by Meera Lester
After strolling out of the ice cream parlor with a handful of napkins, Lucas Crawford smiled as he handed the napkins to Kat. Abby’s stomach tightened. Lucas—that gorgeous man of few words, with soulful eyes the color of creek water—appeared to be sharing a sweet moment with her best friend. What was up with that?
Honey-Lavender Ice Cream
Ingredients:
2 cups whole milk
cup fresh lavender leaves
2 tablespoons honey, plus 2 teaspoons
¼ cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup heavy cream
Directions:
Combine the milk, lavender, and honey in a medium saucepan and bring to a gentle boil over medium-low heat. Stir occasionally.
Remove the saucepan from the heat and let the milk mixture rest for 5 minutes. Next, strain out the lavender and return the milk mixture to the saucepan. Bring the milk mixture to a simmer over low heat and cook for 5 minutes. Stir often.
Beat the sugar and the eggs in a medium bowl with an electric mixer set to medium speed until the mixture is pale yellow, thick, and well blended, about 3 to 5 minutes.
Add half the milk mixture to the egg-sugar mixture and whisk together. Pour the egg mixture into the remaining milk mixture in the saucepan and cook over low heat until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon.
Remove the mixture from the heat. Stir in the heavy cream. Freeze the mixture in an ice cream maker, following the instructions provided by the manufacturer.
Serves 6 to 8
Chapter 8
Drink a tea of rose petals and rosemary sprigs
to heal the heart’s conflicts.
—Henny Penny Farmette Almanac
Abby eyed a tight space behind the long line of parked cars at the Richardson estate sale. “Sheesh. Looks like the whole dang town is here.”
Kat groaned. “I might have guessed. Flyers have been plastered all over downtown. We should have gotten an earlier start.”
“Well, we’re here now,” Abby said with optimism. She maneuvered the Jeep behind a sleek black Hummer with the license plate letters SVC-WHIZ. Convinced that a fling between Kat and Lucas wouldn’t last even if they did get something going, Abby entertained the hope that Kat would soon find a new Mr. Right. Maybe a nudge in that direction couldn’t hurt. She pointed to the plate and said, “Looks like he’s here!”
“Who?”
“That new boyfriend you wanted—the Silicon Valley engineer type. But finding him in the throng . . . well, that might take a little sleuthing.”
“My luck,” Kat replied, “he’ll drive a beater, his wife will be the whiz, and that Hummer will be her wheels.” She swung her long legs from the Jeep to the ground as the wind tousled her short, blond locks. She slammed the Jeep door shut and walked around to Abby’s side.
Abby suppressed her eagerness to ask Kat about Lucas and the ice cream moment and decided she’d wait for the right time. From her perspective as Lucas’s neighbor and a frequent shopper at his feed store, Abby had some insight into the man. He wasn’t the kind of guy who would jump into any relationship without giving it prudent thought. She doubted he could be hurried. Perhaps his meeting Kat had been a chance encounter. End of story. But there was no denying Kat’s dark mood today. Abby was pretty sure her friend would get her groove back during the estate sale. She just needed to find some special item at a bargain-basement price. And Abby was going to help her find it.
Clicking the Jeep’s lock button on her key and starting the short hike down the road, Abby glanced briefly past the red barn that led up to Fiona’s cottage and Doc Danbury’s house. Both the cottage and the main house had their doors closed and their blinds down. With the houses set back from the road, the residents could easily spot visitors or intruders. As she walked, Abby thought about what Kat had said on their drive up the mountain. Tom Davidson Dodge looked the most promising as a suspect, but the case was weak. The evidence was circumstantial, but he didn’t have a verifiable alibi. Cops knew the killer was the last person to have seen Fiona alive. It was Tom’s bad luck that he’d slept at his wife’s cottage the night before she was found dead.
The fog was lifting, and the birds were singing. Abby’s tummy was full of Kat’s strong coffee, herb omelets, and a miniature lemon scone with chilled crème anglaise and fresh strawberries from her farmette garden. All seemed right in Abby’s world, except for the niggling doubt that Tom Dodge is the actual killer.
