by Lois Winston
“See? You should have called me.” I managed a thin smile. “I would have told the cops you’ve threatened to kill Dudley routinely ever since sixth grade when he called you a girl.”
Jonette snorted and her eyes twinkled. This was just what she needed. “That’s right. You make sure Detective Dumb as Dirt hears that. Dudley didn’t think anything of my recent threat because I’ve been yelling at him for years.”
No kidding. The cops were stupid if they thought Jonette’s threat to kill Dudley meant anything. No way was I going to sit back and let them railroad my best friend. But it troubled me that she’d had dinner with him. I didn’t know how to deal with that.
“What else do they have?”
Jonette rubbed her eyes. “They took my fingerprints. They are going to match up to the prints in his car and his house because I was in both places. They took the clothes I wore Tuesday. There’s nothing on them but dog hair.”
Jonette held out her hand to me. “They trimmed my nails to see if I had fought with Dudley. I didn’t, so that should help to clear me. Thank God I don’t own a gun.”
“Britt seems convinced you are guilty of murdering Dudley. You and I better figure this out and quick,” I said. “What do you know of Jasper Kingsland and his mom? Jasper claims Dudley was responsible for the schoolteacher’s pension fund theft. Jasper’s mom had her life savings in that fund and now Jasper loathes Dudley. I thought he was going to blow a gasket when I asked Jasper if he had a gun.”
Jonette leaped to her feet again. Did she put Mexican jumping beans in her tea? “Don’t you know who Jasper’s mom is?”
“No.” I scowled up at her animated face. “But you seem to know. Tell me.”
Jonette’s face glowed. “Violet Cooper is Jasper’s mom. Do you get it now?”
Violet Cooper. Now why did that name sound familiar? I thrummed my fingers on the back of the sofa. I remembered she moved here about ten years ago, but I couldn’t come up with anything else. “I’m drawing a blank.”
“Violet Cooper won every shooting award there is,” Jonette crowed. “She’s Hogan County’s answer to Annie Oakley. I bet her house has more guns in it than a gun shop. I’m going over there right now to find out if she shot Dudley.”
I couldn’t let her charge off alone into such a dangerous situation. I stood up on one foot and grabbed her arm. “You’ll do no such thing. If she’s a murderer, you’ll end up just like Dudley. We need a plan. How about this? Daddy did her taxes for a couple of years, but someone else did them this year. I’ll pay her a visit under the guise of checking up on former Sampson Accounting clients.”
“When?”
“Soon. Right after Dudley’s funeral,” I said. “I’ve got a million things to do before then. You still remember how to tape up an ankle?”
“Clee, I could tape your ankle with one hand tied behind my back.” Jonette strode towards the kitchen cabinet where the first aid supplies were kept. She returned with a roll of athletic tape and a pair of scissors.
I sat back down and propped my foot on the coffee table. “Tape this bad boy up and then sack out in my room for a bit. I’d offer you your old room, but I haven’t seen the floor in there since Charla took occupancy.”
“No thanks,” Jonette said. “I’ll go to my place. I can’t face doggie drool sheets just now.” Jonette yawned. “I feel like I could sleep for the next hundred years.”
“Don’t do that,” I said. “It’s my turn to have an hour of need again. I’m sure to require your special attention.”
That brought a faint smile to Jonette’s bow-shaped lips. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
TEN
After Jonette left, I realized my keys to the office were in my purse, which was five miles away at the golf club. With this bum ankle, five miles was as unobtainable as the moon, even with Jonette’s superb tape job.
I rooted through the kitchen junk drawer until I found a spare set of keys. Shoes were out of the question, so I wore my fuzzy pink slippers. I hobbled through the backyard to the detached garage, which served as the offices of Sampson Accounting.
The décor of our three-room suite was early do-it-yourself. Daddy had framed and paneled the walls, hiring a plumber and an electrician to put in the utilities. Over the years, Mama had added indoor/outdoor carpet, plants, and curtains. File cabinets lined three entire walls. Computers and telephones topped the two desks.
