Murder and Salutations by Elizabeth Bright Page B

help her if she won’t talk to me.”
    “ Would you like me to talk to her?” I asked. “She might tell me something she’s holding back from you.”
    Bradford slammed his palm down on my worktable. “She’s got to get it through her head that I’m trying to help her. I swear, she’s more stubborn than you and Lillian put together.”
    “ I doubt that,” Lillian said. “Let us talk to her, Bradford. You can come along if you’d like.”
    “ No thanks,” he said, shaking his head firmly. “I’m I going back over there and I’m not leaving until I get some answers from her. Thanks for the pep talk, though.”
    Grady Farrar, owner of Farrar Hardware and now interim president of the Rebel Forge chamber of commerce, came into the shop as Bradford was leaving, he was holding a paper bag in his hand as if it contained something valuable.
    “ Did I miss something?” Grady asked.
    “ Nothing that matters,” I said. “What brings you here, Grady? Are you looking for a card for that lovely wife of yours?”
    “ Jennifer, if I brought a card home to Martha, she’d think I was up to something. No thank you, trouble like that I don’t need.”
    Lillian said, “So if you’re not here for a card, to what do we owe the pleasure of your company?”
    He held the paper bag out to me. “I forgot all about this in the excitement last night. Here, this belongs to you.”
    I took the bag and opened it. Inside was the golden anvil I’d won last night just as Eliza’s body had been discovered.
    I tried to hand it back to him as I said, “I can’t take it.”
    “ Now, Jennifer, don’t make me scold you in public. You won it fair and square; it belongs to you. About that speech I made last night,” he added softly, “those were Eliza’s words, not mine. I’d never have read them if I’d realized how hurtful they were going to be. She had no right to go after your sister like that.” Grady looked flustered. “And here I am speaking ill of the dead. It was a long night and a short sleep for me, but that’s no excuse. If you ladies will pardon me, I’ll be heading back to my hardware store.”
    After he was gone, I put the paper bag on the counter. Lillian asked, “Aren’t you even going to take it out of the bag? Let me see it, Jennifer. I’m curious about it, even if you’re not.”
    “ They never should have given it to me in the first place,” I said. “And I have a sneaking suspicion they wouldn’t have if Eliza hadn’t seen it as a way to take a jab at Sara Lynn.”
    Lillian ignored me and took the anvil out of the bag. “Nonsense, it’s your award. Where should we put it?”
    “ How about back in the bag?” I suggested.
    “ It needs to be displayed,” Lillian said, ignoring me completely. “I know. Let’s have a shelf installed for it above the register. That way everyone will know you won it.”
    “ Lillian, let me have that.”
    She reluctantly handed the anvil to me, and I put it in the display counter under the cash register.
    “ Jennifer, you can hardly see it there.”
    “ Lillian, if I catch you moving it, you’re fired, and I mean it.”
    My aunt took in my stern stare, then said somberly, “We can’t have that, can we? I don’t know how I’d manage to squeak by without my salary from the shop.”
    After a second, we both burst out laughing. Lillian could buy and sell my shop a dozen times over, and we both knew it. Besides, she didn’t draw a dime in pay, if I didn’t include the supplies she freely used.
    “ So when are we going to Heaven Scent?” Lillian asked. “I’m going crazy just hanging around here.”
    “ Okay, you wore me down. Let me hang the sign on the door and we’ll go.” I’d invested in a sign that offered the adjustable hands of a clock and set it for an hour’s time. It would be enough time to talk to Addle, and hopefully I wouldn’t lose too many customers while we were gone. Business had really picked up since I’d first opened the card