by J. R. Ripley
“Tuesday night?”
“I don’t think so, why?”
“Because I expect you to be here.”
Our lunch concluded and my alliance with the devil-next-door completed, I begged my leave. Derek offered to walk me home and we exited to the sidewalk together.
“By the way,” Paul called from the table on the other side of the pony wall, “you’re the bird lady.”
Derek and I stopped. “So?” I asked.
“So can’t you do something about that darn woodpecker that keeps waking me up in the middle of the night?”
I laughed. “Number one, as much as I am the bird lady, as you say, I’m not Dr. Dolittle. I don’t talk to the animals and they don’t talk to me. Number two, I’d hardly call six thirty in the morning the middle of the night.” I urged Derek to move on.
“It is for me,” replied Paul. “I run a biergarten, remember? Nighttime is prime time. While you’re home snuggled in your little kitty jammies, I’m on my feet serving customers.”
I blushed, my shoulders tensing, but I forced myself to say nothing, move on. How did this guy know I wore pajamas with kittens on them? Who squealed?
10
We paused outside the door to Birds & Bees. “Do you want to tell me what’s really going on?” Derek began softly.
I sighed and collapsed into his arms. “Bessie Hammond is dead.”
“So that was what all those sirens were about.” Derek explained how he had been driving across town when the police and ambulance had screamed past him.
“I’m afraid so. And I’m the one who found her.”
Derek wrapped his arms around me and squeezed gently. “Do you want to talk about it?” He ran a gentle hand over my scalp.
“No,” I said, looking him in the eye. “But I need to.”
Derek smiled. “Let’s sit.” He pulled me over to a small wrought-iron bench in the shade of the front porch. The bluebird house sat empty—nesting season was over—but several wrens pecked away at the feeder hanging over the porch rail.
I let the whole story out. How I thought I’d seen a dead body being tossed from the window of the old McKutcheon house. About the bird-watching hike I’d organized, then hiked out to the McKutcheon property so I could snoop. How I’d gone back again that morning to snoop some more. I’d even told him about the widow in the lake, for what it was worth.
Derek nodded. “I’ve heard of this widow-in-the-lake thing.”
My brow rose. “You have?”
Derek rubbed his forehead. “Yeah. Amy told me about it.” Derek’s ex-wife’s name is also Amy. Lucky me. “She and her girlfriends think it would be fun to take part in the annual vigil this Saturday.”
“No offense, but your ex is a nut.”
Derek chuckled. “I dare you to tell her that.”
Amy Harlan was a temperamental fashion- and looks-obsessed fiend, if you asked me. But no, I wasn’t telling her that to her face. “There’s an annual vigil?”
“So Amy says. It’s not a big deal. Apparently, a small but dedicated—”
“Crazy,” I interrupted.
Derek smiled and continued. “—gathering meets on the anniversary of the widow’s death at the magic hour. Hoping for the widow’s appearance.”
“Oh, brother.” Was it material to Bessie’s murder that the anniversary of Mary McKutcheon’s suicide was this week? Did it have anything to do with everything weird that had been going on? I shook my head. No, it couldn’t.
“Hey, you don’t have to tell me it’s crazy. I’m only repeating what I heard.”
“When is this magic hour?” I wrapped finger quotes around the two words.
“Sunrise.”
“Did you know that the widow in the lake was a McKutcheon?”
Derek stiffened. “No, Amy didn’t tell me that. Or, if she did, I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Yep. Mary McKutcheon.” I glanced back inside the shop. “Esther says the McKutcheon house is cursed. I don’t want to believe her.” I paused before continuing. “But the next thing I know, I lead a bird-watching hike there and Bessie Hammond winds up dead.”
“And you’re certain it was murder?”
“Yeah, I don’t know what else it could be.”
“Maybe this Bessie woman fell out of the tree? She might have climbed up to get a better look at some bird,” Derek proposed. “You did say she was an avid birder.”
“That’s what Gus McKutcheon suggested,” I replied. “I don’t buy it.”
