Mint Juleps, Mayhem, and Murder

by Sara Rosett

  “And Colonel Pershall was always fair,” I said sadly.

  We walked up the narrow sidewalk. Carrie was allowed to continue living in base housing for up to a year. It had to be hard for her to be on base, but maybe it was the best decision for her financially. I knew Carrie was a computer engineer and did contract work out of her house for different offices on base.

  I almost expected her to turn us away or not even open the door. But as soon as Abby rang the doorbell, Carrie opened the door as if she’d been watching us through the narrow window beside the front door. She whipped the door wide with such force it stirred her wispy brown bangs and she had to shake them off her face. “Well, come on in. I figure if I talk to you, you might stop calling me.” The words themselves were quarrelsome, but it was hard to take her seriously when she delivered a statement like that in her breathy little girl voice. It diluted the effect.

  We stepped inside and Carrie gestured to the living room couch. This floor plan was even smaller than Denise’s and it only took three steps to reach the couch. Abby’s house on base was the same design and even though her house was just as small, it had a completely different feel. Abby’s house was cozy and warm and I always wanted to stay. Carrie’s house was filled with heavy, dark wood furniture that felt too big for the small rooms and gave me a claustrophobic feeling.

  From the living room, I could see into the dining room and kitchen beyond it. Stacks of paper, a phone, and several books, pens, and file folders coated the hefty dining room table a few feet away. In the kitchen, a pile of dishes waited on the counter next to several jars of craft paint and a paper plate arrayed with paintbrushes, which surprised me because I didn’t realize that Carrie was into painting.

  Abby and I squeezed between the weighty coffee table and the couch, then sat down. Carrie picked up a stack of papers from a leather recliner and moved them to the coffee table before she sat down in it, which dwarfed her small frame. Her feet barely brushed the floor.

  Several pages of paper cascaded to the floor and I reached down to pick them up. I handed the papers back to her. She gave a tight little nod and, even though she was close enough to reach out and take them, said, “Just put them there.”

  Jeeze. Who did she think she was? Royalty? I tossed the papers on the coffee table and settled into the couch, amazed at how she’d changed. If I’d run into her at the store, I don’t know if I would have recognized her. She wasn’t the wilting, drooping, crying creature I remembered from the memorial service. Even her posture was different. She sat with her back straight. Her shoulder blades, which were pressed back, didn’t touch the back of the puffy leather cushion on the chair. I hadn’t seen posture that good since I watched Sense and Sensibility. Her face was different, too, more rigid and determined. Before, she’d been lost in her grief, her brown eyes bloodshot and teary. Now her gaze was clear and I had the feeling that even though she was the shortest person in the room, she would have looked down her nose at us if she could. Carrie tilted her head slightly and raised her eyebrows. “Well?”

  Abby reached over and patted Carrie’s hand. “We’re just checking on you. Do you need anything? How’s everything going?”

  Carrie shifted her hand slightly and Abby’s hand fell away. “I’m fine. Everything is just dandy,” she said sarcastically.

  “Okay,” Abby said slowly. “Well, I’m hosting a supper club this Thursday. Jeff and I would love to have you there. Everyone misses you and it would be a great opportunity to reconnect with everyone from the squadron.”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t want more visits from the squadron, either. Pass that along, will you?” Even with the childish voice, there was no mistaking it for a question. It was an order.

  There was a beat of silence and I realized Abby was stunned. She was speechless, not an easy state for her to achieve. Carrie trained her cold gaze on me and for a second I was actually frightened. I couldn’t quite believe my reaction. I had a good ten inches on Carrie and my best friend was beside me. And, we were in the middle of base housing. Nothing bad could happen here. I gave myself a mental shake.

  “I appreciate the offers of help, but I’ll handle things,” Carrie said. “I even managed to mow the grass last week on my own.” Her words were weighted with meaning and Abby glanced back and forth between us, unsure of what was being communicated, but I knew Carrie was letting me know that she knew I’d seen the letter she’d sent to Colonel Pershall. “I had a little visit from a detective and an OSI agent. I understand I have you to thank for that, Ellie.” Her gaze was even more frigid. “Oh I know he wasn’t supposed to, but that person who came to interview me slipped up and mentioned you.”

