Chapter 3
513 자
Chapter 3
The swinging door from the kitchen burst open as a rack of bagged, freshly baked bread was pushed through it. Faye was behind it, doing the pushing. Since Hannah still had Jef, I jumped up to go and help her get it into position behind the counter.
She smiled when she saw me. “I didn’t know you were out here. Did you bring the baby?”
I nodded but she was already waving to Jef while Hannah held his little arm and waved it for him back at her.
The ladies all looked on silently – not at all like them.
Fayed stepped up behind the display case and questioned them as a group, “Why so quiet? You’d think we were having a funeral in here.”
Lucy coughed on her sip of tea. She recovered as Bridget patted her back and started explaining, “We didn’t even know you were back there Faye. We weren’t trying to say anything to upset you.”
Selma shot Lucy a look but she missed it as she rattled on. “We were only trying to give Dana some of the local history for a book she might write.”
My Mother-in-law turned her head and looked at me with raised eyebrows.
Glossing right over the fact that some of the conversation had been about her, she instead quizzed me, “So, you’re back to writing are you? What about now? Local history of all things? There really isn’t a whole lot of that, that isn’t already covered, you know?”
“It’s just a thought,” I said. “Something the ladies brought up when I mentioned that I’d thought about trying my hand at writing up some true crime stuff and maybe even dissecting some of my old cases.”
“What sort of local history stuff?” Faye asked as she spun away from me and looked pointedly at the women arrayed around the table as she walked out from behind the counter.
Lucy cleared her throat and admitted, “We were telling her about Tanner Mathis – the one that died that Thanksgiving when you were a teenager. His...it was never solved.”
Faye looked back at me then. “Lots of people were there that day. Lots of cops too. They went over and over everything.” Her tone implied that if they couldn’t figure it out, it couldn’t be figured out.
My curiosity won out over my fear of upsetting her. “When,” I asked, “was the last time anyone looked into the case? Does Mel even know about it now that she’s the Sheriff and all?”
“I can’t answer that,” Faye admitted. “I honestly don’t know what she knows about it. It was well before she was born...heaven’s, more than 40 years ago, I’d say.” She rubbed her temple and then shook her head out as if to clear it.
“Let me have at that baby for a minute,” she said as she smiled and changed the subject. She walked around the end of the counter and out into the open.
Hannah put Jef down on his feet again and offered her fingers down for his little hands to hold while Faye squatted to get down to his level.
Excited, the boy trundled right out of his mother’s grasp and took four unaided steps toward one of the three women he thought of as Grandma as everyone in the shop oohed and awed at him.
- 작가
