by Teresa Trent
Aunt Maggie threw her hands in the air. “Well then, I don’t find her acceptable. Did you tell Danny this?”
“No. Not yet.”
“I see. I hate to tell you this, but this is the kind of thing Danny doesn’t always understand. I’ll do my best to talk to him, but I’m not making any promises.”
“I don’t want him to get his feelings hurt.”
“How does Tyler feel about it?”
It was going to be difficult to explain why my stepson was not on board with helping her son. “He really wants to date this girl, and I’m afraid his adolescent desire has overtaken any loyalty he might have to family.”
Aunt Maggie tilted her head to the side. “I know I should be angry with him, but on one level, I can understand. Tyler came into this family late and had to adjust to Danny. You grew up around him—to you, he’s family. You could never see anything wrong with him. It’s an adjustment for people from the outside. Danny is just a normal man living a normal life. Okay, he can’t drive or balance a checkbook, and he sleeps with a teddy bear.” Maggie let out a long sigh. “This sure is a strange Christmas.”
I put my arms around her for a long hug. “We’re going to get through this. I promise. We always do, right?”
“Right,” she answered in a whisper.
Danny needed a few more minutes to brush his teeth, so I wandered around Maggie’s porch looking for some sort of evidence to help prove she wasn’t the killer. Her yard was a vision of Winter Wonderland, Texas-style, which meant fake snow. The giant gnome she had just purchased wavered a little in the breeze, the sound of the fan drumming into my ears. I placed myself where Maggie had been standing and pointed out into the street. If the bullet went through Joe, the police should have found it directly across the street.
I stood there with my finger pointed in the air when Mr. Rodriguez came by walking his beagles. I must have looked like I was auditioning for the next version of Charlie’s Angels because he gave an abrupt snort and walked by without a word. The gnome moved again. Why did I get the feeling he was laughing too? Maggie was so proud of it, but I thought he was a little much. He even had a streak of something dirty on his white beard. She would have a fit when she saw that. I was surprised she hadn’t seen it and been out there with her bleach spray scrubbing the jolly guy down. I stepped off the porch, hoping to brush the dirt off the inflatable. Maggie had enough to worry about without going into her hyper-cleaning mode. As I came closer, something crunched under my feet. I looked down, hoping I hadn’t just crushed a Christmas light bulb. Instead, I found something I hadn’t figured on. A shell casing with 9mm printed on the bottom. It was the same type of gun Aunt Maggie had used, but this shell casing was too far into the yard to have been shot from the porch. There had to be someone standing behind the gnome. I looked at the giant inflatable again. Could the black smudge be gunshot residue?
I walked over and touched the side of the gnome, almost toppling him and then stepped out into the street to get a better look at the line of fire. A battered green pickup slowly rolled toward me and stopped. Karen Baldwin rolled down a window and leaned her elbow on the truck door. “What are you doing?”
I felt embarrassed by my do-it-yourself forensics. “Oh, nothing. Just … looking at the Christmas lights. I’m writing an article for the paper, you know.” I tried to make my tone light, but Karen wasn’t falling for it.
“Trying to see where Joe was shot?” she asked. So much for my clever subterfuge.
“Yes,” I admitted.
“I have to say, I would never have figured Maggie to be angry enough to shoot somebody.”
Once again, my aunt was being blamed for a crime she hadn’t committed. Nothing like guilty until proven innocent, which seemed to be the standard judgment in our town. I edged closer to the truck and lowered my voice.
“You and Joe had a fight in town the other day.”
Karen pursed her lips and put her truck in park. Lucky for us, this street wasn’t too busy today. “It was nothing really. I was just stressed out about my daughter.”
Karen Baldwin’s daughter had left town over a year ago. She was a young beautiful woman in her early twenties. But she had always been a little too thin, and when she lived here she was an active part of our town’s wild side. My father had arrested her at least once for driving under the influence. Even with that kind of track record, it was clear that Karen was a mother who was concerned for her daughter, no matter what her history was.
