He jutted his chin and stroked his white grizzled beard. “What’s your mama up to?”
I shrugged as a raindrop glanced off my shoulder. “Beats me.”
“She’s not planning to sabotage my weekend extravaganza, is she?”
Yes. Yes, she is. “You know my mama.”
I recalled how my daddy told me that Johnny was going to dress as Johnny Cash for his extravaganza, and I couldn’t quite picture how he planned to pull that off, as there was no resemblance whatsoever.
Around seventy, Johnny was not a young man by any means, but he was big and muscular with a wide barrel chest and beefy arms. When I was younger, there was something about his physique and the way he walked that always reminded me of Popeye’s nemesis, Bluto. Nowadays I thought he still looked like Bluto, though his hair had long since turned white and his muscles had atrophied some.
Once upon a time, Johnny had been considered a catch, especially since he had a fat bank account and a big ol’ house, but money couldn’t make up for his rotten personality, and he’d remained a bachelor most of his life.
It was a little ironic that he ran one of the most popular wedding chapels in town, though I supposed I could say the same of my mama, with her matrimonial cynicism.
I wondered again what he had been arguing about with Nelson but couldn’t quite screw up enough courage to ask. I wasn’t frightened of much, but this man scared me some.
“It would serve her best to mind her own business and stop trying to steal mine,” he warned, keeping his voice low. “And best you remind her of that.”
Apparently after all these years he also hadn’t learned that no one told my mama what to do. I stood up, ready to go toe-to-toe with this man three times my size. I might be scared, but I was never one to back down from a challenge. I latched onto my locket and said, “Is that a threat, Mr. Braxton?”
“Just fair warning,” he answered lightly. “No one messes with my bottom line and gets away with it.”
“How much money do you rightly need?” I snapped. “You already own half the town.” He owned his chapel, several reception venues and party halls, and a couple of restaurants, too.
“More, if I have a say in it.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I always get what I want.”
“I know what you need,” I said sassily.
His tone was sharp as he said, “And what is it I need, young lady?”
A poke from my pitchfork would work nicely. “You need yourself a woman to soften up your hard edges, Mr. Braxton. You should come see me about my matchmaking services. You’re never too old to find love.”
Though, truth be told, finding someone to love him would be quite the task.
Thunder rumbled, and Johnny looked to the skies before glancing back at me. “Why would I do that? I heard tell you’ve been poisoning people with those potions of yours. Isn’t it cruel how vicious some rumors can be?”
I narrowed my eyes. Had he been fanning the flames of those rumors? “Seems to me I heard my own rumors about you fighting with Nelson in front of the coffee shop a couple of days ago. Now, what was that fight about, Mr. Braxton?”
His jowls tightened in anger. In a low warning tone, he said, “You should mind your business, too, Miss Carly.” He tipped an imaginary hat. “Have yourself a good night, now.”
• • •
A good night. Ha! It was turning out to be anything but.
The skies had opened on my way home, and I’d come in the back door to a dark kitchen. The power in my house had gone off, yet everyone else’s on the street was just fine.
Roly and Poly were nowhere to be found, and I suspected the big chickens were hiding out under my bed—their usual spot when it was storming.
I’d left my damp shoes on the back door landing and now stood in the kitchen in my sopping socks, watching the ceiling drip.
Letting loose a string of curse words that would make my daddy blush, I grabbed a Crock-Pot from the cabinet and set it under the leak.
Rain pounded the roof, and I found two more leaks in the living room. I set a saucepan under one and an empty kitty-litter container under the other before heading upstairs to my room to change.
As I was running home in the rain, I’d tried to come up with a good plan to get Bernice Morris to spill what she knew of Nelson’s private life to me.
I needed a lie. A whopper that would convince her to give me some information—despite the fact that she probably hated my guts.
The storm had darkened my bedroom, and it took me a second to remember why the light switch didn’t work when I flipped it on.
No electricity.
