Shadow Notes by Laurel Peterson (cool books to read txt) 📗

date. It still didn’t make sense. Why would my going upstairs with Hugh have provoked her to call Pete?

Why would Pete kill Hugh?

Then, with the kind of certainty that always came with intuition, I knew who could tell me. Hetty had been a loner, but even loners told someone when they fell in love, even if it was the person at the pharmacy counter. Homeopathic remedies for sheep diseases.

I scrambled up and headed across the yard.

Ernie looked surprised to see me. “What’s up, Clara? You come with an answer about your Dad’s firm?” He smiled, not believing his own words, and gestured for me to sit. Too antsy, I shook my head.

“Who was Hetty’s vet? Someone who used homeopathic stuff.”

He settled on the couch, gray lines etching his face. “David Warren. You know him, don’t you? He was married to Mary Ellen Winters before he got smart.”

I sat down suddenly.

“Warren’s practice is in Stamford. He and Morty Hein are pretty much the only big animal vets around. David does dogs and cats too, to pay the bills, but I think he likes working with the horses and cows best.”

“At the Christmas party, Hetty mentioned a natural remedy for her sheep. Could he have recommended that?”

“Sure. Warren uses natural remedies a lot. Hein doesn’t think much of that ‘new-fangled’ stuff.” He managed a grin.

“Did Warren attend the funeral?” I was trying to put a face to the name.

“Nice looking guy, gray-haired, tall. He spoke briefly about her and the farm.” He stuttered over his words. I gave him a minute to recover, trying to recall the man.

“Were they close?”

“I wish I knew, Clara.” He rubbed his finger around the diamond stud in his ear. “Hetty became a stranger. I don’t think she let anyone know her.”

Could Warren be Hetty’s affair? If not, would he know if Hetty was having an affair with Pete Samuels?

Ernie let me look up the address in their phone book, and I hugged him goodbye on my way out.

In Connecticut, one goes from lush, large properties surrounded by white fences or charming stone walls to public housing circled with wire fencing like a prison yard with disquieting speed, sometimes in the space of five or six city blocks. In this case, it took ten minutes from my secluded and seemingly safe enclave into the more urban area where Warren practiced. His office was well-located to serve farms like Hetty’s, and the small pet owners that, as Ernie said, paid the bills.

Warren’s clinic resided in a small, golden brick office building. A large apartment complex rose on the right, laundry hanging off its balconies, and on the left was an empty lot and a big hole where someone had started to build several years earlier. Piles of rock and rotting plywood lay stacked behind the eight-foot wire fencing, and flapping signs read, at intervals, “Keep Out.” Given the amount of graffiti on propped-up plywood, the signs didn’t seem to be working all that well.

I arrived just before noon, hoping to find Warren ready for lunch. He had already gone, but his friendly receptionist sent me the next street over to a deli where she said I’d find him sitting at a corner table reading the American Journal of Veterinary Research and eating a ham sandwich.

The deli was crowded, with a long line out the front door, and most of the tables filled with cops and road crews working their way through big sandwiches or plates of rice and beans. I edged through the din, trying not to bump too many elbows. When I pulled out a chair and sat down at Warren’s table, he gave me a sad and bemused look and shut his magazine.

“Clara Montague.”

Startled, I said, “You remember me?”

“Hard not to remember the daughter of the woman my ex-wife hates more than anyone else in the world.” He quirked a corner of his mouth at me. From the silver hair, I guessed he was a little older than Mary Ellen, but his easy manner, dirty jeans and work boots made me wonder how she had ever said yes to his proposal. “It’s a good thing she finally had a daughter of her own, took the edge off her jealousy.”

My face must have shown my shock.

He said, “You didn’t know Mary Ellen was jealous of your mother?”

I closed my mouth enough to form a word. “No.”

“Didn’t matter what your mother did, Mary Ellen had to one-up her, even if your mother never knew she’d been one-upped. Exhausting stuff.”

My emotional fatigue at the revelations was so great at this point that the lump on my head felt like a minor wound. “That’s not it,” I managed to get out. “I didn’t know she had a daughter. She—you have a daughter? How old is she?”

The girl would be my cousin. My trip from only child, isolated from her family, to having half-siblings and a cousin was giving me rope burn. Wait. That meant Andrew Junior was my half-brother. No wonder Mother and Mary Ellen had flipped out at my marriage proposal joke.

“Fourteen. Beautiful like Mary Ellen. Nice, like me.” He smiled, the sad one again.

She’d been born after I left, but how could I not have known? “Do you have custody of—?”

“Emma.”

“Mary Ellen never mentioned her.”

“That was a condition of our divorce. Emma lived with me, and Mary Ellen couldn’t interfere. I don’t think she really wanted a child; Emma came late in the marriage. It’s not true, but it felt like Mary Ellen filed for divorce the day she gave birth.”

“I…I’m sorry.”

“What can I do for you, Clara? I imagine it’s not an animal problem you’re here about.” He picked up his sandwich and took a bite.

“You knew Hetty Gardner pretty well.”

“No one knew Hetty well.” He put the sandwich down and wiped his fingers on a napkin. “I knew her better than most, I guess.”

“Did you meet when she started the farm?”

He nodded. I noticed his skin wasn’t as sun-toughened as I expected for someone