Peaches and Scream (Georgia Peach Mystery, A) (17 page)

He cleared his throat, bringing me back to focus. “Make up your mind, Nola.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m about starved, and the diner closes at four, remember?”

My rational voice kicked in, along with my growling stomach, and overpowered my doubts. Certainly, if we were going to discuss business, it really wasn’t a date. “Sure.” I shrugged. “Why not? But I’ll buy my own,” I added.

“Suit yourself,” he replied, a temporary flash of triumph showing in his eyes. He motioned for me to lead the way. “We’ll take my truck. I’ve got to head back this way anyway.”

Asking him to wait, I ran back inside to make sure Roscoe had enough food and water before heading out to the truck. Once again, I found myself removing a stack of papers from the passenger seat. “Is this your truck or your office?” I teased.

“A mess, isn’t it?” He pulled from our drive and onto the
main road, one hand up on the dash keeping a clipboard of papers from sliding to the floor.

“You always were a slob.” I’d remembered visiting the McKennas’ house as a kid, always amazed at the contrast between Hattie’s ultra-organized room and Cade’s room, which usually looked like a tornado had just hit.

He laughed, his eyes sliding across the cab to me. “What can I say? Old habits die hard.”

“Yes, they do,” I agreed, gazing out the window. I was watching peach orchards and pecan groves roll by, paired together like siblings: the looming pecans, standing straight and tall, towering over the smaller, burgeoning peach trees, which, if not sharply pruned and restrained, would grow rampantly wild. Sort of like me and my own siblings. And it was pretty easy to guess which one of us would be considered the wild-growing peach tree. Especially if they knew about
all
the things I’d done that summer before leaving. “Joe got the pump up and running,” I commented, trying to keep my mind off the past and on more important, present-day matters. “He’s supposed to be working on the tractor this afternoon.”

“Your daddy will be happy about that.”

“Yup. I wonder if he’ll be happy about my plans for selling peach products.”

I kept my gaze averted, but I could feel Cade glancing my way as he spoke. “I’m sure he’s always proud of you, Nola. No matter what you’re doing. But don’t expect him to be enthusiastic about coming back to a new enterprise loaded onto him. He’s got his hands full, just trying to keep up with the farm. Like I was telling you before, I can’t see him adding an Internet business to the mix.”

He was sure right about that. My daddy wouldn’t take well to an Internet business. He still kept most of the farm’s records in an old ledger book. “You know,” I went on, “Margie Price over at the Sunny Side Up wants to buy our preserves for her guests. And Ginny said she’d carry them, too.” I continued to explain my thoughts for marketing locally.
“I’m thinking there’s small towns all around here that have places like the diner where we could pitch our products. Really, if you think about it, Macon’s not all that far and there’s tons of opportunities up there.”

“I agree. Just don’t go getting your hopes up that your parents are going to be able to keep up with all that. Making the product is only the start. Then there’s the initial contacts to make and constant resupplying afterwards.”

We were passing by several white clapboard houses that bordered the edge of town. An old man sitting on a lawn chair under the branches of a shade tree raised his hand and tossed us a slow wave. Cade was right. I’d known all along that my parents wouldn’t—couldn’t—do what it took to get our farm back on firm financial grounds. What was it they said about teaching new tricks to . . . Well, perhaps that wasn’t the best saying for this particular situation. But I’d already realized there was only one way this would work: if I stayed on to see this thing through. It had been admitting it, and then committing to it, that was the hard part. “I thought I’d stay. See to it myself,” I blurted out.

“What?” Cade glanced over his shoulder and swerved to the side of the road. Hitting the brakes and throwing the truck into neutral, he turned in his seat and faced me. “Did you just say you’re staying in Cays Mill?”

The look on his face made me laugh. “Yup. That’s what I’m saying.”

He tipped his head back and let out a little whoop. “That’s great!” Then, calming a little, he turned back to his serious self. “But what about your job? And I thought you couldn’t stand it here. Too boring and backwards for you.”

I held up my hand, still laughing. “That’s not exactly what I said! It was your interpretation. And about my job . . .” I sighed. “Well, it’s a long story.” I pointed back to the road. “Let’s get to the diner and talk about it over lunch. I’ll tell you all about it, but I swear, I’m going to pass out if I don’t get something in my stomach soon.”

