A Pour Way to Dye (Book 2 in the Soapmaking Mysteries) (10 page)

I shook my head. “You give me too much
credit.”

“
Ben, you are very good at
this. Don’t underestimate yourself. I don’t want you to come in
tomorrow. This is more important. Besides, with the Fair on the
Square, we won’t have many customers, if past years are any
indication.”

“
I’ve kind of got something
else going on tomorrow,” I admitted.

“
Tell me, what could be more
important than this?”

I finally admitted, “I’ve got a date with
Kelly Sheer and her daughter.”

Mom smiled. “Well, I’d have to say that’s at
least as important as this. Go, have a good time, but don’t forget,
you need to keep working on this. We’re all counting on you.”

No pressure there, having the entire Perkins
clan depending on my ability to better a trained police force.
“I’ll do my best. Good night, Mom.”

“
And to you,
Benjamin.”

I grabbed a pizza on the way home to my
apartment and settled in for the night. Television couldn’t hold my
attention and neither could the three books I tried to start
reading from my waiting pile. The image of Earnest Joy dying with a
bar of our soap in his hand kept haunting me, and finally, barely
after ten, I gave up and went to bed. I might as well have stayed
up for all the rest I got.

When I finally dragged myself out of bed the
next day, I realized that not even a cold shower would bring me
back my normal bouncy step. As I shaved, I realized I should be
excited about my first family outing with Kelly and Annie. So why
was I dreading it?

Chapter 5

I waited by the old stone chimney near the
Square, the rendezvous point Kelly and I had agreed on. It was
close enough to the action to see everything gearing up, but still
easy enough to spot each other. The petting zoo was nearby— filled
with bleats and baas from the goats and sheep—and I could smell
popcorn and funnel cakes in the air. I was a good half hour early
for our allotted meeting time, and I fully expected to wait. That’s
why I was so surprised when Kelly showed up a minute after I got
there. She was alone.

“
Where’s Annie?” I asked,
trying not to believe the sad look in Kelly’s eyes.

“
Ben, we need to talk,” she
said solemnly.

I had never had a conversation with a woman
in my life that started off with those particular words and didn’t
end in disaster.

“
Go on,” I said, ready for
the bad news. I was half expecting it from the way she’d been
acting lately, but I never could have imagined the reason
why.

“
Wade and I are going to try
to reconcile,” she told me, the blow of her words nearly staggering
me backwards. “It’s for Annie’s sake,” she added, obviously trying
to soften the sting of her words.

“
You can’t be serious,” I
said. “After everything you told me about him? Is Annie enough of a
reason to put yourself through that again?”

While he hadn’t been exactly abusive, Kelly
had told me enough about Wade to make me despise the man for the
way he’d treated her.

“
He’s changed,” she said,
her voice nearly breaking. “I’m so sorry to do this to
you.”

The other shoe finally dropped. “Wait a
second. That was him in your office yesterday, wasn’t it?”

She reached for my hand, but I was in no mood
for it. In a plaintive voice, Kelly said, “Don’t make this any
harder than it already is.”

“
Why shouldn’t I?” I
protested loud enough to draw the attention of some parents waiting
for their kids at the petting zoo. That was too bad, let them
listen. “Kelly, don’t do this. There’s something special going on
between us.”

“
I know that,” she said,
barely choking out the words. “I’m not thinking about my own
happiness. I’m doing this for Annie.”

She left me standing alone, and there wasn’t
a thing in the world I could do about it.

My first reaction was to get out of there. I
wasn’t in the mood to be around a lot of people, most of them happy
and joyous to be together.

Maybe Kelly was right. I had to grant her the
possibility that Wade had changed, but even if he hadn’t, Kelly had
been pretty emphatic about her decision, and the reason behind it.
She was doing it for her daughter, and as much as I wanted to, I
couldn’t fault her for that. My parents were together until my
father’s untimely death, and it had meant a great deal to me having
them both right there whenever I needed them. If Kelly was making a
sacrifice for her daughter, wasn’t that what parents did? My
loyalty to my own family made me realize that, even though there
was the potential for a truly great love between us, she had a
daughter to consider.

