Fetch a Pail of Murder (We're Not Dead Yet Club Book 1) Read online

  Fetch a Pail of Murder

  by

  Constance Barker

  Copyright 2017 Constance Barker

  All rights reserved.

  Similarities to real people, places or events are purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Chapter On e– Magic in the Garden

  “Why purple?”

  “Hmmm?”

  Ida May blinked twice and slowly turned her head towards Hazel, flashing that coy smile that only Ida May knew how to create.

  “Why dye your hair purple?” Hazel replied, staring down at a deck of cards in her hands. “What’s it supposed to be anyway?”

  Ida May instinctively reached up to her hair and gently pushed up the tips, feeling the hair bounce as she released it.

  “They call it the Waterfall Pixie look.”

  “I don’t care what they call it. I still don’t think it’s an appropriate style for a funeral.”

  Ida May watched as Hazel’s fingers pawed ineffectively at the top card as she tried to pick it up. She tried three times to remove it from the top of the deck, but each time her elderly, frail hands failed to grasp hold of it.

  Ida May smiled.

  “I don’t think it’s appropriate to be practicing your poker, either.”

  Hazel looked genuinely put out. In fact, her concentration was so stunted that she almost dropped the pack right there.

  “I am not practicing poker,” she replied in that matter-of-fact way that was usually reserved for her weakest denials. “If you must know I’m practicing my new hobby.”

  “Building a card house?”

  There was that irritated look again.

  “No,” she replied, trying again to remove the top card. “I’m learning how to do card tricks.”

  I thought, for a moment, that Ida May might collapse and die right there. She stopped in the middle of the pathway, clutched at her chest and stared, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, at Hazel. She even managed to make the wrinkles on her chin and cheeks disappear before she finally gave in and burst out into a great cackle of laughter.

  Hazel lowered her round glasses until they perched awkwardly on the end of her nose and peered over the top of them at her friend. She didn’t look particularly amused, despite the best efforts of her garishly red-and-orange colored, badly knitted, homemade sweater.

  “And why is that funny?”

  Ida May paused for a moment, glanced back down at the deck of cards, and resumed her laughter.

  “The best card tricks are done by sleight of hand, careful card manipulation…”

  “So?”

  “Well, I hate to break it to you, Hazel, but you have about as much dexterity and nimbleness as a block of cement on a warm day.”

  Hazel’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What’s Dexter got to do with it?”

  Ida May laughed again. In a quick movement, she reached forward and snatched the pack of cards out of Hazel’s hands.

  “Hey. I was…”

  She stopped and stared as Ida May cut the deck in half and skillfully flickered them back together. With the ease of a casino croupier, she fluttered the cards back and forth, occasionally allowing us a brief flash of the red and black faces on the other side. With her effortless demonstration completed, she flicked through the cards and snapped them back into Hazel’s hand.

  Hazel stared down at the lifeless deck, almost as though she was attempting to fathom out some complex process, before slowly looking back up at Ida May.

  “I was in the middle of a trick,” she muttered, a hint of disappointment lingering in her voice.

  “Never mind,” Ida May shrugged. “I don’t think we have that many years left in us to have waited for you to finish at any rate.”

  Hazel glanced back down at the deck. “I wouldn’t have taken that long.”

  “Oh? How long had that one taken you so far?”

  Hazel made to answer, but a glance at Ida May’s mischievous eyes warned her off. She turned her face away, pushed back her glasses and stared up towards a nearby spruce tree.

  “I’m not saying,” she replied.

  Ida May turned to me.

  “Clara?”

  I don’t usually get involved in Ida May’s little digs, but you have to admit she had a point. That being said, I did often feel sorry for Hazel and her attempts at keeping herself amused. Only last month, her brief attempt at mastering the art of chocolate making had resulted in her becoming the lucky owner of no less than fifteen molds, all of which contained chocolate caramels that so far seemed destined to spend the rest of their lives encased in molten plastic. That doesn’t even take account of the time when she tried her hand at gardening and successfully managed to topple Richard Wroxley’s prize-winning apple tree.

  At least this hobby didn’t have the potential to damage anything, or lead her to a premature death.

  I shrugged. “A little while I guess.”

  Hazel span around and glared hard at me. “You liar.”

  “You asked me to pick a card two hours ago,” I fired back. “You haven’t managed to find it yet.”

  “Yes. Well.”

  She struggled to find her words for a good few seconds before she finally decided better of arguing. In a slow – and rather deliberate – movement, she turned her back to me, folded her arms and let out a loud, “Humpf.”

  I tried not to make eye contact with Ida May, but I could feel her laughing all the same. With a sharp nudge of my elbow in her ribs, I announced:

  “But that’s all right because it’s only your first attempt.”

  “Yeah,” piped in Ida May. “It takes practice, that’s all. The tip for a great trick is to know your target audience. For example, Hazel, say the name of a card – any card.”

