“Belvia Brakeman didn’t have friends. Who are you working for?” He paced forward. “Coralee? A competitor? Or someone else?”
“I can’t be concerned out of kindness for Belvia?”
Ron stepped closer and grabbed the door, hovering over me. His eyes glittered. “No, kindness has nothing to do with it. I suggest you keep your curiosity to yourself. You know what they say about curiosity.”
“You mean about the cat?” I found myself on the porch.
“Exactly.” The door banged shut.
I still had two casseroles. I followed the path to the matching house. This time, I marched up the steps with less swagger, rattled by my confrontation with Ron Newson. Originally, I’d hoped to get an unprepared answer about his rifling through the medicine cabinet. In his police testimony, he’d give Luke a more thoughtful answer. One created by an attorney. But finding Parker as Hazel’s hassler had discombobulated me.
Young Parker wasn’t to be trusted. Now I knew why he hadn’t understood my casserole. His father must have been raised in some sad place where neighbors didn’t share food. And his mother must have been too busy with the sweet tea dynasty to teach Parker proper etiquette. Or to not shake down seniors.
If only the public knew the traditional tea they were drinking came from a family of no tradition.
I used my elbow to ring the bell at Belvia’s house and noticed the one major difference between the two homes. A wheelchair ramp had been built on one end of Belvia’s porch. It made my heart knot for Belvia, even with the irritation I felt due to the mess she’d made of her family.
Coralee answered the door. She all but threw her hands in the air at my appearance.
I’d made an impression.
“You again?” she said.
I shoved a casserole toward her. “Hey, Coralee, this is for your family. To eat. It’s to show my sympathy over the death of your mother and sister. And I don’t need a receipt.”
“I know what a casserole’s for. Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“No, ma’am. It’s just that...never mind. Anyway, I’m also here to offer you help. I know you asked Molly to lend a hand, but she’s retired and elderly, so why not take me on? Since I’m not retired and young?”
She pushed away the pan and grabbed the door. “No way. I don’t want your help or your casserole.”
Again, I resorted to shoving a boot into the jamb and letting the door slam into my foot. Looked like a stop for ice at the SipNZip would be next on my itinerary.
“I sincerely want to help you. Miss Molly’s not up to the task.”
She gave a snort insinuating Molly’s slacker mentality.
“Coralee, the woman is eighty-two.”
“You’re trying to nose into my mother’s affairs. What are you looking for? I’m not paying you and I’m not giving you a job at the company.”
“I don’t want to work for Meemaw’s Tea. Your momma asked me to look out for Molly. Whatever you need, consider me instead. Miss Belvia thought me reliable.”
“Why would my mother—a corporate executive—ask you—a hick artist—for help?”
I squished my lips to the side, debating a qualified answer that didn’t include sass-back to the bereaved. “I’m friendly?”
Coralee rested her hands on her hips. “My mother never once cared about anyone being friendly.”
“You got me there.” I shuffled the heavy casseroles. Kindness also hadn’t worked with Ron. Brakeman family values didn’t cover many virtues. “In all honesty, Miss Belvia liked the way I suspected you of messing with her will. Kind of crazy to trust someone who’s suspicious, but that’s the way it was.”
Coralee opened her mouth, then closed it.
I waited for her scathing retort but it never came.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning. Eight o’clock sharp in Mother’s office.”
The door slammed. I still held two casseroles, feeling like a Girl Scout who couldn’t give away her cookies.
Looked like I had another job that had nothing to do with art and everything to do with getting myself into the Brakemans’ business. Uncle Will was going to kill me.
I trudged toward the split where the Datsun waited, dripping oil and rust on their perfect drive. Winter dusk had turned to full darkness, shrouding the surrounding landscape. Decorative spotlights lit the houses, but on the drive I could barely see my truck, let alone my own feet. Laden with congealing concrete-like casseroles, there was no rooting through my bag for a phone or tiny flashlight to light my path.
