Reflections - Til Death

I read Til Death in less than a week and a half. The tenth mystery is a page turner. Annette ratcheted up tension and piled on complications throughout. I spotted her red herrings but didn’t figure which was hiding in plain sight until Zoe was poisoned.

Character conflicts permeate the mystery.

Franklin’s bitchy estranged wife annoys everyone but turns cooperative when she discovers Franklin was murdered. She gives Pete the clue that solves the mystery.

Charles Davis, the obnoxious political opponent who lost to Franklin, offers to work under Zoe because she hasn’t finished the training. Zoe accepts. She needs help. But was this a mistake? 

The solution to the problem of who will walk Zoe down the aisle—which Annette admitted to me she didn’t know when she started the novel—was most satisfying. Zoe’s estranged step-father Tom, who wouldn’t talk to Zoe because she falsely thought he murdered someone; Pete’s father Harry, who has Alzheimer's and could be too confused to manage the role; and Zoe’s half-brother Scott, who said he wouldn’t attend the wedding because Pete is trying to convict Scott’s son, were her choices. She decides to walk down the aisle alone. But on her wedding day, all three offer their hands and walk her down the aisle together. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I read. 

As if I needed more romance, Annette pleased me by ending the mystery and the series with Zoe and Pete exchanging vows they’d composed. In the emotion of the ceremony, Zoe forgets hers part way through. Pete whispers, “Just talk to me.” (page 260) 

She does.

Annette tied up loose ends but left plenty of character conflicts in case editors request “A Zoe Chambers Mystery #11.”

 

 Reflections - Trucks and Men

Maverick

Last year, Matt, the owner and brains of Cummings Auto, tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “The Colorado’s rusting underneath.” Our trusted, optimistic mechanic wiped his hands on an oil-stained cloth and used his calm, respectful voice. “It passed inspection this year. It may get one more year, but . . .”

Spence and I had bought the 2008 pickup under Obama’s Cash for Clunkers. Since the summer of 2009, Spence drove the red pickup over 300,000 miles. He wanted to drive it until he could replace it with an all electric truck. Would the industry produce one soon enough?

One day he grinned and turned his computer screen to show me Elon Musk’s Tesla. “It goes from zero to sixty miles per hour in six-point-five seconds.” His voice softened. “It isn’t available yet.”

The Cybertruck looked like a vehicle from a science fiction movie and had a price to match. I hoped Spence would find a more down to earth choice.

He followed the ups and way-downs of Lordstown Motors. Ten minutes into its first test drive, the Endurance's battery caught on fire and flames engulfed the pickup. Then investors sued the owners for fraud.

Spence also checked the F-150. “It’s available. All electric. But it’s too big for our garage.”

He considered buying a used pickup to give the auto industry more time. Then prices soared, and most trucks would comfortably fit the Jolly Green Giant. The only appropriate pickup he found had rusted underneath and wouldn’t pass inspection.

The second week of June, Spence spotted an announcement for the Ford Maverick. Every night, he studied options and gave me reports.

It’s only a hybrid, but it gets great gas mileage.

It’s half the price of all electric pickups.

It’s size makes it easy to park.

Meanwhile, the Colorado shed pieces during road trips.

Friday evening June 18, Spence asked, “Do you want a date?”

I emptied the sink strainer. “I’m too tired to go anywhere.”

He set Rills on the floor and patted the cat-hair covered space beside him. “It’s a sofa date. You can help me order a Maverick from the Ford website.”

I replaced the strainer, dried my hands, and plopped down beside him.

Spence shifted his laptop, so we could both see, and clicked the Reserve Now button. He scrolled through images of the basic truck in grays, whites, and black. “I like the red.” He clicked the next model up for additional colors and selected “Hot Pepper Red.”

With the color settled, we zipped through options adding a bed extender, manual rear sliding window, and spray-in bedliner. Then came the dealer selection—Crivelli in Franklin, McCandless in Meadville, Grove City Ford, or Titusville Ford.

Spence squinted. “It says Titusville’s the closest.”

