Dead On the Bayou

by June Shaw

  The workmanship here pleased me. Eve and I needed this business of ours to survive, so while I was under doctor’s orders not to perform any carpentry work yet myself, I was satisfied that for the time being, my sister and I could work with house plans to help people remodel their homes, and others could do most of the actual labor.

  There was no mess in this space. These workers cleaned up after themselves as they worked, which I admired. The beauty of this garage began with something I had suggested that the couple hadn’t known about. Instead of harsh, cold concrete, they had used this durable floor finish that would resist chipping or stains. They could wipe away any spills from the floor that was now mauve. Georgia had chosen the color, which blended beautifully with the cabinets. Light-paneled floor-to-ceiling cabinet doors with slim perpendicular handles covered most walls.

  “Great job,” I called to all the workers who thanked me and continued their chores.

  At home, I made sketches with ideas that might work in their new home and looked over their existing plans. After a while, my mind shifted to Eve and to Dave. Conflicting emotions wore me out, so I got to sleep earlier than normal.

  In the morning, I focused on helping others. I set a large pot on the stove and pulled out ingredients for a seafood gumbo. I sautéed onions, garlic, bell peppers, and celery, added smothered okra from my freezer, a fresh tomato, shrimp, three quarts of water, a pinch of Worcestershire sauce, and salt and pepper. I let that simmer while I put eggs and potatoes to boil and fixed myself a tasty breakfast of cinnamon-laced lost bread with milk. Once I showered and dressed in slacks and casual moccasins, I added a pint of oysters and two pounds of crabmeat to the mixture on the stove, got the rice ready, made the potato salad, adding sweet relish to the mixture, and swiped mascara across my lashes and pale pink lipstick on my lips.

  With everything prepared, I drove the meal and two loaves of crusty French bread out to our community center. The building was small and old, but had been donated and lovingly spruced up by volunteers. Now the walls were painted bright white instead of the dull finish they’d had before, and cheerful posters with positive quotes lined the walls. This was a soup kitchen of sorts that had become more of a gumbo kitchen since that’s what most of us contributed and the needy enjoyed. No one sat at any of the long tables yet, but it wouldn’t be long. Ladies in the kitchen took my offerings and set them near pots and bowls of others that emitted the most enticing aromas.

  My high school friend Amy Matthews ran the kitchen. “Yum, girl, I smelled that gumbo when you walked in.” Her skin was cappuccino and her clothes vibrant. “Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  She stepped out of the kitchen with me. “So tell me about your love life with that guy.” Her big eyes widened.

  “I just met Dave a handful of times at the coffee shop downtown.”

  “Yes, and…?”

  “I’ve told him how I felt about not hurting my sister. He won’t try to advance our relationship until I’m ready.”

  “Sunny, you deserve a good relationship with a man.”

  I sighed. “I know. I want to be ready. But I wanted Eve to find somebody else—she always has before—and you know….”

  She learned farther back. “I do know—your sister who died. You won’t cause this one anguish.”

  “Not if I can help it.” I gave her a hug around the neck and trotted out of the building.

  In the afternoon, I showed up at Eve’s house, afraid I would need to convince her to get out of her nightgown and dress in regular clothes. She surprised me. I pressed the doorbell once, and she opened the door and came out. My identical twin wore light makeup, no frown, and a pale blue knit dress.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Not getting any conversation from her, I drove to what would become Dave’s fishing camp. I told her I’d seen an alligator in the bayou, but she didn’t look for one. She showed little reaction when I pointed out an eagle that swooped low to the water. They were fairly rare here, but did build nests along some bayous. Reaching Dave’s camp, I was pleased to see his truck pulling into his drive ahead of us.

  “Thank you for coming,” he told Eve, who gave him a tight smile. “Since y’all are guests, I’ll let you in through the nicer entrance.” He unlocked the front door and stepped aside for us to go in first. “The place doesn’t look like much, and it doesn’t need to for me to use it for relaxing. But I will want to fix it up some and hope you and Sunny might help.”

