Hung Out to Die (12 page)

That startled me. She'd said
what
?

“—and you'd have thought I'd said something truly awful, like Fenwick deserved it or something, and the next thing I knew, Nora was screaming at me, and so was Mamaw Toadfern, that I always had been an insensitive troublemaker, and if it weren't for me, Henry and Fenwick would have gotten along, and Henry said, well, we certainly didn't need to put up with this kind of treatment—that's not what we'd come back for—and I said, of course not, we came back for a business deal, and it was only because we have good manners that we dropped by at all, and so we left and went back to the Red Horse Motel.” She wrinkled her nose. “Awful accommodations, really, but the only place in town, of course. I think they have mildew problems.”

“It's owned by the Rhinegolds—good customers and friends of mine,” I said. “I've gotten to know them very well over the years. And I don't think they have mildew problems.”

“Hmmm. Well. You might suggest they update the décor. Anyway, we'd finally gotten back and had started getting ready for bed when there was a knock at the door. It was Chief Worthy.” She shook her head. “Handsome fellow. Seems to me you and he are the same age. I didn't notice any wedding band. But please tell me you aren't dating him.”

“I'm not,” I said, “although I did back in high school, until I found out he was two-timing me. At which point I dumped him and . . .”

. . . and ran home and cried on Aunt Clara's shoulder, until she'd had enough of my sniffling and fed me hot chocolate and cookies and told me I deserved better in life.

Is that what she'd say about my situation with Owen? I wondered. I had a feeling it was . . .

“Well, I'm not surprised he cheated on you. His father was a two-timing twit, too,” my mother was saying.

My eyebrows went up at that. “I always thought Mr. Worthy was a fine, upstanding citizen.”

My mother hmmphed. “You've got to look past surfaces, you know. C. J. Worthy was a successful businessman, owned a plumbing company locally. Your daddy and Uncle Fenwick worked for him, before Fenwick started his own business. C.J. was a terrible flirt with me at cookouts he used to have. Made his wife—a dowdy little thing—very jealous. And it didn't make the Worthys very happy that Fenwick started a rival business up in Masonville. But that was after both Henry and I left Paradise.”

I hadn't known that my daddy had been a plumber once. I realized I'd never actually thought about what he might have done for work. All I knew was that he'd left when I was little and that my mama always called him “that good for nothing.”

But something else struck me about what my mama was saying. She'd heard about Uncle Fenwick starting his own plumbing company. That meant she'd stayed in touch with someone in Paradise all those years. New plumbing companies in small towns in Ohio wouldn't have made the news anywhere outside of the immediate area, so she couldn't have learned about it—wherever she'd been all those years—from any other source than someone in Paradise.

Uncle Horace and Aunt Clara? No, I didn't believe that. Someone from the Toadfern family? No, that didn't seem likely, either.

But she'd kept up on Paradise news with someone . . . and yet hadn't known what had happened to me right after she left. Who had she stayed in touch with?

I filed the question away, telling myself it didn't matter and I didn't care.

“Anyway,” Mama went on, “that little brat John Worthy came to our room with some other officers and said they had to question us. Worthy said they'd gotten an anonymous call about the fight Henry and Fenwick had at dinner, that Henry had threatened to stab Fenwick. Like a fool, Henry admitted it. Worthy asked him if he had a knife. Henry showed him the collection of antique hunting knives he'd brought up as gifts and to sell to a local dealer. We really do have some knowledge of the flea market business, you know. Anyway, Worthy took all the knives. I don't understand why.”

While I had been at Mamaw Toadfern's after the murder, John Worthy had only said that Fenwick had been murdered—not how.

“Uncle Fenwick was stabbed,” I said. I didn't see any reason to bring up the fact that someone had first attempted to hang poor Uncle Fenwick from a telegraph pole.

Mama blanched. “Oh. Well, Henry is being held in the Paradise jail. Given that it's the holiday weekend, I don't know if I'll be able to get him out by Monday. I called our lawyer down in Arkansas, but he just looks over our real estate contracts and can't practice here in Ohio, anyway. He gave me the name of a Columbus attorney to call tomorrow morning . . . but, oh, Josie . . . we need your help! We need you to find out whoever the killer is!”

