by Ami Diane
The knot in Ella’s chest tightened like a vice grip wrenching around her heart. “Firstly, you helped me search for clues, and secondly, I was just following the evidence.”
“I know, dear.”
Ella swallowed back a growing lump in her throat. “I know you’d never kill anybody.”
Wink’s eyes shined. “Good. Because I wouldn’t.”
Ella fumbled around, stacking more lemon squares. A cold silence fell between them, pronounced only by the ticking clock on the wall.
Was that what people thought of her? That she was only out to catch murderers and accuse her friends of killing?
She fought the tears building behind her eyes. The pain turned to sadness then to homesickness. She missed her family, her friends, her home.
Maybe she had been too eager, sticking her nose where it didn’t belong, but it had only been to help her friends.
Ella wandered into the diner to bus the table and wipe down surfaces. After the tables were clean, she poured a cup of mud and moped near the register. She ran a cleaning rag over the counter, the years marking their presence in a constellation of nicks and scratches.
Sometimes she pushed people away, had a hard time letting them. But she had decided she wasn’t going to do that here. Keystone was a new beginning.
Wink’s blue head poked through the pass-through, and for a moment, Ella thought she saw a cloud of guilt over her face.
“Would you mind taking a plate of squares over to Mrs. Tanner, please?”
Ella nodded, and Wink disappeared from view. She stared at the empty place, feeling a part of her heart deflating.
After a deep breath, she pushed her shoulders back and dropped the rag into the bleach bucket. It splashed and sopped water over the sides.
She was going to prove how loyal she was, how good of a friend she was. If Wink was afraid people would think she killed Stan, then Ella would just have to solve his murder. Make that, two murders. Well, one murder and a probable other.
She was going to find out more about the victim and also find out who was on the “Save Twin Hills” committee.
As she gathered lemon squares to take to the recent widow, her mind swirled with questions to ask. Whoever killed Stan was still out there, putting everyone in Keystone in danger—including her friends.
CHAPTER 12
ELLA sneaked a lemon bar from the plate meant for Mrs. Tanner as she traipsed along the trail. She nodded her head and called out a greeting at a couple of people as she passed the Romani camp. Chapman’s conversation with them had obviously failed to get his point across. She’d have to make a second trip to bring them their container of lemon squares and see why they hadn’t left yet.
The conversation with Wink replayed in Ella’s mind, stuck on an endless loop. Wink’s guarded expression, the lines tight with fear.
Ella sighed, the plate growing heavy in her arms. She couldn’t change the past, but hopefully, she could prove her loyalty to Wink by finding Stan’s killer.
Her steps slowed as she neared the brownstone house and detached garage she’d seen Mrs. Tanner cleaning out.
Like most houses in Keystone, the abode appeared quaint and picturesque, complete with a short picket fence and rhododendrons. But that’s where the similarities ended.
Before, Ella had overlooked the overgrown brown grass and the cracked flower pot on the porch holding a dead plant. She stepped onto the askew welcome mat, craning her neck to see inside the dark front window. It didn’t look like anyone was home.
Balancing the plate of goodies with one hand, she rapped her knuckles on the door. Then, she toed the mat into place so it lined up with the front of the house.
She shifted on her feet and waited. She shifted again and began to hum the theme song for the Brady Bunch.
She was just about to leave when she heard muffled footsteps on the other side. The door cracked open, and a pale face stared back at her.
“What do you want?”
Ella’s face twitched between a grimace and smile. She lifted the heavy plate up, hoping the small breeze would pick up the lemony scent and carry it to the widow’s nose.
“Wink thought you might want these. I hope you like lemon squares because if you do, there’s plenty more where this came from. Like, a lot. Like, I’m not sure there’s a single lemon left in the greenhouses.”
