That Old Flame of Mine

by J. J. Cook

  “His diamond high school ring was gone.” Eric finished before Walt could. Their words came almost at the same time. “I remember now!”

  “Adam loved that ring,” Walt said. “He never took it off. We couldn’t prove it since there wasn’t enough skin left on his finger to see if there was a white band where it should’ve been. The coroner actually argued that the ring had melted. No one ever found the ring—or the metal either.”

  “People take things that matter to them out of their houses before they set them on fire for the insurance money,” Eric said.

  “I know,” she answered him. She looked at Walt. “Eric reminded me about people not wanting to lose their important things when they torch their houses.”

  “Exactly,” Walt shouted. “You’ve still got it going on, buddy.”

  It was funny watching Walt dance around the living room, pumping his fists into the air and staring at the ceiling.

  “Tory noticed too, but the old man told the DA it wasn’t enough to investigate, and the DA agreed.” Eric sounded like he was right beside her. Stella jumped, and he laughed at her. Too much caffeine.

  “Was he telling you that everything else was perfect?” Walt stopped his victory dance. “There was only that flaw and some testimony from Tory and her friends that Adam had stopped smoking months before.”

  “Tory also said that it was the wrong type of cigarette,” Stella added. “It sounds like it was worth looking into with that extra evidence.”

  “You haven’t been here long enough to really cross the old man or see him in action with someone else,” Eric explained. “When he shuts something down, it stays down. Like the investigation into your grandmother’s death.”

  Stella watched Walt finish his coffee. She’d heard so much about this. “Was there something odd, beyond the tragedy, about my grandmother’s death at the estate?”

  “Not according to Ben Carson.” Walt sat down heavily on the chair. “I guess Eric told you about that, huh? I wish I could hear him too. I wonder why you can.”

  “I don’t know,” Stella said. “What about Abigail Carson?”

  “Another case of no proof. Some of the people who worked at the estate said Ben and Abigail were arguing right before she fell down the stairs.”

  “Including my mother.” Stella wondered if anyone knew the truth. “She told me she found out later that Ben had left and was working at the pepper plant when it happened.”

  Walt shrugged. “If he was, nobody saw him there but the old manager, Shu Carriker. He swore up and down that the old man was at the plant taking apart a broken machine.”

  Stella took a deep breath. Jack’s father. The one John said had once been Ben’s go-to man. “He counts, right?”

  “He did,” Eric agreed. “Before he took off for places unknown right after. No one ever saw him again, which meant no one could follow up.”

  “Not that this isn’t interesting.” Stella tried to get back on topic. “Right now, I guess we need to stick with what happened to Adam Presley and whether that had any impact on Tory’s death.”

  “I think it’s obvious,” Walt said. “The man killed in the fire on Second Street wasn’t Adam Presley. I believe now that Adam set that fire up to cover him getting away from Tory. He probably left town. He had to get away from the butt-kicking he knew her father would give him for making her look bad, even if she was unfaithful.”

  “I thought this afternoon that either Tagger or Greg Lambert might have killed Adam. It had taken Tory all these years to gather enough evidence to make her dangerous. What if Adam is back?” Stella asked. “What if he didn’t like Tory continuing to try and prove it wasn’t him that died in that fire? He went to a lot of trouble to disappear.”

  “I suppose that’s possible,” Eric said. “Although it seems like folks would know him right away. He grew up here.”

  “If he’s back, no one might recognize him after all these years.” Walt grinned and looked at the ceiling. “I bet I look a lot different now than I did when you passed.”

  “He looks the same to me,” Eric said. “Older, yes. I would’ve still known him.”

  “What does Eric look like now?” Walt wondered.

  Stella admitted that she hadn’t actually seen him. “I think it may be more difficult to see a ghost than to hear one. Adam could also have had plastic surgery. Don’t forget, he had to be looking over his shoulder for the last forty years. He probably doesn’t look like he did at all.”