  Abby leaned back a bit to stay out of Carrie’s range of vision, like she’d be frozen solid if Carrie looked directly at her.

  How had we gone from an invitation to a supper club to this tense situation? When Denise showed me the letters, I’d thought it was Carrie’s anger and grief that led her to write those words. It seemed so unlike her. I hadn’t really believed that she’d murdered Colonel Pershall, but now, seeing her arctic demeanor, I wasn’t so sure. “Detective Waraday needed to know about those letters, surely you can see that,” I said.

  “No, I don’t see that. It was a wasted trip for the detectives, a waste of their time. Some of us have an alibi. Besides, those letters aren’t connected with his death. I’m not connected with his death. I didn’t murder him. Don’t get me wrong,” she said conversationally. “I’m glad he’s dead. He deserved it. It was one of those cosmic karma things. If he’d listened to me and hadn’t sent Ryan on that deployment, Ryan would still be alive and so would Colonel Pershall. But he didn’t listen. Ryan died and now he’s dead, too. The universe has a way of evening out these things.”

  Her blasé attitude blew me away. I didn’t have a response to that speech. On second thought, I did: time to leave. I grabbed my purse and stood. Abby bounced up like a jack-in-the-box. “We’ll let you get back to work,” I said.

  “One good thing has come out of Colonel Pershall’s death,” Carrie said. “Someone really does understand how I feel. Denise.”

  How could you be so cold? Even if Denise now understood what it was like to lose her husband suddenly, I thought, it had to be worse to have your husband murdered. Carrie was still talking as she walked behind us. “You know, you shouldn’t believe everything Denise tells you,” she threw out, then picked her words more carefully. “No, I should say, what isn’t Denise telling you?” She turned back to the dining room. “I have a great view of the neighborhood out that window and Denise keeps some…interesting…company. Every Tuesday afternoon. You should see for yourself. Two-thirty.”

  “Well, if this information is so important, I’m sure you shared it with the detectives,” I said.

  She smiled slowly. “No.” She wrinkled her nose as she smiled a fake smile. “More fun this way. You tell Denise to stop sending the police my way and she doesn’t have to worry about the word getting out about her little visitor.”

  I wasn’t sure what she was talking about, and glanced back through the house to the dining room table and the large window in the kitchen beyond it. Now that I was in a different position, I could see around one of the stacks of paper on the table. A pair of binoculars stood beside her coffee cup.

  Chapter Eight

  “That’s some coping mechanism,” I said as I slammed the car door.

  “Okay, I was wrong on that. She’s so cold and formal. And, what was all that about Denise?” Abby asked as she buckled her seat belt.

  “I have no idea. Did you see the binoculars on the dining room table?” I asked and held on to the armrest as Abby accelerated away from the house. “Slow down. We’re in base housing, remember?”

  “Oh, right,” Abby said and eased off the gas. “Sorry. She creeped me out. I wanted to get out of there.”

  “So what’s behind her house? Has she been spying on Denise?” I asked.

  “This road backs up to t
he section of base housing where Denise lives. There’s a wooded path between the two areas, but Carrie’s house is on that slight rise,” Abby said as she turned a corner and I recognized Denise’s street. Abby parked a few houses down from Denise’s house. Carrie would be able to see Denise’s house from her window.

  “Did you see the telescope?” Abby asked.

  “What? No.”

  “It was on the back patio. I could see it through the kitchen window. I know Ryan was a big astronomy buff. Jeff said he was so excited to get that house in base housing because it was on the rise and there were fewer trees. I’m no expert, but it sure didn’t look like the telescope was pointing to the sky. It was aimed in this direction.”

  “But what’s Denise done that makes Carrie think she’s got some hold over her?” I wondered aloud.

  Abby raised her eyebrows in a silent question.

  “No,” I said, shocked. Abby had once told me that both her parents had had affairs before they divorced. She’d never mentioned it again, but I thought her history gave her a tainted, cynical perspective.

