by K C Hart
“How long did this go on?” Katy shifted slightly in the hard metal chair.
“The Dwight concert was back in the summer. I won the tickets a couple of weeks before that.” She looked at Katy and shrugged her shoulders. “We met up at the concert for the first time. I told my husband that my sister from Jackson was going with me. After that it just got kind of easy to lie about it.” Tears started trickling down her face.
Katy pulled a tissue from the box on the desk beside them and handed it to the woman. “How did your son find out?”
“I finally came to my senses last month.” She paused and wiped her nose. “I realized that I was throwing away my marriage and my real life for a pipe dream. My husband is loyal and loves me, even if he is too tired to talk when he gets home from work. I told Rob that we had to break it off.”
“What happened?”
“Well, I saw a side of Rob that I had never seen before.” She looked at Katy and swallowed. “I didn’t tell the sheriff this. I was scared it might make Chase look bad.”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Smithers. Just tell me the truth. Chase has an alibi for the time of the murder.”
“I didn’t know that when I talked before.” Mrs. Smithers looked down at her hands. “Anyway. Rob showed me some pictures he had made of us at the Dwight concert and going into the hotel and at restaurants and other places. He said he would show them to my husband if I didn’t do what he said.”
Katy’s jaw dropped. “How did he take the pictures without you knowing about them?”
“He didn’t take them; somebody else did. He just had them on a cell phone and showed them to me.”
“What did he want you to do?”
“That’s the strange thing. He said that he would let me know later.” She shrugged her shoulders. “He never did get back with me. I guess I don’t have to worry about that now.”
“But how did your son find out?” Katy asked. “I still don’t understand.”
“Rob would drop by and leave a picture on the counter every once in a while. Just walk in, lay the picture down for the whole world to see, then walk out.” Her voice trailed off. “Kind of like a cat and mouse game.”
“Your son saw one of the pictures?”
“Yes, he was in the office with me on that Saturday. Rob had slipped in and laid the picture down and slipped out. We were in the back laughing about something or the other and didn’t hear the door open. Chase walked out ahead of me and saw the picture on the counter.” Mrs. Simmons leaned over and dropped her face in her hands. “He exploded. I tried to calm him down, but he wouldn’t listen. He stormed out of here, saying he would take care of that man once and for all. I thought my son had killed him when I first heard about it. That’s why I asked you if he was all messed up. That’s why I went to the funeral home.”
“I don’t understand,” Katy said, placing her hand on the woman’s shoulder.
Mrs. Smithers looked up again. “I knew Chase was mad, mad enough to kill Rob. But I just couldn’t believe the rest of what I had heard. The lady at the post office told me he had been mutilated.” She paused and took a deep breath. “I know this sounds crazy, but I could forgive my son for a crime of passion, but I just couldn’t believe that my own child would kill somebody in the way people were saying it happened…with a guitar string.”
Mrs. Smithers took another tissue from Katy’s hand and wiped her face as she stood up. “I guess you think I am a horrible person.”
Katy stood and placed an arm around the older woman’s shoulders. Crying washed away her carefully constructed youthful facade and made Mrs. Smithers look her actual age, perhaps even a little older. “No ma’am, I don’t. I think we all make mistakes.” She squeezed the woman’s arm and they walked back to the front of the store. “I’m going to relay what you told me to the sheriff. It might help find the real killer.”
“I hope so. I don’t want anybody else to suffer because of that man.” She raised a hand over her mouth. “I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but Rob Clay, well, he’s hurt enough people in this town.”
Katy hurriedly jumped in her car, leaving Mrs. Smithers who was taking the sign back off of her door. Misty would be calling any second, wondering where she was.
She pulled into The Burger Barn’s parking lot and scanned the cars. Misty was already there, but she must not have been waiting too long. She hadn’t texted or called yet.
The smell of the burgers from the grill and the onion rings coming out of the fryer invaded her senses as she entered. She had planned on having a Cobb salad, but a cheeseburger might just take its place. She walked over to the booth where Misty was waiting and slid in opposite her friend.
“I ordered you a sweet tea,” Misty said as the waitress put the drinks in front of them and handed Katy a menu.
“I’ll have a cheeseburger with everything and a side of onion rings,” Katy said, not bothering to look at the menu.
“Oohh, living on the greasy side. I’ll have the same.” Misty waited for the waitress to walk away from their table. “Edna Morse is a hot mess.”
“I take it she told you something important.” Katy pulled her straw from its paper and stuck it in her tea.
“Oh, yeah. Well, I think it’s important. I guess I’ll let you decide. It sounded important to me.”
“What did she say?”
“First of all, she said that the music store was barely staying afloat. She was often in there after hours, waiting for Rob to close the place. He had unpaid invoices and overdue notices everywhere. According to her, he would pay one place just enough to keep them out of his hair and then switch and pay the next guy the same way. He never stayed caught up.”
“That is interesting.”
“That’s not all. He always had plenty of cash on hand, too. They would drive up to Jackson on Friday nights, and he would always pay for their dinner and hotel with cash…always.”
“Do you think he was skimming off his own company?” Katy’s forehead furrowed in thought. “If that’s the case, I imagine his cousin would be pretty mad.”