My boots clopped along the blacktop and the faint scent of chili and corn wafted from the heavy casseroles. My stomach rumbled its displeasure. Luckily, no one was around to hear what sounded like a bowling alley on tournament day.
After the day I had, cornbread casserole sounded pretty damn good.
“I guess I’m free to partake of these, since nobody wanted them,” I said to my stomach, then immediately felt guilty. Should I be eating rejected funeral casseroles? What would Grandma Jo think? “I should bring one to Molly. But the second is fair game.”
My stomach gave its assent.
Footsteps broke the interlude of my gut chat. Hurried patter unlike the clunking I was making. I stopped to glance behind me. In the foreground of the lit houses, a figure darted across the drive into a stand of trees. The hunched shape flitted in a jagged pattern, making it impossible to tell from which house they had come. Or if they had come from a house at all.
Goosebumps flushed my already chilled skin. “Hey,” I called, then clamped my lips shut. The stalker could be a Brakeman or an interloper sneaking around the Tea Grove.
And in either case, wouldn’t Belvia have wanted to know who prowled her property?
Because I sure as hell did.
I tightened my grip on the pans, scooted off the drive toward the tiptoer, and ran into a hedge of waist-high azaleas. Raising the pans to my shoulders, I tried to step over the azalea. One boot crashed through the hip-high shrub. My left leg stuck mid-swing, sprawled over the bush. I jerked my right foot and felt the thicket of branches catching my boot. I wiggled my hips, trying to get the left leg over, but the azalea spread deeper than I realized.
“Dammit.”
A rustling sounded in the grove. Furtive rustling as opposed to small critter rustling.
Quieting my squirm, I lowered the pans to rest near my outstretched leg. I leaned forward and squinted at the grove. Past the azaleas, taller bushes made a ring around a grouping of trees. By their spreading branches, I judged the trees as those ornamental cherries that looked pretty in the spring, although that was neither here nor there. It wasn’t spring and I couldn’t see worth a dang. However, someone skulked around the plantings. The crunch of dry leaves and shuffling of pine straw told me the skulker moved lightly and slowly.
I squinted at the shadowy tree forms. Spotted movement behind a trunk. The skulker wore dark colors and had something pulled over their head, likely a hood. I felt exposed, straddling a bush with nothing to cover my blondeness or winter paleness in my apple-green fleece coat with the hand-stitched poppies.
Why had I chosen metallic thread for the poppies? Why hadn’t I tanned at the Get A Glo this winter?
Because I hadn’t known I’d be stuck in a bush holding cornbread casserole while hiding from a tree stalker.
Like a worm on a hook, I floundered over the azalea. The interlocking branches held my boot. My other leg still hung over the bush, unable to give me leverage. With aching hands, I gripped the pans and rocked. Which did nothing except scrape the insides of my thighs with azalea branches.
Those marks would take some explaining.
Giving up, I called out to the tree stalker. “Hey there. I’m kind of stuck. Can you give a hand?”
The
quiet gave way to more rustling.
“I know you’re in there.”
The rustling died. The stalker had disappeared. But footsteps pattered on blacktop. They had snuck from the trees to the driveway.
I twisted to see behind me and a flashlight blinded me. Squinting, I teetered on one leg. “Hello?”
The flashlight beamed on my face.
“What are you doing?”
The footsteps changed from patter to hammer and the flashlight beam widened.
I twisted forward, pulled at my boot, then looked over my shoulder. I still couldn’t see, but could tell the Tree Stalker ran toward me.
“Stop,” I yelled. Gripping a casserole, I heaved it around my body. The aluminum brick slammed into the drive and splattered with a similar thud and splat of an airborne pumpkin.
The flashlight’s beam swerved to follow the pan’s arc, then hit my eyes again.
I grabbed the other pan and held it before my face, blocking the light. The awkward twist of my waist put a kink in my lower back. My arms shook with tension.
