THIRTY TWO
I went into the church and the 4-H meeting was just wrapping up. They’d gotten together for a community service project and the tables were littered with two hundred bird feeders made of various recycled materials. I knew they were planning to deliver them to the senior center in town during their next regular meeting.
The kids were milling around and didn’t look quite ready to go yet, so I took a seat and pulled out my phone. I was deleting all of the junk emails when Carol Vinford approached me.
“Hi Daisy,” she said. Her voice was high and thin, like she’d just swallowed a mouthful of helium. “How are you?”
I hadn’t spoken to her since the co-op sign-up day when everyone had avoided my class.
“I’m alright,” I said, tucking my phone away into my purse. “You?”
“Okay,” she said, still smiling. “I think the meeting is just about over.”
I glanced at the kids. “Yeah, looks that way.”
She looked around the room. I could tell she wanted to say something to me but I wasn’t going to make it any easier on her by asking.
She took a deep breath. “So,” she finally said. “Co-op.”
“Mmhmm.”
“We have sort of…an issue.”
I sighed. “Carol, I know no one wants to sign up for my class. It’s fine. I told you we can just cancel it. I’m not going to force anyone to spend time with me if they don’t want to.”
“Right,” she said. “Well, no. That’s not the issue.”
I wondered if they were worried that we’d start bringing dead bodies to class. “What’s the issue then?”
She sat down in the chair next to me, scooting it away just a bit. “Stella Bogard had to cancel her class about nutrition. Her husband was laid off and she had to go find a job.”
I frowned. “Oh, wow. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“And Violet Tumbledrag had to cancel her math class because she broke her ankle,” Carol said, wringing her hands slowly in her lap. “Shoveling her driveway, don’t ya know.”
“Oh, that’s rotten.” At least she hadn’t ended up like poor Sally in the mortuary.
“For sure, yeah,” Carol said. “So we’re down two classes, unfortunately. We’re supposed to offer a minimum of ten. Losing those two, plus yours? Well, that puts us at nine. If we’re under ten we can’t run the co-op because we won’t have enough registration money to cover the building rental.”
“Well, I didn’t exactly pull mine, Carol,” I said. “It seemed pretty clear that no one wanted to take it. You yourself indicated that your kids weren’t interested. After you said they were,” I added.
Carol winced and clasped her hands together. “Right. Right. Well, here’s the thing. I have another mother who is willing to teach a class. On Minnesota history. That would give us ten if she’s able to.”
I nodded, unsure where she was going. “Okay. Well, then it sounds like the problem is solved.”
She started wringing her hands again. “Not exactly. The woman who has offered to teach?” She hesitated and then, in a small voice, said, “She’ll only do it if your kids aren’t in her class.”
I waited a moment. “Excuse me?”
“She’s worried about, I don’t know, I guess the drama that might be involved,” Carol said quickly. “With the investigation and all. She thinks it might be a distraction if your kids are in her class. So she wanted an assurance that they wouldn’t sign up.”
I looked away from her for a moment to compose myself. The anger I’d felt toward Thornton was nothing compared to what I was feeling now. Carol was sitting next to me, calmly telling me that my kids were being blackballed from a class they hadn’t signed up for because of a crime they had nothing to do with. It was the most cowardly thing I’d ever heard.
I stood and spotted Will on the other side of the room. I called out to him. “Will. Grab the girls. We’re leaving.”
“I know this is hard,” Carol said, standing. “I know it doesn’t seem fair.”
“That’s because it’s not,” I said. I turned to her and the expression on my face made her shrink away. “You all are acting like morons.”
She cast her eyes downward but not before I saw a look of guilt blossom there. “Well, I don’t know if—”
“I do, Carol. I absolutely know that you all are behaving like morons. And you’re being unbelievably unfair to my kids.” I stared at her. “And I’m not gonna take that.”
Her neck flushed red, the color quickly traveling to her cheeks. “Daisy, you’re taking this all the wrong way.”
I swallowed hard. “How exactly should I take it then? Tell me.”
Her lips pursed and she didn’t offer anything.
“You tell whoever your replacement teacher is that she has nothing to worry about,” I said. “My kids won’t set foot near her class.”
Carol’s hand rested over her heart. “Oh, well. Thank you for being so understanding. You know how much we all value your—”
I cut her off. “My kids won’t be setting foot in
any
of the classes.”