She burst out crying, reverting to the sobbing persona who'd appeared at my door just a half hour before, and yet studying me between her fingers, with a look in her eye that told me she was watching my face to see if the sobbing was having an effect on me.

I stared at the woman on my couch . . . this woman who was my mama, but yet, who wasn't, who wavered between being just like the woman I remembered as Mama and this other manipulative creature she'd reinvented herself into . . . and I thought why? Why would they want my help . . . and why would I want to give it?

The question must have showed on my face because she said, “I read about your involvement in solving the murder of Tyra Grimes.” She was referring to a nationally known domestic diva/media mogul who'd come to our town and been murdered the past spring. Unfortunately, there had been several local murders since then, and I'd gotten involved in those, too, because of my curiosity-giftedness (as I like to think of the trait everyone else calls “nosiness”), but those cases hadn't made national news.

“Josie,” my mama said, sniffling, making her eyes wide, “we—your daddy and I—need your help. In finding out who set your daddy up as his brother's murderer. I imagine it was one of the Toadferns—but who? And that twit Worthy hates us, so he's just all too willing to look no further than an anonymous phone call. Henry needs to get out of jail and have this wrapped up so we can go ahead with our FleaMart plans for the orphanage . . . and I need Henry to get out of jail because I miss him!”

Now, I have to admit I was tempted, then and there, to say, sure I'd help, simply because I was curious: why did John Worthy hate my parents? Did it have to do with his daddy having flirted with my mama, way back when? Maybe that had something to do with how meanly he'd treated me, ever since we broke up, way back in high school? But if he'd known about anything between my mama and his daddy, he'd never mentioned it, either while we dated or after.

Maybe he just had an airtight case against my daddy, and Mama didn't want to admit it.

After all, it sounded like there was some pretty good evidence against my daddy in the killing of Uncle Fenwick. I shuddered before finishing off the last of my now lukewarm tea, and fixing my gaze on Mama.

“No,” I said. “I can't help you with this.” I stood up. “I'm going to get on my tennis shoes and coat and drive you back to the Red Horse Motel. I recommend that in the morning you also call Elroy's Filling Station to have your car towed to his shop, before your car gets impounded.”

I picked up Mama's mug from the end table, turned, and stepped toward the kitchen—and stopped at her next words.

“We're your
parents,
Josie! Doesn't that mean anything to you?”

There were all kinds of answers—mostly angry—that came rushing to my mind all at once. Foremost—I was your kid. Didn't that mean anything to you? Oh, wait, I know the answer
. . . No
!

But Uncle Horace and Aunt Clara had reared me better than that. Maybe it had been a bad idea to give in to Sally's wheedling and attend the Toadfern Thanksgiving Family Reunion. If I'd known my long-gone parents would have wheeled into Mamaw Toadfern's driveway, would I have gone?

I wasn't sure. When I was little, my curiosity made me wonder about them from time to time. Why had they left? What were they like? What were they doing? Was it somehow my fault they'd left? I'd asked Aunt Clara that once, and she'd sternly told me no, I must never think that, and I'd believed her, and after that the questions about my parents started to fade and other questions about the world and life and my role in it took over.

So, I guess I had long ago stopped trying to imagine what my parents were like, but now that I'd met them, I was disappointed. They were self-absorbed and arrogant, seeming completely unaware that by leaving Paradise as they each had, they'd hurt a lot of people—and that by returning with a plan to build a FleaMart, they were going to hurt a lot more people.

I turned and looked at my mama, thinking about her question.
We're your parents . . . doesn't that mean anything to you?

“Yes, it does,” I said slowly, carefully. “I'm thankful that I'm alive, that you two created me, that you gave birth to me. Thank you for that.”

Mama hmpphed, rolled her eyes in a gesture that was similar to my own eye-rolling habit.

“No, really, I do thank you for that. And I don't know what I can really say beyond that, except . . . I'm not the right person to help you and Daddy with this situation. You need to follow your attorney's advice.”

