Kneaded to Death

by Winnie Archer

  “I’m sure I’m the last person you want to see, Olaya. Believe me, I feel the same. However, this is important.” Olaya scoffed, but Mrs. Branford ignored her and continued. “About a week ago, Jackie stopped by—”

  Olaya’s head snapped up. “She stopped by to see you?”

  “We were neighbors, Olaya. The fact that we were on friendly terms wasn’t a betrayal of you.”

  Olaya’s nostrils flared slightly as she drew in a deep breath. “Por supuesto,” she said. “I know that.”

  “Anyway,” Mrs. Branford continued, “I just remembered this morning—after you left, Ivy—that she’d been in a state.”

  “What does that mean, in a state?” Olaya asked.

  “She was worried. She asked me if I could keep a secret, which of course I can—”

  “Yes, I’m sure you can.”

  Mrs. Branford drew herself up, throwing her hunched shoulders back as much as she could and lifting her chin indignantly. “Look here, Olaya Solis. You . . . you fell in love with my husband, not the other way around.” She pointed a gnarled finger at Olaya. “I should be angry with you. For many years I have been angry with you. But life is too short. Jimmy’s gone. Jackie’s gone. Everything can change in a single moment, and we need to be grateful for the things we have. The friends. The family. The love. This”—she waved her finger back and forth between the two of them—“this animosity doesn’t do either of us any good.”

  “James stayed with you,” Olaya said, her voice quiet and laced with hurt and regret. “He stayed with you.”

  “He was my husband. Should he have left me for you?”

  “I loved him.”

  Mrs. Branford’s expression softened. “I’ve no doubt you did. And I believe he probably loved you, too.”

  “But you were his wife,” Olaya said with resignation.

  “I was his wife.”

  A heavy moment of silence passed between them, and then Olaya said, “I never meant for it to happen, you understand.” Her gaze finally met Mrs. Branford’s, and a thread of understanding seemed to pass between them.

  Mrs. Branford nodded solemnly. “I know, my dear. I’ve always known that. Jimmy didn’t, either.”

  Olaya shook off the emotion flooding her, swallowing and blinking away the tears that had been pooling in her eyes. They’d had a breakthrough. I didn’t know if it would last, but I was happy, for the moment, to have them in the same room without the heat of anger heavy between them.

  “Have a seat,” Olaya said, gesturing to the kitchen table.

  Mrs. Branford plopped herself onto a cushioned chair, then leaned her cane against the distressed wood table.

  “Now,” Olaya continued, “what were you saying about Jackie?”

  “She was upset about something that day,” Mrs. Branford said. “I’d completely forgotten. My old, addled brain, you know.”

  “You remembered,” I said, encouraging her to go on. “That’s what matters.”

  “I haven’t remembered much,” she said, clarifying. “She looked over her shoulder a few times, as if someone might be following her. She was afraid. I’m sure of it now that I’m looking back on that day. She was definitely afraid.”

  Olaya’s cheeks had tinged pink, and her hands had balled into fists. “I knew it.”

  “Knew what?” I asked.

  “Something was going on with her. Something she would not share with me.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. When I’d first met Mrs. Branford, we’d seen Buck Masterson, and she’d made an offhand remark that he probably killed Jackie Makers. Could there be truth behind that? Was Jackie afraid of her own neighbor?

  “But who would she have feared?” Olaya asked, pondering aloud.

  “Buck Masterson?” I offered. I looked at Mrs. Branford. “You said he’d gone into your house uninvited.” The invasion of privacy would certainly have me on edge if it had happened to me.

  “He did?” Olaya asked.

  Mrs. Branford nodded. “He’s a menace to the neighborhood,” she declared. “But,” she added, “I’m not sure if that’s who Jackie was afraid of. Quite possibly. She mentioned Jasmine that day.”

  “She and Jasmine were not getting along, but she wasn’t afraid of her own daughter,” Olaya said.

  “No, no, that’s not what I mean. I don’t believe so, either,” Mrs. Branford said. “But there was something going on there. Something that had her on edge.”

  “We could ask Jasmine,” I suggested. Seemed to me that if you had a question or concern, you simply needed to go to the source.