“Sure thing!” His head bobbed up and down as he maneuvered back onto the road. “Have you told Hattie? She’s going to be—” His voice was cut off by the sound of sirens screaming up behind us. Cursing, he swerved back to the side of the road again, making room for the sheriff’s car. “Holy crud! We almost got creamed!”

Taking a deep breath, I tried to quiet the squall of adrenaline from the near miss. “That looked like Travis,” I said, staring after the cruiser, which had already become just a white speck on the horizon. The sirens from the first vehicle had barely faded when we heard a second set coming from behind. The intensity of the wailing increased until finally another sheriff’s cruiser appeared and whizzed past us so quickly that the sides of the truck shook. “And that was the sheriff.”

“Both of them? Something big must be going on.” Checking over his shoulder, he wrenched the truck back onto the road and punched the accelerator. I grabbed the little handle above the door and braced myself as we sped after the cruisers.

“What could it be?” I asked, adjusting my seat belt, which had automatically cinched up on the first wild curb. Cade must have had a little NASCAR know-how buried in him, because he was keeping up well with the sheriff’s car.

He clenched the wheel and shook his head. “No way of telling.” We were headed away from town, toward the freeway.

Then I saw it. A black plume of smoke rising over the treetops. “Look!” I tapped my window. “It’s coming from the direction of the mill.”

My knees bounced nervously as he punched the gas and gained speed on a straight stretch of the road before whipping onto the mill turnoff. Then we slowed to navigate the twisty road leading uphill to the mill. As we grew nearer, the smoke grew thicker, and an acrid smell assaulted us.

“It must be bad,” I said, but I had no idea how much of an understatement that was. As we turned onto the service road leading directly to the mill, large flames came into
sight. Their peaks lashed out at the blue sky like angry lizard tongues. “Oh no!”

We parked back a ways and walked closer on foot. As we neared, I saw the blinking red lights of a couple fire engines through the smoke as yellow-clad volunteer firemen scurried with hoses. It also became apparent that things weren’t as serious as we first thought. “It isn’t the mill buildings. Looks like it’s just a stockpile of wood on fire,” I commented, my eyes scanning the bigger buildings for any sign of flames. Off to the right of the main building, a large group of workers was gathered. A middle-aged man with a clipboard scurried about, jotting down notes as he talked to several of the employees. “I hope no one’s been hurt.”

Cade nodded, craning his neck around as more cars pulled into the clearing behind us. After a few minutes, people ventured out of their vehicles and gathered to watch the spectacle, some on top of their car hoods, lying back and watching the scene as if it was Friday night at the drive-in movie.

I spied Ginny and hurried over to her, Cade right behind me. “Ginny!” I gave her a quick hug. “Can you believe this?”

She frowned. “No. I left Sam to finish up while I came up to see what was happening.” She shook her head. “Thank heavens it isn’t the mill itself!”

I turned my gaze back to the scene, watching as the firemen kept their hoses steady against the flames. A smaller crew of men was busy hosing down adjacent stacks of wood in hopes of preventing the fire from spreading. Fortunately, it looked like the responders were starting to get things under control.

I thought back to what Ray had said earlier that morning about someone vandalizing Millicent Wakefield’s car. Could it be this fire was started on purpose, too? Did someone have it out for Wakefield Lumber? Of course, my mind instantly flashed to Floyd Reeves. Scanning the grounds again, I now paid more attention to faces in the crowd, searching for Floyd. He wasn’t there. Who I
did
see, though, was Millicent.

Excusing myself, I broke away from Ginny and Cade and
pushed through the crowd until I reached Millicent. She was standing all alone, watching intently as the firemen worked.

“Millicent?” I said, approaching from behind. She turned and glanced my way, but didn’t bother to answer. Instead she tightened her lips, folded her arms across her chest and turned back to watch the fire.

“I’m so sorry, Millicent,” I persisted, coming up alongside her.

She shot me a cold look, but I continued. “You must be in shock. First Ben, then your car and now this . . .”

Her expression loosened a bit. “You heard about my car?”

“Yes, and I can’t believe someone did that to you.”

“Probably that crazy nail woman.”

I didn’t respond to that. Of course, Laney would be the first person that jumped to mind for her, and had been originally for me, too, but I knew the police suspected Hollis, so I thought it was best to just let the whole car vandalism issue drop.

Then the sound of applause arose from the crowd behind us, as the firemen successfully put out the last of the flames. She glanced back and scowled. “Sickos. Treating this like some sort of source of entertainment.”

