Moonlight, Murder, and Small Town Secrets

by K C Hart

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Helen arrived a few minutes later and Katy helped load Mrs. Simmons into the cream-colored Cadillac. Trudy Mae assured Sheriff Reid that she could answer any questions he might want to ask her mother. Mrs. Simmons had not set foot in her trailer since she broke her hip about six weeks ago and had not seen the body or had any contact with Laney Finch in about six weeks either. He was satisfied and gave permission for the old lady to leave. While Trudy Mae and Helen transferred their mother’s necessities from the tall black SUV to the long cream-colored Cadillac, Katy decided to sit in the back seat with Mrs. Simmons to make sure the shock of what happened hadn’t been too much for her. Plus, Helen’s car was running with the air conditioner blowing so her mother would be comfortable while she waited.

  She climbed into the back seat of the luxury vehicle and admired the black leather interior. The cool touch of the leather seeped through her thin nursing uniform and felt like a little piece of heaven to her sweltering hot skin. The back of her scrub top was damp with perspiration. Hopefully, her salty sweat wouldn’t leave a stain on the expensive leather seat. She had no idea if saltwater affected leather in a bad way. She had never heard of cows swimming in the ocean, so it probably wasn’t a good thing for this natural material to be drenched with her sweat, but oh well. She was here now.

  Her patient seemed to be taking the whole ‘dead girl in my bedroom’ thing extremely well. Since the sheriff’s arrival, Mrs. Simmons had not asked any more questions about Laney Finch’s death. Katy assumed the old lady was a little forgetful and probably more concerned about where she would sleep tonight and getting her medications on time than she was with this unusual situation she had come home to today. Katy was wrong.

  “Katy honey, what time did you get here this morning?”

  “Around seven-forty-five. You and Trudy Mae drove up about five minutes after eight. I remember because we were scheduled to meet at eight. I glanced at my dash clock before getting out of the car so I could document my time for the admission. Did you miss a medication or something? Trudy Mae said you got all of your morning meds before leaving the nursing home.”

  “She’s right, I did.” Mrs. Simmons turned and looked out of the back-car window. Her two daughters were still at the SUV digging through a tote box full of her things. “I hope they didn’t lose my false teeth glue. There is nothing worse than floppy teeth.” She slowly turned her gaze to Katy. “I’m just wondering about a couple of things. I don’t expect you to tell me anything and that’s okay. I still want to have my say.”

  “Go ahead, I’m listening.” Katy closed the admissions folder and glanced at her watch.

  “Well, first of all, I know Laney didn’t just have some kind of accident in my trailer.”

  “She didn’t?”

  “No, she didn’t,” Mrs. Selman said. Her eyes sparked with insight as she spoke. “The police wouldn’t come flying out here with sirens blaring loud enough to wake the dead if that girl had just tripped over a mop handle or fell in my shower and broken her neck.”

  Katy puckered her lips absently as she slowly nodded her head. “That makes sense.” She had been looking past Mrs. Simmons through the back-passenger side window, but now she moved her gaze to the woman’s face. Mrs. Simmons was studying her carefully, like a cat watching goldfish in a bowl. “I mean I guess that makes sense. I don’t know much about these sorts of situations.”

  “I don’t either.” Her eyes never left Katy’s face. “As a matter of fact, I don’t think anybody in this town is an expert on these sorts of things. That’s why it’s like a three-ring circus in my front yard right now. But never mind that. There’s something else I find odd. What happened to Laney’s truck?” She paused, waiting for Katy to respond.

  “Her truck?” Katy looked at her patient with new-found respect.

  “That girl’s been coming to my house to clean every week since last March,” she continued. “She always parks that big ole red truck in the same place on the left side of my porch away from the gravel drive. I asked her why she parked there since it made her have to walk a little further around the back of her vehicle to get to my front steps. She said she didn’t mind if it kept her baby from getting hit by a rock from the gravel drive when some idiot kid came flying down that road.”

  “She called her truck her baby?”

  “Oh, she loved that truck. She was so proud of it. Said she was paying every note without any help from her husband. She offered to take me for a ride right after she started doing my cleaning, but I told her that I couldn’t lift my legs that high to get in the thing.”

