“Congratulations.”
She smiled, and I thought it was the first genuine smile I’d seen her wear. “The framing work will start in two weeks.”
“Will the cow pastures be part of the agrihood?”
“Those are privately owned,” she said, her voice clipped. “We expect the type of people who’ll be interested in living in an agrihood will consider the nearby fields a bonus, though we can’t promise that the farms will be there forever. The only thing eternal is change.”
“I thought it was death and taxes.”
“Is there anything else?”
I turned to her. “I heard things were tense between you and Bill at the last meeting.”
She waggled her expensive navy pump. “Who did you hear that from?”
“There were several people at the meeting—”
“Penny.” She leaned forward, her expression sharpening. “Penny said that, didn’t she?”
“Does it matter?” I’d watched enough Magnum PI to know you never gave up one source to another source.
She laughed harshly. “You don’t have to say anything. I can tell. Did Penny tell you that she and Bill were once romantically involved?”
“Penny and Bill?” Penny of the crazy sweaters and grape-cluster earrings? Was there anyone over fifty Bill hadn’t dated? “I hadn’t heard.”
“It’s not as surprising as it sounds. Bill was quite the ladies’ man.”
Suddenly I wanted this conversation over. “Okay, well, thanks.” I laid my business card on her table. “Even though your son wasn’t involved, he might know something. Please ask him to call me if he gets a chance.”
Her smile was wintery. “He’s skiing. Don’t hold your breath.”
I hesitated at the office door. “By the way, where were you on Sunday afternoon between four and four thirty?”
“Home. Alone. As I said, Oliver is in Tahoe.”
So she had no alibi for the hit and run. “Thanks again.” I hustled out of the office.
My jaw tightened. I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I needed to talk to my mom.
I pulled into my mother’s driveway and parked my pickup beneath the big oak. A metal ladder leaned against its trunk. I squinted into the sunlight streaming through its branches.
Impervious to the cold, Dieter clung to a wide branch and wielded a circular knife. His jeans rode down his hips, and his ripped T-shirt rode up his stomach as he stretched for a bunch of mistletoe.
Two policemen stared up at him.
“Dieter?” I asked. “Do you need any help?”
“No, Mad K, I got this.” He reached for the cluster of mistletoe, wobbled, and grabbed the branch for balance.
I sucked in a quick, terrified breath. “Dieter—”
“I can do it,” he insisted.
“Well, scream if you fall,” I said. “I’ll call 911.”
“911 is here,” one of the cops said.
“Right,” I said. “Then carry on.”
I strolled up the winding walk, past the straw reindeer and barrel-hoop snowman and a new-looking Lincoln SUV, and walked inside. I shut the door and the wreath rattled against it. Following the scent of baking flour and sugar, I made my way to the kitchen.
My mom slid sugar-and-spice cookies off a baking sheet onto wire racks.
“Yum,” I said. I reached for a cookie and she smacked my hand with the spatula.
“Ow!”
“I have to frost those,” she said. Her short hair was rumpled. Flour smeared one of her cheeks.
I rubbed my hand. “Need help?”
“What I need is to get out of here.” She gestured at the kitchen piled with plastic and metal cookie containers. “The insurance company paid for a rental car, but what’s the point when I’m a prisoner in my own house?”
“Is Ladies Aid having a bake sale?”
“Not this year.” My mother slumped against the gray granite counter. “Maybe my police escort will let me take them over to the old folks’ homes. Not everyone is allowed sugar, but these are just too many cookies.”
“There’s no such thing as too many Christmas cookies.”
“What have you learned? Have you gathered any more clues?”
Dieter strolled into the kitchen and dropped a bundle of mistletoe in the sink. “Here you go, Mrs. K. What’s next?”
“Madelyn was just going to tell me what she’d learned about our killer.”
Grinning, Dieter folded his arms and lounged against the counter beside my mom. “Oh, she is?”
“Don’t say anything, Mom,” I warned. “He’s probably got a bet running.”
“Dieter wouldn’t do that,” she said. “Dressing up like Santa to murder someone … I still can’t believe it. And you could have been killed yesterday, Madelyn. And poor Detective Slate. Have you spoken with him? Is he all right?”
“I called. He says his arm is in a sling. I guess they’ve put him on medical leave.”
My mother’s lips flattened. “So Detective Hammer is in charge?”
Dieter whistled. “That changes the odds.”
I frowned at him. “You’d better be joking.”
“It’s a pity cats can’t apologize,” my mom said. “Between you setting her hair on fire—”
“I didn’t!”
“—and GD breaking her foot, that detective isn’t well disposed toward you.”
“GD broke her foot?” Dieter shoved aside a tin of cookies and braced one elbow on the counter. “I thought that was an urban legend.”
“He didn’t.” I glared at him. “It was a weird accident.”
“It’s a pity,” my mom continued, “because Detective Slate clearly likes you.”
My cheeks warmed. “What?”
“Well, it’s obvious to me,” my mom said.
“You’re dating Slate?” Dieter asked. “Does Adele know?”
“Who said anything about dating?” I asked. “He’s helped me with some research on stuff in the museum, that’s all.”