The crack in the door widened, and Mrs. Tanner’s point-shaped nose poked out. “Is that for the whole neighborhood?”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” Testing her luck, she added, “Mind if I come in and set these down. It’s getting a bit heavy. I don’t have your—” Her eye flitted down to Lilly’s biceps. “I’m not very in shape.” Ella’s arms had actually begun to twitch, increasing to her need to locate a gym or at the very least, a set of weights.
Mrs. Tanner frowned at Ella but nudged the door aside. After following her into the dining room, Ella set the plate on an old, oak table.
Massaging her arms, she took in the space. The house was dark and cold, neglected and full of secrets.
“I saw you at the meeting,” Mrs. Tanner said. “You’re new here, aren’t you?” The question was more of a statement, unfriendly.
“You must’ve missed the meeting where Mayor Bradford introduced me. My name’s Ella.” Putting her hand out, she waited for the widow to return the gesture. It seemed several breaths before Mrs. Tanner shook it and quickly pulled away.
“Lilly.” Her lips pursed, and her gaze wandered to the door in a not-so-subtle hint for Ella to leave.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Yeah, well… it’s not really a surprise now, is it?”
One of Ella’s eyebrows rose. She shifted her weight on her sneakers, her eyes roving over the dark shelves behind Lilly. Dusty picture frames and a vase sat on one. Most of the photos were of the forest or of the lake.
There was only one of the couple together, standing at a barbecue, a wide space between them. Stan smiled at the camera, but Lilly’s expression was pinched as if she smelled something rotten, most likely Stan. Ella couldn’t help but notice the absence of a wedding photo.
“How long were you two married?”
“Too long.” The air became thick as Lilly stared daggers at Ella. A high-pitched sound whistled from the kitchen. “Excuse me. I have a kettle on.” She pointed at the front door, trying to usher Ella out of the house.
“Do you have a bathroom I could use?”
Lilly’s eyes darkened. “Can’t you hold it? It’s not like it’s that far to town.”
“It’s a bit of a walk back, and I drank an entire pot of coffee. Also—” she pointed at herself “—out of shape, remember?”
“Didn’t I see you running by my place this morning?”
“Heh, did you? Might’ve been me. Did you also see me walking?”
With a heavy sigh, Lilly’s bony finger stabbed at the bathroom door, then she disappeared into the kitchen.
Ella waited until she heard the widow shuffling around before creeping down the hallway. The walls were bare, absent of photos or paint or basically anything cheery. It was as if Lilly had taken interior decorating inspiration from the inside of a prison.
A dark doorway stood at the end of the hall. Ella peered into the bedroom. Gray light broke through a crack in the curtains, falling in a narrow rectangle onto the bed. The comforter was thrown back, revealing a tangle of sheets on one side, the other side perfectly preserved. Her heart went out to the widow.
Figuring she should keep up the full-bladder ruse, Ella slipped into the bathroom before Lilly came to see what was taking her so long. After drying her hands, she glanced back at the closed door then pried open the medicine cabinet.
The shelves inside were full of the usual toiletries: soaps, toothpaste, bandaids, and medicine. Her mouth turned down at the lone toothbrush, and she couldn’t help but notice the lack of a man’s razor.
Stan had sported a clean-shaven face both times she’d seen him
—excluding when she’d seen his body. She’d been more focused on the fact that he wasn’t breathing and less on the state of his facial hair.
Closing the cabinet door, she poked around some more, finding a single washcloth and bath towel and a very moldy shower curtain. The absence of a second bathroom set could’ve been the result of Lilly doing laundry, much like her urge to clean the garage. But the presence of a shower curtain that had enough mold carpeting it to be a second bath mat suggested otherwise.
Another possible explanation surfaced, one that involved a blonde-haired woman with the clipboard.
Someone pounded on the door, giving Ella the actual urge to use the bathroom for real.
“You done in there, yet?”
Ella turned the knob and pulled on the door. It stuck on the uneven floor. With a grunt, she pulled harder, making a wide enough opening to squeeze out.
