Bought the Farm Mysteries Books 1-3 Page 15

  “I’d love to meet the menagerie again. I went to all of Hannah’s events and fell in love with the alpaca.”

  “Alvina has a cult following. Happily, she’s adjusted well to the change. She’s even fallen for my brother, Asher.”

  “Well, Asher has a bit of a cult following, too,” Teri said, grinning. “Half of the old ladies in town call in fake emergencies in the hopes that Asher will be sent out. They almost mobilized to picket the station when he got reassigned to highway patrol.”

  “Seriously? Asher?” A laugh spilled out of me and Keats looked up, startled. Then his tongue lolled out one side in a happy smile. I realized then how much my stress had been wearing on him, too. We hardly smiled anymore.

  “We never see our siblings as others do, right?” Teri said. “Asher’s a lovely man, inside and out.” She beckoned me to the counter. “Now what can I do for you today?”

  “I’m looking for a birthday gift for Jilly.” I pulled out the little glass stone. “I found this and someone recognized it as your work. I was thinking of a pendant.”

  Teri took the stone and gave a little gasp.

  “Where exactly did you find it?” she asked. “I only made two of these.”

  I thought about evading the question, but Teri seemed like a good person. Keats thought so, which was enough for me to take a chance.

  “In a field at the farm, actually. Keats nosed it out, Jilly took a shine to it and Margie Hodgson has something similar.” I shrugged. “So here I am.”

  Teri’s hand trembled as she set it on a little velvet cushion that sat on top of the display case. She looked up at me with intense dark eyes. “Like I said, I only made two of these pendants in white. Both for Lloyd Boyce. I saw Nadine wearing hers plenty of times, but I don’t know what happened to the other one.”

  A shiver ran down my back and Keats’ hackles rose at the same time. I knew exactly whose neck the other pretty pendant had graced. Giving two women the same piece was the move of a tacky man. At least he hadn’t had one made for Daisy, too.

  “I know about Lloyd’s passing, of course,” Teri said. “How do you think my little stone ended up in your field?”

  “No idea,” I said, picking up the stone and pocketing it. “But it’s something I’ll need to share with the police, Teri. I guess you can expect a call at some point.”

  She frowned and then smiled again. “I’ll ask for Asher.”

  I laughed again. “You’re going to get the chief, I’m afraid.”

  “Equally handsome but devoid of charm,” she said.

  “Not completely,” I said, heading for the door. “He just needs the love of a good dog to bring it out.”

  “What about the gift for Jilly?” she called after me. “Was that a ruse?”

  “Sort of, yeah,” I called back. “But the offer of displaying your art was 100 percent legit.”

  “Good. And the offer to paint Keats also stands.”

  “No take-backs on something that important,” I said, turning with my hand on the door. “It’ll have pride of place over the mantel.”

  “It was nice meeting you,” she said.

  She tilted her spiky head a little and Keats mirrored the pose. It was a sign that he not only expected but hoped we’d meet again.

  “You too,” I said. “Keats welcomes you to our pack.”

  “Ivy, watch out for—”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The door slammed before I caught Teri’s last words but I had no trouble figuring out what she was warning me about.

  Kellan Harper was standing outside the door. With his arms crossed. Waiting. There was a chill in his eyes that rivalled Keats’ sole baby blue. Meanwhile, Keats’ ruff came up and his tail went down and I wondered if Kellan realized how much they had in common at that moment. Telling him so wasn’t going to win me any favors, however, so I gave him a bland smile.

  “Hey, Chief. I was just arranging for a sitting for Keats. I’m going to hang his portrait over the mantel at my inn.”

  “Sounds nice,” he said, with as little enthusiasm as a man can have and still be conscious. “What else were you doing?”

  “Making new friends. I could use some in Clover Grove. My name is still under the cloud of death, you know. Some people are actually scared of me. As if murder on your land were contagious.”

  Kellan sighed. “Have you thought about delaying your opening? Just long enough to let the dust settle?”

