by Sharon Short
Jeanine stared at me dubiously. Everyone knows Chief Worthy dislikes me so much that once a week he buys me a lottery ticket and leaves it on the front counter of my laundromat, hoping I’ll win a million bucks and hightail it out of Paradise. Which I wouldn’t, because of Guy, but Chief Worthy wouldn’t understand that.
“I’ll tell Sally to give you happy-hour prices at the Bar-None whenever you want, for a whole week,” I said.
Jeanine sighed, but the hint of a smile slipped across her lips. “Go on. Don’t take too much of his time.”
I went, glancing back to see her carefully slipping my card into the comment box.
“You came to report a stolen suitcase that isn’t even yours?” Chief Worthy glared at me.
I glared right back. “The suitcase that was stolen was Ginny Proffitt’s. I think its contents might provide important clues to her murder.”
Chief Worthy snorted. “You think dirty laundry could provide clues to solve a murder.”
“Well, of course,” I snapped. “How many people commit a crime in the nude? So if a killer is wearing clothes, the clothes are bound to have traces of the crime. Blood. Poison. Dirt or mud from burying the body.”
Chief Worthy looked amused. “You found all that on the clothes in Ms. Proffitt’s suitcase?”
“No! I’m speaking theoretically. The overalls in Ginny’s suitcase were just paint spattered. But—”
Suddenly Chief Worthy lunged forward on his desk, waving a finger at me. I leaned back in my chair.
“But you just can’t keep your nose out of things that are none of your business, Josie. So what if Ms. Proffitt dropped a suitcase with some dirty clothes at your laundromat? She probably just wanted some tips on paint-stain removal—”
“But she was murdered. So this could be relevant . . .”
Chief Worthy sighed. “You know, with the water main break, I’m real busy here.”
I stared exaggeratedly all around the room. “Funny. I don’t see any water seeping up through the floorboards. And last I saw, it was the fire department—plus most of your staff—who was busy on Main Street.” I turned a sharp gaze on Chief Worthy. “So why don’t you want to hear about something a murder victim did in the last few hours of her life—even if it was something as mundane as dropping off at my laundromat filthy clothes that are way too large for her and years old? Even if you don’t like the idea I might actually have a clue, you ought to listen. You’re usually not this mule-headed.”
Chief Worthy slapped his hands on the edge of his desk. “All right, since it will probably hit the news by tonight anyway, I’ll tell you why I’m not interested in your clue. Because Ginny Proffitt wasn’t murdered. She committed suicide.”
“I don’t believe that. Ginny wasn’t suicidal. She—”
“You knew her well?” Chief Worthy demanded.
I thought about Ginny in her brightly colored warm-up suit, bounding across the Red Horse Motel’s parking lot just yesterday morning. Her jolly insistence on reading my palm. Her eerie ability to divine my dreams of Mrs. Oglevee. Her sly gaze in the Serpent Mound parking lot. Her odd note that echoed my Aunt Clara’s devil saying. All the things I’d heard about her over the past day.
Did I know her well? No. But I did know human nature fairly well. And people who are by turns pushy and conniving and clever and even jolly are not suicidal.
“No,” I said, “but—”
“She left a note, Josie. We found it in her pocket,” Chief Worthy said.
“Notes can be faked by killers,” I said.
He rolled his eyes.
“What did it say?”
He shook his head.
“Why not tell me if it’s going to be in the news anyway?”
He shrugged.
“I’ll go to the press. I’ll tell ’em you ignored evidence.”
He looked amused. “About a suitcase of dirty clothes you can’t even produce?”
I crossed my arms. “It might make me look crazy, but it won’t make you look good. And I might mention how you tend to look the other way every third Saturday night in the backroom poker games at the Bar-None.”
“What—that’s not—how do you—” he sputtered.
It was my turn to lift my eyebrows.
“You wouldn’t do that to Sally,” he said, finally.
Of course I wouldn’t. For one thing, she gets 10 percent of the illegal gambling take, which she’s putting away for Harry, Larry, and Barry’s eventual college educations. The money’s sacred to her. Even on weeks when she has to serve boxed mac-n-cheese as dinner three nights in a row, she doesn’t touch that money. No way I’d betray Sally on that score.
