go on without me.”

  “How about a ride to the hearing on Thursday? You are going to that, aren’t you?”

  There was a slight pause while I felt my blood pressure ratcheting up. She’d better damn well be going.

  “Warren said he’d bring me.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you then. Thanks again for the use of the land.”

  I called Martha and gave her the good news and then had to listen to a complete rundown of the preparations so far, which left my ear sore and tingling when I finally hung up the phone almost an hour later.

  I didn’t rush home that night, and when I walked in the door, horror dawned as I saw the dining table set for a special dinner. Was it too late to run out and get a card?

  Joe came out of the kitchen and smiled at me. “Guess you forgot what day it is?”

  “June twenty-first. Oh, Joe, I’m so sorry. There’s been so much going on and—”

  “Never mind. Happy anniversary. Come and have some champagne.”

  Sarah was in the kitchen, filling three champagne flutes. My heart sank. Apparently she’d forgotten her announcement from the night before that she was leaving.

  What kind of mother isn’t happy to see her own daughter?

  I forced myself to toast with them. The pale, sparkling wine was dry against my tongue, almost not like a liquid at all, and did nothing to loosen the tightness in my throat.

  Joe proudly showed me the flooring he’d picked out. Brazilian cherry in seven-inch-wide planks. The cabinets were a raw cherry wood, which was beautiful, but not to my taste. I’d always pictured something lighter, more modern.

  “It’s very nice.”

  “You don’t like it?” His face fell.

  “I do, it’s just that . . .” I thought with a pang of the pictures I’d cut out of magazines in anticipation of the fun we’d have planning the remodel. The hours spent sitting around the butcher block table, talking, laughing, dreaming, mixing and matching, until we both decided on the perfect combination. Together.

  Life was so ironic. Finishing the kitchen was something I’d wanted for a long time. But not right now. And now it was all being done in a rush.

  Jasper, ignored in the excitement, lifted his leg and peed on a scrap of what was left of the vinyl floor.

  Thanks to years of teaching, I knew the serenity prayer by heart. I carefully set down my champagne glass. “Come on, Jasper, let’s go outside.”

  Even though it was shutting the barn door after the horse had escaped, I had to start somewhere. I didn’t even ask when was the last time anyone had thought to let him out.

  I followed the puppy into the yard and sat for a moment in the metal glider on the back porch. We’d bought it at auction, wobbly, rusted, and missing screws. Joe had painstakingly sanded it down, made it sturdy again, and painted it with several coats of aqua paint until it gleamed.

  Jasper peed up against the corner of the shed, and then again on the pedestal of the birdbath, and finally he produced one long stream against a clump of emerging daylilies.

  I leaned my head against the glider, feeling like I’d been falling apart a little more and more every day since Sarah had come home. Now my emotions were so close to the surface I was a walking raw wound. Had I really been that peaceful and happy before, or was I just kidding myself?

  I took a deep breath, stood up and went back inside.

  “I’m sure the kitchen will look great when it’s done, Joe. Now, let’s celebrate.”

  Joe grinned and we hugged, and Sarah topped up everyone’s glasses. I poured some water for myself.

  We chatted about the preparations for the country fair over dinner.

  “Hey, Mom, I asked one of my PA friends to lend us some walkie-talkies for the parking attendants to use. She’s going to ship them to me here.”

  “What’s a PA?” Joe asked. “A pain in the—”

  “Daddy! No, it’s a production assistant!”

  Sarah laughed, the sound as light and joyous as the bubbles in the champagne. How beautiful she was. How precious to me.

  She made no mention of leaving again, nor of any work on the horizon. I knew she expected me to ask, but the new Daisy would let her make her own way. She’d either pay her mortgage or lose the condo. Simple as that. It was out of my hands now.

  There was a slight lull in the conversation.

  “I wonder what will happen at the preliminary hearing for Angus,” I said.

  Joe dropped his fork onto his plate with a clang. “Could we please stop talking about Angus for one night? You’re depressing everyone. Ruining the mood.”

  I fixed my smile in place. “Sorry, everyone.”

  Sarah looked down at her plate, not meeting my eyes.

  Joe sighed. “I admire your desire to help people, Daisy, I really do, but I’m worried about what this is doing to you—and to us.”

  “Okay, okay.” I smiled harder. “This Veal Marsala is delicious, Joe. However did you make it?”

  Somehow we got through the rest of the evening, and managed to convince ourselves that everything was fine.

  They say God only gives you what you can handle. I was guessing He’d gotten me mixed up with someone else.

  *

  “The next morning I awoke to the sound of rain lashing against the windows of our old house. It was Wednesday, which meant visiting day at the prison.

  I slipped out of bed, so as not to disturb Joe, dressed quickly, and left a note in the kitchen.

