Becklaw's Murder Mystery Tour (Jo Anderson Series) (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-eight

We four flew through the door of the office and paused, hesitating, not seeing either Percy or Oleta McLaughlin in the reception area. I walked over to the door that led to their private living quarters and knocked, head tilted toward the door to listen for any sound that might indicate whether they were in or not.

What I heard chilled me to the bone.

I motioned frantically for the others to join me and they did, a collective look of concern on their faces. I indicated that they should listen; one by one, they pressed their ears to the door and one by one they recoiled, a look of fear replacing the alarm.

What I had heard – and what they had now confirmed – was the sound of Miss Lucinda’s voice as she begged for the McLaughlins to let her and LJ go. I tried once more to get Officer K on the line, and this time I had success. When I heard her hearty ‘Officer Kingsley here,’ I almost cried.

‘This is Jo, Jo Anderson. We need you out here at the KOA pronto. The McLaughlins have Miss Lucinda and LJ …’ I was babbling and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop myself.

‘Slow down, Jo,’ commanded Officer Kingsley, and her tone, authoritative and calm, arrested my thoughts enough to let them catch up to my mouth.

‘We just got back to our trailer at the KOA and found the door kicked in. Miss Lucinda and LJ are up here at the office, and the McLaughlins are holding them captive.’ I felt foolish saying this, but if it was true, I’d sound foolish all day long in order to ensure their safety.

Officer K did not question my statement but instead asked me for our location. I told her, and she suggested that we move away from the building as casually as possible, and she and backup would be on their way. We did as she had told me, but it was difficult to leave, knowing that Miss Lucinda and LJ could be in mortal danger.

We huddled together under the shade of the tallest aspen that stood just to the right of the driveway, eyes peering anxiously down the highway for any sign of Manchester’s finest. I could have cried when I saw the first car, lights on but riding silently. It pulled to the side of the road a few yards from the KOA’s entrance, a second car pulling up behind them.

Officer Kingsley exited the second car, talking into a radio and motioning us to join her. We waited for her to finish the transmission, a bit impatiently, I must admit, while the other officers walked over to join us. I recognized the two doodlers from the briefing, but they acted as though they had never seen me. Just as well, I thought; I might be tempted to give them a piece of my mind.

‘OK.’ Officer Kingsley looked around at those of us gathered, four of us anxious and the others with their game faces on and ready to rock and roll. ‘This is what we’ll do, per the Captain: Snow,’ – doodler
numéro uno
 – ‘you and I will take the outside private entrance. Steadman, you and Shaw will take the private entrance located in the office. You other two,’ – motioning to doodler
numéro dos
and a short, muscular officer whose badge read ‘Peterson’ – ‘will cover the windows to the residence. We try to make contact first, then go in on my count if no answer. If that’s the case, I’ll count three and then we go in, got it?’

All officers nodded, and I found I’d been holding my breath. I moved closer to Miss Bea and put my arm around her, and Leslie took the other side. I could feel the older woman breathing rapidly, and I was afraid she’d hyperventilate. We needed to get her calmed down, at least as much as we could. I met Leslie’s eyes over her head and we silently consented to gently move back against the tree we had been standing under to begin with. Derek followed, still carrying two of the bags containing our lunch.

Aha! My go-to remedy for any and all that ails you – sugar – was in the bag I carried. I had almost forgotten that we had purchased cookies of several different kinds to go with our sandwiches and chips. I opened the bag and pulled out a handful, passing them to the others indiscriminately. I had a chocolate chip, Leslie had oatmeal, and Derek and Miss Bea both had sugar iced ones with a thick frosting.

We munched the goodies as we watched the police move into place: two alongside the wall that was in our view; Officers Kingsley and Snow going around to the other side of the building; and the other two officers entering the office. I heard a faint crackle from the radio on one of the officer’s shoulders and he spoke quietly into it, acknowledging Officer K’s commands.

Looking back on that spring afternoon, I find that I have a few gaps that still haven’t been filled. For instance, I don’t recall the exact moment that the officers moved in, having gotten no answer from either the McLaughlins or their niece Lola, who had coerced them into joining her in the commission of the kidnappings and the two murders. I can’t remember who came out first, the perpetrators or the victims, but I do know that suddenly I had my arms tightly around Miss Lucinda’s ample waist, and that she and Miss Bea remained glued together for the rest of the time we spent in Manchester.

LJ, in spite of his naturally tentative veneer, seemed the least traumatized of us all. Leslie, on the other hand, could not let go of LJ’s hand or arm, and before we left for Copper and home base, she was sporting an engagement ring. Apparently LJ had carried it around for quite a while. I realized that I had always been a bit curious about their relationship; for some reason, I had put them down as kissing cousins or best friends.

