Murder on a Girls' Night Out (9 page)

“Mine, too.” I filled my bowl and added some oyster crackers.

Bonnie Blue looked at me in surprise. “You going to eat all that?” she asked.

“Sister’s been talking to you, hasn’t she?”

Bonnie Blue grinned.

“Well, you can forget my anorexia. It exists in her fertile imagination.”

We walked carefully to our table, balancing the soup. It was still a little early for the main lunch crowd, so we had a corner to ourselves.

“Did you find Henry?” I asked.

“No. And he’s still not answering the phone.”

“You don’t suppose he left town, do you?” But the
minute I said it, I knew it wasn’t so. “No. I know better than that,” I told Bonnie Blue.

She was stirring ice from her water glass into her soup to cool it. “Maybe he did,” she said, “if he’s smart.”

“What do you mean? You know Henry didn’t have anything to do with Ed’s murder or with the drugs, either. Why would he need to leave town?”

Bonnie Blue looked straight at me. “That sweet boy has things working against him. The sheriff’ll find it out.”

“What, Bonnie Blue? What do you mean?”

Bonnie Blue shrugged. “Things that happened between Henry and Ed.”

“What kind of things? Henry said he and Ed got along fine.”

“They did, usually. But you remember I told you Ed had these spells like PMS? Well, a couple of months ago, he had the worst one ever. I mean, there was no living with that man! And he got to drinking and got mean as a snake. Usually he would just sleep it off in the office, and that’s where we thought he’d gone until we heard Doris screaming. Doris, the girl who used to work there?”

I nodded.

“Well, Doris is nobody’s spring chicken and nobody’s beauty, but I guess Ed was so drunk he couldn’t see straight. Anyway, he decided he was going to get him some right in the walk-in cooler, of all places. Doris walked in and there Ed was, ready for action. Backed her up against the counter, and her just a-screaming. He slammed the door—locked it, the fool. If they’d been there by themselves, they’d have frozen, I reckon.” Bonnie Blue grinned. “That brings an unusual picture to mind, I must say.” She tasted her soup to see if it was cool enough. “Anyway, it was the middle of the
day, and we all heard Doris yelling, but we didn’t know why. Henry grabbed the key and opened the door and there they were, poor Doris with Ed all over her. Henry yelled for him to quit, but I think old Ed was too far gone by that time. Anyway, Henry had a frying pan in his hand and he hit Ed with it. Took Ed’s mind off what he was doing, all right. Knocked him cold. The trouble was, when he fell, he cut his head on the corner of a metal shelf. Had to have fifteen stitches. I took him to the emergency room and told them he was drunk and fell and cut his head, which was true. But Doris couldn’t keep her mouth shut. She told everybody about Henry hitting Ed with the iron skillet and saving her honor. Huh, he saved something, all right, but it wasn’t Doris’s honor.” Bonnie Blue took a spoonful of soup. “I wish I knew where she is. She knows what happened, but she left the next Monday, soon as Ed came back to work. And you know? I swear Ed didn’t remember any of it. He never said a word to Henry about him hitting him or about locking Doris up in the cooler. Just acted like nothing had happened.”

“Good Lord! I thought he just touched women’s hands. Could he have been on drugs?”

“I don’t know. I just know he was crazy. That was the only time I ever saw him
that
drunk.” Bonnie Blue munched thoughtfully on a cracker. “The fight plus the dope I’m sure someone planted are gonna put Henry in a tight spot.”

I remembered when I had put the toilet-paper holder back in the wall. There had certainly been nothing under it then.

“You think someone’s trying to set Henry up?” Soup dripped from my spoon, which was frozen halfway to my mouth, and landed solidly on my white shirt.
“Damn, damn,” I said, grabbing a napkin. “Let me go see if I can get some of this off.”

In the ladies’ room, I wet a paper towel and worked on the spot. It takes more than a wet paper towel to get broccoli soup out of a white cotton blouse, but I got out enough to keep the spot from staining. The whole time I was working on it, I kept thinking about what Bonnie Blue had said. Why would someone want to set Henry up? Or was Bonnie Blue jumping to conclusions like Sister and I had done with the “I’m going to kill you” phone message, which, incidentally, still had not been explained to my satisfaction. But she was right about one thing: the cocaine, or whatever it was, had been put into the holder when the Skoot was vandalized. I could swear to this.

