Born in a Barn (Clucks and Clues Cozy Mysteries Book 4) Page 4

  Our eyes all went to Peterson’s hands, which were clamped tightly around his thin upper arms. Pale, smooth, and perfect. No bruises or scrapes.

  Eli visibly relaxed. “Tomorrow, I’d like you to walk me through your encounter with Homer Wilds, if you don’t mind. It might help move the investigation in the right direction while we’re waiting for the autopsy report to come back.”

  Peterson gave a terse nod. “Of course.”

  “I can pick you up here in the morning,” Eli added. “I’d prefer if you didn’t take your car anywhere.” He didn’t need to say why. We all understood his meaning. In case it’s evidence.

  “You can pick him up at his hotel,” I corrected, turning back to my salad preparations. “If he can find one. Otherwise he might be sleeping in that car.”

  “Do you realize what you’re saying, Mom?” Andrea asked, indignance creeping into her voice. “Are you really still saying there’s no room at the inn for the father of your children?”

  “Child,” I said, stabbing the tomato a little harder than I needed to. “We have one child together.”

  “It’s Christmas,” she reminded me.

  “Fine. He can stay in the barn, like Jesus.” It was the perfect solution, actually. Before the harvest this year, I’d refurbished the loft into rustic accommodations for my apple-picking crew. The previous owner, Ruth’s grandfather, had used the space for his farm help, too. I’d improved his bare-bones set-up with comfortable beds, wool blankets, and a woodstove. It wasn’t the Four Seasons, but it was better than the motel, that was for sure.

  “He’s not an animal! Anyway, you don’t even make your chicken sleep in the barn!” Andrea yelped.

  “It’s nice!” I protested, turning back around to face the group. “There’s even a private outhouse.”

  Peterson’s upper lip trembled, sweat beading on his forehead. “It’s fine, Andrea. If Leona doesn’t want me here, I don’t want to be here. I’m going to head home—this family Christmas thing was all a bad idea.”

  “I’m afraid you can’t do that,” Eli said, drawing the words out as he watched Peterson, his eyes narrowed. “I need you to stick around town until the autopsy comes back.”

  “Like Andrea said, I didn’t kill him!” Peterson insisted, holding out his hands and flexing his fingers, presumably so Eli could view their undamaged lengths again.

  Eli nodded. “I believe you. I do. But you may be the last person to see him alive. That makes you an important witness. I just want to make sure everything in the case is plumb before you leave town. Shouldn’t be more than a few days. And in the meantime, I’m afraid I’ll need your car keys.”

  Peterson pinched the bridge of his nose, wincing as his fingers grazed his swollen eye. Then he pulled his keys out of his pocket and handed them to Eli. “Fine.”

  “Leona will find some space for you—right?” Eli asked me. “The couch, maybe?”

  “I’m already sleeping on the couch, and trust me, there’s only room for one.” I finished cutting the tomato into wedges and turned my attention to the cucumber.

  “Let him have it. Come stay at my house.”

  I brought the knife down hard on the cucumber, splitting it in two. I pointed the knife at Eli, whose eyes twinkled at me. “I am not giving up my house to him. I worked hard for this farm, and he can’t just waltz in here and take over my life. I divorced him for a reason, and it was because I spent thirty years giving up everything I wanted for his wants and needs.”

  “Was it really that bad?” Peterson asked. “Was our life together really that—"

  “He can have the upstairs room,” Andrea interrupted, her voice exhausted. “I’ll move the kids down with me.”

  “No! No, no, no,” I said, mutilating the poor cucumber even further by punctuating my words with slashes of the knife. The upstairs room was my bedroom. No way was Peterson sleeping in my bed. I didn’t even let Eli stay the night, and I actually liked him.

  “Whoa, Nellie.” Eli reached around me and pried the knife handle out of my grip. “You’re swinging a little wild there, partner. Peterson can stay with me. I’ve got two extra bedrooms and he can have his pick.”

  I felt the tension drain out of my shoulders at his suggestion. “Really? You’d do that? He’s a terrible guest. He doesn’t even know how to load a dishwasher.”

