The Turtle Mound Murder (7 page)

She crushed her cigarette in a flower pot.
“Come on, Leigh, let’s go in. I need some more coffee.”

Ruthie came out a few minutes later, and we
had breakfast. Penny Sue acted as if she didn’t have a care in the
world. I studied her hard, trying to decide if she was putting up a
front or really felt nothing. I finally decided she was on the
level. She’d simply dismissed the murder from her mind.

Live in the present, the self-help books
said. The past is gone, the future isn’t here, and the present
moment is all that exists. I guess that’s what Penny Sue was doing.
But how? My mind was a hopeless jumble of shoulds, if-onlys, and
what-ifs. What happened to all that stuff in her mind? Was it
simply forgotten? Had she always been this way, or was it an
acquired skill? With three divorces, perhaps her brain circuits had
been burned out. Or, maybe it was the hormone thing. Memory loss
was supposedly one of the first symptoms. However it occurred, I
found myself envying Penny Sue. For the first time in my life, I
wished my mind worked like hers—and that was a scary thought!

I called my realtor before we left for
Cassadaga. The water heater checked out okay; she guessed they
didn’t let the water run long enough to get hot. The service call
cost fifty dollars—should she send the bill to me or Zack? The
young couple was definitely interested in the house, but they were
bothered by its age. Would we consider buying a major repair
insurance policy? Though it would cost close to a thousand dollars,
she thought a warranty would cinch the deal.

I said, “Fine, no problem.” I picked up her
card and paused. “Let Us Take The Worry Out Of Selling Your Home.”
Yeah, right.

Ruthie called, “Ready?” Then, I heard the
twang of the rusty spring on the screen door. I pocketed the card
and hurried out.

Penny Sue was waiting impatiently, car in
gear, and started moving before I even had a chance to close the
door. “What’s the rush—” I started to complain, but caught myself
mid-sentence. A New Smyrna Beach patrol car was parked at the edge
of the lot, and a ramrod officer with a clipboard was talking to a
sandy-haired man next door. That surprised me—I’d thought the condo
was vacant. I hadn’t seen any cars there since the red pickup truck
on the first day, which I’d assumed belonged to a workman.

“Getting the daily report on our
activities,” Penny Sue muttered tightly, as she guided the car to
the street.

“I’m sure it’s routine; they’re still taking
statements on the murder,” I said.

Penny Sue harrumphed and tuned the radio to
a rock station which was playing Bob Marley’s song “I Shot the
Sheriff.”

“Don’t you dare,” I said. We all laughed.
Penny Sue’s face muscles relaxed, and I could see she’d banished
the incident from her mind. She amazed me—I would still be
stewing.

We rode in silence for a while, Ruthie
reading
Places to Go in Florida
, while I spotted license
plates. Ontario, New York, Illinois, even a Missouri. While the
season had not officially started, New Smyrna Beach was already
bustling with tourists driven south by an unusually early winter. A
tractor trailer pulled out at the New Smyrna Beach Speedway, a
dirt-poor relation of its big time cousin in Daytona Beach, and we
slowed to a crawl.

“What is Cassadaga, again?” Penny Sue asked
Ruthie. “A bunch of astrologers?”

“It’s a Spiritualists enclave. You know,
mediums. People who channel information from entities on the other
side.”

“Dead people?”

“Yes.”

Penny Sue chuckled. “Spooks speak, huh?”

Ruthie shook her head with disgust. “Stop
that. You’ll offend the spirits, and none of us will get a good
reading.”

“I was just kidding. Surely, the spirits are
not so thin-skinned. They know we call them spooks. If they used to
be human, they probably called spirits spooks, too.”

Ruthie folded her arms. “Maybe so, but
there’s no sense in taking chances.”

I could see that Ruthie was getting pouty,
so rushed to change the subject. “How do these readings work? Do
the mediums go into a trance, or can we ask questions?”

“Every medium has their own system, but they
all give you an opportunity to ask questions.”

“I’m going to ask if Lyndon Fulbright is
married,” Penny Sue declared airily. “I sure liked the looks of
that boat. I can see myself sailing around on it.”

“It’s not a sailboat,” I said.

“Sail, float, what difference does it make?
It’s the Lyndon and me going off into the great blue yonder that
counts. Sail to Cancun. Cruise the Caribbean. Flit over to Monte
Carlo.”

“I don’t think you flit to Monte Carlo. The
trip would take weeks.”