  Eve mumbled something and didn’t try to get close to him, which was so unlike her.

  Maybe if I took myself out of their space a couple of minutes, she would perk up. “Dave, you might want to show Eve around. I’ll just check out some things over here.” I scuttled from the living area, and he guided her toward the hall.

  I stepped into the utility room. It was small with only enough space for the old white washer and dryer that must have come with the place and might or might not work and the water heater. A large black garbage bag that looked almost full leaned against it.

  Plastic and heat don’t mix well together, I would tell Dave after he and Eve finished their tour. In the meantime, I grabbed the top of the bag to pull it away from the heater. The thing didn’t budge. I opened the top to remove some of what must have been chunks of wood or maybe plaster, judging from the wide shape at its bottom.

  “Jingle bells,” I bellowed, spewing more lyrics.

  “Sunny, what’s wrong?” Eve ran in ahead of Dave, knowing my unwilling song stemmed from fright.

  My arms quivered and mouth dried as all three of us stared at the slumped body in the trash bag. Even though blood matted her hair, it was easy to see this was Eve’s neighbor Mrs. Wilburn. The odd twist of her neck assured us she was dead.

  Chapter 3

  Eve and I rushed from the utility room, my heart pounding so hard I heard it thrusting into my head over the sound of my carol and almost missed hearing Dave say he was calling 911.

  My twin and I stopped in the kitchen, both shaking. We held each other’s hands, my eyes surely as big as hers had become. A mask of fear gripped her face. My feet quit moving, but my heart slammed my ribcage as if it were a power drill.

  Dave stepped into the room with us. “Police are coming.”

  Eve flung herself against him, circling his neck with her arms. His arms came around her. I knew she clung to him for support, and I wanted it, too.

  “You two stay together.” He pulled away from her. “I’m going to hurry through to make sure whoever did that isn’t still around.”

  “Do you have a gun?” I asked.

  “Yes, but it’s in my truck. I won’t leave you in here to go get it.”

  “We could wait outside,” Eve offered, but immediately reconsidered. “No, the killer could be out there.”

  Dave shook his head. “I don’t think it just happened. The blood doesn’t look fresh enough. Wait there.”

  I stood in place, not wanting to think of what he would do if he discovered a murderer.

  We were with Eve’s neighbor yesterday. How could she be dead now? And why here in the little building down on a remote bayou where Dave wanted to make his relaxing fishing camp? What about her poor motherless son?

  “There’s no one here.” Dave’s words competed with the cry of the sirens that I first thought was the electric saw from the next camp’s wharf. He strode outside and car doors slammed. Moments later, he returned with two deputies, one I recognized and one I didn’t. Both were real young and with solemn stances and faces, one of the faces wearing freckles. The one I’d never seen before stared at me. At Eve. And at me again, certainly registering that, yes, we were identical—except, Dave had told me, for the gold flecks that the sun picked out only in my clear blue eyes.

  The deputy we’d seen before stayed in the room with us and began asking questions and taking notes while the unfamiliar one moved to the utility room. Sirens again swamped the air outside,
and more men and a woman in uniform rushed in. With gloves and cameras and a gurney, they swarmed the building that grew tinier while I tried to pay closer attention to all of the questions and to Eve’s and Dave’s answers.

  Thick black brows and lips so full they would put most women’s to shame gripped my attention. The man owning them stamped to us on stubby legs.

  “I’m Detective Wilet with the Landry Parish Sheriff’s Department,” he announced to Dave. His gaze grabbed us. “You two, again.”

  Eve and I offered tight-lipped smiles. We couldn’t help it if we were involved in previous murders. We hadn’t committed any, then or now.

  “We’ve answered a lot of questions already,” I told him as though I believed that should end the discussion and the need for any query from him.

