“Once we have the flower part done,” she said, “we’ll thread the petal shapes onto a wire and add a small center with a cotton ball.” She wired and glued, then held her finished flower up to four delighted “ahs.”
As she reached for her scissors to begin her second flower, Ina Mae asked, “You said you’d found out a
couple
of things, Jo. What’s the second?”
Jo shared what she’d learned about Bill Ewing, explaining to those who hadn’t heard yet exactly what her interest in him was. “Carrie and Dan are dining tonight at the restaurant of the friend he’s staying with. I’m hoping they can pick up a little more information about him while they’re there.”
Ina Mae nodded approvingly as she folded her newly cut circles into quarters.
“He’s a photographer, you said?” asked Javonne, still picking out the papers for her second flower. “My Harry loves cameras. He’s always playing around with them and picking up new lenses and things—when he’s not fixing teeth, that is. Maybe he can be of some help in talking with this Ewing guy.”
“Wednesday’s his day off, isn’t it?” Ina Mae asked. “Perhaps if Jo finds out where he’ll be photographing a barn that day, Harry and Jo could accidentally run into him.”
Wow, Jo thought, looking over her group of friends who were so rapidly coming up with ways to help her. Tonight’s idea mix, she thought, grinning as Dulcie’s metaphor came to mind, was beginning to turn her bare-dirt plans into fertile ground.
“That’d be terrific, Javonne,” she said. “See what Harry thinks of it.”
Jo smiled as she watched four sets of hands work diligently at their budding bouquets. Who knew what an evening of making paper flowers might help her dig up? And hopefully, she added, taking a sip from her coffee mug, quash the seeds of suspicion toward her that had been germinating in Sheriff Franklin’s mind.
Chapter 12
At nine o’clock, Jo waved off her workshop group and locked the front door behind them, feeling a wave of fatigue wash over her. One more quick cup of coffee, she decided, and then she’d take off for the hospital. She drained the last of the pot into her mug, then tidied up the workshop area quickly between sips, eager to be on her way.
The drive to the hospital was quiet, as Abbotsville streets usually were at that time of night, and the hospital lobby turned out to be even quieter and much emptier than it had been the previous night. Jo thought how she much preferred this calm atmosphere. Last night’s had been filled with stress and worry, while the current one gave out a feeling of restfulness and healing, exactly what she wanted for one particular patient.
Russ had been moved from the ICU to a private room. As she stepped off the elevator, Jo spotted a uniformed police officer standing guard. Why, she wasn’t quite sure, since Russ’s shooter was definitely in custody. She decided it was simply a way Russ’s comrades showed extra concern for one of their own. She started to give the officer her name, but he smiled and waved her in before she got more than “Jo” out, saying, “He’s been waiting for you.”
Jo peeked in and found Russ awake, the head of his bed raised as he watched the news. “Hi,” she said.
Russ flashed his old smile, not the exhausted one of last night, which cheered her immensely as well as making her heart skip. He looked much less pale than he had too, though still far from robust.
“You made it,” he said, clicking off his TV with the remote.
“Looked forward to it all day.” Jo went over to the right side of his bed, his uninjured side. He held out his hand and when she took it, he drew her close. They kissed, but gently, Jo acutely aware that although Russ looked and sounded much better, his strength still had a long way to go. She stroked his cheek, then said, “You shaved!”
“With help. Couldn’t greet my date looking like a cave-man.”
“Your date,” Jo said, running a hand through her hair, “probably looks like something the saber-toothed tiger dragged in.”
Russ shook his head and started to say something, but was overcome by a fit of coughing. Jo poured fresh water into the glass on his end table and held it out to him. He took a swallow, cleared his throat, then handed it back. “Thanks.” He grinned. “You’d make a good nurse.”
Jo laughed. “Maybe if serving water were all I had to do. Do you need anything from a real nurse?”
He shook his head, and Jo pulled up a chair and sat down, taking his hand once more.
