Murder Carries a Torch

by Anne George

  “That’s pretty far-fetched.”

  “But not impossible. Think about it.”

  “I don’t want to think about it. Just thinking about snakes gives me the creeps.”

  Sister got up and went to stand by the fireplace, holding out her hands to the space heater. She glanced at her watch. “We need to go.”

  I nodded at the hall. “Well, we can’t leave until we know she’s all right.”

  A ray of sun spliced across the white vinyl floor; the clouds were breaking up.

  “The Packard guy,” Mary Alice said when we heard the sound of tires on the gravel driveway. “Lord, he needs to shave.” She went to open the door.

  “Hey, Mrs. Crane. I saw your car,” I heard him say. “Did you find your cousin?”

  “She was in Nashville at a dancing convention.”

  I heard Albert chuckle. “I figured she was all right. I told you Monk was running an underground railroad for frustrated women.”

  “Come on in.”

  “No, thanks. I’ve got to get home. I promised Mama I’d help her figure out how to stay out of jail. That woman. I swear. When somebody pays her two hundred dollars cash for a quilt, she doesn’t think she should pay tax on it. The IRS is disagreeing.”

  “Well, you tell your mama she has my sympathy. I don’t think she should have to, either.”

  “I’ll do that. Has Betsy left?”

  Sister shook her head. “She’s still here. You want to come in?”

  “No. Just tell her I’ll see her later. And I’m glad your cousin showed up.”

  “Thanks. We are, too. Tell your mama hey.” Sister closed the door and turned to me. “Imagine charging that poor old lady tax on quilts.”

  No way I was going to get drawn into this.

  “Was that Albert?” Betsy was standing in the hall doorway, wiping her face with a washcloth.

  Sister nodded. “He said he’d talk to you later.”

  “How are you feeling?” I asked. I already knew the answer. She looked like hell.

  “Better. I’m sorry.” Betsy came over and sat back in the chair she had vacated so quickly. She held the washcloth against her throat. “I don’t know. Things just hit me all of a sudden.”

  “I can understand that,” I said.

  She held up the cameo. “But I thank you so much for this, Mrs. Hollowell.”

  “I’m glad Jamie will have it. And, Betsy, my cousin Virginia found it in her car when they were on their way to Tennessee. Susan and the children went grocery shopping with her and she says she thinks one of the children might have broken the chain.”

  Betsy nodded. “Thank you.”

  I started collecting the coffee cups, but Betsy stopped me. “I’ll get those.”

  “Don’t be silly. You just sit there and get to feeling better.”

  “No, really. I’m fine.”

  Mary Alice looked at her watch. I stood up.

  “Well, if you ever need me for anything, you just call,” I told Betsy.

  “I will. Thanks.”

  She got up and walked to the door with us. I still wasn’t sure we ought to leave, but Mary Alice was halfway to the car by the time I gave Betsy a hug.

  “Virgil’s coming to dinner,” she said when I got in the Jaguar. “I’ve got to go by By Request and pick something up. I guess I’ll have to feed the whole Nelson clan again, too. Unless you want to invite them.”

  “Send them to Morrison’s Cafeteria.”

  Gravel spun under the tires as Sister backed out and headed up the mountain.

  “What’s that rattle?” I asked. “Did you shake something loose when you hit the curb at the sheriff’s?”

  “Of course not. If I’d hit the curb that hard the air bags would have deployed.”

  “Well, something’s loose.” The noise seemed to be coming from the back. I turned and shrieked just as the biggest rattlesnake I had ever seen in my life struck where my arm had been and where Sister’s hand was now.

  Sister centered the Packards’ mailbox and the airbags deployed. It was a nightmare that I would live over and over again for months, being engulfed in an airbag with my last view being that of a huge poisonous snake latched on to my sister’s hand.

  Chapter

  Eighteen

  “So y’all are handlers. You told me the other day you didn’t handle snakes.”

  We were traveling down the mountain to Oneonta in the same ambulance that Luke had traveled in to the hospital. The same two young women had picked up all two hundred fifty pounds of Sister and slid her easily into the back of the ambulance. The same driver. The same paramedic, Tammy, sitting across from me.

