Heaven Preserve Us: A Home Crafting Mystery (A Home Crafting Mystery)

by Cricket McRae

  "Damn straight," I said.

  "How was the Helpline?" she asked.

   

  "Um. It was okay. A little sad. Kind of boring. Until the end, at least. This creep called and said he was going to kill himself, but then seemed more interested in finding out my name than in slicing his wrists."

  "Sophie Mae! You can't make fun of people who call in to the Helpline."

  "No, really, he was creepy. Philip hung up on him. He even sent me home early. I think he was afraid I'd quit right then and there"

  "Did the man who called get the number of someone to help him?"

  "I gave it to him, but I don't know if he wrote it down."

  "Oh, that poor soul. I hope he's okay."

  "Urn, yeah. Me, too." Which was true, of course. Never mind that the main reason I volunteered at Heaven House was because Meghan had talked me into it.

  I changed the subject. "Have you decided what we should take to the preserves exchange?"

  "Oh, God, I'd forgotten. It's tomorrow night, isn't it?" She walked to the pantry, opened the door and peered in. "We pickled extra asparagus last spring; it's cured almost a year, so it'll be just right."

  "Okay, but leave some for us."

  She turned around and gave me a look. "We'll make more in May, you know."

  "But a year, Meghan. You said it yourself-it's better after it sits a while. And it's only February."

  A ghost of a smile crossed her face, and she turned back to the open doorway. "We have a ton of watermelon pickles."

  "Watermelon pickles," I moaned. "I love watermelon pickles."

  "We can make more of those next summer, too."

   

  "Keep a few jars. Please, please, please?"

  "God, you're worse than Erin. Of course I'll keep a few jars, if only for you children."

  "Hey-"

  "Do you think we should whip up another batch of wine jelly in the morning? Everyone loves to eat that with beef and lamb, and it's done in a jiffy."

  But I wasn't really listening. I was thinking about all the good stuff we were about to have added to our pantry. The preserves exchange was another project at Heaven House, though it was designed less to aid the community and more for the volunteers. It was based on an old Cadyville town tradition. During the Depression, Cadyville High School had sponsored a preserved food contest for the senior girls. They canned and pickled and jellied frantically for weeks; whoever canned the most food won the recognition of their peers and the kudos of a grateful town. It probably didn't hurt much in the search for a husband, either.

  And Cadyville was grateful because most of the food preserved for the contest went straight into the kitchen of the local hospital to feed the patients all year long. It sounded like a perfect setupthe hospital won, and the girls had a chance to compete in something meaningful, both in terms of charity and in terms of learning how to preserve food for their future families. Though, truth be told, most of them were probably old hands at such things by the ripe old age of eighteen.

  Thirty is the new eighteen ...

  Anyway, the preserves exchange at Heaven House worked in much the same way, except we only exchanged among ourselves. So many of the volunteers at Heaven House were great cooks, and this way we got to sample each other's home-preserved specialties.

   

  Thaddeus Black would bring brandied peaches. Nothing like those eaten with a little vanilla-bean ice cream in front of an applewood fire on a cold snowy night. Yum. I hoped his niece, Ruth Black, would bring her famous blueberry conserve, perfect baked as a tart filling in a shortbread crust. There would be dilly green beans and bread-and-butter pickles and homemade sauerkraut for the best Reuben sandwiches in the world or to stew with lamb sausage in the slow cooker all day. I'd heard rumors of relishes, beets, marinated mushrooms and corn. If everything went as planned, everyone would have well-stocked and varied pantries.

  Mmmm.. .

  "Sophie Mae! What are you doing?"

  I looked down to where I was about to double dip into the peanut butter jar with the biggest spoon in the silverware drawer.

  "Mmmph" I said. Which meant, "I have no idea how this happened, but I require milk this very instant."

  I headed to the refrigerator, bending just a bit under Meghan's look of mild reprimand.

  "No drinking out of the carton."

