Lemon Larceny (The Donut Mysteries) (7 page)

We hadn’t gone up
there for nothing, though.
 

The attic had yielded
something more substantial than we’d found so far.

If we could only
figure out what it all meant.

We weren’t meant
to find that out, though, at least not yet.
 

The front bell
rang just as I closed the attic door behind us.

“Who could that
be?” Momma asked as we walked down the stairs.

“It’s probably
the first wave of mourners,” I said.
 
“I’ve been expecting folks to start dropping by.”

“Of course,”
Momma said.
 
“For a moment there, I
forgot that Jean was gone.
 
This
investigation she’s put us up to has been distracting me from our real loss.”

I patted my
mother’s shoulder as we reached the second floor landing.
 
“I know exactly what you mean.
 
It hardly seems real.”

“I keep expecting
her to pop up behind the next corner, telling us that it was all just some
elaborate ruse,” Momma said sadly.

“The best thing
we can do for Aunt Jean right now is to find out what really happened to her,”
I said as I hid the journal in a safe place in the living room before we let
anyone inside.
 
“It’s what she
wanted, and to be honest with you, it’s something that I need to do for
myself.”

“I agree,” she
said, her hand poised on the front doorknob.
 
“Are you ready for this?”

“As I’ll ever
be,” I said.
 
“Go on and answer it.”

Momma opened the
door just as the bell rang again.
 

“May we help
you?” Momma asked the older woman standing there.
 
She wore slacks and a matching top, but
her clothes weren’t what stood out about her.
 
The lady looked extremely nervous as she
stood there, and she kept glancing over her shoulder as she spoke to us, as
though she was expecting a rather unpleasant surprise to spring up on her.

“I’m Sylvia
Reynolds,” she said, making eye contact for just a moment.

“You were Aunt
Jean’s best friend,” I said as I extended a hand.
 
She took it briefly, and then shook
Momma’s hand as well.

“We were close,”
Sylvia said.

“Won’t you come
in?” Momma asked.

“I’m sorry, but I
can’t stay,” she said as she looked behind her yet again.

“Were you
expecting someone to join you?” I asked her, curious about her behavior.

“What?
 
No, of course not,” she said, trying her
best now to keep her focus on us.
 
“I just had to stop by and offer you both my condolences.
 
I’m so sorry about what happened to
Jean.”

This was the only
eyewitness that we knew of who’d witnessed one of the attempts on my aunt’s
life, and I didn’t want to let her go without discussing it with her.
 
“We really would like to talk to you.”

“I would if I
could, but I can’t,” she said as she started to back away off the porch.
 
“I just wanted you to know how sorry I
was.”

She was two steps
off the porch when I started to follow her.
 
“Sylvia, you were there when the truck
almost hit my aunt, weren’t you?”

“I didn’t see a
thing,” she said, as though she were repeating a memorized line.

“You might think
so, but you might have caught something that you didn’t realize was
significant,” I said in as soothing a voice as I could manage.
 
“We’re not asking for much, just a few
minutes of your time.”

She paused for a
moment, and then Sylvia said emphatically, “I told you, I have to go.”

“Where are you
going that’s so urgent that you can’t attend my sister’s funeral?” Momma asked,
having followed us out onto the sidewalk.

“I have to go,”
she said again, and short of tackling her to the ground, we had no choice but
to let her go.

As Momma and I
walked back up the steps to the house, I said, “Something has that woman
spooked big-time.”

“She seemed a
little distracted, didn’t she?”

“Momma, she was
practically jumping out of her skin.
 
There’s something that she wasn’t telling us, that’s for sure.”

“So, you don’t
believe her pressing engagement somewhere else, either?”

“She’s scared,
plain and simple.
 
I only wish I
knew why,” I said as we walked back into my aunt’s house.

“Well, she
clearly wasn’t going to tell us, but it confirms our belief that what happened
to my sister was no accident.”

“At least Sylvia
thinks so,” I said.

“You’re not
having second thoughts about what happened to Jean, are you?” Momma asked me.

“No, I believe
that someone really wanted her dead.
 
I just can’t imagine why, and one of our best chances of finding out
just ran away.”

Momma and I were
still pondering Sylvia’s odd behavior when the doorbell rang again.
 
When we opened the front door, we found
a stout, rather heavyset woman with short, powerful little legs in her fifties.
 
Even as we answered, she had one finger
pressed against the bell.
 
Her dark
hair was streaked with broad bands of white, as though the look was intended
and not given to her by nature.
 
“Oops.
 
Sorry.
 
Wasn’t sure that you heard me,” she said
gruffly, and then she offered us a casserole dish covered in foil.
 
“This is for you.”

“Thank you,”
Momma said automatically as she took the offering.
 
“I’m sorry, but you look very familiar
to me.
 
Have we met?”

The woman smiled,
showing off her sharp and pointed little teeth.
 
“Four years ago, I dropped by to return
Jean’s rake when you were visiting.
 
It seemed that I’d lost mine, but I finally found it.
 
Would you care to guess where it was?”

“Under a pile of
leaves?” I asked, being more than a little sarcastic despite the circumstances.

“Now, aren’t you
a wonder,” the woman said in amazement.
 
“You must be Suzanne.
 
I’ve
seen plenty of your photographs.
 
You have to be.”

There had been a
few framed shots of me in the house, so that didn’t entirely surprise me.
 
“I’m afraid that you have us at a
disadvantage,” I said.

She shook her head
in mock disbelief.
 
“Where are my
manners?
 
I’m Anna Albright, Jean’s
next-door neighbor.
 