  “Of course.” Eli gave me a reassuring smile. “Couple of guys, couple of brewskis, couple of ballgames? We’ll have a great time.”

  “Maybe I should come stay with you, too,” Andrea muttered. I shot her a look, and she rolled her eyes at me. “Just kidding.”

  “Do you mind if we head over now?” Peterson rose shakily from the table. “I’d like to lie down.”

  Andrea frowned. “Before dinner?”

  “I don’t have much of an appetite, I’m afraid.”

  “Understandable,” Eli said. He handed me the kitchen knife back and headed toward the door. “Do you have some luggage you want to bring over?”

  “Yeah, it’s in the trunk,” Peterson said, following him toward the front door.

  “What about the steak?” I stood in the middle of the kitchen and gestured with the knife at the pile of half-peeled vegetables in the sink. “What about the potatoes?”

  “Cook ’em. We can have the leftovers for breakfast,” Eli said over his shoulder. The door banged shut behind them and I heard the soft beep-beep of the Rolls unlocking in the driveway outside.

  Andrea went to the sink and began furiously peeling the remaining potatoes. “At least your boyfriend is nice to your family,” she mumbled into the pile of peelings. “If you had your way, Dad would be in handcuffs right now.”

  “He’s not my family,” I said firmly, scooping my mauled cucumber pieces into the salad bowl along with the tomato wedges. “So I don’t have to be nice to him anymore. Especially not when he barges into my life just to ruin my Christmas.”

  “Is that why you think he’s here?” Andrea put down her peeler and turned her head to stare at me. “Seriously? He’s here because I asked him to come, and you know why? Because every week, he’s crying on the phone to me about how stupid he was to let you go. How he ruined everything up by taking you for granted. He knows he screwed up.”

  “I gather his girlfriend broke up with him?” As soon as we’d separated, before I’d even moved out of the house, Peterson had taken up with a model even younger than Andrea and let her move into the pool house. I found it hard to believe that his change of heart didn’t have something to do with her change of heart.

  “Well, there’s that. But actually, he broke up with her, not the other way around, because she kept asking him for money. Plus, they had nothing in common.”

  “Surprise, surprise,” I muttered to the salad.

  “He wants to make amends. Give him a chance to show you how he’s changed, Mom.” Andrea bit her lip, her perfectly arched brows drawn together anxiously. “Please, can you stop being so harsh and just try to achieve some basic level of family harmony? For me and the kids?”

  Well, when she put it that way, I couldn’t refuse my own daughter. I took a deep breath and gave a single grudging nod. “I’ll try to be nicer. For you and the kids.”

  Chapter 6

  December 21

  The twins were still in their pajamas when Peterson and Eli arrived the next morning. I’d already dressed in my comfiest pair of jeans and my pink-and-purple “World’s Best Nana” T-shirt. I hoped the shirt’s slogan would remind me of my promise to Andrea: I was going to be nice to Peterson—or at least try—for Andrea and J.W. and Izzy’s sake.

  “Have a seat; breakfast is almost ready,” I said over my shoulder as I deftly flipped the potato pancakes. I turned up the radio so I could hear my favorite Christmas carol, Twelve Days of Christmas, over the sizzle of the griddle. I couldn’t help being fond of it, given that it was one of the few songs in existence that featured chickens.

  “Hi Gamp. Hi Other Guy,” Izzy said, her face already smudge
d from the blueberry smoothie I’d made to tide the kids over while they waited for the real breakfast to cook. J.W. just blinked and slurped his straw.

  “That’s Eli, honey.” Andrea reached over with a napkin and wiped Izzy’s chin. “You guys have a good night?”

  “We sure did. Watched some b-ball, ate TV dinners. Felt like we were in our twenties again. Breakfast smells great, Leona.” Eli cleared his throat. “Anything I can help with?”

  “Sure, you can grab the plates and set the table.”

  “I’ll do it,” Peterson said, stepping around him. He began opening cupboards left and right, looking for the plates. The swelling in his black eye was even worse than yesterday, and the bruising had spread down his cheekbone like chocolate sauce dripping down a sundae. It looked truly awful.

  “They’re right there, Eagle Eye.” Eli nodded to the stack on the counter, chuckling. “I’ll get the forks.”