  I poured the milk into a tall glass and swigged it. Once again able to talk, I said, "Jeez. One little faux pas with the peanut butter, and you act like I'm going to start eating like a guy or something."

  "Don't you dare," she said.

  I grinned. "I'm off to bed. See you in the a.m."

  "Uh huh. Don't forget the phone, `Honeybunch"'

  "Shut up," I said and walked out, snagging the cordless phone off the hall table as I passed by. Behind me, Meghan laughed.

   

  "It was okay," I said, repeating what I had said to Meghan about my evening of volunteer work to Barr Ambrose. "I'm not so sure I like the kind of clientele you get to talk to, though."

  "Hell, Sophie Mae, the point is to help people in trouble who don't have anyplace else to turn. Those folks tend to be a tad less refined than you or me."

  "That's not what I mean. I talked to a couple of people who probably fall a lot higher on the social scale than I do. But there was a kind of scary guy this evening, and I bet he's only the first. It's not because they're bad people or anything. It's just that desperation makes you do things you wouldn't otherwise do. Like I did last October. And that's a little ... frightening."

  He was silent for a moment, and I knew he was thinking about the fact that I'd burned someone quite badly the previous fall, trying to keep Erin safe. That was okay, though: the silence. I liked Barr's silences. Rather, I liked the silences that fell between us. They felt full, not empty. Comfortable. I hadn't felt that with anyone since my husband had died five years before.

  "What did the scary guy do?" he asked. Trust him to zero in on the one thing I wished I hadn't mentioned. Barr was a detective, make that the detective, on the Cadyville police force, and while that was nice in many ways, he did have a way of blowing the idea of me being in danger all out of proportion.

  "It was nothing," I said.

  "Sophie Mae."

  "No, really. Just that desperation I was telling you about. Made me a little uncomfortable. I'll get used to it. And I really like the idea of helping people out. Maybe I can make a difference in somebody's life. You know, like in a big way."

   

  "You're already making a big difference in somebody's life, just by being your sweet self."

  And that was why I took the phone to bed with me, whether Meghan teased me about it or not. Because that was the kind of thing I liked to hear right before going to sleep every night. Not big statements, but the little bits of sugar he'd slip in now and again. That and the fact that he really wanted to talk to me every night when we were apart. Even when he was working. In his gentle, understated way he made me feel special.

  "Aw," I said. "Ain't you sweet."

  "Yes, I am. But I do have to go. I have at least two hours of paperwork to plod through before I can leave, and I'm working in the morning."

  All the overtime Barr had to put in wore him out and tried my patience. "When are they going to hire another detective? Or at least make the uniformed officers do more of the investigative work?"

  "When they get the funding," he said. "The Chief is working on it. And there's only so much the uniforms can do."

  "I don't understand. How much crime is there in a little town like Cadyville, anyway?"

  "More than I'd like to tell you about. I spent most of this evening interviewing a woman who was attacked walking to her car after work. It happened right downtown. I want you to be extra careful, Sophie Mae. We haven't caught the guy yet."

  "When you say attacked..."

   

  "He didn't rape her. But he might have if some high school kids hadn't c
ut through that alley and scared him off. He left her bruised and shaken, but that's all."

  "That's enough."

  He murmured his agreement. "Just be careful. Goodnight."

  "'Night. Sleep tight. You know, when you get a chance to sleep at all."

  We rang off, and I lay in bed thinking. We weren't to the Ilove-you stage of things yet. That was okay. We'd been seeing each other for over three months, and I liked moving slowly after years of relationship hiatus. Not that everything was moving that slowly, mind you. But I got the feeling when Barr Ambrose said "I love you," there would be a whole lot of strings attached. I was getting to like the idea of those strings, but I was still a little gun-shy. He knew that. I hoped that was why he was being so reticent. I sure didn't want it to be because he didn't know how he felt about me.

  The phone rang. I pushed the talk button quickly, afraid the shrill sound would wake Erin and Meghan, both of whom had turned out their bedside lights down the hall.

  "Forget something?" I asked.

