Butter Off Dead Read online

  Whoosh. With a spit and sputter of frozen mud and snow loud enough to hear with the windows shut tight, the car rose and fell and shot out of its ruts, bouncing with a heavy metal thud. I braked quickly but carefully, to avoid the big spruce behind me.

  And got the heck out of there.

  I drove north, breathing deeply, shaking my head to clear the mental fog from my close call. Slowed at the sight of a woman crossing the road on foot. A stocky woman about my height in a bulky black coat and a green-and-orange knit hat, a multicolored pom-pom on top.

  Phyl, cradling a critter that did not want to be held. I crept closer. A bony claw-foot poked out between her arms, and half a dozen reddish-brown feathers floated up and drifted off.

  I rolled down the passenger-side window. The chicken’s head popped up, her eyes dark and angry, and she let out a string of clucks.

  “Fowl-mouthed thing,” I said.

  “She tried to cross the road,” Phyl replied, and we both half died from laughing. Phyl hopped in the car. At the garden gate, she released the hen to the company of her friends and we clomped inside.

  “What brings you out this way?” Jo put a plate of Scottish shortbread cookies on the table.

  I warmed my hands on a cup of wild herb tea. No cover story in my pocket, and none sprouted to mind. We’d been so busy laughing on the short drive in that I hadn’t thought to invent one.

  But apparently the color on my cheeks wasn’t all from the cold, and revealed me. An old boss of mine at SavClub had taken EST training in the early 1980s and often spoke of “enrolling” others to get them to help you solve a problem.

  I made a quick decision. “You don’t get into town much in the winter—”

  “Or in summer,” Jo said. “We let town come to us.”

  “But there’s talk. Unpleasant talk. Iggy left almost everything to Christine, who left most of it to Nick. And there are people—some carrying badges—who think that smells funny. They—Nick and Christine—were engaged a while back, until she broke it off. But they were giving it another go.”

  Phyl and Jo watched me in silence, expressions somber.

  “It makes no sense to think he killed her. He loved her. He didn’t know about the money, and he wouldn’t have cared anyway. And he just wouldn’t do that.” A giant balloon of anxiety seemed to fill my chest and choke off my oxygen supply. The women’s faces gave away nothing. “What worries me is . . . when I realized something was wrong at Christine’s, I called him to find out where she kept her spare key. He said he was in the Jewel, checking on wolves. There’s no way to confirm that—it was snowing like crazy and his tracks would have filled in before nightfall. But you saw him down here Saturday morning. Miles from the Jewel.”

  I paused, my breath ragged. “And he’s down here again today, out at Rainbow Lake. Which is not where he said he was going when he left the shop.”

  “So you followed him,” Phyl said. “Wondered why you had Kathy’s car.”

  “It’s one thing to not tell me the truth. But it’s another to lie to law enforcement. How can he not know the trouble that could cause?” Phyl and Jo make a habit of respecting privacy. If you’ve got a secret you really need to keep, but you really want to get it off your chest, tell one of them. They might tell each other, but beyond that, only the goats and chickens would ever catch wind.

  And here I was asking them to tell me my brother’s business. Beneath the table, I swiped my thumb across my wrist.

  In a distant room, a cuckoo clock rang the hour. In the garden, a hen clucked and another responded. Outside, fat snowflakes filled the sky.

  “We’ve been seeing Nick drive by for a few weeks,” Phyl finally said. “Early, when we go out to feed the animals and gather eggs.”

  “But we don’t know where he’s going,” Jo said. “Or why.”

  What else did I need to know? “So he heads out before dawn,” I said, hooking my thumb toward the lake. “And when does he come back, toward town?”

  “Early afternoon,” Phyl said. “Like on Saturday. ’Course, now we know, Saturday, he was going to Christine’s, ’cause you called.”

  Jo cocked her head. “First time we saw him was that morning after we heard the ruckus in the chicken coop. We were in and out all night, didn’t sleep a wink.”

  “No sign of the usual foxes, and the grizzlies are hibernating. I could swear I heard a wolf howl.”

