A Body in the Bargain: A Kate & Kylie Mystery

by Charlotte Moore

  “I’m going to fight it, so I suppose I should just keep my mouth shut and not look like a hypocrite.”

  I couldn’t think of a tactful thing to say, and he went right ahead.

  “I suppose you heard about that silly policewoman arresting me in my home because I got one of Meredith’s dresses for the undertaker?” he asked. “Do you have to put that in the paper?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “I did hear about that, but I heard the charges were dropped, and you were out in time to open up this shop on Saturday. I won’t be doing a story.”

  He smiled a little.

  “Not that it matters that much what’s in the paper, the way people talk around here. But I will say——not for quoting, please—that I have far more friends than my sister did. If Meredith had run a shop, she would have gone out of business in a week, because the woman was just like a porcupine throwing off quills.”

  I left, feeling as if a weight had lifted off me. I didn’t think Flip Tarver was an angel. Maybe he did take the blue vase in a fit of anger or simple possessiveness after he learned about the will. Maybe he even grabbed the ugliest thing he could find in her closet as an excuse in case he got caught.

  But I couldn’t believe he’d be talking to me so frankly if he’d had anything to do with her murder.

  My phone rang out its musical tone. And I heard a shout from across the street at the same time. It was Josh Miller. He was calling me and waving from the front door of the newspaper office.

  “Hey,” he said over the phone, “What have you got on Flip Tarver? Come talk with me.”

  I walked across the street and told him the basics of what I knew about the will, and that Flip had decided he didn’t have anything nice to add to the story about his sister. Josh grinned.

  “I can’t say that I blame him,” he said.

  “And I’ve got an appointment tomorrow morning with Chief O’Reilly,” I said, “So I’ll get whatever he’s willing to tell me at that point. Have you had a chance to read my City Council story?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Good job, but you don’t have to put every single thing they do into the story or all about the ordinances. Just hit the high points.”

  “I didn’t know there were any high points,” I said, and he laughed.

  “Well, I’m going to run it just like you wrote it,” he said. “That and two of the pictures from the fish fry. We’re probably going to need to fill up some space on the front page if there isn’t a big story on the Merkle murder. And, listen, I’ve got something else I need for you to cover tomorrow if you have time. This is for next week. Just a little story and some photos. Maybe mostly photos and cutlines.”

  It flickered through my mind that Josh really needed my help and that he was getting a good deal with the free-lance arrangement. I stopped him right there, seeing that I was in a good bargaining position.

  “Josh,” I said, “We need to talk about how much you’re going to pay me for photos.”

  He frowned a little, and I said, “Hey, you aren’t paying for my health insurance. You’re still ahead of having somebody full-time.”

  After we had worked that out, he explained that he had been planning to ask me to cover a luncheon meeting of the county’s Development Authority tomorrow, but then he remembered that it was on the same day as the second anniversary of the opening of Camelot Court.

  “I’ll cover the Development Authority,” he said. “Camelot Court is going to have a potluck dinner, and a program, and all that. The old folks who live there are going to invite their families, and they’re going to give out some awards, like for prettiest patio and whatever. I promised Jade Montgomery we’d do something.”

  “I remember Jade,” I said. “She’s not a senior citizen.”

  “She’s the apartment manager over there. She does a real good job, I think. It’s just that she wants to be sure everybody knows it. You don’t mind, do you?”

  ”Actually, I don’t,” I said after considering the question. “I’d rather do that kind of thing than city council and crime.”

  He shrugged and said, “Hey, the city council only meets twice a month, and we don’t have a homicide once a year. You just happened to get here at a bad time.”

  As I headed to the door he laughed and said, “And if you hadn’t opened that sofa bed, we might not have that story yet.”

  “It wasn’t me,” I said. “It was Kylie who opened it, and that’s not funny.”

  I called Kylie to ask if it was okay for me to drop by, and she said, “Kate, you don’t have to call and ask.”

  “I know,” I said, “But I’m still going to do it. You call before you come to my place.”

  “Of course I do,” she said, laughing, “You’re single. You could be entertaining. I’m a happily married lady and even if I weren’t, my mother’s in the house.”

  I admit it. I tell Kylie Carson almost everything. I know she may tell Buddy some of it, but if she does she must make him swear on a Bible not to tell. Either that or he doesn’t pay that much attention.

  In any case, I told her all about the blue vase, and showed it to her on a collectibles site, and I told her about the old ladies trying to badger Aunt Verily into getting them into Meredith Merkle’s house, and Aunt Verily saying they just wanted to snoop.

