Grave Risk

She and Noelle found Bertie in the dining room, scrambling to keep the buffet table filled with enough black walnut waffles to satisfy the Saturday-afternoon brunch crowd.

One glance, however, brought Bertie to her side, dish towel in hand.

“Jill Cooper, you look like you could use a good, filling meal. Was that massage at the spa too much for you?” She gestured for Jill to follow her into the dining room.

“I…um…Bertie.” She froze. She couldn’t do this.

Bertie, diminutive, white-haired, already looked too fragile. She had suffered so many losses in her life. Her only child had died young, decades ago. Her husband, Red, had died two years ago. And now this? Her business partner and best friend?

“Uh-oh,” Bertie said. “I can tell by that look on your face you saw our visitor. Wasn’t Austin your old high-school sweetheart?”

“Yes, Bertie, he was, but—” She looked at Noelle.

With a nod, Noelle gently took Bertie by the arm and led her out of the dining room. “We need to tell you something.”

“Well, for goodness’ sake, what is it?” She looked at Jill, and her warm, friendly eyes darkened with distress. “Jill, didn’t you and Edith go to the spa this…oh, no. Did that ticker of hers pitch a fit again? I keep tellin’ her to remember her medicine, but half the time she goes off without it. Someday it’s gonna—”

“Bertie,” Jill said, “this time she didn’t make it.”

There was a startled pause as the words registered, then the news pressed Bertie’s slender shoulders down with their weight.

“I’m sorry,” Jill said, once again feeling the loss like a knife in her heart. “I’m so sorry.”

Chapter Seven

Hours before the funeral service at the Methodist church on Wednesday morning, Jill stepped tentatively through the front door of Noelle’s Naturals and Spa.

When Jill was a horseback-riding youth, she’d been taught early to get back on the horse quickly after being tossed so she wouldn’t develop an unnatural fear of horses. The concept had worked then. Would it work for her in this situation?

Of course, she’d never been a fan of spas, whereas she had always loved horses, dirty and dangerous as they could be. They still weren’t as dangerous as humans.

As a nurse, she was in close contact with people every day, but she was the one giving the care. She was in control. In a spa, she felt vulnerable. The memory of Edith’s death continued to weigh heavily on her.

Soothing music emanated from hidden speakers, and an abundance of plants thrived in this roomy waiting room.

Imitating what Dane Gideon had done with his general store years earlier, Noelle had purchased two empty store buildings with a shared wall within the town square complex. She had knocked out a portion of the connecting wall and combined the space so she could easily oversee the natural herb and food shop while managing the spa. She had also dipped deeply into savings to develop a Web site and an all-out marketing campaign that reached the entire southwest area of Missouri.

“Hi, Jill. Back for another massage?”

Jill turned to find Sheena Marshall stepping out of one of the massage rooms. Her blond hair was tied back, and her pretty blue eyes had circles beneath them. She looked as if she had lost weight since Saturday. Gone was that characteristic perky smile.

“Not today, thanks.”

“Didn’t think so.” Sheena went into Noelle’s office and sat at her desk. She pulled open the top drawer and took out a pad of sticky note paper.

“Are you with a client right now?” Jill asked.

“Nope. It’s been slow, so I’m making a supply list.” She closed the drawer and stood up. “I guess no one wants to come to a place where a nice old lady died. Like maybe she was contagious or something.” Sheena shook her head sadly. “You know how superstitious people can be.”

Jill nodded as she glanced toward the broad entryway to the herb and food shop. “I’m sure it’ll pick back up. It’s just a time of mourning.”

“You’re looking for your sister, I guess.” Sheena stepped back out into the hallway with a pen and the notepad.

Actually, Noelle wasn’t who Jill was looking for. They’d had another long talk last night.

“She’s gone to Springfield to pick up some supplies,” Sheena explained. “Nathan decided to go with her. Those two are so sweet to each other, Mom says sometimes she just wants to gag.” Sheena smiled, and it was a sad smile. Ordinarily, she was the giggling type, but since Edith’s death, the young woman had lost her usual effervescence.

Jill hesitated, feeling intrusive. “Since you mentioned the day Edith died, do you remember much about that morning?”

