Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 06 - Death of a Damn Yankee

by Toni L. P. Kelner

  Chapter 21

  As we headed back to the car, Richard said, “I wonder what the odds are for Burt having murdered Marshall?”

  “Richard!”

  “We know that he’s against the buyout—why not kill Saunders to stop it? The fact that nobody knows what he’s really hoping for would provide one heck of a cover.”

  “But Marshall’s death didn’t stop anything,” I reminded him.

  “Burt probably assumed that Grace would be too distraught to go ahead with the deal.”

  “Then why go to the trouble and expense of bringing us down here? You know doggoned well Burt wouldn’t spend money on plane tickets and rental cars unless he thought he had no other choice.”

  “All part of his insidious plan. Since we’re the only ones who know about his nephew, we’re the only ones who’d know why he wants to stop the buyout. He got us here so he can take care of us, too.”

  “You are kidding, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t you think it’s suspicious that he’s invited the two of us to meet him at the mill? Alone? At night? And he doesn’t want us to tell anybody where we’re going.”

  For a minute or two, it almost made sense. Then I tried to imagine Burt as the master manipulator that he’d have to be to have come up with such a plan. It didn’t work. “Cut it out!” I said, poking him. “You’re just trying to scare me.”

  Richard grinned. “I had you going for a minute there, didn’t I?”

  “You did not.”

  “I did.”

  “Not for a whole minute. Ten seconds, tops.”

  “At least fifty.”

  We ended the auction at thirty seconds as we got into the car. Checking my watch showed that we had several hours before time to go meet Burt, but I had no brilliant ideas of how to fill them productively. Then Richard got a different kind of idea that might not have been productive, but it sounded good to me. So we headed back to Aunt Maggie’s, and after making sure we had the house to ourselves, took advantage of the time alone the best way we knew how.

  Richard was taking a quick shower when I heard the front door open. I quickly finished getting dressed and went downstairs, expecting to find Aunt Maggie. What I didn’t expect was to find Linwood at the bottom of the stairs, glaring at me.

  “If you’re looking for Aunt Maggie, she’s not here,” I said.

  “I wasn’t looking for her. I was looking for you.”

  “Well, you found me,” I said. “I was just about to get something to drink. Can I get you something, too?”

  “I don’t want nothing from you.”

  “Okay,” I said, and stepped past him to get to the kitchen. Linwood stomped in behind me.

  Linwood continued to glare as I got a cold bottle of Coke out of the refrigerator and leaned against the kitchen counter to drink it. I knew Linwood wanted me to speak first, and at first I thought I’d wait him out, but looking at Aunt Maggie’s clock reminded me that Richard and I had an appointment, so I broke the silence first. “You said you were looking for me?”

  “Sue told me what you’re up to,” he said.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that I want you to keep your nose out of my business! Going to my house behind my back and asking her a bunch of fool questions, and trying to pretend you were just curious. Did you really think my own wife would bad-mouth me?”

  I took a breath before answering, partially to calm down and partially to make sure that I worded the next sentences carefully. “All I did was bring up some of the fires that have been set around here lately. I never mentioned your name, so why would you assume I was asking about you?”

  “Don’t try to fast-talk me! I know damned well you’re trying to pin those fires on me. I bet it was you who set Junior Norton on me.”

  “I did no such thing!”

  “Who gave you the right to go stirring up trouble, anyway? Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “I thought I was your cousin,” I said. “I thought I owed it to you to find out if you were in trouble, so I could help you if you are.”

  “Since when do you want to help me? You’ve never had any use for me before.”

  The awful thing was, he was right. “I know we’ve never gotten along, Linwood. At this point, I don’t know whose fault it is, and I don’t think it even matters anymore. What matters is that we’re family, and if you need help, I’ll do what I can for you.”

  “I don’t need your help!”

  “Fine!” I snapped. “You go ahead and keep setting fires until you burn the whole town down, if that’s what you want.”

