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

  “Good eye, Leona! I’ll talk to Ed about it.” Eli said. He planted a kiss on my forehead and clapped Peterson on the back. “Thanks for all your help, Pete.”

  Peterson—who usually bristled at any nicknames—gave him a wan smile. “No problem.”

  It seemed to me there was a problem. Why wasn’t he more enthusiastic about the idea being cleared of wrongdoing? Eli noticed, too. He paused, frowning. “You OK?”

  Peterson snapped out of his trance with a little shake of his head. “Yeah—I’m fine. When you said I’d be able to head home, Leona, I just felt a little—I don’t know. Sad.” He gave me a small, apologetic shrug. “Home used to be with you.”

  Chapter 7

  “I’ll drop you off so you can spend some time with Andrea and the kids,” I said, shifting the Suburban into gear. Since Peterson would soon be leaving, he probably wanted to get as much time with them as possible. After his heartfelt admission, I didn’t want to rob him of a Christmas with his grandchildren. Maybe we could move up the celebration a few days so he wouldn’t miss out on seeing them unwrap their presents. The kids were young enough that they didn’t know what date it was, anyway.

  “You’re not staying?”

  I eased the car to the edge of the parking lot and checked for cross-traffic. “I promised Ruth I’d help wrap the Gifting Tree donations. It’s a big job, so they need as many hands as possible. I’ll be back in time for dinner.”

  “Let me help,” he said suddenly.

  I raised an eyebrow. “You want to wrap gifts for charity?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “I don’t know—because you’ve never wrapped a gift in your life? When I did it myself for Andrea’s first birthday, you literally hired a service and had all the gifts re-wrapped, remember?”

  “I just wanted them to be nice for Andrea.”

  “They were nice.” I sucked in my cheeks as I pulled out onto the highway and headed out of town, remembering all the care I’d put into choosing the paper, ribbons, and bows, not to mention the time it’d taken me. I tried and failed to keep the acid out of my tone. “She was one, Peterson. She didn’t care about the paper. You know as well as I do that you wanted fancy packages to impress all the guests at the party—all those adults we barely knew that you invited to a baby’s birthday so you could network.”

  “I know.” His voice was low and guilty. I stole a peek at him in my peripheral vision and his face was somber as he stared at his hands in his lap. He raised his head. “I was wrong. And I want to make it up to you.”

  “One day won’t make up for our whole marriage,” I said, my eyes now trained studiously on the road so that my resolve not to cry wouldn’t weaken. He was saying all the things I’d wanted to hear two years ago, but it was hard to believe he actually meant them.

  “I’m not saying it will—I just want you to know that I’m sorry. Please, let me help you today?”

  I braked and pulled into the sawmill parking lot, the last place to turn around before we hit the Curves. For the first time since we got in the car, I got a good look at Peterson. His face was earnest, pleading, even hopeful. He knew he didn’t deserve forgiveness, but he wasn’t too proud to ask for it.

  “Fine—but you’re going to have to text Andrea and tell her it was your idea to leave her stuck at the farm by herself with the kids all day. I don’t want to be the bad guy.”

  “It’s a deal.” Peterson chuckled and pulled out his phone, speaking aloud as he typed while I made the turn and drove back in the direction we’d come. “Staying in town to help Mom. We’ll be home for dinner.”

  When we pulled up to the library where I was supposed to meet Ruth, her car wasn’t there, but Gary’s still-fully-decorated VW bus was. I parked next to it. Before I could get out, Peterson flashed his phone’s screen toward me so I could read Andrea’s reply to his message: “GREAT!!!!”

  I giggled. “Four exclamation points? Wow, she really didn’t want us there. Maybe she’d prefer not to see her parents at all this week.”

  Peterson chuckled. “My thoughts exactly.”

  The door to the community center was propped open, so we headed inside. The community center decorations were looking a little bedraggled after the first Honeytree Holidays gathering yesterday, but the Gifting Tree still stood tall and proud in the center of the room, the toys heaped around it. Ruth was bent over next to it, loading toys into a cardboard box, her face reddening with the effort. She stood up when she heard us come in and pushed her hair out of her face.

