Barbara Graham - Quilted 05 - Murder by Sunlight (26 page)

The second sister must have pulled a tube of lipstick from her purse, and she began applying it generously to her late sister’s lips. “Poor sister. She looks so pale.” The amateur makeup artist’s aim was poor, and the walker supporting her teetered. In seconds she had painted a scarlet slash across most of the dead woman’s face, turning it into a grotesque sight.

Tony exchanged glances with Wade. “Is any of this illegal?”

“Weird? Hell, yes.” Wide-eyed, Wade raised one shoulder and let it drop. “Illegal? I don’t know.”

Calvin waved the men closer. “Can’t you stop them?”

“You called about a fight.” Tony forced his eyes away from the elderly women and their makeup project.

“Yes, yes. Look at this,” Calvin pointed to a trail of broken gladiolas and some overturned memorial potted plants. A porcelain vase had shattered, apparently when it hit the wall behind it. “They are destroying my place of business.”

Tony spotted Blossom huddled in the far corner of the room with at least six of her sisters. Her fiancé Kenny was jammed up against the wall, behind some of the Flowers men. Tony strode over and cut her out of the herd. “What happened here?”

Blossom’s eyes watered, and she dabbed at them with a tissue. “Our aunts have been out of control ever since Aunt Hydrangea died. Her sisters went wild with grief and now, just minutes ago, we learned Aunt Hydrangea had been hiding a second marriage. I can promise you they were not happy about learning the old lady has—had—two husbands.” Blossom nodded toward a pair of elderly men, identical in appearance and attire, and each clutching a bouquet of flowers in one hand and the casket’s handle with the other. “That’s them, the husbands.”

“If it’s true, I can’t exactly arrest her for bigamy. Since she’s dead,” Tony muttered to himself. The sounds around him continued to grow. He sent Wade to silence the piano.

In a louder voice, he urged the mourners to all say their farewells and quickly leave the building. As one of the ancient sisters moved past the new widowers, she paused to study them and sniffed, lifting her nose higher. “Quantity not quality.”

It took a while to pry the old guys loose, literally, their gnarled hands seemed locked in place. Eventually they managed to clear the room.

Wade and Tony paused at the doorway and looked back. The carpet was soaked with water from overturned vases. Broken flowers littered the room. Calvin sat near the casket, which was askew, one corner almost touching the floor. Calvin was holding his head with both hands.

“What do you think, Wade?” Tony pulled out his notebook. “How do we write a description of this?”

“I’m thinking this has got to be some strange dream. I sure hope I can remember the details when I wake up.” Wade gathered a handful of crumpled flowers from the floor and dropped them in a trash can, one almost completely filled with used tissues. “Grace will love it.”

As Tony and Wade walked outside, Tony received a call, telling him where to find Sinclair, Candy’s frequent visitor.

“Candy always had cash and was a lot of fun.” Sinclair snuffled and turned his face so he could wipe his nose on the back of his hand and cleaned it on the seat of his pants. “She’d slip me a little, you know, gas money, so I could come out and visit.”

“Rumor has it you’re selling drugs.” Tony took a step closer. It put him much closer than he wanted to be to the man. It hadn’t taken great detective work to locate the owner of the blue Toyota. He was sitting in it, parked at Kwik Kirk’s. “I think Candy was one of your best customers.”

“Oh.” Sinclair’s narrow face developed a bit of a sneer. “You know, rumor ain’t the same as proof. I say me and Candy was friends, and you c’aint prove otherwise.”

“If I borrow a drug dog, I don’t suppose you’d mind if it paid you a little visit?” Tony raised his palm to stop the inevitable tirade about interfering with personal freedom. “You don’t need to answer, just give it some thought.” Tony almost laughed at the idea of Sinclair doing much thinking. “Did you and Candy have a spat recently?”

“A spat?” Sinclair seemed not to understand the term.

“An argument.”

“Oh, I know what that is.”

“And did you?”

“Just a little difference of opinion. I wanted pepperoni on the pizza and she wanted ham and pineapple. Silly girl pizza.”

“And did you eat this pizza in her house?”

“Nope. We had us a little moonlight picnic in the yard.”

Tony pretended to study the yard across the road. “In Alvin’s greenhouse?”

