Murder on the Cape Fear (12 page)

“
Why? Do you have a reason for thinking that Jimmy Pogue killed his wife?” she asked in a disbelieving and infuriating tone.

I tilted my head from side to side like a confused puppy. She was in law enforcement; weren’t they trained to suspect the spouse first? Meanwhile, Jimmy Pogue was hightailing it to parts unknown.

It was maddening how cool this woman could remain in the most heated circumstances. I was forced to repeat the quarrel I had overheard last night.

“
Don’t answer any more questions, Ashley!” Melanie shouted as she pushed past the uniformed officer who was attempting to block her way. Melanie turned on him, furious. “Take your hands off me! This is my sister’s house. I can come in here whenever I want. My father was a judge - I know the law!”

Diane Sherwood crossed her arms over her chest and smirked. I knew exactly what she was thinking: The Wilkes sisters are as nutty as a Snickers bar.

Melanie took hold of my arm. “Get your purse. We are out of here.” To Diane she said, “If you want to talk to either of us, call our lawyer, Walt Brice.”

Walter Brice was the best defense attorney in New Hanover County and had been a friend of our late father, Judge Peter Wilkes.

Bolstered by Melanie’s assertiveness, I said to Diane, “Make sure you lock up when you are through. If anything is missing, I’ll hold you and the PD responsible.”

Diane gave the junk stacked in my parlor a contemptuous once over. “As if you’d know if something was missing.”

“
Why does that woman hate me so much?” I asked Melanie after she had hustled me down my front steps and into her waiting Mercedes convertible which she’d left double parked in Nun Street. Police cars had filled all available curb spots. My own car was parked in the porte cochere at the side entrance to my house - the only entrance not standing wide open for all the world to see the mess inside my house - and I’d left my van at the Captain’s house on Front Street.

“
She hates you because she fears you,” Melanie said.

“
Fears me!” Why would anyone fear me?

Melanie took Third Street to Oleander and headed east. “Where are we going?” I asked, the wind catching and blowing my hair as Melanie accelerated.

“
I know just what we need to take our minds off these dreadful killings.” She turned to me. “They have nothing to do with us, you know. Here I am, just doing my job, organizing my investors and showing desirable properties, and it’s like I spawned a coven of witches!”

“
Watch where you’re driving!” I screeched. If I had a dollar for every time I said that one, I’d be a millionaire.

“
She fears you because she sees you as a rival and you’re younger and prettier. I’ve had to put up with her type of female all of my life. I know how snotty they can act. She’ll make your life miserable if you let her.”

“
But she’s the police, Melanie, and I’m involved in two homicides. It’s not my fault that I find the victims, but Diane Sherwood acts like I’m guilty of something just because I do. I’m innocent. If anyone’s to blame, it’s you for bringing that dreadful Patsy into my house!”

“
Don’t go there! You’re playing into Sherwood’s hands with that kind of attitude. She’d love to split us up - divide and conquer. But as long as we stick together - and as long as you stand up to her - we’ll beat her at her game. And when she starts to put on the pressure, just call Walt Brice. He’ll take care of her.”

“
This is all about Nick,” I groaned. “She wanted Nick, and I got him and that is what makes her so spiteful. Hard to believe that I once respected her. Not anymore. I told her she was welcome to Nick, but that doesn’t seem to make any difference.”

“
That’s because Nick didn’t want her then and I doubt he wants her now. She probably thinks he is still hung up on you. That’s her problem, not yours. So let it go. You’re lucky he’s out of your life. I’ve been telling you that for months. Now forget all the homicide stuff. We’ve got a wedding to plan. We’ve got the best men in our lives, real catches. Diane and Nick are welcome to each other. Together they don’t make enough money to pay my dry cleaning bill. You’ve got to learn to focus, Ashley, like I do. Don’t let the enemy camp distract you.”

I gave her a look of renewed respect. “You know something, big sis, you’re something else. Sometimes it’s uncanny how much you remind me of Daddy. That sounds just like something he’d say.”

