by Tess Rothery
Many hours later, after Taylor and Hudson had spoken with the deputies, they sat in the quiet, dark dining room of Comfort’s fanciest restaurant—Berry Noir—a little establishment located at a vineyard just outside of town. They didn’t want to talk about the murder they had just seen, but they were only human.
“What do you think Mrs. Sylvester meant when she said Leon was her boy?” Taylor asked, twirling angel hair noodles on her fork.
“That he was her boy?” Hudson sipped the glass of Pinot Noir that the vineyard was known for and frowned.
“But what did she mean? He was way too young to be her son. He had to be our age, right? And she’s ninety-two.”
“First of all, he was at least thirty-five. But maybe he was her grandson?”
Taylor wrinkled her nose at her slightly younger boyfriend. To her, thirty and thirty-five seemed about the same age. “Probably.” Taylor stabbed a broccoli floret and considered it. The way she shushed them while he was talking had seemed so possessive. Maybe he was a grandson she had raised. “Do you know the family at all?”
“I’ve met her before. And Leon. I do some handyman work there as needed.”
“What was he like?”
“Pretty funny. One of those guys that makes you laugh without even trying.”
“Was being chaplain his only job? Seems like a volunteer gig.”
“Wouldn’t know. I’m not Methodist.”
The Methodist church ran the old folk’s home, and since Taylor wasn’t Methodist either, the inner workings of their staff stuff was a mystery to her as well.
As was Hudson.
They’d been dating now for over a year, but not exclusively. That was on her. She’d been given very good advice to give it a year before making major life changes after a significant loss.
Considering her mother had died, she’d moved home to Comfort, and her four-year relationship had ended all in the same week. She qualified for the slow path.
Nonetheless, Hudson had been there for her, pretty much on-call, whether she needed help with a flat tire or someone to go to tea with at the old folk’s home. Not to say there hadn’t been sparks and romance and fun. There had been. Good fun.
But she’d seen other men, here and there. Her friend, John Hancock, who was in banking, was always up for a night on the town or often had tickets to events he needed a plus one for. She liked their nights out. They were just friends and they both knew it, even if everything they did felt like a date.
And then there was Reg, her friend, the sheriff’s deputy. They’d gone out a few times, but she’d kept it casual. Still, she liked him and not just because he’d helped her catch a killer last winter.
She’d never been the kind of girl to say, “I’m not a girl’s girl. I like the company of boys better.” But she was beginning to sympathize with those kinds of girls. The company of attractive, attentive, interesting men was addictive.
She found herself staring at Hudson’s strong face with the scruffy five o’ clock shadow and the crinkles around his eyes. Hudson was four years younger than her but had the kind of face that had looked twenty-five since he was in high school. That and his broad shoulders, muscled arms from all that construction work he did....
Taylor quickly found herself forgetting about the thing with Leon at the place…
“Hello, did I lose you?” Hudson asked with a laugh.
“Yes, but only because you are literally the most attractive man I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
He waved his hand, “Waiter? Check, please.”
She laughed and closed her eyes. “What a night, right?”
“Want to go back to my place?”
“Yes.” In fact, at just this moment, nothing sounded better. She’d had enough of murder in the last year-and-a-half. Spending a night with this guy sounded much better than going home, barring her bedroom door with a dresser, and letting the PTSD that had come from a few bad encounters with killers have its way with her for the evening.
Her phone buzzed, and though she could have ignored it, she lived in a constant state of alert concerning her sister and her grandfather.
“Have to talk. Please.” The number wasn’t in her contacts but scrolling back a few messages, she realized it was Belle’s friend, Dayton.
“Tomorrow” Taylor’s reply was quick.
“tonight please”
She looked up at Hudson with a frown. “I want to go home with you more than I’ve wanted to go anywhere ever, including Disneyland.”
“But?”
“But there’s a scared teen who might have witnessed the murder who needs to talk.”
