by Julie Howard
There’s no reason I can’t start over again. It’s a big world.
****
There were some people who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Honey stood at the door holding up a cloth-covered plate. “You can’t stay mad forever.”
Meredith grimaced at her, debating for a second whether she actually could.
“Oh, but it’s cold out here.” Honey lifted her shoulders in an exaggerated shiver. “Bitter.”
She opened the door wider, stepping to one side, and the woman hurried inside.
Honey pressed the plate into Meredith’s hands and shucked off her coat. “You have no idea what’s been brewing over at my place. Chaos.” Noting the rabbit hutch, she gave a nod. “Seems like you have a growing family, too.” She bustled into the kitchen and rummaged for four plates, paused, and then put two back. “Let’s the two of us have a chat until the kids discover we’re here eating sweet potato pie. I over planned for Thanksgiving and had to put three more pies in the freezer. Heavens knows what I was thinking.”
Meredith quietly put a kettle on the stove for tea, sensing her friend had something on her mind. The woman always did. She set out mugs and tea, and waited.
“Egan.” Honey huffed out his name. “He wants to marry my Gemma. She said yes, just as quick as you can blink your eye. Heaven help us all.”
Meredith swallowed. Just six months earlier, Gemma revealed her plans to marry Brian. The two would have made a perfect pair: deceitful, greedy, opportunists. She felt sorry for Egan. Less than a month ago, he didn’t even know where to find the girl and now they were engaged? For all his rough edges, he was probably a nice country boy underneath his unkempt beard.
“She’s marrying Egan? Does she even like him?”
The other woman’s tone was clipped, annoyed. “My granddaughter likes a man around admiring her. And turns out the young fellow got on at the mine at a good salary. She likes that, too. Anyway, he offered to adopt the baby. Thought you should know.”
The kettle began to whistle, the pitch high and screeching, and Meredith poured the water and dropped tea bags into the mugs, grateful for the interruption. She’d been nursing a hope that Gemma would go somewhere else far away, removing Brian’s baby from their lives. “Where would they live?”
“Not with me; I set them straight on that one, right away. They can go live with Egan’s land-grubbing family, and my granddaughter can learn another hard lesson in life.”
Honey’s lips pursed together, waiting. Meredith set the steaming mugs on the table, refusing to ask any questions about the apparent bad blood between the families. The other woman waited and when no reply came, heaved a sigh at being thwarted in gossiping about Egan’s family. She switched gears and her dumpling face lit up. “What does our sheriff think about what happened in Twin Lakes? Poison? Those men could have gotten themselves into something foolish, eating something gone spoiled. Some men just aren’t too fussy. Warm mayonnaise, half-cooked chicken, old eggs.”
Meredith was glad the subject was changed. She would far rather talk about death than about Gemma. “Curtis said the ground is frozen and they need to get more equipment up the mountain to exhume Jacob’s body.”
Her friend raised her eyebrows. “They say poison’s a woman’s weapon.”
“He isn’t calling it a crime.” Meredith couldn’t help adding, “Yet.”
“Murder begets murder. One, two, three,” Honey said in a whisper, leaning forward.
The woman’s eyes shone at this tidbit of gossip, the specter of a corpse exposed from its resting place and speculation about murder. Jamie rushed into the kitchen, demanding pie and cutting off the conversation. Atticus joined them and the next fifteen minutes was filled with chatter about rabbits as they wolfed down their pie.
“Will your baby goats sleep in your living room in the winter?” Jamie asked after scraping her plate clean.
“Oh no. I have a heater out in the barn for all the animals. They’re cozy all winter long. But no little kids until the spring. Kids are what we call baby goats.”
The young girl smiled to herself and Meredith knew her daughter would launch a spring offensive to get a baby goat. Her kids scampered off to play in Atticus’s room.
Honey carved off a second piece of pie for herself and Meredith refilled their mugs. Whatever the difficulties with her friend, it felt good to sit and share her distress with someone. “My roof’s coming down,” she shared. “There’s a hole in Jamie’s room covered with a tarp.”
