(1T) Real murders

by Harris, Charlaine

  “Huh?”

  “A club member was killed, and another club member is being used to divert suspicion.”

  “You think whoever killed Mamie took her purse and deliberately planted it under Melanie’s car seat,” I said slowly.

  “Oh, yes.” I could picture Jane standing in her tiny house full of her mother’s furniture, Jane’s silver chignon gleaming amid bookcases full of gory death.

  “But Melanie and Gerald Wright could have had something going,” I protested weakly. “Melanie could really have done it.”

  “Aurora, you know she’s absolutely head over heels about Bankston Waites. The little house she rents is just down the street from mine and I can’t help but notice his car is there a great deal.” Jane tactfully didn’t specify whether that included overnight.

  “Her car is here a lot too,” I admitted.

  “So,” Jane said persuasively, “I am sure that this candy thing is another old murder case revisited, and maybe the police will find the poison in another club member’s kitchen!”

  “Maybe,” I said slowly. “Then none of us are safe.”

  “No,” Jane said. “Not really.”

  “Who could have it in for us that bad?”

  “My dear, I haven’t the slightest. But you can bet I’ll be thinking about it, and I’m going to start looking for a case like yours right this moment.”

  “Thanks, Jane,” I said, and I hung up with much to think about, myself.

  I had nothing special to do that night, as my Saturday nights had tended to run the past couple of years. Right after I ate my Saturday splurge of pizza and salad, I remembered my resolution to call Amina in Houston.

  Miraculously, she was in. Amina hadn’t been in on a Saturday night in twelve years, and she was going out later, she said immediately, but her date was a department store manager who worked late on Saturday.

  “How is Houston?” I asked wistfully.

  “Oh, it’s great! So much to do! And everyone at work is so friendly.” Amina was a first-rate legal secretary.

  People almost always were friendly to Amina. She was a slender brown-eyed freckle-faced extrovert almost exactly my age, and I’d grown up with her and remained best friends with her through college. Amina had married and divorced childlessly, the only interruption in her long, exhaustive dating career. She was not really pretty, but she was irresistible—a laughing, chattering live wire, never at a loss for a word. She had a great talent for enjoying life and for maximizing every asset she’d been born with or acquired (her hair was not exactly naturally blond). My mother should have had Amina for a daughter, I thought suddenly.

  After Amina finished telling me about her job, I dropped my bombshell.

  “You found a body! Oh, yick! Who was it?” Amina shrieked. “Are you okay? Are you having bad dreams? Was the chocolate really poisoned?”

  Amina being my best friend, I told her the truth. “I don’t know yet if the chocolate was poisoned. Yes, I’m having bad dreams, but this is really exciting at the same time.”

  “Are you safe, do you think?” she asked anxiously. “Do you want to come stay with me until this is all over? I can’t believe this is happening to you! You’re so nice!”

  “Well, nice or not,” I retorted grimly, “it’s happening. Thanks for asking me, Amina, and I will come to see you soon. But I have to stay here for now. I don’t think I’m in any more danger. This was my turn to be targeted, I guess, and I came out okay.” I skipped my speculation with Arthur that maybe the killer would go on killing, and Jane Engle’s conjecture that maybe we would all be drawn in, and cut right to Amina’s area of expertise.

  “I have a situation here,” I began, and at once had her undivided attention. The nuances and dosey-does between the sexes were Amina’s bread and butter. I hadn’t had anything like this to tell Amina since we were in high school. It was hard to credit that grown people still engaged in all this—foreplay.

  “So,” Amina said when I’d finished. “Arthur is a little resentful that this Robin spent the afternoon at your place, and Robin’s trying to decide whether he likes you well enough to keep up the beginning of your relationship in view of Arthur’s slight proprietary air. Though Arthur is not the proprietor of anything yet, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And you haven’t actually had a date with either of these bozos, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But Robin has asked you to lunch in the city for Monday.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you’re supposed to meet him at the classroom.”

  “Yep.”

