Moonlight, Murder, and Small Town Secrets

by K C Hart

  Katy’s eyes stretched wide as she looked from one woman to the next. “You mean that sweet man is a,” she leaned in close and lowered her voice, “a hoochie daddy?”

  The four women burst out laughing again as Katy starred from one to the other waiting for an explanation.

  Misty dabbed under her eyes with a napkin at the tears of laughter ruining her mascara. “Yes girl, the biggest hoochie daddy around. I bet he hits on you every time you go in that store and you don’t even realize it.”

  “I don’t know,” Katy said, shrugging her shoulders, “he just seemed very helpful to me.” She looked at her friends’ faces as they gawked at her in disbelief. “Okay, maybe you’re right, but who cares. He’s fixing to announce the winners.”

  The women turned their attention back to the radio. They groaned and sighed as the familiar voice of Miles Brown floated from Katy’s smart phone bragging that his deals couldn’t be beat anywhere in the state of Mississippi.

  “Who do you think is going to make it this year?” Vickie asked. “I’m rooting for The Bluegrass Babes.”

  “Oh, they’re a shew-in,” Misty said, brushing a strand of black wavy hair away from her face. “Everybody loves them, and they’ve been around for at least 20 years. The only reason they weren’t in it last year is because their fiddle player was going to be out of town on an Alaskan cruise.”

  “Well,” Katy sipped her diet coke, “did any of you vote for The Moonlighters?” The four other women stared at her like she had grown feathers and was about to take flight.

  “I didn’t,” Sarah said. The rest of the group chimed in their denials.

  “Why waste our daily vote on us Katy?” Misty asked. “We’ve never placed before. We just aren’t that well known, except maybe with the adult diaper and denture cream crowd.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Katy sighed. “But I know we got at least two votes every day from John and myself.”

  The women quit talking as Rob Clay’s voice came back on the radio. “Now, what you have all been waiting to hear. I will be calling the winners out in no particular order. Band number one…The Bluegrass Babes.”

  Misty looked at the other women with an, ‘I told you so,’ look.

  “Band number two…Tubby and the Tubs.”

  Sarah reached across the booth and gave a high five to Vickie. “Shush girls,” Misty said, waving her hand in their direction.

  “Band number three…The Rough Edge Boys. And last, but certainly not least…The Moonlighters.”

  Vickie and Sarah began to squeal and bounce up and down on the benches like a couple of fish out of water. Heather, who was sitting on the end, jumped up and knocked her chair over as she began doing the happy dance.

  “What happened,” Mason, one of the local teenagers sitting at the table across from them, asked. “You guys win the lottery?”

  Heather, Sarah, and Vickie proceeded to tell everybody in the Burger Barn that The Moonlighters would be in Battle of the Bands. The whole crowd began clapping and shouting out congratulations to their table. It didn’t matter if they had ever heard them play or not.

  Katy spewed her giant gulp of diet coke across the table all over Misty’s face. Misty stared google eyed at the smart phone, never even blinking. Katy grabbed a wad of napkins out of the silver holder. She reached across the table and began dabbing the little brown beads of soda running down Misty’s face. “I am so, so sorry.” She stopped and looked at her friend who continued to stare straight ahead, mouth hanging open “Misty, honey, you okay?”

  Misty finally pulled her eyes from the phone and looked at her friend. A slow grin crept across her face. “We are in the Battle of the Bands.”

  Katy’s phone buzzed and she snatched it up. “Mom, are you listening to Rob Clay?” Kelly Anne, Katy’s daughter asked. “You’re in Battle of the Bands Mom.”

  “Yeah, I heard,” Katy said, grinning into the phone. “Where are you? Are you in town?”

  “No mam, I’m at home. I was just curious about who would win, so I had the radio on yaw’s local station. We voted for your band every day, like we do every year, but I had no idea that you’d win. You must be getting popular huh?’

  “I don’t think so honey. I don’t know how we won. The rest of our own band members didn’t even vote for us.” Katy paused to think. “You know, I’m going to have to do a little snooping around and figure this out.”

  Kelly Anne laughed. “You do that Mom.”

  Misty’s high heeled sandals clunked out a steady rhythm as she walked beside Katy down the isle of the high school auditorium. Two representatives from each band of the four bands were scheduled to meet with Rob Clay and the chairman of the PTO to go over the rules of the competition and set up practices.

  Tubby Robinson and Joe Phobs smiled as Katy and Misty walked up. Tubby had taken over The Wildcats last year after Jessa Williams died, renaming the band Tubby and the Tubs. It turned out that Joe, who had never been in a band before, sounded a whole lot like Dwight Yoakum. He was quickly recruited to take the lead vocalist spot that had been left vacant.

  Katy looked down at her black tennis shoes and then across at her best friend’s clunky, stylish high heels. Last year Katy had a close call when Jessa’s killer had tried to do her in. She had been in an orthopedic boot for several weeks recovering from a break caused in her struggle with the murderer. She knew that she probably wouldn’t have been wearing heels, even if her ankle wasn’t a little weak now. She wore tennis shoes to see her home health patients on the job two or three days a week. For some reason she just didn’t see the need to change from them when she wore her blue jeans and tee-shirts on her days off.

