Jam Up and Jelly Fright

by Donna Walo Clancy

  Ghost was sitting on the top level of the plant stand, enjoying the open window and the fresh air. Greg was helping himself to an apple out of the fruit bowl. Marmalade jumped up to the second level of the plant stand and was batting at her brother.

  “I guess everything’s back to normal,” Tabby sighed.

  “Which means I have to get back to the shop. Thanks for lunch,” Greg said, biting into the apple.

  “That was supposed to be used in my apple butter,” Tabby protested.

  “Do you want me to put it back?” he asked, taking another bite out of it.

  “You’re gross,” she laughed. “Just get out of here and take that chewed up apple with you. I got work to do, and I’m behind schedule.”

  “See you tonight?”

  “Do you want to eat dinner here?” Tabby asked, putting her arms around her hot boyfriend.

  “Depends. What’s for dinner?” he asked, nibbling on her ear.

  “You’ll have to show up to find out, won’t you?” she whispered in his ear.

  “Oh, I am so here,” he said as he pulled her in close to kiss her.

  The ringer on Tabby’s cell went off. She pulled the phone from her back pocket and read the screen over Greg’s shoulder while they kissed. The screen name said Blocked. Her inner gut told her to answer the phone.

  “I have to answer this,” she said to Greg. “Hello.”

  Someone was on the other end. Tabby could hear them breathing.

  “Hello? Who is this?”

  “Help me,” as the line went dead.

  4

  “Who was that?” Greg asked.

  “I don’t know. They whispered, “help me” and the line went dead,” Tabby stated, staring at her phone.

  “Was it a man or a woman?”

  “I couldn’t tell.”

  “Do you recognize the number?”

  “There was no number, it was blocked.”

  Then a sickening thought hit Tabby. What if that was Jen calling her? Should she go to the bookstore after the sheriff told her not to? She had to call him so that he could go and check on Jen. She began dialing.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “I’m calling the sheriff. He needs to go check on Jen. I can’t say it was definitely her, but who else would call me and leave a message like that?”

  “Only half the town of Whipper Will Junction,” Greg mumbled, shaking his head. “Call me when you find out anything.”

  Tabby, even when she was little had always been known for being able to fit the pieces together and coming up with a solution. When Mr. Wells, the town elder disappeared during the summer, and dead bodies were popping up everywhere, Tabby led the way in returning their beloved town leader and identifying those responsible for the murders.

  “Sheriff, where are you?” Tabby inquired the instant he answered his phone. “Are you anywhere near the bookstore?”

  “I’m at the diner having a slice of Judy’s blueberry pie. Why? What’s up?”

  “I just got a phone call. The only thing they said was ‘help me,’ and then the line went dead. The number was blocked. You need to go check on Jen. I can’t go there, please, you have to go check and make sure it wasn’t Jen,” Tabby pleaded, almost in tears.

  “Okay. I’m on my way out the door. I’ll get back to you,” he said, hanging up.

  Tabby went down to the shop and stood looking out the front door. She saw the sheriff disappear in the general vicinity of the bookstore’s front door. It seemed like forever until she saw him again. He hurried across the street and into the building that housed the doctor’s new office. Minutes later he hurried back in the direction of the bookstore.

  When Fink’s realty business closed, Doc Holden decided to rent the building. He was getting up in years and was tired of walking to the second floor above the pharmacy each day for office hours. He wanted a first-floor office for himself and his elderly patients.

  Afraid for her best friend, Tabby wanted to run after the sheriff to see what was going on. She had made a promise and stayed put at the front door. Ten minutes later the sheriff crossed the street with Jen hanging on his arm. She didn’t look good; as a matter of fact, she looked terrible. He looked at Tabby and gave her a slight nod. They walked out of Tabby’s sight and into Doc Holden’s office.

  Twenty minutes later the sheriff came through the front door of Jellies, Jams, and Weddings. Tabby had sent Janice home and was sitting at the wedding table with a cup of coffee. Stan could tell she had been crying.

