Traffic accidents were a social event in Parkwood, and when they happened, they caused a huge headache. The entire town simply had to get a gander at the accident, no matter how small, so they could relay the story that evening over dinner.
And when it came to fender benders with Wickham Birkland—or anything with Wickham Birkland, from trampled azaleas to missing mail—there was no such thing as small.
Wickham was Parkwood’s most notorious bad mood waiting to happen. He skulked around town with a scowl and a list of grievances as long as his uncut hair (unsurprisingly, his list of grievances began with his ex-barber), and when you were the new kid in town, one of the first things you learned was that you should try your level best to never, ever cross his path in any sort of way, but especially not in any sort of bad way. And that was exactly what had happened to the poor soul who had the misfortune of running through the stop sign at the intersection of Oak and Tutor, just two blocks north of the Hibiscus.
There was a lineup of lookie-loos four blocks long. Betty Ramp—I knew her from a story I’d penned about the new First Methodist Sunday bulletin format (they were shaking things up with Cambria font!)—was toting lawn chairs and a pitcher of lemonade up the sidewalk for the older folks who’d abandoned their cars for a better show. Betty Ramp was thoughtful that way.
An unlucky police officer was having a heck of a time trying to direct traffic. I’d never seen him before. He must have been new to Parkwood, likely filling the opening left by Officer Jamie Martin, who’d retired and moved to the coast just a few weeks earlier. This new officer was closer to my age, and was tall, dark-haired, and had a muscular build that didn’t look half bad—okay, actually looked really good—in a uniform.
Nobody was paying him the slightest bit of attention. By the time I drove up to the stop sign, he’d given up on hand signals, as several cars had simply taken up residence right smack in the middle of the intersection, their owners sitting on someone’s open tailgate sharing a bag of cookies. He pleaded me with his eyes to just move on. They were nice eyes, I couldn’t help noticing.
Like a good reporter, I quickly surveyed the accident, even though I knew the Parkwood Chronicle Weekly would never report on such things. People don’t want to read about accidents, Hollis, I could hear Mary Jean saying. They want to read good news. New babies and award-winning cakes and spelling bees.
“Just as long as they’re not spelling g-i-b-l-e-t-s,” I whispered to myself as I tried to assess the situation.
A man had popped into the front of Wickham Birkland’s Mercedes, knocking a big hole into the grill and shattering the headlight. My windows were rolled up, so I couldn’t hear what Wickham was saying, but from the looks of things, he was either throwing an utter fit or dancing the Y-M-C-A. Or maybe practicing to be head cheerleader for tonight’s homecoming game. I tried entertaining myself by making up the cheers and seeing how they aligned with Wickham’s furious body language. “Hey-hi-ho-hoo! We’re the team that’s gonna beat you!” I giggled. “It works! Jump to the left! Jump to the right! Raise your fists up high and—” A knock on my window startled a squeak out of me. The officer was right on the other side of the glass. His nametag read HOPKINS.
Sheepishly, I pushed the button to roll down the window. Now that I could hear, I could definitely tell that Wickham Birkland wasn’t cheering. In fact, the police chief had arrived and was now standing between him and the other guy, and probably for good reason. Wickham was looking a little more than unhinged.
“You think you could keep traffic moving, ma’am?” the officer asked in a very official voice. It was a smooth, baritone voice—I couldn’t help noticing that, too.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just cheering…um…” I squirmed. “Sure, I’ll move. But… Can I ask you a question first?”
“I’m directing traffic, ma’am.” We both looked at where traffic should have been, but obviously wasn’t, moving. He sighed, closed his eyes briefly, refocused on me. “What’s your question?”
“Do you have any thoughts about Esther Igo’s new giblet gravy, by chance?”
The Hibiscus Café—a local institution and hub of activity at any time of day in Parkwood—was abnormally quiet. Everyone was still at Oak and Tutor, watching Wickham Birkland dance circles of anger around the man who’d crashed into his Mercedes.
