Farm Fresh Murder (29 page)

“Wow, it sounds like he was perfect. Why didn’t you stay together?”

Her face soured. “Pride and stupidity.”

“Sorry?”

“He was too proud and I was too stupid.”

“What do you mean?”

“Abner would never have lived on this land. He was too proud to take the land of someone he married. He wanted to make his own way—he had his own family land. I was stupid. This was my land, and if he didn’t want it, I thought he didn’t want me enough.” She sighed. “Truth be told, his refusal to take this land meant he loved me all the more. I was so very stupid.”

“And he was so very proud,” I said. I got the principle of what Abner had felt, but seriously, there should have been some way to compromise. “He wouldn’t budge?”

“No, not an inch. And then Matty got really sick with pneumonia. Even though I dated Abner, we were all friends, and Matty’s mother had died years before. I offered to help take care of him. You have to understand, it was a different time. People still die from pneumonia, but back then . . . well, Matty and his father didn’t have much of anything. Matty spent most of his time getting better at his house, not a hospital. When Abner, Barry, and I visited him, I was horrified at the condition of his home. I offered to help take care of him. Abner was fine with it even though our relationship had already become strained at that point.” Her eyes went to that distant place again.

“You fell in love with Matty while you were taking care of him?” I prompted.

“Becca, we were very young. I thought I was feeling love for Matty but, well, it was . . .”

“That caregiver/patient thing that sometimes happens.”

She nodded, and her eyes teared up. “And Matty had no problem coming to live with me on my land. He was a good, good man, and I’m so very happy we were married and had Jessop, but . . .”

“You were never really in love with him?”

“Not totally. But that’s unfair, too. I loved him, but not like Abner.”

“Abner probably didn’t take any of that well at all.”

“It was horrible.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Matty was the best-looking boy I knew.” She sniffed. “And how silly was it that that became what I held on to, what I kept in my mind as being the reason I left the love of my life? I left Abner for someone better-looking.”

In a way, my heart broke for them all. But in another way, I wished I could have been there to tell them how stupid they were being. I stamped down my sympathy—I still had to figure out who’d killed Matt.

“I don’t understand something. How come this land was next to Abner’s and Barry’s?”

“Abner’s land was in his family for a long time. Barry’s land was actually ours—mine and Matty’s—for some time. But shortly after we were married, Barry claimed that his family had had that property for years, too. It was an ugly scene, but Barry was able to prove that he was right. He got his property. But he was never happy there, so about twenty years ago, he sold it to Carl Monroe’s family. Carl’s been working the orchard for about ten years.”

Suddenly, she seemed very lucid. This must have been the land dispute Barry spoke about. So, he hadn’t been completely lying.

“Was Barry unhappy because of you and what you did to him? Is that why he moved away?”

“I don’t know, never did know. Last night at the party was the first time I’d talked to him in a long time. That’s why I seemed confused. I’m afraid I’m a big mess of emotions right now.”

“Uh-huh,” I said unsympathetically. “Why didn’t Abner leave?”

“Pride again, I suppose. He built that greenhouse and made his land more successful than any of his family before him. He wasn’t going to let me or my marriage to someone else force him out.”

That sounded like the Abner I knew.

“Pauline, tell me about the three trees.”

“What trees?”

“The three trees on the border of these three properties.”

“How do you know about those trees?” Her face reddened so quickly, I thought her cheeks might feel hot to the touch.

I didn’t answer but did my own shrug instead. I probably wasn’t supposed to know about the pictures that we found in Abner’s house. I didn’t tell her I’d seen the trees live and in person as I spied on Carl.

“Ms. Robins, it really is time for you to leave now.” Abruptly, her tone changed to unwelcoming again.

“Pauline,” I began.

“Now.”

She grabbed my glass from my hand as I stood. She marched us to the entry foyer and to the front door. She opened it with a violent pull.

“I’m sorry, Pauline, I didn’t mean to upset you. I have just a couple more questions, though”—her eyes blazed at my gall—“when were you blond, and what do you love so much about hummingbirds?”

I thought she might slap me, so I braced myself. She was significantly older than me, but she was also lots bigger.

Instead of slapping, she slammed—the door practically exploded the frame. She looked at me with anger and something crazy.

I took a step backward and patted my pocket. I’d left my cell phone in my truck, sitting next to the gloves and the hummingbird feeder. I was going to have to run if her demeanor turned any more dangerous.

She reached behind an umbrella container I hadn’t noticed before. The look on her face was now purely murderous. Did she have an axe hidden among the rain gear?

As she reached, I did what was sure to end my career as a criminal investigator.

I screamed like a little girl.

Pauline’s eyes widened and then got small. She wasn’t reach
ing behind the umbrella stand, but into it. She rummaged around and then pulled out a frame; it was short and wide—wide enough for about three pictures.

“Why did you scream?” she asked as she held the frame. I’d misunderstood her completely. She wasn’t murderous at all. I think she was sad, instead.

“I . . . I thought . . . I don’t know.” I was horrified, relieved that she hadn’t pulled out an axe, and amused at my own silliness. “You had a frame in your umbrella stand?”

“It was in the back of my closet for years, but I found it here last week. The pictures were gone. I just left it here because I wasn’t sure what else to do with it. The police confronted me with the pictures, but I lied and told them the woman wasn’t me.” She sounded lost.

“Okay.”