  Sister was strapped on the gurney, the hand the snake had bitten encased in what looked like Styrofoam. Her eyes were closed and she was deathly pale, but every few minutes she managed to say, “This is all your fault, Patricia Anne.”

  And, believe it or not, I’d say, “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Had I suggested that Sister accompany me to Chandler Mountain? Ever? Had I put the snake in the car? The only thing I was guilty of was moving my arm just as the snake struck, allowing it to hit Sister’s hand. Nevertheless, I felt guilty as hell and kept agreeing that it was, indeed, my fault.

  “We’re not handlers,” I assured Tammy. “We’re just having a streak of bad luck.”

  “God’s truth,” from the gurney.

  “God’s truth,” Tammy agreed. “You feeling okay?” She was asking me.

  Actually I felt like I’d been in a boxing match with Mohammed Ali. No, Cassius Clay before he was Mohammed Ali. When he was still slinging those twenty-year-old punches in every direction and winning the Olympics. Air bags save lives; I’m all for them. But my tiny body is no match for them. It hurt to take a deep breath, and my face felt like the top layer of skin was gone.

  “You may have to help me out of the ambulance,” I said. “I’m getting stiffer by the minute.”

  “This is all your fault, Patricia Anne,” came from the gurney.

  “Are you hurting bad?” I asked Sister.

  “Of course I’m hurting. And I’m feeling dizzy and nauseated, and I’ve wrecked my car.”

  “She’s going to be fine,” Tammy assured me. “We got to her in plenty of time.” Then to Sister, “You haven’t been drinking strychnine, have you?”

  Sister opened one eye and looked at Tammy. “Of course not. Why would I drink strychnine?”

  “Oh, that’s right. You’re not a handler. Some of them drink it.”

  “Strychnine? Like the poison?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Mary Alice groaned.

  “How’s your log cabin coming along?” I asked Tammy.

  “Haven’t done much on it the last couple of days.” Tammy tapped at a gauge, picked up a telephone, and read some numbers into it. She turned back to me. “Been too busy.”

  “Lots of emergencies?”

  She nodded. “People wait until after Christmas to die. Happens that way every year. Never fails.”

  “That makes sense,” Sister said. “You don’t want to miss Christmas. I bought these purple boots in Warsaw, Poland, this Christmas.”

  Tammy lifted the blanket and looked at the boots. “I forgot about those. We need to get them off. We don’t want anything constricting your extremities.”

  “My extremities aren’t constricted. Don’t you dare touch my boots.” Sister tried to sit up, but the straps allowed only a sideways movement of her head.

  “She’s fond of the boots,” I explained.

  Tammy shrugged and brushed her bangs out of her eyes. They immediately fell back in. I’ll bet her mother was dying to get to her with the scissors. Or some bobby pins. I glanced at Sister. The Dharma look was a good one if you were going to be bitten by a snake and hit a mailbox. You couldn’t tell if it was messed up or not.

  “How did y’all get tangled up with that snake anyway?” Tammy asked, giving up on the boots. “The guy who called us said it was a huge one
.”

  “Somebody put it in our car.” I shivered and looked out at the now familiar limestone-rock walls of the road, at the leaning pines. They looked, I realized, like the universal sign for PICNIC AREA, a sign that has always bothered me because the tree looks like it may fall at any minute on the unwary picnickers. The trees along this road loomed the same way.

  Tammy tapped the gauges again. Either they were defective or she didn’t believe what she was seeing. “Why would they do that?”

  “Crazy,” Sister muttered.

  I touched the right side of my rib cage. Definitely painful. I tried to take a deep breath. Definitely painful. I would need to be checked out at the hospital, too.

  I suddenly felt very sleepy. I rested my head against Sister’s gurney. And when I closed my eyes, I saw the rattler striking Sister’s hand. A hand that had been encased in a leather driving glove.

  My eyes popped open.

  “Tell the children I love them, Mouse.” Sister whispered faintly.

