Chapter 17 Avery
AVERY
I hadn’t lied to Noah: I did have a lot of calls to make, a lot of stuff to do to get up to speed on the house and prepare it for sale.
But by the time I got back to the house I’d turned my thoughts from the kiss with Noah (in a word: hot) to Harold Pembroke’s murder.
I guess it said a lot about my life that thinking about a murder committed on my property was less complicated than the fact that I’d made out with two of my new roommates in as many days.
Powered by the long-awaited caffeine from the Common Ground, I started down the pathway at the back of the house, glad Noah had gone to the nursery so I could explore on my own.
I hadn’t been back in the yard since my arrival two days before but now it held a surreal kind of familiarity. It was easy to remember the way I’d felt the first time, innocently looking for the caretakers (who’d turned out to be hotter than sin) right before I’d stumbled on Harold Pembroke’s body.
The garden had seemed like a magical land unto itself, one filled with only beauty and light.
Now I couldn’t help feeling a sinister undertone on the property. Harold had been murdered in the gazebo, rising in the distance like a fairy-tale cake topper. Beyond it, the pond shimmered under the sun, a couple of geese honking and flapping their wings on the surface.
I passed the shed and the hedge maze and continued toward the gazebo.
Goose bumps rose on my arms. I told myself it was because a small bank of clouds had drifted in front of the sun and not because two days earlier a killer had been on the property, maybe even at the same time I’d been looking for Beck, Noah, and Dane.
The gazebo was still wrapped with yellow crime-scene tape.
It had already been processed for evidence but Sheriff Crowe had told Dane that the police might want to come back to the scene of the crime.
I looked through the entrance of the gazebo to the place where I’d found Harold Pembroke’s body and had a flash of memory: Harold slumped against the railing, chin on his chest like he’d been sleeping, mud on the hem of his pants.
Mud… on the hem of his pants.
I walked around the gazebo, circling it slowly. An assortment of flowers had been planted up against the structure (by Noah?), and a small strip of grass separated the flower beds from the paved walkway.
I stopped between the pond and the gazebo. The geese had stopped honking and were gliding peacefully along the pond’s surface. Across the water, a copse of trees waved lazily in the spring breeze.
I had no idea what was on the other side of the trees, but from here it looked like Aunt Evelyn’s property was pretty private.
I continued around the gazebo, thinking about the day I’d arrived in Blackwell Hollow. It had been clear and sunny, the ground dry, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t rained in the days before Harold’s murder.
I crossed the strip of grass to the flower beds next to the gazebo and bent to feel the soil.
It was barely damp, the kind of damp that was probably due to regular watering by Noah or an unseen irrigation system as opposed to a heavy rain.
I stepped back onto the walking path and used my phone to check the local weather. Knew it: the last time it had rained in Blackwell Hollow had been five days before Harold’s murder.
“What the fudge?” I muttered.
Where had the mud on Harold’s pants come from?
I left the gazebo behind and continued along the path to the part of the property I hadn’t yet explored. It only took a minute to realize it was far bigger than I’d imagined.
I passed a huge cutting garden bisected with gravel walking paths, a small glass greenhouse, and a fountain trickling with water, birds hopping along the fountain’s stone ledge. There was an old well, covered with moss, and every so often, stone statues nestled under bushes.
I passed the Buddha, Mother Mary, Shiva, and Kali.
There were others too, busts of serious-looking men who might have been philosophers and more than a few nudes of both men and women.
The sculpture collection alone was stunning — a gem within the gem of the property — and I felt a pang at the thought of selling the place.
Aunt Evelyn had clearly put a lot into making the place so beautiful.
I felt again like Dorothy, transported to a technicolor world, realizing that the one I’d been in before hadn’t been so colorful after all.
And then my phone rang. It was jarring, a sound that didn’t belong in the old-world beauty of the garden, and I fumbled to silence it, then saw that it was my stepmom, Miranda.
I hesitated before accepting the call. Miranda hardly ever called me. There might be an emergency.
“Hi, Miranda.”
“Avery! Hello!” My stepmom was a tiny cheerful blonde — the exact opposite of my mom — who always sounded a little breathless, probably because she was always on the run with Luke and Evan, taking them to baseball or soccer practice or swimming lessons or one of the other activities that seemed to be on their endless menu of fun. “How are you?”
