Murder Shoots the Bull (13 page)

“Hey, honey,” I said. “What are you doing there?”

“Brought you an e-mail from Haley. Lisa’s been catching me up on all that’s been going on. I can’t believe it.”

“None of us can.”

“Is that Debbie?” Sister asked.

I nodded.

“Ask her if my grandson is up to Chinese food today.”

“Your mama and I are on the way home. We’re going to bring lunch and she wants to know if you feel like Chinese. Who all’s there?”

“Lisa and Mrs. Phizer and me. And I’m feeling pretty good today.”

“Ask the others if it’s okay.”

“Chinese okay?” I heard Debbie asking. In a moment she told me, “Anything.”

“We’ll see you in a few minutes then.” I hung up the phone. “They said anything. Just three of them.”

“We can stop at the Hunan Hut and get some stuff from the buffet.”

Which we did. It was a mistake, though. The whole time I was putting food onto the Styrofoam plates, I had the eerie feeling that if I turned around fast enough I would see Sophie and Arthur sitting in the corner booth and he would be stroking her hand. Or I would see them walking across the parking lot, her leaning against him, him lifting her into the car. Damn, damn.

“I’m glad to get out of there,” I said as we made for the
car, both carrying sacks. “Couldn’t you just see Sophie and Arthur in there?”

“No, but I saw Alcorn Jones with a girl young enough to be his granddaughter.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” She sounded angry. “Him and his fake tan and capped teeth.”

This was so unlike Mary Alice that I should have noticed, but I was still caught up in the Sophie-Arthur memories. And I was looking forward to getting the e-mail from Haley. I know I worry too much about her, but Lord, she’s a long way from home.

When we came through the gate, we saw that Arabella Hardt had joined the group. She was sitting on the steps petting Woofer and moved over to let us by. The others were sitting at the table. Mitzi, I noticed, looked better; there was some color in her cheeks and her eyes were brighter. Arabella was the one who looked sick today. In fact, she looked as if she had been crying all night. Dark glasses hid her eyes, but not all of the puffiness. She had on some old denim shorts and a stained shirt that the Goodwill would have refused.

“Hey, Mama. Aunt Sister.” Lisa jumped up, gave me a hug, and took the sack of food I was carrying. “Ummm, this smells wonderful.”

Debbie took Mary Alice’s sack. “We’ll put this out on the kitchen table,” she said. “We’ll call you when it’s ready.”

I sat in the chair that Lisa had vacated.

“I’m feeling better,” Mitzi said. “How did the meeting go?”

“Interesting.”

Mary Alice sat down. “Do you know a woman named Bessie McCoy, Mitzi?”

“Did she have on a crocheted hat?”

“Yep.”

“She always wears that hat. She got scalped when she was a child.”

“Scalped? Like with a tomahawk?”

Mitzi shrugged. “I’m not sure how it happened; I never asked. But she’s an artist. I’m surprised you don’t know her. Her stuff’s in all the banks. The kind of stuff you can’t tell if it’s upside-down or not. Why?”

“I think she’s going to keep the meetings interesting.” Sister gestured to Arabella. “Come join us, Arabella. You okay?”

Arabella stood up, came over, and said she was okay but had better be moseying along, that she had a lot to do.

“Stay for lunch,” I said. “We brought plenty.”

Arabella shook her head. “I just came by to check on Aunt Mitzi.”

“One egg roll?” Sister asked.

“Don’t think it would stay down. But thanks. I’ll see y’all later.”

Mitzi got up and followed her to the gate where they had a quiet conversation.

“She just found out her mother wants to be cremated,” Mitzi explained when she came back. “I think the reality of her death is just sinking in.”

“Poor child,” Sister said. “I know what that’s like, what with losing all my husbands so suddenly. It took days for it to sink in.”

“Maybe Cedric will outlast you,” I said.

She looked at me, puzzled.

“Cedric, the man to whom you have plighted your troth.”

“My troth isn’t plighted. Good Lord, Mouse.” She thought for a minute. “What’s a plighted troth, anyway? It sounds like a gum disease.”

“Are you engaged, Mary Alice?” Mitzi asked.

