“I sure can!” A second later, he was a red-haired streak, racing into the girls’ bedroom and living room, yelling, “Get a move on, girls! Get the lead outta your britches and fill up that truck out there! Granny said so!”
“Granny didn’t say nothing about lead in our bloomers, Waycross Reid,” replied a sassy female voice.
“Yeah, that’s something you’d think of, not her!”
“We don’t gotta mind you, Waycross! You’re just a dumb, pee-pee-headed boy!”
Stella rolled her eyes, dried her hands on the dish towel, and hung it neatly on the oven handle.
“Poor child,” she whispered. “He gets no respect from those girls. Can’t be easy, being the only male in an eight-person house.”
She hurried into the living room, where Savannah, Waycross, and Alma stood, their books and lunch sack in their hands, patiently waiting for the rest of the brood.
Elsie had left an hour before, scurrying off to the plantation and her morning duties. Only the folded quilt and pillow on the end of the sofa marked her departure.
“Go on out to the truck,” Stella told the three kids. “I’ll round up the rest of ’em.”
As the trio headed for the door, Stella reached out and nabbed nine-year-old Alma by the arm. “Hold on there a minute, sweetcheeks,” she said. “What’s this about you having a bellyache for some time . . . one I ain’t heard about till last night?”
Alma shrugged. “It comes and goes,” she said. “No big deal.”
“Is it in any way tied to an overabundance of eatin’ sweets? Like Miss Elsie’s coconut cakes or ginger ales your sister buys for you with empty bottle money?”
The girl grinned sheepishly and shrugged. “Might be.”
Stella looked her up and down. Alma was small for her age. She had never quite thrived like her siblings, who were larger than most of their classmates. Dark-haired and blue-eyed, she was a miniature version of Savannah with the same sweet disposition.
But she lacked Savannah’s steel core, that deep inner confidence that helped the oldest of the siblings get through the hardest circumstances that life threw their way.
Stella didn’t worry a lot about Savannah, but she was concerned about little Alma.
“Do you reckon you might need to stay home with that tummy ache?” Stella asked her, refastening the barrette that was holding her curls out of her eyes.
“No! No! I have to go to school today! My tummy’s fine, and I’ve gotta be there!”
“What’s so all-fired important that you can’t take a day off, Miss Alma Joy?”
“The spellin’ bee’s today! I gotta go and win again. I’ve been studyin’ to beat the band, and I’ll betcha I’ll beat that Kathy Beckerman again!”
“Ah, yes. The great annual Reid-Beckerman spelling bee showdown! How could I forget somethin’ as earthshatterin’ as that?”
“I know! I need another blue ribbon to go with them other two! They’re lonesome on their own!”
“I understand. What’s two when you can have three?!”
“That’s it! Three would be way better! You understand.”
“I do. So, you can go to school, but you promise me that if your belly starts actin’ up again, you’ll have your teacher get ahold of me. I’ll either be here at home or with Sheriff Gilford. He’s got a phone there in the station house and a radio in his car. He’ll tell me if you need me to come get you. Okay?”
“Okay. But I won’t call. I’ll be busy beatin’ the socks off that stuck-up Kathy Beckerman.”
“You be a good sport about it!” Stella shouted as the girl raced out the door, legs and tummy apparently in fine working order. “We don’t gloat in this family. It ain’t fittin’.”
But Alma was already out of earshot, on her way to beat the Beckerman girl sockless.
Marietta, Jesup, Cordele, and Vidalia came racing through on their way from the bedroom to the door and nearly knocking Stella off her feet.
“I got your red bow!” Marietta yelled, holding up a scarlet hair ribbon and waving it under Vidalia’s nose as she raced past her. “I got it, and you don’t! I’m gonna be pretty today, and you . . . you’re gonna look like the south end of a north-goin’ skunk! Nanny, nanny, boo-boo! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
Stella sighed and shook her head. “Well,” she said, reaching for her purse, which was lying on her piecrust table behind the door. “We don’t gloat in this family . . . all that much.”
