Murder in Her Stocking

by G. A. McKevett

  But Shirley was holding hostage the seven people Stella loved most in the world. Precious, innocent children—the perfect weapons in the hands of someone who didn’t care who got hurt as long as they won every battle and maintained control over those around them. One of the oldest, cruelest, and most effective tactics available to someone with a stunted conscience had to be, “Do what I want, or I’ll hit you with someone you love. They’ll get hurt, and it’ll be your fault.”

  Both Stella and Shirley knew that Stella would submit, because of her love for her grandchildren. An otherwise strong woman would back down, paste a fake smile on her face, and speak gentle words of peace when she felt like screaming and striking out, because sweet, innocent hostages were being held.

  But Stella was old enough to have seen the game played many times, and she knew how it ended. Those who won so many battles using such despicable means lost the war and ended up bitter and alone, because eventually, one way or another, the hostages broke free.

  As Stella looked into Shirley’s eyes, she knew exactly what her daughter-in-law wanted. Control. Pure and simple.

  Shirley had yet to learn that control wasn’t power. Love was power.

  So, Stella gave her daughter-in-law the control she craved, knowing that the law of sowing and reaping would provide justice for her and the children someday.

  Just not today.

  “We were fixin’ to go back to the house and put up this Christmas tree,” she told Shirley, looking around at the sobbing, frightened children. “We’ve even got us a Christmas cake to eat while we’re doing it. Why don’t we all go back to the house together? You too. We’ll have a nice evening and make some sweet memories for the kids to remember.”

  For a couple of seconds, Stella thought Shirley was considering it. She seemed to be.

  The children waited breathlessly to see if this Christmas miracle might happen. But . . .

  “No! I’m not going to your house for no tree and cake, just so’s you can look like a Miss Goody Two-shoes in front of the kids. I’m not that stupid, Stella. I see right through you, and someday, the kids will, too. They’ll see you for the mean, evil bitch that you—”

  “Mama! No!” Waycross shouted. He scrambled up from the ground, where she had thrown him, and confronted her, getting as face-to-face as he could, considering that he was a foot and a half shorter. “Don’t you talk to Gran that way. Don’t you call her bad names. We’re not gonna have that.”

  “We’re not gonna? Who’s we, little Mister Smart Mouth?”

  “All of us,” he said, waving his hand to indicate all his siblings. “We’re family, and we stick up for each other.”

  Shirley turned on Stella. “See there? That’s what I mean. You turn my kids against me, and I’m supposed to let you see them? Let them stay with you for days on end?”

  Stella bit her tongue, not allowing herself to remind Shirley that the extended grandkid visits were almost always at Shirley’s request. Shirley made the most of her kid-free time by inviting men over for drunken parties that went on all night or until the neighbors complained.

  “Go on, you kids.” Shirley waved a hand toward the Bulldog delivery pickup. “Go get in the back of that truck. You’re going home.”

  “But the tree,” Marietta whined.

  “You don’t need no tree. There’s plenty of Christmas decorations around town for you to look at. The damned things are everywhere.”

  Stella looked at Savannah and saw tears streaming down her granddaughter’s face.

  At that moment, Stella despised Shirley. Try as she might, she couldn’t help it. Moments before they had been so happy. Now everyone was heartbroken, all because Shirley was jealous that her children were receiving some happiness that wasn’t coming directly from her own hand.

  “Come on, you guys,” Savannah said, gently pulling her brother and her other siblings to her side. “Let’s go. That’s the way it’s gotta be.”

  “But you can’t put them all in the cab,” Stella protested. “There isn’t room for seven kids in a—”

  “Get in the back!” Shirley shouted at her brood. “It ain’t that far, and it ain’t that cold. It won’t kill ya.”

  “Shirley, please,” Stella pleaded. “If you won’t come back to the house with me, and you won’t let them . . . then let me take them back to your house. My truck’s got a seat and a belt for each one of them. It’s safer and warmer than the back of a pickup. I won’t come into your house. I’ll just drop them off. Okay?”

