by Anne George
“And Dusk Armstrong. Apparently she hadn’t known he was here in Birmingham, though. She said she hardly knew him, anyway.”
“Well, somebody knew him and didn’t like him.” I sipped the Lemon Zest carefully. It was delicious.
Sister stirred her tea with her finger. “And they had to stick the knife in him just as they started the chorus-line kick toward the front of the stage because he lined up with the others and seemed okay.”
“Which narrows it down to the Elvises on either side of him, wouldn’t you think?”
“That’s what I told Virgil and he said no, that when they were lining up, anyone could have sneaked up behind him. The one on his left was Larry Ludmiller, remember. Tammy Fay’s husband.”
“Tammy Sue.”
Mary Alice shrugged.
“Who was on his right?” I asked.
“Virgil didn’t say. I don’t think whoever it was knew him, though. The Mooncloth guy, I mean.”
“Well, Larry didn’t, either, did he?”
“Says he never saw him before in his life. Wondered who the hell he was when he danced out onstage.”
“Strange.” I sipped the hot tea carefully.
“I told Virgil. I said, ‘Virgil, maybe it was someone with a bad case of Elvis envy.’”
“Elvis envy?” I nearly spat the tea out.
Sister frowned at my reaction.
“Elvis envy?” I repeated when I had swallowed safely. “Is this some kind of psychological problem that leads to violent behavior?”
“How should I know?”
I rubbed my forehead. I felt a headache beginning.
We both jumped when the doorbell rang. Mary Alice spilled tea on her Yul Brynner outfit and muttered, “Shit.”
“Who could that be?” I wondered.
“Probably a Girl Scout selling cookies. Isn’t this the time of the year?”
“In the pouring-down rain during school hours? You’re nuts.”
“Well, go see,”
For a moment I thought it might be Charles Boudreau, that he had followed me looking for Marilyn.
The bell rang again. For the second time that day I looked through a front-door peephole. This time I was delighted at what I saw. I opened the door to Officer Bo Mitchell of the Birmingham Police Department.
“Bo! Come in.” I started to hug her, but she held up her hand.
“I’m wet as a duck’s butt.” She stepped into the foyer. “You know, something just told me it was you when the call came in.”
“What call?”
“Breaking and entering. Burglary. Various and sundry. I told myself, I said, ‘Bo, if it’s various and sundry it’s going to be Patricia Anne and Mary Alice. You can bet on it.’”
“What are you talking about?”
“The burglar alarm, Patricia Anne. The one you have thirty seconds to enter the code for before we start calling, which we did and you didn’t answer.”
“Oh, shit.” I rushed back to the kitchen, opened the pantry door and punched 5-7-7-2.
“What’s the matter? Who is it?” Sister was standing at the sink rubbing her martial arts top with a wet paper towel.
Bo grinned at Sister’s outfit. “Shall we dance, dum dum dum?”
Sister twirled around. “Hey, Bo. I’m taking a martial arts class.”
“Good, you’re going to need it in prison because you’re under arrest for breaking and entering.”
“Damn. The burglar alarm? Why didn’t you call us?”
“We did. The phone’s disconnected.”
“That’s one more thing I need to do.” I reached in my purse, got out my little notebook, and wrote, Call phone company. “They’re coming home the first of April, Bo. And Haley’s pregnant.”
“Well, I declare.” She pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. “Boy or girl? Or does she know?”
“A girl.” I got another cup from the cabinet, filled it with water, and put it in the microwave. “Her name is Joanna because she was blessed by the pope.”
“Joanna Paula?”
“Hmm. I hadn’t thought about that.” I got a tea bag from the box. “Lemon Zest?”
She nodded and shrugged out of her raincoat.
“What have you been doing, Bo?” Sister asked, sitting down beside her.
“This afternoon? Fishing a dog out of Village Creek. Either of you want a dog? Woofer could use the company, Patricia Anne.”
“He’s too old to learn to share, Bo.” I handed her the cup of hot water and the tea bag.
