by Vickie Fee
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know, but after a pause I asked, “What?”
“He was clearing the toilet paper off the trees in my front yard and—”
“Your yard got rolled last night?”
“Yes it did, and so did half the other houses in the neighborhood. I guess after the hayride a bunch of the teenagers decided to cap off the night by wasting toilet paper,” she said. “But that’s another story. Anyway, Earl was up on a ladder pulling the paper off the tree and I came out on the front porch to check on him. I walked over by the ladder, and all of a sudden this little snake drops out of the tree and lands on my shoulder.
“I flicked it off and went running. I was all the way over in the Rowland’s yard when I heard Earl hollering, ‘It’s not a real snake, Virginia.’ I turned around and he’s standing on the ground, laughing his fool head off. He bent over and picked up this rubber snake and started waving it at me.”
I was trying very hard not to laugh. But it was difficult to do with Larry Joe practically doubled over in his chair laughing, since Mama talks loudly enough for anybody in the room to overhear her part of the phone conversation.
“I tell you I was madder than a wet hen. I grabbed the rake that was leaning against the side of the house and went after him with the stick end of it. And he ran, too. I think he knew he’d be in for it if I caught up to him. The very idea. Earl Daniels is going have to make this up to me if he ever expects to sit down to supper at my table again. I even thought for a minute about putting some ex-lax in his gravy, but I decided to be the bigger person and turn the other cheek.”
At this point, Larry Joe slapped his napkin over his mouth and ran out of the room.
Mama’s call waiting beeped, and she told me she had to let me go. Just in time, too, because I don’t think I could have bit my lip to hold back the laughter another second without drawing blood. The image of Mama chasing Earl around the yard while turning the other cheek just about pushed me over the edge.
After clearing away the dishes, Larry Joe and I got dressed and decided to take a stroll through the neighborhood. It was a sunny day with perfect, long-sleeve temperatures. We held hands and shuffled through piles of leaves that had gathered in patches along the sidewalk. Nobody on our street seemed to have gotten their yards rolled, but on the street just behind us we saw a couple of people clearing away toilet paper from trees and shrubs. The dummy with the Freddy Krueger mask scared me half to death Friday night, but at least he was easier to clear away than reams of dew-dampened toilet paper covering a towering oak tree.
After our walk, Larry Joe and I snuggled up on the sofa in the den and put our combined brainpower to work on the Sunday crossword puzzle.
Around three, Di called and invited us to come over to her place for supper at seven.
“Dave said he’s going to fire up the grill and throw some T-bones on the flame to celebrate putting Morgan’s real killer behind bars.”
Di said she would be contributing baked potatoes and a tossed salad to the menu. I said we’d bring beer and wine.
Chapter 28
By the time we arrived at Di’s, the temperature was beginning to drop outside. So when Dave pulled the steaks off the grill in front of Di’s trailer, we all headed inside to dine at the kitchen table.
Dave looked more relaxed than I’d seen him in weeks.
“So did you two fix Ted up with that odd little spider lady?” Dave said, eyeing us with that bad-cop look he puts on for interrogations.
We told him the truth in a slightly deceitful way.
“I barely know her,” Di said. “She’s in my yoga class.”
“I’d never met her until Friday at the funeral,” I said.
“Hmm,” Dave said, unconvinced.
“Dave, you know Ted joined the yoga class only as a last-ditch effort to meet women,” Di said. “You should be happy for him that he’s found someone.”
“I suppose,” he said. “But I didn’t much enjoy him telling me how great it felt to have a tarantula crawl across his bare chest.”
“Eww,” Di said.
“So he’s already gotten bare-chested with Daisy?” I said, a little surprised that either one of them would move so quickly.
“I’d rather not think about Ted’s bare chest right after I’ve eaten,” Larry Joe said.
Di and I shared a knowing look before I began clearing away the dinner plates while Di put some coffee on. After filling our coffee mugs, she dumped a bag of trick-or-treat candy onto the table.
