“This is good,” I said after another sip. “What’s in it?”
“The whiteness of truth,” she said. “All is revealed.”
“You say there will be no more revenge or vengeance?”
“Sadly, only in regards to Abel or Betty Jo or Mina Beth. It’s over.”
“What about Cain? He’s still on death row and there is nothing we can prove that would release him,” Starnes said.
“Cain will be fine. I told you that there will be no more bloodshed. That includes his blood. No harm shall come to him. He has a mark on him. You recall the story from the Bible, no doubt. The mark of Cain. It protects him.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. It was my skepticism that forced me to speak.
“I know,” Aunt Jo answered. “There is no way for me to help you understand. You can either believe me or not. I speak the truth. It’s over.”
“I want to believe you,” I said.
“Me, too,” added Starnes.
“Then drink your tea and enjoy the purity of the moment.”
We drank in silence. Aunt Jo poured us another cup and we sat there with her for an even longer stretch during our second cup. It was as if time stood still while we were in her presence. It was my internal clock that kept me aware of the duration of time passing. I have to admit that the moments were quite restful.
At some point, when it had to be very late in the evening or else very early in the morning of the next day, Starnes and I stood to leave. I thought I could tell that a burden had been lifted from Starnes. I knew I felt better.
We stood on the front porch and said goodbye to Josephine Starling.
“Don’t let the sadness drive you to despair, children,” Aunt Jo said.
“Three senseless deaths,” Starnes responded.
“Five.”
Starnes and I were both puzzled at Aunt Jo’s number.
“You’ve miscounted, unless you know something we don’t,” I said.
She smiled in the pale light of the candle shining dimly at the window. “There is much I know that you have yet to learn, ladies.”
“So tell us how you arrive at the number five?”
“Abelard was the first,” she began. “Betty Jo was the second senseless death. Her unborn child was number three. Mina Beth Cody was the fourth … and her unborn child was the fifth.”
The photograph of the naked woman holding the 9mm Luger immediately came to mind. Trim and voluptuous. Then the image of the waitress who worked at Madison’s greasy spoon café with the obvious paunch came into view. It explained a lot. It was a horrible realization.
Starnes and I looked at each other and simultaneously shook our heads in despair.
“Abel caused a lot of heartache before he died,” I said.
“And trigged some damnable chain-reactions,” Starnes replied.
“Oh, and do not be alarmed if you learn that the gun collection is gone,” Aunt Jo said.
“What do you mean gone?” Starnes asked.
“No longer here, no longer around, no longer in evidence,” Aunt Jo said.
“That’s impossible,” Starnes said.
“Be careful when you use that word,” Aunt Jo smiled and continued her explanation. “Impossibilities are merely moments away from happening every day. Believe that. Goodnight, ladies. Do come again.”
Josephine Starling closed the door to her tiny home before Starnes or I could achieve any further explanation regarding her words about the set of five German 9mm Lugers so central to our investigation.
“We still have the Luger I found by the woodpile at the Gosnell’s house,” I said as we climbed inside the vehicle. I had thought that I had left it lying on the console between the seats. It was not there. I opened the glove compartment only to find lots of papers, pens, and a tire gauge. I looked under the seat. Nothing. I searched the entire vehicle while Starnes sat waiting on me to finish.
“It’s gone,” I said.
“Precisely what Aunt Jo told us, huh?” Starnes said. “Let’s go home. Start the Jeep. I’m tired.”
“This could be evidence tampering,” I said.
“Probably is.”
“So do something. You’re the sheriff.”
“Acting Sheriff. And what is it you want me to do?” she said.
“Arrest someone for evidence tampering.”
“Okay. Whom do you suggest?”
I was at a loss for a name. It would have been ludicrous to suggest we arrest Aunt Josephine Starling. Likely, but ludicrous.
We debated Aunt Jo’s words all the way back to the Jeep.
“Her ways of knowing and doing are different,” Starnes said.
“I never had the chance to ask her about what had happened to me.”