Even if I could change her mind, I wasn’t at
all sure I had the right to.

I felt an arm grab mine and looked up to see
my sister Louisa standing there. “Hey, bro, what’s up?” She took
one look at my face and asked, “Oh, no, did someone else die?”

“
Just a budding romance,” I
said, quickly telling her what had happened.

“
Ben, I’m so sorry. Would
you like to go somewhere and talk about it? I’m a great listener;
you know that.”

“
I wouldn’t dream of doing
that to you.” I looked around. “Hey, where’s John?”

She shrugged. “He had to go to a sales
conference at the beach this weekend with his company. From the way
he described it, they’ll talk about business for ten minutes then
golf the rest of the time. So what do you want to do? I’m all
yours.”

I thought about leaving the Fair and taking
my sister up on her offer to listen to my problems, but the last
thing I wanted to do was to hold a postmortem over a relationship
that barely had the chance to bloom, no matter how promising the
bud had been.

“
Tell you what,” I said.
“Why don’t we check out the Fair since we’re already
here?”

“
Are you sure? I don’t mind
missing it. Really I don’t.”

“
I’m positive,” I said.
“After all, maybe it would do me some good.”

She put an arm through mine and led me toward
the festivities. “Then let’s go and have some fun.”

There were more than a few whispers and
indirect looks my way as Louisa and I walked past the street
vendors and displays. There was no doubt in my mind that news of
Earnest Joy’s homicide had already been rehashed over breakfast
tables throughout Harper’s Landing, and I was pretty sure that
everyone in town knew I was the chief suspect. I didn’t let it get
to me, though; I tried my best to forget about what had happened
with Kelly, too. It didn’t work, but I still tried.

Set up in the center of the Square was a
series of big glass pickle jars, the kind that restaurants must
use. In front of each jar was a sign describing an item that was
being raffled off for the fire department’s fundraiser. They were
in dire need of a new truck, and with the budget cuts that had been
hitting our state lately, this was probably the only way they were
going to get it.

As Louisa veered off to buy a caramel apple,
I took a closer look at the signs, then I asked the young woman
with a nametag that read Sarah, “How many things are being
raffled?”

She smiled as she counted the items on her
list. “Believe it or not, nobody’s asked me that today. We’ve got
twenty things we’re giving away, but some of them you probably
won’t like.”

I smiled at her. “Now how do you know what I
might not like?”

She grinned as she looked at me and said,
“Funny, you don’t seem the type to like manicures and
pedicures.”

“
You never know if you don’t
try, do you? I’ll take twenty tickets.”

As she took my twenty-dollar bill and
exchanged it for the requisite number of tickets, Sarah explained,
“Put your name and phone number on each ticket, then drop them in
the jars. We’re drawing at five P.M. but you don’t have to be
present to win.”

I did as she said, depositing a ticket into
each jar without even looking at the prize offered. With my luck, I
probably would win the manicure and pedicure. If I did, I’d give
the certificate to Louisa. I didn’t know how she’d managed it, but
she’d found me at exactly the right time, just when I’d needed
her.

My sister joined me as she took another bite
of caramel apple. “She’s a little young for you, isn’t she?”

“
What are you talking
about?” I asked.

“
That girl at the table. I
saw you flirting with her. What is she, sixteen?”

“
I wasn’t flirting with her,
and she’s got to be older than that,” I said. “I’m sure she’s at
least in college. Who knows, maybe she likes the older,
distinguished type.”

Louisa poked me. “More likely you remind her
of her dear old dad. Face it, Ben, to women in their twenties,
you’re practically invisible.”

“
Hey, I’m not that old,” I
protested.

“
Dream on,
Brother.”

Surprising us both, I leaned over and kissed
my sister’s cheek.

“
What was that for?” she
asked.

“
For being here when I
needed you. Thanks.”

