Murder Over Easy (A Trailer Park Mystery Book 2)

by Jimmie Ruth Evans

  “Hey, Wanda Nell, how are you today?” Katie Ann’s smile was bright and friendly.

  “I’m doing fine, how about you?” Wanda Nell led the way to the door and opened it, motioning for the younger woman to go in ahead of her.

  “Just peachy, thanks,” Katie Ann said.

  Wanda Nell paused to speak to someone at the counter, then continued on her way to Melvin’s office to put away the deposit slip. As she passed the closet where they all stowed their purses and things, she saw Katie Ann on her knees, poking around some of the lower shelves.

  “You lose something?”

  Startled, Katie Ann turned around. “Oh, yeah, Wanda Nell. I think I heard something fall out of my purse.” She ducked her head back down and continued looking. After a moment, she stood up and dusted off her knees. “Well, whatever it was, I can’t find it.” Flashing another smile, she pushed past Wanda Nell and walked down the hall toward the kitchen.

  Shaking her head, Wanda Nell went on to Melvin’s office and put the deposit slip in the desk. She didn’t know why, but she had the feeling that Katie Ann had been lying to her.

  But why would she lie about something so stupid? Had she been searching for something else?

  Surely she hadn’t been looking for Fayetta’s savings account passbook. How would she even know about that?

  Wanda Nell went back to the closet. When she’d found the passbook the other day, she had quit looking. Maybe there was something else there.

  She began a systematic search of the shelves, but the more she looked, the more frustrated she got. There was nothing out of the ordinary that she could see.

  She was about to give up when her fingers brushed across something plastic wedged at the back of the top shelf, behind a couple of large cans. Whatever it was, it was stuck into the join of the shelf. She need to get a bit higher before she could see it.

  Testing one of the lower shelves carefully, Wanda Nell stepped onto it. It held, so she put her full weight on it and pulled herself up.

  So far so good. Now her head was at the right height to see whatever was stuck behind the wood. She moved the cans out of the way, and she could now see that it was a bit of plastic about the size of a credit card.

  Holding onto the shelf with her left hand, she reached with her right and pulled the card loose. Slowly she stepped back down from the shelf and examined her find.

  Though it was the size of a credit card, Wanda Nell realized that it was actually a key card of the type that many hotels used. One side had two arrows on it, to show the user which way to insert the card.

  She turned it over. There was a logo on the other side. Stamped in plain, bold script were the words The Deer Stand.

  Wanda Nell frowned. What the heck was this? She’d never heard of a hotel or motel called the Deer Stand. It seemed an odd name for a place to stay.

  But maybe it was some kind of club. That made more sense.

  Was this what Katie Ann had been searching for?

  Wanda Nell decided she was just going to ask her, flat-out.

  Clutching the card in her hand, she headed for the front of the restaurant. Katie Ann was chatting with Ruby Garner. Ovie was at the door, purse in hand. She waved bye when she spotted Wanda Nell, and Wanda Nell waved back.

  She waited until Ruby had also gone, then called for Katie Ann to come with her to the back dining room. It was empty, and she could question the younger woman without worrying about anyone overhearing them.

  Katie Ann sauntered back to where Wanda Nell stood. “What is it, Wanda Nell?”

  Wanda Nell held up the card so Katie Ann could see the writing on it.

  “Was this what you were looking for?” Katie Ann paled, but she didn’t say anything. She stared at Wanda Nell, her eyes round with innocence.

  “Nothing fell out of your purse,” Wanda Nell said flatly. “I checked. But you were looking for something, and this is the only thing I found that didn’t belong in that storeroom.”

  Katie Ann frowned. “I don’t like being called a liar.” She tossed her head. “Why should I be looking for that thing? I don’t even know what it is.”

  “Are you sure?” Wanda Nell demanded. “You’ve never seen it before, or one like it?”

  “Looks like one of them key cards,” Katie Ann said, after a moment’s hesitation. “It’s not a credit card.”

  “If it’s not yours,” Wanda Nell said slowly, “then who does it belong to?”

  “How should I know?” Katie Ann said, her voice sharp. “I told you it’s not mine.”