  “Tell them yourself.”

  I turned to Tammy. “Is she really bitten?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am. Not as bad as she would have been without those gloves, but the fangs went through a little bit.”

  “So she’s just a little bit bit.”

  Tammy looked thoughtful. “Well, a little bit bit is something you have to see about when the snake’s that big. She may need some antivenom. If she was small she definitely would.”

  Sister opened her eyes, frowned at Tammy, and closed them again.

  “You got no idea who put the snake in your car?” Tammy asked. “Must have been a handler. You can’t find big rattlers in the woods in January.”

  “Some fool,” Sister said.

  I was concentrating on not breathing too deeply. I put my head against the gurney again and thought about what had happened. Obviously the snake had been a warning. The person who put it in the car knew that even if we were bitten badly, we were close to help. There was a phone in the car and paramedics nearby. Of course, we could have gone over the side of the mountain and been killed. Obviously, the person hadn’t cared.

  Fortunately, we had hit the mailbox and Albert Lee Packard had come rushing out.

  Sister had hit a mailbox with her Jaguar. I felt a giggle burbling up. It was immediately stifled by pain. Damn.

  “Snake!” Sister had screeched, batting against the airbag, yanking the door open, and nearly knocking Albert Lee down as she ran away from the car and he ran toward it.

  I had heard the screaming, but didn’t see the near collision. Albert Lee told me about that later after he had gotten me out and slammed the door, trapping the snake inside, coiled now on the backseat. Probably more scared than we were, though I didn’t think about that at the time. All I was thinking was that we were out and alive.

  Now, gliding around the curves next to my just-a-little-bit-snakebit sister and a paramedic who was going to be blind soon if she didn’t cut her bangs, I tried to think who might have wanted to scare us away from Chandler Mountain and why. We had found Susan’s body, we had looked through Monk Crawford’s house, and I had met Betsy Mahall for lunch. We had also seen some of the handlers, had met a couple of them, Joe Baker in particular. We had gotten to know the Packards, mother and son, and had found out that Eugene Mahall was a tyrant, perhaps a murderer, and that he could walk. But he didn’t know that we knew that. And even if he did, what would he be afraid of? That we might tell Betsy?

  Whoever had put the snake in the car had done it in the short time that we had been drinking coffee with Betsy, returning the key. Albert Lee Packard’s car had been the only one that had come up while we were there.

  Someone hiding in the church? Parked on the other side of it? Or someone sneaking up through the woods? And who was afraid of what we might know? What did we know?

  “Virgil will figure everything out,” Sister said, reading my thoughts.

  I sighed; it hurt.

  “Hey. You back again?” Irene, the receptionist in the emergency room at the Blount County Medical Center, looked up in surprise.

  I pointed to the ambulance where Mary Alice was being unloaded. “It’s my sister this time. She’s been bitten by a snake.”

  “Well, have mercy. Y’all are smack in the middle of some kind of bad karma, aren’t you? Work in here long enough you see bad karma, Southern Baptist or not.”

  She handed me a clipboard with a form to fill out. “What kind of snake was it?”

  “Rattlesnake.”

  “In January?

  “Somebody put it in our car.”

  “Well, I declare. You sure?”

  “It was sitting on the back seat big as life last time I saw it.”

  “Lord. I’d have died just seeing it.”

  “I almost did.”

  I squinted at the form, and reached in my purse for my reading glasses. Behind me the doors banged open as the gurney was brought in.

  “Wait a minute,” I called to Tammy as they started down the hall. “I’ve got to get her purse. I need the insurance cards.” Lord, déjà vu sure enough. The feeling was compounded when I sat down to fill out the form and Death walked in with his KILL THEM ALL, LET GOD SORT THEM OUT T-shirt on, sat down, and picked up a Southern Living.

  I glanced over at Irene.

  “Trash,” she mouthed.

  The door slid open again with a rush of cold air.

  “Mrs. Hollowell?”

  I looked up to see Terry Mahall. He was dressed in a navy suit with a red-and-navy-striped tie. He was every inch the banker today.

