Cal could say more, the front door of the house opened and a gurney rolled and rattled its way across the porch.
Maybe she would follow Burt Johnston to the hospital in Winchester. Burt owned and operated the two veterinary clinics in the county. He’d taken care of her beloved collie, Maisey, twenty years ago. Couldn’t hurt to ask him for a few details.
He’d tell his coffee-drinking buddies at breakfast in the morning anyway. He might as well tell Audrey now. After all, the newspaper gave him a discount on all his advertising. It was the least he could do.
A murder—even in self-defense—was as scarce as hen’s teeth in Franklin County. Especially if it involved a possible mob-connected stranger from out of town and a quiet Mennonite woman who’d lived here her whole life.
Had all the makings of a feature that could be picked up by the Associated Press. This might be Audrey’s lucky night.
Audrey tossed her keys onto the table that sat next to the door. Lifting one foot and then the other, she removed her ruined shoes. She paused for a moment, her toes curling against the cool wood floor. The house was completely dark save for the lamp on the table where her keys lay. It felt so strange coming home to an empty house. Even now, after six months of living in her childhood home as an adult, the hollowness at times startled her.
Her mother had always been so cheerful and vibrant. No matter the season, the house had been filled with the scent and beauty of the flowers from her gardens. Even in the winter she had kept plants blooming in the Victorian-style greenhouse she had built when Audrey was a child. Every single year until the one before last, Mary Jo Anderson had won awards for her lovely gardens. Her gardening had always been her escape, her own special brand of chicken soup for the soul.
Reading had been Audrey’s. She imagined it was all those suspense novels that had made her so bold as a reporter. She often told friends she had lived a thousand lives through the books she read. Growing up in a small town, books were her escape.
She picked up her high heels and headed for the staircase. The entire house remained stuck in the Victorian era with few concessions to modern times: a more comfortable sofa in the den and updated appliances in the kitchen. The paint and wallpaper, though well maintained, boasted the same pinks and burgundies from more than a hundred and twenty years ago when the house was built. Her great-great-grandmother who’d actually commissioned the house had insisted on keeping things exactly the way she’d wanted them. Mary Jo, though not exactly a pink-and-burgundy lady, had respectfully left the decorating scheme as the late great Annette Anderson had decreed. Audrey’s grandmother and great-grandmother had done the same.
At the top of the stairs, Audrey glanced toward the south end of the second-floor hall. The suite at that end had belonged to her parents. How many nights had she crept quietly through the darkness from her bedroom at the other end to those towering double doors? Her father had always scooped her up and nestled her between him and her mother. A perk of being an only child.
Even after all these years, her heart squeezed at the memory of her father. She imagined that she would always miss him, no matter that he’d been gone for twenty-four years. Weary now, she made her way to her room, the same one she’d slept in growing up, and padded straight to the walk-in closet to put her damaged shoes away. She should probably just throw them out, but the little shoe repair shop on the corner of the square depended on folks like her to stay in business. No one understood the need for supporting local businesses better than Audrey. Though she was far from destitute, the expenses related to her mother’s care and turning the newspaper around were quickly draining her savings.
She sighed as she hung up her jacket. Though her mother had changed hardly a thing around the house, Audrey had altered a couple of things right away. The first being to expand her closet into a decent-sized one. And still she’d had to downsize her wardrobe. Living in the limelight of investigative journalism for all those years had required an extensive wardrobe. Plus, she was reasonably sure she had a slight obsession with clothes, shoes in particular. With her work, it hadn’t actually been a problem.
But that life was over.
Audrey closed the door of the closet as well as the one to the past.
No looking back. This was her life now, and it wasn’t such a bad one.
She tossed her clutch purse onto a chair and reached for the zipper of her skirt. After leaving the Sauder farm she’d followed Burt to the hospital but had learned nothing. As she left the hospital and headed home, she dictated the story to Brian, her longtime friend and the editor at the Winchester Gazette, via her cell. Once she’d sent him the photos she’d snapped, he had laid out the story for tomorrow’s front page. It would be tight, but since they were one of the few remaining small-town newspapers that still did their own printing, the job would get done. Newspapers landing on doorsteps and in stands tomorrow morning would showcase what little was known about the shooting. The article was already online.
Sarah Sauder was two or three years younger than Audrey. She remembered seeing her at the family-run bakery as a child and then as the woman behind the cash register since moving back to Winchester. Audrey popped in at least once every week. The Yoder Bakery, though located outside Winchester proper, was considered a local landmark. The peanut butter balls were to die for and her mother loved them. Audrey liked having a special treat for her mother when she visited. She also adored their blueberry scones. She bought those for herself, which was all the more reason not to drop by too often.
But the man who’d taken his last breath on Sarah Sauder’s kitchen floor hadn’t come to Buncombe Road for peanut butter balls or blueberry scones. And he sure hadn’t broken into the century-old farmhouse looking for valuables to snatch. Branch Holloway’s presence ruled out any possibility of the man’s death being something less than serious trouble.
Wouldn’t be drugs or human trafficking. Certainly not gunrunning. At least not involving the Sauders. The man had obviously connected the wrong identity with the house. But that still left the possibility that someone in Franklin County was up to no good and the trouble rippled all the way to the Windy City.
The skirt she’d worn tonight slid down her hips, then she stepped out of it. Frankly, she couldn’t think of any criminal activities that rose to that level in which any of the locals, much less the Yoders—in this case the Sauders by marriage—would be involved. Of all people, Audrey was well aware of the reality that what one saw was rarely exactly what lay beneath the skin of others. But these were Mennonites.
She frowned as her fingers hesitated on the buttons of her blouse. She’d forgotten to ask Brian how he’d heard about the shooting. She assumed it was from the police scanner. She would ask him tomorrow.
The buzz of her cell echoed in the room, the sound muffled deep inside the clutch she’d tossed aside. She didn’t dare ignore it. There could be breaking news in the shooting...or an issue at the paper.
Since taking over the Winchester Gazette, she’d realized how running the family business could consume one’s life. As a crime reporter she had given herself completely to the story, but when the story was over there was typically some time before another came her way. Running the Gazette was entirely different. It was always there, an endless cycle of need for more content. Another story, another something to fill the pages—advertising. The newspaper had been in the Anderson family for nearly two centuries. How could she be the one to walk away? Her father would have wanted her to take over when his brother, Audrey’s