Melanie flashed a megawatt smile my way. The wind whipped her long auburn hair but it only fell perfectly back in place. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“
In your case, I’d say it’s a peach, big sis. OK, now where are we going?” I repeated.

“
Why, to try on wedding dresses. What else? Nothing will make you feel more like a bride and get you back on target than a long white gown.”

Wedding dresses. Yes, it was certainly time. “Thank goodness we’re not living in Mama’s era. Divorced women weren’t allowed to wear wedding gowns when they remarried, and certainly not white gowns. The bride would have been ostracized.”

“
Well, thank goodness society has progressed. Oh, did I tell you? Candy Murray is meeting us. She publishes a Southern wedding magazine, you know. And she has excellent taste.”

Here we go again with the women with excellent taste, I thought. Why did they always turn out to be unreliable and trouble? And why was Melanie always taken in by them? “I’ve got to call Jon,” I said, and hit his number on my cell phone.

After our conversation, I told Melanie, “He already knows about Patsy’s murder. The whole town knows. He’s standing on the sidewalk out in front of my house like the entire population of Wilmington!”

“
Did you tell him where we’re going?”

“
No. Just that I was with you. Where are we going?”

“
A bridal boutique, of course.”

“
Oh, shug, that one is definitely you,” Melanie squealed.

“
It’s fabulous,” Candy Murray agreed.

I was modeling a Jessica McClintock wedding gown, simple white strapless with a mid-length train. “You can wear Great-Aunt Lillian’s rubies with that dress,” Melanie advised.

She turned to Candy. “Since it’s going to be a Christmas wedding, I want to inject red into the color scheme as much as possible.”

I studied myself in the full-length mirror. I felt like a princess. My dark brown hair had grown longer and now skimmed my shoulders. The pure whiteness of the dress brought out the pink in my skin. My gray eyes looked huge. I looked like a bride. I looked like a princess. I felt like a queen.

“
I think I’ll wear my hair up,” I said and lifted my hair off my neck.

Neither Candy nor Melanie responded, instead Candy told Melanie, “Shug, I can’t tell you how much I admire you for planning your own wedding. You are really something. Most brides aren’t capable and have to hire a professional.”

“
I think this is the one,” I said, and saw my skin flush with happiness.

Melanie giggled and confessed, “I’m just a control freak. I know I can do a better job than a wedding planner.”

“
Well, if you need any help, just call me. I’ve got the contacts.”

“
Oh, Candy, you are a love,” Melanie said.

Seeing myself in the gown, the wedding felt real. In December I really was going to be divorced from Nick. In December I really was going to marry Jon. Life is sure funny, I thought to myself. Funny and good.

“
I think simple white peau de soie pumps,” Candy said, looking me over in an analytical way. “Don’t you, Melanie?”

“
I agree. We don’t want peek-a-boo toes with that elegant dress.”

“
Well, I’m glad you’ve got that settled,” I said. Peek-a-boo toes, indeed. Yet actually, I was feeling very, very happy and grateful to both of them. I’d pushed Patsy Pogue’s murder to the perimeter of my consciousness.

“
Now, it’s your turn, Melanie,” Candy said. “Try on this ivory gown.”

“
Oh, I’ve already ordered my gown from Vera Wang. I selected it when Cam and I were in New York last month.”

Candy was impressed. “She’s the best. She made my friend Mary Susan’s dress and you . . .”

I tuned them out and told the sales associate that this was the dress for me, and to get the alterations lady. As the gown was fitted and pinned - it was an almost perfect fit, needing only a few minor adjustments - I couldn’t help but think that I was standing here very much alive while Patsy was no doubt still lying in my gazebo with police photographers and a medical examiner hovering over her, not giving her any peace. She had been a dreadful woman - but nobody deserved to be murdered.

