“I’m not growing marijuana,” Mary Beth said with a nervous laugh.
“All the same.” I held the money out until she took it.
“I don’t have change on me, so you’ll have to take another dozen.”
“Sure, I’ll come back when these run out.” I shifted the carton under my arm and switched topics. “You didn’t know Hattie Hoffman, did you?”
“No,” she answered quickly, starting to unload the eggs she’d just collected.
“She was practically family to me.”
“I’m sorry.” Whatever else she might have been feeling, she sounded like she meant it.
“You okay, Mary Beth?”
“Yeah. There’s just a lot going on right now.”
“Mmm. Your mom and the farm and everything.”
She nodded and kept working.
“Why were you talking about murder with Winifred?”
“What?” Her head shot up and she finally looked me in the eyes. Hers were surprised and tense, the kind of tense that builds up over months and years, where the muscles don’t even remember how to relax. Winifred had said something about marital troubles.
“I heard the two of you before she open fire on me. She said murder has its place.”
“It was nothing. Not what you think.”
“How about you tell me what it was and then I’ll tell you if it’s what I think.”
“It was just . . . Peter, my husband.” She swallowed and stopped, then her eyes darted around the floor. “He’s a vegetarian. Thinks it’s wrong to kill animals. Winifred was trying to reassure me.”
Even though it explained Elsa’s comment, the rest of the conversation still didn’t jibe.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“It’s between me and her. I don’t . . .” Her mouth became one firm line and I knew I wasn’t getting any more out of her.
“I need to see your knives.”
“Why?” Her eyes flashed, but there was no fear in them.
“Hattie was stabbed to death.”
She nodded and silently obliged. The autopsy report had come in last night and it said the wounds were caused by a straight, single-edge blade about six to eight inches in length. I measured each of Mary Beth’s knives and none of them fit the specs. The only one with the correct length was curved and none of them had the right blade width. I didn’t think I was going to find the murder weapon on Mary Beth Lund’s tool bench, but there was something she wasn’t telling me.
She walked me back to the cruiser and lifted a hand to Elsa, who watched us through her lace curtains.
“Hey, does a handle mean anything to you?” I asked. Mary Beth was only a few years older than Jake.
“Like a bucket handle?”
“No, like a name.”
“Sure, that’s what people call their screen names for websites and blogs and stuff.”
I thanked her and started whistling as I backed out of the driveway, ready to put my chief deputy back in his place.
I pulled into Pine Valley proper and cruised down Main Street, nodding to the men outside the feed store who usually stood around jawing about the price of hogs and corn seed. They watched me for the whole stretch of road with cap-shaded eyes and grim mouths, leaving no doubt about today’s topic of discussion.
When I got into the station, Jake was hunched over Hattie’s computer like it was showing the ninth inning of game seven of the World Series. I dropped a sack of burgers on the desk.
“You’re not going to believe what I found.” He fished out a burger and bit in without a glance at what he was eating.
“So”—I sat on the desk—“Hattie met someone online with a handle named L.G.”
“How’d you know?” Jake managed to look genuinely disappointed with a mouthful of bun. Clearly he’d been looking forward to explaining handles to the old man who knew squat about the internet. I swallowed a smile.
“Stands to reason.”
“Well, I don’t think she saved everything. See? She was copying and pasting messages into a text document. Some of the messages don’t seem to pick up where they left off and there’s no names on any of it, except this one.”
He swung the screen toward me.
HollyG,
I should probably use your real name now, but I can’t bring myself to do it. This last fragment of duality will allow me to say what I must. Our friendship is over. It was a dangerous idea in the first place, no matter who you were, but now that Jane Eyre has unmasked us it’s obvious how painfully wrong this is. Please know that I wish you well and blame myself entirely.
We can never speak of this. Tell no one.
Goodbye,
L.G.
“When’s this from?” I asked.
“She saved it last October. There’s dozens of these files, filled with hundreds of messages. Del, Hattie was having a secret relationship.”
“L.G.,” I muttered.
Jake pulled up the next one and we read, finished our burgers, and read some more.
HATTIE / Tuesday, September 11, 2007
“WHEN YOU think about it, there’s really only three people worth bothering asking to Sadie Hawkins.”
“That’s three more than I would look at twice.” I processed Mrs. Gustafson’s photo order—thirty pictures of ugly kids—while Portia leaned on the counter and examined her fingernails. She’d collected four new shades of polish from the beauty aisle and was consumed with figuring out which one went best with the traditional Sadie Hawkins flannel. Like there was a winning possibility there. Ignoring me, she lifted one of the bottles up to the light. It looked like blue Gatorade, the kind of color that looked awful on me and gorgeous on her with her light-brown skin.