by Nan Sampson
A glance at his name tag told her she had to be close – it read Klein.
Brenda stood up as the man herded the two teenagers toward her. “What’ve we got here, Sam?”
“Coupla juvenile delinquents. Caught them up the old Franklin place, smokin’ a joint. Again. Third time’s a charm, boys. This time we’re gonna have to call your Pa.”
Ellie thought it would have been mandatory the first time, but maybe things worked differently in small towns.
Brenda stood up and put her hands on her hips, looking severe now. “Reverend Mueller isn’t going to like this. You boys better be ready for a good spanking.” Then, as the boy’s heads sunk even lower, she gave Ellie a wink.
Ellie glanced at the boys, who were clearly torn between trying to look tough and being really scared. Thinking she could duck out now, she sidestepped around them toward the door.
“Oh, hey, Ms. Gooden, before you go, I’d like you to meet my brother, Sam. Sam, this is the woman who’s going to bring pumpkin spice lattes to Horizon.”
Sam turned and looked her up and down. “Don’t s’pose you’ll be serving just a regular cup of joe, huh?”
Ellie put on her best salesman smile, the one she’d spent the last ten years in marketing perfecting. “Absolutely. I don’t go in much for the specialty drinks myself. I bet you take yours black. Or maybe…” She sized him up, the way she’d been guessing the coffee habits of everyone who passed through her weekend coffee shop hang out in the city for years. She’d gotten damn good at figuring out what people were going to order. Her more straight-laced friends called it creepy. Ellie just called it intuition – with a little help from the Goddess. “Maybe you take just a little cream. The real stuff, though, not that artificial crap.”
His mouth fell open. “How’d you know?”
Brenda scoffed. “It’s her business to know.” She grinned. “Thanks again for stopping by, Ms. Gooden. I’ll see you around!”
It was a very polite dismissal, and Ellie jumped on it. “Please, call me Ellie. And I look forward to it.”
She slipped out the door as Sam started to read the boys the riot act. A part of her wondered how this little drama would end, and whether Officer Sam would really call the Reverend Mueller about his miscreant sons this time. That made her smile. Not at the fact that those poor boys would get in trouble, but at the sheer nature of the whole situation. It was so…. Andy Griffith — which was exactly what she’d come to Horizon looking for.
She was half way back to town when her phone rang. It was Patti Mough.
“Honey, you’ve just got to come by. Earl has some good news for you, and I’m making a couple of pies that have your name written all over them. If you’re finished over at the Chief’s office, why don’t you pop on over?”
“How did you…” She let that drop. Somehow she was just going to have to get used to everyone knowing exactly where she was and what she was doing at any given moment. Her real estate agent, Terri Kohler, had warned her about this, but she hadn’t quite believed it. “I’m just finished. Would fifteen minutes be okay?”
“Oh, you take your time, honey. We’ll be here.”
Ellie drove the rest of the way through town, looking for spies along the side of the road who might report her exact whereabouts. Only a little part of her actually expected to see any.
Chapter 10
The Mough farmhouse was a huge affair. Built originally, she’d learned, in the mid-1800s, it had been torn down and rebuilt at the turn of the century. It sat on a hill, a wooden structure painted a sunny but not obnoxious yellow, the long front of the house with its three dormers facing west. A lovely wrap around porch, painted a brilliant white, boasted wicker chairs and even a wicker rocker, flanking an oval-glassed front door.
During the days of the commune, she knew, it had been a run-down, sideways leaning rat trap that housed upwards of twenty earnest and free thinking college age kids – and eventually their assorted small children. Since then, Earl and Patti had gradually restored the place to its former glory. They refinished the plank oak floors and woodwork, updated the kitchen appliances and bathroom fixtures and basically re-built the place so that it could probably pass any building inspector’s muster.
