24

Dear Reader,

I don’t know about you, but every time I make a roast, I seem to end up with a complete mess on the bottom of the roasting pan that takes a lot of elbow grease to clean. But fortunately I learned a little trick from my grandmother.

Sprinkle some baking soda over the bottom of your pan, add hot water and some white vinegar, and let the whole mess soak for a while. When you come back, the burnt bits will lift right off and washing the pan will be a breeze!

Shelby was tired, but she still found it hard to settle down. The dogs followed her out to the kitchen, their nails tapping on the wide-planked wooden floor. Shelby filled the teakettle and put it on to boil. Maybe some chamomile tea would make her sleepy.

Jenkins and Bitsy went to stand by the back door and Jenkins began pawing at it. The paint at Jenkins’s level had long since been scraped off, and Shelby didn’t see any point in repainting it—Jenkins would only do it again. Shelby opened the door to let them out for their last run of the night.

She took her tea and sat down at the kitchen table. What a stroke of luck it had been to run into Rebecca and her daughter. The evening had provided the answer to one question at least—why Rebecca had disappeared those many years ago.

A thought came to Shelby while she was sipping her tea. Rebecca had done her best to keep her daughter a secret. She was unlikely to run into anyone she knew at Lucia’s in Allenvale—unlike at the Lovett Diner, where everyone pretty much knew one another except maybe for the truckers who came through late at night when all the Lovett residents were already tucked up in bed.

Could it be that Rebecca had been with Kate the afternoon of Zeke’s murder and that was why she was unwilling to tell the police about it? But surely if she was being suspected of murder . . . Shelby shrugged. People did strange things for strange reasons. Perhaps Rebecca was hoping another detail would emerge to prove her innocent and she wouldn’t have to reveal the existence of her daughter.

It was certainly a possibility, Shelby thought as she drank the last of her tea, rinsed out the mug, and put it in the dishwasher.

Shelby opened the back door and called for the dogs. They came running toward the house, Jenkins in the lead and Bitsy lumbering behind. They burst into the kitchen with their tongues hanging. Jenkins had a dried leaf stuck in the fur on his belly, and he rolled around on the floor, trying to dislodge it. Shelby picked it off for him and threw it in the trash.

Bitsy leaned against Shelby’s leg, looking to be petted, and Shelby reached over and idly scratched her back. Her hand brushed something unusual and she looked down. A piece of paper was rolled up and tucked under Bitsy’s collar.

Shelby stared at it for a moment. Where on earth had that come from? Bitsy couldn’t have picked it up herself—someone had to have put it there. Her hands shook as she slid the roll out from under the dog’s collar.

She unrolled the paper. There was a message on it written with letters cut from a magazine. Shelby read the note.

MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS AND STOP NOSING AROUND OR SOMEONE IS GOING TO GET HURT.

All the air rushed out of Shelby’s lungs and she felt as if she could no longer breathe. She let go of the piece of paper and it dropped to the floor. Who would have done such a thing?

The murderer, of course. She’d obviously touched a nerve, but whose?

Shelby looked at Bitsy and shivered. The killer had been in her yard—close enough to attach that note to Bitsy’s collar. The thought that they might have harmed Jenkins and Bitsy left her weak, and she sank into a kitchen chair.

She had to call Frank. She realized she hadn’t thought about him all night. Was he still with his date? Maybe she ought to call the police station instead.

Shelby quickly looked up the number for the Lovett police station. A tired-sounding voice answered on the other end.

Shelby explained the situation and the officer promised to send someone around immediately. As soon as she hung up the phone she checked the locks on the doors and closed and locked the windows on the first floor.

She became limp with relief when she saw the lights of a squad car in the driveway. She looked out the window and watched as two officers got out of the car. Suddenly a pickup truck came roaring down the drive and parked alongside them.

Shelby couldn’t see clearly in the dark, but she was pretty sure that was Frank getting out of the truck. He approached the two policemen and they conferred briefly. The policemen then got back in their squad car and headed down the driveway.

Moments later there was a knock on the front door.

Shelby yanked it open. “Frank!”

“I came as soon as I heard. Why didn’t you call me?”

“I didn’t want to bother you.”

Frank fixed Shelby with a stern look. “I’ve told you before. I promised Bill I would look out for you and the kids. And I meant it.”

“Yes,” Shelby said in a small voice.

“Where is this note?”

Shelby led Frank out to the kitchen with Jenkins and Bitsy close on his heels. Normally she would have offered him a cup of coffee, but she was so frazzled, she didn’t think of it.

Frank took a handkerchief from his pocket and picked the note up off the floor where Shelby had dropped it. He held it gingerly by the corner. His expression darkened as he read it.

