Annie left Harry’s and drove down the hill into town. She soon realized that when the residents referred to “downtown Harmony,” it was their version of local humor. The main street was about three blocks long, running parallel to and facing the railroad tracks. Only one intersection merited a four-way stop. On one side of the tracks was a row of storefronts. Opposite the tracks was a huge loading platform and a fruit canning plant.
Still, the town had all the basic necessities—one bank, one gas station, a tavern, a beauty parlor—and a few stores that appeared neither necessary nor profitable, making Annie wonder how they could compete with the shopping mall in Yakima.
Annie found Edna’s cafe, the Apple Blossom Inn, in the middle of the third block. The building was old, with peeling red paint, but the window boxes filled with yellow mums and white petunias were well tended and inviting.
Seeing a pay phone across the street from the cafe, Annie decided to check in with her office before searching out the local gossip. As briefly as possible, she filled Val O’Hara in on what had happened, and explained that she would be staying over for a few days, at least until she knew Taylor was going to be all right.
“Do you think she took the pills out of guilt?” Val asked after hearing the whole story.
“I’m not sure. I haven’t had a chance to speak with Taylor yet, but there are some rumors about Steve abusing her that I want to follow up on. If he had been playing mind games with her, she might have felt guilty even if it was self-defense.”
“The poor dear. It sounds like a horrid experience. You think they’ll bring charges against her?”
Annie paused while a loud truck from the cannery rolled by. “That’s my guess. The detective seemed like the type who will want easy answers, and the easy answer would be to prosecute Taylor for murder, regardless of what Steve may have put her through.”
“Well, you take your time, dear, and do what you have to for your friend. Things are under control here.”
Before hanging up, Annie asked Val to prepare a retainer agreement for Taylor’s signature, and some releases for medical and financial records, and fax them to a copy center in Yakima near the hospital.
Inside the cafe, Annie was met with the mingling aromas of freshly baked pie and simmering soup. Even though it was only about eleven, she was starting to get a little hungry for something nutritious, having had nothing but a bear claw with Galen, and a couple of cookies at Harry’s.
The tiny room held four tables. Only one was occupied. Annie saw Seth Longacre, the highway patrolman she had met at the Wine Gala, at a table in the window where he was busy attacking a plate of fried chicken and mashed potatoes.
“Annie, hi. I didn’t expect to see you up and about after last night.”
“Thanks for getting Taylor to the hospital.”
“Hey, part of my job. Have you heard how she’s doing this morning?”
“Not yet. I called the hospital, but they said they wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone. I’ll be going there in a little while. Listen, Seth, the reason I stopped by, I’m trying to find out a little bit more about what may have been going on between Taylor and Steve. Harry Braithwaite suggested I talk to Edna Hinkel. Is she here?”
“Sure, I’ll introduce you.” He waved to a middle-aged woman behind the counter. She saw him and walked slowly over to the table, favoring an arthritic hip.
“Edna, have you met Annie MacPherson? She’s that lawyer friend of Taylor’s from Seattle. Annie, Edna Hinkel’s the best baker in the Yakima Valley—if not the universe.”
“I pay him plenty to say those things,” said Edna, smiling. Up close, Annie could see that the woman had to be closer to seventy-five than to fifty. Soft russet hair curled around a moon shaped face that had more lines and crevices than a dry riverbed, but her bright blue eyes belonged to a girl of twenty.
“Galen Rockwell brought over some pastries this morning. Were those yours?”
“They sure were, hon. Hope you had a bear claw. I consider them my personal best. Only bake ’em on Wednesdays.”
“I did, and it was wonderful. I’ll be sure to stop in and get some extras when I’m heading back to Seattle.”
“You’d better. Nobody in the big city bakes like our Edna,” said Seth, shoving a mouthful of mashed potatoes into his mouth.
“Can I get you something, dear, before this overgrown boy with two hollow legs eats me out of house and home?”
Annie ordered a bowl of Edna’s homemade chicken soup, as Seth shoved the last bite of potatoes into his mouth, and pushed his plate away with a sigh. Edna picked it up, saying simply, “Well?”
“Oh, Edna, you know what I want.”
“The apple again? Seth, I have to make two extra pies a week, just to feed you, boy. Haven’t you learnt how to cook for yourself yet?”
“Nope. And I probably never will, with you around.”
Edna returned in a moment with Annie’s soup and Seth’s pie—a wedge about four inches across heaped with two scoops of vanilla ice cream and cinnamon sauce. Annie thought her friend Ellen, the marathon runner, would adore this place.
