Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 01 - Down Home Murder

by Toni L. P. Kelner

  “You don’t think it’s worth investigating,” I said.

  She shook her head slowly. “Laurie Anne, you haven’t given me anything to investigate. If I started to ask too many questions when I don’t have anything more than this to go on, I could lose my job.”

  “Burt Walters called you, didn’t he?”

  She nodded. “Burt Walters is still on the town council and he’s got a lot of pull with the mayor.”

  “So you’re willing to let a murderer go free? Is that the kind of police chief you are?”

  Junior took a deep breath, and I knew that she was probably as angry as I was, but she kept her voice calm. “Laurie Anne, if you had anything I could use, I’d use it come hell or high water. I thought a lot of Ellis Burnette, and there’s no way I’d let anyone get away with hurting him. Don’t you ever say anything different! But you know damn well that it’s not been easy for me to keep this job. I’m not going to risk it for no good reason.”

  Neither of us said anything for a while, but then I said, “I’m sorry, Junior. You’re right. I don’t know anything for sure, and I don’t want you to lose your job.” I gave her a small smile. “I’d hate for all that tutoring to go to waste.”

  She smiled back. “Now Walters also told me to run you out of town, but I explained that there was no legal way for me to do that.”

  “Isn’t his calling you kind of suspicious?” Richard said. “Maybe he’s hiding something. Why else would he be so nervous?”

  “Walters was born nervous,” Junior said. “Of course if Big Bill was my father, I might be nervous, too. In this case, I suspect he’s worried about the newspaper getting wind of this. Business at the mill hasn’t been too good lately, and he’s running scared. If people started to think he was negligent, he’d lose customers and workers both.”

  A thought occurred to me. “I don’t suppose you know where Burt Walters was the night Melanie Wilson was killed, do you?”

  “He was at his daddy’s birthday party. I know that for a fact, because I was there, too.”

  So much for that idea.

  “Might I assume that you’re not giving up this investigation?” Junior asked.

  I looked at Richard, and when he nodded, I said, “That would be a safe assumption.”

  “I suppose I couldn’t talk you out of it if I tried.”

  “Probably not,” I agreed.

  “Then I won’t bother. Try not to get into too much trouble.”

  “We’ll try. Can I ask you a favor? I know this stuff about Melanie may not mean anything, but could we look at your file about her? I’ve read what’s in the paper, but maybe you’ve got something else that would help.”

  Junior stood, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, Laurie Anne. I couldn’t do that. It’s against regulations.” She walked to a file cabinet, pulled out a file folder, and gestured with it as she continued. “This file is restricted, and I can’t let just anyone look at it.” She laid it on top of her desk.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go into the back room for about fifteen minutes. You two let yourselves out. It’s been good seeing you again, Laurie Anne, and it’s been a pleasure meeting you, Richard. If you do find out anything definite, you let me know right away.”

  She started toward the door to the back, and then stopped. “Laurie Anne, did you notice our new photocopier there in the corner?” She pointed. “It makes real good copies and the instructions are printed on the top. Bye now.”

  Chapter 27

  Richard reached for the file as soon as Junior was out of sight, but I put my hand over his.

  “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” I asked.

  “Don’t you?”

  “Maybe Junior’s right. Our pieces don’t seem to fit.”

  He shrugged. “So we don’t have all the pieces yet. We’ll just keep on looking. If you still want to, that is.”

  I hesitated for a minute more, and then remembered how hard Paw had worked to tell me someone had hit him. He had known what he was saying—I was sure of it. I picked up the folder.

  Despite the moment of soul-searching, it only took us ten of the allotted minutes to make photocopies of everything in the folder and put it back on Junior’s desk. Then I drove back to the house, letting Richard read the file on the way.

  “Well?” I asked, once we were sitting at the kitchen table with bottles of Coke beside us.

  “These guys don’t write very well.”

  “I don’t think taking creative license is encouraged when writing police reports. What do they say?”

  “They put most of what they know in the newspaper. A county policeman found Melanie Wilson’s car by the side of the road Friday night. The car was out of gas, explaining why she had stopped there. The registration was in the car, so the policeman called up Melanie’s parents to see if she had called or found her way home. When he found out that she wasn’t there, the police started searching for her. No trace of her was found that night. The search continued into the next afternoon, when the anonymous call came telling them to look in Marley.

  “Though the police questioned a number of people in Marley, no one could tell them anything. They made a brief drive-by search, but finally decided the phone call had been a hoax and kept searching the area around Melanie’s car for some clue.”

  “Thaddeous thought they were just protecting the blacks,” I put in.

  Richard shrugged. “Cynical of him. Anyway, the search continued until a woman in Marley went to take her trash out to the dumpster on Tuesday morning and noticed the smell and lots of flies. She had enough presence of mind not to look inside the dumpster, and called the police instead. Though Melanie was last seen wearing a green shirt and blue jean shorts, plus the usual complement of underthings, the body was nude.”

  I shivered despite myself. Though rationally it shouldn’t have mattered, being left naked made Melanie’s death seem much more brutal.

