by R. J. Lee
“Was she sick?”
“Not hardly. She sit me down at the table just like we doin’ right now and say to me, ‘I stepped in it.’ And I say back to her, ‘What you step in?’ I know she wudd’n talkin’ ’bout that silly poodle she got. I do know that dog definitely housebroken.”
“This is gonna be good, I can tell,” Wendy said, unable to restrain her glee.
“You got no idea,” Merleece told her, taking a big sip of her coffee before she continued. “Anyways, Miz Crystal say she got a phone call from Miz Helen Hope Williamson earlier that mornin’ ‘bout some committee they both sit on for the Rosalie Garden Club. Don’t know which one, but they havin’ some kinda trouble on it. I only know Miz Crystal then tell Miz Helen Hope loud as all git-out what a nuisance it is to work with some other lady on the committee. I believe it was a Miz Dickey or somethin’ like that. You know who that is?”
Wendy got a quick word in. “That would be Miz Ilona Dickey. I know that family well.”
“Anyways, Miz Crystal say she start goin’ on and on to Miz Helen Hope ’bout how tacky and picky Miz Dickey is and all like that—”
“Miz Crystal is a fine one to talk about being tacky,” Wendy managed as Merleece took a quick breath. “She’s always at the outer limits of taste, if you ask me. Money doesn’t automatically give you good fashion sense.”
“I know that’s right,” Merleece said as both women smiled broadly. “So what it all boil down to is Miz Helen Hope finally get a word in and tell Miz Crystal that Miz Dickey and her be close first cousins. I can still hear Miz Crystal carryin’ on like she in a Little Theater play with her arms goin’ in all directions at once: ‘Oh, what am I gonna do now, Merleece? I’ve offended one of the social goddesses of Rosalie.’ So, I say to Miz Crystal, ‘It cain’t be that bad.’ ”
“This is just too funny,” Wendy said. “Miz Helen Hope really will bite your head off for the least little faux pas or if you sneeze wrong around her.”
“So then Miz Crystal go on and on: ‘Oh, no? Can’t be that bad, you say? Miz Helen Hope, she hung up on me. She slammed that receiver down. Now, what am I gonna do, Merleece? Tell me what to do.’ ”
“And what did you tell her?”
“I tell her to calm down first and that she gone ruin her makeup and have to start her day all over again drawin’ on her face. The sun gone rise the next day, believe it or not, I say. Strawberry, these ladies have nothin’ to do but fuss and fight all the time, but they get over theyselves erry time that I remember. All that time I was workin’ for Miz Liddie Rose at Don Jose’s Retreat, I see it happen over and over. They all make up in the end, usually over they drinks. Many, many drinks, I have to say.”
“Too many to count, right? I remember talking to Daddy once about all the drinking that goes on here in Rosalie, and we both agreed that as small as this town is, it had to be the alcohol consumption capital of the country, bar none.”
“Ay-men to that.” Merleece sipped her coffee in smiling silence, as if she were enjoying the glow of an imaginary crackling fire in front of her. “But they is a lesson here. You gotta keep that mouth shut in Rosalie when you start runnin’ folks down. Look to the right, look to the left, and you best look behind you, too. You never know who related to who and who might be listenin’. They last names might be different, but that don’t mean they not blood kin somewhere along the line. A place like Rosalie can really get you in trouble when gossip get back to the right person. Seem like errybody related to errybody else—no matter what color they skin is or what church they go to. It can go a ways back, too. So I always tell Hyram and anybody else I know up in this town to do the smart thing and zip it if you know what good for you.”
“Wise advice,” Wendy said.
“You best b’lieve it is.” There was a lull during which Wendy checked something on her phone with a few strokes of her fingertip. Then, Merleece changed the subject abruptly. “Have they caught whoever kill Mr. Brent Ogle yet?”
“Nope. The investigation’s still ongoing, and they don’t seem to have made much progress. It’s more like they’re going round and round in circles.”
