An Angel to Die For

by Mignon F. Ballard

  “Can you believe it? I shouldn’t complain; the place stays spotless, and once in a while she’ll even bake something for the next day. Why, yesterday we had a loaf of dilly bread that was out of this world. Ola’s a marvelous cook—of course she puts the pots and pans back in the wrong places.”

  “No kidding?” I smiled. “And she denies doing it?”

  “Says she doesn’t remember a thing about it. Claims it’s an angel.” My mother sighed. “I really do think the poor soul’s slipping.”

  “I checked with your lawyer’s office in Atlanta, Mom. Your friend Wally is due home sometime next week. Maybe we can work this out soon and Ola can get her own life back.

  “By the way,” I said, “a man called here yesterday and left a message, wants to lease the farm for a nursery. Thought we might ask your friend about that as well.”

  “What man?” Mom asked.

  “Said his name was Whisonant. Peter Whisonant. Has a garden center in Cartersville. He left a number.”

  “Peter Whisonant . . . I’ve heard of his place. It’s a huge operation. They have just about everything there. Hollis Prater gets all her day lilies from them. You remember Hollis? Used to be in my bridge club? Has about an acre of day lilies right behind her house.”

  “You think I should call him back?”

  “If you think you’d be interested, and if he’s really who he says he is,” she added.

  But how was I to know?

  Sit down and think, a calming voice said. And so I did. I phoned for directory assistance and asked for the number of the nursery in Cartersville. It was the same one I’d written down the day before.

  I was returning Mr. Whisonant’s call, I told the clerk who answered, and would like to talk with him about the property near Liberty Bend. But talk was all I meant to do. Even after the trauma of the last few months, Smokerise, and the land surrounding it, was my home, just as it had been home to generations before me. I didn’t know how I would manage to keep it up, but I wasn’t ready to let it go. The house, the red soil, the huge old oaks, and the rolling hills were all a part of me, just as I was a part of them. The thought of this land belonging to someone else caused an ache so deep inside me it almost hurt to breathe. And I came close to calling the man back to tell him I’d changed my mind.

  I was feeding the cat before leaving for Dottie’s when he returned my call, and the unexpected ringing caused both of us to jump.

  Their plan would include the construction of a large greenhouse and a couple of other buildings, Peter Whisonant told me. A major part of the acreage would be planted in trees and shrubs, and possibly an orchard later if things worked out.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Smokerise—this house—is our home. I was raised here. I’m not sure I like the idea of turning it over to strangers.”

  “I understand. And that’s certainly negotiable,” he said. “We don’t plan to use the house itself, and you can determine what your boundaries are to be.

  “I’d like you to talk with my nephew if you would. He’s a horticulturist and one of the partners I spoke of and can show you on paper what we have in mind.”

  It sounded promising, yet I still wasn’t sure I was ready to commit to such an arrangement. I did agree to look at the blueprints with the man’s horticulturist kin, who would soon be in touch, he promised.

  When the phone rang a few minutes later, I thought it might be the nurseryman’s nephew calling to set up a meeting, so I paused begrudgingly to answer it on my way out the door.

  “I know you have the boy,” a man’s voice said, “and I won’t stop until I find him. I’ll be watching you every minute. Just remember that.”

  By the time I found the breath to reply, the man had hung up.

  I couldn’t get to Dottie’s fast enough.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I should’ve known something else was about to happen. I guess we all expected it.

  As soon as I got back from Atlanta the next morning, I found out Faris Haskell had been charged with the murder of Jasper Totherow. I learned it from Aunt Zorah who said she was on her way to see him.

  I drove straight to her house instead of home, partly because I was putting off going to Smokerise alone, but I’d also made my aunt promise she wouldn’t go to see Faris without me. She met me at the door, her brassy hair all tousled and lipstick askew, like she’d tried to put on makeup with a rubber stamp and missed.