  “I told you, we don’t need your help, Stella Reid! We don’t need anything from you!”

  “Yes we do. We need the Christmas cake. It’s got gumdrops on it and everything,” Marietta said, getting up off the ground and brushing the dirt from her clothes and her skinned knees.

  “You don’t need her cake. As far as I’m concerned, Stella knows exactly what she can do with that cake. I might do it for her, if she don’t look out.”

  Stella watched as her grandchildren left, heading for the pickup, their heads low, their spirits wounded.

  If they hadn’t been there, Stella hated to think what she might have done to Shirley. The whacks that Bud had received from her were a schoolboy’s spanking compared to the havoc she wanted to wreak upon her daughter-in-law at that moment.

  Stella considered running into Mr. Anderson’s office, calling the sheriff, and asking him to intervene on her behalf.

  But she knew how fruitless that would be. Unfortunately, there was no law that forbade Shirley from doing exactly what she had done to her children. Stella considered it strange that the statutes that would send Shirley to jail for assaulting some numskull in the tavern wouldn’t protect a child who received the same abuse.

  She walked back to the driver’s door of her truck, opened it, and got inside. She turned the key in the ignition but shut off the heat. If her grandchildren would be riding in a cold truck without heat, so would she.

  She turned and looked at the cake sitting in the box on the passenger’s seat, where Savannah had left it.

  Savannah. Her first grandchild. Her heart.

  She watched as the girl, already forced to be a woman, helped her smallest sisters into the cab, then lifted the others into the rear of the pickup.

  Just before she climbed in herself, Savannah stopped, looked back at Stella’s truck, and made eye contact with her grandmother. They held the gaze, suffering not only their own pain but each other’s.

  “Get in the dadgum truck, Savannah! I haven’t got all day!” Shirley bellowed.

  Savannah did as she was told.

  Stella thought she saw the child blow her a kiss, so she sent her one in return. But she couldn’t be sure if Savannah saw the answering gesture.

  Stella couldn’t see that clearly. Her eyes were too full of tears.

  * * *

  When Stella set the Christmas tree in the corner of her living room, it was all she could do just to place it in the stand and water it. The thought of decorating its branches without her grandchildren brought her more sorrow than she could bear.

  As did the sight of Mr. Anderson’s cake sitting in its cardboard box on the coffee table. He had given her family that treat to bring them happiness. But thanks to Shirley’s rejection of it, the gift only added to the grief of the moment.

  Stella didn’t know what to do with it. She had no desire to eat it herself.

  Then she remembered there was one other person within her immediate vicinity who was probably even more miserable than she.

  Long ago, Stella had learned that few things lifted a heavy heart more effectively than generosity. Many times, during her darkest moments, she had found a ray of sunlight in a simple act of charity.

  Once the tree was situated, bare and cheerless though it might be, she snatched up the cake and headed out the door with it.

  She was determined that Mr. Anderson’s Christmas gift, bestowed with such goodwill, would find its way to someone who needed the love it represented eve
n more than she did.

  It didn’t take Stella long to drive to Florence Bagley’s house. Once there, she looked around to see if Bud’s big, fancy pickup was parked by the front door or around back.

  If he had returned home and sweet-talked Florence into some sort of “rubber band and duct tape” reconciliation, as he had done so many times before after breaking her heart and abusing her, the last thing Stella wanted was to interrupt their happy reunion.

  Not because she was such a considerate neighbor, but because she didn’t think she could stand to see the look of sly glee that Bud always wore after such a “triumph.”

  Bud might be stupid, but he was no dummy. He knew that Stella had his number. Even if Florence wasn’t aware of his all too deliberate manipulations of her, Stella knew. He enjoyed flaunting the control he had over Florence, knowing how much it frustrated and upset Stella. After the day Stella had just endured, if she had to watch Bud strut around, his nose in the air, she was afraid it just might compel her to commit violence.

  As Stella took the cake from the truck and carried it up the steps to the veranda, it occurred to her, not for the first time, that she was having a hard time stomping out the little fires of hate that were continually springing up here and there in her spirit lately.

