Once that puree was poured into a pot on the stove, I added some lemon juice and sugar and brought the mixture to a boil before reducing the heat and simmering for five or so minutes. Then I added some pectin and brought it to another minute-long hard boil, took it off the heat, and added the mint sprigs and a small amount of peppermint essential oil—the real stuff, never imitation. Finally, I added a little green food coloring, which was probably the biggest reason the jelly had been so popular. It was eye-catching, and the bright green along with my simple red-bordered label had been an almost perfect magnet for those searching for gifts. Once I filled the jars, I hot-water processed them all. As the first batch hot-water processed, I started a new batch and so on. I had a number of processing pots, so there were times when it sounded like the entire kitchen was boiling. By the time Sam called, I’d made about fifty new jars of jelly but hadn’t started on the cookies.
“So, you didn’t arrest Brenton?” I said as I answered the phone.
“Hello to you, too,” Sam said.
“Sorry. Hello, how was your day?”
Sam laughed. “I’ve had better days. Have you eaten?”
“Nope.”
“I’ll bring some sandwiches or something. Be there in a half hour.”
A half hour gave me time to finish the last jars, setting them all carefully on the center worktable. They weren’t supposed to be bothered for at least twenty-four hours, so these fifty wouldn’t make it to Bailey’s until the day after tomorrow. The jars Sam and I had made the night before would be tomorrow’s inventory.
Inside the house, I stirred up a huge pitcher of iced tea. I’d always been a fan of the drink—being southern almost demanded that you like sweet iced tea—and it had become Sam’s favorite, too. Apparently—or so he told me—after I’d served it to him the first time he’d come out to my farm to ask me questions regarding the murder of Matt Simonsen.
The times, they had definitely changed.
• • •
“No, I didn’t arrest him. I probably could have, but I didn’t want to,” Sam said as he leaned back in the dining room chair. He’d changed into jeans and a white T-shirt, automatically transforming him into casual Sam. I liked both professional Sam and casual Sam, but casual Sam was my favorite, unless professional Sam happened to be my favorite that day. We’d finished off roast beef sandwiches and potato salad but were still enjoying the tea.
“I’m glad you didn’t arrest him.”
“I just wanted to get him out of there and away from Bailey’s until he cooled off. He hadn’t done much wrong, but he was on the verge of doing something potentially dangerous and something I was sure he would later regret. He’s a good guy.”
“He’s a great guy. What happened to upset him?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. He didn’t have to. He asked if he needed an attorney. I told him I wasn’t arresting him. I asked if there was anything going on that I could help him with.”
“And he said no?”
Sam took a sip of tea. I wondered if he didn’t know that I could sometimes see right through his avoidance. He wasn’t totally under my control. There had been plenty of times in our short relationship that he’d informed me that he wasn’t going to tell me something I really wanted to know. There’d been way too many murders in the Monson area recently, but we were typically a low-crime town, or so I’d thought. There was more going on in my community than I really knew, and I’d been surprised by some of the illegal activities Sam had told me about, though he hadn’t always shared perpetrators’ names.
“He said no,” Sam said.
“He didn’t. I can see he didn’t. You don’t want to tell me what he said, but can you give me a hint?”
“No.”
“Let’s see, he was accusing Denny Ridgeway of being the killer. Did it have something to do with the Ridgeways?” I said.
“Maybe,” he said with a smile.
Now he was getting information out of me. We’d sometimes dance around something, trying to get information from each other. Usually both of us caved, or each of us offered enough to the conversation to make the entire story become clear.
I played along. “Because”—I smiled—“because Brenton had been acting strangely toward the Ridgeways since I saw him pull into the parking lot yesterday. He told you more about his relationship with the Ridgeways.”
“Wait, why would he pull into the parking lot and not his loading/unloading area?” Sam asked. This was a legitimate question, not part of the game.