“That’s not exactly true,” Starnes said. “There were several pauses in there while we sipped tea, my lovely.” More Starnes sarcasm, accurate but sarcastic.
“Yeah, well, after I drank some of her tea blend, the notion of asking those questions left me. I can’t explain that.”
“Because now you want to ask those questions.”
“Yeah, I do. But when I am with her and we are drinking whatever concoction she has brewed up … she’s not a witch, is she?”
“Maybe like Glinda, the good witch from the Wizard of Oz.”
“But you don’t think she’s a witch,” I said.
“Nope. Just a unique woman with the sight.”
“Whatever that is.”
“Precisely. Whatever that is.”
“I have some questions about the 9mm Lugers being gone,” I said.
“Not as many as I do.”
We rode back to Starnes’ house in silence. Once there, the veil of silence lifted and she asked to see the Luger that I had found on the ground in front of the wood pile. When we had left Sam for his respite before our nighttime trek to talk with Aunt Jo, I had placed the handgun in my suitcase which was under the bed.
I retrieved the suitcase, opened it, and discovered to my astounding surprise that the gun was not there. I searched the entire room, then searched the Jeep, but I couldn’t find it. I felt the small of my back thinking that maybe I had only planned to hide it in my suitcase inside of Starnes’ house. My holstered weapon was there but nothing more. No Luger. It had simply disappeared.
I stayed at Starnes’s place the next day when she went in to work. I told her I needed some down time and I would be washing and packing, readying myself for the long trip back Norfolk. She understood.
Around one o’clock, Starnes called to report that the murder weapon in the slaying of Abel and Betty Jo was missing. It was gone from the evidence locker and no one knew anything about it. Naturally.
The Luger which had belonged to Betty Jo, also in our possession and formerly in the evidence locker, was missing as well.
“And Cain’s gun, the one we cleared of any recent slayings?”
“No can find.”
“Sloppy housekeeping,” I said, but I knew better than that.
“You could surmise that,” she said.
“Likely investigation, huh?”
“Some folks will take offense no doubt.”
“Heads will roll.”
“Maybe. Evidence tampering or some such charge could be forthcoming.”
“Could we get Aunt Jo to testify to what she said to us?”
“Probably not,” Starnes said and ended the call.
Since I am adverse to anything that smacks of a coincidence, I called Lucinda Bradshaw in Erwin, Tennessee to see how she was doing. I don’t usually do things like that, but something came over me and I gave in to the power of my notion. Besides, I was curious and wanted to ask about her 9mm Luger. In the course of the conversation, she mentioned that she thought someone stole her gun and that she was glad to be rid of it.
This was too much for me.
Starnes arrived home around five. She had brought pizza with her for our final feast together. Fitting. She and I had a history
of visiting some good and not-so-good pizza establishments in the Tidewater area. There was now one in the village of Athens which just might be the best around anywhere. We wasted no time indulging in one of Papa Nick’s supreme delights. Some folks simply know how to make a devilish crust coupled with delectable toppings.
“So, super detective-person, what’s your take on this royal mess of an investigation?” Starnes said while she chewed the delicious food.
“We are apparently at any impasse regarding who killed whom,” I said after swallowing.
“Impasse, huh?”
“Gridlock, deadlock, stalemate,” I said.
“I know what the word means. It also means that I have three murders with two of them likely to go unsolved because … well, one, the evidence disappeared … and two, we have no viable leads to go chase. And, you and I both believe that the man in prison scheduled to be executed is innocent.”
“Aunt Jo said we had five murdered victims.”
“I’m still waiting on the autopsies to verify her information.”
“You doubt the voracity of what she told us?”
“No, but I can’t very well add two unborn babies to my official report without some supporting evidence.”
“Yeah, that might be suspect.”
“I want to know what you think,” Starnes said as she took her third piece of pizza from the large box between us.
“My theory of the crimes, so to speak.”
“Whatever,” she said while she chewed.
“I think that Mina Beth killed both Abel and Betty Jo. I think her confession was real despite the fact that it would have never entered the court records. She hated Abel for what he had done to her, and she hated Betty Jo for being one of his conquests. I also believe that she would have killed Lucinda given enough time and circumstance to plan her intent.”
