Becklaw's Murder Mystery Tour (Jo Anderson Series)

by Dane McCaslin

  We had thought to call ahead and see if Officer Kingsley was available. She was, so we went directly to the Manchester Police Department. I gave our names at the front desk – the officer acted like he knew me – and we sat down to wait. Within just a few minutes, a smiling Officer Kingsley opened the door and beckoned for us to follow her.

  Being somewhat familiar with the warren of hallways by this time, I realized that she was leading us to a conference room. That should have set off alarm bells for me, but I meekly trailed her and my companions trailed me.

  When she opened the door, we saw that the room was nearly full of officers, each sitting with a stack of papers in front of them and the emblematic mug of bad coffee to hand. I halted in the doorway and nearly caused a pedestrian traffic jam.

  ‘Come in and find a seat, you guys. You’re just in time for a team briefing,’ Officer Kingsley welcomed us in to the room. If I could have sunk through the floor, I would have. Talk about embarrassment!

  Not to mention my wonderment at being included in an official briefing. This had all the aspects of a made-for-TV drama, where the local gal or guy helps to crack a case that has totally baffled the police. Not likely, Jo, I thought. Still, it was nice to get the invite.

  The team briefing was on the dual murders. Motives were discussed and I recognized some of the things that we had shared with Officer K. All right – maybe we were more helpful than I had previously thought. I felt a tinge of self-pride well up but quickly squelched it; after all, karma was still hanging about and I didn’t want to invite another casualty.

  Per what we heard, the idea that Julian Sweet could be considered a suspect was plausible. Some officers were leaning toward the ‘scorned woman’ theory, and I was anxious to share with Officer Kingsley what we had discovered about Lola and her husband, Hap.

  I tried to crane my neck without being obvious, reading over the shoulder of the officer nearest me. He had done nothing but doodle, the lined notepaper filled with fanciful swirls and happy faces. I wondered if Officer Kingsley was aware of this. I casually looked at another officer’s notepad and saw much the same thing. Well. If that was the way things were handled in Manchester, it was no wonder two people could meet their end the way Josie and Lily had.

  My confidence in their ability to solve these crimes went subterranean but fast. When the topic turned to ‘What’s for lunch’ and ‘Did you see the game last night’, I was through. I motioned to Leslie, Miss Bea, and Derek to follow me and we stood to our feet.

  ‘Officer K, thanks for allowing us to sit in on your …’ here I paused significantly and gave the doodling officers a Mrs Fiornelli fish-eye ‘… meeting, but we need to get back to Miss Lucinda. She, er … hasn’t been feeling well lately.’

  We trooped out the conference room door and down the hall part-way before Derek, walking just behind me, asked, ‘So? What do you think that was all about?’

  I let him come abreast of me before replying. That hallway had some killer acoustics.

  ‘Well, I think that was a “We have it all under control” invitation,’ I said.

  ‘I think so too,’ Derek responded, reaching out to open the door at the end of the hallway. ‘Which makes me think they don’t. Have it under control, I mean,’ he added for clarification.

  The four of us stayed silent until we got out to the station wagon. I looked over my shoulder at Miss Bea, who sat next to Leslie in the back seat.

  ‘Now what? Any ideas?’

  Miss Bea shook her head slowly. ‘No, Jo, I’m clean out of ideas on this. I tell you what: let’s pick up some lunch for the six of us and head back to the trailer, maybe have a picnic. We might as well enjoy the rest of the day.’

  I had to agree. For some reason the wind had gone out this entire affair and now I just wanted to enjoy what time was left of our visit to Silverton County.

  We found a deli that advertised sandwiches to go, along with chips, whole dill pickles, and freshly-baked cookies. I tried to call LJ to see what he and Miss Lucinda would like, but got no answer. Instead, I left a message telling him to give me a call in the next few minutes, but said that if he didn’t, Miss Bea would choose for him.