“They had this marked down when I ran by the dollar store today,” she said.
I had avoided saying anything about the events of the previous evening to Dave, since I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what he thought of our little stunt, using the play to rouse a reaction out of Bryn, à la Hamlet. I was trying to think of a way to bring up the subject casually when Larry Joe saved me the trouble.
“So, Dave, it sounded to me like Bryn confessed to killing Morgan, but you said you found Pierce’s fingerprints on the poison plant. What’s the deal? Who killed Morgan, and why?” Larry Joe asked.
“The two of them were in on it from the beginning,” Dave said. “This was a carefully planned murder. Morgan refused to fade away quietly. According to Bryn—who’s been talking nonstop since her arrest—Morgan had threatened to go public about the affair if Pierce didn’t file for divorce. Pierce couldn’t afford that kind of scandal, since he was planning to start campaigning for the state senate as soon as Senator Cromwell announced his retirement. Word on the street has it that Pierce was being groomed for a run at the governor’s office in a few years. And I think Bryn liked the idea of being Tennessee’s first lady as much as Pierce liked the notion of being governor.”
“But why kill Morgan at the retreat?” I asked. “Pierce could have killed her quietly pretty much anytime.”
“That’s just it. They needed the murder to happen in such a way that Pierce wouldn’t be suspected, and at a time when Jasmine would be. They probably started hatching their murder plan shortly after Bryn first learned about the highly poisonous plant while making arrangements for the garden show back in the spring. She and Pierce just had to wait for the right time.”
“I admit, I never suspected Bryn,” Di said. “I was convinced Lucinda was the killer after that tarantula episode, until it turned out the spider belonged to Daisy.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said.
“Y’all wanted to believe it was Lucinda. So did a lot of other folks,” Dave said.
“Listen, even before the spider I figured if it wasn’t Jasmine, it had to be Lucinda. She was in the best position to get her hands on some of that hemlock water-dropwort, since she’d recently been to Europe. And then that attempt on her life seemed like the kind of phony dramatics Lucinda would come up with,” I said.
“Right,” Di said, turning to Dave. “And how were you always so dang sure the attempt on Lucinda’s life was genuine?”
“I knew the attack was the real deal because I saw her right after the incident. She was scraped up and bleeding, and crying real tears. Lucinda may be on TV, but she doesn’t strike me as the type to do her own stunts.
“I should’ve dug deeper into Bryn as a suspect early on,” Dave said. “Pierce was the only one we knew for certain was having an affair with Morgan—Bryn and Pierce both admitted as much to me.”
“I still don’t understand who did what to who and when,” Larry Joe said, throwing his hands in the air.
“Okay, here’s the way it went down yesterday,” Dave said. “When Liv told me she remembered that she and Bryn got blueberry tea at the same time at the retreat, and yet Bryn had just said she has a severe blueberry allergy, that moved Mrs. Davenport to the top of my list of suspects.”
“And while I was telling Dave about the allergy, I suddenly remembered something Lucinda had mentioned when Di and I talked to her about her meeting with Pierce. According to her, Pierce had said something like, when he first heard about M
organ’s death he had thought it was ironic that someone who was such a health nut died from drinking herbal tea. It dawned on me that even if he guessed Morgan had been poisoned, he couldn’t possibly have known that the poison was served in the tea. Nobody knew that until a few days later, when the medical examiner gave the test results to Dave. And that was the day Dave arrested Jasmine.”
“I’d known something was fishy when someone finally got around to telling me about the mysterious fog and disappearing voice mail nonsense in Bryn’s office,” Dave said.
“Liv, I think when you called and said you needed to talk to her, Bryn got worried you might be onto her. She knew some people in town were already convinced of Jasmine’s innocence, so she decided to use the fog machine and voice message to cast suspicion on Lucinda.”
“It worked,” I said.
The miniature candy bars lying on the dining table were calling out to me. I picked up a Butterfinger and unwrapped it.
