Tea Shop Cozy Mysteries - Books 1-6

by Katherine Hayton

  “Should we just take him to the sheriff by ourselves?” Reg suggested as they approached the Prebbleton’s farmhouse, which was shrouded in darkness. If only someone had turned a light on inside, it would have made their choice easier.

  But Willow wasn’t prepared to stomp across half the town at night, escorting a prisoner. She was already regretting coming out with Reg in the first place. Although she often walked short distances around town—nothing was ever far away in Aniseed Valley—her body wasn’t quite so fit as she’d like to think. If the sheriff came out to collect Wilber, there was every chance he’d also give the two of them a lift home.

  “I’ll knock. You take hold of this one.” Willow gave Wilber’s arm a shake and finally, let go of the man. Even though she’d eased up on how tightly she held him, her fingers left marks in the glowing paint.

  Willow knocked quickly on the door, waited for thirty seconds, then repeated the gesture so anyone waking at the first sound would know what it was. She stepped back and glared at Wilber. Something that became harder to do when the moon ducked in behind a cloud.

  “What is it?” a very grumpy Howard asked before opening his door. “Don’t you know what time it is?”

  “We do know, thank you. It’s caught-the-poacher-who’s-been-troubling-you-red-handed time.”

  Willow’s voice was enough for Howard to throw the door open. He peered out suspiciously, apparently trying to make sense of the shapes in the dark. Howard hadn’t turned any of the house lights on—Willow supposed to let his wife sleep, if she was capable of doing so through all their noise.

  “You!” Howard gave an angry start and stepped out, grabbing hold of Wilber in the exact same spot Willow had just released. “I know you! When I told the sheriff all about the poaching, I said you were the most likely culprit. He gave me a song and dance about how you’d reformed.”

  “I had.” Now it was Wilber’s turn to sound angry. “Gave it all up and went on the straight and narrow for years, I did. What did that get me? Laid off when the business I worked for had a bad year. I even came by here, asking for work, and what did you tell me?”

  “I told you that we didn’t have any work.” Howard released his grip on Wilber and popped his hands on his hips instead. “And we didn’t. Not that we could afford to pay for, at least. Times are hard for everybody. That doesn’t give you a license to steal.”

  “We only took a few.” Wilber turned his head to the side, hawked and spat. “Only to tide us over for a few weeks. It’s not like anybody wanted to resort to thieving, but you’ve got cattle to spare.”

  “We’ve only got enough to pay off our debts for the year, nothing more. Now, we don’t even have that.” Howard kept his steely gaze fixed on Wilber until the man dropped his eyes to the ground. “Don’t you be laying your troubles at our door. Now we’ve found out who’s responsible, I’ll expect you to make good.”

  “Take everything I’ve got,” Wilber said with a snort. “For all the good it’ll do you. The only thing I own is a notice of eviction from my landlord, but you’re welcome to it if it helps you sleep better at night.”

  After that exchange, the two men fell silent. To Willow, it looked like they were both fuming at the unfair circumstances, one with a lot more right to than the other.

  “Come on,” she said, clapping her hands. “I don’t want to stand out here in the cold all night. Call the sheriff’s office and have him come down here to arrest Wilber. There were a couple of other guys who ran off, but I’m sure after a few nights in the cells, Wilber might oblige Sheriff Wender with their names.”

  Howard shook his head, but not at her suggestion. He took a step back inside but held a hand up when Reg went to follow. “No offense, but I’d prefer you waited out here if you don’t mind. Tess is still sleeping, and she’s had scarce enough of that in the past week.”

  Willow stamped her feet and rubbed her hands together, blowing into them as a defense against the cold. Now they’d stood in place for a few minutes, it was terribly bitter, but she didn’t blame Howard. If a scraggly lot like them turned up on her own doorstep, she might ask them to wait outside as well.

  “He’s on his way,” Howard said, rejoining them at the door. “He sounded absolutely delighted to make your acquaintance again, Wilber. I’m sure he’s preparing the cell for you, right now.”