  Not hearing from LJ, we settled on three foot-long sub sandwiches, six little bags of chips, four pickles (Leslie and I opted out), and a dozen cookies. We piled back into the station wagon and headed back to the KOA, picnic lunch in tow. We chattered about where we should go to eat. I suggested the tables just to the rear of the KOA. The McLaughlins had thoughtfully provided a Ramada-type shelter, making the area usable even on inclement days.

  We pulled into the KOA, heading the station wagon toward the trailer where LJ was keeping an eagle eye on Miss Lucinda. I hoped he had survived; sometimes she could be a bit overbearing.

  Carting one of the bags up the steps and onto the porch, I stopped short. The front door, locked when we had left a few hours before, now stood slightly open. That familiar prickle began its trip down my spine; something did not feel right. When I spotted the splintered wood of the door’s frame, I froze.

  Derek and Leslie, who had been chatting amiably about their respective homes, noticed my hesitation. I could see that Derek was going to call out so I waved my hand at him in a ‘be quiet’ gesture. Thank goodness he could read the Josephine Anderson version of sign language.

  I tiptoed back off of the porch, holding my breath against tell-tale creaks of the weathered wood. Thank goodness I had learned to walk softly early in life; my prowess for sneaking out of the house at night was legendary among my many nieces and nephews.

  Derek, Leslie, and Miss Bea were watching my progress with concern. I got within earshot of them and told them about the door’s condition. I thought poor Miss Bea was going to faint. Instead, only her hair slipped a notch. She was a strong woman, emotionally speaking.

  The four of us moved away from the trailer as slowly as we could; although I tell you, I was tempted to run like a bat out of … well, you get the idea. I wanted to get out of there as quickly as was humanly possible and get help.

  Once we had made it past what I calculated was far enough away so as not to be heard by whoever was in there with Miss Lucinda and LJ, if indeed they were still there, I fished my cell out of my pocket and thumbed through the contacts until I reached Officer Kingsley’s number. With shaking fingers I attempted to dial; it took three tries before I got it right.

  When I heard her voicemail and that cheery voice admonishing to “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”, I almost wept in frustration. Now what? I had no idea who else to call and I was beside myself with worry. I could tell by the looks on the others’ faces that they felt the same as I did.

  ‘Now what?’ I mouthed as quietly as possible, looking to Miss Bea for guidance.

  She stood still a moment, thinking hard. At last, she said, ‘Let’s go up to the manager’s office. We can tell them and use their phone.’

  Head slap! Of course – why I hadn’t I thought of that?

  We hurried as fast as we could go, deli bags caught up in our arms as headed for the front of the KOA and help.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  We four flew through the door of the office and paused, hesitating, not seeing either Percy or Oleta McLaughlin in the reception area. I walked over to the door that led to their private living quarters and knocked, head tilted toward the door to listen for any sound that might indicate whether they were in or not.

  What I heard chilled me to the bone.

  I motioned frantically for the others to join me and they did, a collective look of concern on their faces. I indicated that they should listen; one by one, they pressed their ears to the door and one by one they recoiled, a look of fear replacing the alarm.

  What I had heard – and what they had now confirmed – was the sound of Miss Lucinda’s voice as she begged for the McLaughlins to let her and LJ go. I tried once more to get Officer K on the line, and this time I had success. When I heard her hearty ‘Officer Kingsley here,’ I almost
cried.

  ‘This is Jo, Jo Anderson. We need you out here at the KOA pronto. The McLaughlins have Miss Lucinda and LJ …’ I was babbling and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  ‘Slow down, Jo,’ commanded Officer Kingsley, and her tone, authoritative and calm, arrested my thoughts enough to let them catch up to my mouth.

  ‘We just got back to our trailer at the KOA and found the door kicked in. Miss Lucinda and LJ are up here at the office, and the McLaughlins are holding them captive.’ I felt foolish saying this, but if it was true, I’d sound foolish all day long in order to ensure their safety.

  Officer K did not question my statement but instead asked me for our location. I told her, and she suggested that we move away from the building as casually as possible, and she and backup would be on their way. We did as she had told me, but it was difficult to leave, knowing that Miss Lucinda and LJ could be in mortal danger.

