A Peach of a Murder (20 page)

As she drove toward Dr. Lee's office, which was located near the hospital, Phyllis thought about the confrontation with Sally Hughes. While there was little doubt in her mind that Sally was not guilty of Donnie's murder, she had to admit that Sally-and her brother Charles--had strong motives.

A double motive, so to speak, because Domie's death not only avenged the wrong that he had done to them so many years earlier, but it put money in their pockets as well. She assumed Donnie's estate had gone to Charles and Sally, but she realized she didn't know for sure. That might be wdrth checking into.

Carolyn, on the other hand, didn't profit financially from Donnie's death. If she had killed him, the only thing she got out of it was vengeance.

That started Phyllis thinking about the other tragedies that had occurred. Like Sally and Charles, Darryl Bishop would have had a double motive in killing a relative, in his case his father, Newt.

Although again she couldn't be sure of it, Phyllis assumed that Darryl had inherited his father's farm. That would make him a lot better off financially than he had been, and he also would have had the satisfaction of striking back at the man who had mistreated him as a child. Alfred Landers would have had no reason to kill Newt except for pure spite over losing that lawsuit.

Jani Garrett was the wild card here. Phyllis had no idea what the young teacher's life was like other than her predilection for messing around with male students. As a schoolteacher, though, it was highly likely that she didn't have much money. The attempt on Jani's life had to have been a crime of passion, carried out by a parent of one of the young men she had seduced, or by one of the students themselves. As Dolly Williamson had said, a young man with a broken heart was liable to be so upset that he would do almost anything....

Once again an insistent feeling nudged at the back of Phyllis's brain, a not-so-gende reminder that she was overlooking something. She thought about Newt Bishop, Donnie Boatwright, and Jam Garrett and asked herself again what the three of them could have had in common.

By the time she reached the doctor's office, she still hadn't come up with an answer. With a sigh, she put the matter out of her mind as she parked the car. The past was dead and gone and couldn't be changed. Now she had to deal with the present.

She went into the office and told the receptionist that Dr. Lee was expecting her. "I got delayed a little,' she said apologetically. "I hope I haven't caused a problem."

The receptionist smiled at her. "I'll let the nurse know you're here."

A few minutes later, the door into the hallway where the examining rooms were located opened and a nurse stuck her head out. "Mrs. NewsomT' she said. "Come on back."

This felt like she was visiting the doctor for a checkup of her own, Phyllis thought, as she followed the nurse into the hall. Instead of stopping at one of the little .exam rooms, however, they went all the way to the end of the corridor, where the nurse opened the door into Dr. Lee's private office.

"Go on in and have a seat." she said with a pleasant smile. "The doctor will be with you in just a minute."

Phyllis knew good and well that "just a minute" to a doctor could mean forty-five minutes to an hour or more, but Walt Lee surprised her by coming into the office less than five minutes later.

"Hello, Phyllis:' he said as he went behind the desk and set down the large manila file folder he was carrying. "Thanks for coming."

"I'm sorry it took me so long. I got delayed," Phyllis said again, without offering an explanation of what had happened. She didn't want to admit that she had almost been clobbered by a large, angry, purse-swinging murder suspect.

As Dr. Lee settled into his comfortable swivel chair, he asked, "First of all, how are you doing these days? It's been a while since I've seen you."

"Oh, I'm fine," Phyllis said without hesitation. "No complaints. I haven't missed a checkup, have I?"

"No, I don't think so." Lee reached forward and opened the file folder. "Actually, as I mentioned on the phone, it's Mattie that I want to talk to you about. I got some test results today ... "

"Are you sure you shouldn't be talking to Mattie herself about this?" Phyllis broke in.

"I would ... but Mattie told me some months ago, when she realized that' she was starting to have more and more trouble with her thinking, that I ought to talk to you if anything serious came up."

Phyllis blinked in surprise. "I didn't know that."

Lee nodded solemnly. "Mattie knew the day might come when she wouldn't be able to make her own decisions. As you and I have discussed before, she has a mild case of Alzheimer's, and it's slowly progressing."

Phyllis had the sense that he was working his way around to something else. 'This isn't about the Alzheimer's, is .itT' "No, I'm afraid not. When Mattie was here about six weeks ago, I noticed some things that disturbed me about her behavior, and that's why I had an MRI done on her."