“Um… I’m fine.” I moved toward a weathered iron bench artfully placed in the shade of a giant oak tree. “How are you?”
“So busy!” She sounded happy about it. “Listen, I know your dad reached out to you about Luke’s birthday next month, but he said he hasn’t been able to get ahold of you and we need to sort the food and other details. Figured I’d give it a shot!”
She sounded so happy and cheerful, and I felt a flush of guilt that I couldn’t also be happy and cheerful talking about Luke’s birthday.
“Yeah, sorry about that.” I didn’t know where to start or even how much to tell her about my sabbatical in Blackwell Hollow. I’d only told my mom, and she was so busy we hadn’t even touched base since I’d arrived in Blackwell Hollow.
Busy. Everyone was so so busy.
Too busy to call or text. Too busy to have a real conversation, to even be present.
And I should know because I was busy in the city too: too busy to call Aunt Evelyn, to visit her when she’d been alive.
“That’s okay!” Miranda said. “Anyway, we’re planning a big bash for Luke’s tenth birthday, and of course we want you to be there!”
Every sentence was punctuated by excitement. Did she ever get tired? I was already exhausted.
“Um, that sounds… fun. When is the party?” I knew Luke’s birthday was in June (Evan’s was in November), but my dad’s hurried voice mails hadn’t included the date of the party.
“Saturday June 14th,” she said. “Nothing too crazy, just a party here at the house with a bounce house for the kids. You have to come! You’re Luke’s sister!”
Was I? I mean, I knew I was related to Luke by blood, but I’d never really felt like we were related.
Maybe it was because of the age difference.
Maybe it was because while I was expected to attend an endless stream of birthday parties and award ceremonies for the boys, my dad’s replacement family — and my dad — didn’t seem interested in being part of my life at all.
There were no big bashes for my birthday, and there never had been, not even when I’d been a kid, probably because my dad had married Miranda less than two years after the divorce.
Luke and Evan had come along shortly after that, and then my dad had seemed to forget all about the fact that he had another kid who also had birthdays and award ceremonies.
He usually sent me a text for my birthday. Miranda usually didn’t mention it at all.
I’d been forgotten, discarded, and even though I was an adult, it still stung.
“So can I mark you down as a yes?” Miranda asked, pulling me from the past.
“Uh… I’ll have to get back to you. I’m out of town right now and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“Okay then! Keep me posted! The boys would love to see you!”
I doubted that. They hardly knew me, and on the rare occasions when we were in the same room they treated me with the kind of scorn reserved for an aged aunt, my attempts at conversation an annoying interruption from the games they played on their iPads or their texts with friends (Evan was only eight years old — who was he even texting?).
“Will do,” I said. “Thanks for calling.”
“Talk soon!”
The call disconnected and I slipped my phone back into my pocket.
No doubt I was one of many people on Miranda’s hit list. She’d be working the phones all day, coaxing at least fifty people into attending the big bash, which would be held in the picture-perfect home my dad had purchased for his new family.
I felt more than a little deflated, the way I always did after talking to my dad or Miranda, but then I looked around and realized something: thanks to Aunt Evelyn, I had a picture-perfect home too.
It wouldn’t be mine for long, and the dead body in the gazebo was definitely a downside, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy the place while I was here.
Plus there was Beck and Noah — and Dane, I guess, who was nice to look at, even if he was kind of a jerk.
I got to my feet with a sigh and continued down the gravel path, wondering what on earth Harold Pembroke had been doing here the day he’d died.
I had no idea, but it was a relief to turn my attention away from my complicated feelings about family in favor of the mystery about Harold Pembroke’s dead body.
I passed briefly through what looked like a mini-orchard, complete with a statue of who I assumed was Johnny Appleseed (an elfin boy carrying a sack full of apples), plus a cherub holding a birdbath.
And then, just past the orchard, the hair stood up on my arms.
I was transported back to the cemetery and the feeling that I was being watched, and I turned suddenly, half expecting someone to be standing in the trees watching me.
The apple trees were twisted, bent at strange angles, but there was no one there.
Not that I could see anyway.
