Hark! The Herald Angel Screamed: An Augusta Goodnight Mystery (with Heavenly Recipes)

by Mignon F. Ballard

  I agreed. I was sort of holding out for Idonia’s sake to see if he turned up. I had left another message for Kemper earlier, asking him to call my cell phone number, and when it rang, I thought the policeman was getting back to me. But it was Zee on the other end and I could tell she was trying to sound calm. It didn’t work.

  “Lucy Nan, I can’t seem to find Idonia. Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

  hat time is it?” Ellis asked when I told her what Zee had said.

  The clock on my dashboard said four o’clock, but then it always says four o’clock since it stopped running two years ago. I looked at my watch. It was a little after one.

  “Has Zee gotten in touch with Idonia’s niece Jennifer?” Ellis said when I told her the time.

  “She didn’t mention it, but surely Jennifer would know if Idonia has decided to take off to Savannah or something.”

  “She wouldn’t go to Savannah. You know she wouldn’t,” Ellis said.

  I did know it and so I didn’t even bother to phone Jennifer at the high school but drove straight there. Luckily, Jennifer was on her lunch break when we arrived and when we explained the situation to the school secretary, she paged her right away.

  “She assured me she was all right when I phoned her yesterday,” Jennifer said when she met us in the office, “but frankly, I thought she sounded pretty stressed out. Are you sure she’s not at the house?”

  “Zee rang the bell and pounded on the door and she’s tried to reach her by phone several times,” I said.

  Jennifer hesitated briefly then spoke with the secretary. “I have a key to Aunt Idonia’s house. Just give me a minute to get my purse,” she told us, hurrying back to her classroom. Fortunately, we learned, the secretary had been able to find someone to take her last class.

  Ellis phoned Zee as we followed Jennifer to Idonia’s and told her to meet us there. I wasn’t surprised when Jo Nell and Nettie showed up as well.

  “Did you check to see if her car’s here?” I asked Zee when she skidded to a stop out front.

  “Of course, but she always keeps it in the garage and I couldn’t see inside,” she reminded me.

  “I told Idonia she was doing too much too soon,” Jo Nell announced as we waited for Jennifer to unlock the door, and although my cousin is the world’s greatest worrywart, this time I tended to agree with her. I tried not to think of our friend lying cold and still across her bed or crumpled on her kitchen floor, and I must’ve had Ellis’s arm in a death grip because she cried out that I was cutting off her circulation.

  A lopsided spray of drying evergreens tied with a red plastic bow rattled as Jennifer opened the door and stepped inside while the rest of us hovered briefly on the threshold as if our entering would bring the news we didn’t want to hear. The house was quiet and dim except for the light from a table lamp Idonia always kept burning in her family room. A holiday edition of a popular women’s magazine lay open in the seat of the worn green recliner where Idonia liked to sit. A pink poinsettia drooped in its pot on the coffee table and I stuck my finger in the soil. Idonia had overwatered it as usual.

  “Aunt Idonia!” Jennifer called, softly at first and then more urgently until the rest of us began to take up the cry as we made our way through the house. There was no answer.

  “She must have gone somewhere,” Zee muttered, and nobody answered, probably because we were all thinking the same thing: I hope she’s gone somewhere.

  Idonia’s bed had been neatly made and a still-damp towel was tossed over the shower curtain rail as if she had left it there in a hurry, which was most un-Idonia-like. The kitchen was clean and uncluttered except for a fat red candle surrounded by a wreath of pine cones that Claudia had given her for Christmas the year before on the kitchen table and a tin of cookies on the counter. Nettie lifted the lid and looked inside. “Charleston squares. Mattie Durham,” she said. And we all nodded in agreement because Mattie always brought Charleston squares when anybody was sick.

  Although I knew our friend had been there as recently as the day before, or even later, the house had an abandoned, neglected look, and it made me sad.

  “Car’s not here,” Jennifer called out, looking into the connecting garage, and I felt weak with relief.

  “Do you suppose she’s just out running errands?” Zee said. “Lord help us if she is when she finds we’ve invaded her house!”

