Amara shrugged. “No problem.”
Stan sighed. She opened her mouth to apologize, but Amara started talking at the same
time.
Stan motioned for her to continue. “You first.”
“I just wanted to thank you. For speaking up at the town meeting. Your support is
important,” she said.
“It is?” Stan asked, surprised, then she recovered. “I mean, sure, yes, you’re welcome.
I think it’s a great idea. The town needs a vet, and having both traditions available
will promote good things. Glad I could help.”
Amara nodded, clearly uncomfortable. She grabbed an avocado off the display and studied
it intently.
Stan took a breath. It seemed to be the perfect time. If it didn’t work, so be it,
but at least she could say she’d tried. “I really am sorry about our misunderstanding,”
Stan said. “I . . . wish we could be friends. Or at least doctor and patient. Nutty
needs you.”
Amara hesitated, then sighed and dropped the avocado back into its bin. “I guess you’re
not Zen if you’re holding a grudge,” she admitted. “It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean
to accuse me of murder. I was being overly sensitive. I’m sorry, too.”
They both looked at each other for a minute, not really sure what to do next.
Ah, what the heck,
Stan thought, and gave Amara a hug, which thankfully she didn’t resist.
“Thanks,” Stan said. “It was a really rough time.”
“I’m sure it was. What a terrible thing,” Amara said. “So what’s going on with Nutty?
Is he sick?”
“No, but he really needs a checkup.”
Amara pulled her phone out of her purse and opened the calendar. After perusing it
for a minute, she said, “Can you bring him over Monday morning?”
Stan nodded. “I can. What time?”
“How about eleven?”
“That works. Thanks, Amara.”
Amara keyed a reminder in and dropped her phone back in her purse. “You’re welcome.
Oh, hey, one quick thing.”
“Sure, what?”
“You’re not going to accuse me of murdering Hal Hoffman when you come over, are you?”
Her eyes twinkled behind those glasses.
Stan grinned. “Touché. I’m trying to stay out of this one.”
Amara snorted. “I see you walking over there every day. How is that staying out of
it?”
“I’m just helping with some paperwork. Keeping my nose out of everything else.”
Amara tucked the brown rice syrup into her cart. “If I know you, your nose may be
out of it, but most other parts of you won’t be.”
She disappeared around the corner. Stan shook her head and selected some honey and
spelt flour.
How does she think she knows me? She hasn’t talked to me since the week after I moved
in.
Chapter 26
“They want
how
much to bail him out?” Stan stared at Brenna in disbelief. Her assistant had showed
up soon after Stan returned from the co-op, desperate with the news of Tyler’s proposed
bail. Stan had just settled in with a personal-sized homemade feta cheese and black
olive pizza and her favorite old-fashioned notebook to make a list of everything she
needed for Benny’s party.
She’d purposely avoided going to the Hoffmans’ this afternoon. After the drama last
night, she thought it best to stay away. Leigh-Anne and Roger could handle the work.
Plus she needed to focus on her own business, for a day at least. Between funerals,
cow pushing, and trying to keep her treats on track, her days were getting away from
her.
“Fifty thousand dollars. I just left the arraignment. Em almost fainted.” Brenna rubbed
her forehead. Lines of concern were embedded into it. Stan was starting to worry about
her. “A flight risk? How is this kid a flight risk?”
“Well, he’s a young kid. He’s mobile. And he confessed to a murder, Bren.” She held
up a hand at Brenna’s withering stare. “I’m just saying. This is police business,
not friend business.”
“It’s crap. Stan . . . they don’t have any money. I don’t think Em’s family does either,
and Hal’s sure isn’t going to help her out. At least not his mother or brother.”
“So what are they going to do?”
Brenna didn’t say anything. She kept her eyes trained on Stan. Sad eyes. Pleading
eyes.
It took her a minute, then it dawned on her. “You want me to bail him out?”
Brenna nodded, her eyes pleading. “Those kids need the family together. Em’s lost
her mind. Danny’s flipping out. And the little ones are with Em’s sister, but she
can’t keep them long-term. If I had the money I’d do it, but I don’t. And I don’t
know what to do.” Tears filled her eyes.
