Fatal Frost (Dewberry Farm Mysteries Book 2)

by Karen MacInerney

  “Oh, he’d never cheat on me. I’m the best thing that ever happened to him.” She slugged down the rest of her mimosa.

  “Are you and Phoebe Matheson close?”

  “Heck no,” she said. “All she talks about is her husband, and how everyone in the congregation is after him. I swear, it’s gotten worse lately, too. She’s like Velcro.” She added another slug of champagne to her glass. “I can see why, though. He’s good looking, and half the women at that church are swooning over him.”

  “Do you think he’s a faithful man?”

  She grinned at me. “To the church? Absolutely. To Phoebe? I couldn’t say, but that woman would drive me insane.”

  “Was he sweet on anyone in particular?”

  “Oh, he laid it on thick all around. Got all the widows in town paying his mortgage for him. He’s a smooth operator, that one.”

  “Your husband seems to be looking at buying more land.”

  “Oh, he and Faith have their heads together all the time. He’s full of big plans—he just has to win the mayoral race.”

  “What plans?” I asked.

  She was about to say something else when the door opened.

  “Hope, honey?” It was Ben O’Neill.

  “Oh, hi, sweetheart. I was just telling her about Pastor Matheson’s harem—and your plans for our little town.”

  O’Neill’s face went dark. “Looks like happy hour started a little early.” He turned to me. “I’m sorry, Ms. . . .”

  “Resnick,” I supplied.

  “Ms. Resnick. It looks like my wife isn’t feeling too well.”

  “I’m just fine, Ben. You just don’t like my talking to people is all.”

  “Perhaps another time?” he asked, ignoring her and looking at me.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Come on over anytime,” Hope called to me as her husband ushered me to the door. “It was nice talking to you!”

  He walked me out and lingered on the front porch. “I don’t know what she told you, but when she’s like this . . .” He shook his head. “She’s liable to say anything.”

  “I understand,” I said. “So . . . I understand you’re a big donor to Pastor Matheson’s church?”

  “Who told you that?” he barked.

  “Oh, a little bird,” I said.

  “I think it’s time you left,” he said, the pretense of friendliness gone.

  “Merry Christmas,” I told him, and headed down the steps to the truck, glancing back over my shoulder. What had Hope O’Neill been about to tell me about her husband’s plans? I wondered. As I opened the door to my own truck, I heard the sounds of raised voices from inside the house. I wasn’t sure what kind of marriage the O’Neills had, but I got the feeling it wasn’t very happy.

  The truck’s thumping took on a new, ominous rhythm as I pulled out of the O’Neills’ driveway. As I drove toward town, the sound got louder, and the car started to drag to one side. I was still a half mile from town, surrounded by bleached pastures, when I hit a pothole. There was a very loud thump, followed by the sound of the engine revving up and metal scraping against pavement.

  I said a few choice words as I steered toward the shoulder. When the car rolled to a stop, I killed the engine, then got out and peered under the truck. To my dismay, a large piece of the undercarriage seemed to have fallen off the bottom of the truck and was now wedged into the gravel shoulder. I stood up and scanned the area; the closest house was about a quarter mile away. I started walking, telling myself I could use the exercise and trying not to think about how expensive it was going to be to fix whatever had happened to my truck. Or whether it was fixable.

  I reached for my phone, planning to call my parents, but it had died somewhere between the O’Neills’ house and here.

  The wind picked up as I got closer to the house, a low-slung brick ranch set about one hundred yards off the road. A giant cross adorned the front yard, along with a fading plastic manger scene surrounded by a few scraggly bushes.

  I walked up the concrete front walk to the door, pulling my coat close against myself as a gust of wind hit me. The inside door was ajar, and the wind rattled the glass storm door. I knocked, then sucked in my breath.

  A crumpled form lay on the linoleum floor of the front hall, a hand curled like a claw.

