Murder for a Rainy Day (Pecan Bayou Book 6)

by Teresa Trent

  "Danny doesn't like scary movies," I said.

  "It's not like they're real or anything," Tyler laughed. The look on Danny’s face indicated Tyler had made him feel silly.

  "Nevertheless, he doesn't like them." We finally decided to watch a series of sitcoms with the weather warnings running along the bottom of the television. The entire family settled in watching the aimless jokes and canned laughter.

  Pulling up a blanket around me, I listened to the sound of the rain pelting the windows. Then I smelled it, fresh paint. Had Aunt Maggie been painting recently? Leo’s joke about my pregnant nose had never been truer. It was almost overwhelming.

  I looked around the room. It was now quiet and I saw Connor Holman standing in the door. He wore a white t-shirt with a smiley face on it. At his throat was a deep gash leaking blood, dripping onto the floor.

  "You never knew me."

  "Only in death."

  "I didn’t have many friends in life. Glad I made one in death."

  "Who killed you, Connor?"

  "For me to know, and you to find out."

  "Couldn’t make it easy on me, huh? I saw some of your work. You were good. I loved the way you painted animals. You captured their beauty."

  "Thank you. Animals are pure and honest. They would never cheat on you. They will always help you step into the wind."

  "Why did you steal the animals?"

  "They were beautiful. I wanted to paint them all. It started with the horse, and then I just couldn’t stop myself. I needed to see those animals all the time. I had to paint them. Does that sound strange to you?" If he only knew.

  "Your work was so good, why did you sign it with a smiley face? You had to know it made your paintings look amateur," I said, knowing the truth might hurt his feelings. Then again, he was a ghost.

  "You don’t know creative expression. It didn’t feel right to me signing the name society had given me. Inside I felt like that little happy yellow guy, mostly… except when I found out about Sasha and that salesman."

  "So you knew?"

  "Sure. Sasha was much more complicated than I was. When she came home from work smiling all the time, I knew it had nothing to do with making biscuits for Benny."

  "So what is your message for me?"

  "Find my killer and when you do, be safe. The roads will be busy with comings and goings."

  "Do you mean the killer or the baby coming?"

  "Both."

  Danny and the boys laughed at a wisecracking teenager on the television, making me jump. I yawned and stretched, feeling the baby slide to one side. Comings and goings echoed in my brain. Connor Holman had joined the grisly crew delivering warnings. He wanted me to solve his murder as I had for the other victims from my dreams.

  I kept thinking there was some item I had missed at the crime scene. There had to be something there that would point to his killer. I thought back on his paintings. He painted all of those beautiful scenes, and then plastered a smiley face in the corner. It was a shame he didn’t go with a more professional trademark, because from what I had seen, his work was not that bad. There is a market for scenes of rural life, but like so many creative people, he didn’t know how to promote his own work.

  Maggie had been snoring quietly beside me. I looked up to see a notice running on the bottom of the TV screen.

  "Residents…of…Pecan…Bayou…a…storm…is…imminent…for…your…own…safety…pl

  ease…report…to…the…assigned…shelter…"

  "Okay everybody we’re traveling," Aunt Maggie said. "Let’s get going to the shelter. Everybody grab your bags. We're getting in the car in the next five minutes. Danny, get your pillow and your blanket.

  "I don't want to go to the shelter," Danny said. He did not do well with abrupt changes in his routine. It was for that reason Aunt Maggie almost never traveled. Spending a night in a hotel could be extremely stressful for both of them.

  "It'll be okay Danny. We'll all be there with you," Tyler said. Zach put his arm around his cousin. "Do you want to sit next to me in the car?"

  "I want to stay here."

  "I know, but we’ll have fun, and some of your friends might be there too," Aunt Maggie said.

  "Where?"

  "At the shelter. Let’s go see."

  "Okay," Danny said reluctantly.

