Death Takes The Blue Ribbon (Lizzie Crenshaw Mysteries Book 6)

by Teresa Watson

  “Jake doesn’t want to hear about some silly girl stuff. He prefers more hardcore things, like hounding grieving widows who just witnessed their husband die right in front of her.”

  “You didn’t bother Gladys last night, did you, Jake?” Trixie asked.

  “Of course not,” Jake said. “Lizzie chewed me out for even thinking about doing it yesterday. I realized she was right, and so I refrained.”

  I looked at his face. His right eye twitched slightly, and I knew he was lying. “You mean, you tried to talk to Gladys last night, and Iris sent you away. You never made it off the front porch and into the house, did you?”

  “I’m lucky she didn’t pull a shotgun on me and fill my behind with buckshot.” Trixie and I laughed. “So, what were you about to tell Trixie?” he said, looking at me.

  “Nothing.” There was no way I was going to say anything about what I had learned last night.

  “She got some juicy news about Harold’s death while T.J. was having dinner at her house,” Trixie replied. I glared at her as Jake got a very ticked off look on his face.

  “You had dinner with Deputy Dawg last night?” he said.

  “When a man shows up at your house with steak and cherry cheesecake, a wise woman opens the door and lets him in,” I told him.

  “So you took this unexpected opportunity and pumped him for information on the case, right?” Jake asked. “Smart reporter move, taking advantage of the situation.”

  “I did not ‘take advantage of the situation’. Doc Endicott called him while he was still at my house.”

  “Whatever. What did you find out?”

  I hesitated. T.J. hadn’t specifically told me not to talk about the lab results. “I’m not sure I’m at liberty to talk to you about it.”

  “Did T.J. specifically tell you NOT to talk about it?” Jake said. I shook my head. “Then spill the beans.”

  Trying to delay the inevitable, I looked around to make sure no one was listening, when I saw T.J. walk in. I never thought I’d be glad to see him, but I waved at him and moved over so he could sit down. “Just the woman I was looking for,” T.J. said as he sat down.

  “You were looking for me?” Trixie said, batting her eyelashes at him. “I didn’t know you cared so much, T.J.”

  He laughed. “It’s good to see you, Trixie, but I was referring to your friend here,” he replied. “Jake, how are you?”

  “I was doing fine until you showed up.”

  “Well, don’t let me ruin your morning, Jake,” T.J. said. “I’m sure you have places to go, people to harass, candy to take away from little children…”

  Jake started to reply, but I stopped him. “Alright, that’s enough. We’re all going to have to learn to get along, especially since T.J.’s coming back to Brookdale for good. So shake hands, agree to disagree, and tell me why you are both looking for me.”

  They didn’t shake hands, no big surprise there, but at least they stopped the snarky remarks. “I got a call from Iris this morning,” T.J. told me. “Gladys left something at the house and wanted to go back over there to get it. When I told Iris no, she told Gladys, who started yelling in the background. I won’t repeat what she said. Needless to say, I had to settle for a compromise. Gladys said it’s alright for you to go over there with me to get it.”

  “Me? Why me?” I didn’t want to go over to the Norwell house. My plans for the day included walked around the fair for a while, going to the store, and then going home. Nowhere in those plans did I have room to go to Gladys’ house. Nope, no way, no how, not happening.

  “I asked Iris the same thing. Apparently, Gladys trusts you right now, because you were so kind to her yesterday. And Iris doesn’t want to leave her alone right now. So you’re it.”

  “But I don’t want to go,” I replied. “I have plans.”

  “It will only take a few minutes.”

  “No. Get it yourself.”

  “I could, but then she wouldn’t get it until tonight, or maybe even tomorrow. I got the search warrant, and I’m on my way over there right now.”

  “Take Trixie with you.”

  “I can’t go,” Trixie replied. “I have a meeting with an interior decorator in about an hour.”

  “Redoing the club, Trix?” Jake said. “Going with the whips and chains theme I suggested last month?”