“How’re you feeling?” she asked, leaning closely.
“Hard to tell with all the pain meds they’re pumping into me. Ask me in a couple days when the pills start tapering off.”
“You scared me half to death, you know.”
Russ squeezed her hand. “Sorry about that. My own damn fault for getting in the way of the bullet.”
“Mark Rosatti said you were trying to help the girlfriend who panicked.”
Russ winced and shook his head. “If she’d only hung on a few more minutes. The situation seemed to be calming down, and we might have walked them both out of there with no problem. I don’t know, maybe he said something that really scared her, made her decide to run for it.”
Russ’s voice cracked dryly and he reached for his water. Jo got it for him, then pulled the tray table over the bed for him to use.
“Turns out,” Russ said, after a swallow of water, “the guy had been showing signs of instability for a good while, which they’re telling me might have been handled if he’d gotten treatment.”
“Why didn’t he get it?”
Russ shook his head. “Who knows? Denial? Ignorance? The system? Whatever it was, people ended up getting hurt because he didn’t go for help early on.”
Jo rubbed Russ’s hand, thinking about that. “What is the girlfriend’s condition?”
“Bullet grazed her. She’ll be okay. And the shooter? Not a scratch. He ended up throwing down his gun and walking out with his hands up.” Russ’s mouth twisted. “Full of remorse, I hear.” He pulled his hand away to rub at his face, which looked fatigued.
“Did you get any rest from your steady stream of visitors?” Jo asked.
“Tried to. Pretty hard to rest in a hospital, I’m finding out. Can’t wait to get on home.”
“Don’t rush it. What about your family, Russ? Have they been called?” Jo knew Russ had a younger brother, Scott, somewhere out west.
“Yeah, Scott called and wanted to come. I told him not to. He can’t afford to fly all the way from Seattle at the drop of a hat. Besides, Pam’s due pretty soon. He should be with her.”
Jo nodded. She also knew Russ had been married before, but didn’t ask if there had been any contact with his former wife. He hadn’t talked to Jo much about the marriage, other than it had ended five years ago and had lasted barely four. Jo took her cue from his reticence on the subject, aware it was not an area she was eager to get into either.
There was a brisk knock on the door, then a scrub-suited nurse walked in, pushing a cart filled with medical paraphernalia. “Time to do a few things for our lieutenant, here,” she said, taking a quick look at his bandaged shoulder. She turned to Jo. “If you’ll just wait outside?”
Jo stood up. “Actually, I’d better get going. It’s pretty late.”
“What’s happening with that Michicomi case?” Russ asked, glancing suspiciously at the instruments lined up on the cart.
“Oh, not too much,” Jo said, pushing her chair out of the way.
“Franklin arrest anyone yet?”
Jo shook her head, then leaned down to give Russ a good-night kiss, which, while exceedingly pleasant had the additional effect of blocking more questions. She hurried to the door, saying, “Get a good rest tonight. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Promise?” Russ asked, leaning around the nurse to see her.
“Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away.”
Jo pulled the door closed behind her thinking that wild horses weren’t exactly what she needed to worry about. Franklin’s deputies showing up with an arrest warrant, however, was a whole different thing. But she wasn’t going to think about that yet. What she wanted most right now was to head on home and fall into that wonderfully soft, beckoning bed of hers. Russ might be the one pumped full of sleep-inducing pain meds, but the way Jo felt as she made her way back to the parking lot, she could definitely give him a run for the money on pillow-to-REM speed.
Chapter 13
The next morning, shortly after arriving at her shop, Jo spotted the answering machine blinking and pressed Play. The voices of Carrie’s two knitting students came on, one after another, and with much hemming and hawing gave convoluted reasons for not being able to come to the class that morning. Jo sighed and called Carrie.
“You might as well take the morning off,” she said, explaining why.
“Shoot!” Carrie said. “Why don’t I call those two and try to straighten them out?”