“Sort of.”

“Well, congratulations. Who to?”

“An Englishman named Cedric.”

I knew she didn’t remember his last name.

Fortunately, Mitzi didn’t ask. She sat down and held out a key.

“I promised that I would go pick out an outfit for Sophie. That’s really why Arabella came over here. She says she can’t go in the apartment.”

“I thought she spent the night there last night,” I said.

“She says she couldn’t. She ended up staying with a friend.”

Debbie opened the back door. “Lunch is on the table.”

“Patricia Anne?”

I knew what Mitzi was going to ask.

“Sure. I’ll go with you.”

“I’ll go with you, too,” Sister said. “You don’t want to pick out anything too pretty.” She pushed her chair back. “Come on. I’m starving.”

T
he University of Alabama’s medical center in Birmingham is an amazing group of hospitals. My children were born at University Hospital which, with the dental school, was at that time the whole university facility. Now there’s a hospital for, as Fred says, “whatever ails you.” Cataracts? The eye hospital. Heart? Cancer? Diabetes? Psychological problems? There’s a hospital for you. Are you a veteran? A child? You get the picture. In fact, UAB, its hospitals and clinics are now the financial backbone of Birmingham, taking the place held so long by the steel mills.

And patients and their families have to have places to stay, particularly those who are here for extended treatment. So around the perimeter of the medical complex, residential motels, hotels, and condominiums have sprung up. Sophie was living in one of the latter, a ten-story building of very elegant apartments. Most of them are occupied by perma
nent residents who work at the medical center, but some of them are for lease, for a pretty penny, I’m sure. Especially Sophie’s apartment which was one of four on the tenth floor.

Mitzi unlocked the door and we stepped into one of the loveliest rooms I had ever seen. Simply furnished, it was done in beige and white. A white carpet, beige and white plaid sofa, beige and white striped chairs. A few accents of turquoise in a pillow, a lamp, a geometric wall hanging. The walls were white, the draperies that covered the sliding door to the balcony the same beige and white stripe of the chairs. The dining and kitchen area angled off to one side and were set aside from the main room by two white columns.

“Oh, this is beautiful,” Mitzi said. “Look at this, y’all.”

We were looking and admiring. It was even lovelier when Mitzi opened the draperies and we were greeted by a view of the distant mountains and their many shades of late summer green. On the balcony were a chaise and a small table with two ice cream chairs. This, I suspected, was where Sophie had spent much of her time, probably even eating her meals there.

“I’ll bet Bill Bodiford decorated this,” Sister said. “He tried to put some of those wire chairs on my porch. I told him he had to be kidding. I like the colors, though.”

The apartment was designed for maximum privacy with the two bedrooms and baths on opposite sides of the great room. Sophie’s was the first one we walked into, and it was a mess. Drawers had been opened and not closed. In the lovely white bathroom, several cigarettes floated in the turquoise toilet.

“Damn,” Mitzi said. “You’d think the police would leave it in better shape than this.”

On the front wall of the bedroom was a window with vertical blinds. Sophie could lie here, I realized, and see the setting sun. Its rays were already striping the white carpet. There was also a sliding door that opened to the balcony.

Mitzi opened the closet’s doors and a light came on, illuminating the contents.

“She didn’t have many clothes,” Sister remarked. “I thought she had money.”

“She came here because she was sick,” I reminded her. “She wouldn’t need many clothes just to go to the hospital for treatment.”

“She was at the Hunan Hut with Arthur.”

I gave her a dirty look which she ignored.

But Mitzi wasn’t upset. “You’re right. There’s not much here to choose from.” She began to separate the outfits. “Tell me what you think.”

I didn’t want to say what I was thinking, that whatever we picked out was going to go up in smoke. “How about that gray suit?”

Mitzi took down a light gray suit and looked at it. “It’s real expensive, y’all. Look.” She showed us Sophie’s name embroidered on the back of the lapel. “It was made for her.”

Suddenly, Mitzi began to cry. I took the suit away from her and said, “This will do fine, Mitzi.” Dammit, that Arabella shouldn’t have asked Mitzi to do this.

“It’s an old suit, anyway,” Mary Alice added. “Look at the width of those lapels.”

