Murder Carries a Torch Read online

  “Right. Thank you, Cousin Pat.”

  “You’re welcome, Richard. Be sure and let the President know how things turn out.”

  I hung up and looked down at Woofer who was drooling over his Milkbone. “Want to run for Congress?”

  I slipped on some jeans, a sweatshirt, and my Bullwinkle fuzzy slippers while I waited on Debbie’s call. I was worried about Virginia, but the talk with Richard had lightened my spirits. I turned on the gas logs in the den fireplace and fixed myself a cup of hot chocolate. Muffin jumped up beside me on the sofa, and Woofer stretched out in front of the fire.

  This, I was thinking, was what January afternoons should all be like. I even managed to finish the hot chocolate and was dozing when the phone rang.

  “The man’s not dead,” Mary Alice announced. “They’re taking him to Vanderbilt Hospital, but they think he just had a spell of some kind.”

  “What kind of spell? Virginia said he was lying on the floor and he was obviously unconscious if she thought he was dead.”

  “How should I know, Mouse? Maybe one like Aunt Gracie used to have. Remember how she would fall out? Get that look in her eye and we’d know to catch her. Good thing she was little.”

  “Have you talked to Richard? I told him his mother was in Nashville and okay except for maybe having killed a man.”

  “He’s trying to get a flight out now, but he may end up driving if he can’t get out soon. He’s all excited about the President calling him.”

  “Our family is blessed.”

  “We are. Imagine the President taking such a personal interest in Richard.”

  “Imagine.”

  “I’ll call you if I hear anything else. Henry’s fixed pot roast for supper.”

  “Enjoy.”

  I was in a good humor when Fred came in. So good, in fact, that we uncorked the Viagra before we ate the corned beef and cabbage. Totally missed Wheel of Fortune.

  “A spell?” He asked as we were eating our egg custard pie. “Virginia called you to say the guy was dead and he had had some kind of a spell?”

  “All I know is what Sister said. They took him to Vanderbilt Hospital.”

  “Does this have something to do with the snake-handling preacher?”

  “I doubt it. I don’t know what’s going on. Sister thinks Monk Crawford took Virginia to Nashville to meet this man. I guess it’s possible.”

  “Mary Alice say any more about Virgil? I thinks she’s got her a good one this time. He was telling me the best places at Smith Lake to catch bass. He’s got a cabin up there.”

  “Well, let him break the news to her.”

  “True.”

  I’m sure both of us had the same mental picture of Sister in a lake cabin cleaning bass.

  We were in bed asleep by nine o’clock. Sometime later the phone rang and woke me up.

  “Migraine,” Sister said.

  “What?”

  “The Gordon guy is going to be okay. He had a migraine attack, took some new medicine he had, and was sleeping it off.”

  “On the floor? He must have taken a hell of a dose.”

  “Well, Virginia said she didn’t have her glasses on and must have guessed wrong when she gave it to him. Do you suppose Aunt Gracie had migraines? Remember how funny her eyes looked?”

  “I think Aunt Gracie took paregoric, Sister. I’m going back to sleep now.”

  “Well, I never did tell you what I found about Eugene Mahall.”

  “What about him?”

  “He can walk as good as you and I can.”

  This woke me up.

  “Who says?”

  “I was talking to Virgil on the car phone telling him where we’d been and he told me. Said he’d seen him himself. Said he went out to his house to question him about Louellen’s disappearance. You know, the country singer he married who kept jumping into the legustrum trying to commit suicide? And you know those glass panels on either side of the door? Virgil saw him walking down the hall big as life. But when he opened the door, he was in the wheelchair.”

  “Insurance fraud?”

  “That’s what I said. But Virgil says probably not, that when he collected the insurance he really was crippled up.”

  “What would be the purpose then?”

  “I have no idea, Mouse. Why do you always think I know all the answers?”

  “I’m going to sleep now.”

  I hung up, but I didn’t go back to sleep for a long time. Why would Eugene Mahall want everyone to think he couldn’t walk?

  “I’m scared,” I heard Betsy say.

