A Good Day for Chardonnay

by Darynda Jones

  Next, they went to the grocery store, where Mrs. Fairborn only needed toilet paper and Dr Pepper, and would she mind? Then to the hardware supply store where she swore she needed three rolls of electrical tape. It wasn’t until they ended up at the bait shop that Sun began to suspect the woman was leading her on a wild-goose chase, but to what end?

  Sun couldn’t help but wonder if she was afraid to go home. No one would blame her. Several members of the community cleaned the crime scene at her house after forensics finished. They even replaced a couple of broken windows, fixed a leaky faucet, and brought her some individually packaged home-cooked meals.

  But she was still attacked in her home. Her sanctuary invaded. The one place she felt safe had been violated. Sun couldn’t imagine how that felt.

  “This is the very last stop,” she promised.

  “Mrs. Fairborn, is there somewhere else I can take you? You don’t have to go home if you don’t want to.”

  “Oh, no, honey. It’s okay. I just have one more thing to get.”

  She blinked and looked out her windshield. “At The Angry Angler?”

  “Yep.”

  “You going fly-fishing?”

  “Better. Angry fly-fishing. I hear it’s much more productive if you yell at the fish as you’re pulling them in.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Sun said with a snort.

  Sun saw Quincy walking in the back.

  She opened the door and hopped out. “Quince, wait up.”

  He turned. “Hey, boss.” He gestured toward the fishing shop. “Got a call about a disturbance.”

  “Stay here, Mrs. Fairborn.” She locked her doors before heading inside, her palm on her duty weapon.

  Quincy knocked on the back door and tried the knob. “It’s unlocked.”

  She nodded.

  He opened the door and they slipped inside to an empty storeroom. After they headed up front and cleared the floor, they looked at each other. The sign on the locked front door read CLOSED.

  “No one’s here,” Quincy said, right before they heard a crash.

  “Does this place have a basement?” she asked.

  They hurried to a set of stairs beside a bookcase, which were not easily visible or accessible. They drew their duty weapons.

  “Sheriff’s office!” Quincy said. “Show your hands!”

  Sun followed him down a narrow set of stairs into a dark room just as the lights flared to life around them. She was blinded for a few vital seconds. When her vision adjusted, she looked around at a roomful of smiling faces.

  She turned to Quince.

  He turned to her. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “I was about to ask you that same thing.”

  When she scanned the room again, she realized she knew every single person there, including Mrs. Fairborn, whom she’d just locked in her cruiser, and her parents. The same parents she’d just left in Albuquerque.

  “Did you lose her again?” she asked them.

  Her father grinned. “Don’t worry about the peanut. She’s in very good hands.”

  Sun took another sweep and saw Mayor Donna Lomas standing off to the side with her arms crossed over her chest and a satisfied smirk crinkling her mouth.

  “You can put those away,” she said, gesturing toward the guns.

  They holstered their weapons, and Sun said, “Is this what I think it is?” Eleven of Del Sol’s finest in the basement of an angler’s shop. Because where else would they meet?

  “You figured it out,” the mayor said. “Thus, it was time.”

  “You figured what out?” Quincy asked her.

  “That the mayor,” Sun said, sharpening her gaze on her, “is a bona fide, card-carrying member of the Dangerous Daughters.” That was the only explanation as to why Mayor Lomas would be so insistent that Sun figure out who they are. She had an ulterior motive, Sun just didn’t know what it was.

  “They’re real?” he asked.

  “They are. And I think I know why.” She eyed Mrs. Fairborn, the only one sitting in one of many chairs strewn about the beautifully appointed room. “This is about the case Auri stumbled onto.”

  The twinkle in the older woman’s eyes was infectious. “It is. I told you, that girl of yours is clever. How she found that Press boy is beyond me.”

  “The one who tried to kill you?” Quincy asked, his expression filled with horror. Then he frowned at the people standing around, smiling at him like they were part of a cult and he was this year’s sacrifice at the Autumn Harvest Festival. “Would someone fill me in?”

  “Absolutely.” The mayor walked up to him and handed him a coin.

