The Mulberry Tree

At that he gave a big smile to all of the customers, who were looking at him as though wondering if what he’d just said was good or bad, and went outside. Chuckling, feeling that he’d got some of his own back for that coffee, Matt went to his pickup, a dark blue, three-quarter-ton, wide-bed Chevy, and got inside. “Now to the widow’s,” he said, then started the engine, backed out of the parking place, and headed toward Owl Creek Road and the old Hanley place.

Now he was here, and he could put it off no longer. Slowly he got out of the truck and began walking toward the house. He knew it and the grounds well. As kids, he and Rick had ridden their bikes along the creek, then forced their way through the weeds to find the trees that still bore fruit. For three summers, they’d had a roadside fruit stand with produce they’d purloined from the abandoned farm. But they’d had no luck selling much; every other farm in Calburn also had a roadside stand.

As Matt walked up the path, he looked around. He had to admit that a lot of work had been done in a very short time. He couldn’t stop himself from turning around full circle to see the changes, then gave a low whistle. Someone had paid a lot for this. In fact, someone had paid double and triple to persuade company owners to pull all their men off other jobs and send them here for one day.

Influence and money, he thought. Someone with both had done this.

He walked up the narrow steps to the front door of the house and raised his hand to knock, but the door opened at his touch. He knew the layout of the house well; years ago, he and Rick had forced a window open in the kitchen and often played inside. Also, he used to spend time alone in the house. But then one day he’d found the broken window repaired, and he couldn’t find a way in. He’d told his mother that someone had done some repairs on the old Hanley place, but she hadn’t had the time to be interested.

“Hello?” he called as he stepped inside. “Anyone home?” When he stepped into the big living room, his eyes opened wide in shock. He’d always seen the house in a state of filth and disrepair. To see it clean and filled with furniture startled him. What was more, he liked the furniture. Most people in Calburn went to the local furniture discount store and bought “sets,” whole rooms full of furniture that matched.

“Nice,” Matt said, as he ran his hand across the chintz-covered sofa.

It was at that moment that he smelled food cooking—and the aroma almost made his knees give way under him. In the last months, Matt had found that after being away from his hometown for so many years, he’d become a little particular. He no longer liked food that had “helper” in the name, such as Hamburger Helper and Tuna Helper. Patsy said he’d become uppity, and maybe, when it came to food, he had.

“Oh, hi,” said a woman as she walked into the living room through the doorway that he knew led to the kitchen. She was pretty, he thought. She was small and curvy, wearing light-colored trousers, tennis shoes—real tennis shoes, not those great, hulking running shoes—a T-shirt that didn’t seem to have any writing on it, and an apron. Her apron was white and covered with food stains.

“You must be the contractor,” she said as she held a wooden spoon out toward him. “Would you mind tasting this? I’ve tried it so many times that I can’t tell anymore.”

There was a yellowish gel on the end of the spoon that Matt wasn’t sure he wanted to taste, but the enticement of a pretty woman on the other end of it was more than he could pass up. He couldn’t help giving her a look to let her know that he knew she and his sister-in-law had been discussing him and sex.

When Matt’s tongue made contact with the substance on the spoon, he forgot everything else. “What is that?” he asked, taking the spoon from her and licking it like a child.

“Apple jam with ginger,” she said over her shoulder as she went back to the kitchen.

Matt followed her like a puppy on a string. The sight of the kitchen made his eyes widen.

“I know,” she said, looking up from a pot she was stirring. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”

He had to blink a couple of times as he looked in wonder about the place. The walls had holes in them where someone had ripped the overhead cabinets down. And the lower cabinets looked as though someone had taken a . . . “Chain saw?” he asked.

“The gardeners,” she said as she stirred another pot. There were six burners on the big, professional range, and each one had a pot of something bubbling on top of it. Now that he was closer, he could smell cinnamon, cloves . . .

As though he were a cartoon character following his nose, he let it pull him toward the big pots. “What’re you cooking?” he asked, trying to sound merely polite, rather than desperate.

“It’s too much, isn’t it?” she said with a sigh. “I always do that. When I have a problem, I cook.”

“Was this a big problem or a small one?” There was something red in the pan nearest him.

“Big. This is only half of what I bought today. A funny thing happened to me today. I—” She stopped and looked up at him. “I’m sorry, I’m being rude. I’m Bailey James.” She wiped her hands on her apron and held one out for him to shake.

“Matthew Longacre,” he said, holding her hand, but looking over her head into the pot behind the one filled with something red.

“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I made myself dinner, but I haven’t had time to eat anything. Maybe you’d like to share it.”

Matt pulled his eyes and his nose away from the food and looked down at her. Was this a trick? he wondered. Had Patsy told her he was coming over so that she could cook something to lure him? “Depends on what you’re having,” he said, with as much I-don’t-really-need-food in his voice as he could manage. He had, after all, had one of Ruth Ann’s “special” hamburgers.

“Pigeons. I got them from a man down the road.”

“Old man Shelby,” Matt said, looking at her with wide eyes. The cantankerous old farmer raised the pigeons and sold them to a fancy restaurant in D.C. As far as Matt knew, no one in Calburn had ever cooked a pigeon.

“Yes, that was his name. Lovely man, and so helpful.”

“Shelby,” Matt whispered. The man frequently chased people off his property with a loaded shotgun.

“Do you like pigeon? You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”

“That depends on what Patsy puts in her meat loaf,” he said, but she just looked at him with a polite smile, not understanding his joke. “Yes,” he said at last. “I like pigeon.” I guess, he thought.