Phyllis remembered that quite well. She had taken Mattie for the procedure back in early June.

"I found something then," Lee went on, "but I thought it would be best to get a second or even a third or fourth opinion, so I sent the films off to a geriatric specialist and an oncologist I know, as well as a neurosurgeon, for consultation. I've heard back from all of them now, and they all agree with my initial findings."

Phyllis wanted to grab him and shake him and tell him to spit it out, for God's sake. Instead she forced herself to remain calm. "What were your findings, Doctor?"

Lee took a deep breath and then said, "Mattie has a tumor in her brain. Given all the considerations-her age, the tumor's location and state of advancement-surgery isn't an option, and neither is radiation or chemotherapy."

Even though Phyllis had been expecting that answer or one similar to it, the news still hit her hard.

"You're saying there's nothing you can do?"

"I'm sorry" Dr. Lee said.

Phyllis sat there stunned for a long moment. She looked down at her hands, listened to the silence in the office. It wasn't often that you heard a death sentence pronounced on a good friend. Her mind went back to her own early days as a teacher. Even though they had taught at different schools, Mattie Harris had been a mentor of sorts to her. A lot of what she knew about teaching, about caring for the kids and putting their needs first, she had learned from Mattie.

Finally, she swallowed hard and looked up again. "How long?"

"Itvo or three weeks, maybe a month," Dr. Lee said quietly. "For what it's worth, there shouldn't be a great deal of pain until near the end."

"And Mattie ... Mattie has no idea about this?"

Dr. Lee hesitated. "Actually, she does. I was rather upset when I realized what we might be dealing with, and I said too much. Mattie knows there's a good chance she might not have much time left."

"She never said anything to me......

"I'm not surprised." Dr. Lee smiled. "She wouldn't have wanted to worry you. You know Mattie, always putting other people first. Now that it's certain, and we have a better idea of the time frame we're looking at, I thought it might be easier if she heard the news from you."

Easier on whom, Phyllis wanted to ask, Mattie or you? Because it's sure not going to be easy on me.

Still, some things had to be done, no matter how hard they were. Phyllis nodded. "I'll talk to her."

"Thank you:'

Some stubborn part of her prompted her to ask, "Are you sure there's nothing that can be done?"

"Well, when I talked to Mattie before, we discussed alternative treatments. There are various drugs that haven't been approved by the FDA, and herbal and vitamin supplements, and the sort of off-the-wall things that some people swear can cure cancer even though there's no medical or scientific evidence for their claims. As far as I'm concerned, though, those are all just false hopes, and usually very expensive ones, at that. Some of them are even dangerous and can make the situation worse. I explained all of that to her and warned her not'to try anything without talking to me about it first."

"She should have told me what was going on." Phyllis said, as much to herself as to Dr. Lee.

He shook his head. "It wouldn't have done any good. She said she wasn't going to bother you with it right then because you were about to start getting ready for the peach festivaland the cooking contest. She didn't want to distract you from that."

Phyllis laughed hollowly. "As if any cooking contest could be more important to me than an old friend:' "That's Mattie for you," Dr. Lee said with a shrug.

Yes, it certainly was, Phyllis thought. Mattie was the ultimate volunteer, the person who just wanted to do good for the community and everyone in it, even if that meant not making a fuss about her own impending death.

"All right," she said, clutching her purse tightly. She stood up. "Thank you, Doctor. I'll tell Mattie that your diagnosis has been confirmed."

Lee got to his feet as well. "If there's anything I can do, just let me know."

Phyllis smiled sadly. "It doesn't seem like there's anything anybody can do."

"All things have to come to an end. As doctors, we don't like that, but it's inevitable."

"Yes. And I don't like it, either."

She left the office, still a little stunned by the news she had heard. She had known that Mattie's health was failing, of course. Mattie was in the December of her years, as the old saying went. But Phyllis had expected that they still had more time together than a few weeks. It wasn't that she was unacquainted with the death of someone close to her-she had endured the loss of her husband, after all-but to lose a good friend was a shock and always would be. The idea of a world without Mattie Hams in it just seemed so wrong somehow. Mattie had always been there, a part of Phyllis's life.