  “Hi, Le—” She broke off when she saw Peterson beside me, her eyebrows nearly hitting her hairline.

  “He came to help,” I explained, suddenly self-conscious.

  “Well, why not. Grab a box and fill ’er up.” Ruth motioned to a few empty boxes beside her. “Gary couldn’t help today because his daughters are visiting, but he loaned me his bus. Between that and your Suburban, I think we’ll be able to do it in one trip.”

  Peterson grabbed two boxes and handed one to me. I ducked around to the other side of the tree and began stacking Barbie dolls and LEGO sets into my box while Ruth and Peterson worked to do the same. When I’d filled mine to the brim, I took it out to Gary’s VW and slid it into the open cargo space. A dozen trips later, we’d loaded his bus with toys and crammed as many as could fit into my Suburban.

  Ruth dusted her hands and grinned at both of us. “Many hands make light work, as they say.”

  “Where are we taking these?” I asked.

  “Joan set up a wrapping assembly line at her shop,” Ruth said. “Rusty’s going to meet us there, and the Knitwits volunteered to help, too, so I think it’s going to go really fast.”

  Joan owned a yarn and handicrafts shop called Knitty Gritty on a side street near the high school. The vast majority of her yarn business was online, and the shop itself mostly served as an unofficial clubhouse for the Knitwits, a group that met twice weekly to gossip and turn string into scarves and sweaters. They’d been the ones who knitted the charming miniature decorations for the Gifting Tree.

  They also took on other charity projects throughout the year, whether it was knitting hats for women with breast cancer or blankets for children in the foster care system. Though the giftwrapping endeavor didn’t involve yarn, I wasn’t too surprised that the Knitwits were helping out with the Gifting Tree, since Joan was so involved with both organizations.

  I shut the back doors of the Suburban and walked around to the driver’s side. Peterson was already in the passenger seat, texting, when I slid behind the wheel.

  “We’re headed to the yarn shop to do the actual wrapping,” I said to him. “You remember Mrs. Claus? She owns it. Runs it out of a cute little house over by the school.”

  He didn’t seem to hear me. His thumbs worked furiously as he typed on the tiny phone screen.

  “Who are you talking to?” I asked. I pulled out behind Ruth and followed the blinking Christmas lights on Gary’s bus down the street, curiosity tugging at me. “Someone from the office?”

  He sent the message he’d been typing and clicked off his phone. “Just giving Andrea an update,” he said, looking out the window as I drove the few blocks over to the yarn shop, past the baseball field and the high school. He motioned to the red brick building. “Is that where you graduated?”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s like something out of a movie,” he said. “So quaint. I can see why you love this little town. I honestly wish I’d visited sooner.”

  I turned down Mallow Lane and tried to swallow the bitterness that rose in my throat. It’s not that I hadn’t asked him to come here to Honeytree a hundred times while we were married. He’d always demur. “I shouldn’t waste my vacation days,” he’d say. “If I’m going to take time off work, I want to go somewhere good.” Instead of visiting my hometown, we’d spend Christmas in Hawaii or on the beach in Mexico or under the Paris streetlights. He’d fly both our parents out, too. How could anyone complain about that? But I
still missed my little hometown.

  I parked next to Ruth just as Rusty pulled up. As soon as Ruth and I opened the back of our vehicles, we were surrounded by the Knitwits. The group—all female save one lone, graying gentleman—spanned every age and shape of womanhood, from a bespectacled teen with braces to elderly women who could be her great, great grandmother. They swarmed the stacks of toys, ferrying them into the little golden-brown Craftsman that housed Knitty Gritty like bees transporting pollen to their queen.

  Inside, surrounded by shelves of yarn in every shade of the rainbow, Queen Joan presided over four long folding tables that had been set up in the center of the shop. Each table had a station for paper, ribbon, and tags so the gifts could be wrapped and labeled as quickly as possible. Joan delegated roles to everyone present, including the chore of choosing a gift out of the pile for each child on the Gifting Tree wish list.