  A few minutes later, as I scooted over onto the seat, I suddenly felt what started out to be a Braxton Hicks contraction. Something about this painless contraction did not seem quite so painless. I shifted in my seat.

  "Everything okay, Betsy?" Leo's mother asked.

  "Fine. I'm just fine."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Although I was pretty sure I was in the very early stages of labor something was bugging me. It was a nagging thought that pulled me away from the storm shelter.

  The cryptic messages were finally making sense, and I was pretty sure I knew what the people in my dreams were trying to tell me. If I followed through on their clues, they could point me directly to the murderer.

  Still, though, I felt trapped riding along in my aunt’s station wagon. If I could just take a half hour and check it, I could concentrate on the baby. I opened my phone and called Leo.

  "How is the storm chasing going?"

  "Great. We’ve seen a funnel cloud from less than a mile. It’s awesome! Oh no. Are you having the baby?" Leo asked, with just a little disappointment in his voice.

  "Doing fine." I wasn’t lying. I was doing fine in progressing towards labor. Labor could take anywhere from ten to twenty hours. He would be back in plenty of time.

  "Good. You had me worried there for a minute."

  "Are you going to be back soon? We’re evacuating to the shelter."

  "You of all people should know it's pretty hard to predict a storm. I promise we’re heading your way. From the way it looks, I should be out with them for less than an hour, and I'll join you at the shelter. As exciting as all of this is, I also have the feeling that this could be the day for the baby."

  Me too, I thought. "Well that's good to hear. I really want you with me tonight." I looked around the car to make sure my fellow passengers could not hear Leo’s side of the conversation. If I wanted to run a side errand, this was going to be the only way to do it.

  "Yes. I guess I could do that," I said into the phone. My words confused Leo on the other end.

  "I’m sorry, Bets. What did you say?"

  I continued with my fictional conversation. "Okay. I'll tell you what. I'll meet you in front of the police station. That works for me. How about you?"

  "The police station? Why would I want you standing outside at the police station in this weather? You should go to the shelter with the family. Are you feeling okay?"

  "Okay then, I guess I'll see you in about an hour in front of the police station. Don’t be late." I clicked the phone shut and turned and smiled as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

  Aunt Maggie's head jerked around from the front seat. "Did you say you're meeting Leo at the police station in an hour? What is he, crazy? Let me talk to him on that phone."

  I held up the phone to her.

  "Sorry, he already hung up. They were zeroing in on another tornado."

  "You have to be nuts if you think I'm going to let you stand out in front police station," Maggie said.

  My little subterfuge wasn’t working. I scrambled for a better reason to be at the station.

  "What he really said was Dad asked him to ask me to go into the police station and pick up some red flares for the storm."

  "Well that's simple. We can do that on our way."

  This was not getting any easier. "No, Aunt Maggie. I really want you to get the boys to the shelter. This is really no big deal and I’m just glad I can help, what with the police force being so busy with the storm. I think the flares are in the back closet. It won’t take me long, but I do have to search a little for them. By the time I find everything, Leo will be there to pick me up."

  Leo's mo
ther pursed her lips and began shaking her head. "Why don't I come with you? What if you go into labor?"

  "No, Gwyn. I really want you to be there with the boys. Tyler especially needs you there." I pushed hard on her fraternal grandmother instinct.

  "Is your cell phone charged?"

  I pulled out my phone and checked the bars. "Yes I’m fully charged. See?" I held it up for the entire car to count the bars.

  "I’ll be fine. You know, some women go two weeks over their due dates. If I feel anything suspicious, I’ll call you, and you can rush over to pick me up before Leo gets there. It's only an hour."

  "I really don't know about this, Betsy," Maggie said as she pulled up to the police station.

  "Call Dad and check if you don't believe me."

  Maggie thought for a moment, and then raised her hand to shew me out of the car. "I don’t like this, and if I don’t hear something from you in the next hour, we’re stormin’ the station, do you hear?"

