A Peach of a Murder

by Livia J. Washburn

  Chief Whitmire nodded in solemn agreement with the sheriff’s statement.

  “Donnie Boatwright was an important man, even though he didn’t hold public office anymore. The district attorney, the mayor, the city councilmen, and the county commissioners … everybody knew Donnie. Everybody wants his killer caught.”

  “So do 1, sir;” Mike said. “I don’t have any idea who it is, though.”

  “We’re hearing from Donnie’s family, too,” Haney went on as if Mike hadn’t spoken. “His brother and sister are mighty upset, as you can imagine. What makes it worse is that there was a large insurance policy on Donnie’s life, and the insurance company isn’t going to pay off as long as there’s a cloud hanging over his death.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Mike protested. “Mr. Boatwright’s death has been ruled a homicide. What else does the insurance company need?”

  Whitmire said, “They don’t want to take a chance on paying a bunch of money to somebody who might have been responsible for Donnie’s death.”

  Mike sucked in a sharp breath. He knew he was staring, but he couldn’t help it. “The insurance company thinks Mr. Boatwright’s brother or sister killed him?”

  “They consider it a possibility. Not only that, but just because the death was ruled a homicide doesn’t mean that Donnie couldn’t have put that poison in his water bottle himself.”

  “Now that is crazy. He wouldn’t have committed suicide. The doctor said he was in good health.”

  Haney shrugged. “People have killed themselves before

  when it didn’t seem like they’d have any reason to do such a thing.”

  Mike shook his head. “I don’t see it. The insurance company is just looking for excuses to drag its feet about paying off.”

  “Maybe,” Haney agreed. “But even if that’s true, they’ll have to settle once the case is closed. Charles Boatwright and Sally Hughes know that, and that’s why they want us to make an arrest.”

  “There can’t be an arrest until we know what happened,” Mike said stubbornly.

  “Of course not,” Haney agreed. “There’s not going to be any rush to judgment about this. But you can see why we can’t afford to overlook any possibilities.”

  This was about the statements he had taken from his mother and her boarders, he thought. He had begun to hope that the sheriff and the chief wanted him to probe some other angle of the case.

  Sheriff Haney leaned forward. “Mike, I hate to ask you this, but are you certain your mother and her friends didn’t have any reason to hurt Donnie Boatwright?”

  “Of course they didn’t,” Mike responded without hesitation. “They all knew him, of course, but so did half the people in Parker County. And just about everybody in the county knew of him.”

  “None of them had any reason to hold a grudge against “Not that I’m aware of,” Mike said, and that was a totally honest answer.

  “What if there was some other reason?” Chief Whitmire asked. “When somebody’s murdered, you always have to take a look at who was close to them when it happened. Maybe Donnie was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “You mean maybe he was killed because somebody tried to sabotage the cooking contest?” There, he had said it. And it sounded unbelievable even to his ears, and he’d been there when his mother and the others were talking about it. “We’re just trying to cover all the bases,” Haney said. “Do you think that might be what happened?”

  Mike shook his head. “For what it’s worth, Sheriff, I’ve known my mother my entire life and Miz Wilbarger almost that long, and I just don’t believe either of them would do that. I know my mother wouldn’t. I couldn’t say about all the other women in the contest, but I even know some of them and they don’t strike me as killers.”

  “Well, it was a long shot,” Haney said with a sigh, “and even though we can’t rule out the other contestants entirely, based on the evidence, I don’t think they should be a focus of the investigation. What do you say, Ralph?”

  “I never believed it, either,” Whitmire said. “But maybe one of the contestants … say, Mrs. Wilbarger … had a reason to want Donnie Boatwright dead that didn’t have anything to do with the cooking contest itself.”

  “That still doesn’t seem possible to me,” Mike said, but inside him, a feeling of unease stirred.

  Haney and Whitmire looked at each other for a second, and then the sheriff said, “That’s because you don’t know what we’ve found out, Mike. But we’re about to tell you… .”

  The morning after Donnie Boatwright’s funeral, Phyllis did some shopping. When she got back to the house and started to put the groceries away, she paused as she looked into the refrigerator and saw the fresh peaches that were still sitting in the crisper. After a moment, she took them out and dropped them in the garbage can. It went against the grain for her to throw away perfectly good food-she had been raised never to waste anything-but she knew good and well that she wasn’t going to feel like fixing anything with peaches in it for a long time. These particular peaches would be rotten before she would ever use them, and she didn’t feel up to freezing them.

  Right now, she didn’t care if she ever ate a peach again. Taking a deep breath, she got back to work and put away the rest of the groceries. The house was quiet. Eve and Mattie had gone out to the high school for their tutoring sessions with the summer school students. Carolyn was probably upstairs in her room. Sam’s pickup had been gone when Phyllis came in from the store, so she didn’t know where he was. The silence made the knock on the front door sound even louder than usual-and somehow ominous. Phyllis frowned and gave a little shake of her head. There was nothing sinister about a knock on the door, she told herself. She was just being silly because it had been such a hectic, upsetting summer.