“I think Joanie’s going to take him, anyway, if nobody claims him. He kissed her when she wrapped him up in a towel.”
“She’s not out in the car, is she?” Joanie Salk is Bo’s partner. Joanie is tall, thin, and white; Bo is short, plump, and black, though not as plump as she had been when we first met her. She has decided that she is going to be the first woman chief of police in Birmingham and has started working toward that goal. I think she’ll succeed.
“No. She’s taking a course at UAB. I dropped her off. She said to tell y’all hey.”
“You really knew it was us?” Sister asked.
Bo grinned and sipped her tea. “I guess y’all were at the Alabama Theater last night when that Elvis guy was killed, too, weren’t you?”
“In the front row,” I admitted. “How did you know?”
“Stands to reason the way you find bodies. You know folks are going to quit inviting you to their parties, don’t you?”
Sister gave me a dirty look. “It’s Patricia Anne’s fault. I never saw a body in my life until she retired.”
I swatted at Yul Brynner with a paper napkin.
Bo burst out laughing.
“What?” we both asked.
“I saw Sheriff Stuckey down at the station, y’all. He was telling me about last night. He’s a nice man, Mary Alice.”
“So nice I’m marrying him in May.”
“Well, I do declare.” Bo swirled her tea bag gently in her cup. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks. You’ll be getting an invitation.”
“She’s planning on the attendants wearing magenta and sunflower,” I grumbled.
“Have mercy. I wouldn’t miss that for the world.” Bo put her tea bag on the saucer and smiled at me. “I’ll bet you’re the magenta, Patricia Anne.”
“She’s acting a fool about it, too.” Sister said. “You know what a beige person she is.”
“I’m not a beige person.” I pointed to my blue sweater.
“Nothing wrong with beige.” Bo took a sip of her tea. “Umm, that’s good.”
“Have the police found out anything about the man who was killed last night?” I asked. “Like what he was doing here? We heard that none of the other Elvises even knew him.”
“Y’all know more than I do. Y’all saw it happen. All I’ve been doing is fishing dogs out of Village Creek.”
“All we saw was him falling into the orchestra pit,” Sister said. “That was enough to give me nightmares all night.”
“Me, too. We thought he was having a heart attack. We didn’t know about him being stabbed.”
Bo nodded. “Probably a switchblade the way it went in and then up. You can get such a good grip on a switchblade, you can do a lot of damage in a second.”
Sister and I both put our tea down.
“They haven’t found it?” I asked.
“Not that I know of. I’m just guessing about the switchblade anyway. We haven’t gotten the report back.”
“But someone would have had blood all over them wouldn’t they? I mean your hands would be right up against the body if you were gripping a switchblade, wouldn’t they? And all the Elvises had on white suits. Looks like that would be easy to check out.”
“Might not have been much blood at all,” Bo said. “A punch, a little push up and across, and then out. Real quick, and you’ve got the aorta that’s bleeding inside, not out.”
“My Lord,” Sister said. She had turned a green
ish color. “Y’all change the subject. This is gruesome.”
“God’s truth,” Bo agreed. “Tell me about the wedding.”
Which Sister did, in detail. A lot of details that I hadn’t heard. I swear I think she was making it up as she went along. No sane person would plan a wedding reception in a pasture. There’s bucolic and there’s idiotic. Sister was opting for the latter as far as I was concerned.
Bo finished her tea and said she had to get back to work, that probably folks were sitting on top of their cars under the Fifth Avenue viaduct waiting to be rescued. Lord only knew why, but it seemed like they aimed for that spot every time it rained hard. She put on her coat and told us to behave ourselves. We promised that we would. It wasn’t until she had driven off that I remembered that I hadn’t told her about Griffin Mooncloth’s appointment with Debbie. I was sure Debbie had already called and reported it, though.
“I’m going to go upstairs and see if there’s a rocking chair,” I said. “I wonder which room they’ll use for the baby.”
“That little room next to the master bedroom. The one Philip uses for his office. The one with all his computer stuff in it.”