She blinked at me. “What?”
“We quit,” I said. “All of us.”
Her eyes widened. “But Daisy. You can’t. We need you. You know that. You handle our finances. And our master calendar. No one else knows how to do those things because you’ve done them for so long.”
“We quit,” I repeated, enunciating each word. “You don’t want us around, we won’t come around.” I shrugged. “Easy as that.”
She started to say something else, but I held up my hand to stop her.
“Not another word, Carol,” I said, shaking my head. “You can just shove all your issues. Right up your big, fat butt.”
THIRTY THREE
“Jake!” Grace yelled when he walked through the door. “Carol has a big fat butt!”
Jake set his keys on the table. “Well, that’s excellent to know. Thank you for sharing.”
Grace bounded off the couch and headed for the stairs. “Mommy told her she had one!”
I was checking on the casserole in the oven and turned back around to find him staring at me.
“So,” he said. “How was your day?”
I closed the oven door. I didn’t believe in obscene gestures but at that moment my middle finger twitched in his direction. “Fine.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And why exactly were you informing Carol about the size of her ass?”
“Because she
is
an ass,” I snapped.
He kicked off his boots. “Should I go ask Will for his interpretation of what happened or are you going to tell me?”
I pulled the plates from the cabinet and set them on the counter without smashing them. Then I recounted my run-in with Carol.
“So you quit?” Jake asked, when I was done. “You really quit?”
“Yes!” I said. “What else could I have done? They’re blackballing us!”
He frowned.
“What?” I asked, watching him. “You disagree?”
He pulled a diet soda from the fridge and leaned against the closed door. “I think people are overreacting.”
“Oh, you think?”
He held up a hand. “Don’t get mad at me. But, yeah. I think all of the people there are overreacting to something they know nothing about.” He paused. “And I think that rather than creating enemies, it would be better to just sort of ignore them.”
I pulled cups down from the cabinet and let the door slam shut. “They banned the kids from the class.”
“No,” he said, his tone measured. “One idiotic mother doesn’t want them in her class. Which is, very stupid. But would they want to be in that class anyway?”
“I have no idea,” I said. I pulled on the fridge door handle and Jake slid out of the way. “And neither will they since they aren’t allowed to take it,” I added bitterly.
He shifted so he was against the counter instead. “Did you ask them if they wanted to quit the co-op?”
“No, of course not. When Carol told me, I freaked out.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Are there other classes they want to take?”
“Probably,” I admitted. “But that’s not the point.”
He held up his hand again. “Hold on. Listen to me.”
I made a face and filled the water pitcher at the sink.
“If there are other classes they want to take…and that they are welcome in…is it worth yanking them out of the co-op completely because of one lunatic?” he asked.
I watched the water drip into the plastic pitcher. I hated it when he was so calm and rational. And made too much sense. It completely countered my superpowers of freaking out and irrationalness.
“If you want to take them out, I’m cool with it,” he said. He brought the can to his mouth and took a long drink. “But I think if it’s going to be something they’ll really miss, then we need to think about just rolling our eyes at the nutjobs and tolerate them for awhile.”
“Thornton has a girlfriend,” I blurted out.
“And we are changing the subject ever so smoothly,” Jake said, smiling. “Thornton has a girlfriend. Excellent. Or is it?”
“Sure.” I set the water pitcher down on the dining room table and Jake followed me in there.
“And is she a taxi driver or heroin dealer or kleptomaniac or something else this time?”
“Be nice,” I said. He’d brought the plates with him and I took the stack, dealing them out around the table. “All I know is she’s apparently a singer.”
His mouth twitched. “For his band, no doubt.”
“Yes. Babette’s Insane.”
“How do you know? You haven’t even met her yet.”
“No, that’s the band’s name,” I corrected. “However, it is also her first name.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “Okay. Great. I assume you spoke to him today and this is how you gleaned all of this info?”
I told him about his showing up in the parking lot at 4-H. By the time I finished recounting our encounter, Jake wasn’t smiling.
“Are you kidding me?” he said, frowning. “He’s telling us what’s best for those kids? From a guy who can count the minutes he spends with them on his fingers and toes?”
“I know,” I said. “I set him straight. He backed off pretty quickly.”