Sheena blinked at her, then glanced again toward the connecting entryway between the spa and the shop, as if concerned someone might overhear them. “Sure I do. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. I’m sorry I was such a brainless idiot that day.”

“You were understandably upset. It was a horrible thing for you to see.”

“It’s just that…well…Miss Edith was always so good to everyone. And I know everyone has their time to die, but I didn’t think her time would be on my watch, you know?” She gave a shudder for emphasis. “I don’t like death.”

“Nobody does.”

“I know. I guess death has to come, and it’s best if it comes for someone who’s lived a good, long life and is ready, you know? But still, I hate that it had to be like that.”

“Did the shop get a lot of visitors that morning?” Jill asked. “I mean, not clients, but drop-in visitors.”

Sheena’s gaze sharpened then. “Why? Are you checking something out?”

“To be honest, I’m not sure what I’m doing, unless it’s just a search for closure. You know how much I cared about Edith.”

Sheena nodded sympathetically.

“She was the one who convinced me to have a massage in the first place,” Jill said. “She was already in a robe Saturday afternoon when I got here. Do you know how long she’d been here when I arrived?”

Sheena’s eyes narrowed in concentration. “Couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, but I might be wrong. You know how these old folks who know everybody can talk for hours about nothing in particular.”

“Who else do you remember being here that day?”

“You’d probably get a better answer from Noelle. She was the one who opened up that morning.”

“She was on the computer in her office most of the time, working on August month-end things. She didn’t see many people.”

“Well, then Mom would have seen them, I guess. She’d left just a little before you got here.”

“Austin Barlow was here, I understand,” Jill said.

“Sure, you know how he always liked to check out the new businesses in town. He thought it was his civic duty to do that when he was mayor.”

“Did he have anything to say? Do you remember if he spoke with Edith?”

“I didn’t hear if he said anything to her. Remember when he got into an argument with her during that church business meeting, then somebody up and killed her cat? Some said Austin might’ve done it, but now we know it wasn’t him, don’t we?”

Jill shook her head. Austin’s son had killed Edith’s cat. What agonies Austin must have gone through when all of this painful information about Ramsay was revealed at last. “Did anyone else drop by that day?”

“Well, Dad came by to pick up Mom. They were going to a show in Branson that afternoon.” Sheena lowered her voice. “Before they left, Junior Short came by to talk to Dad.”

Junior Short. Another bad memory—possibly another connection? Austin had been buddies with Junior Short and Sheena’s father, Jed, when they were in high school. Edith had been the high-school principal at the time.

A vague unease stirred in Jill’s mind, but she dismissed it. Those three had been deeply involved in a high-school scandal, but that was far in the past. “Your dad and Junior are still friends after all these years?”

Sheena’s face scrunched up in a good imitation of her mother’s look of distaste. “I guess. I see them drinking coffee together sometimes at the bakery. He never comes around the house because Mom can’t stand the man.”

Jill nodded. Junior could be obnoxious. It was a trait he’d carried with him into adulthood and passed on to the next generation—a tendency to pick fights easily, and just generally irritate everyone around him. Possibly Jed felt sorry for him. Junior didn’t have many friends.

“I don’t suppose Cecil Martin came by for any reason?” Jill asked. “I thought I saw him walking from the direction of the spa when I passed him on the sidewalk on my way here that day.”

“Now that you mention it, he probably did come by to see Miss Edith.” Sheena grinned. “You know, I think those two might have been sweet on each other.”

“Sheena,” came a warning call from one of the doors near the end of the short hallway of massage rooms. Mary Marshall, Sheena’s mother, stepped into the hallway, wiping her hands with a paper towel. “Don’t start any rumors.”

“They’d been spending a lot of time together lately, Mom.”

“They were friends.” Mary strolled down the hallway and tossed her towels into the trash can beside the reception desk. Her gray-blond hair was pulled back in a tight knot, as if to draw taut the wrinkles that now marked her once-pretty face. Her makeup made her look washed-out, and her clothes did nothing to enhance barely existent curves on her slim frame.

Jill decided that if Sheena wanted to do a makeover, she could begin with her own flesh and blood.

Mary nodded at Jill; no smile of welcome touched her face.