  “You just never know, Jake, I just might,” she laughed, winking at him. Wait a minute, was my best friend flirting with my old college boyfriend? Isn’t there a rule in the best friend’s handbook against things like this? Hold the phone, people, why did I care? I mentally slapped myself.

  “Don’t even think about suggesting I go, Lizzie,” Jake warned me. “There’s no way I’m going anywhere with him.”

  “Nobody asked you to go anywhere, Mathias,” T.J. said.

  “Ok, ok, I’ll go. Geez Louise Mother McCree,” I muttered.

  “That’s my girl,” T.J. said, patting my leg. “Let’s go.”

  I glared at Trixie and Jake. “You two are going to pay for this one.”

  Trixie just smiled. Jake, on the other hand…well, if looks could kill, T.J. would be lying on the café floor with a hundred knives in his back.

  Chapter Ten

  T.J. offered to let me ride with him over to the Norwell house, but I declined. I followed him over there, and parked behind him. There were two other police cars there, as well as a crime scene unit. “What exactly does Gladys need me to pick up?” I asked T.J. as I joined him on the sidewalk.

  “She said there are some photo albums in the master bedroom closet,” he replied as he pulled out some latex gloves. He handed a pair to me. “You need to put these on before you go inside.”

  “That’s it?” I said as I did what he asked. “Just some photo albums?”

  “I think she and Iris have been doing some sentimental journey, remembering old times,” he shrugged. “No reason for her not to have them.” One of the crime scene techs handed us some paper booties to put over our shoes. “Is someone checking out the backyard?”

  “Yes, sir, one of your deputies,” the tech replied.

  T.J. nodded as we went in. It was tastefully decorated; it had that warm, homey feel to it, which isn’t something I would normally associate with Gladys’ caustic personality. But then again, you just never know how people behave inside their own homes.

  “The master bedroom is down that hallway, last door on the right,” T.J. pointed out to me. I followed him, and we went into a room that was about the size of my living room. There were various shades of blue all over the room, and I cringed. It reminded me of a tacky tri-colored blue shag carpet from my childhood. It wasn’t pretty, but I guess to Gladys, it was.

  He opened the closet doors, and we started looking for the albums. Harold’s clothes were on the left, mostly collared cowboy shirts and comfortable slacks. One black suit hung in the back, and a pair of well-worn slippers and a pair of dress shoes sat on the floor under the clothes. On the right, total chaos. Bright colors jumped out at me, all vying for my attention. There was lemon-lime, pink, orange, bright yellow, light blue…just about every color of the rainbow and then some. I thought I was going to go blind looking at all those tacky colors. I had seen her wear some of these things, but when they were all together in one place, all I could do was shudder.

  I scanned the upper shelves. “There,” I said, pointing at a pile of albums in the middle of the shelf. “Those must be it.”

  I moved aside so T.J. could pull them down. There were eight albums of various sizes, but definitely full of pictures and mementos of their lives together. I would have never guessed that Gladys was so sentimental. “Let’s see if we can find a box to put these in, or they’re just going to slide all over your car.”

  I agreed, but unfortunately, there wasn’t one to be found in the bedroom. “Why don’t we check the garage,” I suggested. “Everyone always has a box in there.”

  We left the bedroom and made our way toward the front door when
Owen called out to T.J. “I thought you weren’t working this case,” T.J. said, sounding a bit nervous. He was probably afraid that Owen was taking over the case.

  “I’m just supervising the backyard search,” he replied. “Just trying to help move your investigation along. Besides, I’m letting a couple of my deputies do all the heavy work.” He looked over at me, and gave me a small nod, his way of letting me know that he had understood what I was talking about earlier. “Speaking of which, we found something out here I think you should take a look at, T.J.”

  They went out the back door, and since they didn’t specifically tell me I couldn’t, I followed them out there. One of the crime techs had spread what looked like a plastic drop cloth on the ground, and dumped the trash from the outside can on it. Owen, T.J. and another person were standing by a table that was partially covered with vegetables. I walked over and stood next to T.J. “Don’t touch anything,” he said without looking at me.