Jake shook his head, still irritated. “Yeah, well, good for him. The next time we need parenting advice from him will be never. And you can tell him that. Or I will.”
I’d gone back into the kitchen and grabbed a potholder off the counter. “And now who’s overreacting?”
He waved a hand in the air. “Entirely different thing.”
I chuckled, opened the oven, and pulled the glass dish out off the rack. I closed the oven door and set the dish on the stove top to cool. “You say so.”
He opened the fridge, pulling out a beer this time. He yanked the top off of it, taking a long pull from it. He took a deep breath and exhaled. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” I smiled. “Thornton has a knack for driving us both i
“Still.”
I took the beer from him and took an equally long drink. I handed it back and hugged him. “It’s okay.”
He grunted, but hugged me back.
“I went to see Olga again today.”
“Olga?”
“Olaf’s sister,” I reminded him.
“Right. The mortician.”
“Yes,” I said. “I saw her work on a body today.”
“Really?”
I pressed my ear to his chest and listed to his heart thump. “Really.”
“And did she make that poor person look like a clown? Maybe that’s what she specializes in.”
I smiled and shook my head. “You know, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t even want to stay in the room while she worked. But…she was like a magician.”
“Yeah?” Jake’s voice mirrored the surprise I’d felt while watching her.
I nodded. “She was so…careful with this woman. So tender and loving. Like she really cared, you know? It was one of the nicest things I’ve ever seen.”
“Nice, huh?” Jake digested this for a minute. “But still a little creepy?”
“A little,” I admitted.
His free hand rubbed my back. “And what did Olga the mortician have to say?”
I pressed into him and arched my back, trying to maneuver his hand where I wanted it to be. “Well, nothing new really. But I think I’ve been going about this all wrong.”
“What is all this and what was wrong?”
I pulled away so I could see him. “All this is Olaf. And I was looking at it from the wrong angle.”
He smiled. “Do tell, Sherlock.”
I swatted at his chest. “Stop. I mean I think I’ve been focusing on the wrong thing.”
“I’m still not following because I don’t think this is the part where you tell me I was right for asking you to not play private investigator.”
“I’ve been focusing on who killed Olaf,” I said. I opened the freezer door and dug around for a bag of mixed vegetables. I found it and took it over to the counter and cut through the plastic with a pair of kitchen shears. “What I should be focusing on is who would want to make it look like
I
was the one who did it.”
“Okay,” he said. “But I didn’t know you had an archenemy.”
“I don’t.” I dumped the vegetables into a small glass bowl and carried it over to the microwave. “At least I don’t think I do.”
Jake raised his eyebrows. “Be weird if you find out you do.”
“I didn’t know Olaf well,” I said, ignoring him. “So trying to figure out who might have wanted to hurt him is next to impossible. But I could easily figure out who might want to cause me trouble. Or at least think about reasons people might be upset enough with me to make me look bad.”
He set his beer down and eyed me. “Okay. So like who?”
I tapped the number pad on the microwave and pressed the start button. “I honestly have no clue.”
“Mom!” It was Will yelling from upstairs. “Is dinner almost ready?”
“Five minutes,” I called back. I turned to look at the casserole cooling on the stove. It was a simple pasta bake, penne noodles and sauce and a variety of cheeses and spices mixed together. Something Will would actually eat.
Jake spoke again. “Or maybe you were just an easy target.”
I touched the sides of the casserole dish, testing it. The ceramic had cooled a little so I grabbed the handles and quickly carried it to the table. Jake was ready with a hot pad and slid it underneath. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it seems as if everyone in town knew about your date with Olaf,” he said. “Except me, of course.”
I frowned at him.
“So let’s say whoever killed Olaf knew about that date,” Jake explained. “And they wanted to make it look like someone else killed him. If they knew you had a connection to him, that would’ve made you a good cover.”
I thought about that. It made some sense. I did have a connection to Olaf, no matter how miniscule. I didn’t have a motive to kill him, but we’d had dinner and everyone apparently knew about it. I couldn’t hide it.
“Maybe we had a common enemy then?” I said, grabbing a spoon from the drawer. “Someone who had something against both of us?”
Jake shrugged. “It’s a possibility.”
The microwave dinged, signaling the vegetables were done, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was another sign, too. A bell literally going off, telling me I was finally looking in the right direction.