Bluegrass Hero. Allie Pleiter

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      “No. Really?” The older woman buying four jars of lavender bath salts looked astounded.

      “Yes, just hours after the concert.”

      “Bless your heart. That kind of thing just doesn’t really happen in places like that, does it? Outside the orchestra hall?”

      Emily was surprised at her rendition of the details. She rarely ever talked of her late husband’s demise. Most folks in town already knew, and it wasn’t the kind of thing that normally came up in conversation with strangers. Even when store chatter strayed over to the very sad tale of Ash Montague’s passing, she resisted giving the details. It was hard to watch people react to the story. Good folks balk at an actual murder—murder belongs on television and in spy movies, not in real life. But big crime happens in big cities. Ash thought the orchestra job was a huge opportunity, worth the frequent long trips away from Middleburg. Tuning pianos for a major metropolitan orchestra hall is, after all, a very important job. But sometimes pianos had to be packed up or moved into storage late at night, and things happen. Dark back alleys hide bad people. Lives get…ended.

      “Oh,” sighed the woman, pursing her scarlet lips and putting her hand to her delicate jaw. “That’s beyond dreadful. You poor thing.”

      “I manage,” Emily replied, placing the four bottles, now wrapped in her store’s signature lavender tissue, inside the store’s butter-colored bag. She tucked a list of next month’s sale items inside the bag beside the bath salts. “It’s been four years now since Ash’s passing.” To the day, as a matter of fact. Maybe that’s why she’d blurted out the story when the woman had asked if she was married.

      “You must miss him, bless your heart. To go in such a…dreadful way.”

      “Every day.” She forced brightness into her smile, not wanting to end the transaction on a somber note as she pressed the register button. Emily used an old-fashioned ornate brass cash register—the kind that made a delightful ching when you pushed the sale button to open the cash drawer. She didn’t like computerized cash registers, opting for hand-written receipts instead. Her only nod to technology was the electronic machine that generated credit card sales—and even that was placed in a tiny chintz box so that only the buttons and receipt slot were visible. It wasn’t until last year that she began asking for e-mail addresses to send out sale notices, and that was only after the postage rates had gone up again, forcing her to find a more economical way to reach her customers.

      “Come back next month when I’ll have the matching body lotion on sale.”

      “I’ll do that. I’ll certainly do that.” Although, from the expression on her face, Emily couldn’t quite tell if any subsequent sale would be born out of the quality of her French-milled lavender, or plain old pity for a young Kentucky widow.

      She marked down the sale in her tally, lining up the numbers in precise columns. For a bath shop that was supposed to be west of Paris, France, but ended up west of Paris, Kentucky, she was doing okay. Not well, but okay enough to barely make this month’s loan payment.

      Actually, Emily always made her loan payments, and she always made them on time. Her checkbook balanced down to the last penny every month. Her Christmas cards arrived on time if not early, and her library books were returned ahead of their due dates. She showed up five minutes early for every appointment, and nothing in her fridge was anywhere near its expiration date.

      Emily liked to have all her details under control.

      So how, she wondered as she stared at her naked left hand and the pale void where her wedding ring had once been, had so much of the big stuff gone wrong?

      Chapter Two

      The next morning, it was astounding that Gil Sorrent didn’t break a case of soap dishes when he stormed into the shop. He stalked up to the counter and slammed down plastic bag. “What’s in there?” he demanded, pointing to the bag. It was a wonder half the store wasn’t rocking in his wake.

      Emily shot up from her desk by the window. “Pardon?”

      Sorrent’s voice deepened to the near-growl she remembered from their last town-hall clash. The man had a fierce temper—one she hadn’t expected to ignite just by talking about the designs of streetlights. Was it that strange an idea that things should look nice as well as functional? Everyone else on the town council had understood that it would take a few extra dollars to get lights that didn’t look as if they belonged on the freeway. He was always going on about improving this or upgrading that—she’d have thought he’d be happy to be purchasing new streetlights for Ballad Road. He didn’t look happy then, and he sure didn’t look happy now. “I want to know what’s in that soap you gave us, and I’m not leaving until you tell me every last ingredient, you hear?”

      It took Emily a moment to realize what he was talking about. Then she remembered her spontaneous act yesterday. The Pirate Soap. “Gracious. Did your friend have some kind of allergic reaction? Believe me, I’ll do whatever I can—”

      “Oh, he had a reaction all right, but it wasn’t the itchy kind. Now I mean it, tell me what’s in there.”

      It was at this point that Emily noticed a row of faces pressed up against her shop window—a collection of tough-looking young men, noses flattened on the glass. She panicked for a brief moment, until she realized they were Sorrent’s farmhands. Gil Sorrent ran Homestretch Farm, a correctional program for young-adult offenders. Every year he brought on a new batch of troubled young men, usually in their late teens or early twenties, to work the horse farm and put their lives back in order. She’d seen them around town every so often accompanied by Gil or Ethan—the foreman often in charge of the farm’s young residents—but they’d never had cause to come into her shop. She’d never met Ethan before yesterday. Awful as it was to say, she didn’t mind their absence. They looked…well, they looked mean.

      But they didn’t look that mean at the moment. In fact, they looked downright odd. “Well,” she stammered, thinking that Sorrent and “his guys,” as he called them, were probably not people you wanted to upset. “I don’t make the soap but I can surely find out the ingredients.”

      “Find out what’s in there, and quick.” Catching that Emily was glancing over his shoulder, Gil spun around to face the window. The line of rugged faces scattered like mice. She thought she could hear his teeth grind from across the counter.

      She looked at the bar, wet and slightly muddy in a plastic bag. “Well, why don’t we start by looking at the label.” She started to head off to the table where the other Pirate Soap bars were displayed.

      “Got it right here.” He produced the other bar, still in its label, inside another plastic bag. He held it with two fingers as if it were something nasty he’d found on the floor of his barn. “Ain’t nothin’ I can see out of the ordinary, but according to Ethan, it ain’t no ordinary soap.” Red crawled up his neck and threatened to flush his face. He shifted his weight and scratched his chin. He hadn’t yet shaved this morning.

      “Why would you say that?”

      Sorrent shuffled and stole another look at the window. His guys had returned and were now peering into the shop harder than ever.

      “Should I tell them to come in?” Emily offered, СКАЧАТЬ