Sharpe Shooter (Cozy Suburbs Mystery Series Book 1)

by Lisa B. Thomas

  The line of hungry Methodists had formed quickly, and she spotted the usual fare of spaghetti, salad, and French bread. She headed to a round table covered with a white tablecloth at the end of the buffet line where several women were filling plastic cups with ice and sweet tea. She thanked them as she picked up a cup, put a dollar in the donation jar, and cased the room for a place to sit. She was looking for the 70ish crowd, people who might have known Matthew when he lived here. She spotted a group that seemed to fit the bill. They were sitting at a rectangular table covered with white butcher paper that served as a disposable tablecloth. She walked over and sat down. A few people looked up and smiled.

  “Hi. I’m Deena Sharpe.” No one seemed to hear. “My great aunt and uncle are Cora and Frank Meade.”

  “Oh, is that so,” a woman with her hair in a snowy white bun said. “How is Cora? Is she still living with her sister?”

  “Yes. She’s well, but she’s just having an awful time coping with the news of her son Matthew’s murder.”

  The gentleman sitting next to Deena, cutting his spaghetti with a knife and fork, belted out a few words with gruff authority. “Terrible. Tragic.”

  “So you must be here to visit the cemetery. It really is the best place to find comfort,” another woman said.

  “Well, no. Actually, I am writing a story about Matthew’s death and was hoping to find some people who knew him.”

  “She’s doing what?” a woman farther down the table asked.

  “She’s writing a story,” the gruff man yelled back.

  “Oh,” she replied, and everyone turned their attention to a woman showing pictures of her new great-grandbaby. She couldn’t compete with that,

  That didn’t go very well, Deena thought. She excused herself, although no one heard, and made her way to a different table. This one was round and filled with women except for one lone man.

  “Mind if I sit here?” she asked.

  “Not at all, dear,” a kind looking woman with a pretty blue hat said. “I don’t believe I have seen you here before. Are you new to town?”

  “No, I’m just visiting from Maycroft.” Deena spoke her words carefully. “Cora and Frank Meade are my great-aunt and uncle. I am on my way to the cemetery to visit Frank’s and Matthew’s graves. It really is the best place to find comfort,” she said and sniffled, trying to bring a few tears to her eyes. “Poor, poor Uncle Matthew.”

  “Oh goodness, dear, everything will be fine. Ladies,” she announced, “this is Frank and Cora’s great-niece, and she stopped by on her way to the cemetery. She’s just sick about the death of her poor Uncle Matthew.”

  Like the hallelujah chorus, the sweet women all began shaking their heads and speaking at once.

  “Can I get you some more tea?”

  “Why, you need to eat, my dear. Dorothy, fix her a plate of food.”

  “They are putting out brownies for dessert. Let me just get you a couple. Chocolate makes everything better.”

  And just like that, she was in.

  “I’m Harriet. How is Cora? Such a shame she wasn’t able to make it to the funeral service. Have you found out any more about Matthew’s death? He was a fine young man.”

  “Did you know him?” Deena asked politely and then took a bite of her salad.

  “Why yes. I think we all did.” The other women shook their heads. “Roger, did you know Matthew Meade?” She practically shouted the question to the man across the table who was apparently hard of hearing.

  “He was older than me, but I knew him,” Roger replied.

  “I have a picture of him. Would you all like to see it?” Deena asked. They most definitely did. She retrieved the photograph of Matthew and the blonde woman and handed it to Harriet. She admired the photo and turned it over to see if anything was written on the back. “Who is this pretty girl with him? I don’t remember her.” She passed the picture which slowly made its way around the table.

  “I have no idea,” Deena said. “Do any of you recognize her?”

  Several of the women speculated, but all of their guesses were ruled out. “That picture was taken after he got back from the army. Maybe that is someone he met when he moved up to Dallas.”

