Peach Pies and Alibis (19 page)

Pushing Freda’s desk chair back into place, she crossed the room to where her mother
stood. “Let’s go home. We won’t be much good to anyone if we’re all half dead.”

Her mother nodded. “You’re right. And we only have a handful of days to find a murderer.
It’s up to us, ladies. The authorities can’t help. Melissa’s death has been ruled
an accident and they’d call us crazy if we told them that we believe Freda was deliberately
infected with
Listeria
.”

“We don’t need them,” Reba said. She reached under the hem of her dress and pulled
a twenty-two pistol from the diminutive holster strapped to her thigh. She dropped
her eyes to the gun. “I won’t fail again, Adelaide.”

Ella Mae expected her mother to tell Reba that none of this was her fault, but she
didn’t. “We need to know our enemy’s identity. Nothing else matters.”

Reba nodded solemnly and left the room.

“How is she supposed to find out?” Ella Mae asked, feeling angry on Reba’s behalf.
“No one else has any clue what’s going on? Why should she?”

“Because that’s what she does. It’s who she is.” Her mother studied her. “My gifts
are of no use. Neither are my sisters’ talents. We’re depending on Reba.”

Ella Mae picked up her purse, feeling the weight of her father’s Colt inside. “We
have other weapons. Me, for instance.”

“What can you do? You don’t even know the extent of your abilities.”

“I can get people to talk,” Ella Mae said, her voice steely with determination. “I’ll
make enough pies to get the whole town talking. Someone must know something!”

Her mother smiled wryly. “What do you have in mind? Are you going to invite the Gaynors
to lunch?”

Ella Mae didn’t return the smile. “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

The next morning, Ella Mae woke to a leaden sky. Her limbs were as heavy as the knot
of gloomy clouds obscuring the horizon, and her eyes felt puffy and sore, but she
knew this was not the time to wallow under the covers. There were only six days left
until the harvest. Six days to find a killer and restore the Lady of the Ash.

Unlike Ella Mae, Chewy was raring to go. He danced in tight circles over her floral
comforter, delighted to find that she was finally stirring. She rubbed his belly and
caressed his soft ears until he leapt to the ground, barking for her to follow.

After a cup of strong coffee, Ella Mae threw on a robe and went outside. She found
her mother in the herb garden, murmuring to a rosemary bush the size of a Christmas
tree. Ella Mae pressed one of its needlelike leaves between her fingers, releasing
a burst of fragrance. The scent of the mint, basil, and lavender curled around her,
cocooning her with comfort.

“Any news of Freda?” she asked.

Her mother shook her head and clipped a stalk of thyme as tall as Ella Mae’s shoulder.
“Her condition’s unchanged. Verena and Sissy stayed all night. Reba relieved them
this morning. None of us want Freda to be alone, and Peter needs to rest. What are
your plans?”

“I’m going to church and after that to the farmer’s market,” Ella Mae said. “I’m hoping
to chat with the vendors and see if anything strikes me as unusual. I haven’t noticed
any new products since I started shopping there, but maybe the farmers have seen something
I haven’t.” She shrugged. “I don’t really know what else to do to help until the pie
shop opens for business on Tuesday.”

Clipping several sprigs of oregano, her mother placed them in a basket on top of an
aromatic pile of dill, sage, and several varieties of parsley. “I think that’s a good
idea. I wish I could tell you that Peter had some notion of where Freda’s tainted
food came from, but he didn’t. We’re all in the dark.”

Ella Mae took in the pewter sky and the thick line of gull gray clouds. “It’s a full
moon tonight, isn’t it? Will you still perform your ritual?”

“Yes,” her mother said. “If the Luna rose blooms for a couple beneath a harvest moon,
their lives will be doubly blessed. They’ll have love and riches. Not a bad combination.”

“And if they’re not blessed?” Ella Mae asked, glancing at the brown and twisted Luna
rose bush and the tight, colorless bud waiting in its center. The bud looked like
a heart trapped in a tangle of thorns, but she knew that if tonight’s couple had fortune
on their side, the rose would burst into life with the brilliance of a hundred moons.