“I think you’re right,” I said, sitting back down at the table. “Whether someone is deliberately trying to set Henry up or not, he’s in trouble. I’ll tell the sheriff the dope wasn’t in the bathroom the day Ed was murdered. I screwed the holder back in myself. I have this Swiss army knife.” I reached into my bag and brought it out. “See? A little Phillips head. You think he’ll believe me?”

“Probably. What we need is Doris, though. She’s not at her apartment and nobody’s seen her since she left the Skoot. I don’t have any idea where she might be, and I’ve got a temporary job at the truck stop on 78, so I don’t have much time for looking. I’ll keep trying, but I was hoping you’d help me. Help Henry.”

“Sure I will. Just give me the details.” I pushed my cold soup away. “Hit him over the head with an iron skillet?”

Bonnie Blue grinned.

“I’ll bet
that
made his tattoo dance,” I said.

M
y house smelled wonderful when I came back from my lunch with Bonnie Blue. It smelled like my wedding day, I thought, the bouquet of gardenias I had carried. I went into the kitchen and admired the plant that I had put on the breakfast room table in the bay window. I would have to move it before we ate, it was so large. Where in the world had Fred found a huge gardenia blooming in October? He was going to be forgiven a lot for this.

I listened to my phone messages: Mary Alice, call her; Debbie, call her; Sheriff Reuse, please call; Becky Bates, about cupcakes for the church bake sale. The last one shook me up more than the sheriff’s call; I’d been expecting that. Becky’s call was proof positive that lies will catch up with you. How had she known?

I called the sheriff first. He wanted to know if I could
come in at my convenience to talk to him, that I should just call to make sure he was in. I said I would, the next day, and would he mind telling me what it was about. He assured me he was just trying to clear up a few little discrepancies and would appreciate my time. I wanted to ask him if he had Henry there, but decided I’d better not.

Debbie was next. She wanted to know everything I knew about Henry. I told her, including his wife’s death and the fight he’d had with Ed, if you could call it a fight. More like a rescue. She thanked me but wouldn’t tell me why she needed the information.

Then Sister. The black dress I had worn to Myrtle Teague’s funeral would be fine to wear to the Hannahs’ party if I hemmed it a couple of inches, maybe three, and wore an important necklace.

“Fine to wear where?”

“To the Hannahs’ dinner party. You know. Richard Hannah, our next senator.”

“Oh.” I’d forgotten about Sister’s invitation.

“Just above your knees. You’ve got great legs, Patricia Anne, and never show them. At least three inches, okay? And an important necklace.”

“I don’t think I have an important necklace, whatever that is.”

“I do. I’ll let you borrow one if you’ll return it.”

“Look, I just forgot that old scarf.”

“It’s a Gucci.”

“Well, if I decide to go to the party, I’ll come up with my own important necklace. Okay?”

“Fine.” The line was quiet between us for a moment; then Mary Alice said, “Sheriff Reuse wants to talk to me tomorrow.”

“Me, too.”

“I don’t know what on God’s earth that man thinks
we
can tell him, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“He won’t even let Fly McCorkle get started fixing the place up. Won’t even let
me
go in. Said he would let me know when they were through with their investigation.”

“Hmmm,” I said. I was admiring the way my gardenia looked in the afternoon sun.

“You want to go together?”

“Sure. You want me to drive?”

“God, no. Let’s try for the morning, okay?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll bring some necklaces so you can choose one. And three inches at least.”

“Three inches,” I repeated. Sister hung up.

I got the piece of paper I had written the information about Doris on and studied it, trying to decide what to do. I wondered if Doris’s version of what had happened would be necessary. Surely if the sheriff heard about it, he would know what Henry had done was what any decent man would have done. On the other hand, he might consider hitting Ed over the head with an iron skillet a little overkill, so to speak, and there would be only Bonnie Blue and Henry to say the cut had come from Ed’s falling into a metal shelf. Besides, Ed wouldn’t have fallen if Henry hadn’t hit him. But he’d been trying to rape Doris. I sighed and reached for the phone and dialed the number Bonnie Blue had given me.