Louisa looked embarrassed by the display. “I
didn’t do anything,” she protested.

“
There you’re
wrong.”

She looked at some of the rides that had been
set up on the Square. “So are you up for some fun?”

“
You’d have to be crazy to
get on that Ferris Wheel,” I said, “let alone the Spider. They put
these things together in the middle of the night. What makes you so
sure they didn’t miss a bolt or two in the dark?”

“
Come on, take a
chance.”

I shook my head. “You go ahead. I think I’m
going to take off.”

She looked longingly at the rides, then said,
“Let’s go then.”

“
No, I want you to stay and
have fun. I’m going to be fine. I promise.”

She didn’t want to let me leave alone, but
when I insisted, she finally agreed. “If you need me, just
call.”

“
I will,” I said, and then
fought the crowd back to where I was parked. When I got into the
Miata, I suddenly realized I had nowhere else to go. The only way I
was going to get my mind off my hapless love life was by trying to
figure out if there was anything I could do to help Molly figure
out who had killed Earnest.

Maybe it would help take some of the sting
out of Kelly’s rejection if I occupied my mind with something else,
something more urgent than a bruised heart. I drove back to Where
There’s Soap, but instead of going in, I walked around to the back
where the fence stood. To my surprise, Terri Joy was standing there
staring at it from the other side, her left hand testing its
sturdiness.

“
It’s pretty ugly, isn’t
it?” she asked when she saw me.

“
You could always take it
down,” I replied.

She shook her head. “I would if I could, but
my brother has some kind of obsession with it now. He’s claiming
that he’ll fight you to the end to fulfill Dad’s last wish.”

I lightly kicked the bottom edge with the toe
of my shoe. “Why did Earnest care so much about it? If it mattered
all that much, he sure took his time getting around to it.”

Terri sighed. “Don’t kid yourself. I’m pretty
sure Andrew was behind this from the start. He was going through
Dad’s safe-deposit box at the bank and stumbled across the IOU.
That was months ago, but then all of a sudden it became important
to him to do this.”

I gestured toward the gopher-hole garden.
“More important than his horticulture?”

She laughed. “It’s pretty hideous, isn’t it?
Hey, Dad was just happy Andrew found something he liked doing. We
used to watch Andrew digging from Dad’s office. That boy has
developed a single-minded devotion to moving dirt.”

“
I’m kind of surprised
you’re even talking to me,” I said. “Terri, it’s important to me
that you know I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to
your father. I lost mine, too. I know how much it
hurts.”

She wept without appearing to even
acknowledge the tears. “I know you wouldn’t hurt him, Ben.”

‘
Thanks for believing me,” I
said.

Her words sharpened. “Don’t think I’m letting
you off the hook completely. I still think his murder had something
to do with this dispute. Just because I said I don’t think you did
it doesn’t mean I’m ready to absolve your entire family.”

“
Terri, I can assure you,
none of my family would do something like this.”

She stared at the fence a moment longer, and
I wondered what she was going to say, when I heard Andrew’s voice
coming from the back of the jewelry shop.

“
Leave her alone,” he
shouted as he came at a trot.

“
I’m fine, Andrew,” she
said, turning back to look at him.

She might as well have saved her breath. As
he approached us, he said, “I mean it, Perkins. I’m not going to
let you bully my sister, so don’t even try it. You’ve already
murdered one member of my family, and I’m not about to let you hurt
another one.” He had his fists clenched, and there was a fire in
his eyes. Was I going to get into a fist-fight, at my age? I wasn’t
looking for a confrontation, but if that was what he wanted, I had
a lot of anger and frustration I wouldn’t mind venting out on
him.

Not even trying to hide the scorn in my
voice, I snapped, “I didn’t kill your father. Stop being such a
jerk.”

Terri stared at me a second, then turned to
her brother. “Honestly, you both need to grow up. Andrew, nobody’s
going to bully me, you know that. We don’t know what happened to
Dad yet, so stop jumping to conclusions.”