Not to say that it was a show place. The Moughs had five children and now at least twice that number of grandchildren, and they’d never been wealthy. The work they’d done had literally been done by them. The furnishings were not the lovely antiques that decorated the Inn, but the place exuded such love and care that even if the place had still been leaning sideways, no one would have noticed. It was the kind of family Ellie had always envied, being an only child.
Of course, that also meant that she never really felt entirely comfortable in the midst of such clans. The rules in extended households were foreign to her, and she always felt as though she were going to put her foot in her mouth, bolstered by the fact that she frequently did.
She drove up the long, gravel driveway to the house, which sat atop one of the larger hills on the property – although not anywhere near as large as the one the Inn sat on. She stood for a moment, feeling the sun warm the top of her dark hair, and looked out across the pastures to the west. Far away, she could see the tree line that marked the edge of the Mough’s property on that side, and she knew just beyond those trees was the little cabin that would be her home.
Hopefully Earl’s good news meant that her cabin was ready and that she could move in.
She heard the sound of gravel crunching under boots, and turned to find Earl standing behind her, hands tucked into his faded overalls, a John Deere cap squashed onto his head as though it were permanent part of him. She’d never seen him with it off, so perhaps it was.
“Mornin’, Ellie.”
“Mornin’, Earl.”
He fished something out of his pocket. “Got yer keys. You’re all set. Fridge is a mite small, but you don’t look as if you eat much. It should do.”
She caught the keys as he tossed them, then took another look back out across the land. Hers. It was all finally hers. She smiled and glanced back at Earl, but he was already walking away, crunching back across the gravel toward the nearest shed.
Her smile broadened. A man of few words, was Earl Mough. But he was the proverbial salt of the earth. Although she couldn’t reconcile him with the man who had helped rebel activist Artie Cullen co-found the commune here. She thought she’d heard that Earl’s ‘people’ were originally from Horizon. So maybe his “wild hippie” days had just been an aberration and he’d now gone back to type.
At any rate, his laconic style was night and day from his wife.
Who was waiting for her on the porch, wearing a long flowing cotton skirt and a tie dyed t-shirt with a low scoop neck that showed off ample cleavage. “Ellie! It’s so good to see you!”
Ellie braced as the woman wrapped her in a tight squeeze. “Good to see you too, Patti.”
“I hear you had a day yesterday. Come on in. I put up a pitcher of chamomile and hibiscus iced tea this morning – just the thing for a day like today. Set your mind at ease.”
Ellie allowed the woman to herd her in through the old fashioned wood and mesh screen door and through a winding way to the big old farmhouse kitchen. An enormous plank table, which Earl had made himself, took up most of the floor space and on it already was a thick pie, oozing juice through the slits in the top crust.
“Oh, Patti. You shouldn’t have.”
“What, I was going to let those apples go to waste? Earl won’t eat them. Don’t know why we have three apple trees if he won’t eat apples. I was thinking that maybe once you get your shop open, I can donate them to you. Surely you can make something with them.”
Ellie shook her head. “I’ll buy them from you – you won’t donate anything. But yes, certainly I can use them.” And then she frowned. “Just as soon as I find a baker.” It was the one last detail that she hadn’t managed to nail down. She’d ordered a gazillion pastries and so forth
for opening weekend, and she’d hoped to have some time this week to continue interviewing people. But with the shop not even available to her, she wasn’t sure how she was going to accomplish that.
Patti set a plate down on the table and grabbed a fork from the hand-woven basket that sat there. “Here. Sit down and eat some pie. I have a feeling everything will work out.”
“You do, do you?” She examined the woman’s face. “You’ve got something up your sleeve, don’t you?”
Patti assumed an innocent look. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. But I do know that things have a way of working out.”
Ellie sat, and dug into the piece of pie Patti served her. Even though breakfast hadn’t been that long ago, she had a weakness for pie, and Patti’s was probably the best she’d ever had.
“Sit down with me,” she urged her hostess. “I want to ask you about Artie.”
She felt the tension in air immediately. “What do you want to know?”
