Murder Boogies With Elvis (17 page)

“Who?”

“Day Armstrong.”

“Day?”

“I know it sounds crazy, but I’m sure.” The shakes were back. “I just don’t know what to do about it. Nobody’s going to believe me.”

There was a mumbled conversation at the other end of the phone. Then Debbie said, “Aunt Pat? Richardena’s here with the children. I’m coming over there.”

Ordinarily I would have insisted that I was okay and that she needn’t bother. Today I said, “Hurry.”

“You could be right.” Debbie was curled up in the corner of my sofa. “I’d hate to think it, though.”

“And it is illegal to marry someone so they can become a citizen?”

Debbie nodded. “I’ll have to look it up to see what the law is exactly, but it’s illegal. Dusk would have been in trouble if Griffin Mooncloth had decided to report her.” She paused. “Of course, he’d have been cutting off his nose to spite his face because he never would have gotten back in the country again. But, you know, I can’t imagine what he thought I could do for him.”

“Dusk said he didn’t want a divorce. Maybe it was about some kind of legal separation hoping Dusk would change her mind, or maybe he thought you might know some kind of loophole that he could use to stay here.”

Debbie frowned and rubbed a spot on her sweater that looked suspiciously like dried milk. “But if Day recommended that he come to see me and thought he
could work something out legally, why would she kill him? There’s something missing there, Aunt Pat.”

“I know. But I’m still sure as anything that she put the knife in my purse.”

Debbie gave up on the spot, which was going to take more than rubbing, and frowned. “You know, maybe she was protecting somebody else. Maybe she saw Dusk with the knife, and got rid of it for her. That would make sense.”

“I guess so.”

“Or she could have seen it on the floor at the theater and assumed Dusk was responsible and picked it up.”

“That’s a possibility, too.”

The phone on the table beside Debbie rang. She picked it up and said hello.

Mama,
she mouthed to me. Then, “Just visiting. Yes, ma’am. She told me about it. How is he?” A pause. “What do they say?”

So Larry was still alive. I went in the kitchen, took the salmon loaf from the oven, and glanced at the clock. I opened the door and called Woofer. If I couldn’t take him for a walk, he could at least come in for a visit. But he was sitting by the fence eyeing a little white poodle who had wandered into Mitzi’s yard. No way he wanted to come in.

“Mama wants to talk to you, Aunt Pat,” Debbie called.

I picked up the phone. “What do the doctors say?”

“They’re still running tests. They’re going to have to do surgery.”

“What are his chances?”

“Not good, I think.”

“Are you going to stay there?”

“No. His whole family is here. And Tammy Sue
needs Virgil to herself. I’m going to leave in a few minutes.”

“Well, come have supper with us.”

“What are you having?”

“Salmon loaf.”

“Dill sauce?”

“I can make some.”

“Then I’ll be there in a little while. I need to bring your chair anyway.”

I hung up and went back into the den.

“Did she say anything about Marilyn?” Debbie asked.

I shook my head.

“I guess she hasn’t checked her messages yet. I can’t believe Marilyn did that, can you?”

I shrugged. Worrying about Marilyn could wait. “Your mama’s bringing the chair Bernice Armstrong gave me for Haley. The rocker.” I sat down and looked at Debbie. “How can I tell the police that Bernice’s daughter probably dumped a murder weapon in my purse and chances are that she’s the murderer? I wonder what Miss Manners’s advice would be on that?”

“Does Mrs. Armstrong know anything about Dusk and Griffin Mooncloth?”

“No. She doesn’t even know that they were married. She thinks Dusk knew him in dance class.” The mention of Bernice and the chair had reminded me, though. “They have a grizzly bear in their house named Maurice.”

“What?”

“The Armstrongs. A real grizzly bear in their foyer. Stuffed. Got his arms up like this.” I held my arms up Maurice style. “Scared the hell out of your mother and me.”

“What?”

“Mr. Armstrong’s uncle shot him years ago. He’s molting, and it’s really sort of pitiful because Bernice is embarrassed by him, you can tell. I mean he’s standing right there in their foyer. But she says her husband treasures him. And he’s already had open heart surgery, the husband has, and damn it, I know it was Day who put that switchblade in my purse, and I don’t know what to do.”

Debbie handed me the phone. “Call Detective Hawkins, Aunt Pat.”

“But what if I’m wrong?”

“What if you’re right?”

“Hand me the phone book.” I dialed and left word for Tim Hawkins to return my call. No, it was not an emergency.