Annie stopped Edna as she was starting to leave. “Actually, Edna, I was on my way here to talk to you, at Harry Braithwaite’s suggestion. Can you sit down and join us?”
“I think that might be arranged, now that the breakfast crowd’s thinned out, and the lunch boom is still an hour or so away. Let me get my coffee and I’ll be right back.” Seth scooped a bite of pie into his mouth, and ate as if he expected someone to take his plate away before he was done with it. Annie heard him emit a sigh of contentment.
Edna returned with a brown mug and a pitcher of cream shaped like a mooing cow. She poured a heavy measure of cream into her coffee, took a swallow, then added more. “Galen called here as soon as I opened this morning, and told me how bad-off Taylor was doing, over at the hospital. I sent some flowers, and called over there, but the nurses wouldn’t tell me anything else. Have you heard any news?”
“Nothing more than what Galen knew this morning. I’ve got some things for Taylor in my car to drop by the hospital, but I guess her doctors have restricted her from having visitors.”
Edna shook her head. “It’s just a darned crying shame, that’s all I can say. That poor, poor girl, with all the tragedy she’s had in her life. If you get to see her, you tell her that I’m praying for her. And that she’s got a meal on the house waiting for her any time. You’ll tell her that, won’t you?”
“I sure will. Harry told me that you might know about Steve and Taylor, whether he?” Annie paused, hoping the older woman would elaborate without much coaxing.
“Whether he beat her? Well, yes, though I don’t know details. She thought she was fooling everyone, but not much gets by me. I’ve seen just about everything in my day. My first husband tried to slap me around once. Ran him off with my daddy’s hunting rifle when I was no more than twenty. Never did hear what happened to him. Guess he thought he could do without a wife that was a better shot than he was.”
“Did Taylor ever talk to you about it?”
“Oh, no, she’s not like that.” Edna used a corner of her apron to wipe an imaginary spot off the table. “Fact, most of the time Taylor was always doing for somebody else. She’d stop in and see Harry two or three times a week, just to make sure that Mimi wasn’t driving him crazy. And whenever she was going to Seattle, she’d stop and see if I needed anything. She even made special trips to the Pike Place Market, just to get me fancy vegetables and spices. A real caring attitude, that girl has. You don’t often see it in someone of her generation.”
Annie smiled. It was a side of Taylor that she had glimpsed back in high school. She remembered the dances where Taylor could have left with a gang of friends, but always made sure Annie was included. And the time they were hiking on the Mount Si trail, and Annie stumbled on a tree root and twisted her ankle. Taylor had been there, helping her down, every painful step of the way.
But there was also another side to Taylor North. There was the Taylor North who telephoned at eleven o’clock the night before a test, desperate for Annie to help her study so she wouldn’t flunk. The Taylor who said cruel things about girls she didn’t like. The wild Taylor who had to defy the rules, stay out too late, drive too fast. Annie was glad to hear that the caring side seemed to have prevailed as Taylor had matured.
“Do you know if she ever pressed charges against Steve?”
“No, I can’t say.”
Seth, his mouth full of apple pie, shook his head. “Couldn’t have been,” the patrolman mumbled, swallowing. “ ’Scuse me. Couldn’t have been more than a month ago, Taylor was here in the cafe on a Saturday morning, picking up pastries like everybody else, and she had those big dark glasses on, even though it was a cloudy day. I could see just a tinge of purple right there at the sides, so I knew she was hiding a shiner, and I told Edna as much. Afterwards, I called one of my buddies over at the sheriff’s office and asked if they’d written anything up and they said ‘no.’ Never did have any domestic complaints from out at North Faire, they said.”
“So, this time you saw her with a black eye, that would have been Steve moved out?”
“Oh, yeah. I’d say it wasn’t more than a month or two ago.”
“How did you know it was Steve who hit her?”
Edna stirred her coffee. Her comments were almost identical to Harry’s. “It was like she wanted people to know, yet she didn’t. I remember that time Seth’s talking about. And somebody, might’ve been the Reverend, asked her how she was and if she’d had a nice week. He was kind of fishing for information, but not too pushy.”
“Reverend’s real good at that,” said Seth. “He gets stuff out of me all the time that I have no intention of telling him.”
“Anyways, he asked her in a real gentle way, and she says something ambiguous, like ‘Fine, but I could’ve done without my husband dropping by.’ And he says, ‘Oh? And how’s Steve doing?’ and she clams up at that point and says, ‘I wouldn’t know. I guess you’ll have to ask him,’ and that was it. Never said nothing about how she got the black eye, but made it real clear to everybody in the place that Steve had been to see her. Believe me, we all got the point.”