  “They’ve arrested that fool Faris,” she told me without so much as a flicker of change in her expression. “They say he killed Jasper Totherow. Found his bloody thumbprint on the wall below the barn loft—blood type same as Jasper’s, and he had scratches on his wrist that could’ve come from the dead man. Some policeman with a strong stomach and no sense of smell scraped residue from under Jasper’s nails that might be human skin—maybe Faris’s, although I don’t know how they could tell it from all the dirt.”

  “Oh, dear,” I said, and sighed. I didn’t know if this was good or bad. It didn’t feel good, and Aunt Zorah didn’t look good either; in fact, she looked like somebody had told her the world would end tomorrow and it was five minutes till midnight. But at least they hadn’t arrested her.

  They had questioned her, she said. “And they went through my closet too—dresser drawers, everything—looking for I don’t know what. The very nerve! I made them put every bit back how they found it.” My aunt made a face. “Wanted to know if I’d whacked Jasper with a shovel.”

  “And did you?” I asked, hoping if she had, she’d have sense enough to lie about it.

  “Can’t say I didn’t consider it,” my aunt said. “Low-life tried to blackmail me with Faris’s Phi Beta Kappa key. Said he’d tell everybody what Faris did, that he was still alive. Wanted me to meet him there in the barn lot at Smokerise.” Aunt Zorah moaned low in her throat. “Of course I already knew that by then.”

  I followed her into the kitchen where she stood for a minute looking as if she’d forgotten what she came for, then waited while she filled a glass with water and drank it.

  “I’ve been such a fool, Prentice! Just couldn’t stand the thought of everybody knowing, laughing . . .” She shook her head. “And what would it matter if they did?”

  “So, what happened then?” I asked, although I wasn’t really sure I wanted to know.

  She shrugged. “I’m ashamed to admit I was going to be stupid enough to pay that piece of trash, but he didn’t bring the key with him. Said he’d left it in a safe place. Idiot expected me to give him money for something he didn’t even have!”

  I shook my head as if in disbelief, although I wasn’t one bit surprised. “And then . . .?”

  “Well, it just went all over me all of a sudden, and I picked up a shovel and made like I was going to cream the little weasel!” She laughed. “You should’ve seen that nitwit scramble up that ladder to the loft to get away—as if I might come after him!” My aunt snorted. “I’m not climbing into a hayloft after any man, especially that one!”

  I waited for her to go on, but she didn’t. “And that was all?”

  “What did you expect, Prentice? Of course that’s all! I realized what a fool I’d been and left the wretch up there. He must’ve fallen through that old rotten floor and landed on his head. They say pride goeth before a fall . . . seems it was my pride, but Jasper’s fall.”

  She set her empty glass aside and slowly made her way through a dark book-lined hallway to the small sitting room.

  “But somebody hit him from behind,” I reminded her.

  She tossed me a long-suffering glance. “Wasn’t me.”

  “What happened to the shovel?”

  “How should I know?”

  “It might have your prints on it. You didn’t—move it or anything?”

  “Now why would I do that? Maybe whoever killed him disposed of it—if, as you seem to think, the shovel was their weapon of choice.”

  Don’t go there, Prentice Dobson! I warned myself. You’ve sai
d too much already.

  “Have you spoken with Uncle Faris yet?” I asked as she gestured for me to sit in her ancient Morris chair with the fringed arm protectors. I sat carefully. I knew it had belonged to her father, maybe even her grandfather.

  “Of course not,” she said. “After all, I was the one who put him there.” She shrugged. “Well, he put himself there, but I turned him in to the police.”

  “Why did you do that? When?”

  “In Florida a few days ago. Faris took my silver. Had it in his suitcase. Can you believe he’d do that to his own wife? They caught him boarding a plane to Mexico.”

  I could believe Faris Haskell capable of just about anything. “You didn’t go to a family reunion, did you?”

  Aunt Zorah sat across from me. “No, I didn’t.”

  “How did you find out? About Faris, I mean?”

  “Didn’t you notice that pile of rocks by his grave? They weren’t there before. Had to come from somewhere.”

  Of course I’d noticed them. I just hadn’t thought much about it.