“How is she doing?” I asked.
Karen’s answer was quick. Too quick. “Fine.” She put the truck in gear. “I’ll let you get back to your investigation, Nancy Drew.”
As she drove away, I noticed fresh lumber in the bed of the truck. Karen Baldwin was one of our town’s most talented craftswomen. Could her skill set include murder?
Danny was finally ready. Instead of the usual chatter I heard from him, he was quiet. Today his eyes looked haunted. He ran his thumb along the stitched edge of his Spiderman lunch bag. “Mama is very sad. Is she going to feel better soon?”
I chewed on my lip and answered, “I think she will. I think what happened last night really bothered her.”
“What happened last night?”
Even though Danny had been standing in the front door, he still hadn’t comprehended that his mother had shot out into the dark and hit a man.
“You know how you get scared in the dark?”
“Sure. I get real scared.”
“I guess that’s how your mother’s feeling right now.”
Danny brightened up as an idea struck him. “I’ll give her my bear. Mr. Paddington has helped me lots when I was scared.”
Giving up Mr. Paddington was a big deal for Danny. A couple times when he had spent the night at our house, we’d had to go back and get him. “Are you sure you can live without him?”
“Well …” it was obvious he was thinking it over. “Yes. Mama needs him. The dark is scary. But why did she shoot that gun? It was very loud.” He placed his rounded hands over his ears as if hearing the noise all over again.
“I guess it was because she was scared.”
Danny pulled his hands down and hugged his lunch to his body. “You’re not supposed to touch the gun.”
One thing my father had always taught was that if you were going to have a gun in the house you made sure it was safe and secure and children were nowhere near it. I was glad to hear Danny repeat the gun-safety rule to me.
“You’re right. And do you see how sad it made your mama?”
“Yes. I’m sad too.” His voice broke.
I reached across the front seat and ruffled his hair. “Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay.”
“But what if Mama is still sad and she can’t take me and Wanda to the Christmas festival? She promised.”
“Then I’ll take you. We’ll be there anyway. Don’t worry about that right now.”
He acted surprised, as if he hadn’t considered the fact that the rest of his family would also be there. “Yes, you will be there. And Tyler will be there with his girl. We are going on a date together. A two-couple date.”
I gave Danny a little smile, hoping it looked sincere, even though I doubted his two-couple date would happen. From the sounds of Tiffany, Danny and Wanda were not the social set she would want to be seen with. No matter what, I couldn’t let anything else bad happen to Danny.
Chapter 9
After dropping off Danny, I thought about my do-it-yourself forensics and decided to put a call in to my father about the gnome.
“Can’t talk to you right now, Betsy. Our police department is crawling with U.S. Postal Inspectors. Seems it was illegal for Joe to have those crates in his garage. There are thousands of pieces of mail on his property, and it’s their job to go through each one eventually and try to get it to the proper recipient.”
If my memory served me right, there had to be at least a dozen of those white plastic mail cartons, U.S. Mail stenciled on t
he side of each one. He must’ve been hiding them behind that room divider. That was why no one else ever knew about the crates. Joe had always parked his car on the street and kept visitors out of his garage.
“Wow. So what Joe was doing was illegal? I just can’t believe it. Not Joe. Besides, everybody in town has fond memories of the man. Do you remember how nice he always was to Danny?”
“I do, but somebody sure didn’t like him, and that someone was angry enough to shoot him. I just hope that somebody wasn’t my sister.”
His reflection on Joe’s death helped me to remember why I had taken a moment to call him. “I don’t think it was Maggie who shot Joe.”
“Uh-huh,” he grumbled. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he wasn’t receptive to my butt-in style of detective work. I had personally helped him solve many cases in town. He placed his hand over the speaker of the phone and was having a conversation with someone else in the room. I waited a moment for him to respond, but even from the muffled tones, I could feel the stress he was under at the police department.
Finally, he returned to the phone. “I’m sorry, darlin’, but it’s busier here than a free Stetson sale before the rodeo. What were you saying?”
