“Y’all ready?” he asked Harley, Wilma, and Tina, who stood in the barnyard.
“I guess we’re as ready as we ever gonna be,” Wilma said.
He opened the double doors and stood aside, calling to Floyd. “Bring her on out, Floyd.”
The three women watched as Floyd’s red El Camino idled out of the work shed, its hitch pulling a large flatbed trailer. On the trailer was Alveda’s reconstructed gingerbread house.
Or what was left of it anyway.
With the help of screws and duct tape, Tater and Floyd had patched the many broken pieces back together, then painted the entire thing red. A satellite dish made of aluminum foil was perched on the roof, along with a six-pack carton of beer, being pulled by little plastic reindeer.
It did not stop there.
Seated in the Astroturf yard was a green lawn chair, and in the lawn chair sat Mr. Gumdrop with Miss Sugar Plum on his lap. Mr. Gumdrop had his hand on Miss Sugar Plum’s thigh as he sipped a bottle of beer and she smoked a candy cigarette.
“Can y’all guess what it is?” Tater asked.
“Frankenstein’s House of Sin?” Wilma said.
Tina spoke up next. “It kind of reminds me of that movie—the one Uncle Tater made us watch that one time at Christmas—with that foul-mouthed killer gingerbread man played by Gary Busey.”
“The Gingerdead Man?” Harley said, although she had wished for selective amnesia after she had seen the film.
An offended Tater shook his head. “No. Ain’t none of that. It’s The Shed! Can’t you see it’s The Shed?” He pointed. “Look at the sign on the door yonder.”
Welcome to The Shed
This is a High-Class Establishment.
Advice: 5 cents
Harley smiled at the gloriousness of it. “It’s The Gingershed.”
“What?” Tina said.
Harley smiled again. “A shed by any other name would taste as sweet.”
Tina turned to her. “Hey, ain’t that Shakespeare or somethin’?”
“Or somethin’,” Harley said.
“It’s our Christmas float,” Floyd said with glee. “For the parade.”
Harley could sense Aunt Wilma was about to grab her broom. “You mean to tell me y’all are gonna put that crazy thing in the parade?”
“Not only are we puttin’ it in the parade,” Tater said, “we’re enterin’ it in the contest.”
“I swear, I’m gonna have to move outta town,” Wilma said.
Floyd stuck his head out the driver’s side window. “We got little party favors to throw to the crowd, too.”
Tater held out his hand, showing them a container of Skoal chewing tobacco and a packet of Willy Wonka’s Fun Dip. A piece of string attached the two items, along with a note that read:
So the Whole Family Can Dip Together
“But you ain’t seen the best part yet,” Tater said. “Floyd, hit the switch.”
As Floyd fiddled with a remote control in the El Camino, Tater turned to them and said, “Now, we ain’t quite worked out all the technical glitches just yet, but we should be good by tonight.”
Holiday music boomed from little speakers attached to the gingerbread house. Rows upon rows of colored lights lit up the roof, the house’s sides, and its door.
“Looks like the Griswold house in Christmas Vacation,” Tina said.
On the roof, the tinfoil satellite dish danced, and Santa’s beer carton sleigh slid up and down the roof’s shingles, pulled by the little plastic reindeer.
“I consider this my Magnum P.I.,” Tater said.
“Magnum P.I.?” Tina said.
“Magnum opus,” Harley whispered to her.
“Oh.”
“Turn up the juice!” Tater said to Floyd.
Floyd did so. The music boomed louder, Santa’s little reindeer pulled harder, and the satellite nearly spun from the roof. Even the lights twinkled fast enough to induce a seizure.
BOOM!
Fire sparked on the roof, shorting out the lights, and the music. Santa’s beer sled caught fire, along with the satellite dish, igniting the roof in an inferno.
The barnyard smelled like a bakery.
A burning bakery.
“Get the fire extinguisher!” Wilma said.