Seth had finished his pie and was trying to mop up the last smidgen of sauce. “That’s pretty typical, from what my buddy at the sheriff’s department says. Most of the time, the wives won’t even file a complaint. Guess they’re afraid the guy might retaliate and make it worse.”
Annie nodded. She knew that was typical. But it still bothered her to hear the description applied to Taylor North. She never would have suspected that her friend would fit into that category.
“You said something about all the tragedy Taylor’s had in her life?”
Edna nodded. “They say these things run in families. You know Taylor’s mama, Lizzy, pulled up stakes and took the kids to Seattle when they were teenagers? I don’t usually like to speak ill of the dead, but Taylor’s daddy, Cliff North, used to get pretty rough with his wife. Everybody knew it. Now, Lizzy weren’t one to confide in anybody, but I heard from a lady lived down the street that the reason why she left all of a sudden, not a penny to her name, was that Cliff had started beating up the kids some, once they got older. Called it discipline. Back in those days, it was hard for a divorced woman to get by, but from what I heard, the judge what heard the case made her a right fair award.”
Annie tried to remember when Taylor and her family moved to Seattle. She had known Taylor’s parents were divorced, but that was about it.
Seth pushed away from the table and looked at his watch. “Well, I guess I gotta go catch me some speeders.” He put some money on the table. Leaning over, he whispered to Annie, “Know that stretch of Highway 82 between Granger and Grandview?”
She nodded.
“Speed trap.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“Anytime,” Seth said as he put on his hat and headed for the door.
After he left, Annie asked, “So, what do you think, Edna? Was the situation that bad?”
“I don’t know, dear. I do know that there was a craziness between Steve and Taylor. Darned near every man in town was at least partways in love with her, but Steve… it was like he had some kind of hold over Taylor. Even after she threw him out, he was up there all the time. Sometimes to see her, sometimes just to sneak around. The way he badgered her, gosh, I wouldn’t have been surprised if any of them had wanted to kill him.”
“Any of them? Who do you mean?”
Edna chuckled. “Oh, Taylor’s men, I tend to think of them as. She had a way, I don’t know. There was just always some man coming to her rescue, whether she needed it or not. That’s just the type of gal she was, she didn’t ask for it particularly. Harry Braithwaite, Galen, her brother Gerald, even Martin Grubenmacher. I’d say any one of them would have flown to the moon if she’d wanted them to.”
“Martin Grubenmacher? He was the one who invited Steve in the first place.”
Edna raised an eyebrow. “The boy has always been a mite strange, if you ask me. He and Taylor went to grade school together, before her folks split up. I remember how some of the older boys teased Martin for the way he felt about Taylor. Like on Valentine’s Day, they’d put a valentine in his mailbox and pretend it was from her, just to make him do something embarrassing. You know how silly kids can be, but most of ’em grow out of it. When Taylor moved back to this area, you could see from the way he looked at her that Martin still had a thing for her. Not a real healthy attachment, neither.”
Annie finished her soup. “Tell me about Gerald.”
Edna thought for a moment. “Gerald North. He’s a moody one. Bitter might be a better word. Goes around being quietly angry, like the world has a personal vendetta against him.”
“He seemed so concerned about Taylor the other night. I take it they’re close?”
“Now they are. Oh, there was a time, back a few years after their daddy died. Almost a year went by when they wasn’t speaking. Gerald was sorely miffed about something, some real estate deal that went bad between him and Taylor. Steve was involved too, somehow. That’s when Gerald moved over to Ellensburg, got that teaching job. Yes, I’d say it was a year or so that not a word passed between them.”
“But they patched things up, obviously.”
The older woman nodded. “It’s been fairly recent, I’d say.”
“Within the last six months?” Annie asked.
“I couldn’t pin it down exactly, but that sounds about right. In fact, I’m pretty sure that Gerald didn’t set foot back in Taylor’s house until Steve was out of there.” Edna looked at Annie and lowered her voice. “I’ve no doubt that Harry told you the same thing—nobody in town had much use for Steven Vick. Gerald couldn’t stand him, neither could Galen Rockwell. He was a mean-spirited man, and even though I don’t have any proof, I believe in my heart that he was the type that’d use his fists on a woman. All I can say is, if our Taylor has to go to prison for defending herself against that awful man, then there’s something plain wrong with our system of justice.”