The scent of gravy and butter rolled out as soon as I pulled open the door and my mouth immediately began watering. Esther’s gravy may not have been something I got excited to report on, but I have to admit there really was something special about the new recipe. Even I wouldn’t have minded getting my hands on it, and I lived on a diet of microwavable macaroni and cheese for one.
“Well, Hollis Bisbee! You’re back again! Welcome, welcome!” Esther, in many ways the matriarch of Parkwood, was a fluffy woman in every possible sense. Her graying hair was a fluffy cloud of curls, her fluffy-ruffled apron concealed a fluffy figure, and even her words were fluffy. When you walked into the Hibiscus, the fluffiness enveloped you and you felt like you were…home. Not just any home—your childhood home.
My childhood home in Chicago was filled with my mom and her twin sister, Ruta. Mom and Aunt Ruta were one and the same and neither were fluffy in any sense, nor could either make gravy—or much more than toast—to save their lives. But they were tough and scrappy and never let me get away with feeling sorry for myself over anything. They were all pick yourself up by your bootstraps and rub dirt on it and there are no white knights or horses here, sister, so don’t bother with that damsel in distress bit. I’d repeated that last one to myself a thousand times while adjusting to Parkwood.
Boy, did I miss those women. I made a mental note to give them a call later.
“Yep, I’m back,” I said, making my way to the counter while flashing what I liked to think of as my reporter smile—all teeth, confidence, and sincere, trust-me eyes. The smile I used to have to rely on to get an experienced police officer to give up the goods on an investigation I was now using to get a chef to give up the goods on a recipe. “I just can’t get enough of that gravy, Esther.”
“Oh, you’re too kind. Did you know I had to whip up an extra batch this afternoon? Yesterday, I ran clean out before the dinner hour even got here.” She leaned in and whispered. “I’m telling you, it’s the giblets that have people begging for more.”
I slid onto a stool at the counter and Esther immediately poured me an iced tea. “I heard old Wickham’s giving somebody the business out on Tutor,” she said.
I took a sip of the tea. It was so sweet, it made my uvula recoil. Esther served two flavors of iced tea—sweet and syrup-sweet—and I was still trying to get used to it. “I got caught up in it. Looked like he was fit to be tied.”
She clucked her tongue. “That Wickham’s been looking for trouble since the day he was born, and one of these days, he’s going to actually find it. You mark my words about that. You having the turkey sandwich again, honey?”
My stomach growled. Turned out Mary Jean was right—I was hungry. “Sounds great. Has he never been in real trouble before?” With Wickham’s temperament, I found this hard to believe.
Esther scribbled something illegible on a pad of paper, ripped it off, and pressed it through a window. A meaty hand pawed through and grabbed it. I’d never seen the chef attached to that hand. I’d often wondered who it might belong to, until my neighbor Daisy told me it was good that I didn’t know; some mysteries were best left unsolved.
“Small-time trouble, sure,” she said. “But his daddy got himself in real hot water once. Caught some teenagers throwing rocks at a dog. Well, Jeffrey Birkland loved animals and didn’t take to that very kindly. Beat the living tar right out of those teenagers. All three of them, single-handedly. Put ’em in the hospital. Two of ’em were never the same again. He showed no remorse. He went to prison, spouting ‘eye for an eye’ the whole way there. Most people think that’s why Wickham is the way he is—learned it from his daddy. Maybe they’re right. I’m no brain shrinker, so I couldn’t tell you. Personally, I suspect anger is just in the Birkland blood.”
I thought about how red Wickham’s face was as he shouted and waved around the front of his car in that intersection. If it was possible for anger to run in blood, Birkland blood seemed as likely to hold it as any.
“‘Hup!” a deep voice called from the window where Esther had passed the order earlier, and a plate appeared. Esther hurried to grab it.