  I never really know if Ida May is just a very good judge of character or whether she’s just naturally adept at peaking people’s curiosity. Either way, it only took a second or two before Hazel turned her head towards her and clearly announced:

  ‘Four of diamonds.”

  “Four of diamonds,” Ida May repeated. “Are you sure of that?”

  “Of course, I’m sure…”

  “Alright, I just want you to be sure you’ve made a free choice.”

  Hazel’s curiosity had peaked.

  “Why?”

  “Because the card at the top of your deck is the four of diamonds.”

  “Get out of town.”

  “I’m serious.”

  Hazel looked down at the deck, back up at Ida May and then back down to the cards again.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Ida May shrugged:

  “Take the top card and find out.”

  Without another word, she turned her back and moved off down the path. I waited with Hazel, who stared curiously down at the cards, but when she didn’t move off again, I decided to join my other companion. When I caught up with Ida May, she had a wicked smile on her face:

  “That should keep her busy for the next two hours.”

  We wandered for a good half an hour. Hazel meandered back and forth across the width of the path as she struggled to remove the top card of the deck. Every so often Ida May would pause and look back at her, staring at her companion with small glint in her eye that told me that she’d never want to be accompanied by anyone else.

  The
y’d known each other for a long while – so I gathered at least. They’d always come as a pair for as long as I’d known them – a good nine or ten years now. The first time I met them, they were sat in the corner of a coffee house playing draughts. Well, Ida May was playing draughts. God knows what Hazel was playing. She kept trying to jump the counters and scoot all across the board like she was playing chess and yet every so often she would pull off such a spectacular move that I was almost certain that she really knew what she was playing.

  Ida May had gotten so angry with her, but Hazel never really seemed to care. That’s our Hazel – always lost in her own little world.

  Ida May stopped and stared up at the house at the far end of the garden. With the sun behind it, Aunt Ruby’s old home looked almost gothic compared to the quaintness of her garden – almost like someone had plucked it right out an Alfred Hitchcock movie. The clear blue sky was reflected so vividly in the large windows that it looked to me almost like it was alive.

  And yet it couldn’t be. It was as dead as Aunt Ruby.

  “Was she rich?” Ida May asked, turning a coy eye towards me.

  “She wasn’t poor,” I replied. “Her first husband left her a reasonable amount in his will.”

  Ida May whistled. “Very reasonable, from the look of it.”

  I laughed. “Not really. It was only enough to last her a year or so. She made her money on the slots.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  I shook my head. “She spent three days in Vegas. Came back with something of a small fortune. She made the trip there every year since.”

  “Clever woman.”

  “Mad as a bike.”

  “Just like someone else we know then.”

  “I heard that.”

  Ida May chuckled as Hazel marched over towards us, her fingers still fiddling with the card deck. Ida May took a moment to look her up and down, her eyes lingering on the shabby knitted sweater. Dressed in her slim fitting black trousers and checkered velvet jacket, Ida May looked like something out of Vogue or such like – certainly more stylish that Hazel in her home-made attire. She reached into her Prada handbag and pulled out a small mirror, which she held up to the light and pretended to check her make-up. Ida May always pretended to check her make-up when she was about to have a dig at Hazel, although I don’t think Hazel ever noticed.

  “Why do you insist on wearing that drab outfit, darling?”

  “Hey,” Hazel replied, her instinct taking over as she groped at her sweater. “I’m rather proud of it.”

  Ida May closed her mirror and smiled.

  “But is it really appropriate? I mean, you’re old – not senile.”

  Hazel’s eyes narrowed. Her arms folded over one another and, for a brief moment, I thought she might topple over until she thankfully found a small fence post to lean up against.

  “It’s a funeral, dear,” she replied, condescendingly. “Better to wear this than that awfully disrespectful…” She paused as she struggled to find the right words. “… suit that you’re wearing.”

  I’m sure Ida May would’ve shot back something witty had I not intervened.

  “It’s not a funeral, Hazel. We buried Aunt Ruby three days ago, remember?”

  Hazel shrugged. “I just assumed it was a post-celebration deal. Like a second funeral…”

  It’s at times like this that I can understand why her husband divorced her. She stared like that for a few seconds before her eyes, somehow keener than before, swooped up to meet mine.

  “So, why are we here?”

  “They’re reading the will today.”

  I allowed my eyes to drift up towards the house again. Don, Aunt Ruby’s former butler, had emerged from the back door, followed by the tell-tale whizzing figure of old man Milton in his motorized wheelchair. The two paused at the top of the stairs down into the garden as Milton ranted on about something as he puffed on a rather overly large cigar. As the smoke drifted up towards the face of the butler, I could see Don’s lip begin to curl – but I knew he didn’t have the heart to do anything about it.

  “Oh,” Hazel replied. “And why am I here?”

  “Moral support,” hissed Ida May, before wrapping her arm inside mine and pulling me closer to rest her head on my shoulder. “Think you’ll get anything, gal?”