I gave the phone back to Debbie to put on the table. “Now,” I said, “let’s talk about something else. How about I show you the books of wedding designs that Bonnie Blue brought over.”

“I’m not wearing yellow.”

I got the books and sat down by Debbie on the sofa. I turned to the first one that Bonnie Blue had marked, the strapless one. Debbie sighed.

“And Bonnie Blue liked this one, too.” I turned to the jersey, the one that you couldn’t wear anything underneath. Debbie sighed again.

I glanced up. Her chin was on her chest, and her eyes were closed. Bless her heart. I’d forgotten what it was like to have a two-month-old baby.

I straightened her, put a pillow under her head, and covered her with the afghan. She woke up enough to smile slightly.

When Fred came in, she was still sleeping, and Tim Hawkins hadn’t returned my call. When Mary Alice came in, Debbie was still sleeping, Fred was taking a shower, and Tim Hawkins still hadn’t returned my call.

“Well?” I asked as Mary Alice came through the kitchen door.

“He’s still alive. That’s about all they know.”

I nodded toward the den. “Debbie’s in there asleep.”

She looked around the door. “Worn out, bless her heart.”

“You want something to drink?”

“I’ll get me a beer after I check my messages.”

I stirred the dill sauce and waited for her reaction to Marilyn’s message.

“How about that,” she exclaimed happily as she hung up the phone. “Marilyn’s finally married Charlie Boudreau, Mouse. I knew she had good sense.”

S
upper was a quiet affair. Before Fred came in, I had told Sister I knew that it was Day Armstrong who had put the knife in my purse. I also told her that Tim Hawkins was going to call, but if the call came while we were eating, she was to take it on the bedroom phone and tell him what had happened, that Fred was going to have a nice quiet meal. “He’s still upset about my being arrested, and I don’t want to worry him anymore,” I added.

Sister rolled her eyes. “God forbid that Fred should be worried.”

“And don’t mention Larry Ludmiller, how bad he’s hurt, or that we found him. I’ll tell him later on.”

“Hey, the world’s going around, Mouse. Don’t you think he’s going to find out?”

I gave the dill sauce one last stir, put it on the back burner, and turned off the front. “I told you I was going
to tell him. It’s just that he worries about how we keep finding bodies. He says it’s not normal.”

“Well, it’s not my fault that people keep getting killed around here. It never happened before you retired.” Sister opened the refrigerator and got out a beer. I offered her a glass, but she shook her head. “The other day at the Angel-sighting Society meeting a tacky woman said, ‘Oh, you’re the one who keeps finding bodies.’ I think I’d have slapped her, if I hadn’t been a lady.” She held the top of the beer bottle by the knuckles of two fingers, tipped it up, and drank half of it in one gulp. “Besides”—she burped lightly—“Mama would have turned over in her grave.”

I was too tired to fuss with her or point out the obvious, the fact that she was the one who had gotten us involved in most of the murders with her harebrained schemes like the country-western bar and the investment club.

“Anyway,” I said, “just don’t mention Larry.”

“Okay. I guess we can talk about Marilyn and Charlie. I wonder what she wore. I’ll bet they just went down to City Hall like Philip and I did.”

“That was Roger. You and Philip were married by a rabbi and you wore an off-white chiffon dress.”

“Did I say Philip? I meant Roger, my old teddy bear.” Sister, I swear, has her husbands categorized as the lantern-jawed but sweet (Will Alec), the intellectual (Philip, because he read books), and Roger the teddy bear (I’m not sure why; maybe he was hairy).

Which reminded me. “Bonnie Blue left you some wedding dress books. They’re on the coffee table.”

“Great. Have you looked at them?”

“Some.”

“What do you think?”

“Some of them are beautiful.”

Debbie woke up when her mother sat down on the sofa. “I’m not wearing yellow, Mama,” she mumbled when she saw her mother pick up one of the books.

“Of course you are. It’s your color.”

Debbie groaned and sat up. “I’ve got to go feed Brother.”

“You want to stay for supper?” I asked.

“I can’t, Aunt Pat. I’m hurting.”

That was another thing I had forgotten about having a two-month-old baby. Some things just can’t wait.

“Tell the twins that Teeny sends kisses.” Mary Alice had already opened the first book and now she said, “Wow.”

“How’s Larry Ludmiller, Mama?” Debbie was putting on her coat.

“Not good. But isn’t it great about your sister getting married?” She turned the page. “Look at this strapless one. Do you think I could get away with that?”