Why didn’t they say anything? That spooked me more than the skittering about.
A hand shot out beneath the flashlight beam.
I threw the pan at the stalker.
They swept away the casserole. Cornbread flew into the azaleas.
My body pivoted. The hand slammed into my back and thrust me forward. I nosedived over the bush, but my boot didn’t give way. I hung upside down, one leg still stuck in the bush. My body crushed the dangling free leg. My bag flipped over my back and thunked me in the head.
My attacker ran from the scene. A few minutes later, an engine sputtered.
“Wait,” I screamed. “That’s my truck.”
The Datsun peeled out of the Brakeman drive. As best it could. The Datsun hadn’t burned rubber since 1989. Still, my little yellow truck was gone.
The Tree Stalker had stolen my truck. And I now hung upside down over an azalea. The smell of cornbread casserole permeated the air. Not caring I’d nosedived and caught on a bush, my stomach howled. I yanked on the messenger bag tangled around my shoulders, spilling the contents. Feeling around the ground, I found my phone, flipped it open, and pushed a number.
“I need to report a robbery.”
“Cherry?” Luke’s voice sharpened. “Where are you? At home? Did someone break in?”
“No, my truck was stolen.”
“Are you sure? Why would anyone steal that truck?”
“Good question. But I need you to hurry. I’m getting light-headed from hanging upside down. With that and all the casserole everywhere, I might be sick.”
“Come again? Where are you?”
I sighed. “The Tea Grove. The Brakeman estate. I know what you’re going to say and I don’t want to hear it right now. Just please come get me before one of the Brakemans finds me upside down in their bushes. It won’t be pretty.”
Nineteen
Luke found me digging for the boot I had lost wriggling from the bush. With his Maglite, he helped me retrieve the boot and the contents from my dumped bag. The casseroles I left for raccoon or coyote but swore Luke to secrecy about their demise.
If Pearl ever found out I’d fought off an attack with her casseroles, I’d never be fed again.
After a round of “what happened” and “you did what” and “what in the hell were you thinking,” Luke gripped my shoulders and gave me his stern cop face. “Don’t think for one minute I believe you were just bringing sympathy casseroles to the Brakemans. Why were you really here? What’s going on?”
“It’s a two-parter. First, I don’t want Coralee bugging Molly. I came to offer her my services instead.”
“Uh-huh.” He conveyed a lot of doubt with his agreement.
“Second, after seeing him with Donna Sharp, I wanted to know why Ron Brakeman-Newson was holding that medicine bottle. Donna was on Belvia’s inquiry list, you see, and by association, I’m following up with Ron. I thought I might catch him unaware.”
“You want to run that by me again? What does Ron Brakeman-Newson’s possible evidence tampering have to do with his side-of-fries job performance? If you really are vetting Mrs. Brakeman’s senior management team, which is as unlikely as bringing sympathy casseroles out of sympathy.”
“Don’t get caught up in the details.” I fluttered my lashes, which he ignored. “Back to Ron. He probably had answers prepared when you questioned him, right?”
“Who I question in an active investigation is not your concern. Do I need to tattoo that on your forehead in order to get it planted in your brain?”
“I don’t think tattoos work by osmosis.” I gave him my customer service smile. Likely a wasted effort. “Ron didn’t give me a clear answer about the medicine. Once he realized what I was doing, he got huffy with me. Almost threateningly huffy.”
“Threateningly huffy?”
“In a vague sort of way. Parker also got huffy, but in a nervous, fearful way. Probably because I caught him stealing from Hazel.”
“What? Who?” Luke’s hands fell off my shoulders to grip his belt. “The Hazel from Halo House you mentioned earlier? Parker Brakeman is the kid who accosted a senior?”
“I wouldn’t say accosted. But it’s him all right. Speaking of tattoos, it’s a great way to identify a perp.”
Luke pivoted toward the houses. “What did he steal?”