“That can't be right. Titusville is hell and gone from here.” I grabbed my computer tablet and searched the location of Titusville Ford—north on Route 173 to Guys Mills. “That’s closer than the other places. But why is it called Titusville Ford?”

“I’m nervous about them. They could be knuckleheads like the guy who sold us the Colorado years ago.” Spence scrunched his forehead. “We know the Crivelli guys are reasonable.”

“Nine and a half miles to unknowns, or seventeen miles to reliable folks. You decide.” I got up.

Rills hopped onto my place.

Spence grumbled, twisted his torso side to side, and hit a button. “We can try Titusville Ford. How bad can they be?” His posture straightened. “It says the dealer will reach out to me within twenty-four hours.” He closed his laptop and petted Rills.

The next day, Spence checked his email hourly. No dealer messages.

“It’s Saturday, Spence. They’ll probably contact you Monday.”

“Car dealers are open Saturdays,” he muttered but reduced his checks to every three hours. When Spence still hadn’t heard by Tuesday, he emailed the help contact on the reservation website. Titusville Ford hasn’t responded to my Maverick reservation. What’s the next step?

Wednesday, someone emailed Spence a phone number for Wentworth Ford. Puzzled, Spence tapped in the number, reached the service department, and got transferred to a secretary who connected Spence with Jason.

Eavesdropping, I gathered the dealership had changed owners. They were building a new showroom, and Jason hadn’t seen the papers in the confusion.

Spence repeated the information that he’d typed into the computer and hung up. “It’s ordered. Write a check to Wentworth Ford. Jason said to take it to him in Meadville Monday.”

Monday, Spence’s DuckDuckGo search only listed a McCandless Ford in Meadville. Gritting his teeth, he called the service department at Wentworth, asked for Jason, and listened. He rolled his eyes. “They’re in Guys Mills, not Meadville. Want to come with me?”

In the Colorado, we moseyed past calf-high corn fields.

View from Wentworth Ford's Sales Window

“Can you hear it? The engine’s misfiring.” Spence gripped the steering wheel. “It never did that going downhill before.”

I listened to the gravely rumble—chugga, chugga, ooof. The intermittent vibrations under my feet and fanny convinced me the engine was having a heart attack.

“Somethings wrong.” Spence took his foot off the accelerator. “I’m turning around.”

“But we’re almost there.”

“How many miles do you want to walk home?”

Not nine and a half. Summoning all my energy, I forced myself to sit quietly and breathe.

Spence turned the truck around in a gravel lot.

The Colorado chugged south. About three miles from home, the front driver's-side wheel CLUNKED.

Had it fallen off? I clutched the grab handle.

The truck lurched to the berm.

Spence muscled the steering wheel.

 The truck swung back onto the road.

“Something fell off.” He slowed but didn’t stop.

At home, he parked out front instead of in the garage. “It’s easier to tow from here.”

I turned on the Crosstrek and we headed north again. The drive seemed longer than nine and a half miles—disorienting, but not as disorienting as the appearance of the dealership.

Instead of floor to ceiling glass windows, the white aluminum-siding concealed everything inside. Outside hung blue signs—FORD in a large, sticking-out oval, WENTWORTH AUTO SALES in faded letters on the building, and labels above three cottage-like doors. Service. Parts. Sales.

We stepped inside the “Sales” door to white-washed cement brick walls. Three wooden desks with mismatched, well-worn chairs greeted us. No shiny vehicles. No new-car smell. No plastic plants. I expected Sam Spade to walk across the tile floor and say, “When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it,” but the room echoed silence.

After a few minutes, a man, who resembled a weightlifter with a small shaved head, broad shoulders, and muscular arms, got up from a desk behind a glass partition at the very end of the room. He called, “I’ll be with you in two minutes,” then disappeared through the door to the parts section.

Spence perched on the edge of a desk.

I perched beside him and gazed out a tiny window at the corn field across the road.

In two minutes, the man came back. “I’m Jason. How can I help you?”