  “We didn’t do it.” Eve wiggled her finger between the three of us who had been there.

  “And we don’t know who did.” I gave him a shrug as though that would put his mind at ease and send him off elsewhere to locate a killer.

  We didn’t throw him off, though. While a woman snapped pictures around us, I tried to focus more on what this detective asked and said, and heard him in a disappointed tone ask Dave if there wasn’t a place to sit.

  “Only the floor,” Dave said. “The previous owner left a couple of appliances, and I wanted to get opinions from the twins before I put anything else inside.”

  “Like a body?” The detective lifted his chin.

  “Absolutely not.” Dave grimaced.

  “Detective Wilet, Dave didn’t kill her and neither did we. Dave showed me around in here yesterday, and I can guarantee you Eve’s neighbor wasn’t here.”

  The detective’s stance stiffened. “I’ll need you three to answer more questions at the office.” He tilted his head toward Dave. “Officer Bennings will give you a ride.”

  I bustled forward. “Wait. Are you arresting him? He didn’t do anything. He needs an attorney. He needs his rights read to him.” All of these words swirled through my mind and probably rushed from my mouth. And then bits of words I’d heard registered. Dave had told him he’d gone home after we left here yesterday. No one could attest to that fact. He had been at work earlier today, arrived right before we did, and nobody else had a key to this place.

  The freckled-face officer walked us out with Detective Wilet following. “I’m going to inspect in here and meet y’all there later,” Wilet said.

  Fearful that Dave would go to prison for something he didn’t do, I fought to stop the carol that tried to rush from my mouth, biting down on it while I glanced toward the wharf at the camp beyond. The man on it was no longer working but standing and watching all of the commotion over here. Yes, the police would question him, and if we were lucky, that man had witnessed the killer getting Mrs. Wilburn inside here.

  My eyes skimmed Dave’s carport. Something looked amiss. “Wait,” I said, and the officers stopped walking. The detective’s dark brows tightened into one, letting me know I had better come up with something good. “I saw all your people coming in the front door.”

  “And?”

  “Look back there.” I pointed inside the carport.

  “There’s wood he’s going to use for this place.” Wilet swept his arm toward the stacks.

  “The stacks were neat, but if nobody came in here, all of the wood should have stayed like it was. That two-by-four is tilted over.” I pointed at the top one that was now on its side. “That’s what first caught my eye.”

  The detective let out a loud huff and reached for Dave’s arm. Would he cuff him?

  “No, look.” My words got their attention, although Wilet hardly glanced at the floor where I indicated. “Is that a key?”

  The metal tip was barely visible beneath the edge of the wood that had slipped down. Wilet went there and pulled the object, a key, out from under the wood. He tried it in the back door.

  The key fit.

  Instead of thanking me, he stepped into my space. “How did you know this was here? It was so hard to see, you must have known about it.”

  I shook my head, protests slamming through my mind.

  Eve stepped closer. “She notices details, Detective. My sister used to work for years at Fancy Ladies”—which he would know was the only nearby upscale clothing store for women—“and she fitted women for their undergarments.”

  When Wilet’s eyes blanked, I continued the story. “So I learned to notice things, like I could tell in an instant if a woman was a double D or E, and I knew about panties or not and—”

  His raised hand told me to stop. He held up the key. “And this?”

  “I was born dyslexic, sir, so I might not always get numbers or words I read pronounced right, but I do know how to spot something others might miss. I saw that wood stacked yesterday. I didn’t look at it when I came inside today, but I just spotted the top piece out of place. That led me to wonder why, and I checked out the space below it.” I spread my hands as though a jack-in-the-box would jump out. “There was a key.”

  “You said nobody else had one,” Wilet told Dave.

  “No one does. Yesterday I wanted to give Sunny the extra one.”

  That comment drew an unpleasant face from Eve. Her eyes went hard toward me.