  Anger rose in my belly like a tornado and he must have felt it coming because he took a step backwards. “I am not delaying my opening. My first guests are my former colleagues. The boss who treated me like crap. The last thing I want is to look like a failure in front of him.”

  “Ivy, you were a corporate whiz kid. Asher was always bragging about you.”

  I scuffed at the pavement with my work boot. “I got written off as crazy, Kellan. The reputation I spent a decade building was ruined. My family—my mother especially—tries to pretend all that didn’t happen. She speaks of ‘the incident’ in hushed tones.” I looked up at him again. “For her, the murder is probably less of a big deal than my career downfall.”

  The ice in his eyes thawed noticeably and he beckoned me to walk with him. “You’ve been through a lot this year, but the memories will fade.”

  “A lot of memories faded. Permanently. But the work fiasco wasn’t one of them.”

  “A selective concussion,” he said. “Interesting. But you have no control over that.”

  I stared around at the shops, wondering how many people were staring back from inside. Lots, probably. Fingers were already working the keys to get the news out on the grapevine: Murder brings high school sweethearts together again. Or does it? Stay tuned!

  Finally I said, “I take it you’re no closer to figuring out what happened to Lloyd.”

  “I ruled out a few things,” he said. “Which brings me quite a bit closer.”

  “What things?”

  “Ivy, we talked about this. You need to stand back and be patient.”

  I glanced up at him. “Do you remember patience ever being one of my virtues?”

  “Actually, no, come to think of it. But now you’re like a… runaway camel.”

  “Alpaca. Or llama. There are no camels at Runaway Farm.”

  He stopped outside the Berry Best Café. “Do you have time for a coffee? We might as well talk about what you’ve been doing. You’ve been seen stalling your truck all over town and I bet you’re still nosing around.” He looked down at Keats, who’d positioned himself to my right, maintaining a protective barrier between Kellan and me. “The dog would need to stay outside.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t leave him tied up alone like that. Past trauma.”

  “Past trauma?” His dark eyebrows rose.

  “Yep. For both of us.” I looked away to discourage further questions. “But they have a patio out back and Keats can join us there.”

  Kellan nodded. “I’ll get you a coffee and meet you there.”

  I chose a round metal table in the corner where we were less likely to be overheard. Normally Keats would consider himself off duty at this point, but today he stayed on his paws, even after Kellan set two coffee mugs and a huge cranberry scone on the table and took the seat opposite.

  Thanking him, I took a sip. My heart did a tiny pirouette in my chest when I realized he’d remembered exactly how I liked it after all these years. A touch of cream and about 10 grains of sugar. He tossed down a packet of sugar as insurance. I thought he looked a little proud it wasn’t needed.

  After taking a long swig of his own coffee, he broke off a piece of the scone, chewed and swallowed. Then he asked, “So, what do you know?”

  He pushed the scone toward me and I broke off a piece and tried it. “I know this isn’t as good as Mandy McCain’s scones. She’s the best baker in Clover Grove.” When he didn’t respond I added, “Did you confirm whether Lloyd was seeing Mandy?”

  “Depends what you consid
er ‘seeing.’ Lloyd may have had big plans but I don’t think he’d made much progress.”

  I pulled the glass stone out of my pocket and set it on the table in front of him. “Lloyd bought two pendants with this stone—the only two like it. One of them belongs to Nadine, according to the designer. I’m pretty sure I saw the other one on Mandy.”

  He turned the small stone with big fingers. “Where’d you find it?”

  “In my fields, not far from where… you know.” I pulled out my phone and scrolled through photos for him. “And this is the big hole someone dug for no apparent reason, other than maybe breaking my leg. Or burying some evidence.”

  Increasing the size of the image, he pressed his lips together. “You were going to tell me about this when?”

  “Soon. I was just trying to—”

  He pushed the scone toward me. “Get your leg broken? Or worse?”

  I pushed the scone back. “Keats wouldn’t let that happen. He sniffed it out.”