  Richard went on. “They sifted through the trash in the dumpster and through everything else in the alley, but didn’t find her clothes, her pocketbook, or anything else significant. They also searched all the nearby apartments and questioned a fair number of people, but no one saw or knew anything.”

  “Was she killed there?”

  “They don’t think so. In fact, that’s been the sticking point in the investigation. They don’t know where she was killed. It wasn’t near the dumpster and it wasn’t by her car. The theory is that when her car ran out of gas, someone stopped to give her a ride. She probably got into the other car under her own steam because there were no signs of violence.”

  “That means the Klan has it all wrong,” I said thoughtfully.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Thanks to that phone call, everyone thinks that black men killed Melanie. But no white girl raised around here would willingly have gotten into a car with a bunch of black men.”

  “Methinks I detect prejudice.”

  I shrugged. “I know it sounds awful, but it’s true.”

  “What if she knew one of them?”

  “White girls aren’t encouraged to make friends with black men.”

  “That’s scary.”

  “What’s really scary is that I don’t think I would have gotten into a car driven by a black man, either. Of course after living in Boston, I wouldn’t get into a car driven by any man.”

  Richard looked injured. “What about a perfectly respectable WASP?”

  “Those are the worst. Now, if it was white men who killed her, they must have dumped her in Marley to make it look like blacks did it. To divert suspicion.”

  “This notion has occurred to the police as well, but they don’t know where else to look.”

  “What about the autopsy?”

  “The cause of death was a blow to the head, probably with a stick or a club or some other piece of wood. They can’t get too close on the time of death because of the time lapse before the body was found, but it was sometime Friday
night. She was somewhat bruised, probably as a result of the rape. By the way, despite popular opinion, she was only raped by one man.”

  “How can they tell?”

  He grimaced. “They only found one man’s semen.”

  “Oh.” I wished I hadn’t asked. “So much for the gang bang everyone has been whispering about. Where did that idea come from, anyway?”

  “It was that anonymous phone call, the one that told them to look in Marley.”

  “That’s right. You know, the more I think about it, the more I think that that call was made by the killer himself.”

  “Again, the police agree with you. They would very much like to talk to this tipster, but they can’t find him.”

  “Who received the call? Was it Junior or the county police?”

  Richard thumbed through the photocopies. “The county police. Why?”

  “Just a thought. If the caller was a local, he might have done it that way to make sure that Junior didn’t recognize his voice.”

  “Maybe,” Richard said. “Or if it wasn’t a local, maybe it was easier to find the phone number for the county police.”

  “True. It’s a shame that the car was out of gas. Almost any other kind of car trouble would have been better.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if Melanie knew she was out of gas, the man probably never touched the car. Meaning no fingerprints. If it had been anything else, wouldn’t he have looked under the hood? Most men would, even if they don’t know a carburetor from a hole in the wall.”

  Richard gathered his dignity around him. “I think I would be able to admit my ignorance in this matter.”

  “You are a scholar and a gentleman—a rare and precious commodity.”

  “True. Anyway, the police checked the car for prints. Nothing. Besides, if he had left prints, he could have wiped them.”

  “With her standing there? Don’t you think she would have been a little suspicious?”

  “He could have come back later.”

  “That would have been a big risk. What if someone had seen him? For that matter, didn’t anyone else see him when he picked up Melanie?”

  “No such luck. They’ve found a few people who saw Melanie’s car by the side of the road so they can approximate the time she was picked up, but they have no witnesses who actually saw her with anyone.”

  “Except for maybe Paw.” I thought about it. “This sounds unpremeditated to me. This guy just happened to come along when she just happened to run out of gas and it just so happened that no one saw him. How could anyone have planned it that way?”

  “I suppose someone could have siphoned gas out of her car in hopes that she’d stall somewhere isolated,” Richard said, but I could tell that he didn’t take it seriously.

  “I suppose the police looked into her background to make sure there wasn’t someone with a motive lurking around,” I said.

  “Of course. She had a devoted boyfriend who has an ironclad alibi, no enemies that anyone can think of, and has never been in anything remotely resembling trouble.”

  “So it wasn’t premeditated.”

  “The police concur.”

  I put my hands behind my head, and leaned back. Though I suppose I wouldn’t have felt very safe if I had come up with something that trained police investigators had missed, it would have been gratifying if I had.

  “So where does all this lead us?” Richard asked.

  “Nowhere, really. We still have all the questions Junior asked. Why Paw didn’t call the police right away? How did the killer find out Paw knew? Why did the killer wait until Sunday to come after Paw?”

  “Try this on for size,” Richard said. “Since Paw wasn’t killed sooner, the killer must not have known that Paw knew anything until Sunday, which is when Paw himself realized what he knew.”

  I nodded. If I had all that straight, it seemed reasonable.

  “So either Paw told the killer, or Paw told someone who told the killer.”

  I nodded again.

  “Let’s keep it simple, and assume Paw told the killer.”

  “That means Paw not only knew who the murderer was, he knew him personally.”