  “Half past six, we saw lights on the road. Southbound, remember?” Jo continued. “We thought it was odd.”

  Odd, yes. And a wolf? “When Kim came by, making her rounds, I expect you told her you saw Nick on Saturday?”

  They nodded. The implications were clear. She knew he’d lied. She had his phone. If they got his phone records, could they pinpoint where he’d been when he got my call?

  And what else could they figure out? Could they tell whether he’d doubled back to the church, killed Christine, then snuck out to the woods? If I left my phone on and lost it, I could ping it and dig it out of the laundry basket or trace it to a shelf in the Merc where I’d set it down while showing off jam flavors or restocking the coffee display.

  I tucked my worries away while I navigated the twists and turns of the road home. It felt like driving inside a giant snow globe shaken by an unseen hand. You’d think wildlife would stay home curled in front of their own fires during a snowstorm, but no. Like Phyl and Jo’s wayward chicken, deer often roam during unsettled weather, making narrow, slippery roads even more treacherous.

  A squirrel darted in front of me and I slowed to let him cross safely. That reminded me of Sandburg and Pumpkin, relegated to separate quarters. With Bozo ill and aging, Tracy would not want to take on a new cat, and Phyl and Jo had a full complement of house and barn cats. Kathy had a sweet Siamese who was probably no more interested in adopting a sibling than Sandburg was. Who else? I knew better than to ask Chiara, and Heidi had acted like I’d lost my marbles.

  Near Cutoff and the church property, the sky darkened and the snow became harder, sleetier, pelting the windshield. I flicked the wipers to high.

  And cursed when the right blade flew off the car and vaulted over the borrow pit into a snowy field. If I could find it, maybe I could reattach it—driving all the way back to the village without it would be nearly impossible.

  Take it from me, it ain’t easy to find an eighteen-inch-long slice of black rubber in a snowbank, an occasional fencepost warning me of barbed wire. I spotted the blade poking up between two piles left by a plow and was staggering toward them when a raspy voice stopped me.

  “Not one more step.”

  Off-balance in the deep snow, I turned my head slowly. Jack Frost, in brown Carhartts and a ball cap, stood in a narrow lane, freshly plowed, holding a shotgun.

  A minor blessing: It wasn’t pointed at me. But his face said one wrong move, one wrong word, and it would be.

  “Sign says NO TRESPASSING. Don’t you read?”

  Disoriented by the snow and flat light, I’d wandered into the back lane leading to his place. I raised my gloved hands. “Jack. So sorry. Wiper blade flew off and in this storm, gotta have it.” I pointed to the blade, jutting out of a snow pile beyond my reach.

  Frost jerked the blade free and flung it toward me. It dropped between us like a broken boomerang, and I squinted, afraid to move, while snow stabbed my cheeks. He lurched forward, grabbed the thing, and thrust it at me.

  “Next time, I won’t be so nice.”

  The threat in his words barely registered. I was too focused on his cap and its logo: a circle of red on a white background, a slash across the outline of a wolf’s head.

  • Fourteen •

  The wheel rattled—from the rutted ice or my shaking hands—as I turned onto the highway, speeding away from Jack Frost.

  My eyes blinked in astonishment. The snowstorm had stopped. The wind that had stun
g my eyes had torn open the clouds and light streamed onto the forested hillsides and danced on the mountain peaks. The horizon shimmered, a patchwork quilt of dappled greens, rippling blues, and silky browns, stitched in gold and silver.

  My mother had drilled into me the credo that you never return anything in worse condition than when you borrowed it, so I pulled into the gas station. Yanked the hose over the back of the car and jammed the nozzle in—the tank is always on the wrong side on other people’s cars—and waved at the UPS driver. Walked inside, clutching the busted wiper blade.

  And ran smack into Ike Hoover. The hot coffee he held splashed onto his bare hand and down his brown wool shirt.

  “No problem,” he said, tugging a napkin from a nearby dispenser and sponging up the mess. I might have come back later if I’d seen the sheriff’s rig but the UPS van had blocked my view. Ike nodded toward the broken blade. “Need a hand?”

