Wedding Bell Blues (4 page)

I followed Pastor Pittman out, pulled the door closed and looked down at the key in the lock. Should I take it, too? On second thought, I left it.

If this was a crime scene my fingerprints were all over everything. If, and that was a big fat if, Reba had indeed killed somebody, then I'd be in trouble for being here. Wouldn't Ossie love this? His number two suspect. He'd probably lock me in with Reba and throw away the key. Did jails have keys these days? Wouldn't they have electronic locks? Not in Littleboro. I bet the cell in the basement of the courthouse had some rusty old lock going back to the Civil War, or the “recent unpleasantness,” as we sometimes spoke of it when we were reminded. Ossie DelGardo was just the type to let somebody, especially me, rot in jail. I could imagine him rubbing his hands in absolute glee at finding my fingerprints here. Plus now he had an eyewitness, Pastor Pittman. Who could be more reliable than a Presbyterian minister?

Then I thought, has Pittman touched anything? Not even a chicken wing. And I was the one who had opened the door. But he did sit on the beautiful puffy white coverlet and his body image might glow in the dark if the police used one of those ultraviolet lights. Just thinking of all the possibilities made me feel better. I wasn't in this alone and somehow I'd get Reba out of Ossie's clutches. Maybe. All I knew was that the whole thing was not going to be easy. So far it wasn't even believable. God and Reba and Pastor Pittman. Butch Rigsbee and the guy on the picnic table. What was the connection? And somewhere a woman who sounded crazier than Reba was threatening to kill me.

 

Chapter Four

Pastor Pittman opened the passenger door of his car, a silver BMW, and I slid in. Leather seats. “Oh my goodness,” I said. I was impressed. Lady Bug's upholstery had long been worn down to the foam rubber and I used big blue bath towels for seat covers. Pittman caressed his steering wheel, which also had a leather cover.

“I've got a parishioner who owns the dealership in Southern Pines. He gives me a good deal, says I'm good advertising. Of course I don't know that's true. Parking it at Motel 3 is probably not quite what he had in mind.”

Pittman laughed, reached up and straightened the little gold cross hanging from his rearview mirror. I saw an oval St. Christopher medal dangling right behind it.

He grinned. “I try to cover a lot of bases,” he said when he noticed me staring at the mirror ornaments.

I leaned back, let out a breath. Here I was outside a seedy motel in a fancy car with a preacher. Anybody from Littleboro driving by was sure to notice. We Littleborians don't miss much, not when one of our own is out of place, or somewhere they're not supposed to be or doing something they shouldn't be doing. All this was not good for my reputation, which wasn't all that sterling to start with. There are those people who live in Littleboro who remember me from my first Easter bonnet and white patent leather Mary Janes to the time I ate the communion bread before the blessing. Or the time, dressed as Little Bo Peep in the first-grade play, I threw up onstage. Those were just bits in the local folklore. There was worse later.

Memories, especially embarrassing ones, lingered long in Littleboro. Too long. Maybe that's why when I was eighteen, the minute I graduated Littleboro High School, I couldn't wait to leave for art school in Rhode Island. Lord, was I lucky to land there among my own kind. And one of the things I was dealing with since I came crawling back home on my weary knees was baggage—that was the current term. I carried a lot of baggage and it wasn't exactly plaid and polka-dotted and pretty.

Then I thought another thought. Pastor Pittman's reputation was more at stake here than mine. Motel, parked with a woman in his car. His parishioners didn't do motels, at least not in broad daylight.

“You first,” he said.

“No, you.” My hands were still shaking from the scare of having to bargain with some stranger, who turned out to be Pittman, trying to barge in the motel door.

“My explanation is simple,” he said. “She'd asked me to pick her up here and take her to the gazebo at Lemon Lake for a ‘rehearsal.' She'd heard the word in all the wedding talk. Then she called this morning hysterical about something. I couldn't understand what it was all about. Since I was planning to come, I just came earlier.”

“She wasn't upset about the wedding stuff,” I said. “That was supposed to be tomorrow.”

“You believed she was really getting married?” he asked.

“Of course not, but what did it hurt to play along with her?”