  She smiled as they stepped closer to the rest of the band winners, thankful that Misty had insisted they keep practicing through her recuperation time. The rest of The Moonlighters had come over faithfully two times a week and practiced at Katy’s house until she was well enough physically and emotionally to be out and about again.

  “Congratulations Mrs. Katy, Mrs. Misty,” Tubby said, as both men stuck out their hands to the ladies for a shake. “Now The Tubs won’t be the only new kids on the stage.”

  Katy and Misty shook hands with the other participants, as well as Edna Morse, the wife of the town coroner, and head of the PTO.

  “Okay,” Edna exclaimed, looking around the group. “Everyone is here except Rob, who is late as usual. Everybody just take a seat here on the front row and we’ll get started. If he doesn’t show up soon, I’ll give him a call.”

  The band representatives sat down in the hard, fold down chairs that had been there since Katy had been in high school a million years ago. She wondered if her name was visible in a chair on the back row where she had carved it into the armrest on the last day of her senior year. She turned her attention back to the present as Edna handed each person a pile of stapled papers with the rules of the event.

  Misty looked at Katy and stretched her eyes in mock concern. “I had no idea this was such an official deal,” she whispered. “We may be in over our heads.”

  Katy grinned. Misty had always been a notorious cut up. That’s probably why they got along so well. She nodded toward Edna who was looking at them over the rim of her glasses perched on her skinny pointed nose. Misty turned toward the woman and sat up a little straighter. “Sorry Edna.”

  Edna smiled at the group, like they were a class of third graders, and began going over all of the rules and regulations for the show. “Please remember that this is a family event. There should be no profanity or explicit sexual references in any of your music.”

  Katy held her papers up over her mouth to cover the grin that had popped up on her face. Maybe it was because she was sitting in her old high school auditorium but listening to the owner of the funeral parlor talk about sexual references struck her as extremely funny. This time Misty poked her in the side to get her attention. Edna was glaring her way. She was not smiling. “No sexual references or cursing. Got it,” Katy said
, lowering her papers to her lap.

  Edna finished going over the rest of the paperwork with no further interruptions then glanced at her watch. “Excuse me just a minute while I call Rob. This is unusually late, even for him.”

  Edna turned her back to the group and put her phone to her ear. While she was doing this Tom Jones’ voice began ringing out from somewhere on the stage above the auditorium chairs. ‘What’s new pussycat, whooaaooaaoo,’ drew everyone’s attention as it floated down from the platform.

  “That’s Rob’s ringtone,” Edna said as she turned to look toward the stage. The music stopped as the call went to voice mail.

  “Call the number again Edna,” Katy said as she stood and started going up the stairs on side of the stage. The rest of the band members followed.

  Edna scowled at the group from her spot in front of the chairs, obviously aggravated with the distraction. She dialed the number again. Tom Jones immediately began serenading them as the group followed his voice toward the back of the stage to the dark green velvet curtains. Tubby lifted the heavy curtain just as the song ended for the second time.

  The Bluegrass Babes screamed in harmony as the rest of the group gasped. Rob Clay, skin a pale grey beneath his fake tan, and eyes bulging, lay on the ground behind the curtain.

  “Edna, call an ambulance,” Katy called down to the auditorium floor. She squatted down and felt the side of his neck for a pulse, sure of what she would find. Rob Clay was dead.

  She looked at the thin line mark on his neck. A wire cut deep into the flesh, and blood had trickled out forming a small pool on the stage floor behind his head. Someone had strangled him with a wire. “Somebody call the sheriff too. Rob’s dead.”

  Katy stood and turned to the sound of heaving and retching. One of The Rough Edge Boys was tossing his cookies. “Misty, why don’t ya’ll go back and sit down ‘til the sheriff gets here.”

  “Good idea,” Misty said, looking a little pale herself. She gathered up the rest of the band members and corralled them back to the chairs. Tubby waited with Katy who squatted back down to examine Rob’s body.

  Rob’s skin was still warm. He hadn’t been dead very long, but his pupils were fixed and dilated, staring up blindly. CPR would do no good here. There was some purplish discoloration and swelling around one eye, like someone had punched him in the face. Katy looked at the thin wire that was still wrapped double around his neck. The end of the wire was visible from behind his head. She leaned closer to the wire, careful not to lose her balance and tumble over on the dead man. There was a familiar loop on the end of the wire.

  She could feel Tubby breathing down the back of her neck as he leaned in for a closer look too. “That’s a guitar string,” he whispered from behind her head. “Somebody killed that poor guy with a guitar string.”

  Katy nodded as she quickly looked down the rest of his body. “That’s what it looks like,” she said. His shirt was ripped at the collar with several buttons missing down the front. The cell phone lay beside his body with the screen busted. She noticed bruising and torn skin on the knuckles of Rob’s right hand. It looked like he had tried to fight off his attacker without success.