  Kim emerged from between the aisles carrying a Coke, the station owner puffing up behind her.

  “Hot on the trail, investigating that poor girl’s murder? Sure hope you nail the SOB. Sally says—” The owner’s ears reddened, leaving little doubt she’d been about to regurgitate nasty rumors about Nick.

  The wiper blade emergency had forced me into the hornet’s nest of Gossip Central, its owner the undeclared queen of the faction that regularly rails against village shopkeepers for our snootiness, putting on festivals that bring people downtown, and ignoring the highway merchants.

  Nobody ever threw a party for unleaded gas and expected presents.

  “This one oughta fit.” Ike held up a yellow box and headed out to my car. Kathy’s car. I trotted after him. As undersheriff, Ike oversaw all felony investigations. He had a much-lauded solve rate, but I knew one unsolved case haunted him: The death of my father in a hit-and-run on the bridge, where Jewel Bay flows into Eagle Lake. Two weeks from today, it would be fifteen years.

  Whether out of guilt or inherent kindness, Ike often shows unexpected tenderness toward me and my mother. My brother and sister had rushed home from college, but after those first anguished days, it had been our grief-stained faces searching his for answers when he came to the Orchard to report on the investigation. And my grandfather’s. A vibrant man in his late seventies then, losing his oldest son took more out of him than the cancer death of his wife a few years earlier.

  If only that sense of guilt prompted Ike to think twice—or thrice—before accusing Nick of murder.

  “Fits. There you go.” Ike slapped the box into my palm. “Now, away from prying ears, tell me why you look like the hounds are on your tail.”

  “Oh, uh, just a little run-in with Jack Frost. Not exactly a threat, in so many words, but . . .”

  “In exactly what words, and don’t leave any out.” Ike leaned against Kathy’s car, not seeming to care about the muck rubbing off onto his uniform. Notebook in hand, Kim listened intently.

  Fear had imprinted the details, though Frost’s words sounded less threatening now than they had at the time. “You’re going to tell me it’s nothing, he’s harmless.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Ike said. “No crime in what you’ve reported, but watch your step.”

  “Is he a suspect? You talked to the neighbors—you know he was livid over Christine’s plans for the property.”

  “Can’t tell you that,” he said. Which was as good as saying yes.

  I swirled spit inside my dry mouth, hoping they wouldn’t ask why I’d gone out that way. Or guess that I was trying to confirm Nick’s faulty alibi.

  I gestured toward the convenience store. “What rumors is the Gossip Queen spreading now? Trash talk from Sally Grimes?”

  “You can guess,” Ike said. “What’s the story between your family and hers?”

  “Sally’s? There is no story. She resents Nick’s inheritance, and Christine’s before that. She feels hurt and she’s lashing out at Nick. The last thing my brother cares about is money.”

  Ike’s steady gaze unnerved me. So did his words. “Is that true, Erin? He doesn’t get university funding. He relies on grants. That inheritance would pay for a lot of research.”

  “How can you—? You don’t think—?” Jolted, I turned from Ike to Kim, who’d known Nick as long as she’d known me. She fought visibly to relax her frozen features, to act as if Ike’s words hadn’t shocked her, too.

  I wanted to jump in the car and speed away. I wanted to puke. “Haven’t you learned yet, Ike? I know things about this town you’ll never know. You need me.” I brandished the wiper blade box and stalked away.

  Inside, I dug in my pockets for cash. Threw it on the counter and ignored the two cents change the silent woman laid on the scratched laminate. I glanced outside furtively. Kim’s hand chopped the air, her back to me as she lectured Ike.

  I took refuge in the women’s room.

  When I raised my wet face from the sink, Kim handed me a paper towel. Our eyes met in the mirror. “You know better, Kim. Can’t you set him straight?”

  “You know better, Erin. You know we have to look at everyone. Follow the evidence.”

  I spun halfway, facing her. “So the ravings of a bitter, jealous woman are evidence? Sally always says she never makes any money. She wants to challenge Iggy’s will. Suppose she confronted Christine and shot her?”

  But Sally had been at her shop Saturday morning. I’d seen her myself. Seen her making googly eyes at Larry in her doorway.