  Kylie thought that was hilarious, which made me finally laugh about it, too.

  And then I told her about Flip Tarver and what he said, and that I personally thought he might have snitched the blue vase while he was in the house, and she laughed and said, “Well, good for him if he did. It sounds like she kept all of their mother’s stuff. She should have made sure it stayed in the family instead of giving it to some college that will just hire somebody to have an estate sale. Oh!”

  Her eyes widened, and she brightened up suddenly.

  I said, “I can read your mind, Kylie Carson! No! I do not want to go and buy Miss Merkle’s old stuff. I wouldn’t even want to go in her house.”

  “But,” she said, “What if Flip didn’t steal that vase, and the estate sale person doesn’t know how valuable it is? Maybe we could get it for five dollars.”

  I laughed and said, “It took me two minutes to find it online, and I didn’t even know there was such a thing. I’m sure somebody who runs estate sales would have it all appraised.”

  She got us each a second cup of coffee, and said, “Well, as long as we’re talking about Miss Merkle, what have you heard about David Dabney’s getting out of jail?”

  “What have you heard?” I asked cautiously.

  “That Sally Turbo was right,” she said and wrinkled her nose. “ It really was Mary Jane Pendleton, and she said she was with him all night, but probably Daniel O’Reilly should have had her parents there when she made that statement.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Is she a minor.”

  “No,” Kylie said, “But she might as well be. She’s kind of, well, a little off the wall. Unstable. I think she’s really bright, but, you know…”

  “Mentally ill?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Kylie said. “Immature maybe. Sort of lives in her own world. She’s probably never had a boyfriend before if he even was one. And David Dabney, well, some people think he was selling pills and stuff. Anyway, he should have left her alone.”

  I said, “It still doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “He could have killed her earlier, like that afternoon, and hidden her body somewhere else, then had the party, and then slipped out of the house to hide her body in the sofa,” Kylie said.

  “But why?” I asked. “If you killed somebody, would you go get the body later and put it in a sofa in your own garage?”

  “I might if I knew the junk collector was coming the next day to take the sofa away,” she said.

  “Well, what if you heard your mother on the phone telling someb
ody that they could still buy the sofa if they got there before the junk man?” I asked.

  “We don’t know that David knew anything about that,” Kylie said. “When I talked to Doris Dabney, she was out at the lake at their new house.”

  We sat in silence for a moment, and then Kylie said. “Well David isn’t very bright, you know, and he was drinking, and probably doing more than that, so who knows what kind of judgment he had. Or maybe his father did it.”

  “I’m sure they’ve all been questioned,” I said. “They went door to door in the neighborhood, too, trying to find out if anybody had even seen Miss Merkle walking around that afternoon. That’s the real mystery to me. Not why she was in the sofa but where she got killed in the first place.”

  My appointment with Chief Daniel O’Reilly was at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, and I was at the River Valley Public Safety Building five minutes early, wearing my second best jeans with boots and a blue silk tunic, carrying my camera over my shoulder and my little notebook in one hand.

  I was trying to look like I wasn’t trying, but—truth be told—I was looking forward to meeting with Chief Daniel O’Reilly.

  And that was too bad because the first thing I found out from the uniformed man behind the front desk was that Chief O’Reilly wasn’t available, and the man—whose name plate said Sgt. Darius Meade—had no idea when he might be, and wasn’t prepared even to say if the Chief was in the building.

  I turned and headed for the door, feeling really frustrated.

  Just as reached my car, the chief’s car came flying into the parking lot with another police vehicle right behind it. They headed toward a side entrance, and I headed the same way on foot, making myself less conspicuous by standing behind a generator that was enclosed with a wooden fence.

  I heard doors slamming and voices, and peeked out.

  Brenda Breaker was escorting a scrawny sandy-haired young man in handcuffs. I was pretty sure it was David Dabney.

  And then I was quite sure it was because Daniel O’Reilly had Doris Dabney in handcuffs.

  My inner paparazzi took over. Adrenalin pumping, I leaped out with my camera and took one picture, and then a second, and finally, a glorious, award-winning third, as Doris Dabney spotted me and snarled like a grizzly bear.

  By that time Chief O’Reilly had seen me, too, but he was preoccupied with his captives and was doing his expressionless face. Someone opened the door from the inside, and he and Brenda disappeared with the Dabneys. The door banged shut.

