A Plain Malice: An Appleseed Creek Mystery (Appleseed Creek Mystery Series Book 4) (8 page)

“I hope you and your daughter have a lovely lunch. I recommend the fried chicken,” I said.
“It may not compete with your jerky, but it’s very good.”

Gertie wagged her finger at me.
“Melinda isn’t my daughter.”

I blushed.
“I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed.”

Gertie was unconcerned. “She’s my companion. I pay her to travel with me.”

Melinda’s face turned bright red.

I smiled
at Melinda. “That sounds like a fun job. I’m not well-traveled. I’ve been to California and a few other states. I hope to visit Italy this summer. My best friend Tanisha lives there.”

Gertie beamed. “Melinda and I went there three years ago for my ninety-
seventh birthday. Oh, the Italian men, were they ever taken with me! I can tell you stories that will make your toes curl. We had pip of a time, didn’t we, Melinda?”

“A pip,” Melinda de
adpanned.

Melinda gave an all
-suffering sigh and followed Gertie up the short walk into the Young’s.

Ruby’s cousin,
Pearl, was the last person to exit the bus. Although Gertie was one hundred, Pearl seemed to be twice Gertie’s age and did not have the centurion’s energy. She hunched forward as she navigated the bus steps. I offered her my hand to help her down the steps. She thanked me quietly as tears gathered in her light brown eyes.

“I’m so sorry about your
loss.” I didn’t know what else to say.

She took a shuddered breath.
“I don’t know what I’ll do without her. She was all the family I had. Should I go home? How will I get there?”

“If you need
to make arrangements to return home, I’m sure the travel company can help you. There’s an airport just an hour away.”

Her eyes were bloodshot.
“What about Ruby? I can’t leave her here alone. Who would take care of her arrangements?”

She had a point
, and Chief Rose wouldn’t be happy with me if I encouraged a prime suspect to skip town.

Tears gathered in
Pearl’s eyes. “I don’t think I can face the rest of the tour.”

“I can take you to the inn
if you would like some time to rest.”

A tear slid down her
heavily powdered cheek. “I would appreciate that. It would be nice to lie down and make some phone calls. There’s so much to do. I need to call the funeral home, the church, and…” She trailed off as the enormity of her task settled on her shoulders.

Hudson
placed his hand on the door closer. “How are you going to get her there? You’re not taking her in my bus.”

I glared at
Hudson. “I have no intention of driving your bus.”

“Good.”
He moved to shut the bus’s folding doors.

I grabbed the door.
“Wait! Pearl, is there anything on the bus that you will need before we go?”

A
SUV behind the tour bus honked and the driver shared a rude gesture.

Pearl flushed. “
I do have a small carry-on under my seat.”

“I’ll get it for you
.” I jumped onto the bottom step. “It will take me two seconds to grab her bag.”

“Fine,”
Hudson grudgingly agreed.

As I climbed onto the empty bus and
realized this might be the only time I’d be on it without passengers. I should look for clues. Trouble was I had no idea what to search for. I wished Chief Rose had given me more direction on this investigation.

Umbrella
s and folded jackets lay on the empty seats. Small roll bags with the Blue Suede Tours logo of a blue shoe were embroidered on the front of it were tucked up the seats. The Mississippi tour group was a neat bunch. There were no confession notes or smoking guns left behind.

Hudson
watched me in the rearview mirror. “What’s taking so long? I’ve got to eat too, you know.”

I shuffled to
the back of the bus and retrieved Pearl’s bag; it looked like all others, but had Pearl’s name and address on the luggage tag. Under the seat next to hers was another bag. I flipped over the luggage tag. It was Ruby’s. Before I could change my mind, I took that one too.

Chapter Seven

I climbed out of the bus with two roll bags, not one. Tanisha would be proud. She taught me the key to pulling anything off—good or bad—was confidence.

Hudson
shut and locked the bus door behind me and revved the engine. I stepped clear of the bus just before he peeled away from the curb.

“You have two bags there,” Pearl said.

I adjusted my grip on the roll bags. “I grabbed Ruby’s too.”

Tears appeared in her eyes again. “
That was so thoughtful of you to do that for me.”

I hadn’t grabbed the bag for her but didn’t argue.

A man cleared his throat as he brushed passed us to enter the restaurant and muttered about people always “standing in the way.” Inside the restaurant, there was a line to be seated—Jimbo wasn’t going to be happy about that— but many of those waiting sat in white rockers on the restaurant’s wide front porch.

Without my Beetle, we needed transportation.
Maybe I should have lined that up before I offered to take Pearl to the inn. I led Pearl to the side of the porch, so we didn’t block the door and removed my cell from my pocket. Pearl stood in a daze as I texted Timothy. “Where are you?”

A text came back.
“At Young’s.”

“I’m
here too. Can I borrow your truck?”

“Meet you out back.”

I smiled at Pearl, whose head appeared even more Crayola crayon red in the sunlight. “We’ve got a ride to the inn.”

“That’s nice,” she murmured and reached for her roll bag.

I studied her face as I handed it to her.
Was she going into shock?

I led Pearl into the restaurant. The place was packed. Ellie
, the owner, and her son Uriah must be pleased. I wove through the people waiting to be seated as we reached the host stand, a burly man stepped in front of me. “Hey, no cutting! Get back in line.”

I frowned.
“I’m not staying, I’m just passing through.”

Aaron Sutter, who was both Timothy’s best friend and Deacon Sutter’s son, watched the exchange from
his wheelchair beside the host’s podium. His bowl haircut was longer than the last time I had seen him, and his bangs hid his eyes.

The man folded his arms.
“We’ve been waiting here for over twenty minutes for a table. If you think you can waltz in and take our place, you have another thing coming.”