I nodded toward a group of employees that had gathered outside the mill. Frances Simms was buzzing about asking questions and taking pictures. “At least it looks like no one was hurt.”

She brought both hands to her face and rubbed her cheeks. “That’s true. Thank goodness no one was injured. Still, this is a nightmare. Like you said, someone doing all these terrible things to me.”

I offered a sympathetic nod before her words fully sank in. I narrowed my eyes. Did she, too, think this mill fire might be deliberate? Or know it was?

I glanced back at the now-smoldering woodpile just in time to see one of the firemen poking at the ashes with a long-handled shovel. “Hey, Sheriff!” he called out, scooping
something out of the ashes. “Take a look at this!” He raised the shovel in the air, revealing a burned-out metal gas can.

A gasp arose from the crowd, followed by the breakout of low murmuring. Frances Simms shot out of nowhere, camera clicking away. They all knew there was only one reason for a gas can to be in a woodpile—arson!

The exited buzz of the crowd died down momentarily until something else captured their attention. It was Maudy Payne, who’d been kicking at the ground around the burn site. Suddenly she bent down and picked up another item. “Well, I’ll be,” she declared, grasping it carefully with her handkerchief and raising it into the air for all to see, or perhaps for Frances to get a good shot for the next issue of the
Cays Mill Reporter
. “An empty Peach Jack bottle. Why, who might that belong to?”

Judging by the instantaneous bending of heads and excited whispering, the crowd thought they knew the answer to that question. By the looks of things, the rumor mill had just kicked into high gear. And, unfortunately, Hollis was going to be ground to pulp by its fiercely spinning axle.

Georgia Belle Fact #004:
Sisters are like two different flowers from the same garden. But Georgia Belle roots are always connected—try to uproot one and you’ll have the other to contend with, too.

“Tell me again how you plan to use Mama’s recipes to save our family farm?” Ida was sitting across from me at her kitchen table, Savannah and Charlotte flanking either side. We’d covered the table with an oilcloth and laid out every art medium possible: markers, crayons, colored pencils, even finger paints. The idea was to have the girls brainstorm a cute logo for Harper Farm’s new line of peach products.

Biting my lip, I fought hard to keep my patience with Ida. I’d already explained my plans to her a couple of times, but her mind seemed to be elsewhere. “I told you all about it, Ida. Weren’t you listening?”

She picked up a stack of scratch paper and began fanning herself. “Of course I was. I’m just a bit distracted, that’s all.” She glanced at the girls and drew in a deep breath, her eyes roaming over the tabletop. “Don’t you think this peach business thing is a whole lot of trouble to put yourself through for something that might not even work?”

My shoulders sank. “I was hoping you’d believe in me, that’s all. Maybe show some support.”

She stopped fanning and stared at me for a couple beats. “Why, of course I believe in you! You’re my sister, aren’t ya?”

I smiled. “Good. Because your girls are the next generation of Harpers, after all. Don’t you think it’s worth trying something, anything at all, to preserve their heritage?”

The girls’ heads popped up at the mention of their names. “Mama, what’s a heritage?” Savannah asked, her blue eyes wide with question.

Ida brushed a strand of hair out of her daughter’s eyes and tapped a finger on her freckled nose. “A heritage is like a big ol’ present your parents and grandparents work their whole life to give to you.”

Charlotte sat up a little straighter. “A present?”

Ida chuckled. “Yes, darlin’. And, if you ask me, you girls are lucky to have an auntie who’s willing to work so hard to make sure you get that present one day.” She cast a brief but warm smile my way and, just like that, I knew Ida was on board with my ideas. Still, I could tell something was eating away at her. Something she didn’t want to bring up in front of the girls.

“Let’s see what we’ve got here,” I said, reaching across the table for a picture Charlotte had drawn. It was one of those classic kid pictures where the horizon cut straight down the middle of the paper, dividing the green grass and the blue sky. In the center was a very good copy of the farm’s large red barn with a grinning sun, complete with sunglasses, hanging over its roof. “Well, isn’t this the sweetest!” I said, fussing over her drawing.

“That ain’t all that good,” Savannah piped up, eyeing the picture from across the table.

“Isn’t,” Ida corrected.

“Isn’t,” Savannah echoed, sliding her own paper my way. “Look at mine.”

I picked hers up—a simple drawing of a large, somewhat lopsided peach with a huge green leaf attached at the top—and gave it an equal amount of fussing. “Well, look at this. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a beautiful peach. Why, it looks good
enough to eat.” I pressed my lips to the paper and made gobbling sounds, bringing on a raucous round of giggles from the girls.