  We huddled together under the shade of the tallest aspen that stood just to the right of the driveway, eyes peering anxiously down the highway for any sign of Manchester’s finest. I could have cried when I saw the first car, lights on but riding silently. It pulled to the side of the road a few yards from the KOA’s entrance, a second car pulling up behind them.

  Officer Kingsley exited the second car, talking into a radio and motioning us to join her. We waited for her to finish the transmission, a bit impatiently, I must admit, while the other officers walked over to join us. I recognized the two doodlers from the briefing, but they acted as though they had never seen me. Just as well, I thought; I might be tempted to give them a piece of my mind.

  ‘OK.’ Officer Kingsley looked around at those of us gathered, four of us anxious and the others with their game faces on and ready to rock and roll. ‘This is what we’ll do, per the Captain: Snow,’ – doodler numéro uno – ‘you and I will take the outside private entrance. Steadman, you and Shaw will take the private entrance located in the office. You other two,’ – motioning to doodler numéro dos and a short, muscular officer whose badge read ‘Peterson’ – ‘will cover the windows to the residence. We try to make contact first, then go in on my count if no answer. If that’s the case, I’ll count three and then we go in, got it?’

  All officers nodded, and I found I’d been holding my breath. I moved closer to Miss Bea and put my arm around her, and Leslie took the other side. I could feel the older woman breathing rapidly, and I was afraid she’d hyperventilate. We needed to get her calmed down, at least as much as we could. I met Leslie’s eyes over her head and we silently consented to gently move back against the tree we had been standing under to begin with. Derek followed, still carrying two of the bags containing our lunch.

  Aha! My go-to remedy for any and all that ails you – sugar – was in the bag I carried. I had almost forgotten that we had purchased cookies of several different kinds to go with our sandwiches and chips. I opened the bag and pulled out a handful, passing them to the others indiscriminately. I had a chocolate chip, Leslie had oatmeal, and Derek and Miss Bea both had sugar iced ones with a thick frosting.

  We munched the goodies as we watched the police move into place: two alongside the wall that was in our view; Officers Kingsley and Snow going around to the other side of the building; and the other two officers entering the office. I heard a faint crackle from the radio on one of the officer’s shoulders and he spoke quietly into it, acknowledging Officer K’s commands.

  Looking back on that spring afternoon, I find that I have a few gaps that still haven’t been filled. For instance, I don’t recall the exact moment that the officers moved in, having gotten no answer from either the McLaughlins or their niece Lola, who had coerced them into joining her in the commission of the kidnappings and the two murders. I can’t remember who came out first, the perpetrators or the victims, but I do know that suddenly I had my arms tightly around Miss Lucinda’s ample waist, and that she and Miss Bea remained glued together for the rest of the time we spent in Manchester.

  LJ, in spite of his naturally tentative veneer, seemed the least traumatized of us all. Leslie, on the other hand, could not let go of LJ’s hand or arm, and before we left for Copper and home base, she was sporting an engagement ring. Apparently LJ had carried it around for quite a while. I realized that I had always been a bit curious about their relationship; for some reason, I had put them down as kissing cousins or best friends.

  It turned out that they were both.

  I suppose I should have suspected the McLaughlins and their niece all along, in hindsight, but there were other clues that had thrown me off – and threw the police off as well, Officer Kingsley admitted later. It seems that Lola’s strategy was to be obvious about a possible motive – the ‘scorned woman angle’ – and hope that it would seem too obvious. It almost worked.

  Lola’s husband Hap was in shock over the entire episode, and the last I heard of him he was ensconced in the Silverton County Behavioral Center, being treated for clinical depression. Who could blame him? His wife had turned out to be as batty as her Aunt Oleta. Her Uncle Percy, poor thing, was roped into it all of it by reason of blackmail.

  He had not paid taxes – state, local, or federal – for many years, and Lola knew about it. By some weird sense of reasoning, he figured it would be easier to get away with murder than to repay all that money.

  People just baffle me at times, you know?

  When the proverbial dust settled, we were amazed at what we learned from Officer Kingsley over pizza and breadsticks on our last night at the KOA, which was now being run by Julian Sweet, who needed a more permanent job than the one at the casino.

