A Body at Book Club (Myrtle Clover Mysteries) (13 page)

Chapter Thirteen

The figure froze. Myrtle froze. And then the figure took off running.

Myrtle hurried to the kitchen door, yelling, “Stop!” and gripping her pepper spray as if she’d never let go. She flung open the back door and hurried outside in time to see the dark figure running out her gate in the direction of the woods around the lake. She bellowed again, “Stop!”  There was no way she could catch up with anyone moving that fast…and who was almost certainly decades younger than she was. But then the figure stumbled over a tree root and went down…and Myrtle started hurrying toward the intruder again.

A bit of movement near her legs made her jump and she looked down in time only to see an emaciated, dirty Pasha gazing up at her in terror with her fur raised. The running, the screaming…clearly the cat was scared to death. “Pasha,” she gasped in joy. She thought no more about the figure bolting through the woods as she stooped down to reach out soothingly to the animal. “Here kitty,” she called.

But Pasha was well and truly spooked and bolted away into the darkness, tearing off through the gate.

Myrtle stood still, hoping that Pasha would come back in a few minutes. But she didn’t.

The next morning, after restless wakefulness for the rest of the night, Myrtle discovered that not only had the intruder escaped, not only had Pasha gotten away, but she’d tracked mud all over her house because her yard had been so soggy from leaving the sprinkler running. It was time for her luck to change, it really was. The only bright spot was that she had
seen
Pasha with her own eyes. The poor thing was alive, if not in the best condition. And that made her feel better.

There was no way around it. She was going to have to call in the troops to clean this mess up. Well, actually, it was one troop. Puddin. Puddin was a sorry housekeeper, but Myrtle couldn’t get rid of her because her husband, Dusty, was the only yardman in town who’d cut her grass even if her gnome collection was in the yard. So Myrtle put up with all kinds of nonsense from Puddin just to stay in Dusty’s good graces. Although, Dusty wasn’t exactly a prize, either.

Myrtle picked up the phone and called their house. As usual, Dusty picked up the phone. “Too dry ter mow, Miz Myrtle!” he hollered as soon as he heard her voice.

Myrtle gritted her teeth. Dusty was the laziest yardman alive. You’d think he didn’t need the money the way he carried on. “I’m actually looking for Puddin, Dusty, so don’t worry. The grass has stopped growing because of the heat, sure enough.” Although, the backyard was sure to start growing again soon with all the watering she’d done.

“Puddin!” yelled Dusty. And then he dropped the phone with a clunk onto whatever surface was near him.

Minutes passed. Finally, a sour voice muttered, “H’lo?”

“Puddin? It’s Myrtle Clover. I need your help today with some cleaning.”

“Ain’t on the schedule,” said Puddin aggressively.

Myrtle was starting to be concerned that her teeth would sustain permanent damage from all the gritting she was doing. And she was very proud of her teeth. “Today isn’t on the schedule, no, but you were supposed to come last week and didn’t—so today can be a make-up day.”

“Because my back was thrown out!”

“Yes, I remember the medical basis of your excuse. But I’m sure you’re fine now—that was nearly a week ago,” said Myrtle with as much patience as she could muster.

“Wellll.” Puddin mulled this over. Myrtle could just picture her sullen, pasty face. “I suppose. What kinda cleaning are you looking for?”

Myrtle glanced over at the mud-streaked floor. “Oh, just some light cleaning. You know.”

“None of that silver polishing!” 

“No, not that,” said Myrtle.

“All right,” said Puddin. “I guess I could come now,” she said in an ungrateful tone.

An hour later, Puddin stared in shock at the state of Myrtle’s kitchen floor…and bedroom rug as a matter of fact. “Hey!  What happened here?”

“There was a rare Pasha sighting,” said Myrtle. “And a muddy backyard.”

“That witch-cat ain’t here, is she?” asked Puddin, swinging her head and peering around. Puddin, like Miles, was no fan of Pasha.

“No. But I think she might be coming home soon,” said Myrtle.

Puddin gave her a dour look and pushed her lank, blonde hair out of her face. Then she filled up the sink and jerked the bottle of cleaner over it and stuck the mop inside. Without wringing out the mop, she swabbed at the floor resentfully.

Myrtle left Puddin alone to mop. There was another reason why she’d asked Puddin over—the housekeeper gossip network. In Bradley, there was this underworld of housekeeper intelligence. They bragged to each other about how much they knew about the lives of the people they cleaned for. Some of the time it was even true.

Mopping was pretty hard labor, too. Puddin would probably only be able to stand fifteen minutes of it before she was ready to talk. Myrtle simply sat in her living room and worked on the morning’s crossword puzzle. And wondered over the fact that the Ural mountain range was in every single puzzle she’d done for the last week. Couldn’t the puzzle designers have come up with other four-letter words?

Sure enough, it wasn’t long before Puddin, sounding a bit breathless, joined her in the living room. “Hard work, Miz Myrtle,” said Dutiful Puddin, pulling out a tissue from her jeans pocket and dramatically swabbing her pasty face. Myrtle noticed that Puddin’s pale features weren’t flushed from activity one smidgeon.

“Well, take a break for a moment, Puddin. Did you get it all done at least?”

“The mopping, anyway. What else you got for me?”  Puddin’s small eyes were watchful.

“Light cleaning, compared to the mud clean-up. A little dusting, collecting trash from the wastebaskets. And I wouldn’t stop you if you put my laundry away.”

Puddin relaxed a little. “No running the vacuum? No scrubbing the tub?”

“None of that today.”

Puddin looked positively jolly now.

“While you’re taking this short break,” Myrtle put careful emphasis on
short
, “I wanted to ask you a couple of questions.”

