Gourdfellas Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  PRAISE FOR The Gourdmother

  “A lovely and fascinating mystery I thoroughly enjoyed . . . A wonderful, satisfying read.”—Earlene Fowler, author of

  Delectable Mountains and The Saddlemaker’s Wife

  “In gourd artist Bruce’s strong debut . . . [she] deftly weaves insightful instructions on dealing with grief and loss as well as details of the ancient craft of gourding into the plot.”—Publishers Weekly

  “Appealing protagonist Lili Marino charts a courageous and kindly course in this trenchant exploration of damaged lives.”—Carolyn Hart, author of Death of the Party

  “A compelling mystery with realistically drawn, nuanced characters and a compassionate heroine yearning for healing. Maggie Bruce captures the tantalizing charm—and unveils the dark secrets—of a small town where newcomers are not the only outsiders.”—Rochelle Krich, author of

  Grave Endings

  “What a terrific debut! In much the same way as her protagonist transforms gourds into personal and unique works of art, Maggie Bruce takes the traditional village mystery, moves it to upstate New York, populates it with believable and complicated people and issues—and with knife-edge sharpness turns it into something new and uniquely hers.”

  —Gillian Roberts, author of the Amanda Pepper Mysteries

  “A great cozy mystery . . . [Lili’s] mystery solving is reminiscent of a good episode of Murder She Wrote or The Snoop Sisters. Maggie Bruce does a wonderful job creating characters that are both memorable and endearing . . . If you are a fan of Jan Karon, Dorothy Bodoin, or Lilian Jackson Braun, The Gourdmother is certainly the book for you! Good work, Ms. Bruce! We look forward to other Lili Marino adventures.”—Roundtable Reviews

  “[A] fine amateur sleuth who-done-it.”—The Best Reviews

  “Maggie Bruce writes with extraordinary warmth and understanding about such things as love and loss, families and communities. The Gourdmother is a wonderful start to a fine new series.”—Nancy Pickard, author of

  The Whole Truth

  “In addition to the smoothly crafted mystery itself, I loved Maggie Bruce’s depiction of friendship—the quirks and false starts before trust takes root. She knows how small-town America can guard its secrets, and she is wise enough to let her story flow from this knowing. The gourd lore is fascinating and left this reader saying, ‘More, please.’”

  —Margaret Maron, author of Winter’s Child

  “An intense who-done-it . . . well written and entertaining.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

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  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  GOURDFELLAS

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / March 2007

  Copyright © 2007 by Wallace Systems, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without

  permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of

  the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  eISBN : 978-0-425-21226-4

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design are trademarks belonging

  to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Bruce and Mark and Jeremy, forever my guys.

  Acknowledgments

  My writing life wouldn’t be the same without the feedback I get from Judy Greber, Triss Stein, Jane Olsen, and Meredith Cole. I’m grateful for their perceptive comments, the kindness with which they were delivered, and the camaraderie of sharing manuscripts and laughter, with some good political rants thrown in for good measure.

  My gourding life has blossomed thanks to Dyan Mai Peterson, Bob and Kathy James, Joy Jackson, and all the dedicated gourders I’ve met at shows and festivals and online. What a great and generous community you all make up!

  My life has been enriched by so many wonderful, loving people that I can’t even start to name each of them, or these acknowledgments would become a novella. Still, I need to thank Irving Weiss, Karen Bozdech, Steven and Debra Weiss, Ken Wallace, Ben Davis, Anita and David Orlow, Lynn and Michael Hassan, Maria Nardone, Jan Roth, Nancy Gallagher, my friends at Gilda’s, and the Gogs—Judy, Margaret, Sue, Lia, Linda, and Nancy—for the love and support that has helped get me through some interesting (as the Chinese saying goes) times.

  Most of all, even though the book is dedicated to them, I thank my guys—Bruce, Mark, and Jeremy—for all the ways you’ve shown your love, and for letting me love you with all my heart and soul.

  Chapter 1

  Sometimes you get an early warning signal. You sense that the placid surface of your life is about to be disturbed by a storm. Maybe it takes a while for the pressure to build enough for you to recognize that you’ll have to spend enormous time and energy to return things to their proper places. I knew something was wrong as soon as my
friend Nora got into my car.

