Stranded

by Lorena McCourtney

  What was relevant was that my big question had been answered: this relationship had been going on parallel to Hiram’s relationship with Lucinda. Which raised the ominous question: had Lucinda found out about KaySue? And had she grimly decided that Hiram had dumped and humiliated her once, and he wasn’t going to get away with it again?

  She could have gotten him up to the third floor easily enough. Just told him she hadn’t seen the view from up there since their high school days and wanted to see it again. She was strong and fit from her walking and health club workouts. She’d have no difficulty pushing him out the window.

  Oh no. No, no. I didn’t want to think such thoughts about Lucinda.

  Another side of the coin occurred to me. What about the reverse of Lucinda finding out about KaySue and being angry enough to kill him? Maybe Hiram had decided he was going to marry Lucinda after all, and he’d broken it off with KaySue. How would she take the news? Calmly and graciously?

  About as likely as Three Stooges Moe breaking into operatic aria.

  18

  Good news when I got back to the pickup. Abilene had passed both written and driving tests. She proudly showed me her new license, complete with terrible photo. I wouldn’t have thought Abilene could look unattractive under any circumstances, but the curse of the DMV photo held true even for Abilene. Her mouth had an odd, off-center tilt, her eyes bulged in a way they never did in real life, and her hair looked like a blond wig one of Norman’s chickens had been scratching in. She didn’t mind, I knew. She’d have happily accepted a license that made her look like Frankenstein, just so she could now drive legally.

  Which she did, all the way back to Hello, smiling all the way, wheeling that oversized pickup down the road as if she’d been driving all her life. Although she sobered when I gave her a brief rundown on my meeting with KaySue, whose last name I still didn’t know, and my two-sided suspicions.

  “So either one of them could have done it.” Abilene sounded as dismayed as I felt. She liked Lucinda too.

  But, I asked myself, wasn’t KaySue the more likely perpetrator? She admitted to being in Hiram’s house. She could have been fudging about when she was there. She could also have been lying about the drinking/hangover thing. If she’d gone up to Hello and found Hiram was with Lucinda that evening, she might have waited for him, her temper spiraling to the murderous level.

  The scenario fell apart there. If KaySue was angry enough to kill Hiram, she’d have clobbered him right there in the driveway or kitchen. She wouldn’t have wasted time luring him up to the third floor.

  Abilene’s next question, “Now what?” echoed my question to myself.

  Yes, now what? Tell Kelli everything? Confront Lucinda? Go to the police? I felt squeamish about all these alternatives. I didn’t want Lucinda to turn out to be a killer. But neither, I realized, did I want hotheaded but also naïve and optimistic KaySue to be the guilty person. Or, for that matter, Nutty Norman or Kelli or flower-shop Suzy or I-can-hire-a-killer Doris or anyone else I’d encountered so far.

  So many suspects, so many conflicting motives and clues.

  And then there was Chris, with his bad advice about the Bahamas bank. Could that have tangoed into murder? But in that situation, if someone was going to murder someone, it seemed more likely ol’ Hiram would have been furious enough to do Chris in, not the other way around.

  By now my head was pounding, as if those carousel horses were thundering around inside it, and I remembered a mystery I’d once read in which a character remarked about the victim, “What difference does it make who killed him? The old goat deserved killing. Why bother to figure out who did it?”

  But I didn’t feel that way. Old Hiram McLeod certainly had his flaws and faults, but no one had the right to decide he should die for them. Not even one of the nice people on my list of suspects.

  Abilene intended to drop me off at the house and go back to work, but a business card was wedged in beside the doorknob. It was from Nick’s Garage, with a greasy message on the back about an available motor home engine, so we drove out to the garage.

  A motor home—or, more accurately, what was left of a motor home—stood in the yard. Compared to this one, ours was almost roadworthy. The entire back half of it was simply gone, no bathroom, kitchen, or rear wheels, almost as if that half had been surgically removed. Part of a sofa dangled out of what had been the living room.

