Jeremy opted for two rolls, one tuna and one salmon.
“The decorating is coming along great for Thanksgiving,” Eve said as the waiter promptly arrived with two more water glasses, another teapot and little cups. “And then we’ll do it up for Christmas.”
“Christmas?” Daniel teased. “But you’re a wiccan.”
“And we have our own holidays, but I—unlike some people I know—respect all kinds of beliefs. We carry items to appeal to wiccans, Christians, those who recognize Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius—we even have customers who celebrate Kwanzaa. Oh,” she added, nodding sagely toward Jeremy, “we also have a few things for anyone who’s into voodoo.”
Jeremy realized that she didn’t know that he wasn’t originally from New Orleans, nor that not everyone in the city practiced voodoo.
“Yeah?” Daniel asked, his lips quirked in amusement. “Is that what those hideous masks on the wall are all about?”
Eve made a face. “I don’t like them at all,” she admitted.
“But you sell them,” Daniel said.
“What masks?” Rowenna asked.
“We just put them out this morning,” Eve said. “I have so much beautiful stuff—and Adam decided we had to buy those masks. They’re by a local artist. Well, a guy who grew up here and made it big doing special effects in the movies, and then decided to come back home. His name is Eric Rolfe.”
“Eric? I remember Eric,” Rowenna said, and looked across the table at Jeremy. “He was a few years ahead of me in school. He wanted to do special effects, even when he was a kid. He always made the creepiest scarecrows.” A troubled look crossed her face. “In fact…his scarecrows were almost as scary as a real corpse.”
Jeremy knew he needed to look up this Eric Rolfe immediately.
“So he just moved back here recently?” Jeremy asked.
“Yeah, a couple of weeks ago, but don’t go getting ideas about him being a homicidal maniac,” Eve said, waving a dismissive hand in the air. “He’s the sweetest little thing you’ll ever meet,” she said in a mock Southern accent.
“Sweetest little thing?” Jeremy repeated.
Rowenna laughed. “He’s actually about six-three, and he was built husky, even back in high school. But he is a really nice guy, the kind who wouldn’t hurt a fly. I heard that a few years ago, one of the high schools managed a senior trip out to California when he was working on some monster movie. He gave all the kids a tour of his shop, got them on the set—he was really generous to them. I’m kind of anxious to see him. I didn’t know he was back.”
“What’s the story with his masks?” Jeremy asked Eve.
“Eric was always interested in what makes people tick,” she said. “He thought it was fascinating psychologically, the way the Puritans believed in witches and actually thought people could sign the Devil’s book and all that. So now he’s made a series of masks depicting what the Puritans thought the Devil might look like. And let me tell you, they’re creepy as hell. Adam insisted we carry them.”
Was that what they’d been fighting about? Jeremy wondered.
She sighed. “At least I managed to hide them in the back of the store. Oh, on a brighter note…Ro, do you remember Angie Peterson? She’s doing beautiful jewelry designs in silver—she got her degree in New York—and she’s come home now, too.”
When the two women started discussing Angie’s life and art, Daniel turned to Jeremy and said, “We found a reference to a body being left in a cornfield almost three hundred years ago.”
“Rowenna said something about centuries ago,” Jeremy told him.
“I think it could be important, don’t you?” Daniel asked, and gave him a rundown on the Harvest Man and the related history they’d uncovered.
“Could be. It certainly looks as if the killer is local and knows this Harvest Man legend,” Jeremy agreed. “Then again,” he added, “whoever did this obviously knows the local fields and when the roads were likely to be empty so he could go out and put up his ‘scarecrow.’”
“Local?” Eve looked positively ashen. “I know just about everyone who lives around here,” she said. “And I don’t know any homicidal maniacs, thank you very much.”
Rowenna looked at her friend, clearly worried by her pallor.
“Sorry,” Eve said, looking around the table. “It’s just—it’s just very upsetting.”
“Of course it is,” Rowenna said soberly.
There was silence at the table.
At that moment the waiter arrived with the miso soup and salad.
Eve bent over her soup immediately, as if it were the most important thing in the world.
“Are you afraid?” Daniel asked her quietly.
She paused with her spoon midway to her mouth and looked up. “Me? Why should I be afraid?”