“Of course.” We grinned at each other. Dr. Philip Nachman’s life was in for some big changes.
“A switchblade,” Mary Alice said as we went up the steps. “Sounds like West Side Story, doesn’t it? With those rumbles. Sort of old-fashioned.”
“Old-fashioned, my foot. The kids at school call them flicks. And they’re easier to hide than guns.”
“You’re just full of information, aren’t you?”
“You’re full of it, too.” I expected her to swat me on the behind, but she had apparently missed the barb. I had just relaxed when she yelled, “Yaa!”
I leaped over two steps to avoid whatever my sister, who had suddenly turned into Chuck Norris, was about to do to me.
“It works, doesn’t it?” she said, smiling.
Six
“Impregnate Marilyn?”
Fred and I were sitting at the kitchen table eating the barbecued chicken, baked beans, and potato salad without mustard (we hate potato salad with mustard in it) that I had picked up at the Piggly Wiggly on my way home. Rain was still hitting the windows and Woofer was lying under the table. I had pulled off my shoes and was rubbing him with my sock feet.
“I swear that’s what he said. He even repeated it.”
Fred frowned. “Sounds like a crazy man. I’m glad you didn’t let him in. What did Mary Alice say when you told her?”
“I didn’t tell her. I talked to Debbie, and she’d had a message from Marilyn saying not to tell her mother.”
“That some man was showing up to impregnate her?”
I helped myself to more potato salad. “Debbie’s not sure. Marilyn must have been calling from her car phone and the message was garbled. But that might have been what she was talking about.” Under the table, Woofer rolled over and gave a little sigh of pleasure as my feet massaged him. In the den, Muffin was stretched out on the sofa asleep, her head resting on a pillow.
“I’m not giving that precious cat back,” I said, pointing toward her.
“I know.” Fred wiped his hands on a paper napkin before he reached for another piece of chicken. “Did Debbie know this man?”
“No. She doesn’t have any idea what’s going on.”
The sound of the rain was steady, hypnotic. I was suddenly grateful for my warm, dry house, for the furry body beneath my feet, for the lovely man scarfing down barbecue chicken across from me. It was one of those moments that you want to save, when you realize how lucky you are.
“Well, Marilyn’s always had good sense. She can take care of herself. You don’t think this man is dangerous, do you?” Fred asked.
“He just seemed upset.”
“Well, we’ll find out what it’s all about eventually.” He took a bite of chicken and said, “Umm, that’s good. You need to get the Piggly Wiggly’s recipe, honey.”
There went the moment. I hesitated and decided not to take offense. I’ve learned in forty-one years of marriage that half the time I get mad at Fred, he has no idea what he’s said or done that could possibly have upset me. Besides, it’s hard to get mad at a man with barbecue sauce on his nose.
“Wipe your nose,” I said.
The evening continued peacefully.
We took our coffee into the den and turned on the news. We had had three inches of rain. Village Creek was flooded. Tonight’s designated challenge-the-elements reporter pointed toward the rushing water, rain pop-popping on her umbrella. “A train of rain choo-chooing from the Gulf is causing this,” the wind-blown reporter—obviously the mother of small children—explained.
Then back to the studio and the story of the murder at the Alabama Theater. Griffin Mooncloth, Elvis impersonator, killed at a benefit for the restoration of the statue of Vulcan.
A tape: Mr. Wurlitzer pointing toward the floor of the orchestra pit. “Right here. Missed smushing the organ by inches.” A look of sadness. “That would have been a great loss.”
“Lord,” Fred grumbled, clicking over to Wheel of Fortune.
“We forgot to turn off the burglar alarm today at Haley’s,” I said while Vanna was turning over three S’s. “Bo Mitchell came to investigate and told us that the Mooncloth guy was probably stabbed with a switchblade knife.”
Fred was interested enough to turn down the volume. “From the back? What did it do? Hit a kidney?”
“Bo said he wouldn’t have died as quickly as he did if it hadn’t hit something like his aorta.”
“From the back? What about ribs? Wouldn’t the blade have been deflected?”