“And you have no idea who sent this to you?”

“No. It was attached to Bitsy’s collar. I found it when she came in from her last run of the evening”

“And the dogs weren’t harmed?”

“No, thank goodness.”

Frank’s expression darkened further. “They had to have been in your yard—near the house. And you’re here all alone. I don’t like that.”

“Frankly neither do I,” Shelby said with a slight return of her usual spirit.

Frank smiled briefly.

“Why would anyone send you a note like this? Why do they think you’ve been nosing around?”

Dear Reader, this is the part I’ve been dreading. How do I explain about my snooping?

“You’ve been asking questions again, haven’t you?” Frank said before Shelby could reply. “Don’t you see how that can be dangerous? Once someone has committed murder, what’s to stop them from doing it again? They have nothing to lose.”

Frank’s words sent an icy chill down Shelby’s spine.

“I haven’t really been asking questions,” Shelby said. “People talk and I listen.”

“Can you think of anything you’ve heard that might have prompted the killer to send this note?” Frank brandished the piece of paper.

Shelby thought of Rebecca in the restaurant and her daughter, Kate.

She shook her head. “No.”

Frank sighed, took a plastic bag from his pocket, and carefully inserted the note.

“We’ll see if forensics can lift any prints from this, but the system is so backed up that by the time we get the results, the perp will probably have been tried, sentenced, and locked up in jail.”

Frank put a hand on Shelby’s shoulder. “I’m going to take a look around outside. Lock the door behind me, and call me if you see or hear anything—and I do mean anything—out of the ordinary, okay?”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

•   •   •

“You don’t look very perky this morning,” Bert said when she showed up at Shelby’s back door.

Shelby yawned. “I’m not feeling perky. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Any particular reason?”

Bert took a mug from the cupboard and poured herself a cup of coffee.

Shelby told her about finding the note attached to Bitsy’s collar.

Bert gave a loud harrumph. “I don’t like the sound of that. I’d feel a whole lot better about you and the kids if you had a man under your roof.”

Shelby bristled. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

“Of course you are,” Bert said soothingly. “But a big, strong man is a lot more likely to scare someone off than a gal who is only a hair past five feet tall.”

“I don’t suppose I can argue with that,” Shelby said dryly.

“Did you still want to make some watermelon pickles?” Bert said, hooking a foot around one of the kitchen chairs and pulling it closer. She put her feet up. “I could give you a hand.”

“Are you sure?” Shelby said. “Are your legs bothering you?”

Bert scowled. “Of course not. I like to put them up occasionally. It helps with the circulation.”

Shelby doubted that, but she knew better than to argue with Bert.

“If we start on the pickles today, they should be ready by the next farmers’ market. They’re always a big seller.”

“No time like the present, then.” Bert swung her legs down from the chair and got to her feet.

Shelby retrieved the watermelons and put them on the counter. She didn’t grow them herself—the Clarks, who had a farm on the other side of Lovett, gave them to Shelby in exchange for some of her root vegetables.

Cutting the rind off the melons was a tedious process, and Shelby was glad of Bert’s help. She was saving the pulp to make watermelon granita.

“How are Billy’s riding lessons going?” Bert asked. “Is he going to take a blue ribbon in next year’s county fair?”

“He certainly hopes so,” Shelby said as she peeled the rind off the last piece of watermelon.

“Jim Harris has been teaching for a long time—he’s got a string of blue-ribbon winners to his credit. Hopefully Billy will be the next one.”

Shelby filled her biggest pot with water and added a generous measure of salt.

“I feel sorry for Jim,” Shelby said. “We were there the day of the anniversary of his brother’s death. He’s still very torn up about it.”

“It’s always hard when there’s no closure,” Bert said, cutting the rind Shelby had prepared into one-inch pieces.

“I imagine it’s hard not knowing who was responsible.”

“I think Jim has always felt a little responsible himself.” Bert scooped up the rinds as Shelby cut them and added them to the pot of boiling water.

“Why would Jim feel responsible?”

Shelby set the kitchen timer for five minutes. She would check the rinds then to see if they were tender. Sometimes they needed an extra minute or two.

“Doris—she’s my neighbor who you met who works at the Dixie—was waiting tables the night it happened. It seems Jim and Sid were there together enjoying a couple of beers and shots of whiskey when they got into an argument.”

“Oh?”

Bert nodded as she scooped a piece of rind from the pot and tested it with the tip of a knife. “She didn’t know what it was about, but I guess Sid walked out of the bar in a huff. The two of them had gone to the Dixie together in Jim’s truck, so Sid didn’t have his car. He began to walk home.” Bert dropped the piece of rind back into the pot. “Which is pretty silly, considering it was a good five miles to his farm and he could barely walk a straight line. At least that’s what Doris said.”