“It’s just so sad that her life had to end this way.” Mitzi stepped into the bathroom, got some toilet paper, and wiped her eyes while I held the gray suit.

“Look at those lapels,” Sister repeated. “This one needs to go.”

“Well,” Mitzi said, blowing her nose. “This isn’t solving anything.”

“I guess not,” I agreed.

Mitzi rolled off some more toilet paper, stepped back into the bedroom, and took a deep breath. “You’re right. The gray suit’s fine. Now what about shoes and underwear?”

“For what?” Sister asked.

“Because you can’t get into heaven without underwear.” I aimed a slight kick at her but missed.

I laid the suit across a chair while Mitzi opened one of the drawers that lingerie was spilling out of.

“Oh, my,” she said.

“What?” I walked over and looked at a drawer brimming with silk: silk camisoles, silk panties, silk bras.

“Isn’t this beautiful?” Mitzi picked up a peach-colored camisole with a single rose embroidered on the front.

I felt the material. “You couldn’t throw it in the washing machine, Mitzi.”

Mitzi looked up and actually smiled. “That’s true. Cotton Jockeys are hard to beat.”

Sister gave up on us, walked over to the nightstand, and opened the drawer.

“Get out of there,” I said when I realized what she was doing.

“I’m just looking.”

“For what?”

“Look at this.” She came over with a silver framed picture of a young Sophie, a man, and three teenage children. It had been taken on the deck of a boat. The family, dressed in shorts and swimsuits smiled into the camera. The boy, who must be David, was already taller than his father. Tan and handsome, he stood with an arm draped casually around each of his sisters’ shoulders, while his parents stood slightly away from the threesome, their arms around each other’s waist.

“They were a beautiful family, weren’t they?” Mitzi had come to stand beside us.

I nodded. “Arabella said her brother was killed in a car accident?”

“In college. There were three boys in the car. Two were killed. The other boy was hurt, terribly, but survived.”

“Were drugs or alcohol involved? Sue said they buried
him the same day. She sounded like her parents were trying to cover something up.”

“Maybe, though who knows? Milton Sawyer was on the way up in the political world and if his son were on drugs and responsible for the death and injury of two others, it might have hurt his career. But I doubt that was it. I’ve always thought they couldn’t bear the thought of an autopsy on David’s body. He was the family’s shining star.” She paused. “I know that Sue never has believed David was on drugs. She says he was Mr. Clean, always.”

“And Arabella?”

“It’s one of the bones of contention between them.” Mitzi took the picture and looked at it. “They both adored him, but Arabella never thought he was perfect.”

“Not many people are.”

“None that I know of,” Sister said.

“Sophie called Arthur the night David was killed. Arthur cried like a baby. Said he’d never heard such pain.”

“So you’d known about Sophie all along?” I asked.

“Oh, sure. They stayed in touch. I’ve known that Arthur’s always loved a seventeen-year-old Sophie, Patricia Anne. But he’s loved me at every age.”

“I’ll put this back where I got it,” Sister said, reaching for the picture.

Damned if I didn’t have to go in the bathroom and get some toilet paper to mop my eyes.

“I don’t see a hang-up bag here. We should have brought one.” Mitzi was back at the closet.

“Maybe there’s one in the other bedroom. I’ll go look,” I said. “If there’s not, we can just use a plastic bag from the kitchen.”

I crossed the great room and entered Arabella’s bedroom. It was a duplicate of her mother’s except everything was in place; this room hadn’t been trashed like the other bedroom had. The bed was covered by a turquoise and white checked
bedspread and the drawers were closed. There were no family pictures, no books or magazines lying about, nothing personal.

Mary Alice had followed me. “It’s neat in here. And where’s her stuff?”

In the closet, a couple of skirts, blouses, and pants were lined up neatly. I opened the chest of drawers and saw the same order, several pairs of panties, bras, camisoles stacked neatly. I walked into the bathroom and opened the drawers. No cosmetics, lotions, creams.

“Nothing in the nightstand,” Sister reported.

I walked back into the bedroom. “Mitzi,” I called, “Come here.”

“What?” She stuck her head in the door.

