“C’mon in, Amy-Faye,” Ham said, making as if to hug me. He wore only a pair of running shorts, which displayed his muscular legs, and a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt, unbuttoned so his hairy paunch hung out.
I stepped back out of hugging range. “I’m hungry. Let’s get breakfast. My treat.”
Ham gave me a half-resentful, half-hurt look that said he knew what I was doing, but muttered, “Okay.”
“I’ll meet you at the diner,” I said, hurrying to my van before he could suggest we drive together. No way, not even for Ivy’s sake, was I getting into the same vehicle as Ham. I’d made that mistake already and barely escaped with my virtue; I was a firm believer in “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
I pulled into the gravel parking lot of the Pancake Pig, with its chef’s-hatted pig statue holding aloft a plate of pancakes from atop a silver pole, and pulled open the door. Chrome and white and turquoise predominated in the diner’s decor, and a 1950s sound track vibrated through a cheap speaker system. The Pig always did a good business, and I grabbed the last table available, exchanging greetings with friends and acquaintances as I passed. I had time to order two coffees and a short stack of blueberry pancakes before Ham arrived, looking considerably more presentable with his parrot-patterned shirt buttoned and his hair slicked back.
The coffees arrived when he did, and he slumped into the seat opposite me, added two packets of sugar to his cup, and slurped half of it down before saying, “I can’t get my head around Ivy’s being dead. Honest to God, I can’t. It’s really knocked me off my game.”
I decided to take that as an apology for the apartment and his appearance when I arrived. “I almost called Ivy today,” I said, “to ask her if she wanted to watch The Maltese Falcon with the Readaholics tonight. Then I remembered.”
“Suicide.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why she had to do that. It’s not like she had any real problems. I mean, she had a good job with a steady paycheck, a nice house. Lots of people don’t have that.”
Meaning him.
“I mean, she wasn’t going to prison or anything, and she didn’t have some awful disease, or a husband who was cheating on her, so why? She even had plenty of friends and family who’d’ve helped her out if she’d let us know she was in a bind. She had me, didn’t she?”
I didn’t respond, merely looking at him over the rim of my coffee cup. Ham was no one’s idea of a confidant or port in a storm. If anything, he added to Ivy’s troubles.
When I didn’t respond, Ham tried again. “She’d been depressed, you know. Anyone could see it. I’m sure you noticed.” He watched me closely, even though he seemed to be scanning the menu.
“I can’t say that I did,” I said bluntly. “She seemed the same as always Monday night. A little pissed off about something, maybe.”
“She was my sister. We had a . . . a connection.”
Yeah—her checkbook.
“I could sense her sadness.”
“Really?” I put on my politely disbelieving face. It said: You are lying through your teeth, but I’m too well-bred to call you on it and embarrass us both. I drizzled syrup over my pancakes. “What was she sad about?”
“I wish I knew,” Ham said with a gusty sigh. “I could have helped her, if I’d known.”
Uh-huh. “About the reception . . .” I steered the conversation toward business.
He flagged down the waitress and ordered enough food to fuel the Buffs’ offensive line. I knew it was because I was picking up the tab. “I’ve been thinking about the reception, and I think we want to keep it simple—”
Cheap.
“—because that’s what Ivy would have wanted. She wouldn’t have wanted a big fuss. And for her ashes, I think she’d prefer that I spread them from a spot she loved—remember the old tree house?—rather than have them interred somewhere. You could go with me. Brooke and Lola, too, since they were Ivy’s friends since forever.”
Ivy loved being the center of attention. She’d dressed like a fairy princess for her wedding and insisted on all the trimmings. She’d thrown parties to celebrate her birthdays and career achievements like her recent promotion and still had the sparkly tiara she’d worn as a homecoming princess—Brooke had been queen, of course. I decided right then that I was going to throw Ivy the kind of funeral reception she’d have wanted, even if Ham chipped in only enough for Ritz crackers and Vienna sausages.
Biting my tongue to keep from commenting on his cheapness, I told Ham I’d be honored to go with him to spread Ivy’s ashes, and I was sure Brooke and Lola would, too. I hadn’t thought about the tree house in years. We discussed the details of the reception. When I asked Ham for a deposit, he squirmed. “Until I sell Ivy’s house, I won’t have much cash on hand,” he said.
