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

by Cricket McRae

Instead, I got a brown-eyed handsome man parking next to the Volvo. Barr Ambrose got out, strode to my side, and pulled me to him. Long-legged, streaks of gray winding through his wavy chestnut hair, he wore jeans, a tan corduroy sports coat, and one of his signature string ties-this one a pewter steer's skull-with a white shirt. He smelled like wood shavings and leather.

  "Mmmph," I said into his shoulder, which meant, "Damn, I love the way you wrap around me like we've fit together for years."

   

  "What?"

  "I'm glad you came," I said.

  He smiled. "You hung up on me"

  "Well..."

  "All snitty-like."

  I examined the toe of his cowboy boot. "Sorry."

  He cocked his head. "I know I don't have a lot of time to spend with you. It won't be forever, though. I promise."

  I licked my lips. "I know. There's no excuse for hanging up on you. All I can say is that it's been a pretty stressful day."

  "Boy, I hear you." He exhaled loudly. "Now give me that." Hefting the heavy box, he preceded me back into Heaven House.

  Erin had tidied things up quite a bit, and the three of us arranged wine jelly in record time. Meghan still stood with Kelly, laughing at whatever he was saying. Oh, brother: it was the complimentary laugh, the one that told a man how brilliant and funny he was. She had it bad.

  "Okay, everyone. I think we're ready." Maryjake's voice was rough. Usually it filled the room with ease, but tonight I strained to hear her.

  Barr stepped forward and cleared his throat. I frowned, unsure of what he was doing.

  "Before we begin I need to make an announcement," he said. "This morning Philip Heaven became very ill and was rushed to the hospital."

  No one looked surprised. Anyone who hadn't known before coming to the exchange had become privy to this information by now.

   

  "He went immediately into the ICU, but, I'm very sorry to say, they weren't able to save him."

  What?

  Barr continued. "Philip Heaven died at four p.m. today. I know this must be very distressing news to those of you who didn't know."

  Jude's eyes flicked up again, and I knew he'd already been informed. For a moment I felt angry. He should have told us. Then I felt bad; Philip had been his cousin, after all.

  Other faces were blank. Ruth Black's hand went to her mouth. Thaddeus looked stoic. Meghan's eye's filled with tears. Kelly put his arm around her and drew her close, his own expression speculative.

  And then I wondered why the heck Barr hadn't told me Philip had died. What was I? Chopped liver? He must have known when I talked to him on the phone earlier. When he stepped back to my side I moved away from him. He shot me a look, but I was too upset to try to interpret it.

  From the corner of my eye I saw Maryjake teeter forward, and as I turned my head, she crumpled in front of Ruth Black's display. She hit the edge of the table with her shoulder as she went down, and one of the pint jars of beets teetered and fell onto the painted concrete floor, impacting with a loud crack! The glass broke and the pressurized contents burst out, painting the wall and floorand my brand new white sneakers-with chunks and splatters of deep red goo that would stain forever.

  The sound of the breaking glass grabbed the attention of everyone who'd missed Maryjake actually falling, and soon she was surrounded by bewildered participants of the Cadyville preserves exchange and whomever they'd dragged with them to the event. The beet juice surrounding her looked like blood.

   

  "Maryjake? Maryjake!" James crouched beside her, shaking her shoulder. He leaned forward and pressed his ear against her considerable chest. It reminded me of what I had done to Philip only hours earlier. Surely she wasn't-

  She sucked in a sudden, whooping breath, and her eyes popped open. When she saw her husband's face so close to hers, she recoiled and pushed him away. Hard.

  "Leave me alone."

  He fell back on his posterior, narrowly missing a piece of broken glass on the floor. A flush infused his cheeks. Not the kind of response you expect from a loved one in distress whom you're trying to help.

  Apparently emergencies brought some things to a head. Interesting.

  Maryjake started wailing and shaking. Meghan stepped in and grabbed her.

  "Stop it." Meghan's gaze rose to meet mine as I backed out of the crowd. She nodded, understanding what I was doing. "Not too cold." Her words cut through the babble of voices and Maryjake's high-volume hysteria.