  A wrinkled piece of cloudy pink paper lay at his side, like he had dropped it from his hand when he was attacked. Katy squatted down one more time to get a closer look at the typed message on the paper. She quickly slipped her cell phone out of her pocket and snapped a picture of the note.

  You are going to pay!!!!!!

  EM

  She turned and looked at Tubby who was still behind her. He had a strange, kind of dazed look on his face. Seeing the dead body seemed to be getting to him too. “Tubby, you don’t have to follow me around. You can go down there with the rest of them if you want to. I’ll be alright.”

  Tubby jerked his head from the pink paper and back to Katy as she stood up. “Oh no mam,” he said, popping out of the daze that had crept over him. “I think I’d better stay up here with you ‘til the police get here to take over.”

  Katy smiled to herself. It seemed that Tubby had named himself her unofficial bodyguard. That was okay. He had rescued her in the past. Let him hang around. He might notice something that she missed.

  She looked at the rest of the stage. It was a mess. There was a door frame standing a few feet away with the door missing. A raggedy dirt brown sofa was sitting to one side of the door with a wobbly side table next to it. An ancient rotary phone sat on the table. The drama team must be practicing for a play.

  Katy stepped closer to the fake living room scene and noticed a square white envelope sticking out of the corner of one of the sofa cushions. “That looks like a pack of guitar strings.”

  Tubby, ever her shadow, bent over and looked at the envelope. “It sure is. Looks like it has been opened too. I bet that’s one of the strings from the pack over there on Mr. Clay’s neck.”

  There were a few metal chairs open around the stage as well. A couple were turned over in the far corner, like maybe somebody had knocked them over. She quickly snapped pictures of everything they saw, trying to be discreet.

  “Tubby, ain’t there a door back here somewhere that leads backstage?”

  “Yes mam,” Tubby answered. “I think it’s to your right.” He pointed in the direction of the overturned chairs. He followed as she walked that way.

  Katy pulled back the thick velvet curtain revealing a wooden door that was opened to a narrow dressing room behind. This room was even more cluttered than the stage with props and cardboard boxes full of costumes and other discarded materials from performances of the past.

  They stepped into the room to look around. Tubby had to stand behind Katy because the pathway through the clutter was just too narrow for them to stand side by side.

  “Look, there’s the back door behind those boxes. It goes to the rear parking lot,” Tubby said, pointing over Katy’s head to the back wall. “I know I don’t look like it now, but I used to be on the drama team in high school.”

  “Oh really?” Katy was surprised. She had pictured Tubby for a jock, not a drama geek. “What roles did you play?” she asked as she walked toward the back door.

  “My junior year I was Brutus in Julius Caesar.” That was kind of cool, but my senior year I was Curly McClain in Oklahoma. That was, by far, my favorite role.”

  Tubby squeezed around Katy and stepped toward the back door. “This leads toward the parking lot.” He reached for the knob.

  “Wait Tubby,” Katy said, grabbing his hand. “If the killer left this way there might be some fingerprints on the door.”

  Tubby jerked his hand back like he had touched a hot skillet. “Oh yeah, you’re right.”

  Katy glanced around the narrow room at the boxes full of old costumes and props. The killer could have run through here and out the back even after people were arriving out front.

  They returned to the stage just as Sheriff Reid walked through the main entrance at the back of the auditorium. “Katy Cross?” he called, walking though the mass of chairs between the stage and the entrance.

  Katy lifted her hand and gave a shy wave. “Yes sir, it’s me.”

  The sheriff strode up the isle toward the edge of the stage where Katy and Tubby were now standing. The other witnesses were still huddled together in the chairs on the front row. He passed them without slowing down and climbed the stairs. He stopped beside Katy and pulled out a small notebook and pen from his shirt pocket. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

  If you enjoyed this peek, look for the book soon on Amazon

  Acknowledgments

  This book is dedicated first and foremost to my husband Bruce, who always told me I could when I was telling myself I couldn’t. Thank you for pushing me to be more than I thought I could be.

  I am grateful to my three girls who have inspired me, encouraged me, and put up with me while I struggled to learn all the ins and outs of self-publishing a book. Emily Shotwell guided has me every step of the way and answered my endless questions
with patience and love for her mom and made the impossible possible. Jill Crosby read chapters and explained English rules and encouraged me to continue when I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Lori Crosby listened to plot lines and twists and helped me decide whether Katy Cross could figure out who the killer was with the tools given to her in the story.

  Thank you to Tracey Hudson Countz who read my very rough draft and told me it was worth keeping and polishing up into a real story. Thank you for bringing my cover design to life with your wonderful talent and for just being a dear friend during this process.

  And thank you to my crazy extended family who have always encouraged a strong faith in God, a strong imagination, and a belief that every topic of discussion goes better with a little ribbing and a lot of laughter.

  About the Author

  K.C. Hart is an emerging author of Southern Cozies. This is K.C.’s debut novel set in a small town in Mississippi that you can only get to when you read the pages of her book.

  K.C.resides in south Mississippi with Mr. Wonderful, her husband of thirty-plus years, where she spends her days reading, writing, playing the piano or guitar, or keeping up with her family and friends.

  You can follow K.C. at kchartauthor.com.