  "Sophie Mae Reynolds."

  Oops. Not Barr. "Yes?"

  "Sophie Mae, Sophie Mae, Sophie Mae." The man on the other end of the line softly sang my name.

  All snug in my flannel pjs, under my mountain of down comforter, I suddenly felt very cold. "Who is this?"

  "I found out your name after all, Sophie Mae. And that's not all I found out."

   

  "Allen?" I knew it wasn't his real name, but I didn't know what else to call him. Correction: I knew what else I wanted to call him, but that seemed like a bad idea at the moment.

  "I'll call you again, soon. I'm looking forward to talking more." And he hung up.

  I beeped off the phone and lay there for a few moments, trying to think. I could call Barr back. But what could he do? Just worry. And I'd already caused him enough worry. I'd figure out how to deal with this Allen jerk myself.

   

  THREE

  A GENTLE RAIN PATTERED gently on the roof the next morning. Eventually, I got around to opening my eyes enough to peer at the clock on my nightstand. Six fourteen a.m. and still dark as night outside. My hand crept through the cool sheets to the other side of the bed before I really thought about it, but no one was there. Barr and I only spent a couple of nights a week together, always at his place, but I loved waking up with his tall, lanky form wrapped around me.

  I missed it more than usual this morning.

  Why was that?

  Then I realized: waking up with Barr made me feel safe, and the mysterious Allen had me thoroughly freaked out.

  Well, thank heavens I'd remembered that, I thought as I let out a whoosh of breath and threw back the covers. No more lollygagging around. I had work to do, and then I needed to find out from Philip whether they'd ever had problems with callers suddenly taking it into their pea brains to stalk the volunteers at Heaven House.

   

  At nine o'clock, after mixing a batch of lemon verbena soap and catching up on the wholesale invoicing for my handmade toiletry business, Winding Road Bath Products, I took a break and drove the few blocks downtown. In the daylight, Heaven House looked less than inviting. Just one block off the five-block length of First Street, it was a large brick cube, as wide and high as it was deep. Owned by the Heaven Foundation, for years the top floor held an apartment and office space, and the ground floor had been leased to a large antique "mall" where locals would bring their old crap and sell it to tourists on consignment. As soon as the lease expired, Philip Heaven had moved his personal brainchild into the building.

  One large room took up most of the main floor, with the big cheap desk I'd been sitting at the night before located near the front door. Along the back wall was a smaller room, empty so far, and to the left a larger one we all referred to as the game room, though it only had one game in it, and no furniture. The entrance to the unisex bathroom was at the rear of the building, by the back door. To the right were the stairs to the second floor. The whole building was old, with layers of paint and a persistent odor of musty mildew.

  Philip was big on vision, but from what I could tell so far, not so great with detail or implementation. Luckily, he had a full-time assistant named Maryjake Dreggle. When I walked in she was sitting at the desk, peering at her computer monitor with a frown. Beside her, the pungent smells of chili and garlic wafted from a cardboard take-out container of Thai food.

   

  Her pale brown eyes brightened when she saw me. "How'd it go last night?"

  "Okay, I guess. Hey, I've got a question for you."

  "Yeah?"

  "Ever have someone, you know, fixate on you before? A caller, on the Helpline?"

  "Fixate? Not really. I've had repeat callers. But mostly they just needed someone to talk to." She shifted in her chair and put a booted foot up on the desk, displaying a heavily muscled leg between the top of her wool sock and the hem of the hiking shorts she insisted on wearing year round.

  "Did you refer them?" I asked.

  She pushed a chunk of her fuzzy dishwater-red hair behind one ear. "Sure. There was one woman, though. She and I seemed to connect, so I just let her spill her guts. I know it's not what we're supposed to do, but it seemed to help, and I referred her to a therapy network, too. She was going through a horrible divorce, and I've been there, too."

  A completely different situation than the one I had with Allen.

  "Philip up in his office?" I asked.

  Her frown returned. "He was. Not feeling so hot, though, so he may have given up on working, gone back into his apartment. But take a look."

