Murder on the Ol' Bunions (A LaTisha Barnhart Mystery) (24 page)

“Um,” I could imagine Marion blowing her stack. “I’m sure that didn’t set well with her.”

“She ranted and raged and began taking everything out on
Valorie
,” Mark said. “Telling
Valorie
how her cheating brought such shame, that she’d never amount to anything if she listened to me.”

“I was so mad, Mrs. Barnhart.” She sucked back another sob. “I was afraid to say anything, but it kept eating at me—”

“Both of us would do things differently if we had the chance. But we won’t, and that’s part of what we have to deal with,” Mark said, staring at his jittering foot.

I wondered if he realized how this looked.

Their confession had the ring of truth. A knock on the office door signaled the return of the pastor. I shot Mark a look. “It would be good for you both to talk to him. Forgiving others can be a lot easier than forgiving ourselves.”

What I really wanted to do was ask Mark the questions about the break-in at Marion’s. I doubted Chief had a chance to mention it to him, in light of the funeral. I sighed.
Valorie
didn’t need anything else to rock her world right now. I’d have to hold off.

A little smile curved
Valorie’s
lips as she sat up. “Thanks.”

I patted her cheek. “Deep down, you know your momma loved you,
Valorie
.
Very much.
She just had a problem showing it sometimes.” As I spoke my mind went to my reaction to
Shayna
. “We mommas love so strong that we have a hard time knowing when to let go.”

Pastor set a box of donuts on the table by
Valorie
and peeled off the lids of a coffee and a hot chocolate. I heaved myself to my feet and served Mark a look.

I’d never seen him look
so.
. .so. . .humble. He and I shared a long, silent stare, before Pastor
Haudiare
blocked him from view as he offered Mark the coffee. “Pastor, I-I think it would be good if my daughter and I talked to you.”

I made my exit right then, knowing I’d left them in good hands. They’d made the first
step,
the rest wouldn’t be quite so hard.

Not one person remained in the sanctuary, so I beat it out of there. In the parking area, Dana stood talking to Sara’s mother, while Sara clutched her mother’s hand and stared at Dana. When she saw me, she broke free and ran over.

“Hey, little gal.”
I greeted her with a hug.

“Mommy and Dana are talking about clothes.”

I matched her smaller steps but kept on course to the car where I could see Hardy sitting, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. I glanced at my watch. Payton would be at our house in a little less than an hour.

“I was getting bored.”

“Talking about clothes?” I tried to look exasperated. “How can you call yourself a girl when you get bored talking about clothes?”

She giggled as if I’d said the funniest thing in the world. “I told Mrs.
Letzburg
she looks as pretty today as she did the day I saw her going into that dead lady’s shop. She said thank you and mom asked her where she got her outfit.”

 
I ground to a halt. Sara grinned up at me, unaware of the maelstrom she had loosed. I took her hand and tugged on her
piggytail
, not wanting to appear abrupt or scare her, but I knew the next few minutes were important.

“You saw Mrs.
Letzburg
the other day? I thought you
was
in school.”

“I was in school. We have recess before lunch. Mary and
me
played hopscotch and I won. She got mad at me and left.”

“Mrs.
Letzburg
play
with you then?”

Sara giggled.
“No, silly.
She was all dressed up like she is today walking down the sidewalk. I waved at her, but she didn’t see me and went into the dead woman’s store.”

Excitement buzzed around inside my body. But I needed to get an idea of the day and time.

“You sure it was Mrs.
Letzburg
?”

Sara’s head bobbed in the affirmative. “She has on the same outfit as she did then.”

No way to find out what I needed to know but to come right out and ask, though I hated to do that for fear Sara might go back and let it slip to Dana that I’d been pumping her for information. I had to try. I massaged my brain. Then I got an idea.

“I hope you ate all your lunch that day.”

She scrunched up her nose. “No. They had carrots and meatloaf. Yuck.”

“Sara!” Her mother called out from the other side of the parking lot. Sara gave me a quick hug, before she skipped away.

“Love you, sweetie,” I called after her, my eyes on Dana as she slid into her car. At least I didn’t have to worry about Sara letting it slip that we’d been talking about her.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“I got us a date over at Dana’s this afternoon.” Hardy informed me as soon as I set foot in the car. I blinked at him and yanked the safety belt around me, my brain in a buzz.

 
His hand on my arm tugged me around to what he’d been flapping his lips about. “
You
lookin
’
a little splotchy in the face. You have indigestion again?”

“No, I don’t have indigestion. Sara told me she saw Dana one afternoon last week walk into—” I made air quotes, “—that dead woman’s shop. What you think of that?”

“What day? It’s been locked up tight.”

“Whatever day they had meatloaf and carrots on their menu at the school. I’ll have to call Wilma Billings. She’s head cook.”

“Shouldn’t be hard to find out,” he said as he slipped the car into drive and we chugged out of the parking lot.

“You talk to Payton about anything else?”

“Maybe.”
He pointed a finger at a toothpick stuck in the seam where the fabric on the roof met the plastic of the side. “Hand me that thing.”

I snorted. “You’ve only got one tooth to pick, why you need it?”

“Like to suck on them.”
He pulled a face. “And I’ve got plenty of teeth in my head yet.”

I handed it over, trying to hide my irritation at his change in subject. Sometimes it just wasn’t worth it for me to admit he knew something I didn’t. He knew how it irked me when he savored a juicy tidbit I had no knowledge of. “You better stop playing your games with me, Hardy Barnhart.”

He gave me a cheeky grin, the toothpick stuck to his lower lip. “Payton didn’t talk much.”