“Why would that make Jim feel responsible? He didn’t do anything.”

“That’s the thing. He didn’t do anything—he let Sid walk out and didn’t go after him until it was too late.”

“Sid was already dead?”

“He hadn’t gotten far. He was found barely even a quarter of a mile from the Dixie. Jim always felt that if he’d left the bar sooner and stopped Sid, he would be alive today.” Bert measured out sugar, vinegar, allspice, cloves, ginger, and some pickling spices and put them in a saucepan along with two cinnamon sticks. “And who knows? Maybe Sid would be alive if Jim had gone after him. But then you could say he might be alive if they hadn’t had the fight or, heck, if they hadn’t gone to the Dixie in the first place. You can’t go second-guessing things like that.”

Bert turned the gas on under the mixture in the saucepan. “Jim also felt that if he’d gotten to his brother sooner he might have at least seen who was driving the car that hit Sid.”

•   •   •

Shelby stared with satisfaction at the row of glass jars in her refrigerator, filled with green watermelon rind pickles with their slim edges of pink. She’d put Love Blossom Farm labels on them, and they would be ready for the next farmers’ market.

Shelby spent the rest of the morning outside cleaning out beds and readying them for their cover crop. It didn’t take long before she was hot, tired, thirsty, and very dirty. She’d agreed to meet Kelly for a cup of coffee later in the afternoon—Kelly wanted to discuss the details of her upcoming wedding—and by then Shelby was more than happy to put down her shovel and head inside for a shower.

She was aching and filthy, but fifteen minutes under the pulsing shower—that was all the hot water her old water heater could crank out at one time—soothed her sore muscles and made her feel like new.

She threw on a clean pair of shorts and a T-shirt and went downstairs. Billy and Amelia’s breakfast dishes had been abandoned in the sink. Billy was over at Jake’s helping him on the farm—something he would moan and groan about if Shelby had asked him to do it—and Katelyn’s mother had picked Amelia up for the day. She was taking the girls to a movie later in the afternoon and for some shopping at a mall forty-five minutes away. Shelby had managed to scrounge up some cash for Amelia’s ticket and for her to buy something inexpensive at the mall.

Shelby’s cell phone rang as she was pulling into the diner’s parking lot. It was Kelly to say she was running a bit late, but she’d be there shortly. A calving both she and the farmer expected to be routine had run into an unexpected complication, but mother and baby were now doing fine and she only needed to clean up a bit before heading to the diner.

Shelby shuddered at the thought of the type of cleaning up Kelly would have to do. Being covered in dirt was a little different from being covered in— Well, it didn’t bear thinking about. It was one of the reasons she’d been pleased to lease her pasture to Jake—she didn’t mind getting her hands in the earth, but dealing with animals was a whole other ball game.

Shelby left her car unlocked and the windows rolled down—people in Lovett didn’t bother much with security. There wasn’t much to steal, and if you really needed something the farmers were quick to help you out. There was a deep vein of generosity in the community that Shelby cherished.

The diner wasn’t busy—lunch was over and no one was ready for dinner yet. Shelby looked around. She smiled at Jessie Tedford, who was finishing off a piece of the diner’s rhubarb pie, and waved to Earl Bylsma, whom she’d known from St. Andrews for ages.

A woman was standing at the take-out counter and Shelby realized it was Rebecca Barnstable. Shelby supposed she was picking up a late lunch to take back to the feed store. She watched as Rebecca paid the clerk and turned to go.

Rebecca passed Shelby’s table, and Shelby put out an arm to stop her.

“Hello,” Shelby said.

Rebecca looked not unlike a fish caught on a fisherman’s hook. Shelby half expected her to begin twisting and turning.

“Hello,” Rebecca mumbled, not meeting Shelby’s gaze.

“Picking up some lunch?”

“Yes. Treating myself,” Rebecca said with an edge of bitterness to her voice.

“The food here is good although it’s not fancy. Not like Lucia’s.”

Rebecca’s eyes became wary and she edged away from Shelby’s table.

“You were at Lucia’s last night. How did you enjoy it?”

For a minute, Shelby thought Rebecca would deny it, but she apparently realized that was futile.

“It was okay.”

“Your daughter is lovely,” Shelby said.

Rebecca jumped as if she’d touched a live wire.

“How—”

“We ran into each other in the ladies’ room. The resemblance is quite striking. She’s a beautiful girl.”

In spite of herself, Rebecca gave a small smile. “She is, isn’t she?”

Shelby nodded. “You must be very proud of her.”

