by Hillary Avis
Eli stood up and, with a concerned look in my direction, shepherded me to the front porch. “Sit here on the steps while I call it in, OK? I’m going to get somebody out here to take a look and tell us what we’ve got here.”
He returned to his SUV and I could hear the crackle and buzz of the radio as he talked to someone at dispatch. I rubbed my clammy hands on the knees of my overalls as I studied his profile in the driver’s seat and wondered who was waiting at home for him. Who’d be picking a fight when the word got out that Eli was flirting determinedly with me? Because word would get out—if Rusty knew, then Ruth would know, and if Ruth knew, everybody knew.
People would be talking about me and Eli getting married if I didn’t nip this in the bud. He returned to the front steps and sat down beside me, surveying the row of stakes I’d laid out to mark the remaining post holes. “They’re sending a team out from Roseburg. I hate to say it, but they’re probably going to make a mess of your yard. We’ll get it squared away, though. I can help you level the dirt when they’re done.” He patted my knee.
“I don’t need help!” I snapped, scooting away.
“But I want to. Really.”
“I think I’ll wait inside.” I stood up and he nodded, his expression a little injured, and I headed for the door. I paused, halfway inside, when a question occurred to me. “Eli?”
He jerked his head up.
“You don’t think it’s...” My voice caught, and I could barely finish the question. “You know. Murder?”
He shook his head no. “The Chapmans are a good family. There aren’t any missing persons reports on my desk, either. If a murder occurred in Honeytree, I’d know about it.”
“I only trenched down eighteen inches,” I said. “That’s a shallow grave.”
The lines in his face grew deeper, but he shook his head stubbornly. “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation. The water table rose and pushed up the bones, maybe. Or Amos did some landscaping and moved some dirt around.”
I nodded and, my discomfort eased by his rationale, went in and puttered around unpacking kitchen boxes while I waited for the county crew to show up. My new kitchen was a whole lot smaller than my old one. That one, I’d renovated in a French country theme, with hand-distressed cabinetry and tumbled marble floor tiles. But despite my slavish commitment to authenticity, it’d always felt like it was someone else’s...maybe because it was. Our full-time housekeeper, Gloria, always shooed me out of it, insisting that I should sit and rest while she whipped me up something from her seemingly bottomless supply of gourmet recipes. She didn’t believe me that I liked cooking—that was her job. My job was to endure being served.
This kitchen, tiny and worn though it was, was all mine. I intended to shoo everyone else out of it for the rest of my life. The cabinetry was hand-distressed, too, many colorful layers of paint showing through the chips, and the slate floors had foot-sized scoops worn into them where a generation or two of cooks had stood at the sink and stove. I could sense the envy of my Beverly Hills interior decorator from eight-hundred miles away.
I heard the crackle of a vehicle pulling up to the house and peeked out the window. To my surprise, it wasn’t a sheriff’s car or a coroner’s van—it was a four-wheeler. Anne Sutherland, Walt’s wife, was astride it, balancing a covered dish in her lap. Though she was my age, mid-fifties, she looked older. Her hair, pulled back into a tight, low ponytail, looked more gray than its true mousey brown, and though her pale forehead was unlined, her eyes were tired. My mother, rest her soul, always said that being married to an older man made her age faster. My father was ten years her senior, and they died within weeks of each other, so maybe she was on to something. Anne’s husband was twenty years older so perhaps that aged her twice as fast.
I dropped the curtain so she wouldn’t see me staring as she mounted the porch steps, and then counted to three after she knocked before opening the door. She held the dish up.
“Walt wanted me to bring you this. He saw the sheriff over here and said you might need it. Plus he wanted me to warn you about the chicken. It’s a cobbler,” she added. “I didn’t have time to roll a pie crust this morning.”
I took it from her, puzzled at the chicken comment. “Thanks. Do you want to come in for a minute and have a bite of this with me?”
Anne looked back over her shoulder in the direction of her white farmhouse and then back at me. “Maybe just a bite.”