  Wanda Nell stared at her for a moment. She’d swear on a stack of bibles that Katie Ann was lying to her. The girl knew what the card was, all right. But how was she going to make her admit it?

  “Maybe it belonged to Fayetta,” Wanda Nell said. “In that case, I reckon I better turn it over to the sheriff’s department. It may have something to do with her getting killed.”

  “Don’t do that!” Katie Ann slapped a hand over her mouth as soon as the words were out She stared at Wanda Nell in dismay.

  Wanda Nell waited.

  “Oh, hell,” Katie Ann said. She licked her lips. “Yeah, I was looking for it. I knew Fayetta had one, and I thought she might’ve left it here.”

  “Why would she leave it here?”

  “She didn’t want her mama finding it,” Katie Ann said. “Her mama was always going through her stuff at home. Fayetta couldn’t hide anything from her. That old woman is nosey like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Would Miz Vance even know what this is?”

  “Maybe not.” Katie Ann shrugged. “But Fayetta had a hard time standing up to her sometimes.”

  “Sounds to me you knew Fayetta a lot better than you let on,” Wanda Nell said harshly.

  “Yeah,” Katie Ann said. She moved over to a table and sat down.

  Wanda Nell checked the front. Junior Farley had come in while she and Katie Ann had been talking, but he just helped himself to coffee the way he usually did when they were busy. He waved at Wanda Nell.

  “You need anything else, Junior?” she called.

  “A date for Saturday night,” he called back.

  “Can’t help you there,” she said. She should’ve known. That was his standard response anytime one of the waitresses asked him that question.

  She made a dismissive gesture with her left hand, then turned her attention back to Katie Ann.

  “I guess I knew Fayetta pretty well,” Katie Ann said. She sighed. “She didn’t have too many women friends.”

  “No, I reckon not,” Wanda Nell said.

  “She knew I liked kids,” Katie Ann continued. “I’d babysit for her sometimes to keep old prune face from doing it. That’s what she called her mama.” She shook her head. “I was there one time watching the kids when the old lady came by. She about had a hissy fit when she found me there instead of Fayetta. She made the kids go home with her, and Fayetta like to had a stroke when she found out.”

  “Why didn’t she want her mama looking after the kids.?”

  “Oh, come on, Wanda Nell,” Katie Ann said. “Miz Vance was trying to get those kids taken away from her. She thought Fayetta was an unfit mother, and she kept saying she was gonna take Fayetta to court over it.” She shivered. “You know, I almost think she hated Fayetta.”

  Wanda Nell felt a deep and unexpected sympathy for Fayetta. She knew what it was like to be threatened with losing her children. Old Mrs. Culpepper had tried to do it to her. But she was a lot more stable than Fayetta had been. She had to admit she could see Mrs. Vance’s point. She had a right to be concerned.

  Now that Fayetta was dead, Mrs. Vance could probably keep the kids, unless any of their daddies wanted to try to get custody of them. That didn’t seem too likely, though, since none of their daddies had had anything to do with them, as far as Wanda Nell knew.

  Wanda Nell decided it was time to get the conversation back on track. “Tell me what this thing is. What’s this Deer Stand?” She laid the card on
the table.

  “Oh, it’s just a club,” Katie Ann said, very casual. “You know, hunters.”

  “Seems kinda fancy for a hunting club,” Wanda Nell said, her fingers tapping the card. “Why would they need something like this for some old deer stand?” She thought about the one her own daddy and her brother had built. It was nothing fancy, just about big enough for the two of them and maybe one other hunter.

  “It’s real private,” Katie Ann said. “From what Fayetta told me,” she added hastily. “Not many people know about it, just the members.”

  “Where is it?”

  Katie Ann shrugged. “In the woods somewhere.”

  Wanda Nell wanted to pinch her. A good part of Tullahoma County was wooded. “You can’t be more specific than that?”

  The younger woman shrugged again. “Fayetta never said.”

  There was something Katie Ann wasn’t telling her; Wanda Nell could feel it. Maybe if she asked the right question. But what was it? She sighed.

  “What was Fayetta doing at a men’s hunting club? Surely she wasn’t a member?”