  “And Lizanne has definitely discarded this Robin.” Amina and Lizanne had always had a curious relationship. Amina operated on personality and Lizanne on looks, but they’d both run through the male population of Lawrenceton and surrounding towns at an amazing rate.

  “Lizanne formally bequeathed him to me,” I told Amina.

  “She’s not greedy,” Amina conceded. “If she doesn’t want ’em, she lets ’em know, and she lets ’em go. Now, if you’re going to meet him at the university, you realize he’s going to be sitting in a classroom full of little chickies just panting to hop in bed with a famous writer. He’s not ugly, right?”

  “He’s not conventionally handsome,” I said. “He has charm.”

  “Well, don’t wear one of those blouse and skirt combinations you’re always wearing to work!”

  “What do you suggest I wear?” I inquired coldly.

  “Listen, you called me for advice,” Amina reminded me. “Okay, I’m giving it to you. You’ve had an awful time. Nothing makes you feel better than a few new clothes, and you can afford it. So go to my mom’s shop tomorrow when it opens, and get something new. Maybe a classic town ’n country type dress. Stick to little earrings, since you’re so short, and maybe a few gold chains.” (A few? I was lucky to have one my mother had given me for Christmas. Amina’s boyfriends gave her gold chains for every occasion, in whatever length or thickness they could afford. She probably had twenty.) “That should be fine for a casual lunch in the city,” Amina concluded.

  “You think he’ll notice me as a woman, not just a fellow murder buff?”

  “If you want him to notice you as a woman, just lust after him.”

  “Huh?”

  “I don’t mean lick your lips or pant. Keep conversation normal. Don’t do anything obvious. You have to keep it so you don’t lose anything if he decides he’s not interested.” Amina was interested in saving face.

  “So what do I do?”

  “Just lust. Keep everything going like normal, but sort of concentrate on the area below your waist and above your knees, right? And send out waves. You can do it. It’s like the Kegel exercise. You can’t show anyone how to do it, but if you describe it to a woman, she can pick it up.”

  “I’ll try,” I said doubtfully.

  “Don’t worry, it’ll come naturally,” Amina told me. “I have to hang up, the doorbell is ringing. Call me again and tell me how it goes, okay? The only thing wrong with Houston is that you aren’t here.”

  “I miss you,” I said.

  “Yeah, and I miss you, but you needed me to leave,” Amina said, and then she did hang up.

  And after a moment’s disbelief, I knew she was right. Her departure had freed me from the role of the most popular woman’s best friend, a role that required I not attempt to make the most of myself because even the best of me could not compete with Amina. I almost had to be the intellectual drab one.

  I was sitting thinking about what Amina had said when the phone rang while my hand was still resting on it. I jumped a mile.

  “It’s me again,” Amina said rapidly. “Listen, Franklin is waiting for me in the living room, but I ran back here to my other phone to tell you this. You said Perry Allison was in that club with you? You watch out for Perry. When he was in college with me, he and I took a lot of the same courses our freshman year. But he would have these mood swings. He’d be hyper
-excited and follow me around just jabbering, then he’d be all quiet and sullen and just stare at me. Finally the college called his mother.”

  “Poor Sally,” I said involuntarily.

  “She came and got him and I think committed him, not just because of me but because he was skipping classes and no one would room with him because his habits got so strange.”

  “I think he’s beginning to repeat that pattern, Amina. He’s still holding together at the library, but I see Sally looking worried these days.”

  “You just watch out for him. He never hurt anyone that I know of, though he made a bunch of people nervous. But if he’s involved in this murder thing, you watch out!”

  “Thanks, Amina.”

  “Sure, ’bye now.”

  And she was gone again to enjoy herself with Franklin.