I offered her a seat in my kitchen at the small vintage table that I bought for a song at the junk shop in Deer Valley, then dug a couple of my grandmother’s jadeite dessert plates out of the half-empty packing box on the floor. I opened up the cobbler dish to admire the perfectly browned biscuit topping. The scent of sweet blueberries hit my nostrils and made my mouth water. “Wow, this smells heavenly.”
Anne smiled tightly, carefully avoiding my gaze. “I put vanilla in the dough. Most people don’t, but I think it adds a little something.”
I scooped two generous helpings onto the plates, rejoicing silently that I could eat mayonnaise and dessert in one day without a cutting comment from anybody, and slid one across the table to Anne. I hoped it’d help her relax. I knew she had interests—her pies won prizes at the fair, according to Ruth when she showed me the farm—but she had a nervous temperament, the kind like a rabbit, quiet and quivering. Hard to get to know without spooking her.
“Walt wanted me to tell you to keep your birds on your side of the fence,” she said abruptly.
Well, that’s one way to start a conversation. “You can tell Walt not to worry—I don’t have any chickens. Not yet, anyway.”
She stared at me with her cool gray eyes. “That’s a lie. One’s been pooping on our porch, and Walt hates a messy porch.”
I shrugged. “Well, it’s not my chicken. I have an order in at the hatchery, but it hasn’t been delivered yet. Maybe it’s someone else’s bird.”
Anne shook her head. “Nobody’s kept hens in the Flats for ten years. It’s only since you’ve been here that I’ve had to hose off the porch every day.”
“Wild turkeys, maybe?”
“I think I know the difference between turkey trots and chicken crap.”
Wow, she was a ball of fun. Sometimes when you finally get to know people, you find out that you never should have bothered to begin with. I was saved from further scintillating conversation by a second knock at the door. “Excuse me,” I said, grateful for the excuse to leave the table.
Whoever I’d been expecting—Eli or some other county official—I was wrong. Ruth stood on the porch, her hair even wilder than usual, clutching her purple purse and staring at me, her eyes large and concerned.
“Are you OK?” She brushed past me into the house. “Oh, hi Anne. Did you bake? I guess I came at the right time.”
I shut the door and turned around. “Of course I’m OK. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Ruth went to the counter and, unaware of the plates in the packing box beside her, sniffed an empty coffee mug to determine whether it was clean and then scooped a serving of cobbler into it. “Well, the dead body. The more I thought about it, the more I got freaked out and I figured you might be freaked out, too. Listen”—she set down the mug and dug around in her purse, then pulled out a bundle of sticks triumphantly—“I brought sage! So we can clear out the bad juju.”
Anne gasped, her spoon clattering on the green enamel tabletop. “A body?! Is that why the sheriff is here?”
“No—yes. I mean, it’s a skeleton, not a body.” I shook my head. “Eli said the county guys will take care of it. He said not to worry—it’s probably not a murder.”
At the word “murder,” Anne’s face turned as gray as her hair and she looked like she was about to lose her blueberry cobbler all over my kitchen table. I decided not to mention the part about how I’d been planning to move the skeleton to a new grave myself before I caught the heebie-jeebies.
“Emergency saging time!” Ruth yanked open drawers in the kitche
n until she found what she was looking for, a box of matches, and quickly lit the end of her sage bundle. She waved it around the room, flipping her wrist so the smoke trailed behind her in little loops, humming to herself. She paid special attention to the door and window frames, and gave Anne’s back an extra swirl, too, her face sympathetic. She stubbed out the still-smoldering bundle in the sink.
“I’ll do the whole house later,” she said, recovering her coffee mug full of cobbler and poking a spoon into it. “But don’t you feel better already?”
I waved away the smoke that smelled a whole lot like the time our Christmas tree caught on fire when my mother decided to use birthday candles instead of twinkle lights. “Sure. I love cobbler with a side of coughing.”
Ruth rolled her eyes at me and then, noticing Anne’s silence, slid into the chair next to her and patted her on the arm. “Hey. Don’t be upset. The old pioneer families are buried all over the valley. Leona probably just hit a family plot. Nothing creepy.”