“What sort of research has he been helping you with?” Dieter grabbed a warm sugar cookie off the plate and shoved the entire thing in his mouth, scattering crumbs across his ripped tee. My mother did not smack his hand with a spatula.
“Certain of my haunted objects have been connected to deaths,” I said, intentionally vague. I didn’t want to give the cowbell curse any more traction. “Detective Slate has access to the police archives.”
“Yeah,” Dieter said, nodding. “He’s totally not into you.”
I sucked in my cheeks. “It’s not as if he’s been kept busy investigating homicides in San Benedetto.” Not until recently, at least.
“Speaking of homicides, what have you learned?” My mom brushed the back of her cheek with her hand, widening the smear of flour.
Wary, I glanced at Dieter. But he could keep his mouth shut when it mattered. “Kendra said Tabitha and Bill were having an affair, and that Penny had once dated Bill. And Penny said things between Tabitha and Bill, and between Bill and Kendra, were tense. But Kendra said Penny was lying because of her old fling with Bill.”
“It sounds so high school,” my mom said.
Dieter snorted.
“But if Bill and Tabitha were having an affair,” my mother continued, “it might show he had undue influence over where that tax money went. As a town councilwoman, Tabitha held sway when it came to funding decisions. If she was capable of being corrupted in this instance, perhaps she was in others too.”
“Whoa.” Dieter straightened off the counter. “Corrupted? You mean like bribes?”
“Young men are so innocent.” My mother pinched his cheek, and to my amazement, he grinned.
“But if Tabitha was taking bribes,” I said, “that’s no reason for her to kill Bill.”
“Unless someone was blackmailing her,” Dieter mumbled, spewing crumbs. “Maybe someone’s got evidence.”
“Or maybe nothing’s going on,” I said. “All we have is Kendra’s word that Tabitha and Bill were an item.”
My mom shook her head. “No, I suspect it’s true. It would explain a lot about their relationship. When I saw them together, they always seemed a little too close for comfort, laughing and touching each other’s arms. Sometimes I wondered how Tabitha’s husband could be so calm about it all. Perhaps he wasn’t.”
“So you noticed something going on between them too?” I asked. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I wasn’t certain,” she said. “But now that I know I wasn’t the only one who noticed something odd, there’s no sense in being discreet. What else did you learn?”
“What else?” I glanced at Dieter. I couldn’t ask my mom about her dating Bill with the contractor hanging around.
“I know there’s something else,” she said. “You have that guilty look in your eyes.”
“I don’t have a guilty look. There’s nothing for me to feel guilty about. You asked me to investigate, and now I’ve made most of the local women in positions of power mad at me.”
“You’re not investigating because I asked you to.”
“I’m not?”
“You’re investigating,” my mom said, “because you’re good at it.”
Dieter nodded. “The odds are totally in your favor.”
I glared at him.
“Besides,” she said, “someone’s shot the cow, blown up my Lincoln, run down a perfectly good detective, and ruined your ritual. Kosloskis don’t take that sort of thing lying down.”
I reached for a cookie, and her eyes narrowed. Slowly, carefully, I withdrew my hand and cleared my throat. “The ritual was ruined before Detective Slate got hit by that car.”
“What happened?” Dieter asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “A woman said something bit her—”
“GD?” my mom asked.
“No, he was on top of the holiday ogress cave the whole time. I think having all those people in the museum freaked him out.”
“Imagine,” Dieter said dryly.
“And then another woman said she was bitten. And someone shouted that the curse was still on, and there was a panic, and everyone ran out of the museum. Herb and Xavier insist the curse has been removed, but no one’s taking them very seriously.”
“Including you,” my mom said. “Maybe that’s the problem. People know you’re a skeptic.”
I clawed my hands through my hair. “The reason I don’t believe in curse exorcisms is because I don’t believe in curses. This is nuts.”
“No, it’s human nature,” Dieter said. “The idea of malign influences is embedded in our caveman DNA.”
We stared at him.
“What?” he asked through a mouthful of cookie.
My mom turned to me. “Now what aren’t you telling us?”
“Telling you?” My pulse accelerated.
“Spill it,” she said.
“Yeah, Mad, spill it,” Dieter said.
“Dieter doesn’t want to hear this stuff,” I said. “Let’s bundle up the mistletoe and we can talk later.”
Dieter braced his chin on his fists, his blue eyes wide. “Au contraire, mon frère. I am busting with interest. Does Slate know you’re running an off-the-books PI firm?”
I grabbed a cookie before my mom could object. “Says the man who’s running an off-the-books bookie firm.”
“Children, enough,” my mother said. “Now Madelyn, say whatever it is you haven’t been saying. And Dieter, stop teasing Madelyn.”
I shuffled my feet. “Um. Well. Penny said you were dating Bill. Recently.” It would have to be recently. My mom was still a relatively newish widow.
Dieter snorted. “And you believed her?”
My mother sighed. “Penny is cannier than I give her credit for. I certainly didn’t tell anyone, and I’m sure Bill didn’t.”
We gaped at her.
“Way to go, Mrs. K!” Dieter raised his hand for a high five.