I took the mugs into the kitchen, filled them with soapy water and set them next to the other soapy-water-filled mugs. I'd wash them all in the morning.

Then I went into my bedroom and slipped on my sneakers and my coat, grabbed my purse and keys from the dresser, and went back out to the living room.

But Mama was sound asleep, snoring.

At least, she seemed to be. Maybe she was just playing possum, managing to somehow look sad and lost and vulnerable all at once, knowing at some level I'd fall for it, even though I had every reason in the world to shake her awake and take her back to the Red Horse Motel and never have another thing to do with her and Daddy.

But instead, I felt sorry for her. Had she manipulated me like that when I was a kid? I wasn't sure. Maybe.

It was too late at night—or too early in the morning—to try to figure that one out. Instead, I unfolded the afghan and spread it over Mama.

Then I went back to my room, shut the door, took off my shoes and coat and fell at last into blessed, dreamless sleep.

9

Mama, as it turned out, was next to impossible to wake up.

Right after I woke up at 7:55
A.M.
—fully wide awake, right before my alarm went off at 8:00
A.M.,
which is how I always wake up, even after a night of less sleep than usual—I padded out to my living room. I lightly shook Mama. She moaned.

I decided to give her a few minutes. I showered, then dressed in jeans, black boots, an off-white turtleneck, and an ordinary burgundy cardigan that did
not
feature a single flashing turkey. I fluffed my short cropped do, and put on moisturizer, a dash of beige eye shadow, and a single coat of Cover Girl mascara, the brand that comes in the hot pink and lime green tube, because Cherry swears by it.

After all that, Mama still wasn't awake. So I pressed a cold, wet washcloth to her face. She flailed.

So I had breakfast as loudly as possible, clattering around in my kitchenette as I made a pot of coffee, washed the previous night's mugs, and had a bowl of Cap'n Crunch cereal with chocolate milk. My breakfast rowdiness didn't rouse her, so I gave her yet a few more minutes of sleep while I brushed my teeth and dabbed on lip gloss. Then I called Elroy's Filling Station and left a message about having Mama's car towed there.

Then I came out and stood over her and sang “Rise, and shine, and give God the glory, glory,” in the loudest, most nasally voice I could muster—just as a counselor once did to me at Ranger Girl Camp Wren-E-Na-No-Tikki. That experience is what gave me the ability to come fully awake a few minutes before whatever my alarm is set for.

But Mama just wriggled down further under the afghan.

I gave up, left a note on the coffee table: “Called Elroy's Filling Station and left message to tow your car there. I'm downstairs in my laundromat. Josie.”

Then I shrugged on my coat, let myself out of my apartment—slamming the door extra hard—and went out to the balcony landing. I stood there for a few seconds and stared at more snow swirling. Then I glanced down at my van, the lone vehicle in my laundromat's parking lot. From the look of my van's roof, about another half inch had fallen. If this kept up, by Sunday night, I'd have to call Chip Beavy, the grandson of one of my most beloved customers, and hire him to do one of his many odd-job specialties, in this case, plowing.

And if we really ended up with a doozy of a snowstorm in the next few days as predicted, I'd drive my van around to my more elderly customers and gather up their laundry to do at no extra charge. The last thing I wanted was a senior citizen falling and breaking a hip while struggling to bring a basketful of dirty laundry to my laundromat.

Truth be told, I knew I could leave my laundromat open and unattended that day and the next, and just have a few customers. Not too many laundromat customers over Thanksgiving weekend.

After the weekend, that would change. I'd be extra busy for a few days consulting on how to get stains out of Sunday-best outfits so folks could wear them for end-of-year holidays, too.

I went down the metal steps, around to the back entry to my laundromat, and let myself in, stomping off my boots on a mat just inside the door as I flipped on the overhead light in my combo office/storage room. I shrugged out of my coat and hung it on the old coat-rack, which had been used by my Uncle Horace.

Somehow that coatrack always gives me comfort. It's an antique Uncle Horace bought years ago from Rusty Wilton, who owns the Antique Depot. Rusty'd been trying to buy it back ever since.