  River Road was flooded over in places, and water rushed by in a vicious brown torrent. My wipers barely kept up against the driving rain, which clattered against the roof of the car. I gripped the steering wheel, hoping the Subaru would make it through some of the deeper puddles. Many streams and creeks flowed downhill and under River Road, which made it about ten degrees cooler and pleasant on summer days, but today the terrifying power of water swept all along before it. Some of these cottages at the river’s edge would be flooded out if this kept up.

  I passed the quarry, with gigantic blocks of rock and a towering cliff above me, and raced alongside the river, where a flotsam of logs, branches, a Styrofoam cooler, and a wooden pallet whipped along, marking the pace of the thunderous current.

  “What’s up, Daisy Duke?” Angus greeted me with a flash of his former
exuberance when he walked into the visiting room.

  “What’s up, Burger Boy?”

  He surveyed my attire—a hastily thrown together combination of long-sleeved cotton top and khakis. “How come you didn’t dress up to come see me?”

  “Ha! And this from the guy who was always telling me to wear jeans.” I wiggled my fingers through my rain-dampened hair to release some of the moisture.

  We smiled at each other briefly, and then he lapsed into what was becoming his habitually morose expression.

  “Why doesn’t Betty ever visit?”

  “She had hip surgery, Angus.” I could feel my smile fading in disappointment. I’d thought for a moment he was back to his old self. “I told you that before.”

  “But she doesn’t even call.”

  I bit my lip. “Look, don’t worry about that right now. She’ll see you at the hearing tomorrow.”

  He rubbed at his forehead.

  “Are you all right? I came to see you on Sunday, but they said you were undergoing a medical evaluation.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbled. “Will you give me twenty dollars for the lot?”

  I skipped over that for the moment. I needed to get my questions in. “I want to know about this estate company that consigned the pens. Had you dealt with them before?”

  He shrugged as if I were speaking a foreign language.

  “The pens, Angus. The valuable pens that were stolen?” I doggedly recited every detail of what I’d found out so far, hoping that perhaps something I said would resonate.

  “Don’t wanna talk about this. No point.” He seemed more despondent, more confused than ever. “You get a line, I’ll get a pole, we’ll go fishing in the crawfish hole.”

  “Okay.” Struggling for a lighter note, I told him about the successful auction with Patsy’s bid calling and Martha’s party afterward.

  He leaned forward, a spark in his faded blue eyes that crinkled up like check marks in the corners.

  “That Martha, I tell you, Daisy, she was a firecracker in her day. She was something else. She still dresses up like she’s going to the prom.”

  He went off on a tangent about some of the friends he remembered from high school. At least he was coherent when talking about the past.

  Could Alzheimer’s come and go like that? And if it came to a jury trial, how the heck would Angus hold up? If he fell apart when questioned about the murder or recent events and started talking nonsense in the courtroom, he’d lose his case right then and there.

  “Yeah, Grandma Perkins was a real ol’ witch,” he said. “Shot Sammy Jones with a BB gun when he wandered onto her pumpkin patch by accident.”

  At the mention of the Perkins name, I snapped to attention. “What happened?”

  “Kid got a glass eye, that’s what happened.” His lip curled up. “Screw that whole Perkins family. They’re pure evil. Including the grandsons.”

  “What do you mean?” I whispered, so as not to break the fragile train of his erratic thoughts.

  “There was a girl, a friend of Patsy’s, that one of them Perkins boys took an interest in. She wanted nothing to do with him. Think it was the older one, Tom. Well, one night, he went over to her house and stole her cat.”

  I swallowed. This was going to be the story that Patsy couldn’t tell me in front of Claire. I flashed on a scene from Fatal Attraction and the pet rabbit . . .

  I couldn’t deal with this right now. I didn’t want to pass out like I almost did in Ramsbottom’s office. I held up a hand. “Angus, stop. Please.”

  “Okay.” He lapsed into silence.

  I blew out a breath. A minute passed and then my curiosity got the better of me.

  “Oh, hell. Just tell me—was the cat dead or not when all was said and done?”

  Angus shook his head.

  “Then give me the PG version.”

  “They played what they called ‘Bowling with Kitty’ at their house with some friends. Set up a stack of pins at the end of the wooden hallway upstairs and threw the cat down the length of it, skidding head over arse along the varnished floor until it knocked over the pins. Finally, when they got tired of the game, they tossed it out of a second-floor window.”

  I gasped. “But I thought you said the cat didn’t die.”

  Angus chuckled. “He didn’t. He came back inside, went upstairs, and took a massive dump on the old lady’s bed.”

  I snorted with laughter.

  “That cat was never the same after that, though. Had a real attitude problem.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I can see why.”

