Free 18 Deader Homes and Gardens by Joan Hess

summers.” Her abrupt laugh startled me. “Reality sucks, doesn’t it?”
    “Sometimes,” I said cautiously. “Once we’re here, you can teach me how to make these divine cinnamon rolls. We’ll go out to lunch every week.”
    “We might even have fun,” she said, “if I can remember how. I picked the strawberries this morning. Tomorrow I’m going to hunt for blackberries. Are you a birdwatcher?”
    “Not yet, but I’m willing to learn.” I ate a strawberry while I considered how best to politely interrogate her. “May I ask you about Winston? He had a fatal accident while fishing, didn’t he?”
    Nattie regarded me over the rim of her glass. “You must have read the story in the newspaper. Winston was a very talented young man, and we were all saddened by his death. His mother taught high school math, and his father wrote long, wearisome tomes about the Napoleonic Wars. I did my best to read one, but after five hundred pages I was begging for Waterloo. Anyway, we saw very little of Winston after his parents sent him to a prep school in the East. He spent summers at a camp in Michigan or Minnesota. It changed him, turned him against us. During the holidays, he was polite but remote.”
    “Why do you think he moved back here?” I asked.
    She glanced over her shoulder as if Jordan might be hunched behind the tomato plants. “I suspected he had some health problems—mental and physical. Last Christmas, he and Terry turned down my invitation for dinner.” She shook her head. “That’s understandable, though. I’m sure they had a much better time with pheasant and white wine than they would have had with Felicia’s dry turkey, Margaret Louise’s lumpy mashed potatoes, Pandora’s pickled okra, and a glass of water. I know I would have.”
    “Even if he wasn’t into the family thing, all of you must have been upset when he died in the fishing accident.”
    “It wasn’t an accident,” Nattie said as she popped a strawberry in her mouth.

4
     
    I choked on a mouthful of tea. Once I’d recovered, I said, “Not an accident?”
    Nattie handed me a napkin so I could dry my chin. “The police investigators were happy to write it up that way, and the Hollow family was hardly going to disagree. Out of respect, the report didn’t mention the two empty wine bottles. Those, coupled with the marks in the mud, satisfied them that Winston was inebriated when he lost his balance.” She reached for the pitcher. “Let me refill your glass.”
    “Thank you. It still sounds like an accident, Nattie. If Winston consumed two bottles of wine, he easily could have slipped.”
    She gazed at the valley for a long while, gnawing her lower lip as though I’d said something profound. “I don’t disagree with that, but…”
    “But you don’t believe it was an accident. Why not?”
    “As I said earlier, Winston had problems. When I encouraged him to tell me what was going on, he was evasive. At first I thought he was missing his former life in New York City. Farberville isn’t exactly a hotbed of artistic excitement, and it must have been a devastating culture shock for him. Some people aren’t meant to live in the countryside, where the loudest noises come from starlings and bullfrogs. I occasionally caught him during the remodeling, and he told me that he missed the clamor of garbage trucks, the incessant sirens, the honking horns, the kamikaze cabs, and the daily parade of pedestrians.”
    I heard something that was neither avian nor amphibian. “What’s that thumping noise?”
    She listened for a second and then said, “The clothes dryer in the basement. It’s twenty years old and about to expire any day now. The washing machine sounds as if it’s about to explode. Moses has a medical condition that causes him to change clothes often. He … uh, leaks.”
    I was sorry that I’d asked, and even sorrier that she’d answered. “Tell me more about Winston.”
    “When the house was finished, he and Terry