Tucking a pair of clippers into the pocket of her garden apron, her mother plucked
a spent bloom from the lavender bush. She crushed it and let its pieces fall to the
ground.
“They’ll either break up and search for a more suitable partner or they’ll ignore
the signs and stay together, determined to change their destiny.”

“Is that possible?”

“No, but not many people are willing to give up on a dream. Very few can simply walk
away from the person they’ve fallen for, but some do.”

Ella Mae thought of her own marriage. What if she and Sloan had stood before the Luna
rose? Would it have remained dark and still? Would she have stayed in Havenwood even
if the ritual had predicted that her future marriage was doomed from the start? She
knew the answer. She would have run off to New York anyway, hoping against hope for
a different fate.

“I know how hard it is give up on a relationship,” she said. “When you first fall
in love, you feel invulnerable. Sometimes, it takes years for the cracks to show—to
see that it’s not going to work. Maybe it’s better to have had that time together
than nothing at all.”

Her mother touched Ella Mae on the cheek. Her fingers smelled of lavender and honey-scented
roses. “A few years of happiness? That’s not what I want for you. Most mothers want
a good man for their daughter. A decent man. For you, for
my
daughter, I want a great man. Someone strong, true, smart, and brave. A fortress
of a man. A champion. A sanctuary.”

“I guess I thought I had that when I left here with Sloan,” Ella Mae said. “And we
had a good marriage until the end.”

“
Good
is not enough. You should settle for nothing less than extraordinary. I didn’t.”
Her mother’s smile was wistful as she bent over to pick up her basket. “I’m going
to hang these for drying and then head over to the hospital. If Freda’s condition
changes, I’ll call you.”

Ella Mae felt the spot on her cheek where her mother’s cool fingers had lovingly brushed
the skin. Such maternal
gestures were rare, and Ella Mae treasured both the touch and the words.

Leaving Chewy at Partridge Hill, Ella Mae attended the early church service. She prayed
for Freda to be restored to health, for Candis and Peter to find strength and comfort,
and for justice to prevail over the wicked person who’d infected Melissa and Freda
with
Listeria.
Her final prayer was for help in sorting out her feelings for both Hugh and Sloan.

“At times like these, I could really use a friend,” she whispered to the polished
wood pew in front of her. As much as she loved Reba, her aunts, and her mother, she
knew that none of them were unbiased listeners when it came to her ex-husband. And
because Hugh could fall victim to Loralyn’s power at any given time, they disapproved
of him as a suitor as well.

Ella Mae thought of all the casual friendships she’d formed at culinary school, of
the dozens of times she’d gone out for coffee, to Broadway plays, or shopping with
a group of women her own age. She’d been so busy working that she forgot how wonderful
it was to have a girlfriend.

She raised her eyes and listened as the preacher invoked his benediction and then
joined the other worshippers as they filed outside. The church bells pealed and the
sound resonated through Ella Mae’s body, its triumphant notes making her blood quicken
and her feet move with a lighter step.

Uplifted, she drove to the farmer’s market held every weekend in the park adjacent
to the town hall. While she sniffed and squeezed fruits and vegetables, sampled fresh
baked bread smeared with homemade berry preserves, and loaded her hemp shopping bags
with items for the pie shop, she kept her eye out for suspicious behavior or new and
unusual food items. She saw neither.

In fact, by the time her bags were laden with local produce, the sun had burned the
gray from the skies and was
gilding the leaves on the oak trees standing guard over the square.

By noon, most of the church services were over and the streets of downtown Havenwood
were full of townsfolk searching for their midday meal. Because everyone was on the
lookout for parking spots, Ella Mae decided to leave her Jeep in the town hall lot
and walk to the pie shop. As she passed the little boutiques and gift shops that would
either stay closed or open after one o’clock, she began to replay yesterday’s events
in her mind. She was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she didn’t notice a large
white dog barreling toward her.

“Jasmine!” a woman called out. “Jasmine!”