  Katie Ann shifted in her seat. She didn’t look at Wanda Nell. “They kinda like to have a couple of women around. You know, cooking and waiting on them.”

  Wanda Nell didn’t believe that for a minute. She knew why the club members had wanted Fayetta around, and the knowledge chilled her.

  “Do you know any of the other women who worked at this club?”

  “Fayetta didn’t mention any names,” Katie Ann said.

  Wanda Nell stared at her for a moment, then at the key card. “I think the sheriff’s department oughta know about this. It might have something to do with Fayetta’s death.” She stood up, and Katie Ann reached out and grabbed her arm.

  “You can’t do that!”

  Wanda Nell shook off the other woman’s hand. “Why not?”

  Katie Ann was frightened. Wanda Nell could see it in her eyes and in the way she sat so rigidly in her chair.

  Slowly Wanda Nell sat down. “What are you afraid of?”

  “You don’t know what you’re messing with,” Katie Ann said. “The men in that club ain’t gonna like you talking to the sheriff’s department.”

  “So what?”

  “You don’t understand, Wanda Nell,” Katie Ann said, her voice pleading. “Those men are the kind of men you don’t mess around with.”

  Wanda Nell suddenly put two and two together. That list Fayetta had kept on the backs of the menu pages. She’d bet anything those men were members of the club. They were the men Fayetta had been blackmailing.

  She swallowed hard. Katie Ann wasn’t lying. Those men were some of the wealthiest and most powerful in Tullahoma. If they had some kind of private sex club going, they wouldn’t like it if anyone came poking around. Hell, the sheriff himself might even be a member.

  Wanda Nell dredged her memory for those names. Had the sheriff’s name been on the list? She couldn’t recall seeing it, and surely if she had seen it, she would have remembered.

  She relaxed a bit. No, Jesse Shaw’s name wasn’t on that list. But it didn’t mean he didn’t know about it. Nobody knew more about what was going on in town or in the whole county than the sheriff. He turned a blind eye to some things, and maybe this was one of them.

  “Wanda Nell! You got customers up here that need you.” Junior Farley’s bellow startled both women.

  “I’m coming,” Wanda Nell yelled back at him. She stood up, sticking the key card in the pocket of her polyester slacks.

  “What are you gonna do?” Katie Ann whispered to her as they moved up front

  “I don’t know yet,” Wanda Nell said in an undertone. She motioned for Katie Ann to see to the new customers while she went to check on Junior.

  While she got him the dish of blackberry cobbler he requested from the kitchen, she thought about what Katie Ann had told her. The girl was still holding out on her; Wanda Nell was sure of that Maybe because she was one of the women who worked at the club with Fayetta?

  Wanda Nell set the cobbler down with a thump. Katie Ann didn’t look the type to be doing something like that. She sure wasn’t like Fayetta, but Wanda Nell knew from long experience that you could never tell everything about a person from the way they looked.

  Would Katie Ann admit it if Wanda Nell challenged her with that question?

  After a moment’s reflection, Wanda Nell decided it didn’t matter, at least for the moment. Right now she had to figure out what she was going to do with the damn key card. This whole mess had suddenly gotten a lot more complicated, and she had to consider what she was doing very carefully.

  If she turned the card over to Elmer Lee and explained what it was—if he didn’t know already, and he just might— then she could be stirring up a real hornets’ nest. Really big and really mean hornets at that.

  But if she turned it in, could Elmer Lee keep her name out of it? Would he? He might not, just to dump her in the shit that would surely hit the fan. She never could tell with Elmer Lee.

  “I said, I need some coffee.”

  Junior’s petulant voice broke into Wanda Nell’s thoughts. Muttering an apology, she fetched the coffeepot and refilled Junior’s cup.

  “What’s with you today, Wanda Nell?” Junior demanded, frowning. Normally, he was jovial, but today he looked downright peeved with her.

  “Sorry, Junior,” Wanda Nell said, setting the coffeepot down on the counter. “I got a lot on my mind right now. I should be paying more attention, though.”

  Mollified, Junior said, “That’s okay. I understand.” He leaned over the counter, as far as his large belly would let him. “You think Melvin really did it?” he asked in a low voice.