  Olaya shook her head. “I told you. She will not return my phone calls.”

  “I don’t know her,” Mrs. Branford said. “Never had her in my class, and while I’ve seen her around over the years, it’s been a long time.”

  They both looked at me expectantly. “You could reach out to her,” Olaya suggested.

  I spit out a laugh, chagrined. Were they serious? “Are you serious?”

  They both nodded.

  “I’ve never even seen her,” I said, then proceeded to rattle off other reasons why I should not be the one to contact Jasmine about her mother’s murder. “She’ll think I’m a freak if I just randomly show up and start asking her questions about her relationship with her mother,” I paused. “I have no idea how to even find her. I’m really pretty shy,” I lied. “There’s no way!”

  “You are the farthest thing from shy,” Mrs. Branford said.

  “The farthest,” Olaya agreed. “And I have her home and work address.”

  “Of course you can’t just show up and start quizzing her about her mother. But, Ivy,” Mrs. Branford said, “you’re your mother’s daughter. You’re curious. You’re smart. Think about the stories your mother broke when she was in high school and on the newspaper. You just have to be creative and dig a little.”

  “You mean lie.” I’d have to visit Jasmine Makers on some false pretense. I couldn’t even imagine what that might be.

  Mrs. Branford shook her head. “Not a lie, Ivy. A manipulation of the truth. You can do this.”

  “For Jackie.” Olaya said.

  I held back a scoff. Telling a lie and manipulating the truth were one and the same, but I kept my thoughts on that to myself. My shoulders sagged. Despite my misgivings, I knew I’d give in.

  As I accepted what I knew would happen, it occurred to me that we still didn’t know why Jackie Makers had shown up at Penny Branford’s house. “What did she want that day?” I asked.

  “Oh!” Mrs. Branford exclaimed. She slid a gray canvas daypack off her back. “I don’t care for purses,” she said when she noticed me looking at it.

  “That is quite practical,” Olaya said with approval.

  “It is,” she agreed. She reached into her daypack and pulled out an eight-by-ten goldenrod envelope on the table between us. “She’d been having trouble with Buck Masterson.” She grimaced. “Of course.”

  “She talked about him, this Buck Masterson,” Olaya said, looking from me to Mrs. Branford and back.

  “Only because he’s the biggest menace to Santa Sofia and the historic district since Richard Nixon,” Mrs. Branford said.

  I stared. “Um, Richard Nixon?”

  “Okay, forget Nixon. Buck Masterson is the biggest menace to Santa Sofia. Period.”

  Olaya shook her head, puzzled. “How have I never met this menace?”

  Mrs. Branford patted Olaya’s hand. “You’re better off, my dear.”

  I covered my mouth with my hand, hiding my grin. I knew they were meant to be friends, and now, despite the Jimmy/James situation, their friendship destiny might be secure.

  “Buck wanted Jackie to tear out the patio cover she added in her backyard. Tear it right out.” Mrs. Branford slapped her hand on the table. “It probably cost Jackie ten thousand dollars. Tear it out, indeed. That man is horrible!”

  “She told me about that. She said a neighborhood committee was giving her a difficult time about the work she
’d done. That she did not have it approved by the historic district before she did the work.”

  Mrs. Branford folded her left hand on top of her right, nodding. “But her backyard work was actually done in . . . the . . . backyard. Not visible from the street. Not attached to the house. Not required to get approval by the historic district.”

  “What is this guy’s problem? How did he even know about the work she did?” I asked.

  Mrs. Branford tilted her head as she responded. “Remember I told you he’d been sneaking into houses on the street?”

  I gasped. “Jackie’s house? This house?”

  She nodded solemnly. “This house. I saw him with my own two eyes, and let me tell you, I called Jackie right away. Of course she was in her kitchen. Buck had carte blanche to break and enter without Jackie’s knowledge,” she said. “But he didn’t count on me,” she added, shaking her head. “He could have known about the work she did only by being in the house or in the backyard. And Jackie did not give him permission.”

  “Let me understand this,” Olaya said. “You saw him enter Jackie’s house. You called Jackie to tell her. And then she came over to your house and brought this envelope?”