  Wilber turned his head and spat again, folding his arms across his chest. Between the thin cloth of his shirt and the still-damp paint, Willow thought he must be freezing. In better circumstances, she might have offered him her heavy coat but there was no way she’d ever get the resulting stains out of the wool.

  Just as the lights from the sheriff’s vehicle showed along the driveway, Tess’s voice called out from inside. “Who is it, love?” Her tone sounded slurred and Willow wondered if her first good night’s sleep came at the expense of a pill. “Whyn’t you come back to bed?”

  She flicked on the light in the hallway, temporarily blinding the group standing at the door. As Willow lifted a hand to shield her eyes, she could just make out Tess’s shape nearing the exit. After a few more blinks, her vision cleared well enough for her to lower her hand.

  Tess stood in the doorway, staring in horror at Wilber. Her mouth had dropped open and her throat was working, as though a shout was trapped inside, squirming to be set free. Her right hand dragged at the loose skin of her throat while her left was planted palm-down on the wall to steady her.

  “But you’re dead,” Tess managed to whimper before her eyes rolled up into the back of her head, and she fainted.

  * * *

  Willow managed to rouse Tess a few seconds after the sheriff arrived. She tried a trick with a dose of white wine vinegar beneath each nostril. She preferred the smelling salts passed down by her mother but managed with what was on hand.

  Tess came around slowly, smiling angelically up at Willow’s face for a moment before her eyes widened in fright and she reached out to grip handfuls of her thick wool coat in her hands.

  “I saw a ghost,” she whispered. Willow pulled her up to a sitting position and sat beside her, arm around the woman’s back to steady her.

  “No, you didn’t. You saw a poacher who’s marked himself up like a fool to be seen at night. It’s Wilber Mount. Not any kind of ghost.”

  The fact Wilber had frightened Willow when she first spotted him, helped her to be patient while she reassured a slowly recovering Tess that everything was all right.

  “I know Wilber is a scary sight under the best of circumstances,” Willow said after a minute, “but I’m sure he won’t hurt you. Not with Reg, the sheriff, and your husband standing right there, ready to give him a thump.”

  “We don’t condone violence in my office,” Sheriff Wender said with a quiet smile. “But under the circumstances, I might be looking the wrong way.”

  After a few minutes of recovery, Tess began to scramble to her feet. Once Willow was sure the woman was steady enough to walk, she rejoined Reg and nodded to the sheriff. “It’s good to see you,” she said, shaking from the fright of Tess’s collapse as much as the cold.

  “What’s going on here?”

  “Can we explain to you in your car when you give us a ride back into town?” Reg asked, and Willow could have kissed him. “Only, we’re starting to get a bit cold just standing about here and Tess and Howard don’t know anything other than what we’ve told them.”

  Soon, they were seated in the vehicle with the heater going full strength.

  “We caught Wilber out in the fields on the Prebbleton farm,” Reg explained. “He had some friends with him, but he warned them off, so they ran away.”

  “I can probably guess,” Sheriff Wender said. “I’ll make inquiries early tomorrow. What happened to Mrs. Prebbleton?”

  “She was asleep while we were talking to Howard at the door and got a fright when she saw Wilber in his painted getup. I have to say, I don’t blame her.”

  “Not with the volume you were screaming whe
n you first saw him,” Reg said with a smile.

  “Why are you dressed like that?” Sheriff Wender asked his new prisoner.

  Wilber just turned his face toward the car window. “No comment. I’m not saying anything until my lawyer gets here.”

  “In that case, we’ll fill you in with as much detail as we can,” Willow said. “But do you mind if we give you a statement in the morning? I’m exhausted right now.”

  “Sounds fair. Do you want me to drop you two off at home?”

  They agreed, and the sheriff pulled out of the Prebbleton’s driveway and onto the road, carefully indicating even though there was nothing out there at that time of night. As the car drifted past the black vehicle pulled off to the side, Willow leaned forward. “Have you looked into why that vehicle’s out here?” she asked. “It’s been sitting there since the day Matthew Albert was found.”