  “Sordid?” He turned it over. “Son.” He looked back at her. “Yeah, this doesn’t clear anything up.”

  “Maybe this will,” Mrs. Fairborn said. She stood, walked over to Sun, and handed her a coin as well.

  While Quincy’s was yellow gold, hers was rose gold and heavily worn, the words almost rubbed off completely. She read aloud, as well. “Daughter.” She turned it over. “Dangerous.” She smiled. “The crown, so to speak.”

  “That it is.” She cackled and pointed to it. “Don’t lose that. They’re irreplaceable. This coin was made in 1937 by a German clockmaker who dabbled in rare coins and designed the official seal for the Royal House of Ezra.”

  Sun’s mouth formed an O.

  Mrs. Fairborn giggled. “Just kidding. About them being irreplaceable, that is. I’ve lost my coin twelve—”

  “Thirteen,” Elaine said.

  “—thirteen times. But it is a pain in the ass to get them replaced. Just sayin’.”

  Sun looked around at what would be called the pillars of the community. Not necessarily those who were on the city council or who were in positions of authority. They were the farmers and the business owners. The custodians and the educators. Even the high school principal was there. And the second love of her life, Royce Womack.

  She shook her head. “I have to admit, I had no idea about the sons.”

  “I’m Salacious,” he said, a wicked grin spreading behind his scruffy beard.

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  One by one they were introduced to the Dangerous Daughters and the Sordid Sons. Daughters like Dastardly and Diabolical and Devilish, a.k.a., her mother. And sons like Savage and Sinful and Scandalous, a.k.a., her father.

  “We’re being inducted,” she said, feeling both humbled and profoundly underqualified.

  These were the sons and daughters of Del Sol. People who were born and raised in the town and hadn’t left for fifteen years like Sun did, though one, Rojas’s tia Darlene, did live in Albuquerque for a few years before coming back into the fold. She was the Daughter Dastardly.

  “If you accept,” her mother said.

  “And if we don’t?” she asked.

  “Well, you’ve already seen our faces, so we’d have to kill you.”

  “If you’re taking Mrs. Fairborn’s seat,” Quincy said, looking at his coin, “whose seat am I taking?”

  She’d wondered that herself.

  Royce dropped his gaze. “Bo Britton, son. Your former lieutenant.”

  Bo, much beloved by the community, had died two weeks before Sun took over as sheriff. Quincy looked at the coin in his hand with a new respect.

  Sun studied hers. “So, there’s always a baker’s dozen at any given time?”

  “Yes,” the mayor said. “Seven women and six men.”

  “And we’re lucky to get that much,” Royce said. “Mrs. Fairborn was very reluctant to let any man have a say in her secret club.”

  Mrs. Fairborn nodded. “The women will always have the final vote.”

  “Then we’re missing one.” Sun counted again.

  “Sinister,” the mayor confirmed. “While you are the reigning queen, so to speak, he would be—”

  “The king?” she asked.

  “More like the prince,” Mrs. Fairborn said. “No one has more power in this group than the queen. He couldn
’t be here today, but he’s already cast his vote.”

  “As we all have,” her dad said.

  An emotion she hadn’t expected threatened to close her throat. She managed to get out two words: “I’m honored.”

  Quincy nodded, unable to speak himself.

  Sun helped Mrs. Fairborn back to her chair and knelt in front of her. “This is a big day for you. Passing on the torch.”

  The woman nodded sadly. “More than fifty years I’ve been running this town. Well, the most important aspects of it.”

  “Why now?”

  “I was waiting for you. Thought you’d never come back. Eventually, we realized we’d have to force your hand.”

  “You were involved with my parents’ election tampering?”

  “Involved? It was my idea.”

  Her parents laughed softly. “It was not her idea,” her mom said.

  “But why me?” she asked. “I’m honored. Don’t get me wrong, but—”

  “A butterfly and a hammer,” the older woman said.

  She and Quincy exchanged a quick glance, then asked simultaneously, “A butterfly and a hammer?”