“This”—she held the empty frame for me to see—“held the only evidence of me having blond hair, Becca. Somehow you’ve seen the picture that was in the middle of this frame. How? Unless you searched the back of my closet, you saw it somewhere else. Where? Did the police show it to you?”

“Were there pictures of trees there, too?”

“Yes, the three trees . . . and then . . . and one tree. Where did you see these pictures? Where did the police get them? They wouldn’t tell me.”

I stepped toward her and took the frame from her shaky hands. The glass was still intact, but the places where the pictures were supposed to be were void of anything but off-center paper backings.

“This was in your closet?”

“Yes, until the day before Matty was killed.”

“The man with you was Abner, right?”

“Yes.”

“Why were you blond in the picture?”

She sniffed. “I was in disguise.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you if you tell me where you found the pictures.”

“The day of the murder—that night, I went to Abner’s house to see if he was okay. He wasn’t there, but the door was unlocked so I went in anyway. The pictures were on the floor, next to his overturned coffee table.” The truth flowed but felt somewhat foreign.

“Abner broke into my house and took the pictures?”

“I don’t know. But why were you blond?”

She sighed heavily.

“It was the disguise I used to wear when I went to meet Abner. After Matty and I were married. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“After you married Matt, you continued to see Abner?”

“Yes.” She hung her head in shame. “We met when we could at the cabin. But that picture was from a trip we took to Florida. The wig wasn’t necessary, but I still wore it. I don’t know. It made me feel less . . . less deceitful, I guess. Stupid and silly. It’s possible that Matty found the pictures and confronted Abner.”

“That sounds like a reasonable scenario. I can see your husband snooping around in your closet. How long were the pictures there?”

“Decades.”

“And he just discovered them, right before he went to work at Bailey’s? Is that really why he went to work at Bailey’s? Did he want to keep an eye on Abner or torment him?”

“I don’t think so.”

The loud roar of a truck interrupted the questioning. We were still standing in the front entryway of the house. Pauline opened the door and I peeked around her as another brown truck sped to a quick stop right beside my bright orange one.

Jessop Simonsen swung his long body out of his truck and then walked over to look inside mine. He could easily see the gloves, the feeder, and my cell phone. Him knowing what was on my front seat made me strangely uncomfortable.

Pauline closed the door. “Don’t tell Jessop we’ve been talking about this. Let’s go back into the front room and sit down. I don’t want him upset. He’s had such a hard time with everything.”

We did as she instructed. As I sat, I whispered, “Pauline, I need to know about the hummingbirds before he comes in the house.”

“I loved hummingbirds when I was younger. It was the nickname Abner used for me.” She spoke quickly, then calmed her face just as Jessop walked through the door.

So what?
was what ran though my mind. If Abner killed Matt, did he put up the hummingbird feeders to honor his old love? Who would do something like that? Maybe a psychopathic murderer, but the act didn’t seem worth the effort.

“Mom?” Jessop said with scrunched eyes and a tight mouth.

“Hello, dear. This is Becca Robins.” Pauline stood.

“I know who she is. She came by Smithfield one day.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. What’s she doing here?”

“Just paying her respects, Jessop.”

They both looked at me as though it was my turn to contribute something to the conversation, but I didn’t. Instead, my eyes were fixed on Jessop’s face and the familiar look it had just held.

And when I looked more closely, I realized that Jessop not only could twist his facial features in a familiar manner, but his entire face was familiar.

No. Way.

“Paying her respects, huh?” Jessop said, filling the silent air.

“Jess, come help me with something in the kitchen for a minute. I’ll be right back, Ms. Robins,” Pauline said.

They walked away, Pauline practically dragging her son with her. Had she seen something on my face that made her realize what my brain was putting together?

I stood and went back to the piano. I found a picture of a twenty-something Jessop and put my fingers over the full hair. The face was younger, but still one I knew.

Jessop had Abner’s face. He was tall like his mother, but Jessop was Abner’s son. I would have put every dime I had on that fact.

It suddenly seemed very obvious. How could anyone look at the three people involved—Abner, Matt, and Pauline—and not know that Jessop belonged to Abner more than he belonged to Matt? Abner might have been short, but Jessop clearly got his build from his tall mother. And he most definitely got his face from his father.

How did this help me know who the murderer was? I switched my thinking into overdrive. Though it was now obvious to me, Pauline, Abner, and perhaps Matt probably knew all along. How did this get Matt killed? Did Abner finally want to be a father to his son and Matt felt threatened? Did Matt just figure it out and confront Abner, and Abner killed him?

Still, while all of that seemed possible, none of it quite fit. Abner kept claiming that he didn’t commit the murder, but he wouldn’t say who had. If that was true, it meant he was protecting someone; someone he loved. That could be his sister, Helen, Pauline, me . . . or his son. I knew it wasn’t me and I also knew I was in a house with the two strongest suspects. I had to get out of there, or at least get to my cell phone and call Sam for help.

I turned back from the piano and stepped quickly toward the front door. With each step, something else became perfectly clear. When I’d visited Abner earlier that day, he’d said something that rang a bell. I suddenly realized what it was—it was about old-timers. Barry had kept bringing up old-timers, too. Old-timers were the market vendors who got to work early every day.
Early to rise, early to sell
.

That was it! That was what had been nudging at me this whole time.

I knew exactly who the murderer was, and I was most definitely in the house with that person.

I turned my quick steps into a run, made it out the front door, and was halfway to my truck when the familiar boom of a shotgun made me instinctively hit the ground and cover my head.