  I shrugged. “I doubt it. Aunt Ruby didn’t really get on with my side of the family. I was the only one she’d talk to and even then it was just to spite my mother.”

  ‘Well, you’re here, ain’t ya?” Ida May replied. “The old girl must’ve left you something.”

  “Probably something incredibly awkward to take home, if I know Aunt Ruby. That’s what she was like – always needed to have the last laugh.”

  Don had finally had enough of Milton and rapidly descended the staircase before marching across the garden in the direction of the gazebo. For a moment, Milton – his eyes crusty underneath his large, bushy white eyebrows, seemed to stare down at the stairway in utter confusion – almost as though the whole concept of them was something totally alien to him.

  “Besides,” I replied, turning back to my friends. “Milton there was closest to her. People used to say they were a couple what with the amount of time they’d spend together and all.”

  “Milton…” Ida May eyed the old man in the wheelchair, her right eyebrow rising slightly. “You think?”

  “Ida May,” I replied, trying hard to stifle my laugh. “He’s nearly ninety.”

  Ida May’s mouth twitched a little. “So much the better. I won’t have to put up with him for so long…”

  “You’re incorrigible…”

  Hazel finally caught up with the conversation: “Does everyone get something?”

  Ida May’s eyes ripped themselves away from Milton and landed squarely on Hazel’s. She gave a heavy sigh and asked:

  “Did you know her?”

  “Who?”

  “Aunt Ruby.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “So, why would she leave you anything?”

  Hazel thought hard for a moment. “Well, we’ve come all this way.”

  That was her – typical Hazel. I often wondered whether she played on it as much as Ida May did whenever someone asked her about how many children she had. There was a sort of innocence about her – the sort that only a woman who grew up on an isolated, Iowa farm had – and yet there was a spark of brilliance about her as well. Almost as though she hadn’t yet found her true calling but would be amazing when she finally did.

  I laughed along with Ida May and watched as she turned her predatory eyes back on Milton as he slowly span himself around and headed back into the house.

  “Come on,” I replied, grasping hold of her arm and pulling her back along the path. “We’d better get you exercising before you pounce on poor, old Milton.”

  “You’re no fun,” she replied, a wicked smile stretching across his face. “Do you think he likes the more energetic woman?”

  I slapped her playfully on the arm.

  “Behave yourself.”

  We’d only gotten a few more meters before Hazel – never one to be beaten – finally managed to remove the top card and slowly turned it over.

  “Hey,” she cried out. “Four of diamonds. How’d you do that?”

  “Magic,” Ida May replied, flashing a mischievous smile.

  “I’m serious. How’d you do it?”

  “If I told ya, I’d have to kill ya…”

  Given what happened next, that probably wasn’t Ida May’s best choice of words…

  Chapter Tw o– Aunt Ruby’s Lil’ Secret

  The path continued for a fair way down the garden, winding in and out of sparsely planted trees until the house, and all within it, was practically out of sight. At this point, the path seemed to come to an abrupt halt just before the garden disappeared into densely packed collection of trees that towered high above us, threatening to block out the sun.

  “I don’t like it,” Hazel whisper
ed, staring up at the creaking trees. “This place has a bad vibe about it.”

  “Nonsense,” replied Ida May, grabbing hold of her hand and giving her a sharp tug. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  Before Hazel could reply, she found herself disappearing into the dense trees and in a moment was completely out of sight. I chuckled to myself as I heard Hazel being led around by Ida May who fiendishly pointed out burrows and gaps where all manner of creepy crawlies might live.

  “Ida May,” Hazel’s voice called out. “This isn’t funny.”

  I’m not one to laugh at other people’s misfortunes, but it kinda was. As the two of them moved back and forth along the tree line, I rested up against the shattered branch of a nearby tree and gazed blissfully up at the clear sky overhead. To the west, drifting slowly over the high hills, a dark formation of clouds was heading our way – not enough for rain fall, I imagined, but more than enough to send a slight shiver down my spine.

  I reached up and pulled my coat a little tighter around my neck. This reminded me of the day my mother died. That had been a nice day too until I received that phone call. I should’ve known something bad was coming because I’d watched the clouds gather overhead – just as I did now…

  The scream echoed out from beyond the trees – a blood, curdling cry that sent my instinctively leaping to my feet. I didn’t hesitate. I headed straight into the trees, moving as fast as my legs would carry me, and weaved in and out of the trees in search of Hazel. At first, I couldn’t see any sign of her, nor of Ida May. The deeper I moved into the trees, the more the light seemed to fade around me. My eyes had never been that good, but in these conditions I was practically blind.

  I clawed my way along, moving in the direction that I hoped Hazel was in – praying that a small shaft of light might penetrate the canopy above me and provide a path for me to follow.

  It had been Hazel’s scream – I’m sure of it. It was the kind of scream that people gave when something terrible was happening to them. When their life was on the line…

  I crept a little further, straining my ears – hoping to hear Hazel cry out once more.