Peaches and Scream (Georgia Peach Mystery, A) (18 page)

I threw my arms in the air. “My point exactly! You never give a thought to who has the most to
gain
!”

Her smugness dissipated with a quiver of her brow, as if she might have missed something obvious. “Oh really. And who might that be?”

“Millicent Wakefield, that’s who!”

Frances clamped her mouth shut.

I kept going. “After all, with her husband dead, she gains control of Wakefield Lumber. And good timing, too. Considering he was getting ready to divorce her. What’s more, Laney Burns told me she saw Millicent in town the day Ben Wakefield was murdered!”

Frances leaned in, eyes gleaming. “Is that so?” She reached into her desk drawer and extracted a notepad and pen. Clicking the pen, she leaned forward again, headlines dancing in her eyes. “What else can you tell me?”

I bit my lip, regretting my outburst. That darned woman! She could get things out of me without even trying, it seemed. Knowing I had to tread carefully, or I’d end up in trouble for slander, or worse—arrested for interfering with Maudy Payne’s case—I checked myself and chose my next words carefully. “All I was saying is that there’s more than one way to look at this case and more than one suspect in it.” I tried to backtrack.

Frances clicked her pen again and let it hover over the notepad. “Yes. Millicent Wakefield, to be exact. Are you saying she’s got control of the mill now?”

I held up my hands. “
I’m
not saying it; that’s pretty much a public fact.”

“And Laney Burns saw her the day of the murder?”

I felt my knees weakening. “Did I say that?”

“Uh-huh.”

Maudy Payne was going to throw me and my big mouth in jail—that was for sure. “That’s just hearsay. Don’t quote me on that.”
Please don’t quote me on that.

Frances clicked her pen again and slapped the notebook closed, a gloating smile playing on her lips. “Well, thank you for stopping in, Nola. I do appreciate these new leads. You can be sure I’ll put them to good use.”

I’m sure you will.

Back outside, I stood stewing on the sidewalk, suspended between outrage and regret. Regret for my impulsive tirade, which was undoubtedly going to lead to trouble, and outrage that Frances had once again printed something that was going to harm my family’s reputation. One look at today’s headlines and everyone in town was going to dub Hollis as some sort of Jack of All Crimes. Peach Jack, that was. I tried to glom on to the slimmest sliver of hope that my unintentional feeding of this news shark might take her off Hollis’s back. But from my experience with her so far, it was a false hope at best.

“You’re looking fit to be tied.” It was Hawk, who seemed to appear out of nowhere. Perhaps he was better at snooping than I first thought.

“Just got done talking to Frances Simms.”

He squinted and cocked his head to one side.

“She runs the
Cays Mill Reporter
,” I explained, shoving the crumpled paper his way.
Shoot, the man’s here to investigate and isn’t even aware who the culprit is that has the town so set against Hollis.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. After all, Hawk wasn’t even from these parts. “Wait until you see this issue. The pictures she’s printed practically string the noose right around Hollis’s neck.”

He glanced it over and gave a little shrug. Whether he expected it from any newspaper or expected Hollis deserved it, I couldn’t tell. “You’re right; that’s pretty bad.”

I shot him a withering look. “Yes, it is, and what exactly have you been doing to help his case? Anything?”
Besides gathering DNA samples from Laney Burns
.

His chin jutted out. “What? All of a sudden you have some sort of problem with the way I’m doing my job?”

No, not all of a sudden; all along, but I didn’t say that. Instead I took a deep breath and held it for five counts before exhaling. “No, sorry. I’m just upset, that’s all.”

“Well, to answer your question, I was just in talking to the sheriff. Seems Floyd Reeves is nowhere to be found. The sheriff thinks he’s headed back to Macon.”

“Macon? That’s where he’s from?”

“According to Sheriff Payne, yes.”

“Do you think his meeting with Millicent in the alley had anything to do with Ben’s murder? Like maybe she paid Floyd to kill him?”

His gaze turned flat. “Could be. Or it could be nearly anything else. In the meantime, Payne is working on Hollis pretty heavy for that fire. A lot doesn’t add up, though.”

I could feel my brows furrow. “Like what?”

“What would Hollis have to gain by setting it? He’s already under suspicion about the murder of the mill’s owner, so arson at the mill only further points to him. He has nothing to gain.”