Fred came into the room just then. Mary Alice held the book up for him to see. “Do you think I could get away with that, Fred?”

“Well, it sure wouldn’t fall off you like it’s about to do that girl.”

“True.”

I walked Debbie to the back door and promised to call her if I heard anything about Larry. “Or anything else for that matter,” I added. I also added my kisses for the children to those that “Teeny” had sent. One of the joys of Sister’s life is being called “Teeny” by Fay and May, something that we’ve never figured out. Richardena, the nanny, is “Deeny” so maybe there’s some connection there. Who knows. For a second I
wondered what Joanna would call me and felt a little flutter in my belly.

When I looked back into the den, I saw something that I never thought I would see. Fred and Sister were sitting on the sofa looking at the bridal gowns, discussing the pros and cons of each one.

“Look at this one,” Fred was saying. “That woman’s skinny, and she looks like a lard-ass with all that material in the back.”

“But if she really had a lard-ass, nobody would know. They’d think it was the material.”

“True.”

I left the amazingly congenial duo to their fashion perusal and set the table and put supper out.

“This one is amazing,” Fred was saying when I called them to supper. “Look, honey.” He showed me the book. “Isn’t that amazing?”

The dress consisted of about a hundred yards of material covered with net that was caught up in places by bouquets of white roses and lace. Ribbons fluttered from the bouquets. I checked to see if Fred was serious. He was.

“Amazing,” I said. I went into the kitchen thinking that no matter how long you’re married to a man, he can still surprise you. And that’s not bad.

Like I said, supper was quiet. We talked about Marilyn and Charlie Boudreau and how we hoped they would be happy. “A proper conduit, anyway,” Fred said, grinning. Then he asked what we had been doing today. I explained about the rocking chair, told him it was outside in Sister’s car. Sister described Maurice, the grizzly bear, which got a chuckle out of Fred. While we were eating chocolate Popsicles, the only
dessert I could find, the phone rang. Sister jumped up, claimed it was for her, and disappeared down the hall. Fred didn’t think this was at all unusual. I had trouble swallowing my Popsicle, though, until she came back and said that it was the Hannah Home and their truck would be on our street picking up discards on Wednesday. She had told them we didn’t have anything to discard.

I thought she was telling the truth until Fred went into the den to watch
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
. She leaned over and whispered loudly that the caller had been Tim Hawkins and that he would talk to me in the morning. She had told him I suspected Day, though.

Suspected, hell. I
knew
she had done it. And
I
had gotten arrested for it.

“Here’s a pretty one, Mary Alice,” Fred called from the den. I glanced around the door and saw that he was looking at the bridal designs again. The man had lost his mind. Sister went galloping in to see what he had found, and they spent another hour engrossed in the dresses. Amazing.

It was drizzling rain when Sister left, a book propped on each hip. She said that she would keep the chair in her car, and we could take it over to Philip’s house the next day. “And I’ll call you if I hear anything about you know who.”

“Who?” Fred asked as the door closed.

There’s a big difference in keeping something from your husband and straight out lying to him. “Larry Ludmiller,” I confessed. Which meant that I had to tell him the whole story.

“Damn, Patricia Anne,” he said. “Damn. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

He frowned at me.

“Besides, I just did. I told you everything.”

He picked up the newspaper. “I’m going to bed.”

“You’re mad at me, aren’t you.”

“I’m just put out.” He disappeared down the hall.

Fred seldom gets mad at me, so seldom that I fall apart when he does. I finished straightening up the kitchen, watched the ten o’clock news, took another antibiotic and aspirin, and kept hoping that he would come back in and say he was sorry. He didn’t. Around eleven I tiptoed into the bathroom, put on my nightgown, and slid into bed beside him. I’m not sure if he was asleep or not, but he didn’t turn over or tell me good night.

There was no way I could sleep. I finally went into the den, picked up Carolyn Hart’s
Sugarplum Dead,
and tried to lose myself in the Christmas adventures of the Darlings. But not even Max and Annie Darling could keep my mind off the day’s events. Larry Ludmiller, crumpled and bloody, kept getting between me and the pages. Surely he would be out of surgery by now, or they would know something. I finally got the phone book, looked up University Hospital, and reached the intensive care waiting room’s number from the operator by telling her I had a family member in intensive care. Well, it wasn’t much of a lie.

Hoping that I wasn’t waking anyone up, I dialed the number. A woman answered, and I asked if Virgil Stuckey was there. When he came to the phone, I apologized for calling in the middle of the night but told him I couldn’t sleep because I was worried about Larry.