  “No, here’s something on the dining room table,” Jo Nell called. “Looks like she’s left a note.”

  Jennifer’s name was on the outside of the envelope and she hurriedly ripped it open and read the contents, then silently held it for us to see. Idonia’s usual neat handwriting could pass for an example in penmanship, but this note was written hastily on one of those greeting cards you receive unsolicited in the mail, and we sighed in unison when we read it: Gone to meet Melrose. Don’t worry. Be back soon.

  Jennifer sank onto a nearby chair. “Has she lost her senses? She doesn’t even say where she went.”

  “Or why,” I said.

  Ellis and I exchanged looks before she spoke. “I don’t want to alarm everybody, but Al Evans said Melrose has been acting kind of strange lately, and he didn’t seem to know what to make of it. I don’t like the idea of Idonia going off to meet him like this.”

  I agreed that Al had seemed worried about his cousin, and now I was worried, too, especially when I remembered that Idonia had seen Melrose hurrying from the church the night Opal was killed.

  Jennifer’s face was white. “Good Lord!” she said when I told them. “Why didn’t she say something? Do you think he might have had something to do with what happened to Opal Henshaw?”

  “He could’ve had other reasons for being there,” Nettie reasoned. “Still, I think it’s time we talked to the police about this.”

  Jennifer was already calling the number.

  Guilt rode with me like a specter all the way to the police station. From what Al Evans had told us, Melrose might be unstable, and now Idonia had gone rushing off to meet him and we had no idea where she’d gone. I also wanted to wring her neck for making us worry like this.

  Beside me, Ellis echoed my very thoughts. “I’m going to kill Idonia if that Melrose doesn’t get to her first!” she said.

  I shuddered. “Ellis Saxon! Hush your mouth!” It sounded awful when somebody spoke it aloud. I wished Augusta were with us, but just then it was more important to speak with the police.

  “And I’d like to jerk a knot in that idiot Elmer Harris as well,” Ellis added as we pulled into the parking lot behind the station. “That man doesn’t have the sense God gave a billy goat!”

  The chief had told Jennifer that because Idonia was a grown woman and had left of her own volition, he couldn’t issue a missing person’s bulletin. Besides, he added, he wasn’t sure she’d been gone twenty-four hours yet. He did perk up when we told him she’d gone to meet Melrose, and asked us to let him know if we heard from her.

  “Let’s hope Kemper’s here or Ed Tillman,” I said as the six of us marched inside, an avenging army brandishing purses.

  “There he is!” Jo Nell shouted, ignoring Paulette Morgan, the dispatcher who sat at the front desk, and I knew news of our arrival would be all over town in less than an hour.

  Kemper seemed to cringe when he saw us, then immediately put up a bold front. “We need to talk,” I said as we gathered around his desk. And supported by the others, I told him about seeing Melrose at the outlet mall in Commerce and how Idonia had glimpsed him hurrying from the church the night Opal Henshaw died.

  “I’m beginning to think Idonia’s gone off the deep end,” Zee added. “She’s completely bonkers about this man and she doesn’t know a blessed thing about him.”

  Kemper sighed. Well, really it was more of a groan. He rubbed his face and then rubbed it again as if he could hide from us behind his hands. “Sit down, please,” he said. I noticed someone had brought the required number of chairs, and so we did.

  �
��It really would have been helpful if you had come to us with this earlier,” he said, and he seemed to be staring straight at me.

  I tried to explain that I had left a couple of messages for him earlier and that I didn’t know Melrose had left town until I spoke on the phone with Idonia on my way to Georgia a few days before. That’s when Kemper told us several choir members had seen a person of Melrose’s description at the church the night Opal Henshaw was killed.

  “Don’t forget to tell him about the locket, Lucy Nan,” Nettie urged me.

  Kemper picked up a pencil and put it down. “I’m assuming you’re talking about the locket that went missing the night your friend was drugged.”

  “Right,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’ve found it.”

  He shook his head. “What about the locket?”

  “We think it’s the same one the Tanseys’ daughter, Dinah, is wearing in a photograph on their piano,” I began.

