by Molly Macrae
“I know.” Sally Ann pulled the mug of tea toward her and moved it in circles on the table. “But it’s complicated. I feel responsible. I’m the one who asked Mel to give Reva Louise the job. To give her a chance. You know what it’s like. You’ve got sisters or brothers, don’t you?”
“No, but I think I know what you mean. I’ve known some—”
She cut me off. “You don’t really know, then. But trust me, it’s complicated. Especially between sisters. And Mel didn’t know she had one and now she’s lost her and she hasn’t got many real friends. But she likes you, Kath, and she needs someone. So could you go over there? Talk to her? Please?”
“I’ll try.” I cringed inside hearing myself say that. I didn’t know what to say to Mel. Didn’t know what was going on with her. Didn’t want to play Dr. Kath making a horrible house call.
“Thank you.” Sally Ann put her hands to her cheeks and shook her head, her eyes focused on the tea mug. “I had to call Mama and that was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. It tore her up.”
And there I was, pitying myself because I didn’t know what to say to a hurting friend. “Sally Ann, I’m so sorry. Does your mother still live in Gatlinburg?”
“Moved on down to Florida. She’s not able to travel much.”
“Poor thing. What a shock this must be. Do you know when the funeral is? Where she’ll be buried?”
“Nothing firm yet. It’s up to Dan.”
“How’s he doing?”
“You know how folks say so-and-so is being strong enough for two of us? That’s Dan. He was more worried about me yesterday. Took me home. Stayed awhile. Taking care of people is what he knows. He took good care of Reva Louise.” She blew her nose on a tissue. “But he’s hurting.”
“Did they have children?”
“She miscarried a few years back. Then I guess they couldn’t.”
“I don’t even know where they lived.” Why was I using past tense for both of them? I hurried to revive Dan with the age-old remedy. “I know some of us would like to take food around to Dan. Do you think he’ll mind?”
“It’ll show up on his doorstep even if he does,” Sally Ann said with a sad smile.
“And some of it questionable.”
“Isn’t that the truth? I can’t tell you the address, but it’s the house at that sharp curve on Spring Street, on the way out of town, before you cross the train tracks. You know the one? Old house. Bunch of ramshackle outbuildings. Not much to look at, but Reva Louise said she liked the potential. She was all about potential.”
Somehow “potential” paired with “Reva Louise” wasn’t conjuring pictures of rosy hope and optimism in my head. More like sneaky possibilities. Or mayhem.
Chapter 19
“What’s going on, Mel?”
I stood outside the café’s back door, nose almost pressed to the window. Sally Ann had been right. Mel did look as though she’d spent the night there. She’d taken off her apron at some point, but her chef’s pants, usually crisp and clean, were as tired as her eyes. At least her spiked hair looked alert. Maybe it was keeping her awake. I knew she could hear my question through the door, because I heard her loud and clear.
“Not buying, Red. Don’t care what you’re selling.”
At least she’d come to the door when I knocked. Sally Ann said she hadn’t even waved.
“Do I look like a door-to-door yarn peddler to you? Come on, what do you think I’m trying to sell?”
“Thoughts and prayers. Visions of a better place. As far as I’m concerned, all of that happy-happy mumbo jumbo is like alien abductions, Red. Not happening.”
“I’m not peddling that, either.”
“Then what do you want?”
I felt silly, but I looked left and right to make sure no one was lurking in the service alley to hear me. I gestured for her to come closer and put my mouth to the crack between the door and the frame. “Answers, Mel. We think there’s more to Reva Louise’s death than a trigger-happy reenactor. We’re short on physical evidence, but the scenario we’re putting together is the more compelling for its lack.” I pulled back from the crack to gauge her response. She raised an eyebrow. I leaned toward the crack again and almost stumbled inside when she swung the door open.
“It wasn’t locked,” she said with a shrug.
“Sally Ann said—”
“I unlocked it after she left. I’m still not open, though. If you don’t believe me, you can read the sign on the front door. It’s still locked.”