  “And then Maynard Griggs started reading! Checking out books from the library. He’s never been too bright, you know. If he had any sense, he wouldn’t have married that uppity Ernestine. Why, Maynard hasn’t read anything significant since Miss Mamie Pitts made us memorize The Thanatopsis in high school, and here he was taking home books by Dickens and Thoreau.”

  “I thought they were for his granddaughter,” I said.

  “Bah! She doesn’t have any more sense than he does. And Ernestine never reads anything heavier than those magazines like that Martha Stewart puts out. I knew they were for somebody else. And he wouldn’t meet my eyes either. Slipperier than a greased eel that one. Figured he was up to something. A little warning bell went off in my head—only it wasn’t so little. Sounded more like Big Ben.” My aunt straightened her glasses. “Never ignore a warning bell, Prentice.”

  “No, ma’am,” I said. My own noggin vibrated from the tolling already. “But how’d you know how to find him?”

  “Knew he had to be staying somewhere nearby, but not with Maynard. That wouldn’t do. Not but one other place around here and that’s the Liberty Leisure Inn.”

  “Oh, surely not!” I said. “Nobody stays there.” Even the “in your pants after one dance” couples back in high school avoided that place. We called it the “crab lab” because of . . . well, just because.

  “But that’s just what Faris wanted. Even after all this time, he couldn’t take a chance on being recognized, and nobody around here would be caught d—” Aunt Zorah cleared her throat. “Well, he could be sure no one he knew would be staying there. And sure enough I followed Maynard there one day, saw him dropping off some books; he never suspected a thing. I’ll swear, if that man had bird brains, he’d fly backward!

  “Anyway, after he left, I went in and looked at the register. Faris didn’t sign his right name, of course, but I recognized his handwriting, and the address was the one in Florida. When the fool dropped out of sight a few days later, I knew where to find him.”

  “Do you think he killed Jasper?” I asked my aunt as we drove to the county jail.

  She was quiet for a minute. “I think he has it in him to do it, and Jasper did have Faris’s precious key. I found out later he gave it to his daughter to keep. How’d he come by it unless he stole it off of Faris? Damn fool thinks more of that key than he does himself, and if you don’t want to make him mad, don’t mess around with that Phi Beta Kappa key.”

  “He could’ve lost it,” I suggested. “Maybe Jasper found it somewhere.”

  “Maybe,” my aunt said. But I could see she didn’t believe it.

  Faris Haskell né Fabius Hawthorne wasn’t at all happy to see us. We met in a small room with nothing but a table between us and he stood about as far away from that as he could get. “I don’t have anything to say to you,” he said to my aunt. He took a step backward, then another. Any farther and he’d back into a cement wall.

  “I have plenty to say to you, Faris Haskell,” Aunt Zorah said, “but I don’t like to use words like that in front of Prentice.”

  The man looked around as if looking for a quick escape route, and for a minute I thought he was going to call the guard on the other side of the door. He had reason to be afraid. Aunt Zorah was using her forced calm voice. Not a good sign.

  Faris spoke quietly. “I didn’t kill that man, Zorah. Hadn’t even seen him in over a week. I was in Florida when all that happened.” He backed against the wall like he needed it to hold him up. He didn’t sound convincing.

  “Then how did he come to have your Phi Beta Kappa key?” my aunt asked. “I hope you have a good lawyer, Faris. You’re going to need one.”

  I didn’t think he was going to answer. He shook his head, crossed his arms, and sighed. He was an unattractive, shaggy man with a bulging middle, and the orange prison jumpsuit wasn’t his color at all. I couldn’t imagine what Aunt Zorah ever saw in him.

  “We had a bit of a scuffle,” he said. “But that’s all it was. A scuffle. I bloodied his nose and I guess he scratched my arm. That must’ve been when I lost the key. It was somewhere in the barn lot; I tried and tried to find it, but it was already gone.”

  The man with the flashlight the night it snowed! The hat with purple ear flaps. Of course! Faris Haskell came back to look for his missing key. But Jasper Totherow got there first.

  “He tried to blackmail you with it, didn’t he?” I said.