The folders for the various Homeowners Association audits were stacked in the center of my desk. Mama might be a pain in the butt about some things, but she was a machine when it came to work. Everything had a place and you better get with the program or else. Daddy had been content with this arrangement, and so was I.
It had often occurred to me that if Mama understood accounting, I would be out of a job. There were times when I thought she understood tax law, balance sheets, and government forms just fine, but she avoided the intensive detail work of accounting, sticking to the glory jobs of answering telephones, filing claims, and billing clients.
I pulled up a chair, rested my ankle on it, then got to work. Within minutes I was deep into homeowner dues and association expenses. Numbers flowed in comfortable, satisfying sequences. Unlike the messiness of human relationships, accounting was a very straightforward process.
Mathematical computations required no interpretation of hidden subtext or reading between the lines. And, in the unlikely event of a numerical error, a mistake was easily corrected. Why couldn’t emotions be as logical and orderly as numbers?
I’d finished up one of the smaller audits and started on the Shady Hills audit when Mama burst into the office like a cyclone. “Baby Girl, you’re hurt?” she asked, hurrying to my side.
I appreciated her concern, but I was in the groove here in my safe world of numbers. “I twisted my ankle. No big deal. I’ll be good as new in a few days.”
Mama wasn’t deterred. “What about ice? Aren’t you supposed to ice an injury for the first twenty-four hours?”
“I already iced it.” I handed her the completed audit report. “This is done and can be invoiced. I’m working on Shady Hill right now.”
To my dismay, Mama tossed the report on her desk. Heck. I could’ve done that. I braced myself for Mama in her nurse-martyr role. I could already see the wheels of possibilities spinning in her head.
“Don’t you worry. I’ll take care of everything,” Mama said. “Did you eat lunch?”
I brushed my hair back behind my ears. Couldn’t she see I wanted to be left alone? “I’m not hungry, Mama. I have work to do.”
“Don’t leave me hanging. What happened to your ankle?”
Mama bustled about in the little mini-kitchen in the rear closet. I heard her crack ice out of the ice-cube tray.
The best way to get Mama out of my hair was to let her think she was helping, so I’d better cooperate with whatever she had in mind.
As I explained about the golf club display and twisting my ankle and Jonette’s ordeal, Mama covered my ankle with a towel-wrapped bag of ice. “You’ve had a rough day,” she said, her voice dripping with sympathy. “Let me pop over to the house and get you a bowl of chicken soup.”
Mama wasn’t Jewish, but she viewed homemade chicken soup as human duct tape. It was one thing she never modified the recipe for. She kept a supply of it in the freezer for emergencies.
“I’m fine, Mama,” I said.
“Nonsense. Chicken soup can fix anything. I’ll be right back.” Mama departed in a flurry of footsteps.
I had to admit that the ice eased the throbbing in my ankle. It wasn’t so bad having Mama fuss over me, and my plan had worked like a charm. Mama felt like she was helping and I was alone in my office. What could be better? I picked up the Shady Hills folder and oriented myself to the expense invoices and deposit slips.
I’d forgotten about the soup when Mama charged back in with the girls and the dog in tow. Mama’s tray held a large bowl of soup with orange slices on the side, but mor
e importantly, the cup of coffee that I needed to keep going. “Thanks,” I said, shuffling papers to the side of my desk.
“Cleo, I’ve just had the most marvelous idea.” Mama’s face glowed like a light bulb. “Why don’t you finish up out here while the girls and I prepare dinner?”
The rich aroma of chicken soup stirred the juices in my stomach. Okay, so I was hungry. I glanced at Charla and Lexy. They weren’t protesting about helping Grandma, which should have been a big clue something was up, but my brain was working out the details of the Shady Hills audit and I wanted to get back to it.
Turning Mama loose in the kitchen was risky. If she’d stuck to the grocery list, she couldn’t have too many rogue ingredients to choose from for dinner. Her track record of being unconventional when it came to meal preparation shouldn’t come into play.
“I guess that would be all right,” I said slowly, inventing damage control on the fly. “The girls are supposed to change the bed linens this afternoon. Lexy, why don’t you help Grandma in the kitchen? Charla, you set the table and make up the beds.”