  I pulled myself out of the car and waved goodbye, then pulled out my key to the station. My father gave it to me years ago when I was still a teenager. He wanted me to be able to get in the building even if they were locked down.

  As the door opened, the air in the station felt different. Most of the time there were emergency lights flooding the hallways, but tonight it was very dark inside. The police department building had been shut down to move the base of operations to the shelter. Even cops need to be safe.

  I felt on the wall and thankfully found a light switch. I knew the stolen items would be in the back of the building, in the impound yard. It was overcast and extremely dark outside, and I wished I had thought to bring a flashlight.

  As my eyes adjusted, I could see the outlines of shapes. I knew they were the animals, but they could have been anything, including a person. I found the outdoor flood lights and flipped them on. The beams of white electric light illuminated the eerie black shapes into the animals I had come to examine.

  Stepping out into the yard I walked to the side of the cow. Even with the flood lights on, it was hard to see. Relying on my sense of touch, I ran my hand along the lower side of the cow, feeling for the hole I had seen when it stood in Connor Holman’s yard.

  As I reached down, I felt the tug of the baby. There was a painful pulling down, and I knew I had to be dilating. I looked at my watch deciding to time what I knew was an early contraction. It wasn’t an intense contraction, and with Zach’s birth, at this point I was still many hours away from delivery. I leaned up against the fence and took a deep breath as the contraction waned.

  I went back to the cow, and putting my hand on the rough edge I tried to turn the cow itself. It was too heavy to move. Trying a new approach, I got down on my knees for a view of the underside of the cow. I reached along the crack again, and as I had suspected, there was a ragged hole that had been patched.

  The crack led me to what I was looking for. I punched my fist through the patched area and reached in. Was the smiley-face painter’s murder connected to whatever was inside this cow?

  My fingers landed on something that felt like a paperback book. When I pulled it out, I knew who had slashed the throat of Connor Holman.

  What I pulled from the cow was not a book, but a banded stack of bills, reminding me of cash in a bank vault.

  Stuffing the cash back up in the cow’s stomach, I backed out of the enclosure, turned off the light and returned to the front of the police station. With the crazy message I gave Leo, I knew he would turn the storm chasers our way. He probably thought I was out of my mind and in labor. He’d be right on at least one count, maybe both.

  I locked the front door of the police station and felt another contraction. I looked at my watch. It had only been six minutes since the last contraction. This one picked up a little in intensity. The rain and wind whipped around my ankles. I leaned against the wall waiting for the contraction to pass. Six minutes apart wasn't too bad, and it could go on like this for hours. I could do this, I reassured myself.

  Panic slowly crept into my forced calm. I was all alone on the deserted Main Street in Pecan Bayou. Everyone who could possibly help me was now in the shelter protected from the storm. The sound of the wind would block out my screams.

  For the last two weeks I couldn’t avoid everybody and their neighbor asking me if I was in labor. Right now, I would give anything for one person to ask me that irritating question. Yes! I would tell them. I’m in labor.

  "Is anybody listening?" I shouted. "I’m in labor!"

  A tear escaped from my cheek to the arm I was leaning on. I was going to have to deliver my baby alone in a storm, and it was all my fault. If I had just listened to Aunt Maggie, I wouldn’t be in this mess. I was alone. I should have at least shared my suspicions with my father. Maybe I could call Maggie and have her come pick me up. Before I could punch in her number, I spotted car lights approaching. I breathed a sigh of relief. Leo was here. I knew he would save me. I just knew it.

  I waved my hands over my head as the headlights came closer. Thank goodness. I was saved. For a car that had been chasing storms, there was a surprising lack of equipment attached to it. When the driver exited the car, I knew I had just made a deadly mistake.

  Lonnie Carello came over and took me by the arm.

  "Are you okay?"

  "I think I need to go to the hospital, or even the shelter."

  "Well of course. I'll be glad to drive you there. What in the world are you doing out here all by yourself?"