“I needed to dig up some physical evidence against Bryn,” Dave said. “Then I recalled reading in a forensics journal that fingerprints can sometimes be retrieved from plants, so I called in a favor from a friend who’s a forensics expert at the FBI field office in Memphis.
“While waiting for those results, it occurred to me that if Bryn had killed Morgan, she was also a good suspect for the attempt on Lucinda’s life. So I decided to take another run at the housekeeper to see if Bryn’s alibi held up.”
“Hang on a minute,” Larry Joe said. “I understand why they wanted Morgan out of the way. But why kill Lucinda?”
“Because they didn’t know how much Morgan may have shared with Lucinda about Pierce,” I said.
“And they couldn’t risk Lucinda possibly deciding to leak some of that information to the tabloids after Pierce announced his candidacy, especially if Lucinda suspected that Pierce, or Bryn, was somehow involved in Morgan’s death,” Dave said. “Now where was I?”
“You were going to interview the housekeeper again about Bryn’s alibi,” Larry Joe said.
Larry Joe never pays this much attention to the thread of the conversation when I’m talking to him, I thought.
“Right,” Dave said. “The maid, Myrna, stuck to her story about bringing tea to Bryn while she was on the phone with her mom—and phone records confirmed there was a twenty-six-minute call to a Virginia number. So I had Myrna go through the whole evening again, pressing her about anything that might have seemed unusual. She remembered taking the kitchen trash out to the garbage can in the garage and thinking it was odd to see Mr. Davenport’s Mercedes there. She said he normally drives the Expedition only on hunting or fishing trips. I quickly wrapped up the interview with her and took a quick peek through the garage window on my way out. I could see that the big SUV parked inside was indeed a dark color with tinted windows like the one that tried to run down Lucinda. I figured if it wasn’t Bryn who tried to run Lucinda down, it could be Pierce. I called the judge to get a warrant before taking a closer look at the SUV. I wanted to be sure we did everything by the book.”
“Bryn drove that SUV to the retreat,” I said. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that earlier, since she usually drives that little sports car.”
“Wait a minute,” Larry Joe broke in again. “Pierce was in Nashville at a dinner for the governor the night Lucinda was attacked. Liv and I saw the TV reporter interviewing him.”
“That puzzled me, too, at first,” Dave said. “But when we reviewed the news video, the reporter had said the cocktail hour was about to begin. That would have made it an hour before the seven o’clock dinner. Pierce could have put in an appearance during cocktails and still have driven from Nashville to Dixie in less than two and a half hours—putting him in town in time to run down Lucinda. We’re going through security camera footage from the hotel where the dinner was held, trying to nail down when Pierce left the building.
“I’m not sure how Pierce knew about Lucinda’s little nine o’clock appointment. But he could have paid someone to keep tabs on her,” Dave said.
“Actually, I think I know how he got hold of that tidbit,” I said. “Nell said Friday that Sindhu had told her about Lucinda’s nightly dates. Nell also mentioned that Bryn had called and offered to make a contribution for Jasmine’s defense. I’m sure that was just a pretext for Bryn to pump Nell for information. And in my experience you don’t have to prime the pump to get a flood of gossip from Nell.”
Dave took a notepad from his shirt pocket and scribbled something down.
“I’m going to need to get formal statements from you and Di and Nell, and the rest of the women from the retreat,” Dave said.
“We didn’t have fingerprints on file for Pierce or Bryn,” he continued. “But I figured I could retrieve prints from their wineglasses at the murder mystery dinner. I didn’t want to alert them to our suspicions before we’d taken a look at the SUV. We had a forensics tech from Hartville standing by to go over the vehicle as soon as the couple left the house. Fortunately, neither of them had been at home when I’d questioned the housekeeper earlier in the day.
“The tire treads on the Expedition were a perfect match to the acceleration scuff marks we found in the hotel parking lot. Even better, there was a tiny fragment of Lucinda’s blouse snagged on the side-view mirror.