Puddin furrowed her brow. “Looking for the latest word on the street, is that right? Like the fact that Johnny Turrow done left his wife?”

Myrtle couldn’t possibly care less about Johnny Turrow or his wife. “No, more if you have any information about Lena Fowler, Claudia Brown, or Maxine Tristan? Or maybe even Rose Mayfield?”

Puddin reported excitedly, in the tone of someone relaying news of great importance, “Rose Mayfield is dead!”

“Yes, that part I knew. I guess I was looking to see if there was anything about her that might have contributed to her death,” said Myrtle.

Puddin appeared to be tripping over the word
contributed
. She finally gave up and said, “All I know is, she asked me to clean for her. I didn’t even get there and she turned up dead. Sheila used to clean for her, but she got old and quit.”

“Retired. Right. I remember Rose telling me that. She was looking for another housekeeper and Lord help me, I gave her your name. Did Sheila have anything to say about Rose Fowler?” asked Myrtle.

“Sure thing. She got mad about the way Miz Fowler told her she cut corners and stuff. Said if Miz Fowler didn’t like her cleaning, she could get out the bottle of glass cleaner and clean her own mirrors!”

Not very helpful. “I mean, did she say anything personally about Rose.”

“She thought she was mean. And she complained a lot about her neighbors and acted like she was so perfect. But she wasn’t. Sheila said that Miz Mayfield was trying to blackmail somebody.” Puddin looked smug, knowing from Myrtle’s face that she’d finally coughed up something good.

“That
Rose Mayfield
was trying to blackmail someone.” Myrtle sat completely still to let the import of that statement seep through her. She could see Rose scolding someone about killing Naomi. She could even see Rose thanking the killer for murdering Naomi. What she couldn’t see was Rose trying to sneak extra income from a killer. “How did Sheila come up with that? She wasn’t working for Rose at the time of Naomi’s death.”

Puddin’s already dumpy features sagged more. “She guessed it. But Sheila is a good guesser, Miz Myrtle. She said that Miz Mayfield’s house was falling apart. It needed all kinds of repairs and Miz Mayfield only had enough money to pay her usual bills—nothing extra. The only reason she could pay for a cleaning lady is because she was too high and mighty to clean her own house. She even had a hard time coughing up the money for light bulbs. And Miz Mayfield loved that house. It was her mama’s house, you know.”

“Yes, I know about that,” said Myrtle impatiently. “I was around, remember? I’m older than the hills. Okay, so no proof that Rose was blackmailing anyone, but an interesting theory floated by Sheila. What have you got for me on Claudia Brown?”

Puddin snickered. “What? Claudia Brown? Ain’t nobody cleaning for her, Miz Myrtle. She’s got no money for cleaning. And her house is a mess the likes of which nobody has ever seen.”

Myrtle remembered the clutter on every surface and the scrapbook stuff on the sofa. “Nothing on Claudia, then. How about Lena Fowler and Maxine Tristan?”

“I clean Lena Fowler’s office sometimes. Not that animal poop and stuff, but the other. Nobody cleans her house for her. I wanted to, so I didn’t have to go near all them animals all the time but could clean a regular house. But she cleans her own house.” Puddin made a face as if there was something fundamentally wrong about people who cleaned their own homes.

“What do you think about Doctor Fowler?” asked Myrtle.

“Oh, she’s not a doctor. She just fixes up animals.”

Myrtle gritted her teeth again. “Never mind. Tell me what you think of her. Had you heard anything about her husband and Naomi Fowler…anything like that?”

“I don’t like her. Mean. Tells me I’m lazy.” Puddin frowned in thought. “No! Says
slothful
. Tells me I’m
slothful
.”

A straight shooter, that Lena.

“And I did hear about her husband and Naomi Fowler—that it was all nonsense. All Miz Fowler did was flirt with him to get him to fix stuff around her house for her. There weren’t nothing interesting going on,” Puddin said in a disgusted tone. “She’s just mad cause her husband died, that’s all. Ninny.”

Myrtle couldn’t think of anyone less like a ninny than stern Lena Fowler.

Puddin screwed up her face in thought. It was a painful process to watch. The Scholarly Puddin was impossible for her to pull off. “Lessee. Miz Maxine Tristan. She did have cleaning done sometimes, and then sometimes didn’t have money and done cleaned herself.” Puddin peered hopefully at Myrtle as if maybe she’d fulfilled her full gossip potential by merely sharing that Maxine’s finances were sometimes unreliable.

Myrtle gave her a coolly unimpressed look.

Puddin sighed. “Miz Tristan. Lessee. I didn’t clean for her, you know. She was another one of Sheila’s ladies.”

“Remember Sheila’s thoughts on her at all?”

Puddin snapped her fingers, remembering. “Sheila said she needed to go to church more. That was it. She was bad. She done bad things,” said the Righteous Puddin.

“Such as?”

“She dates lots of men!”  Puddin made a face. Apparently her life with Dusty hadn’t made her the biggest fan of men, in general.

Myrtle frowned. “
Lots
of men?”

“Well, a couple. That’s lots in a town like Bradley.”

Myrtle sighed. She was striking out here with Puddin, too. When was her luck going to turn with this case?

That night, Myrtle felt antsy. She double-checked that her door and all the windows were locked. She put Wanda’s pepper spray next to her bed again. She lay down in bed only because that’s what you’re supposed to do at midnight…but the sleep didn’t come.

At three o’clock, there was a tap at her front door and Myrtle nearly jumped through the ceiling. But murderers and other intruders didn’t ever announce their presence, did they? She snatched her pepper spray off the bedside table and, gripping it in one hand and her cane threateningly in the other, she moved toward the door.