Despite the exquisite and expensive tending that Candy Murray lavished upon her appearance, there was nothing she could do about her odd shape. From the waist up she looked like a Modigliani drawing: high forehead and long narrow horsy face. Long narrow torso, long thin arms. But then your eye stopped in alarm at her short, short legs and you blinked and wondered if your eyes were playing tricks on you. The cropped pants she was wearing didn’t help; they shortened the appearance of her legs, as if her legs, not the pants, had been cropped. Now Melanie, with her perfect figure, and even I, with my not-so-perfect figure, can get away with Capri pants, but a short-legged woman like Candy could not.

What she lacked in stature, she made up for with determination and a super confident ego. “Why not?” was her favorite expression. Ask her anything, and her response was always a hearty “why not!” As if she was game for anything. As if there was no hurdle so high her short legs could not surmount it.

And she was cold. Deep, deep down, she was cold. Despite her gregarious and friendly manner, she was a chilly woman. It showed in her eyes when she thought you weren’t noticing. An icy glint. Instinctively I didn’t like her. Didn’t trust her.

We decided to go to the Bridge Tender Restaurant for a drink, and to call our “men folk” to meet us there for dinner. But first we had to make a quick stop at Melanie’s so I could borrow something decent to wear.

“
What am I going to do for clothes while the police shut me out of my house?” I moaned on the drive to Melanie’s house on Sandpiper’s Cove. We were alone on the drive, Candy having something to do and deciding to meet us at the Bridge Tender in an hour. “Everything I have at Jon’s is dirty. I haven’t had a moment for laundry.”

“
You’ll borrow my clothes. I think I have some things you can fit into.”

And she did. In her bedroom, she produced a stretchy pink tank top with a pink linen loose shirt. “Don’t button it and it will fit,” she told me. “These pants have a draw string waist so they’ll be fine.”

Spunky, Melanie’s cat, was winding himself around my ankles so that I could not get my feet out of my shorts. “Spunky, I’m happy to see you too.” I lifted him and set him on the bed where he proceeded to groom his glossy black coat. He has a white fur bib that makes him look like he is wearing a tuxedo. Recently someone had told me that certain cats were “closet groomers” - grooming themselves only when no one was around. Spunky was certainly not a closet groomer.

“
I like food too much,” I complained as I stepped out of what Melanie calls my construction-wear chic outfit and into her elegant thin linen sportswear.

“
Well, I do too. We just have different metabolisms, is all,” she said. Her head was in the closet and she was pulling out clothing items. “These should do you for a few days.”

Then she seemed to really see me for she stopped, and quickly crossed the room to close the distance between us. She enfolded me in a warm embrace. “Listen, baby sister, I don’t say this often enough, but I love you. If anything had happened to you today . . . If you had arrived while the murderer was still there . . . Why, I just couldn’t live without you. You are the most important person in the world to me.”

She moved back and I saw that tears had welled up in her beautiful green eyes, making them sparkle.

I hugged her tight. “And you are the most important person in the world to me too. Don’t cry, Mel. I’m safe and so are you. I don’t know what’s going on anymore, but as you say, it has nothing to do with us.”

Melanie stepped back, thinking hard. “The key to all this is that journal. I think we need to do some investigating of our own. That Diane Sherwood is a sorry excuse for a detective. After dinner, we’re going over to Binkie’s and see what he’s learned from the journal. Hugh Mullins was killed over it.”

“
And there was an attempted break-in at Binkie’s house,” I added, “and what else could they have been after but the journal?”

I had a thought. “Do you suppose the murderer was searching my house for the journal and then Patsy caught him and so he killed her?” I shook my head negatively. “No, that doesn’t work. Patsy was out in the gazebo gobbling down fudge brownies. He snuck up behind her. So, no, she was killed for another reason.”

Melanie gave me a searching look.

I went on, “I hate to admit it but you are right. We can’t rely on Diane Sherwood. She wouldn’t even listen when I told her about Jimmy’s quarrel with Patsy and how he’d fled the murder scene. She’s much too blinded by her dislike for me to analyze this crime dispassionately.”

Melanie looked thoughtful. “But what could have happened during the height of the Civil War that would provide a motive for someone to kill now? Listen, little sis, if anyone is going to solve this crime and get the cops out of our hair so we can go back to planning our wedding, it will have to be us.”