  A female crime tech was holding a mortar and pestle in her gloved hands. “There’s quite a bit of residue here, as you can see,” she said, holding it out for us to examine. She put it down on the table and picked up a piece of wadded up wax paper. “I also found some cut up pieces of rhubarb greens on here, as well as blueberry filling. There are probably some of the crushed greens in that filling. I’ll know for sure once I get it back to the lab and test it.”

  Owen pointed to several stalks of rhubarb on the table, nestled next to some carrots and corn on the cob. I never ate rhubarb myself, but I knew it was the color of raspberries on the outside, and green on the inside. It looked a bit like celery, except for the color, and it certainly didn’t look appetizing, but that’s just me.

  I left the three of them to talk while I wandered toward the vegetable garden in the right corner near the back fence. There were plenty of vegetables, ripe and ready for harvesting. It would be great to have something like this in my backyard, but Mittens had the tendency to dig a lot, and knowing Babe, she’d probably lay down right in the middle of the garden, killing anything trying to grow there.

  “Lizzie,” T.J. called out to me, “let’s go.”

  I looked around the garden one more time before I walked back to the house. There was something bugging me about the garden. I’m not sure what it was, but something wasn’t right.

  Turns out, that something was a pretty big clue, only I didn’t know it at the time.

  Chapter Eleven

  I watched them put everything into separate evidence bags, and then T.J. carried the albums out to the car for me, placing them in the front seat. “It doesn’t look good for Gladys, does it?” I asked him as I took off the gloves and booties.

  He shook his head. “No, it doesn’t,” he replied, taking the protective gear from me. “How well do you know her?”

  “She’s a friend of Mother’s. I’ve known her all my life.”

  “Did you ever see anything to indicate that the two of them were having serious problems?”

  “No, not anything that she would kill him for. They were always nasty to each other, but not in a mean sort of way. More of a ‘we’re married, and I enjoy yanking your chain once in a while’ kind of way, although there were times when the comments were intentionally mean. Even the people you love can do stupid things that can upset you.”

  He stared into my eyes. “Yes, they can, but I’m sure they don’t mean to hurt the other person.”

  There were butterflies in my stomach as he said that. I knew what he meant, but I wasn’t ready to go down that road, not yet. “Sometimes it takes a while to forgive, and sometimes things don’t always go back to the way they were.”

  I saw a flash of hurt in his eyes, but I couldn’t help that. “You should get those albums over to Gladys. She was anxious to have them.”

  I swallowed hard. “Right,” I said, pulling my keys out of my pocket. “Thanks for carrying those out here.”

  “No problem. Glad to help,” he said, opening the driver’s side door. I got in and he closed the door. I started the car and lowered the window. “I’d like to see you later, if that’s alright.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”

  “Fair enough,” he replied, stepping out of the way. He watched me drive off.

  I was still trying to figure out what was bugging me about the Norwells’ garden when I parked in front of Iris’ house. It was similar to Gladys’ house, except it was a light blue with white trim. The front door opened, and Iris came out. She stood on the porch as I gathered the photo albums in the front seat. One of them fell sideways from the seat onto the floorboard, and I picked it up, putting it on top. “Here, let me help you with those,” Iris said, coming down the steps toward me.

  Gratefully, I let her take half of the large albums. “How’s she doing?”

  Iris shook her head. “She’s fluctuating between denial and grief. I’m going to have to buy more tissues soon; she’s already gone through three boxes, bless her heart.”

  “Mom says you were all childhood friends,” I said.

  “That’s true,” Iris confirmed. “Our families were all good friends, so it was natural that the three of us became good friends as well. Goodness, these things are heavy!”

  I followed her into the house. Iris put the albums on the coffee table in front of the couch, which is where Gladys was sitting. “Hello, Gladys,” I said, sitting next to her on the couch. “I hope I brought the albums you wanted. They were the only ones we found in the master bedroom.”

  “These are the ones I wanted. Thank you, dear,” she said absentmindedly, patting my left hand. I looked at Iris, who shrugged.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “Are the police through searching the house yet?”