  I reached for the handle of the door and yanked it open—thank God it was unlocked—and rushed to the prone figure. It was Ethel Froehlich, Wanda’s friend from the Blue Onion. She wore a brown velour bathrobe that zipped up to her neck. Now, it was bunched up around her knees. Her pale legs were askew on the tan rug, riddled with dark veins.

  I knelt to check for a pulse.

  Nothing.

  I dropped her arm—still warm—and ran to the kitchen, where I grabbed the phone and dialed 911. As I reeled off the details to the dispatcher, I surveyed the room. Two teacups were in the dish drainer; on the table was a plate with a few cookies and some crumbs. Who had Ethel been entertaining? I wondered as I told the dispatcher what I’d found and she promised to send an ambulance. I had just hung up when there was a knock on the front door.

  That was fast, I thought.

  I hurried to the front door to find the mail carrier, Alma Holz, holding a package. I should have known it wouldn’t be Buttercup’s finest.

  “Lucy. What are you doing here?” she asked, looking puzzled as I opened the storm door.

  “My car broke down. I was walking to borrow a phone, and when I got here . . .” I pointed to the prone form behind me in the hallway.

  “Oh, no. Is she okay?”

  I shook my head. “I called 9-1-1; an ambulance should be here soon. Or at least in the next hour or two,” I amended, remembering that I wasn’t in Houston anymore.

  Alma looked at the package in her hand, and then at me. “I was just going to drop this off, but I hate to leave you here alone . . .”

  “I’d love the company, to be honest.” It was creepy being alone with a dead person—particularly one you suspected might not have died of natural causes. I wondered what had happened to her. Heart attack? Stroke? Or something else?

  As we stood on the front porch, the wind kicked up; I hadn’t put a jacket on, and the chilly air cut right through my cotton shirt.

  “Let’s get out of the cold,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “The door’s already open. As long as we don’t touch anything, I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

  As I followed her into the mothball-scented front hall, a cold breeze followed us. “When will they be here?” Alma asked.

  “They’re sending someone from La Grange,” I said. “It’ll be a few minutes.”

  “What should I do with this, do you think?” Alma held up the Harry & David box.

  “Put it on the hall table, I guess,” I said, pointing to the chunky oak table just inside the door. We both gasped at the same time. A letter addressed to Brandi Jenkins lay propped up against a porcelain angel. I recognized the jagged script immediately.

  And so did Alma. “So that’s who’s been sending them,” she said.

  I looked back down at the prim-looking woman on the rug. “I never would have guessed.”

  “Me neither,” the mail carrier said.

  My eyes were drawn to a writing desk tucked into the corner of the living room, which opened up off the front hall. “Think that’s where she composed them?”

  “I’m guessing so. Looks like she was working on one when she died,” Alma said. She was right; there was a half-full page on the desktop. I walked over and looked at it.

  “This one’s to Hope O’Neill,” I said. It suggested, as usual, that her husband had not been particularly faithful, and chided her for not being a good wife. It seemed to be a common theme for Ethel. Her last name might mean “happy” in German, but she seemed to be anything but.

  “Spreading the Christmas cheer, wasn’t she? Look,” Alma said, pointing to a half-crumpled sheet addressed to Phoebe Matheson in a trash can
next to the desk. “I just delivered one to her last week.”

  “The pastor’s wife, too?” I glanced down at the page. Several words had been crossed out; the letter looked like a draft. I skimmed the text; evidently Ethel felt that Phoebe had been an inadequate wife, and that because of her, the good pastor was being tempted into sin. I wondered if she was referring to Krystal.

  “Because when a husband strays, of course it’s his wife’s fault, right?” Alma said sarcastically.

  “That’s what she seemed to think,” I said, looking at the letter. “It doesn’t go into specifics, though.”

  “At least not in the draft,” she said. “What a piece of work. Sending nasty letters anonymously isn’t exactly the most Christian thing to do. And wasn’t she picketing the Christmas Market just the other day because it was immoral?”

  I glanced back at the prone figure in the front hall. “Think she died of natural causes?”

  Alma’s eyes widened. “Do you think someone killed her?”

