A Fine Fall for Murder

September had no business pretending to be fall.

By eight in the morning, the back of my shirt was damp, the kitchen windows had fogged at the corners, and three pumpkins sat on my porch like liars.

My mother had put them there yesterday.

“They look festive,” she’d said.

“They look heat-stressed.”

“They’re pumpkins, Sadie.”

“They’re sweating.”

She’d ignored me after that, which was generally how June Mercer handled opinions she hadn’t specifically requested.

I carried my coffee outside anyway.

The porch boards were still cool beneath my bare feet, one of the small mercies available before the sun cleared the trees. Beyond the yard, the pasture rolled away in green folds toward the pecan trees, where a handful of cattle stood shoulder to shoulder in the last useful strip of shade. Somewhere behind the house, a tractor started up. A moment later it coughed, died, and started again.

Beau.

I could tell from the aggression.

The farm had been awake long before I was. It usually was.

Hawthorne had belonged to Mercers for long enough that nobody in the family could agree on exactly when we’d stopped saying the farm and started saying Hawthorne like it was another relative. My father maintained that his grandfather had done it. My mother maintained that my father’s grandfather had called it “the place” and Owen Mercer was rewriting history because he liked the sound of himself.

I had no position on the matter.

I lived in the cottage at the southern edge of the property and allowed everybody else to fight about family mythology over Sunday dinner.

The cottage had started life as somebody’s tenant house, then spent several decades holding farm managers, visiting relatives and, for one unfortunate stretch in the eighties, feed sacks and a broken freezer. By the time I’d taken it over, my parents had already redone the wiring and plumbing, which left me the more enjoyable work: refinishing floors, rescuing the old built-ins from six coats of white paint, and filling the place with furniture nobody sensible wanted to move.

The result leaned heavily toward charming right up until you opened the mudroom door.

I had accepted that.

The screen door creaked behind me.

“You’re drinking coffee instead of working.”

I didn’t turn around.

“You entered my house without knocking.”

“I knocked.”

“You yelled my name through the screen.”

“That counts.”

Beau came around the side of the porch with one work glove tucked into the back pocket of his jeans and a smear of grease along one forearm. At thirty-three, my brother had somehow reached the exact age at which our father had started looking perpetually tired in old family photographs. Beau had rejected the tradition.

Even before nine in the morning, after apparently fighting farm equipment, his hair looked intentional.

I took another drink. “What did you break?”

“Nothing.”

“The tractor disagreed.”

“The tractor is dramatic.”

“You two have that in common.”

He pointed at me. “You are supposed to be helping Mama with the front field signs.”

“I have a job.”

“You have an antique store.”

“I work at an antique store.”

“You spend half your life in dead people’s houses.”

“That is also my job.”

“And yet somehow the rest of us are still hanging signs.”

He reached for my coffee.

I moved it away.

“That wasn’t an invitation.”

“I have been awake since five.”

“Poor planning.”

He stared at me for a second, then looked past me toward the three pumpkins lined up along the porch rail.

“Those are bad.”

“Thank you.”

“Too symmetrical.”

I turned to look at them.

“That wasn’t my complaint.”

“It should’ve been.” He stepped off the porch and nudged the middle pumpkin two inches to the left with his boot. “Better.”

“You got grease on it.”

“Texture.”

Then he headed across the yard as if he’d come over solely to criticize my mother’s pumpkin arrangement and steal coffee.

“Did you need something?”

He kept walking backward.

“Mama needs you at ten.”

“I’ll be gone by ten.”

“Then tell her that.”

“You tell her.”

“I value my peace.”

“So do I.”

“Then you understand the problem.”

He turned and disappeared around the side of the cottage.

A second later the tractor started again.

This time it stayed running.

I went inside before the heat finished climbing onto the porch.

My phone was vibrating across the kitchen counter.

The name on the screen made me reach for it before I’d set down my mug.

“Please tell me you aren’t standing underneath anything heavy.”

Cordelia Vale answered with, “What a peculiar way to greet your employer.”

“The last time you called me before nine, a wardrobe had fallen on you.”

“It tipped.”

“It pinned you to a wall.”

“I wasn’t injured.”

“You couldn’t move.”

“I had my phone.”

“That was your argument then too.”

A pause.

“I was right.”

I smiled and leaned against the counter.

Cordelia had owned Vale Antiques & Estate Services for longer than I’d been alive and had spent most of that time developing the kind of reputation that made people either trust her completely or become visibly nervous when she entered their homes.

She knew furniture, silver, porcelain, jewelry, paintings, rugs and exactly which Bellweather families had sold which pieces while insisting they hadn’t.

