A Second Helping of Murder and Recipes: A Hot Dish Heaven Mystery

by Jeanne Cooney

  I stared at him, yet he refrained from looking up from the newspaper, even though he was well aware I wanted him to do so. “Buddy,” I said, my tone stern, “are you going to explain that black eye or not?”

  He meticulously folded the paper and placed it on the seat next to him. “I already told you, it’s not important.”

  That irked me. Call me crazy, but I’d always preferred reaching my own conclusions. “Listen, if this arrangement of ours is going to work, you have to level with me.”

  “I am leveling with you. My eye has absolutely nothing to do with Raleigh Cummings’ death.” His manner suggested the topic was closed to further discussion. Another point of contention with me. In fact, it really ticked me off. I hated anyone censoring me.

  “Fine!” I flung my napkin at my plate. “Forget the whole thing.” Frustration and fury had sharpened my voice and were urging me to toss around a few other “F” words.

  Before I went that far, I slid from the booth, and he grabbed my arm. “Hold on. I need your help.”

  “No you don’t. At least not enough to be up front with me.” I shook my arm free.

  “But you agreed.”

  I pinned him with a glare. “Not if you’re going to be less than honest.”

  “I didn’t lie.”

  “Omission is the same thing. Or is that concept just too vague for you to comprehend?” See? I could get pissy too.

  He halfway rose to once more tug on my sweater sleeve. “All right. All right. Sit down, and I’ll tell you.”

  I vacillated. This was my chance to bow out with a clear conscience. I could assure myself that while I’d offered my assistance, Buddy wasn’t keen on my approach or my need for transparency. As a result, I couldn’t help him. End of story.

  So why didn’t I leave? The urge to go was so great it actually made my feet tingle. Still I remained in place. How come?

  In a word—curiosity. In another—nosiness. I also could have gone with “prurience” or “inquisitiveness.” All pointed to the same thing. My unadulterated shameless need to know everything in general. And in this specific situation, the story behind that shiner.

  Feigning disinterest, I edged back into the booth and poured myself another cup of coffee. “Well, okay. I guess if you insist. Go ahead. Shoot.”

  He murmured something unintelligible.

  “I can still take off, you know.”

  He shook his head. “No, don’t do that.” He fingered the corner of the newspaper. “It’s just that I was surprised how . . . umm . . . aggressive you are.”

  “You mean pushy?”

  “You said it. I didn’t.”

  I warned myself to remain civil. I’d been called worse. And he was right. My inability to be subtle was one of my biggest shortcomings as a reporter. It was one of the primary reasons I’d been assigned to the Food section at the paper and not real news, where I’d actually have to interact with people on a daily basis. Even so, I didn’t need him to remind me.

  “Buddy, if I recall right, you were the one who said we didn’t have much time. So I was searching for information as quickly as I could. That didn’t allow much of a chance to get all touchy-feely. Sorry.”

  He momentarily closed his eyes. “Okay. Let’s just move on.”

  No way. I wasn’t done justifying my actions. Or making him feel bad for yelling at me. “I also had the impression you weren’t thrilled about asking your family or friends the tough questions yourself.”

  “Of course I wasn’t ‘thrilled’ about it.”

  “That’s one of the reasons you brought me on board, right? To ask the tough questions? And that’s all I was doing.” I stopped to allow him to think about that.

  “Now,” I then added, “tell me about your eye.” He puffed out a big breath of air. He was giving in. I mentally licked my fingertip and drew a hash mark in the air, scoring one for me.

  “I got hit by a guy named Hunter. He got upset with me over his girlfriend.”

  I unintentionally smirked. “Why? Were you hustling her? Or was the hustling part over by the time he caught you?”

  He raised his shoulders, appearing somewhat incredulous. “Why would you say that?”

  I brushed my hand across my mouth but couldn’t wipe the smirk from my lips. “You have a reputation for being a cad.”

  He leaned forward and spoke in a voice just above a whisper. Again I had no idea why, unless he suspected that Margie, Buford, Wally, and Little Val were eavesdropping on us from the kitchen. “I may like women,” he said, “but I don’t poach girlfriends—or wives.”

  I mimicked him by leaning forward and replying in a similar tone, “This Hunter guy must think otherwise.”

  “Not really.”

  “Then why’d he hit you?”

  Uncertainty crossed his face, embarrassment following close behind. “Because I . . . umm . . . said he was too good for her.”

  “What? Why would you do that?”

  He backed into the corner of the booth, bending his knee and pulling it toward his chest, his foot resting on the seat. “Because I saw her in the Eagles in Hallock last Saturday night. She was making out with some other guy while Hunter was at the bar in the next room, drowning his sorrows, as usual.”

  “As usual?”

  “Yeah, she runs around on him a lot.” He settled his forearm on his bent knee, his hand dangling. “When Hunter finds out, which he always does, he heads to the Eagles and ties one on. After that things settle down until the next time she chases after someone.” He rubbed the side of his nose. “Normally she’s more discreet. But for some reason that night—”

  “He actually puts up with that?” I was having trouble accepting what he was telling me.

  “Yep. Has for decades.”

  “What?” I sat up straight. He definitely had my attention.

