Paula K. Perrin - Small Town Deadly

by Paula K. Perrin

Fran said, “How are you holding up? Finding Andre that way had to be—”

  “It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen. How could someone do that to another human being?”

  “Drink your tea, Liz,” Mother said. “It’s the new people moving into town. None of us would do such a thing.”

  “Did Max pick up any information?” I asked.

  “He said they all got pretty excited when the body was moved, there was something under him, but Max couldn’t see what. Gene’s being protective of his case. You probably know more than any of us, tell, tell.”

  “Oh, Fran, I don’t want to think about—”

  “Pretty please.”

  I sighed, knowing she wouldn’t leave me alone until I satisfied her curiosity. Little Bunny Foo Foo sighed too and lay across my feet, his small body warm and strangely comforting.

  “If I tell you tonight, will you keep Max away from me tomorrow?”

  “Oh, Liz, come on, you found Andre, I have to run an interview with you.”

  “Write it yourself, then, from what I’m saying now.”

  “Promise not to talk to The Columbian before we come out on Tuesday?”

  “No problem.” As if I wanted to talk to reporters!

  Fran went to the pile of paper on the counter under the wall phone. As she sorted through newsletters, ads, catalogues, and unsolicited credit card offers, she said, “Don’t you think this stack is getting out of hand?”

  Mother sniffed. “I don’t dare touch it. Liz has ever-expanding ideas on what can be recycled.”

  “Do you want trees for your great-grandchildren or not?” I asked.

  Fran nudged the pile of papers, and it wobbled. “Remember what happened when man conceived the Tower of Babel?”

  I glanced at Mother. Her fingers pressing against her lips didn’t quite hide a smile.

  Fran picked a pen out of the elephant mug and took notes on the back of an envelope as I told them about finding the body, everything except finding the lipstick and the joint.

  Mother’s gnarled hand shook and her tea cup clattered against its saucer. “How terrible.”

  My hands shook, too.

  Fran put a gentle hand on Mother’s arm.

  Mother sat up straighter. “Not that he was one of my favorite people,” she said. “He had the morals of a cat.”

  Fran glanced at me. I didn’t move.

  Fran tucked the envelope on which she’d taken notes into her jacket pocket.

  “Gene should turn it over to more experienced investigators,” I said.

  “Gene will be fine,” Mother said. “He’s quite intelligent, though you never give him credit for it, Liz.”

  “I don’t see that having three ex-wives is any sign of intelligence.”

  “Two,” Fran said, “the latest divorce isn’t final.”

  Little Bunny Foo Foo jumped up barking. The back door opened.

  “Little Bunny Foo Foo!” Meg cried. His tail wagged. She snapped her fingers, pointed at her chest, and said, “Fly!” The dog jumped straight at her, the leash trailing, and she caught him in mid-air. “Good dog.”

  He licked her face as she hugged him. “Do we get to keep him, Grandmother?” she asked, her dark eyes shining.

  “His name will have to be changed. No creature should go through life burdened by something like that.”

  “We’ll just shorten it to Bunny. That’s easy, and he’ll still recognize it. Won’t you, Bunny?”

  He wriggled ecstatically.

  “But if you’re going to live with us, no more of this,” Meg said, pulling on the red bow stuck in his beige topknot. She rummaged in one of the drawers.

  “Not the kitchen scissors,” Mother cried.

  “Too late,” Meg said, snipping the bow from the topknot.

  “Meg—”

  “I’ll put alcohol on the blades,” she said. She nuzzled the poodle. “Not that you’d have a germ on your precious little hide, would you?”

  I had been in a state of shock since Meg had gotten Little Bunny Foo Foo to jump through the air to her. No one but Barry and Andre had ever done that trick with him. How did Meg know it?

  I’d been so shocked I hadn’t noticed until now how Meg was dressed. “What happened to your clothes? What’s that you’ve got on?”

  Meg spread one arm wide, holding the poodle against her with the other as she pivoted to model. “They gave it to me in jail when they took my clothes away. It’s a genuine prison jumpsuit!”