  That was the problem with those little fires. Once ignited, they grew into brushfires, and all too quickly, when you least expected it, they exploded into raging infernos that destroyed everything and everyone in their path.

  All too well, Stella knew that the first victim an out-of-control forest fire claimed, scorching them with mindless, heartless ferocity, was the person whose spirit had harbored the initial spark.

  Stella found it almost impossible not to hate the likes of Shirley and Bud, who continually hurt the ones she loved and, instead of feeling remorse, appeared to thrive on their own cruelty.

  To Stella’s dismay, no amount of praying seemed to help.

  She would start off humble enough, but then her temper would get the better of her, and her righteous entreaties would quickly disintegrate into words like, Lord, please put some of your divine love in my heart for Shirley, ’cause I can’t seem to conjure up any of my own. Meanwhile, you best keep that weasel-faced, peckerhead Bud Bagley away from me, ’cause if I see him anytime soon, I’m liable to jerk a knot in his tail, then beat him to death with it.

  Though she wasn’t proud of herself after such spiritual discourse, Stella figured the Lord forgave her. He knew Shirley and Bud Bagley even better than she did.

  After knocking three times on the front door, Stella started to debate the pros and cons of nabbing the house key that Florence had told her was stashed under the geranium pot on the windowsill and just letting herself in.

  Pros: She’d get in the house a lot faster and spare her knuckles.

  Cons: When she and Florence were teenagers, she’d spent a summer teaching Flo how to shoot a .22 rifle. As a result, her friend was a darned good shot. In Florence’s present emotional state, she might get overly excited to find someone rambling around inside her house at night.

  A body could wind up dead like that, and Stella couldn’t bear the thought of Florence having to live with all that guilt.

  Finally, she reached a compromise. She took the key out from under the geranium pot, unlocked the door, opened it, stuck her head in, and yelled, “Flo, it’s me, Stella. I know you’re there, and I know you heard me poundin’ on your door. Get your butt in here, girl. I’ve got coconut cake.”

  She knew that would do it. Flo had a weakness for sweets that was almost as fierce as Stella’s.

  It wasn’t thirty seconds before a disheveled Florence, dressed in an old bathrobe and scruffy house slippers, her hair standing on end, and without a smidgen of makeup on, came trudging down the staircase.

  She stopped halfway down and stared at Stella and the cake. “Is it one of Elsie’s?” she asked.

  “No. It’s Harry Anderson’s sister’s.”

  Florence stood still, said nothing.

  “Flo. It’s cake.”

  Florence plodded down the remaining stairs and through the foyer, leading the way to the back of the house and the kitchen. “I’m not hungry,” she said. “Haven’t eaten a thing all day. That’s why I’m going to force myself to have a slice.”

  Stella took the cake from the cardboard box and set it on the marble counter. “I understand,” she said. “You gotta keep your strength up.”

  “That’s right. I’ve lost the love of my life—may the lousy, good-for-nothing sonuvabitch fall down a flight of stairs into a pit of rabid crocodiles—but I’ve got to keep going.”

  “That’s the spirit. Have you heard from the sonuvabitch in question?”

  “Not since this morning. No sooner had you left than he came by for the rest of his stuff. You just missed him.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “He took all the guns with him, too. Didn’t even leave me that twenty-two you gave me to protect myself and the house with.”

  “Well, shoot. I could’ve just gone ahead and let myself in with the key.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Cut me a piece of that cake. I’m not hungry, either, so a medium-size piece’ll do ’er.”

  Florence took two of her crystal dessert dishes from the cupboard, cut two ridiculously large pieces of the cake and plated them, then carefully arranged any wayward gumdrops in an attractive pattern on the top.

  A linen napkin for each and a tumbler of iced sweet tea, and they were ready to chat and eat away their problems.

  Or at least put a decent dent in them.

  Florence led Stella to the table situated in a cozy breakfast nook that was about the size of Stella’s entire kitchen. They sat across from each other, the delectable dessert between them.