Honey nodded as though she wasn’t surprised at all. “Life is two steps forward, one back.”
Meredith studied her tea, wondering if the older woman had always been full of aphorisms and folksy sayings. If an apocalyptic event occurred, Honey probably would have comforting words to say about that too. Right now, she needed solid advice and comfort, not empty words.
“I don’t think I’m getting the full two steps forward,” she said, certain she was due a little sympathy. Everything was going wrong at a time when it all should be going right. She found herself unburdening herself of her most recent problems; her collapsing house, her financial crisis, her need for a job. Any remaining frustrations she had with her friend thawed the more she talked. It was soothing to talk to someone who enjoyed listening to one’s troubles.
“You can’t expect to get them all at one time,” Honey explained with a shrug. “At some points in our lives, it’s five or six steps back and then, all in a rush, seven or eight or ten steps forward. You’ll see.” Honey served herself another slice of pie.
“I hope someone up there is keeping track for me.”
The woman gave her a stern look. “I made a mess of my life a ways back. You know, I had a thing for bad boys back in my day. I didn’t like being told what to do and, my goodness, there was this one boy in school who broke all the rules. Of course, he had to be the boy for me.” She shook her head, her expression grim at the memory of her teenaged self. “I was pregnant my senior year of high school and proud of it, stupid girl that I was.”
Meredith tried to imagine a teenage Honey and could only picture a round full-hipped girl with large shoulders who wouldn’t let anyone boss her around.
“I lost that one but was pregnant again inside of six months. You’d think we’d have learned a lesson. Ha, not a chance. We ran off, got married and…Shorty…” She spat out the name… “built us this house. Judith, Gemma’s mother, was born.”
Honey leaned forward on the table and her voice lowered to a hiss. “You know what happens to bad boys when they grow up? They become bad men. There were no steps forward for me back then, none at all. I was pregnant again when he set fire to the house. Miscarried.”
She paused in her story, lost in its telling. A bad marriage. A violent end. Two babies gone. She leaned back again, her voice softening. “I was all prepared to tell you about Gemma and your husband, the first time I came to your house to visit. But then I saw your little ones and the bruises on you and saw myself all over again. History was repeating itself, right here in the same house, and I knew what was coming next. You deserved better.”
Meredith sat frozen in her seat. The doubts she had about the woman being involved in Brian’s murder were always at the forefront. “Honey,” she started, but her tongue thickened in her mouth. How do you ask a friend, your best friend, whether she was behind the murder of your husband? Would she ever be able to put the suspicion to rest?
Honey brightened. “Milt arrived just in time. He was a friend of the family. Tall and big like me. He just swept me off my feet. Some people might call it a boomerang romance, but it sure bounced me into the right arms. I never had a bad day with my sweet Milt.” She wiped at a tear and stood, scraping back her chair from the table, indicating their chat was over.
“You just get your chin up, girl,” she said. “Your time is now. A hole in your roof? Heavens. It’s not the end of the world.”
Chapter Sixteen
Meredith woke wi
th eyes swollen from crying and lack of sleep. She stared in the mirror and touched several newly developed lines on her face. Fine wrinkles now etched the corners of her eyes, a former crease in her forehead was a canyon and the corners of her mouth took on the appearance of craters.
I’m twenty-four and feel like I’ve lived a lifetime already. Her mouth sagged downward as she studied her reflection. Chin up, girl. Honey’s down home sayings were cheery but they didn’t pay the bills.
One day at a time. The mantra didn’t cheer her. The day in front of her was impossible. Her roof was collapsing and the chemistry final exam was tomorrow. Studying was the last thing she wanted to do. What was the point anyway there was no likelihood now she’d ever be able to afford another class?
Life is messy. It’s how you handle it that counts.
Her mother’s words didn't help either. Of course, life was messy. She’d learned this well enough.
She recalled a middle-aged woman who’d worked at the Wild West Motel, one of the many such places she’d lived in as a child. The woman, with hard shiny eyes boring into whoever walked by, had a constant bitter attitude, always negative in outlook no matter what the topic.