  “You’ve been in jail?” Mother cried.

  “How did you escape?” Fran asked.

  My heart thumped frantically. What had Gene and his men found? Had there been something of Meg’s besides the lipstick by Andre’s body? What had I missed?

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Aunt Liz, you look like you’re going to faint.” Meg slid into the vacant chair, Little Bunny Foo Foo on her lap. “Are you all right?”

  “She’s had one shock too many,” Mother said, pushing herself out of her chair. She leaned against the chair back, then took the step to the counter and leaned on that as she reached into a cupboard and got the brandy. “Here, Liz, put some of this in your tea.”

  Fran took the bottle from her and helped herself to some before passing it on to me.

  Mother cut a piece of gingerbread, mounded whipped cream on it, and made her way back to the table. “Put that creature on the floor where it belongs,” she said, placing the plate in front of Meg.

  Meg wrinkled her nose but put the dog on the floor. She dug a fork into the gingerbread.

  Mother lowered herself into her chair. “Now, what were you doing at the jail?”

  Meg shrugged, her mouth full. She put her fork down, raised her hands and wiggled her blackened fingertips at us. She swallowed. “They said they needed to take fingerprints. After that they wanted my clothes. But don’t worry, they said they’d give them back.” She took another bite of gingerbread.

  “But, Meg, why did they take you?” Fran asked.

  “They took everyone, didn’t they?” Her gaze rested on me still in my blue sweater and Fran’s jeans. She frowned.

  “I thought everyone was supposed to go in tomorrow to have their fingerprints taken,” I said.

  Meg’s chair screeched against the floor as she pushed it back. “Why are you looking at me like that? I didn’t kill Andre!”

  “We know that, dear, but why would the police think you did?” Mother asked.

  “My Go—gosh, I don’t know!” Her brown eyes grew huge as she began to take her visit to the station seriously.

  “Meg, if they have some reason to suspect you, you must tell us. Now’s not the time for secrets,” I said.

  Her fair skin flushed scarlet. “Secrets!” She glared at the three of us. “Sometimes you remind me of those three witches in Macbeth: Higgelty, Piggelty and Nod, or whatever their names were, cackling over your boiling cauldron.” Her voice rose to a shriek, “No, we wouldn’t want any secrets here!” She scooped Little Bunny Foo Foo up and ran out, her footsteps pounding down the hall then up the stairs. The door of her room slammed shut.

  “Perhaps it’s a good thing she dropped out of Wellesley after all.” Mother sniffed. “Higgelty, Piggelty and Nod! What are they teaching these days?”

  I managed to say, “At least she got the play right,” before Fran and I erupted in laughter.

  Mother levered herself to her feet and glared down at us. “You girls can laugh all you want, but education in America is going downhill at a perilous rate.”

  We laughed even harder.

  Mother made her way to the refrigerator where she’d left her cane hooked on the handle and then thumped down the hall.

  After a while, Fran shook my arm and said, “Hey, Higgelty—”

  “No, I’m Piggelty.”

  “Stop, stop, my sides hurt.”

  When we finally sat up and wiped our eyes, the last giggles shivering through us, Fran said, “Why would they have taken her clothes?”
<
br />   “I don’t know. It scares me.” I poured more tea for both of us even though it was lukewarm and way too strong. Fran dumped the tea out and poured us healthy slugs of brandy. “That’s the first time I’ve seen Meg go off the deep end,” she said. She pulled her velvet jacket closed. “I see what you mean about her being irrational.”

  “She’s so changed.”

  “She’s as cheery as ever when she comes into the paper.”

  “Not around here. She’s sullen, and she never used to be. Mood swings, so much anger. But the play’s been good for her, steadied her a little.”

  “Should you talk to her again about a therapist?”

  I shrugged. “She refused absolutely. I wish I had a clue what’s wrong.”

  “Something that happened at school, you think?”

  I rubbed my forehead. “Maybe. Though I noticed some unhappiness before she went back in September.”