  “Who said I set those fires?”

  I was tempted to tell him his own mother suspected him, but I couldn’t hurt Aunt Edna that way. So I sidestepped the question. “If you didn’t set them, then where have you been all those nights you weren’t at home? Where were you when the fire broke out at the cookout?”

  “Where I go is none of your business.”

  “You weren’t with the rest of the fire brigade, and you weren’t with your family. Don’t you realize that your own daughter could have been hurt?”

  “You leave Crystal out of this! She wasn’t anywhere near that fire, and you know it!”

  “I know it now, but did you know it then? Where were you, Linwood? Prove to me that you weren’t anywhere around the fire, and I’ll quit asking questions about you.”

  “I don’t have to prove a damned thing to you!” He stepped closer, and even though I stood as straight as I could, he still loomed over me. “I’m only going to tell you this once: you stay the hell out of my business or I’ll—”

  “What you’ll do is get away from my wife,” Richard said. Though he didn’t raise his voice, somehow the implied threat was more effective than all of Linwood’s blustering.

  Linwood must have thought so, too, because he backed off. “I was telling her, and now I’m telling you: stay out of my business or I’ll—”

  “Let me tell you something,” Richard said in that same tone. “If you ever do anything to hurt Laura, you will regret it.” Linwood started to say something, but Richard held up one finger and Linwood stopped. “Don’t make idle threats. I don’t.”

  Linwood tried his best to stare my husband down, but got nowhere. I didn’t even see Richard blink. Finally, Linwood turned on his heel, muttering something profane under his breath, and, a few seconds later, we heard the front door slam as he went out.

  Richard put his arms around me. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” I said, burying my face in his chest.

  “He didn’t—”

  “He didn’t hit me, but I could tell he wanted to. Now I know how Aunt Edna must have felt. Lord, Richard, has he always been so awful? I mean, I’ve known since he was little that Linwood had a mean streak, but this…”

  “He’s out of control. Promise me that you won’t be alone with him, not until he’s acting normal again. Or as normal as he ever acts.”

  “I promise.” I hadn’t really had time to be afraid of Linwood, but now that he was gone, I was very relieved that Richard had come down when he had. Peeking around him to look at the clock on the stove, I said, “We’d better get going if we’re going to meet Burt on time.”

  “Are you sure you’re up to it?”

  “I’m fine.” I wasn’t, but I wanted to get the meeting over with. The sooner we answered our questions about Marshall and Grace Saunders, the sooner we’d be able to get out of Byerly, and the way things were going, the sooner we got out of Byerly, the better I’d like it.

  Chapter 22

  I must have been estimating by Boston’s traffic, rather than by Byerly’s, because we got to the Methodist church more than half an hour before time to meet Burt. Rather than sit in the parking lot where somebody might notice us, I decided just to drive for a while. And that’s when we ended up in that line of cars going by the burnt-out warehouse where Marshall Saunders had died.

  Seeing how awful the building looked m
ade me wonder what Marshall’s body must have looked like. All I could think of was the time I forgot to set the timer for a meat loaf and how the pan had looked and smelled by the time I remembered to take it out of the oven.

  The worst part about driving by that husk of a building was knowing that the road ended just a little way past it, meaning that I had to turn around and go past it again.

  As we made the turn, I said, “Richard, when do you suppose Sue told Linwood about my talk with her?”

  “Last night before dinner with Aunt Edna, I suppose. Why?”

  “I’m just wondering how mad it made him.” By then, we were passing the burnt warehouse again, and though I wanted to ignore it that second time, I couldn’t help but stare at it.

  “Laura, listen to me,” Richard said emphatically. “We don’t know that Linwood killed Marshall. That’s why we decided this morning to assume that he didn’t.”

  “I know, but that was before he came after me,” I said. “The way he was today, I’m not sure I’d put anything past him.”

  “Okay, maybe he did do it. But if he did, he did it for his own sick, twisted reasons. It was not your fault.”