Aaron straightened a stack
of menus in his lap. “She’s not here to eat. She’s a friend of the owner.”

The man grunted and stepped out of my way.

“Thanks, Aaron.” I gave him a small smile.

He simply n
odded and handed the stack of menus to an Amish teenager who seated guests.

Sadness washed over me as I led Pearl through the dining room.
Even though Aaron was Timothy’s best friend, I had seen little of him since Becky told him she was never returning to the Amish community. I kept an eye out for Becky. She was supposed to be working, but the place was so crowded I couldn’t pick her out from the other servers running in and out of the kitchen in matching Amish dresses.

In the stainless steel professional kitchen, none of
the Amish cooks questioned me as I led Pearl through their domain. They diced vegetables for the salad bar, stirred huge vats of beef stew, and dropped chicken legs into the fryer. All the while, chatting with each other in Pennsylvania Dutch as if they were in their home kitchens. Pearl and I went out the back door, and the heavy door banged shut behind us as we stepped into the small private parking area behind the restaurant.

Timothy’s blue pickup
waited right outside the kitchen door. He leaned against the hood of the truck and looked like a Stetson advertisement in scuffed boots. All he needed was a cowboy hat. The thought of Timothy in a cowboy hat made my heart race. Mabel sat at his side, completing the look.

“If I had known you were coming to Young’s I would
have followed you here instead of going back to the farm to get Mabel,” Timothy said. He nodded to Pearl but didn’t say anything to her. An unspoken question lingered in his eyes.

I
scratched Mabel between the ears. Her eyes closed in doggy bliss. If only it were so easy to please my Siamese cat, Gigabyte. Only Becky knew the way to his feline heart, through his stomach. “The next stop on the itinerary was Deacon Sutter’s farm. I made an adjustment.”

“Ahh.”
He nodded. “Young’s is a good choice. There’s plenty to do here to keep the tourists busy well into the afternoon.”

Pearl didn’t look up from her hands which clutched her roll bag. I held Ruby’s bag
, and I itched to see what was inside of it. “Can I borrow the pickup to take Pearl to the Dutch Inn? It’s been a terrible day for her, and she needs to rest.”

He fished his keys out of the hips pocket of his jeans. “I can take you there.”

My eye flitted in Pearl’s direction. “I think it’s better if I take her on my own.”

Timothy dropped the keys into my
palm. “Okay.” Timothy circled to the back of the pickup with Mabel on his heels. He reached into the truck bed and pulled out his red toolbox. “I have a few small jobs to do for Ellie, so it’s no problem if you’re gone for a little while. I should be done when you get back.” Timothy cleared his throat and nodded to Pearl. “It was nice to see you again.”

She refused
to look at him and only clung to the handle of her bag more tightly.

Timothy raised his eyebrows at me, and I shook
my head. With his index finger, he touched the luggage tag of the roll bag I held, and his eyebrows shot up even higher in question.

“
I shouldn’t be gone too long,” I said. “Hudson, the bus driver, knows I’m taking Pearl to the inn. You can tell any of the passengers that’s where I am if they ask.”

He nodded.
“Will do.”

I opened the
passenger side door, shoved Ruby’s roll bag into the tiny backseat, and helped Pearl into the truck. Timothy squeezed my fingers as I climbed into driver’s side.

I turned out of
Young’s parking lot and onto the county road in silence. The Dutch Inn was only a fifteen minutes from the flea market by car. If I wanted to ask Pearl about her cousin, I had better do it quick.

Pearl beat me to it. “I hate to travel. This trip was Ruby’s idea. She
tried to talk me into a vacation like this for over thirty years. I finally say ‘yes,’ and she’s dead because of it.”

“Pearl, this isn’t you
r fault,” I said.
At least I hope, it’s not.
I paused at a four-way stop. “Does Ruby go on trips like this often?”

She stared out the windshield as the farmland whizzing by.
“Yes, she’s been on dozens all over the country and Europe. She is—was—so adventurous. I always wished I could be more like her.”

I wrung my hands back and forth on the steering wheel.
“How do you know the other people on the bus?”

“
I don’t know them. Ruby and I met them the day we left Tupelo.”

I passed a
wagon buggy on the road. “How did you join the tour then?”

“
Ruby saw an ad in the local paper and signed us up through the travel agency. I was so angry at her, but finally, I relented. I could never be angry at Ruby for long.” She turned her head away to face out her window. “She has done too much for me.”

“Blue Suede Tours is an interesting name for a travel agency,” I said. “And they
really
like the color blue.”

Pearl chuckled softly at my
comment. “It got its name from Tupelo.”

I gave her a blank stare
as I paused at another stop sign.

“The birthplace of Elvis Presley.
He had a song.
Blue Suede Shoes
. That’s where the name comes from. There are many Tupelo businesses that are named after one of Elvis’s songs.”

“Did Ruby use
Blue Suede Tours before?”

She folded and unfolded her hands on her lap. “
I don’t think so. Like I said she found the trip in the local newspaper.”

“Was she sick?
Did she have any health problems?”

“She had a
heart murmur, but she’d had it for decades. It was well controlled by medication. It’s hard for me to believe that’s what caused her collapse. And if that was the cause, why did Dudley keel over at the same time?”

An
excellent question.

The
stone-face of the Dutch Inn came into view and was small by Holmes County standards. Several of the large Amish Inns there boosted over one hundred rooms, indoor swimming pools, and health spas. The Dutch Inn was a simple country inn with modest but clean accommodations. It sat two miles as the crow flew from the center of Appleseed Creek and resided on several acres of fallow farmland. The back balconies held a vista of the unplanted fields and banks of the winding Kokosing River.