Ed Lynskey - Isabel and Alma Trumbo 03 - The Ladybug Song

by Ed Lynskey

  “You told Isabel and me not to put on our walking shoes,” said Alma.

  “Nobody is going anywhere because that is Sheriff Fox’s job when he gets here,” said Isabel. “In the meantime, we should put our heads together and figure out how the late Mr. X met his final fate.”

  “I stand by my earlier claim he’s another murder victim,” said Willie.

  “We’ve had a few of those, Ladybug being the latest,” said Alma.

  “Alma, what are the other possibilities to consider?” asked Isabel.

  “He accidentally drowned or he committed suicide,” replied Alma.

  “Then we have the three different scenarios: accidental drowning, murder, and suicide,” said Isabel. “Now, which of them is the most likely one?”

  “If it’s a drowning or suicide, where did he fall into the river?” asked Alma.

  “Maybe his body washed downriver from somewhere,’ said Ossie.

  “The river’s current isn’t strong enough to push the dead body, and there have been no summer storms lately,” said Isabel. “Mr. X got snagged on the first obstruction he came to on the river which is where we observe him now.”

  “In that case, Mr. X had to have originally been here on the bridge,” said Alma.

  Chapter 32

  Isabel smiled as much as anybody could when it came to solving murder mysteries. “Then give us the possible sequence of events that took place on the bridge.”

  “I need you to help guide me through the rough spots.”

  “That is how we always do things, and this time will be no different.”

  “Get on with it,” said Willie. “The suspense is getting so thick I can cut it with a knife.”

  “Willie, isn’t it past time for taking your nap?” asked Blue, checking his wristwatch. “Just shush your piehole.”

  “Please go on, Alma,” said Isabel.

  “First off, I’ll say Mr. X took his final breaths right about where we are gathered on the bridge,” said Alma.

  “I agree with you,” said Isabel.

  Ossie, Willie, and Blue taking long steps backwards—they collided with each other while doing it—left Isabel and Alma standing alone on the cursed spot. Neither of the sisters reacted to the Three Musketeers’ display of superstition.

  “Let’s suppose Mr. X came here for a dark reason,” said Alma. “He intended to leap from the bridge and commit suicide by dying from the fall.”

  “Mr. X jumped off the bridge without a bungee cord tied around his ankle.” Ossie’s complexion paled as he rubbed the back of his neck still in one piece. “It was boom and out went the lights in this world.”

  Willie was also massaging his neck. “Talk about taking your hard bounce.”

  “Or one way to use your head,” said Blue, his fingers also checking on the intact status of his neck.

  Alma gave the Three Musketeers a sidelong glance. The old warriors bearing their army dog tags were acting squeamish about death, but she didn’t comment about it and risk hurting their feelings.

  Not seeing any gain made from dwelling on Mr. X’s suicide, Alma moved on with telling his story. “The main channel’s force was dynamic enough to move his dead body along with the current until he was intercepted and got lodged on the driftwood log where you observant gentlemen spotted him earlier today.”

  “Did any eyewitnesses see him do it?” asked Isabel.

  “He made sure nobody with their cell phone cameras out loitered near the bridge,” replied Alma. “Perhaps he took the plunge by moonlight. The semi-darkness helped to mask how far down the fall he planned to take was in case he lost his nerve at the last second and chickened out.”

  “Now for the sixty-four-dollar question: who is Mr. X?” asked Blue.

  “I can’t single out any distraught townie who’d do such a terrible thing,” said Willie. “Everybody stays upbeat, especially during October’s glorious stretch of weather.”

  “Mr. X probably wasn’t one of us,” said Alma. “He was from out of town.”

  “I bet Mr. X was one of those shifty-eyed interlopers,” said Blue.

  “Where did Mr. X come from?” asked Willie.

  “Possibly San Francisco,” replied Alma. “Mr. X was last seen alive on the Golden Gate Bridge. He staged his suicide jump there convincingly enough to confuse the authorities. Then he slipped out of Frisco and made his way east to reach Quiet Anchorage. Mr. X might be Curt Miles.”

  Isabel nodded in agreement.