As they walked, Abby’s thoughts shifted to Clay. How bold Clay had been to invite himself along on her outing with Kat after Abby had briefly mentioned it. She’d talked him out of it that morning in a phone text, placating him with a promise of a home-cooked meal . . . soon. If Clay were to move back to the farmette and continue to be generous with his money, it would take the edge off her financial situation, at least for now. Still, Abby chafed at the idea of needing Clay’s help. She wondered whether or not to broach the subject with Kat and finally decided to go for it.
“You’ll never guess who has walked back into my life . . . Clay Calhoun. Can you believe it?”
Kat turned and looked at her, wide-eyed. “Oh, no. I thought you’d never see that man again. So what’s his story?”
“Not clear.”
“Never is with him. Surely he’s told you where he’s been and what he’s been doing?”
“Nope.”
“What do you want to bet that he’s jobless now? Or he’s had a breakup with whatever new woman he found after leaving you high and dry.”
“I don’t know,” said Abby. “I’m just trying to be present with it.”
“Take my advice. Don’t let him get under your skin, girlfriend, unless you want to get hurt again.”
“Yeah, yeah . . . I’m picking up what you’re putting down, Kat.” Abby believed Kat had her best interests at heart. If she didn’t welcome Kat’s input, she should have avoided bringing up the subject of Clay in the first place. “Look,” said Abby, pointing into the yard where the estate sale was being held. “I see a gorgeous armoire.”
Vintage furniture made up the bulk of the sale. Antique armoires, carved wooden headboards and footboards, along with cabinets, a chest of drawers, two desks, and assorted chairs, stood in one area. Banker boxes of books were lined up in neat rows on a threadbare Oriental carpet—a bargain at a dollar apiece. Bakeware, pans, lids, and assorted serving pieces were scattered about on several old tables. Lamps and other household bric-a-brac covered utility tables like the one Abby carted to the farmers’ market on the first and third Saturdays during summer.
Kat made a beeline to a table that held old silver-plated serving pieces and post–World War II/midcentury curios, along with small collectibles, china, and sundry pottery pieces. Abby followed and asked the question that had been at the back of her mind on the ride up the mountain.
“You said the BOLO your peeps put out on Laurent netted him at SFO. So where was he going?” She picked up a deeply tarnished but otherwise lovely old pie server with a claw curve, decorative engraving, and a filigree handle.
“Where else? Port-au-Prince,” Kat replied with a frown as she attempted to decipher a pitcher’s pottery mark.
“Going home to Haiti. Figures.” Abby laid aside the pie server and picked up a nineteenth-century opal-glass rolling pin imprinted with a poem. “You see this?” she asked Kat, who loved all things Victorian.
“Yeah. I’ll pass. It’s an old sailor’s souvenir—a collectible for someone, but not me,” said Kat. She spied a Devon cottage creamer. “Now, this is sweet.... Johnson Brothers. You got to wonder how Zora’s mother came by it.” A beat passed. “But I’d want it only if the sugar bowl came with it, and I don’t see one.”
Abby followed her to another table and watched as Kat plucked a bone china gravy boat with an ornate floral pattern to study. “This is nice, too.” She turned the boat over in her hands. “Ha. I guessed it. Another Johnson Brothers. There is a crack in the handle and a ch
ip in one of the blue flowers,” she bemoaned, returning the item to its matching plate.
“So about Laurent . . .” Abby handed Kat a demitasse cup and saucer in the 1930s flow blue style. “Why hightail it out in such a hurry?”
Kat inverted the cup, as she had every other piece. “He said his mother had taken ill and the voodoo healing spells have not helped. But, of course, we know that he wanted to escape prosecution on a burglary charge.” Kat pointed to a hairline crack through the center bottom of the cup. She set it back on the table, apparently not deterred from searching on.
“I’m insanely curious about what you found in his briefcase,” Abby said.
Kat brushed a lock of her blond hair behind an ear and hoisted the straps of her empty cloth bag a little higher on her shoulder. “He didn’t have a briefcase.”
“But . . . ,” Abby stammered. “I saw him toss a black briefcase into a green sedan before he drove off.”