“Well, it has to do with a black smudge on that inflatable gnome …”
“Uh-huh … I need you to do me a favor and let me fly solo on this one. Now that we’re dealing with the Feds, this murder investigation has to happen alongside a United States mail fraud case. I’m not so sure they would welcome the whodunit insights of the helpful hints columnist.”
Was he serious? I was beginning to feel like Rocky when my father blocked him from a story. Even though I had important information about a second shooter, I had been told to go home and write my column.
“Betsy? Do you understand what I’m saying?” There were more voices in the background, one of which I was pretty belonged to Boyle. I feared his no-nonsense style of police work was starting to rub off on my father. This investigation had bloomed into a multi-agency task force, but I still didn’t like being pigeonholed.
“Yes. I understand very clearly.”
I clicked off the phone. After being told to butt out of the case, I decided to drive over to Joe Nelson’s house. It was only a few blocks away and practically on my way home, where I would dutifully start polishing up my column on the wonders of Christmas light displays. I drove past the neatly kept yards that bordered Cape Cod homes and ranch-style houses. In front of Joe’s house was a dark sedan and a large white panel truck where various members of the postal department were loading up the white cartons of mail. It would have seemed suspicious if I stopped to watch, so I drove by slowly, looking like I was lost. These people weren’t from around here, and they wouldn’t know that I’d lived here all my life. A man who was standing next to the sedan talking on a cell phone turned and made eye contact with me. His penetrating gaze made me feel guilty, as if I were a collaborator in Joe’s mail hoarding. There is nothing worse than the guilt of an innocent person.
He motioned me over with one hand. “May I help you?” The man rested his phone against his dark suit. He seemed very dressed up for such a large operation, wearing a white shirt and blue striped tie. On his pinky was a gold signet ring. If I had to guess, this was a supervisor.
“I was just curious why the post office would allow Mr. Nelson to store mail in his garage?” It was a stupid question, but maybe it would lead to some information about our retired postman’s murder.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I cannot speak about the case against Joe Nelson. Please move on, and do not block traffic.” The well-suited man returned to his call, and even though he resumed his conversation, his eyes stayed on me to make sure I was leaving.
Why would Joe feel the need to hoard mail? He wasn’t the kind of man who would take other people’s Social Security checks. If anything, he would help people out and give them money of his own. I hadn’t heard anything about people missing payments of any kind. Why else would a person keep mail in their garage to sort through at their leisure? Joe had been a gentle, kind man. Every time Danny got a greeting card, Joe would personally hand it to him with a little speech.
“More fan mail for you, Danny,” he would say. “You’re a popular guy. What’s this? It’s your birthday?” Then he would sing “Happy Birthday” to him in a sweet, wobbly tenor voice.
No, Joe Nelson was not a mail thief.
Chapter 10
The next day Pecan Bayou was back in the swing of things even though their most beloved mailman had been murdered. The Christmas festival was something people looked forward to all year long. Even so, Zach and Tyler were much more focused on the sale at Crazy Eddie scheduled to take place on Christmas Eve. They plotted and planned the acquisition of their new gaming console and the resulting games that would have to be purchased. It never failed. First, they got you for the overpriced gaming system and then, of course, the slew of expensive games to go with it.
“Maybe we can get Warfighter?” Zach put a heaping teaspoon of crunchy rice cereal into his mouth.
“Dude, Warfighter is old. I’m saving up for Lancelot 4. The graphics are great. Have you seen it? It’s just like you’re in the middle of medieval England.”
Neither of the games sounded entertaining to me. If I had to choose a game, it would probably be a puzzle or an electronic version of a game I already knew, like Scrabble. I quickly reminded the boys, “Have you forgotten that we will be at the interdenominational service on Christmas Eve? Coco will be very upset if you miss her being an angel.”
Tyler’s chin dropped to his chest, and Zach took another bite, eyes cast downward. They hadn’t forgotten.
