Murder on the Ol' Bunions (A LaTisha Barnhart Mystery) (16 page)

As Hardy guided the car down Gold Street, I made up my mind.

“When you get home, I want you to change out of those beige pants and put on something black.”

He looked at me like I’d plucked my head bald.
“What you
thinkin
’, woman?”

“We’re going to walk over to Payton’s shop at midnight. You and I are going to do a little spying.”

I crossed my arms and huffed at the ceiling, where shuffling feet and an occasional thump let me know Hardy was hard at work getting dressed. If we were going to get to the rehearsal on time, he needed to move faster. I was always waiting on that man. With as little meat as he had on his bones, he should take less time than anyone to get dressed. At least he didn’t have to tuck his excess into a pair of pantyhose. I could pin on a hat in less time than it took him to stick a leg into his drawers.

Tonight, I vowed I wouldn’t say a word, no matter how slow he moved. When the phone rang, I plucked it off its base and barked my greeting.

“Momma?”

Shayna
.
Funny, I should have been delighted, but in light of the other cancellations, I dreaded the call. Maybe she wanted to chat. After all, it had been awhile since I’d called her. If not for this investigation, I would have, being that Wednesday is my normal night to reach out and touch my children. No matter what, after my talk with Hardy, I vowed I’d handle myself better if she called to back out of Easter dinner.

“It’s about time you call your momma.”

Shayna’s
laughter made me smile. “You must be waiting on Pop to get dressed. You have that edge to your voice.”

That made me grin. How well they knew their father and me. “You haven’t heard the latest. Sit down and I’ll fill your ear.”

“Sounds serious.”
Her voice faded away for a second. She must have switched ears or something. “What’s going on in Maple Gap?”

 
I inhaled, savoring that moment when I knew something someone else didn’t. “I found Marion Peters deader than dead in her shop this past Tuesday.”

“No!”

“Yes.” I nodded, as if she could see me, pleased at her reaction.

“What happened?”

“Not sure yet.
With all the classes I’ve taken, I’m trying to piece things together. The state police did the forensics work, but you know how small town people react to big town folks. Marion’s funeral is Saturday. They promise to release the body in time. I’ve got to get over there tonight and practice,
Valorie’s
wanting
me to sing. You
gonna
come to the funeral?”

“Uh, I’m
thinkin
’ I’ll be busy, Momma.”

I closed my eyes. “We could sing together, like we did when you
was
young.”

The other end of the conversation got quiet. “But I’m all grown up now. Didn’t like singing then and still don’t.”

“You’ve got a beautiful voice,
Shayna
, you should use it.”

“Actually. . .” She mumbled something.

“What you say?” The voice in the background at
Shayna’s
sounded deep.
Definitely male.
“Is that Rhys I hear?

“Sorry, momma.
Yeah, it’s him. Anyway, what I called to tell you is important. Can Pop get on the other line?”

I reared my head back.
“Hardy!
You pick up that phone now, you hear? It’s our baby.”

“That’s my ear you’re yelling into, Momma.”

“Sorry, honey. You heard from your brothers?”

“Talked to Tyrone last night.
Cora’s doing fine. She’s had some Braxton-Hicks. Tyrone got real nervous.”

A click on the line and Hardy’s voice came on. “I’m here.”

“Momma, Pop . .
. ”
I steeled myself for whatever announcement was coming, reminding myself to play it down if she couldn’t come to dinner. “
Me
and Rhys are getting married!”

As Hardy babbled his surprise and congratulations, my mind floated on another plane entirely. My remain-cool-at-all-costs promise didn’t take in this kind of announcement. For sure! “You haven’t been dating long enough to get married.”

I hadn’t realized I’d said it out loud until I heard Hardy’s tone.
“
Tisha
.”

“We’ve known each other a long time, Momma. I always admired him in college and we took a course together.
Worked on a project together for an entire semester.”

“That’s different than working on a lifetime together.” I couldn’t stop myself.

“Momma, he’s a good man. Has a great job.”

“
You bringing
him home for Easter supper?”

“Well. . .”

 
I refused to let the salt gathering in my eyes start spilling all over the floor. “Tell my son-in-law-to-be that I guess I’ll see him at the wedding then.”

“We were thinking we’d go to the Justice of the Peace. You know.
Small wedding, just the two of us.
No fuss or frills.”

 
Hardy was responding to her, but I couldn’t take anymore and slammed the phone down.

Thirty minutes later, Hardy appeared in the doorway of the living room. “You
comin
’?”

I pulled another tissue from the box and blotted my eyes. Jamming my feet back into my shoes, I noted Hardy’s short-sleeved shirt. “It’s chilly tonight, you’ll need a coat.”

“I’ll get one.”

We rode in silence, though I heard voices from long ago—the chatter of my babies as I hauled them to school, picked them up from a bake sale, or from fall carnival. Their little bodies would smell of sweets and fresh air.

Saturday mornings meant trips to the bakery on Gold Street that specialized in hometown goodness. The children would each get a free cookie of their choice. Mrs.
Gudeese
always had a smile and
a warm sticky bun, cinnamon roll
, or loaf of cinnamon-raisin bread.

Then she died and the store shut down, hollow and empty.

Marion’s store would shut down soon, too.

Payton would be forced to move if the council gave the okay to the contractor, hoping the new homes would lure city folk from Denver. What would Hardy do without Payton’s shop?

Maybe I should talk to Payton and convince him to move into the old bakery, that way we’d at least keep him in town, where he belonged.