“Now you tell me the truth. You don’t think somebody gone get away with it, do you?”
Wendy could think of nothing to do but shrug with a helpless expression on her face. “Daddy’s told me more than once that some crimes never do get solved. They go cold, and the culprit’s never caught.”
Merleece shivered and made an unpleasant face. “I don’t like to think about that too much, Strawberry. I mean, the notion that somebody runnin’ round free here in Rosalie who actually did kill somebody else. You cain’t let the Devil get away with the Devil’s work.”
Wendy checked the time on her phone again and gasped softly. “Well, I do have to get on down to my little cubicle at the Citizen sooner or later. But I tell you what I’m gonna do before I leave. I’ll cut me a slice of your pie and nibble on it all day long. That’ll make me one happy reporter.”
“I guess I knew you coudd’n resist it too long, Strawberry,” Merleece said, finishing off her coffee.
They both rose from the table, and then Wendy said, “This was just so much fun. You don’t have to come over here just on your cleaning days, you know. You can drop by anytime so we can chat and catch up, especially if Miz Crystal gets to be too much to handle at the Manor. I know she can be off the wall at times.”
“I know that’s right. But we still Strawberry and Merleece, and nothin’ ever gone come between us.”
“Sisterhood, here’s to it,” Wendy said as the two women hugged it out. “I need more of this. Let’s go ahead and meet for lunch today at Simply Soul and order some a’ those greens we both like so much.”
“Don’t forget the corn bread, sister.”
“Can you manage Miz Crystal and get the time off?”
Merleece laughed as if she didn’t have a care in the world. “You just watch me, Strawberry. I just need to know what time.”
“Let’s be conventional and say high noon.”
“I got it covered.”
* * *
Ross’s approach with Hollis Hornesby in the interrogation room was different than it had been before. It had been Ross’s experience that when a suspect held back something important that subsequently came to light, it frequently resulted in cracking a case wide open. Ross didn’t necessarily think that Hollis had committed the murder yet, but he was not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt as much. It was time to press ahead and press hard.
“So tell me again why you thought you should withhold your little trip to the hot tub from us?” Ross was saying. “That doesn’t look very good for you right now, I have to tell you.”
Hollis looked very uncomfortable, and Ross could see beads of sweat across his forehead. “Like I told Miz Winchester, it was a combination of things. Shock when I realized what had happened to Mr. Ogle, and then fear that I might be accused of doing it if I revealed that I was there at all. Can’t you understand that? Listen to what you just said to me.”
“I can understand it, but nevertheless, you are a piece of the puzzle,” Ross told him. “Now that we know you were there around the time of the murder, can you tell us what time it was when you discovered the body? I can understand why you were reluctant to reveal that before, but if you did notice the time on your cell phone, tell us now. It will help us with our timeline.”
Hollis’s tone had an “eager to please” edge to it. “Yes . . . yes, I did notice. It was 6:29. Yes . . . I know that’s it. For some reason, I remember thinking, ‘Oh, it’s nearly 6:30.’ Isn’t that odd? Now, why would I think something like that when I’d just discovered a dead body?”
“I can think of at least one reason,” Ross said. “You could have been in shock, as you said. The brain doesn’t necessarily function logically at times like that. It does the best it can but often fails miserably.”
Hollis seemed to be jumping at Ross’s conclusion. “I’m sure you’
re right. I know you are. Why else would I have run into the hallway the way I did and knocked Miz Ogle over?”
Ross leaned forward, his trademark smile nowhere to be found. “Fortunately, she wasn’t hurt. Just startled. So when you decided to sneak back to the hot tub, your intentions were only to chew out Brent Ogle? Nothing else?”
“I swear,” Hollis said, raising his right hand. “At that point, I’d gotten so riled up about the things he’d said to my mother about funding the RCC that I was determined to tell him off. He had it coming, and I was just sick and tired of being abused by him, myself. If he had problems with me, it wasn’t because of anything I’d done or said to him. If you want my take, he just hated me because I existed. There are people like that, you know.”