Stan sighed. When had she gotten the reputation as a bail bondsman? Izzy was one thing.
Stan had fully expected to help her friend, who hadn’t needed it anyway. But was she
going to be expected to bail out everyone in town?
“Bren. I can’t just pull fifty grand out of my wallet,” she began, but Brenna’s shoulders
drooped in disappointment.
“Okay,” Brenna said, her voice almost a whisper. “I’ll have to go pick the kids up
and stay with Em at their house, I guess. I don’t know how much she’s going to be
able to do in the state she’s in. . . .” Her voice trailed off in choked tears and
Stan felt like crap.
“Jeez, Bren. Where do I need to go?”
Brenna stared at her, then flung herself at Stan and hugged her. “Do you mean it?
You really will? You’ll get it back—Ty’s obviously not going to flee the state or
anything. I mean, where would he go, right? Em wouldn’t let him anyway. Plus, I know
he didn’t do it.”
Then why did he confess?
She remembered her conversation with Tyler in the little office, where the evidence
of Hal neglecting his duties—and his family—had been overwhelmingly present. Tyler’s
words rang in her head:
“I loved my dad, but he had other things going on. Things that didn’t include us.
And I think he hoped those things were his ticket out of here. But he never made it.”
Had he never made it because his own son had killed him?
“Stan, you’re the best,” Brenna was saying. “We should go. Now. I’ll drive.” She grabbed
Stan’s arm and pulled her out the door.
On the way to the barracks—a trip Stan was getting way too used to making—she sorted
through her thoughts about this latest turn of events. In her old, corporate life,
it helped her to pull out her trusty notebook and jot down the facts, then write up
a SARS report: Situation, actions taken, results, and support needed. And then focus
on a theme song until her mind solved the problem.
However, that worked best when she was alone. Brenna might think she was nuts if she
burst out in song.
Instead, she ticked through what she knew: One, Emmalee and Hal had not been getting
along. Two, Emmalee was nowhere to be found the afternoon of Hal’s death and had even
missed a parent-teacher conference—something those who knew her well said she would
never do. Three, Hal hadn’t been seen anywhere that day. Four, Tyler knew his father
had other things on his mind besides his family and the farm. Five, Tyler confessed.
What eighteen-year-old boy did that if he was innocent? But he was fiercely protective
of his mother. Which could mean he had killed his father because he felt his mother
was being wronged, or he lied about killing him to keep his mother out of jail.
Because he knew Pasquale was on the right track thinking of Em as a suspect?
If Emmalee had finally gotten fed up, who knew what could have happened? She and Hal
could have been on the farm, engaged in a rapidly escalating discussion while Hal
used his family heirloom sickle to trim corn. Maybe she lost her temper. Grabbed the
sickle out of his hand and stabbed him with it, then took off when she realized what
she’d done.
It was a great theory. But Stan wasn’t feeling it.
Em was a serious, responsible woman who relied on her farm to provide a living for
her and her kids. Stan could imagine her calling an angry truce with her husband.
Making it clear she knew what he was about, but wouldn’t rock the boat because they
had work to do. Finding a way to get her revenge in some other way down the road.
Plus, she had been with Em when Hal was found and her reaction didn’t seem to be in
line with that of a murderer, unless she was a phenomenal actor.
Tyler, she wasn’t so sure about. The boy was intense. But kill his own father in cold
blood, then drive back to school and wait for the call? And no one had heard or seen
anything that day. No fighting, no screaming, no nothing. In fact, Roger had told
Pasquale that he hadn’t seen Hal on the farm since the day before his death. Had anyone
seen Tyler there? And what about the mysterious, missing Enrico? Did his disappearance
have something to do with Tyler’s confession?
And then there were the unhappy business partners. Asher Fink’s fight with Hal. Peter
Michelli’s dissatisfaction with the way Hal ran the business. Not to mention the real
estate deals gone bad and people looking for their money. And Izzy’s financial troubles.
She had no one to blame but herself—and Hal.
“Stan?” Brenna stared at her. “We’re here.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry. Just thinking.” Stan grabbed her purse. “Let’s do this. Is your
sister here?”
