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

by Mignon F. Ballard

  “What’s so funny? What did he say?” Idonia asked.

  “He wanted to know if I thought you were getting even with him for that time he played hooky in junior high,” I said.

  Idonia’s eyes widened. “Nathan played hooky in junior high?”

  Ellis left soon afterward and Idonia was settled in the guest room for the night when I remembered there was something I meant to do. I looked at my watch. What time was it in Oregon? It didn’t matter. I picked up the phone and called my brother, Joel, whom I hadn’t seen in almost a year. He plans to come for a long visit soon after the holidays.

  It was late when, after a long chat with Joel, I finally crawled into bed and I should’ve dropped right off to sleep, but the events of the day kept playing in my mind. Idonia was safely back, thank goodness; the local police were aware of where the missing locket was hidden, and it looked as if they would make an arrest soon. Or as soon as they could locate Jeremiah Tansey. Had it been Jeremiah who buried the locket in the flour canister? Augusta seemed to think she knew who had put it there, but she wasn’t sharing her secrets.

  When at last I drifted off to sleep I dreamed of a young woman I took to be Dinah Tansey, only the Dinah in my dream was even younger than the girl in the photograph. She lay across a bed in a room with yellow walls and white curtains at the window and she was crying. It wasn’t at all like the room we had seen at the Tanseys’ cottage except for the locked door. But in my dream the door was bolted from the inside.

  “There’s something I want to run past you when we get a chance,” I whispered to Ellis in the choir room the next morning. With Idonia there I hadn’t been able to discuss with Augusta what was on my mind, and we had to rush to the church after a hurried breakfast.

  Ellis adjusted her stole and mine. “We have an hour break between services. Maybe we can sneak away to the parlor. Can it wait till then?”

  I nodded. I guessed it would have to.

  “Will Augusta be in the congregation this morning?” Ellis asked, checking to see if her music was in order.

  “You might not see her, but she’ll be there both times. You know how she loves Christmas music,” I said. “And Idonia says Melrose is coming, too.”

  Ellis sniffed. “He’d better!”

  But try as I would, I couldn’t find Melrose DuBois among the people attending the Lessons and Carols program although I scanned every row while our minister read the scriptures, and again during the offertory until I felt my eyes would cross.

  Idonia’s son, Nathan, sat in the second row flanked by his wife and daughter and I don’t believe he took his eyes off his mother for one second. I didn’t blame him. Idonia had a nervous, distracted look as if she wanted to bolt at any minute. A few days ago she had been pleased when she heard Nathan would be bringing his family, and now, after hours of rehearsals, all she could think of was the absence of one Melrose DuBois. God help him if he didn’t show up for the eleven o’clock service, I thought, because if the police didn’t track him down, I would!

  Ellis closed the door to the parlor behind us and, kicking off her shoes, curled up on one end of the sofa. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Has Idonia heard any more from Melrose? She seems in a bad way—did you notice? I’ll swear, if that little jerk doesn’t show up for church this morning I’m going to wring his neck.”

  “Let’s hope he’s there at eleven,” I said. “He’d better not be leading her on! I felt bad about leaving her there in the choir room. I know she wondered where we were going.”

  “Maybe some of Cissy’s turtle bars will cheer her up,” Ellis said.

  Our choir director always baked her fabulous cookies made with chocolate, brown sugar, and pecans to go with the other goodies choir members brought to eat between Christmas services. Most of us, I’ve learned, will grab any chance to have a party and I hated missing this one, but I needed somebody to tell me I wasn’t crazy.

  “Ellis,” I began, “I had the strangest dream last night. Have you ever wondered if Dinah Tansey might still be alive?”

  “Lucy Nan Pilgrim, you are totally, absolutely, and undeniably crazy!” my friend said. “What makes you think a thing like that?”

  I told her about my dream and reminded her that Dinah’s family wasn’t told of the girl’s death until after she was buried. “What if she never died?”

  Ellis frowned. “Then who’s buried in her grave?”