  I realized I hadn't taken the time to dig the extra flares out of the closet. My whole reason for being here was now a lie.

  "My husband told me to meet him here," I said as Lonnie helped me into the car. He reached out to me, and I was sure he was about to snap my neck. I flinched and then he handed me the seatbelt.

  "We need to be safe, especially now, little mama. I’m quite surprised your husband left you out in the storm. I certainly wouldn’t let my pregnant wife alone for a minute. Hey, I heard the funniest thing about you. Someone said you had a knack for solving murders. I had no idea you were so talented. Any ideas on our horse thief?"

  "My husband is with the storm chasers, and he told me he could just pick me up on the way. You know, I think I should probably just wait for him. He’ll be so upset if he doesn’t find me here. Maybe the storm slowed them down. You know, as a matter of fact, I think I'll just wait here for him."

  "I can't let you do that sweetie. You could going into labor right here, and you would be all by yourself. No. Papa Lonnie is going to take care of you tonight." He closed my door with a resounding click and headed for his side.

  I could just open the door and jump out. Would he drag me back? What kind of danger would it put me and the baby in? What kind of danger were we in already? My mind was racing, and as he got into the car I tried to open my door to get out.

  "No really. I'll just wait for my husband." Lonnie Carello put a hand on my other arm, squeezing just a little too tightly.

  "I can't believe you're refusing a ride from me. I won't hear another word. I couldn’t face myself if you got in trouble out here in the storm by yourself. Now let go of the door." His last few words were no longer laced with the artificial friendliness he was so full of when he first found me. I shut the car door and he hit the gas. I shot up a prayer as another contraction began. Let Leo find me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket. "I’ll just text my family and let them know I’m on the way."

  The bars I’d proudly displayed to my family earlier were now flat. The storm must have knocked out the cell tower. And my ability to call for help.

  "No coverage. I promised my family I wouldn’t be long."

  "So what were you doing at the police station all alone?" Lonnie asked.

  "I was checking on something."

  "Go on…"

  I didn’t answer, and hoped he would let it drop. No way could I tell him I had been at the police station digging
through the innards of a cow—his cow, which just happened to be stuffed full of neatly wrapped bills.

  Lonnie kept his eyes on the road. My heart was pounding so hard against my ribs, I wondered if he could hear it. Probably not, since the wind outside was getting louder by the minute. I looked up just as a plastic grocery bag collided with a swaying stoplight, wrapping around it like a bandage. My labor pains seemed to be mimicking the wind gusts. I crossed my arms over my middle.

  "Looks like it won't be too long now," Lonnie said.

  When I regained my breath I answered. "Yes. Were you headed to the shelter?"

  "… Sure," he answered.

  I knew Lonnie Carello hadn’t been driving to the shelter when he spotted me. Given the direction he was headed, he may have been coming from the shelter, but he certainly wasn’t going toward it. He was about to break into the police station, but before he could, he found me standing in front. I suspected he was lying, but wasn't sure what he suspected of me.

  "You know the shelter was back there," I said, pointing behind me. I hoped Carello was so new to Pecan Bayou he didn’t realize his mistake.

  "Was it? I just thought we would take a little shortcut." I don’t know what kind of shortcut he thought he was taking, but I thought it was a bad idea, since we were driving directly through the wind and rain.

  I tried to remain calm. If I couldn’t be calm, I had to at least sound calm in order to think my way out of this. I was escaping for two this time around.

  "Just what brought you to Pecan Bayou, anyway?" I asked, trying to sound friendly.

  The wind whipped more debris across our path. Before Lonnie could answer my question, a large pine tree uprooted and crashed onto the roof of a house.

  "Damn," Carello swore. "That was close."

  I desperately wished it had landed across the road because then I could have scrambled out of the car.

  "Pardon my French," he apologized. "You Texans sure know how to have a storm."

  "So where are you from originally?" I asked, still trying to sound normal, not terrified.

  "Chicago."