  The joint table-setting endeavor seemed a little competitive. They both raced to finish their task first. Peterson slung his last plate like a Frisbee, barely edging out Eli, who groaned with disappointment as he placed the final fork.

  Boys.

  “You’re lucky that plate didn’t crack,” I said to Peterson as I hefted the big skillet of potatoes and eggs to the table and put it down next to the leftover steak. Andrea shot me a warning look, but I was being nice.

  The rest of breakfast was amicable. Andrea kept the conversation going as she described their daily life in Chicago and asked nice, neutral questions about life in Oregon. It wasn’t until Izzy recounted the Christmas list she’d told Santa in excruciating detail that I remembered the serious reason for our gathering. The “real” Santa was dead, and Peterson was the last one to see him alive.

  My appetite vanished even though my plate was still half full. I pushed back my chair and gathered some empty dishes to rinse in the sink. The window over it had a perfect view of my coop and run, which was full of a couple hundred laying hens and my glorious rooster, Alarm Clock. I’d decorated it this year with a string of colorful lights around the eaves, but they looked less cheerful in the daylight.

  Up the rise behind the coop, Eli’s white farmhouse was visible. His large blueberry orchard stretched in rows between the fence and his driveway on the other side of the field. The blueberry bushes had turned a lovely purple-red shade during the fall, but now the leaves had all fallen, leaving the branches starkly bare. Yesterday’s snow had melted away, leaving everything slightly gray and sodden. The effect was heightened by the heavy, dark clouds that hung over everything.

  I shivered as I put the plates in the dishwasher. “We should get going, in case it decides to rain.”

  Eli scraped back his chair. “You don’t have to come. I’ll take good care of Pete, scout’s honor.” He held his fingers up in a mock salute.

  “She can come if she wants,” Peterson said irritably. My eyes flicked to him, surprised that he’d come to my defense. Andrea raised her eyebrows at me, as if to say See? He really has changed.

  “I need to drop an order at the diner,” I explained. The Greasy Spoon had an extensive breakfast menu, and as a result, was one of my most reliable egg customers. It just happened to be located right across the street from the gas station. “I’ll meet up with you guys once I’m done and drive Peterson back, so you don’t have to make an extra trip.”

  “I’ll finish the dishes, Mom,” Andrea volunteered. “The kids love helping with anything that involves bubbles.”

  Grateful, I dried my hands on the dish towel and went out to wrangle some eggs out of the fridge on the back porch. Eli and Peterson were gone by the time I got the specially fitted egg coolers in the Suburban loaded up. I had to drive differently to protect the small fortune of eggs in the back of my vehicle. My Porsche wouldn’t recognize the delicate handling I gave my Suburban when it was loaded up like this.

  As I pulled in behind the diner to deliver the eggs, I noticed caution tape encircling the gas station building and pump across the street. A “closed” sign hung in the window of the small attached convenience store. Eli’s SUV was parked in the lot nearby, but no other law enforcement officers were on the scene. That buoyed my hopes—nobody at the sheriff’s office really thought Homer had been murdered. If they did, they’d have been swarming the place.

  Homer had been falling-down drunk when Peterson stopped to get gas, he’d said. Alcohol was the more likely culprit of any harm that had come to Homer. He probably just passed out and hit his head on the hard, concrete floor. Maybe all the bumps and bruises he’d received from Peterson were just a coincidence.

  I was startled back to the task at hand by a sharp knock on the hood of my Suburban. I jerked my head up and saw Ed Wynwood, Jr. give me a wave through the windshield, a grin spreading on his Basset-hound face. A veteran of the conflict in Afghanistan, he still kept his graying hair in a military cut. He wore a bright blue T-shirt with the outline of a spoon printed on it that represented the giant painted silver spoon on top of the small brick building that housed his diner. A grubby apron was tied around his waist.

  “Got some goodies for me?” he asked when I stepped out.

  “Sure do. How’d you know I was here?” Usually he didn’t come out until I knocked at the back door to let him know I’d arrived.