  “Curt journeyed an awful long way just to hop off our bridge,” said Ossie. “I would have taken advantage of the Golden Gate Bridge if I had the same crazy idea he had in mind.”

  “Ladybug told Phyllis the authorities never recovered Curt’s body from the bay,” said Isabel. “Earlier Sammi Jo started to ask me if Curt really made the jump, and my ringing cell phone interrupted us. I forgot about it until Alma brought up his suicide.”

  “What brought Curt to our small town?” asked Willie.

  “I suggest he came here to do in his ex Ladybug,” replied Isabel. “After his alleged suicide, he would be the last person considered as the guilty culprit for the simple reason he was presumed dead. Then I can only assume Curt actually did take his own life.”

  “That’s a humdinger of a story,” said Willie. “Have you got any idea of why Curt jumped?”

  Isabel shook her head. “Alma and I never met in person much less talked to Mr. Miles. Our learning anymore will require further investigation, I’m afraid.”

  “Look on the bright side of things,” said Ossie. “You are now one step closer to figuring out the total solution to Ladybug’s murder mystery.”

  “I suppose that’s one constructive way of regarding it,” said Isabel.

  “We’ve kicked this around long enough,” said Alma. “Shall we call and let Sheriff Fox in on this latest twist?”

  “I was set to suggest the same thing,” replied Isabel. “He’ll be over the moon to hear about it.”

  Willie scoffed with disdain. “Roscoe Fox gets paid the big bucks to handle the messy stuff like this. If the young man can’t hack it, then somebody else had better pin on the sheriff’s badge.”

  “Hear, hear, Mr. Moccasin,” said Blue, slapping Willie on the back. “Would you like to keep the law and order as our new town sheriff? I will nominate you, and Ossie will second it to place your name on the ballot.”

  “Not unless you and Ossie also agree to be my right-hand deputies,” replied Willie. “So, I put it to you. How likely is that to happen?”

  “I’d give it no chance in a million,” replied Blue. He checked his Aloha shirt with its deep red background and hibiscus floral print. “For one thing, the shiny silver deputy’s badge would clash with my daily wardrobe.”

  “Please make the call to Sheriff Fox, Alma,” said Ossie. “Don’t mind us. We’re just three duffers flapping our gums and telling lies when we’re not playing boyish pranks on each other. Truth be told, I’m a grizzled eighty-three-year-old who feels every bit as if I’m a fifteen-year-old kid reliving my salad days.”

  “It beats sitting in the porch rocker and screaming at the kids to stay off your lawn,” said Willie.

  “You could just have a fence erected around your yard,” said Blue.

  “Fences don’t keep out the kids,” said Willie.

  “We’re leaving here next to go see Rosie and Lotus,” said Ossie. “Isabel wants to speak with Lotus in private.”

  “That’s okay,” said Isabel, looking downriver at Curt’s dead body. “The topic of our conversation has been overcome by events, so it isn’t necessary anymore. Am I correct in saying that, Alma?”

  “So it would seem,” replied Alma.

  Chapter 33

  Isabel and Alma along with the Three Musketeers left the old highway bridge spanning the Coronet River. None of them wished to see up close and personal what the deputies recovered from hanging up on the driftwood log. Isabel had told Willie he should be the one to phone the sheriff’s
office and report what the three men out on their fishing trip had discovered while crossing the old highway bridge.

  After listening to Willie’s outlandish yarn, Sheriff Fox chuckled. He ribbed Willie about seeing things due to his cataracts. He’d soon be contacting the sheriff’s office about his sightings of Bigfoot, gremlins, or even young Elvis at the local Wawa convenience store munching on a bag of pork rinds washed down with a cold bottle of Pepsi Cola. The testy Willie revealed he’d undergone the corrective laser surgery to fix his cataracts, and he could see everything just fine.

  To appease the fussy curmudgeon, Sheriff Fox promised Willie to take a spin out to the old highway bridge and personally reconnoiter what boogie man had spooked the Three Musketeers. They provided Sheriff Fox with better comic relief than Deputy Bexley did. Sheriff Fox couldn’t stifle his snickering and chuckles while driving to the bridge. He got out and trained his binoculars to glass Willie’s object of interest. It was probably just some corn farmer’s scarecrow that had washed downriver and gotten wedged on the driftwood log. He couldn’t recall ever seeing a scarecrow caught in the river.