“Voilà!” she said, setting it in front of me while refilling my tea with the other hand. “Open-face turkey sandwich, extra gravy for my extra special guest this afternoon.”
I took a deep breath, inhaling the intoxicating scent, then picked up my fork. “Speaking of the gravy,” I said, digging in. “Mmm…you really outdid yourself.”
“You like it?” Esther’s whole face lit up when she smiled, and in that smile it was easy to see why everyone wanted to be at the Hibiscus, even if they had the same dishes in their recipe boxes at home.
“I love it.” I swallowed. “And speaking of—”
The door opened, and a child’s shriek interrupted me, followed by sheer, utter chaos. My next-door neighbor and best friend, Daisy Mueller, and her entourage of children, were making the entrance they made everywhere they went.
“Willow! I swear, if you don’t stop doing that, I will take you home and let the dog babysit you, and I mean it this time. Brant, do not walk on the booth tables. I said get off of there! And where did your shoes go? Lucas, what on earth are you doing? Come help me with your sister! Where is Jake? Jake? Jake! Darn it, Jake, did you put muffin up your nose again? How many ER doctors have to tell you that could go to your brain? You ever see someone with Blueberry Brain? It is ugly, son. Really ugly. Just—here, blow it out. Brant! Get down from there! Hey, Esther, sorry to be late. These guys got into some chocolate and have been a sugar and caffeine tornado ripping right through my house all morning.”
To me, Daisy’s house seemed to be a tornado all the time. Then again, I was childless, so what did I know about kids and caffeine?
She handed Esther a basket of Mueller Muffins—her fledgling baked goods side business. So far, Esther was her only client, but she was a good client. Daisy’s muffins fairly flew off the shelves at the Hibiscus.
“Oh, hey, Hollis. I didn’t know you’d be here this morning.” She blew her bangs out of her eyes and checked her phone. “Good grief, I guess I meant to say this afternoon,” she corrected.
I wiped gravy off of my bottom lip with a napkin. “I was just trying to get a little extra for the story,” I said.
“Extra?” Esther, said curiously. “What kind of extra?”
There was another child-shriek, followed by a crash, followed by raucous laughter. Daisy looked up at the ceiling, counted to five, then said, “That’s it! I’m calling the dog now. He owes me one anyway.” Judging by the way the kids all giggled and cheered, my guess was they didn’t find her threat to be as menacing as she’d meant it to be, if for no other reason than they didn’t own a dog. Daisy rushed off to find the source of the ruckus.
I took another bite of turkey. The diner door opened, and another customer walked in. A few seconds later, it opened again and two more entered. The wreck had apparently cleared. Soon, the Hibiscus would be hopping and my chances of getting Esther’s undivided attention would be severely diminished. I couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. My eyeballs were already floating on a sea of sweet tea.
“What kind of extra?” Esther repeated, refilling my glass, even though I’d only taken a tiny sip.
I swallowed. “Well. Okay. You know.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I do?”
I nudged her. “Yeah, I think you do.” This was so uncomfortable.
She scratched her head contemplatively. “I don’t think I do.”
“Mary Jean wants the recipe.”
She set down the tea pitcher and crossed her arms. “Oh, she does? Well, I don’t give out my prized recipes. She should know that by now.”
“She thought…”
Her eyebrows—fluffy as they were—went up so high they were concealed behind her fluffy bangs. “She thought…?”
I took a breath to steel myself. “She thought you might be interested in a trade.”
She uncrossed her arms and put one hand on her hip. “What sort of trade are we talking about?”
I took a gulp of tea this time. Then another. Then pointedly looked at the pitcher, hoping another refill would stall me from having to say the words aloud. She didn’t budge. That Esther could drive a hard bargain when she wanted to. “You’re sure you won’t just give it out? For the good of the people?”
“Exactly what kind of trade is Mary Jean looking to make?”
She was channeling my grandmother—God rest her stern soul—and instantly, I felt like I was ten again. My throat didn’t want to let the words out. To make this bargain would betray my oaths as a journalist. Not that I took actual oaths, of course. But I thought them. And I stood by them.