  “They’ve been dating since high school, back in the seventies. They’re both in their late fifties now.”

  “Wait a minute.” I had to take another run at this. “They’ve been dating for some forty years?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And they’ve never married?”

  “Nope.” He bit back a smile, yet the corners of his mouth twitched. “Hunter says it wouldn’t be ‘prudent to marry’ given her ‘proclivity’ for other guys.” He worked to keep his smile in check. “Those are his words. Not mine. And where he got them, I have no idea. He doesn’t talk like that, so my guess is he’s met with a preacher or a shrink or someone like that.”

  In an effort to clear my head, I gave it a good shake. It didn’t help. “But short of marrying her, he’s fine with the relationship as it is?”

  Buddy offered a palms up. “That’s basically what I asked him Saturday night. I’d never said anything before. Figured it wasn’t any of my business. Besides, she’s nice enough—to everyone else anyhow. She just treats Hunter like shit sometimes. But I always thought that was between the two of them. On Saturday, though, I decided I needed to speak up.”

  “And?”

  “He hit me.” He brushed his bruise with his knuckle. “I would have gotten mad, but he was so drunk there wasn’t much force behind his fist.” He shrugged. “And he’s a friend.”

  “Some friend.”

  “Yeah, well, most guys in his situation would have gone a little berserk.”

  I gaped. “Buddy, most guys wouldn’t be in his situation. Not for long anyhow.” I raised my coffee cup to my lips. “Why does he put up with it?”

  “That’s what I asked him.”

  “And?”

  “Well, just before he let me have it, he told me he loved her. And he said everyone should leave them the hell alone.”

  “Hmm.” So many questions. So little time. “Did he go after the other guy? Y
ou know, confront him? Beat him up?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “But he must have known him. This isn’t exactly a metropolis.”

  “Maybe he didn’t get a good look at him. I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t?”

  He winced. “I might have had a few too many drinks that night. I don’t remember everything real clearly.”

  “You got drunk during harvest? I thought that wasn’t allowed.”

  “We weren’t in the field last weekend. It was raining off and on, so we were shut down.”

  I backtracked. “You really didn’t recognize the guy?” To my way of thinking, drunk or not, Buddy should have been familiar with practically everyone in the county.

  As if reading my mind, he said, “Emerald, strangers do pass through once in a while. Guys come up to work beets every fall. And construction workers move through on a regular basis.”

  He sank deeper into the corner of the booth and fixed a glassy gaze on some point beyond my shoulder. “I remember catching sight of her on my way to the bathroom. She was in the corner with . . .” He spoke in a quiet, modulated tone, as if narrating the scene playing out in his mind. “Then about forty-five minutes later, when I was headed back to the bar to get another drink, I saw her again. She was in the same corner, with the same guy. It was . . . It was her and . . .” His words faded as his gaze was replaced with the gleam of recognition.

  “You remember, don’t you?” My interest turned to excitement. “Who was it? Who was she with?”

  The curl of his lip signaled near disbelief as he said, “Raleigh Cummings.” He sat up straight. “She was with Raleigh Cummings.”

  “Really?” Prickles of excitement ran up and down my spine. “Are you positive?”

  He again stared past me, apparently rerunning the events of that evening through his head. “Yep, it was him.”

  “Hmm.” Buddy’s revelation was disturbing yet fascinating in a perverse way. “And all this took place this past Saturday night?”

  “Yeah, the Eagles had a dance—a live band.” He shifted away from the corner of the booth. “But how is any of this related to Raleigh’s murder?”

  I searched the recesses of my mind for the answer to that question and came up with nothing concrete. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not. But for what it’s worth, we now know your friend had a very good reason to dislike Raleigh.”

  “Reason enough to kill him?”

  “Again, I don’t know.” I paused to collect my thoughts. They were all over the place. “People have killed for less. But since Hunter didn’t even bother to break them up, I wonder how much he really cared for his girlfriend in the first place. On the other hand, he told you he loved her, and he popped you one for criticizing her. Still . . .”

  “Maybe he went after Cummings, and I just didn’t see it or don’t remember it.”

  “If there had been a ruckus, Buddy, you’d have heard about it at the very least.”

  “Well, I never heard a thing.”

  “Then I suspect nothing happened. There wasn’t a fight. At least not at the Eagles.” I stopped for the count of two. “We need to talk to this Hunter guy to see what we can find out.”

  “I don’t know.”

  I raised my eyes and silently prayed for patience. “Buddy, we don’t have much else to go on. And since you aren’t keen on questioning Wally . . .”

  He appeared ready to argue but must have thought better of it. “If the weather clears up,” he said, his tone yielding, “there’ll be a fish fry tonight at the Eagles. Hunter never misses one of those.”

  “Hey, guys.” Our discussion had been so intense that the sound of someone else’s voice startled me. I jerked my head to find Little Val waddling our way from the kitchen. Instead of a plate full of Rhubarb Bars, she held a fork and a deep-dish pie pan with only the slim remains of a Peaches and Cream Pie. “Where’s Wally?” she squeaked as she clutched her stomach the best she could, given that both of her hands were full.