Rebecca’s smile widened. “She’s graduated from college and has a good job.”

Shelby thought she could practically see Rebecca’s chest swell.

“Why are you keeping her hidden?”

Rebecca looked at Shelby and laughed. “Why do you think? I know people around here talked when I disappeared. I know they put two and two together. Times have changed but not all that much. At least not here. I don’t want to put my daughter through that.”

“I don’t think—”

“Besides, she’s not mine anymore. She has another mother, as well as a father—something I wasn’t able to give her.”

“If she was with you the afternoon your brother, Zeke, was killed, you have to tell the police,” Shelby said as gently as possible. “It gives you an alibi.”

Rebecca kicked at the table leg. “Why should I tell them when they’ll find out who really did it eventually?”

“Because they’re wasting time investigating you when they could be looking for the real killer.”

Rebecca curled her lip. “Ask me if I care.”

Shelby was shaken by Rebecca’s attitude. She knew there was no love lost between Rebecca and her brother, but you would have thought she’d have some interest in seeing his killer caught.

Rebecca had an alibi, so she was obviously ruled out as a suspect, and Shelby was left with no further ideas.

•   •   •

Shelby was still a little rattled when Kelly arrived, all smiles, smelling of hay, fresh air, and farm animals.

“I have some great news.” Kelly slipped into the booth opposite Shelby.

Shelby eyed the waitress who was fast approaching with her pad at the ready.

“What can I get you to drink?” the waitress said, slapping some menus down on the table.

“Just an iced tea for me,” Kelly said, handing back the menu.

“Same for me.”

Kelly was practically bouncing in her seat as the waitress walked away.

“You’re about to burst,” Shelby said. “What is your news?”

“Seth has agreed to have our wedding at Love Blossom Farm,” Kelly squealed.

“That’s wonderful. I’m so glad. It’s going to be so much fun.” Shelby frowned. “So, does that mean that Seth finally talked to his mother?”

Kelly ran a hand through her tangled red curls, dislodging a piece of hay that fluttered to the floor of the diner.

“Seth said it’s our decision, not his mother’s.”

“Good for him.” Shelby leaned back as the waitress slid a frosted glass of iced tea in front of her. “I wonder what Mrs. Gregson will say, though.”

Kelly fiddled with the wrapper from her straw, pleating it between her fingers. “I’m a little scared—scared that she’ll talk Seth out of it.”

“Seth seems like a man who knows his own mind.”

“He does, but that woman is like a bulldozer.”

Shelby giggled.

“What’s so funny?”

“I have this vision of Mrs. Gregson wearing a cocktail dress, a long strand of pearls, and gloves, and sitting atop a giant bulldozer, chewing up the land around the barn at Love Blossom Farm.”

Kelly erupted in laughter. “You always know how to make me feel better.”

“Have you decided on a month yet?”

Kelly wrinkled her nose. “I still have to talk to Seth, but I was thinking May—before it gets too hot.”

“And after the snow melts . . . hopefully,” Shelby said, remembering one of the terrible winters they’d had when the mounds of snow piled more than a story high in parking lots hadn’t completely melted until nearly the beginning of May.

“I’d like to make flower chains for my bridesmaids to wear in their hair,” Kelly said, her eyes turning dreamy. “And carry a bouquet of wildflowers.” She scowled. “Mrs. Gregson will probably complain that they exacerbate her hay fever.”

Kelly grabbed Shelby’s hand. “And you’ll be my matron of honor, of course. And Lancelot can be the ring bearer. If we can get him to behave.”

Lancelot was Kelly’s golden retriever. He was a high-spirited dog, and Shelby couldn’t quite picture him walking demurely down the aisle.

“And Amelia as a bridesmaid if she’s willing, and Billy a junior groomsman.” Kelly paused to take a sip of her iced tea. “We don’t want to have a huge wedding party. Seth’s brother will be his best man.”

“I think both Amelia and Billy would be thrilled to be included.”

Dear Reader, I think I am almost as excited about this wedding as Kelly is.

“Enough about me,” Kelly said. “Do the police still think that dreamy neighbor of yours killed Zeke?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything new.” Shelby shivered. “Did I tell you about the note?”

Kelly leaned forward, her eyes wide. She took her straw out of her iced tea and sucked the liquid out from the bottom. “No. What note?”

Shelby explained about the paper warning her to keep her nose out of things that had been attached to Bitsy’s collar.

Kelly drew her breath in sharply. “That’s terrible. Who would do such a thing?”

“The killer, I suppose.”

Kelly put a hand on Shelby’s arm. “You have to stay out of things. You could get hurt.”

“I’ve shown it to the police, and believe me, I have no intention of getting involved any further.”