  “Hell no! Not about that. I never saw the man again after that. The fool threatened to go to the police after they found Colette Champion. Maynard paid him to keep quiet, but I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it.”

  And then he tried to get money from Aunt Zorah.

  “I’ve told them over and over I wasn’t here when that man was killed! Why won’t they believe me?”

  “My goodness, I can’t imagine! I guess you’ll just have to prove it.” My aunt pulled out a chair and sat in it. She didn’t look at the man who had been her husband. “Maynard Griggs says the two of you meant to kill Jasper. Just how were you planning to do that, Faris?”

  “Maynard’s a fool!” he muttered.

  “I won’t argue with you there, but somebody dug a hole back there in the woods on the side of the hill big enough to hide a body. That where you were going to put him?”

  “What do you want from me, Zorah? What do you want me to say? Yes, we did talk about killing Jasper Totherow, and yes, we did dig that trench to hide the body, but we both came to the conclusion it wasn’t worth it.”

  That accounted for the ring around our bathtub, I thought. Neither Faris nor Maynard Griggs could afford to be seen covered in mud after digging that trench, and they’d enjoyed an early breakfast at Smokerise as well.

  “Planning to kill somebody and actually doing it are two different things!” Faris Haskell paced as he talked, pausing only for audible huffing and puffing. Now he turned to Aunt Zorah with his face all red and purple, and if words could steam, we’d both be scalded. “I didn’t kill that man, and I didn’t take your damn silverware either!”

  “Oh, my! Then how did it get in your baggage?” My aunt pretended shock.

  I didn’t have to pretend. The reality of what he was saying slapped me cold. Maybe Faris Haskell had killed Jasper Totherow and maybe he hadn’t, but I knew he was telling the truth about the silver. Why would a man who had as much to lose as Faris Haskell risk trying to leave the country with stolen silverware? He might be a fool, but surely the man had more sense than that.

  Faris had mean eyes, and his Coke-bottle glasses made them appear even bigger and meaner. Now he fixed them on me. “She put it there, you know. Your aunt put that silver in my luggage and she knows it.”

  “Now why would I do that?” Aunt Zorah said.

  Maybe Uncle Faris hadn’t been dead for all those years the way we thought, but his eyes were, and now he fastened those cold orbs on my aunt. “Why indeed, Zorah? You tell me. Is th
is to be my punishment?” And he called for the guard to take him away.

  “Did you?” I asked my aunt later when we pulled up in front of her house.

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you plant that silverware in his luggage?”

  “Of course. It was the only way I could think of to keep him from leaving. You should’ve seen his face, Prentice, when I showed up on his doorstep in Florida. The silly man was all packed to fly out of the country. He knew they’d found that woman’s body and that Maynard Griggs would eventually talk; their little ruse would soon become obvious. Faris has a record for what he did before he was so conveniently ‘killed.’ His company never did recover the money he stole. Faris has been living quite comfortably off his ill-gotten gains, and now he’s an accessory after the fact in a murder case.” Aunt Zorah drew her fringed shawl a little closer about her. “He also speaks fluent Spanish and was headed straight for Mexico.”

  “When you turned him in for taking the silver, did you tell the police who he really was?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No, but his fingerprints are a matter of record. It just took them a few days to match them up.”

  “Why do you care?” I asked. “What difference does it make after all this time? Couldn’t you have just let him go?” Surely she still didn’t want this creep back in her life.

  “I suppose I could, and maybe I should’ve, but how did I know he didn’t have something to do with that woman’s death? When I think of the tears he caused, the shame—and now the humiliation, I’m not even one bit sorry!” And my aunt walked into her house and shut the door firmly behind her.

  Maybe I should go after her, I thought. Offer whatever comfort I could. But how do you soothe an injury that deep? Besides, there are times when people prefer to be alone, and for my aunt, I felt sure this was one of them.

  Ever since Augusta had left me to sojourn in the south end of the state, I’d felt as though an anvil hung over my head just waiting for the right moment to drop, and in the last couple of days that awareness had developed into a heavy dread.