“No way. I ain’t traipsing off into the dark.” Sinclair looked insulted. “I got better sense than to wander back there even with a flashlight. It’s cuz of that boy of hers, Alvin, always digging holes like some damn gopher.”

“Did Candy like going back there?”

“Nossir. She was worse than a girl. Always going on like ooh, there might be bugs or snakes, or one night she swore there was an axe murderer back there with a flashlight and a gun.”

“Not an axe?” Tony couldn’t help himself. To him, Sinclair didn’t sound any braver than Candy. It also didn’t sound like the couple was likely to be in the greenhouse at night.

Sinclair looked a bit cross-eyed at Tony’s jibe. “You got a problem?”

Tony ignored the question. “Did you ever go into the greenhouse in the daylight?”

“Why would I?” Sinclair leaned closer, his breath vile. “There’s nothing so great about it. Candy said her boy wouldn’t let her grow any weed back there, so I say, what’s the point?” His tirade stopped in mid breath. His brain must have finally caught up with his mouth.

Unfortunately, Tony believed him. He seriously doubted Sinclair would walk all the way to the back of the yard without powerful incentive—money or fear. Neither fit the facts as he knew them.

Trapped in her own office, Theo sat next to Martha on the window seat. Tony’s aunt kept crying, and all Theo could do was to keep handing her more tissues. “I didn’t think you liked Candy Tibbles.”

“I didn’t.” Martha wailed like a toddler. “She was an awful girl, an awful mother, and a general waste of skin.”

“So, of course, you’re sitting here bawling all over my expensive fabric.” Theo didn’t understand. “What am I missing?”

“I feel so sorry for Alvin.” Martha’s sobs became hiccups. “He was just getting used to being emancipated, and now he has to deal with funerals and the property and grief.” She wiped the tears from her face with a wad of tissues. “Do you think he’ll move back to his house?”

Theo hadn’t given the matter any thought. “I guess he could. I’m sure his grandparents paid the house off years ago, and I can’t imagine he won’t inherit it.”

Martha sighed. “So much responsibility for a young man.”

“He’s a boy.” Theo refuted Martha’s statement. “I’ve got shoes older than he is.”

“It would be nice if he’d stay in my downstairs.” Martha blew into the tissues with a loud honk.

“Aha.” Theo felt like the lights had just come on in the tunnel of her confusion. “This isn’t about Alvin, it’s all about you. You enjoy being a landlady.”

“I do.” Martha managed a smile. “If, or actually when, Alvin leaves, I think I’ll rent again. The space is perfect and private and yet”—she exhaled heavily—“if I should fall and break my leg, maybe I wouldn’t have to lie there for weeks before someone would know to come rescue me.”

This statement surprised Theo, because Martha was not old. It would have been less shocking if Jane, who was considerably older than her sister, was the one concerned about living alone. Of course, Jane had a very active, if overworked, guardian angel. She could still picture Tony’s face when he’d given her a description of Jane and the bear, the wild bear. His reenactment had gone into great detail, including his own part in the melodrama. “I promise we’ll check on you if Alvin moves out and you can’t find another tenant.”

“I’m really curious about how the tools got under the porch.” Tony lined up a couple of sheets of paper on the table. “If Alvin shoved them under there, I will jump off the courthouse roof and fly.”

“I agree.” Wade rocked back on the chair legs. “Alvin would have put them neatly in the shed, and latched it shut. Maybe even locked it. But . . .”

“What?” Tony wondered if his deputy was thinking the same thing he was. “Who would be using them, and why? We didn’t find any holes. Of course, someone has been digging out there. It’s a garden. Alvin’s the only one who can tell us if something has been changed, damaged, or rearranged.”

“Maybe someone thought Alvin buried money in the garden. You see it in movies where someone stashes the loot in a coffee can and buries it next to the tomatoes. And, as you say, who but Alvin would be able to tell if someone other than him had been digging in there?”

“Sinclair said he saw a light and heard digging one time when he and Candy were having their picnic. Or did he say they had seen it at another time?” Tony rose to his feet. “Time to get Alvin to give us a tour of his garden. Maybe he’ll spot something out of place.”

As Tony drove Alvin out to the Tibbles home, he saw no reason he couldn’t release the house and its contents to the boy. Nothing they’d found inside it showed any connection with Candy’s death. Tony cleared his throat, wondering about the best way to broach the subject to Alvin.