“I doubt it. She probably threw him in a cell and went home to eat dinner. I’m so
mad at her right now.” She swung her long legs out of the car and slammed the door.
Stan thought Brenna had probably been watching too much
Law & Order
or
CSI,
but she didn’t say that. Instead, she said, “Let me talk.”
They went in the front door. Luckily, it was a different dispatcher than the one who
had witnessed Stan and Jake’s attempt to bail Izzy out.
“Can you tell me how I would go about posting bail for Tyler Hoffman?” she asked,
speaking into the microphone next to the bulletproof window.
The trooper picked up a book from his desk, skimmed it, then looked back up. “Actually,
his bail’s already been posted. ’Bout a half hour ago.”
“By whom?” Brenna stepped over.
The guy sighed, like he wasn’t sure why she cared, and looked back down. “Ted Brahm,”
he read.
Brenna looked at Stan. Stan raised her hands, palms up. Ted Brahm, the farmer? How
in the world was he posting bail? At the tune of fifty grand?
“So they’re gone?” Brenna asked.
“Yup.”
“Well, that’s good news,” Stan tried.
Brenna nodded distractedly. “Can we go over there?”
“To their house? They might just want to be with the family right now. But sure, we
can stop,” she said, as Brenna opened her mouth to protest.
“Good.” Brenna turned and slammed out of the barracks. The cop behind the glass raised
his eyebrow at Stan, then went back to his computer.
Stan hurried out after Brenna and got in the car before she could take off without
her.
“Why the heck would Ted bail Tyler out? And
how
would Ted bail him out? Where did he get that much money?” Brenna reiterated Stan’s
thoughts from a minute ago. She peeled out of the parking lot and hit the gas a lot
harder than necessary.
Stan thought of her peaceful afternoon gone up in flames and shrugged. “They’re friends,
right? And business partners. He’s been helping Em out since Hal died. I saw him over
there that first morning, working on the farm with some of his staff.”
Brenna shook her head. “It’s weird. Em didn’t have any use for any of the co-op partners.
She just went along with it because Hal was passionate about it. And because it made
them more money than just running their farm and selling milk.” She went quiet until
they pulled into Em’s driveway. Em’s truck with the N
O
F
ARMS
, N
O
F
OOD
sticker was parked next to an unfamiliar Honda Civic.
“Ted must still be here,” Stan said. “Should we bother her?”
“I’m going in.” Brenna shoved the car into park and got out. With a sigh, Stan followed.
“Go to the side door,” Brenna said, motioning Stan to the door near the garage.
Close on her heels, Stan almost tripped when Brenna stopped short. Stan regained her
balance in time to see what had startled her: Em and Ted Brahm guiltily jumping apart
from the embrace they’d been locked in on the stoop.
Brenna gaped at them, mouth open, until Stan nudged her with her elbow. She flushed
and recovered. “Shoot, sorry. We, uh, just wanted to make sure you were okay. We went
to get Tyler. At the barracks. Stan was going to post his bail.”
Emmalee smoothed her flyaway hair back, red faced at being caught. “You did? Why,
Stan, I just don’t know what to say. How sweet of you. And yes, we’re fine. Tyler
is innocent. He did not kill his father. This will all get straightened out. The police
are going to search his room at school. They got a warrant.” She grimaced, but forced
a smile back on. “But thankfully Ted . . . came to the rescue.”
Ted tipped his baseball cap. “Afternoon, ladies. We’ll all get through this.”
“Well, that’s wonderful,” Stan said, her hand on Brenna’s arm. “And we should go.
Em, I’ll bring Samson some food for his tummy later tonight.”
“That’s wonderful. We’re actually leaving for a few days. To go stay with my sister,”
Em added, which told Stan she probably wasn’t going to stay with her sister. “Would
you mind checking on the dog and cat? I would be so grateful.”
“Sure, no problem.”
Why do I keep agreeing to these things?
“We’re going to get going. Take care, Em.”
With a nod to Ted, Stan turned Brenna firmly around and shoved her toward the car,
her head spinning with this new revelation.
So Em had been getting her revenge on Hal after all.