“So when you found him, his head was leaning back on the edge of the hot tub and somebody had already clubbed him with that pestle?”
“Yes. Although I didn’t know what had caused that gash at the time. In any case, I did not have that pestle in my hand. After that, it was all so hurried, and my brain went to mush, as you know.”
Ross went silent but continued to catch Hollis’s gaze. His experience was telling him that Hollis was not someone who was capable of murder and that he was telling the truth about his ill-advised excursion to the hot tub. If nothing else, however, the timeline for the murder was being narrowed down—the window of opportunity that had existed that evening for foul play was definitely shrinking.
Ross told Hollis once again not to leave town and then dismissed him. Then, he began making notes:
1. the killer clubs Brent Ogle with pestle, runs away
2. Carly Ogle discovers the body first, heads back to locker room to get Wendy
3. Hollis Hornesby discovers the body right after that, panics, runs into hallway, knocks Carly Ogle down, who is returning to locker, and then runs to Deedah’s office
4. Wendy and Carly go back to hot tub together to see body
5. Wendy and Carly return to Deedah’s office to report the death to the others
Ross turned a page in his notepad and started printing again: Murder had to take place no later than 6:29; allowing at least a minute between time Carly and Hollis discovered body, murder had to take place before 6:28. Power lost at 6:13. Allowing at least a couple of minutes for someone to get pestle and get to hot tub—murder took place between 6:15 and 6:28. No more than a thirteen-minute window. Why can’t we narrow this down more? Get together with Bax and the map I made of RCC. Revisit this based on Hollis’s testimony.
Bax called Ross into his office around five-thirty and told him to take a seat. “Pike was just in here, and I just finished going over all his surveillance material. Very interesting stuff.”
Ross leaned forward in his chair expectantly. “And?”
“It appears my daughter’s instincts are still sharp and first-rate. No way was her initial impression incorrect that Gerald Mansfield’s various activities were not a matter of coincidence.”
“What happened today? Come on, give,” Ross said, the alarm clearly registering in his voice. “You’ve got me on the edge of my seat.”
Bax looked down at the notes Pike had made and started speaking with a certain disinterest. “Nothing in the morning going on. Mansfield showed up at the RCC around 8:30, and Pike says it was a snooze fest for the next three hours. But then, Mansfield got into his car around 11:35, and Pike followed him to the Citizen’s parking lot. For the next fifteen or twenty minutes, Pike says Mansfield just sat in his car in one of the spots, waiting around. Then around 11:55, Wendy came out of the building and went to her car. Pike says Mansfield waited long enough to follow her in his car, but not too obviously, and then Pike followed them both. Wendy met up with someone—a black woman—at Simply Soul for lunch, it looks like, a little after twelve, but Mansfield didn’t go in. Seems he parked his car down the street a ways and waited for her to come out of the restaurant, which was around 12:45 with the same woman. The two embraced. Wendy then returned to the Citizen, and Mansfield followed her back. After she went into the building again, he left in his car and returned to the RCC, where Pike says he remained until five o’clock. Pike followed him straight home after that. And that, my friend, is the end of the report.”
Bax finally looked up from Pike’s notes and cocked his head. “So then, what do we make of all this, son?”
“I don’t know, but it’s enough to bring him in for questioning. I’m creeped out by all of this, and Wendy is absolutely right. Something is going on, and we need to find out what it is.”
“You bring him in tomorrow, then,” Bax added. “Meanwhile, I think I’ll call up that daughter a’ mine and see if she was at all aware of Mansfield’s activities, since she knew about Pike’s detail.”
“Not much gets past our Wendy, as you know.” Then Ross summarized his interrogation with Hollis earlier in the day. “If he was telling the truth, maybe it gives us a better chance to narrow this thing down. Wendy and Carly are the only ones we know for sure who didn’t do this, at least based on their testimony taken together. They have each other’s backs. Still, we ought to be further along than that at this point.”