  Technically, Matthew lived in Maycroft, but many folks in Bingham, which lay just south in Darron County, referred to any place “up north” as Dallas. The picture made its way back to Deena. Laying it reverently on the table in front of her, she addressed the group. “There are two other people I have been wondering about.” Her audience seemed anxious to help her out. “Does anyone remember a woman named Donna Morrison?”

  They talked it over and unanimously agreed the name was unfamiliar. “There were some Morrisons living over in Hamilton, but they had all boys,” Roger offered up.

  Deena put her hands in her lap and crossed her fingers under the table. “How about a man named Gene Collins?”

  “Sure, we know Gene,” Harriet said and got confirming nods from the group. “The Collins family have had people here for a long time.”

  “Didn’t Gene go up to Dallas with Matthew and work for a time?” Dorothy asked.

  “That’s right,” Roger said. “He moved back not long after Matthew went missing.”

  Thrilled by the news, Deena cautiously asked if he were “still around.”

  “He’s actually in Restwood,” Harriet said.

  Uh-oh, she thought. That sounded like the name of a cemetery.

  Seeing the concern on her face, Harriet quickly said, “Restwood Nursing Home is over off Pecan St. and Elm.”

  Deena breathed a sigh of relief. “I may go visit him, if y’all think that would be okay. He was one of the last people to see Matthew alive, and I…”

  “We understand, dear,” Harriet said, patting Deena on the arm. “I think that would be fine.”

  Deena thanked them for their kind hospitality and promised to come back again to visit. Walking out to her car, she felt a little guilty for manipulating her new friends but decided real reporters do what they have to in order to get a story. As she headed out of the parking lot toward Pecan Street, she failed to notice the black Ford sedan slowly following her.

  She found a spot to park near the front door. Taking a deep breath, she looked out the window of the car at the aging building in front of her. It appeared to have once been a well-maintained, tan brick building intended to reflect a homey and welcoming atmosphere. Much like the residents within, the years had taken their toll and the building was showing its age.

  Opening the glass door, the smell of ammonia mixed with pine trees, the kind of odor that gets in your sinuses and stays there for days, smacked her in the face. She walked up to the reception desk and signed her name on the spiral notebook for visitors. Next to her name, she wrote ‘Gene Collins’ as the resident she was there to visit. She waited for the receptionist who was chatting with a nurse. She finally turned to Deena and asked, “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Gene Collins.”

  “Patti, is Mr. Collins still eating or is he done?”

  “I’ll go check.”

  Deena waited, wondering if the receptionist would ask about her relationship to the resident or her purpose for the visit.

  Patti returned. “He’s asleep. Probably won’t be up for at least an hour. Do you want me to wake him?”

  “No,” Deena said. “I’ll come back later.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Disappointed, Deena walked out and got back in her car. She thought about going to the antique store around the corner, but she decided to drive over to the cemetery, keeping her promise to Harriet & Co. It’s bad karma to lie to old women, she thought.

  *

  “You must be a lawyer,” Patti said to Deena an hour later as she led her down the hall to Mr. Collins’ room.

  “No, why would you think that?”

  “Any time someone here gets two visitors in the same day, at least one of them is a lawyer.”

  They stopped in front
of room 319, and Patti knocked on the door before opening it. “Here’s another visitor.”

  Deena walked in and Patti walked off. “Hello, Mr. Collins. My name is Deena Sharpe.”

  “What do you want?” he asked suspiciously. “Are you a reporter, too?”

  “Me? No. I’m Matthew Meade’s niece.” She stood in the doorway hoping for an invitation to enter. The man inside looked older than she expected.

  “I see. Excuse me then.” He pushed himself about halfway up out of his chair, fell back down, and said, “Come on in and sit down.”

  The room was about the size of the old motel rooms where Deena’s family used to stay when they took trips in their big station wagon. The space was furnished with a hospital-type bed and a round table with three chairs. A small bureau and nightstand were pushed next to the wall by the bed. A television sat on a rolling cart.