Ella Mae paid no attention to the shouting. “Could it be?” she murmured to herself
as she stared at the framed poster hanging in the window of the town’s wine shop.
The print was of a hunk of yellow cheese sitting on a cutting board alongside a bunch
of plump, red grapes. “Could that be the source of the
Listeria
?” Just as she pressed her finger against the glass, she heard a frantic cry of, “JASMINE!
NO!
” before a blur of white knocked her right off her feet.

Grunting in surprise, Ella Mae landed hard on her backside.

A woman with hair the color of summer honey and meadow green eyes grabbed the end
of the dog’s leash with one hand and Ella Mae’s elbow with the other. “I am so sorry!”

Ella Mae recognized her as Suzy Bacchus, the owner of the Cubbyhole, Havenwood’s only
bookstore.

“Jasmine is usually obedient,” Suzy said in dismay. “But she saw a squirrel dart across
the road, and before I knew it, the leash was out of my hand and she was off like
a rocket. Oh, your shirt!”

Looking down, Ella Mae saw a dark purple stain growing in the center of her blouse
like a bleeding wound.
“Smells like plum jam,” she said, trying to show Suzy that she wasn’t the least bit
upset.

Suzy bit her lower lip and picked up the shattered jar of preserves. “Are you hurt?
She ran into you pretty hard.”

“I’m fine. Really.” Ella Mae gestured at the wine store’s window display. “I wasn’t
paying attention. If I had been, I could have stepped out of her way.” She smiled
at Suzy, wanting to ease the other woman’s guilt. “But if I ever need a bouncer at
the pie shop, can I borrow your poodle?”

Suzy’s shoulders sagged in relief. “On one condition. My store is right up the street.
Let me make you a cup of coffee and give you a Cubbyhole T-shirt to wear.” She indicated
Ella Mae’s soiled blouse with her eyes. “If you go anywhere looking like that, people
will think you’ve been shot.”

“You’re probably right,” Ella Mae agreed with a laugh.

The two women collected the spilled fruits and vegetables, tossing several bruised
apples and flattened bananas into a nearby trash can. Suzy then gave Jasmine a stern
scolding and the trio headed off to the bookstore.

Ella Mae had shopped at the Cubbyhole several times, but she hadn’t had much of an
opportunity to chat with Suzy. As they walked past tourists out for a Sunday stroll,
she learned that Suzy was thirty-one, unmarried, and had relocated to Havenwood from
Ocean Isle, North Carolina.

“How could you leave the beach?” Ella Mae asked as Suzy unlocked the shop’s front
door. “I’ve always thought it would be like paradise to live by the ocean.”

Suzy let Jasmine trot inside the store and then turned to Ella Mae, her expression
forlorn. “I had man trouble.”

“I can relate to that,” Ella Mae said, and by the time she and Suzy had shared half
a pot of coffee, Suzy knew all about Sloan, and Ella Mae had listened to a story very
similar to her own featuring a louse named Rob. As it turned out, Suzy was only a
year younger than Ella Mae and had chosen to relocate to Havenwood because her grandparents,
who lived nearby, suggested she sell her bookstore in Ocean Isle and open up her own
place in the mountains of Georgia.

“And I’m happy that I listened to them,” Suzy said. “I love it here. People are fun,
friendly, and they love to read. The area’s beautiful. Where else could you be surrounded
by these blue green hills and a huge expanse of water? The lake is so big that I sometimes
forget that it doesn’t stretch all the way to France.” She glanced into her empty
cup. “I have been a bit lonely, though. I’ve been on a few dates, but I’m not ready
for anything serious, and you’re the first woman I’ve had a real girl talk with in
ages! Can I say how much I miss doing this? Just sitting with another chick and having
a royal gabfest?”

Ella Mae laughed. “Believe me, I’m with you. This has been one of the best afternoons
I’ve had in ages. We need to make this a regular thing.”

Suzy clinked the rim of her coffee cup against Ella Mae’s. “Amen. How about this weekend?
We could go out to eat or catch a movie.”