“No green sedan, either. We caught up with him. He was locking the doors of his old beater pickup and getting ready to board a bus from the long-term airport parking.”
Abby frowned, confused. “So what happened to that green sedan?”
“He told us it belongs to a mountain mechanic friend, who loans him the car whenever Laurent schedules work on his truck. Apparently, he went to Fiona’s store to retrieve his black zippered portfolio containing publicity photos of him and local bands. Thought her shop more secure than his apartment.”
“Really?” Abby sighed heavily. “I didn’t make a mistake, Kat. I know what I saw. And I think I know a briefcase from a portfolio.”
“Of course you do. But we couldn’t find the briefcase, and he’s not admitting to even owning one.”
Now thoroughly perplexed, Abby pointed to a framed tapestry. “Did you let him go?”
Kat looked over at the tapestry and made a distasteful face. “We couldn’t hold him on burglary. He had a key to Fiona’s shop and free access, he says. But he began to sweat when I asked him about his immigration status. So we’ve got him cooling his heels in a cell until ICE can interview him.” Kat reached across a table of mismatched plates to retrieve a lavender-glazed teapot with a silver lid. Beaming, she handed it to Abby. “Speak to you?” Kat asked. “Fraunfelter with an Ohio stamp on the underside.”
“It does,” replied Abby as she pulled the round ball on the silver dome and the lid lifted, revealing a chain that held a four-cup tea-leaf strainer inside. “So cute. You seldom find these with the strainer and the round rubber ball that releases steam,” observed Abby. “I’m sure it belongs to the twenties flapper era.”
“So buy it,” Kat said, apparently happy that at least one of them had found something.
“Well, I think I will . . . but it depends on the price Zora wants for it,” Abby said. “You keep looking.”
“I’ll be over there.” Kat pointed to the side of the house where stacks of framed art rested against an old wheelbarrow.
Weaving through the crowd with the teapot in her arms, Abby finally spotted Zora. The tall, thin woman in her late thirties wore gray slacks with a pale pink oxford shirt and a gray, hip-length vest. Over her outfit, she had put on a frilly strawberry-patterned apron with oversize pockets embellished with pink rickrack. She was counting out change for a woman who had just purchased a large chamber pot. Abby smiled, imagining how lovely a mass of purple petunias would look in that pot on a wide gray porch with white trim. Suddenly, a burly, balding man with a chair pushed in line in front of Abby.
Excuse you. What is it about yard sales that bring out bad manners? Rather than listen to him haggle over the price, she moseyed over to a bench that wrapped in a semicircle around the trunk of an ancient oak. Seated in the shade, she could avoid the pressing in on her by others and quietly browse the contents of a box that someone had placed on the bench. After setting the teapot down beside her, Abby picked up a book from the top of the stack in the box. She recognized it as a dust-covered volume of Culpeper’s Complete Herbal. Absorbed in thumbing through the pages, she didn’t see Jack Sullivan stroll up.
“Mackenzie, isn’t it?” His tone conveyed no hint of the causticity that had characterized their last conversation.
“It is,” Abby replied while assessing the handsome man with curly, brown hair streaked with threads of silver. She squinted up to see intense pale blue eyes gazing back at her. He wore tan cargo shorts with side pockets near the knees, a navy stretch polo, and running shoes with white ankle socks.
“Fiona’s books,” he said, looking at her intently.
“Seriously? You’re selling them?”
He nodded and pointed toward Zora. “She dropped by yesterday. Said I could bring down to the sale whatever I was clearing out of the cottage. I’m afraid it all has to go.” He paused for a beat and looked at her intently.
His warm, friendly demeanor perplexed Abby. It was certainly a different vibe from that of their last encounter.
“Listen, I know I made a mistake with you,” he said. “Any chance we could put that behind us?”
Caught off guard by his sudden admission, Abby tilted her head quizzically, as though she hadn’t heard him right.
“I’m not usually so high-handed,” Jack said. He gestured to the open space on the bench on the other side of the box. “May I?”
Abby nodded.
He sat down, chewed his lower lip, as if trying to figure out how to engage her. “My thoughts seem to be duller and more muddled than usual since I arrived in your charming hamlet,” he said, looking over at her. “I’m obsessing and not sleeping.”