“Don’t you worry about a thing.” Mama adjusted the ice bag on my foot and patted my shoulder. She seemed giddy with excitement. “We’ll have everything ready before you know it.”
Mama’s cheeriness put me on notice. Something was definitely up, and she didn’t want me anywhere near the kitchen. Danger, danger, danger.
In case the girls didn’t know the menu, I recited it as they left. “Lasagna, salad, rolls, iced tea, and a double batch of chocolate pudding.”
My words were drowned out in squabbling as Lexy jostled the dog leash out of Charla’s hand on the way out the door. I sipped the homemade soup and enjoyed the silence. There was nothing like working through a tangled accounting problem to sharpen one’s wits. The pieces of Shady Hill fell rapidly into place.
While I formatted the audit report, I thought about the police investigation of Dudley’s murder. Britt Radcliff and the mayor were wrong. Jonette wasn’t a murderer. She had hated Dudley since forever, and she probably would still hate him on her deathbed.
If it weren’t for Dudley, her life would have taken a much different path. But she wouldn’t kill him because of that. She couldn’t even kill her frog in tenth grade biology class, and she didn’t have any reason to like it either.
If I was going to clear Jonette, I needed to question Violet Cooper, Jasper’s mother. If Violet was as good a marksman as Jonette claimed, then she was a much more likely suspect than Jonette. And, if she had Jasper’s quick temper, so much the better to paint her as the logical suspect. She’d never know that I was checking her out as I pried out of her who she was using for her accounting needs these days.
On my calendar, I scribbled a quick note to interview Violet Cooper on Monday. And if Violet wasn’t the murderer, I’d keep looking until I found the real killer. Jonette wasn’t going to jail for a crime she didn’t commit.
~*~
Bitsy Davis, Dudley’s ex-wife, wandered into my office about six with two scotches in her hands. Her blond hair hung lank about her pale face. The light in her sky-blue eyes appeared to have been snuffed out.
I closed the folder I was working on and hobbled around to sit with her in my guest chairs. “I’ve missed you, Bitsy. I’m sorry about all this.”
“It isn’t your fault.” She embraced me then eased into her chair. “Trust Dudley to find new ways to screw up my life.”
I knew exactly what she meant. Charlie’s infidelity had cost me more than my marriage. I’d lost my self-confidence and opened myself up to the worst kind of pain. “How’d it go at the funeral home?”
“I wanted to put that cheater in the cheapest, tackiest coffin they had, but I couldn’t do it.” Bitsy drained her glass. “I bought the top of the line model because I couldn’t bear for the boys to see me being hateful.”
Children had a way of knowing things. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bitsy’s sons knew exactly what she thought of their father. My Lexy was plenty astute. She didn’t need to be told that it was over between her parents.
I understood Bitsy’s protective nature. Sometimes mothers did things for their kids that went against the grain. It was natural to want to shield your children from the hatefulness of the world. “I won’t think any less of you for that.” I covered her hand with mine and squeezed gently. “I understand.”
“I can’t believe he’s gone.” She closed her eyes for a moment as if she were summoning energy to continue. “Why did he do this to me? And why now? We were just getting to the point where we didn’t argue over every little thing.”
I’d never seen easygoing, mild-mannered Bitsy quite so shaken. Usually she took everything in stride, whether it was a tsunami or a broken nail. “I’ve been out of sorts since I found him,” I said.
“I’m sorry you had such a shock, Cleo. This can’t be easy for you, either.” Bitsy gazed longingly at the drink I’d immediately put down. “I just don’t know how I’m going to get through this.”
Getting smashed had never solved anyone’s problems, but who was I to judge? I handed her my drink. “Here. You need this more than I do.”
She took my glass and knocked the contents back quickly. “How do you do it? How do you live in this small town where everyone knows everything about anything? How do you handle seeing Charlie with Denise?”
I grimaced. “It’s hard, all right. But I was Cleo Sampson long before I was ever Cleo Jones and I’m not going to let him take away my hometown too.”