“A lot of good that does back here. Aren’t you worried about people coming in thinking you are open?”
“It’s mostly locals and I’ve been running them off all morning. Except Carl.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. Carl, an eightysomething widower who used his morning walk to the café to jump-start his days, sat at his usual table in the back corner, nursing a cup of coffee. He lifted two fingers from the cup in greeting. “Carl needs me,” Mel said. “The rest can wait until I open up again. Make up your mind, Red. In or out. You’re as bad as a cat and I don’t need the flies.”
I went in. She closed the door and I followed her to the kitchen. The scent of onion lingered in the air from her chopping extravaganza of the day before. The onions were nowhere in sight and the place was spotless.
“Hold up,” Mel said to me. She stuck her head back out the kitchen door. “Keep the riffraff out, will you, Carl? And help yourself if you want more coffee.”
“Why don’t you just lock the door again?” I asked.
“Nah. It’ll give Carl purpose if he can run off a tourist or two. Now, what’s this you’re saying about my sister?” She faced me, fists on her hips, mustard spiked hair like raised hackles.
Her challenge gave me pause. How did one suggest the possibility, to a loyal and rock-hard woman—one with quick access to long knives—that her sister wasn’t universally liked? And by “wasn’t universally liked” one meant that her sister was disliked for several good reasons, including that she was dishonest. And that she was disliked enough that someone felt the need to shoot her. But Sally Ann had said that I was a straight shooter and that’s what I’d always tried to be in my professional life. So, despite Mel’s intense eyes locked on me, I could do this. I could tell her.
“Mel, Reva Louise was, was . . .” My hands flailed, trying to pull the least judgmental and the clearest, most objective words from my head as they could. “Reva Louise was a liar, a cheat, and a thief.” Well, at least I was clear.
Mel’s eyebrows rose. So did mine.
“Let me show you something,” she said. “See what you have to say after you see it.”
Everything except her spiked hair stood down and she led me to the room she used as an office. I’d never been in it, but with its high, tin ceiling and each of the four walls painted a different shade—turmeric, curry, paprika, and ground cumin—it made me feel as though we’d stepped into a spice can. The only window looked across a one-lane alley to the cinnamon-colored bricks of the next building over, but the room was large enough for an antique rolltop desk against the curry wall and a comfy chair and love seat with a narrow coffee table in between. The chair and love seat were fresh sage and dry thyme respectively. The coffee table was lacquered and could have been a bar of dark chocolate—ninety-nine percent cocoa.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Mel asked, pleased with my reaction. She had, with help from her brother, taken the derelict Blue Plum Hardware and converted it into Mel’s on Main. They’d carved out the dining room, kitchen, and walk-in coolers, and also this nicely proportioned space. “I don’t spend a lot of time in here,” she said, “but when I do, I figure I might as well be comfortable. Sit down.” She pointed to the love seat.
I sat. I still wasn’t entirely sure she was reacting calmly to my bald statement that her sister was a liar and a crook. While she went to the rolltop and gathered what she planned to show me, I steadied my nerves by studying the bookshelves on the turmeric wall across from me
. Cookbooks were interspersed on the shelves with what were probably antique kitchen gadgets. Whisks of various designs, standing in a crock, I recognized. And a mallet, with a corrugated face, that might be a meat tenderizer. But a couple of the larger tools had cranks and hoppers that suggested grinding jaws somewhere inside their wooden boxes. Those things looked scarier, to a jumpy mind’s eye, than any domestic implement had a right to.
Mel plopped into the comfy chair facing me.
“Mel.”
She looked up from the papers she was spreading between us on the table. Now her eyebrows were drawn together and her mouth twisted sideways. In disgust? Anger? She pointed a finger at me. “What you said?” She turned the accusing finger to the papers. “Yeah, she was. And I might’ve been slow, but I was beginning to figure it out.”
Offering a “sorry” hardly covered the situation. I said it anyway.
“Thanks. Here’s my summary of this episode of my life. I kind of liked the idea of having a sister. It didn’t work out. Too bad.”