Plus she’d probably pummel me.
But Chief Worthy didn’t know that. So I just grinned at Chief Worthy. Hey—I’ve never played in the poker games. But I’ve heard Kenny Rogers croon, “You gotta know when to hold ’em” enough on the Bar-None jukebox to, well, know when to hold ’em.
Amusement changed swiftly to anger on Chief Worthy’s face. “Fine. Here’s everything I know. Ginny Proffitt killed herself with a .22-caliber pistol, one bullet through the left temple. We found the pistol just a few feet away from her body, in the corn rows. The pistol could have flown from her hand and landed there as she fell. The pistol had only her prints on it and was registered to her name.”
“But, she could have had it with her, argued with someone, and that someone could have taken it away from her, shot her—”
“You’re thinking Dru Purcell?”
I was. But I didn’t say anything.
“All Pastor Purcell is guilty of is having a different belief system than yours.”
“And lying about meeting Ginny at Serpent Mound yesterday—”
Chief Worthy held up a hand to stop me. “There was a note in her pocket, Josie. It was very simple but clear. It just said, ‘I only have a little time left. I’d rather go fast than slow.’ And her signature. We also searched her rental car that was parked at the back of the field the Crowleys cleared for parking for the corn maze. There was no evidence that she was forced to drive to the corn maze. Everything points to a simple scenario: she drove herself to the corn maze of her own free will, went to the back corner of the corn maze, and killed herself. Simple as that.”
I thought of the other note she’d left for me in the suitcase. Even without that note, this case was anything but simple. Why would Ginny kill herself in the corn maze instead of, say, in her motel room? Or in the woods? Or, for that matter, since the place held spiritual significance, at Serpent Mound? Did mazes represent something that would make it a symbolic place, particularly for a psychic, for suicide? Maybe the location was for irony—Ginny had spent her life trying to help others unravel the convoluted twists and turns life often throws us, and then finally killed herself at the end of a maze.
I shook my head at that. I just couldn’t believe Ginny had committed suicide. Should I pull out the note she’d left me, show it to Chief Worthy, I wondered? Well, yes. But since it wasn’t signed he could say the note was a prank, maybe put in Ginny’s suitcase by one of the “crazy” psychics. Or he could say she’d changed her mind after leaving the suitcase and the bizarre note with me, and killed herself after all. No, if I left him with that hanky, he’d just file it away somewhere. He wouldn’t take it seriously as a clue of what I still believed was Ginny’s murder. Ginny wouldn’t have killed herself, not the full-of-life, headstrong Ginny I’d met . . .
“Ms. Proffitt’s note referred to the fact she had cancer. We checked with her neighbor back in Chicago. Melanoma. She’d had several tumors removed, but additional tumors appeared, and she just learned the cancer spread to her lymph nodes. The neighbor said Ms. Proffitt still felt okay but she refused chemo and was interested in alternate treatments, including psychic healing,” Chief Worthy said. To his credit, his voice had lost his edge. I knew he’d lost his mama to breast cancer a year before.
I stood up. “Well,” I said. “You’ve to
ld me more than you had to. I guess Ginny wasn’t murdered after all. She must have, as you say, committed suicide.”
Chief Worthy lifted his eyebrows at me. “You’re nosey, Josie, not a liar. I know you don’t believe me.”
I turned and left. Quickly. Besides knowing when to hold ’em, I know when to run.
Plus, I wanted to get to the Red Horse, get a room, and start investigating Ginny Proffitt’s murder. Someone had to.
13
For the first time in at least my twenty-nine-year life, and in probably a good deal longer than that, the NO was lit beside the VACANCY on the Red Horse Motel sign. The NO flickered, as if it couldn’t believe its own resurrection, or that the neon gas was really flowing through its glass tube body, or that it wouldn’t be snuffed out, soon.
I was happy for the NO, for the Rhinegolds, and for the LeFevers. Unless that NO had taken on a life of its own, the fact that the Rhinegolds had flicked it on meant that they were doing more business this weekend than they had the entire year. And that meant the LeFevers’ psychic fair was a hit.