  She didn’t look at me, didn’t start chattering about her son Scooter, didn’t kiss my cheek in a spontaneous burst of affection. Maybe she was simply distracted, but I had the sense that something was bothering her in a deeper place. I offered a silent prayer that whatever it was could be chalked up to a bad day. My already overloaded life—clients with freelance writing work they wanted done yesterday; a juried art show for which I needed to have twelve new pieces ready next week; once a week sessions as a volunteer mediator—had me scheduled to the nanosecond. Good, bad, or neutral, I couldn’t cram another thing into my life.

  Except, here I was on my way to a town meeting to hear arguments for and against allowing a casino to be built outside of Walden Corners, New York, population 3,245.

  “Where’s Susan?” I asked. Susan Clemants, who got up at five and then taught sixteen-year-olds about the industrial age all day, hated driving after dark. “I thought she was coming with us.”

  Nora buckled her seatbelt and turned to me, her light brown skin glistening with a sheen from the mist that had turned the April evening diaphanous with fog. I switched to low beams as I backed my blue Subaru out of her driveway.

  “She’s driving herself to the meeting.” Nora sounded troubled, her voice tentative. “Said she felt as though she needed to be on her own. That she was tired of arguing with the rest of us and upset because we didn’t get it. I don’t like this whole casino question, Lili. Who ever thought it would cause so much trouble?”

  Susan had been adamant. A casino would provide reparations to Native Americans for centuries of injustice. She didn’t want to hear about how much it would change everyday life—which was exactly what concerned many of us.

  “I know. But she’s entitled to her own opinion, right?” I groaned and glanced at the clock on the dash. We would just about make it in time for the town council meeting, scheduled to start promptly at seven. “I hope she’s not really serious about not coming with us. I disagree with her but so what? We’re friends. We’re grown-ups. Don’t you think she’s overreacting?”

  “Elizabeth phoned her.” This time, Nora’s voice was barely audible. “She stomped up one side and down the other of poor Susan. Said Susan would be singing a different tune when some lowlife ended up peeing in her front yard at three in the morning after the casino plied him with drinks to keep him at the tables. Said that if Susan wanted to save the world that was her business but a lot of other people had worked too hard all their lives to build a community here.

  And they weren’t ready to give it up to satisfy either greed or guilt.”

  “Sometimes, Elizabeth just likes to push people’s buttons. I mean, she’s an attorney. She loves arguing.” I still had moments of wariness around Elizabeth, whose sharp tongue and quick mind served her better in court than it did around a dinner table.

  “So does Susan. At least about this casino thing. I still can’t believe what she said to me.”

  I glanced away from the road to see whether Nora’s face was as troubled as her voice. She bit her lower lip and shook her head, her gaze fixed on her knees.

  “Nora?” I said as gently as I could.

  She lifted her head. “Susan said, ‘Of all people, you should be thinking about justice. I’m sure your daddy would have been on the side of the oppressed.’ Can you believe it? Now all black people have to support the casino. We’ve been friends since third grade, but that’s the first time Susan ever told me I wasn’t black enough for her white liberal self.”

  Maybe it was possible for friendships to get lost in a swirl of politics and misunderstanding, but I didn’t want to believe that about this group. Nora Johnson, Elizabeth Conklin, Susan Clemants, and Melissa Paul had been sharing the triumphs and challenges of their lives since grade school. Allowing me into their circle six months after I moved to Walden Corners from Brooklyn was one of the things that made my life full and rich. I didn’t want an argument about a casino to jeopardize the monthly poker games that I’d come to count on for good company and the occasional ten dollar win.

  “I don’t know what to say, Nora. Isn’t Susan allowed to have a difference of opinion without being judged by her friends? She wasn’t being intentionally mean and she sure wasn’t being selfish. She’s not the only who feels that the casino is a pretty good way to make up for social and economic injustice. Nathaniel Bartle said it loud and clear at the very first meeting.”

  Nathaniel and Susan did have a point, as did the people touting the economic advantages of bringing in the casino. But that was one side. The arguments on the other side, about safety and preserving the nature of the community, made a lot of sense, too. I’d begun to feel like a shuttlecock in a game of opinion-badminton. This casino business had turned the political into something personal.

  In a few weeks, the community would vote on the issue—but meanwhile the rationality factor seemed to drop as the emotional factor went way up. Homeowners put up signs supporting the casino, and those signs disappeared in the middle of the night. Graffiti, not quite nasty but still unsettling, was scrawled across the wall of a store whose owner opposed the casino. Discussions in the diner and in shops all over town started at a decibel level usually reserved for talking back to the television news or scolding misbehaving dogs.

