I was up before six the next morning, waiting for it to be late enough to call Mom and Aunt Ruta. I called at exactly seven o’clock. They answered on the first ring, singing “Hello” in harmony.
“I think you know why I’m calling,” I said icily.
Mom gasped. “You’re engaged? She’s engaged, Rut!”
“It’s about time,” Ruta yelled from the background.
“Once again, you’re on speaker, you don’t need to yell. I can hear you just fine. Unfortunately,” I added under my breath. “And, no, I am not engaged. How could you, Mother?”
“How could I what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Encourage Trace to visit me without ever telling me anything.”
“Well, he’s a grown man,” she said. “There wasn’t exactly anything we could do to stop him. He’s very motivated.”
“You could have warned me,” I said. “You told him you warned me.”
“We tried,” Ruta said.
“When? I am pretty sure I would remember if you told me Trace was going to be sitting on my front porch last night.”
“When we called you and you so rudely hung up on us,” Aunt Ruta yelled. “We were calling to warn you. You never called back.”
Oh. Yeah. That.
“I didn’t know that you wanted to tell me something important,” I said. “You could have called again.”
“Nah,” said Aunt Ruta. “We decided you’d like the surprise instead. Were you surprised?”
“Uh, yeah. Very.”
“We thought you would be excited to see him,” Mom said.
“Excited? To see my ex-boyfriend who I’ve spent a year trying to get over? No. Whose side are you on, here?”
“I wasn’t aware there were sides,” she said.
“Two sides,” Ruta yelled. “The rational side and her side. Glad to see you finally came around.”
“I did not come around,” I said.
“That’s not what we heard,” Ruta said.
“We heard there was lots of apologizing, and he’s going back in a couple days after you’ve had a chance to think about it. And we heard there’s a job interview. It will be so good to have you in the city where you belong, Hollis.”
“Finally a decent driver to take me to my eye exams,” Ruta yelled.
“I’m a decent driver, you old picky-pick,” Mom said, and then the two of them launched into one of their trademarked arguments. I knew this one by heart and could have mouthed along if I hadn’t been so angry.
“You talked to him?” I asked. “After he was here?”
“Well, we had to know how it went,” Mom said.
“Why didn’t you call me to ask that question? My answer would be that it went terribly. Because I was totally blindsided and I didn’t know what to say to him and I didn’t have time to think about anything.” And because even after thinking about it all night long, I still wasn’t sure what to say or do.
I had ached for my old life since the moment I’d left it. And now I could get it back.
And I was pretty sure I no longer wanted it.
“Welcome to the Knock ’em Dead podcast.”
“Where murder and muffins meet.”
“I’m Hollis.”
“And I’m Daisy, the cookie lady!” Daisy had brought a beautiful tray of iced lemon sugar cookies decorated to look like slices of lemon. I’d already scarfed down two; they were amazing. “Now, most people add water to their royal icing to thin it. But I add fresh lemon juice to make it extra lemony. Tart and tasty.”
“And very dangerous,” I said. “Sort of like a hit-and-run on the tastebuds.”
She covered her mic with her hand. “Nice tie-in. But I was thinking something more along the lines of, So delicious, they could be poisonous.”
“Most poisons are bitter and unpleasant to the taste,” I reminded her.
“Antifreeze tastes good,” she countered. “That’s what makes it so dangerous.”
“True,” I said.
“Do you remember the band?” she asked. She grabbed a cookie, shook off the crumbs, and took a bite.
“Band?”
“Poison,” she said. “‘Every Rose Has It’s Thorn’? ‘Unskinny Bop’?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t remember the b—you know what? Let’s start over.” I stopped recording, took a deep breath and started again. I was feeling off-kilter and grouchy. A dangerous combination.
“Why? I thought we were being charming.”
“Welcome to the Knock ’em Dead podcast.”
“Where murder and muffins and unskinny bops meet!”
I flicked a look at her, but decided to keep going. Let the listeners try to figure that one out.
“Today I have cookies,” she said, and went into her spiel about royal icing again, allowing me just enough time to scarf down a third cookie while stressing about how I was going to segue into what I was planning to say to start the episode. I pushed the tray closer to her to get it away from me.
“So last time we talked about the mysterious poisonings of Jane Stanford,” she said. “What poison scandal do you have for us today, Hollis?”
Perfect transition. This was why we were partners. We could set each other up without even trying.
“No poisoning just yet, but I definitely have a scandal. A local scandal. We’ve talked about it a few times, but I think something really sketchy is going on here. A cover-up of the Coach Farley hit-and-run, which I’m starting to suspect was purposeful. Regardless of what has been reported, the coach’s death was not due to natural causes.”
She gave a curious look, put her hand over the mic and whispered, “What are you doing?”
“You said people like local. I’m giving them local.”
“They like local cooking stories. They aren’t going to like this. And you’re going to get yourself fired.”
“They can’t fire me for telling the truth. The community needs to know. Something sketchy is going on, and it started right in the parking lot of their beloved football stadium.”
