Murder Carries a Torch Page 19
“I’m storing it away for future use. How’s Brother?”
“He slept two straight hours last night. I guess that’s progress. Have you heard from Haley?”
“I haven’t turned on the computer since yesterday morning. I think they’ll be back from Rome today.” I hesitated. “I don’t think I’ll tell her about the snake and the wreck.” I thought for a moment. “Well, about the wreck. I can’t resist. But not why it happened. No use worrying her.”
“I can’t believe somebody put a big rattlesnake in Mama’s car. And that it bit her.”
“She lucked out with the gloves,” I admitted.
“I trust the two of you are going to stay away from Chandler Mountain?”
“You trust right. Virgil Stuckey is welcome to Chandler Mountain and all the goings-on up there. Incidentally, Debbie, I think I heard him call Sister, ‘my baby.’ You really may get yourself a stepfather out of this one.”
“Lord have mercy, Aunt Pat. How does the woman do it?”
“Haley says it’s pheromones and the woman ought to bottle them.”
We hung up laughing. At least Debbie was laughing. My ribs were too painful. Go back to Chandler Mountain? No way. I took the phone off the hook, turned gingerly on my side, and went back to sleep with no thought of the old saying about the mountains coming to Mohammed. A good thing or I wouldn’t have slept so soundly.
Chapter
Nineteen
E-MAIL
FROM: HALEY
TO: MAMA AND PAPA
SUBJECT: ROME
The pope actually spoke to me, y’all. He said, “How do you do, Mrs. Nachman.” Isn’t that incredible? “How do you do, Mrs. Nachman.” We’ve been married five months and I think it was the first time that I really felt like Mrs. Nachman, not like Haley Hollowell Buchanan pretending to be Haley Nachman. And he held out his hand and I didn’t think I was supposed to shake it so I held out my hand to let him take the initiative and he took it in both of his and just held it. And he asked where we were from and I told him Birmingham, Alabama, and he said he had heard it was a beautiful city and I said it is, that it’s mountainous and green and he should come visit us. And then he asked if I wanted him to bless me and I said yes, and could he include my family. Which he did, so all of you are blessed.
He’s not as frail as I thought he would be. And he has the most unforgettable eyes. They’re like blue marbles. Philip says he thinks they’re some kind of special contact lenses. Whatever. They’re remarkable.
Then we visited the tourist sites. Even threw some coins in the Trevi Fountain because we want to go back some day. Telling you about that is going to wait until tomorrow, though. We’ve just gotten back and it’s late and we’re tired. A good, happy tired.
Love to everyone. Tell them all that they’re blessed.
Haley
The back door slammed and Sister called, “Mouse?”
“In the boys’ room with the computer.”
I heard her stop by the refrigerator, heard ice clunking, and then the opening of a cabinet.
“We’re all blessed,” I told her when she came into the room eating chocolate chip cookies and drinking a Coke. I moved aside so she could read Haley’s E-mail.
“Probably the reason Luke and Virginia and Richard left,” she said when she finished reading.
“They’ve gone home?”
“Richard’s gone back to Washington. Luke and Virginia have gone to Columbus.”
“They were speaking?”
Sister got up from the computer and sat on one of the twin beds that have been in the room since Freddie and Alan were children. I’ve never been able to totally turn the room over to an office. And the beds come in handy sometimes.
“Sort of,” she said.
“Sort of?”
“Virginia told Luke to go to hell, and he told her to kiss his butt.”
“Well, at least they’re communicating.”
We smiled at each other.
Sister crammed a whole chocolate chip cookie in her mouth, held up her hand, chewed, swallowed, and said that they had to stay where Virgil could get in touch with them.
“He talked to them a long time last night, though,” she added. “Luke admitted that maybe it wasn’t Virginia who hit him over the head in the church, that it was more an impression of someone coming at him, and he’d just seen Susan’s body and was rattled.”