I moved about in the murky light, first to check to see if the cats were under the bed (they were) and then to my closet to change out of my wet clothes. I slipped into a pair of drawstring shorts and a T-shirt before thumping down the hall to the bathroom (dang light switch!) to dry my hair with a towel. I set a wastebasket under the drip near the tub.
I glanced in the mirror at my freckled face and groaned at the sight of my hair. Without a hair dryer it was going to frizz like a used Brillo pad.
As I stared at my reflection, I wondered what on earth I’d done to bring today’s mess upon myself.
Nelson dead in my shop.
Johnny Braxton threatening me.
Rumors that my potions were poisoned.
I squeezed my eyes shut and braced my weight on the pedestal sink. In a town this size, a rumor like that could put me out of business fast. Despite the truth of the matter, people would believe what they heard. Even tourists would hear snippets and stay away.
It didn’t matter that mine was one of the more successful shops in town.
Or that my potions worked wonders on people.
Only that people heard that one man had died and another had wrecked his car after drinking my potions.
Why?
The word kept echoing in my head, bouncing off reasons why Nelson had been found in my shop.
Why? Why? Why?
There were no answers.
I might not know why now, but I’d find out. I wasn’t going down without a fight.
With a new determination, I headed downstairs to gather up more buckets for the inevitable leaks, and candles in preparation for nightfall. Lightning flashed and thunder cracked.
I checked the breaker in the kitchen, but it didn’t show that I’d blown any fuses. I opened my front door to check on the neighbors’ houses and almost fell into my pile of porch debris.
I’d almost forgotten about the porch. My anger simmered as I stomped toward the kitchen, to the phone book in a drawer. I’d call and see if the cleanup company could come tomorrow instead of Monday to haul the debris away. I found the number of the county company, but as soon as I picked up the phone, I found it dead.
Lots of that going around today.
I slammed down the receiver, walked over to the pantry, and pulled out a jar of peanut butter. After grabbing a spoon from the drawer, I twisted off the peanut butter cap and dug in.
Within minutes, Poly was downstairs, twining around my legs, meowing for his fair share. He could smell peanut butter from a mile away, I swear.
I grabbed another teaspoon from the drawer, dipped the tip into the jar, the smallest of dabs, and set it on the floor.
Poly looked at the spoon, then back up at me.
“It’s enough,” I said.
He flicked his long gray tail in displeasure.
“Take it or leave it.”
The cat wouldn’t touch a mouse with a ten-foot pole, but offer him some peanut butter and he was in kitty heaven. It was no surprise when he started lapping at the spoon.
It would take Roly another few hours after the storm stopped to come out from under the bed. I had no doubt that as soon as Poly finished his peanut butter, he’d go back upstairs and lord it over her that he’d had a treat and she hadn’t.
He was a braggart like that.
Roly was patient, however, and would exact her revenge on him later.
I tapped my spoon on the edge of the plastic container and thought about Bernice and Nelson. There had to be a way to get information from her.
Maybe I could send Ainsley. She had a way about her that made people tell her things. Of course, if Bernice knew Ainsley was only after the info to help me out, then Ainsley would be sent packing with a firm, sweet smile and a zucchini loaf.
Southerners were polite like that.
Poly stared up at me with baleful eyes.
“No more,” I said, and finally had to turn around so I wouldn’t be persuaded.
I shoved another spoonful of peanut butter in my mouth and let it melt. What was going to happen with the trial now that Nelson was dead? Coach would need another lawyer, and surely the case would be delayed.
I continued to tap the spoon and noticed that the skies outside were lightening, but it was still raining. Drips plopped from my ceiling into the Crock-Pot.
Wait a sec. . . . The perfect plan was forming in my head. It just might work.
If I went to Bernice and explained that I needed the information on Nelson because I was convinced that whoever killed him must have been the real embezzler, trying to stop the case from going to trial by killing Nelson because he was going to expose the true culprit, then maybe she’d open up. Especially after I added that by finding that person, I’d be proving Coach’s innocence once and for all, and oh yeah, clearing my own name and saving my reputation.