  She went up the hall and through the living room, touching her hair out of habit as she went to make sure it was in good order. A smile spread across her face when she looked through the curtains over the window beside the door and saw Mike standing there.

  “Come in,” she said as she opened the door. “What brings you by?”

  “Business, I’m afraid.” He stepped into the house, holding his Stetson. He was in uniform, and his expression was solemn. Phyllis felt an immediate stirring of apprehension when she saw the look on his face.

  “This is about Donnie Boatwright, isn’t it?” she asked tensely, lifting a hand to the throat of her blouse.

  “Yeah.” Mike glanced around. “Is Miz Wilbarger here?” “I think she’s upstairs. Why do you-” Phyllis stopped and began to shake her head. “Oh, no, Mike. I told you, that was just a crazy moment on my part. Carolyn would never have poisoned Donnie just to make me look bad. Not even by accident.”

  “It’s not that. It’s not about the contest at all. But it looks like Miz Wilbarger might’ve had another reason to hold a grudge against Mr. Boatwright. The investigation has uncovered some information about her daughter.”

  Phyllis stiffened as she remembered the way Sandra

  Webster had looked at Donnie’s funeral and the odd comment she had made afterward. Neither Sandra nor Carolyn had seemed particularly upset that Donnie was dead.

  Mike had noticed her reaction. He said quickly, “Mom, what is it? Do you know something about Miz Wilbarger’s daughter?”

  “No!” The shout came from the top of the stairs before Phyllis could say anything. “No, she doesn’t know anything.”

  Phyllis and Mike both turned their heads to look up the stairs. Carolyn stood there, gazing down at them with a rather stunned expression, and as they watched, she raised her hands, covered her face, and began to sob in total misery.

  Chapter 17

  For one awful moment there, Phyllis had been convinced Carolyn was about to confess that she had murdered Donnie Boatwright. It was a horrible, unbelievable, unsettling feeling.

  But after Mike had gone up the stairs and gently but firmly brought Carolyn downstairs to the living room, Carolyn sank
down in an armchair, wiped away some of her uncharacteristic tears, and said bluntly, “I didn’t kill him. I didn’t have anything to do with his death, and neither did Sandra. I won’t lie to you and say that we were sorry to see him dead, though. After the things he did, he deserved it. After what he did …”

  “Why don’t you tell us about it, Miz Wilbarger?” Mike suggested quietly.

  Phyllis thought that she should probably leave the room, that whatever Carolyn was about to say was really none of her business. But Carolyn didn’t ask her to go-in fact hardly seemed to know that Phyllis was even in the room so she stayed as Carolyn began to talk in a halting voice.

  “At first we all thought it was a good thing Sandra had gone to work for Donnie Boatwright. Jerry … well, Jerry’s had trouble at times holding a job…. He’s doing fine now, he’s been at Home Depot for a couple of years and is doing really well, but back a few years ago Sandra’s salary came in really handy.”

  “What did she do for Mr. Boatwright?” Mike asked.

  “She was his secretary and bookkeeper. He had an office down on the square, you know, where he kept up with all of his various businesses. That’s where Sandra worked, in the office. It was just the two of them. I guess … I guess that’s why Donnie thought he could … could…”

  “Just take your time,” Mike told her gently. “What did Mr. Boatwright do?”

  “He was always touching her,” Carolyn said. “He’d put a hand on her shoulder or come up behind her and rub her neck, and more than once while she was at the filing cabinets, he’d reach past her to get something and his arm would brush up against her … her breast. She thought it was just an accident at first it was a small office-but it didn’t take her long to realize that there was nothing accidental about it.”

  As she listened, Phyllis thought that what Carolyn was saying didn’t sound at all like the Donnie Boatwright she had known. Sure, he was loud and boisterous, but she had never seen him acting in such a crude, offensive manner.

  Of course, she had never been alone with him, either, she realized, and she hadn’t been close to anyone who worked for him.

  Mike nodded. “What did Sandra do?”

  “Well, she put up with it, of course. She and Jerry needed the money. But after a while it got so bad … He started touching her even more, and he suggested that she come to his house so they could work there…… Carolyn sniffed angrily. “As if Sandra didn’t know exactly what he meant by work…. Anyway, she asked him to stop it, and he acted like he didn’t know what she was talking about. But things got better for a little while, and Sandra started hoping that he’d gotten the message.”

  “But things didn’t stay that way, did they?” Mike guessed.

  Carolyn shook her head. “No. A few weeks later, Donnie said he had to go to Corpus Christi on a business trip. He wanted Sandra to go with him. She told him that she couldn’t do that, and he said that if she wanted to keep her job, she’d go with him and do whatever he wanted. Well, that was the last straw.”

  Phyllis felt anger burning inside her. Even though Carolyn’s story was at odds with Donnie’s public personality, her words rang with utter conviction, and Phyllis knew that she was telling the truth. Donnie should have been ashamed of himself. The old goat! Phyllis couldn’t blame Sandra for being upset or Carolyn for being mad, even after all this time.