Anne nodded, but she pushed her half-eaten cobbler away and stood up from the table. “I ought to get back. Walt’s missing me. We’re gleaning the bushes now that U-pick season is over, so there’s a lot to be done. Don’t worry about the dish—you can drop it by any time.”
I nodded and followed her out, watching as she bunched up her flowered skirt to straddle the four-wheeler and peeled out past where Eli was marking off a rectangle on my grass using spray paint, the studded tiles kicking up the gravel. On her way down the driveway, she veered into the orchard to pass a caravan of vehicles coming in: a sheriff’s cruiser with its sirens off but its lights flashing, a white van, and a yellow county utility truck. A mint-green Prius brought up the rear.
“That’s Tambra,” Ruth said from behind me, where she was standing on tiptoe to peer over my shoulder. She settled back down onto her heels when I turned to look at her. “She’d have been here earlier, but she was finishing up a client.”
I could only assume Ruth meant the Prius. I spotted two heads inside as it parked under the apple tree to the right of the porch, which meant Tambra had brought company. “How’d she find out?”
Ruth explained around a mouthful of blueberry cobbler. “We overheard it on the police scanner when Eli called it in to county. When she heard I was going to drive over, she wanted to come for moral support.”
“She’s probably afraid I chipped my new manicure digging the guy up.” I gave my nails a quick once-over before Tambra reached the front door. Luckily, they were all in pretty good shape even though I hadn’t picked up those cushioned gloves she mentioned.
“I brought flowers,” Tambra announced, thrusting a bouquet of pink Gerbera daisies in my face. She stepped aside so I could see the woman behind her. “And Yelena. I was just finishing up a deep conditioning treatment and figured why wait—I can rinse her out in your sink.”
Yelena, an elderly woman with deeply tanned skin and beautiful, crinkling laugh lines, beamed at me from underneath a plastic-wrap turban. She produced a large glass bottle from a tote bag on her arm and held it up. “And I brought vodka! Death requires a stiff drink...get it?” she joked in a thick Russian accent.
Ruth grinned as she showed Tambra and Yelena to the kitchen. I found an empty yogurt container in the recycling to put the flowers in, my good vases all left behind in Los Angeles. “Well, I guess we have the essentials,” she said. “Dessert, liquor, flowers, and friends.”
“And sage, apparently,” Tambra added, sniffing the air and then nodding at the slightly damp bundle in the sink. “Good. I’m not normally one for that stuff, but it can’t hurt.” She didn’t sit down at the table, but instead peered out the window over the sink at where Eli and the folks from county were setting up across the driveway from the house. I reached around her to add water to the flower-filled yogurt tub.
“Sit, both of you,” Yelena ordered, patting the table on either side of her as Ruth, having discovered my box of plates, dished out the first round of cobbler for them and a second round for us. Ruth set four flowered teacups on the table and poured an inch of vodka in them, then rattled around the top shelf of my ancient refrigerator and plunked an ice cube in each cup. Well, if ever there was a day for a second helping of dessert and a shot of vodka, it was the day you dug up a boot full of foot.
I put the pink daisies in the center of the table and sat, but Tambra stayed at the window, absentmindedly accepting her plate of cobbler and setting it on the counter to the side of the sink, next to her car keys. Ruth took one of the teacups and raised it. Yelena and I followed suit. “Cheers, ladies.”
“What’s happening out there?” I asked after I recovered from my sip of alcohol. Yelena didn’t mess around—the vodka was crisp like a punch in the face.
“They taped off a big area and now a guy is digging,” Tambra reported from the window. “He’s making a mess of his jumpsuit—whose idea was it to wear white for digging in the dirt? Oh, he’s pulling something out!”
We all sat forward in our chairs, half eager for and half dreading the gruesome details.
“It’s”—Tambra leaned forward and squinted—“I think it’s a guitar case.” She gasped and turned toward us, her eyes wide and shiny and her lower lip quivering. “Oh, God. It is him. It has to be.”
My heart stilled. “What do you mean? Do you know who it is?”