She frowned and he dropped his hand, stuffing it into the pocket of his jeans.
“Then it’s true?” I asked.
“He asked me out, and I said yes. This was before I was president of Ladies Aid, you understand.”
“What does Ladies Aid have to do with it?” I asked. “Is there a rule against the president of Ladies Aid dating the president of the Dairy Association?”
“Of course not,” my mother said. “But I hadn’t worked with Bill very closely up until that point, which is why I agreed to go out with him. Then I discovered he thought real work was beneath him.”
“How many dates before you figured it out?”
“Really, Madelyn. I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“Well, no, but—”
“I don’t sit home in suspended animation waiting for my children to return so I can bake them cookies.” In a gentler voice, she added, “I miss your father terribly. No one will ever be able to replace him. But it’s rather lonely in this big house. And I am an adult.”
I thought about the huge changes that had happened in her life after my father died. Selfishly, I’d just assumed everything was working out for her. “It’s okay,” I said. “I mean, it’s great. I’m not upset. And it’s none of my business even if I was. I’m just … surprised.”
“When I became president this fall,” she continued, “my life got busy, and Bill and I drifted apart. Romantically, I mean. We were working with each other quite regularly. But if he was having an affair with Tabitha Wilde, I wonder when it started? He seemed a bit distant when we were dating, but I thought that was just his character. Maybe he was seeing her then and using me as a beard.”
“No way,” Dieter said, indignant.
She patted his hand. “What I don’t understand is why Madelyn hasn’t been given a police guard after yesterday’s attack.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Dieter said.
We turned to stare.
“I talked to the cops outside.” Dieter bit into another pfeffernüsse. “They said Detective Hammer wants to keep an eye on Mad personally.”
The next morning, I drove past fields blanketed in pewter fog. My gaze flicked to the rearview mirror. If Laurel wanted to keep an eye on me personally, she was keeping her surveillance covert.
I shrugged my shoulders in my fleece-lined jacket and checked the rear-view mirror for the nth time. Two could play at this game.
The museum was closed on Tuesdays too. It’s just not a big day for visiting wineries or paranormal museums. But Internet sales happen daily, and I needed to ship some orders and feed GD.
First, though, I wanted to talk to Penny again. The Wine and Visitors Bureau would be open this morning, doling out tastings at the bar to any tourists disappointed by the dearth of open wineries. And Penny had seemed to be trying to divert suspicion from herself yesterday. I couldn’t ignore her archery background.
I slowed as a VW Bug pulled from a vineyard into the road. The VW sped forward, its engine sputtering, and careened around the corner of a barren apple orchard.
I didn’t actually know where any of the suspects had been on Sunday afternoon. Kendra said she was home, but there was no one to verify it. Penny said she’d been called to a “family matter.” And I had no idea where Tom and Tabitha Wilde or their son Craig had been. And then there was Dean Pinkerton of the unpasteurized milk. And Belle, the mother of my ex’s child.
My grip tightened on the wheel. I had too many suspects.
All right. Think. Was Kendra a suspect? I’d initially approached her because Oliver might have been involved. Now it seemed that he wasn’t, but there’d been odd currents between Kendra and Bill, accord
ing to reports.
A crow skimmed low over the road. I braked, barely missing it, my head rocking forward. Nerves officially wracked, I drove on.
What about Belle? She could have set up the cow burning to win the prize money, and one of her hypothetical confederates accidentally killed Bill. Then, to make it seem like someone had intentionally killed Bill, since she’d had no motive to do that, she manufactured some mad conspiracy and attacked the museum event—conveniently located by her apartment.
All in all, it seemed a little much.
I turned onto a wide road leading into town. The fog was thicker here, the nearby vines invisible, and I slowed, keeping an eye out for wildlife.
Tabitha, now … she’d been helpful. Too helpful? If anyone was trying to throw suspicion on others, it was her. She was clearly worried Craig might have been involved. The offer to pay for the damage from the bombing smelled like a payoff.
If it was true that she and Bill had been having an affair, and her husband or son found out, would either of them have killed Bill Eldrich?
I pulled into the Wine and Visitors Bureau’s misty driveway. Penny’s Honda was parked in her private space, toward the back of the educational vineyard. In the small plot, barren vines twisted along metal wires. I backed into a visitor’s spot, hopped from my truck, and shut the door.
A sound—a smothered cry—floated through the fog.
I froze, head cocked. “Hello?”
Something thudded softly from the direction of Penny’s blue Honda.
The hair lifted on my arms. “Hello?” I called again.
No answer.
My heart thumped. “Laurel, I hope you’re around,” I muttered.
Swallowing hard, I crept toward the sound. “Hello? Is someone there?”
Soft gulps and gasps and snuffling emerged from the other side of the blue Honda. For a moment I wondered if I’d stumbled across an animal in distress. I forced my leaden legs to move forward and rounded the rear bumper.
Through the fog, I saw a bulky figure hunched against the small car.
Relieved, I exhaled and trotted forward. “Penny?” I squatted beside her. She was crumpled against the car door. In her white parka and ski cap, she looked like a melting snowman. “Penny, what’s wrong?”
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