She took a long swallow of Coke. “And Virginia said it sure as hell wasn’t her, that she was in Nashville by then getting ready to Senior Swing.” She held out the package of cookies. “Want some?”
I shook my head. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Fine. I had a little headache when I woke up and then Virginia told me they were leaving. I didn’t even have to take an aspirin. How about you? You look like hell.”
“I don’t feel as bad as I look. How did you get over here?”
“The Jag folks gave me a demonstrator to drive while mine’s in the shop. Nice. I may upgrade.”
Those Jag folks aren’t fools.
“Does Virgil have any idea what’s going on up on Chandler Mountain?”
“I don’t think he’s supposed to talk about it.”
Which probably meant he didn’t have a clue.
Sister downed another cookie, chugalugged the rest of the Coke, and announced that she was on her way to the Big, Bold, and Beautiful Shoppe for some loungewear, that Virgil was coming over for supper, and she figured something in velour would be nice. What did I think? And did I want to go with her? Bonnie Blue would pee her pants when she heard about the rattlesnake.
I doubted that, but Bonnie Blue Butler is one of the shrewdest women I’ve ever known. I thought it would be interesting to run the whole story by her. And I hadn’t seen her since before we went to Warsaw. She hadn’t heard about our trip.
“Don’t worry about the way you look,” Sister said. “If anybody notices, they’ll just think you’ve been in a bad fire and haven’t had skin grafts yet.”
“Do, Jesus,” Bonnie Blue exclaimed when she looked up from the package she was wrapping and saw me. “Did the Concorde fall down?”
“Mary Alice hit a mailbox yesterday.”
When I saw the expression on Bonnie Blue’s face, I decided right then and there that the pain was going to be worth it.
“No,” she said to Sister. “You hit a mailbox and skinned this girl up like this?”
“Only because a rattlesnake was hanging on to me.” Sister held out her hand, which was still swollen and discolored.
Bonnie Blue frowned.
“If I’m lying, I’m dying,” Sister assured her.
“Well, I’ve got to hear about this.” Bonnie Blue reached into a bin, pulled out a pink bow, and stuck it on the package. She held it up for our inspection and we nodded that it was fine.
We followed her to the comfortable seating arrangement in the front corner of the store. Since Bonnie Blue has been the manager of the Big, Bold, and Beautiful Shoppe, she has made her mark on the store, the “getting your thoughts together area” as she calls it being one of them. Sister and I sat on the flowered chintz loveseat and Bonnie Blue offered us coffee, which we both declined before she sat in the matching chair and said, “Now, what’s this about a rattlesnake?”
Bonnie Blue looked wonderful, I realized. She is as large as Sister with skin the color of dark milk chocolate. The two of them walking down the street together is a formidable sight. But today Bonnie Blue was dressed in a soft pink suit and her hair was pulled back from her forehead and held with a pink hairband.
“You look like you had a great Christmas,” I said.
She cut her eyes around at me and grinned. “Girlfriend, you wouldn’t believe. But y’all tell me your stuff first.”
Mary Alice did most of the talking. Did a pretty good job of it, too, only wandering off the subject occasionally to describe the Mahall house and its Thomas Jefferson floors and Albert Packard’s Spanish-moss beard.
“Seems like I remember something about it,” Sister said.
“Some of those men are still buried up there in that coal mine. Mr. R. T. Jemison, Daddy’s friend, is one of them.”
“Did the company pay his wife much?” I asked.
“Don’t know. I can find out.”
“I don’t guess it matters. It’s just that that’s supposed to be how the Mahall man got his money.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Bonnie Blue said. “That accident made them change a bunch of the laws.”
“This lady on the mountain told us that everybody believes Eugene Mahall killed his second wife, a country singer named Louellen Conway,” I added.
Bonnie Blue’e eyes rounded. “Kicking Balls?”
Mary Alice and I both must have looked confused.
“You know the song, ‘Kicking Balls.’ That was Louellen Conway’s claim to fame.”
Bonnie Blue waited for a sign of recognition, which she failed to get.
