For Whom the Bluebell Tolls (18 page)

The ladies’ room yielded more black powder on the door handles and a larger assortment of insects dead in the corner, but nothing in the way of evidence—unless Bixby managed to discover a print on the handles.

As Brad begged off to get back to work, I was on my way out, too, when I noticed light streaming from under the door to the pastor’s office.

I knocked.

Shirley, Pastor Seymour’s girl Friday, swung open the door and pressed a finger to her lips. Behind her I could see our octogenarian pastor slumped back in his leather chair.

“Nap?” I whispered.

She nodded. “He’s worn out. Fell asleep in the middle of writing his sermon. I hope that doesn’t mean it’s a snoozer on Sunday.”

“I’ll make sure I have an extra cup of coffee before I leave the house.”

“I heard that,” he growled, lifting his head. “Just resting my eyes. Contemplating mainly. Audrey,” he said, with a hint of pleasure in his voice. “Nice to see you. What brings you to church today?”

“I had to meet with Gigi to discuss the flowers for the wedding, and decided to stop by and say hello.”

Pastor Seymour grimaced.

“Something I said?” A grimace from the good-natured old man would translate to a swearing fit in almost anybody else.

“It’s that wedding.” Shirley winced. “Sour subject around here.”

“I wish I’d never agreed to that whole arrangement,” he said. “Brad’s the one who called me about it, you know. And the way he talked, it sounded like a way to get some good exposure for the old church. Such a beautiful and historic place.”

“It is a lovely church,” I started.

“But it’s a church, not just a lovely building. It’s God’s house—not a place for me to take pride in. I’ve lived a long time, Audrey. Nothing good comes of pride, trust me on that. God gives us all wonderful, beautiful things to enjoy and talents beyond measure. But they’re to use to enrich the lives of others. Not to get all puffed up and make ourselves the center of attention.” He shook his head. “Pride stirs up all kinds of trouble—jealousies, envies, murders.”

“You can’t think Gary was killed because you had pride in the church.”

“No, I’m not that foolish. But if I hadn’t been so easily flattered into letting them film here, then he would have been killed somewhere else.” He shuddered. “Look at me. That was a terribly insensitive thing to say.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “You care about this place, and I don’t think there’s a prideful bone in your body.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling him for days.” Shirley turned and fed paper into the copy machine.

“And if I keep listening to you two,” he said, “I’m going to end up proud of my humility.”

“But you naturally care more about the reputation of the church than a man you just met,” I said.

“And he didn’t even meet him,” Shirley said.

“Talked on the phone once,” Pastor Seymour said. “Everything else, Brad handled.”

“When did you talk with Gary?” I asked.

“The day he was killed.” Shirley bent to clear a jam from the copier. I’d used the machine in the past. I think it jammed after every three copies. It was the perfect machine for a church. It required the patience of a saint.

“He called to ask if the church would be open,” Pastor Seymour said. “Claimed he needed to check something out.”

“But you didn’t actually see him arrive?” I asked. “Know if he came alone or with someone?”

Pastor Seymour shook his head.

“I took Pastor to the doctor’s that afternoon,” Shirley volunteered. “Prostate exam,” she mouthed.

Pastor Seymour sent her a dirty look. “Now, don’t go airing my personal business all around town.”

Shirley ran a pretend zipper across her lips. Her lack of verbal control almost got me killed once, and apparently she was slow in learning the lesson.

“I told him we’d leave the church open for him.” Pastor Seymour scrubbed his face with his hands. “After all, I thought, this is Ramble. What could happen?”

Instead of heading back to the shop, I found myself cruising up Old Hill Road. I needed a few minutes to think, and there was no better aid to thinking than pulling weeds. And I knew an old cottage that had plenty of them.

Of course, I couldn’t pull
all
the weeds. The yard was almost nothing but. Still, I could pull or cut the tallest and strongest of them that were trying to strangle what remained of the perennials that Liv, Grandma Mae, and I had planted and tended over the years.

I sat back on my heels. The weeds
strangled
the flowers
.
And I couldn’t help but think of Gary.

Of course, the weeds aren’t
trying
to strangle the flowers. There’s nothing malevolent in their nature. They’re just trying to get their own light and water and space. The flowers are simply in the way.

Did Gary get in someone’s way? Did he block someone’s goals or ambitions? Or was he hogging something that someone else wanted? His job? Henry Easton had made it clear he was thrilled to take Gary’s place. His wife? Gigi had admirers: Pinkleman and that Swedish Adonis of a lighting guy.

I’d cleared most of the tall weeds away from a yellow rosebush, but really could do nothing about the aphids. I fingered a half-eaten yellow rose.
Departure of love. Jealousy.

I sat back in the overgrown grass and studied the cottage, trying to revive the happy memories. Only today they would not come. The roofline seemed more bowed than ever, the peeling paint duller, the windows, even those that Eric had recently replaced, dirtier and grayer.