  “She and Benjamin were still in love then.”

  “Yes. That didn’t fall apart until after Christmas.” I sighed.

  Fran sighed too. “So, last summer.” Fran touched my hand. “The only traumatic thing I can think of last summer was Hugh’s death.”

  I did my best to ignore the familiar stab of regret. “I don’t see how that could have affected her so much.”

  She said, “Intimations of mortality? Because he was Jared’s father and someone she’d known all her life? Because she knew how you once felt—”

  I touched the lapis bracelet on my wrist, the only one of Hugh’s gifts I had kept.

  “Maybe the futility got to her,” Fran said, “being caught in the crossfire during a convenience store hold-up.”

  “While buying flavored condoms.” My eyes filled with tears, “Oh, Fran, the dumbest thought keeps coming back. If Hugh’d only bought the condoms here in Warfield instead of in Portland, he’d still be alive—it was such a stupid thing to die for.”

  “Well, his lady friend was down there. Probably he and Alisz didn’t use condoms, and you know how people talk around here. Give him credit for being discreet.”

  “Poor Alisz.”

  Fran shrugged. “It’s too bad Hugh’s affair got the publicity it did when he was shot, but I always say men don’t stray if they’re getting what they want at home.”

  I poked at the crumbs on my plate. “I wish—I’d give anything to go back twenty years and start over—”

  “I’m sorry I brought it up.” Her arm went around me and she hugged me tightly.

  After a moment I sat up and reached for my brandy.

  Fran got the pan of gingerbread and the bowl of whipping cream, and we had more of both.

  I was just about to ask her where she’d gone when she said abruptly, “Well, I didn’t kill Andre, did you?”

  “No.”

  Fran pivoted her wrist back and forth, her silver medical alert bracelet swiveling on her wrist, the links making a slithering sound. “You know the statistics—it’s most likely to be your nearest and dearest who do you in.”

  “But he didn’t have anyone near and dear since Barry died. Women were strictly a hobby.”

  “Don’t be bitter,” she admonished.

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are, and you should do a better job of hiding it. It’s a motive—”

  “What about you?” I pointed my finger at her.

  She batted it away. “I take men and sex a lot less seriously—”

  “Because you’ve had a lot more of them,” I said.

  “Exactly. You should try it.”

  “Opportunities don’t exactly abound—”

  “You just walk right on by them and never notice.”

  Upstairs the newly re-christened Bunny barked twice.

  “That’s not going to make him popular,” I said.

  We both jumped when the kitchen door creaked open and a man’s voice said, “Don’t you ever lock your doors?”

  I froze in my chair. Fran had jumped up and grabbed the toaster, raising it above her head with both hands.

  “Gene Cudworthy, I’m going to kill you!” I said, the hair still standing up on my neck.

  “Fran looks far more dangerous,” he said, but I noticed he hadn’t even put an arm up to defend himself.

  She laughed and put the toaster back on the counter. “You’re lucky you didn’t get a head full of bread crumbs.”

  “I didn’t mean to scare you. I tapped on the back porch screen door, but you didn’t hear me, so I came on through.”

  My heart stopped beating. He’s going to arrest Meg. I said, “You can’t take her. She’s only nineteen.”

  “What?”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “Meg’s innocent.”

  “Now why would you think I was coming to arrest Meg?” His quizzical blue eyes met mine.

  “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  “What did you come for?”

  “I saw Fran’s car outside.” He smoothed his moustache with one large hand and scrutinized Fran. “Now’s your chance to come clean, tell me why you left and where you went. Tomorrow this gets real serious.”

  Fran said, “Sit down, Gene.” She got a glass and put it in front of him. I shoved the brandy bottle toward him. She got him a plate and fork and served him gingerbread. I scraped the bowl for the last of the whipped cream.

  He sank into a chair. “Thanks.”

  We all had brandy. Mother was going to be scandalized.

  “To absent friends,” Fran said, raising her teacup.

  We all clinked and drank.