* * *
Once the children were dropped at school, Stella wasted no time heading for the sheriff’s station. With all her heart, she hoped that she’d walk in, look over at the main desk, and find Manny sitting there with a self-satisfied smile on his face, signifying that his prisoner was once again in custody.
That might not be the cure for world hunger or bring about universal peace, but it’d sure make my day a sunny one, even if it rains, she told herself as she pulled her old, panel truck in front of the station, turned the engine off, grabbed her pocketbook, and climbed out.
But it wasn’t Manny’s smiling face she saw when she opened the rickety screen door and walked inside.
It was Deputy Mervin Jervis sitting at the desk, a deck of cards spread out before him. He was so deeply engrossed in his solitaire game that he didn’t even notice when she entered.
She was almost to the desk before he spotted her.
He jumped, dropped the cards in his hand, and clutched his chest.
“Lord’ve mercy!” he said. “You liked to’ve scared the puddin’ outta me, Mrs. Reid. Warn a body when you’re fixin’ to sneak up on ’em like that!”
“I didn’t sneak. Just moseyed in like I owned the place, Deputy,” she told him. “If I’d been a dangerous felon, you’d been facedown in cow doody right now.”
He reached down to retrieve his dropped cards from the floor. Due to his ample and ever-expanding girth, he grunted a bit doing so.
Had it been anyone else, Stella would have helped him. But she thought of poor Manny out there, stumbling around in those thick woods, looking for the prisoner Merv had allowed to slip from custody.
She thought, Good ol’ Deputy Merv can pick up his own dadgum cards off the floor, if he can find a way around that belly of his to do so.
“Where’s the sheriff at?” she asked, anticipating the reply.
“Him and that old Indian buddy of yours are out there in the woods, trying to track Billy Ray.”
Stella fixed him with a cold stare as she said with a calm that would have bothered a more observant person than Mervin Jervis, “My dear Cherokee friend’s name is Magi Red Crow, and we should all be so young when we’ve been around as long as he has.”
“What?”
“Never mind. When do you expect Sheriff Gilford to return?”
“Don’t know.” He chuckled. “When he’s got Billy Ray in tow, I expect.”
The telephone rang, and Merv took his time answering it.
For a moment, Stella feared it was the school calling to say that Alma had tossed her cookies in the middle of the spelling bee. With any luck, it would have been in Kathy Beckerman’s direction.
Stella had to admit that she agreed with Alma’s assessment of Little Miss Beckerman. Kathy’s a snob, all right, but it ain’t the child’s fault, Stella reminded herself. It’s her momma’s. Myrtle Beckerman’s done stuck up higher than the flag on the county courthouse, come the Fourth of July.
But she put the Beckerman family and their uppity attitudes out of mind when she heard Deputy Merv say to the caller on the phone, “A threatening letter? What kind of threatening letter?”
Stella could feel her heart pounding as she listened to the rest of the conversation. “Yeah. I’ll tell the sheriff when he comes in,” Merv told the caller. “But he’s out in the field right now. Well, the woods, actually, but—”
“Who is it?” Stella asked, unable to contain her curiosity any longer. “Who got a threatening letter?”
But Merv didn’t answer her as he f
inished his call. “Yeah. Okay. Bye-bye.”
“Who was that?” Stella demanded the moment he set the phone down.
He picked up his cards and began to shuffle them.
Her patience shot, Stella reached over, grabbed the cards out of his hand, and tossed them down on the desktop. “Dadgum it, Mervin! Would you stop actin’ like a horse’s rear end and at least try to do the job this city pays you to do?”
“You slapped them cards right outta my hands!” he shouted. “What’d you do that for?”
It occurred to Stella that Merv’s face looked like Marietta’s when she was tuning up to pitch one of her fits.
“I wanted to get your attention, Deputy, and now that I have, maybe you can tell me who that was on the phone. Who got a threatening letter?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, Mrs. Reid, being as it’s top secret, official police stuff and all that, but it was Harper Everson.”
“Harper? The mailman?”
“Yep.”
“The mailman got a threatening letter?”
