Butter Off Dead

by Leslie Budewitz

  That reminded me to shovel the front walk, a first-thing chore I had put off to meet Mimi and Wendy. The downside of an unincorporated town—no town services.

  I piled snow on the berm between sidewalk and street, careful to leave cuts for access, then perched on the window ledge to catch my breath and savor the sights and sounds of a sunny winter morning in Jewel Bay.

  A flash of light across the street drew my eye. Larry Abrams stood in Puddle Jumpers’ open doorway. Sally Grimes’s hands flew, gesticulating dramatically. Sally always speaks dramatically. Fresca calls her “the Queen of the Againsters,” the folks who oppose any new idea. They’re convinced what works in other towns can’t possibly work here. First words out of their mouths are always “the problem is . . .” Sally wears a deflector shield worthy of a starship.

  Had Larry broken through her defenses? His white head leaned in closer, his hand lightly touching her upper arm. And then, to my utter astonishment, he kissed her and strolled down Front, whistling.

  Why not? Larry seemed eligible, and Sally Sourpuss is attractive when she smiles, which isn’t often. At least not at me. She does not like me. She tolerates my mother and my sister, barely knows my brother, and absolutely cannot stand me.

  I must have stared a moment too long. She turned and glared, as if to say, What’s it to you? Then she spun on her heel, almost losing her balance on the frosty concrete, and tugged the door of her shop tight behind her.

  At half past twelve, while I straightened Luci the Splash Artist’s soaps and lotions, the front door chime rang.

  The tea shop prospect hitched her bag high on her shoulder and gave me a this-hurts-me-more-than-you look that I didn’t quite believe. “Jewel Bay is adorable. But your downtown is built on restaurants and retail. That gives you ninety days to make a living off the tourists.”

  “Small towns are short on office workers,” I admitted. And it’s easy for the few we have, along with the bank tellers and retail employees, to run home for lunch. “But if you give the locals good food and service in a sweet place, they’ll be there.”

  “I’ve run the numbers,” she said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “It can’t be done.”

  If you think it can or you think it can’t—either way, you’re right.

  Half a wink after she left, the door flew open and in whirled a red-and-blue tornado, cape whipping dangerously close to a display of Montana cherry wine. Behind him stood his mother, my sister, Chiara. (Say it with a hard C, and rhyme it with tiara.)

  “Bring him back to the shop after lunch,” she said and waved good-bye.

  “Landon. My favorite nephew.” I scooped up the five-year-old and planted a big wet smackaroonie on his cheek. He wiped it off, a sign of his advancing age, then wiped his hand on his blue tights.

  “Your only nephew,” he said, echoing his mother’s standard response. “Mom says the bakery has movie cookies and you can buy me one.”

  “As soon as Tracy gets back from lunch and her dog walk,” I said. “Aren’t you cold in that outfit?”

  He scowled. “Auntie, I’m Superman.”

  A few minutes later, we popped next door into Le Panier. “A three-cheese panini. Panino. Whatever.” I’m half Italian, but all American when it comes to messing up foreign words.

  “And movie cookies,” Landon said.

  Wendy and her French-born husband, the Max of Chez Max, the delightful bistro adjacent to the bakery, have no children. But she always has a smile and a cookie for Landon.

  She handed him a chocolate sandwich cookie with mint cream filling, wrapped in a waxed paper square that immediately drifted to the floor. I bent down to grab it. The door opened, the breeze blowing the paper under one of the café tables. I chased it around a corner, out of sight of the woman who stalked to the counter.

  “How can anyone honestly believe,” Sally said to Wendy, “that this town needs yet another festival?”

  My fingers touched the waxed paper and I froze.

  “You’d think those Murphys would have learned their lesson,” she went on. “That Erin comes back and people start dropping like flies.”

  The yeasty, warm, cinnamon-scented air seemed to freeze.

  “I’m a Murphy,” Landon said, his voice as big as it could be through a mouthful of cookie. “Landon Thomas Murphy Phillips.”

  I backed my way out from under the café table and stood. “If you have a beef with me, Sally, bring it to me. Have the grace not to bad-mouth my family in front of a five-year-old.”