  She cackled. “You may not remember this, but when you were very young, I found you in the park cradling a pitiful little butterfly in your hands.”

  “King Henry,” she said. She hadn’t thought about him in years. “He was orange and black.”

  “Yes. Poor little guy had tattered wings and couldn’t fly. Some boys were laughing and trying to kick it. And you, in all your five-year-old glory, stormed into the middle of their circle and ran them off. Then you picked up the butterfly, cradled it in your hands, and told me you were taking it to the vet.”

  “I remember. My mom wouldn’t take it to the vet. She said they didn’t treat insects.”

  Mrs. Fairborn nodded. “You were devastated. I’ll never forget the look on your face when your mother told you it was going to die. So you took it home and cared for that poor thing day and night for almost two weeks because you wanted it to feel happy and safe for the rest of its life, no matter how long that would be.”

  “You never told me that story,” Quince said.

  “I’d forgotten about it.”

  “I didn’t,” Mrs. Fairborn said. “Your mother kept me updated. When it died, she was worried she was going to have to get you into grief counseling.”

  Sun smirked. “Figures.”

  “So where does the hammer come in?” Quince asked.

  Mrs. Fairborn practically shimmied with mirth. “When I saw Little Miss Sunshine at the park right after the butterfly’s passing, God rest its soul, she was carrying a hammer.”

  Sun frowned. “I don’t remember this part.”

  “You stopped at the bench where I was sitting, pointed to the boys who’d been cruel to the butterfly, and told me you were going to take out their kneecaps.” She rocked back and clapped her hands, her laughter filling the room, her glee infectious.

  Sun fought a sheepish grin.

  “You almost pulled it off, too. I’d never seen boys run so fast in my life. If not for your mother capturing you mid-swing, your parents would’ve had several lawsuits on their hands.”

  Sun laughed, thinking back, then asked, “So that’s why?”

  The older woman leaned forward. “That was only the beginning. I’ve been watching you, Sunbeam.” She tapped her temple. “You have all the fire and passion I once had. You’re the one I want filling my shoes.”

  Sun took Mrs. Fairborn’s hands into hers. “Thank you.”

  “How did all this get started?” Quincy asked. He brought around a chair for Sun and took one beside them. Everyone else did the same so they could hear the story once more. “The whole Dangerous Daughters thing.”

  “Like Sunny said. It started with the missing persons cases. It’s so odd. It just doesn’t seem like that long ago.”

  Sun leaned on her elbows and listened.

  “Aurora was right. The people who went missing in the late fifties and early sixties, many of them anyway, had stayed with us at the boardinghouse. For almost a decade, travelers and the like just disappeared. Not many, mind you. Maybe one or two a year. Sometimes they’d leave some of their belongings. They’d head out at all hours and we wouldn’t hear about the fact that they never made it to their destinations for weeks. Sometimes months, if at all.”

  Royce brought Mrs. Fairborn a cup of tea and put it on a side table.

  “Thank you, Sheriff.”

  Sun smiled. Lots of people in town still called Royce “Sheriff.” She loved it. If she could co-sheriff with anyone, it would be with that grizzly bear.

  “But it was the Emily Press case that brought it all to the forefront. The papers got wind that she’d stolen a necklace, an old family heirloom, and was headed to Colorado to meet up with her beau when she disappeared.”

  “The necklace Billy Press was after?” Quincy asked.

  “Yes, sir. That’s when I first started to suspect. I found the necklace in the dresser of my husband, Mortimer. He said Miss Press forgot it when she took off, but I knew. Deep down, I knew he was killing those people for what little they had.”

  She took her cup into a shaky hand and sipped to calm herself, a haunted expression on her face. “He killed that sweet girl. He killed them all.”

  “I’m sorry,” Quince said.

  “Me too.” Sun squeezed her hand. “I think this story should be told. The world needs to know who the real killer was.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that. I have that rascally daughter of yours working on it.”

  Uh-oh. Not sure if that was a good thing or a bad one, Sun acquiesced with a nod.

