Page 107 of The Aster Valley Collection, Vol. 1

Pim’s face was soft and paternal. He reached out a hand to hold one of mine.

“You were scared, honey. Everyone here understands how awful that family has been to you. Of course we understand. But I appreciate you telling us now. I’d like to see him go to jail, if not for my own injury, then for all the pain he’s caused you over the years. ”

It was too kind. His words brought tears to my eyes, and I willed them back inside. I wasn’t used to a kind and understanding paternal figure.

Chaya wasn’t as touched. She muttered into her mug. “You mean you didn’t tell a soul except your new boyfriend. And your pal Barney.”

I turned to her in confusion. “I never told Barney.”

She nodded and swallowed a sip of coffee. “You must’ve, because he mentioned it at the hospital. Said ‘It has to be them. Especially after the hit-and-runs.’ Runs, plural. Believe me, I noticed, and I was not pleased that you shared with him and not me .”

“But…” I thought back to when I would have told Barney about recognizing the truck at the hit-and-run. “No. No way. I did not tell him. Ever since that moment, I swore to myself I would take the secret to my grave. And I kept that promise until I told Sam yesterday afternoon.”

“Then how’d he know?”

I opened my mouth to explain but then closed it again. How did he know?

“Maybe you misheard him?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I know I didn’t because he muttered something under his breath about whether it was ‘hits-and-run’ like ‘attorneys-at-law’ or ‘hit-and-runs’ like ‘glad hands’ which I don’t understand at all.”

“It’s a model trains thing,” I muttered. “But…”

“Wait,” Mikey said. “Model trains. Wasn’t he at the model trains meet-up until after the fire was started? Wasn’t that his alibi?”

I nodded. “Well, that’s what he said. But in all the time I’ve known him, I’ve never known a model trains meeting to go past nine forty-five.”

Pim leaned closer. “What was his reaction after the December incident? Was he upset? Guilty? Worried?”

“Definitely worried and stressed, but I assumed he was worried for me because I was so upset about it myself. I remember telling him how scared I’d been,” I began.

“When you guys pushed me and I heard the honking and squealing of tires… I was really shaken up afterward. He was supersweet. He made sure I wasn’t alone.

He slept over in my guest room for several nights and made me breakfast. Then he’d stop by the shop every day just to say hi.

We ended up spending so much time together, we were kind of dating, even though I kept telling him I didn’t want to be in a relationship. ”

Mikey clasped his coffee mug between two hands. “But when I was first here in December, someone told us you two were dating, and that was before the hit-and-run.”

Pim nodded. “Probably me. We all thought you two were dating.”

“No,” Mikey said. “I think it was Winter. When he and Gentry came over for dinner.”

“Why? We were just friends before that. I volunteered as a reader at the library,” I explained.

Pim thought back before answering. “He told Lew Bristol, who told Bill at cards one night. It was Black Friday because Bill was bragging about the deal he’d gotten on an immersion blender that morning.”

Chaya cut in. “And I remember Mindy mentioning it around then, too. Remember, I asked you about it?”

I’d just assumed it was one of those funny, small-town rumors. But I never would have guessed it had come straight from the source. The lying source.

“But, why?” I asked, feeling like a fool.

Pim shrugged. “Tale as old as time, isn’t it? Lonely older man and a young, respectful cutie with good manners and a tight little bod.”

Bill cleared his throat loudly from behind him before setting a platter of muffins down and pinching Pim’s side. “Watch it, old man.”

Pim grinned at his husband. “I was watching it. I believe that’s what got me into trouble.”

Bill leaned down and kissed Pim gently on the lips while smoothing down an errant strand of hair. “You okay?” he murmured softly.

Pim nodded. They shared a beat of eye contact before Bill returned to the kitchen. Pim watched him walk away before turning back to the table and fanning his face. “Lordy, that man.”

Chaya was pissed. “Barney would have wanted to push Truman into needing him. Make him scared and lonely. Make him need an older man to look out for him. That asshole. I knew he wanted you barefoot and pregnant like a good little wifey.”

I ignored her even though she was kind of right. He’d made plenty of statements implying I’d be better off at home, without my shop.

Mikey met my eyes. “Did you see Gene Stanner behind the wheel either time?”

I closed my eyes and shook my head. “No. At the shop, I only saw the tail of the truck as it raced off. But I recognized the beige-and-orange truck and the red bumper sticker. And then yesterday, I recognized the truck and bumper sticker again, but the sun was glaring off the windshield.”