  Sally Grimes turned red. As red as Wendy’s rubber clogs. As red as the red velvet cupcakes in the bakery case.

  “I think the Film Festival’s a great idea,” Wendy said. “It’s time we did something for ourselves instead of always for tourists.”

  “For fun,” Landon said, gripping his cookie so tight the filling oozed out. The panini press buzzed, the aroma of toasted bread and cheese wafting over the chaos of conversation and conflict.

  Sally glared at my nephew, at Wendy, and finally, at me. She’d hit a tender spot. Though everyone assured me over and over—everyone but Sally—that none of it was my fault, I did feel guilty when my first new festival, the Festa di Pasta di Jewel Bay, resulted in the murder of a good friend. And when more tragedy struck the Summer Art and Food Fair—Jewel Bay’s longest-running festival, an event Fresca helped start when Nick was a baby. But Christine had been convinced that we could make a winter film festival fly, and when it comes to movies and food, I’m a sucker. As Wendy had said, it wasn’t for the tourists. It was for the town. A little play, after all our hard work.

  “You Murphys think you’re the only ones around here with good ideas,” she sputtered. I didn’t point out that the Film Festival hadn’t been my idea.

  She left empty-handed, a cloud of fine white snow swirling in her wake.

  “I think,” Wendy said, “we all need another cookie.”

  “Good idea,” Landon said, and I had to agree.

  * * *

  I delivered my nephew to his mother at her gallery, left the shop in Tracy’s practiced hands, and took to the road.

  Once across the one-lane bridge over the Jewel River, I pointed my sage green Subaru—the semi-official car of western Montana—east and followed the river along the narrow two-lane highway called Cutoff Road.

  By early February, you can almost see the light growing stronger. These clear, sunny days are the coldest, but the light makes up for the lack of heat. New snow gleamed on the peaks of the Swan Range, and through a cut to the south, I caught a glimpse of the Mission Mountains, carved by the glacial hand of God.

  Christine lived in a darling cottage, once a rectory, beside a decommissioned Catholic church. Iggy—aka Louise Ring—had bought the property on the corner of the highway and Mountain View Road decades ago, to save it from the wrecking ball when the parish built a new church north of town. After her husband died, Iggy moved in to the cottage and converted the church into an art studio and gallery. Friends and students had reclaimed the parking lot behind the church, planting an orchard and creating a community garden. Not content with tomatoes and beans, they also planted art: Fountains flow in giant clay pots, flowers blossom in tiled tire rims, and over it all reigns a horse welded from scrap metal.

  Today, snow blanketed everything but the horse.

  None of us had been surprised by Iggy’s death last fall—she’d been ninety-seven, though she hadn’t looked a day over eighty.

  But we’d been astonished that she left the bulk of her estate, including the church and cottage and her art collection, to Christine. Who’d been more surprised than anyone.

  I turned onto Mountain View and parked across from the church, painted white with forest green trim to match the cottage. Zayda had beat me here, the front wheel on the right side of her mother’s old red Toyota perched awkwardly on a snow berm. I grabbed my blue leather to
te bag—a remnant of my city wardrobe—and waded into the fresh white powder.

  Last night’s new snow lay undisturbed on the walkway to the cottage and its wide front steps. I headed for the well-trampled trail between the buildings, which forked left to the back door of the church and right to the side door of the cottage.

  Where Zayda George huddled on the concrete steps, arms wrapped around her knees, the hood of her charcoal gray ski coat pulled over her head and face. She gave off an air of unhappiness far beyond being “too sensitive.”

  Careful, Erin. You’re not her mother or teacher, or the Film Club advisor. You barely know her.

  “Hey, there. You could have gone in. You didn’t need to wait for me.”

  The hood slipped back. The brown eyes she’d gotten from the Greek side of her family were pained.

  “What’s wrong?” I said. No reply. My rib cage tightening with a nascent fear, I stepped around her and opened the screen. Knocked on the door.

  No answer. No footsteps.

  Behind the house, Christine’s car stood under last night’s thin blanket of snow. She hadn’t gone anywhere.