“Hi,” the answering machine said. “You have reached the Chapman residence. I am unable to answer the phone at this moment, but if you will leave a message, I’ll return your call as soon as possible. Thanks.”

Doris’s voice surprised me. It sounded very young, a Marilyn Monroe whispery quality to it. I hung up. No
use leaving a message. Bonnie Blue had been doing that for three days. I looked again at my notes. Doris Chapman, fortysomething, single, no steady boyfriend as far as Bonnie Blue knew, phone number, address in Fultondale, probably a size 12, fell into a peroxide bottle. Bonnie Blue’s exact words. I don’t know why I hadn’t just put “blond.”

I got out a map of the Birmingham metropolitan area and found Doris’s street in Fultondale. It was just two o’clock. I had time to go out there before I had to cook supper. And the gardenia deserved a very special supper. On the other hand, if she wasn’t at home, what good would the trip do? Ask the neighbors if they had seen her? Or knew where she had gone? Maybe one of them was feeding her cat.

It was worth the trip, I decided. And I would give Fred stir-fry for supper. He loved that. I could get the stuff already cut-up at the salad bar at the grocery. What did it matter who cut up a carrot?

But first I tried Henry’s number again. If he had answered, I don’t know what excuse I would have used for calling. You hate to tell a grown man that you were just worried about him. He didn’t answer, though. I gave Woofer a couple of dog biscuits and apologized for neglecting him, grabbed my keys and headed for Fultondale.

The address turned out to be a nice town house in a new development. Each town house was painted a different pastel color, which was startling against the red clay bank that rose, stark and bare, behind them. The builder had come in with a bulldozer, cleared off every tree, cut a hill in half and wedged the town houses in. Doris’s place was yellow. A small tree with no leaves was planted in her postage-stamp yard and enclosed in some kind of wire frame—for protection, I supposed.
By the front door was a round concrete planter filled with dead and dying geraniums. If Doris was home, she certainly wasn’t taking care of her plants, I thought. Not that they stood much of a chance, anyway, with that mud slide in the back just waiting to happen. It couldn’t have rained hard since these places had been built.

I rang the doorbell and heard “War Eagle,” the Auburn fight song, instead of the usual “Avon calling.” That was all I heard, though. I rang the bell again and picked a few dead leaves off a geranium. Finally I went to the blue town house on the left.

This time I heard footsteps, and the door was opened just as far as the security latch would allow. “Yes?” a woman asked.

“I’m looking for Doris Chapman,” I said. “Do you happen to know if she’s out of town?”

“Why?”

I thought quickly. “I’m the new owner of the Skoot ’n’ Boot, where she worked. It’s about her health insurance.” God forgive me!

“She’s in Florida,” the woman said. “Gone to spend the winter down there.”

“Do you know where?”

“Destin, I think. I hope she left some heat on. Like I told her, her pipes burst, my house floods.”

“You don’t have a phone number or anything?”

“No. But if you give me your name and I hear from her, I’ll tell her you were looking for her. I probably won’t, though.”

I tore my name off a bank deposit slip and handed it through the crack in the door, thinking for the thousandth time that I needed to get some cards printed.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You’re welcome.” The woman shut the door, but as I turned away, she opened it again. “Hey,” she said, “I
just thought of something. There’s this guy keeping her dog. I’ll bet he knows where she is. Fixed the kitchen floors here last time it rained. Got a real funny name. Some kind of bug. Wait a minute, I’ll think of it.” She drummed her fingers against the molding.

A light dawned. “Fly?” I asked. “Was his name Fly McCorkle?”

“That sounds right. I knew it was some kind of bug.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you very much.” I fairly skipped back to the car. As I was backing out of Doris’s driveway, it occurred to me that in spite of the mud-slide hazard and the lack of landscaping, these town houses had not come cheap. Minimum wage and tips at the Skoot didn’t buy pastel town houses in nice neighborhoods. Nor did they allow for winters in Florida. I shook my head. Another puzzle to add to the pile.

I added a Mrs. Smith cherry pie to my supper shopping. Usually, by the time you get them home they are thawed enough to be put in your own pie plate to cook. Which is what I do. My daughter-in-law has never forgiven me for not giving her the recipes for my wonderful pies. It’s the old Mom-apple-pie cliché and I’m caught right in the middle of it, hiding my Mrs. Smith boxes. There are certain lies you have to live with.