“But the whispers and the covert glances.” Bitsy’s shoulders slumped. “Don’t they bother you?”
I wasn’t so good with this true confessions stuff, but Bitsy was my friend. It was eye-opening to see how raw her pain still was when she’d been divorced twice as long as I had. I had assumed the bitterness lessened with time.
“Sure,” I said. “But I don’t let that stop me. What’s hard for me is realizing I’ve stored up bits and pieces of my day to tell Charlie and then I remember I don’t do that anymore.”
Bitsy nodded in agreement.
Maybe it was helping her to hear that I was so dysfunctional. I shared another slice of my soul. “When Charlie heard about Dudley, he came over here expecting me to comfort him as if I were still his wife. It was extremely awkward.”
Bitsy nodded again, tears filling her eyes. She gripped her hands tightly together in her lap. “I know what you mean. Every time I heard a woman’s name linked with Dudley’s I wanted to yank the hair out of her head. Maybe if they had all been bald, Dudley wouldn’t have looked at them.”
I searched her gaunt face. Her color was off, greenish even. “Bitsy, is there something you’re not telling me?”
Bitsy set down the glass so hard I thought it would shatter. She ran her fingers through her lank hair. “You’re never going to believe this. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but it’s not something I can keep hidden for much longer. I’m three months pregnant, Cleo. With Dudley’s baby.”
I blinked in astonishment.
She was pregnant?
With Dudley’s baby? Never in a million years would I have guessed such a thing. Questions like how and when surfaced in my head and I torpedoed them immediately. Pregnant. I was stunned by the news.
I’d rather be run over by a herd of wild elephants than let Charlie sleep with me again. And Charlie had only slept with one other woman. Dudley had slept his way through the alphabet.
After disbelief rolled through, anger swept in. Given that Bitsy was pregnant, she should be taking better care of herself. She had no business drinking that scotch.
“Are you trying to give that baby brain damage? What’s going on in that head of yours?” In spite of my good intentions the next question slipped out. “How could you be pregnant by your ex-husband?”
Bitsy bent her head forward and wept. I mentally kicked myself to the street and back for opening my big mouth. This wasn’t an accounting problem I could shift around until everything fit
in the right blanks. I wished I could take back my words, but I kept my mouth shut to keep from digging the hole deeper.
When her tears subsided, Bitsy said, “I got pregnant in the usual manner. Do you remember that Dudley refused to have a vasectomy like Charlie did after Lexy’s birth? Once I divorced him, I discontinued using birth control. And in a moment of weakness three months ago, I allowed him to charm his way back into my bed. Everything felt so good and right between us. I believed he wanted us to be a family again. But when I came to town to see him afterwards, he was entertaining a woman for lunch. After waiting in his office for two hours, I knew I’d been had.”
Poor Bitsy. She’d given Dudley her heart time and again and he’d never cherished her love for the precious gift it was. Dudley had been a fool and it had cost him everything.
Lord, Lord. Pregnant. How was she going to deal with that? In this day and age there were other options when it came to pregnancy. Would she choose to keep the baby? “What are you going to do?”
Tears brimmed in her eyes. She inhaled shakily. “I’m having the baby. It’s all I have left of Dudley.”
I exhaled slowly. Bringing a baby into the world when there were two people sharing the parenting load was a lot of work. Doing it alone was gutsy.
“Did Dudley know about the baby?” I wanted to recall my uncensored question immediately, but the damage was done.
Bitsy stood and walked over to look out the gingham-framed windows, her hand curved protectively over her womb. Now that I knew about her pregnancy I saw that she was already rounding. “He knew. And he seemed relieved because in his mind, we had to get married again, only I wouldn’t have it. Not when he hadn’t mended his ways. He swore he’d changed and that he deserved a second chance, but I foolishly believed him.”
Bitsy turned to face me. “Oh, Cleo, what am I going to do? I loved that man beyond all reason, and now he’s gone and gotten himself killed. How am I going to raise this child on my own? I can’t bring myself to tell Mother or the boys about the baby.”