I wondered if it was that simple and if she was that tough. She was too busy shuffling her papers to meet my eyes, which told me something. What she said next did, too.
“If someone hadn’t shot her, I would’ve had to fire her.” This time she did look at me. “Firing isn’t the same as shooting her myself, Red. Okay, okay, I get it. The point your body language is making is taken. I won’t talk like that in public.”
“Good. And not in private to Cole Dunbar or any of his deputy buddies, either, I hope. Or to anyone who might go tell them. Why were you going to fire her? Is that what’s in your papers?”
“She was cooking the café’s books.”
“Ooh. Sautéed by your own sister.”
“Yeah.” Mel jumped up and started pacing. “Not by much, though. She was smart. She wasn’t greedy.” She pivoted and reversed course at the end of each short statement.
“And you didn’t suspect?”
“No. Because she was smart. She was plausible. She was an excellent liar.” She stopped and held her hands out flat. Then she slapped them to her temples. “Blinders,” she said. “I had on blinders because I wanted to like her. I wanted to give her a chance. What a chump.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. If you didn’t suspect anything, you’re not a chump. And we all tried to like her.”
“You tried because that’s the way you are. But not everyone tried. I knew why Thea and Joe quit showing up at Fast and Furious, and it ticked me off.”
“Really? Oh. Well, liking her and not thinking she was a—”
“Louse.”
I shrugged. “Ardis called her a boll weevil. Anyway, liking her and realizing she was a louse are two separate things. I think it’s fair to say we were all fooled by her, so I guess that makes us all chumps.”
Mel stabbed her finger at me again. “But you don’t know what I knew when I hired her.” The pacing, pivoting, and short bursts of information started again, too. “I knew it up front. Sally Ann told me. I knew there was a risk. But the recidivism rate is low. I know that because I can Google with the best of them.”
“Are you saying she did this before?”
Mel stopped midpace. “Didn’t I say that?” She dumped herself back in the chair. “Yeah, she’d been there, done that, paid the price. You didn’t know I have a bleeding heart, did you?”
“Well, yeah, Mel. Doesn’t ev—”
“You did not.” She actually looked shocked.
“I’ll admit, you hide it well. I’m sure I’m the only one who knows. Did Reva Louise serve time?”
“Two years of probation. She was still making restitution. Pffft. That’s probably why she needed the money. Can you believe she stole from a church? She was the secretary and kept their books.”
“You knew that and you let her keep your books?”
She dragged out the word “no” so that it sounded as if she was in pain. “But I should’ve been more careful. I let her place the orders for baking supplies. They were pretty much our regular orders. It should’ve been easy as pie.” She made a disgusted noise. “There are a lot of bad jokes I could make about this. But I gave her a job, offered her a chance to start over, paid her well, thinking that would make a difference, and the bottom line is, I was dumb. I made the mistake of thinking, ‘What could go wrong?’”
“That’s a classic. It shows you’re an optimist, though. Your opinion of Reva Louise was half-full. That isn’t such a bad thing.”
“Except to an embezzler, her bank account must always look half-empty.”
“Is that what you were doing here all night? Going over accounts?”
She looked at me.
“Sally Ann told me. She was worried.”
“Funny how she and I are more alike than either of us was to the real half sister.”
“Except Sally Ann has an aversion to needlework of any kind.”
“Everyone has a flaw or two, Red. Some of them are just more obvious than others.”
“And there’s my segue, Mel. We think someone’s flaw, possibly Reva Louise’s own, led to her death. Ardis and I do, and, you know, some of the other members of TGIF.”
“Kath Rutledge and her posse riding to the rescue again?”
“Yeah, well.” Ardis was the one who’d started calling our small subset of TGIF my “posse.” She liked the idea of mild-mannered needle artists having alter egos. I liked the fact that we’d unraveled the clues and found the answers to a few mysteries before Clod Dunbar. Geneva, being the television Western enthusiast that she was, loved being a member, even if no one else knew she was. Or that we never rode horses into a sunset. But they all referred to it as my posse, and that made me somewhat uncomfortable.