  “Yes. Oh! Yes.” Mrs. Branford flipped the goldenrod envelope over and unclasped it. “She came to find out what I’d seen. We got to talking, you know. I do miss her.”

  “I miss her, too,” Olaya said quietly.

  Mrs. Branford continued. “As I said, we got to talking. I told her that I’d seen Buck walk down the sidewalk, all nonchalant-like. He looked over his shoulder, then up and down the street. Quite suspicious, if you ask me.”

  Olaya and I both nodded. “Very,” I said.

  “We talked for a while. Just chitchat about her work, her daughter, life’s mysteries.” Mrs. Branford chuckled. “I have sons, so I couldn’t really help her much with the issues she was having with her daughter. She said that no matter what she said, her daughter didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand.”

  Olaya frowned. “This is why I never had children.”

  “Hey now,” I said. “Jasmine may not be daughter of the year, but some of us are pretty good kids. I’m a pretty good kid.” I’d probably driven my parents crazy as a teenager, and moving to Texas had been hard on both of them. My divorce had taken its toll on them. But in my heart I knew that most parents thought their children were worth all the grief and frustration.

  She patted my hand. “I know you are. Your parents, they are good ones.”

  “Yes, they were. Are.” I swallowed the lump in my throat and let my fingertips touch the edge of the envelope. “Back to the mysterious envelope. She gave it to you?”

  “No, no,” Mrs. Branford said. “She left it behind. I confess that I looked in it.” Mrs. Branford’s eyes glazed, and she seemed distressed. “I snuck a peek, and then I tucked it away until I could give it back to Jackie. And then . . .” She paused, twisting her fingers around each other. “And then I forgot all about it.”

  Suddenly her face looked more worn than it had just a few minutes ago, her wrinkles etched deeper into her skin. She was an old woman, and it seemed she was going through the experiencing some forgetfulness, as so many elderly people did.

  “It happens,” Olaya said, giving Mrs. Branford a sympathetic glance. “It is nothing to be concerned about.”

  Mrs. Branford held up her hand, silencing any more discussion about any gaps in her memory. “I happened upon the envelope again this morning, after you left, Ivy. In the freezer, behind the gallon of ice cream, if you can believe that.”

  That was an unusual place for it, which was an understatement, and it raised a bit of concern. I set that worry away for another time and unclasped the envelope, slid out the papers from inside it, and took a quick glance. “They’re letters to the historic district.” There were six, and each one was dated within the last month and signed by someone with a Maple Street address.

  “Yes! From the looks of it, Jackie was gathering ammunition to oust Buck Masterson from his seat on the council. She must have come by that day to ask me to write a letter. I’m sure that was her intent.”

  Olaya asked the obvious question. “But?”

  “But she got a phone call. Her daughter, she said. And then she dashed off—”

  “To save Jasmine from herself,” Olaya said, finishing the sentence, her sarcasm heavy.

  I hadn’t met Jasmine yet, but if I were to describe her, selfish was the word that came to mind. She didn’t strike me as someone I’d be inclined to hang out with.

  We spread the letters across the table. One by one, Olaya and I read them, sliding them back and forth as we finished one and reached for the next.

  “This one’s pretty direct,” I said, considering a handwritten missive from Mr. Harold Reiny. The writing was neat and precise, slanting slightly to the left. I was no handwriting analyst, but if I had to guess, I’d say Mr. Reiny was a tough old guy who didn’t take any crap from anyone, least of all a devious man like Buck Masterson.

  Granted, I hadn’t actually met Buck Masterson, either, although I’d seen him from across the street while I’d been at Mrs. Branford’s. I hadn’t met a lot of the players in this crime drama in which I was living, but I was getting a good handle on many of them despite my lack of personal knowledge.

  I read aloud a snippet from Mr. Reiny’s letter: “Buck Masterson is single-handedly destroying Maple Street. He manages to make people think he has good intentions and only wants the old houses here cared for, but in reality, the man is power hungry and is a menace to his neighbors. He does not represent me, my house, my family, or my interests.”