  Chapter Seven

  Sunday dawned warm and rainy. A breeze swooped over the fence and rustled my rose trees. It was not a morning to eat breakfast on the patio. I fried bacon and ate my bakery sweet roll while listening to a local radio broadcast. The mayoral candidates were answering questions on this morning’s talk show. The election promised more interest than the usual Democratic shoo-in, since not only was there a Republican candidate who actually had a slim chance, there was a candidate from the—gasp—Communist Party! Of course, this was the candidate whose campaign Benjamin Greer was managing. Poor miserable Benjamin, hoping that the Communist Party and politics would be his salvation. Of course the Communist, Morrison Pettigrue, was one of the New People, one of those who’d fled the city but wanted to stay close to it.

  At least this would be a unifying election for Lawrenceton. None of the candidates was black, which always made for a tense campaign and a divisive one. The Republican and Democrat were having the time of their political lives, giving sane, sober answers to banal questions, and thoroughly enjoying Pettigrue’s fiery responses that sometimes bordered on the irrational.

  Bless his heart, I thought sadly, not only is he a Communist but he’s also very unappealing. I’d made a point of looking for Pettigrue’s campaign posters on the way back from the grocery store the day before. They said nothing about the Communist Party (just “Elect Morrison Pettigrue, the People’s Choice, for Mayor”) and they showed him to be a grim-featured swarthy man who had obviously suffered badly from acne.

  I listened while I ate breakfast, but then I switched to some country and western music for my dishwashing. Domestic chores always went faster when you could sing about drinkin’ and cheatin’.

  It was such a nice little morning I decided to go to church. I often did. I sometimes enjoyed it and felt better for going, but I felt no spiritual compulsion. I went because I hoped I’d “catch it,” like deliberately exposing myself to the chicken pox. Sometimes I even wore a hat and gloves, though that was bordering on parody and gloves were not so easy to find anymore. It wasn’t a hat-and-gloves day, today, too dark and rainy, and I wasn’t in a role-playing mood, anyway.

  As I pulled into the Presbyterian parking lot, I wondered if I’d see Melanie Clark, who sometimes attended. Had she been arrested? I couldn’t believe stolid Melanie truly was in danger of being charged with Mamie Wright’s murder. The only possible motive anyone could attribute to Melanie was an affair with Gerald Wright. Someone…some murderer, I reminded myself…was playing an awful joke on Melanie.

  I drifted through the service, thinking about God and Mamie. I felt horrible when I thought of what another human being had done to Mamie; yet I had to face it, when she had been alive the predominant feeling I’d had for her had been contempt. Now Mamie’s soul, and I believe we do all have one, was facing God, as I would one day too. This was too close to the bone for me, and I buried that thought so I could dig it up later when I wasn’t so vulnerable.

  I made my way out of church, speaking with most of the congregation along my way. All the talk I heard was about Melanie and her predicament, and the latest information appeared to be that Melanie had had to go down to the police station for a while, but on Bankston’s vehement vouching for her every move on the evening of Mamie Wright’s death, she’d been allowed to go home and (the feeling went) was thus exonerated.

  Melanie herself was an orphan, but Bankston’s mother was a Presbyterian. Today of course she was the center of an attentive group on the church steps. Mrs. Waites was as blond and blue-eyed as her son, and ordinarily just as phlegmatic. But this Sunday she was an angry woman and didn’t care who knew it. She was mad at the police for suspecting “that sweet Melanie” for one single minute. As if a girl like that was going to beat a fly to death, much less a grown woman! And those police suggesting that maybe things weren’t as they should be between Melanie and Mr. Wright! As if wild horses could drag Melanie and Bankston away from each other! At least this awful thing had gone and gotten Bankston to speak his mind. He and Melanie were going to be married in two months. No, a date hadn’t been set, but they were going to decide about one today, and Melanie was going to go down to Millie’s Gifts this week and pick out china and silver patterns.

  This was a triumphant moment for Mrs. Waites, who had been trying to marry off Bankston for years. Her other children were settled, and Bankston’s apparent willingness to wait for the right woman to come to him, instead of actively searching himself, had tried Mrs. Waites to the limit.