  Sheriff Wender gave it a brief glance, then shrugged. “I had a deputy look into it but when he asked, the Prebbleton’s said it’s theirs. It broke down and they haven’t moved it from the spot.”

  “No.” Reg sat forward, touching the sheriff lightly on the shoulder. “I think you’ve confused each other there. Howard and Tess have a broken-down car, but it’s farther along. Their one is a real rust heap, good only for scrap.”

  “Really?” Sheriff Wender managed to insert a good dose of both surprise and disgust into the one word.

  “Yes, really.” Willow turned to catch a glimpse of it out of the back window. “I wondered if it was connected to the death since it’s got out-of-state tags.”

  The sheriff gave a long sigh and turned the car around. He walked over to check the license plates, then hopped back into the driver’s seat, looking a hundred years older. “There’s so much going on in this case, I feel like we’re missing stuff left, right, and center. You’re right about the vehicle, though. The plates are from Tennessee.”

  Willow kept her mouth shut but thought, just like Matthew Albert.

  Chapter Eleven

  Willow insisted they drop Reg off at his house first, then he turned and made the short drive around to her house. As she climbed out and gave a weary wave goodbye, the sheriff got out to escort her to the door.

  As soon as they were out of earshot of the prisoner, he leaned in to ask, “What’s all that glowy stuff on him?” He looked down at the front of Willow’s coat, where she’d managed to smudge the paint on her hands from when she’d held onto Wilber’s arm. “And on you?”

  “It’s paint.” Willow gave a disgusted sigh and tried not to think of the dry-cleaning bill looming in her future. “Luminescent paint. I think the poachers were using it to keep tabs on each other in the darkness.”

  “Idiots. You can get the same result with a shielded light.” Sheriff Wender shook his head. “But please don’t tell them that.”

  Willow gave a tired smile. “I won’t. You might want to question Wilber about the night Matthew Albert died though. When Reg said he saw an alien out at Prebbleton farm, I think it’s a safe bet that it was actually Wilber coated in all that paint.” She felt her cheeks heat up as she thought about her first encounter with the man. “I certainly thought along those lines when he popped up out of the dark tonight. And he made poor Tess faint.”

  The sheriff wiped his paint-smeared hands against each other, just managing to spread the stuff out onto a wider surface area. He gave a sigh of disgust. “This paint is all over the station house at the moment. I swear, it’s worse than glitter to try to get rid of it.”

  Willow nodded, though she thought it must be somewhat of an overstatement. “Reg had a bit on him after his fright. He got some on my couch and it was Harmony who worked out what it was. We thought at first, it might be someone playing a joke on him and checked it out at the hardware store. They stock a lot of it.”

  “Thanks. It should be easy enough to track Wilber’s purchase. Even better if it’s one of his mates who bought it, then we can prove conspiracy, even if we can’t place them at the scene.”

  * * *

  Willow woke the next morning when Mavis sat on her face. After a mouthful of hair and a feeling that she was choking kicked her heart into full gear, she jumped up. The kitten glared at her balefully.

  When a few seconds had passed, clearing the disorientation, she worked out why. As a result of her escapades the night before, Willow hadn’t gotten to bed until very early in the morning. Because of that, she’d overslept.

  Mavis had missed her usual feeding time by close to two hours.

  “You must be starving, little minx,” Willow said as she carried her grumpy cat downstairs. “Lucky you woke me, too, or I’d have missed half the day.”

  She also made a mental note to set an alarm if she stayed up late again. A mouthful of fur wasn’t the greatest start to a Sunday morning.

  As an apology, she left a few treats by the bowl along with Mavis’s usual can of fine dining cat food. For the first few bites, it appeared the kitten would never forgive her, then she tucked into the meal with gusto, all transgressions forgotten in the joy of eating.

  Following her kitten’s example, Willow fixed herself a large breakfast to soothe her rumbling tummy. After an extra portion of toast, she sat back replete. She had nothing planned for the day at all and it stretched out in front of her like an all-you-can-eat buffet of idleness.