“I called this morning.”

Jason’s eyes scanned the room as if trying to locate something.

“I’m Spencer Wells. We’re here to put a deposit on a Maverick.”

“Oh . . .” Jason made the long trek to his desk and back. “I remember now. A fella with the last name of Grace called too. I had you confused . . . Grace . . . Wells.”

Spence and I exchanged worried glances.

Jason accepted the deposit check, copied our driver’s licenses and insurance card, then handed us receipts. “Paperwork is confusing here. We bought Wentworth Ford and sold this building to a window factory. We’re moving to a building that’s still under construction in Titusville.” He widened his stance, clasped his hands behind his back, and, finally, put on a car salesman’s smile. “Your truck will arrive there in the fall.”

My shoulders slumped. “Titusville is a long way from us. We picked this dealership because the computer said you were closest.”

Jason waved an arm in the direction of Titusville. “We can work that out. Once the truck arrives, I can have someone drive the vehicle and paperwork to you.” His salesman’s smile grew jack-o’-lantern large.

After all the Colorado drama and the disorienting dealership building, I neglected to check the odometer for the trip. Driving it twice, however, I distrusted Ford’s posted nine and a half miles. I pulled up Goggle Maps.

Wells Wood to Wentworth Ford in Guys Mills - 15.6 miles

Wells Wood to the new Titusville Ford location - 32 miles

Sheesh.

Since we bought the pickup as if making a purchase on Amazon—with no test drive and no haggling—we might as well take delivery like Amazon. We would accept Jason’s offer to drive the Maverick to us. 

In the meantime, the Colorado saga continued. Spence drove the old pickup to Matt’s the following morning. On the way, the brakes alternated from press-against-the-floor mushy to drum-tight hard.

“All the symptoms mean one thing,” Matt said after a short test drive. “It’s a faulty wheel bearing.”

“I understand the steering and braking problems,” Spence said. “But how can wheel bearings make the engine misfire?”

Matt pointed with his finger to an imaginary wheel bearing in his other hand. “A sensor on the wheel bearing sends messages to the engine making it misfire.” Matt kept the Colorado. “It’s too dangerous to drive.”

But he had a packed schedule. The pickup would have to sit for a week until its inspection appointment on July sixth. We waited for Matt to work his magic on the Colorado so it would run through the summer.

Though Matt didn’t get to the old pickup on the sixth, seventh, or eighth, Spence didn’t worry. “Matt’s busy. His lot is full. He has half his staff. He’ll get to it.”

At four-thirty last Friday afternoon, Matt called. His cheery voice bubbled through the line. “The truck’s done. It’s good. You can get another year out of it. Probably two.”

We only need a season to free ourselves from dropping truck pieces and four digit repair bills.

That’s assuming the Ford factory in Mexico builds our hot pepper red Maverick on schedule despite what Spence labels the “dam pandemic supply chain failure.”

Wentworth Auto Sales

Reflections - Jinxing the Fence

Tomato Blossom

Spence dreams of deer leaping over his garden fence. I’m haunted by earworms of his sad voice saying, You’ll jinx the fence.

His tomato plant torment began at the end of winter. Night after night, Spence tramped down the spiral stairs to the basement. He tenderly finger-pushed each seed—first Wood’s Famous Brimmer, then Amish Paste, Marglobe, Sub Arctic Plenty, Jersey Devil, and Roma—into his special mix of potting soil and extra perlite. With cats circling his legs, he set trays of planted seeds on heating pads. He watered, transplanted sprouts, and set baby tomato plants under grow lights on a table he’d built for nurturing the precious seedlings. He repeated the process until he had almost two hundred, healthy tomato plants.

In May, he hauled the seedlings to the hoop house to harden off.

The weather didn’t cooperate.

Weeks of temperatures too low or soil too wet delayed planting. The healthy seedlings grew into straggly teenage tomato plants and needed to get into the ground.