I shouldn’t be here, waging battle with the weeds. I should be at the shop, working on flowers for Suzy’s wedding—or at the inn, trying to ferret out a killer. The safety of our little town might depend on it.

My hand clenched around the rose I was deadheading. I didn’t realize a thorn in the stem had drawn blood until I pulled back my hand and stared at the red dripping down my palm.

Thorns meant
severity
. Gary was a hard taskmaster. Might his severity, his threats, have caused one of the crew to want him dead? But thorns on a rose also represent
fear
. Incidentally, the leaves represent
hope
, so when I prepare roses, I like to strip the thorns but leave as much of the foliage as I can. Why strip away hope when you remove fear? What are you left with?

And then there I was, in that cold, clinical emergency room, with the white floor tiles and white ceiling tiles, making me feel like I was sandwiched between ice cubes. I felt a shiver as I remembered.

“You’re only there as an observer,” my advisor had told me. “You stand in the corner and stay out of the way. No exceptions. No heroics. You’re not insured.”

It sounded like a cushy assignment. Pull the tags off my first pair of scrubs and stand in the corner for a few hours. For this I was getting credit?

The first few nights were just that. Oh, it wasn’t as fun or as exciting as the TV shows make out. Instead of
General Hospital
or
Grey’s Anatomy
, I got stuck with the old man with the rash who kept dropping his trousers to show people.

But then came the bus accident.

They came in, teenagers, just a little younger than I was at the time. Bloody, bruised, concussed. More than one broken bone. All around the room, staff hustled from place to place. I should have taken the opportunity to sneak out in the confusion, to get out of the way.

But I was still standing in the corner as a med student worked on the driver. It didn’t look good. Studying the monitors, I suspected the compound fracture of his femur might not be the worst of his injuries. The med student barked out an order, but nobody seemed to follow it. Then I realized he was yelling at me. Monitors were beeping, alarms were flashing. Feet raced past in the halls.

I shook my head, both in memory and in real life, refusing to relive any more of that experience. The driver had died a few minutes later. The med student had taken it out on me, blasting me with accusations, recriminations, and grim forecasts of my career, until I slid down in my corner in tears.

My advisor later took him to task, and a formal apology was sent in writing to the nursing school.

But the damage was done. I couldn’t go back to that hospital without seeing the dying man, or hearing the recriminating words. I finished out my semester with an incomplete in the internship. And never went back.

I never planned to drop out. I’d packed up all my clothes and supplies and my mini-fridge, waved good-bye to my mother, and backed out the driveway, planning to go to my dorm room. But a few miles out of town, I changed course. Instead of driving to the college, I ended up here, at Grandma Mae’s.

She’d stood on the front porch—now missing—and waved at me, that worried look in her eyes. Half an hour and two cups of coffee later—instant, lots of sugar—I knew that I was not a failure. That sometimes it is the right thing to face your fears, as my mother insisted I needed to do. But it was something else entirely to change your course when your current one wasn’t making you happy.

Nursing had been more my mother’s idea. A solid career, she said. But I didn’t want to be responsible for the lives of others. Didn’t want to? Couldn’t? The terminology really didn’t matter. So what
did
I want to do? Grandma Mae asked as we weeded her fall mums.

More than anything, I simply wanted to weed the fall mums.

Mom was livid when she discovered that I’d enrolled in a fledgling floral design school sponsored by a large florist. The school didn’t survive long enough for me to claim a certificate, but I developed enough skills to be hired by a small florist shop. There was something magical as arrangements took shape in the vases, a fulfilling sense of creative endeavor.

And nobody yelled at me. And nobody died.

Then how did I get here? Trying to play detective and keep Brad out of jail and protect the town from a killer? I’d say deranged killer, but I suspected that was redundant.

I’d let people flatter me into thinking I could do this, in the same way Pastor Seymour was flattered into volunteering the church for filming. And, as he said, nothing good ever came of pride.

I’d made a mistake to get involved. Bixby could handle it. He wasn’t some bumbling hayseed. He’d interrogated suspects, run tests on the supposed bloodstains, and had the presence of mind to check for prints on the restroom doors.

I stretched out on the cooler ground in the space that I’d cleared, leaning on my elbow and watching a few bees as they darted among the flowers and wildflowers and flowering weeds, making no distinction between them.

Yes, the thing to do was to be the bee—go about my own business. Finish the flowers for the wedding, collect my check, hopefully have enough to buy this place.

A rumble of tires hit the gravel drive next door. Through the weeds I could see Mrs. June’s car. Maybe she wouldn’t see me.

“Audrey?” she called. “Are you all right, child?”

I pushed myself up off the ground and waved.

She put a hand to her chest. “Don’t scare me like that. Are you here to see me? Come and have some cake and visit a while.”

“I . . . sure.” I found a path through the remaining weeds and wound my way to Mrs. June’s house. She was already in her kitchen, so I pulled open the screen door.

She flipped on a window air conditioner right by the table. “Could you get the lemonade?”