The fact that my argument was all made-up gobbledygook (except for the clearing-my-name part) was beside the point.
Ha! It was genius, if I did say so myself. The perfect lie concocted to weasel some much-needed information.
Poly wandered off, and I was feeling right proud of my plan as I set my spoon in the sink and put the peanut butter away.
So much so that my motive for my faux argument barely registered until I set the peanut butter jar back in the pantry.
And realized it might not be so phony after all.
In fact, it was the only thing that had made sense all day long.
What if Coach really was innocent? And what if the real embezzler heard the buzz about Nelson getting Coach off scot-free? Would he or she have killed to stop Nelson from taking the case to trial, to stop new evidence from being revealed?
New evidence like a second audit and a handwriting analysis?
Hmm.
I walked over to the dining room window and stared out at the falling rain. From this spot, I could see Mr. Dunwoody on his front porch, sipping his evening tea, rocking away while watching the storm march eastward. Leaves fluttered in the wind, and broken twigs littered our yards.
If Coach’s new lawyer didn’t know what he was doing . . . Coach would be found guilty of embezzlement. Locked up. And the embezzler would get off clean as could be with twenty thousand dollars.
It sounded like the perfect motive to me.
I just had to figure out who that person could be.
If he or she even existed.
I was still clinging to the belief that Coach was guilty, but since this was the only lead I had, I’d work with it until proven otherwise. And in order to do that, I needed Bernice Morris’s help.
As I stared outside, I spotted movement near Auntie Marjie’s fence.
I squinted, but didn’t see anything out of place.
But there . . . a bush shook. As I watched, a head popped up above the fence, looked left, then right, and then ducked back down again.
Someone was sneaking through Aunt Marjie’s front yard.
Someone with a death wish, apparently.
And just as I had the thought, a shotgun blast split the air.
Chapter Ten
The gun blasted the trespasser out of his hiding spot in the bushes and sent him scurrying for better cover.
I jumped into action before there was another murder in Hitching Post today. Hightailing it out my back door, I dashed toward my aunt’s house.
Mr. Dunwoody’s loud tee-hee-hee reverberated as I sprinted down the street, my bare feet slapping on the wet brick road. Aunt Marjie stood on her front porch, a shotgun balanced against her shoulder, one eye squinted.
“Don’t shoot, Aunt Marjie!” I shouted.
One of these days she was going to hit someone, and I didn’t think she would look good in prison stripes, either.
Marjie yelled, “Come out of those brambles, you son of bitch, or I won’t miss next time!”
I hurdled Marjie’s front fence (I was getting good at it) but nearly fell because of slippery landing area. Standing firm, I put myself between her gun and the culprit. I didn’t think she’d shoot me.
At least I hoped she wouldn’t.
“Could you put that gun down, Aunt Marjie?” I huffed, trying to catch my breath.
“This ain’t your business, Carly. Get on with you, now,” she barked. “I’ve got a city slicker to pop holes in. He’s gonna look like Swiss cheese when I’m done with him.”
Another round of Mr. Dunwoody’s tee-hee-hees echoed. I was glad he was having a jolly good time.
What sounded like pitiful mewls emerged from the bushes behind me. I wasn’t sure what had set the trespasser to crying—the Swiss cheese threat or the brambles. Those thorns hurt something fierce.
“The gun, Aunt Marjie,” I said firmly. Pleading never carried much weight with her—she saw it as a sign of weakness.
Heaving a sigh, she slowly lowered the weapon, though I noticed she still kept a finger on the trigger. She was itching to bag herself a city slicker.
“Thank you,” I said.
“He has exactly ten seconds to get himself out of my yard. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly,” I said.
“Eight,” she intoned.
I spun around, crouched, and stared into the face of a terrified man.
“Six.”