  “Someone killed Krystal,” I said. “It might be a heart attack . . . or it might be because she knew something she shouldn’t have. Or maybe one of her letters hit a little too close to home.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe someone found out who was writing them and killed her because she knew something she shouldn’t have,” I suggested, thinking of the two cups in the kitchen. Someone had been here—and Ethel hadn’t put away the cups or picked up the cookie plate. Had she fallen sick while her guest was still in the house? That would explain why the plate was out when everything else in the house was neatly tidied away. “I wonder if she was poisoned?”

  “Poisoned?”

  “That’s how Krystal was killed,” I said.

  “I heard it was Molly Kramer’s friendship bread.”

  “It was somebody’s friendship bread,” I said, “but I doubt it was Molly’s. Did Molly get any letters?”

  “No,” Alma told me, “but her daughter did.”

  My heart sank. I looked over at Ethel. I was fairly sure what had killed her wasn’t natural causes—and it wasn’t Molly, either.

  I looked down at the desk again. There was another piece of paper, one that had been covered in strange doodles. The numbers “1-2” appeared again and again, along with the initials “BK” inside a heart. Was she in love with a man with the initials “BK”? If so, who?

  I turned to Alma. “Know anyone with these initials?”

  She reflected for a moment. “Not offhand, but I’ll think about it,” she said. “What do you think the numbers mean?”

  “I don’t know, but she seemed pretty obsessed with them.” I looked back at Ethel; she was full of secrets, it seemed. “Will you come with me?” I asked Alma. “I want to look at the kitchen again.”

  “Is that okay? I mean, if what you’re saying is correct, this may be a crime scene.”

  “We won’t touch anything,” I said. “I just want to look.”

  With Alma trailing behind me, I walked through the living room into the dining room, which was furnished with dark oak antique furniture, and into the small, brightly lit kitchen.

  There was no friendship bread in evidence, thankfully—or much of anything else outside of the plate of cookies on the table. Four ceramic canisters were lined up neatly against the back of the green Formica backsplash, and a dish drainer sat next to the sink. With the exception of the plate on the table, the kitchen was spotless. “She was a good housekeeper, I’ll give her that,” Alma said.

  “Brandi Jenkins was staying here,” I said. “Do you think . . . ?”

  “Think she killed Ethel? I mean, staying with her would probably be a nightmare, but other than that, what’s her motive?” Alma asked.

  Maybe Ethel found out Brandi had killed Krystal, so Brandi poisoned her to keep her quiet, I thought. But how had Brandi gotten hold of Molly’s recipe card? I didn’t say what I was thinking.

  “Ethel got the cups, but she forgot the cookies—and this,” I said, grabbing a napkin and using it to pick up a flowered ceramic teapot on the counter (I didn’t want to leave fingerprints). Still using the napkin, I opened the top and looked inside. “This doesn’t look like black tea to me,” I said, pointing to the murky dregs of whatever was in the teapot.

  “Probably herbal tea,” she said.

  I bent down to sniff it; it had a minty, almost medicinal smell. “I hope they analyze it,” I said.

  “You think it’s poisoned?”

  “I have no clue, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to find out,” I said just as an ambulance pulled up outside.

  I hope that’s not a new perfume you’re wearing,” Quinn said, wrinkling her nose as I walked into the Blue Onion.

  “No. My new scent is a perk of using Fred Sanger’s loaner,” I said. Alma had given me a ride to town in the mail truck, and I’d arranged with Fred to tow my truck. He’d taken pity on me and loaned me an old Ford pickup that smelled like gasoline and cigars. Which meant that I now smelled like gasoline and cigars.

  “I found another body,” I said.

  Her hand leaped to her throat. “Oh, no,” she breathed. “Who?”

  “Ethel Froehlich.”

  She listened wide eyed as I recounted what Alma and I had found. “So Ethel was the poison-pen letter writer!” Quinn exclaimed. “How did she know all that stuff?”

  “Nosy, I guess. Maybe too nosy.”