  “Finally bit and scratched one of the girl’s neighbors really bad. Enough to send them to the hospital. The parents had to put it down.”

  “I thought you said the Perkins boys didn’t kill the cat!”

  “They didn’t.”

  I shook my head. Men could be so annoyingly literal at times.

  The lights flickered. “Look, I’ll see you tomorrow, Angus. Keep the faith, okay?”

  “You’re an amazing woman, Daisy Buchanan. I love you.”

  I swallowed against the sting of tears in my eyes and gave him the biggest hug I could muster. “I love you, too. Don’t worry, Angus. Everything is going to be fine.”

  In the prison parking lot afterward, I sat in my car for a while, leaning back in my seat, fighting a spirit-stealing wave of depression. Maybe the situation was hopeless after all.

  When I got to Sheepville, the rain had eased, so I decided to stop at The Marmalade Cat, a wonderful independent bookstore in the middle of town. I’d look for a nice anniversary gift for Joe. If nothing else, being around books always cheered me up.

  As I walked up the street, I saw Reenie coming toward me. She was wearing a clean T-shirt and jeans, her hair was shiny, and I smiled at the peach color in her cheeks, glad to see her looking so much better than the last time I’d seen her.

  Amazing what losing an abusive husband can do for your appearance.

  “Reenie! I’m so happy I ran into you. You look great.”

  “Thanks.” She smiled back, a faint dimple appearing.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Okay. Me and the kids are fine. But one of the cows had milk fever. Second one this month. The vet came out, so same old story. Never enough money to go round. He said I could pay him off in eggs, though, which was nice.”

  “Reenie, you’re not going to believe this. I have great news for you!” I was almost jumping up and down with excitement.

  Her smile was quizzical, inquiring. “Yeah?”

  “Yes. The ladies in Millbury are planning a country fair and flea market. On the Saturday before July Fourth. You don’t have to do a thing, but all the profits will go towards a fund for your kids. To pay for their college or whatever else they might need.”

  Reenie stared at me for a few seconds. She opened her mouth, but no words came out.

  I grinned, feeling as if I’d just handed the lottery check to this week’s winner. Whatever it took to pull the event off, I’d do it ten times over to see that look of wonder on her face.

  “Daisy, I can’t believe you’re doing this for us. It’s too much.”

  “Shh. No, it’s not.”

  “Thank you.” She squeezed her eyes shut, and then wiped at them roughly. “I guess you haven’t found out any more about what happened to Jimmy? Anything about that estate company?”

  “I’m afraid not. That seems like a bit of a dead end.” I winced. Pardon the pun. “But don’t worry, Reenie, I won’t stop until I figure it out. And I’m going to make sure that you and your kids are well taken care of.”

  She stared at me again, as if she could hardly comprehend what I was saying.

  Suddenly she gave me a quick, hard hug. “I wish I’d had a mom like you growing up. Maybe things would have been different,” she whispered into my ear before she hurried off.

  I stumbled into the bookstore, swallowing against the lump in my throat. It had
been a watery morning, all things considered.

  I almost lost track of time inside the tantalizing shop, but eventually I found a book on vintage bicycle restoration for Joe, the latest paranormal by Sarah’s favorite author, and for me, Sunday’s New York newspapers. They were a few days old, but I’d still enjoy reading them.

  As I drove home along River Road, the grass was completely flattened and sullied brown along the edges, showing how far the water had risen over its banks. I had to use the wipers every now and then to clear the mud-splattered windshield.

  When I arrived in Millbury, I parked outside the house and hurried toward the store. As I passed Tony Z’s barber shop, I did a double take.

  Cyril Mackey was sitting stiff-backed in one of the red vinyl chairs.

  I couldn’t help it. I stopped dead in my tracks and watched open-mouthed as wet pieces of his long gray locks fell to the mottled vinyl flooring.

  Cyril glared at me, hard enough to crack the hand-lettered glass.

  I waved and chuckled as I walked on.

  Hey, wait a minute. I took a surreptitious step back and checked out his attire. Was Cyril wearing a new jacket, too? It hung on him somewhat, but it was a definite improvement on the old one.

  It wasn’t until I’d unlocked the door of Sometimes a Great Notion and started the coffee brewing that I realized where I’d seen that particular green tweed jacket before.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I willed Eleanor to appear so I could share that tidbit with her, but the universe wasn’t listening. She must have actually decided to open her own place and do some work for a change. Martha didn’t show up with any baked goods either, so I dug into my emergency supply and poured a bag of M&M’s into a glass bowl.

  I treated myself by admiring the dollhouse for a few minutes, which I hadn’t had a chance to do before, and then spent the next several hours printing out and filling orders received through the website. I’d make a run down the street to our tiny historic post office before it closed at 5 p.m. with my stack of neatly wrapped packages.