But the NO didn’t portend well for me. I leaned against my van, staring at the sign as I tried Owen again on my cell phone. No answer; just his answering machine.
I decided to find the Rhinegolds and see if they knew of someone checking out later. If not, and if I didn’t track down Owen, I could always sleep in my van, I guessed. Or at Sally’s trailer.
The van sounded good. Maybe the Rhinegolds could at least loan me a pillow and a blanket. I envisioned myself, curled up in the dark van, fetal-style, all alone with my certainty that Ginny had been murdered, under a thin blanket that smelled of moth balls, nibbling on crab Rangoons from my take-out box. The Rangoons, which had already nicely perfumed the inside of my van, would be my only comfort in a cruel world that had, in just one day, dished out a disappearing boyfriend, a beloved cousin with health issues, and a closed, water-damaged business. All the while, inside the Red Horse throngs of much happier people would receive glorious predictions of health, wealth, and super sex lives.
Meanwhile, Ginny’s killers would learn I alone questioned the verdict of suicide and attack me in my own van. I envisioned Dru and Missy pummeling me to death with packets of super-sized eternal-life tracts. My last meal—a semistale crab Rangoon. My last thought—they’ll all be sorry now!
I shook my head. At this rate of self-pity, I would likely eat the Rangoons right then, plus a big chocolate bar from the vending machine that stood to the left of the motel’s front door, if I could get the machine to work. Then I’d be in a sugar stupor all the rest of the day. Instead of investigating Ginny’s murder, I’d stew and worry about Guy’s upcoming medical tests.
I butted away from the van and went into the motel.
Sure enough, the motel dining room was filled with throngs of people, although they didn’t look as happy as they had in my parking-lot vision. I walked through, looking for the Rhinegolds, but taking in the minidramas that were being acted out at the psychics’ tables and in the lines.
At Samantha Mulligan’s table, a woman sat weeping while Samantha, the pet psychic, chirped back and forth with a cockatiel in a cage. The cockatiel’s chirps were weak and pitiful while Samantha’s seemed more questioning. Then Samantha said something to the woman, who gasped, bowed her head, then finally stood up and walked over to another younger woman who was standing near me.
“What’d she say, Mama?” the younger woman asked.
“That Pepper says I need to stop taking him to the vet every few days. It’s time for him to go.”
“Can you handle that?”
“I think I can. Now.”
The younger woman wrapped an arm around the pet owner, who was still crying, but calmer now. Whatever Samantha told her comforted her enough to let her beloved cockatiel go.
“Have you had a consultation yet with Max Whitstone?”
I turned at the voice, which belonged to Mrs. Beavy, the eighty-something, delightful lady who was one of my regular customers until she finally got her own washer and dryer. Chip, her great-grandson, had helped me out earlier that day.
“Mrs. Beavy! It’s good to see you.” I leaned forward to give her an enthusiastic but gentle hug. She returned it with a forceful hug of her own. I grinned even as I gasped for a breath. Mrs. Beavy may be aging, but she’s lost little strength and none of her savvy. I deeply admire and respect her.
“What are you doing here? I asked.
“Well, I was evacuated from my house because of the water main break—”
Of course, I thought, sorry I hadn’t checked on her. She lived just one street over from Main Street.
“—and so Chip brought me over here,” Mrs. Beavy said.
“Here? But I wouldn’t think . . . I mean . . .”
“That I’d go for this kind of thing?” Mrs. Beavy cackled, then waggled a finger for me to lean down again so she could say quietly in my ear, “Chip was going to take me to Marla’s.”
Mrs. Beavy shuddered. Marla is her granddaughter, whom
Mrs. Beavy loves very much, but Marla, Mrs. Beavy says, always fusses over her too much and talks too loudly and slowly, as if she thinks Mrs. Beavy is slow and deaf and ready to keel over dead any moment. To use Mrs. Beavy’s words, it drives her nuts.
“Staying overnight will be a test enough,” Mrs. Beavy was saying. “I didn’t like the thought of spending all afternoon, there, too. So I thought I’d come see this psychic fair that’s created such a fuss in town.”