  Ruth, Rusty, Peterson and I weren’t trusted with that enviable task—nor with the fine art of giftwrapping. Instead, we were assigned the grunt work: conveying wrapped packages to the appropriate bin in the back room for delivery on Christmas Day.

  I manned the end of my assigned table, Ruth on my left and Rusty on my right. On the other side of Rusty, Peterson stood at attention, poised and ready to excel at the job. His competitive drive hadn’t changed, whatever else had. He always wanted to be the best at everything. It was part of what attracted me to him initially, back when I was a college cheerleader and he was a fresh med school graduate. But it was also what had driven us apart. His high standards were too high for me, a wife who in many respects was only average.

  The first wrapped package appeared in front of me. I checked the tag for the correct bin number and carried it to the sorting room. Peterson had already dropped his first gift and was heading back with a triumphant expression.

  “You win,” I said as we passed in the doorway.

  He smirked at me. “What’s my prize?”

  Our amiable morning had given him way too much confidence. I rolled my eyes. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. One package doesn’t make Christmas, if you know what I mean.”

  “I guess I’ll keep trying,” he said, waggling his eyebrows. “Maybe by the end, you’ll be more impressed with my package handling.”

  “Doubt it,” I said, moving past him to the bins. I couldn’t help breaking into a grin. His comment was so inappropriate, and I didn’t intend to entertain it, but I couldn’t help being a little flattered that he was flirting with me.

  After Andrea moved to Chicago, it was like he didn’t even see me...and when he did, it was to point out all the ways I could improve. His little suggestions over the years—tone up a little, try a chemical peel, let me work my magic—had whittled away my self-confidence to almost nothing. He’d always insisted they weren’t a comment on my beauty or lack thereof, but it was hard to take them as anything but.

  Maybe seeing me with another man had reminded him that I was still attractive. Eli didn’t have a problem appreciating every ripple and curve I had to offer, and perhaps Peterson had caught a glimpse of me through his eyes. Well, he could still keep his comments to himself.

  I returned to my station and found three wrapped gifts piled up at the end of the table. I’d better hustle if I was going to keep up with these busy elves. I picked up the pace, but Joan intercepted me as I balanced the three boxes on the way to the sorting area. She wore a green, handknit sweater with a turtleneck that threatened to swallow her head. In another life, it could have doubled as a Grinch costume.

  “Careful you don’t mix those up,” she warned. “When you hurry, I worry. That’s how mistakes are made. That’s how things slip through the cracks. We don’t want a child to be disappointed on Christmas morning.”

  “Of course not,” I said quickly, scuttling past her and very nearly losing the top box in the process, earning me an extra glare. I paid special attention to the tag numbers as I sorted the packages, her watchful eye on my every move.

  “Watch out for Mrs. Claus. She runs a tight workshop,” Rusty whispered as he plunked a blue-and-silver gift with a glittery bow in the bin next to me. “Plus, the pay is terrible.”

  I giggled but quickly swallowed my amusement when I noticed Joan fixing us both with a disapproving stare. I spent the next hour running back and forth from the front room to the back, tuning out the chit-chat of the Knitwits at my table so I wouldn’t get distracted and slow my pace or make an error. I was just feeling like Joan didn’t hate me when a set of bells jangled on the front door of the shop. I looked up and saw Eli headed in my direction, his face grim.

  “Bad news,” he said when he reached me. The Knitwits at my table paused their assembly line to eavesdrop. Eli shot them an apologetic smile for the interruption, and they resumed their wrapping, although I could tell that some of them still had an ear cocked toward us. “Sorry to barge in—I saw your car parked out front and thought you’d want to know.”

  “Want to know what?” Peterson asked, abandoning his post to move over and stand next to me.

  “I’m sorry to say, you’re not out of hot water yet, Pete,” Eli said. “I talked to Ed, and unfortunately he’s not willing to turn over his security footage.”