Tater rushed to The Shed, and returned, spraying a white cloud of chemicals on the house. He stood back and surveyed the charred remains. Harley thought he might cry.
The house’s sides were charred black and a huge hole gaped from the roof.
“What are we gonna do now?” Tater said. His voice was laced with anguish. “We ain’t got no backup plan, and the parade starts tonight.”
“Well, I guess you better get to figurin’ then,” Wilma said. Although Harley could tell she was secretly pleased by the turn of events.
“We worked so hard,” Floyd said. He surveyed the damage from the El Camino’s rearview mirror. “It was so purdy.”
Harley felt sorry for Tater and Floyd, and she hoped they would be able to come up with a last-minute replacement for the float. However, she would not be there to see it or help with it. She needed to get to the store. There were people she needed to visit.
63
Harley’s Temptation
When Harley and Matilda arrived at Smoky Mountain Spirits an hour later, pedestrians were gathered on Main Street in anticipation of the Small Town Christmas Festival.
With the stores still closed and the holiday music not wakened, they milled about on the sidewalks, chatting in muffled conversations as they sipped coffee from insulated cups. Further down the street, a small crowd huddled outside Tina’s bakeshop, waiting for her to unlock the doors, welcome them inside, and treat them to her morning selection of breakfast pastries.
Harley parked her truck behind Smoky Mountain Spirits, and she and Matilda entered the back room, where she rested a case of winter cider on the prep table. The cider, a combination of Tennessee whiskey, apple cider, and spices, she would warm in an electric carafe, then place it stationed on a table in the store’s center, surrounded by glass mugs. For garnish, she arranged cinnamon sticks in a silver cup and placed them alongside the carafe.
With everything settled, she flipped on the lights and the store came to life: the colored lights in the storefront window reflected on the copper stills, the garland wove in sparkling rows along the bar and liquor shelves, and clear lights and glass ornaments twinkled from the Christmas tree stationed in the room’s center.
As a final touch, she made a crackling fire in the potbellied stove, not disturbing Matilda who had collapsed beside it in her elf costume. She returned to the back room where she turned on the sound system, smiling as the Blackberry Pickers lilted bluegrass holiday songs throughout the store.
She tried calling M.R. Designs once more, and got the answering machine. She left another message, took a seat at the bar, and opened her leather notebook across the counter. With the store still quiet, this proved an ideal time to work on new recipes. She put pencil to paper, and was midway through a New Year’s Eve-inspired cocktail when she detected movement outside the storefront window.
She looked up to find Eric Winston beneath the outside awning. A black wool coat covered his dress shirt and slacks, and he peered through the storefront window as a child might during the holidays, admiring an arrangement of toys. When he saw her through the window, his handsome face lit up.
She motioned for him to come inside, and when he had shut the door behind him, he smiled and said, “Ah, there she is. The one and only. Just who I came to see.”
Harley could not help but return his smile. He had looked so adorable as he stood there, admiring her display of antique bottles, stills, holly, and berries. And there was something about his expressions that always transfixed her, his kind, inquisitive eyes that peered from an incredibly handsome face.
“Writing some recipes?” He examined the notecards as they lay on the bar. “Anything for me?”
“Maybe,” she said. “That
is if you’ve got something for me.”
“Ha!” he said with a laugh. “I know what you’re interested in. Information.”
“You know me well.”
He inclined his head as he stood over her. “And how lucky I am.”
He greeted Matilda who lay by the potbellied stove, then ventured to the bar where he took a seat beside Harley.
“Anything to drink?” she asked.
“Oh—no—um, I’m on break. Thanks though.”
Harley decided to get straight to the point. One of the ways she dealt with her weakness for Eric was to treat their interactions in a businesslike manner. It deflected his charm, and helped her separate her feelings from the more important matters at hand, namely Jennifer Williams’s murder and the suspected drugs in Beau’s decanter.
“Beau’s decanter?”
He gave a single nod and rested his elbows on the bar top. “I’m sending it off for testing, but I thought maybe you could tell me some of the symptoms he had. Maybe I could give you an educated guess in the meantime.”