“Taylor…” He lowered his voice and his eyelids, a winning combination in her book, “that teen did witness a murder.”
She chewed her bottom lip and sent another text. “We can talk tomorrow, right?” The phone buzzed again.
“Please, Taylor? I’m scared.”
She held the phone up for Hudson.
“You’ve got to go. I understand.” He took his last bite of steak.
She replied to the text. “Where can we talk?”
“flour sax?”
“I guess I’m headed back to the shop.” Taylor scrunched her mouth, not excited about it.
“Can I come?”
Her heart lifted a little. “Yes, please!” If he was willing to stick around through a few minutes of comforting a scared kid, there was still hope for tonight.
Dayton met them at the back door of the shop. They slunk in, hushed and shivering, though the June night was still dusky and far from cold.
Taylor flipped the lights on at the back of her shop and filled a paper cup with water from the water cooler. “Drink this, Dayton, and sit.” She put her hand on the back of Grandpa Ernie’s threadbare corduroy recliner. It was always empty these days as he stayed home with her cousin, Ellery, who was basically his day nurse.
Ellery had been accepted into nursing school for the fall, which was another reason Grandpa Ernie needed to relocate sooner rather than later.
Dayton sat.
A rumbling noise upstairs, like a rolling chair over wood floors, rattled the ceiling. Taylor grimaced.
Hudson gave her a “chins up” kind of smile, though Taylor had a feeling he was as pleased as she was by the noise.
The door to the upstairs apartment creaked open, and Clay Seldon pattered down the steps. “Having a party without me?”
Clay had moved in over the winter. Just for a couple of weeks to get himself together. It wasn’t supposed to be permanent. Taylor hadn’t wanted her ex-boyfriend, the man who had been her partner of four years, living permanently above her business.
Not long after he moved in, he had convinced her to let him be her bookkeeper too. To pay her back for the free rent.
He ended up taking so much work off her plate she put him on the payroll in addition to the free housing.
All of this rolled around in her brain as she stared at the man she used to love, and the affable half-grin settled comfortably into his friendly face. His flannel jammie pants and sock feet looking every bit at home here as they had in her condo when he had moved in there, “just for a few weeks,” so many years ago.
“Hudson.” He smiled up at the much taller man.
“Clay.” Hudson smiled, the confident look of a man who isn’t threatened.
“Sorry, Clay, do you mind? Dayton and I need some privacy.” Taylor looked to the stairs he had just come down.
“Sure, I don’t mind. Come on up, Hudson. I’ve got beer.”
“I was planning on staying here.”
“I think we need to talk alone.” Dayton fidgeted, fingers wrapped in the long sleeves of a thin, plaid, flannel shirt.
“Got it. No biggie. I’ll take a beer with Clay. I’m just upstairs.” Hudson leaned in for a kiss.
The men retreated, leaving her with one of her sister’s oldest friends.
She pulled one of the shop’s slipper chairs beside the recliner. “What’s
worrying you?”
Dayton leaned forward and spoke in a quiet, dramatically low voice. “I was in the kitchen when Chef Joey carried the cake out. Me and a couple of other servers.”
Taylor waited.
“Two girls left as soon as they finished the stuff they were doing, wiping counters, I think, but I stayed behind for a minute because I had a text from Cooper.”
Cooper was the third amigo in the Belle-Dayton-Cooper triangle.
“I was heading out just when Leon got stabbed.”
Taylor’s breath caught in her throat. “Wait, did you see who did it?”
Dayton’s mouth scrunched and eyebrows went up. “Maybe?”
“What did you see?”
There was a long pause as Dayton sorted out what needed to be said. “Right after Chef Joey and some of the guys set the cake on the table, I saw a person with dark hair and a dark suit jacket standing behind Leon, maybe even taking a step toward him. Whoever it was moved to the side, away from Leon, while Joey was talking. Because Joey was talking, I was distracted, but when Leon started to like, fall over, the person in the jacket was gone.”