“No. We thought we could make our visit to Crazy Eddie fit around it,” Zach said, plastering on a slightly insincere smile in an attempt to win me over.
Tyler took up the persuasion campaign. “Crazy Eddie put ads in all of the neighboring newspapers, but we promise we’ll just be a little late for church. That’s okay, isn’t it, Betsy? I mean, it isn’t like we don’t already know the service.”
I couldn’t deny that those kinds of prices would cause people to drive from miles around from some of the larger cities in order to purchase unimaginable bargains. Would there be people camping out on Main Street in order to get these things, like a Black Friday sale? The more people there were, the fewer items would be available. Getting this game console might be harder than my boys thought.
I had a dozen copies of my book, The Happy Hinter: A Collection of Hints from the Pecan Bayou Gazette in a box on the counter. I had reluctantly agreed to put out this collection after Rocky suggested that we put together my columns in book form and give the readers an opportunity to subscribe to the Gazette in each chapter. Who knew? Maybe I would sell a book at the Christmas festival.
At this moment, anxious merchants were putting up their booths around the town square. Homemade wooden stalls that had been stored in garages during the year had been drug out and painted in bright holiday colors. They would brighten up our little town. Rocky’s booth was one of the best because he hired Karen Baldwin to create it for him. Then he cleverly asked the art class at the high school to paint it. Of course, he made a small contribution to the art department, and I mean small, but one thing Rocky was good at was using his local resources. The festival would last for five days, ending at noon on Christmas Eve. Most of the time the local merchants who were not immune to their own personal Christmas rush used that morning to deconstruct their booth, but some of them stayed around to the stroke of twelve. The weather in Pecan Bayou had been clear and sunny with no snow expected except the one kind you could spray on a window, which was not an unusual forecast for this part of Texas. If we didn’t get rain, an outdoor festival was perfect.
As I dropped Coco off at daycare, I noticed that our blue skies were starting to cloud over. Rocky had requested I sit in the booth today for a couple of hours while he would try to be two places at once as he worked on getting out th
e paper with his son, Nick. We were all overwhelmed with pre-Christmas craziness, but I agreed to sit in the booth. Not very many people were walking by, as it was a weekday and it looked like rain. The Pecan Bayou Gazette booth was set up next to Karen Baldwin’s, where she had several brightly painted wooden toys making me think of days gone by. Wooden puzzles, pull-along puppy dogs, yo-yos, and even marionettes. Her work was beautiful, and I made sure to tell her when I stopped by to deliver my books to the paper’s booth.
Unbelievably, even Crazy Eddie had a cafeteria-style table surrounded on three sides by a six-foot yellow curtain. The store was selling tickets for places in line on Christmas Eve. He had numbered pieces of paper inside of a bingo rolling ball. For $20, customers could roll the ball and get a place in line. Twenty dollars for only a chance at a sale item. What a racket. One of Tyler’s friend’s parents had just plunked down a twenty at Crazy Eddie’s table, so I quickly excused myself, determined to get my own boys a place in line. Rocky was busy trying to hang a medium-size flat screen TV for a PowerPoint presentation showcasing photos taken in Pecan Bayou over the last fifty years. I plunked my books on the counter and headed for Crazy Eddie’s booth. Yes, I was weak, but an early number would mean that our Christmas Eve would not be ruined by this blatant commercialism.
“I’ll be right back.”
Rocky looked over, screwdriver in hand. “You just got here.”
“I need to get a ticket for Crazy Eddie’s sale.” I glanced down at the counter and noticed three-day-old papers. “What’s the deal? Why don’t you have the latest edition?”
“Yeah, well, if I’m giving away a paper, it might at least be one I was going to have to throw away.”
I shrugged and went to Eddie’s booth.
Eddie didn’t really look like a crazy person. He was a young man in his mid-twenties with his blue-streaked hair slicked back and a ready smile. His only customer had left, and now he was attempting to hang a string of red shiny garland on the front of his table. On a metal chair was a neatly folded white tablecloth.