  “I heard you had a battle royal with your daughter-in-law at the Christmas tree lot this afternoon,” Florence said, digging into the cake with greater gusto than one might expect of a woman who had just been dumped by her husband of over thirty years.

  “Who told you?”

  “Gay Copeland. Her sister-in-law, Becky Davis, was visiting from Chattanooga, and the two of them were driving by just as Shirley was flinging those young’uns right and left out the back of your truck. They contemplated pulling over and putting a stop to it, but then they saw that you were taking the situation in hand. Sounded plumb awful, to hear them tell it.”

  Stella shook her head and sighed. “Just once,” she said, “I’d like to not have the entire town know my business before I do.”

  “That’s the joy of living in a small community. Everybody knows what everybody else had for supper, and they’ve all got an opinion on it.”

  Stella popped a cherry gumdrop into her mouth, but it had no flavor, and she nearly choked on it, just thinking about the joy it would have given her grandchildren.

  It didn’t seem right, her eating this cake when they couldn’t, after them being so thrilled to get it.

  She pushed the plate away and decided to just drink the tea instead. “Yes, me and Shirley had it out right there on Mr. Anderson’s property. It was plumb ugly. I thought we were gonna clean each other’s clocks for sure right there in front of the kids.”

  “I’m sorry. That woman’s given you nothing but grief since she and Macon started keeping company. I remember you telling me even back then that she was a heap of trouble, and you were right.”

  “In those days, I thought Macon could do better. But now I’m not sure he could’ve. I wouldn’t admit this to just anybody, Flo, but Macon’s been a heartache to me. I know he neglects his family. He’s probably part of the reason why Shirley’s the way she is.”

  Stella took a long drink of her iced tea and noticed that her own hand was shaking. “If I’m honest,” she said, “I’d have to admit that since Macon’s daddy was the best man who ever walked the earth, I must be the reason why Macon turned out bad. I don’t know where I went wrong, but I must’ve. I try to rememb
er that when I get too mad at either one of ’em. Reckon there’s enough blame to go around for everybody.”

  “You and Art wouldn’t be the first good parents to turn out a rotten kid,” Florence countered. “Look around you. Happens all the time. Then you have the opposite—two lousy parents whose children are the salt of the earth. Like Shirley and Macon and your grandkids. They say that goodness and badness skip generations. I’d say that’s the case with your situation. Look at that little Savannah. She’s the spitting image of you. If you’re gonna take the blame for Macon, you’ve gotta take the credit for her.”

  As much as Florence’s words were soothing to Stella’s spirit, she’d come to her friend’s house not to be comforted, but to console.

  “I didn’t come over here to burden you, Flo, but to lift you up a bit. I was worried about you, hon.” She reached over and squeezed Florence’s hand. “I couldn’t go to bed till I knew if you were okay.”

  “Bless you, Stella.” Tears began to roll down Florence’s cheeks again, and her voice choked when she added, “You’re the best friend anybody ever had.”

  “Oh, hooey. You wouldn’t have said that the day we were clowning around down by the river, and I pushed you into that blackberry patch.”

  Florence chuckled. “That’s true. I had to go to the eighth-grade graduation party looking like I’d tangled with a bobcat and lost!”

  “I remember we stole your mama’s makeup and tried to cover up those scratches. We used the whole bottle, and it didn’t do a bit of good.” Stella smiled, remembering, cherishing the memories—good and bad. “We’ve made it through a lot, Flo,” she told her old friend. “We’ve got the scars to prove it, inside and out. But what didn’t kill us made us stronger.”

  Florence thought it over for a moment. “So they say. But I’m not sure it’s true. Do you feel stronger, Stella, for all the crap you’ve been through?”

  “Not particularly, now that you mention it. Mostly, I just feel tired and pissed off at people who’ve made my life harder than it needed to be. Right up to today. Shirley had no call to pitch that hissy fit in front of her children and hurt ’em like that. I swear, if they hadn’t been there and I’d had a billy club in my hand, I’d have plowed that gal’s field for her then and there.”