  What a can of worms. Basket of snakes.

  I finally got up and fixed some decaffeinated tea. Ended up sleeping on the sofa with Muffin.

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  The next morning, I was sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper and having a second cup of coffee when there was a knock on my back door.

  “Any sweetrolls and coffee?” Officer Bo Mitchell of the Birmingham Police Department asked when I opened the door.

  “For you, always.”

  I hugged Bo and took her coat.

  “Lord, you’re skinny, girl!”

  Bo twirled to show off her new figure. “One twenty-five. And that’s it. I’m at the sticking point now. So one sweetroll and that’s it.”

  “You look wonderful.” And she did. Bo has the most beautiful skin, a light milk chocolate color and her eyes have a slightly Asian cast. She is also one of the nicest people I know, funny and brave. Her friendship is one of the best things that has happened to me since I retired from teaching.

  “Sit down and I’ll get you some coffee.”

  I put her coat over a chair in the den while she sat down at the table.

  “Where’s Joanie this morning?” I asked. Joanie Salk is Bo’s partner.

  “We had the night shift. I just came to hear about your trip. How’s Haley doing?”

  “So good you wouldn’t believe.” I put a cup of coffee in front of Bo and got some sweetrolls from the refrigerator and stuck them in the microwave. “She’s loving being married and living in Warsaw. And, Bo, guess what? She and Philip are in Rome today. They’ve got an audience with the pope. Not one of those big things with a crowd, but a small group. They’re really going to get blessed by him personally.”

  Bo has a terrific grin. Every time I see it I think of the thousands of dollars we spent on our kids’ teeth just praying for smiles like that and missing it by a mile. “I’m so happy for her. That’s great.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  She reached for the sweetener. “How’s Mary Alice? She and Fred get along on the Concorde?”

  “They did fine. Peter Jennings was on the plane with us coming back so she rearranged everyone’s seats.”

  “She get engaged to him?”

  The microwave dinged and I took the rolls out.

  “He slept. I can’t believe she didn’t wake him up.”

  “The poor soul. He doesn’t know what he missed.”

  I put the rolls between us and sat down.

  “She’s fallen in love since we got home, though.”

  “Who with?” Bo took a sweetroll and blew on it to cool it.

  “A man named Virgil Stuckey. The sheriff of St. Clair County.”

  “Really? I know Sheriff Stuckey. He’s a nice guy.”

  Bo looked up suddenly. “The sheriff of St. Clair County? Y’all been messing around up there, getting in trouble?”

  “Well, you heard about the snake-handling murders?”

  Bo shook her head in disbelief. “Damn. Should have known.”

  “Well, it’s Pukey Lukey’s wife’s fault. She ran off with the snake handler. At least, Luke thought she had.”

  Bo nodded and took a big bite of her sweetroll. By the time I finished telling her all that had happened, she had eaten two rolls and had finished her second cup of coffee. The telling, eating, and drinking were punctuated with Bo’s favorite expression, “Do, Jesus!”
Bo is a wonderful listener, probably one of the reasons she’s such a good policeman.

  “Sounds like a mess,” she said when she realized I had finished the story with the man in Vanderbilt Hospital who had the migraine attack and Virginia having thought he was dead.

  “It is,” I agreed. “Thank goodness Virginia’s shown up. We’re out of it now. It’s up to the sheriff.”

  “That’ll be the day.” Bo licked some icing from her finger. “You and Mary Alice are going to help him out by finding out who did it, aren’t you?”

  “Nope, Miss Smart Aleck. But I am going to tell him he needs to take a good look at a man named Joe Baker. We met him yesterday and you could just see the mean in his eyes. You know how that is?”

  Bo nodded that she recognized mean in peoples’ eyes.

  “He’s Monk Crawford’s brother-in-law, and now that Susan and Monk are both dead, he’ll probably be the chief snake handler.”

  “Now that’s something to aspire to, isn’t it? Snakes. Yuck. You know,” Bo stuck her finger in the crumbs on her plate and licked them off, “my mama was the dickens on potty training. Had us all out of diapers by the time we were eighteen months old. But last fall I was spreading pine straw under my shrubbery and picked up a handful with a little snake in it. Lord! I peed my pants.”