  Wanda Nell regarded his chubby face, burned red by long hours in the sun. “No, I don’t. And I bet you don’t either. You know Melvin. You really think he could do something like that?”

  Junior shook his head and settled back on his stool. “Not over Fayetta,” he said. “He’d’a had to get in line. A real long line.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yep,” Junior said, his face solemn. “You probably don’t know my cousin Eli Farley. He works down at the John Deere place out on the highway. He’s a mechanic, and he’s pretty tight with his money, so he don’t eat out that much.”

  “No, can’t say as I do,” Wanda Nell said, hoping Junior would get to the point eventually.

  “Well, Eli, he lives on the same street as Fayetta. In the next block, across and catty-corner from her. I stopped by there last night to see him; he’s doing some work on my truck. I pay him real good, but he don’t charge me as much as they would down at the Dodge place. And I owed him some money, so I stopped off there, and we got to talking.” He paused for a sip of his coffee.

  “About what?” Wanda Nell said, trying not to let the frustration creep into her voice.

  “About Fayetta,” Junior said, a puzzled look on his face. “What’d you think I was talking about? Anyway, me and Eli got to talking, and he was telling me how he saw men coming and going sometimes from Fayetta’s house. Now, Eli can see the side of her house and her backyard from his front window, on account of his house being across the intersection and catty-corner. So he’s got a real good view.” He paused for more coffee. “Now, that don’t mean he spends all his time spying on his neighbors. He’s a good Christian man, and I reckon that’s why Fayetta being his neighbor bothered him.”

  “Uh-huh,” Wanda Nell said. She thought about taking his coffee away from him until he got to the point, but she knew she’d just have to be patient.

  “Yeah, old Fayetta had men slipping in and out of her house. They reckoned they was being real smart by sneaking in from the side and coming through the yard with the trees for cover, but Eli could see ’em.” Junior nodded briskly. “Yeah, he sure could. He thought about calling somebody about those kids of hers, but it seemed like their grandma was always coming and taking them away. Anyway, that’s about it.” He stared down into his coffee. “Oh, ye
ah. Eli said sometimes the house would be dark all weekend. Fayetta’d be gone, and so would her kids.”

  The weekends Fayetta was working at the club? Wanda Nell mulled that over. Could be.

  Junior’s rambling really didn’t tell her much new. Except that Fayetta had been even busier than Wanda Nell had thought.

  She tuned back, because Junior was still talking. “... talked to her mama a time or two, and Eli said she’s a pretty sharp old lady, but kinda mean where them kids are concerned. He was out working in his yard a coupla times when she came by to get ’em, and he said she was reciting Bible verses at ’em while she was putting ’em in the car.” He shook his head. “Ain’t nothing wrong with kids learning the Bible, but Eli said it was all verses about the wages of sin being death and all that. I don’t think it’s right to say that to kids all the time. You need to tell ’em good things.”

  “You’re right about that,” Wanda Nell said, feeling a bit guilty. She hadn’t been very good about seeing that her own children went to church on a regular basis. She really should make more of an effort to get there herself and set a good example. Maybe she’d try going to Mrs. Culpepper’s church, since TJ. was going there with his grandmother.

  What would the church say about TJ. if they knew?

  The thought hit her suddenly, and she felt a headache coming on. I’ll think about that later. I’ve got more’n I can handle right now. She put it firmly out of her mind.

  Junior didn’t have anything more to say, and Wanda Nell filled his coffee cup one more time. She cleared away the remains of his blackberry cobbler and went to wait on someone who’d just walked in.

  As she worked, she thought about what she should do with the key card she’d found. She knew she should give it to Elmer Lee, but those nagging doubts just wouldn’t leave her alone. She didn’t want the members of that club coming after her or her family if Elmer Lee had loose lips.

  No, she just wasn’t sure she could trust Elmer Lee enough. So, for the moment, she had to do something else.

  She could talk to Tuck about it. In fact, she should, because he needed to know about this. But she felt funny about Tuck now, after what she saw outside the courthouse. How could she; talk to him, or to T.J. for that matter, and not let on that she knew something?