Bury the Hatchet in Dead Mule Swamp (12 page)

“Adele!” I cut in. “Wait.
You can’t just jump in and take over the planning for
Jerry.”

“Oh, he’ll want my help.
Don’t worry.” She bustled to the bakery case and extracted two
large muffins. “With Jack Panther gone, there’s no one in town
other than Janice and me who can do mega-food. You take these right
over to Jerry’s house and tell him not to worry about the catering.
But, have him let me know if he wants a meal or only desserts.
That’s important.”

My head was spinning as the
store’s front door creaked shut behind me. Adele always seemed
about three steps ahead of anything I could handle. But I did as
she said. It was only three blocks to Jerry’s house. I was tempted
to walk, but I didn’t want to take up space in Adele’s parking lot
on a Friday by leaving my car, so I drove west on Main and turned
south on Cherry. This was one of the oldest streets in town. It was
lined with stately, mature maple trees. The homes were large, of
the Victorian era. Obviously, when they were built there was one
mansion per block. Since that time, the majority of the estates had
sold off side lots, and smaller, newer houses now huddled in the
shadows of the huge homes. Towers, porches, dormers, cupolas and
gingerbread trim were the hallmarks of the Victorians. Most had
been well cared for, and were painted to enhance the fancy
detailing. It was clear that this street was where a lot of the
Cherry Hill money resided.

The one block that had not
filled in was 200 South, the one owned by Jerry Caulfield. His
family hadn’t needed to sell lots to survive financially. Except
for Holiday Real Estate, there was nothing in the entire block
except the newspaper office, the Caulfield home, and one large, but
less imposing, home to the north, built in a style similar to
Jerry's. I wondered how the Mill-at-Meadow-Street corner had come
to be sold. I thought it must be galling to Jerry, and I couldn’t
understand why he didn’t buy it back.

I parked beneath one of the
maples, grabbed the bakery bag and headed for Jerry’s front door.
The cottage cheese would have to take its chances on the floor of
the warm car.

Of course, I knew what the
front of Jerry’s house looked like, but I’d usually seen it from
the back, from Mill Street, through the vacant lot. After talking
with Cora about the museum idea, I now looked at the front side
with new eyes. The house was painted white with maroon, muted teal
and mustard trim. The center section was a large square of three
stories, with a widow’s walk on top. This seemed unusual in the
Midwest, but since no two of the Victorian mansions were alike, I
decided the goal of the builders had been to create something more
outlandish than any previous structure. This design would have won
the contest.

On each side of the second
floor front was a steep-roofed dormer, with a tall narrow window
that also seemed to function as a door, since each opened to an
upstairs porch. The entire central square was thrust out in front
into a tower with picture windows on the three sides. The top was
adorned with a railing that matched the widow’s walk. This tower
was the portion Cora had thought would make such a wonderful
display case. She had been right. Jerry seemed to be using it this
way already, museum or not. In the main window an ornate carousel
horse reared with bared teeth and pawing hooves.

And on the first floor,
each side of the square tower was filled in with a porch which
wrapped around to the sides of the building. The roof shingles
couldn’t be original, but must have been replaced with ones of
expensive restoration quality. They were hexagonal, in a soft gray.
Ornate railings and complex detailed trim completed the busy
architectural wonder.

From my previous visit, I
knew that the main living room was on the left side, so I climbed
the steps to that porch and rang the bell. Even though it was
covered by a lace curtain, I could see Jerry approach through the
large oval pane of wavy glass in the door. When he opened the door,
I thrust the small white bag of muffins into his hand.

“From Adele,” I said.
“Watch out. She’s totally on board with the Ball.”

In a few minutes, as we ate
the sandwiches, I asked him to tell me more about Jack
Panther.

“Jack’s parents moved to
Cherry Hill around 1960,” Jerry began. “They were young, dirt-poor
and worked at the canning factory. Jack was born in 1970, and then
the big explosion was in 1971. Do you know about that?”