  Abby made a tsk-ing sound. “It’s the most obvious thing. Afternoon visits while Colonel Pershall was at work. And, he always was at work. Maybe she was lonely.”

  “No,” I repeated, stronger than before. “There is no way she’s having an affair.” I badly wanted to say, “She suspected him of having an affair,” but I’d promised not to share that bit of information, so I kept my mouth shut and thought about it. She’d certainly seen a few things that had seemed to indicate Colonel Pershall might be having an affair: the late nights, the perfume, the deception. Denise had quickly seized on an affair as the explanation and hadn’t looked for other alternatives. Perhaps she had a guilty conscious? No. No way, I reiterated silently, wishing I could share my thoughts with Abby.

  Abby said, “So what do we do now?”

  I looked at my watch. “Today’s Tuesday. It’s almost two-thirty now. Let’s watch and see what happens. I’d love to prove Carrie wrong.” And I wanted to find out if I was being played. Either Denise hadn’t told me the whole truth, which I did find hard to believe, or Carrie was making trouble for Denise. Perhaps Carrie thought I’d take her accusations straight to Detective Waraday and further complicate Denise’s life.

  About twenty minutes later, Abby said, “Now I understand why those cop shows always do the time-lapse thing when there’s a stakeout. They’re boring.”

  I had to agree. We’d checked the radio stations, eaten all the chocolate kisses I had in my purse, called Anna to check on the kids, and waved to the mailman.

  Abby shifted in her seat and said, “Twenty minutes doesn’t sound like a long time.”

  “Unless you’re trapped in a car, watching the clock.” I was surprised Abby had lasted this long. She was a “doer,” always on the go. We’d had a flutter of excitement about five minutes earlier, but instead of someone going to the house, it had been Denise’s sister, Nancy, leaving. She’d walked to her gray sedan, probably a rental car, and driven away.

  “Did you notice how Carrie said she had an alibi?” I asked Abby.

  “Yeah, she did manage to slip that in. What was up with that?” Abby asked.

  “Denise doesn’t have an alibi. She was home alone all Saturday afternoon, except for one trip to the knitting store, which closed early. So no one at the knitting store can say she wasn’t at the golf course.”

  “Umm…since Carrie was so smug, she must be pretty sure of her alibi. I wonder what it is.”

  “I wish I’d asked her. Of course, since she was in her queen bee mode, I doubt she would have lowered herself enough to tell me,” I said.

  “She seemed to almost be enjoying herself in a self-righteous way. I know grief does strange things to people, but that was extreme. Even if she does have an alibi, she really hated Colonel Pershall and she’s glad that Denise is a widow. That’s twisted.” Abby got an elastic band out of her purse and gathered her long hair into a ponytail.

  “I know. But just because she says she has an alibi doesn’t mean she’s not lying. Or, maybe she convinced someone else to lie for her.” I sighed, fanning myself with one of my organizing flyers. “It all sounds so far-fetched. It’s hard to believe someone would murder Colonel Pershall. I mean, this is someone we know, not someone in those bizarre news stories.”

  “Those bizarre news stories are about real people. And the way Carrie’s changed is pretty bizarre itself,” Abby said.

  “She’s gone from being so delicate that the whole county wanted to take care of her to, I don’t know, an avenging angel–type. No, an avenging devil. Come on, let’s get out of here,” I said, reaching for my seat belt. “I think Carrie made the whole thing up. And if we sit here much longer, someone will probably call the security police. I think that last dog walker was staring at us.”

  “Wait,” Abby said in almost a whisper, as if the smallest sound would give us away. “I think that car is slowing down at Denise’s house.”

  We both leaned forward to watch. A small, beat-up blue car parked behind Denise’s gargantuan SUV. A young guy got out, slammed the door, and loped quickly across the lawn to the front door. It opened and he slipped inside.

  Abby and I looked at each other.

  “Well,” I said reluctantly, “it was a guy and he was young.”

  “And hot,” Abby added. “Did you see those ropey-muscled arms and shoulders?”

  “Abby,” I scolded, “we’re half a block away. We could hardly see him.” Abby had a thing for arms and shoulders.