  Then the thing I should have said to Ike occurred to me. “Wait a sec. Everybody knows a killer can’t inherit from his victim. If there’s no other motive, then money doesn’t make sense.”

  “Motive isn’t evidence, Erin.”

  I stared at her. “You have evidence you’re not telling me about. Besides . . .”

  “Besides what?”

  But I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t help Nick further the lie that he’d spent the day tracking wolves. Because I no longer believed it. “Motive may not be evidence, but evidence can be misinterpreted. Evidence doesn’t explain why.” I reached past her to stuff the damp towels in the overflowing wastebasket.

  “Always asking why. Murder never means anything, Erin. That’s for books and philosophers, and Pollyannas who try to see a lesson in every bad thing. Don’t go all Pollyanna. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “How do you know what suits me? When my father was killed, you dropped me like a hot rock. Ever since I came back, you can hardly stand to be around me. We go riding, but half the time you drum up some excuse to skip out. You play pool with the rest of us, but you stand apart, acting superior because you’re a deputy sheriff or a Caldwell or whatever you think you are.” I ripped the words out of my throat, hot and sharp, knowing I might regret them later and not caring.

  The cool blonde in front of me, in her navy blue pantsuit and her stylish boots and her expensive wool coat, turned to ice. “You. Don’t. Know.”

  Then she was gone and I sank back against the sink, drained. Why bad stuff happens to good people, the eternal question. Fifteen years later and I still felt wounded by Kim’s desertion, the night of our senior year when I lost my father and my best friend. I’d thought the two were connected, but it turned out only time linked them. The real explanation had been teenage jealousy, that a lucky streak on the back of a horse had given me the rodeo crown she’d coveted. Then I left for college in Missoula and later moved to Seattle, and a chink that might have mended with time and proximity became a chasm.

  I’ve thought a lot, over the years, about crime and meaning. My father’s death may have been an accident, but it was also a crime—and every member of my family its victim.

  It didn’t happen to teach me a lesson. It didn’t happen to make me more grateful for being his kid, or to teach me to love my family, or any of the other Hallmark sayings people fall back on. It didn’t happen to make us more careful drivers, o
r prompt us to “live life to the fullest.”

  It happened because some creephole had gone too fast on the icy bridge, striking my dad’s car and sending it spinning until it smashed into the guardrail so hard the impact killed him.

  Kim had it wrong. I wasn’t looking for meaning. I was looking for an explanation. For someone to take responsibility.

  Not the same thing.

  And I wasn’t going to stop. Someone out there knew what had happened to Christine. I couldn’t pretend Nick wasn’t acting oddly, but while Kim and Ike were busy pinning murder on him, I would suss out the real explanation.

  Because it’s the people who believe in us, who believe in justice, who give life and all that happens meaning.

  * * *

  The voices in my mind nattered on as I drove into the village. They harangued me as I parked Kathy’s car and trudged my way to Dragonfly. They did not shut up as I plopped her keys onto her cutting counter.

  I told the voices to stuff it and put on my retail face. Kathy wasn’t fooled—she rarely is—but she said nothing, her eyes flickering to the open classroom at the front of the shop. Six or eight women chatted while twisting crochet hooks around what appeared to be plastic bags. A woman who taught needlework moved around the circle, giving pointers.

  “Upcycling,” Kathy said. “Tell me about the tea shop prospect.”

  “You know, I started to think maybe these people are right, maybe Jewel Bay is too small for one more restaurant, one more food lovers’ shop, but if those women can crochet plastic bags, anything’s possible.”

  The instructor called for her students’ attention and demonstrated a finishing technique. I recognized her as one of the women-about-town who make a part-time career out of retail. A woman who might work Tuesdays at the kitchen shop and fill in on Thursdays at the quilt shop, help out at a gallery one summer, and pitch in for the antique dealer next. Cheery and chatty, they work as much for fun and to keep busy as for income.

  I might need one of them soon myself, if the Merc kept growing. Especially if Tracy left to start her own shop—a prospect so distressing it gave me night sweats in midday.