  I hesitated, unsure of what I should say. “Um, no, not yet. They were still there when I left.”

  “I don’t know why Owen and that deputy of his are even bothering. They aren’t going to find anything,” she said, squeezing my hand as she got more upset. I used my free hand to remove her fingernails from my trapped hand.

  “Of course they won’t,” Iris reassured her. She looked at me, and even though I did my best not to give anything away, she knew right away that something was wrong. “What’s wrong, Lizzie? Did they find something?”

  “Well…errr…it’s not my place to say, Iris,” I stammered. “I’m sure the police will talk to Gladys about anything they find during their search.”

  “Would you like something to drink, Gladys?” Iris said, suddenly standing up. “It’s such a warm day; I think we could all use something cool to drink. Why don’t you come help me, Lizzie?” She gave me a look that told me I should just do it, no questions asked.

  I followed her into the kitchen, and she took some glasses down from a cabinet near the fridge. “Spill it,” she whispered to me. “What’s going on?”

  Looking over my shoulder to make sure that Gladys couldn’t hear us, I said, “It doesn’t look good for her, Iris.” I quickly told her what had happened. “Even T.J. admitted it looks bad. I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but if you know a good lawyer, I would call him.”

  Iris looked shocked. “You really think it’s that bad?”

  “Yeah, I do. Do you think she would feel up to answering a couple of questions?”

  “I don’t know, to be honest. You can try.”

  She handed me a Dr Pepper from the fridge, and poured some tea in the other two glasses. We carried them back into the living room, and Iris handed a glass to Gladys while I sat back down next to her. “Would you mind answering a question for me, Gladys?”

  “About what?” she eyed me warily.

  “About the rhubarb on the table in your backyard.”

  “What rhubarb? There’s no rhubarb back there. Harold hates the stuff, and I’m not too fond of it, either. If I need some, I just buy it at the store.”

  “When was the last time you bought any?”

  She took a drink of
her tea. “Let me see, I believe it was last year for the ladies’ church group luncheon. Someone requested two rhubarb pies, so I pulled out Momma’s old recipe and made them.”

  “None since then?”

  “Definitely not,” Gladys replied. “I may be getting old, but I’m not a blithering idiot, Elizabeth Crenshaw.”

  I took a drink before I asked my next question. “So, you don’t grow it in your garden?”

  “Good heavens, no!”

  And I suddenly knew what had been bothering me. There weren’t any rhubarb plants in the Norwell garden. So, then how did rhubarb end up on the back table and in the trash?

  Chapter Twelve

  Before I could ask her any more questions, the doorbell rang. “Wait a minute, Iris,” I said and turned to Gladys. “I’m guessing that’s T.J. coming to arrest you. Just hush and listen to me. Don’t say anything to them without an attorney present, do I make myself clear?” Gladys didn’t say anything. I moved the albums to one side and sat on the coffee table in front of her. “Gladys, we don’t get along at all, but I know in my heart you didn’t do this. Just trust me, alright? We will get through this. No talking without an attorney. Iris and I will get one for you. Understand?” The doorbell rang again. “Answer me!”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. You be the strong woman I know you are, and hold your head up high.” I nodded at Iris as I sat back down on the couch.

  Iris got up and opened the door. “T.J.! What a pleasant surprise. Please, come in.” She stepped back and out of the way as he came in.

  He nodded at me as he walked across the room to Gladys. I expected him to be tough with her, but he knelt in front of her, and took one of her hands in his. “Mrs. Norwell, I’m sorry more than I can say about this, but I’m going to have to ask you to come down to the station with me to answer some questions.”

  “Are you going to arrest me?” she asked him as her eyes filled with tears.

  “Well, ma’am, I’ll be honest with you, it’s a very strong possibility. The evidence against you is overwhelming, and very hard to ignore. But you’ve got some good people on your side,” he said, glancing over at me, “who tell me there’s no way you’d ever hurt your own husband, much less kill him.”