  “Betsy called and told me you were here. She wanted me to check and see how your sister is. Albert called her and told her what happened.”

  “They’ve just taken her back. I think she’s going to be okay, though. I appreciate your coming by.”

  Terry sat down beside me. Death looked over the top of his Southern Living, checked him out, and continued his reading.

  “I’m glad Betsy called me. I’m working right down the street today so if there’s anything I can do for you, I’ll be glad to.”

  “Thanks, but I can’t think of a thing. Did she tell you what happened?”

  “She sure did. Unbelievable.”

  Death’s cute little wife walked in, and he stood up. For the first time, Terry got a look at the T-shirt.

  “Lord,” he mumbled. Then after they walked out, “I hope we’re not financing anything for him.”

  I shrugged, which hurt. I may have groaned a little.

  “Are you okay?” Terry asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Your face is scratched pretty bad. And burned. The air bag?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I think we need to get you checked out, too.” He got up and started toward Irene, then turned back to me. “Okay?”

  Polite man. I was happy for him to take charge.

  “Okay.”

  Fifteen minutes later I was being wheeled down to X-ray. An hour later I was sharing a cubicle with Sister, my two cracked ribs were wrapped, the abrasions on my face were covered with antibiotic salve, and I was feeling no pain.

  “What did they give you?” Sister asked. “You’re pie-eyed.”

  “I don’t know, but this is a nice place.”

  “Hell. They haven’t done a thing for me. Keep looking in my eyes and making me pee in a bottle.”

  “Well, my goodness. I’ll bet that’s hard to do.” I studied the vertical blue-and-gray lines in the wallpaper. Interesting.

  “That Mahall guy said to tell you he had to go but he would check on you later.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “And Virgil’s on his way down here. He says Virginia called Richard to come get her.”

  “She and Luke should get married.”

  “Dear God. What did they give you?”

  I didn’t know and I didn’t care. The blue and gray lines in the wallpaper were beautiful.

  “My baby,” Fred said. “My sweet b
aby.” He ran his hand over my hair.

  “Sister hit a mailbox,” I said.

  “I know she did.” He took my hand and held it.

  “It was a damn Godzilla of a rattlesnake.” Sister started crying.

  I opened my eyes. A nurse was taking my blood pressure and Sister was sobbing into the shoulder of Virgil Stuckey’s uniform.

  “Where’s Fred?” I asked.

  The nurse took the cup off of my arm and pushed my hair back to examine the abrasions on my forehead.

  “He’ll be here in a little while,” Virgil said. “I called him.”

  “You’re fine.” The nurse patted my arm. “Go back to sleep.”

  And I did.

  “Wake up, honey. It’s time to go home.”

  This time I knew I wasn’t dreaming.

  “Where’s Sister?” I asked.

  “Virgil’s taking her home. They left when I got here. She’s fine. How about you?”

  I sat up very carefully. Surprisingly, there was little pain.

  “I’m okay.”

  “You’re drunk as a coot. They’re going to wheel you out to the car.”

  “Sister hit a mailbox, Fred.”

  “That’s what I heard.” He grinned. “Mark that one off your list.”

  “I can’t wait to tell Haley and Debbie.”

  “You little snitch.”

  “What goes around, comes around.”

  It sounded like it made sense.

  It was the next afternoon before I got around to E-mailing Haley, though. And then I wasn’t sure how much I should tell her. Her Aunt Sister hitting the mailbox, definitely. But how much did I want to tell her about the snakes and the murders?

  Debbie had called around ten o’clock to check on me. Her mother had told her about the snake and the car wreck, and that the snake was as big as a boa constrictor, and was I all right?

  I told her that I was feeling pretty good, that Fred had brought me a couple of aspirin, coffee, and the morning paper before he left, and I was still in bed but considering getting up.

  “Did your mama tell you she hit a mailbox?” I couldn’t resist.

  “You’re kidding. No, I swear she told me a tree, Aunt Pat.” Debbie giggled. “You gonna let her live it down?”