Death had a habit of snatching people away, and the old gentleman had been busier than usual this summer, it seemed to Phyllis. First Newt and then Donnie and then-almostJani Garrett, although Jani had slipped out of that bony grip, at least for now. Somehow, through coincidence, she supposed, Phyllis had been close at hand for both of those deaths and the near miss. And now, she would soon have to face the loss of Mattie.. . .

Those thoughts were running through her head as she drove, and suddenly it was all too much for her. She had to pull over into the parking lot of a convenience store and bring the Lincoln to a stop.

Tears burned hotly in her eyes, and there was a pounding in her head so strong that she feared for a moment she was about to have a stroke. She gasped as all the events of the past weeks came together, all the things she had

seen and heard and read: Like a flower blooming in her mind, the truth opened up to her. She grasped the steering wheel tightly and shook her head, but it didn't do any good. The pounding didn't go away. It was a drumbeat of mortality and inevitability, the marching cadence of death.

And just as she had thought before, there was a mason for everything that had happened, an answer for all the questions. The lessons of history were true again, as they always were. Cause and effect, one following the other as ceaselessly as the tides, as eternal as the stars.

The tears still rolled down her face, but the pounding in her head gradually slowed and faded away.

She took a deep breath, then another and another and stopped only when she realized she was about to hyperventilate. With the back of her hand she wiped away the wet streaks on her face. When she felt that she was calm enough to handle the car safely again, she put the Lincoln in gear. She hadn't ever turned off the motor.

There was nothing left to do now but go home.

Eve was there by the time Phyllis got back to the house. The four friends were together again, only now there were five because Sam was there, too. Even though he had only been living in the house for a relatively short time, Phyllis already felt like he was one of the group.

"You've been busy as a bee lately, dear," Eve said as Phyllis set the table. "It seems like you're always running around somewhere and are never here."

Phyllis smiled. "That's about to come to an end. I won't have any more running around to do."

"No more detecting?" Eve asked. "No. No more detecting."

While they were eating, Carolyn talked about Phyllis's run-in with Sally Hughes. Phyllis would have just as soon kept the whole thing quiet, but Carolyn was more animated tonight than Phyllis had seen her in quite a while and wanted to talk. She supposed that was because-while Carolyn wasn't in the clear yet-the specter of Donnie Boatwright's murder wasn't looming quite so menacingly over her as it had been.

Sam took up the story from the point where he'd arrived. "Just as I pulled up, I saw this big of woman tryin' to clout Phyllis over the head with her purse. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me at fast. I didn't figure such a thing could really be happening. But it sure was."

Eve laughed. "I wish I could have seen it." She turned and gave Phyllis an apologetic look. "I'm sorry. I know it must have been terrifying at the time. But it really does sound like it might have been amusing to watch."

"I'm sure it was," Phyllis said politely, keeping her real thoughts to herself.

"I don't mind tellin' you, I was more than a little scared myself," Sam went on. "That lady was really mad, and when I stopped her from goin' after Phyllis, I was afraid she might turn on me."

Eve reached over and took hold of his hand. "And of course you're too much of a gentleman to ever lay a hand on a lady."

"Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that. I just figured that if she got in a lucky punch, she'd deck me."

"I don't know what to think," Carolyn put in. "Sally Hughes doesn't seem like the sort of person who would murder anybody, especially not her own brother. And yet she got so mad she was basically out of control when she came after Phyllis. If she got mad enough at Donnie. . . well, who knows, what she might have done."

Phyllis said, "I'm sure the police will continue investigating both her and Charles."

"Yeah, but they're lawyered up now," Sam said. "It'll be hard to get anything out of 'em."

"Lawyered up,' Eve repeated with a laugh. "Dear, you've been watching cop shows on TV again."

Sam just grinned and shrugged.

Phyllis looked around the table and was glad to see that they seemed to be enjoying themselves, even if a little of it was at her expense. After the summer they'd had, they all needed a bit of lightheartedness.

Unfortunately, things were going to get worse before they got better.

Mattie was quiet during supper,- not taking part in the gentle joshing that went on between Sam and Eve and, to a lesser extent, Carolyn. She didn't eat much, either, Phyllis noted. Her appetite was fading these days. She had always been birdlike, but now she was thinner than ever.

When the meal was over and Phyllis was clearing the table, she said, "Mattie, would you be willing to give me a hand with the dishes tonight?"

"What?" Mattie seemed a little surprised by the question, as if she hadn't been quite aware of what was going on around her.