“He’s still in surgery, Patricia Anne,” he said. “They
just don’t know.” There was a long pause before he said, “They’ve given Tammy Sue a sedative. She’s dozing a little.”

“I hope I didn’t wake her up.”

“No. It’s fine. I appreciate your calling. Mary Alice has already checked in a couple of times.”

So Sister was having trouble sleeping, too.

Virgil’s voice was shaking when he said, “Keep us in your prayers, Patricia Anne.”

I promised that I would, and I meant it. After I hung up, I went back to bed and whispered to Fred’s back that I loved him and had just been trying not to worry him. Finally I slept.

Fred was gone when I woke up. In spite of so little sleep, I realized that I felt okay. The antibiotics had kicked in. I opened the blinds and looked out. It was a perfect spring day, sun gleaming on leaves wet from the night’s drizzle.

I dialed Sister’s number, and she answered on the first ring. Larry had made it through surgery. Virgil had just come in and was drinking some coffee. Tammy Sue wouldn’t leave the hospital.

“The prognosis?” I asked.

“Still questionable. But he at least made it through surgery. Wait a minute.” I could hear a man’s voice. “Virgil says to thank you for calling last night.”

“Tell him he’s welcome. Does one of us need to go stay with Tammy Sue?”

“Olivia’s there. You know, Larry’s sister. And Buddy—Virgil, Jr.”

“Okay. Call me if you need me. I guess I’ll have to stick around here for Timmy Hawkins.”

I got a cup of coffee and checked my e-mail, hoping
to hear from Haley. I had three messages. One said
SEX SEX SEX
, another asked if I was interested in working at home, and the third was from Martha Stewart.
Dear Patricia Anne
wasn’t interested in those giant cookie cutters today. Instead, I typed in Haley’s e-mail address and told her there was no news and that we were fine. She was in Warsaw and pregnant. What could she do about our latest escapades but worry? I had turned off the computer before I remembered that neither Marilyn nor Debbie might have e-mailed her about Marilyn’s marriage. Maybe when Fred got home we’d call her.

I waited for an hour for Timmy’s call. Nothing. And it was a beautiful day outside. I finally got Woofer’s leash and left for a walk. Sister had told him basically all I could tell him the night before. I certainly had no proof that Day was the culprit. He could leave a message.

It was so good to be feeling better, so good to feel the freshness of a morning after rain. Woofer felt the same way, scampering from tree to tree, barking wildly at a squirrel. We walked all the way to Homewood Park, where I sat on a bench in the sun and Woofer lay on the ground beside me, wagging his tail at the few people who walked by pushing strollers or jogged by, everyone saying, “Good morning.”

I closed my eyes. I could sleep here in this peaceful park with its huge old shade trees sprouting new green. For a few moments, Larry Ludmiller wouldn’t be fighting for his life, Day Armstrong wouldn’t be dropping knives in my purse, Fred wouldn’t be angry with me. Sunlight, dappled by new leaves, made shadows across my closed eyes. I sighed and relaxed.

“Good morning, Mrs. Hollowell.”

I must have dozed off because I jumped.

“Sorry I scared you.” Timmy Hawkins sat down on the bench beside me. “I was driving past the park and saw you.”

I rubbed my hand across my mouth, hoping it hadn’t been open, and I hadn’t been drooling—a bad habit of mine when I doze.

“Morning, Timmy,” I said, wondering if he was on duty. He had on jeans and a University of Alabama sweatshirt with a red elephant holding a megaphone and declaring
ROLL TIDE
on it. On his feet were brown boots that had seen much, much better days.

“I was on my way to your house. Actually I was on my way to the Piggly Wiggly. It’s my day off, and I thought I’d stop by if you were home.”

“Sister said you were going to call.”

“I was.” He reached down and patted Woofer, who rolled over in delight. Good thing Timmy wasn’t some mugger. “But I was going by anyway.”

“Well, she told you about Day Armstrong, that she had the opportunity to drop the knife in my purse.”

Timmy nodded. “Tell me about it.”

So I did, adding that I didn’t want to believe it, but I did.

“How do you suppose she got the knife?” Timmy asked.

I looked into his guileless blue eyes. “Don’t hand me that, Timmy. The same way you think she did. Picked it up off the floor of the stage. Or walked out on the stage with it. God knows. But I’m telling you this. Larry Ludmiller’s in the hospital maybe dying because whoever killed the guy at the Alabama thinks Larry saw him. Or her,” I added.