She patted her stomach. “Wow, Wink’s banana bread is definitely more enjoyable on its way in than out, you know what I mean?”
Lilly’s turned up nose suggested she knew exactly what Ella meant. With not-so-gentle hands, Lilly swept Ella towards the front door.
“Thanks for stopping by, Emma.”
“Ella.”
“Whatever.”
Ella had to remind herself that the woman had just lost her husband. “I’ve been meaning to ask, how was Stan doing with his signatures? Do you have any idea how much support he garnered?”
“How should I know?”
The door loomed ahead. “What did you think of the expansion project?”
Lilly ripped open the door and shot Ella with a frosty glare. “I couldn’t have cared less. What are you, the sheriff?”
Ella pulled in a slow breath. She was never going to get anywhere with Lilly, never going to get more answers, so why not plunge in all the way into the icy waters?
“Where were you the night of the storm?”
Lilly’s pallid skin turned a dangerous pink. “Get out of my house,” she seethed, biting out each word.
The moment Ella’s sneakers touched the faded welcome mat, the door slammed behind her, sending a gust of stale air crawling over her skin.
“Welp, that could’ve gone better.”
Back at the diner, a late lunch rush had gathered as if half the town realized they were hungry at the same time.
Ella jumped from table to table, all the while the discovery that Stan hadn’t been sleeping at home rolled around in the back of her mind. She wondered if it was enough to tell the sheriff or if she needed more. If Stan had, in fact, been staying someplace else, she found it strange that she hadn’t heard about it yet.
When Ella had a moment to breathe, she pulled out her phone and added the blonde-haired woman to her memo, along with Stan’s probably change in address.
What she needed was to talk out the details with someone, throw out theories. She needed another coffee break with Flo and Wink, but since she was on unsure footing with one, she didn’t know when it could happen.
“Excuse me,” a woman with dark brown curls and a handsome face said, “can I get some coffee and a donut, please?” She settled on a stool at the lunch counter, moving with a lithe grace like leaves carried on a breeze.
“Cops and robbers, coming up.” Ella paused. “Or would that be a cop and robber?” She shook her head and went to a display case.
After she placed a maple-glazed donut in front of the woman, she poured coffee into a cup. The comforting aroma hung in the air and reminded Ella of late night study sessions and early morning classes.
“You’re Ella Barton, right?” The woman’s eyes crinkled as she smiled. There was something open about her face, inviting secrets.
Ella nodded, placing cream and sugar on the counter.
To her left at the cash register, a tall man in tattered flannel was attempting to pay Wink with a rainbow trout from the lake. The fish itself didn’t seem to be the problem, but rather the date in which it had been caught was causing both of them to raise their voices and a few customers to pinch their noses
“I was wondering if I could interview you for Keystone Corner?”
“How’s that?” Ella had forgotten about the woman.
“I write for Keystone Corner. It’s just me and one other writer. Just something to keep us sane between kids and husbands. Anyway, we like to do profiles on the new arrivals, and yours is long overdue.”
Her smile widened before she sipped from her coffee. Ella noted her lipstick didn’t smudge.
“Yeah, no. I don’t think anyone wants to read about me.”
“On the contrary, my dear. You are especially of interest. You’re from the twenty-first century, our very first to stay in the village. I think I could fill a whole paper on you, not just a column, what it’s like in the future, what sort of history has taken place, and so on.”
Ella’s eyebrows pinched together, and she leaned into the counter, considering the proposal.
Wink had finally accepted the fish, and the flanneled man was just exiting the diner. The moment the door closed, Wink dropped the fish in the nearby trash. Ella grimaced and made a mental note to take out the garbage as soon as she got a chance.
The woman pulled Ella’s attention back. “What do you say?”
“You know, now that you mention it, other than a few random questions, not many people have asked me about my time period.” What questions she had gotten mostly came from Will, and they tended to focus on technology and gadgets.