Harley considered. “Well, I didn’t smell or taste anything that night.”
“Oh … ,” he said with raised eyebrows. “I didn’t know you’d had some, too.”
“I did. That night. In Beau’s bedroom.”
His eyebrows fell back into their normal position, and his pleasant expression sunk into a grimace. “I didn’t know you all were, um …” He cleared his throat. “Intimate.”
“We’re not … I mean, not physically intimate … but he is a good friend.”
“Ah.” The grimace on his face waned at bit, and he studied her for a moment. His mind seemed to ponder her relationship with Beau and its implications.
If Harley were not mistaken, she thought he might be jealous, not of a physical intimacy—he seemed to believe her on that point—but of the emotional dimension. It seemed to her he was disappointed she allowed Beau to get close to her when she would not allow him the same privilege. What he did not understand was that the boundaries she set for him, and not for Beau, were because she felt romantically for him in a way she did not feel for Beau. That was the overarching point.
“And then,” she said, steering the conversation back on point, “I remember getting dizzy, and then … and then well, nothing. I can’t really remember anything else after that.”
“Sounds like it might’ve been GHB,” he said.
When her expression relayed no knowledge of the term, he said, “Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid. Known on the street as liquid ecstasy. It’s used in a lot of clubs—teenage raves. Colorless, mostly tasteless. Maybe just a slightly salty flavor. Most people don’t even know they’ve had it.”
He repositioned himself on the bar stool. “It lowers inhibitions, makes a person more passive, open to suggestion … drowsiness, mental confusion—”
“Hallucinations?”
“It could in larger amounts—especially if mixed with alcohol—have some mind-altering effects. Then, when people wake up, they don’t remember anything about the time they were out.”
Harley leaned against the bar, reviewed the various symptoms, and decided they lined up perfectly with how she felt that night. Someone had wanted Beau unconscious for a given amount of time. Why? Her next question, naturally, was who would have put the drug into his whiskey.
“How easy is it to get?”
“Very. Easy to manufacture, cheap, readily available.”
She slumped against the bar. She thought if it had been a very expensive drug, hard to attain, that would have narrowed the suspect or suspects down to someone in Briarwood. They had money, power, and connections. They had access to things, in this case illegal substances, most did not have the money or connections to buy. But this was a common, if illegal, drug. Anyone could have bought it, she realized, and it pointed no fingers in any one direction.
“Jennifer’s murder,” she said. She pivoted her body back toward him. “Was there anything else you picked up on at the crime scene?”
He considered. “Well, her body was moved. That’s for sure.”
Harley straightened with a start. “Moved?”
“I won’t go into all of the gory details of how I came to that conclusion, but, yes, she didn’t die where we found her. She was moved afterward.”
“From where do you think?”
“Don’t know exactly. But it looks like from another location in the park.”
“Was she carried?”
“Dragged.”
“Oh.”
“And there’s really only one conclusion I can make about the killer’s reasoning.”
Harley followed his line of thought. “That they didn’t want her body found in that particular location … because that particular location points the finger to something greater. Something they didn’t want us to find out or draw our attention to.”
“Right.”
Then to her surprise, he inclined his body toward hers, so their hands, then their knees nearly touched. His eyes searched her face, and his voice was soft and thoughtful. “Harley, you …”
Then he drew his hand toward her hair, and before she could help it, a whimper escaped her lips.
64
Aunt Wilma, the Wise
“You’ve got something in your hair,” Eric said.
“Huh?” Harley was thrown back into the real world.
Eric pulled a white spherical object from her hair and held it in his palm.
It was a piece of Miss Sugar Plum’s candy cigarette.
Oh, I’m such an idiot!
The shop bell rang, and Aunt Wilma blew through the door. Harley, though startled and ashamed, had never been so happy to see her great-aunt in her entire life.
“Aunt Wilma?”