“You’re getting Ivy’s house?” I don’t know why I was so surprised. He was her brother, after all. It wasn’t like she had a husband or children to will it to. I wondered if she’d actually left a will or if he was getting her estate because he was her nearest living relative. The latter, I’d bet.
He smiled smugly. “Yep. But my lawyer tells me I can’t access the money in her bank accounts or sell anything until probate’s done—whatever that is—so I’ll have to ask you to wait for your money. You know I’m good for it.”
I didn’t know any such thing, but since I’d already decided I wanted to throw one last party for Ivy, I merely said, “Sure, Ham.”
He reached across the table and trapped my hand under his. “Look, Amy-Faye. Now that Elvaston is off the market, maybe you and I could try again, huh? After we get Ivy buried, I mean,” he added as an afterthought, apparently remembering he was supposed to be grief stricken. His lips shone with bacon grease.
I jerked my hand away, appalled that he knew I was still hung up on Doug—did the whole town know?—and offended that he’d hit on me minutes after Ivy had died. “I thought I made myself clear when I kneed you in the balls on our one and only date.”
His hand dropped to his lap protectively. “I figured—”
I interrupted him by signaling for the check. To get off the topic while waiting for it, I asked, “Did the police say anything about how Ivy died? What caused her death, I mean?”
“She poisoned herself. Something in her tea.”
I gasped. “How awful!”
Ham snapped his fingers. “Oleander; that’s it. She drank oleander in her tea. Not the way I’d want to go,” he added. “An easy bullet in the noggin”—he made a gun of his forefinger and middle finger, held it to his temple, and mimed pulling the trigger—“and lights out. Outside, in the woods somewhere. The way she did it . . . I’m going to have to get a cleaning crew in before I can list her house.”
Too disgusted to answer him, I scraped back my chair and walked away, stopping at the counter to hand Carmela Olivera, the owner, enough to cover our tab and the tip.
“I was sorry to hear about Ivy,” she said, her gaze going from me to Ham. He had apparently decided not to follow me and was using a toast triangle to wipe up the last of the sausage gravy on his plate. “Do you know when the service will be?”
I told her and she said, “I’ll be there. I can bring some tamales to the reception.”
“That’d be great, Carmela.” I gave her a grateful smile, calmer now that I was away from Ham.
She lowered her voice. “Is it true that it was a suicide?” She crossed herself.
“I don’t believe it.” That very moment, I made up my mind to find out what had really happened. Ivy deserved better than to have people talk about her death in whispers, as if it was a scandal, something to be ashamed of. The Ivy I’d known for almost twenty years would never have killed herself, and I was going to prove it. Somehow.
* * *
My next stop was at Lola’s nursery, Bloomin’ Wonderful. I’d convinced another one of my brides
to use potted daylilies in lieu of cut flowers for her wedding, and I needed to confer with Lola about finding a near-white variety to make the bride happy. Going out to Lola’s always made me happy. Even though her small farm was only five minutes outside Heaven, it felt like I’d traveled back in time, to a more peaceful era, when I trundled down the gravel road leading to her farmhouse. On one side, a field of daylilies, some beginning to bloom already, stretched out in a haze of spiky green foliage. In another month, the field would be a riot of yellow and orange, cherry red and deep purple, and pinks of all shades. Greenhouses lined the other side of the road, their panes steamed. I knew they held all sorts of flowering shrubs and potted trees, as well as other perennials. The smells brought back strong memories of high school, of driving out here to pick up Lola, who usually couldn’t take the family’s only car, to collect her for a football game or soccer practice the one year we both played on the school’s new and very, very bad girls’ soccer team. Lola was much better than me, faster and more agile. She displayed a competitive streak on the field that I hadn’t even known she possessed. The coach used to say that if the team had eight or nine more Lolas, we might have won more than one game.
The farmhouse was small and painted a cheeky lavender with white trim. Old Mrs. Paget, Lola’s grandmother, rocked on the veranda, shelling peas, it looked like, and I waved. She waved back. An aging hound, resting at her feet, barked once as I passed and went back to snoozing, guard duty done. I spotted Lola with a hose near the old barn that housed her equipment. She was washing out a wheelbarrow, Misty sitting nearby, looking like she was trying to decide whether or not to attack the fat green snake spitting water. The kitten looked like she’d filled out some already. Lola smiled when I got out of the car and shoved her glasses up her nose with the back of her wrist. “Hey, Amy-Faye. Come to help mulch?”