“ ’Twasn’t addressed to him. He found it in a mailbox when he was pokin’ other mail in there.”
“Whose mailbox?”
He gave her a catty grin and said, “Now, wouldn’t you like to know?”
She leaned over the desk until they were nearly nose to nose. “Mervin, you are drivin’ me, an otherwise peace-lovin’ woman, to violence. I’m fixin’ to do you serious bodily harm.”
“You’ll get arrested.”
“The way the sheriff feels about you right now? I’ll take my chances.”
At that moment, a loud noise behind Stella made both of them jump. She whirled around to see Dolly Browning burst through the door and run into the station.
“I got a letter! Some horrible person left this awful thing in my mailbox and my mailman found it and brought it in to me!” Dolly was shouting, waving a piece of paper in her hands.
Her eyes looked wild with a mixture of fear and excitement. “Just wait till you see this! It’s dreadful! They’re threatening to do something terrible to me!”
“What?” Stella asked, her own heart pounding. Dolly’s terror was contagious. “What do they say they’re fixin’ do to ya, darlin’?”
Dolly hesitated. “Well, I’m not sure. But it sounds absolutely awful! Just read it and you’ll see what I mean. I think they might even mean to kill me!”
Chapter 11
“We already heard all about your nasty letter,” Mervin told Dolly, looking so smug and condescending that Stella felt the need to smack him. “That mailman of yours already reported it to the police all proper like. So you got nothin’ to worry about, little lady.”
Stella turned to Mervin and made a face at him, not unlike the one she had seen earlier on Marietta’s when she’d been taunting Vidalia. “That’s what you refused to tell me, Deputy Smarty-Pants Jervis? So much for your so-called top-secret police information.”
“I don’t gotta tell you nothin’, Stella Reid. You’re just a civilian. You got no badge, no authority.”
Stella’s temper soared. “And you got no right to tell this poor, scared lady that she’s got nothin’ to worry ’bout. You haven’t even read her letter, and you haven’t done a blamed thing about that phone call you got neither. You haven’t even informed the sheriff, so’s he could do something ’bout it, if he chose to.”
She paused and took a deep breath before launching into the second phase of her attack. “There’s more to bein’ a deputy than holdin’ that chair down and makin’ sure it don’t float away, Mervin Jervis. From what I can tell that’s all you’re good at—that and pokin’ quarters in them Pac-Man machines ever’ chance you get.”
Before Mervin could reply, the door burst open again, and this time it was Sheriff Manny Gilford who rushed inside.
He hurried over to Dolly, grabbed her by the shoulders, and turned her toward him. He gave her a quick look up and down, then apparently satisfied that she wasn’t hurt, he said, “What’s going on with you, woman? I saw you running down the middle of the street out there and thought your tail was on fire or something. Didn’t you hear me yelling at you to get out of the road before you got hit by a car?”
“What?” Dolly looked genuinely confused. Finally, she said, “No, I didn’t see you or hear you. I was just trying to get to the station here as fast as I could to show you this.”
She shoved the paper into his hands, then stood with her arms crossed defensively over her chest, looking as indignant as she was upset.
“You ran all the way here from your house?” Stella asked her, as Manny read the letter.
“Yes. I guess I should’ve used my car, but I was all upset and not thinking right. I just read it and took off running here.”
Manny looked up from the letter and said, “Miss Dolly, where did you get this?”
“I know that!” Merv piped up, excited and eager to contribute his bit. “I got a call from—”
“Oh, shut the hell up, Merv,” Manny barked back. “I’ve got ticks and chiggers all over my legs from traipsing around in that woods trying to track the prisoner you lost, so I’d much prefer that you just keep quiet.”
Manny turned back to Dolly. “As I was saying, Miss Dolly . . .”
“Harper, the mailman, brought it in. He told me he found it when he stuck my other letters and bills into my box. It was in there already.”
“You opened it right away?”
“Sure. I was curious.”
“Of course you were, and when you read it . . . ?”
“I went from curious to worried. Very worried.”
“I can see why.”