If Aunt Wilma had witnessed what had just passed between Harley and Eric, she did not show it. She trounced in as she always did in her hot pink puffer coat and matching snow boots. The tasseled pompoms danced with her feet.
“I reckon this old weather’s finally made up its mind, ain’t it?” she said. “Cold, cold, cold. Ain’t gettin’ no warmer.” She eyed Eric on the bar stool. “Eric, you ain’t got nothin’ warmer than that ol’ thin coat to wear? You need you some down.”
He smiled at her. “I’m afraid not, Aunt Wilma. Not that’ll go with my shirt and tie anyway.”
She shook her head. “I swear, I don’t see why doctors has got to wear shirts and ties at the hospital. Seems like a messy kind of business if you ask me.”
Eric laughed. “And if you ask me, I wish Wilma True was my boss.”
Wilma’s face lit up. “You know, I considered goin’ into the medical profession a time or two. I tell ya, I’ve saved many a friend from some grievous elements by readin’ the internet.”
“I’m sure,” Eric said, playing along.
There was also many a time when Aunt Wilma had been convinced of her certain and imminent death after self-diagnosing on the internet.
Eric rose from the bar stool. “Well, speaking of work, I better head back.” He looked at Harley, a bit of an odd expression on his face, one she could not read. “Give me a call, okay,” he said, “if you think of anything else.”
“I will.” Her words were barely audible.
She watched him as he passed by Aunt Wilma, headed out the door, and closed it behind him.
Before she had time to mentally upbraid herself for what happened, Wilma did it for her.
“Now, what did you think you was doin’ just then?”
Harley moved around the bar and fell against the counter. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
“Well, you was tryin’ to do somethin’ I can tell you that. I didn’t fall off no turnip truck yester-dee. I seen you through the door. Leanin’ in all close, givin’ him the googly eyes.”
“I … I didn’t mean for it to happen … almost happen.”
“He’s got him a girlfriend, young’un, get real.”
Harley buried her face in her hands. “I know he
does, Aunt Wilma. I know. And I feel horrible. You know that’s not like me.”
“It ain’t.” Wilma took a seat next to Harley and rested her hand on her shoulder. “Now, I ain’t sayin’ that your feelings for Eric is wrong or nothin’. No, darlin’, I reckon you can’t help ’em. But you can help how you act on ’em.”
“I’m trying.”
“I know you is.”
When Harley kept her face buried in her hands, Wilma wrapped her arms around her. “Oh, how he done cast a big ol’ spell on you, hadn’t he? Like nothin’ I ever seen.”
Harley released a sigh and shook her head. “I’ve tried to stay away from him, you know I have. But somehow he always comes around, and it stirs up all of these feelings inside of me. Every single time.”
She looked up at Aunt Wilma, and she could feel the wrinkle in her forehead. “And I know he doesn’t really care for me. Not really. Not in that way. Not like he does for Clarissa. I mean, I’ve seen her. You’ve seen her. She’s amazing. Everything every man would ever dream of. I could never compete with that, you know that and you know me, too … I don’t want to.” She squeezed her hands together on the bar. “And even—even if he were single, even if he did like me back, his father would never approve.”
“Oh, ol’ Peter Winston ain’t nothin’ but a snob. Ain’t never been nothin’ but an ol’ snob. Thinks a person’s got to be educated and rich to be somethin’ in life … even though you’re smarter than all of ’em put together.”
Wilma sat in thought for a moment. “Now, I know you think I’m just some silly ol’ woman, and I know you think I’m ridiculous, and heck, I probably am—I know I am—but I pick up on a whole lot more than y’all give me credit for. And I’m not sayin’ that I know that boy’s feelings or what he’s up to, but I do know one thing. That unless you keep away from him—at least until he’s got his business sorted out—you’re gonna be gettin’ hurt.”
And Harley knew she was right.
Wilma moved behind the bar and placed her purse beneath it. “You ready to take your break?”
The Ghosts of Notchey Creek Page 21