My heart pounded in my chest as I hurried along the path, and I breathed a sigh of relief when the back of the house came into view. I’d wound my way through the property left to right, the gravel walking path leading me home, to the terrace off the kitchen.
A stand of trees seemed to act as a property line on the other side of the house, and I continued through what looked to be a cutting garden. Dahlias, roses, and peonies opened their lush petals to the sun while other flowers — some of which I couldn’t name — bobbed in the breeze.
The air was fragrant, laced not only with not only rose but jasmine and honeysuckle and other floral notes I couldn’t place, plus something earthy that I thought might be eucalyptus.
Here I could almost believe that I’d imagined the sensation of being watched, could almost convince myself that the property’s isolation had made me paranoid.
Past the cutting garden was another garden, and this one looked to be for food. Perfectly positioned beyond the terrace, the ground was punctuated with small green plants just beginning to rise from the rich soil.
I paused on my way through the kitchen garden to press the toe of my sandal into the soil. It sank easily and I bent to pick up a clump of earth with my hands. It was damp, like the dirt in the flower beds around the gazebo, but not wet enough to be called mud.
Hmmm…
I rose to my feet, then stumbled backwards when I noticed a figure dressed in black emerging from between two huge lilacs bordering the cutting garden.
Adrenaline flooded my body in the moment before the figure took another step forward and I realized it was Dane.
“Oh my gravy…” I gasped. “Will you please stop doing that?”
“Doing what?” Dane’s eyes were hooded, his expression flat.
“Sneaking up on me!” I narrowed my eyes. “Wait a minute… How long have you been standing there?”
Had he been the one watching me in the orchard?
“Who says I was standing there?”
I folded my arms over my chest, feeling suddenly naked in my shorts and low-cut, coffee-stained shirt. “Were you?”
“I live here.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.” Jesus, he was annoying.
He stalked toward me, like an animal advancing on its prey.
Taking a step back was instinctive.
He stopped a few inches away, close enough that I caught a panty-melting whiff of his cologne or body wash, something musky and masculine mixed with the subtle tang of man-sweat. “You know what I realized?”
“What?” Why was my voice hoarse?
“We have no idea where you were before we found you in the gazebo.”
I frowned. “I was here, looking for you so I could get the key to the house.”
“Right.” His eyes were like slabs of flat gray granite. “You were on the property. Where Harold was killed.”
I leaned back in shock. “You don’t think I killed him?”
He stared me down. “I’m just asking questions.”
“I can ask questions too,” I said. “Where were you — you and Beck and Noah — before you found me in the gazebo?”
“We were here, on the property, like you.”
Now we were staring each other down, and for one crazy moment, I wanted to step toward him, rise on my toes to kiss him, see what would happen.
“Why would I kill Harold Pembroke?” I asked, trying to clear my head of the intrusive thought, the dangerous desire coursing through my veins.
I’d already kissed two of my roommates. Adding another notch on the belt of my employer-employee relationships seemed like a bad idea.
Especially with someone like Dane. “I didn’t even know him. ”
“You want to sell this place right?”
“‘Want’ isn’t the word I’d use,” I said. “I don’t really have a choice.”
Dane’s expression was unreadable. “There’s always a choice. And if you wanted to sell, Harold would be a good target. He was on the town council, working to stop the Hearthstone development.”
I wasn’t following. “What does that have to do with selling the house, the bakery?”
“Luxury homes will increase property values all around,” Dane said. “You’ll come away with a small fortune if the development is approved.”
Anger flared in my chest. How dare he?
“As you were so happy to point out, I wasn’t even in touch with Aunt Evelyn.
Not really. I never expected to inherit anything from her, so how could I even know what was going on here in Blackwell Hollow?
” I continued without waiting for him to answer, feeling defensive in spite of my protestations.
“And I’m certainly not counting dollar bills now when all I can think about is the fact that I wasn’t here for Aunt Evelyn when she needed me.
” I was getting angrier and angrier. “So you can just… just…”
He lifted one dark eyebrow.
“You can just… just… fudge off, Dane Calder!”
His mocking laughter followed me all the way to the door, all the more infuriating for the fact that our argument hadn’t just pissed me off.
It had turned me on.
What the fudge?