  Nick came out to talk to us as we studied the mess.

  “What happened to the occupants?” I asked, appalled.

  “Funny thing. Brakes on an eighteen-wheeler went out, and the truck hit ’em dead-on sideways at a crossroads down south of here. You can see what it did. Sheared off the whole back half of the thing. Scattered it over half an acre down there. But those folks, couple about your age from New Jersey they are, had their seat belts buckled on tight, or the good Lord was with ’em or something, because they walked away with no more’n a few scratches. You can see how the driver’s and passenger’s seats weren’t even touched.”

  “What about the truck driver?”

  “He’s okay too, but shook up as bad as they are. The thing is, these people never want to see this or any other motor home ever again. They just want to go home, and they’re flying back to Jersey tomorrow. So if you want the engine, I figure we can get it for a bottom price, probably not over five hundred. They just want out from under.”

  “I don’t want to take advantage of their misfortune!”

  “You wouldn’t be taking advantage. You’d be doing them a favor. They have comprehensive and liability insurance, but no collision coverage, so there’s nothing for them there. They’ll probably get a good settlement from the truck company eventually, but who knows how long that will take? They want to wash their hands of what’s left of the motor home now.”

  “The engine would work in our motor home?”

  “It’s a newer model, but it’ll work. And it looks like it’s in good condition, with a lot less miles on it than yours. A really weird accident, kind of like when a tornado demolishes one house and leaves the one next door untouched, the way the accident left the engine untouched.”

  “So how much would it cost altogether?”

  “Well, with the installation charge, and probably some miscellaneous parts to buy, I’d say maybe twelve or thirteen hundred total. It’s the best deal you’re ever going to get on an engine, that’s for sure, because we’re not too busy now and I’m shaving the labor fee to the bone. If you can pay them for the engine now, you can take two or three months to pay me for the labor.”

  “Let us think about it for a few minutes, okay?”

  “Sure.” Nick walked back toward the open garage doors. Nothing was up on the rack today, and his helper was drinking coffee, which suggested business was indeed slow.

  “So, what do you think?” I asked Abilene.

  “I guess we ought to do it,” she said, though she didn’t look overjoyed. A few weeks ago we’d both have been thrilled by this unexpected opportunity, but circumstances were different now. Her job, my job. Dr. Sugarman? Mac coming to town? “I’ll get paid in a couple days, and I can put that money in on it.”

  My Social Security check and CD interest were on direct deposit with the bank, and I hadn’t touched that money yet this month. I could write a check against that and then pay Nick off with part of next month’s checks. “I can swing the rest of it.”

  Then Abilene asked the big question. “When we get it fixed, do we pick up and leave right away?”

  Decision time. With the motor home in working shape, we’d no longer be stranded in Hello. We could head on down to Arizona, as we’d originally planned. Warm weather. Swimming pool. Sunshine. I figured Nick would trust us to send the balance of the money from there. We’d be putting distance between ourselves and anyone who was after us.

  But we’d more or less decided the divorce meant Boone had given up on us, and the Braxtons hadn’t shown their ugly faces since they’d chased me into
Oklahoma some months ago. Maybe we didn’t have to run.

  There were good reasons to stay on. Abilene loved her job, and maybe something would develop between her and Dr. Sugarman after the divorce, which I thought would be a very good thing.

  And it just wasn’t in my genes to walk out on a murder unsolved.

  “I think we could stay on here for a while,” I said, and Abilene’s grin surely qualified her for entry into some toothpaste ad hall of fame.

  We went in and told Nick we wanted the engine and how we could pay for it, to which he was agreeable. He said he’d get right on it and be in touch later, and I told him where I was working now. On the way home, I made another decision.

  “We won’t tell anyone about the letters or KaySue yet, okay?” I added my reasoning. “The letters don’t prove anything, and they might just cause innocent people embarrassment and trouble.”