“You can look over the article and make any changes you want before it goes to press,” I mumbled.
She brightened. “Is that so?”
“Yes, ma’am. If you want. But you don’t have to make changes,” I added. “If you have strong beliefs in the first amendment, for example.”
“Oh, honey,” she said soothingly. “Are you worried that my writing will outshine yours? That’s so sweet.” She laid a hand on my arm and squeezed. “You shouldn’t concern yourself with that. I’m sure your article is just fine and I’ll make very few changes. Did you mention my giblets at all?”
I caught Daisy just as she was strapping Willow into her car seat. Two of the boys were climbing around the minivan like moles.
“Boys!” she was yelling wearily. “You need to get back in those seats. If I get pulled over, I’ll tell on you both. Do you want me to tell on you?”
I snorted. “You’re threatening to tattle on your kids to the police?”
“It’s all I’ve got left,” she said. “They’ve been running me ragged all morning. My threats are getting weaker as the minutes pass. You get your story?”
“More like she got hers,” I said. “But, yes. She’s going to give up the recipe, and all I have to do is add a whole lot of glowy language about the Hibiscus.”
She snapped Willow’s seatbelt and slid the minivan door closed, silencing the babble inside. She leaned against the door.
Daisy was thirty-one and adorable—small and mighty, with blond hair cut short and choppy, which I once accused of being stylish but she claimed was accidentally so, because she’d had to keep getting up to pull Brant away from the litter box while her at-home stylist worked on it, and also more than once had to cut out a piece of gum that nobody would admit to having lost there. Eventually, she decided it was just a look and she would go with it.
Daisy was a great—if not exhausted—mom, but also a whiz in the kitchen, especially with baked goods. She could take flour, sugar, and whatever she had in the back of the pantry and turn them into something you’d be proud to take to the company picnic. She seriously had no idea how impressive her baking skill was. She thought it was “just a thing,” and refused to admit that it was “just a thing” that she did better than anyone I’d ever known. Including Esther.
Daisy was also outspoken, incredibly intelligent, completely sleep-deprived, was the only person I’d ever seen look good in overalls, which she wore all the time. Also, she was the most intuitive person I’d ever met. She could tell you where her kids were at all times, just based on the sounds she wasn’t hearing.
Mom and Aunt Ruta tried to convince me that was just mother’s intuition and everyone had it. I didn’t have the heart to remind them about the time they left me at a gas station in the middle of Nebraska on our road trip to Yellowstone when I was seven. There were some conversations you just didn’t want to open up again with Aunt Ruta.
Daisy closed one eye against the sun. “You do know Esther’s going to leave like four ingredients out of that recipe, right?”
“That is so devious,” I said.
She shrugged. “It’s tradition.”
“All I know is Mary Jean said get a recipe and I’m getting a recipe. Story ready to go to print. What I’m more interested in talking to you about is murder.”
“This again?” She glanced through the van window, pounded on it with the flat of her hand, and pointed threateningly at a kid I couldn’t see.
“Yes, this again. You know you’re interested. You said you were interested. You’ve said it multiple times. I’ve even got a name for it. Knock ’em Dead. What do you think? The Knock ’em Dead podcast.”
“I think you’ve got a fixation,” she said, starting toward the driver’s side door.
“And so do you.” And that was the truth. Daisy always initially acted horrified when I brought up true crime, but within minutes she was spouting off facts and opinions and hypotheses right along with me. We’d spent many a summer evening sitting in her backyard, our feet in a plastic baby swimming pool, talking serial killers and suspicious widows long into the night.
It only made sense that we could put our deep-seated and somewhat mortifying love of true murder mysteries, books about serial killers, and missing person podcasts to good use. An idea began to simmer. And then bubble. And then boil. And then overflow.
Just about every evening ended with the same words: We should do this professionally. We should make a show. A podcast!