  I twisted the doorknob. Locked. “Did you try the studio? She must be waiting for us there.”

  Stricken. The only word for Zayda’s expression.

  At the back doors of the church, I tugged the big brass handle on first one dark red metal door, then the other. Rattled them. “Christine,” I yelled.

  No answer.

  So I did what any veteran little sister would do. I called my big brother.

  “The spare’s underneath the Buddha behind the house,” Nick said. “I’ll be right there.”

  I upended three frosted Buddha statues before finding two keys on a thin wire ring. The faded yellow paper label read BACK. Church or house? I dashed to the red double doors, mentally rubbing the stars on my wrist. Keys and I don’t always get along.

  First key, no luck. I swore.

  The second key fit and I turned it, but nothing happened. “The other way,” I muttered, and the door creaked open.

  “Christine?” I paused in the carpeted back entry, listening.

  “Christine?” Nothing. I bounded up the half flight of stairs to the sanctuary, a long straight nave with no transepts or alcoves. “Christine?” Light poured through the tall windows behind the altar. A marble statue on a pedestal gleamed, and a pair of bronzes gave off a subtle glow.

  “Oh, God.” She lay on the altar, facedown. Two long red braids trailed down her back, and a thin trickle of a deeper red crawled across the yellowed oak floor.

  • Four •

  I did not want to see her. I did not want to touch her.

  “Christine.” I knelt, taking her wrist in my shaking fingers. Warm skin—a good sign. A faint throbbing. Her pulse, or mine?

  “Uhhnnnh. Uhh-unh.”

  “Shush. It’s Erin. Help is on the way.” I lowered my face to hers, to hear and be heard. “Hang in there.”

  In response came a long, painful gurgling noise. Like a fish crying for water, she scrambled for air. Her shoulders heaved and bucked as she tried to raise her chest off the worn wood floor.

  That’s when I saw the pool of blood beneath her, the hole in her side.

  Acid welled in my gut. “Hang on. Zayda’s calling for help.” An unmanned fire station stood kitty-corner across the highway, but the volunteer department could only be reached by calling county dispatch.

  “Shop,” she said, her speech obscured by the gasping, the gurgling, as blood filled her lungs. “Lrss.”

  “Shushhh. Don’t try to talk.”

  “Shop,” she repeated, her paint-stained fingers clawing and scraping.

  “My shop is fine. Tracy’s working today. Help is coming and you’ll be fine. Hang in there.” She would not be fine, and we both knew it.

  I held her wrist, my other hand unsure where to land, finally settling lightly on her shoulder. Liz Pinsky had made me a feng shui convert last summer, demonstrating how a space holds energy. She would say that even after decommissioning, a church holds the prayers and intentions of the faithful who worshipped there.

  I called on them now, and on the saints and angels, to not abandon this holy place because evil had violated it.

  That is when we need all that is holy all the more.

  In reply, sirens.

  And then, “I’ll take over now.” An EMT—a mechanic by trade—touched my shoulder. I scooted back, making room for him and his bag. He reached for Christine’s wrist, then her neck. On her other side, a second EMT saw the pool of blood. Hands in thin blue gloves, he raised her shirt to expose the wound and applied a pad. “Gotta stop this bleeding,” he said, while the first man slid the business end of a stethoscope onto her bare back. Listened to her lungs. Raised his head and I saw the two men’s eyes meet.

  They did all they were supposed to do, but that brief glance confirmed that it would not be enough.

  I sat on my heels. Not again. Maybe Sally’s right.

  “I’m Nick Murphy. My sister and my girlfriend are in there.”

  The strained voiced boomed from the rear of the sanctuary. Zayda had sunk against the back wall, beneath a black-and-gold Asian tapestry. She hugged her knees, her big coat enveloping her and her sadness. A deputy sheriff I did not know blocked Nick’s way.

  “I’m sorry, sir. This is a potential crime scene.”

  “Nick!” I ran down the altar steps and past Christine’s easels and canvases, her worktable littered with tubes and knives and brushes. Past the display cabinets and the walls of paintings. “She’s been shot. She’s bleeding. I’m afraid . . .”