Too many changes.

Hardy pulled into the church’s driveway, lifting a hand in greeting to Pastor
Haudaire
, a good man of God in the small town for as far back as I could remember.
Probably hovering around his fiftieth anniversary of preaching.

“How old you think Pastor is?”

Hardy turned off the car and smothered a belch. His bottom lip
pooched
out. “Forty-eight, forty-nine years he’s been here.
Probably sixty-nine or thereabouts.”

Something inside me deflated at the news. That meant the Pastor, who looked so very old, was only about twelve years older than me. I swung the door wide, braced my hand along the roof of the car and aimed my feet toward the pavement. Hardy hauled me out and up onto my feet.

“You’d think with all this walking I’m doing, I’d lose weight.”

“You weighted yourself lately?”

“Weigh-
ed
, not weighted, and, no, the scale and I aren’t on speaking terms.”

“It told you the truth, did it?”

I drilled him with my eyes. “You better shut your trap before I yank them britches up so high you’ll sing with the angels.”

His eyes glittered. “I sing with angels all the time, next to you in church.”

“Oh,
you’s
a sweet talker when you want to be.”

He slammed the door. “A smart man knows when to wag his tongue in the honey pot.”

I winced as Hardy greeted the pastor with a hearty slap on the back, even though the elderly man seemed frail as glass. I shook Pastor’s hand and moved into the sanctuary where Mark and
Valorie
sat together on the last pew.

Up front, the organist practiced a slow, mournful song. No choir to sing for Marion, I noticed, but then some people didn’t want a whole group singing at their funeral.

By the looks of
Valorie
, she hadn’t done much else but
cry
. I settled myself beside the girl and pulled her into a hug.

Tears sprang to my eyes and I didn’t know if they were sympathy tears for
Valorie
,
or genuine tears of grief for Marion. Maybe tears for myself. “Let’s get this crying done
so’s
I can rehearse.”

Hardy waited until the organist finished and proceeded to the front where he sat down at the piano and ran through a few small pieces he always used when “getting limber” as he called it.

As I held
Valorie
, Mark went to the front to lean on the glossy mahogany piano to listen. Hardy never disappointed his listeners. After being married to him for so long, listening over and over to the hundreds of songs he could play or pick out, or even create, I could sometimes still be surprised by the immensity of his gift. He began “Amazing Grace.” At first he added a jazz feel to the notes,
then
it mellowed and softened into a flowing river of promise to the listener. His hands crossed over the keyboard, then down again, and the notes floated and wrapped me in the blanket of their mercy.

Emotions spilled through me until the tears came anew and when I could stand it no longer, I released them. My voice, a soft, low rumble, built with the intensity of Hardy’s playing until everything slipped away and I imagined heaven opening its doors and ushering me in. A great longing welled as I held that last note and my mind came back to the reality of the cold, hard world, and the newness of death experienced by the young woman
laying
like a child against my breast.

Valorie
lifted her head and nodded. “My mother always said no one could sing like
LaTisha
Barnhart. Thank you. That
was.
. .terrific.”

The spell melted completely as Mark laid a hand on Hardy’s back and bent to say something. Even from the back, I could see Hardy’s pleasure and sense his exhaustion.
A good exhaustion.

Chapter Fifteen

On our way home from rehearsal, Hardy tried to bring up the subject of
Shayna
, but I stopped him, and neither of us had much to say for a long time. Hardy went to his piano and stayed there. I watched the clock real close and worked on a simple assignment about police procedure.

Finally, at eleven thirty, we began preparations for our spying adventure.

“I don’t know why I agreed to do this,” Hardy grumped as he came down the steps in his black sweat pants—thankfully, not hitched too high—and matching, long-sleeved top. He fidgeted with the drawstring of his sweatpants, looking a little nervous. I didn’t feel so good myself.
If we get caught . . .

Erasing the idea from my brain, I smirked at him. “You look like a dipstick covered in oil.”

Hardy grimaced at my choice of an old black knit outfit I’d found in the back of my closet. “And you look like ten pounds of potatoes shoved into a five pound sack.”

But the way his eyes glittered into mine let me know my stab at humor had helped lighten the mood.

We decided to walk. From our street, we turned onto Gold,
then
took a left onto Spender. As we neared Payton’s store, we could make out a dim light coming from the back of the store. Passing Marion’s shop gave me the shudders. Hardy must have sensed my distress because he grabbed my hand and laced his fingers through mine. We looked for
all the
world like a couple out for a midnight stroll.
Except two things.
One, Hardy and I were never up this late, and, two, we were both dressed in black. Lucky for us the town’s quiet streets meant everyone else had the good sense to be in bed.

We slowed our pace as we walked past Payton’s store from the relative safety of the other side of the street.
Definitely a light on in the back of the store.
My heart raced at the prospect of discovering some secret, though I couldn’t imagine what Payton and Dana could have in common that they needed to be together this late at night.

Hardy led the way around the building to the back, where a window in the back of Payton’s store shone a patch of light onto the lawn. When we got to the window, we realized, even with my height, I wouldn’t be able to see inside.

“
Here.
” I motioned to Hardy. “Boost me up so I can see.”

I glanced back at the window. Two more feet and I’d have a clear view. Hardy’s cupped hands didn’t appear and I glared over at him.

“Uh, I was
thinkin
’ about that ten pound sack.
Lookin
’ more like twenty all the time.”