  I laughed. “What kind of snake was it?”

  “Don’t know. I threw him a winding and went to take a shower and wash my clothes.” Bo placed both of her hands on the table and spread her fingers out in what looked liked a gesture of surrender. “Deliver me from those things.”

  We sat quietly for a moment and I remembered that I hadn’t told her the most important thing of all.

  “Debbie had her baby, Bo. They’re fine.”

  Bo’s smile beamed again. “That’s wonderful. Mary Alice beside herself?”

  “Just about it. She’d given up on grandchildren until Debbie got pregnant with the twins, you know.”

  “Haley will be next.”

  “I hope so.” I pointed toward Bo’s cup. She shook her head no and said she needed to get on home and get some sleep.

  “Well, let me ask you something before you go. Susan Crawford’s body in the church? The way it was laid out? I’ve been thinking about it. Have you ever run up on any bodies that are fixed just so, with their clothes fixed neatly, and even their hair looking like it had been brushed?”

  “I get the drive-by shootings and the ODs under the interstate. They’re laid out all right, just the way they quit breathing.”

  “Well, what about women murderers? Do you think they would tend to straighten up the bodies more?”

  “Patricia Anne, have you lost your mind? Of course not. They’d get the hell out as quick as any man. Quicker, maybe. You think tidying up is some kind of innate female thing, regardless of the circumstances? Lord, girl!

  “Tell you what, though.” Bo followed me into the den where I had put her coat. “We did have a case in West End where an eighty-year-old man killed his wife who had Alzheimer’s. Smothered her with a pillow. He had her all bathed and in her prettiest nightgown when he called us. Even had makeup on her.”

  Bo held out her arms for her coat. “Only time I ever cried at a murder scene. And didn’t feel a damn bit bad about it. A man named Jeff Maloney answered the call with me and he was sniffling, too. Damn.”

  “And someone broke Susan Crawford’s neck and then laid her out like they loved her.”

  Bo slipped into her coat. “Maybe it wasn’t the same person. Maybe someone found her dead and took her into the church.”

  I hadn’t thought of that possibility. But after Bo left with promises of calling soon, I had Joe Baker killing Susan and Monk finding the body and laying her out in the church. Or Eugene Mahall killing Susan (I could think of no reason for my suspicion except that he had lied about walking), and Betsy finding the body. She could have been the woman Luke swore he saw in the church. But that didn’t make sense. Betsy would have called the police immediately if she had found Susan’s body. Surely she would have.

  I finished loading the dishwasher and turned it on. One thing I was sure of now. Whoever had put Susan Crawford’s body in the church, whoever had straightened her clothes and combed her hair, had cared deeply for her.

  It was a beautiful sunny day. The temperature was supposed to be in the sixties with rain that night and much colder weather the next day. Muffin was lying in the bay window watching two squirrels trying to get sunflower seeds from my squirrelproof bird feeder that really works. The squirrels jump on the wooden perch and their weight closes the feeder. A remarkable invention except I feel so sorry for the squirrels after they’ve worked a long time, that I’ll go and throw some seeds on the ground for them.

  Woofer and I took a quick walk. Most of the Christmas decorations were down by now, but there were a couple of holdouts. There’s a house a block away from us that has a chimney on the front. They put their wreath up Thanksgiving and take it down Easter. Don’t ask. But it’s a good way to give directions in February and March. “Go past the wreath house, turn left…”

  I had thought I would have a message from Mary Alice, that she might have heard from Richard, but there was nothing but a dial tone. I turned on the computer; not even the SEX SEX SEX people were trying to communicate with me this morning.