“Hey, don’t shrug it off,” Mel said. “I’m giving you your due, not making fun. You’ve got a good track record. We’ve got a good track record. I’m part of your posse, too, so tell me what we’ve got.”
I took out my notebook, slipped the elastic, and read. Mel listened to the points Ardis, Thea, Ernestine, and I had come up with over supper the night before, plus the questions I’d added since. I also read the list Ernestine gave us of the people she remembered coming into the shop and the list John e-mailed to me. I read Mel’s name with no more or less emphasis than the rest. “We’re still in the gathering stage,” I said when I finished. “But what do you think?”
“That I probably scalded Ernestine’s and John’s ears when I made my mad dash in and out of the Cat. Did they tell you why I was there? Or do you want me to tell you so you can compare the two versions?”
I tried not to look as uncomfortable as I felt.
“Body language, again,” Mel said. “You need to practice your ‘I’m good, I’m cool’ look in the mirror more often. It’s okay, though. I was looking for Reva Louise.”
“About the lunch thing?”
She threw her hands in the air. “You’re not supposed to throw a line to a witness like that. I’d roll my eyes, too, Red, but the eyes are such a cliché.”
“And you avoid those like the plague?”
“You’re darn tootin.’ What’s ‘the lunch thing’?”
That stopped me. She didn’t know? “Um, that’s what Ernestine thought you were there for, and I’ll tell you about it in a minute. But then, why were you looking for Reva Louise?”
Mel looked at me, then looked away. “I’m not proud of my temper, Red. I figured out what she was doing with the supply orders and I needed to do something about it. It couldn’t wait. Do you know what that’s like? Sally Ann said she might be at your place, so I stormed over.”
“You would’ve confronted her in the Cat?” That was an appalling thought. “Did Sally Ann know why you were looking for Reva Louise? Does she know about the orders?”
“No. She doesn’t need to feel bad about bringing Reva Louise down on us.”
“You don’t think she’s guessed something by the way you stormed out?”
“Well, she’s no d
ummy. So tell me what the ‘lunch thing’ is and if I owe anyone anything to make up for it.”
“Let’s just say Reva Louise was a piece of work, Mel, and leave it at that.”
“But that’s why you think someone killed her? Pushed over the brink by a piece of work?”
“Like I said, we’re still at the gathering stage.”
“Clues, evidence, and no preconceived notions?” She thought for a minute. “This pig skit guy. Prescott?”
I nodded.
“He’s also a real estate agent?”
“And a piano salesman. As he says, high-end.”
“It’d be hard not to have preconceived notions about a guy like that,” she said with a quick smile. She started tapping an index finger on the arm of her chair. “What about this? I know a real estate agent in Knoxville. You want me to give her a call? See if she can pick up any buzz about him? Discreetly.”
“First, any idea why Reva Louise would have one of Prescott’s realty cards?”
Mel cocked an eyebrow.
“I found one in her pocket after she, um . . .”
Mel cocked both eyebrows.
“I gave it to the police. Anyway, Prescott said he had a deal in the works for the mercantile that might be scuttled by Reva Louise’s death.” Which was information he’d asked me not to share. And then the skunk had snuck around in my study. “Sure, call your friend. I don’t see how it can hurt.”
“A dangerous phrase, Red, much like ‘what could go wrong?’ But I’m glad to see you haven’t learned, because I probably never will, either. Make a note of that, will you?”
Instead, I wrote notes about embezzling and about Mel making inquiries in Knoxville. I got a kick out of writing making inquiries and thought how pleased Geneva would be if I read that to her in a plummy British accent. I was about to close the notebook with an authoritative snap of the elastic when I thought of a piece of information I hadn’t gotten. “Hey, Mel, is the embezzling the theft you reported? The one Cole Dunbar asked you about yesterday?”
Mel went completely still. She could have been a bird or a rabbit, frozen in a yard when it’s just realized someone is there and watching it. Talk about body language.