  However, as she settled down in her favorite chair to read, the sheriff turned up to remind her of the promised statement. Willow accompanied him down to the station, feeling her good humor evaporating with every turn of the wheel.

  “I wish that Wilber Mount had the good sense to leave off poaching until the sheriff’s office was finished sniffing about the farm,” she said in a crotchety tone. “He’s quite upset my day off.”

  “He’s upset everybody,” Sheriff Wender said with uncharacteristic good humor. “Ask Mary-Jo about it if you want an earful. Apparently, he’s taking a liking to her and subjected her to a full barrel assault of charm.”

  “Ugh.” Willow followed the sheriff into his office and took a seat opposite his desk. “I can just imagine the horrors that entails. I hope you sent the poor woman home.”

  “I’ve given her two days in lieu for the early call-in, so I shouldn’t expect she’ll hold a grudge for too long.” Sheriff Wender pulled his notebook close and sat with his pen poised, ready to begin.

  It didn’t take long for Willow to recount their activity. After all, Wilber was the only bit of excitement they’d struck, and that happened so early on there wasn’t much else to tell.

  When she told the sheriff about the can of paint by the car, he frowned. Willow imagined it was because, for the first time, her story didn’t tally with her friend’s.

  “I didn’t point it out to Reg because he’s so adamant he encountered an alien out at the farm. Even after seeing Wilber painted up the same way again, I don’t think he made the connection.”

  Sheriff Wender nodded. “I’m glad there was someone with him this time, otherwise, I’d end up with a lot of evidence I’d be scared to present in court.”

  “It won’t go that far, will it?” Willow fiddled with the top button of her blouse. The only time she’d been inside a courthouse was when probate was granted on her husband’s will, and that had been a five-minute job. In and out.

  “Probably not. Wilber’s been caught bang to rights, and he knows it. The only issue at stake is the part his friends played in the whole setup. And we might have a problem if this does tie in closely with Matthew Albert’s death. It’s hard to know with Wilber just saying, ‘no comment,’ in answer to all our questions.”

  “So you don’t even know if he was the one out there on the night Matthew died?”

  The sheriff shook his head. “Thanks to you, we did tie the car back to him, though. It broke down out there and it could’ve taken another week before we realized we had the vehicles mixed up.”

  “It belonged to Matthew?”

  “Yep. He must have aba
ndoned it shortly before his death. The oil ran dry, and the engine was pretty much fried before he pulled over.”

  “What a tragedy.” Willow pursed her lips. “If he hadn’t broken down, then he might’ve been just fine. I must admit, I don’t bother to change the oil in my car as often as I should, either. I’m completely reliant on the little light on the dash.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t an accident.” The sheriff leaned forward again, a gleam in his eye. “Somebody removed the sump plug and let it all drain out. It’s not difficult to do, but it does involve crawling underneath the engine. Whoever did it, was trying to cause some havoc.”

  Willow’s mouth dropped open. “Why would somebody do that?”

  Sheriff Wender shrugged. “To ensure he broke down on the outskirts of town, maybe. It could have been a simple case of vandalism—he did upset a few people in the short time he was here—but it might also have been prearranged. If they worked out where his vehicle would break down and had a greeting party waiting for him… Well.”

  “Who would do a thing like that?” Willow sat back and tilted her head, looking at the sheriff askance. “It sounds a bit farfetched to me.”

  Sheriff Wender pursed his lips, tapping his pen against the bottom one. After a moment, he seemed to come to some decision. “If I tell you something, promise you’ll keep it a secret?”

  “Of course. You can count on my discretion, you know that.”

  “We’ve kept it quiet, but when we found Matthew Albert he was undressed.”

  Willow was so astonished she sat back in her chair, scrambling to try to think what it might mean. Did it point to a sex crime? “Completely naked?” she whispered.

  “He still had his underwear and shoes and socks on, but he’d removed his shirt, jeans, and jacket.”

  Willow gave up. Her thoughts splayed in too many directions to catch hold of them. “And what do you think that means?”