Gain!
Just like I’d pointed out to Frances, now much to my regret, there were other ways to look at things. “Millicent!”

“Huh?”

“Millicent has just taken over the mill and maybe found out it’s in financial trouble. Maybe that payoff to Floyd was for him to set fire to the mill so she could collect insurance money. A woman like Millicent probably has no desire to run a mill, and this would be a perfect way to get her money out of it quick.”

Again, Hawk offered no facial expression in response. I figured he was thinking it over, trying to ignore the fact that I’d come up with, once again, the kind of ideas that he should have been coming up with himself. Finally he said, “If it was arson, why start the fire during the middle of the day? Before
the work shift was even over. When it would be easily detected. And a woodpile? That’s not going to pay out anything.”

I tilted my head and paused, mulling over his point. Okay, so maybe he was right. All those facts didn’t add up to arson, at least not a smart plan for arson. Then again, I didn’t have the impression that Floyd Reeves was overly smart. Another thought came to mind: maybe Millicent’s motive wasn’t to collect an insurance payout, but to frame Hollis for the murder she had Floyd commit for her in the first place. If that was the case, it would make sense to start the fire during the day, so it would be detected and put out before it spread too far and caused any real damage.

I was about to tell Hawk my new theory when I noticed him focusing on something over my shoulder. “Looks like your boyfriend’s come looking for you again.”

Glancing behind me, I saw Cade coming down the walk. I started to correct Hawk on the boyfriend reference, but he cut me off. “Catch ya later, Nola. I’ve got to hit the road. I’m heading up to Macon to try to track down Reeves. Ray thinks he’s the key to Hollis’s case. I should be back in a couple days.” He turned and sauntered off just as Cade caught up to me.

“The investigator again?” he asked.

“Yup. He’s leaving town for a couple days, chasing a lead.” I detected a flash of some sort of emotion in Cade’s eye. Relief? It was hard to tell and I really didn’t want to put all that much thought into it anyway. I decided to change the topic. “So, what brings you into town?”

“Lunch, actually.” We both turned our heads and glanced at the diner. I knew what was coming even before he asked, “Why don’t you join me?” He swept his hand toward the diner and added, “We never did get there yesterday and we still need to discuss your bill.”

“Sure, why not?” I relented as we took off across the square for Red’s Diner.

•   •   •

The smell of hot meat and fried onions hit me as soon as we walked through the door. I surveyed the chalkboard inside the entrance. Today’s special: panfried chicken, corn pone, field peas and lemon chess pie. A quick glance around at once told me the panfried chicken was popular. All the guys at the bar were gnawing on bones and racking up piles of crumpled napkins.

Ginny caught my eye and pointed us toward an empty booth in the back. We’d barely settled before she appeared and plunked two glasses of ice water in front of us. “Two specials?” she asked, turning the pages on her order pad and pulling a pen from behind her ear without even so much as a smile or a “hey y’all.”

I hesitated, glancing over the menu.

“Don’t bother with the menu,” she snapped. “Just get the special. It’s good. Look around. Everyone loves it.” As if on cue, one of the men at the bar turned, waved a half-chewed bone my way and shot me a thumbs-up. Ginny put one hand on her hip and shook her shoulders at me. “See what I mean?”

I gulped. “Uh . . . okay, then. I’ll have the special.”

“Make that two specials and two iced teas,” Cade added.

As soon as Ginny turned away, I leaned in and whispered, “Wonder why she’s so cranky?”

“Beats me. Probably nothing.” He shrugged and extracted a piece of folded paper from his back pocket and began scanning the columns of figures. Which just went to show how unobservant some men really were. Just watching Ginny as she maneuvered the diner, slopping coffee into cups and snatching up spent plates with a scowl, I could tell it wasn’t “nothing.” Something big was bothering her. I was double sure of it when she placed our order on the ticket spindle and spun it so hard I could feel the breeze halfway across the room. “I’ve tallied up the numbers for you,” Cade
was saying. “You made out pretty well, actually.” He slid the paper across the table.

My eyes popped at the final figure. It was much lower than expected. “Are you sure? This doesn’t seem like much.”

“Most of the materials were scavenged from my leftover pile. I didn’t have to purchase much.”

“Yes, but your time.”

He pointed toward the lower portion of the paper. “If you’ll look at the bottom, you’ll see I accounted for my labor separately.”