The woman nodded, taking another long dip into her coffee. “Tends to happen around here. You’ll see soon enough. People are hungry for knowledge of the outside world but too scared to hear about it sometimes. It reminds them of what they’re missing. But,” she paused for emphasis and to swirl a bit of donut in her cup of sludge, “they do want to know, whether they admit it or not.”
Unsure of what else to say, Ella countered the woman’s insight with an eloquent, “People be crazy.”
She straightened and brushed away bits of lemon square that had stuck to her jeans at some point.
“Sorry, but I need to get back to work.” Her gaze shifted over the woman’s shoulder to an older couple waving their cloth napkins like white flags. They were either surrendering to a band of pirates or trying to get her attention.
“Just think about it.” The woman stood too.
“I didn’t catch your name?”
“Shelly Rossi.” Her grin spread over half her face.
Ella’s eyes popped open as the woman strolled around the lunch counter and let herself into the kitchen. Through the passthrough, Ella saw Shelly kiss her husband on the cheek. Horatio paused behind the stove long enough to return the gesture.
Ella felt her cheeks flush. Some detective she was. Horatio had mentioned a couple of times that his wife worked for the paper.
Grabbing her order pad, she pulled the pencil stuck in her messy bun and went back to work.
When the tables were clean and all but two customers were left, Ella leaned against the refrigerator and eyed the kitchen with a certain level of contempt. It looked like an entire cooking show crew had come and gone.
The lemon squares had been culled and put in the fridge, stuffed into every nook and cranny. The sickly sweet scent hung heavy in the air and made her stomach hurt. Lemons were now her least favorite fruit
During the lull, Horatio invited her over to dinner Monday night, thinking it would be a good opportunity for her to get to know his wife and young boy better.
After she accepted, he slipped out back for his break, leaving Ella and Wink alone in the kitchen. They hadn’t spoken much since that morning, mostly because there hadn’t been a moment to do so. Now, in the empty room, the tension felt palpable.
“How’d it go dropping the squares off at Mrs. Tanner’s?”
Water sloshed inside a glass as Ella ran it under the faucet for a drink, grateful Wink had broken the ice. “About as good as the Alamo went. She kicked me out. But right up until t
hat point, I think she appreciated the gesture.”
Wink turned from putting away a cutting board. “She kicked you out?”
“Right after I asked her what she was doing the night of the storm.”
Wink’s mouth twitched. “You didn’t.”
“That’s not the best part.” Ella leaned her elbows on the island and lowered her voice. “I think he was on the outs with his wife, maybe even having an affair.” She described the little clues that had led her to this conclusion. Like a door had been opened, their friendship was back on track.
“We need to get Flo over here, fill her in.” Ella stood suddenly. “What is it Flo does all day, anyway?”
Wink dismissed the question with a wave. “Mostly chases men around town.”
“Romantically or with a gun in hand, like, ‘I’m going to kill you’ kind of chase?”
“Little bit of both I suppose. Anyway, I’m seeing her soon. We’re going to the salon together.”
“Okay, now I just have more questions, but back to Stan.”
“Yes, he did seem like the hustling type. Can’t say as it would surprise me all that much.” She ran her fingers through her blue bob absently. “Men like that are never content. I dated a few in my youth, before I saw the boy that had been right in front of me the whole time. My Donald.”
Ella didn’t move for fear Wink wouldn’t continue. Mention of her late husband was as rare as Ella baking.
Wink sighed. “I’m really sorry about this morning. And for not trusting you. It was wrong of me.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve realized trust is something earned. I’m working on trusting others. Who am I to expect it doesn’t work both ways?”
“Still, I’d like to make it up to you.” Her eyes gleamed. “I have the perfect idea. You’re coming with us to the beauty parlor.”
“Oh no, Wink. That’s okay. There’s customers—”
Before Ella knew what was happening, Wink had pulled Horatio back inside and hustled Ella out the front door. Ella’s feet made scuff marks over the sidewalk as she resigned herself to her fate.