Mother's Day Murder

A small crowd had gathered down the block and across the street from my house when I came outside that afternoon with Eddie, my two-and-a-half-year-old. I knew before I got there what it was about, a situation I had shaken my head over more than once during the spring months, wondering at the things that people found to argue over. It would be better not to walk in that direction and get caught in the fracas but Eddie spotted my friend watching from her driveway and said, "Mel. Wanna see Mel," as he took off toward his chief cookie-baker-and-giver and the small angry crowd nearby. They were actually shouting when we got there. "Chris, hi," Mel said, scooping up Eddie. "I know what you want." "A cookie." He said it with the kind of smile Mel found irresistible. "We'll get you a cookie soon," she said, nuzzling him so that he giggled. "They're going to kill each other over this," she said to me. "Can you believe it's gone this far?" "Only when I see it." "Yes, you will," the man at the center of the group was saying in too loud a voice. "And you'll pay for it. You've had ten years to take care of this and you haven't done a damn thing." "You have no heart," the woman standing nearest him called back. "That's all I can say. You probably drown stray cats, too." "Enough," Mel said. "Let's go inside and find the cookies and get away from this horror. I hate seeing reasonable people become monsters." She looked around. "Sari? Noah? Come on. We're going in." The five of us trooped into the house, the children grabbing their cookies and going upstairs, Mel and I hanging around the kitchen until the tea was made and then carrying our snack into the family room. "Hal talked about moving last night," Mel said after she poured. "Mel, don't say that. What will I do without you?" "What will I do? But this is getting crazy. That man has lost his mind and the Greiners won't give an inch. He's probably got the law on his side and I understand his point of view, but it's hard to like him. The Greiners are nice people but they've got to acknowledge they've caused a problem for him. Did you get the flyer in your mailbox?" "Two flyers. One for and one against. Jack checked with the police, just on a hunch. Do you know Mr. Kovak owns a handgun?" "What?" "A pistol. It's all licensed and legal. He doesn't have a permit to carry, just to keep it on the premises." "That's very scary." "Lots of people own guns, Mel. It's the world we live in." "Well, he better not use it over a tree." It was a tree, in fact, that was the center of the discord on Pine Brook Road, a tree that had turned neighbor against neighbor. However many years ago, a seed from a silver maple had blown from the mother tree and settled on the edge of the Greiners' property, eventually planting itself and becoming a small sapling. I had not lived in Oakwood when that happened, although I had visited my aunt frequently in the house that I inherited from her a few years ago. When the seed rooted, I was a Franciscan nun living upstate in St. Stephen's Convent, not far from the Hudson River. By the time Aunt Meg had died, bequeathing the house to me, and I had been released from my vows and taken up residence on Pine Brook Road, the once tiny and fragile sapling was already a tree. Today, four years later, it was a good-sized tree with pretty, silvery leaves that moved gracefully in the wind and shaded the area beneath, and unfortunately wreaked havoc with Mr. Kovak's driveway only a few feet away from the trunk and just above the most aggressive of the roots. The upshot of this natural phenomenon was that the KovaHarris, Lee is the author of 'Mother's Day Murder' with ISBN 9780449004425 and ISBN 0449004422.