  Dave reached into a pocket of his slacks. He drew out a key ring that held a number of different sized keys, flipped through them, and pulled one up. “This is the one I used to get in here today through the front door. Sunny and I walked out of here through the carport.”

  “And we sure didn’t knock down any wood,” I said.

  Dave tilted his head toward the key Wilet held. “The one I took off the ring and tried to give her must have slipped down without me noticing.”

  “You would have been pretty distracted when you left not to have noticed,” Wilet said.

  I recalled the moments Dave and I shared before I left. Was it only yesterday?

  Dave swung his gaze toward me, making me think he also recalled our time on the driveway.

  Eve kept her lips tight. Her eyes didn’t soften.

  “Okay, I’ll need to check out your story more,” Wilet told Dave. “You can drive yourself to my office and wait for me to finish up here.”

  “I certainly will.”

  “You know where my office is?”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “I’ll get you two to come by to answer more later, maybe tomorrow.”

  Eve and I had gone to his office more than once. We both nodded.

  The tensed muscles in Dave’s face relaxed. “Thank you so much, Sunny,” Dave said once the detective went inside. From his body’s shift toward me, I thought he might give me a kiss, albeit a light one. Then his eyes shifted toward Eve just like mine did. He stayed where he was.

  All sorts of emergency vehicles were parked on the road in front of Dave’s place and beyond. Seeing them pulled my thoughts back to Mrs. Wilburn, now the dead person inside.

  Neither Eve nor I spoke when we climbed into my truck, and while I drove. I didn’t want to think about what I discovered in that bag and tried to focus on the slim road. I steered us back toward her house, shaking in my shoulders intensifying when I needed to turn down her street. My jaw grew rigid when I rolled past Mrs. Wilburn’s house.

  Only after I’d parked in Eve’s driveway did I let out a breath it felt I’d held since we left the crime scene. That term slid into my mind like poured concrete.

  A hand gripped mine. I tightened my fingers around Eve’s and stared at her frightened eyes that balled up like blue marbles, knowing they reflected mine. The truck’s cabin felt like a space I didn’t dare say anything in now that we were so close to her dead neighbor’s house. Both of us turned toward it. Although it was late afternoon, the days were so long it was easy to see no one was in the yard.

  Eve opened her door and stepped out. I did the same, and we shut our doors without slamming them. I looked next door toward the fir
st window in front that Mrs. Wilburn had so often stared out of, seeming to watch everything Eve did. The curtains hung straight. Not even a slit opened between them. Her pale face—the small dark eyes weren’t staring out at us.

  Eve unlocked her door, and we stepped inside.

  “I miss seeing her there,” I said.

  “Me, too.”

  “She should be watching you, spying on you.”

  Eve was nodding. “And Royce should be standing right behind her, watching over her shoulder.”

  “Of course.” I was also nodding and squeezing her hands. “Oh, my God, he probably doesn’t know.”

  “His mother won’t be coming home,” Eve said as though I had left off the end of my sentence. “Sunny, can you imagine that? A boy learning his mother was murdered?” Tears sprang to her eyes, and I figured she was imagining her own new grandson losing his mother, Eve’s daughter.

  “But if anyone wanted to kill her, why would she end up in that little camp Dave’s bought, of all places?”

  “Yes. Who would have connected her and him together?”

  My twin’s eyes went blank, and I knew she was thinking, like I was, especially when she blinked twice, her present state seeming to register when she stared at me. “The link between those two is us.”

  I grabbed her hands. “And Dave. But he couldn’t have done it.”

  “Absolutely not.” Her gaze shifted aside and then back at me with a different solemn expression. “Why did he want to give you a key to his place?”

  “Oh, just so you and I could go in and look things over while he was at work.”

  “Oh.” Her shoulders lowered as she relaxed.

  “Maybe we can do some digging around and find out more about why Mrs. Wilburn would have been dead in his camp.” I gripped my purse tighter. “I don’t want to be around here when the police arrive to tell Royce.”