“Was she the athletic type?”
“I rather doubt it. Not to mention, she was in her sixties.”
“You can’t picture Bessie Hammond climbing a tree?”
“Not without laughing.” We smiled at each other.
“Were you and Bessie close friends?” Derek, relatively new to town, said he hadn’t known her.
“No. I barely knew her. But still . . .”
“I understand,” said Derek, patting my leg. “Are you going to be okay?” I nodded. “I’d better go. I promised Dad I’d help him with some yard work this afternoon.”
“What about Bessie?” My eyes darted out across the lake. I could just make out the peak of the McKutcheon house. Bessie Hammond had met a violent death out there . . .
“What about her? I’m sure Chief Kennedy and the Ruby Lake PD will find out what happened.” He kissed me quickly on the lips. “You will let the police do their job, won’t you?”
“Of course!” I said, maybe a smidgen too quickly.
“Good,” answered Derek. “Because butting into a murder investigation could land you in a heap of trouble.”
I grinned. “That’s what lawyers are for, right?” And that had proven to be the case more than once. A little case of murder had been the reason for our initial meeting.
As Derek headed to his car, his words replayed in my mind. “Heap!” I blurted out.
Derek paused beside his car. “What?”
“You said heap.”
His brow went up. “And I meant it.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “There was a heap, a mound really, out at the cemetery on the McKutcheon property. We all saw it, our entire bird-watching group, yesterday on our hike.”
“So?” Derek unlocked his door. “It’s a cemetery. It’s supposed to have mounds.”
“But this one looked fresh.”
“Fresh?” Derek bent his head, entered the vehicle, and pulled the door shut behind him. He rolled down the window and beckoned me closer. “Tell the police,” he said. “Let them check it out, Amy.” He turned the key in the ignition and the little engine sparked to life. “That’s my advice.” Derek waved his finger as he said, “As your lawyer.”
Derek’s car disappeared toward downtown, modest though the city center is. My eyes were drawn to Ruby’s Diner. More specifically, to its new manager, chief cook, and head bottle washer, Guster McKutcheon. I’d seen a body mysteriously tossed out an upstairs window of his house early the other morning, heard tales of his ancestor, the widow in the lake, and discovered Bessie Hammond’s body at the base of a tree on his property.
It didn’t take a genius or a big leap of imagination to know that something strange was going on out there. The question was, what?
Come to think of it, when Abby first spotted the cemetery, Bessie had made some flip comment about how graves couldn’t hurt you and we’d all end up in one someday. Who could have predicted that not twenty-four hours would go by before those words proved prophetic for Bessie herself?
My thoughts were interrupted by a grip on my shoulder that made me jump as if the widow in the lake had laid her wet, icy clutches on me. “Ahh!”
“What are you hanging around out here for?” snapped Esther, dusting her hands on her store apron. “It’s time for my break.” She pulled off her apron and foisted it on me. “Get to work.”
I did. It kept my mind of things. Off scary, troubling, and sad things like murder.
* * *
&nb
sp; By Monday morning, the news of Bessie’s Hammond death had spread through Ruby Lake. Lance Jennings, several years my senior, came by fishing for a quote. “Get lost,” I said, barely glancing up from my sales ledger, open on the front counter. “And you can quote me on that.”
Lance is a reporter for the Ruby Lake Weekender. He’s about forty years old and forty pounds overweight. He lets his wavy black hair run a little too long, in my opinion, but that was probably to lessen the sight of his receding hairline. Sometimes I thought the only thing thicker than his nose was his head.
“Come on, Amy. I can’t go back to the office without a scoop.”
I frowned. Lance’s father owns the paper and runs a tight ship. I’d been in the paper’s headquarters a couple of times to place store ads. Lance’s office was nothing more than a tiny, cluttered cubicle next to the janitor’s closet. “I don’t know what I can tell you that you probably haven’t already heard from the police.”