“I can’t believe it,” Starnes said as she finished her third piece and took another.
“Then tell me what you think,” I said.
“Oh, I absolutely agree with you. I believe every word of what you said. What I can’t believe is that you and I actually agree … completely … on this.”
“Even the part about Lucinda being next in line for Mina Beth?”
“Makes perfect sense,” she concluded.
“Speaking of Lucinda,” I began, “I called your cousin today.”
The phone rang and Starnes answered. The information regarding Lucinda’s gun would have to wait a little. I was hesitant to tell her about the call in the first place. I knew it was not just a coincidence that Lucinda’s 9mm Luger was missing.
I continued eating while I listened to half of the conversation.
“That’s okay, Bevel. What’s up?” Starnes said.
She listened.
“When did you discover this?”
More listening.
“Well, make a report and put the paperwork on my desk. I will take care of it tomorrow. You have any ideas as to how this happened?”
Listening.
“How about Deputy Stanton?”
Listening some more.
“I see. Well, don’t worry about it. Thanks for letting me know. We’ll talk tomorrow. Yeah. Goodbye.”
She returned to the table and worked on her piece of pizza without comment. I waited impatiently for her to inform me of the other half of the phone conversation. Curiosity will one day likely be my downfall.
“What was that?” I said.
“You don’t want to know.”
“I already do.”
“You know, yet you ask.”
“Verification.”
“You have this thing about verifying stuff. You always have to do that.”
“Yeah. I learned that from a good friend,” I said. “Methinks that verification is your word.”
“You were like that long before I came along. So what is it you want me to verify?”
“The gone-ness of the last of the five Lugers,” I said.
“It’s just no fun working with you. You know that?”
“I’ve been told that a few times. At least I’m consistent.”
We continued chomping on the pizza together. An hour later, it was all gone. We had literally devoured a sixteen-inch pizza that contained vegetables and meats of nearly every known variety to mankind. It was quite good.
We stayed up late that night and talked. Most of the conversation was naturally about Jo Starling and her mountain ways. It was a delightful, enriching, bewildering conversation about Aunt Jo. We also conversed about people, relationships, revenge, and the five 9mm German Lugers that mysteriously disappeared. After midnight, we talked about ghosts, apparitions, and blithe spirits, those things we most certainly did not believe in.
We were like two school-girls at a sleepover, sitting up into the early morning hours talking, laughing some, crying now and then, and delighting in each other’s company. We had to talk with each other because we knew that no one would believe us if we told them our tale.
Now look for Outcast in Gray, also by M. Glenn Graves…
Starnes Carver’s dog has brought Starnes a trophy – a human bone. However, her pet can’t seem to remember the place where she discovered it, so she enlists the help of Clancy and her dog Sam in the search for more of the skeletal remains. What begins as a mysterious adventure in bone searching, quickly turns into a nightmare in which more bones and bodies turn up in the North Carolina mountains. A savage beast seems to be on the loose, while Clancy and Starnes are hoping to figure out who or what is behind the vicious killings before more people die. The cryptic mountain woman, Josephine Starling, just might be the vital link to solving these brutal crimes.
Purchase your copy of Outcast in Gray, here.
About the Author
M. Glenn Graves has been writing fiction since graduating from college in 1970 but did not begin to work on novels until 1992. Born in Mississippi, he has lived in Tennessee, North Carolina, Missouri, Virginia, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. He graduated from Mars Hill College with a BA in English and Religion. He received a Master of Divinity in 1977 three years after he finished his four-year tour in the United States Navy. Married to Cindy, they have three grown children—Brian, Mark, & Jenn. They also have three grandchildren—Jonathan, Matthew, & Phoebe. Glenn, Cindy, and Sophie, their Lab, currently reside in the mountains of western North Carolina where he is the pastor of a local church.
Find more great titles by M. Glenn Graves, here.
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M. Glenn Graves
When Blood Cries Page 27