  “Wasn’t it? I got him all riled up, didn’t I?”

  “No, it was Aunt Edna’s fault.”

  “Aunt Edna didn’t do anything, and you know it. All she’s done is fall in love with Caleb. She didn’t know he was going to propose last night.”

  “Then it was Caleb’s fault.”

  “It was not. He’s been trying to do the right thing by Aunt Edna, and by Linwood, too. It’s not his fault if Linwood reacted the way he did. There’s no way he could have guessed what Linwood would do, and even if he had, it was Linwood who set the fire, not him. How can you say it was his fault?”

  Richard didn’t answer, and though I may be slow sometimes, I’m not stupid. “Okay,” I said, “I get it. Even if Linwood murdered Marshall, it’s not my fault any more than it’s Aunt Edna’s or Caleb’s.”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “What if Linwood didn’t do it?” I asked.

  “Then it couldn’t possibly be your fault.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe our being in town scared somebody enough to want to kill Marshall.”

  “How? We haven’t done anything yet to scare anybody.”

  I nodded. I still felt uneasy at the possibility that we’d even inadvertently contributed to Marshall’s death, but I pushed the feeling away.

  Burt showed up in the church parking lot right on schedule, and Richard and I climbed into the backseat of his white Cadillac. “The windows are tinted,” he said, “so if y’all scrunch down, the guard at the gate probably won’t see y’all.”

  That seemed reasonable, and the car was more than big enough. Heck, it was so big that in Boston, he’d have been able to sublet the backseat as a studio apartment.

  Burt didn’t bother to sign in at the gate, just waved and drove on through as befitted the boss. Unfortunately, after going to the trouble of making sure Richard and I got inside the gate unseen, Burt parked in his reserved spot, right in front. I didn’t realize it until Richard and I got out, and I saw people looking out the windows of the break room, and by then it was too late to do anything but follow Burt inside.

  Though we didn’t actually see anybody as we went in through the front door and rode the elevator up to Burt’s office, I could hear people’s voices and plenty of footsteps. So much for a discreet entrance—we might as well have come in and asked Miss Hunsucker for the file.

  When we got to Burt’s office, he waved at a bank of file cabinets, and said, “The file’s somewhere in there.”

  “What’s it filed under?” I asked, but wasn’t surprised when he looked blank.

  “I’ve never gone into the files myself—I just ask Miss Hunsucker and she brings me what I want.”

  I should have known. “I’ll see what I can find,” I said, and nudged Richard. While I was going through files, he could find out what Burt knew about Junior’s investigation into Marshall’s death.

  “Has Chief Norton learned anything new about the murder?” Richard began.

  “Nothing important,” Burt said. “Why?”

  “It is our cover story,” Richard reminded him, “and if anybody asks, we should have some details.”

  In the meantime, I found the S drawer and looked for a file marked Saunders. No such luck.

  “I see what you mean,” Burt said. “I heard that Junior got Dr. Connelly to perform the autopsy right away. Apparently Saunders was knocked unconscious before he died from smoke inhalation, so it was definitely murder.”

  As if we hadn’t known that already. Next I looked under buyout Nothing there.

  “Are there any witnesses or suspects?” Richard asked.

  “Not that I’ve heard. Junior has been questioning people about Marshall, including me and Daddy, but I can’t tell that she’s come to any conclusions. Of course, the arsonist has hidden his tracks pretty well up to now, so it only stands to reason that he’d do an especially good job when there was so much more on the line.”

  I racked my brains, trying to come up with another place to look. “Mr. Walters, what was the name of the detective agency your father used to check out the Saunders?”

  “It’s in the file,” he said.

  “I haven’t found the file yet. Are you sure you don’t know what she filed it under?”

  He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

  “I’ll keep looking.” Maybe D for detective? Nope.

  “So Junior thinks that Marshall’s killer and the arsonist are one and the same?” Richard said.