  Kemper leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. He seemed to relax for the first time since we arrived. “Just because it looks like that doesn’t mean they’re the sa—”

  “The Tanseys’ daughter was married to Dexter Clark, the man who was killed out at Willowbrook,” I said.

  “Just how do you know this?” Kemper sat upright so fast I thought he might catapult over the desk.

  I didn’t answer. Just let him stew awhile, I thought.

  Ellis spoke quietly. “And Dexter Clark was Opal Henshaw’s nephew,” she said, meeting his gaze.

  “It’s in Opal’s obituary in today’s Messenger,“ Jo Nell said.

  Kemper picked up the phone. “Paulette, see if you can round up Captain Hardy—and you’d better put on another pot of coffee, too.”

  “You have several messages on your answering device,” Augusta told me when I finally got home later that afternoon.

  “Do you know who they’re from?” I asked. (Of course I knew she did. I don’t want to say Augusta’s nosy. Let’s just say she’s extremely curious.)

  “Two are from your friend Ben. I think he wants you to call him, and your daughter-in-law, Jessica, phoned to ask how much fabric she would need for the curtains you’re going to make for her.” Augusta didn’t even try to hide her smile as she poured some of her wonderful apricot tea into the fragile violet-flowered cups that had belonged to my grandmother. I turned on the tree lights in the living room and we sat on the sofa to drink it.

  “I’m too tired to answer them now,” I said, kicking off my shoes. “And you know very well I have no idea how much fabric she’ll need.”

  Augusta patted her lap and Clementine came up and laid her big head there. “She gave her window measurements and I wrote down the yardage she’ll need and left it by the phone,” she said, stroking the dog’s soft ears.

  “Augusta Goodnight, you’re an angel!” I said, raising my cup in salute. She flushed, but I know she likes it when I say that. “I just wish you could tell us where we could find Idonia,” I added.

  Augusta listened quietly as I told her about finding the note from Idonia and our subsequent meeting with several of Stone’s Throw’s finest. “Have they changed their minds about trying to locate Idonia?” she asked. I could tell she didn’t want me to know she was worried, but the stones in her necklace turned cloudy when she touched them.

  I told her I had heard Kemper tell Captain Hardy he was going to talk with Al Evans again and try to get some idea about where Melrose might have gone. The captain was heading out to Willowbrook to speak with the Tanseys.

  “Melrose must have phoned Idonia sometime yesterday,” I said, “and Kemper even suggested trying to trace the call, but Melrose had obviously used a cell phone.

  “Jennifer has left a message for Idonia’s son, Nathan, in case she turns up there but I seriously doubt if she went to Savannah. Poor Nathan! He must be a basket case by now. I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up on our doorstep tomorrow.”

  “You said yourself Idonia was looking forward to singing in Sunday’s musical program at your church,” Augusta reminded me. “I fully expect her to be back before then.”

  I wish I could’ve believed she meant it.

  Ben and I had discussed going out that night and taking in a movie, but after all my running around in search of Melrose, then Idonia and our talk with Al Evans, I was more inclined toward a quiet night at home. Ben picked up a recent comedy on DVD and we ordered a pizza and spent the evening in front of the television.

  “I’m dying to find out what the police learned from the Tanseys but I know they won’t tell me,” I said, polishing off my second piece of pepperoni with extra cheese. “I’m sure it must have been one of the Tanseys who took Idonia’s locket, but why do you suppose it’s so important? I wish I knew where it really came from.”

  Ben poured another glass of wine. “There’s one person who might be able to help you.”

  “I can’t imagine who. We’ve questioned just about everybody we could think of.”

  He picked up my copy of The Messenger and turned to the article that included Opal’s obituary. “Not everybody. What about Opal’s brother, Terrance Banks?”

  “The one who lives in Tennessee? I don’t think they were especially close. How do you think he could help us?”

  “Don’t forget, this Dexter Clark was his nephew, too,” Ben said. “He might know more about the relationship between Dexter Clark and the Tanseys’ daughter than you give him credit for, including how she came by the locket she wore. After all, Opal’s sister, Maisie, was Dexter’s mother, and the boy’s parents are both dead. This uncle seems to be the only one left to ask.”