“I don’t know. But Edna thinks he was probably mixed up in something illegal.”
The waitress walked up with their food balanced on a red cafeteria tray. “Alright, ladies.” She placed the burgers and rings in front of them. “Let me know when you’re done, and I’ll bring you to-go boxes. There is no way y’all will eat all this.”
Katy looked at the enormous pile of food in front of her. “I think we probably should have split an order of rings.”
“Speak for yourself,” Misty said, shaking a generous portion of salt over her plate of food. “I didn’t eat breakfast. I plan on eating every one of these bad boys.” They said their blessing and dug into the food, forgetting about Edna Morse for a few minutes.
Katy finished almost all of her burger and about half of her rings. She leaned back in the booth and watched as Misty continued to dip her onion rings in ketchup and shovel them in. “Where are you putting them all? I’m stuffed.”
Misty paused from lifting a ring to her mouth. “I told you I didn’t eat breakfast. Besides, you know I have a big appetite.”
“Yeah, but how come you’re still the same size we were in high school and I look like I swallowed an inner tube?”
“Girl please. I’m a good twenty pounds heavier than I was back then. I just wear good undergarments and clothes that disguise the bulge.”
“What do you mean, good undergarments?” Katy wiped her hands on her napkin and dropped it on the uneaten portion of her burger. “I don’t wear holey underwear, either, but what’s that got to do with anything?”
Misty leaned across the table and crooked her finger toward Katy, motioning her to lean in. “Spandex,” she whispered conspiratorially.
“You mean you wear a girdle?” Katy’s eyes darted around quickly. She had not meant to speak so loudly.
“Ssshhhh.” Misty waved her arm toward Katy and looked around the restaurant. “Not a gird
le, no. Just Spandex underwear.”
“But that’s what a girdle is, isn’t it?”
“No, a girdle is what my mother wears.” Misty leaned back and looked down her nose. “I am not wearing a girdle.”
“Okay, okay, whatever you say,” Katy said, holding her face as straight as she could. “Anyway, you look great, so it doesn’t really matter what you have on under there.”
“Thank you,” Misty said, slightly mollified. “Now, let me finish telling you about Edna.”
“Oh, I thought that was it.” Katy pulled air through her straw, making a slurping sound. The waitress appeared and refilled their glasses.
“No, you told me to find out if she knew anything about Floyd Perkins, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. I just figured she didn’t tell you anything.”
“No, she was a fountain of information. You know she is on all of those school committees and civic organizations?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, Floyd used to be the treasurer of the PTO, but the books kept coming up wrong, so he lost his spot. Guess who took his place, volunteered for it?”
“Not Rob Clay?”
“You guessed it. And the thing that made Edna so mad was that she nominated Rob for the position. Now he’s dead and she’s getting a divorce. She thinks Rob was stealing from the school as well, but unlike Floyd, he was smart enough to fix the books so nobody could tell.”
“Rob Clay was just involved in a little bit of everything,” Katy said shaking her head. “I thought he was just the guy who ran the music store.”
“Have you been to the tattoo girl’s place yet?” Misty dug around in her purse for her wallet. “What did it look like in a tattoo parlor?”
“No, I haven’t been. I had a couple of patients to see, and then I went by to see Mrs. Smithers.” She leaned back and patted her stomach. “I’m stuffed like my grandma’s turkey. I might wait and do that tomorrow.”
Misty grinned, finally fishing her wallet from her purse. “Yeah, if you decide to get a ring of flowers tattooed around your belly button you might want to wait until you’re not bloated from all of the greasy fried food.”
“You’re probably right,” Katy said, rolling her eyes.
“Did the bug lady tell you anything important?”
“Yeah.” Katy’s voice turned serious. “Rob Clay had pictures of their meetings. He was threatening to blackmail her.”
“My word,” Misty whispered. “He really was a wicked man.”
“I know. I need to track down Todd and tell him all of this stuff.” She laid her tip on the table and slid to the edge of the booth. “First, I need to go home and get it all organized in my murder book.”
“Well, I guess while you go do that, I’ll go back to the world of daisies, roses and Mother.”
When Katy got home, she got the murder notebook from its usual place and began adding her notes. She made a new column titled “Blackmail Victims” and wrote down “Johnnie Mae Smithers” and “Floyd Perkins.” She brought the tip of her pen to her lips as she studied the paper. Why did he just blackmail those two people? Maybe he didn’t. Maybe there were others. Maybe he had information on Edna Morse, too. She could have been lying about why she wrote the note saying he would pay. It seemed like Edna Morse would have as much or more money than Mrs. Smithers, and she was certainly worried about her image in the community, probably even more than Floyd Perkins. Maybe Edna wasn’t telling the whole story.
She jotted down the new information about Mrs. Smithers. Poor lady, but at least she had not said that her husband was leaving her. Maybe she would come through this alright after all.
Katy read over her notes again. Who had taken those pictures for Rob Clay? He had showed some of them to Mrs. Smithers on a cell phone, but Todd said that the cell phone he had on him the day that he was murdered didn’t have anything but a lot of selfies. There had to be another phone.