I wasn't sure I believed his story. Pittman was a darn good-looking man with a prissy blond Barbie of a wife who Ida Plum said probably only let him have sex on Sunday mornings so he could get charged up for loving that pulpit and speaking to the “Frozen Chosen” while she sat in the first pew with a smug Cheshire cat smile. Barbie Pittman was skinny as a stick and wore her butter-blond hair in a tight twist of an upsweep. I felt like a brunette, ponytailed Raggedy Ann around her. But Reba? Even though she'd cleaned up lately, gotten a cute new haircut (and Juanita had even put in highlights so you didn't notice all the gray), the idea of hanky-panky with Reba was too far-fetched even for a nonromantic like me.

“And?” I waited.

“And I planned to listen to her hysteria, talk her out of this most recent craziness, buy her some ice cream, maybe even one of those banana splits at the S & T Soda Shoppe. That would keep her eating half the day and so full of sugar and chocolate and nuts and whipped cream she'd forget the whole June bride business and go back to her tree.” He turned to me. “Anything wrong with that? What's your story?”

“I guess it's more involved.” So I told him about it in detail: Reba's phone call, the white truck, God, my attempt at CPR, the man on the picnic table, the MedAlert.

“Wow,” he said, which startled me and made me wonder if he thought I was making the whole thing up, that some of Reba's imagination was catching, like measles. Then I guess I expected him to pat my hand, pull out a Bible from somewhere and read me some verses. Maybe the 23rd Psalm I'd memorized at some point. I thought about the part of preparing a table in the presence of “mine enemies.” Ossie could be considered “mine enemy” of sorts. Something.

“That's some story. Good to know you can do CPR,” he said. “And where's Reba now?”

“Jail. I guess. Ossie took her off in the squad car and Bruce drove the truck behind him.” I fingered the roll of Reba's clothing in my lap. “I thought I might find some of her things in the motel, take them to her.” I didn't say what was obvious. Reba didn't need her bridal gown in her jail cell. Maybe it would even be cruel to remind her, for her to see it. Maybe I should just drive over to Walmart and buy her some new underwear, a robe, slippers. I should have taken that burgundy robe I found in the room. It wasn't too late. I could just pop out and go get it. The key was still in the door.

That sounded logical, reasonable and believable.

Pastor Pittman sighed. “The poor woman. Who knows her pain?”

I'd never thought of Reba having pain, being in pain before. She was rarely upset about anything or anybody. She seemed so happy, talking to the birds, singing to herself around town, borrowing anybody's bathtub (and bath salts if she couldn't get her hands on bubble bath—Reba loved a good bubble bath and you had to clean the bubbles she left in your tub; she'd been known to empty a whole bottle in with her), sleeping under her tree. I saw her, and maybe the whole town did, too, as an oversized child. Sweet and innocent. Now she might be hurting. And scared out of her wits thinking she'd killed somebody. I tried to shake the image of that fellow (whoever he was) out of my mind. That awful sour taste when I did the CPR. I wiped my hand across my mouth. Yuk. Was there any mouthwash in Reba's motel bathroom?

“Just a minute,” I said, and hopped out, leaving the car door open and the bundle for Reba on the seat. But just as I had my hand on the motel-room doorknob, somebody clasped me on the shoulder. “Oh, no you don't. You can't go in there.”

I turned around to see Al, or Allison Petty as I'd known her in high school, close behind me with a vacuum cleaner, bucket and mop. And a roll of yellow tape. “Bruce just brought this over. Didn't you see the car? He was in and out like lightning. I was going to clean the room, but he stopped me just in time.”

Damn, I thought. Maybe her cleaning would have wiped and washed away all my fingerprints and Reba's sin. Evidence if she had indeed killed the
real
Butch Rigsbee aka God.

“I just wanted to get a robe to take to Reba,” I said.

“No, not on your life. Ossie'd kill me if I let anybody in that room. He'd seen that white ‘God' truck parked here yesterday, the one at the pull-off he just hauled off to the police station.” She unrolled the yellow crime scene tape across the door. “This isn't going to do my business any good.” So she'd heard the story already, at least part of it.