I strapped on knee pads, knelt by the string marking row, and dug. The wide trowel scritch-scratched against rocks. I dug deeper and deeper to make room for a handful of Spence’s compost and another of crushed egg shells under each of the eighteen tomato seedlings I transplanted.

Spence could have done the job faster, but he dragged various lengths of pvc pipes to construct the garden fence.

Keeping a safe distance from the scraping trowel and long pipes, robins hopped in the tilled soil and cocked their heads to hunt earthworms.

Progress.

However, Spence returned from his next morning’s garden check with clenched teeth. “A critter ripped out some tomato plants.”

In the garden, ripped-out plants littered the walkways and broken plants stuck in the mud. The critter had also left empty spaces where seedlings had been. Deer prints littered the garden.

“Deer didn’t eat my tomatoes last year.” He growled. “And they were outside the fence all summer.”

Filling in the spaces of lost plants and extending the row a tad, I transplanted eighteen more straggly seedlings. When I brushed against the leaves, they released a pungent, green fragrance.

Spence added sections to the fence and transplanted even more seedlings.

The deer came back.

I helped counter the deer destruction three more times. On one sunny day, Spence, who calls me a delicate butterfly, limited my garden time to forty-five minutes. I would have complained, but the sun spoke louder than Spence. Sweat added a wide, wet band to my sun hat, saturated my sports bra, and rolled off my nose onto wilted tomato plants. Pooped, I welcomed his shooing me inside.

Spence worked on the fence and infilled empty spaces daily.

Last Monday morning, the first full day of summer, he stood by the sliding glass door and hooted. “The doe’s standing in the asparagus patch and staring at the fence. It baffles her.”

Joining Spence and gazing at the five-foot high deer netting held up by pvc pipes, I remembered the times deer netting ensnared my feet. Hooves could get tangled too. No wonder she stared.

The doe ambled to the far end of the south garden, looked longingly through the fence, and left.

View of South Garden from the Deck

“Great!” My mouth watered in anticipation of the sweet, tangy sauce that Spence makes with homegrown Wells Wood tomatoes. “I’ll write a blog about the fence protecting our tomatoes.”

“Don’t!” Spence’s sunny demeanor clouded into a dark thunderhead. “You’ll jinx the fence.” And later that afternoon, as if to underscore his warning about my blog topic, he tilted his head toward the north garden blueberry cage where he’d help lift a cover cloth over the seven foot high frame. “You can say we’re getting old. We hardly argued.”

I fastened the cloth to the frame with a cable tie. “I’ve already written about blueberries. Twice.”

“You can never have too many blueberry stories.”

I didn’t take his advice. Instead of forcing a blueberry story out of nothing, I pondered an arc for the obvious conflict of the deer and the tomato seedlings. 

The next morning, Spence slung open the glass door and shouted. “Get out of my garden!” He turned to the cats and me. “Did you see that? The doe was in the garden. She leapt over my fence to get away.” He clenched his fists and shook his shoulders as if to rid himself of the image.

Perhaps I jinxed the fence.

Your thoughts aren’t connected to the deer’s stomach.

I should have listened to his plea and worked on a boring blueberry saga.

Deer eat five hundred kinds of plants. They take what’s available.

But the deer didn’t eat tomatoes last year.

They were trellised last year. Weather kept Spence from building the trellises first this year.

Wednesday morning, Spence came back from his garden check with slumped shoulders. “I’m crying over my lost tomatoes.” He plunked his straw sunhat on top of the coat stand. “What’s the use of planting more. The deer will just eat them.”

Spence had a point. He’d planned for six or seven tomato rows. Of the hundred and ten seedlings we planted in four rows, deer destroyed over sixty before we got a single green tomato. With all the infilling, Spence will be lucky to start the fifth row.

“It’s just chaos out there now.” He scowled at the garden through the glass door.

Rubbing his back, I gazed at the garden too. His plan of keeping the six varieties of tomatoes in separate sections got jumbled by infilling empty spaces. Deer ate plants nearly as fast as Spence replaced them. He had a limited number of plants while the deer had all summer to gobble. To top it off, nature, which abhors a vacuum, filled every cubic millimeter of bare soil with weeds—

a very different picture from the neat garden the first day I’d helped Spence.