“I’m sure he’d hire someone to sail—”

“It’s not a sailboat.”

“—it across the ocean. We’d fly.”

“My, you do think big,” I quipped.

“Thoughts are things, right, Ruthie? You
can’t have what you can’t imagine.”

The comment stopped me. Just when I’d almost
concluded that Penny Sue was a empty-headed hedonist, she’d come up
with something profound. It happened every time, and she was
right.

Thoughts and attitudes do determine our
lives. Depressed people see a dismal world. Happy people see humor
in almost anything. So, what did that say about me? What did I see?
I thought of Penny Sue, the spirits, Woody with his pants around
his ankles ... nuts. I must be nuts.

We parked the car in front of the Cassadaga
Hotel. Typical of resorts from the turn of the century, the hotel
was a stucco and wood structure ringed by a wide porch with white
rocking chairs and worn wooden benches. Only a handful of people
were outside, most having a cigarette. We entered through the front
door, and Ruthie’s face lit with delight. An ancient sofa and
old-fashioned upholstered chairs complemented the lobby’s polished
hardwood floors and ornate tray ceiling. A wooden telephone booth,
complete with folding door and corner seat, stood against the wall.
A New Age shop offering books, incense, rocks and Indian
paraphernalia was off to the right. To our immediate left was The
Lost in Time Cafe, a pleasant room with lace curtains, a delicately
carved bar and tables decked out with white tablecloths, small
vases of flowers, and bottles of the house wine, Delicious
Spirits.

Everything about the place was reminiscent
of a long past, slower era. I could almost see women in long
dresses having tea in the cafe. Or men with handlebar mustaches in
white linen suits milling around the lobby. The place truly was
lost in time, maybe that’s what the spirits liked about it.

We went to the front desk and inquired about
readings. Several mediums were available. Who was the best? we
asked. The receptionist refused to comment, recommending that we
use intuition to make our choice.

“I’ll take Horace,” Penny Sue said
instantly.

Ruthie regarded her quizzically. “You get
good vibes from him?”

“No. He’s available now, and he’s the only
man. I like available men.” Penny Sue smiled, counted out her money
and sashayed across the lobby to find Horace.

Illumina, Sally Ann and Reverend Angelina
were the other choices. Ruthie took a deep breath and touched each
of their names, trying to divine their energy. A minute later her
eyelids fluttered and she pronounced, “Angelina.”

That left me with Sally Ann or Illumina. As
Ruthie toddled off to her appointment, I stared at the names,
hoping to hear a voice, feel a tingle, something. I got absolutely
nothing. The reservationist started to fidget, and I felt like a
dense putz. Choose one, I told myself, it’s fifty-fifty. “Sally
Ann,” I blurted. Illumina sounded too much like a car.

After our sessions we had lunch; checked out
several bookstores where Ruthie bought the book
Cassadaga, The
South’s Oldest Spiritualist Community
; and took a walking tour
of the village. It wasn’t until we were in the car headed back to
the beach that we compared notes on our readings.

“I’m going to get married again. A man with
light hair who’s involved in sports,” Penny Sue announced as she
sped down Route 44. “A true Prince Charming, Horace said.”

“Who fits the bill?” I asked. “The Falcon or
the Brave?”

“Neither. The Falcon’s bald; what little
hair he has, he shaves off. Jimmy, the Brave, has brown hair. I
think it’s Lyndon. Yachting’s a sport, isn’t it?”

“Sure, they have races and stuff; it must be
considered a sport,” Ruthie replied.

“How about we go to The Riverview for dinner
tonight?” Penny Sue said.

“Not wasting any time, eh?”

“Girl, I don’t intend to let Prince Charming
get away. What about you, Ruthie? How was your reading?”

She was looking out the window and didn’t
answer immediately. I held my breath with anticipation. Ruthie had
been quiet all afternoon. I hoped the medium hadn’t given her bad
news.

“Angelina said I was a born sensitive, and
my life purpose was to help people by becoming a medium myself. She
said I’d move to Cassadaga one day.”

“I can see that,” Penny Sue said. “You’ve
always been interested in spiritual stuff.”

“I guess.”

Ruthie’s response was flat and lifeless.
Something was bothering her. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I’d think
you’d be thrilled at the prospect of becoming a medium.”

“Oh sure, it’s the move that bothers
me.”

“Why is that a big deal?”