  “Maybe there isn’t any grave. Maybe Dinah Tansey is the ghostly woman who haunts Willowbrook.”

  “Now wait a minute, Lucy Nan, let’s don’t get carried away. You aren’t thinking she actually lives in that room we found? Dinah would be in her twenties now and the clothes we found, everything was for somebody much younger.”

  Someone passed by the door and Ellis waited to continue until the footsteps went away. “And why in the world would she do it? She’d have to be—well, you know—”

  “Crazy,” I said. “I wish there were some way we could find out for sure.”

  “I believe there is.”

  I looked up to see Augusta standing before us. “The music this morning was lovely,” she said. “But if you want any of those refreshments, you’d better hurry. I’m afraid the others have already taken care of most of it.”

  “How?” I said.

  Augusta glanced at herself in the mirror that hung over the sofa. Today she wore a garment of what looked like golden filigree over a deep green satinlike dress that swirled when she walked and brought out the turquoise depths in her eyes. “How what?” she asked.

  Today I had little patience with her vanity. “How can we find out if Dinah Tansey Clark is really dead?”

  “If what I’ve read is correct, they have to issue a death certificate when someone dies. If you can find out where she was supposed to have died, they should have one on record,” she said.

  “Augusta Goodnight, you’re a genius!” I threw my arms around her and sensed her serenity like a balm. “But how are we going to learn that?”

  “Preacher Dave would be the most likely source,” Ellis said, “but if she really isn’t dead and the family is keeping her there in secret, he certainly isn’t going to tell us the truth.”

  “Soso,” I said, remembering my conversations with Aunt Eula and her kin in the small Georgia town. “Dinah was a friend of the Shackelfords’ daughter Carolyn. Maybe she kept up with her after she married. I’ll call Aunt Eula as soon as we get home.”

  But I immediately shoved that to the back of my mind when we processed into the sanctuary for the second time that day and that scumball Melrose DuBois was nowhere in sight.

  “I’m worried about Idonia,” Jo Nell had confided when we met briefly in the ladies’ room earlier. “First she disappears and now she looks like she’s about to jump out of her skin. It’s that Melrose again, isn’t it?”

  “He’s supposed to show up at one of the services this morning,” I explained. “Idonia said she had his word on it.”

  “Ha!” Jo Nell snorted, letting the door slam behind her.

  Ben smiled up at me from an aisle seat and I smiled back remembering he would be taking me to lunch after church at one of those new steak restaurants out on the highway. Roger sat near the front with Jessica and Teddy, and Julie would soon be home for Christmas. If only things would work out for Idonia! How rude and inconsiderate of that pipsqueak Melrose to put a damper on our holidays!

  Nathan Culpepper stationed himself by the choir room door as soon as the service was over and I remembered that he expected his mother to go back to Savannah with him for Christmas. I wasn’t surprised to find Idonia waiting for me as I hung up my robe. “Lucy Nan, you’ve got to help me,” she said. “I can’t leave with Nathan today—I just can’t! Something’s happened to Melrose, I know it.”

  I could see that this was not the time or the place to try and convince her that Melrose DuBois might not be the knight in shining armor she thought him to be. Instead I sent frantic eye signals to Zee and Jo Nell who
stood behind her putting their music in appropriate stacks according to Cissy’s directions, and Jo Nell, bless her heart, came over and put her arm around Idonia.

  “We’re so glad to have you back,” she said. “Don’t you dare scare us like that again!” And Idonia, ever the one with the stiff upper lip, began to cry.

  “Honey, he’s not worth it,” Zee said with tears in her own eyes. “If the man’s going to make you unhappy like this, you’re well rid of him.”

  “You don’t understand. He’s in trouble—bad trouble, and if we don’t find him, it might be too late.” Idonia accepted a tissue and used it accordingly.

  “What kind of trouble?” Ellis asked. “I thought you said you knew where he was.”

  “I did yesterday. It’s today I’m worried about. I’m afraid he’s gotten in over his head.” Idonia sank onto the nearest chair. “Melrose has good intentions—I know he does, but he has no idea who he’s dealing with, or, I’m afraid, how to go about it.”