  I crossed the large open area and climbed the narrow stairs to Philip's office and the apartment he'd taken over with the rest of the lease.

  A short hallway at the top of the stairs revealed two doors, one of them closed. I strode to the open doorway and stopped, looking into the small office. The high ceiling sported beautifully carved molding, but the plain white walls remained unadorned, and fluorescent track lighting gave the space a stark quality. An ashtray on the windowsill betrayed Philip's sneak smoking, and the brisk tone in the air suggested he'd recently closed the window. Unfortunately, the room still smelled of stale cigarette smoke ... and something else. I wrinkled my nose.

   

  Philip's heavy oak desk, situated at an oblique angle to the door, completely dominated the room. Good feng shui, he'd told me. I had no idea whether he was right, and furthermore didn't understand why anyone who ran a nonprofit organization funded entirely through a family foundation would care about situating his office to make money. But what did I know? Maybe it was actually more about success than money.

  In which case he might have been holding his book on feng shui upside down when he'd decided how to place the desk, because Heaven House didn't exactly qualify as a successful enterprise. The only thing that would solve that problem was a director with more focus than Philip would ever possess.

  I hesitated, not sure if I was interrupting his work, but after several moments I realized he wasn't really reading anything on the computer monitor in front of him so much as staring a hole in it. The harsh light reflected from his scalp under the sparse sweep of a bad comb-over. I cleared my throat and stepped into the room. When he looked up, I was shocked.

  Philip Heaven looked like hell.

  "Hey, babe! How's it going? Just couldn't stay away until Friday, huh?" The words fit his usual persona, but they slurred together as if he were drunk. His eyes looked like two holes burned in a blanket, their muted hazel coloring eclipsed by red-rimmed lids. His nostrils flared over a two-day stubble, and his naturally pale complexion had taken on the moist appearance of newly risen bread dough.

   

  "Holy crap. You should be in bed," I said.

  "That an offer?"

  Oh, good Lord. Fine. Not my problem if he didn't have the sense of a gnat. But I stepped back in the doorway. Whatever he had, I didn't want any of it.

  I told him about Allen calling me
at home the previous evening.

  "He called you at your house? How'd he get your number?" He didn't look pleased. In fact, he acted like it was my fault "Allen" had decided to harass me.

  "I was hoping you could tell me."

  "Well, I didn't give it to him," he said.

  "He shouldn't even have known my name."

  "Well, I didn't give him that, either." He sounded defensive. "You're the only one who talked to the guy." He coughed, then gasped for a couple breaths as if he couldn't get enough air.

  My brow wrinkled. He sounded like he had pneumonia. "Listen, I'm not blaming you. I just wondered if this had happened before. You know, see if there's a protocol to follow."

  "No. Never before. No protocol." More gasping.

  I couldn't help it. "Philip, are you okay? I really think you should lie down. Or maybe go to the clinic down the street."

  He waved his hand at me, dismissing the idea. "It's just something I ate. I don't know what to tell you about this guy, babe. I'd go beat him up for you, but we don't know who he is."

   

  As if Philip could have beaten up a kitten right then. "I'll figure it out. Thanks for your help." More like thanks for nothing.

  He licked his lips. "You know, I get threats all the time."

  I paused in the act of turning toward the door. "Really? Why would anyone threaten you?"

  He shrugged. "Most of them don't come to anything."

  I squinted at him. "What do they say?"

  His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. "Various things. Most of them reflect wishes for unpleasant things to happen to me."

  I wondered if I'd stumbled into something. Maybe Allen was less interested in me than in getting to Philip somehow. "This has happened recently?"

  He looked away and rubbed his fingertips across his lips. "Yeah."

  "Somebody threatened you-did you tell the police about it?"

  "Sort of. Sophie Mae, it doesn't have anything to do with that caller."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because my latest threat was not exactly anonymous." He looked back at me, and I saw his Adam's apple work again as he tried to swallow. "Have you ever had your lips go numb?"