Donnie Gibson was blackmailing Floyd Perkins. Did he have the other cell phone? Was he the accomplice who had taken the pictures? Katy flipped the notebook shut and grabbed her purse. It was time to go visit Mrs. Simmons.
Chapter Thirteen
“This is where you write down everything you find out about the crime?” Mrs. Simmons ran her finger down the first page.
“Yes ma’am. It’s not all facts; some of it is just my ideas.”
“Well, first of all, I think we need to separate the facts from the guessing,” she said, handing the book back to Katy. “Why don’t you start another list that is strictly stuff you know for sure?”
“Okay,” Katy flipped to a clean page. “The list won’t be too long, though.”
“That’s okay. I just need to see the sure stuff before I go chasing wild hares.”
“Alright,” Katy sighed and started reading from her list. “We know that Rob was strangled with a guitar string. I saw the loop on the end, and Todd confirmed that is what killed him.”
“That’s the how,” Mrs. Simmons said, holding up a finger.
“He was seen going into the auditorium about one forty-five, and then Mrs. Morse got there at about two-fifteen. Then the other musicians started pulling up around two-thirty. So, we know that he was killed between one forty-five and two-fifteen. We also -” Katy stopped. Mrs. Simmons stared at Katy, shaking her head.
“Now, wait a minute. You’re moving too fast. Was anybody with Edna?”
“When?”
“When she got to the auditorium. Did she arrive alone, or was someone with her?”
“I am pretty sure she was alone. I didn’t write that down, but I remember talking to her after it was over, and she left alone.”
“So, Rob went in the auditorium, and then thirty minutes later Edna goes in there with him. Then fifteen minutes later everybody else gets there?”
Katy forced a smile. This might have been a mistake. Mrs. Simmons seemed to be having trouble following along. “Yes ma’am, that’s right. I got there with Misty at three. We were the last ones to arrive.”
“Well, how do you know for sure that Edna didn’t do it, or at least help do it? She was in there with him alone for fifteen minutes, and you already said she wrote a threatening letter to him. That seems like ample time to do what was done, if she didn’t waste any time.”
“My word,” Katy whispered, as she followed Mrs. Simmons’s train of thought. She looked back through her papers then up. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. She had an opportunity of at least fifteen minutes before the other people arrived.”
“Now, don’t go jumping to conclusions,” Mrs. Simmons said softly. “Just write down what you know. Edna was alone with Rob for fifteen minutes right before he died. We have a pretty close idea of the when.”
Katy scribbled down the note and smiled. “Okay, Rob was blackmailing Floyd Perkins. I don’t know what he had on him, though. I also know that Donnie has picked up where Rob left off.”
“Alright,” she paused and looked across the trailer park toward Tubby and Emma’s trailer. “Do we know the whereabouts of Donnie Gibson and Floyd Perkins from one forty-five to three?”
Katy followed Mrs. Simmons’s gaze to where Tubby and Emma were getting out of their vehicle. She waved at the couple, who started walking across their yard toward them. “Uh-oh. We might have to finish this later,” Katy said, flipping the cover shut on the notebook.
“That’s alright, honey,” Mrs. Simmons waved to the couple. “You find out everything you can about what Edna and them two men were doing that day around the time Rob Clay was killed, then we’ll move on from there.”
Katy stood and looked at her cell phone. “It’s five o’clock,” she gasped. “I have practice tonight at seven, and I haven’t even thought about supper.”
She hugged Mrs. Simmons then stepped down the steps as Tubby and Emma walked onto the porch.
“Don’t rush off on our account,” Tubby said with a grin.
“I had no idea it was this late. I still have
to cook supper before practice tonight.”
“How is everything coming together?” Emma asked. “I called Todd a while ago. He said they still aren’t through with my guitar case yet.”
“I haven’t heard anything new from Todd or the sheriff.” Katy looked from Emma to Tubby. “How are you two holding up?”
“We’re doing okay,” Emma said, reaching over and grabbing Tubby’s hand. “We’ve decided to be positive and have faith that this is going to be alright. I know I’m innocent. I have to believe that this will soon be over.”
“It will, baby,” Mrs. Simmons said. “You just keep praying and believing and it will all be fine.”
Katy pulled into the sheriff’s office. She had stopped by her house, but John wasn’t home yet. She decided filling in the sheriff was more important than supper. After talking to Mrs. Simmons, she realized that she needed to let the professionals know what she had learned. She was jumping to conclusions and assuming things without having all the facts. The sheriff might be able to figure this out a lot quicker if he had all her information. Todd’s truck was not in the parking lot, but the sheriff’s big Crown Victoria was parked near the door.
“Hello, anybody here?” Katy called poking her head in the door. No one was at the dispatch desk.
“Come on in, Katy,” the sheriff answered from his office. “I’m minding the store by myself this afternoon.”
Katy walked to his office and stood just inside the doorway. “I’ve found out a few things that I think might help you some.” She cleared the frog that suddenly lodged in her throat.
“Alright.” The sheriff waved a hand toward the empty chair in front of his desk. “Why don’t you close that door and have a seat.”