Charlotte’s little voice cut across the table. “Do you like mine better?”

“Don’t be silly,” Savannah said, hushing her sister. “What does a barn have to do with peaches? Right, Auntie Nola?”

I paused, staring down at both pictures, feeling the heat of Ida’s glare bearing down on me. My brilliant idea of the girls coming up with a cute little logo was looking less brilliant all the time. Suddenly, an idea struck me. “You know what, girls? I’m going to use both.” I scrounged up my own crayon and paper and went to work sketching out my idea. When I finished, I held up a giant peach with a smiley face. “See? It’s Savannah’s peach with the smiley face from Charlotte’s sun. It’s perfect! When people see it, they’ll feel so happy, they’ll want to buy up tons of peachy things.”

Whoops and cheers boomed out in stereo, until Ida threw up her hands, clasping her ears and shouting, “Enough! Settle down, now, ya hear.”

The room fell into instant silence, my nieces looking stunned at their mama’s outburst. It wasn’t like Ida to lose her patience. I eyed her closely, noticing just how drawn and sallow her face looked. She’d gone back to fanning herself again. “I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I’m just having a bad day, that’s all.”

“Why don’t you two run along and play in your rooms. Let your mama and I talk a little,” I told the girls. But they stayed rooted, hesitant to leave their mother. “It’s okay. Your mama just needs a little rest. Go on, now. Go play. I’ll pick up this mess.”

The idea of not having to clean up must have been enough of an enticement, because they jumped right out of their seats and scurried out of the kitchen. “What’s going on?” I asked Ida as soon as they were out of sight.

Ida busied herself getting us some tea. “That pesky Frances Simms again. She called here this morning and was asking all sorts of questions.”

“Questions? Like what?” I was trying to cram crayons back
into the box, ending up with about ten extra that didn’t seem to fit. Why couldn’t someone invent a better crayon box, anyway?

“All about that fire up at the mill. You know they found a bottle of Peach Jack in the weeds right by where the fire was started?”

I nodded but kept quiet. Of course I’d known. I’d seen the sheriff find it, but I was hoping Ida wouldn’t hear of it so soon. Glancing over, I watched how slowly she moved about the kitchen, getting ice and pouring tea. All this stress couldn’t be good for her. Or her baby.

“Then there’s that car thing,” she went on. “Ray told me all about it. You heard, right? Someone vandalized Millicent Wakefield’s car.”

Grabbing the dishcloth, I went to work on scrubbing marker off the tablecloth. “Yeah, I heard.”

“Well, they found a bottle of Peach Jack there, too.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. Lots of people drink Peach Jack.” Not as much as Hollis, but that was better off left unsaid.

“Well, anyway. That call from Frances got me all worked up again. Just when I was feeling better about things, too.” She passed me a glass of tea and we both sat down again. “You don’t suppose she’s going to paint an ugly picture of all this in the paper, do you?”

I cringed. It was Tuesday. Time for another issue of the
Cays Mill Reporter
. “What can she say? There’s no evidence linking Hollis to either one of those crimes.” A ray of sun floated through the kitchen window and landed on the tablecloth, highlighting a few streaks of finger paint I’d missed. I went back to the sink for the dishrag, while Ida cleared the rest of the art supplies and picked up our empty tea glasses.

“Oh, you don’t know Frances. She’s got a way with words, you know. She may not say anything directly slanderous, but believe me, there will be some sort of innuendo. I swear, she has it out for Hollis.” She started rinsing the glasses. “I wish she’d just stay out of our business for a couple days; I think Hollis would do much better. He’s already come up with a
plan to try to salvage some of the money he’s lost on this lumber deal.”

My muscles stiffened. “A plan? What type of plan?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She hesitated, staring off to the side and chewing her lip as she tried to recall the details. “I think it had something to do with the same old lumber deal.” She shrugged and pointed to the side of her head. “Sorry. When Hollis starts talking business, it just goes in one ear and out the other. I just know he was feeling better, kind of back in control again, if you know what I mean, and that’s all I really gathered.”