“I didn’t know what year it
happened. I know Cora’s first husband died then.”

“Yes he did, and Jack’s
father too. His name was Edgar something.”

“Not Panther?” I
asked.

“That’s a long story. Jack
was just an infant when his father died. His mother never
remarried, and she was Mexican. She kept her maiden name; Gonzales,
I think, and I don’t remember Edgar’s last name. I’m sure Cora
could tell you. Jack grew up in the Hispanic community. But when he
was a young buck he started going to Native American Pow-Wows.
Found out he was an eighth Pottawatomi, and took the name
Panther.”

“How did he get the
diner?”

“His mother had kept the
settlement money from the explosion in the bank all those years. It
was enough to buy the whole building the Pine Tree is in. Jack
moved into the upstairs apartment. He’s been there ever
since.”

“Until yesterday,” I
noted.

“Yes. Apparently, he’s
closed the entire building. Added new hasps and padlocks to the
doors. It looks quite permanent. His car is gone too. I’m sure
Tracy has an APB out to track him down for questioning, if only
because of the timing.”

Jerry reached for the bag
of muffins. The smell of cinnamon and sugar burst into the room as
he pulled open the paper wrapper. I could see whole pecans emerging
from the muffin tops when he set them on the counter.

“Let’s split one,” I
suggested. “They’re huge.”

“Sure.” Jerry pulled the
biggest chef’s knife from a wooden holder. It seemed much larger
than necessary for the job. He turned to me with an evil grin,
lifted the knife over his head and glared at me. “Murder and
mayhem!” he shouted.

“Jerry!” I cringed as he
lunged at me. But then he laughed, turned and brought the knife
down carefully on the muffin, which waited without expression for
its execution on the butcher block.

Chapter 17

I was so full of lunch and
questions that as soon as I returned home I took a walk on the
trail that led from my yard through Dead Mule Swamp for about two
miles, until it ended at the seasonal extension of South River
Road. My thoughts were in a muddle, and the hike settled my
stomach, but not my mind. I still couldn’t figure out what the
connection might be between the body of Jared Canfield and the very
lively Jerry Caulfield. It was confusing, even if coincidental,
that the judge whose murder we had talked of reenacting was named
Oldfield. Too many fields! And, maybe it would be bad juju to add
that to the mix, even for the sake of enticing Cora to the Harvest
Ball. If there would be a ball... with the building controlled by
the police... possibly without enough people in town to fix food...
without being sure we could even get Cora to come... without a cast
to dramatize an old murder if Chad didn’t like the idea. And who
needed to bring up an old murder? We had a new one right in the
building. Unsolved.

I pushed open the kitchen
door and heard the house phone ringing. Fortunately it was in the
cradle, so I didn’t have any trouble finding it. I flipped my hair
away from my ear and pushed the talk button.

“Hello?”

“Ana Raven?” It was a
woman’s voice.

“Yes, who is this?” I
asked.

“A fray-und.”

I was already frustrated by
all the questions I’d just been mulling over. My patience was thin.
“Friends generally give their names,” I snapped.

“You aren’t very observant.
Ah’m surprised. You’ve already gotten quite a reputation for
solving mysteries around here, and yet you overlooked my message,”
she continued.

“What are you talking
about? What kind of message?”

The voice took on a harsh
tone. “In your car, bee-itch. Pay more attention.”

The connection broke. I
looked at the display on the phone. Just like when I had received a
threatening call in May, the caller’s number was displayed. The
closest thing to write on was a paper napkin, and there was a pen
on the counter, so I quickly jotted down the digits.
Maybe this time the number will lead us to the
caller
, I thought. The connection had ended
without the tell-tale click of an older mechanical phone, so I
suspected the call came from someone’s cell. Funny, how much more
attention I was paying to details than I used to, although not
according to my mystery caller. I’d get Tracy to check out the
number, but first I wanted to see what was in my car.