  “Let me just turn off the TV,” Mr. Collins said, picking up the remote with a shaky hand. “What can I do for you today Miss—?”

  “Please, call me Deena.”

  “Deena. I suppose you want to ask me a lot of questions about Matthew just like the other fellow.”

  “I didn’t realize you were going to have another visitor today or I would have come another time.”

  “Don’t put off what you can do today because tomorrow you might be dead.”

  “That’s true, I guess,” Deena said awkwardly. “Was the other man named Leon Galt by any chance?”

  “Leon. That’s right. Said he was an investigator. I asked him who he was working for, and he said it was an independent investigation. I answered a few questions and he left.”

  “Well, I’m here because Aunt Cora, Matthew’s mother, asked me to see what I could find out about Matthew’s death.”

  “And since I was with him that night, you thought I might know something. How did you find me, Miss Deena?”

  “I talked to Roger and Harriet and Dorothy at church. They told me you were here.”

  Mr. Collins reached over, picked up a small plastic pitcher, and poured water into a paper cup. “Want some?” Deena declined. “You know, I must have thought about that night a thousand times, and I still can’t figure out what happened. Matthew and I knew each other since we were kids. We enlisted together. When he got out and found a job, he found me one, too. We were like brothers.”

  “Where were you working?” Deena started to reach for a notepad but thought better of it, not wanting to come on too strong.

  “We worked at the Barnes Medical Supply Company in Maycroft. Matthew was a manager, and I worked in the warehouse. He was a smart one, he was.” He stopped to take another drink of water. Deena noticed his hands, fingers bent, skin dark and dry.

  “Can you tell me what happened that day—the day Matthew disappeared?”

  “I gave my friend Donna a ride to work that day. She said her front fender was busted up and she needed a ride. After work, I told her that Matthew and I were going to the diner, just like we did every Wednesday, and did she want to go along. She said sure because she needed a ride back home anyway. She said she would call her brother and ask him to pick her up from there. She rode with me, and we met up with Matthew at the Park Street Café.”

  An attendant appeared in the doorway and reminded Mr. Collins that he needed to take his afternoon pills. She picked them up from the nightstand and gave them to him. He swallowed them down with a few gulps of water and she left.

  “Where was I? Oh yes, so we ate supper and had us a good talk. Didi gave us our tickets and Donna was watching for her brother. It had started raining hard. A real gully-washer. You could barely see out the big front window of the diner. I got up to go to the men’s room and when I got back, Donna was gone. Matthew was standing up at the register with Donna’s coat and check. He said she had run out so fast she had forgotten to pay. I said I would cover it, but he said no. He waited for me to pay, then we ran out to our cars and drove off.” He looked down at his hands. “I never saw him again.”

  Deena reached in her purse and pulled out the photo. “Is this Donna Morrison?”

  He looked at the picture and whispered, “Kitty.” He appeared to lose himself in time for just a moment. “No. That’s Kitty, uh, Katherine. I can’t think of her last name. She and Matthew were sweet on each other for a while, but he ended it.” He handed the photo back to Deena.

  “Do you know why?”

  “Once he told me that he didn’t feel comfortable getting too close to people. He was a loner and seemed determined to stay that way.”

  Deena looked down at the smiling couple in the picture. She slipped the photo back into her purse. “When did they discover he was missing?”

  “The next day, he didn’t show up for work. That was unusual, but we figured he was sick or something. When he didn’t come in on Friday, they called his apartment and he didn’t answer. They called me out of the warehouse to ask me if I knew where he was. I said no. That’s when they sent the police over to check. Nothing. They called his parents, but they had no clue where he was. A few hours later, the police found his abandoned car over on County Road. You probably know what happened from there.”

  Deena did. She thought about the questions written on her notepad. “Did Matthew wear eyeglasses at that time? They said they found his glasses in the car.”

  “Yeah, he wore glasses. Big horn rimmed ones. Did you know he was a sharpshooter in the army?”