  “What did Sandra do?” Mike asked.

  “She told him to back off or she would go to the police and have him charged with sexual harassment.”

  Mike frowned. “That’s usually an internal matter within a company, isn’t it?”

  “Donnie was the company. There was no one else for Sandra to complain to. But sexual harassment is against the law. She could have filed charges against him. At the very least she could have sued him, and that would have brought it all out into the open. Donnie couldn’t allow that to happen. Not the great Donnie Boatwright.”

  “So what did he do?”

  “He framed her!” Carolyn burst out. “He changed the books and made it look like she was stealing from him. He said that if she didn’t drop the whole sexual harassment thing, he would have her arrested for embezzlement!”

  That accusation was just as shocking as the ones Carolyn had already leveled at Donnie, Phyllis thought. Donnie’s behavior had gone beyond being crude to being downright criminal.

  “If it was a frame-up, why didn’t she go to the cops herself?” Mike wanted to know.

  “Oh, come on!” Carolyn said disgustedly. “Who were the police going to believe, my daughter or the great Donnie Boatwright? I can tell by looking at Phyllis here that she doesn’t want to believe Donnie would do such a thing. The police certainly wouldn’t have.”

  Phyllis said, “For what it’s worth, I do believe you, Carolyn. I never knew Donnie was like that, but I know you’re telling the truth.”

  “I certainly am. Sandra told me all about it when it happened. I got so mad I wanted to.”

  “Wanted to what, Miz Wilbarger?” Mike asked quietly. “You know good and well what I was about to say, Mike. I wanted to kill him.”

  “Did you kill him?” Mike’s voice was so hushed that it was almost a whisper. Phyllis didn’t want to believe it was possible Carolyn could have done such a thing, but after what she had heard in the past few minutes she didn’t know what to think anymore.

  “No.” Carolyn’s answer was a whisper. “No, I didn’t kill him”

  The room was silent for a long moment as Carolyn’s denial of guilt hung in the air. Then Mike said, “What happened with the trouble between your daughter and Mr. Boatwright? How was that resolved?”

  “Well, Sandra had no choice,” Carolyn said with a shake of her head. “She had to promise that she would drop the whole matter, and in return Donnie wouldn’t go to the police about the embezzlement. The phony embezzlement, I should say, because Sandra never stole a penny from him. Not one penny.” Tears began to roll down Carolyn’s cheeks again. “But then he … oh, Lord, that vengeful bastard … he had Sandra arrested anyway.”

  Phyllis’s eyes widened in shock. “My God, Carolyn, why didn’t I know about all this? Why didn’t you tell your friends?”

  “You think I wanted my friends to know that my daughter had been arrested for embezzlement?” Carolyn took a deep, shuddery breath. “Some things you do your best to keep in the family, Phyllis.” Her tone softened a little. “Besides, it hadn’t been all that long since you’d lost Kenny. I didn’t want to burden you with my worries.”

  Phyllis reached out and caught hold of Carolyn’s hand, squeezing it. “It wouldn’t have been a burden,” she said. “I would have helped you any way I could.”

  “But there was nothing you could do. There was nothing anybody could do. He was … Donnie Boatwright. He was untouchable.” Carolyn’s breath hissed between her teeth. “But somebody touched him, all right. Somebody touched him real good.”

  Phyllis glanced at Mike, who was watching and listening intently, taking in everything Carolyn said, and the way she said it. Carolyn certainly wasn’t making her earlier denial sound any more believable with statements like that.

  “Was your daughter ever prosecuted?” he asked after a moment.

  Carolyn shook her head. “No. In fact, Donnie dropped the charges less than twenty-four hours later. I don’t think he really wanted Sandra to go to jail. He was just … punishing her for daring to defy him.”

  “She never lodged a sexual harassment complaint against him?”

  “What would have been the point?” Carolyn asked with a shrug. “Donnie having her arrested was like a, what do you call it, a preemptive strike. By putting his charge on the record fast, he made it look like anything she said would just be a lie to get back at him.”

  “She didn’t work for him after that, of course.”

  “No, he fired her, and since she had the arrest on her record, she had a terrible time getting work for a long time after that. Things have gotten a little better now. Sandra w
orks in the medical records office at the hospital. But she’s never forgotten what Donnie Boatwright did to her … and I’ve never forgiven him for it.”

  Stop it, Phyllis thought. You’re just digging yourself a deeper and deeper hole.

  But that was the way Carolyn was. She had always been blunt and opinionated, never hesitating to tell anybody what

  was on her mind. In a way, Phyllis was shocked that Carolyn had managed to keep Sandra’s troubles with Donnie a secret for all this time.

  Carolyn dabbed at her eyes and said again, “I didn’t kill him. I don’t know if you believe me or not, Mike, but it’s the truth.”

  “You’ve been using a lot of peaches in the past few weeks, getting ready for the contest, haven’t you?”