“You know. It’s supposed to be about a football game or a soccer game, but that’s not really what it’s about. It’s a woman’s song. A friend of mine gave it to me. First time I played it I was driving down 459 and got to laughing so hard I had to pull over.” Bonnie Blue giggled in remembrance. “Y’all need to hear that song. They didn’t play it much on the radio. Men disc jockeys. I’ll see if I can get you a copy.”
“I wonder if she made the record after she married Eugene Mahall,” I said. “Maybe that’s the reason she’s supposed to be part of the interstate ramp.”
“Louellen Conway? Hell, y’all, if we’re talking about the same person, she’s right here in Birmingham. One of my best customers.”
“Must not be the same person then.” Sister turned to me. “Didn’t Miss Beulah say Louellen was little and blond?”
I nodded.
“Well, this Louellen’s blond, but she’s a size twenty-four. How long’s it been since all this happened?”
“Several years.”
Bonnie Blue got up. “Tell you what. Why don’t I call her and ask her if she was ever married to—what’s his name again?”
“Eugene Mahall.”
Sister got up, too. “While you’re doing that, I’m going to be looking around. Something for an at-home evening. Maybe purple velour.”
Bonnie Blue pointed toward the left side of the shop and Sister headed in that direction. I picked up a People and tried to get interested in what the actresses had worn to Christmas parties. But my mind was too busy. If this Louellen Conway was the one who had been married to Eugene Mahall, chances were that she knew Monk Crawford, Susan, Joe Baker, and the rest of the handlers. Or at least knew about them. She certainly could tell us about Eugene Mahall, who was looming as a more sinister character all the time. Had she known he could walk? Had he always taken advantage of his son Terry? I thought about Betsy and the two children caught in that situation.
“Louellen?” I heard Bonnie Blue say. “It’s Bonnie Blue.”
A pause.
“Sure. I stuck it back for you. The one with the bird on it, too.”
Pause.
“Just whenever. No problem. But, listen, Louellen. Were you ever married to a man by the name of Eugene Mahall?”
I looked up. Bonnie Blue was holding her hand over the phone and grinning. “Y’all hit a nerve,” she told Sister and me. She put the phone back to her ear and said, “Uh huh” several times. There were also a “Have mercy” and “You don’t say.” Then, “A couple of ladies. One of them got snakebit up on Chandler Mountain yesterday. She’s okay. She’s in here now. But they heard this Mahall guy killed you and poured you into cement on an interstate ramp. I told them no way, that you were right here, alive and kicking.”
There was another prolonged period of listening. Sister located two velour outfits, which she pulled out and hung on a hook. One was lavender, the other black. I knew which one she would leave the shop with. She disappeared into the dressing room.
“I’ll tell them,” Bonnie Blue said. “Sure. Tomorrow will be fine.”
She hung up, jotted something down on a notepad, tore it out, and brought it to me.
“It’s her phone number. She was married to him, all right. Says she’ll tell you anything you want to know about the man, but none of it will be good, believe me. She was bad-mouthing that man something fierce.”
“Thanks, Bonnie Blue.” I stuck the phone number into the side of my purse. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear a tirade about Eugene Mahall. But if she might know anything about the snake handlers on Chandler Mountain, I’d like to hear that. I’d give her a call, find out if she thought Betsy had any reason to be scared in that house.
“How about this?”
Sister was standing before us in the lavender velour suit.
“You look like an iris,” Bonnie Blue said, clasping her hands together in joy. An iris? The woman had risen to manager of the shop within six months of starting work there. Easy to see why.
“You’ve got you a new man, Mary Alice. I can tell.”
Sister nodded. I swear, blushing a little.
“He’s the sheriff of St. Clair County,” I said. “Named Virgil Stuckey. Calls her Baby.”
“Well, I declare. Tell me all about him.”
Which Sister did, transforming him into something Michelangelo might have sculpted. Then Bonnie Blue told us about Charlie, the man she had met over Christmas, and we heard that he was also straight from the sculptor’s chisel.