  “Knoxville’s a big city,” I said. “How am I supposed to find him?”

  Ben finished the last wedge of pizza before he spoke. “Opal’s funeral’s tomorrow, isn’t it? Surely her only brother will be there.”

  was trying to decide what to wear to Opal Henshaw’s visitation when Claudia phoned the next morning. “Sorry I didn’t get back to you last night,” she said, “but I was late getting home from the staff party. What’s all this I hear about Idonia going off like that?”

  I told her what Idonia’s note had said and how we had gone to the police.

  “Where in the world do you reckon she went? Have you heard anything more?”

  “Not yet, but I’m hoping she’ll get in touch with Jennifer or Nathan,” I said. “Did you have a chance to talk with that girl who goes to the Tanseys’ church?”

  “Helen Harlan. She said Louella was at choir practice when Idonia’s locket was stolen. They had an extra rehearsal that night to get ready for Christmas.”

  “So much for that theory,” I said to Augusta, after assuring Claudia I’d let her know if I heard any more. “I was sure Louella Tansey was the one who took that locket.”

  Augusta clicked the remote and put her video exercise on pause. “Why Louella?”

  “You saw the film from Ralph Snow’s camera the same as I did,” I said. “Remember how he focused on people in the entrance hall toward the end of the evening? The only men who even came near those stairs were our minister, Pete Whittaker, and Andy Collins, the man who plays the dulcimer, and I can’t imagine why either of them would snatch Idonia’s locket. The rest were women.”

  Augusta resumed her ritual, bending to touch one foot and then the other. “Perhaps, as Ben suggests, Opal Henshaw’s brother will be able to explain the significance of the locket. I hope there will be an opportunity for you to speak with him at the service this afternoon.”

  “Or even earlier,” I said. “Ellis and I will be on the lookout for him at the visitation this morning, and some of us will be staying to serve lunch to out-of-town friends and family who show up.” I had taken one of Augusta’s pound cakes out of the freezer and Jo Nell was bringing her “Joyed-It” jam cake to serve with the fruit and sandwich trays we’d ordered.

  I saw Ellis’s car pull up out back before I even put on my makeup and glanced at the clock to see
if I was running late. “You’re early,” I said as she breezed in through the kitchen, stopping to drop the latest Sarah Strohmeyer mystery on the table.

  “This is such a good read, I thought Augusta might like it,” she said, helping herself to a slice of banana bread left from breakfast. “I know I’m early, but thought maybe you might’ve heard something from Idonia.”

  “Nothing yet but it’s still early. I’d give anything to know what went on out at the Tanseys’ yesterday.”

  Ellis plopped on the side of my bed and examined her leg. “Damn! I’ve got a run in these blasted pantyhose. Got an extra pair?”

  I tossed her one of several I had invested in at the Budget Shop and she kicked off her shoes and shimmied into them. “I’ll bet I know somebody who might tell us something,” she said.

  “If you mean Weigelia, there’s not enough time in the day to drag it out of her.”

  She grinned. “Not if you have the right bait. She’s been after me for ages for that old photograph my great-uncle Pruitt made of one of the first black schools in town way back when he had a studio here. I’ll have a copy made for me and let her have the original. She ought to have it anyway since a couple of her grandparents went there.”

  I blotted my lipstick and found some simple gold earrings I thought suitable for the occasion. “Go for it,” I said, hunting for my purse. “But don’t take long. We want to have plenty of time to track down Opal’s brother Terrance.”

  I brushed my hair and changed shoes three times before Ellis finally hung up the phone. “Well?” I said.

  “I don’t think she knew much more than we do, but Weigelia said Kemper seemed kind of upset about it. He went out there with Alonzo Hardy after they talked to Al Evans and it sounded like the Tanseys were pretty torn up over it. From what Kemper said, she—Louella—got all weepy, and Preacher Dave just turned kind of pale and clammed up.”

  “What about Jeremiah?”

  Ellis shrugged. “I don’t think Jeremiah was there at the time.”