Jill knew better than to take it personally. When Mary was in a mood, no one was spared her sharp words or brooding silences.

“Why do young people always have to make up some silly storybook romance for everything?” Mary complained to her daughter. “Like such a thing even exists.”

Jill studied Mary’s drawn expression in silence. Sheena’s mother was talking like a bitter old woman, not the wife of a man who seemed to still love her, and with whom she had a beautiful grown daughter.

Do I sound like that sometimes? Will I be a bitter old woman someday? Though Jill hadn’t been blessed with a long-lasting relationship, she did enjoy seeing evidence of love in the eyes of others. Cheyenne and Dane, for example. Or Karah Lee and Taylor. Noelle and Nathan.

“Like you always say,” Sheena murmured, “friendship is the best foundation for a marriage.”

“Can’t a man and a woman just be good friends without everyone in town making a big thing out of it?” Mary grumbled.

Jill found herself wondering the same thing. In spite of herself, a thought of Rex intruded. Jill and Rex had become friends soon after they started working together. The romance had developed some time afterward, hadn’t it? Or had she actually felt an attraction to him immediately?

Man, oh, man, how wonderfully the romance had developed. She dismissed a memory of his kisses with some difficulty. The worst part of their broken engagement wasn’t only the failed romance. Could be the very worst part was losing someone who had become one of her best friends. Maybe even the best of her friends. She’d certainly felt as if she had become the most important person in his life.

“So what’s with the twenty questions to Sheena?” Mary asked Jill. “We all know what happened to Edith. I saw her here late Saturday morning, and she was happy and chattering a blue streak to Noelle. If you’re trying to say someone upset her enough to cause her to have that heart attack—”

“I’m not,” Jill said.

“Then why are you grilling Sheena?”

“Mom, it’s okay. She’s not—”

“The only other person I remember coming in that morning besides clients was Fawn Morrison,” Mary said. “No one caused any problems. Don’t go stirring things up or pointing fingers where they shouldn’t be pointed.”

Jill pressed her tongue to her teeth for a few seconds to keep from snapping back. “I’m not pointing fingers. Fawn was here?”

“She came to talk to me,” Sheena said. “She and I hang out sometimes. You know, when you’re single in a town like this, you won’t find a lot of single girlfriends your age. All my high-school friends moved on.”

“At least you have the good sense to stay where you belong,” Mary said.

Sheena grimaced. “Fawn’s smart for a kid, and I’m trying to talk her into going to cosmetology school like I did. Then she can learn massage while she works as a hair stylist. She’s already really good at it.”

“So unless you think Fawn might have had something to do with Edith’s heart attack,” Mary said with emphasis, “you’re probably wasting your time here. I know you loved Edith. We all did. But the only closure you’re going to find is at the funeral this afternoon, just like the rest of us.”

“Has your husband said anything about why Austin Barlow’s back in town?” Jill asked Mary.

The woman frowned. “Not a word. I put an end to their good-old-boy carousing years ago, Jill. They don’t come around the house, and Jed knows how I feel about them. He wouldn’t tell me if he did know.” She gave a quiet sigh, glancing at her daughter.

With that glance, Jill was touched by the wealth of tenderness she saw pass between mother and daughter.

Disappointed, she thanked Sheena and Mary and left the spa. If Mary did know something, she wouldn’t give it away.

Jill thought about the visitors who had been at the spa the day of Edith’s death.

What was it Edith had said? S…cool. And something about a jet bomber—what on earth could she have been talking about?

By that time, of course, considering the difficulty Edith was having, she might simply have been hallucinating due to lack of oxygen in the brain.

However, she did mention records. And possibly instead of saying cool, she might have been talking about school. Interestingly enough, almost all the visitors Sheena had mentioned were somehow connected to school, and had known Edith there. Maybe that was why she’d mentioned school to begin with. Could be she was simply reminiscing.

She might have seen Austin and Junior, and the sight of them had brought back memories. Just as the sight of Rex and Austin on Saturday had brought back memories for Jill.

She hadn’t expected to search out Edith’s nemesis in one little interview, but she’d hoped to find some kind of evidence that pointed to what had really happened to Edith the day she died.