  I would have to go pick out a fork or salad plate. I’d given lots of similar gifts in a hundred different patterns. I sighed, and tried hard not to feel sorry for myself as I drove to Mother’s. I always ate Sunday lunch with her, unless she was off on one of the myriad real estate conventions she attended or out showing houses.

  Mother (who had spent a rare Sunday morning at home) was in fine spirits because she’d sold a $200,000 house the day before, after she’d left my apartment. Not too many women can get poisoned chocolates, be interrogated by the police, and sell expensive properties in the same day.

  “I’m trying to get John to let me list his house,” she told me over the pot roast.

  “What? Why would he sell his house? It’s beautiful.”

  “His wife has been dead several years now, and all the children are gone, and he doesn’t need a big house to rattle around in,” my mother said.

  “You’ve been divorced for twelve years, your child is gone, and you don’t need a big house to rattle around in either,” I pointed out. I had been wondering why my mother didn’t unload the “four br two-story brick w/frpl and 3 baths” I’d grown up in.

  “Well, there’s a possibility John will have somewhere else to live soon,” Mother said too casually. “We may get married.”

  God, everyone was doing it!

  I pulled myself together and looked happy for Mother’s sake. I managed to say the right things, and I meant them, and she seemed pleased.

  What on earth could I get them for a wedding present?

  “Since John doesn’t seem to want to talk about his involvement with Real Murders right now,” Mother said suddenly, “why don’t you just tell me about this club?”

  “John’s an expert on Lizzie Borden,” I explained. “If you really want to know about his main interest, apart from golf and you, it’s Lizzie. You ought to read Victoria Lincoln’s A Private Disgrace. That’s one of the best books about the Borden case I’ve read.”

  “Um, Aurora…who was Lizzie Borden?”

  I gaped at my mother. “That’s like asking a baseball fan who Mickey Mantle was,” I said finally. “I didn’t know that a person could not know who Lizzie Borden was. Just ask John. He’ll talk your ear off. But if you read the book first, he’ll appreciate it.”

  Mother actually wrote the title in her little notebook. She really meant it about John Queensland, she was really serious about getting married. I couldn’t decide how I felt; I only knew how I ought to feel. At least acting that out made my mother happy.

  “Really, Aurora, I want you to tell me about the club in general, though I do want to discuss John’s particular int
erest intelligently, of course. Now that you and he are both tied in with this horrible murder, and you and I got sent that candy, I want to know what the background on these crimes is.”

  “Mother, I can’t remember when Real Murders started…about three years ago, I guess. There was a book signing at Thy Sting, the mystery book store in the city. And all of us now in Real Murders turned up for the signing, which was being held for a book about a real murder. It was such a funny coincidence, all us Lawrenceton people showing up, interested in the same thing, that we sort of agreed to call each other and start something up we could all come to in our own town. So we began meeting every month, and the format for the meetings just evolved—a lecture and discussion on a real murder most months, a related topic other months.” I shrugged. I was getting tired of explaining Real Murders. I expected Mother to change the subject now, as she always had before when I’d tried to talk about my interest in the club.

  “You told me earlier that you believe Mamie Wright’s murder was patterned on the Wallace murder,” Mother said instead. “And you said that Jane Engle believes that the candy being sent to us is also patterned like another crime—she’s trying to look it up?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re in danger,” my mother said flatly. “I want you to leave Lawrenceton until this is all over. There’s no way you can be implicated, like poor Melanie was with that purse hidden in her car, if you’re out of town.”

  “Well, that would be great, Mom,” I said, knowing she hated to be called “Mom,” “but I happen to have a job. I’m supposed to just go to my boss and tell him my mother is scared something might happen to me, so I have to get out of town for an indefinite period of time? Just hold my job, Mr. Clerrick?”

  “Aren’t you scared?” she asked furiously.

  “Yes, yes! If you had seen what this killer can do, if you had seen Mamie Wright’s head, or what was left of it, you’d be scared too! But I can’t leave! I have a life!”

  My mother didn’t say anything, but her unguarded response, which showed clearly in those amazing eyebrows, was “Since when?”