“Good morning,” Meredith’s mother would sing out as they passed.
Not today it isn’t,” the woman would say each time, her mouth cemented into a constant scowl.
Her mother secretly nicknamed her the wicked witch of the Wild West and they laughed together over the name.
That’ll be me. Bitter and mean. The wicked witch of Hay City. She scowled into the mirror and then turned away quickly. Her impression of the woman from the motel was a little too precise.
****
Deli boy coughed delicately into his hand, then wiped it against his apron. “You’ve probably noticed I’ve been gone awhile.”
“No.” Meredith skipped the deli counter on most of her shopping trips now. Cutting her weekly half pound of deli turkey and ham not only saved her the aggravation of seeing the offensive kid, but also cut her grocery bill. A pound of hamburger, at half the cost of deli meats, could be stretched into a meatloaf dinner, spaghetti sauce and several days of meatloaf sandwiches. Jamie complained and clamored for her favorite turkey, but Meredith remained firm. They would have deli turkey for sandwiches once a month, as a treat.
Probably unhappy at not being missed, deli boy’s tone turned indignant. “I’ve been really sick.”
He waited. She paused and then obliged him with the smallest amount of sympathy she could muster. “Too bad.”
“I could’ve died.” He raised his eyebrows at her, indicating he expected alarm. “But I didn’t.”
“So I see.”
He glared at her and her lack of dismay. She marveled at his belief she would care, after all they’d been through together, all his barbs and nastiness. Deli boy was a blight upon Hay City, corrosive and evil, in her opinion.
“It wasn’t my fault, picking a destroying angel,” he continued, determined to tell his death-defying story. “They look a lot like button mushrooms. Tricky buggers.”
Despite herself, Meredith was drawn in by the unusual name. “Destroying angel?”
Deli boy straightened up, happy to have finally piqued her curiosity and having the opportunity to exhibit authority on the subject. “They’re just like those mushrooms in your cart there; hard to tell the difference unless you’re really paying attention. I was focusing on the chanterelles, the money mushrooms, but picked a few buttons along the way. Darned if I didn’t slip in a destroying angel. Could’ve been lights out for me, forever.”
He thumped his skinny chest. “Good thing I’m tough. Barfed them up right away. Got most of the poison out of my system quick. Still, I’d have to say it was touch and go there for a while.”
She frowned, glancing down at the mushrooms in her cart. There was a very good reason she’d avoided mushrooms all her life; slimy, disgusting, and poisonous as well. This was the first time she ever decided to buy some, thinking she could chop them fine and add them to meals to add a bit of meaty texture and extra nutrients, as Honey suggested.
A strange idea occurred to her. As much as she disdained talking to the noxious teen, she had to ask. “These poisonous mushrooms…you just found them out in a field somewhere?”
He gave her a withering glance. “Forested area. That’s all I’ll tell you. I don’t give away my hunting grounds for chanterelles. I make some good money picking them every year.”
“The destroying angels. Do they make you throw up?”
“Like the dickens.” He opened his mouth and mimicked throwing up on the deli case.
“Poison,” she whispered.
He nodded. “Killers.”
Meredith remembered Jacob saying something about Brooke going for long walks. Would she have picked destroying angels along the way? It would have been easy enough to slip a few poisonous mushrooms into a meal. Poor unsuspecting Jacob and Father Karl. They would have eaten the mushrooms, thinking they were the ordinary everyday button kind, the type you see in grocery stores everywhere. She needed to tell Curtis. She didn’t know why Brooke killed her husband and the priest, but now she knew how.
“Hey, you getting your turkey and ham? Half pound of each, right?”
She stared down at the mushrooms in her cart and swallowed. The fact deli-boy finally remembered her order, the same order every time since they’d moved to Hay City, didn’t give her a sense of victory. There were more important things to think about.
“Just the turkey, quarter-pound only today.” She turned to Jamie. “Hey kiddo. Stay here a moment and get the turkey, okay?”