But in the morning, when the enchantment of mystery wore off, we were both hit with reality: I had a job at the newspaper and she was trying to get a small baking business off the ground. Who had time for podcasts?
But as every day—and every gravy story—rolled by, I was starting to be willing to make the time.
Daisy raked a hand through her hair. “I enjoy small talk,” she said.
“Mm-hmm, and you especially love small talk about big crimes,” I said. “Come on, Daisy. I’ll buy the equipment. I’ve got the name. You know you like the name—I could see it in your eyes. I’ve researched it and planned it out. We choose a theme, and do four or five episodes on that theme, then we move on to a new theme. So not just one murder per episode, but lots of them. I’ve already got our first theme. I’m ready to go.”
She had a hand on the door handle. I could see her thinking. She opened the door a crack and yelled inside. “I saw that, Jake! Cut it out or you’ll answer to your father, I swear it!” She slammed it shut again. “I don’t know. I’ve got a lot going on, with the kids, Mike’s new freelance job at home, the muffin business…And, besides, I’m just some random woman who bakes things. You’re the expert reporter. I’ll sound stupid.”
I gasped and swatted at her arm lightly. “Don’t say mean things about my best friend. You will not sound stupid. C’mon, I miss exciting stories,” I said. “Tonight, Mary Jean’s got me working on a story about hot dogs. Hot dogs, Daisy. My career plan was not to write stories about hot dogs. Unless those hot dogs were a murder weapon or used to rob a bank or—”
“How could someone rob a bank with a hot dog?”
This. This was exactly how our bests conversations started. I felt a jolt of excited energy. If I could ride this wave, the Knock ‘Em Dead podcast was as good as made.
I put my hand in my pocket and stuck my finger out like it was a gun and pointed it at her. “I’ve got a gun.”
“No, you don’t. You have a Ballpark Frank. I can smell it. It needs mustard.”
“Well, I mean, a frozen hot dog could be a weapon. And it wouldn’t smell.”
She thought it over. “Not really. A whole pack, maybe. But I just don’t see myself being too intimidated by a thawing hot dog. How much could that hurt? Ouch, you gave me a small bruise.”
“You’re missing the point. Actually, no, you’re not. These are the kinds of things we would talk about on Knock ’em Dead. It would be great. People would love us. I can’t do this forever.” I whipped out the notebook that I always carried in my bag and waved it at the Hibiscus. It flopped open to reveal Esther’s recipe. “Not if this is all I get to do. I’ve got to have an outlet. And you can’t do that forever without some sort of time out.” I pointed at the van window, which currently had a kid’s face smushed against it, nostrils flared. “You’ll go insane.”
“Oh, honey, I’m already there. Firmly and utterly.”
I stuck out my bottom lip. “Please? Just give it a try?”
“Can I use it to promote Mueller’s Muffins?”
“Of course! Promote away!”
She sighed. “Okay. Why not?”
I jumped and squealed, then wrapped her in a quick hug. “You won’t regret this. We’re going to have so much fun. Knock ’em Dead is going to knock ’em dead!”
She laughed while opening her door, unleashing a cacophony of noise onto the world again. “I think you’re right,” she said. “The show will be my moment of sanity. But we do it at your house. Otherwise, we will be knocking ‘em dead with a whole lot of background noise.”
“Deal. Oh, and by the way.” I leaned over her and mimed coming at her face with my fist and stopping just short of skin on skin. “Frozen frank to the eye! Weapon! Boom!”
“You are so morbid,” she said. She slid into the driver’s seat and shut the door, then rolled down the window. “But I love it.”
I watched her drive away, barely missing Wickham Birkland’s dented Mercedes on her way out of the parking lot. He was fervently following the car that dented him earlier, but paused to lay on his horn. Daisy laid on hers in return. Two kids peered out the van window as she pulled past him. They stuck out their tongues.
I doubted she was telling them to stop.