"I can help you," Carolyn offered.

"No, no, I'll do it," Mattie said, as Phyllis had known she would. "I'm fine, I'm fine."

Carolyn frowned. "Are you sure, Mattie? It wouldn't be any trouble for me to."

"I said I was fine, didn't IT' Mattie asked a little testily. "The day comes when I can't wash or dry a few dishes, you can just send me to the rest home."

"Nobody's going to do that," Carolyn said.

That was true, Phyllis thought. Mattie wouldn't be going to a rest home.

Carolyn went upstairs, while Sam and Eve drifted off into the living room, Eve holding on to Sam's arm while she told him that she wanted him to explain to her some of the finer points of the baseball game that was on TV that night. Phyllis happened to know that Eve had played on several championship-winning softball teams when she was a girl, and she didn't need anything about the game explained to her. Sam cast a sidelong glance in Phyllis's direction as Eve led him out of the room, as if hoping that she would come to his rescue as he had to hers that afternoon, but Phyllis had to disappoint him. He would just have to defend himself from Eve. She had confidence in his ability to do so.

Phyllis had something else she had to do.

"I'll wash, you dry," she said to Mattie when the two of them were alone in the big kitchen.

"All right. I thought you usually used the dishwasher though."

"Oh, sometimes I just like to do things the old-fashioned way," Phyllis said as she got dishpans from under the sink and began filling one of them with hot, soapy water.

"Lord, I know the feelin'," Mattie said "Sometimes it seems like-so much has changed that I feel like old Rip Van Winkle, like I went to sleep for years and years and missed a lot of things" She took a dish towel off a hook and toyed with it in her gnarled hands. "Sometimes I even forget that the war's not goin' on anymore, or the Depression. I was just a little girl then, but I sure do remember it. The bread lines, and the way so many men didn't have a job, and President Roosevelt and the way he'd come on the radio and talk.... We had an old Sylvania, the biggest, prettiest radio you ever did see, and I'd always listen to Little Orphan Annie on it, and the Great Gildersleeve, and, oh my, Fibber McGee and Molly, they were so funny. `Don't you open that closet, McGee!

Don't you open..."

Mattie's voice trailed off and she looked down at the dish towel in her hands for a long moment without saying anything.

"It's all right, Mattie," Phyllis said gently. "It's all right to remember things."

"But it seems like that's all I do lately. Seems like I'm al- . ways back there in the past somewhere I don't mean to be. There's lots of things I don't want to remember. But I can't seem to stop."

"You were all right while you were helping the kids at the high school, the ones in summer school you were tutoring." "I could always teach," Mattie said with conviction. "Kids listened to me. For some reason I was able to get through to 'em. To tell you the truth, Phyllis, I usually felt better bein'

around the kids than I did around grown folks. A kid'll be honest with you, at least most of the time. Some of 'em have some meanness in 'em, no doubt about that, but not any real evil. They won't hurt you bad for no good reason like a grown person will. That's why I hate worse'n anything to see a kid bein' hurt. They didn't do anything to have it cumin'."

"Like Darryl Bishop;' Phyllis said, her voice quiet now, as if she and Mattie were the only ones in the house. The noise of the TV from the living room had faded so that she no longer heard it.

Or maybe it was just that the beating of her heart was so loud it drowned out everything else except her voice, and Mattie's.

"Poor Darryl. Too little to fight back, and too proud to ask for help. I know how kids think.' He probably believed it was his fault that Newt was beatin' him. Figured if he could just be a good enough boy, the hittin' would stop. But it didn't. It just went on and on, until that little boy looked like a dog that's been whaled on with a stick. If you lifted a hand or raised your voice or even looked at him wrong, he'd just cringe so that your heart went out to him. I tell you, Phyllis, there was more than one night I cried myself to sleep over what happened to Darryl Bishop."

"I'm sure you did. I know you were upset about that boy who killed himself, too:'

Mattie's hands knotted on the dish towel. "Billy Moser. He wasn't little, like Darryl. No, he was,a big, strappin' boy. But he was hurt, too. Couldn't stand what she did to him. That tramp. She had no right. She's a teacher, for heaven's sake. She shouldn't have been leadin' Billy and those other boys on. What was wrong with her?"

"I don't know," Phyllis answered honestly. "I guess she was ... broken somehow, inside."