So far, no such evidence. Would Austin, Jed or Junior be more forthcoming? Or would she just make herself look like more of a fool if she approached them with questions?

The lab tests she’d had run on Edith’s blood had turned up nothing. Grilling Sheena had turned up nothing. And yet, Jill knew she couldn’t just leave things as they were. Her instincts—and Noelle’s—compelled her to keep searching for an answer.

Chapter Eight

After Edith’s funeral on Wednesday, Fawn Morrison practically ran from the cemetery, desperate to escape the heavy shadow of grieving that seemed to loom over the whole town. This past year, sharing a cottage on Lakeside Bed and Breakfast property with Karah Lee, she’d come to love both Edith and Bertie as if they were her own grandmothers.

She missed Edith already. She knew Bertie did, too. And yet, wasn’t Bertie the one who always reminded everybody that it did no good to linger on the sad memories?

Fawn had a plan forming in her mind by the time she reached the boat dock. It was crazy, she knew. But still she couldn’t stop thinking….

“Hijacking my boat?” came Blaze Farmer’s familiar voice from behind her.

She had one foot in the canoe and one on the dock in what Bertie would call an unladylike pose, considering the dress she wore. If she lost her grip on the post, she would tip the canoe and hit the water.

“I wouldn’t say hijacking, exactly. I figured you’d show up sooner or later, and I needed to talk to you.”

She settled carefully into the front and glanced up at Blaze. He, too, was dressed for the funeral, and he really cleaned up good—a term Bertie liked to use. He wore a gray suit that set off his black skin and those pretty, dark eyes…which looked as if he’d been crying.

She gestured to the other seat. “Come on. Let’s get out of here for a while. I’ll even let you steer.”

He glanced back toward the town square, then to the church where they had just said goodbye to Edith’s body for the last time. “I’ve got things to do at the ranch.”

“You’ve always got things to do.” She picked up a paddle. “Just a few minutes, okay? Come on, Blaze. You never get a break, and we both need one. I promise not to keep you long. I need somebody to talk to, and I don’t want to bug Karah Lee right now. She’s freaking about all this.”

“You think I ain’t?”

“Watch your language. Nobody’s going to believe you’ve got the top scores in your class if you talk like that.”

He sank to the narrow seat of the canoe and unwrapped the rope from the post on the dock.

Fawn knew everyone dealt with grief a different way. She stuffed everything deep down, as if she could hide it from herself for good if she could ignore it long enough. Blaze was one of those people who immersed themselves in the moment and got it all out of their systems.

But then, Blaze had grown up with a dad who loved him. His mom had her own problems and hadn’t ever been there for Blaze, but he and his dad had had a good relationship when his dad was alive. His dad had tried hard to be both father and mother to his only child.

Fawn had never experienced that. Instead, she’d had a father who’d run out on the family, a mother who’d married a lecher—Bertie’s word for him—then blamed her own daughter for being raped. Stuffing emotions away was the only way to survive where Fawn came from. She’d stuffed a lot since Great-Grandma June had died.

Fawn paddled slowly as Blaze guided them across the lake toward the far shore. There, five newly built houses with Victorian gingerbread trim nestled into the side of the cliff, surrounded by gold, bronze and yellow mums and hundred-year-old oaks and cedars. Blaze, Fawn knew, loved to paddle past those houses and dream about having a house like that himself, someday.

In Fawn’s opinion, Blaze deserved a mansion five times larger than any of those houses.

“Did you see Austin Barlow at the funeral?” she asked.

Blaze stopped paddling. “You know him?”

“I met him Saturday. He came into the bed and breakfast to apologize to Bertie just before Jill and Noelle came with the news about Edith.”

“You talked to him?”

“He was looking for a place to stay for a couple of weeks. He said he came to apologize to Bertie for things he did. I asked him if he was going to apologize to you.”

She could tell by the sudden, alarming shift in the canoe that Blaze had leaned forward, and she wished she’d been facing him in the boat so she could see his expression.

“You didn’t.”

“Sure I did.” She placed her paddle across the sides of the canoe and carefully raised a leg to turn around, glad her skirt was full. “He treated you like trash—you told me so yourself. And all the time his own son was doing the things he blamed you for.”