It turned out that they were both.

I suppose I should have suspected the McLaughlins and their niece all along, in hindsight, but there were other clues that had thrown me off – and threw the police off as well, Officer Kingsley admitted later. It seems that Lola’s strategy was to be obvious about a possible motive – the ‘scorned woman angle’ – and hope that it would seem
too
obvious. It almost worked.

Lola’s husband Hap was in shock over the entire episode, and the last I heard of him he was ensconced in the Silverton County Behavioral Center, being treated for clinical depression. Who could blame him? His wife had turned out to be as batty as her Aunt Oleta. Her Uncle Percy, poor thing, was roped into it all of it by reason of blackmail.

He had not paid taxes – state, local, or federal – for many years, and Lola knew about it. By some weird sense of reasoning, he figured it would be easier to get away with murder than to repay all that money.

People just baffle me at times, you know?

When the proverbial dust settled, we were amazed at what we learned from Officer Kingsley over pizza and breadsticks on our last night at the KOA, which was now being run by Julian Sweet, who needed a more permanent job than the one at the casino.

‘It keeps me away from gambling,’ he confided to me, and I was glad for him. It also kept him away from Andy and Bert, who Julian had threatened to ‘brain’ if he ever spotted them within fifty yards of himself again. Not the brightest thing to declare publicly, but who could blame him?

Anyhoo, as they say back home in Piney Woods, Lola, carrying a deep grudge against Josie for breaking up her marriage – or, at least, that’s what she truly thought, in spite of protestations from Hap – had overheard the gossip concerning Becklaw’s Murder Mystery Tour and the fact that we would need locals to play some bit parts. Since Josie was never around, and Lola worked so many hours, she figured that if Josie had a part in the performance, she would know where she was and could confront her once and for all.

So, she passed along the suggestion to Skinny Joe via Lily, whom she knew from the library and who had told her about the available parts. In her mind, Josie was a perfect ‘fit’ for the ‘lady of the night’ part. Skinny Joe snapped up the proposal, eager to fulfill his end of the bargain, and had asked Josie to join the troupe and there you had it: the stage was set, so to speak, for a showdown.

Lily, we found out, had joined because of Andy, on whom she had a huge crush ever since their high school days. Any excuse to be near him thrilled her, and unfortunately, it also sealed her fate. She was also the only one who could directly connect Lola and Josie – so she had to be dealt with.

Lola, being the strong wench that she was, was able to subdue Lily and well, you know the rest. I had seen her in action at the deli with the half ham, don’t forget, so I had a clear idea of how she was able to … well, for the stomach’s sake, I’ll just leave it there.

Lola and Hap had arrived early for the barbecue supper and she watched the time carefully, calculating when the cast would be arriving. She was pretty close, too; she got to the parking lot just minutes before Josie pulled in.

The confrontation, which in Lola’s jealousy-plagued mind was justified, did not go the way she thought it would. Josie had laughed at her, calling her ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’ and doing everything but say something about her mother. Lola snapped, picking up a large rock from the row that lined the parking lot and bashing Josie on the back of the head as she turned to walk away.

To make it look like a random killing, though, she had run to their truck parked just a few feet away and had pulled out one of Hap’s old hunting pistols. Josie was already dead, or very close to it, when Lola had shot her.

The pistol had been recovered by Officer Snow and the ballistics tests had proven it was a match for the gun that fired the bullet recovered from Josie’s body.

“The best laid plans of mice and men”, I thought wryly. I think what troubled me the most was that Lola had almost gotten away with it and an innocent man, Julian Sweet, had almost taken the fall.

Back to Lily and her untimely demise: once she had realized that Josie was dead, and had figured pretty quickly who must be to blame, Lily had called into work and scheduled some personal time off. She had planned on leaving the area and going to her parents down in Denver, but never had the chance to leave town. The very next morning following Josie’s murder, Lola had begun calling Lily, threatening that she’d get the same if she talked to anyone, ‘anyone’ being the Manchester Police Department.

This had the opposite effect on Lily, though; instead of scaring her into silence, it had made her angry at Lola. She dared her to come over and confront her, which was Mistake Number One.

The second blunder was when she unlocked the front door and let her in. The third error happened when she turned her back briefly on Lola, who had needed but a moment to hit Lily on the head with the large flashlight she had been carrying.

Officer Snow recovered this weapon as well, from the grocery store deli where Lola worked. She had brazenly taken it and brought it back, not even bothering to clean it off that well. She figured, with her twisted reasoning, that no one in the deli department would notice a little blood on the handle.