Treading carefully, she said, “Arabella sort of implied that Artie wasn’t the most… well-liked fellow in town. Every time I talked to him, we got along just fine. I guess I just can’t figure out why anyone would want to kill him. And in such a terrible way.”
Patti sat down, wrapped her long, thin fingers around a glass filled with tea. Her voice was pitched low. “Ingrid and Louisa are here. Out back, playing with the grandkids. I’d rather not have them hear anything about this. It was distressing enough yesterday when they had to go and identify the body.”
“Ingrid and Louisa?”
“Artie’s daughters. They’re in town to help him… they were in town to help him move. Artie was going to go live with them down in Albuquerque. Ingrid is married, and they’ve started a sort of new millennium version of a commune down there. Everyone is required to build their own house out of earth friendly materials. All power is green, of course, and they grow their own food. In ten years, the whole community will be completely self-sustaining.” Ellie could hear the excitement growing in Patti’s voice. “It’s really quite wonderful, what they’ve done.” She shook her head. “Anyway. Louisa is the younger sister, and an on again off again resident of the community they’ve created. Louisa was always a difficult child. Headstrong. Willful. Always had to learn things the hard way. She caused Helen no end of grief during her teenage years.”
“And now?”
Patti shrugged. “She’s confused. Hasn’t really found her path yet. Won’t even admit what we’ve all known for years.”
Ellie waited, fingered one opal earring, fighting back the urge to prompt.
Patti took a sip of her iced tea. “Louisa is gay. None of us here care – I mean, my youngest, Joshua, is gay. It’s never been an issue.” She paused. “Well, okay, there are some in town, and I won’t name names, but they all worship at the same place. They can’t seem to understand that it’s not some horrible thing.” She gave a sigh, then continued. “For the most part – as I’m sure you’ve already seen – this is a welcoming, open community.” She smoothed back wisps of curly gray hair that had fallen free of the casual twist she’d pulled it back in. “Louisa is still trying to fit herself into some mold of her own twisted creation.”
“Sounds like moving to Albuquerque should have been a good thing for her.”
“We all thought so. But I guess you take your problems with you, no matter where you go.” She took a long drink from her tea. “Anyway. The point is…” She paused. “What was the point?”
“That you didn’t want to talk about Artie if the girls could overhear.”
“Oh. Yes.” She stood up, moved to the window over the sink and then came back. “They’re playing croquet now. I suppose it helps take their minds off things.”
Ellie wasn’t going to let this drop. “So we have a few moments, then.”
Patti didn’t look happy. “Well…”
“So why was Artie disliked? I mean, other than him being a bit of a curmudgeon.”
An imaginary spot on the side of the iced tea glass occupied her hostess for a moment. “Artie was… well, you know I hate to speak ill of the dead. Let’s just say he never really embraced monogamy.”
An image of Artie as she’d known him came to her – balding, with wisps of gray hair combed over his age-freckled scalp, faded blue eyes that always looked tired behind outdated wire frame glasses with smudges on the lens, and wearing a tattered brown sweater with baggy pockets. Nothing about that image bespoke a lady’s man. “That must have been a long time ago.”
“Not so long as all that. The last few years, they’ve been hard on Artie. Ever since Helen died. He never did know how to do for himself. That’s why he up and sold his house in town and moved into the cabin. Less upkeep, he said, although I think mostly, that old house just had too many memories.”
“So he stepped out on his wife.” She left the “so what” unsaid.
Patti gave a little laugh. “More like his marriage was a revolving door. Especially when Artie still taught at the university, he’d always be seen around Madison with one young thing or another. His protégés, as he called them, but we all knew he was teaching them more than just how to be a good anthropologist. Then later, after he retired, he still managed to take up with one or two women a year from Karlsburg or Valleyview. Never in his own town, of course, there’d be no way to keep things discreet.”
“But everyone knew anyway.”