“If you’d like some help with cleaning up the house,” Tony mumbled. “There’s a group of women from the church who are willing to come out and sort and clean and organize a yard sale for you.”

“Why?” Obviously surprised, Alvin jerked forward, making the seat belt tighten across his chest.

“You don’t have to.” Tony realized he’d been hasty in his suggestion. After all, the boy’s mother hadn’t even been buried. “It’s your call.”

“I pay them?” Alvin’s voice was only a little louder than a whisper.

“No. It’s a volunteer group. It’s still all your stuff. Everything belongs to you, and you keep everything you want and all the money it brings in.” Tony didn’t suppress a chuckle. “There might be a few ladies who would enjoy having the first chance to purchase some item going into the yard sale but it’s yours until it’s sold.”

“You mean I wouldn’t have to go through all of my mom’s junk and the rotting stuff in the kitchen.” Some of the tension in Alvin’s face dissipated and was replaced with a modicum of relief from the responsibility he neither wanted nor was prepared for. “I have money. I’d pay.”

“No.” Tony wanted to be sure Alvin understood. “You don’t pay. This is a sympathy gift for you. I’ve seen those women in action a few times, and to tell you the truth, except for the bio hazards, which they will dispose of, they are extremely efficient and non-judgmental. You still have to decide what goes and what stays.”

“In other words, they’ll get rid of my mom’s drugs and wash things.”

“Yes.” Not for the first time, Tony admired the matter-of-fact way Alvin approached the subject of his mother’s lifestyle.

“It already is
my
house, you know, not Mom’s.” Alvin spoke after a prolonged silence. “My grandparents left it to me, in some kind of trust. They fixed it so Mom could live in it as long as she wanted to, but it was not hers to sell because they knew she would sell it out from under us and we’d end up living in a car.” After delivering his monologue, Alvin paused to breathe.

Tony hated to think of the years of despair it took for Candy’s parents to make a decision like that. “Who was the responsible adult for the property before you were emancipated?”

“Mayor Cashdollar.” Alvin smiled. “He and my granddad were big fishing buddies.”

“I’ve heard that.” Tony did a little mental arithmetic and realized the two men were probably very close in age, or would be if one hadn’t died.

Alvin finally relaxed on the seat. “They used to take me along sometimes on their all-day trips, but I didn’t love it. Fishing, that is.” His eyes gleamed. “I did enjoy the water and the picnic, but I didn’t actually like to fish.”

“I know the feeling.” Tony felt a slight lessening of his own tension; at least Alvin’s grandparents had protected him as much as they could from his unstable mother. “Fishing doesn’t float my boat either, but my brother Tiberius is a fanatic. He spends more hours in his bass boat than he does on land.”

Tony pulled into the driveway at Alvin’s house, parking near the garage, and cut the engine. “You don’t need to rush your decisions.” The expression on Alvin’s face as he looked up at the house made Tony sense the boy almost felt obliged to move back into the house, but didn’t really want to. “It’s your life. Live where you’re most comfortable. Rent the house out if you want.”

“My garden is here.” A look of mingled sorrow and fear passed over his tense face, and his eyes filled with tears.

“Keep your garden. The lease could specify the area as yours.” Tony hesitated, not wanting to interfere. “If you decide to, you might be happier if you get Claude or my brother Gus to remove the old greenhouse when it’s not needed as evidence any more. You could still commute, like you do now.”

“Your aunt’s nice.” Alvin looked like he was considering Tony’s suggestion.

Tony had to laugh. “Yes, she is. I think she enjoys having you residing in her basement.” He waited another moment before asking, “Does it feel weird at school? You know, having your English teacher for your landlord?”

Alvin cracked a grin. “I thought it might, but no. I live totally separate. I don’t see her often and she doesn’t like, you know, come in and pry. I have my own little kitchen area and total privacy.” He stared through the windshield at his home. “But I know I can knock on her door and ask for advice, you know, if I’m cooking.”

“What about your friends?” Tony sincerely hoped the boy had friends.

“They kinda understand, and it is way better than having them deal with my mom.” His face flooded with color, and his focus dropped to the floor mats. “I tried.”

Tony couldn’t miss the mingling of embarrassment and guilt. “Remember this and believe it, Alvin. You were never responsible for your mom’s behavior. You didn’t cause it, and you couldn’t fix it. You did the best you could.”

Alvin nodded but didn’t lift his head.