“I doubt it would do any good. At this point no one is going to admit they truly believe I’m guilty of murder. But the rumors are probably making them uneasy enough to want to keep their distance. Nothing you say is going to erase that feeling. Only finding the real murderer will do that. Which reminds me, how did it go last night at the diner I sent you to?”
“Well, Ginger’s version of home cooking was more like home freezer to home microwave. We didn’t leave hungry, that’s the best I can say for it. But we did spot that photographer Bill Ewing sitting at the counter. You described him perfectly.”
“Did you get to talk to him?”
“It took a while, but yes, around the time we were ordering desserts—I don’t recommend the apple pie, by the way—Dan managed to catch his attention by bringing up the subject of tobacco barns with the waitress, and how they were disappearing with all the new development. I saw Ewing’s ears perk up when Dan mentioned an old one he knew about that was still standing after many years. Ewing wandered over to ask about its location. He wrote down Dan’s directions. I think he plans to go there tomorrow, if the weather holds out.”
“Great! Good work, Carrie. When this is over I’ll treat you all to a really good dinner, at the place of your choice.”
“When this is straightened out, I’d be happier to see you put your money into a big open-house party at the shop to welcome back all your wayward customers.”
“Not a bad idea,” Jo said, thinking, however, that it depended not only on this terrible situation ultimately being straightened out, but also on how quickly it was. Her budding business had precious little cushion to fall back on. This slowdown of income would hurt her badly if she didn’t clear her name soon.
When Carrie arrived, shortly before one, Jo was eager to be on her way to talk to Patrick Weeks.
“Thanks for holding down the fort again,” she said, grabbing her pocketbook and keys. “Wish me luck in Marlsburg.”
“I do. I hope between you and Dulcie that you can pry everything you need from that ex-husband.”
Jo hoped so too, and as she climbed into her aging but still road-worthy Toyota she wondered if she had made the right decision about bringing Dulcie along. She didn’t know Loralee’s daughter all that well, having spoken to her fewer than a handful of times since she’d moved her family into Loralee’s house with its newly attached mother-in-law suite. At last night’s workshop it had sounded like a good idea—that Dulcie get the conversation going with questions for Weeks about corner cabinets. Would the discussion get stuck on furniture, though? Jo needed to turn the talk to Linda. Would it have been easier on her own, to simply approach Weeks directly?
By the time she’d reached Loralee’s and Dulcie’s home Jo had run out of questions as well as time. Right or wrong, Dulcie was coming with her. As Jo pulled up in front of the pretty Cape Cod, she spotted the woman waiting out front beside a blooming forsythia, a red and white cooler sitting at her feet. Jo’s first thought was that Marlsburg wasn’t a long enough trip to need food. And Dulcie certainly couldn’t plan to soften up Patrick Weeks with gifts of homemade soups or baked goods, though Jo wouldn’t put that past Dulcie’s mother. What did she need to keep cold?
“Hi, Jo,” Dulcie called, picking up the cooler and hurrying toward the Toyota. “Let me pop this in real quick, and then I’ll get the baby seat.”
“Baby seat?” Jo squeaked.
“For Andrew.” Dulcie closed the passenger door on her cooler, then returned to the house where a car seat perched on the front stoop.
Jo eased out from behind the wheel. The last she remembered of last night’s discussion was that Loralee had volunteered to watch Dulcie’s children.
Both
of them.
“Caitlin felt a little warm to me,” Dulcie explained, as she lugged the bulky seat to Jo’s car. “I can’t take a chance the baby will catch something.”
Jo didn’t claim to know that much about babies, but it seemed to her that babies were
always
catching something, that it was part of what defined their babyness.
“Is Andrew specially vulnerable?” she asked, suddenly picturing Dulcie’s son as living one step away from life in a bubble.
“Andrew’s extremely robust!” Dulcie answered, almost dropping the car seat in her shock at Jo’s implication. “I make all his baby food from scratch, and he gets absolutely no refined sugar. He’s healthier than any other thirteen-month-old I know!”