  “You think someone killed her?”

  “If she found out something someone wanted under wraps, I can see a good motive. I hope Rooster looks into it; there were a lot of drafts at the house.”

  “Does he even know about the letters?”

  “I mentioned them to him, but I doubt he paid any attention to me.” I hung up my jacket and reached for an apron. “What can I help you with?”

  “Just keep me company,” Quinn said as she heaved dough onto a floured board. “You think the murderer struck again?”

  “I think there’s a good chance of it.”

  “You said she had company before she died. Any sign of who it might have been?”

  “Nope.”

  “Brandi, maybe?” Quinn asked. “Although I heard she moved out. Is Rooster checking it out?”

  “One of his deputies showed up. He asked if we’d touched anything and told me he was viewing it as a crime scene for now.”

  “I hope they don’t find any friendship bread.”

  “I didn’t see any, but I thought the same thing. There were a few drafts of letters on her desk, including one to the good pastor’s wife.”

  “Really? Did it accuse her of sleeping with half the church’s congregation?”

  “Actually, it accused her of being such a bad wife that her husband was tempted to sleep with half the congregation.”

  “Nice. But no specifics?”

  “No names mentioned . . . I was hoping it would call out Krystal.”

  “You really think the pastor and Krystal were together?”

  “I don’t have any proof, but I have a hunch. Who else but a pastor would get his girlfriend a sapphire cross?”

  “True,” she admitted.

  “Speaking of poison-pen letters, I got one yesterday, too. Telling me that I was a harlot.”

  “Ouch. Don’t tell Rooster that, or he’ll think you’re the one that killed her.”

  “At least it would get Molly off the hook.”

  “Your letter sounds like what I got, by the way,” she said. “I don’t understand, though; Ethel barely knew either of us. Why would she send us nasty letters?”

  “It’s a mystery,” I said. “I asked Alma who else she remembered delivering letters to. I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a list.”

  “Did Molly get one?”

  “No,” I said, “but Brittany did.”

  “I never thought I’d say this, but thank goodness Molly’s in jail.”

  “I’m pretty sure Alfie bailed her out,” I said. “Besides, even if she was in jail
, you don’t have to be there to poison someone.”

  Quinn grimaced. “That’s not a happy thought.”

  “I know,” I said glumly. “But still, why would Molly kill Ethel? Her daughter’s missing . . . why would she care about what someone she barely knew wrote?”

  “Maybe she thought the letter set Brittany off?” Quinn suggested.

  “We’re talking as if she actually did it,” I said, “when what we need to be doing is figuring out who did.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t just a heart attack?”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but she was pretty young for that. Oh—and I found something strange.”

  “What?”

  “A piece of paper with the numbers ‘1-2’ on it, and the initials ‘BK’ inside a heart, over and over again.

  “Someone she had a crush on?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” I said. “I just don’t know who.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said. “It’s not Buster . . . his last name is Jenkins. Besides, I can’t imagine falling in love with Buster.”

  “No accounting for taste,” I said.

  “Well, yours is excellent. I know it’s not at the top of your list right now, but are things any better with Tobias?”

  I nodded. “We had dinner last night, and it went well. Except for the goats.”

  “We’ll be talking about that for years,” Quinn said, grinning. “Speaking of Tobias, he called. He thinks the puppy is ready to go home.”

  “Are you taking her?”

  “I am,” she said, smiling at me. “She’s my Christmas present to myself.”

  “I think it’s a terrific idea,” I told her.

  “How’s the visit with your parents going, by the way?”

  “Not too bad, but maybe that’s because I’ve hardly been home. It’s nice to have help with the chores, even if it does come with a healthy dose of advice from my mother. And my dad grilled steaks for dinner the other night; I think they feel sorry for me.” I sighed. “I just wish we could figure all of this out before Christmas.”

  Quinn grimaced, a dab of flour on her nose.

  “You know, maybe Krystal told Ethel something she shouldn’t have,” I mused.

  “I can’t imagine anyone telling Ethel anything.”