I slapped my forehead; I
knew one thing that was in the car: a warm carton of cottage
cheese. So much for paying attention to details.

Looking around as I opened
the kitchen door again and stepped into the yard, nothing made me
suspicious that the caller was hanging around the house. Some lazy
afternoon bird songs could be heard from the direction of the
river, and two squirrels were chasing each other around a tree at
the edge of the woods.

The Jeep was exactly where
I had parked it. No surprises there. I walked to the passenger side
and peered in the window, which was open about an inch at the top.
When had I rolled it down? On the way to Cherry Hill that morning
was my best guess. There was nothing on the seat. I opened the door
and looked for the cottage cheese. Lying at an odd angle on top of
the carton was a plain piece of computer paper with printing on it.
I grabbed a tissue from the packet I kept clipped to the visor and
picked it up.

The note wasn’t hand
written, but was computer printed in a plain font in large capital
letters.

“YOU AND YOUR RICH
BOYFRIEND BETTER STAY AWAY FROM THAT OLD SCHOOL IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S
GOOD FOR YOU. LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO THE OTHER GUY. A
FRIEND.”

I put the paper down on the
car seat and went back to the house for my purse and keys, and the
napkin with the caller’s number on it. Threatening calls and notes
were getting tiresome. I was taking this to the police right
away.

Chief Tracy Jarvi was
stacking a pile of file folders on her desk as I walked into the
city police station. There was just one large room, and no one had
a separate office. Tracy and Bob Clay, the all-purpose assistant,
had desks on different sides of a low railing, but there was no
privacy. The one officer, Kyle Appledorn, was probably out in the
police cruiser. Bob nodded at me, and I pushed open the gate in the
railing to enter Tracy’s area.

Tracy looked up. “Ana,” she
said. “What’s wrong?”

I guess my face gave away
my growing anger. “I seem to attract threatening people,” I said.
“Look at these.” I laid the note and napkin on her desk, and
started to tell her about my afternoon.

As I began talking, she
held up a finger, then handed the napkin to Bob, and asked him to
run the phone number. She slipped the note into a plastic sleeve,
and placed it carefully on the corner of her desk.

When I finished my story,
she asked, “You didn’t recognize the caller’s voice?”

“Not at all. Of course, it
wasn’t a very long call, but I’m sure it’s no one I know well,” I
responded.

“Did it sound
disguised?”

“Not really, but how could
I tell? I mean, it wasn’t distorted, or weird or
anything.”

“You’re sure it was a
woman?”

“Yes, as sure as one can be
these days. But it wasn’t husky like that new real estate agent’s,
or androgynous or falsetto. A bit of a Southern accent.”

“What does this mean in the
note, ‘your boyfriend?’” Tracy asked with a smile. “Are you keeping
secrets?”

I sighed. It sure didn’t
take long for tongues to start wagging in a small town. “I think
she means Jerry Caulfield. We went out to dinner once, and now
everyone is leaping to conclusions.”

Tracy grinned and her blue
Nordic eyes twinkled. “Are they leaping in the right
direction?”

“No. I don’t know. He wants
me to help plan a big Harvest Ball for the whole community.” By
now, so many people had probably heard of Jerry’s potential plan
that not having a ball wasn’t even an option. “He’s been nice to
me,” I added, remembering that part of the scheme was to let people
think we were dating.

“Is that all?” Tracy
asked.

“What do you mean? I had
lunch at his house today,” I added, feeling guilty. “Do you want to
know if we’re, um...”

“No, no,” Tracy’s eyes got
wide. “That’s none of my business. At least at this point. But you
were together at the school.”

“We told you. He bought the
building on a whim and wanted to look it over. It’s where he wants
to have the Ball. Do you think you’ll be done with the crime scene
soon? There’s a lot of work to do to get the place ready.” I
couldn’t believe I was even asking. Apparently, I was already
invested in the plan.