  After sharpening the focus to the binocular lenses by adjusting the central knob, Sheriff Fox felt his jaw drop like a claw hammer on his toe. He got a little excited. With the cruiser’s red and blue roof bar lights flashing on his face, he radioed his on-duty deputies. They had to stop whatever they were doing and come running because he had a “Code Red” emergency on his hands.

  His Code Red emergency, however, failed to impress the deputies upon their arrival at the old highway bridge. With his arm waving and his bullhorn blaring, Sheriff Fox directed his three deputies on their body recovery effort. They donned rubber hip waders black as truck-stop coffee before they splashed and stumbled on the mossy slick rocks to reach the driftwood log. They encountered none of the feared snakes.

  The irate deputies were grumbling among themselves and glaring daggers back up at the bridge where their boss made it sound easy as going on a Sunday picnic in July. If he had so many bright ideas, why didn’t he pitch in to help them? Lugging the deadweight strapped to the gurney made their return trip more awkward. Oddly enough, the dead man wore a plaster cast and sling on his right arm.

  ***

  Leave it to Sheriff Fox to try to find a way to prove Phyllis had killed the dead man recovered at the old highway bridge. His problem was he knew his arrest of Phyllis for Ladybug’s homicide was crumbling apart, and he could do little about it. Since the Isabel and Alma had no time for relaxing and sipping iced tea from tall glasses, they drank the iced tea from aluminum cans. It was a poor substitute for the real thing if you asked Alma. It was Isabel’s turn to drive.

  “Sammi Jo has been doing a little freelance sleuthing,” said Alma just off her cell phone with Sammi Jo.

  “She also has the incurable sleuthing bug,” said Isabel.

  “Somebody helped her. Can you guess who it was?”

  “Well, since Phyllis is indisposed, I don’t know who else Sammi Jo might corral.”

  “Eustis put aside his pills and filled in admirably for Phyllis.”

  Isabel had an easy-going laugh. “I like Eustis, and I think he can be trusted.”

  “Now can you guess what they were after?”

  “Alma, I’m not a panel member on What’s My Line? Just tell me the rest of their story.”

  “Sammi Jo is keen to know what became of Ladybug’s missing garden shovel.”

  “It also whets my curiosity. Maybe she flung it out into the tall weeds or chucked it into the river.”

  “A fellow might think like that, but a practical-minded lady such as Ladybug would be inclined to save it for later use.”

  Isabel sent Alma a puzzled glance. “Is that a scientific fact, or something you just thought of on the fly?”

  “It’s more the latter, but let’s consider the money suitcase and how it fits in the big picture. Whose money did we find crammed inside it?”

  “The money has to belong to Ladybug.”

  “I agree. Now the questions turn harder. Why did she decide to bury it?”

  Isabel shrugged. “I left my deck of tarot cards at home, but then I’m only a novice reader. Seriously though, let’s shelve Ladybug’s garden shovel and her money suitcase for the time being, so we can devote our attention to Curt Miles.”

  “What is it about Curt that should interest us?”

  “Chicago is where he and Ladybug married, lived, and divorced. She told Phyllis it was an amiable parting. Evidently Ladybug didn’t mind bending the truth, and things weren’t so hunky-dory in the Miles’s household.”

  Alma tipped up her can of iced tea and drained the final swallow left inside it. She took down the can and frowned at it. The soft drink manufacturer’s name she read on it surprised her. All the while, she was mulling over the elaborate fake suicide—some of the newer mysteries called it a pseudocide—Curt had staged on the Golden Gate Bridge before he came to Quiet Anchorage. The fake suicide wrinkle was one she hadn’t anticipated, and the murder case had too many other wrinkles.

  “We may never resolve Ladybug’s murder mystery to our satisfaction,” said Alma after a sigh. “It may frustrate me so much I’ll quit playing detective.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Isabel. “I could see me doing that, but you? Not until pigs fly south in reverse on broomsticks, I say.”