“Okay,” I said, and fully expected her to ask me how I knew there was a robe in that room, but I would be willing to bet she saw me drive in, knew every minute I was in there. From her view from the little office on the corner I bet she didn't miss much. And Pastor Pittman? She saw him, too. And she'd probably told Ossie. Oh boy, when the gossip mill got this going, it would really build into a giant tale. More folklore for the lengthy Littleboro legends, some of which were hundreds of years old, going back to the founding of the town on some king's grant that bestowed favors on those few who came over and fought for him during the Revolution. This little bitty patch of dirt.

Allison turned and waved to Pastor Pittman sitting in his car. He'd tried to duck down and hadn't quite made it. What is
he
hiding? I thought. My Lord, this town has secrets within secrets.

I bet the business of Reba being hauled in by Ossie, the body of Mr. Whoever-He-Was loaded into the MedAlert ambulance on the Interstate and maybe even me seen there with Pastor Pittman at Motel 3 was all over town by now. This was one tale I'd never live down.

I reached in Pittman's car for the things to take Reba. I waved goodbye to him and got in Lady Bug.

Maybe I could get back to the Dixie Dew before the gossip reached Ida Plum and whatever guest might be lingering in my dining room. Give them half a chance and they'd write up a report for the Bed and Breakfast Association, but what could they say? I knew my food was good, my beds were clean and soft and my house was warm, welcoming. The town I couldn't do anything about. The busybodies, the gossips who liked nothing better than a good scandal to chew over, they went back to Noah's Ark, those who escaped the flood. I'm sure some of them were there, riding on the roof of that ark. They must have hopped down at the first hint of dry land, called it Littleboro and passed on their legends for generations.

I drove faster than the speed limit. Ossie and Bruce would be too busy to worry about speeding tickets today. And Reba? Had she really killed this guy? And where was the man she had called God … her so-called intended? I knew the fellow on the picnic table did not in any way look like the photo in the wallet, and those clothes hanging in the closet were big enough for two of him. Maybe Reba and this guy she called a “better man” had killed the real Butch Rigsbee? Then she tried to kill this man? I couldn't see Reba killing anyone. Not even the proverbial fly.

I hadn't seen blood from any gunshot or knife wound on the man on the picnic table. Somehow I couldn't see Reba doing anything like that. Strangled? I hadn't looked for marks on his throat, but I couldn't see Reba doing that, either. She could have smothered him with a pillow, but I remembered all the pillows were still in place on the beds. And if she'd done any of that, how could she have gotten the body to this pull-off beside the Interstate? Reba didn't even drive. So he must have driven the truck, maybe had a heart attack and pulled over, then trying to get air, gotten out and somehow pulled himself over to the picnic table. That's when Reba grabbed his cell phone and called me. Reba might have more common sense than any of us gave her credit for.

All I knew for now was I'd seen a strange man that I thought was a dead man on the picnic table, and Reba had called me and Ossie had hauled Reba away in his police car.

Lots of questions. No answers. And I was threatened on the phone by some big bruiser of a woman who wanted to kill both her thieving, rotten, lying husband and me who had never laid eyes on him until I saw his photo in the wallet. Hussy? I'd never been called a hussy in my life. I looked at all the rubble around me. This crazy woman could be lurking in the woods behind Motel 3, eyeing me in her gun's sites, if she was the shooter type. Somehow the picture I had of this woman looked like the strangler type. She could grab me, put those iron hands around my throat, give a mighty squeeze, I'd croak dead, then she'd walk off and never look back. She also looked like someone who could hot-wire a bulldozer if she had to, toss my body in the rubble of concrete, drywall and bricks, push more rubble over it and nobody would ever find me. Just that thought nearly scared me to death.

I couldn't get out of the place fast enough. So I locked my car door for good measure and lead-footed the gas pedal all the way home.

 

Chapter Five

Of course by the time I got to the Dixie Dew, word had already overtaken me.

Ida Plum met me at the kitchen door, dish towel in hand. “We heard Reba has killed a man and you were seen hugging up Pastor Pittman at Motel 3.”

“No, no, no,” I said. “That's not the way it was.”

Scott stood at the kitchen island, poring over catalogs, flyers and envelopes. He often picked up his mail from his box at the post office, then came by the Dixie Dew for a quick cup of coffee and whatever else was baking or had been baked recently. As he sorted his mail sometimes I got a quick brush of a kiss, which made Ida Plum shake her head and say, “You two. I don't know about you two.”