“I figure he’s paying enough already, having his only kid locked away. If you aren’t careful, you’re going to dump us both in the lake.”

“Ramsay’s not locked away. He’s in a boys’ ranch up in northern Missouri.” She swung the other leg around and managed to do it gracefully enough that Blaze’s eyes didn’t pop out of his head, and she didn’t plunge them both into the water.

Blaze frowned at her, his thick black eyebrows nearly meeting in the middle over dark eyes. “You eavesdropping again?”

“Not completely. I talked to Austin Barlow myself.” She picked up her paddle.

“Not completely?”

“I was stuck, Blaze. He started talking to Bertie before he knew I was behind the counter, and when he started telling her all the juicy stuff, I couldn’t bring myself to—”

“Yeah, I know. You eavesdropped. That’s not—”

“Anyway,” she said with a hard glare at him, “he said he came back to town to make up for some of the things he did and said when he was here.”

“Could be he’s had a change of heart in the past couple of years. It happens, you know. People change.” There was a catch in his voice as he stared back across the lake toward the bed and breakfast.

Fawn knew he was still grieving over Edith. He’d be this way for days, maybe even weeks. He was just like this when Pearl Cooper was killed in that sawmill accident last year, and he hadn’t even known her well.

Aside from that flaw, though, she didn’t know a better man. At eighteen years of age—a few months older than she—Blaze wasn’t a kid anymore; he was as mature as most adults she knew.

He kept so busy, she didn’t know how he even found time to breathe. She was busy, too, but as Bertie would say, a body had to take some time to just sit every once in a while, or what was the use of living?

“Maybe he’s come back here to live,” Blaze said. “He owns a house in town, and he’s been renting it out. Maybe he’s decided to pick up where he left off before the mess with Ramsay.”

“But why come back here?” Fawn asked. “Everybody knows about Ramsay here. Why not go where no one knows his past?”

Blaze shrugged. “It’s home. Austin was born and raised here. Maybe he’s just decided to come back home.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“It’s not for me to say what he does.”

“I didn’t ask you to say, I asked how you felt.”

He picked up his paddle and started to steer the canoe again. “Stop ‘shrinking’ and stick to wedding plans, or Karah Lee’s going to send you back where you came from.”

“Where are you taking us?” she asked.

“I’ve got chores at the ranch. I’m taking you back to the dock.”

She sighed and stuck her paddle in the water again. “I can help with chores.”

“You told Bertie you’d help feed the family. Don’t let her down.”

“I know I told her that, but all the ladies from the church are coming over. There won’t be room for me.”

“She’ll want you there,” Blaze said. “She’s hurtin’ enough right now.”

Fawn sighed. Good old Blaze, always thinking of his own responsibilities…and hers. “Okay, fine. Dump me at the dock.” She gave him a dark stare. “I guess when you’re a man in demand, you don’t have a lot of time to spend with old friends.”

He chuckled. “You don’t, either. You’re as bad as I am, what with the wedding to plan, and you’ll probably be needed more at the bed and breakfast now that Edith’s not there to help Bertie. And you know, you do still have school work to keep up with.”

“And after the wedding, I might be looking for a new place to stay.”

“Why would that be?”

“No newlywed couple wants to start their married life with a teenaged kid in the house.”

“That what you needed to talk about?”

“Part of it.” She just wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about anything more right now. Blaze was in too much of a rush.

His movements slowed. “You really worried about what’s going to happen to you after the wedding?”

“I guess so.”

“Well, don’t. You know Karah Lee and Taylor better than that. They’re good folks. They’re not going to dump you out in the cold.”

She gave a one-shoulder shrug. She’d been dumped out in the cold before.

“Karah Lee’s nothing like your mother,” Blaze said, reading her mind. “And Taylor’d be mortified if he knew you were comparing him to your wicked stepfather.”

“Eeww.”

“Sorry. You just don’t have anything to worry about. I thought you and Karah Lee were both all set to move into that house Taylor bought up on the hill near Jill’s place.”

She paddled in silence as they drew near to the dock once more. “Yeah, well, I’ve been doing some thinking, too, and I just don’t think it’ll work. I may have other options, though.”

“What other options?” He maneuvered the canoe against the dock and reached out to steady her.