“Well, of course. Small towns are like that.” She looked pointedly at Ellie. “There are no secrets here. People may pretend as if they don’t know, for years, even decades at a time, but rest assured, no matter what it is you’re trying to hide, somehow, someway, it’ll come out.”
That hit uncomfortably close. “You’re saying they didn’t like him because he cheated.”
“No, it wasn’t the cheating, so much as it was the way he treated Helen while he was doing it. Rude. Condescending. Not physically abusive, but perhaps emotionally so. Like she was an old work shirt he wore occasionally, but didn’t particularly like. She was functional, but nothing he wanted to show off, if you get my drift.”
“Yeah, I can see where that wouldn’t endear him to any friends of Helen. Did his daughters know?”
She paused for a moment, looked down into her tea in what Ellie thought was an evasive gesture. “I suppose they must have done. I’m sure they heard it around town. Especially as they got older. Plus, they both attended UW Madison.”
How would it have been, Ellie thought, if she’d heard about her own father, who’d also been a professor, having an affair with a student at her own school? The thought was absurd – Max Gooden had adored his wife. Even so, if it had happened, the sense of betrayal would have been enormous, and the thought that kids she went to school with might know about it would have been particularly humiliating.
She wondered how the two Cullen sisters had felt.
Ellie finished her pie, set down her fork. “Wow. How sad for them. But clearly they must have mended fences. He was going to go live with them.”
“He’s their father, I suppose. And you look after your own.” She scooted back her chair, picked up Ellie’s plate, a clear signal that that part of the conversation was over. “Are you sure you don’t one just one more small sliver of pie?”
Ellie shook her head. “I had breakfast at the Inn this morning, in addition to the pie. I probably won’t need to eat until next Tuesday.”
Patti laughed, and some of the tension left her body. “Well, when you get to feeling hungry again, you come on over. I don’t know how to cook for two. And now that Josh has moved out on his own, I find there’s always too much food left over at supper time. It’s been a blessing having Ingrid and Louisa stay with us, really. Gives me someone to fuss over.”
She took Ellie’s plate to the sink just as the screen door to the mudroom opened up and two tow-headed little girls raced in, followed by a woman about Ellie’s age with an arm full of tattoos and an assortment of body piercings
. All three were laughing.
Ellie recognized the kids as Patti’s grandchildren, Phoebe and Caitlin, although which was which, she couldn’t have said. The woman with the piercings had to be Louisa.
The two little girls flung themselves at their grandmother, both jabbering at once. “We beat Lu, Nana, we beat Lu!”
Patti smiled indulgently at them. “Good job. Are you ready for some juice now?”
“Yes, please!”
“Then go sit nicely at the table and I’ll bring some over.”
Ellie stood and stepped back to let the girls clamber past her to the long bench on the far side of the trestle table. She put out her hand and gave Louisa a friendly smile. “Hi. You must be Louisa Cullen. I’m Ellie Gooden. I bought your father’s shop.”
Louisa stared at Ellie’s hand as though it might be contaminated with plague bacillus. In a voice that rang with Patti’s cadence and timber, she snarled, “You. Amazing what kind of trash blows into town.” She gave Ellie a disgusted look then turned and disappeared back out the screen door without a word.
Ellie stared after her for a moment then looked down at her hand, wondering if she had pie goo on it or something.
“I’m so sorry. Please, don’t mind her. She’s just…” Patti trailed off, unable to come up with an excuse.
“I’m sure she’s upset about her father.” Glancing at her wrist again, she thought it had been a damned stupid idea not wearing a watch. “Well, I should go, let you get to your grandkids. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.”
“Oh, honey, you stop by anytime. We’re neighbors now – oh! I completely forgot. Earl has your key. He’s finished with the work on the cabin, so you can move in anytime you want.”
Grinning, Ellie fished the key out of her jean’s pocket. “I saw him out front. I can’t thank you enough for all the work you’ve done. I wish you’d let me pay you for at least some of it.”