  “He didn’t stop Charlie from getting injured.” Kellan shoved the scone toward me again.

  “He would have if he’d had the opportunity. He was inside.” I shoved the scone back once more. It was getting a lot of miles on it for an average scone.

  “How many accidents does it take for you to realize you’re at risk?” he asked. “And now you want to put your guests at risk, too. Does that make sense to you?”

  I stared into my coffee cup. “What makes sense is solving this murder fast. So I have to do what I can, Kellan.”

  He sighed. “What else have you found? Be honest, Ivy. Maybe you’ve got something I don’t.”

  “Well, now you have the stone, and Teri Mason can confirm what I told you. My best guess is that Nadine was wearing her necklace when she choked Lloyd and he ripped it off.”

  “She has an alibi, remember.”

  “It’s full of holes.” I told him about the private yoga session Jilly and I’d had with Hayden.

  “I checked the building’s security footage,” Kellan said. “Nadine arrived at the studio that day at four and left at eight.”

  “Maybe, but she wasn’t in the hot yoga class like they told you. She’s been putting in lots of extra time getting her poses right with Hayden, though. Did she mention that?”

  He pressed his lips together in a silent “no” and avoided my eyes.

  I took another bite of the travelling scone and said, “Obviously he’s covering for Nadine. Go back and check the live feed for the class. And then ask about her necklace. See if it’s missing in action.”

  “Yes, boss,” he said, frowning. “Anything else?”

  “She’s running low on rat poison. I saw it in her shopping basket at Myrtle’s before Lloyd died. I wondered if she was poisoning the mice in hopes of killing the snakes but maybe she had bigger plans.”

  “I doubt that. Although the baked goods in Lloyd’s fridge came back clean and we couldn’t find any other traces in the kitchen. Mandy’s off the hook on that front.”

  “Check the mice. But I certainly hope he wasn’t eating them.”

  “There wasn’t enough poison in his system to do more than give him a bellyache,” Kellan said. “The final autopsy report said the bruising on Lloyd’s neck was consistent with the sheep hook. But he was most likely strangled with wire. It would have taken a lot of strength and dexterity, and the killer likely struck from above.”

  “I thought about the guy from Rattlesnake Tattoos. Lloyd owed him five grand. But Jilly and I checked him out and he’s clean.” I plucked out a few cranberries. “Well, not a murderer, anyway.”

  “And you know that how?”

  “Because he loves his dog.”

  “That means nothing.”

  “Of course it means something. It means everything. No man who loves his dog that much could murder someone.” I put my hand over my heart. “Those two things can’t coexist.”

  “I’d like to refute that and I will,” he said, taking another piece of scone.

  “Well, you can present your findings. In the meantime, the Scorpion has a quality alibi. Several people at the dog park saw him at the time of the murder. No way he could have gotten to the farm to clobber Lloyd.”

  “A quality alibi?”

  “Exactly. I’m not so sure about Brian Letsky’s. He wanted Lloyd’s Iron Man doll so he was at least somewhat motivated. But he claims he was away for the weekend.”

  Kellan had stopped chewing and I didn’t think he had swallowed.

  “Maybe you could verify his alibi,” I continued. “I don’t think Iron Man alone was sufficient motive to kill. There are plenty on the market. But he and Lloyd had a not-so-friendly competition going, and I saw him creeping at Lloyd’s the first night I went in. When you showed up, he fled like a— Well, like I did, I guess.”

  “You went to Lloyd’s place at night?”

  “Just in and out. No biggie.” I gave him a sheepish smile and it looked like he was struggling to swallow his mouthful of scone. Finally he washed it down with coffee.

  “You and Jilly have been busy,” he said.

  “We’ve talked to a few people, that’s all. It’s hard to imagine Brian jumping on Lloyd and choking him. He’s a nerd, but I guess anything is possible.”

  Kellan looked like he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or scowl. “How did you get onto Brian?”

