Jill said.
“Then why are you grilling Sheena?”
“Mom, it’s okay. She’s not—”
“The only other person I remember coming in that morning besides clients was Fawn Morrison,” Mary said. “No one caused any problems. Don’t go stirring things up or pointing fingers where they shouldn’t be pointed.”
Jill pressed her tongue to her teeth for a few seconds to keep from snapping back. “I’m not pointing fingers. Fawn was here?”
“She came to talk to me,” Sheena said. “She and I hang out sometimes. You know, when you’re single in a town like this, you won’t find a lot of single girlfriends your age. All my high-school friends moved on.”
“At least you have the good sense to stay where you belong,” Mary said.
Sheena grimaced. “Fawn’s smart for a kid, and I’m trying to talk her into going to cosmetology school like I did. Then she can learn massage while she works as a hair stylist. She’s already really good at it.”
“So unless you think Fawn might have had something to do with Edith’s heart attack,” Mary said with emphasis, “you’re probably wasting your time here. I know you loved Edith. We all did. But the only closure you’re going to find is at the funeral this afternoon, just like the rest of us.”
“Has your husband said anything about why Austin Barlow’s back in town?” Jill asked Mary.
The woman frowned. “Not a word. I put an end to their good-old-boy carousing years ago, Jill. They don’t come around the house, and Jed knows how I feel about them. He wouldn’t tell me if he did know.” She gave a quiet sigh, glancing at her daughter.
With that glance, Jill was touched by the wealth of tenderness she saw pass between mother and daughter.
Disappointed, she thanked Sheena and Mary and left the spa. If Mary did know something, she wouldn’t give it away.
Jill thought about the visitors who had been at the spa the day of Edith’s death.
What was it Edith had said? S…cool. And something about a jet bomber—what on earth could she have been talking about?
By that time, of course, considering the difficulty Edith was having, she might simply have been hallucinating due to lack of oxygen in the brain.
However, she did mention records. And possibly instead of saying cool, she might have been talking about school. Interestingly enough, almost all the visitors Sheena had mentioned were somehow connected to school, and had known Edith there. Maybe that was why she’d mentioned school to begin with. Could be she was simply reminiscing.
She might have seen Austin and Junior, and the sight of them had brought back memories. Just as the sight of Rex and Austin on Saturday had brought back memories for Jill.
She hadn’t expected to search out Edith’s nemesis in one little interview, but she’d hoped to find some kind of evidence that pointed to what had really happened to Edith the day she died.
So far, no such evidence. Would Austin, Jed or Junior be more forthcoming? Or would she just make herself look like more of a fool if she approached them with questions?
The lab tests she’d had run on Edith’s blood had turned up nothing. Grilling Sheena had turned up nothing. And yet, Jill knew she couldn’t just leave things as they were. Her instincts—and Noelle’s—compelled her to keep searching for an answer.
Chapter Eight
After Edith’s funeral on Wednesday, Fawn Morrison practically ran from the cemetery, desperate to escape the heavy shadow of grieving that seemed to loom over the whole town. This past year, sharing a cottage on Lakeside Bed and Breakfast property with Karah Lee, she’d come to love both Edith and Bertie as if they were her own grandmothers.
She missed Edith already. She knew Bertie did, too. And yet, wasn’t Bertie the one who always reminded everybody that it did no good to linger on the sad memories?
Fawn had a plan forming in her mind by the time she reached the boat dock. It was crazy, she knew. But still she couldn’t stop thinking….
“Hijacking my boat?” came Blaze Farmer’s familiar voice from behind her.
She had one foot in the canoe and one on the dock in what Bertie would call an unladylike pose, considering the dress she wore. If she lost her grip on the post, she would tip the canoe and hit the water.
“I wouldn’t say hijacking, exactly. I figured you’d show up sooner or later, and I needed to talk to you.”
She settled carefully into the front and glanced up at Blaze. He, too, was dressed for the funeral, and he really cleaned up good—a term Bertie liked to use. He wore a gray suit that set off his black skin and those pretty, dark eyes…which looked as if he’d been crying.
She gestured to the other seat. “Come on. Let’s get out of here for a while. I’ll even let you steer.”
He glanced back toward the town square, then to the church where they had just said goodbye to Edith’s body for the last time. “I’ve got things to do at the ranch.”
“You’ve always got things to do.” She picked up a paddle. “Just a few minutes, okay? Come on, Blaze. You never get a break, and we both need one. I promise not to keep you long. I need somebody to talk to, and I don’t want to bug Karah Lee right now. She’s freaking about all this.”
“You think I ain’t?”
“Watch your language. Nobody’s going to believe you’ve got the top scores in your class if you talk like that.”
He sank to the narrow seat of the canoe and unwrapped the rope from the post on the dock.
Fawn knew everyone dealt with grief a different way. She stuffed everything deep down, as if she could hide it from herself for good if she could ignore it long enough. Blaze was one of those people who immersed themselves in the moment and got it all out of their systems.
But then, Blaze had grown up with a dad who loved him. His mom had her own problems and hadn’t ever been there for Blaze, but he and his dad had had a good relationship when his dad was alive. His dad had tried hard to be both father and mother to his only child.
Fawn had never experienced that. Instead, she’d had a father who’d run out on the family, a mother who’d married a lecher—Bertie’s word for him—then blamed her own daughter for being raped. Stuffing emotions away was the only way to survive where Fawn came from. She’d stuffed a lot since Great-Grandma June had died.
Fawn paddled slowly as Blaze guided them across the lake toward the far shore. There, five newly built houses with Victorian gingerbread trim nestled into the side of the cliff, surrounded by gold, bronze and yellow mums and hundred-year-old oaks and cedars. Blaze, Fawn knew, loved to paddle past those houses and dream about having a house like that himself, someday.
In Fawn’s opinion, Blaze deserved a mansion five times larger than any of those houses.
“Did you see Austin Barlow at the funeral?” she asked.