  “So, her husband never brought her to work?”

  “No, never met him. She always drove her baby and she always parked on the left side of my porch.”

  Katy was impressed. She had not even thought about how Laney had gotten to the trailer. Mrs. Simmons had laughed and joked with her daughter this morning. She had allowed Katy to treat her like a forgetful old woman during her admission. She had sat quietly while all kinds of strangers entered her home to handle a situation that was scary and tense, to say the least. Yet all this time she had been working out the details of the event in her mind and asking questions that Katy had overlooked. She had underestimated her. She wondered if Trudy Mae knew how sharp her mother was. She probably did. Trudy Mae acted like a clown most of the time, but she sucked up what was going on around her like a sponge. Katy jumped as Trudy Mae slammed the trunk lid.

  Helen opened the driver’s door and slid behind the wheel of the Caddie. “I guess we’ve got everything you need for a night or two Momma,” she said as she adjusted the rear-view mirror. “We’ll come back and get anything we missed once the law lets you back in your house. You ready to go?”

  “I sure am baby doll. My stomach is gonna go to growling if I don’t feed it soon.” She cut her eyes back to Katy who had opened her door to get out. “Now Katy you think on what we were discussing, and we’ll have to revisit this conversation next time I see you.”

  “Yes Mam, I will. Considering the circumstances, why don’t we plan on a follow-up visit tomorrow?”

  “You gonna see me on a Sunday? That’s the Lord’s Day child. I ain’t sick, I’m just old.

  “Yes mam, I don’t mind coming by after church.”

  “Now there ain’t no need in that. I’ll be staying with one of the finest nurses in this county. I guarantee you that she’ll call you if I hiccup one too many times.” She leaned over and patted Katy on the cheek. “Now you do what the Lord intended for us to do on Sunday. You rest.”

  Katy smiled. She didn’t think rest would be coming very easy for her tonight. Not at all. It was going to be a rough day.

  After Helen took Mrs. Simmons to Trudy Mae’s house, Katy hung around waiting for Sheriff Reid to give her permission to leave. She sat on the porch for three hours while he talked to Trudy Mae and did a lot of walking in and out of the trailer making phone calls, talking with the coroner and giving orders. She completed Mrs. Simmons’ paperwork during the first hour and a half. After that she sat twiddling her thumbs. That was not her most favorite past time

  They brought Laney’s body out on a stretcher covered with sheets, so Katy couldn’t get another look at her neck. She felt certain that Laney had been strangled. Sheriff Reid followed behind the emergency workers and sat down in the rocker beside her. “Here Katy. He handed her one of two little six-ounce bottles from Mrs. Simmons’ fridge. “Drink a coke with me before we get down to business. I need to take a breather.”

  Katy gratefully took the ice-cold bottle from the sheriff’s hand as she leaned back in the rocker. She sipped the drink enjoying the burning fizzle it made going down her throat. She watched a Robinson log truck pulled out from a dirt road in the field of pine trees across the highway.

  The sheriff followed her gaze as the truck made its way into the busy traffic of the five-eighty-seven. “I need to send Todd over and make sure they have flags and signs up for them truck
s. The last thing I need today is a wreck on that highway.”

  Katy watched the orange flag tied to the end of a log sticking off the tail of the long dirty truck whip in the wind. It disappeared from sight as the truck shifted gears and gathered speed heading toward town. She didn’t answer the sheriff. He seemed to be talking to himself anyway.

  “Okay Katy,” the sheriff said, slapping his knee. “I guess I better get down to business. Mrs. Hawkins said you met her here this morning to sign her mother up for home health.”

  “Yes sir. Dr. Roberts set it up through my company yesterday and my office called me last night telling me to start her services today.”

  “Alright. Is that the way it normally works?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Now when you went into the bedroom you found the Finch woman’s body on the floor?”

  “Yes sir. I turned on the light and saw her. I started CPR but after a few seconds I was sure she was dead. We continued until the ambulance team came in and took over.”