The pie, the stir-fry, and my obvious gratitude for the gardenia put Fred in an unusually good mood.

“Hear anything more about the Skoot ’n’ Boot today?” he asked cheerfully, settling back in his recliner.

“No,” I said, taking out my needlepoint.

“Do anything special?”

“No. Just had lunch with one of the girls.”

“Good.”

“Promised to take a couple of dozen cupcakes to the church bazaar.”

“That’s nice.”

The house smelled like gardenias and my husband was smiling at me. Like I say, there are certain lies that just make life easier.

“Do I look like I haven’t slept a wink in three days?” Mary Alice asked, backing out of my driveway. This is one of her damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t questions.

“Absolutely not,” I said.

“You’re lying.” She waited for a pickup truck to go by and turned into the street. “I have bags under my eyes so puffy, it looks like I’ve been in a fight.” She pulled her dark glasses down. “Look.”

“Hmmm,” I said, like I have been doing for sixty years when she puts me on the spot. She bought it again and pushed her glasses back up on her nose.

“And my earlobes are numb, particularly the left one. That always happens to me when I don’t get enough sleep. Numb earlobes. You know how I’ve always told you about my numb earlobes.”

This was the first I’d ever heard of numb earlobes. “Hmmm,” I said.

“One night I couldn’t sleep because of the murder and you screaming about somebody being in Debbie’s house and scaring me to death, and last night I was worried about the break-in.”

“That’s just two nights.”

“And three days.” The tone of her voice left no room for arguing. I changed the subject.

“Fred sent me a beautiful gardenia bush yesterday,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because he wanted to.”

“Doesn’t sound like Fred.”

I changed the subject again. “What could the sheriff want with us today?”

“The man’s a little martinet, Patricia Anne. It’s as simple as that. He loves to see people jump when he says jump. God help the wife who has to put all that starch in his shirts and iron them to suit him.”

“He doesn’t have a wife,” I said.

“What?” Mary Alice pulled her glasses down again and looked at me. “How do you know?”

“Watch where you’re going,” I said, pointing at the intersection ahead. “Henry told me.”

Mary Alice didn’t question how Henry might have known this. Actually, it was Bonnie Blue who had told me at lunch the day before, but I didn’t want to go into all that.

“He has a ring. His wife quit him?”

“She’s a neighbor of your husbands.”

“At Elmwood?”

“Yep. He’s a widower. Two years.”

“Hmmm.”

“Just the right age for Debbie.”

“Shut up, Patricia Anne.” She turned up the interstate ramp. “Besides, Haley irons better than Debbie.”

It was my turn to say, “Shut up.”

Sheriff Reuse’s office was as Spartan as his appearance. There were three chairs, the usual file cabinets and bookcases, and a desk on which there was a computer and nothing else. Not a scrap of paper or a manila folder. Not an empty Coke can or a Styrofoam coffee cup.

He motioned us to the two chairs that faced his desk, sat down behind it and thanked us for coming.

“Laundry,” Mary Alice said to me. I looked at his starched shirt and nodded in agreement.

“What?” the sheriff asked.

“I’m reminding my sister I need to pick up my laun
dry,” Mary Alice said, not hesitating for a second. “Since everybody’s gone back to cotton, it’s a godsend for the laundries, isn’t it? Of course, some people still wear polyester.” She looked at me so pointedly that the sheriff turned my way.

“It’s a blend,” I said, holding out the sleeve of my blouse for his inspection. “Forty-sixty.”

“It’s very pretty,” he said.

“Thank you. The way I figure it, if God had intended for us to iron, He wouldn’t have invented polyester.”

“That doesn’t make a grain of sense,” Mary Alice said.

The sheriff rubbed his temples in the way that was becoming familiar to me and asked Mary Alice if she had done any kind of background check on Ed Meadows when she bought the Skoot ’n’ Boot.

“Just how the place was doing financially. How much money he owed on it. That kind of thing. Why?”

“We’re having trouble finding his next of kin. We need to notify them so they can arrange for a funeral and clear up his financial obligations.”