Jamie appeared pleased with the responsibility. “I’m in charge of Atticus, too?”
She nodded, grabbed the bag of disgusting fungi out of the cart and strode off to the produce department. She had a return to make.
****
She was breathless as she told Curtis about deli-boy’s close call. She blurted out the story as soon as she entered his office.
He raised his eyebrows in question. “Jeffrey Cole? Mushrooms?”
“He called them destroying angels, but I’m sure there are lots of poisonous mushrooms out there,” Meredith rushed on. “Listen, Jeffrey was out picking mushrooms right about the time Jacob died. There must have been these mushrooms everywhere.”
Curtis rose from his desk and approached the counter where Meredith stood. He rubbed his neck in thought. “A storm’s coming in. The equipment for Jacob’s exhumation won’t go up until the weather passes. Until we can get a full autopsy done, we won’t know if he died from anything other than a heart attack. In the meantime, I’m waiting on a detailed report on Father Karl’s death. I’ll give them a call about possible mushroom poisoning though.”
She huffed in exasperation. “Why does this take so long?” The concern lurking under the surface boiled over. “Brooke will go back to work soon. To Jamie’s school. You need to do something.”
His expression hardened somewhat at her suggestion he wasn’t fulfilling his duties. “There’s been no proof of murder. No witnesses to anything suspicious.”
“Jacob told me…” she broke in, then bit her lip. They’d been through all this before.
“Meredith.” He squeezed her hand. “Do you understand what I’m telling you? It doesn’t matter what I believe; my job is to collect solid evidence. If there’s no evidence, or no confession, no prosecutor will touch the case. In Twin Lakes, there’s no proof of murder.”
“Yet.”
He nodded in acknowledgment. “I’m frustrated, too, by this waiting. I need to know exactly what we’re dealing with.” His voice softened, a gentling. “Have a little more faith in people.”
She withdrew her hand; she wasn’t in a mood to be comforted. She needed to know Jamie was safe and no more people would die. She wanted Curtis to be as mistrustful as her. “You’re too nice to be a sheriff. Too worried about doing the right thing.”
What was meant to be a criticism
emerged as a compliment. She struggled to find something more pointed to say. Adjectives flowed through her mind, but they all came back to Curtis’s gentle nature, his continuing belief in the goodness of the people around him. Sheriffs weren’t supposed to be so good-looking, so generous, so kind, offering to build houses for people they met less than a year ago. They were supposed to be embittered by life, quick to recognize the wicked impulses of those around them.
Making an exasperated sound, Meredith turned and stomped out. He would be shocked when Brooke was finally hauled to justice. He would become bitter and mean soon enough. Like me. Consoled by the thought, she headed to Honey’s house for another lesson in marksmanship.
****
She lay in bed the next morning debating whether to drive to Twin Lakes and take her final exam. The roads would be slick and unpredictable, but she was proud of how well she could drive in the icy weather after such a short time. Just a few simple rules and it was easy: Drive slower, turn the wheel in the direction of a slide, and don’t panic. Why didn’t they post these rules on roads in snow country?
There was no point in taking the final test if she wasn’t going to keep taking classes. She couldn’t take classes if she didn’t have money to pay for them. And she didn’t have the money if her house was falling down. Why did it always come back to money? Would she be as obsessed with it as Brian and Gemma?
I’m going to move forward in my life and not let anything stop me.
She wavered for a moment. Words were easy to say; doing was another thing. It didn’t hurt that she wanted a chance to see Brooke again. If Curtis wouldn’t talk to Jacob’s wife about the mushrooms, then she would just have to take charge. He would thank her after Brooke confessed.
Meredith tugged the covers up to her chin, the morning chill more insistent than usual and making her reluctant to budge out of bed. She knew Honey would be willing to watch her kids while she drove to Twin Lakes. Even if the woman was a bit devilish, Honey was accommodating and helpful when one was in a pinch. She was learning it took a healthy amount of forgiveness to get along with people in Hay City.