  “Right,” Richard said triumphantly. “Since he knew the murderer, he wanted to give the man a chance to confess and turn himself in to the police. To do the honorable thing. The problem is, the murderer didn’t do the honorable thing. Instead, he went to the mill to wait for Paw.”

  “How did he know Paw was going to the mill?”

  “Good question. Could he have followed him?”

  “I suppose so, at least long enough to figure out where Paw was going. Then he could sneak around the back to get there ahead of him. Paw wasn’t a fast driver, and he would have signed in with the guard. And he usually spent a few minutes talking with the guard. So, yes, I think someone could have gotten there ahead of him.”

  “Then that’s our answer.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Richard said, “You don’t agree?”

  I shrugged. “I just find it hard to accept that Paw would give a murderer a chance like that. Even if Paw didn’t think the man would come after him, he must have realized that he might run away. Would you let a murderer get away?”

  “But Melanie’s body hadn’t been found yet, so Paw didn’t know that she was dead. Maybe the murderer lied to him, told him that Melanie was fine when he saw her last. Why else would Paw wait to call the police?”

  The phone rang before I could answer. “Maybe it’s the murderer calling to confess,” I joked.

  It wasn’t, of course. It was Aunt Nora calling to invite us to dinner. After a quick consultation with Richard, I accepted and told her we’d be at her house at six.

  Though I spent the rest of the afternoon reading and rereading the police report while Richard finished up with Louis L’Amour, I could have twiddled my thumbs for all the good it did. By the time we had to leave for Aunt Nora’s, I was eager for an excuse to quit.

  Chapter 28

  We got to Aunt Nora’s just in time for dinner. This time it was fried chicken, boiled new potatoes, snap beans, and plenty of biscuits. Dessert was a pecan pie that had somehow escaped yesterday’s feast.

  Despite Aunt Nora’s cooking, it wasn’t exactly a festive meal. Willis was half-asleep, Thaddeous was clearly still mourning Melanie, and Uncle Buddy was even quieter than usual.

  After dinner, Thaddeous took Richard upstairs, insisting that he had to find him something more appropriate for the Mustang Club than the Izod shirt he was wearing. I stayed in the kitchen to help Aunt Nora with the dishes, but we were only halfway through when Uncle Buddy came into the kitchen and said, “Laurie Anne, I need to talk with you for a minute.”

  I looked questioningly at Aunt Nora, but she looked just as mystified as I was. “Sure, Uncle Buddy,” I answered, and followed him into the den.

  He closed the door behind us, waited until I sat down on the couch, then sat in the armchair opposite me. “Burt Walters called me up to his office today. He said you had come to see him, asking all kinds of questions about Paw’s accident and talking about a lawsuit.”

  I should have known better than to expect Walters to keep anything to himself.

  Uncle Buddy went on, “Walters said you seemed to think there was something funny going on. I want you to tell me just what you’re trying to do.”

  I didn’t like his tone, but I tried hard to keep my voice even. “I think there was something odd about Paw’s death, and I’ve been trying to find out what happened.”

  “Now you listen here! I’ve been working at that mill for over twenty years and I don’t mean to lose my job because of you sticking your nose in where it don’t belong.”

  “Uncle Buddy, you don’t understand.”

  “Oh I understand all right. You think you can come down here with one of them fancy-talking Boston lawyers and make the mill give you a bunch of money. Then when Walters fires the rest of us, you can go on back North and leave
us with no jobs and no way to make a living. Well, that ain’t the way it’s going to be. You’re going to leave it alone, and quit trying to make money from your granddaddy’s death. Accidents happen, and that’s all it was—an accident.”

  I made myself take a deep breath before I spoke, because I knew that I was as mad as I had ever been. “It wasn’t an accident,” I said coldly.

  “Did your computer tell you that?” he asked scornfully.

  “No. Paw told me that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When I went in to see Paw the day I got here, he told me that what happened at the mill wasn’t an accident.”

  “Then what the hell was it?”

  “It was murder. Paw told me that someone hit him.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. The nurse chased me out before he could say more then, and he was never strong enough later.” I gave him a minute for that to sink in, and then said, “I’m going to find out who killed Paw, no matter what you say or think. If that bothers you, I don’t give a damn!” I stood, and walked straight past him to the front door and outside.

  I couldn’t leave, of course. Richard was still upstairs with Thaddeous, oblivious to what was going on, and I wasn’t about to go back inside to get him. I couldn’t even go sit in the car, because the keys were in the house with my pocketbook, so I sat down on the front steps and stared away from the house. A few minutes later I heard the front door open, and a quiet step behind me.

  “Laurie Anne?” It was Aunt Nora. “Can I talk to you?”

  Why not? Hit me with both barrels. “Sure,” I said.

  Aunt Nora closed the front door gently behind her, and sat down next to me. She was wringing a tired-looking handkerchief in her hands.

  “You don’t really think someone killed Paw, do you?” she asked.

  “I tried to tell you before. Paw told me that what happened to him wasn’t an accident. I have to believe him.”

  “He was dying when you saw him, on all kinds of drugs. He didn’t know what he was saying.”