  “Well, that scares the bejesus out of me,” Walt said. “If this is true, it could explain the fire at my place. Heck, maybe it even explains who ran you off the road, Stella. Tory left you to walk around asking questions about Adam’s death all over town. Maybe that got him riled up.”

  “He could be right,” Eric said. “Not sure how we could prove any of this.”

  “Eric isn’t sure how we can prove it.” Stella got to her feet and walked to the big windows that overlooked the deck.

  “I don’t know if we should try,” Walt said. “I’m retired and homeless. Eric is dead. It could be bad for you, Stella. Are you sure you want to press your luck with this?”

  “Maybe there’s a way to trap him into giving himself away,” Stella continued, caught up in the idea. “I’d like to leave Sweet Pepper knowing this was resolved.”

  Walt seemed to weigh his involvement in the project. “I was too scared of my position when Adam died. I thought about it last night. I don’t have much to lose now. What the heck?”

  Stella outlined her plan to flush Adam Presley out into the open. Adam’s father was still alive. She thought they might be able to use him to help locate Adam. It was a long shot, but Walt agreed that it could work.

  * * *

  Together, she and Walt got everything together that they’d need over the next few days. Technically, Stella would have been required to have Don Rogers’s approval to approach Adam Presley’s father about exhuming his son’s body. She was banking on the fact that Adam’s father wouldn’t know that.

  If he did, and spoke to Chief Rogers, the worst that could happen would be that the police chief would be angry when he found out. Since he was angry all the time anyway, she decided to go ahead with her plan without consulting him.

  When everything was in place, Stella and Walt knocked on Joe Presley’s front door. It was the day before the festival. The little white house he lived in seemed barely big enough for a person. It was more like a child’s playhouse.

  Joe came to the door, leaning heavily on his walker. He looked every year of his ninety-two birthdays. He’d once been a warehouse manager at the pepper plant and had taken care of his wife and son on that salary for many years.

  “Yes?”

  “Joe? It’s Walt Fenway. Remember me?”

  Lucky for them, Joe not only remembered Walt, he also thought he was still the police chief.

  “We need to exhume your son’s body,” Stella explained after telling him who she was.

  Joe looked confused. “Where’s that other fella who took care of the fires?”

  “Eric Gamlyn? He retired,” Walt said. “Chief Griffin is taking his place.”

  “What is it you want Adam for?” Joe asked.

  “We need to talk to you about him,” Walt said.

  Had Joe forgotten that Adam was dead? Stella wondered.

  “Oh. Well, I haven’t heard from him for a few years, not since his mama died in 1992.” Joe scratched his head, still not understanding.

  Stella and Walt exchanged hopeful looks. That’s a surprise. Maybe they were on the right trail.

  “Has Adam sent you anything lately? Checks? Letters?” Walt asked him.

  Joe shook his head. “Not in years, sir. He tries to do what’s right. He sent his mama a postcard right before she died. It’s from California. Imagine going all that way. No one else in our family has ever gone that far from Sweet Pepper.”

  They went back inside with Joe, who sat down in a ragged chair near the TV.r />
  Stella hadn’t been expecting this. She thought they’d have the old man sign the fake document and that would be it. They could take it to the newspaper and pretend they were going to exhume Adam’s body. That was supposed to bring Adam out to stop them from finding out that he wasn’t in his coffin.

  She hadn’t thought that Joe knew his son was alive. “Do you have the postcard, Mr. Presley?”

  “Sure. I’ll show you.” Joe got to his feet with great difficulty.

  Stella and Walt watched the man hobble into the next room.

  “Can we use that as proof that Adam is still alive?” Stella whispered.

  “Possibly. All depends on when it’s from and if someone believes it.”

  “You mean Chief Rogers.”

  “We’d need him to present it to the DA. And we couldn’t have worse timing. No one is gonna want to know about this during the festival. It’s like the last time.”

  Stella knew he was right. Maybe the timing was bad, but as Walt and Eric had admitted, if they’d continued pushing the last time, Tory might still be alive.