I glanced around at all the people—just ordinary-looking people. There had been quite a fuss about them coming, though.
“You don’t think all of this is—well—silly? Or sinful?”
“Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I’m stodgy,” Mrs. Beavy said, a hint of admonition in her voice. “I love history but I love thinking about the future, too. And maybe this fair is silly or sinful, depending on how you approach it. Anything can be, though, if you go at it with the wrong attitude.
“But I’m old enough to know that we don’t know everything there is to know about the universe. Maybe there’s something to all this.” Mrs. Beavy waved a hand around. “It’s fun to think about anyway. And I hear that Max Whitstone channels communication with the dearly departed.”
I stared at Mrs. Beavy, horrified. She wasn’t really thinking of trying to conjure up Mr. Beavy, was she?
She stared off in the distance, a dreamy look on her face. “I do so miss Harold. I can’t wait to talk with him again . . .” And then she refocused on me, with a glint in her eye. “You know, Harold as a young man kind of looked like Max Whitstone. Except for the cowboy hat. He’d never have worn that.”
And then she laughed at my stunned expression. She waggled her slightly arthritic fingers at me as she wobbled off, leaning on her cane. “Remember, be open-minded, Josie.”
That was good advice, I thought. Mrs. Beavy: the anti-Mrs. Oglevee.
And I’d try to follow it, soon, when I found Skylar and talked with her. But at that moment, I noticed, Skylar had a short line of customers. Her mother was nowhere in sight. Maybe that was partially why her business was building. Who’d want a reading while a psychic fair stage mama hovered in the background? I was glad for Skylar. I could check with her later; right now, she didn’t need me to create a distraction of a different kind.
And I did need a room. I needed to find the Rhinegolds, or I really was going to get stuck in my makeshift Rangoon B&B for the night.
Luke Rhinegold was behind the bar, serving up soft drinks, chips, hot dogs, and grilled sandwiches. He looked thrilled.
“Josie, this is the best day of business we’ve had in a decade,” he said quietly, grinning, taking a break to wipe down the top of the bar, while Lenny Longman—the “Dracula” from the Methodist church youth group—took over serving. “Greta’s cookin’ grilled cheese and hot dogs as fast as she can. Back in the kitchen singin’. She couldn’t be happier.”
“Let me know if anyone
wants a beer,” Luke had told him, before moving down to the end of the bar to chat with me and wipe at the one space that wasn’t filled—a space that didn’t need wiping, but the Rhinegolds love to be busy. The last few years of fewer and fewer customers had been tough on them both emotionally and financially.
I’d ordered a cola. It tasted good and sweet. Just what I needed to take the edge off my thirst and my tension. Somehow, knowing my laundromat was closed for the weekend, my home unavailable, and my ideas about Ginny’s death laughable to Chief Worthy, had made my throat dry and tight.
People were lounging at the bar or at the few tables that had been left set up for dining. Others were wandering outside to the courtyard, as Greta called it, formed by the four sides of the motel. The courtyard was really the old swimming pool, filled-in and planted with a few annuals and perennials. A birdbath in the middle of the plantings was the only reminder of the pool. Plastic white deck chairs and tables had been arranged around the filled-in pool turned flowerbed. For Paradise, that was as close to a courtyard as we were likely to get.
And on such a gorgeous autumn day, it worked.
“Is everyone here because of the psychic fair?”
“Mostly. Some attendees are staying in motels up in Masonville. We sold out our last few rooms because of the water main break in town.” Luke’s joy at a business bonanza turned to a look of concern. “Is your business okay? I haven’t heard exactly where the break happened.”
I shook my head. “My laundromat’s closed and I’m evacuated from my apartment for the next few days.” I smiled at Luke, wanting to soften the sound of my next statement. I knew he’d be upset if he couldn’t help me. “I was hoping to stay here. I saw the no vacancy sign out front, but I was hoping you knew of someone checking out later this evening?”
Sure enough, Luke looked worried for me. “Sorry, Josie. We’re booked up through tomorrow night.” Then his face brightened. “But if you don’t mind sleeping on a couch, you could stay in our apartment.” The Rhinegolds have a second-story apartment over the motel’s lobby and office.
