by J. R. Ripley
“Trouble with the cops again?” Esther asked, her eyes flashing with delight. She had a pot of coffee going and was filling a jar for iced tea with tap water.
I smothered a yawn. My stomach grumbled. I should have taken Mom up on the breakfast cookies. The only food on hand downstairs this morning was a plate of Danish butter cookies, the remains of a tin I’d bought a couple of days before at the Lakeside Market up the street. Hardly the breakfast of champions. Or shopkeepers. “Not exactly.” I helped myself to a small stack of cookies, then glanced at the front door. “Have you opened up?”
“Five minutes ago.” She stared at me like a dog waiting for a juicy treat. “So what did Chief Kennedy want, busting in here all wet and covered in mud first thing in the morning?”
I sighed. Esther was obviously not going to let go of this figurative bone. “Look, Esther,” I began, “you’ve lived here a long time—”
“My whole life.”
“Yes,” I said, “your whole life. What do you know about the McKutcheons? Do you remember them?”
Her wispy white eyebrows formed a V above her nose. “Them from the farm on the other side of the lake?”
“Yes,” I said, nibbling at my final cookie. After this, I’d look for some real nutrition. Maybe a candy bar.
“What do you want to know about them for?”
The corners of my mouth turned down. Why did she seem to answer every question with a question? “If you must know, I—” I hesitated. Did I really want to tell Esther the Pester what I’d seen? Or thought I saw. Finally, I began again. “If you must know,” I said quickly, before I could come to my senses and change my mind, “I saw a man throw another man out the window this morning.” I folded my arms across my chest and stared her down.
“At the McKutcheon house?!” Esther hooted.
“Yes,” I said sharply. “At the McKutcheon house.”
Esther had finished filling the tea jar. She added a half-dozen tea bags, sugar, and lemon and set it in the window to warm in the sun. Not that I was certain we’d see any sun today. No matter. We could always warm the water in the microwave if it came to that.
“What were you doing at the McKutcheon house?” demanded Esther.
“I wasn’t at the McKutcheon house.”
“Then how did you see what you say you saw?”
I explained how I had been birdwatching and happened to glance across the lake.
“And you just happened to see a murder?” Esther pulled the plate of cookies out of my reach as I extended my hand for a second helping. “These are for the customers.”
As if waiting for their cue, a pair of women walked through the front door and Esther followed me as I went to greet them. I inquired if they were looking for something specific but they said they wanted to take a look around. I retreated to the cash register and checked to make sure I had sufficient change to get through the day. If not, I’d need a trip to the bank.
“Nobody has lived in the McKutcheon house for some years,” Esther said from the other side of the sales counter. “Last McKutcheon moved out before you were born.”
“Well, according to Jerry Kennedy, there’s one living there now.”
Esther was clearly surprised. She scratched at her ear. “You don’t say?”
“Apparently a Guster McKutcheon has come back to Ruby Lake. He’s opened the house up as a hostel.”
“You mean like a hotel?”
“Something like that.” I gazed across the street to Ruby’s Diner. “Apparently Mr. McKutcheon also has a job over at the diner.”
“I never thought we’d ever see a McKutcheon living in that old place again,” Esther said.
“Why not?” I pushed the cash register closed. Esther was interrupted by the approach of our two customers. One carried a birdhouse constructed of recycled material.
The blonde held the birdhouse aloft. “Will I get robins to nest with a birdhouse like this?”
I took the birdhouse from her hands. “This house would be perfect for chickadees and wrens,” I explained. “See this opening?” I ran my fingers around the edges of the hole. “It’s an inch and a quarter. It’s designed for cavity nesters, like wrens and black-capped chickadees, but too small for others like house sparrows and bluebirds.”
The woman looked disappointed. “So, no robins?”
I smiled to lessen the blow. “Sorry. Robins build their nests on shelves and ledges. You can build them a nesting platform yourself.” The two women looked at each other dubiously.
“We do sell a selection of nesting platforms. I can show you, if you like.”
The women agreed and followed me over to a wall where I had different types of birdhouses and nesting boxes arranged by the species of bird they were best suited for. I helped them select a simple cedar nesting platform. The platforms look like a typical birdhouse with the front removed, except for a low border along the front to keep the nesting material from spilling out.
“I’ll take it,” the customer said.
“And I’ll take the other birdhouse, Claire,” added her friend. “The one for wrens and such.”