  I stepped back, bumping into the growing stack of gifts that I should have already moved to the back room. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s his choice at this point. I asked, he said no. That’s that. I’m really sorry. It looks like you’ll have to stick around at least until the autopsy report comes back,” Eli added apologetically to Peterson.

  I shook my head. Ed was such a rational, even-keeled guy. It seemed so odd that he wouldn’t cooperate with a simple request from the sheriff. “Did he give you any reason?”

  “He said he wasn’t aware any crime had occurred. Until he knew otherwise, he felt it was best to protect everyone’s privacy.”

  “Honorable,” Peterson said at the exact same time I said, “Stupid.”

  When I felt both their eyes on me, I had to explain my choice of words. “What? It is stupid. That camera looks over a restaurant parking lot, a public street, and a gas station. It’s not like it’s anyone has an expectation of privacy in those places.”

  Eli nodded. “I agree with you on face. But Ed’s within his rights to refuse.”

  “He’s hiding something,” I said. “There’s something on that tape he doesn’t want us to see.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. He said he’d hold onto the recording until after the autopsy report comes back. If it shows that Homer died of his injuries, then he’ll turn it over to me. That’ll give us a more accurate picture of what happened. Should confirm your story that he was alive and well when you left the gas station,” he added to Peterson. “Unfortunately, you’ll have to stick around until then. My guest room is open to you as long as you need it; I feel bad that you got mixed up in this.”

  Peterson stuck out his hand to shake Eli’s. “Appreciate it, brother.”

  Brother? Were they in a fraternity now? Leona Sigma Chi? Well, at least Peterson wasn’t starting another fistfight. Plus, as long as Eli was willing to play host, that meant Peterson wasn’t staying at my house. No matter how nice he was acting, I still didn’t want to be his roommate.

  Chapter 8

  Across the knitting shop, Joan cleared her throat meaningfully, and we all jumped to attention. The Knitwits redoubled their wrapping efforts, and I realized that the stack of boxes behind me had grown even higher. “Thanks for letting us know,” I said to Eli. “I should get back to work.”

  “Santa’s little helpers,” he said bemusedly. “That’s OK, I should, too.”

  I found myself in the sorting area at the same time as Ruth and Rusty as I scrambled to find the right location for my backed-up boxes.

  “Were you talking about what happened to Homer?” Ruth asked me when we found ourselves in front of the same bin. “I heard about it last night. Terrible.”

  I tossed a small, purple-and
-gold box into the pile. “Yep—unfortunately, Peterson stopped to fill up at the Gas and Go yesterday morning, and the two of them had a scuffle. He could be arrested if it turns out that Homer died from his injuries.”

  Ruth gave a small gasp. “I assumed it was alcohol-related!”

  “It probably is. But until the medical examiner determines Homer’s cause of death for sure, Peterson’s stuck here in Honeytree.”

  Ruth’s already wide blue eyes widened even further, and her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my word! Rusty, did you hear that?”

  Rusty sidled past her to add a gift to the bin just beyond her. “Yeah, so?”

  “Didn’t you have an interview for a job at the gas station yesterday?”

  He shook his head and his cheeks flushed. “I was supposed to, but it didn’t happen.”

  Ruth clicked her tongue in disappointment. “Too bad. I thought you might have seen something while you were at your interview that would help.”

  “Nope. Nobody wants to interview a crook like me, I guess.” Rusty’s blue eyes darkened and for the first time, I noticed a scar in his right eyebrow that hadn’t been there before he left for prison. Though his sentence had been relatively short, it still couldn’t have been easy serving those long months surrounded by hardened criminals. And coming back home to a place where everyone had opinions about you and your choices? Well, I knew exactly how much courage that took.

  I put my hand on his arm. “Hey. Don’t give up. The right door will open at the right time.”

  “That’s true,” Ruth agreed. “You’re a hard worker and an honest person, and there’s always a job for someone like that. You just have to be patient.”

  Rusty started to reply, but Joan swooped down like Oscar the Grouch with wings, interrupting him with a clap of her hands. “Wasting time is worse than stealing money!”

  “Sorry, Joan!” Ruth chirped. “We just got distracted.”