  I flipped my directional signal and turned into town, joining the line of cars that snaked their way up the hill toward the Walden High School parking lot. From the look of things, everyone within twenty miles of town had something to say about this casino.

  I didn’t know the man standing at the front of the stage, but I feared for his health.

  His face, pale when he’d started to address the noisy crowd, had grown so red that I worried about burst blood vessels. His eyes bulged, and a geyser of fury erupted in a sibilant explosion from his thin mouth.

  “Sin and salaciousness! Steal your money, sure, but casinos steal the soul of a place. Sorrow and sickness, that’s what’s in store!” A thick fist pounded the podium, rattling the microphone. His entire body trembled with righteous fury as his exhortation spilled over the packed auditorium of Walden High School.

  I ducked, not wanting to get splattered with all that anger and alliteration. Melissa Paul, owner of the Taconic Inn, rubbed her toes and suppressed a giggle.

  “A little over the top, but he’s right,” Nora whispered into my left ear. “You want to lose your money, go to Atlantic City. Don’t mess with my town.”

  Elizabeth Conklin, seated on the other side of Nora, clenched her jaw. “And definitely don’t preach at me as though you’ve heard The Word,” she said.

  Ira Jackson, a small, pinched man with a small, pinched mind, who just happened to own the land on which the casino was to be built, sprang from his seat two rows in front of us. “That’s a pile of horse manure. You all have any better idea how to pay for the roads and the schools around here? You done something lately to make jobs for the farmers run off their land by the corporations? You gonna donate a new wing for the county hospital? We need that damn casino, that’s all!”

  Heads turned toward his reedy voice, and a tornado of shouts swirled through the room.

  “It’s someone else’s time to speak. Sit down, Mr. Jackson!” Joseph Trent, the town council member who was chairing the meeting, tapped on the microphone.

  “No casino in my town!” another voice shouted.

  A compact, open-faced woman whose pixie haircut made her blue eyes seem huge, took the microphone from Trent’s hand and said, “Would you all calm down? This meeting is for the council to find out what the citizens of our town think about this damn casino. I want my voice to be heard. I’ll do whatever I can to keep Walden Corners just as it is, but we have to follow procedure. If you have something to say, sign up to speak, don’t—”

  “We need jobs!” someone shouted from the back.

  “Who was that?” I asked. “I thought she was going to turn things around for a second there.”

  No
ra said, “Trisha Stern. She’s lived up here for about three years. A physical therapist. This is getting way out of hand.”

  “Order! Order!” Joseph Trent yelled into the mike, pounding a gavel on the table in front of him and glaring over the top of his glasses. “The chair recognizes Marjorie Mellon.”

  The scheduled speakers, lined up in the center aisle, shifted forward as Marjorie headed to the stage. A stubby man in a denim jacket and battered John Deere cap moved to the front of the line. Susan Clemants and her red tresses followed right behind him. I glanced over at Elizabeth, who appeared to be looking at everything in the auditorium except Susan.

  The crowd continued to hurl shouts as a string bean of a woman jogged to the microphone, her gray curls bobbing and her dark eyes focused straight ahead. Where was the civility, the due process, the tolerance for other points of view? This roomful of ordinarily respectable—and respectful—citizens was behaving like a mob driven by bloodlust. I half expected to see Sydney Carton kneeling in front of the guillotine as the crowd cheered.

  “When other people spoke, I was quiet. Now I want you to give me my two minutes.” Marjorie’s back was erect and her face stern. “I may be a cleaning woman, but I know a thing or two about business around here.”

  As she paused and scanned the crowd, I looked around too. Marjorie ran the only commercial cleaning service in town, which meant that the business climate in Walden Corners was of great importance to her.

  “I know we need to build a new wing on the elementary school and buy two new snowplows. We need some kind of recreation center so that our children have something to do besides playing around with drugs and each other. Our police force has three computers that break down every other day and two cruisers with over one hundred thousand miles on them. The tax base of Walden Corners won’t even support those crucial things. Plus, with the cost of natural gas going out of sight, you all are going to have to send your kids to school in their parkas and mittens because where we’ll find the money to cover the heating bills is a big mystery. So one alternative for paying for these essentials is to raise the taxes of every single citizen in this town.”