Perplexity on P1/2 (Parson's Cove Mysteries) (29 page)

     “That’s the address you gave me, Reg. Did you tell Maxymowich?”

     He nodded. His mouth was full so he couldn’t talk. It isn’t a pleasant experience watching Reg eat, so Flori and I bit into our muffins too.

     “Wish I could taste these,” Reg said, as he was tearing his second one in half and adding butter. He looked up at me with feverish eyes. “Lost all sense of taste with this cold.”

     “Well, you could’ve fooled me,” I said. “Are you taking your medication?”

     “Most of the time.” He plopped the last bit into his mouth, chewed, swallowed, and said, “Maxy is sending someone in Yellow Rose over to check this Stella’s house out.” He stood up. “I’ll let you know what he finds out. Thanks for the muffin and coffee. Good, as usual.”

     “He could’ve told me all that over the phone,” I said, after the door closed.

     “He just wanted coffee and something to eat. Poor man is feeling so terrible. I think I’ll make some chicken soup and take it over for him.”

     “Flori, I’m sure Beth can make soup. He isn’t taking his antibiotics so it’s his fault he’s so miserable.”

     I filled our cups up and we ate in silence for a few minutes.

     “Can you figure this out, Mabel? Where would Stella be? She didn’t say anything about leaving Yellow Rose. Do you think someone killed her too?”

     I shook my head. “Of course not. Ralph killed Grace. That had nothing to do with anyone else. What I don’t understand is why would Sally be at Stella’s house and if we were right there in Yellow Rose, why didn’t she tell us that Sally was at her place?”

      Flori held her cup in midair and stared into space. Then, she turned to me and said, “Did we ever talk to Stella about Sally? Do you think someone kidnapped Sally; she escaped, and then just happened to run into Stella’s place to phone? Perhaps, someone was after her?”

     All I could manage was a groan.

     “And Stella just happened to forget to mention it to us? I don’t think so. Personally, I’m beginning to think that everyone who lives on Avenue P ½ is loony. Maybe all Texans are crazy. I don’t know.”

     “Oh well, at least, the murderer is caught and that’s all that matters. You should be proud, Mabel. You were the one who figured it all out. Imagine, seeing dandruff on Grace’s clothes. I would never have connected that with the murder.” She raised her empty cup to me. “You, my friend, are a good detective.”

     “Well, thanks, Flori, but you know it isn’t over. We still have to figure out what happened to Sally and I have to force a confession out of Esther.”

     “Force a confession? For what? Surely, you’re over that school thing. I mean, Mabel, that happened over forty years ago. I told you, you had to come to grips with that. If you let things fester, they just get worse and worse.”

     “This has absolutely nothing to do with things that Esther did to me forty years ago. This is the phone call she made and scared the wits out of me, that’s what this is about.”

     “You have no proof that Esther even left that message.”

     “Well, who did then?”

     She shrugged. “I don’t know; maybe it was Sally.”

     “No. The second message was definitely from Sally but not that first one. I’ll have to listen to it again.”

     “My advice to you is to forget about it. No one has harmed you so it was either a prank call or you didn’t hear it right.”

     Bing! A light went off in my brain.

     “We
do
know Sally was at Stella’s, Flori. At least, I think we do. How could we have been so stupid?”

     “What do you mean? Sally was at Stella’s? We definitely did not see Sally at Stella’s.”

     “No, but we could’ve
heard
her. Remember the music? I thought it was weird that her good for nothing son was making her play that music so loud. Then, when I went back to wait for you two, I did hear something but I thought it was either the water pipes or some very wild lovemaking going on down there. That was Sally. I bet you anything she was tied up somewhere in her son’s suite.”

     Flori shook her head. “I don’t know. That seems kind of farfetched.”

     I ran over to the phone and called Reg on his cell phone. He agreed with Flori, that it was farfetched but he did what I asked anyway. He called Maxymowich. 

Chapter Forty

     “You were right, Mabel. And, I’m not going to say ‘again.’” Reg was back in my shop the following morning. No one comes in to buy anything until after eleven even on my busiest days. That’s not good for sales but, at least, we were able to speak and not worry about anyone eavesdropping. “They found Sally, tied up, in the suite under Stella’s house.”