  “He was hot,” she insisted and I knew she was right. “I may be married, but I can still appreciate a hot guy, even if I am half a block away. Do you think he’s the lawn boy? I know they don’t have a pool, so he can’t be the pool boy.”

  “No! This is not Wisteria Lane. This is base housing and that’s Denise we’re talking about.”

  “Okay, whatever you say. I guess we’re out of here now,” Abby said.

  I chewed on my lower lip for a second, thinking, then said, “Pull up in front of her house. We’re going to drop in.”

  “What?” Abby had been reaching for the ignition. She twisted toward me. “You can’t go up there now.”

  “Why not? She asked me to help her out. There’s no reason I wouldn’t stop by now and check in with her. If she doesn’t answer the door, well…then that’ll tell us something, and if she does, we might get some real answers instead of speculation.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Abby grumbled, but started the car. As she pulled to the curb in front of Denise’s house, she said, “I bet you a whole bag of Hershey’s kisses that she doesn’t answer the door.”

  “You’re on.”

  I pressed the doorbell and we waited, the only sound the faint revving of the mailman’s engine as he made his way through the neighborhood. The door opened and Denise leaned her head and one shoulder out the door. “Ellie!” she said with false brightness. “It’s nice of you to come by, but now’s not a good time.”

  “Really? I just talked to Carrie. Abby and I went over to invite her to the supper club. I thought you might want to know what she said.”

  Denise looked torn, but said, “How about we meet in an hour or so over at the Base Exchange? There’s a new coffeehouse that I hear makes great blueberry muffins.”

  “I think it would be better to talk now. Carrie’s insinuating some rather unpleasant things about you. Apparently, she’s been watching your house and says you have a visitor every Tuesday at two-thirty,” I glanced at the blue car in her driveway and her face lost its forced cheeriness.

  She looked back inside uncertainly, then turned to us. Before she could say anything, we all heard another door close in the house. Denise stepped away, leaving the front door open. Abby and I took a step inside. “You owe me a bag of chocolates,” I said in an undertone to Abby.

  Outside, an engine revved and I glanced back in time to see the blue car peel away down the street.
>
  “Now look what you’ve done,” Denise said as she shoved the door closed behind me. “You might as well come on in now. He won’t be back for weeks, if ever.”

  Not the reaction I was expecting. Abby and I exchanged glances and followed Denise into the kitchen where she was flipping two books closed and gathering up papers. “I’m sure I can guess what Carrie was insinuating, but that was a high school student who has trouble reading. I’m teaching him.”

  One of the books she held in her hand was titled Reading Skills and the other was an early reader about football. “Oh, Denise, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” she said, thawing a bit. “I hope he’ll be back, eventually. He really does want to read. He ran because no one knows he can’t read. He’s managed to keep it a secret from his parents. They’re both officers and work on base.”

  “How did you find out?” Abby asked, fascinated.

  “We hired him at the beginning of the summer to mow our lawn.” Here Abby shot me a glance and I knew she was thinking, lawn boy! Denise continued, “I left him a note when we were out of town about watering the grass for us. Lewis had fertilized the lawn and it needed to be watered consistently. Well, he didn’t—couldn’t—read the note and we came home to a scorched lawn. Fertilizer will do that, if you don’t water it. Anyway, I was furious and about to fire him when I realized that there was more going on than him slacking off. I guessed, basically. Anyway, I convinced him to let me help him, but he won’t meet me at the library. If anyone saw these books and heard his halting reading, he’d be embarrassed. So we meet here, once a week.”

  “Denise, what you’re doing is wonderful. I’m sorry we caused him to bolt.” I felt bad, too, that when she’d refused to let us in, I’d assumed the worst as well. I wondered if this was one of her projects she’d talked about, one of the things she’d found that helped her feel like she was making a difference.

  She blew out a sigh. “That’s okay. I’ll convince him to come back. He was making enough progress that he was starting to feel encouraged. I was going to send him a message and tell him to skip our session, but I spent all morning making arrangements for Lewis’s funeral. When he showed up, it was actually a relief to switch to something normal, something that had nothing to do with Lewis.”