  “Well? What is wrong with Jen?” Tabby asked, tearing up again.

  “Doc Holden thinks that Jen has a bad case of the flu,” he replied.

  “NO! I don’t buy it. There’s something more than that going on. She doesn’t stop talking to her mom and to me because of the flu,” Tabby insisted. “We have to get her away from Alex.”

  “Jen has been told to stay in bed, and Doc is going to look in on her tonight on his way home. Tabby, you have to listen to me and stay away from the bookstore until I can find out who this Alex character is. Promise me you’ll do that,” he insisted.

  “That means Jen is at his mercy if no one is around to protect her,” Tabby announced defiantly. “I can’t just leave Jen like that. Can’t Doc insist that she be admitted to the hospital with dehydration or something?

  “I’ll talk to him about it. He’s supposed to call me later tonight,” the sheriff replied. “Just stay away from the situation unless I tell you otherwise.”

  “Fine, but I don’t have to like it,” Tabby stated, crossing her arms.

  “I’ll call you later,” he said, going out the door with his coffee in hand.

  At five o’clock Tabby locked up the store. She took the cats upstairs and started to cook supper while waiting for Greg to arrive. The sheriff called shortly after six to tell her that Doc Holden suggested that Jen to go to the hospital when she was at his office, but she refused. He stopped to check in on her at the bookstore on his way home, but Jen was sleeping so he didn’t have a chance to talk to her. Alex had hurried Doc Holden out of the store as fast as he could.

  Tabby had an idea, but she had to discuss it with Greg before she put her plan into action.

  She felt a little better as a solid plan formulated in her mind. She placed a call to Bea. Everything was falling into place; she just had to talk to Greg to finalize things. She was removing the steaks from the grill rack when Greg walked in. She ran over to him and gave him a big kiss.

  “Okay, what do you want?” he asked, eyeing her suspiciously.

  “Who says I want anything?” she replied sweetly.

  “That settles it; a greeting like I just received and that sweet voice, what do you want Miss Moon?”

  “I have a plan, but only you, Bea, and I can know about it,” Tabby stated. “We even have to keep it secret from the sheriff. Absolutely no one else in town can know what we are going to do.”

  “This has to do with Jen, doesn’t it?” Greg assumed.

  “Yes, it does. If anyone else knows they may let it slip to Alex where Jen is,” Tabby insisted. “You and I will be the only ones in town to know where she has disappeared to.”

  “If Bea knows Alex may go after her,” Greg commented.

  “Bea is going to be with Jen taking care of her daughter. I already called her, and she has three weeks of vacation time saved that she can use to disappear,” Tabby said, setting the table.

  “Disappear? Wouldn’t that be kind of obvious if they both disappear at the same time?”

  “Yes, it would. But if no one else in town knows where they went, what would it matter? Tabby replied, setting the food on the table.

  “Obviously, you have this all figured out. I’ll bite… where are we going to hide them?” Greg asked, setting a beer and a wine cooler on the table.

  “In a house that no one would suspect that anyone was staying in; a house that has a big for sale sign on the front lawn,” Tabby answered.

  “My gra
ndmother’s Victorian?” Greg asked surprised. “I never would have thought of that.”

  “Does anyone else know that you own a house in Larsen?” Tabby asked.

  “Only Mr. Wells. I told him I would purchase the house here when I sold the house there.”

  “Is the house in your name?”

  “No, it is listed in my grandmother’s trust name. Her last name is different than mine, so I guess no one would connect the house to me,” Greg agreed. “I could tell my aunt, you know, the one that is a detective in Larsen, that someone is renting the house until it sells. That way, the police won’t think someone is breaking into an unoccupied house.”

  They sat down to eat their supper. While they ate, they discussed how they would get Jen out of Whipper Will Junction. Bea would take the bus and leave on Thursday; her car would be left at home so the plates couldn’t be traced. She would stay at a small motel in Larsen under her maiden name.