  I know she said something more, but I was focused entirely on the tiny sliver of pie that remained in the pan. Another dessert made by Margie for the beet banquet. She got the recipe from Lillian Heine, who insisted it was “the best pie ever.” But Lillian’s daughter, Elizabeth Stellon, disagreed. She claimed her Rhubarb Meringue Pie was even better. Being someone who preferred making up her own mind, I was looking forward to testing both and deciding for myself. Now I wouldn’t get the chance. I felt cheated and . . .

  A scream broke my rumination. It was Little Val. She followed with another that was almost too shrill for humans to hear. And after that she dropped her fork, along with the pie pan. “I think . . . I think . . . I think I’m in labor,” she yelled just before her water broke, gushing down the legs of her father’s wool overalls.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A shaft of sunlight penetrated the café’s front window. It was early Friday afternoon, and the storm was winding down. The rumbling of snow plows harmonized with the buzzing of snow blowers and the scraping of shovels. And together they provided background music for Little Val, who was moaning and groaning her way through labor.

  She was lying on the floor in the café, next to the juke box. Everything had happened so quickly we didn’t have time to get her upstairs, much less to the hospital, even if we could have powered through the snow-blocked roads.

  Initially we had considered laying her in a booth, but she wouldn’t fit. As I said, Little Val wasn’t very little anymore. She also refused to be hoisted onto the pool table, much to Buford and Buddy’s poorly disguised relief. So she was making do with the floor until the ambulance arrived, which wouldn’t be until later, when the roads were once more passable.

  Margie and Vivian were attending to her, while I did what I could to help, from fetching pillows and blankets to sterilizing everything that wasn’t nailed down. As for Little Val’s husband, Wally, he shifted between kneeling next to his wife and hiding out in a booth, depending if at that particular moment, she “needed him” or wanted to “kill him” for “doing this” to her.

  Buddy and his brother had excused themselves early on, claiming they had to go upstairs and get cleaned up since “they were crawling with germs.” Apparently they kept extra clothes up there because the next time I saw them, they were showered, shaved, and hightailing it out of the café in fresh shirts and jeans, professing the need to shovel out the vehicles buried in the snow. Chickens.

  Little Val’s father wasn’t any better. Ever since he and Vivian had arrived, he’d been outside, supposedly clearing the sidewalk. But as I mentioned before, the man was missing an arm, so he couldn’t shovel any better than he could drive his snowmobile. And Vivian had to do that. No lie. After Wally phoned them, it was Vivian who made record time from the farm to the café on the Arctic Cat, Vern merely hanging on for dear life. Regardless, Vern now insisted on remaining outside, scooping snow from the sidewalk so the ambulance crew could make its way into the café. Chicken.

  Inside, during some of her more intense contractions, Little Val begged for painkillers, assuring Wally he could buy them from the guy down the street—the one who’d just undergone knee replacement surgery. When Wally refused, she became furious, demanding that he perform a variety of solo sex acts that were either anatomically impossible or illegal in most states.

  Later, after she’d calmed down or grown nearly numb from pain, she agreed to forego further demands for illegal drugs if Wally would sing Righteous Brothers tunes to her. Eager to win his way back into her good graces, he started off with her favorite, “Unchained Melody.” His voice was soft and sweet and full of love. Yet when he got to the line about “time going by so slowly,” Little Val screamed that if he really wanted to see time go by slowly, he should switch places with her. Needless to say, that was the end of Wally’s singing.

&
nbsp; Still, he wasn’t ready to give up. He was bound and determined to provide his wife some comfort. And to that end, he plugged in the juke box and grabbed a handful of quarters from the cash register, feeding them into the coin slot and hitting the buttons. He was so nervous he couldn’t think straight or, obviously, see clearly. The first song up was “Goodbye Earl,” by the Dixie Chicks:

  “It wasn’t two weeks after she got married that Wanda started gettin’ abused. She put on dark glasses, long-sleeved blouses, and makeup to cover her bruise.”

  “Push, push, push,” Vivian urged her daughter while flashing her son-in-law the stink eye. Wally, in response, slapped more buttons, but the song played on, leading Vivian to yell, “Come on now. This isn’t rocket surgery.” And to that Little Val cried, “I’m doing the best I can, Mom!” Then the Dixie Chicks insisted that “Earl had to die.” And Vivian glowered at Wally, making me certain that Earl wasn’t the only guy in really big trouble.

  After that, Margie caught Wally’s attention and calmly said, “Just pull the gall-darn plug, son. Just pull the gall-darn plug.” As if a light had finally switched on in his attic, Wally immediately rushed to the juke box, rounded the corner, and cracked his head on the wall. Dazed but not bloodied, he yanked the cord, and the song screeched to a halt. He smiled. Then staggered. And I gave him only about a fifty-fifty chance of remaining upright for the duration.

  But who was I to talk? My stomach had pitched and rolled with each one of Little Val’s contractions. And as she urged that baby along, sweat trickled down my chest. On the flip side, I was totally mesmerized by the sight of a human being entering the world. And when that little boy was delivered into his grandmother’s arms, I cried at the wonder of it all. Then I rushed down the hall to the bathroom, where I threw up in the toilet.