by Annie Irvin
Final Sale
(A Bittersweet Hollow Mystery)
Annie Irvin & Rae Sanders
To the dreamers who said we should.
To the believers who said we could.
Chapter One
Harper Reed stood on the front porch of the Bittersweet Inn and sipped apple cider from a Styrofoam cup. The crisp October air made for perfect sweater weather and on this particular Sunday evening the full harvest moon hung just below the horizon. The first stars of the night twinkled in the cloudless Iowa sky while the deepening twilight cast shadows across the face of the rounded turret and gingerbread trim on the graceful Queen Anne house. Harper sipped her cider and silently thanked Mother Nature for providing such spectacular weather for the Pumpkin Patch Festival.
Mixed emotions tugged at her while she surveyed the crowd milling around the grounds. For the past twenty years, Harper, her sister, Lonnie Carmichael, and their mother, Olivia Waterford, had hosted this annual autumn event to showcase the stately Victorian bed and breakfast the family had owned for five generations. What had started as a small gathering of locals making the short two mile outing from Bittersweet Hollow to the field behind Olivia’s house to pick bright orange pumpkins, had turned into an impressively-sized crowd of town folks and out-of-towners celebrating the pumpkin harvest. Food stand vendors pitched hot dogs, salt-water taffy, and kettle corn while a few booths offered handcrafted items for sale. Warm apple cider was gratis, something to enjoy while soaking up the atmosphere of the grand old house and well-groomed flower beds. There were hayrides all day, the hay wagon bumping along a well-worn path between the Inn and the shoreline of the Big Bittersweet River where it churned its way along the back acres of the property. And always after darkness had settled firmly over the grounds, the Pumpkin Patch Festival ended with a colossal bonfire.
The preparations for the day involved planning and hard work but Harper, Lonnie and Olivia truly considered it a labor of love. All good things must come to an end, however, and this year would see the end of not only the festival but also the end of the family’s claim to the house where Harper and Lonnie had grown up in a cozy suite of rooms on the Inn’s first floor. Harper sighed. Nobody in this family is getting any younger, she thought. Her mother would soon turn eighty, and at fifty-one, Lonnie was only two years younger than Harper. Lonnie’s daughter, Claire, was off to college and had informed the family she had no interest in taking over the Inn, and Harper knew her own son, Lincoln, was perfectly content in his first year teaching out in Seattle with no desire to move back to the Midwest, let alone a town the size of Bittersweet Hollow.
“Well, how you gonna keep ‘em down at the Inn after they’ve seen Paree?” Harper spoke out loud to no one in particular.
“Jazzin’ around and painting the town,” Lonnie chimed in with a chuckle, joining Harper on the porch. “You’re talking about our kids, right?”
“Yep. So we say goodbye to the Inn as soon as Mom signs on the dotted line with Mead and Alice Hoover. I don’t know whether to thank Grace Potter for being such a good real estate agent and getting the place sold, or give her what for because it won’t seem the same without the old home place.”
Lonnie put an arm around Harper’s shoulders. “I know how you feel, but we need to be thankful Mom has agreed to sell. After she slipped on the stairs and broke her wrist last year, she finally realized it’s for her own good to move into the townhouse a few blocks from you. So we should thank Grace that even during a huge housing slump she finally found a buyer. And speaking of Grace, she just blew past me a little while ago like she was on a mission. Didn’t even acknowledge me although she almost plowed me over.”
“Were Mead and Alice with her?”
“Nope. I saw them earlier by the hay wagon picking out some pumpkins. They told me they were glad they could observe the festival first hand. They’d like to keep up the tradition after they buy the Inn.”
“It’s getting dark,” Harper said. “Ezra will light the bonfire in a few minutes. Everyone is already over there. We should head that way.”
The sisters descended the porch steps and strolled across the spacious lawn toward the edge of the pumpkin patch where Ezra Sanders, Olivia’s longtime employee who, along with his wife, Violet, kept the Inn up-to-snuff, readied a box of matches and prepared to set fire to a gigantic pile of timber, scrap lumber, and brush.
Earlier in the week, Harper and Lonnie had helped Ezra string what seemed like miles of paper lanterns throughout the property and now as evening slipped into night, the yellow and orange globes cast soft illumination onto the hay bales and corn shock bundles decorating the lawn.
Leaves crunched under Harper’s shoes, releasing their dry earthen scent. The hint of a breeze stirred the air and rustled the tree branches. A throng of children waited excitedly where the lawn met the pumpkin field and Ezra’s rising tower of timber stood ready. He’d promised Harper this bonfire would be the most spectacular one ever, since it was slated to be the last he would have a hand in building.
“It’ll be a humdinger for sure,” he’d said proudly.
And a humdinger it turned out to be. After Ezra set a match to the timbers, the blaze roared toward the heavens, dimming the light of the harvest moon now halfway above the tips of the treetops. The crowd of young, old and in-between clapped and cheered the crackling, snapping inferno as the dancing flames turned Ezra’s masterpiece into a blazing torch and the amber sparks floated upward to join the stars in the dark sky.