  On Friday, Greg and Tabby would take Jen out the back door and put her in a rented car when Alex made his daily run to the bank at noon time. Alex did not know that Tabby still had keys to Jen’s place which would make it easier for them to get her best friend out of harm’s way.

  It was decided that Greg would drive Jen in the rented car and pick up her mother from the hotel on the way to the house. Tabby would be the first-person Alex would confront when Jen disappeared. It would be better if Tabby stayed put in her shop all day and not be seen leaving to go anywhere. Thelma asked for Friday off which meant Tabby would have to stay in the shop and work her shift; it was the perfect cover.

  Greg made trips to Larsen all the time for fresh flower pick-ups. If they went to Larsen on Thursday and left Greg’s flower shop van parked at the flower outlet, he could drop off the rented car and bring the van home with flowers for his shop. No one would be the wiser. They would go to the diner on Wednesday night for supper and tell Bea to leave on Thursday without a word to anyone, not even the owners. They would understand when everything was explained to them later on.

  Greg left right after supper as he had to be at his shop at five in the morning for a flower delivery. Tabby sat at the computer ordering supplies she needed for jelly making. Her mind kept wandering to Jen, and before she realized it, she had punched in too many zeros and ordered two thousand cases of jelly jars instead of two hundred. She decided she better not do any more ordering that night.

  She climbed in bed, but her mind was too active to sleep. Tabby ran the plan over and over in her head searching for any flaws that could backfire and put Jen in danger. It was a solid plan, and Alex would never see it coming. After Jen’s health was restored and she was free from Alex’s hold over her, the sheriff could step in and do what he had to do to press charges against him.

  Tomorrow, after Janice and Thelma were at the store, Tabby would make a trip out to talk to Anthony Capri and check out the old Pelton farmhouse to see what could be done to transform it into a haunted house. His forty-eight hours were up, and Tabby needed to go to the sheriff and tell him about the bones found on the Capri property.

  She finally drifted off to sleep.

  5

  August was almost gone, making way for September and the cooler weather that the autumn brought with it. Tabby was up early, fed her furry roommates, and went down to the shop to make the coffee. She opened the shop at eight, greeting the customers that were waiting to enter. Janice and Thelma came on duty at ten, and Tabby was now free to do what she needed to get done.

  “I’ll be back in a few hours,” she said to Janice as she went out the back door. “If anyone is looking for me, I will be out at the old farmhouse.”

  Pelton Farms was just on the outskirts of town about a mile past where the drive-in used to be. There were acres and acres of cornfields and an old apple orchard on the far end of the property. Apples still grew on the trees, but not in the quantity that they used to.

  Tabby turned up the dirt road that led to the old farmhouse. As she passed the fields, she could see down the perfectly spaced rows of cornstalks, and she wondered just how many bodies were laying under the corn. She passed the old deserted farmhouse and drove on to the new residence that had been built by the Capri family.

  She parked in front of a newly built log cabin. The house was as large as it was beautiful. A matching two-car garage had been built fifty feet from the house. Just past the garage, an oversized hanger that held a harvester, plows, and other various farm equipment stood with its doors open. Tony Capri exited the hanger heading toward the house. Tabby waved.

  “Tabitha how are you,” he asked, extending his hand.

  “I’m good, thank you. What a beautiful house you have,” Tabby commented.

  “My wife designed it. She said we would never leave here, so she wanted the house of her dreams. She was the one who talked me into buying the farm. I had never grown a thing until we moved here,” Tony chuckled. “I learned really fast and had a bumper crop this year.”

  “I have to admit, it was still the best corn around,” Tabby smiled. “You did a great job, even for a newbie.”

  “We have company, Tony?”

  Tabby turned around. A beautiful woman of Italian descent with long black hair, olive skin, and blazing black eyes came down the steps from the house. She walked toward her husband and protectively linked her arm in his as if to tell Tabby he was hers.

  “Isabella, this is Tabitha Moon, the person I was telling you about who is in charge of running the haunted house for the local Halloween celebration. Tabitha, this is my wife, Isabella Capri,” Tony said, making introductions.