Fortunately, he didn’t give up. He infilled and rebuilt torn parts of the fence. Next week he’ll buy more deer netting to replace the ripped parts and more row cover cloth to baffle the deer. “I’ll hang the row cover over the deer netting. If they can’t see where they’re going, they won’t jump in.”

The first tomato formed on a Sub Arctic Plenty plant, and when I asked Spence if he had a chore for me in the garden he said, “You might as well infill tomatoes. The deer are running out of things to eat.”

He dreams of deer leaping into the garden.

I hear his sad-voice warning.

But we still hope for fresh-from-the-vine, ripe tomatoes.

First Tomato - Sub Arctic Plenty

BLUEBERRY BLOGS

“Blueberry Bunnies” July 7, 2019

“Cat-Escaping Craziness” June 28, 2020

 Reflections - Melodies for Richard

Red-Winged Blackbird

Stuffing masks into our pockets, Spence and I walked into Brugger Funeral Home Friday, June 4. Unmasked, suited men on either side of the atrium inclined their heads and, in unison, said, “Welcome.”

Directions would have been more helpful, but I inclined my head back and walked down the marble hall until I spotted a sign above a doorway. Michael, for my second cousin Richard Douglas Michael.

 

He was eleven years older than me. We saw each other at family gatherings on Edith’s (his aunt’s, my great aunt’s) farm. I ran beside the brook with other children. He talked and laughed with the young adults on the rise by the breezeway. Over the years, he greeted me at family funerals with a broad smile that lit his rosy cheeks. I sat near him at the luncheon after Aunt Edith’s service. He related an adventure of climbing a pole for Penelec in gusting winds.

“You mean,” I asked in awe, “while we’re huddled at home waiting for the electricity to come on, you’re climbing the utility pole in the snowstorm?”

He chuckled. “That’s right.”

His wife Charlene gazed up at him with love and admiration.

I’d never top his pole climbing to help people, but I hoped by attending his funeral and saying goodbye to Richard in person, I would support his wife and sisters.

With Spence following, I stepped into the Michael room. Aisles separated the eight-chair middle section from the narrower side sections. Seventy to eighty unmasked strangers sat between me and Richard’s open casket in front. I whispered to Spence, “We don’t need our masks.” Shivering, half in thrill and half in unease of finding myself in a group so large after more than a year of pandemic isolation, I scanned the room for Richard’s sisters.

His older sister Norma, who taught both Spence and me junior high biology, sat in the last row. With backs to us, neither she nor her husband Bob saw us enter. Not wanting to shout and knowing I wouldn’t be heard over the murmur of conversations, I reached my hand toward Bob’s shoulder. A woman at the end of the row, who Norma would later introduce as their daughter Kathy, motioned for Bob to turn around before I made contact.

The three stood. When Bob and Norma last visited us at Wells Wood, conversations had flowed. But, after Norma’s alto, “I’m glad you came,” and Bob’s bass “Good to see you,” silence fell. With the pandemic more under control, I wasn’t sure how to greet someone I hadn’t seen for a couple of years. Bob stretched his hand to Spence. The rest of us nodded like bobbleheads.

From the front of the room, Charlene glided toward us. She wrapped me in a bear hug. “Thank you for coming.”

“I’m so sorry, Charlene,” I said breaking away. “At least you had a long time together.”

She glanced toward the casket. “We did. Sixty years,” and she smiled Richard’s broad smile before stepping aside to make room for Nancy, Richard’s younger sister.

More bobblehead nods. Our greetings would have amused Richard.

“How is your quilting coming?” I asked after condolences and thanks were exchanged.

“Fine. Friday is the day I’m with my quilting friends . . .” Her voice trailed off at the reminder of why she missed the gathering that day. “I make pottery now too.”

Grateful I’d had time to connect with relatives, I sat between Norma and Spence.

Is it wrong to enjoy a funeral?