  I turned and ran to the bathroom, filling a couple of tiny Dixie cups with water. Then back to the gawker knot surrounding Maryjake. Her lips had taken on a blue tinge, and she was gasping for breath. Hyperventilating, big time. I held out both of the little cups of water to Meghan, who took them and promptly threw them in Maryjake's face.

   

  Maryjake stopped gasping and stared at Meghan. We all did. I smiled. So much for breathing into a paper bag.

  We milled around, the awkward silence occasionally punctuated by a whispered comment. James had taken Maryjake home despite her weak protests. Erin stood with Meghan's arm lightly draped across her shoulder. Her gray eyes moved from face to face, watching the reactions of everyone in the group. Barr was in the restroom. Jude stood next to his table of jellies looking like he wanted to cry. Mrs. Gray and Bette silently cleaned up the beets and shards of glass.

  No one seemed to want to take charge.

  Standing with all those people, I felt very alone. Was there something more I should have done to help Philip earlier that afternoon? I had to wonder, but I genuinely couldn't think what it could be. I regretted giving him a hard time, even though he was so obviously ill. I regretted my complaining about his inefficiency and boorishness. So he wasn't a genius. So he lacked class. He'd just been a guy, a regular guy, who wanted to do some good and had a chance to try. Now he wasn't going to have a chance to try anything ever again.

  A heavy curtain of depression settled over me. I wanted to go home and crawl in bed for several hundred years.

  Instead, I spoke to the room. "I hate to say this." My voice sounded too loud in my skull. "But we should probably finish the exchange."

   

  Meghan nodded. "Let's just get it over with." Her new beau stepped to her side-now where had he been?-and I saw her shoulders automatically shift toward him.

  Murmurs throughout the room signaled general agreement, and people began moving to the tables, almost reluctantly picking up foodstuffs to take home. Missing was any banter among the volunteers. I was staring at a jar of sauerkraut with nary a thought of a Reuben sandwich in my head when Jude came to stand silently beside me.

  "You knew," I said in a low voice.

  "Yes. I'm sorry."

  "You should have told us." "

  I didn't want to ruin the exchange. It was supposed to be for morale among the volunteers."

  I turned and stared at him, amazed. He looked away and blinked rapidly. Could it be that he hadn't known how to tell us? That was it, I realized. How very difficult to be Jude Carmichael on a daily basis.

  Barr came out of the restroom and walked to my side.

  "Are you okay?" I asked, concern over his appearance overriding my thoughts about Jude.

  "I'm fine. Just a little off, I guess."

  I eyed him, wondering what he wasn't telling me. He'd been in there a long time, I realized, from just after James had taken Maryjake outside until seconds before. His eyes looked red, and his skin pasty.

  Kind of like Philip Heaven had looked that afternoon.

   

  SEVEN

  NEITHER MEGHAN NOR I had considered the fact that we'd have to haul as many jars of preserves into the house as we'd loaded the car up with earlier. After the food exchange, Barr said he had to go back and finish up a few things at the cop shop, and we helped Ruth and Thaddeus take their gleanings out to their car. We made them promise they'd have a neighbor help them bring the heavy boxes inside the next morning, and they
left with Ruth behind the wheel of their old Buick. Once we arrived home, Meghan tucked Erin into bed while I dragged in our own loot and began unpacking the cornucopia of goodies onto the kitchen table.

  An hour later, with the pantry filled to the brim, I gave in and called Barr's cell phone. I couldn't stand the idea of waiting by the phone for his nightly phone call, all the while afraid that this was the night he wouldn't call. I'd realized I didn't know exactly where we stood or whether we were both looking for the same things from the relationship. It seemed silly in retrospect, but we'd never actually talked about our expectations.

   

  He didn't answer. I looked at my watch. After ten. I didn't leave a message.

  Five minutes later the phone rang, though, and I rushed to answer it. Meghan and I narrowly missed colliding in the hallway. Apparently I wasn't the only one expecting a phone call.

  The caller ID said it was Barr. "I won't be long," I said, and snatched the phone off the charger. "Hello?"