  Ed pointed to a camera mounted under the eaves. “Saw you on the monitor. Just put it up this week because someone was getting into the dumpster and making a mess in the parking lot. How’s the egg farming business?”

  “Pretty good. How’s the egg frying business?” I went around and opened up the back of the Suburban to unlock the egg cooler.

  “Pretty good,” he echoed. He nodded across the street, where Eli and Peterson had now ducked underneath the caution tape and were walking back and forth in front of the pump. Peterson waved his hands animatedly as he explained to Eli what had happened. Ed squinted at them. “You know what’s going on over there? I saw them haul Homer off in an ambulance yesterday.”

  I nodded. “He passed on, I’m afraid.”

  Ed’s face fell. “Sorry to hear that. Not too surprising, I guess. He wasn’t exactly a healthy man.”

  “He had health issues?”

  Ed nodded and pushed a kitchen cart over to the back of my car. “All that liquor is hard on your ticker. He carried some extra weight around his middle, too—I was always telling him to lay off the bacon. Me, saying ‘cool it on the bacon,’ can you believe it?” He shrugged and patted the not-small belly that threatened to spill over the top of his apron. “Maybe I should follow my own advice.”

  I chuckled as I loaded eggs onto his cart, my own stomach still stretched tight from the giant breakfast I’d put away earlier. “I should, too.”

  I held out my clipboard for Ed to sign and then tore off his part of the invoice. “Pay me when you can.”

  “Will do. Merry Christmas.” Ed nodded and disappeared back into the tiny brick building with his cartload of fresh eggs.

  Instead of getting back in the car, I headed over to the gas station. A one-pump wonder, Wilds Gas and Go had seen better days. The latest renovation seemed to have occurred in the Seventies. The psychedelic logo had faded so much that the colors were indistinguishable from one another, and the paint on the siding was peeling, revealing many layers of previous colors. I stood just outside the caution tape, unsure whether to step inside the boundary.

  “He hit his head there.” Peterson pointed to a spot on the metal pole that held up the roof over the pump. “Then he tripped and crashed into that.” He indicated a concrete pillar meant to keep vehicles from crashing into the pump itself.

  Eli squinted at the spots and jotted down notes as Peterson spoke. “So you didn’t hit him at all?”

  Peterson glanced guiltily at me and shook his head. “I maybe—”

  “Maybe what?” Eli pressed.

  “I mean, he was coming at me. I maybe pushed him away when he came too close.” Peterson’s hand went unconsciously to
his injured eye. “I can’t remember exactly—it all happened pretty fast.”

  “I see. And then what? How did it end?”

  Peterson shrugged. “He ran out of steam, and I didn’t stick around.”

  “He just walked back into his office?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see. I just drove off. I don’t know what you want from me.” Peterson crossed his arms. I could tell his irritation was rising at the level of questioning, but his attitude wasn’t helping his cause.

  “Every detail is helpful,” I said reassuringly. He glanced over at me and let out the breath he’d been holding, his shoulders relaxing.

  Eli nodded. “I’m just trying to construct a timeline. Did you see anyone else around who might be able to confirm your story?”

  “No. I mean, maybe. I wasn’t paying much attention to what was going on—I was so focused on getting to Leona.” Peterson met my eyes for a long moment, pain flashing across his face. Between his tortured expression, fresh scratch, and gruesome shiner, I couldn’t look away until Eli cleared his throat.

  “I’ll ask around town. Maybe someone noticed you stop for gas. Your car is pretty distinctive.”

  I scanned the blocks around the gas station. There were plenty of vantage points along the highway where people might have caught a glimpse of Peterson’s car at the gas station—the florist, the dentist, the back lot of the diner where my Suburban was still parked. Usually nobody parked there except Ed himself, but sometimes people used it as a shortcut when they were walking by—or when they were dumpster-diving. Hm. Maybe the security camera caught something. If I squinted, I could just make out the camera attached to the building, and it was clearly angled in this direction.

  I pointed across the street. “Ed has a camera now, and it’s pointed this way. If he captured your stop on film, it’ll clear everything up and you can go home.” I shot Peterson a smile, expecting him to return it.

  But he didn’t. He stared across the street where I’d pointed like he didn’t even see me.