“What do you mean, ‘person?’ Man or woman?”
“I don’t know.”
Taylor narrowed her eyes. Was this more of the Generation Z’s disinterest in traditional gender?
“I swear! If the person in the jacket was a man, he was a shorter man with sloping shoulders. If it was a woman, it was an average height woman with a very short haircut and a suit also cut for a man. You see what I mean? The person wasn’t thin, maybe a little overweight? It was hard to say.”
“Could have been a disguise.” Taylor drummed her fingers on her knee. She thought if she had been the one to see the mysterious stranger, she would have known if it was a man or a woman, but then, she was still stumped by Dayton.
With a tall, slim, boney figure, small chin but prominent nose, Dayton could easily have been a young man with a baby face or a young lady with the kind of face that other women called “handsome.”
“If I was planning on stabbing someone in broad daylight, I’d have worn a disguise.” Dayton’s words came out stiff and defensive.
“Me too.” Taylor wanted to give the kid words of comfort, but she didn’t have any. She still woke up at night clutching a sweat-soaked pillow because the woman who had killed her mother had attacked her too.
The one time she had discussed it with Hudson, he had been quick to suggest counseling. She didn’t disdain counseling. It had been great for Belle after their mom had died. But she didn’t have time. That was the main thing. She just didn’t have time.
But it still kept her up at night so she felt like the last person who should be telling Dayton how to get over the fear of murderers. “I assume you told the cops everything.”
“Yeah, I did.” There was a quiver to Dayton’s voice that tugged Taylor’s heart.
She had to do something, didn’t she?
“But, hon, why do you feel so scared?”
“I think the person saw me.”
Taylor ran the scenario through her head as it had been relayed, both to keep herself focused on Dayton’s needs and to try and see if the fear was legitimate. “When? Wasn’t that person’s back to you the whole time?”
“There was a moment right when I first noticed her or him, when the face was turned.” Dayton turned in profile. “Like this, and then the person paused and turned away, like they knew they had been seen. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, it does. If the killer thought they were being watched before they’d stabbed Leon, then they wouldn’t have done it. This had to be just seconds after the act.” Taylor shouldn’t have said it out loud. Dayton wavered and looked ready to faint.
“So, he killed Leon seconds before I saw him…or her?”
“Maybe,” Taylor nodded. “But you told the cops this, right?”
Dayton nodded.
“It’s going to be okay.” Taylor reached out to give a hand squeeze or something of comfort, but Dayton was curled up, arms tucked in, legs crossed.
“Can I stay with you?”
“Your parents won’t like that.”
“Please? I’m afraid to stay alone.” The words seemed to cost something. The quiver almost broke to a sob.
“Dayton, Dayton…” Taylor reached out again, this time resting her hand on Dayton’s shoulder. “You can stay with me any time at all, ever. Whenever for whatever reason. I just thought it might make things hard for you at home with your folks.”
“My folks are gone. They’re spending the month in Montreal with Dad’s cousins. They’re supposed to come home in time for me to leave for boot camp, but I’m not going.” The frown on Dayton’s face looked particularly feminine. “I’ve never wanted to go into the military. That’s all Dad.”
“I really don’t want you to stay alone. Absolutely come home with me, but…I mean…it’s just me and Grandpa Ernie and Belle. Maybe you’d be safer at Cooper’s. His dad’s a big guy.”
Dayton picked at some fuzz on the arm of the recliner. “Yeah. I guess.”
“But not tonight. At least tonight you’re staying with me. And I can call my cop friend too. We can talk this over with him and see how to keep you safe.” Even with Hudson upstairs, the idea of a long chat with Reg made her heart flutter just a little.
She thought briefly that something was really wrong with her as a person but dismissed it. Now was not the time to unpack her troubled heart. Now was the time to be surrogate mom to a scared teen.
She sent Hudson a quick text, and he and Clay hustled downstairs together.