  “I can drop doing it anytime I feel like it,” said Alma. “It’s just a little something I do to prevent the moss from growing on my brain.”

  “Balderdash.”

  “Okay, so maybe I spoke a little fast there,” said Alma who rarely got away with fibbing to her older sister.

  ***

  Isabel and Alma found Sammi Jo at the drugstore standing in front of the greeting card display rack where she’d been reading and smiling at the funny messages to the latest greeting card arrivals.

  “Did you hear the latest news?” asked Alma.

  “Blue told me no more than five minutes ago,” replied Sammi Jo. She returned the greeting card to its right spot on the display rack and mentally designated it as a possible future purchase. She didn’t like sending out duplicate greeting cards in any subsequent years. “To be truthful, it is all so bizarre to me. What do you think is going on?”

  “Our most likely scenario goes something like this,” replied Alma. “First Curt pretended to kill himself while in San Francisco, and then he resurfaced here. When he was set, he bumped off Ladybug. Then he decided to cash in his own chips.” Alma glanced at Isabel. “Is that the gist of it?”

  “It’s leaky as a colander, but that’s our timeline of events,” replied Isabel. “His motive to kill her remains about as clear as mud. Other nagging questions abound. Why did he make Ladybug’s death appear as an accidental drowning? How did he remain out of sight? Why did he jump off the old highway bridge? Why did she plant the money suitcase in the sand? Where did the money found inside the suitcase come from? I’ll stop my list there, but you get the general idea.”

  “Are you one hundred percent certain Curt Miles is the dead man?” asked Sammi Jo.

  Isabel nodded. “Sheriff Fox called me with an update. They found Curt’s billfold with his driver’s license and photo I.D. The DNA analysis and dental records from his autopsy later should make it an official identification.”

  “Did he leave a suicide note crumpled up in his pocket?” asked Alma.

  “Nothing that easy has come to light,” replied Isabel.

  “So that’s the end of it for us.” Sammi Jo unzipped the front of her jacket. Eustis liked to keep the drugstore as warm as it was back in his native Southern California. The ceiling fans stirred up the sultry air. “With so many questions still left open, it doesn’t seem fair to us.”

  Isabel and Alma had nothing enlightening to offer since they felt the same way. The trail had grown cold as the first frost glazing the Halloween jack-o’-lantern pumpkins the townies had set out on their front stoops.

  “Did Sheriff
Fox fling another hissy fit when he saw the latest dead body?” asked Sammi Jo.

  “Willie told us the deputies said Sheriff Fox’s voice turned high pitched,” replied Isabel. “He rattled off his words like a clacking typewriter.”

  “Typewriter, you say.” Confusion lined Sammi Jo’s forehead. “What is that?”

  “I’ll show you the one we keep as a doorstop,” said Alma. “Most of the relics were sold for scrap metal which is where they always belonged as far as I’m concerned.”

  “All thumbs, Alma was a bad typist,” said Isabel. “But my nimble fingers flew over the typewriter keyboard.”

  “Bully for you,” said Alma.

  “Moving right along,” said Sammi Jo. “Did Sheriff Fox announce when he plans on freeing Aunt Phyllis? It’s obvious Curt was up to no good, and he had lot more of a motive to kill Ladybug than she did.”

  “When I asked Sheriff Fox the same question, he hemmed and hawed,” replied Isabel. “I suppose there is a process he’s required to follow, but he’s in no hurry to admit he arrested the wrong person again.”

  “In his rush to judgment, he digs his own holes, and then he falls into them, and he can’t get out,” said Alma.

  “My prediction is he’ll find a way to spring Phyllis before Judge Redfern makes it across the town limits,” said Isabel.

  “She puts the fear of Zeus into him,” said Alma.

  “I heard Eustis went on his first sleuthing mission,” said Isabel. “Did he pass muster with you?”

  “He’s a bit green, but I think we can work on the polish part,” replied Sammi Jo. “I had to talk him into buying a fedora instead of a handgun. We can add him to our list of good guys.”

  Isabel and Alma nodded their approval. Who could predict when the sisters might again require the aid of a nerdy pharmacist?