     “Was she alive?”

     “Barely. They found Stella too.”

     “You’re kidding. Where?”

     “Galveston. She’d just returned from a Caribbean cruise.”

     “What? She didn’t tell us she was going on a cruise. Honest, Reg. She didn’t say a word. Did she know about Sally? Please, don’t tell me that she was in on all of this, too. It will break Flori’s heart if she was.”

     “Okay, I won’t tell you.” He walked over to the coffee maker. “The coffee isn’t ready yet, Mabel.”

     “Of course, it isn’t. I just walked in the door. Who do you think I am anyway? Super Woman? And, what did you mean when you said, I won’t tell you?”

     “I thought that’s what you wanted.”

     “No. I mean, that’s what I was hoping - that Stella wasn’t mixed up in this. But, you have to tell me if she was, Reg.”

     He sighed and sat down in the wicker chair. His eyes were clearer now so the fever was gone but he still sounded stuffed up when he talked.

     “No, Stella wasn’t involved. Her only sin was babying that son of hers. You could say she was implicated.”

     “Implicated? What the heck does that mean?”

     “It means that she should’ve known something was going on there. That’s what that means.” He took out his red and white handkerchief and blew his nose. “When will the coffee be ready?”

     “When I get all of my questions answered, that’s when.”

     “So, what more do you want to know?”

     “What more do I want to know? Well, to begin with, why would her son kidnap Sally and tie her up in his suite? Plus, I want to know if Stella knew what the heck was going on, and I want to know if she knew who Sally really was. I also want to know if she was leading us on so I know what to tell Flori. That woman is not going to hurt Flori, if I can help it.”

     “Well, first of all, let’s face it, Mabel, Stella thought Cecile Tucker was a drug dealer. It so happens that her son thought so too. So, when someone approached him and claimed to be Cecile’s friend and offered him big bucks to store something, he didn’t refuse. After all, Cecile was one of his suppliers.”

     “But didn’t her son know there was a person there?”

     He shook his head. “Stella thought her son was there but he wasn’t. I guess he knew if he told her he had a woman down there, she would leave him alone and not go down.”

     “I can’t believe it. We were up stairs while Sally was right below us. But what about Stella? You said she was back from a cruise?” 

     He nodded. “I think her son gave her the money because he didn’t want her to find out what was going on. She went the day after you left Yellow Rose and was staying in a hotel in Galveston when they picked her up. Her son threatened her and told her not to go home.”

     “What about this Cecile? If he really is a cop, why didn’t he rescue Sally?”

     “Cecile had no idea she was there.”

     “Who was this so-called friend of his then?”

     “Ralph Murphy.”

     “
What
? What on earth are you talking about?”

     “Ralph Murphy was in Yellow Rose too. He found Sally before you and Flori even got there. He found her, showed her all the money, told her he’d killed Grace to get it, and asked her to go away with him. She refused so he had to do something with her. He didn’t want to kill again so he talked to Stella’s son and offered him more money than that young man had ever seen in his life.”

     I sat down on the Coke box. “I can’t get this straight, Reg. Ralph was right there in Yellow Rose when we were?”

     He nodded. “Yep.”

     “How did he happen to find Stella’s son? I mean you don’t pick a house on a street and say, I’m going to tie this woman up and leave her to die under that house. Right?”

     “Of course, not. He knew he’d killed someone named Grace Hobbs who lived in Yellow Rose. He thought she must be Cecile’s wife so he went to his house.”

     “How could he find that out?”

     “I guess the same way you did, Mabel. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look up numbers and addresses in a phone book. That’s when he saw you and Flori going in and out of Stella’s house. He also knew about the other house on P ½ where Andrea lived. As far as I can figure out, he thought by involving Stella, he might implicate you.”

     “How would that implicate me?”

     “Well, let’s see, Mabel. A dead body turns up in your town. You end up in Yellow Rose, visiting the woman who lives next door to Grace Hobbs, the murder victim. Some people might make a connection. Of course, he had no idea what a law abiding citizen you were.”

     “I can’t believe Ralph would think that way, Reg. We were friends. I liked him better than any of the others.”