I clasped an imaginary switchblade and held my hand slightly sideways. “Put the side of your hand beside the spine, turn it, click the knife, in, up, and jiggle a little sideways. If the blade is long enough you get the aorta.”
“And there’s blood everywhere. We didn’t see any blood.”
“He’s bleeding inside. The knife makes a small entrance slit.”
“Did the police find the knife?”
“No. Whoever did it probably snatched it out, closed it, and put it in his pocket.”
Fred tapped his chin thoughtfully with here’s-the-church hands. “There still had to be blood on the knife, maybe not much, but some, and that lets all of those Elvises in the white suits out.”
“Probably,” I agreed.
Fred nodded and turned the volume back up on Wheel of Fortune. Then he turned it down again. “What’s Tammy Sue’s husband’s name?”
“Larry Ludmiller. Why?”
“I’ll bet he had some blood on his arm, and I’ll bet the fellow on the other side did, too. You know how they had their arms around each other in that line.”
“Probably. But you know, they didn’t form that line until the end. They were doing those individual dances and then they all came together in the line facing the audience. That had to be when it happened. The Mooncloth guy wouldn’t have been dancing around with a stuck aorta.”
Fred looked over at me. “Don’t you get involved in this, Patricia Anne.”
“What?” I was startled. “Why should I get involved?”
“I don’t know. I just have a feeling.”
“Well, you can forget it. There’s no reason for me to get involved.”
Vanna turned over an N.
“You got any idea what that is?” Fred asked, pointing toward the TV.
“The Princess of Wales.” I really do need to get on that show. Not only can I solve all the puzzles, I’m so short I would make Pat Sajak look tall.
The pleasant evening continued. Fred dozed in his chair. Woofer got up and went to the back door, wanting out.
When I opened it, I realized the choo-chooing of rain had slowed down some. Woofer ambled over to his favorite tree, marked it, and headed for his igloo.
“Night, night,” I called. He wagged his tail and disappeared into his warm igloo, one of the best bu
ys I ever made.
I covered Fred with an afghan and curled up on the sofa with Muffin to watch Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, another show that I needed to get on with my trivia-clogged brain. A man was stuck on the $125,000 question and I was telling him to quit, fool, take your $64,000 and run, when I heard a knock on the back door.
“Fred,” I said, “someone’s at the back door.”
He pulled the afghan higher around his shoulders and gave a little sigh.
The next knock was more insistent. Probably Mary Alice, I thought. She was like the post office. Neither rain, sleet, nor snow could keep her from her appointed rounds—and, God knows, I was one of her appointed rounds.
I got up just as the man on TV came to his senses and took his money. Good. I went into the kitchen and turned on the back light. A tall, black-hooded figure stood at the door, hand raised to knock again. My heart skipped a couple of beats.
“Aunt Pat, it’s me!”
I opened the door. “My Lord, Marilyn, all you needed was a scythe in your hand.”
“What?”
“Never mind, darling. I just didn’t know who you were for a minute. Come in. You’re soaking.”
There was an awkward moment of trying to hug each other and keep the wet raincoat out of the way. We ended up laughing, with Marilyn leaning down to kiss me on the head. Like her mother, she is a foot taller than I am. Unlike her mother, she is thin. She is also beautiful with naturally curly dark brown hair, olive skin, and big brown eyes. She is the exotic-looking one in our pale family; and she has always had the sense to emphasize this by wearing bright colors and long, flowing skirts.
“She looks like a gypsy,” I’ve heard her mother complain. “And why won’t she cut her hair? It sticks out like a long black Brillo pad.” I’ve also heard Haley and Debbie wishing that they looked just like Marilyn.
But this night she looked nothing like a gypsy. When the black raincoat came off, I saw that her hair was pulled back and caught at her neck with a barrette. She was wearing jeans, a red sweater, and running shoes, and her eyes were puffy as if she had been crying.
“Did I scare you? I’m sorry.”
“Just for a second.” I hung her coat on the pantry door. “Have you had any supper?”