  Gene said, “I’m still waiting for an explanation.”

  Fran’s bracelet began slithering again.

  The two of them stared at each other, each willing the other to back down. It was more than a battle of wills, though. Embarrassed, I took the bowl and pan to the sink and began washing them. Total silence behind me.

  They’d had a brief affair while Gene was married to wife #2. Wife #3 looked a lot like Fran. From the electricity that filled the air, I’d say Fran had a shot at becoming #4.

  I dried the cake pan more thoroughly than it had ever been dried before, and they still hadn’t spoken. Without turning around, I said, “It’s been a long day, and I’m tired.”

  A chair scraped the floor. Gene said, “Tomorrow you both come down to the station. I’ll want to hear the truth.”

  “Don’t involve Liz,” Fran said.

  “She better not be doing anything but telling the truth tomorrow, including what she knows of your activities tonight. There’s such a charge as obstruction of justice, you know.”

  “It’s a terrible thing what political aspirations do to a person,” Fran said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “If you weren’t running for sheriff, you wouldn’t be coming on like such a hardass, that’s what it means,” she said.

  Ominous silence followed her statement. Nothing on earth could have compelled me to turn around.

  At last his footsteps thudded to the door. It creaked open.

  Fran said, “She’ll tell you the truth.”

  “Please thank Cousin Claire for the gingerbread. Good night,” he said, his voice tired. The door shut quietly behind him.

  I turned. “Fran, why didn’t you just tell him—”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “What will you say?”

  She shrugged.

  “Fran, are you in some kind of trouble? Do you need help?”

  She yawned, head back, long arms reaching for the ceiling, jacket falling open, breasts straining against the sheer white fabric of her blouse. She said, “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.”

  “I don’t understand.” I felt as though the yellow linoleum floor was tilting.

  “Lizzie, don’t look like that, it’s nothing so terrible.” She stood up and held a long arm out to me. “Come on, walk me to the door.”

  We tiptoed down the hall past Mother’s room, carefully opened the fr
ont door, and stepped onto the porch. The clouds had blown past, and the moon shone so brightly it cast shadows.

  “Mmm—doesn’t it smell good?” she whispered.

  “Lovely. I’ll pick you up in the morning—”

  “It’d probably look better if we went in separately,” she said.

  “I don’t care,” I said. “What time?”

  ”About two?”

  “Gene said morning.”

  “Then, 11:55. That’ll preserve your writing time, too. How’s the latest opus going, anyway?”

  “Pretty well.”

  “When you get that prim tone it always means you’re working on a hot scene.” She hugged me and ran lightly down the steps. “Night, Piggelty,” she called softly.

  “Night, Higgelty.”

  I watched her drive away, the engine of the Mustang thunderous in the still night. She didn’t even brake at the stop sign, just whipped around the corner and out of sight.

  I sank into the wicker chair. It creaked. It had absorbed moisture, and the chill crept into my jeans. Fran’s jeans, I thought, feeling their pinch. They were too small and only the strength of desperation had enabled me to zip them. I giggled, then sobered as I remembered the bloody blue gown I’d been so frantic to shed.

  The vision of Andre’s ruined head rose in my mind. It was awful to see someone so beautiful, someone who’d loved life so much, dead. “Andre, who would do that to you?” I whispered. He’d been charming, extremely likable. What could he have done to make someone so angry?

  I shivered. I didn’t want to think it was anyone living in this quiet town, this town that had always been my home. Chilled clear through, I went inside, locking the door behind me.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  My phone rang at 8:30 the next morning. I settled deeply into my pillow and pulled the covers over my head. In the middle of the fourth ring it cut off.

  The phone rang again. I burrowed deeper. After three rings, it stopped.

  The phone rang. I snatched it up. “What?”

  “I knew you were there,” Fran’s smug voice said.

  I groaned. “How come you’re awake already? I expected to have to pry you out of your bed at ll:54.”

  “Bad news.”

  I sat up. “What?”

  “Annamaria is dead.”