  “That’s the same thing Mrs. Hawkins said. Did you move anything or remove anything from her body?”

  “Well, she was facing away from me, toward the window. I had to roll her onto her back to check her pulse and begin the rescue breathing and chest compressions. We rumpled up her shirt doing all of that, and the EMTs did the same thing when they stuck the leads to her chest.”

  “All that is expected and couldn’t be helped,’ Sheriff Reid nodded. “Yaw were just doing your jobs and trying to help the woman.”

  Katy watched as the sheriff flipped through the pages of his pad making little notes. After a minute or two, he closed the book and looked at her while running his hand through his thinning grey hair. “You know Todd showed me your notes about the Williams girl.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “First of all, I want to tell you that there have been two murders in the town in less than two weeks and you are smack dab in the middle of both of them.”

  Katy clutched the little glass bottle between both hands. If it had been an aluminum can, like she always bought, she would have just crushed the container and spilled the last swallow of her favorite vice on the front of her scrub shirt. “You know that’s just some kind of weird coincidence don’t you sir?” She felt sweat forming on her upper lip. It had never occurred to her that somebody would think she was connected to these deaths.

  “Calm down Katy,” Sheriff Reid said, noticing the white knuckles of her death grip on the coke bottle and the deer in the headlights look on her face. “I don’t think you’re involved in any of this killing.”

  Katy started breathing again. When had she started holding her breath and why was she so nervous? She had done nothing wrong. Neither had Joe Phobs, but he had been stuck in a jail cell for a week. She pulled a tissue from her scrubs pocket and wiped the perspiration from her face along with the last few traces of her morning make up.

  The sheriff casually watched her fidgeting. “The thing is, I know these two murders are connected. I’m not exactly sure how, but they are. We have that little note Laney Finch left for Jessa Williams for one thing.”

  Katy sucked the last drop of coke from the glass bottle and sat it at her feet on the porch. “So, what do you need from me sheriff?” She wiped her damp hands on the legs of her pants.

  “I read all of your notes about both women wearing the same perfume and how you think there is some kind of love triangle going on.”

  “Yes sir, I’m sure of it. I spoke with Laney’s mother yesterday and Jake Finch really was having an affair with Jessa Williams.”

  “Hmmm,” the sheriff raised his thick grey unibrow, “sounds like you might be a little ahead of me again. What else have you found out since your last uhh, report?”

  Katy desperately wanted to smile, but she quickly ducked her head down to recover her serious face. The sheriff didn’t think she was a suspect. He just wanted to find out what she knew. She quickly filled him in on the discussion she had with Laney’s mother confirming her love triangle theory. She told him about Laney’s alibi then moved on to what she had found out from Emma Robinson.

  “They heard Joe Phobs in his trailer the night of Jessa’s murder, even if they didn’t see him,” she said.

  “I guess Phobs could have been in his trailer,” he said, scribbling in his notebook. “I think I might just need to go door to door around here and see what the good folks of Piney Acres know about last Friday night. I need to see if anybody has seen anything going on at Mrs. Simmons’ place since she’s been gone too. We’ll just kill two birds with one stone.”

  “Sheriff, I know that Laney had an alibi, but what about Jake?” She paused as he glanced up from his notes. “Do you think he was involved in all of this?”

  “You know he was involved up to his ears. Now did he kill his girlfriend or his wife? That I don’t know, but I plan on finding out.” He snapped his note pad shut one last time and shoved it in his shirt pocket. “Alright mam, I’m done.” He stood up from the wooden rocker and walked to the steps of the front porch and started to descend. He paused and turned back toward Katy. “I know you’re a smart lady, but I just want to warn you to be careful.”

  Katy stood from her rocker and squatted down to retrieve their empty coke bottles. She stood back up slowly, eyeing the sheriff.

  “Whoever killed these women does not want to be caught,” Sheriff Reid said, his voice flat. “If he finds out that you’re starting to put all the pieces together, he’ll have no problem with killing you too. Make no mistake about that.”

  “Yes sir. I’ve already thought about that,” she said, trying to swallow, but suddenly her mouth was drier than a cotton patch. “That’s why I’m making sure that nobody but Todd and my husband see my clue...I mean my notebook.”