“I have no idea. And Hazel will deny it. Won’t press charges, I bet, although I don’t know why.”
Luke’s jaw tightened.
“You hate it when you can’t defend a victim, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Could we play bad cop, good cop with Parker? Just this once? Maybe he’ll break.”
He swung a smirk toward me, then pulled me in for a hug. “I wish I could, sugar.”
I relaxed against him and closed my eyes. A golden-haired baby with gray eyes and dimples materialized.
The twins had merged. Probably thanks to Pearl’s “that boy’s a Branson” rhetoric.
Dagnabbit. These imaginary babies were forcing me to look at the future. Particularly the next twenty years’ worth of holidays. Unless Luke and I moved to one of those far off countries, like Japan.
I shoved him away. “Thanks for the hug, but I don’t want to mess your uniform. It’ll be hard to explain casserole stains.”
“What gives with you? You’re blowing hot and cold worse than a window unit on the fritz.”
I faked a laugh and gave him a semi-playful shove. “Oh, stop. You know how much I love you.”
As his eyebrows arched, I fought off an external wince accompanying my internal cringe.
Of all the stupid, stupid comebacks. Here I was, kicking his imaginary babies out of my head, so why would I go there? Talk about sending mixed signals.
Lord, how embarrassing.
I spun toward his car. “Guess we should get going. Let’s file that motor vehicle theft report while the details are fresh. I knew I shouldn’t have left my keys in the truck.”
“Hang on now.” A hand landed on my shoulder.
I turned but kept my focus on his neck. I didn’t want to see any emotion—negative or positive—crossing that ruggedly handsome face. Thankfully it was dark, which would hide the crimson staining my own cheeks.
The hand slid to my upper arm and squeezed. “Cherry?”
Chewing my lip, I waited.
“You want to talk to Ron Newson again?”
My eyes rose to meet his. The dark made it hard to see, but I could feel them smiling.
A butler answered Ron Newson’s door. I guessed he was a butler because of his age and politeness and because he wasn’t a Brakeman. However, I’d never met a butler. He didn’t wear one of those tuxedo-type deals or
even a suit, but he did have a nice cardigan. I kept my mouth shut and let Luke do the talking. Luke wore his Forks County deputy uniform, which I felt trumped the cardigan.
“Mr. Newson isn’t available,” said the quasi-butler.
“There’s been a vehicle theft in his drive,” said Luke. “If Mr. Newson doesn’t speak to me now, he needs to speak at the sheriff’s office. I’ll follow him in my vehicle.”
“Mr. Newson shares a drive with Mrs. Brakeman,” said the Quasi-Butler. “Perhaps you should speak to someone in the next house. I believe Coralee Brakeman’s family is at home.”
“I’d rather talk to Mr. Newson.” Luke rocked on his heels and gave Quasi his cop smile. “As you know, Coralee’s a guest in that house.”
“I’ll take your card for Mr. Newson.” Quasi was not backing down.
“And you are?”
“I’m also a guest.” He began closing the door.
“Just a minute,” I said. “What about Parker? Ron and Parker were just here. I spoke to them myself. Unless they’re the ones who stole my truck.”
“Of course they didn’t steal your truck,” said Quasi.
“I wouldn’t dismiss a victim, sir,” said Luke. “The perp shoved her into a bush and fled with her truck. Assault and theft. Considering the timing, that would make Ron and Parker both suspects. I strongly suggest they speak to me now.”
“One moment.” The door shut, leaving us on the porch.
“Dangit. I forgot to stick my boot in the jamb,” I said. “You reckon they’re still at home?”
“Because of Belvia, they might be tired of dealing with reporters and asked someone to answer for them. Or they didn’t want to deal with any more sympathy casseroles.”
“Or they spied your blueberries flashing all over the drive and are hiding.”
“That too.”
“Or one of them pushed me into a bush and stole my truck.”
A Composition in Murder (A Cherry Tucker Mystery Book 6) Page 14