Stella couldn’t stand it. She moved closer to Manny. “What does it say?”
“May I read it to her, Miss Dolly?” Manny asked.
“Sure.” Dolly thrust it into his hand as though it was something dirty she’d like to be rid of. “Stella’s my friend. I’d trust her with my life.”
“Okay then. Here goes.” Manny held the letter up, touching it only on the edge with two fingertips, and began to read. “Dolly Browning, you are hereby warned. No more poking around in other people’s business. If you continue, you could end up like that Sonner guy at Mabel’s.”
“That Sonner guy at Mabel’s?” Stella repeated, running the phrase through her mind, trying to make sense of what she’d heard. “What’s that supposed to mean? Who’s Mabel? Do we have a Mabel in town?”
“Not that I know of,” Manny said.
“That Sonner guy,” Stella continued. “They must mean Billy Ray. He’s the only Sonner left around these parts now. Does he have a girlfriend named Mabel that he could be holed up with somewhere?”
“I’ve never known a Mabel in McGill,” Manny said. “Maybe in a neighboring town . . . ?”
“Wait a minute,” Dolly said, scratching her head. “Isn’t there an old, old motel way out there on the other side of the Patterson plantation, near the cotton gin? It’s set off the road a way back. It’s falling apart, always has been that I can remember. But I’m trying to picture the sign on the front. It’s all faded, but I think it might say Mabel’s Motel.”
Manny’s eyes went from dull and tired to bright and alert in one second. “I do believe you’re right, Miss Dolly. That rings a bell. Maybe that’s where Sonner’s hiding.”
He laid the letter on the desk and told Mervin, “Deputy, that is evidence. Could you please put it in an evidence envelope and—”
Instantly, Mervin’s eyes began to glaze over, like a kindergartner being given a long division problem to solve.
“Never mind,” Manny said. “I’ll do it myself.”
“Oh, good.” Merv looked overly pleased and relieved. “Sounds complicated and I’d probably just do it wrong.”
“You reckon?” Manny grumbled.
In seconds, he had pulled a brown envelope from the desk drawer, and using a pen from the desk, he eased the letter inside it. “It’s bad enough that Harper and Mis
s Dolly and I have all handled it. We don’t need any more prints added to it before we see if we can lift some others. If we’re lucky, the person who typed it may have left one or two behind.”
“Typed it?” Stella asked. “I figured it was handwritten.”
“No,” Manny replied, as he turned it toward her so she could see the portion that was still outside the envelope. “Typed. Looks like an old typewriter, too, whose ribbon needs adjusting.”
Stella peered at the printing and noticed something she had seen before, but not often. The top parts of the letters were black, as she expected they would be, but the lower parts of the letters, especially the ones with tails like “y’s” and “g’s,” were red.
She agreed with Manny. It looked like an old typewriter had been used, one with a ribbon that hadn’t been properly inserted and aligned.
Once Manny had the letter safely inside the envelope, he hurried over to the office safe, opened it, and stuck his piece of evidence inside.
“Miss Dolly,” he said, walking over to her and putting his arm around her shoulders. “I don’t want you to worry about this too much. Okay? I’m going to head out there to that old motel right away to see if you’re right about that sign. I’ll give it a thorough going-over. With any luck, we’ll have Billy Ray back in custody within the hour.”
“That would be wonderful, Sheriff. Then we’d all breathe a bit better for sure.”
“Would you feel safer if you stayed out of town for a few days? I could help you get into a hotel or motel if you’d like that.”
“No. I need to take care of my animals, and I’m not worried about Billy Ray. You’ll catch him. I know you will.”
“All right then, I’ll drop you off at your house on my way,” he told her. “You go inside, lock the doors nice and tight, and stay there with Valentine at your side until I call you or come by with the good news. Okay?”
She nodded eagerly. “Thank you, Sheriff. I appreciate your concern.”
“No problem.” Manny looked over at Merv. “Man the desk. Don’t bother me unless it’s really important, got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Manny turned to Stella. She had a feeling he was going to tell her to go back home.
Murder at Mabel's Motel Page 10