  ‘It keeps me away from gambling,’ he confided to me, and I was glad for him. It also kept him away from Andy and Bert, who Julian had threatened to ‘brain’ if he ever spotted them within fifty yards of himself again. Not the brightest thing to declare publicly, but who could blame him?

  Anyhoo, as they say back home in Piney Woods, Lola, carrying a deep grudge against Josie for breaking up her marriage – or, at least, that’s what she truly thought, in spite of protestations from Hap – had overheard the gossip concerning Becklaw’s Murder Mystery Tour and the fact that we would need locals to play some bit parts. Since Josie was never around, and Lola worked so many hours, she figured that if Josie had a part in the performance, she would know where she was and could confront her once and for all.

  So, she passed along the suggestion to Skinny Joe via Lily, whom she knew from the library and who had told her about the available parts. In her mind, Josie was a perfect ‘fit’ for the ‘lady of the night’ part. Skinny Joe snapped up the proposal, eager to fulfill his end of the bargain, and had asked Josie to join the troupe and there you had it: the stage was set, so to speak, for a showdown.

  Lily, we found out, had joined because of Andy, on whom she had a huge crush ever since their high school days. Any excuse to be near him thrilled her, and unfortunately, it also sealed her fate. She was also the only one who could directly connect Lola and Josie – so she had to be dealt with.

  Lola, being the strong wench that she was, was able to subdue Lily and well, you know the rest. I had seen her in action at the deli with the half ham, don’t forget, so I had a clear idea of how she was able to … well, for the stomach’s sake, I’ll just leave it there.

  Lola and Hap had arrived early for the barbecue supper and she watched the time carefully, calculating when the cast would be arriving. She was pretty close, too; she got to the parking lot just minutes before Josie pulled in.

  The confrontation, which in Lola’s jealousy-plagued mind was justified, did not go the way she thought it would. Josie had laughed at her, calling her ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’ and doing everything but say something about her mother. Lola snapped, picking up a large rock from the row that lined the parking lot and bashing Josie on the back of the head as she turned to walk away.

  To make it look like a random killing, though, she had run to their truck parked just a few feet away and
had pulled out one of Hap’s old hunting pistols. Josie was already dead, or very close to it, when Lola had shot her.

  The pistol had been recovered by Officer Snow and the ballistics tests had proven it was a match for the gun that fired the bullet recovered from Josie’s body.

  “The best laid plans of mice and men”, I thought wryly. I think what troubled me the most was that Lola had almost gotten away with it and an innocent man, Julian Sweet, had almost taken the fall.

  Back to Lily and her untimely demise: once she had realized that Josie was dead, and had figured pretty quickly who must be to blame, Lily had called into work and scheduled some personal time off. She had planned on leaving the area and going to her parents down in Denver, but never had the chance to leave town. The very next morning following Josie’s murder, Lola had begun calling Lily, threatening that she’d get the same if she talked to anyone, ‘anyone’ being the Manchester Police Department.

  This had the opposite effect on Lily, though; instead of scaring her into silence, it had made her angry at Lola. She dared her to come over and confront her, which was Mistake Number One.

  The second blunder was when she unlocked the front door and let her in. The third error happened when she turned her back briefly on Lola, who had needed but a moment to hit Lily on the head with the large flashlight she had been carrying.

  Officer Snow recovered this weapon as well, from the grocery store deli where Lola worked. She had brazenly taken it and brought it back, not even bothering to clean it off that well. She figured, with her twisted reasoning, that no one in the deli department would notice a little blood on the handle.

  Apparently she was right. It had been sitting there in plain sight when we had stopped by that day.

  The McLaughlins were dragged into the sordid affair when Lola found out that the troupe was staying at the KOA. She assumed that we might be interested in finding out who had done away with two of our cast members and had asked her aunt to spy on us. That was the noise on our walk the night before; Oleta McLaughlin, in her confession, told Officer Kingsley that Derek had given her a face full of dirt and pebbles.