“So it might not have been Gene,” Chaya added.

“Which gels with what Kimber said at the drunken girls’ night.

That Gene hasn’t gotten behind the wheel since losing his license.

Wait. Hasn’t that truck been sitting over at the Chop Shop?

Beige with an orange stripe down the side? Not a very common combo.”

Pim lowered his voice. “Supposedly Gene wrecked it and got a DUI at the same time. Jim fixed it up, but Gene probably can’t pick it up from the shop without a license, and Kimber doesn’t want it sitting in the driveway anyway. So there it sits with no one driving it.”

Except I remembered Sam joking about Aster Valley being a small enough town to leave the keys in the car at the auto shop.

“You mean where anyone can drive it,” I corrected with a groan. “Jim Browning leaves all the keys in the trucks once the service has been paid for. That means it could have been anyone. We’re back to square one.”

“No,” Chaya insisted. “Barney knew it was Gene’s truck, and he knows you’re scared of Gene for good reason.

Let’s talk this through as if it’s Barney.

He takes the truck, tries to scare you in December.

Accidentally hits Pim and Mikey which does its job of scaring you anyway. You cling on to him— ouch !”

I pulled my hand back from poking her. “I did not cling.”

“You agree to let him coddle you,” she semi-corrected.

“And he gets the dating scenario he’d already begun to tell people about.

All goes fine for him until Sam arrives.

Patrick does his usual shitty harassment on the highway.

Sam enters the picture. Barney recognizes him as a threat and decides to scare you back into his own arms again. ”

Pim tapped his chin and continued the narrative. “Barney starts the fire. He probably didn’t mean for it to burn the whole building down. Maybe it was meant to be small, but you probably had plenty of flammable items in there.”

I cut in, nodding. “Essential oils, garlic, cinnamon. Heck, even orange peel has limonene which is a known…” I drifted off when I caught myself digressing. “Anyway, yes. It could have easily gotten out of hand.”

Chaya jumped back in. “He was careful to save Aunt Berry’s notebook before setting the place on fire.”

Mikey sighed. “And brought it to you like a damned hero.”

I thought through more of the week’s events. “The fire was started by someone who went in through the front door of the shop. Barney had a key.”

Mikey was getting angry. “And then he had the gall to take Gene’s truck again and run you two off the mountain road? Is he a monster?”

I nodded slowly, putting the pieces together. “Yes. I think he is.”

“Damn. Now I really wish I’d brought this up at the hospital,” Chaya said worriedly. “I just thought it was bad best-friend behavior to yell at you when you were busy tossing your cookies.”

Tossing my… oh god!

I looked over at Mikey. “He poisoned the peanut butter cookies.”

Chaya asked what I meant, so I explained. “Barney brought me some organic, plant-based peanut butter cookies yesterday to prove there was such a thing. I ate several and then vomited.”

Mikey frowned. “But I had one, and Tiller had one, too.”

I shook my head. “I had like four or five, since he kept talking about how much trouble he’d gone to and wondering if I’d really liked them. But if he used the compound I’m thinking of?—”

“The America Pennsylvania one!” Chaya said excitedly.

“ Myrica pensylvanica ,” I corrected, “which he could easily have taken from my shop. It only works to induce vomiting if you take a higher amount of it. That would explain why you could have one or two and not get sick.”

Chaya was pissed. “And that’s when he planted the beads in the saddlebags. I’m going to kill the little toad.”

Mikey nodded enthusiastically, but Pim shook his head. “Children, children. This doesn’t call for some kind of slapdash payback attempt. This calls for a magnificent, well-planned, and expertly executed vengeance extravaganza.”

We all stared at the older man in awe before nodding our allegiance to the master.

Of course, I was the one a little less sure of everything. “But what if he didn’t actually do it?”

Chaya snorted. “Oh, he did it.”

Pim took my words into careful consideration. “We’re going to lay a trap, Mr. Sweet. And only the guilty party will feel the cold metal bite of its teeth when it snaps closed.”

If I’d felt like a player in an overly dramatic production of a stage mystery then, it was nothing compared to how I felt after we’d concocted our actual plan and Chaya had suggested using costumes, “In order to get the full effect.”

I really loved costumes, but now definitely wasn’t the time for them.