“That’s why not,” she said. “The people of the community don’t want to think about there being a murderer among them. And they don’t want to think their police department is crooked. It’s too close to home. It scares people. They just want to watch winning football games, go to the Hibiscus for victory pie, and go home.”
A look of concern fell over her face. “Is something wrong? You’re not being yourself. Have a cookie. Please.” She uncovered the microphone. “I have a poisoning story to talk about. It’s about this woman named—”
“So, here’s what we know. Coach Gerald Farley from River Fork High School was hit by a car in the parking lot of the Parkwood High School’s football stadium after a contentious homecoming game,” I said in my best anchorwoman voice, once again noting how it was the world’s loss that I didn’t have a face for TV. “It was reported as a natural death, but that did not appear to be the case forensically. A witness said she heard a car come out of nowhere, heard a thump-thump sound, heard the car speed off, and Coach Farley was dead. From where I sit, this doesn’t look at all like a natural death. This looks like a hit-and-run, and we have just a few clues about the car that ran him down. I, personally, would love to hear more from the witness about what she saw, but the police aren’t even bothering to interview her. I think there’s a cover-up going on, and here’s why—”
“So this woman had taken out a life insurance policy on her husband,” Daisy interrupted. “And did you know, Hollis, that when someone dies of strychnine poisoning—”
“Daisy, stop.” She did. “I want to start with this story.”
She shook her head. “I just think you don’t understand what you’re doing.”
“I do,” I said. “I’ve been reporting news for a while. I understand what can happen when you report the truth. But I’m a reporter and the truth is important to me.”
“It’s important to me, too.” She looked confused. And kind of hurt.
“Reporting that Coach Farley just dropped dead of natural causes when I know it was a hit-and-run goes against everything I’ve ever believed in. The people need to know, and I need to tell them. We need tips and someone must know something. Just because Parkwood is a speck on the map doesn’t mean it isn’t important to solve the crimes here.”
“Did you just call us a speck?” she asked, pulling back, away from the microphone, uncharacteristically serious.
“I didn’t. Trace did. But that’s not the point.”
“No, you just did. I heard you.”
I let out an impatient sigh. “I was quoting Trace. And, by the way, I told him it may be a speck, but I like it here.”
She pointed at me. “See? You did it again just now.”
“But I said I liked it. Being a speck doesn’t have to be a bad thing.” Her eyes narrowed just slightly, and suddenly it felt like no matter what I said, it was going to be the wrong thing. “What? It’s not like I said Parkwood is full of bumpkins or something.”
She gasped. “We’re bumpkins now?”
“No, I said you’re not bumpkins.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “Dais. Don’t take it so personally. A lot of towns are specks compared to Chicago.” I felt the words come out as if they were in slow motion, knowing as soon as I said them that they definitely did not come out the way I meant them to.
“Well, it didn’t take you long to drop the old big city background on the podcast, now did it?” She shrugged away from me. “You know, I never joined in on beating up the new hoity-toity reporter, but now I’m starting to wonder if maybe everyone had a point.”
“Everyone? What do you mean everyone? Hoity-toity? I am no kind of toity.”
“Maybe this is just your podcast now,” she said, taking off her headset and pushing away from the desk. “Since you know what to do, and all I know is baking.”
“Daisy, no, I never said that. You know so much more than baking.”
She worked the plastic wrap back over the plate of cookies and swept it up. “You finish with your truth. I’ve got to get back to my speck house and my speck life next door where my speck kids are waiting for me to remind them that they matter, even though they’re just specks.”
“You’re putting a lot of words into my mouth,” I said. “And I was only quoting Trace.”
She smiled thinly. “Another reporter from the center of the universe—that big, important city of Chicago. An actual dot instead of just a speck. Whoop-dee-doo.”
“No, I mean, yes, he is from Chicago, but what I’m saying is—”
“We sure do appreciate you demeaning yourself by living in our town,” she said, then turned on her heel and stormed out.
I sat at the table, dumbfounded. I didn’t understand how I was doing everything so wrong.
Before I could stop them, tears flooded down my cheeks. In some ways, I was crying an entire year of tears. I felt so misunderstood. By everyone. And so out of place.
All I wanted to do was solve a crime. Was that so much to ask?
King Archie abandoned the cookie crumbs he was nibbling and rubbed against my shoulder, making me cry even harder. You knew you were pathetic when King forgot about food for you.
But just five swipes in, he happily knocked over my glass, sending a cascade of water onto the floor. I laughed through my tears. I was pretty sure King was telling me to suck it up and get the job done—monarchs didn’t have to be liked in order to be respected. Or something like that.
Which was good. Because right now, I was definitely not feeling very liked.
I got up, grabbed a paper towel and blew my nose, then sat back down, erased everything that had been said previously, put on my headset, and clicked RECORD.
“Welcome to the Knock ’em Dead podcast, where murder and muffins meet. I’m Hollis, and Daisy is on a break today. So this will be a minicast with just yours truly, and I have a very interesting local story to tell you. But first let me tell you about the amazing lemon royal icing she’s making, and her trick to getting it extra lemony.”