Lance groaned and shoved his pen back in his shirt pocket. He wore a cheap ecru linen suit that looked like it had come off the assembly line pre-rumpled. “All Jerry will tell me is that Bessie Hammond got her neck broke.” Lance kicked his shoe against the counter and only stopped when I gave him the stink eye. “He’s not giving me anything else. No motives, no suspects.”
I’d perked up when Lance said that bit about the broken neck. “So it was murder!”
“Yeah, I suppose so.” Lance looked surprised at my reaction. “What else could it be? They’re certainly treating it like a murder. Being all tight-lipped and tight—”
I slammed shut the sales ledger. “Did he say what Mrs. Hammond was doing out there? Or how long she might have been dead?”
Lance waved his notebook, pages fluttering like doves’ wings. “No. I’m going to see Greeley when I get done here.” He leaned over the counter toward me. “Can’t you give me anything?” he wheedled. “You might have been one of the last persons to see Bessie Hammond alive.”
“There was an entire group of us, Lance. Not just me. Besides,” I said, rising and leading Lance to the front door, “that was the day before she was killed. All sorts of people probably saw her after that.” I held open the door. “Why don’t you go find them? Talk to them.”
Lance stumbled out to the porch. “But—”
A thought suddenly occurred to me. Several, actually. I grabbed Lance’s sleeve. “I’ll make you a deal. You see what you can find out about who else might have seen Bessie in the hours leading up to her death and I’ll do the same. I’ll talk to my bird-watching group. They’ll talk to me.”
Lance wiped a line of sweat from his brow. “You’ve got a deal.” Lance held out his clammy right hand and we shook.
“Great.” I motioned for Lance to scoot over. I threw up the CLOSED sign and locked the store behind me. “Let’s stay in touch.” I hurried down the walk toward the street. “Don’t forget to let me know the minute you find out anything!” I hollered as I stepped off the curb.
“Same here!” Lance called back.
I waved goodbye over my shoulder and waited impatiently for a string of cars to pass. A public bus was sitting idle at the bus stop outside the diner and I wanted a word with its driver.
One of those last people to see Bessie Hammond alive might very well have been a bus driver. After all, Bessie had made a point of saying she didn’t drive. She stated she’d ridden the bus to Birds & Bees the morning of our hike.
This bus.
I trotted to the door and pushed it open. The bus was quiet and empty. “Hello?” My voice came echoing back.
“If you’re looking for the driver, he’s inside the diner.”
I bristled. I knew that voice. “Hello, Gertie.”
“Simms.” Gertie Hammer stood on the sidewalk. She raked her brilliant blue eyes over me like a pair of death-capable lasers. “You’re like a modern-day Medusa.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I pulled the door shut and stepped away from the bus. Gertie was the town curmudgeon; at least she acted like one around me. It was Gertie’s house that I had bought and was living in, though she’d later tried to con me into selling it back to her for her own self-enriching purposes. I’d refused, which added to the list of things she disliked about me. I’d inherited Esther because of Gertie. It seems we all have our own crosses to bear.
“It means you’re like some deity of death.” Gertie pulled herself up to her full height, which was all of four foot nothing. She wore a baggy blue dress that drooped to her knees and low-heeled black shoes that might have been in fashion in the forties—the 1840s. A purse the size of a small suitcase hung off her shoulder. I couldn’t imagine what all she carried around in there. Instruments of torture, perhaps?
I frowned at her. “Medusa had snakes for hair and turned people to stone.”
“I heard about poor, poor Bessie Hammond,” Gertie said with a smile. “You turn people into skin and bones. Seems to me, that’s pretty much the same thing.”
“Yes,” I said. “What happened to Mrs. Hammond was a terrible thing.” I fingered my hair. Maybe it was time for a trim or a new style. I mean, snakes? Really? “Did you know her?” I decided to take the high road and avoid a verbal confrontation. There was little to be gained in such sport and lots of time to lose.
“Sure, I knew her.” Gertie stepped aside and snarled at a young boy as he pedaled by on his bicycle. “I know everybody.”
That was quite likely true. “What about her husband?”
“He’s been dead for years.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Died in a boating accident.” Gertie turned her eyes to the lake.