“I don’t think I’m dressed for it, but I have come to place an order for a July wedding. Two hundred containers of near-white daylilies wrapped in silver foil. Can you do that?”
“Can I ever,” Lola said, turning off the water. A white smile split her perspiration-shined face. Misty moved forward to investigate the now limp hose. The musty but pleasant aroma of wet earth surrounded us. “Thanks, Amy-Faye. I know you pressured another bride into wanting daylilies instead of roses or carnations and baby’s breath. I think the Joan Senior blooms will do. The blooms should be at their peak then and they’re about as white as daylilies get.”
“I don’t ‘pressure’—I ‘persuade.’” I grinned.
“Come inside and give me the details.” She stripped off her work gloves as we walked back toward the house, Misty trotting behind us, convinced that the hose’s lack of response meant she’d vanquished it.
On the way, I told Lola that Ham said the police were calling Ivy’s death a suicide by oleander poisoning. Lola stopped and looked at me, brow crinkled. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Me, too,” I said, relieved to find someone who agreed with me.
“Did she leave a note?”
The thought hadn’t crossed my mind. “She can’t have,” I said, after a moment’s thought, “or Ham would’ve said so. He inherits her house and everything else, I guess. Seems pretty jazzed about it.”
“Oughta take him less than six months to run through it all, ‘investing’ it in his alligator-wrestling attraction, or . . . what was his last business idea? Edible crepe paper?” She snorted gently and led me in the back door of the house and into her small office, not much more than a closet off the kitchen stuffed with a desk obscured by a phone, MacBook, and in-box, a filing cabinet, and a waist-high stack of farming and seed catalogs. I gave her the wedding details and she wrote them down in her precise handwriting, every letter a tiny capital.
“It’s not right,” she said, looking up, a line drawn between her brows.
“I’m sure the date—” I broke off, realizing she was talking about Ivy, not the wedding details.
“Ivy never struck me as the suicidal type,” she said. “It’s not right folks should think of her that way.”
“Just what I was thinking.” I dug through my purse and came up with Detective Hart’s card. “I talked to a detective the day Ivy died. Maybe we should see him together and tell him how we’re sure Ivy didn’t kill herself.”
Pursing her full lips, Lola said, “Of course, that does raise a question: If she didn’t drink the oleander on purpose, how did it get into her tea?”
I blinked at her. “Accident?”
She gave it some consideration, in her usual thoughtful way. “Barely possible. Ivy did like those herbal teas. All sorts of plants get used in making them—rose hips, hibiscus flowers, blackberry leaves, chicory, echinacea, hawthorn, and dozens of others. Still, it’s not possible a commercial tea blender could have made that kind of mistake.”
“I never heard Ivy talk about blending her own tea,” I said. “Plants weren’t her thing.” I’d tutored Ivy through high school biology (and maybe done a couple of her labs and projects for her—I’m admitting nothing) and been thrilled when she’d gotten a C– for the semester.
“Someone could have given the tea to her.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Let’s just spit it out. If someone gave her the tea, then they were trying to make her sick. It’s not like oleander grows wild in Colorado—does it?”
“No,” Lola answered slowly. “Most nurseries have some, though—it’s pretty and people buy potted oleanders for their patios or sun porches. I’ve got some in my greenhouse and I’ve sold six or eight oleanders this spring already.”
I nodded. “So no one’s going to chop up an oleander flower by accident and mix it into a tea blend. Not gonna happen. So if someone gave her the tea, then they meant to make her throw up, at least. I’d call that a pretty mean prank. With a lot of room for error. Obviously. “
We stood silently for a moment, staring at each other. The chugging and sloshing of a washing machine vibrated the room’s thin walls. After a long moment, Lola said, “I hate to even think this way, but it’s possible someone meant to do more than make her sick. If you feed oleander to someone, you’ve got to know they might . . .”
“Die,” I finished for her.