She also believed rocking an empty chair invited company you didn’t want.

These facts occupied equal levels of certainty in her mind.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Nothing happened.”

“It’s eight fourteen.”

“Yes.”

“You’re calling me.”

“I do employ you.”

“You don’t usually remember that until nine-thirty.”

“I’ve remembered something.”

“That sounds worse.”

“The Harcourt family finally signed the inventory agreement.”

I straightened.

“Oh.”

“Precisely.”

Evelyn Harcourt had been dead less than a week.

People in Bellweather had been talking about almost nothing else since Miriam Bell found her Monday morning. Not because the death itself had been shocking. Evelyn was seventy-nine, widowed, wealthy, famously private and had suffered from heart trouble for years.

The surprise was simply that Evelyn Harcourt had turned out to be mortal.

Her funeral had filled First Baptist two days ago with people who loved her, people who feared her and people who had spent forty years saying they couldn’t stand her but still felt entitled to a good seat.

My mother had sent a casserole.

Cordelia had sent flowers and refused to discuss what they’d cost.

“I thought Audrey wanted to wait,” I said.

“She did.”

“What changed?”

“Family.”

That explained nearly everything.

I carried my mug to the sink.

“Already?”

“Sadie, Evelyn was in the ground for approximately six hours before somebody asked Audrey about the silver.”

“That’s ambitious.”

“I’ve seen worse.”

“You’ve caused worse.”

“That allegation has never been proven.”

I laughed.

Cordelia continued, “Audrey wants the house catalogued quickly. She says people are asking what belongs to whom, which generally means people have already decided.”

“Are we starting today?”

“This afternoon. I want the first walkthrough done before anybody manages to inherit something with their coat pocket.”

I glanced toward the clock.

My mother’s signs were not looking promising.

“I can be at the shop by eleven.”

“Ten-thirty.”

“Eleven.”

“Ten forty-five.”

“Fine.”

“Wear sensible shoes.”

“I always wear sensible shoes.”

“You wore clogs to the Patterson estate.”

“They were comfortable.”

“You nearly died on the stairs.”

“I slipped once.”

“You descended six steps without touching any of them.”

“I landed upright.”

“You landed in a fern.”

There was very little point arguing with Cordelia once she’d preserved an event in her preferred version.

“Anything else?”

“Yes.”

Her voice changed just enough that I knew whatever came next had been the real reason she’d called.

I waited.

“The family has retained counsel.”

“Good for them.”

“Thomas Calloway recommended someone.”

I frowned.

Judge Calloway had known half the old families in Bellweather professionally and the other half socially. That part wasn’t surprising.

Cordelia let the silence sit there.

I knew her too well.

“Who?”

“His son.”

For one ridiculous second, my mind supplied the wrong image first.

Seventeen years old. Broad shoulders in a Bellweather High football jersey. Caroline Whitmore hanging off one arm. Half the student section chanting his name.

Then came the later versions everybody in town had followed from a distance.

Rodeo photographs clipped from newspapers.

Winning checks.

Sponsorships.

A hospital photo nobody had been supposed to circulate but everybody had seen anyway.

Law school.

Atlanta.

Wesley Calloway had managed to live three separate lives by thirty-two, and Bellweather had considered every one of them public property.

“I thought Wes did law in Atlanta.”

“He does.”

“And Evelyn Harcourt’s estate needs an Atlanta lawyer?”

“Apparently Evelyn Harcourt’s estate needs that Atlanta lawyer.”

Something in Cordelia’s tone sharpened my attention.

“What aren’t you saying?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re terrible at saying nothing.”

“I am excellent at it.”

“You once told Mrs. Peabody her reproduction sideboard was ‘an energetic interpretation of history.’”

“It was kinder than saying ugly and fake.”

I waited.

Cordelia sighed.

“It’s a sizable estate. Complicated family. Complicated assets. Audrey wants someone who knows what he’s doing, and Thomas knows the family.”

“That makes sense.”

“Yes.”

“So why do you sound pleased?”

“I do not sound pleased.”

“You sound entertained.”

“That is entirely different.”

I looked through the window over the sink.

Outside, the sun had reached the pasture. Heat shimmered above the fence line. Somewhere beyond the pecans, Beau leaned on the tractor horn for no apparent reason except that he knew I could hear it.

Fall was still several weeks away, no matter what the pumpkins on my porch claimed.

And Wesley Calloway was coming home.

“Cordelia.”

“Yes?”

“Whatever you’re thinking, stop.”

She laughed.

Then she hung up.