My eyes scanned past the figures to the bottom of the paper, where I saw the words “Peach Festival” spelled out. I rolled my eyes and giggled. “Cade McKenna, you are insufferable!”

“That may be, but a deal’s a deal.” A slight upward turn of his lips hinted at the grin he was suppressing. But it soon faded when Ginny stomped back with our iced teas, slapping them down and turning on her heel without a word.

“Still think it’s probably nothing?” I asked with raised brows as he mopped up the tea that’d sloshed over the table.

“Maybe something
is
bothering her.”

“Ya think?” I rolled my eyes and scanned the room for a possible reason for Ginny’s sour mood. A difficult customer? Overworked? I sipped at my tea and considered the possibilities. No, probably not anything work-related. Ginny had been waiting tables for years; she’d dealt with worse crowds than this with a smile on her face. It had to be something personal. Maybe a problem with one of their kids. Just having teenagers would be enough to send most people over the edge. Or problems with Sam? Naw. I’d never seen two people more suited for each other.

“What are you thinking?” Cade asked.

“I’m thinking I need to see what’s going on with Ginny,” I said, setting down my tea and excusing myself. Only I sat right back down when the door opened and Millicent walked
in carrying a newspaper. She immediately homed in on the only open space—the booth right behind us.

Oh great. Who else has the paper already?
Then it struck me that maybe the article was the reason behind Ginny’s sudden shift in attitude? I glanced around nervously, wondering how quickly tongues would start wagging. I should probably call and warn Ida.

My eyes wandered back to Millicent as she passed by our booth. I tossed her a little wave as she passed by, but she barely looked my way. While she wasn’t tuned in to her surroundings, her surroundings were definitely tuned in to her. Practically every head turned as she passed through the diner, her poured-on hot pink pants, fur-trimmed vest and metal-studded boots blazing a new trail in the Cays Mill fashion scene.

“Get ahold of that outfit,” Cade commented, his eyes grazing her backside as she passed.

“Shh . . .” I pressed my fingers to my lips and fought to control a sudden onset of the giggles. I raised up on my tippy toes, risked a quick peek in her direction and saw her running her finger across the text of the paper’s front-page article. Before I could glance to see Millicent’s reaction, Ginny returned and plunked our plates down before us, her malevolent aura covering the area like a wet blanket on flames and pulling my attention away from Millicent altogether.

“Anything else?” she snarled, starting to turn away without waiting for a reply.

I reached out and snatched her hand, pulling her back. “Ginny, what is it? What’s wrong?”
Did she read the headlines already? Maybe she decided she’d rather not associate with one of Hollis’s family members?

Her shoulders slumped. “What do you mean? Nothing’s wrong.”

I pressed for an answer. “Oh, come on. Something’s going on. You’re not yourself today.”

She rotated her head and glanced around the room. When
she looked back I could see tears forming at the edges of her eyes. Her breath caught as she spoke. “You’re right. Something has happened, but . . .” She swiped the back of her hand across her cheek. “Now’s not a good time. I’ll fill you in later.” She offered a brave smile and headed over to take Millicent’s order.

Cade immediately tore into his chicken, speaking between bites. “Wonder what that’s all about. Seems like everyone’s having their share of trouble lately.”

“That’s for sure,” I agreed, feeling a bit better. It seemed her attitude had nothing to do with the newspaper headlines. Before I could even exhale with relief, however, my sense of solace was replaced with a sinking feeling. If not the article, then what? Ginny was one of the most upbeat, resilient people I knew. Something big must be happening for her to be so upset. And nothing could bring down my own mood faster than seeing a friend suffer. So, while the chicken was just the way I like it—tender-soaked in buttermilk and deep-fried in peanut oil until the perfectly seasoned skin crisped just right—I pushed it aside and opted for the immediate boost I knew the sugar-laden lemon chess pie would give.

Cade looked up, a corn pone between his fingers. “Dessert first?”

I filled my fork with a load of lemon filling and shrugged. “Why not? Life’s short, right?” Pausing, I closed my eyes and let the smooth, cheese-like filling set on my tongue, the smidgen of sweet tartness giving me a familiar happy feeling. This was what I’d missed most during my travels—the down-home comfort that only true southern cooking could bring, like an elixir for the troubled soul. Forgetting myself, I let a little moan escaped through my lips.