Chapter 6
Lola and I discussed the ways someone might have snuck oleander into Ivy’s tea. They ranged from breaking into her house and slipping it into her tea stash, to mailing her a “free sample,” to sneaking some into her cup while she drank. We voted the first idea unlikely because breaking into someone’s house is tricky, thought the second idea was a bit contrived (although doable if someone took the time to create a flyer about the “new” tea and some kind of interesting packaging), and were not inclined to go with the third one because we couldn’t visualize someone pulling a Baggie of chopped oleander from their pocket at Starbucks and sprinkling it on Ivy’s beverage unnoticed. I suggested someone might have a Borgia-ish ring for administering poison and Lola shot me down with a look. She said she’d research how much oleander it would take to kill a woman. We carefully steered away from any discussion of who might have wanted to poison Ivy.
Feeling weighted down by Ivy’s death and the mystery surrounding it, I left Lola’s and headed back toward town. Passing a familiar turnoff, I suddenly slewed the car to the right. Ivy’s old house, the one where she’d grown up, was at the end of this lane. I hadn’t been down here for ages, maybe not since Ivy sold the family home after her parents died when we were college sophomores. The road turned to gravel after a quarter mile, still corrugated from the winter’s frost heaves and lack of maintenance. I supposed the county was responsible for roads out this way. The road climbed a steep incline and then curved sharply before spitting me out in the small neighborhood where Ivy had lived.
Each house sat on at least two acres and was separated from its neighbors by enough distance that borrowing a cup of milk would have meant a ten-
minute round-trip hike. That made it sound like the neighborhood consisted of spacious, custom-built homes, but it was actually composed of older houses, most with large garden plots, some with horses, one with a large chicken coop and a noisy rooster I could hear even from inside the car. I pulled over on the grass verge in front of Ivy’s former home and got out slowly, not sure why I was here, but going with the urge, probably prompted by Ham’s mention of the tree house.
The house had been a dilapidated two-story, weathered gray, when I used to hang out here. Now it sported a vibrant turquoise paint with yellow trim. An entire flock of pink flamingos stood stiffly in the front yard, and garden gnomes peeked from behind every rock and tree. I remembered Ivy complaining, back when the people she eventually sold the house to were only renters and she’d had to visit to replace a lock, that the woman renter had “never met a piece of kitsch she didn’t buy.” She had vented about doilies and Hummels and cross-stitched pillows and tables made to look like butlers holding trays. We’d laughed about it, but I could tell she’d been a bit sad about all the changes in her childhood home.
Now I avoided the yard and walked around the side of the property to the woods behind it. Unless it had been torn down, there was a tree house back here, far enough not to be seen from the kitchen window, but close enough to hear a mom calling. Ivy’s dad and Ham had built it the summer they moved into the house, and Ivy had claimed it as her special clubhouse. Sometimes I was the favored friend who lolled on the beanbags and read fashion mags and giggled about boys with Ivy, and sometimes it was Brooke or Jennifer or Edith. Ivy had been a one-friend-at-a-time kind of girl, for the most part.
My low-heeled pumps were not intended for hiking, and the layers of damp, molding leaves from autumns past were not improving them, but a glimpse of the tree house made me forget about my shoes. I wondered if maybe another generation of kids had claimed it. I kind of liked that idea, although I thought it was unlikely since it was an older couple who had bought Ivy’s house. If I saw signs of recent habitation, I’d just take a peek and leave without invading their privacy. In thirty more seconds I stood beneath the tree house, looking up at the broad boards that formed its floor. Gaps in the wood that hadn’t been there before suggested that no one was taking care of the place. The ladder was still nailed to the tree and the house, and after a moment’s hesitation, I kicked off my pumps and began to climb it, glad I was wearing slacks and not a skirt. Hauling myself upward vertically was harder than when I was a teenager, and I was puffing a bit when my head and shoulders rose through the hole in the floor into the tree house. I swiveled, surveying the interior. To my surprise, two of the beanbag chairs were still there, although something had chewed through them and scattered the pellets so the chairs sagged like mostly deflated balloons. A decade or more of snow and rain and sun had rotted the denim coverings in places. A musty smell suggested that animals—squirrels, mice, weasels, or others—had appropriated the beanbags.
The Readaholics and the Falcon Fiasco Page 5