  “I did not,” Deena fudged. “What exactly did he do in the army?”

  “He did a lot of…um, special assignments. Top secret stuff. Wet work.”

  “Wet work?”

  “Sniper work. He never talked about it, of course. He swore an oath of secrecy. He must have been good, though, because he made TEC III real fast. That kind of stuff can mess a guy up.”

  “Do you think it messed him up?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” He looked across the room at the television, and Deena sensed he was getting tired of talking.

  “Did you keep in touch with Donna Morrison?”

  “No. She left town about a week after that. I heard she moved up to Oklahoma to be near her folks. It seemed like odd timing since Matthew had just gone missing.”

  She stared for a moment at a crack running along the side wall revealing layers of green paint under the latest beige color. She pictured a small interrogation room with a single-bulb light dangling over the table, she on one side, the suspect on the other. Time to get serious. She leaned forward and asked, “Mr. Collins, is there anything else you can tell me about Matthew’s disappearance? Something you may have left out when you talked to the police?”

  Collins, unintimidated by her show of strength, leaned back in his chair. “It’s funny, you know, how people say he disappeared, like he was a ghost or a lady in a magic act. He didn’t disappear. He was ambushed, probably kicking and fighting, and then they shot him.” His eyes moistened and his voice cracked. “He didn’t deserve that. No one deserves that.”

  The room seemed to grow darker. It was getting late. “Who do you think killed Matthew?” Deena asked.

  “I hate to say this, but I think Matthew was mixed up in something. Something bad. And they killed him because of it. And it’s not just me who thinks that, so does that reporter. And he says he can prove it.”

  Chapter Seven

  “All human beings are commingled out of good and evil.” Deena mulled over this quote from Robert Louis Stevenson as she drove back home. As much as she hated to admit it, she knew it was true. Certainly, it applied to her. She thought about all the years she had paraded around as “Saint Deena,” waving down to the masses like royalty from the high balcony of some ancient stone castle.

  How could Gene Collins think Matthew was involved in some wrongdoing? She was determined to do right by Matthew no matter what he had done.

  By the time she pulled into the garage, it was dark. She felt like all her thoughts were riding a mental rollercoaster. She was relieved to find G
ary pouring wine and preparing hamburgers on the backyard grill. The smoky smell of mesquite chips, comforting and familiar, drifted through the house.

  “You always seem to know just what I need,” she said and gave him a lingering hug.

  “Do want to eat in here or outside?”

  “Outside. I could use some fresh air.” They carried their plates and drinks out to the table beneath the covered patio. Gary lit the citronella candle in the middle of the glass-top table. Taking a few sips of wine, Deena sat back, enjoying the cool breeze coming from the overhead fan. She watched her husband take a bite of his burger, knowing he was letting her relax before asking a lot of questions. She wondered how there could be any evil comingling in this wonderful man. Maybe Stevenson was wrong.

  “I talked to Gene Collins,” she said at last and took a bite of creamy potato salad. “He is in a nursing home in Maycroft.”

  Gary looked surprised. “I’m impressed. How did you find him?”

  Deena told him about the church ladies and the cemetery and the nursing home. She also told him about Leon Galt’s poorly timed visit.

  “It seems a little coincidental that he would have gotten there right after you first tried to visit. Do you think he was following you?”

  The thought had not occurred to Deena, but it seemed possible, causing her to shiver. “How would he even know who I am, much less know where I was?”

  “You’re probably right. What do you plan to do next?”

  “I’d say it is time to give Mr. Galt a call and find out what he’s up to.”

  “I don’t want you meeting with him alone.” Gary’s quick response alarmed her for a moment, but she knew he was just being protective.

  “I won’t. I promise.” They ate in silence, savoring their food and sorting their thoughts. Her head felt better as the food recharged her body. “There’s something else that’s been bothering me.”

  She told him about the encounter with Janice Marshall at the salon, including her stinging remark.