I waited for him to continue but when I looked over at
him,
his mouth worked the toothpick instead of forming more words. “And . . . ?”

“Don’t get your stockings in a twist. I’m just
messin
’ with you. But you think on it a minute. Payton’s a nervous chatterer, usually saying something to fill the emptiness, and tonight he was quiet.
Real quiet.”

Ah. I saw where he was headed.
Maybe.
“It was a funeral. He’s probably being respectful.”

“Could be,” he conceded, pulling the car into our driveway. “I did call and talk to Tyrone. Cora's doing fine. They sent her home to rest. I told him we’d check on them tomorrow.”

The news of Cora relieved me. With that worry laid low, I could turn my complete attention to this mystery. I wanted so bad to figure out this whole thing. I trusted Hardy’s observation of Payton, being the man’s friend and all.

 
Inside the house, I let my purse fall to the table and picked up the phone first thing to dial Wilma. It took her a minute to lay her hand on a menu, but when she did, I felt my scalp tingle at the news. I hung up real fast.

Hardy’s rear-end stuck out of the refrigerator as he dug around. “Sounds like good news,” he muttered.

“It is. Sara, bless that baby’s heart, is
gonna
get a whole pie for this.”

He backed out of the fridge, clutching lunch meat in one hand, the jar of mayonnaise in the other. “Do I get a whole pie?
Blueberry?”

I gave him a caustic look and grabbed the sandwich makings out of his hands. “Give me that! You eat more than any man I know.”

“And I burn it all. What you
flappin
’ at me for?” He struck a pose. “You just can’t stand my fine physique.”

Laughter bubbled. He looked like a plucked chicken standing there, biceps the size of an egg, acting as if he were some Greek god. “Oh, I can stand you all right. I’ll stand you right outside this door and not let you in until I’m through with my thinking.”

Hardy’s eyes crinkled at the corners and he hitched his britches up high to rankle me. “I expect I’ll be outside a long while then.”

I slapped the mayo and
coldcuts
down and lunged for him. He
hightailed
it outside, not even shutting the door. Honestly, he needed a good ear-wringing. He sure was a pert little thing. But as much as we pecked at each other, I knew I’d never want to nest with any other man.

I threw together a sandwich and yelled out the door for him. He was hanging over the fence talking to our neighbor. With me needing to do some cooking for
Valorie
and Sarah, I started banging around in my pots and pans drawer.

My thinking session began with chopping onions and a green pepper, rolling ground beef into balls and browning them on the stove. The more my mind spun around the events of the morning, the more I came back to Mark and that dining table. In light of the secret room, it seemed way too coincidental to think he’d done it accidentally. If he knew about the room behind the bookcase, why didn’t he tell Chief? What was he hoping to do by butting the dining table up against it? The flashlight we’d found didn’t work and we were forced to leave so we wouldn’t be late for Marion’s funeral. On the way to the church, I’d shared with Chief what I’d learned from Regina’s mother’s nurse.

Hardy’s voice boomed out a greeting and I heard a car door slam. It was too early for Payton. I stirred together tomatoes and minced garlic, before wiping my hands and peering out the side door. Chief Conrad’s face framed in the glass about made me jump out of my girdle. I shot back and heard his laugh.

“You spying on me now?” he asked as he slipped inside.

“What are you doing, trying to scare me dead?”

“No, sorry,” he chuckled. “I came by to tell you that Regina came back because she had to pay that money and knew it was due this afternoon. She confirmed it was Betsy picking up where Marion left off, but I’m processing Betsy’s fingerprints and trying for a match before I proceed. I knew you’d want to know.”

Hardy slipped in the door. Never shy about eating in front of others, he started right in on his sandwich, but I knew he had his ear cocked toward our conversation.

I told chief about Sara seeing Dana go into Marion’s Tuesday at around eleven o’clock. We swapped theories about the purpose of the secret room when Hardy interrupted.

“I can tell you what that room is. It was the assayer’s office. He says so right in the diary. That little map shows the layout of the building. He was trying to think of a good hiding place for the gold and must have doodled that map.”

Chief and I stared at Hardy in stunned amazement.

“You knew about the room?” Chief asked.

“He read the diary all the way through last night,” I answered the question.

“Yeah, and if you had read it all, too, you would have known.” Hardy paused to wipe at a smear of mayo on his lip with the back of his hand. “He tells you pretty plain about his little operation, just not where he hid the gold he took.”

Chief pivoted toward the door. “I’m going over there right now, with a good flashlight, and having another look around that room.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Someone was looking for the diary.

That’s the only conclusion I could settle on as I finished up the pot of spaghetti and turned it low to let it simmer. It was the only explanation for Marion’s bookshop being ransacked.

Deciding I’d better have another look at that diary, I brought it down from upstairs and settled with it into a cozy armchair in the living room. The front window looked out over the driveway, so I could hear the moment Payton arrived. I’d let Payton in,
then
leave to find Mark. By now he’d know about the break-in at Marion’s.

My concentration shattered when I saw Payton’s car turn into the driveway. I huffed up from the chair and set the diary aside as Payton and Hardy tumbled in together. Ditching the monochromatic look, the musician’s newest garb screamed so loud it hurt my eyes to look at him.

“
LaTisha
!
So good to see you again.”
He held out his hand as he inched closer. “It’s been a long time since we’ve talked.
Terrible about Marion.”

I rolled my eyes at his extended hand. “Something in that brain of yours is just rattling along. Don’t have time for your
nonsense,
I need to go see Mark. You tune that piano real good now, you hear?” For a nanosecond, I thought I saw his features pinch, but his expression morphed into a show of bright eyes and big teeth. Nice teeth, truth
be
told.