Norma leaned toward me. “The people in the rows ahead of us are relatives.” Then she pointed to specific people. "There’s Little Richard, one of Richard’s four sons.” Her litany continued, names muddled in my head, and the music started. Norma pointed to the woman playing an electric keyboard. “That’s the sister of—.” She said a name, but I forgot.

Sitting on a bench, the musician stared at music resting on a wide rack, played, and sang a song I hadn’t heard before. The words flowed from her heart, but her pitch only blended with the melody half of the time.

Taking steps in time with the music, Reverend Mark O’Hern, as tall and slender as one of the utility poles Richard had climbed, entered. Reverend O’Hern prayed, praised Richard with facts that matched those in the obituary, and prayed some more. The service ended with the reverend leaving while the musician played the same song.

Screenshot of Richard's Obituary

Halfway through, the music rack popped loose. It fell backward sending a white binder up then down adding an unwritten percussive thud to the song.

Relatives in front of me straightened in their chairs.

The musician sang and played without the music.

A man near her picked up the rack and pressed it against the keyboard frame.

The rack fell back to the floor.

The woman kept playing and singing.

He pressed.

The rack fell.

After his third failed attempt, she stopped. “Hold the music for me,” she said to the man trying yet again to attach the loose rack. To the rest of us she said, “If you know the words, sing along.”

No one sang. Many laughed. I bit my lip so I wouldn’t snicker and checked if Richard wore his wide smile. He didn’t, of course.

Is it wrong to enjoy a funeral?

The music stopped. A funeral director gave announcements in a comforting voice, and we left for our cars.

Spence and I came last in the procession. That suited me fine. All the other cars were freshly-washed city clean. Our Subaru wore its perpetual outer coating of West Creek Road dirt. I concentrated on speeding up and slowing down to keep close, but not too close, to the gray car ahead.

Cottonwood seeds floated past the windshield. Tires hummed on the pavement like a muted drumroll. Flashers blinked and orange funeral flags flapped on each of the nearly thirty vehicles stretched out on the gentle rises and dips in front of me. I silently thanked the stopped drivers for their patience and reveled in the fitting tribute for Richard.

Though running red lights had bothered my elementary-school teacher ethics at first, by the time we neared the cemetery, running red lights made me giddy.

Is it wrong to enjoy a funeral?

The procession wove around curving cemetery lanes and past row after row of American flags left from Memorial Day celebrations.

A man, wearing an orange vest over his suit coat, waved for us to park at the end of the long line. By the time we’d walked to the gathering at a tent, the grandson and granddaughter pallbearers had Richard’s flag-covered casket in place. Spence and I stood outside the tent.

Reverend Mark O’Hern began the service with prayers. A red-winged blackbird sang conk-la-ree.

Two servicemen lifted the flag off the casket, folded the flag with precision, and presented it to Charlene. The red-wing whistled.

The servicemen hustled to join the waiting honor guard. One grabbed a flag. The other grabbed a rifle. The guard shot three eardrum-breaking salutes into the air. The red-winged blackbird commented, chack, chack, chack.

The serviceman at the end of the line dropped his cane and lifted a bugle to his lips. Slow, mournful notes of taps moistened my eyes, and the accompanying red-wing’s trills had me checking my pockets for a handkerchief. None. The cloth mask worked just as well.

Last, Reverend O’Hern invited people to sprinkle holy water on Richard’s casket.

Charlene sprinkled first. She handed the bottle to Nancy then walked to the edge of the tent. Tears streamed down Charlene’s face, but she stood erect and kept her eyes focused on the casket.

Nancy sprinkled water then tapped the casket as if giving her older brother pats on the back.

After Norma sprinkled, she joined us. “I didn’t come to mourn Richard. I came to celebrate him. He had a good, long life.” She turned for one last look at the casket, and the red-winged blackbird trilled.

Now, when I hear a red-wing sing, I’ll remember Richard and the melodies from his funeral.

It isn’t wrong to enjoy a funeral.

Red-winged Blackbird