  So, the problem now was, how to find out if Lucinda knew about KaySue. Because if she didn’t know, she wouldn’t have had any reason to murder Hiram. Which would be a big, unpleasant weight off my mind, and I could go on to other possibilities from there.

  I didn’t want to ask any of the Historical Ladies if they’d heard rumors or gossip, because asking a question can all too easily start a rumor. Saying, “Have you ever heard anything about Hiram seeing a young blond down in Hayward before he was killed?” can, when it makes the jump in a gossip circle, take on a much more scandalous spin. “Hey,” it becomes, “did you know Hiram was running around with a blonde a third his age down in Hayward?”

  Lucinda came by the library a couple of afternoons later. She waved to Doris Hammerstone and Stella Sinclair at the main desk but bypassed them to come directly to my workspace. I was into setting up a separate section for Hiram’s books on Egyptian archaeology, another of his varied interests. “Big problem,” Lucinda announced. I’m thinking murder and secret girlfriend and carousel horses, but what she said was, “Esther McIver has dropped out as our props person. She decided she’s had it with snow and ice and took off yesterday to visit her son in California until spring. You’d think she could give us a little advance notice, but that’s Esther for you.” She gave the pages of a book an exasperated flip, then targeted me with an expectant look. “Anyway, I’m thinking you’re the perfect person to take over.”

  “I don’t know anything about props.”

  “If you can tell a doghouse from a policeman’s nightstick, you’re in.”

  “In that case, I’ll give it a try.” I was pleased with the idea of helping out on the Revue without flouncing around in the chorus line. I’d heard the money the Revue brought in was divided between a summer camp program for kids and helping out with the local meal delivery program for seniors. “Nick has found a replacement for our motor home engine, but we’ve decided to hang around even after it’s fixed.”

  “Good. I have a list of props we need. I was thinking, if you have time, we could go over to the hotel on Sunday and see what props Esther has lined up and what we still have to locate.”

  “Sunday afternoon would be fine. I’ll go to church in the morning.”

  “I’ll pick you up about 1:30, then, okay?”

  This felt like an opening to me, and I had to ask, “Would you like to come to church with us?”

  “No thanks.” Her tone suggested she’d as soon spend the morning listening to reruns of political speeches from 1982 as listen to a Christian message from the pulpit with us.

  I was pleased with her Sunday invitation anyway. Surely, with an entire afternoon to work with, I could think of some discreet way to find out if Lucinda knew about KaySue.

  Dr. Sugarman sat with us at church on Sunday. Afterward he invited both of us to go to the Chuckwagon Buffet with him. I had my appointment with Lucinda, so I declined but added brightly, “But you two go ahead. I hear the food there is very good.” But Abilene, without me along to make it a non-date, also declined. Though I did think she looked disappointed. Dr. Sugarman surely was.

  After we got home, I asked if she’d like to come to the hotel with Lucinda and me. Her nod wasn’t wildly enthusiastic, but it was a nod.

  Lucinda had a key to the hotel, of course, and she talked about the hotel’s history as we climbed to the third floor. How President Hoover was supposed to have stayed there at one time and movie star James Dean too, and that Gypsy Rose Lee had been the star to christen the stage when it was first built and featured productions a bit more racy than the current Revue.

  On the third floor Lucinda got out her list, and we started trying to locate the things on it. Thankfully, it appeared that Esther had lined up most of the necessary items, which was good because there was only a week and a half left before the big performance. She had a doghouse and a phony fountain with plastic “water” for the Three Stooges piece, a sign saying “Harry’s Barber Shop” for the street scene, and a tall stool for Ben Simpson’s Will Rogers monologue.

  “Did Will Rogers use a stool on stage?”

  “Beats me. But Ben is sure going to need one. I talked to him last night, and he could hardly get out of bed yesterday. We’re always short on men for parts, of course. You know the statistics about older men and women.” She sounded annoyed, as if the men died off early just to get out of appearing in the Revue.