  It wasn't Barr. It was Sergeant Zahn, his direct supervisor at work, and he cut right to the chase. "Is this Ms. Reynolds? Detective Ambrose wanted me to tell you he's in the hospital."

  "What happened? Is he okay?" My mind went immediately to the place I tried to keep under wraps, the scary ohmygod place that had to do with the fact that my boyfriend carried a gun to work and tangled with the dregs of society on a regular basis. In that place lived things like bullet wounds and knife fights and other disasters accompanied by the kind of special effects only found in bad action flicks. I wasn't a big worrier, and Cadyville wasn't Los Angeles, but the words "Ambrose" and "hospital" in the same sentence sent me right there.

  "They're running some tests now. He asked me to call you. Thought you'd want to know he's here." His voice was gruff, but I tried to ignore that. It was no secret that the good Sergeant wasn't all that fond of yours truly.

  "Can you tell me what happened?"

  "He was at the station. His stomach was upset, and then he got light-headed and started having trouble breathing. Asked me to bring him into the emergency room."

  Barr felt bad enough that he asked Zahn to take him to the emergency room? This was not good. I heard several voices in the background, and one of them was Barr's. He didn't sound happy, not at all.

   

  Okay. No bullets. And dizziness trumped a knife wound every single time. But the word "hospital" still scared the bejesus out of me. Zahn was saying something, but all I could hear was a very loud, frightened voice in my mind clamoring to know that Barr was okay.

  But Zahn couldn't enlighten me any further and made short work of getting off the phone. I dropped all notion of going to bed, laced up my boots with shaking hands, and grabbed my coat off the hall tree, calling out, "Meghan! Where are you? I have to go."

  She appeared at the top of the stairs. "What's going on?"

  "It's Barr. He's in the hospital."

  "Hospital! What happened??"

  "It's nothing to do with work. He's sick or something. I don't know. I have to get over there."

  "Of course you do. I'd go with, but-" She gestured toward Erin's room.

  "No, no, that's fine."

  "I'll keep the phone with me. Call me when you know more. No matter what time."

  "You sure?"

  Her nod was emphatic. "Absolutely. Even if he just has a bad splinter. I want to know."

  Her words brought a small smile to my face, because I knew her concern was as much for me as it was for Barr.

  I ran out through a heavy downpour to my pickup. My hands had stopped shaking, and I jammed the key hard into the ignition and started the engine with a roar. Rain slashed down, pounding against the metal skin of the cab as I urged the Toyota through the dark, empty streets of Cadyville to the highway on-ramp. Our little town only had an emergency clinic. Fifteen minutes later I was in Everett, where Sergeant Zahn had taken Barr.

   

  Philip had gone to the same hospital. I thought of his gasping breaths, how he clawed at the desk as if the slick surface might somehow yield oxygen to his starved lungs. Barr's symptoms mirrored a little too closely those I had witnessed that morning before Philip collapsed.

  And then he'd died. What on earth was going on?

  I couldn't seem to concentrate; I got lost downtown, not sure which street the hospital was on, and once I found it, I couldn't find the entrance to the parking garage.

  "It's okay, he's going to be fine, just relax, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay," I whispered under my breath, cursing first at the red light and then at the blue-haired old lady who wouldn't move her huge lumbering PLYMOUTH out of my way. Deep breath. Okay, better. Found the entrance.

  Parked.

  And ran toward the emergency room.

  The sliding door hissed open, too slowly, and I pushed through with my shoulder. The button on my jacket hooked on something, I don't know what, and my momentum spun me around in an awkward circle. I came to rest beside the reception desk, and the woman sitting behind it put her hand out to steady me.

  "You okay, honey?"

  "Fine. Good. Thanks. Barr Ambrose. Just brought in."

  She nodded. Apparently staccato verbiage was par for the course in these situations. Which made sense. I couldn't be the only one who came in all a-dither looking for someone they loved.

   

  Wait a minute. Love?

  Did I just think that?

  Uh oh.

  Okay, maybe I'd thought around the idea a little. But not, you know, "I Love Barr."

  Too soon. Too big. Too scary. Too ...

  "He's been admitted," the woman said, peering at her computer monitor. "Room 513."