  I got in the shower feeling slightly depressed and knowing why. The last couple of months had been so busy, planning for the trip to Warsaw, the trip itself, Christmas, Brother’s birth, Virginia’s disappearance, and the whole Chandler Mountain snake-handling affair. A morning by myself was a letdown. Next week, I would start tutoring again at the middle school. Next week, I would shampoo the rugs and maybe invite some people for dinner. Arthur and Mitzi from next door, Frances Zata, of course, if she was in town and not in Destin. I let the hot water run over my head and relaxed. Soon, mixed with the smell of shampoo was the smell of bacon frying. It was a pleasant smell, one the aromatherapy people should consider using. A smell that shouldn’t have been in my house, but that didn’t alarm me because I figured I knew the source.

  I rinsed my hair, put on my white terry-cloth robe, and headed for the kitchen.

  “Why don’t you get some real bacon,” Sister complained. “All I could find was this turkey stuff.”

  “Lower in cholesterol.”

  She was sitting at my table with what appeared to be several pieces of French toast and half a pound of bacon on the plate in front of her.

  “Did you fix me some?” I asked.

  “You can have some of this. I think my eyes were bigger than my stomach.”

  I would not answer that.

  I got a plate and helped myself to a piece of French toast and a couple of pieces of bacon. Sister pushed the bottle of syrup toward me.

  “Unusual hairdo.” I couldn’t resist. Sister’s hair was pulled back into random patches, some of them caught with bobby pins.

  “I’ve been to Delta Hairlines. It’s the Dharma look.”

  I’m sure I looked blank.

  “You know, Dharma from Dharma and Greg, the television show. Don’t you and Fred ever watch anything but Wheel of Fortune and Biography?”

  “We’re always in a hurry to get to bed.”

  “You wish.”

  I poured syrup over the French toast. “You hear from Richard and Luke this morning?”

  “Richard called while I was eating breakfast.”

  I pointed to the French toast. “What’s this, then?”

  Sister didn’t miss a beat. “Brunch. Anyway, he ended up driving because there wasn’t a direct flight until this morning and he said it was quicker than having to fly through Atlanta and change planes.”

  “How’s his mama?”

  “Feisty enough to tell Luke she was filing for divorce.”

  “Must have regained her feist when she found out she wasn’t a felon.”

  Sister frowned at me and chomped into a piece of bacon.

  “What about t
he Gordon guy? Is he going to be okay?”

  Sister nodded, chewing. When she swallowed she said, “They met on the Internet. I don’t know any of the details. I guess we’ll find out this afternoon, though. They’re coming back to my house. Virgil’s going to meet them there at three o’clock to grill her.”

  “Gonna grill her, huh?”

  Sister speared another piece of French toast and held it in the air. A drop of syrup dripped onto her plate.

  “Should be interesting. You want to come?”

  You bet I did. I wanted to know what had happened on Chandler Mountain, things that Virginia might have the answers for. Things that the Chandler Mountain booger couldn’t be blamed for, things that Betsy Mahall was frightened of.

  On a hell-warmed-over scale of one to ten, Virginia’s looks would warrant a solid eight. Granted, the afternoon light in Sister’s sunroom was not flattering to anyone older than Tiffany, who was placing snacks on the coffee table and smiling at Richard (obviously this was going to be an informal interrogation), but Virginia looked rough. Her hair was a mahogany red, pulled straight back and either greased down with VO5 or in bad need of a shampoo. There were dark circles under her eyes and her lips looked strange, puffy. Surely Luke hadn’t hit her.

  I caught Sister’s eye, nodded slightly toward Virginia, and touched my lips.

  She mouthed something I didn’t understand.

  “What?” I mouthed back.

  She reached into the end-table drawer, and in a moment handed me a Post-it with “Collagen” written on it. I folded the paper and put it in my pocket.

  Virginia picked up her coffee cup and I watched with interest to see if she dribbled. She didn’t. I think I was equating collagen with novocaine.

  The six of us were sitting in a circle. Virgil hadn’t minded at all when I showed up. In fact, he had said that maybe Mary Alice and I could remind him of some things that he might forget.

  So far, between snacking and wondering if the repairs on the interstate to Nashville would ever be finished, this could be an ordinary tea party. Even Bubba Cat got down from his heating pad on the kitchen counter and came to lie in the sun right at Luke’s feet. A dangerous place, considering that Luke was a strange green color.