Apparently she was right. It had been sitting there in plain sight when we had stopped by that day.

The McLaughlins were dragged into the sordid affair when Lola found out that the troupe was staying at the KOA. She assumed that we might be interested in finding out who had done away with two of our cast members and had asked her aunt to spy on us. That was the noise on our walk the night before; Oleta McLaughlin, in her confession, told Officer Kingsley that Derek had given her a face full of dirt and pebbles.

I mentally gave Derek a high five.

Poor Percy McLaughlin was simply supposed to go over to the trailer and keep us occupied instead of us keeping our appointment with Officer Kingsley, which he knew about, after eavesdropping outside our open living room window while his wife was cleaning dirt out of her eyes. Unfortunately, when he had arrived, not only did he not have the master key he normally carried, but four of us had already left to keep the appointment.

Truly afraid of his niece Lola, he had kicked down the trailer’s flimsy front door and had taken Miss Lucinda and LJ by complete surprise. It wasn’t much of a chore to round them up and march them down to the KOA office. Anyone who might have been looking outside at that instant wouldn’t have seen anything suspicious, just the kindly manager taking care of an issue for two of his happy campers.

Lola was already there, having arrived early in the morning and let herself into the McLaughlin’s private residence with a key she’d had made on the sly. That threw her aunt off guard, and when Percy had turned up with his two prisoners, Oleta had nearly had a nervous breakdown. Things had gotten completely out of hand, she had complained to Officer Kingsley, but what were she and her husband to do? They were victims as well.

Thank goodness the District Attorney did not see things her way, I thought.

Percy and Oleta McLaughlin were formally charged and indicted on second degree kidnapping since there was no intent to harm either Miss Lucinda or LJ. They were also facing charges of ‘aiding and abetting’ for helping Lola in her dirty scheme. They were looking at plenty of time to think about what they had done, we were assured.

As for Lola, she was definitely looking at some serious time behind bars. The evidence showed a cold calculation in the planning and commission of the two deaths, and she was charged and indicted on two counts of first degree murder as well as the second degree kidnapping charges, although I personally do not agree with that. I truly believed that she would have hurt or even killed Miss Lucinda and LJ, as well as her own flesh and blood. That woman was just plain nuts.

Speaking of crazy women naturally brought my thoughts back to Crazy GreatAunt Opal and Piney Woods, Louisiana. I had missed her – and my home – more than I cared to admit. I wasn’t ready to throw in the proverbial towel, though; I had contracted with Miss Bea and Becklaw’s Murder Mystery Tour for six months, and six months it would be.

Chapter Twenty-nine 

With our stay in Manchester over at last, we had packed up and set off for Copper early in the morning. This time, we traveled as a group of six; Miss Bea had asked Miss Lucinda to come back with us and to consider making Copper her home.

I was delighted. With Leslie and LJ mooning over one another and Derek sinking back into his role of Reticent Man, I needed some lively conversation to stimulate my mind. Miss Lucinda certainly fit the bill.

The trip back to Copper flew by. The sisters-in-law kept me entertained with stories of their early meeting, of Desmond and Beatrice’s courtship and subsequent marriage, and of the many trips around the United States and the world they had taken. I was amazed at just how different the Becklaw family was from my own. The Anderson clan would have never even considered a trip to another state, much less one that required obtaining a passport and crossing deep bodies of water.

Shortly after the sun had sunk into its western bed, drawing cloudy curtains of purples and oranges and pinks around it for the night, we reached the turn-off for the town of Copper and Miss Bea’s house. I was tired, my backside was numb, and my mind was still full of the events of the previous few days. All I wanted was a hot shower and a good night’s sleep in my own bed. I briefly wondered where Miss Lucinda would be sleeping, then figured that she would bunk in with Miss Bea; those two had really become inseparable.

The driveway to the house had never looked so sweet to me. I started grinning at the beginning of the rough, bumpy trail and didn’t quit until my head hit the pillow that night. I was sure glad to be back and in one piece.

None of us were hungry enough to make a proper meal, and the refrigerator had been cleared out before our jaunt up to Manchester. I rummaged around and found a frozen loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. Peanut butter on toast would have to do for dinner. I’d need to restock before too long or I’d starve to death.

With my stomach finally full and with a glass of cool well water in hand, I went up the creaking stairs to my room. Leslie had already retired for the night, tired from all that lovey-dovey handholding, I thought wryly. I tiptoed past her door on my way to the bathroom, not wanting to wake her. She would need her rest to get ready for another day of billing and cooing.