  “Mortimer didn’t expect the firestorm he brought down on us. The family wanted that necklace back like the dickens. And, quite frankly, they were willing to move heaven and earth to get it. They had all kinds of investigators comb through this town and the whole area. We even had gen-you-wine Pinkertons in town.”

  “Wow,” Quincy said. He’d wanted to become a Pinkerton at one point. Allan Pinkerton had been a hero of his since he’d read about how the man saved Lincoln’s life and helped with the Underground Railroad. “But I didn’t think the necklace was worth that much.”

  “According to the family, it wasn’t. Said they wanted it for sentimental reasons.”

  “You didn’t buy it,” Sun said.

  “Not in the least. But my husband got it in his head it was worth a lot of money to them, so he was going to demand a ransom of sorts. In the meantime, the detectives began to realize that more than a handful of people who stayed at our boardinghouse went missing soon after. It did not look good.”

  “That’s when you figured it out?”

  “I confronted Mortimer about the killings before he could send his ransom demand.” She took another sip. “Let’s just say, Billy Press was not the first man to die in my kitchen.”

  Quincy and Sun both sat back in unison.

  “You killed him?” Quincy asked.

  “Yes and no. I told him I was going to tell the sheriff everything and, well, he flat did not want me to. Went to kill me with a toaster. When he grabbed it, I plugged it in real fast and he electrocuted himself.” She shook her head. “I kept telling him to fix that old thing.”

  Sun covered her mouth and cleared her throat. It was horrific and hilarious at once.

  “But with all the detectives running around, and now with Mortimer dead, I was afraid they’d think I was the killer. So, I buried him in the backyard, planted a cherry tree on top, and called it a day.”

  That time Quincy covered his mouth under the guise of deep thinking. He scrunched his brows together and everything.

  Sun agreed. The image of Mrs. Fairborn hurrying to plug in a toaster to electrocute her husband was too much, but she and Quincy were now in one of those surreal situations where they were making an oath to a group of people that usually—but not always—had motivations and loyalties that lined up with the law. And they�
��d taken an oath to uphold said law, so what would happen when that was not the case? When one of those group decisions contradicted with their oath? What would they do then?

  Mrs. Fairborn’s actions were clearly self-defense. But one thing was certain: the next few months would be interesting. Sun had no doubt.

  “As you may have guessed,” Mrs. Fairborn continued, “I couldn’t take it. The guilt was eating me alive. So, about a week after I planted Mortimer, I went to the sheriff, that old bastard Campbell Scott, and confessed everything.” She cackled. “You should have seen the look on his face when I told him.”

  “He didn’t think you could do it?”

  “Oh, no. He knew I had it in me. I’d gone steady with him before I met Mortimer. The problem was, he was having an affair. He’d found himself a young filly on the side and I knew it. When he figured out I knew the truth and he could lose all that shiny money he’d married into, he told me I was mistaken about Mortimer being the killer. Said I was confused. Said I was—my favorite word—hysterical.”

  Ah. One of Sun’s favorite words as well. Not.

  “He told me they’d found the man responsible for the missing people over the years. Said a drifter by the name of Hercules Holmes had one of the missing men’s wallets.”

  “Who was Hercules Holmes?” Quince asked.

  “Just like he said. A drifter in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “But how would a man passing through town be responsible for all of those other people’s deaths over the years? Didn’t the detectives think of that?”

  She shook her head. “They didn’t much care. Once Hercules escaped the jail, their only lead was gone. They had nothing to go on and the family had no way of getting the necklace back. When they found Hercules dead two weeks later, the investigation fizzled.”

  “Did they ever find who killed him?”

  “No. And it’s funny how I was never brought up on charges myself. I guess Campbell figured if I stayed quiet, he’d stay quiet.”

  Sun gave her a dubious grin. “That doesn’t much sound like you.”

  “It doesn’t, does it? By that point, I’d had about enough of men and their handling of things around town. We were getting to be a bit of a tourist town, even back then, and I knew things needed to be handled right and corruption needed to be brought to a minimum, so I brought the Dangerous Daughters to life.”