  “Naturally,” Burt said, sounding surprised that he’d asked. “What else could it be?”

  “The buyout has roused a lot of strong feelings,” Richard pointed out. “You aren’t the only one in town who wished the Saunders had never heard of Byerly or Walters Mill.”

  “Surely that had nothing to do with it,” Burt said, sounding troubled.

  At first I thought Burt was just being naive, but then I wondered if maybe he was feeling guilty. If he hadn’t leaked the news about the buyout to the Gazette, nobody would have found out about it until it was too late. There would still have been hard feelings, but people would have settled down pretty quickly once they realized it was a done deal. Instead they’d had a week to stew about it. Not that I blamed Burt, of course. With Richard’s lesson still fresh in my mind, the only one I blamed was the killer.

  Burt went on, “I’m thinking that Marshall saw something he wasn’t meant to see, and the arsonist did away with him to protect himself.”

  “Does Junior think that, too?” Richard asked.

  “She didn’t say so in so many words, but it is the most reasonable explanation, don’t you think?”

  Though Richard nodded, I couldn’t imagine that Junior wasn’t considering all the same possibilities that he and I had come up with, and probably others as well. I’ve always thought she was born to do her job, and I’d have been more than happy to leave the whole mess in her capable hands had I not made that promise to Aunt Edna.

  I glared at the file cabinets and tried to think like Hortense Hunsucker. If the buyout were to go through, she’d have a new boss, so I looked under boss. Nothing there. Okay, maybe she didn’t think of Burt as her boss, but as the owner of the mill, and ownership of the mill was what was in transition. Not getting my hopes up, I looked under owner, and there it was: a fat folder labeled, Owner, new.

  “Here it is,” I announced. Inside were several pages of typewritten notes about the Saunders, apparently gleaned from phone conversations with them, and several letters from them and their lawyers. At the back was a sheaf stapled together with a piece of letterhead from the Lyman Gibson Detective Agency. “Here’s the detective’s report.”

  “Be sure to put it right back where you found it,” Burt said worriedly, “and don’t get anything out of order.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I said. The last
thing I wanted was to alert Miss Hunsucker that anything was awry, because she’d tell Mrs. Walters, who’d tell Big Bill. So far, Burt was managing to hide his feelings from his father, but I wasn’t sure that he’d be able to keep hiding them if Big Bill confronted him directly.

  Burt didn’t even know how to turn on the copier, so it took a few minutes for me to figure it out and copy everything in the file. In the meantime, Richard kept trying to get something useful out of him.

  “How is Mrs. Saunders holding up?” he asked.

  “Remarkably well,” Burt said. “She’s a mighty strong woman.”

  “She must be to continue on with the deal under the circumstances,” Richard said.

  “You’ve said a mouthful there—I’d have thought she’d give it up and go home.”

  For a minute, I remembered Richard’s theory about Burt being the murderer, but would a man who couldn’t run his own copier be able to set a fire?

  Burt went on. “You know, if she’d been a widow beforehand, I don’t know that Daddy would even have considered the offer.”

  “Why not?” I asked sharply. “Doesn’t your father think a woman could handle the job?”

  “Lord, no,” Burt said. Then he saw the expression on my face, and quickly added, “Daddy is old-fashioned that way. I’d never make that mistake myself.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I said, though I didn’t believe him for one hot minute. I would have bet dollars to doughnuts that he wouldn’t have asked my help if he hadn’t known Richard would come along with the deal.

  “Has Junior spent much time talking with her?” Richard asked.

  Burt looked flabbergasted. “You’re not implying… You don’t think she’s involved, do you? Her own husband?”

  So much for his being gender blind. “It’s been known to happen,” I said.

  “I guess it has,” Burt said, and rubbed his chin speculatively. “You know, if she did kill Marshall, that would certainly give me the excuse I need to stop the buyout. Daddy wouldn’t deal with a murderer.”