The wood smoke drifted toward Harper’s nose and she sniffed the sharp smell appreciatively. The flames cavorted erratically, and Harper found she couldn’t look away from the bonfire. It held her as spellbound as a mouse caught in the deadly gaze of a snake. Eventually the fire began to shrink, loosening its hypnotic grip on Harper’s senses. Turning toward Lonnie, she asked, “By the way, where’s your hubby?”
“He’s probably on his way to the garden shed to get a couple of rakes. He told Ezra he’d help sweep up the embers after the fire dies down.”
The sisters focused their gaze toward the back of Olivia’s property where a hundred yards away an old wooden garden shed sat forlornly beside a dense clump of maple and hackberry trees. Although the light from Ezra’s bonfire reached the shed, it did so indifferently, doing little from such a distance to illuminate the tall male figure engaged in what Harper could only describe as power walking toward the Inn.
“That’s definitely Paul,” Lonnie said, squinting to watch her husband’s long stride, his arms pumping up and down in time to his stiff-legged step as he cut through the shadowy distance.
“What on earth is he doing?” Harper asked as Paul suddenly pulled up short and bent over at his waist, resting his hands on his knees and acting as though he’d had the wind knocked out of him.
“Beats me,” Lonnie replied while Paul stood upright and resumed his comical quickstep.
Harper laughed. “He looks like a duck trying to stay one step ahead of the wolf. Let’s go see what’s up.”
Fielding compliments on ‘the great bonfire,’ ‘terrific day,’ and ‘awesome festival’ from a few folks at the edge of the crowd, the sisters caught up to Paul as he reached the back steps of the house.
Shocked at the stunned look on Paul’s face as well as his pasty complexion, Harper said, “For heaven’s sake, what’s wrong with you?”
Lonnie put her hand on her husband’s arm. “You look at though you’ve seen a ghost.”
Paul sat down heavily on the top porch step. “In the shed.”
“What’s in the shed? A ghost?”
Pau
l swallowed hard. “Grace Potter.”
Harper frowned. “Grace Potter’s in the shed or a ghost’s in the shed?”
“Pretty much the same thing, I’d say. I just tripped over a body and it’s definitely Grace and she’s definitely dead.”
“Good Lord,” Harper said, her voice shaky. “Does it look like a heart attack?”
“Nope,” Paul said quietly. “It looks like a murder.”
Chapter Two
Harper watched Violet Sanders carry a blue ceramic platter heaped with cold roast beef and baked ham sandwiches to an oversized oak dining table in the middle of the Bittersweet Inn’s brightly lit kitchen. Lonnie set several mugs of hot coffee on a tray next to the sandwiches. Harper knew no one seemed very hungry. A murdered realtor in the back yard, especially a murdered realtor who’d just sold the back yard, had a way of spoiling appetites. However, she also knew no one sat at her mother’s table without Violet placing food in front of them.
For the past thirty years, Violet and her husband, Ezra, had been Olivia’s only full time employees. Violet helped with the baking, cooking and cleaning while Ezra handled most matters concerning the maintenance of the house, yard and gardens. The two lived in a renovated suite of rooms on the third floor. Although in their late sixties, the couple had agreed to postpone their own retirement until Olivia called it quits.
Violet stood behind the chair where Ezra sat, her fleshy hands on her ample hips, her stout bosom and plump abdomen partially covered by a white baker’s apron. She had arranged her graying hair in braided coils over each ear. A few hairpins had loosened in the chaos following the discovery of Grace’s body and some corkscrew tendrils brazenly escaped their knots.
Earlier, before the sheriff and his deputies had arrived, Violet, Harper and Lonnie had taken a flashlight and sneaked out to the shed to peek in a window. Knowing they had only a few minutes before the sheriff and his deputies arrived from St. Stephens, the women pressed their noses against the pane of glass while Harper held the light.
“It’s Grace all right,” Harper announced. “Paul said someone bashed her in the head with something heavy. I figured there would be more blood.”
Harper chided her sister. “Don’t be ghoulish. It’s disrespectful.”
“Grace thrived on disrespectful,” Violet snorted. “She always poked her nose where it didn’t belong.”
“What on earth do you suppose made her poke it in here?” Harper asked, totally puzzled.
Lonnie shrugged. “Whatever her motivation, she apparently forgot an important rule…duck.”
Later, after the sheriff had questioned the occupants of the Inn and the only commotion remaining outside included a handful of deputies stringing yellow crime scene tape and scouring the property for evidence, Harper observed the others seated around the table. Ezra and Violet had settled protectively on either side of Olivia. Olivia, white curls framing her softly lined face, looked decidedly exhausted to Harper.
Paul, sitting across from Olivia, stretched his long legs under the table. Harper was glad to see some color had returned to her brother-in-law’s face. Lonnie sat next to Paul and rested a hand on his knee, giving him an absentminded pat every few minutes. Mead and Alice Hoover, the Inn’s potential buyers, made up the rest of the party and it was obvious to Harper the consternation on everyone’s face was not due to any grieving over the dead woman but caused by the words Alice spoke.