  We also found a needed bouquet of silk flowers, a fringed lamp, and a set of black masks for another chorus-line number. I kept trying to find out what Lucinda knew about Hiram’s activities before his death, but it’s not easy to work questions about someone’s extracurricular love life into an ordinary conversation. And I had to be careful not to give anything away. If Lucinda didn’t already know about KaySue, I didn’t want to be the one to spill it to her.

  “I found some of Hiram’s old phone bills. He made a lot of long-distance calls,” I observed. “Especially to Hayward.”

  Would that elicit a response such as, “I think he may have been seeing another woman down there”?

  No. Lucinda replied, “Yes, he was always talking with people from that mining company. They have offices in Texas and Denver and all over.”

  “Hayward?”

  “Maybe there too. I don’t know.” No hint from her of anything else going on in Hayward.

  I asked several more discreet questions, but discreet wasn’t getting me anywhere. Getting more blunt, I asked, while we were plowing through a box of knickknacks, “Did you ever wonder, given Hiram’s past, if he could really settle down with one woman?”

  To which she answered cheerfully, “He knew if he didn’t confine himself to one woman this time that he was going to find himself minus this woman.” Lucinda sounded more concerned when she added, “You know one thing we’re missing on the list is the fire hydrant for the street-scene skit.”

  “Would the city have an old one we could use?”

  “Possibly. But it would probably be so heavy we’d need a crane to get it up here. And another one to get it down to the stage. Which is probably why Esther hadn’t figured out what to do about it yet.”

  Abilene had been wandering around looking at costumes and peering down that elevator shaft to the basement, but now she said, “Maybe we could make one.”

  “Out of what?” I asked.

  “There’s those big chunks of Styrofoam in that trash room at the house. They’re funny shaped because they must have been packed around something, but we could cut and glue them into a fire hydrant shape, then paint it red.”

  “Marvelous idea!” Lucinda applauded.

  I’ve never been good at artsy-craftsy things, but if Abilene thought we could do it, maybe we could. We moved on to other items on the list, a live cactus plant and a Greta Garbo poster, me still trying to work in my sly questions.

  Or maybe not so sly questions, considering that Lucinda finally planted her fists on her hips and looked at me over a lava lamp we’d just uncovered. “Ivy, are you trying to find out from me if Hiram was seeing some other woman while we were engaged?”

  �
�Well, uh, no. Not really.” True. I already knew what Hiram was doing. I was just trying to find out if Lucinda knew.

  “Have you heard rumors?”

  I shook my head. Definitely not. No rumors. Hiram had apparently been careful as the proverbial long-tailed cat in a roomful of rockers.

  “I suppose you’ve heard what Hiram did to me years ago, how he left me at the altar and ran off to marry another woman?”

  “Umm, uh, well …”

  “For years after that, I wouldn’t have trusted Hiram about anything. If he’d said it was Monday, I’d have looked at the calendar to be sure. If he’d said two plus two equals four, I’d have checked on my fingers. I had money I’d inherited invested in my husband’s family’s bank, and I warned Bill if they dealt with Hiram in any way I’d yank my money out. But Hiram changed in his later years.” She smiled wryly. “Or maybe he just got too old for the chase. In any case, he was trustworthy now. We had a good thing going, and Hiram wouldn’t have done anything to damage it.”

  “That’s … comforting.”

  But not true. I still didn’t know which woman Hiram intended to marry, Lucinda or KaySue, but I definitely knew he was up to his same old devious, womanizing tricks. And Lucinda’s statement about money and the bank reinforced what I already knew, that she did have a temper when she was pushed hard enough, and she would retaliate.

  By the end of the day, I had to admit Lucinda was either blithely unaware of KaySue’s existence, or she’d simply outwitted me, because I didn’t know any more than I did before.

  Maybe I’d better give up sleuthing and take up fireplug construction.

  19

  When we got home, Abilene and I walked up to the corner to inspect the fire hydrant. It’s odd how you see some ordinary thing such as a fire hydrant almost daily, and you can identify one instantly when you see it. But when you actually get down to making one, you realize you don’t know the details at all.