  “How to go about what?” I asked.

  Idonia took another tissue and shook her head. “Detective work. He’s been taking a correspondence course in how to become a private investigator, and he says he’s on the trail of the person who drugged my punch and stole the dogwood locket. Melrose thinks it’s all tied up with the murder of that man you all found at Willowbrook and what happened to poor Opal Henshaw.”

  And Idonia Mae Culpepper began to cry anew.

  lease don’t worry, Idonia,” I found myself saying. “We’ll work it out somehow. I think it’s time to bring the police into this, and you’re going to have to tell Nathan what’s going on.”

  “Tell Nathan what?” Suddenly Nathan was standing beside us, and I saw Ben in the doorway behind him wondering, probably, what was taking me so long.

  “Look, all of us have to eat lunch,” I said. “Unless you have other plans, why not meet somewhere and discuss this calmly? Ben and I were thinking of Big Jake’s out on the north end of town.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Idonia said.

  “Well, I am,” Nathan told her, “and Big Jake’s sounds just fine to me.”

  And so it was decided. Ellis had family coming for lunch, Claudia had already left for home, and Jo Nell was expecting some of her husband Paul’s kin to drop by, but Zee and Nettie joined us at a table for eight, which included Sara and Millicent, Nathan’s wife and daughter. Over two hours later when just about everyone else had left the restaurant and the busboy began pointedly sweeping under our feet, Nathan finally agreed to stay in Stone’s Throw one more day to await news of the whimsical Melrose DuBois. Idonia, however, was to take her story to the local police.

  “Lucy Nan, you will come with me, won’t you?” she said when leaving the restaurant. “I mean, after all, you were at Bellawood when the locket was taken, and you said you saw Melrose at that mall in Georgia. Besides,” she added, “those Tanseys, who seem to be mixed up in all this, work for your family, don’t they?”

  Well, what could I say? If there was ever a time a friend needed support, this was it, and besides, I was dying to find out what had happened after we left the Tanseys’ place the night before.

  Ben, who would be leaving that afternoon to spend Christmas with his son Greer in Atlanta, kissed me briefly before we left in separate cars. Because Greer is in his last year of residency at Emory University Hospital, he wasn’t able to get away, and Ben didn’t want him to be without family, even though they might not have a chance to spend much time together. “See you in a few days,” he whispered, as I drove away, and I grew warm at the thought. We had agreed to exchange gifts at a ski resort in North Carolina in early January, and the fact that neither of us knew how to ski didn’t bother us a bit.

  Earlier I had phoned Eula Shackelford in Soso and left a message for Carolyn to call me at my cell phone number, but as yet she hadn’t returned my call.

  I found a familiar vehicle in the parking lot behind the Stone’s Throw police station and a familiar figure in it. I wasn’t surprised when Ellis got out of her car to join me in mine. “Zee called and told me you all would be here,” she said, “but you might as well just stay where you are because they won’t let you in the room while they talk to Idonia.”

  “Then how am I supposed to give her comfort and support from out here?” I wailed, settling down to wait.

  “I hope they don’t arrest her for being an accomplice—or, what is it? An accessory after the fact,” Augusta said from the backseat, startling both Ellis and me.

  “Good grief, Augusta! You just about scared me to death,” I said. “And that’s not even funny.”

  “I didn’t mean it to be,” she said. “But I believe she’ll be all right. Her son seems a solid sort, and I expect she’ll be glad of his presence after all.”

  With eyes on the door where we hoped our friend would soon emerge, we settled in to make the best of the situation, and had been there only a few minutes when my cell phone rang.

  Carolyn Shackelford Haney had a voice as rhythmic and full of humor as her mother’s and I could hear a baby trying very hard to talk in the background. I told her I was looking for someone who had kept in touch with Dinah Tansey after her marriage to Dexter Clark, who might know where she died and was buried.

  “It was somewhere in North Carolina,” she said, “but I can’t think of the name of the town. I kept several of her letters though, and if you’ll wait just a minute, I’ll go get them. I know Mama wouldn’t throw them away.”