  He pulled me into his arms, and through our coats, I felt my brother’s heart pound, felt him tremble, felt him hold me tight, safe, and I tried to do the same for him.

  * * *

  “Where have you been?” I asked. Nick wore field gear: water-resistant pants, bright blue knee-high gaiters, boots, mittens that converted into fingerless gloves for note taking. Heavy-duty sun goggles peeked out of an upper pocket in his nylon shell.

  “Up in the Jewel Basin, checking my packs.” Wolf-breeding season. Nick tracked the packs by snowshoe or on skis, then watched for denning activity. “What happened?”

  I told him what little I knew, and we stared, arms around each other, as the EMTs finished their work.

  Sheriff’s Detective Kim Caldwell and Undersheriff Ike Hoover arrived at the same time, Ike in full uniform, Kim in jeans, the belt that held her gun, radio, and other gear slung on her hip. Just looking at it gave me back pain. We’d become friendly again since my return to Jewel Bay, but nothing like the past. We’d been best buds from sixth grade, when her family moved back to help her grandparents run the Lodge, right up till February twenty-fourth our senior year. The night my father died, I lost my best friend, too.

  When you get your badge, they give you extra eyes and a swivel in your neck. Both Kim and Ike scanned the old church quickly and thoroughly, seeming to take in everything. Kim spotted Zayda, knelt and said a few words, then stepped outside, phone in hand.

  It hadn’t occurred to me to call her parents. Some friend and mentor I was.

  Ike pulled out a notebook. I perched on one of the leftover pews, the dark wood polished by decades of backs and bottoms sliding across the grain, and repeated what little I knew. I nearly gagged at the part I didn’t want Nick to hear—the part about the gurgling, the struggle to breathe, to speak. To live.

  “She said what?” Ike said.

  “Shop,” I repeated. “She was asking about my shop. I don’t know why. She was confused. She’d lost a lot of blood.” Shivers overtook me.

  Nick’s eyes darkened and his gaze flicked across the room to the old barrister’s bookcases that held Iggy’s collection of bronzes and Western artifacts. Pain creased his brow. He ran a hand through his dark ha
ir and trained his attention on Ike.

  “Sheriff.” The second EMT appeared at Ike’s elbow. I recognized him from the lumberyard at Taylor’s Building Supply. They stepped aside, and though we couldn’t hear them, the meaning was clear.

  Christine Vandeberg, of the red hair and colored glasses, my good friend, my partner in planning, the woman who might, not once but twice, have become my sister-in-law, was dead.

  * * *

  Outside, the sky had darkened. Leafless branches stood stark against the gray. The evergreens—fir, pine, blue spruce—leaned away from the cold front moving in.

  We had not been inside long. But it doesn’t take long for everything to change.

  I tugged at my collar and hunched my shoulders against the biting wind, hard grains of snow pelting my face as we crossed Cutoff Road to the fire hall. Inside, our uniformed escort pointed to hard chairs set at long plastic tables. The concrete floor and white walls, plastered with huge section maps of the fire district, made the place seem colder.

  A fireman strode in from the garage, shiny red engines visible behind him. He fiddled with a thermostat and started coffee. A deputy stood by each door, and while they did not bar the way or block us in, leaving did not feel like an option.

  Nick and I huddled at one table, Zayda and her parents at the next. I tried to conjure warm thoughts, but that reminded me of Christine, her warm skin cooling, her warm heart stopping.

  At least Nick was dressed for the weather. The Georges must have come straight from the Inn. Mimi had draped a coat over the black pants and blue blouse she wore to hostess, and Tony wore a faded baseball jacket over his grease-spattered chef’s whites.

  “Kim,” Nick said, when she finally appeared. “It’s freezing in here. Can’t we talk somewhere else? Her cottage?”

  “Still being searched,” she said, and I felt a shock wave ripple through him. Nick had not been around last summer, when tragedy struck twice. Nick had not been around a lot these last few years, his field trips for work the reason Christine had given for breaking their engagement. It was finally hitting him that we were talking murder.