     “Mabel, Mabel, didn’t you get the hint? He really didn’t like you. Maxymowich told me Ralph said he should’ve killed you the first time he went to your house.”

     “Really? He’s just saying that because I’m the one who fingered him.”

     “Fingered him?”

     “Yeah. You know, I pointed him out as the murderer. That’s cop talk, Reg.”

     “If you say so. Well, with some friends, who needs enemies, right?”

     “You got that right. So, he
did
have all the money. That lying so and so. He told me Grace didn’t have the money.”

     “I think we’re quite sure you can’t believe a word Ralph Murphy says.”

     “So, is it all figured out now? Are all the criminals in jail? But, what about that phone call, Reg? Why would Sally phone my place and how did she manage it if she was tied up in the garage?”

     “She was upstairs with Ralph and Spencer. Stella wasn’t at home. At this point, Sally had no idea what his plans were for her. She always thought she had Ralph twisted around her little finger so when he went out to get the money, Sally asked Stella’s son if she could make a phone call. She wasn’t quite sure if Ralph was telling the truth about killing Grace so she was going to ask you about it. If you told Sally that Grace was dead, she would tell you Ralph was the killer and the manhunt would be on.”

     “Did Stella ever know there was something suspicious going on downstairs?”

     He shrugged. “How could she not know something was going on? Can a woman’s love for her son be that blind?”

     “So, what was she thinking? I’m sure she didn’t think anyone was dying down there but why wouldn’t she go and check?”

     “Her son, Spencer, warned her never to go down there without his permission.”

     “Well, there’s a red flag going up if there ever was one.”

     “I don’t think she thought there would be a body there, Mabel. She figured Spencer was into something illegal but she didn’t want to know. She was afraid of him.”

     “And, Ralph left Sally there to die.”

     “He went to check on her several times, trying to get her to go away with him but when he saw that she just wanted the money, he left and didn’t go back.”

     “How long was she there all alone?”

     “Quite a few days. Ralph did try convincing her to go with him by offering food and wine but he realized that by this time, she hated him.”

     “I don’t blame her. I’d hate him too, the jerk. I can’t believe that Stella wouldn’t go down to see what was going on when her son wasn’t here though. I sure would have.”

     He shook his head. “I’m sure you would’ve, Mabel, but not everyone’s like you. Stella lost her husband and she put all her faith in that no good son. She believed every lie he told her.”

     “Will she go to jail?”

     He shook his head. “No, but she’s pretty shook up about it. Some things are even worse than jail. Maybe the best word to describe Stella is ashamed. At least, that’s what Maxymowich tells me.”

     We sat in silence for a few minutes.

     “Do you think you could make the coffee now, Mabel? I haven’t had a cup all morning.”

     “Is that why you look so terrible? Where’s Beth?”

     “I let her sleep in. Guess I’ve been keeping her awake all night with my coughing and snoring.”

     I made the coffee, all the time wondering how I would go about telling Flori about Stella. Flori, I knew, would understand. She knew what it was like to have sons and to love them. She also knew what it was like to have stupid sons. Thank heavens none of them turned out to be like Jake but I’ll tell you, there were a few times when the pendulum could’ve swung either way. Even during that time, Flori never gave up hope and she always stood behind them.

     We were half way through our first cup when she walked in. Somehow, I could tell  by looking at her that she already knew.

     “Flori, you’ve heard the news? They found Sally and she’s alive.”

     “I heard. I also heard that she was right there in Stella’s house. You were right all along, Mabel. I’m never trusting another person as long as I live.”

     “Don’t say that, Flori. There are lots of people you can trust; it’s just that most of them live in Parson’s Cove. And, even then, you can’t trust most of them.”

     “I made such a fool of myself.”

     “No, you didn’t. And, don’t be too quick to judge Stella, Flori. She trusted everything her son told her. It was a case of a mother’s blind love. That’s all it was.”

     “I might be like that if it weren’t for you, Mabel. I might, mighten I?”

     “No, you wouldn’t be like that because Jake wouldn’t let you. Don’t forget, Stella doesn’t have a cranky bossy husband to tell her what she should do. Nor to give her son a good thrashing.”