“Oh,” I said again. A sudden breeze off Ruby Lake set the little hairs of my arms on end.
“His body was never found.” Her eyes gleamed devilishly.
“You mean, he—” I pointed toward the lake, now filled with recreational boaters and swimmers. Were Bessie’s husband’s bones rattling around out there at the bottom of Ruby Lake with Mary McKutcheon’s bones?
It was too gruesome to dwell on.
“I remember it like it was yesterday.” Gertie pulled a rumpled pale blue handkerchief from the front pocket of her dress. She blew her nose, rubbed it fiercely, and then returned the hankie to its home.
“Was the accident recent?”
Gertie sniffed. “Ten years ago yesterday, as I recall.”
“You mean . . .”
“That’s right.” Gertie shifted her purse to her opposite shoulder. The bag must’ve weighed a ton. “The same day that ole Bessie got herself killed.” With that, Gertie Hammer turned on her heel and hobbled up the street. I watched as she disappeared inside the town post office.
I stared at my reflection in the window of Ruby’s Diner, wondering where and when I, and the whole Town of Ruby Lake for that matter, had entered the twilight zone.
11
I pulled open the door to Ruby’s Diner. Lana Potter stood behind the hostess stand. “Hi, Lana. Is Moire here?” Looking around the diner, I didn’t see her out front. I did see the back of Gus McKutcheon’s head through the pass-through window to the kitchen.
Lana shook her head, her raven hair flouncing. “She’s taking a break upstairs. Can I get you a table?”
Peering over Lana’s shoulder, I noticed a man in a blue-gray bus driver’s uniform sitting alone at the counter. There was an empty stool beside him. “I think I’ll sit at the counter today.”
“Help yourself. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
I told Lana to take her time and approached the counter. “Is this seat taken?” I asked the uniformed man, more to break the ice and get him talking than anything else.
“Nope, help yourself, young lady.”
I jumped on the stool. Gus turned, set two hot plates on the stainless steel counter. He looked at me and blinked. “Hey, Lana!”
“Yes?” Lana moved languidly toward the pickup counter. She walked like a model and had the looks to m
atch. Lana Potter must certainly be giving Tiffany a run for her money in terms of attracting the attention of the males that frequent the diner.
“Order’s up. Table three.”
Lana reached for the plates. Gus said something in a low voice. Lana laughed huskily, then shook her hips all the way to table three.
“So what’s good today?” I asked, picking up my menu and turning to the bus driver. His paper place mat held a plate with a bacon sandwich with a big bite out of it, French fries, and a shallow bowl of coleslaw.
“Can’t go wrong with the special.”
“Is that it?” My mouth watered. Bacon has that effect on me.
“Yep.” He lifted his sandwich, as if to prove his point, and took a giant bite. His jaw worked back and forth. He swallowed, grinned, and patted his paunch. “Hits the spot.”
I looked at the million-calorie meal on my neighbor’s plate, half of them fat. “Sure looks good.” I told Lana I’d have the same. There’s nothing like ordering what a man’s having for lunch to get on his good side.
Lana looked at me uncertainly. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “Coffee, too. Cream and sugar.”
Lana shrugged, wrote up a ticket and placed it on the pass-through counter.
“I’m Amy.” I lifted my silverware, took my napkin, and draped it across my lap.
“Neal.” He had pale brown eyes and a complexion to match. He removed his cap and placed it on the counter, revealing a head of thick, curly black hair.
My coffee arrived and I dumped in some cream and sugar. “I’ve seen you around town. It must be tough driving a big bus like that around town all day. Especially during the height of the tourist season.”
Neal fisted several fries and shook salt over them. “I don’t mind. Keeps food on the table.” He brought the fries to his mouth and downed them as one.
That it did. “Well, I don’t think I could handle it. I have a difficult enough time maneuvering my minivan.”
Neal chuckled appreciatively. “What exactly do you do?”
I explained that I ran Birds & Bees. “That’s it there.” He turned his neck as I pointed out the window.