Grandma Mae always used to wrinkle her nose at the combination of citrus and chocolate, but Mrs. June seemed to thrive on it, serving lemonade with orange chocolate cake. Both were homemade from long-since-memorized recipes, no boxes or cans allowed. And both were superb.

She kicked off her shoes on a mat by the door, grabbed plates and silverware from the cupboard, and sank into a chair at the table.

I pulled the glass pitcher from her refrigerator and two glasses from the dish drainer before joining her.

“I take it you’re here to pump me for information,” she said. “I figured once you heard the body had been released, you’d be looking for details on the coroner’s report. Turns out the rope didn’t kill him. Said death was caused by asphyxiation due to manual strangulation, so the killer must have strung him up after—”

“That’s good news for Brad, then.” I pulled out my phone and started to text Brad the good news, then recalled that Bixby still had his cell phone.

“It won’t clear him in Bixby’s eyes,” Mrs. June said.

“But Brad was afraid he might have accidentally killed Gary while trying to help cut him down. Now I can tell him that wasn’t the case. That will help ease his conscience. At least I accomplished something before I quit.”

“Quit?”

“I didn’t come to pump you for information. Actually, I came for a few minutes alone to think. I’ve decided to quit playing amateur detective and concentrate on what I do best.”

Mrs. June’s smile dimmed ever so slightly. “What made you decide that?”

“I figured Bixby’s more qualified to handle the investigation anyway. I was over at the church today, and happened to wonder if the killer might have darted into one of the bathrooms, and do you know what I discovered?”

“Did you find something?”

“Fingerprint powder on the door handles. See, Bixby thought about checking that days before I did.”

“He also had access to the scene of the crime earlier.”

“He’s not incompetent.”

“No, dear. No, he’s not.” She leaned back in her chair and let her fork fall onto her plate. “You know, my dad was the one who recruited him. He always spoke kindly of him. He used to say, ‘Watch that Kane Bixby. He’s going to be a great cop someday.’ I even dated him a couple of times.”

“Really? You and Bixby? I didn’t know that.”

“A long time ago. And it never amounted to much. I think, in the end, he was reluctant to date the boss’s daughter. Wanted to prove he could do the job and rise in the ranks without any untoward help. And he did.”

I nodded. “This is why I should bow out and let him do his job.”

“I can’t see where you’re getting in his way. Everyone benefits from an extra set of eyes.”

“But I’m not trained or qualified. I think it would be best for all concerned if I stay out of the way.”

“I see. And where does that leave Brad? You know Bixby’s never been a fan of his.”

“But that was when Brad was a kid. And the powder on the door handles tells me that Bixby’s still looking in other directions.”

Mrs. June sat stony-faced.

“What?”

“They didn’t find any prints on the door handles.”

“Neither of them?”

“Well, there was a partial on the women’s room. Turned out to be Shirley’s. Nothing at all on the men’s room. Bixby’s sure it proves that there wasn’t an unknown assailant.”

“And that Brad was the killer.” Suddenly the cake turned bitter in my mouth. I shook my head. “If there were no prints on the door handle at all, it means the opposite. Think about it. I’m sure Pastor Seymour uses that men’s room. His prints at least should have been on the door handle. And whoever else used it since the women’s auxiliary cleaned last. No prints means the killer wiped the handle clean.”

“Same as the ketchup bottle they found in the Dumpster behind the Ashbury.”

“They found it? I told Bixby he should look for one.”

She nodded slowly. “See, another set of eyes.”

“Not that Bixby would want another set of eyes.”

“What men want, what they
say
they want, and what they
need
are often three different things. Haven’t you learned that yet?”

I groaned and rubbed my head. “Doesn’t it matter what I want? All I want right now is to finish this wedding, cash that final check, and get my offer in on Grandma’s cottage.”

“Still have your mind set on being my neighbor, huh?”

I smiled. “Absolutely.”

She set her fork on her plate, empty except for a few crumbs. “All alone?”

“Yes. Is there a problem with that?” I said it a bit too quickly, and with what Grandma Mae would have called too much sass. I tried to cover with a gulp of lemonade and a forced smile.

She reached over and patted my hand. “Child, I know more about your growing up than you think I do. I know, for example, that when other kids thought you were quiet, you were hurting. I had many long talks with your Grandma Mae the summer your daddy left.”

“I . . .”

“Now, don’t go getting angry. Your grandma was a wonderful woman, and she cared for you so much that she wanted to make sure she was doing the right thing. I guess you can say she wanted another set of eyes on the problem. But she opened up her house and her love to you. She made a safe place, a place where you didn’t have to hear the yelling and the fighting before he finally took off. Or stare at his empty chair after he did.”

Tears came. I had no idea Mrs. June knew so much about me. I brushed a tear back and stared at the table.

“Mae created a place where you could be loved, cherished, and protected. All children deserve that.”

I nodded. “And I loved her for it. Loved that cottage. Loved Ramble.”

She nodded. “But you’re an adult now. You need to leave the cocoon and find your life.”