  She looked around the tiny living room, barely big enough for a TV and a chair. The kitchen area looked the same, with a miniature stove, refrigerator, and sink. That left a small bedroom where Joe had gone for the postcard, and a closet-sized bathroom.

  She thought her apartment back home was small.

  “He must not remember that Adam supposedly died in the fire all those years ago.”

  “Or Adam told his parents he was moving on and they never said anything,” Walt replied. “It happens. Nobody keeps your secrets better than family.”

  “Or turns you in faster, for your own good,” she quipped.

  “Yeah.” He smiled. “One way or the other.”

  Joe slowly returned with the postcard in his hand. “See? He was visiting the orange groves in California when his mama took sick and passed. He couldn’t come home for the funeral. His mama would’ve understood. She didn’t want him to live with that woman a minute longer than he had to. She was eating him alive.”

  Stella realized they had at least the start of an explanation as to why Adam had decided to fake his own death. There were a lot more questions—the biggest one being, where had he found a dead man to take his place for the fire?

  She and Walt looked at the faded postcard. It was dated March 1992.

  “Guess he was alive then,” Walt muttered. “Damn Ben Carson. I knew we should’ve pushed harder.”

  “Never mind.” She handed the postcard back to Joe. “You still have a chance to set it right.”

  They both thanked Joe for his help.

  “You’re entirely welcome,” he replied. “If you see my son, would you tell him I wish he’d stop in. I’m not so young anymore. I’d like to see him one more time before I join my Lula.”

  Walt put his hand on the confused old man’s shoulder. When he spoke, his voice was ragged. “If I see him, sir, I’ll be sure to tell him he should visit you. I’ll do my best to get him here.”

  They walked out of the tiny house together. Stella felt guilty getting the information from the old man who couldn’t even recall that his son was supposed to be dead.

  “That was awful.” She rested her hands on the steering wheel.

  “Never mind.” Walt slammed his door shut. “We did what we had to do and it worked—at least the part about finding out that Adam didn’t die in the fire. Now what? The plan was to go to the Gazette and scare Adam out when he saw in the paper that we were going to exhume him. Now I’d be afraid Adam might go after the Smittys if they say they have a postcard that proves he’s alive. We need to find out who he is.”

  “We stick to the plan.” Stella buckled her seat belt. “The Smittys won’t look too closely at the document. They know you and trust you. They publish the exhumation plan and we draw Adam out.”

  “Well, as long as you know what the plan is, Stella. I’m only along for backup. I wish Eric could be here too.” He glanced at her. “He’s not, is he?”

  She started the engine. “I think the only two places he can go are the cabin and the firehouse. He said he thinks it’s because he built them.”

  “I guess I better get started quick on rebuilding my old place. I want to have somewhere to haunt too. I hope some pretty woman like you moves in and wants to live with me. For a dead man, Eric has it made.”

  Stella wasn’t so sure about that. What was going to happen to Eric when she left? She’d promised herself she wouldn’t think about it.

  The plan included going to the Sweet Pepper Gazette with intent faces to tell the Smittys that Stella had plans to exhume Adam’s body. She and Walt had already looked up where he was buried in the Sweet Pepper Cemetery so they could make it more convincing.

  It was a bald-faced lie. It would take a lot more than a fake court order with Joe Presley’s name on it to make that happen. Walt had said it was a difficult and lengthy process that was nearly impossible to get a judge to sign off on.

  The Smittys didn’t know that. Both reporters (publishers, photographers, owners, and delivery people) sat with rapt expressions on their faces, almost unable to write, so amazed that this could happen.

  “You realize that this is the day before the festival starts, right?” Pat asked in shocked disbelief.

  “That’s right,” Walt said, still raw on the subject. “Maybe we’ll parade what’s left of him down Main Street for everyone to see.”

  Stella cleared her throat, and Walt sat back, frowning. She gave the Smittys enough information to whet their curiosity. She explained how Tory had believed her first husband was still alive and had passed that information along before she’d died. They didn’t ask to see the exhumation document.