  I was going to tell her I would call her back, but she had already gone in search of the letters. A few minutes later I heard hurried footsteps approaching. “It was Asheboro,” Carolyn said breathlessly. “I should’ve remembered because we drove through there looking at furniture once and I went to visit her grave.”

  “So you actually saw where she was buried?” I asked.

  Carolyn didn’t speak for a minute and when she did it was with emotion. “Dinah and I were friends since the fifth grade, but it was about a year after she died that I got a phone call from Dexter telling me what had happened. He cried, wanted to see me, to talk, I guess—seemed to be sorry … I don’t know, but I did come. I came for Dinah. She was a gifted musician, you know. Played the piano and the flute. Dinah could’ve done something with her life. Instead she—” Her voice broke.

  “That must have been a tragic experience losing a friend like that—and one so young,” I said. “Carolyn, there’s a reason I’m asking you this, but I need to know when Dinah died. Do you remember the date?”

  “I sure do. It was April 17, 2002, the day my nephew was born. The little dickens was three weeks early.”

  I thought of the beautiful young girl dying too soon, and although it made me sad, it also made me furious. This could’ve happened to my own headstrong daughter, Julie. It might happen yet. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “It seems like such a waste. What on earth do you suppose made her go off with somebody like Dexter Clark?”

  Carolyn hesitated before she spoke. “I think she did it to get away from that house,” she said.

  But when I asked her what she meant, she wouldn’t say any more.

  “How do you know Dinah was really in that grave?” Ellis said when I repeated our conversation.

  I hadn’t thought to ask Carolyn if there had been a stone. “We’ll have to wait until tomorrow and call about the death certificate,” I said. “All the county offices will be closed on Sunday.”

  “No, we won’t,” Ellis reminded me. “Now that we know where and when Dinah was supposed to have died, we can access that on a computer.”

  Augusta sighed. “Glory be! I should’ve thought of that.”

  “I wish we had one with us,” I said. Now that we were this close to learning the truth about Dinah’s death, I couldn’t bear to wait.

  “What about your friend who works for the college?” Augusta asked. “Wouldn’t she have one of those machines?”

  “Claudia! Of course. I know she used to do a lot of free
lance work from home,” Ellis said. “Let’s hope we can catch her before she goes off somewhere.”

  We were in luck. “Ohmygosh! Do you really think she might not have died? Wait a sec, let me turn off this food processor.” Claudia, I learned, was in the middle of making clam dip for a family party. “I can look it up now if you can hold, or did you rather I call you back?”

  I was going to tell her we’d wait when Ellis let out a shout, “Here she comes!” And I looked up to see Idonia coming out of the building with Nathan and his family.

  At least they didn’t arrest her, I thought. Not yet, anyway. “Idonia’s just leaving the police station, and as far as I can tell, she’s not in handcuffs,” I told Claudia. “Just give me a call on my cell phone when you know something, okay?”

  “Will do, if you’ll fill me in on Idonia,” she promised.

  Nathan, I noticed, had a firm grip on his mother’s arm and she signaled frantically for us to follow them as they left the station and turned in the direction of Idonia’s house.

  “I’ll ride with you,” Ellis said when I hesitated to follow. “We don’t want to lose them.”

  Nathan’s wife and daughter were leaving Idonia’s as we drove up; they had things to do to get ready for Christmas, Nathan explained. He and his mother, he added, would be following them in the morning.

  Augusta accompanied us inside, then disappeared, but I knew she was there listening. Like Ellis and me, she couldn’t bear not to know what was going on.

  Yawning, Nathan excused himself to take a short nap, as, he said pointedly, he didn’t get much sleep the night before.

  Good, I thought. Now Idonia can tell us what went on during her interrogation with the Stone’s Throw police.

  She didn’t waste any time. “Bless his heart,” she said as her son left the room. “I’m afraid he’s a bit miffed with me.”

  “He’ll get over it,” I said. “What did the police have to say? They didn’t tell you not to leave town, did they?”