Mattie snorted contemptuously. "She just didn't give a damn about anybody but herself. She had her fun, and if it hurt somebody else, that was just too bad. Why, Billy told me ... he told me that she laughed at him when she told him it was over between them. Said he was old enough to know better and that what did he expect, she was going to marry him or something? She laughed at him.

Wasn't a week went by before he was dead. A kid doesn't understand that just because something hurts now, it won't always be that way. He thinks his pain's the biggest thing in the world-so big he can't ever get past it. But Billy could have. He could have gone on and had a good life, if it hadn't been for her."

A sudden wave of weariness seemed to wash over Mattie. She pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sank down into it. She had been talking a lot, more than Phyllis had heard her say in a long time, and it had to be taking a toll on hei, emotionally as well as physically.

But it wasn't over yet. No matter how badly Phyllis wanted it to be, it wasn't over.

Mattie looked up and said, "I thought we were going to wash dishes."

"In a minute," Phyllis said. "Do you really think Billy could have gotten over a broken heart?"

"Of course he, could. Everybody's heart gets broken sometimes. Folks get over it"

"Even when someone they trust hurts them really badly? Like Donnie Boatwright hurt you?"

Mattie gazed off into the years rolling back through her memory. "Donnie was so handsome and such a good dancer," she said in a husky half whisper. "We went to Casino Beach one time, you know, that place over on Lake Worth where you could dance right out over the water. Fred Waring was there that night: Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians. Lord, I never saw anybody so famous.

I'd heard them on the radio, and there they were, in person, and I was dancing to their music. Oh, I know Baptists aren't supposed to dance, but Donnie said it would be all right that one time, because it was Fred Waring, and we just couldn't pass up the opportunity.

"My, Donnie could dance! He was so light on his feet for a big man. You'd never know he had a bad knee that kept him out of the service. We danced until my heart was poundin' and I couldn't get my breath, and we laughed and walked out on the boardwalk over the water and drank punch and it was just the best night ... until finally we had to come back to Weatherford ... until ... Donnie stopped the car, somewhere out there in the middle of nowhere on the old Weatherford road.... He had ... he had a '36 Ford, and it was just as shiny as could be and ran like a topnothing but the best for Donnie Boatwright, that was what he always said, nothing but the best for him.... And then he went to smoochin' on me and tellin' me how pretty I was, and I tell you, I didn't really mind all that much because he was such a handsome fella and he'd shown me such a good time, and I figured that since I'd already sinned a little by dancin' to Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians I might as well sin a little more by kissing Donnie Boatwright.

"But he didn't want to stop with smoochin', and I didn't want to do any more than that, because dancin' or no dancin', I was a good girl. You know I was a good girl."

Phyllis nodded, hot tears in her eyes, and whispered, "I know you were, Mattie "

"Donnie said I was so sweet and pretty that he just couldn't stand it, and he claimed he had something comin' because he'd taken me out and shown me such a good time, and there weren't all that many young men around at the time, you know, because of the war and all. He said I needed to stick with him because he'd take me places and show me things. He was going to be a big man in Parker County, he said, and I could go right along with him ... if I went along with him that night. I told him I didn't want to go anywhere with him if he was going to act like that and for him to take me home. But he wouldn't do it. He just kept on and kept on.... He made me do what he wanted....

He forced me to ... to..."

She twisted the dish towel in her hands until it was as tight as it would go.

"And then after that ... after he did that ... he had the gall to call me a week later and ask me out on a date again, as if nothing had ever happened. I told him I'd never go out with him again, and do you know? He got mad at me, like I was the one who'd done something wrong! Can you beat that?

He sure had his nerve, Donnie Boatwright did, and from what I saw of him after that, he never changed. He fooled a lot of folks, but not me. He never fooled me again."

Mattie sighed, long and deep, as if all the memories were running out of her. Phyllis moved over to the table and sat down in the chair beside her. She reached over and took one of Mattie's hands in both of hers.

"It sounds tome like the world is better off without people like Newt and Donnie and Jani;' Phyllis said quietly. "Like getting rid of them is almost ... a public service. Something that a volunteer would do."

Mattie looked up, and her eyes were clear as they met Phyllis's gaze. "You know, don't you?"

"Yes," Phyllis said. She wished she didn't, but she knew. And like history, that knowledge could never be changed.