“I’d never leave Poppa. Don’t you see, it
means Poppa’s going to die.” Her green eyes filled with tears.

A black cloud descended on all of us. I
recovered first. “Your dad is eighty-four, Ruthie. You know he’s
going to go eventually. We all do … sometime.”

Penny Sue jumped in. “And there is no death,
right? You told me that yourself when Momma passed. He’s simply
going to change form, drop his body. His spirit will live on.
Shoot, maybe J.T.’s going to be your guide when you become a
medium. You know how much he loves directing people, and that way
you’d actually listen.”

Ruthie brightened. “I hadn’t thought of
that. Lord, he’d hound me to death.”

I looked out the window, thinking. Sally Ann
told me I would be instrumental in getting a friend through a life
and death situation. Initially, I interpreted the comment to mean
the mess with Penny Sue and the murder. Now I wondered if she’d
been referring to Ruthie. I hoped not.

“What did your medium say, Leigh?”

I took a deep breath. “Oh, nothing much.” I
could see Penny Sue regarding me in the rearview mirror and knew
she wasn’t buying it. But Providence was on my side.

Penny Sue didn’t wait for an answer.
“There’s a red pickup truck behind us. I think it’s the guy that
was fighting with Rick,” she exclaimed. “I recognize the spotlights
on the bumper.”

Ruthie turned around to see. “Don’t look,
he’ll see you,” I hissed, then caught myself. Why did I care if he
saw us? Geez, I sounded like my mother. I turned around and looked
myself.

“He could be the person who killed Rick,”
Ruthie said. “He had a motive: the fight.”

“He hates turtles,” I added. “Remember the
bumper sticker? Rick’s body was found next to the turtle
mound.”

“Yeah,” Ruthie exclaimed. “He waited on the
beach, knowing that Rick would come by to move the turtle nest,
then killed him to settle the score.”

I could see Penny Sue’s eyes in the
mirror.

“We need to find out if it’s really him—get
his license plate number,” she said. “A passing zone’s coming up,
I’ll slow down. You get the number when he goes by.” Ruthie pulled
out a pen and scrap of paper, poised to write, as Penny Sue slowed
the car from sixty to forty-five. “Come on, buddy, the coast is
clear. Pass.” The truck slowed, too, dropping back several car
lengths.

“What’s wrong with him?” Ruthie asked.

Penny Sue’s jaw tightened. “He’s following
us.” She stepped on the accelerator. The truck matched our speed,
though stayed a few car lengths behind.

“Following us? Why?”

“Maybe he’s out to settle a score with us,
too,” I ventured slowly. Though Sally Ann did not specifically
mention Rick’s murder—which made me doubt her abilities—she did
foresee trouble with a man in the near future. At the time, I
assumed she meant Zack. Was it possible Mr. Pickup was the guy in
her vision?

We were approaching the New Smyrna Beach
Speedway and the intersection with Route 415. Penny Sue gripped the
steering wheel with both hands. “Hold on, girls.” She took a hard
right through a service station, onto Route 415 then looped back to
Route 44. The truck went speeding by. Penny Sue pulled in behind
him. She floored the Mercedes and got right on his bumper. There it
was:
Turtles? They Make Good Soup.

“Darn,” Ruthie said. The license plate was
splattered with mud, obliterating the numbers. – – N42 – was all
that we could make out.

“Where did you learn to drive like that?” I
asked.

“Daddy and I took one of those
anti-terrorist driving courses.”

Defensive driving, carrying a gun; I hadn’t
realized that judging was such a dangerous profession.

We followed the truck past the city limits
to the regional shopping center. It took a left into Gilley’s Pub
44 parking lot. Penny Sue went one block further and made a
U-turn.

“I want to make sure the same guy is
driving,” Penny Sue said. “We can chip some of the mud off his
license plate.”

Ruthie drew back, hugging the passenger-side
door. “I’m not chipping any mud. That guy could be dangerous.”

“Pooh, it’s broad daylight. You’ll be
perfectly safe.”

“If it’s so safe, you do it.”

“I have to drive the getaway car. Leigh,
you’ll do it, won’t you?” I could see her face in the mirror. She
was staring at me through those damned Chanel sunglasses and
flashing the sweet, manipulative grin that I hated so much. The one
that said: “This is such a simple thing, you’re brain-damaged if
you don’t comply with my wishes.” I bared my teeth and gave her a
low growl. Childish and catty, I know, but she deserved it.