“Haley met the pope,” I said while Bonnie Blue paused for breath.
But the pope couldn’t hold a candle to Virgil and Charlie. If another customer hadn’t come in, and Bonnie Blue’s assistant been out with the flu, we’d still be there.
I considered taking Woofer for a walk when I got home, but clouds were building in from the west, and the sharp wind that had sprung up was stinging my face. My ribs weren’t as sore as I had thought they would be, but walking on the concrete sidewalks might jar them, make them hurt. I settled for giving Woofer a treat, went back into the den, and collapsed on the sofa. Muffin jumped up beside me, and she and I were both sound asleep when the doorbell rang. It rang a second time before I realized it wasn’t part of my dream. It rang a third time before I got to the door.
I looked through the peephole and saw Spanish moss. Albert Lee Packard.
“God, you look awful,” he said when I opened the door.
“Thanks. And aren’t you tactful.”
He grinned. “Sorry. How are you feeling?”
“Not as bad as I look.”
“Good.”
I gave him my schoolteacher look which he recognized. He laughed and held out a Piggly Wiggly sack that was folded several times at the top and that he was holding with his hand under the bottom.
“I’m on my way to Tuscaloosa and Mama wanted me to stop by and check on you and bring you this soup. She said you probably wouldn’t be up to snuff today.”
“I can’t believe you said that.”
He laughed again. “I’ve been waiting an hour to say that. I thought you’d appreciate it.”
“I appreciate the soup.”
“There’s a pone of cornbread in there, too.”
“Your mama is an angel. You want some coffee?”
“Sure. And I’d like to borrow your bathroom.”
“Down the hall,” I pointed. “Then come on back to the kitchen.”
I was plugging in the percolator when he came in and sat down at the kitchen table.
“Nice house,” he said. “Homey.”
“Thanks. We like it. We had the bay window put in several years ago, the skylights in the den, too.”
I got out a plate for the few chocolate chip cookies that remained in the package after Mary Alice’s feeding frenzy and put them on the ta
ble.
“Did you know that Louellen Mahall isn’t dead?” I asked him.
“Balls?” he grinned. “Sure. She was living here in Birmingham last I heard.”
“Well, what was that wild story about the interstate ramp then? Where did that come from?”
“God knows. It’s like the Chandler Mountain booger. It’s been told so much that everybody believes it. I think my mother could run into Louellen on the street, have a conversation with her, and still believe she’s cemented in the highway.” He stroked his beard. “Stories like that fascinate me, don’t they you? The way they become truth.”
“To a certain point. Until they start hurting people. Everybody thinking he’d killed his wife must have bothered Eugene Mahall.”
“I doubt it. More incentive for people to pay their bank loans on time.”
I looked up, surprised at the sudden bitterness in his voice. “I take it that he’s not exactly Mr. Popularity in St. Clair County.”
“You’re right about that. And this goes back a long way. Everybody still believes he knew more about the Daisy Belle mine explosion than he ever admitted. That there could have been some criminal indictments, but he lined his pockets instead.”
“This isn’t an interstate-ramp story?”
“I don’t think so.”
The coffee quit perking. I got up, poured us each a cup, and sat back down.
“Tell me about Terry and Betsy,” I said, passing the sugar. “We were surprised when we found out they were living with him.”
“He probably insists on it. I think they ask old man Mahall’s permission to breathe. Terry tried sowing a few wild oats when he was a teenager, nothing much, and he got slapped in a military academy. And I think Betsy’s so crazy about Terry that she’ll put up with anything.” Albert put two teaspoons of sugar in his coffee and stirred.
“Betsy says he’s fond of the children, that he rides them around on his wheelchair.”
Albert shrugged and sipped his coffee, holding his beard back.
“She says Terry’s thrilled to have them, too, which is good.”
“Not surprising. They’re Susan’s children.” Albert dabbed at his beard with a napkin and then reached for a cookie.