  The sheriff took the empty bottles from Katy’s hands and followed her to her car. “Good, that’s good. But be careful. Jake Finch might be the killer, but he might just be a cheating husband who is being set up.”

  “Do you think that Joe Phobs is innocent?”

  “Well, we know for a fact he didn’t kill the Finch girl and I would bet my best coon dog that whoever killed the first woman killed the second woman too.”

  “Do you think there’s a serial killer here?” The thought entered Katy’s mind for the first time. At this point, she just didn’t feel like anything could be ruled out completely.

  “Oh no, I wouldn’t go that far. And whatever you do, don’t talk like that in front of anybody else.” The sheriff looked over her shoulder toward their small town. “Folks were already shaken up about the first murder. Most people considered the Williams woman an out of towner even though she’d lived here for over a year, but Laney Finch grew up here. When word gets out that she’s dead and that it doesn’t look like an accident, people are going to start acting stupid. Whatever you do, don’t add fuel to the fire with the word’s serial killer. Besides, that’s highly unlikely.”

  She assured him that she would keep her mouth shut and continue to be careful. She left Piney Acres completely exhausted and drove home on autopilot as her mind played through the events of the last twenty-four hours. They would be bringing Jake Finch in for questioning. If he didn’t have an alibi for the time of either of the murders, he would be locked up in the cell next to Joe. She needed to talk to Trudy Mae about Jessa Williams and try to figure out her relationship to the Browns. Todd probably wouldn’t have time to fool with that now that he had two murders to deal with.

  That would just have to wait. Trudy Mae was probably home with her momma anyway. All Katy wanted to do was go home, take a shower and take a nap.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  When Katy got home, she found a note from John saying he’d gone fishing with Mike and would be home sometime later in the afternoon. After a hot shower, she slipped her tired body into a pair of pajamas and climbed into bed to try to sleep away the fatigue brought on by the stress of the morning. Unfortunately, her brain just wouldn’t
cooperate. Every time she dozed off, she would think of something she wanted to ask Todd or find out from Trudy Mae or talk to Mrs. Simmons or Mrs. Brown about. Her mind just would not shut down to sleep. She finally got up and made a cup of coffee. If she couldn’t sleep, maybe the caffeine would give her a little kick in the pants.

  She attempted going over the Sunday school lesson but decided it was a waste of time. Her thoughts kept coming back to Laney Finch’s murder. Amanda Carson said her daughter was all riled up when she saw her on Tuesday. Why had she said she was going to fix all her problems? What had worked her up like that? She already knew about Jake’s affair, and Jessa had been dead several days. Where was her truck? The way Mrs. Simmons talked; the truck should have been at her trailer since Laney was always in ‘her baby.’

  Now that she was awake and not feeling like something the cat had drug in, she decided to get out of the house. Sitting at home thinking about other peoples’ messes would drive her crazy. She had planned on running a few errands this morning after the admission, but those plans had changed for obvious reasons.

  She looked in the mirror and sighed at the comfortable pair of jeans, flip flops, and an old T-shirt. The half-way stylish Katy with nice make-up, hair and decent clothes who had made an appearance earlier that week was nowhere to be seen in this reflection today. Old habits do die hard. She grabbed her purse and headed out the door.

  She went by the cleaners to get John’s suit and then by the bakery to buy some iced tea cakes for her class. She had written on her list to try and find a new top to wear tomorrow, but she was not in the mood to shop. That left the pharmacy. She needed to pick up a refill of John’s blood pressure medicine and her errands would be done. Hopefully, John would be home by the time she got back. He was not going to like that she had been the one to find Laney Finch’s body, but she didn’t like it either. It had happened that way and fussing wouldn’t change it.

  The cool air and smell of freshly mopped floors hit her in the face as she walked into Friend’s Pharmacy. The prescription area in the back of the small mom and pop establishment had four people in line at the counter. Mr. Friend’s business thrived because of his personal interest in the customers. His staff new everybody in town and made sure they got their medications on time.