“The waiters at the country club were already wearing gloves, which was perfect for gathering the evidence. As soon as we confirmed the fingerprint match, we headed back to the country club. I didn’t expect the commotion you and Lucinda had orchestrated,” Dave said, looking directly at me. “But Bryn’s confession certainly beefs up the case against her. And she just kept on talking, even after being advised of her rights. Her biggest concern seems to be making sure Pierce gets put away.”
Dave relaxed his shoulders and leaned back in his chair.
“Wow, what a twisted mess of politics, murder, and scandal,” Larry Joe said. “I bet the media will be camped out in Dixie when the trials begin.”
“I expect so,” Dave said. “Especially when our celebrity ghost hunter takes the stand.”
“Oh, joy,” Di said. “We can look forward to Lucinda coming back to town.”
My cell phone went off. The ringtone let me know it was Mama. I looked over to Larry Joe.
“You might as well take the call. You know she’ll just call back.”
“Hello.”
Mama started talking a mile a minute as soon as I answered.
“Liv, grab your suitcase and get over here. I’ll be waiting on the porch in fifteen minutes.”
“Mama, what are you talking about?”
“Your sister’s on her way to the hospital to have the baby.”
“Oh, okay,” I said. “We could probably wait and leave in the morning.”
“Liv, the baby’s early,” Mama said, emphatically. “She shouldn’t be in labor for at least another week.”
“Calm down, Mama. I think they can go a week or two in either direction,” I said. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. What did Emma say when she called?”
“That’s another thing,” Mama said. “I didn’t talk to Emma. Hobie called. When she went to the hospital with Lulu, Emma called me. It worries me that she didn’t get on the phone herself.”
“Mama, I . . .”
“Liv, you can come with me or not, but I’m too worried to just sit around here twiddling my thumbs. I’m packed and I’m hitting the highway in the next thirty minutes.”
“Okay, Mama,” I said. “I’m on my way.”
All eyes were on me when I ended the call.
“Is something wrong with your sister or the baby?” Larry Joe said.
“I don’t think so, but Mama insists on leaving right away. I can’t let her drive all the way to Charlotte by herself,” I said. “Guess it’s a good thing we slept in today.”
“We’d better head home and get your suitcase,” Larry Joe said.
I promised Di I’d let her know as soon as we heard a
nything about Emma and the baby.
Epilogue
Mama was rocking baby Trey, Lulu was sitting on my lap, and my little sister was sitting beside me on the sofa with her feet propped up on the ottoman. Hobie was in the study, either catching up on work or hiding from Mama.
Emma clicked the remote to the right channel just as the intro music for P.S. Ghost Encounters started playing.
Lucinda was standing in a graveyard, bathed in soft light, fog swirling at her feet.
“Do her breasts look that huge in person?” Emma asked.
“Like perky melons,” I said.
“Mine don’t even get that big when I’m breastfeeding.”
“Shush,” Mama said. “Look, they’re showing a picture of Lucinda in that little cemetery at St. Julian’s.”
The camera slowly pulled back to a wider view to show the ladies of PWAD huddled around the tombstones.
“Look, there’s Miss Annabelle and her sister,” Emma said.
“Is that you, Liv, standing next to Winette?” Mama said. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”
“If I ever see Lucinda, I’m going to kill her,” I said.
Our star stood there looking glamorous and everyone else looked like a normal human being. But my eyes were glowing like a creature in the woods. And I looked like a hunchback from that angle. I’m probably the only one who thinks I look hunchbacked, I thought.
“Why are you all hunched over?” Mama said. “Did you drop something?”
Emma was laughing so hard, she grabbed a pillow and pressed it against her stomach to protect her cesarean stitches.
“Aunt Liv looks funny, huh, Mommy?” Lulu said.
My precious niece tilted her head back and gazed up at me with that sweet little face. I couldn’t help but smile, despite my televised deformity.
Just as they cut away to a commercial, we could hear a recording of Miss Annabelle saying, “Was that the dead cat talking?”
Emma doubled over with laughter and Mama cackled, her body shaking so violently it woke up the baby.