“Try a spoonful of honey in chamomile tea.” Abby had hardly spoken the words before she wished she could call them back. An ethnobotanist would know the herbs that could help with sleeplessness.
He nodded. “Tried it. Under normal circumstances, it works. But nothing is normal now, is it?”
Abby shook her head. She considered whether or not to ask if he knew anyone who’d want to harm his sister as she watched Zora listening politely as the bald man argued over a fair price for the tufted armchair. Zora shrugged, and the man stomped off, leaving the chair for Zora to put back. Instead, she sat down on it. With no one else in line, Abby realized it was now her chance to ask the price of her teapot. She laid aside the book to stand. Jack spoke.
“I treated you shabbily,” he said in a voice tinged with humility.
Abby sat back down. “Oh, forget about that. Completely understandable,” said Abby, her gaze darting between him and Zora.
“Accept my apology?”
Abby managed a feeble smile and nodded.
Jack continued, “You said you were Fiona’s friend. Did you see each other a lot . . . ?” His words trailed off.
“Quite a bit. She was great fun. Always saw the bright side of things.”
“That she did. I’ll wager she set your ears afire with her stories.” He blew a breath out through pursed lips. “Got that from our mother’s brother . . . Quite the storyteller, he was.” He looked as if he was weighing what more he could say. A beat passed, and sadness took over his features.
“Give yourself time, Jack. You’ve had a shock, and grief can be crazy messy and confusing. Even when you have prepared for a passing, it still leaves a hole in your heart.”
His light eyes locked onto Abby’s. He looked away toward the line of trees and wire fencing that hemmed the property. “You know what’s bloody awful?”
Abby shook her head.
“I can’t get a straight answer about how she died. They’re saying maybe poison.” His jaw tensed.
Abby spoke softly. “It takes some time to process the pain. Grief is like that. It’s a sneaker wave that creeps in to wash over you. It takes you under. Then it brings you up again to an unknown place. All the while, you’re gasping in despair.” Abby swallowed. “But with time, the pain lessens, and your heart heals.”
His eyes blinked as he stared at the ground. Finally, he looked at her with curious, que
stioning eyes. “You lost someone, too, didn’t you? Whom did you lose, Abigail Mackenzie?”
She tensed. His question had triggered the old, familiar ache. Hoping to reclaim her equilibrium, she searched for light amid the negative spaces in the leafy oak canopy. The conversation was one she didn’t want to have.
“Family member? Lover?” He continued to probe.
Abby’s fingers tensed around the edge of the bench. She wasn’t about to confess to a total stranger that the reason she’d entered law enforcement could be traced back to the death of her younger brother during her first year in junior college. He had been visiting her over the Christmas holiday and had asked her to run errands with him, including a trip to the bank. It had been a blustery, rainy day, and she’d been baking cookies and watching Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice on cable. She couldn’t miss the ending of her favorite movie, so she’d declined his offer. There had been a robbery at the bank just before closing. Her baby brother had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Becoming a cop had been a way for Abby to deal with her anger.
She shrugged off Jack’s question. “Cops see a lot of grief.”
Jack’s gaze seemed piercing now. “Fecking senseless loss. How do you come to terms with it?” His voice cracked.
“Counseling,” said Abby. “It’s a process. Acceptance is the last stage.”
As the ensuing silence engulfed them, Abby pushed down her sadness. She felt terrible for him and for herself and for everyone who’d cared about Fiona. Her hands sought something to do, and she reached for the book again. She stared at its cover while spurning the tears stinging at the back of her eyes.
Jack sniffed. He reached over and pinched the book’s cover between his forefinger and thumb and opened to the frontispiece. “Fiona was so excited when she found this at a yard sale back in Holyoke. Mid-teens, junior year in high school, I think, and before the auto crash that turned our lives upside down. With our folks gone, we had to finish our growing up in the care of relatives in Boston.” He turned the page. “She pinched the corners, wrote in the margins. If the book weren’t in such terrible condition, it might be worth something. It’s a first edition, nineteen forty-seven.”