“Tay, if you need anything, I can come over tonight.” Clay stood with his feet wide apart and arms crossed over his puffed-out chest. He had never been the biggest man, but he had recently taken up weightlifting and seemed to resemble a tiny rooster next to a stallion, standing like that next to Hudson.
“Thanks, Clay. That’s a nice thought, but Hudson already had plans to come home with me.”
Clay’s face reddened.
Hudson smiled.
Dayton seemed unmoved by the miniature soap opera playing out in Flour Sax Quilt Shop.
Chapter Three
Dayton went to Belle’s room and Hudson took the couch. Taylor didn’t offer her bed, and he didn’t ask. The mood just wasn’t right for that. Besides, they all felt safer with him down by the front door.
Taylor couldn’t fall asleep and found herself digging around Etsy looking for embroidered handkerchiefs.
She could quilt them together for a wall hanging.
It would make a great few episodes of the YouTube show she had inherited with the business.
Taylor had been hard-pressed to find interesting projects her mom hadn’t already done, but this was one.
Taylor found thirty-two handkerchiefs. They weren’t necessarily cheap, but she needed them, right? She fell asleep with the laptop open next to her on the bed. It might have been good for her if she had kicked it off the bed in the night and it had broken into a million pieces, but she could shop on her phone, too, and anyway, Taylor would probably just use that as a reason to shop for a new computer and get a baker’s dozen delivered to the house.
It was early when Taylor woke, bird song sifting through her bedroom window.
She hadn’t opened her bedroom window.
She clenched her eyes shut and pulled her blanket to her chin and tried to do a round of circular breathing.
She wanted to think she had opened her window the day before, but she never did anymore. She only and always wanted everything in her room locked up tight before she closed her eyes.
The little breeze that carried the hectic song of the starling into the room was evidence enough someone else had been there. Or still was.
She peeled her eyes open again, one at a time. If a murderer had slunk in here, laying still with her eyes closed wasn’t going to keep her alive.
She took three more deep breaths and let them out.
> “Hey.”
Her heart lunged to her throat. Taylor yanked the blanket fully over her head and screamed.
Feet thudded up the stairs, fast and loud
Her door burst opened smashing the wall.
“What’s wrong?” Hudson leapt across the room and landed on her bed.
Shortly before Hudson landed with a thud on her bed, Taylor had opened her eyes and saw Belle, slouched against her closet door with the windmill throw quilt draped over her knees.
“When I got home last night, there was a stranger in my bed.” Belle’s voice was that of a disappointed schoolteacher.
Taylor wasn’t breathing well, so she didn’t answer.
Hudson pulled Taylor to a sitting position and put his arm around her. “It’s just Dayton.”
“Why is Dayton in my bed?”
Taylor’s voice found its way out of her mouth and asked, “What time did you get home last night?”
“About an hour ago.”
Levi.
Taylor didn’t say his name out loud.
She hated that guy.
Weird, overly smart, early college acceptance kid who kept her weird, overly smart, early college acceptance sister out all hours of the night.
Legal adult or not, Taylor didn’t approve of this particular teenager spending whole nights with boys. Because of sex. Taylor was a hypocrite, maybe, but Belle was a baby. Her baby sister, anyway.
Thoughts whirled, like they do when your blood is pumping to the rhythm of panic, but Taylor managed to hold her tongue.
“Why is Dayton in my bed?” Belle repeated the question as she folded the quilt and set it beside her.
“Because of the murder.” Taylor answered in a firmer, more secure voice, though she couldn’t say much more than just that.
“Ah. Got it.” Belle rose from her seated position and left.
Got it?
She was so blasé about murder.
Hudson rubbed her back. “You okay?”
Taylor shook her head, but then nodded yes. “From five-thirty in the morning till dark, I’m great. It’s just…the other hours that are hard.” Taylor glanced at her clock. Five-fifteen. Belle’s timing was cursed. “I guess she opened the window when she got here.”