  "Can I go up and see him?"

  "The elevators are right over there."

  "Thanks" I turned and marched to the elevator. Forced myself to push the button. I hated hospitals. I'd spent too many long hours in them, helpless as they tried to save my husband from the cancer gnawing through his body. When the ding sounded and the doors slid open, I strode onto the elevator like I was going into battle.

  Not that I was, of course. Right? Dizziness, nausea. But still conscious. Not like Philip. Not like Mike. Surely something minor. I mean this was Barr. Mr. Tough Guy. Who happened to drink Earl Grey tea, but still. Upright Town Detective. All Around Good Guy. Mr. Call-Me-Every-Night-Just-To-Hear-My-Voice.

  And he was sick. Seconds ago I'd been so scared and worried that I'd used the word "love," for the first time, if only to myself.

  Inside the elevator, I pivoted. The woman behind the desk watched me with curiosity as the doors slid shut, cutting off her view and enclosing me in the tiny box. My control wavered then. The fear I'd so neatly dispatched returned with a roar. I didn't even know what else I felt, but I sure felt a lot of whatever it was. Especially around my solar plexis. And my throat. And the muscles along my jaw.

   

  The elevator stopped, and I got off. Signs directed me to Barr's room. As I walked by the nurses' station the two RNs gave me a cursory glance, but must have decided I knew what I was doing.

  Boy, I wished I did.

  Room 513. The door was partly open.

  What I saw inside made me want to cry.

  There were two beds in the room. The one by the window was empty. In the bed by the door, the man I'd come to think of as strength itself lay stretched out, filling the bed from top to bottom with his long lanky frame. But that thing, that quiet strong presence, was absent. Even in sleep he had it, but lying there with his eyes closed, his long slender fingers limp on the hospital sheet, he looked abandoned and weak.

  I'd watched the vitality fade like a receding light from my husband at the end, sat with him night and day in the hospice for those last two weeks, every second seeing him withdraw further and further from life. From me. Leaving me.

  Stop it, Sophie Mae. Just stop it. That was then. That was Mike. This is Barr. And he's going to be fine.

  I took a deep, whooping breath,
and curled the edges of my lips into a smile. Barr opened his eyes.

  Walking over, I put my hand on his cheek, and kissed him on the forehead. I could hear the subtle whoosh of the machines all around him, noted the tubes snaking into his nose, the IV dripping clear liquid into his arm. He looked up at me with a weak, but sardonic, grin.

  "What?" I said.

  He shook his head a fraction. "I'm glad you're here."

  "Me, too. What happened?"

   

  "Don't know."

  "What do the doctors say?"

  "Don't know."

  "You don't know what they say?"

  "No. They don't know what's wrong with me."

  My anxiety ratcheted up another degree. I pulled a chair up to the edge of the bed and took hold of Barr's hand. "Sergeant Zahn said you were dizzy?"

  He closed his eyes for a moment and nodded. "Wasn't feeling too hot at Heaven House tonight. Got worse."

  A nurse walked in. "We should get some of the tests back within the hour," she said, but I put my finger to my lips and nodded toward Barr, whose eyes were still shut. As I stroked his arm some of the strain flowed out of his face and he slept.

  "Visiting hours are long over," the nurse said in a low voice.

  "I'm his girlfriend," I whispered. "I'd like to stay for a while."

  "It really is best for him if you leave and come back in the morning."

  Philip had been ill in the morning and dead in the afternoon.

  "But-" I raised my voice, and Barr stirred in bed.

  "Please"

  Frowning, I stood up. "How can you not know what's wrong with him?" I whispered.

  She hesitated, then gestured for me to follow her out to the hallway. At the nurses' station she turned, her eyes moving over my face as if she were trying to read something there. Finally she spoke.

  "Most of the tests they're running right now are to exclude other diagnoses. If those come up negative, we think your man in there had contact with botulism toxin."

   

  Botulism?

  I knitted my fingers together. "That's serious, right? It could kill him."

  "It can be very, very serious. But, if that's what it is, he seems to have had relatively minor exposure, and the antitoxin is already on its way from the CDC."