“That’s the way it goes sometimes,” Bax said. “It backs up and backs up on you, and then, all of a sudden, something unexpected happens and the dam bursts. You wonder why you didn’t see through the confusion and dead ends and red herrings to the solution all along.”
CHAPTER 13
It did not surprise Wendy in the least when her father called and told her the results of Pike’s detail, even though she had made no effort to be more conscious of her surroundings than usual all day. She had not caught a glimpse of Mansfield in her rearview mirror at any time—perhaps a tribute to his own skills at tailing someone more than anything else. Yet she felt a profound sense of relief now that everyone had arrived at the same conclusion: there was a story behind all of this, and perhaps it would help them all solve the case.
She and Ross had decided not to do anything together on this particular evening, although they had come up with a fun twist for a Halloween outing the evening after. They would get a reservation at The Toast of Rosalie and have dinner in costume just for the hell of it. But they would not coordinate their characters—they would just take potluck and see what kind of pairing turned up. To their way of thinking, that was the adult way to celebrate the holiday. No over-the-hill trick-or-treating, no trying too hard at somebody’s costume party; just a cocktail or two and a good steak or seafood dish for the main course.
In fact, Wendy had already made her choice and even rented her costume from Rosalie Painted Faces and Fantasies, the town’s shop of choice when it came to Mardi Gras and Spring Tours balls, parades, and cocktail parties. She would show up for their dinner date explaining herself to Ross as Titania, Queen of the Fairies, from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She had had plenty of “fairy princess” outfits—always a favorite of little girls everywhere—from which to choose. The one she had rented was silver and white with sequins glittering all over, and it came with a bejeweled wand and tiara for accessories. Indeed, the little girl in Wendy immediately came out to play after she had tried it on and taken a gander at herself from all angles in the three-sided mirror. She could easily picture herself lighting up The Toast of Rosalie with quite the sparkling display, and she also envisioned that Ross would have to go some distance to match it in form and figure.
It was after a light and simple supper of a toasted cheese sandwich with a small bowl of tomato soup that she sat back at the kitchen table and began turning things over in her head about Brent Ogle’s murder once again. That sleuthing gift of hers was bothering her again. Not in a bad way, of course. It was more a nagging feeling that she had that just wouldn’t go away. That she had overlooked something that she shouldn’t have. In fact, she even had the distinct impression that she might have overlooked more than one thing that she should reconsider.
For a moment, she thought about getting
up and doing the dishes, but then dismissed the idea. They could wait. They weren’t going anywhere. She had something on her mind, and she didn’t want to let go of it. As she focused with greater intensity, she decided that her recent session with Merleece might have triggered something. She laughed out loud for a second or two. What was it about Merleece’s applesauce pie that always refreshed her mental acuity? She had nibbled on it all day until she’d finished it off. Was it the sugar? No, she knew quite well the difference between a sugar high and a high tide of brains. Merleece had put her on the trail of something that she could not ignore.
Finally, the notion presented itself as if it were taking a bow with a bouquet of flowers after a grand theatrical performance:
Who all was related in Rosalie? Or something similar to that.
Names were no protection. Cousins had different names. Sisters took on different names than they were born with after they married. One, two, three generations could grow up with these name changes that disguised people’s relatedness over time. You had to be careful what you said about people in polite society because it could come back to bite you in the butt when you least expected it. Sometimes the price paid would be very dear, indeed.
That mental exercise led to another question that she had asked herself after doing research at the library:
What had happened to Coach Doughty’s family?
And then, it hit her. She realized she had made an assumption about something that might not necessarily be true. She had pored over all those football pictures at the library, and she remembered clearly that one shot in particular had seemed so familiar to her. It was the one of Coach Doughty on the sidelines all down in the face with slumping posture after losing a game he thought he had won, beating his archrival for the first time in many years. But that one extra second had defeated him and then had even cost him his job.