“I’m just not sure Mead and I can go ahead and close on this house. You see, I have strong connections to the metaphysical world. I feel the Potter woman’s spirit roaming here on this property. She’s determined she won’t rest until whoever killed her is apprehended, and until then she plans to make everyone who comes to the Inn suffer for her misfortune. She’ll drive all the guests away. Her spirit is very vindictive.”
“That’s her normal personality,” Violet said with a snort.
“Maybe so,” said Alice, “but she’s warning me to stay away.”
“Well, now,” Ezra said, “I don’t reckon I’d pay much attention to anything Grace Potter or her spirit had to say if I was you. Her mouth was always a-runnin’ and nothin’ good ever came out of it. If she wasn’t stirrin’ up trouble, she wasn’t happy.”
“Let’s not make any hasty decisions, my sweet,” Mead said, wrapping his long slender fingers around his wife’s plump hand and giving her a tender smile. “We really do want to buy the Inn and I’m sure Grace’s spirit will be placated before long.”
“Oh, dear,” Olivia said. “There’s just no way I can move if I don’t get the Inn sold. Harper, you’ll just have to tell the people at the townhouse I’m not making the move after all.”
“Now, Mom; I’m sure if Grace’s, um, spirit, isn’t put to rest by morning, it will be soon,” Harper assured her mother, wondering why on earth a seemingly sane young woman like Alice had to be a fruitcake and believe in ghosts.
Harper recalled the time Grace, talking to her and Olivia after the Hoovers made an offer on the property, explained how Alice believed she “heard voices or some such crazy thing. And Mead doesn’t contradict his wife when she prattles on about spirits and such so maybe he believes she really is tuned in to a different frequency. Honestly, Olivia, your rambling Victorian certainly has the ambiance to suit a psychic.”
Grace had kept up a steady stream of idle chatter about the young couple, making Harper feel uncomfortable by how much information she apparently had gleaned in her capacity as realtor. And Lord only knows how much of it’s even true, Harper thought at the time, so she cut the conversation short and told Lonnie later, “Grace can fling more you know what than a manure spreader.”
Lonnie’s voice interrupted Harper’s thoughts of Grace. “Ezra is right, Alice. Anything Grace ever said needed to be taken with a grain of salt. She liked to stir the pot.”
“Grace had a cantankerous streak to her, that’s for sure,” Paul cut in. “Even a mad dog wouldn’t bite her. I doubt if there’s been anyone in Bittersweet Hollow who hasn’t been on the rough side of her tongue at one time or another.”
“Yet she seemed so nice,” Alice said. “And she was extremely knowledgeable about real estate transactions and very helpful answering our questions. We felt lucky we found her.”
“There’s no denying Grace could put on a different face when she wanted to sell property,” Harper said. “But I bet if you think for a minute, you’ll come up with a few questions she asked you that didn’t have anything to do with buying the Inn.”
“True,” Alice admitted, considering Harper’s remark. “Mead even mentioned once how she seemed a little nosy.”
“I believe I said Grace definitely had a nose problem,” Mead replied. “You’re just too busy liking everyone to notice their true colors, Alice.”
Alice squirmed in her chair and said, “It will be a shame if Grace’s spirit keeps the guests away from here. It wouldn’t take long to ruin a business if there’s no revenue. You do understand that Mead and I hope to start a family soon. We can’t risk buying a business if it won’t make any money. It might take months to apprehend the murderer. Maybe they’ll never be caught and Grace will never leave.”
“Oh, dear, this is all so horrible,” Olivia said.
Violet patted Olivia’s shoulder. “Now don’t you worry,” she said. “If that darn ghost crosses my path she’ll think she’s run into the Devil instead of me.”
“Look, Alice, Grace worked for Wilcox and Wilson Reality,” Harper said. “Aaron Wilcox and James Wilson are nice young gentlemen and I’m sure as far as working with you and Mead, they’ll step right in and take over where Grace left off. And, Alice, I promise you, Grace’s killer will be in custody soon if I have to apprehend the murderer myself.”
“Goodness, Harper,” Olivia said quickly, “don’t even think of doing anything so risky.”
Mead pushed back his chair. “We’ll go see Aaron and James first thing in the morning. It’s very late. Let’s go upstairs, Alice. There’s a
nice snug room with a soft bed waiting for us. Things will look different in the light of day.”
“I’ll show you up,” Harper said, wishing she could crawl into a soft bed, too. She waited while the young couple said goodnight to the others, thinking how plump, curly-haired Alice with her big blue eyes and pink cheeks resembled a china doll and tall, gangly Mead made a perfect image of Ichabod Crane.
“We’ve put your luggage in the Green Room at the end of the hallway,” Harper said over her shoulder, leading the way from the kitchen to the stairway off the foyer. “It’s the one with the great view. From your window you can see all the way to the timber along the river.”
The Bittersweet Inn contained six guest rooms, each with its own bath. Harper and Violet had added a few special touches to the Green Room after Mead booked it for the weekend, including a hand-stitched Amish quilt on the bed, new lavender-scented sachets in the dresser drawers, and a small box of hand-dipped chocolates from the local candy shop on the bedside table.