I made my toilette and returned to my room, happy to be home, or at least to be in Miss Bea’s comfortable house. I walked across the room, careful to look at my feet as I stepped on the wooden floor, not wanting to make the acquaintance of another mouse. I unlatched and pushed open the window, leaning out into the cool, crisp Colorado night.

My thoughts turned toward Piney Woods, and the wistfulness I had managed to push down during the day welled back up in full force. I was, to put it succinctly, well and truly homesick.

I thought about my seven brothers, about how they had alternately made my childhood happy, terrifying, mysterious, and delightful in turns. I let my mind wander through thoughts of their many offspring, their spouses and their houses, and I had to smile. I had a wonderful family.

I thought about Crazy Great-Aunt Opal and our many visits together at her ‘luxury apartment’, of the many hands of gin rummy we had played and the jokes we had told one another … and played on the other residents. I could hardly wait to see her again and tell her about Lola; that was one gal who could rival my Great-Aunt for sheer kookiness, I reflected.

And finally, I thought about Mama: about her carefully coiffed hair and always neat clothes; of her cool hands on my forehead when I was sick; and her sweet voice reading a myriad of bedtime stories to me when I was a child. I felt my throat tighten and my eyes fill with tears, and I leaned my head onto my folded arms and let myself ‘weep a little weep’, as my mother would say.

Wiping my eyes, I made up my mind: I would ask Miss Bea in the morning if I could be released from the troupe. With that settled, I closed the window, got into bed, and promptly fell asleep.

The morning light moved across my face and awakened me. I stretched, holding my arms up high in the air while I reached to the end of the bed with my bare toes … and froze. Something tiny and furry was moving down there.

I leapt out of bed faster than I had ever had before. Leslie told me later that I sounded as though a strange language was coming from my mouth with nothing making sense. I can only remember clutching at her arms and pointing frantically at my bed.

Derek, once again, was my savior. He flipped back the covers and retrieved the frightened little mouse that had burrowed further down toward the end of the mattress, trying to get away from the crazy girl and her big feet. I huddled closer to Leslie as Derek walked past with the tiny creature in his cupped palms. LJ, who had joined the crowd gathered in my room, followed Derek down the stairs and held open the front door for him, allowing the frightened mouse to make good his escape.

Miss Bea and Miss Lucinda, awakened by all the commotion, stood side by side in the front room, nightgowns billowing around their legs, which were surprisingly spindly considering the other proportions of their bodies.

I wasn’t sure whose hair defied gravity the most: Miss Bea’s or Miss Lucinda’s. It was an amazing sight, the tufts of frizzy grey and hanks of lavender hanging this way and that. I managed to keep my face straight though; these two women had been like fairy godmothers to me.

I resorted to my typical method of handling any crisis involving a creature and marched directly into the kitchen for a round of enthusiastic cooking. This morning’s episode required something hearty and satisfying, so I decided to whip up my mother’s famous Piney Woods Pecan Pancakes. Bare cupboards yawned back at me in the early morning light; time for that trip into town.

With a less than enthusiastic Derek at the wheel of Miss Bea’s wagon (he’d made movements back toward his bed but I nixed that), we set off for Copper in hopes of finding at least one store open. I was a woman on a mission and after all I’d been through, securing the ingredients for a real Louisiana breakfast seemed like small potatoes, if you catch my drift.

 At last, we were gathered at the breakfast table, stacks of the steaming cakes on each plate, thick with real butter and maple syrup, a heaping platter of crispy bacon standing within reach of the six of us.

We ate in comparative silence for a while, making comments on the day’s plans and the food; no one, I noticed, even mentioned Mouse Incident Part
Deux.
Maybe they just assumed that I attracted critters the way some folks attracted mosquitoes.

My talk with Miss Bea went much easier than I thought it would. We both cried a bit and laughed a lot, and hugged each other like the mother and daughter we had become. I thanked her over and over again for my foray into the world of character acting – neither of us mentioned that we actually only performed the Murder Mystery Tour once – and it was confirmed that I would depart in two days’ time.

I spent the rest of my time in Copper relaxing with my friends, exchanging email addresses and cellphone numbers. Leslie assured me that I would be invited to the wedding, and LJ, to my surprise, unlatched from his intended and gave me a hug farewell when it was time for me to board the train back to Piney Woods. Derek gave me a salute, then turned back to help Miss Bea and Miss Lucinda back across the station platform and down the stairs. He was staying on indefinitely, he had confided; this was home to him in a way that no other place had ever been. I fervently wished him all the best. He’d need it, dealing with the Becklaw gals day after day.

Goodbyes over and done with, I settled back into my seat, determined to rest on the eight-hour trip. I was not going to make eye contact with anyone this time, I promised myself, especially if they had lavender hair.