That was probably true. Ida was more in tune with the latest fashion magazines than she was her husband’s business. Not that she wasn’t smart enough to understand the banking business, but her priorities were aligned differently: family over finances, love over labor and, above all, femininity at all times. I reached over and gave her shoulders a quick squeeze. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure Hollis has everything figured out.” Only I was worried plenty. What was Hollis up to now? And why, with all this going on, was he jumping right back into things? From what I’d heard around town, folks weren’t too happy with him. Even if he was exonerated of all charges in Ben Wakefield’s murder, the board of directors might still call for his resignation. And probably rightfully so. His drinking alone would be reasonable cause, not to mention putting the bank’s life on the line with such a single and huge investment in a company whose bottom line was already suffering. Still, what a blow that would be to Ida and the girls.

I gathered up my pictures and headed for the door. “Girls, I’m leaving!” My call was answered with a sudden flurry of footsteps and an onslaught of hugs and kisses that quickly dissipated as Ida flipped on their favorite afternoon cartoon. I paused by the door and watched as she settled on the sofa, a girl nestled on either side, snuggling in for a mid-afternoon rest. Good, a little R & R was exactly what Ida needed.

•   •   •

Hoping to get the labels done by Friday, I drove straight to town and found a spot a few doors down from the print shop. Getting there meant I’d have to pass by the newspaper building and risk running into Frances Simms. So, as a precaution, I hunched my shoulders and hid my face behind my paperwork, sneaking as quickly as I could past Frances’s office. I would have made it undetected, too, if it weren’t for the man who came out carrying a large stack of newspapers. Curiosity made me stop. I dropped my guard and asked, “Is that today’s edition?”

“Sure is. Hot off the press.” He picked one off the top and handed it to me with a flourish. “Here. Be my guest. You’d best get one now; these are going to be hot sellers.”

I thanked him and quickly unfolded the paper. The headline practically jumped off the page, “Hollis Shackleford Released on Bail.” The article was accompanied by a picture of Hollis that must have been taken at a recent black-tie dinner because he was wearing a tuxedo and standing at the head of a table making a toast. On the table in front of him, as plain as day, was a bottle of Peach Jack. My eyes then landed on the headline of the article right below it: “Sheriff Seeks Peach Jack Drinker in Connection to New Crimes.” I squeezed my eyes shut, so mad I could have kicked the brick wall in front of me. When I opened my eyes, I scanned that article, which cinched the noose over Hollis’s neck as neatly as if mentioning him by name, describing how Peach Jack bottles were discovered at the scenes of Millicent’s car vandalism and the fire at the mill.

All I could see was red, my pulse pounding. Even anyone who didn’t know Hollis’s drinking habits would now jump to the conclusion that he committed the other crimes. How dared Frances do this!

Storming into the newspaper office, I waved the crumpled newspaper in my hand. Immediately, Frances’s head popped up from her desk. Her eyes—wide with surprise and magnified even wider by her heavy black-rimmed glasses—seemed
grossly out of proportion with the rest of her birdlike features.

At the sight of her, my blood boiled even further. Frances must have been able to hear it bubbling because she immediately went into defensive mode. “Every word of those articles is factual, mind you. I take pride in delivering unbiased, impartial—”

“Impartial, my foot!” If I were brewing up a batch of Mama’s peach preserves, I’d call my current state a full rolling boil. I pounded my fist on top of the paper. Frances about jumped out of her seat. “You know darn well that a picture is worth thousands of words. Slanderous, biased,
mean
words.” I was so mad, I couldn’t think straight. I gritted my teeth and let out a low growling sound, my southern upbringing preventing me from letting loose with the string of cusswords floating through my head.

I stood there growling, while she passively nodded, a little smirk tugging at the corners of her lips. “Well, as long as you’re here,” she started, reaching across her desk to realign a couple of pencils. “I have a few questions I’d like to ask.”

My jaw dropped. The nerve of this woman!

“Like for starters,” she continued. “Is it true that your brother-in-law ran an asset investigation on Wakefield Lumber? Because if he did, it’s my theory that the results of that report are what sparked his anger and—”

“No comment!”

Frances’s brow quirked above the rim of her glasses. “How about the rumors about the bank?”

“The bank?”

“That Hollis embezzled money.”

“What! That’s ridiculous!” I rubbed my suddenly aching temples. Yet another fine example of malarkey straight from the town’s gossipmongers. I began reputing this latest rumor, but before I could get another word in, Frances went on firing questions like a Gatling gun, one right after another. Each question made me angrier than the one before, until
finally, I’d had enough. “You know what your problem is, Frances? You’ve got a one-track mind.”

Frances crossed her arms with a smug look. “Well, no one but Hollis had as much to lose by dealing with Wakefield.”