  “Do you think it’s possible that Adam Presley killed Tory because of this?” Pat asked.

  “Yes, I do,” Stella confirmed. “I think he was worried about her figuring out that he’d faked his own death. I think she was getting close. We should know in a few days.”

  Of course, they wouldn’t know anything if Adam had left Sweet Pepper right after Tory’s death or if he decided not to take the bait. It was a chance they had to take.

  Walt stayed silent, letting Stella answer the barrage of questions the Smittys put to her. After it was over, they walked out into the sunshine together. The sounds of hammering, sawing, and microphone checks from the festival setup filled the air.

  “Well, that’s that,” Walt concluded. “The fat is really in the fire now.”

  Chapter 33

  Friday was the opening morning of the Sweet Pepper Festival. The weather was perfect. The booths and tents were all up, hues of red, blue, orange, and green dotting Main Street. The roads through town were already blocked off by police barricades, and the smell of cooking food wafted up from the town toward the mountains.

  The only problem beneath the cloudless blue sky was the front page article in the Sweet Pepper Gazette. Residents who had seen it, especially those who had anything to do with the festival, had already lodged complaints with Police Chief Don Rogers.

  Stella was up early too, not because of the article in the Gazette. She was in the kitchen with Eric, who was coaching her on how to make candied peppers. Following his instructions, she cut the peppers into small slices while he made his secret candy syrup of sugar, water, and cardamom. When the syrup was ready, she would dunk the peppers into it, then place them on a baking sheet and cook them on a low temperature until they were crispy.

  Stella smiled as pots, ingredients, and spoons whizzed around the kitchen. Hero whined as he watched it happen. When the peppers were finally in the oven, Eric took Hero outside, staying within his fifty-foot perimeter.

  He was calling the puppy up to the cabin. Eric had admitted as much. He enjoyed seeing Hero, and the puppy seemed to like him. Stella didn’t say anything about it.

  She tasted the bright red peppers when they were done. They were sweet at first, then hot on her tongue. “These are good.�
� She was as surprised as she sounded. She hadn’t baked anything since she and her mother made box pizzas when she was a kid.

  “What did you expect?” Eric asked. “We might win the contest.”

  Stella went through her contestants and their recipes from the email sent out to all the judges. She wouldn’t actually taste the food until later that day. The ribbons would be given out on the last day of the event.

  “This is too dangerous,” Eric repeated again. He’d been saying it since she’d arrived at the cabin the night before after a long practice with the volunteers at the firehouse. “You’re setting yourself up to be the target of a desperate man.”

  “It’s the only way to catch him.” She didn’t disagree that there might be some risk to the plan. “I’ll be careful.”

  “I don’t think you’re listening. Or you don’t realize how bad this could be,” he continued. “You aren’t a police officer, Stella. You’re brave, but you’re foolhardy.” He paused in his rant and listened. “And here’s Officer Trump to tell you the same thing. Should I make a large pot of coffee for all the visitors you’re about to have?”

  She took a deep breath. It wasn’t like she hadn’t expected it. She had so much to do before the festival started at nine a.m. “If you could be quiet for a while, I could get done with this fairly quickly. Is that too much to ask?”

  “Let me help.”

  Stella knew he was close but didn’t know how close until her laptop screen filled with static and the whole thing went down. “Eric! It’s not cheap getting this fixed when you do that. I needed that information.”

  “I thought that way the computer could shut up instead of me. You’ve already looked at the information dozens of times. It hasn’t changed.”

  “I didn’t tell you to shut up,” she said as John knocked on the door. “You’re too sensitive. I have a lot on my plate right now.”

  “Everything, except common sense.”

  Stella put on a smile, despite her annoyance, as she opened the door for John. “Good morning. What brings you out this early?” As if I don’t know.

  He didn’t wait to be invited in—a fact that drew some criticism from Eric despite the fact that he knew John would champion his cause once he’d heard Stella’s plan.