Ruth scooted the fourth teacup in Tambra’s direction, but Tambra shook her head. “Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. I have to go.” She snatched her keys from the counter and hurried out the front door. We all stayed frozen at the table until a few seconds later when we heard Tambra’s car crunch on the gravel driveway, the sound fading from earshot as we sat.
Ruth and I shared a concerned look. “What’s that all about?” I asked her.
“I wish I knew. She must be really upset. It’s not like Tambra to leave a client.” She nodded to Yelena. “Don’t worry, I’ll rinse you out. And I’ll have a talk with her tomorrow.” She stood up and began carefully unwrapping the plastic from Yelena’s head, revealing a head of long, silver hair coiled up like frosting on a cupcake. “Let’s move you to the sink. Can you grab me a towel, Leona?”
I looked around frantically for my box of linens and, locating it just outside the kitchen, found her a couple of hand towels. She draped one over Yelena’s shoulders and the other over her own arm.
“Don’t worry about it, I understand.” Yelena grabbed the bottle of vodka and refilled her teacup, tossing it back like an old pro, before standing up and following Ruth. “She has demons buried in her past, it seems. I guess we all do. It’s just that usually, they stay buried. This one is coming to the surface.”
Chapter 7
While Ruth worked her hairdresser magic in my kitchen sink, I went out to see what—or who—the crew had unearthed. After all, a guitar case wasn’t exactly an identifying possession. Lots of people had guitar cases. Maybe Tambra was upset over nothing.
Eli intercepted me in the driveway before I could get too close. “I’m glad you have company up there,” he said, nodding toward the house. “It’s good to have moral support. I’m here for you, too.”
“In a professional capacity,” I reminded him. “Do you know who it is? The skeleton, I mean?”
“We found some stuff near him—garbage, mostly. Old garbage. We found a Josta can on top of him, and I don’t think that stuff’s been for sale for twenty years. Don’t know if it belongs to the deceased, though. And no wallet, not yet anyway. It’s slow going. We’ll probably be here late. Shift ends at midnight. Will you be up then?”
I nodded.
“Good. I’ll let you know if we find anything else.”
Back in the kitchen, Ruth was combing out Yelena’s hair, which, now that it was stretched to its full length, I saw reached well past her waist. “Do they know who it is yet?” Ruth asked when she saw me.
I shook my head. “No ID. Just a guitar case and some twenty-year-old junk that might not even be his.”
&nbs
p; “I was hoping to put Tambra’s mind at ease. She seemed pretty shaken. You don’t have a hair dryer, do you?” She eyed Yelena’s long, dripping locks.
I shook my head. “They don’t agree with my curls.”
“I’m just going to braid it. Is that OK?” Ruth asked Yelena.
“Yes, I like braids.” Yelena folded her hands in her lap, her back strong and straight. I couldn’t guess her age if I tried. She might be in her seventies, like Walt, or she could be older. “They remind me of my childhood in Russia. My mother braided my hair every day and wrapped it around my head like a crown. Can you do it like that?” She craned her neck around to meet Ruth’s eye, who nodded enthusiastically.
“I love a good braid crown! That’s very trendy these days, you know. Tuck a few flowers in it, and you could be an Instagrammer.” Ruth grinned and began parting and sectioning Yelena’s hair. I sat down and watched her meditative movements.
Yelena chuckled. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to know,” I said. I felt the same way about Instagram as about the skeleton in the yard. One could be curious about it and also know enough to stay away. I couldn’t resist standing on tiptoe to catch a peek out the window at the activity in the yard. As I watched, a guy set up large spotlights and began connecting them to a generator. Eli hadn’t been exaggerating—the forensics team intended to work past sunset. They were taking this as seriously as if it were a murder scene. And who knows, maybe it was. I shivered.
“Do you think Tambra really recognized that guitar case?” I asked over my shoulder.
Ruth paused in mid-braid. “She must. I’ve never seen her rattled like that. Usually she’s so poised. I remember once, a bat flew into the salon, and she didn’t even blink. The rest of us were shrieking and laying on the floor, and she used a tipping cap—you know, the bonnets for highlights—to catch it and put it outside. People don’t guess it because she’s so girly and sparkly, but Tambra’s not a wimp.”