  “Please, call me Tabby; the whole town does,” she stated, sticking her hand out to Isabella.

  Tony’s wife looked down at the offered hand and then looked away without accepting the offer of friendship. Tony frowned and was going to say something, but then thought better of it.

  “Lunch will be on the table shortly. I have an appointment in town and won’t be back until four this afternoon,” Isabella said, unlinking her arm and turning for the house.

  “It was nice to meet you,” Tabby said.

  Isabella kept walking without acknowledging Tabby or her comment. She opened the front door and looked back at her husband.

  “Five minutes,” she insisted and disappeared into the house.

  “I must apologize for my wife. She is not a very sociable person, and she trusts no one. I think it was her upbringing that made her like this.”

  “It seems we are down to four minutes to discuss your problem. Have you decided what you are going to do?” Tabby asked.

  “I found a second skull this morning; in another section of the field,” Tony answered. “I hid it in the barn behind the hay bales with the other one.”

  “Did you tell your wife?”

  “No, she doesn’t know. I mean, she knows I found bones, but not the skulls. She’d only laugh at me again,” he said angrily. “You are the only other person who knows about the two skulls.”

  “Are you going to go to the sheriff?”

  “I have to leave for a business trip to Boston this afternoon. I will be back on Saturday and will visit the sheriff then, I promise. Please don’t say anything as Isabella will be by herself while I am gone and I don’t want her in any danger,” Tony pleaded.

  “Anthony, lunch is ready. Now!” his wife yelled from inside the house.

  “Okay, I won’t say anything until then. I am going to check out the old farmhouse if it’s okay with you,” Tabby replied.

  “I gave you the keys so you can be free to come and go as you please,” Tony stated. “I’ll tell Isabella that you will be on the property periodically, working on the haunted house so she won’t worry when she sees a car.”

  “Thanks again for the use of the farmhouse and have a safe trip,” Tabby said, getting in her car.

  Tony watched her drive off and then went into the house. He told his wife that Tabby and some of the locals would be transforming the farmhouse and would b
e on the property here and there. She blew up. Strangers were not welcome in her world even if they were a half mile down the road. She stormed out the front door and drove off toward town. Anthony stood in the door shaking his head.

  He thought that this would be a good move for his wife. Getting her away from her family in Boston seemed like the right thing to do. Instead, it had made her tenser and more irritable. She was the one who found the farm property online and insisted they buy it. He didn’t understand his wife at all and doubted he ever would.

  Tabby watched Isabella speed down the dirt road past the old farmhouse. She wondered where and who she had this so-called appointment with if she was not sociable as Tony said. Five hours was a long time to spend in Whipper Will Junction if you have no friends. Tabby decided it wasn’t her problem and that she only had to deal with Tony regarding the use of the house. Still, she felt bad for Tony as he seemed so nice; nothing like his wife.

  She dug the keys out of her purse and opened the creaky front door. No one had been in the house for over six years. Dust and cobwebs had taken over the house. The furniture was still there, left behind by the family. In the years between when the Peltons died and when the Capris bought the property, the local kids used the old farmhouse for a hangout spot. There was no damage except for a little bit of graffiti that had been painted on the living room wall.

  There were two bedrooms upstairs and a bathroom. A living room, kitchen, and dining room were located on the first floor. A small pantry had been built off the kitchen as well as a half bath. The furniture looked like it had been placed there from another century. Older pieces like wing back chairs with doilies on the arms, an old trestle sewing machine in the living room, a television set with rabbit’s ears, and an older corded telephone gave the space a feeling of being frozen in time. Braided rugs covered the floors in every room.

  The house was perfect for what Tabby needed. Some full-size skeletons, candelabras, plastic rats, and other assorted props they had collected over the years and stored in the public library basement would be spread around the abandoned house. It had to be scary enough to qualify to be a haunted house, but not terrifying because families came through with children. No blood and guts, just scary fun.