“Look at this room. I don’t believe Arabella’s been staying here.”

“Well, she hasn’t for the last couple of days.”

“No, I mean at all. This room hasn’t been lived in. There’s not even anything in the bathroom drawers.”

“There sure isn’t.” Sister walked out of the bathroom. “And she’s a redhead. She’d need a lot of stuff for her skin.” She held up a shirt she had taken from the closet. “Did y’all know Land’s End has started carrying larger sizes?”

“Is that a large size?” I asked. “Arabella’s probably a size six.”

“No. But it’s from Land’s End. I got a couple of their bathing suits.”

“Arabella brought a bunch of stuff to our house,” Mitzi said. “Maybe everything she had here in Birmingham.”

“Well, there’s not even a lipstick here,” Sister said.

“I don’t get it.” Mitzi walked into the bathroom. “She was supposed to be living here and taking care of her mother. But you’re right, Mary Alice. The towels in here haven’t even been touched.”

“I don’t think the clothes have either,” I said. “It’s like they were just put there for show.”

Mitzi came back into the bedroom, sat on the bed, and ran her hand over the turquoise and white bedspread. “But why would she lie about it? She said this was where she was staying, remember? She came to our house because she said she couldn’t bear to come back here.”

“Well,” Sister said, “there are a few clothes here in the dresser. I guess she could have stayed some nights. The bar of soap in the shower has never been wet, though. Did y’all notice that?”

I hadn’t. Mary Alice had been more observant than I had.

“And nothing smells like Shalimar,” Mitzi added.

Now
that
I had noticed.

“She hadn’t been in our house five minutes until everything smelled like Shalimar.”

“I wonder where she was last night,” I said.

“With a friend, she said.” Mitzi sniffed. “Definitely no Shalimar in here.”

“Where is she now?”

“Same friend, I guess. Somebody on Southside. Arthur has the phone number.”

“You don’t know who the friend is?”

Mitzi shook her head. “No. But she visited her grandparents here when she was growing up and got to know a lot of people.”

“She’s a good-looking girl,” Sister said. “I’ll bet her visits made quite a splash.”

“She had a beautiful mother.”

For the first time there was bitterness in Mitzi’s voice. She realized it and said, “I’m sorry, y’all. But I never thought Sophie would be a problem for Arthur and me. I mean, Lord, it was almost fifty years ago. And here he is, arrested for her murder, someone tries to burn our house down, for God only knows what reason, and on top of that,
he’s responsible for seeing that she’s cremated and her estate is settled. Damn.” She stood up. “Did you see a bag in that closet?”

“No. I’ll see if there’s a garbage bag.” I went into the kitchen and looked in the small pantry. Mitzi and Mary Alice followed me.

“Here’s one,” I said. I slit a hole in the top of the bag and Mitzi slid the hanger through it and pulled the plastic down over the suit. Trying to keep the outfit from wrinkling I guess. God knows why. Shoes and underwear went into a Piggly Wiggly sack.

“I suppose that’s it.” Mitzi walked back into the great room and laid the suit over a chair. I thought she was going to close the draperies, but instead, she slid the glass doors open and stepped onto the balcony. Sunlight angled across it.

“Look at that view.”

We looked. It was the same view Mary Alice has from her house on the top of Red Mountain, except she looks down on this building.

“Maybe we should sell our house and buy something like this apartment.” Mitzi was leaning too far over the railing to suit me.

“Hmmm.”

To my relief, she turned and sat on one of the ice cream chairs. I pulled out the other one and sat down, too. Mary Alice sat in the chaise, though it would have been interesting to see her in one of the chairs.

“You wouldn’t have a place for your flowers.” I didn’t mention the fact that penthouses were sky high in more ways than one.

“That’s true.” She drummed her fingers against the table. “And I wouldn’t have you for a neighbor.”

“That’s for sure.”

The three of us were quiet for a few minutes, watching the late afternoon traffic increase.

Mitzi sighed. “They think the poison was in the artificial sweetener Sophie put in her tea at the restaurant.”

“Which doesn’t mean Arthur gave it to her,” I said. “Some crazy could have left a packet on the table.”