  “After I found the dolls at Lloyd’s I asked around about who collected action figures and such, and deployed Jilly to flirt the information out of him. It wasn’t that hard, really. It’s always disappointing when the leads don’t pan out, though. You get your hopes up and… splat.”

  “Tell me about it.” He pushed the scone aside. “Brian’s alibi checked out, for your information. He was at a comic con in Boston that weekend.”

  I pulled the scone toward me. It wasn’t amazing, but there was no sense letting baked goods go to waste.

  “So it sounds like we’ve come full circle to Nadine again. She wanted to get their divorce settled so she could enjoy perpetual sweltering peace with Hayden. Meanwhile Lloyd was bleeding down their assets.”

  “It’s not Nadine. You and your mutt are barking up the wrong tree.”

  Keats shifted his position so that he could cast his baleful blue eye on Kellan.

  “She hasn’t been upfront about what she was doing the night Lloyd died,” I said. “Maybe she left from another door and came back. Doesn’t that warrant taking another look?”

  “Oh, I’ll be taking another look,” he said. “You’ve given me more to think about, I must admit. And your speed is impressive.”

  “Thank you.” His tone didn’t sound complimentary but I decided to run with it.

  “But there’s more to police work than speed, Ivy. You may have undercut my methodical questioning with your hit-and-run conversations. This kind of investigation takes time and care.”

  His disapproval hung over the table like a bad smell. “I don’t have time, Kellan. This is just a job to you, whereas my whole future hangs in the balance.”

  He sat back in his chair as if he’d been struck. “This isn’t just a job to me. It’s my calling.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just really invested in getting this sorted out, as you can imagine.”

  “I’m equally invested, I assure you. And that means protecting people like you from yourself.”

  “I don’t need protection.”

  “Ivy.” He leaned both elbows on the table and stared at me so fiercely I had to look down and brush crumbs onto the patio stones. Normally Keats would be all over them, but not today. “I can’t believe what you’ve been doing the past few days,” he said. “You’re unstoppable. Reckless. You didn’t used to be this way.”

  “You’re right about that,” I said, hearing the bitterness in my own voice.

  “You blame this on your accident?”

  “Directly and indirectly, I suppose.” I let my index finger trace from one dent in the table to anot
her. “Getting attacked changes you. It’s taking months to recover. My old life ended so I decided to start over with Keats. That was how I was going to salvage something from the whole thing. When Hannah Pemberton offered me this wonderful farm for a price I could afford—barely—it seemed like fate intervening. It turns out fate has a terrible sense of humor.”

  He touched my sleeve lightly and I jumped. A trail of tiny sparks seemed to travel up my arm and bring heat to my cheeks. “Leave it to me, Ivy,” he said. “I will get to the bottom of this, and sooner than you think.”

  “Kellan, I respect you and your work, really I do. But I’m done leaving my fate in the hands of… well, fate. Whatever I can do to protect my animals, property, friends, and family, I’ve got to do it.”

  “I understand,” he said. “And that’s why I’m telling you now that I will lock you up if you get into one more situation.”

  “I’m not doing anything illegal,” I said. “You have no cause.”

  Getting up, he gave a snort that was supposed to pass for a laugh. “I’ll find cause. It’s my duty to protect citizens by whatever means necessary.”

  “Well, I’m not going to insult you by lying to you and saying I’ll stand down.”

  “And I’m not going to lie to you and say I won’t take action.”

  I got up, too. “No action could deter me.”

  “Not even talking to your mother?” His eyebrows rose and dared me.

  I frowned. “Please don’t. I can’t bear her exploding into a million pieces when she gets home.”

  “And I can’t bear telling her or your brother that I haven’t kept you safe,” he said.

  There was a long moment where something else hung in the air over us—something that felt both magical and frightening. It was almost unbearable, so I broke the silence.

  “I don’t remember what safe feels like anymore, Kellan. So I figure I don’t have much to lose by trying.”

  The feeling of connection vanished and he shook his head. “Then let me give you something to lose, Ivy. If you continue to impede my investigation, I will have your dog impounded.”