“Get up!” I yelled.
Like a deer caught in headlights, he just stared at me, making those pitiful sounds.
“Four!” Marjie yelled.
“Tee-hee-hee,” Mr. Dunwoody laughed.
“Three!”
I grabbed the guy’s arm and pulled. Brambles tore at his fancy—yet soggy—suit as he found his feet.
“Two!”
I threw a glance at Marjie, who’d once again braced the gun on her shoulder.
More mewling came from the city slicker.
I glanced into his terrified eyes, said, “Sorry,” and gave him the biggest shove I had in me.
He tumbled backward, right over Marjie’s fence and onto the sidewalk.
The public sidewalk.
I winced at the sound of him hitting the cement. A long, drawn-out moan filled the air.
“He didn’t break my fence, now, did he?” Marjie asked with an accusatory tone.
Marjie’s fence had been falling apart for years. It was only the brambles that kept it from crumbling.
“No, ma’am,” I said.
She grunted and went back inside, slamming the door.
Giving the brambles a wide berth, I walked around the fence. The rain had stopped but moisture hung thickly in the air, and I was sweating like crazy.
The trespasser lay in a fetal position on the sidewalk. Blood oozed from small scrapes and punctures from the thorns. I didn’t see any bullet holes.
I crouched down. “Jeez, do you have a death wish?”
Wide, terrified eyes blinked at me. His perfect white teeth chattered as he said, “I thought they were kidding about the gun.”
“Didn’t you see the No Trespassing signs?” There were enough of them. I saw five with just a quick glance around the yard.
“I thought they were kidding about the gun,” he mumbled again.
Taking pity on the poor thing, I grabbed his hand helped him to his feet.
Wobbly, he reached out for Marjie’s fence post, and I said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
He immediately snatched his hand back, as if it had been electrocuted.
“Who are you?” I asked as I picked leaves off his once-fancy suit.
“John Richard Baldwin, ma’am.”
At least his teeth had stopped chattering, but his eyes were still wide. Shock, I reasoned. “What are you doing here, John Richard Baldwin?”
He blinked as though I’d asked him to name all the presidents in alphabetical order. Bits of shrubbery clung to tufts of light brown hair that stuck out in every direction. His face had been scratched to hell and back.
“Working, ma’am,” he finally said.
“Working where?” I prompted, leading him down the sidewalk toward my about-to-be-condemned house.
Aunt Eulalie came out onto her porch and said, “Did she get him?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Dang!” She spun and went back inside.
John Richard looked at me. “Is everyone in this town bloodthirsty?”
I led him across the street to my freestanding set of steps. “Pretty much. Who do you work for?”
His eyes brightened a bit, and it was good to see some color in his cheeks that wasn’t from the bloody scratches. “Doughtree, Sullivan, and Gobble.” With a flourish, he handed me a damp business card.
“I see.” I’d heard the name before. It was the Birmingham law firm that had been trying to get Aunt Marjie to sell her inn. It was also the firm that had once represented Coach Butts, until Coach fired them to hire Nelson. “Sit.”
He glanced around. “Where?”
I dusted pebbles off the damp brick steps. “Here.”
“You’re kidding.”
He wasn’t much younger than I was, maybe three or four years, but with his baby face and naive air, he seemed more like a high school boy than a big-city lawyer. I pegged him to be fresh out of law school. “If you’re worried you’ll ruin your suit, I’m afraid it’s too late for that.”
He glanced down and let out a small cry, as if just noticing all the rips.
I left him whimpering and ran inside for some rubbing alcohol and cotton balls. When I came back out, he had his head in his hands. “I’m going to get fired for sure.”
“Hush,” I said, dabbing his hand with the alcohol. “They’re not going to fire you. You weren’t successful in your quest, but no one in the firm has been. They can’t fire the lot of you. There won’t be anyone left to make fun of Gobble’s last name.”
A Potion to Die For: A Magic Potion Mystery Page 9