  Each of the letters had a similar message. The good people on Maple Street did not want Buck Masterson involved in their lives and the decisions made regarding their homes and properties.

  Half an idea started to form in my mind. “Do you think Jackie initiated this letter campaign?”

  Olaya considered the question. “If she did, she never told me about it, but it sounds like something she would do. She did not like that man.”

  “None of us do,” Mrs. Branford muttered.

  “But do you think . . .” I trailed off, not sure how I felt about what I was thinking.

  Both the older women who were suddenly part of my life prompted me to continue. Olaya rolled her hand in the air, and Mrs. Branford patted my arm and asked, “Do we think what, dear?”

  I formed the thought into words. “Do you think it’s possible that Buck Masterson got wind of the letters and Jackie’s campaign against him? Do you think he really could be behind her death?”

  Olaya and Mrs. Branford looked at each other, looked at me, and then looked back at each other. Olaya clasped her hand over her open mouth. Mrs. Branford gasped.

  “Buck Masterson, a murderer. A murderer?” Mrs. Branford said it as if she were testing the idea out to see how it sounded, then repeated it again. “Buck Masterson. A murderer.”

  “I do not know the man, but a killer? Jackie’s killer?” Olaya leaned back, pondering.

  “Someone in this town killed her,” I said. “Someone who had some strong feelings against her. Why not Buck Masterson? If she was behind trying to stop his antics here on Maple Street and with the historic district, he might have seen that as a vendetta against him. Maybe he’s unhinged—”

  “Unhinged.” Mrs. Branford tried that word on for size. “Buck Masterson, unhinged. Breaking and entering. Sneaking around. Inserting himself into other people’s business. His smarmy smile.” She nodded. “I’d say that he most definitely could be a trifle unhinged.”

  Olaya spoke up, the voice of reason. “None of those things make him a murderer.”

  Mrs. Branford agreed. “No, but as Ivy said, someone killed Jackie. Now we know that Buck actually has . . . had . . . a motive.”

  “Okay, look,” I said. “We’re being armchair detectives, and the truth is we aren’t the ones to solve this. Why don’t I take the letters to the deputy sheriff? Let h
er investigate Buck Masterson if she feels like it’s warranted?”

  After another few minutes of debate, they both agreed. Emmaline Davis would be able to determine if Buck Masterson was a killer or just a know-it-all busybody.

  Chapter Nine

  Easier said than done. My phone calls to Emmaline went unanswered. I had a few hours before I was to meet back up with Mrs. Branford for our stakeout, so I tucked the envelope of letters into my camera bag and headed back to my dad’s house. I’d try Emmaline again before I headed back to Maple Street at dusk. Or, I thought deviously, I could give the envelope to Billy and ask him to deliver it. A little matchmaking never hurt anyone.

  The house was empty when I got home. As the city manager, my dad was always busy with a million tasks. He probably wouldn’t be home until after nine. Since my mom died, his hours had gotten later and later. “Nothing to come home to,” he’d told Billy and me.

  Agatha jumped from my car and zoomed to the gate leading to the backyard. I let her off her harness and leash, and she instantly took off at a high-speed run. She slowed, spun in happy circles, leapt straight up into the air, and then took off again like the Tasmanian Devil, cutting hard to make a tight turn, her normally curled tail elongated with the force of her run.

  I let her run, tossing a tennis ball for her to chase, until she slowed down, panting, and was finally worn out. Once inside, she settled down in her bed, happily chewing on a knotted length of braid, and although the house was deathly quiet, I was glad for the solitude. I wanted to look through some of my mom’s things, which I hadn’t been able to bring myself to do yet. After spending the morning with Mrs. Branford and then with Olaya at Jackie’s house, I felt ready. Ready to think about my mom and the life she’d led. Ready to face the raw emotions that hovered on the surface of my mind. Ready. Just ready.

  I dropped my purse and camera bag on the white slipcovered couch and headed straight for the garage. My dad had carefully placed all my mom’s school and classroom supplies along the left side of the garage, but no one had been able to muster up the courage to look at them since. They were obstructed by my mom’s car, which also hadn’t moved in the past six months.