“Perfect, Eden.” The woman named Claire explained that the two were next-door neighbors. “We can share.”
I gave them instructions on how to mount the birdhouses—they’d both opted for pole mounts, rather than affixing them to trees—and rang up the sale.
I caught up to Esther, who was ordering around the deliveryman as he rolled boxes of supplies in through the back door using his red hand truck. I pulled her aside. “About what you were saying before, Esther,” I said out of the side of my mouth.
“About what?” Esther cocked her head. “Do you want the seed back here or out front?”
“Out front, like always,” I said, struggling to maintain my calm. We always keep the twenty-five pound bags of unshelled black oil sunflower seeds up front in the corner beside the bins. There was no point lugging them from back to front one at a time when there was such a nice, compliant worker who’d move them all at once for us.
I chased after Esther as she directed Ralph, our young deliveryman, out to the sales side of Birds & Bees. Of course, he’d been delivering here for six weeks or more already, so he knew perfectly well where everything went.
He was too nice to point that out to Esther. “Thank you, Ms. Pilaster,” he said with a nod of his cap. “Anything else I can do for you, ma’am?”
“Well,” Esther said, tapping her foot against the hardwood, “there is that pile of pallets in the storeroom doing nothing but collecting dust and cobwebs. An old lady like me can’t just pluck the lot of ’em up and toss ’em in the dumpster alone, can she?”
Ralph grinned. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll get right on it.” Ralph has short red hair, green eyes, and an arc of light freckles running across his face. He looked all of eighteen, but I knew for a fact he was twenty-four. I’d asked to see his driver’s license.
“Ralph,” I said, “you’ll do no such thing. Kim and I can handle that.” I turned to my employee—though sometimes I felt it was the other way around and I was working for Esther. “I’m sure Ralph has a lot of other important deliveries to make today.” Ralph has a route running from Charlotte to the south to Asheville to the north and all points in between.
“Harrumph,” snorted Esther.
Ralph grinned. “It’s no problem at all, Miss Simms.” He rubbed his hands together. “I’ll get those pallets and be on my way.”
I thanked Ralph and held Esther in place by clamping my arms on her shoulders. The woman was harder to keep still than a nervous chicken. “Okay, Esther.” I resisted shaking the woman—just barely. “Tell me why you said what you said.”
She squinted in puzzlement.
“About the McKutcheon place.” I nudged her some more when an answer wasn’t forthcoming. “You said you didn’t think you would ever see a McKutcheon living there again. What did you mean by that?”
The door chimed and Esther swiveled—a shark catchin
g the scent of fresh blood in the water.
“Oh, no you don’t,” I whispered. Over Esther’s shoulder, I called to the gentleman as he marched toward the book section. “Be with you in a minute!” I turned my attention back to Esther. “So?”
Esther removed my hands from her shoulders. “The McKutcheons never had much luck on that homestead. The ground’s no good for growing. It’s evil. Haunted. Old Indian burial grounds, too.”
I chuckled. “Please, next you’ll be telling me Ruby Lake has its own Loch Ness Monster.”
Esther smirked. “We sort of do, don’t we? We’ve got the widow in the lake.”
I waved a disparaging hand. “An old wives’ tale.” I was trying hard to believe the story was as phony as a three-dollar bill.
“Mary McKutcheon was no old wives’ tale,” Esther shot back. “She was a real life, flesh and blood, saliva spitting pioneer woman.”
“The widow in the lake was a McKutcheon?” Why had I never heard that before?
“Of course.” Esther folded her arms across her chest. “After she passed, the life just sort of went out of the place. Family tried to keep the farm going for years and years. But trouble always followed. My grandpappy, rest his soul, said that nobody was safe living there, not a McKutcheon or anybody else.”
She twisted her head towards our customer who was working his way back toward the door and his escape. “Can I go now?”
A few more steps and the man would have made his escape. “Fine, go.”
Esther called out to the sitting duck cum customer, then turned back to me. “I’d stay away from the McKutcheon house if you know what’s good for you!”
Sadly, I rarely did.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.R. Ripley is the pen name of Glenn Meganck, the critically acclaimed author of the Tony Kozol mystery series, the Maggie Miller Mysteries, and the Kitty Karlyle Pet Chef Mysteries (written as Marie Celine), among other novels. For more information about him, visit www.glennmeganck.com.