The two of us
have been friends for years.”

Funny, but I’d
never heard my aunt mention this woman at all, at least not by name.
 
Then I realized who she must be.
 
Anna Albright’s striking resemblance to a
badger because of her chosen hairstyle and her body type made it clear that I’d
heard her mentioned quite a few times in the past after all.
 
The nickname my aunt had used to refer
to her suddenly made complete sense.
 
Not only did she uncannily resemble the animal, but according to what
I’d heard about her, Aunt Jean had also called her the badger because when she
wanted something, she was relentless.
 
From what my late aunt had told me, this woman had been after her for
years to sell her home to her.
 
“You
wanted to buy this house, didn’t you?”

Anna looked at me
guiltily.
 
“What can I say?
 
I fell in love with it the second I saw
it as a child.
 
Your sister wasn’t
about to budge while she was alive, though.”
 
She paused, and then added, “You
wouldn’t happen to be interested in selling the place now that she’s gone,
would you?”

“I hardly think
this is an appropriate time to discuss it,” Momma said frostily.

“Of course.
 
No, you’re right.
 
Sorry.
 
I just wanted to ask, stake my claim, as
it were.”
 
Anna backed up a few
steps before she added, “I’ll go now.
 
Leave you both in peace.
 
If
you need anything, don’t forget that I’m right next door,” she said as she
pointed to the small cottage just down the hill a hundred feet or so.

“Thanks for
stopping by,” I said to her as she fled.
 
As the woman waddled away, she began to hurry as the sky darkened and
the first of what felt like many raindrops began to fall.

“What an odd bird
she was,” I said to Momma once we were back inside the house.

“Odd indeed,” my
mother said.
 
“I can see why my
sister called her the badger.
 
Do
you suppose she adopted that hair style on purpose?”

“I can’t imagine
why she would,” I said.

Momma frowned for
a moment before she said, “She’s probably soaked by now.”

“We could have
invited her inside,” I said, “but it wasn’t raining then, was it?”

“No, but it’s
coming down hard now,” Momma said as we both looked out into the growing dark
skies.
 
“I’m just glad that we have
a solid roof over our heads.”

“What should we
do now?” I asked.

“I don’t know
about you, but I’m getting a bit hungry.
 
What do you suppose she brought us?” Momma asked as she lifted a corner
off the foil.

“It appears to be
some type of casserole,” I said, though from what was exposed, I couldn’t begin
to guess what its basic ingredients might be.

“What do you
think, Suzanne?
 
Should we risk it,
or should I go into town for takeout?”

“Town sounds
better to me,” I said.
 
“Why don’t I
go with you?”

Momma
frowned.
 
“I hardly need an
escort.
 
Suzanne, I know that you
believe in the buddy system, but no one’s going to attack me if I drive into
town and get us something to eat.”

“Aren’t you
worried about me being here in this big old house all by myself?” I asked her with
a smile.

“You’re a big
girl.
 
I’d be more concerned by
anyone foolish enough to try to break in.
 
I think you’ll be fine while I’m gone.
 
Besides, I thought you might like to
start reading Jean’s journal to look for clues, and I’m not sure I want to be
here when you start digging into my sister’s life.”

“But you’re okay
with me doing it, right?” I asked her with real concern.

“I’m fine with
it, as long as I don’t have to read it myself,” Momma said.
 
“That I just could not take.
 
How about you?
 
Are you sure that you’re up for it?
 
I know that it’s going to be painful for
you to do it.”

“It probably will
be, but I’ll just keep reminding myself that it’s all for a good cause.
 
They only way we’re going to be able to
find her killer is to hear what she had to say about her list of suspects.”

“Take notes on
anything that you find interesting, and you can share it with me when I get
back.”

“You know that
you’re going to get soaked out there, don’t you,” I said as the rain began to
intensify.

“At least there’s
no thunder or lightning,” Momma said, as a distant flash of light was followed
ten seconds later with a low rumbling that washed toward us.

“Not here, maybe,
but it could easily be on its way,” I said.

“Then I’ll
hurry.”
 
Momma grabbed my aunt’s
umbrella, put on a brave face, and then she said, “Don’t you worry about a
thing.
 
I’ll be back before you know
it.”

Two minutes after
she was gone, I began to regret not going with her after all.
 

The house had
been okay when Momma had been there with me, but now that the storm was
intensifying and it was growing dark as well, the circumstances weren’t quite
so amenable.
 

I decided to
start reading the journal to take my mind off the storm and the fact that I was
alone, but I hadn’t even cracked it open when my cellphone rang.

I thought it
might be Momma, stranded at the side of the road, but to my delight, it was
Jake, instead.
 

“Hey, there,
stranger,” I said.
 
“How are you?”

“Suzanne, I just got
your message,” Jake said.
 
“I’m so
sorry about your aunt.”
 
I’d called my
boyfriend right after I’d found out about Aunt Jean, but he was working on a
case out of town, and that meant that I didn’t always have immediate contact
with him.
 
Sometimes a voicemail was
as good as it got, even though I would have preferred talking to him
directly.
 
Shoot, I’d prefer more
than that.
 
I’d love to have had his
arms wrapped around me at the moment, but I might as well have wished for a pot
of gold for as much good as it would do me.

“Thanks for
calling.
 
How’s your case looking?”

“Never mind that.
 
Tell me how you’re holding up.”

“I’m okay.
 
Momma and I are already in Maple
Hollow.
 
We’re going to be staying at
my aunt’s old house for the next three days.”
 
At that moment, there was another flash
of lightning, brighter than it had been before, and the rumbling came sooner
this time.