  I called Josh at The Register and said, “They’ve arrested David Dabney again, and his mother, too, and I have pictures.”

  “Slow down,” he said. “I don’t think I got that right. Did you say they arrested his mother?”

  “Yes,” I said, “She was in handcuffs, and she snarled at me when she saw me taking her picture.”

  “I’ll bet she did,” Josh said. “How’d you get that? What’s going on?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” I said. “I’m going to go stay outside his office until I can get an interview.”

  “No point in that,” he said, “If they just got arrested, they’re probably going to be questioned or something. It’ll take forever. And don’t forget that you’ve got to be at Camelot Court at 11:45!”

  I looked at my watch and groaned.

  Then I marched back in and wrote a note for Chief O’Reilly.

  “Please let me know how soon I can talk to you about the arrests of David and Doris Dabney. I have a deadline to meet. Thanks. Kate Marley.”

  I added my cell phone number in case he had lost it, handed it to a totally impassive Sgt. Meade, and left.

  Then I went to the newspaper office to show Josh the pictures.

  “Wow!” he said when we got to Doris Dabney’s snarl. “That’s fantastic! I wish we could use it.”

  “What?” I said. “Why can’t you use it?”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” he said, “Dave Dabney’s mad enough already, but I told him we had to print the news that the police chief gives us. He’ll know this isn’t anything Daniel O’Reilly gave us. The man is a regular advertiser, Kate! I love the picture. She looks like some kind of wild animal, but I’ll never hear the end of it from Dave.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Fortunately for Josh, Maxie Lewis arrived at that moment with her “River Valley Ramblings” which was handwritten on five or six pages of yellow legal pad.

  “I am so happy to hear that Kate is going to be writing for us,” she said. “And I do hope one of you is coming to our little Second Anniversary celebration at Camelot. All the others have been cooking up a storm, but I cheated and just picked up some chicken salad at the Chicken Shack for my contribution because I know that will be the first things people head for.”

  “Kate’s on her way,” Josh said, “I’m afraid I’ve got a boring thing with the Development Authority.”

  Once I got into my car and stopped hyperventilating, I found that I still didn’t like Josh’s attitude, but I wasn’t so sure I really wanted that picture in the paper with my name beneath it.

  I’d have to encounter Dave Dabney at the next council meeting having been responsible for a photo of his wife baring her teeth as his son slumped miserably behind her, and both of them in handcuffs. Maybe his whole life was about to become a misery.

  In a city, the photographer might never see the snarling woman again, or the snarling woman’s husband might never notice the name of the photographer. But we were in River Valley.

  I told myself that maybe I ought to opt out of crime reporting entirely. I could wind up either with people hating me or with a sense that I wasn’t doing the job like a professional.

  Taking pictures of barns was more my style, or taking pictures of happy people at the Kiwanis fish fry, or the old folks at Camelot Court.

  All the same, I couldn’t wait to show the picture to Kylie.

  Camelot Court was more impressive close up than I had realized just driving by.

  The main building in the front included an office, a gym and a large meeting room with a kitchen attached.

  Jade Montgomery had put on a few pounds since I last saw her, but she was still gorgeous—still in her colorful clothes, with earrings the size of silver dollars and a necklace in five layers of beads. While Sheena QOTJ looked a little like she was on stage with her makeup and jewelry and big hair, Jade could carry it off. Watching her smile and hug people, it struck me that she was the perfect manager for a senior apartment complex.

  “We call her Vitamin J,” a tall skinny old man said, standing next to me.

  I turned and recognized him. Eddie Robuck had been our mailman for years when I was growing up.

  “Mr. Robuck!” I said. “How nice to see you. Do you remember me? I’m ….”

  “Katie Marley,” he said with a smile. “238 Azalea Avenue.”

  “It’s 123 Charter Lane now,” I said. “My grandmother left me her house, and I decided to move back down here instead of selling it.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” he said, “Why are you here today?”

  I explained that I was doing some work for the paper, and he said, “Well, that boy can use some help. There hasn’t been hardly anything in it the last month or so. Maybe I’ll keep my subscription a while longer. Have y’all found out who killed Meredith Merkle yet?”

  “I think there may be some news on that soon,” I said. “The investigation is taking a while.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, “I hear they interviewed everybody here. I missed that, ‘cause I went into the hospital first thing the next morning for some lab tests, and they kept me three days. I heard that all they did was show people a picture and ask them if they had seen her that Monday, and none of ‘em had. Me, I did see her, but she wasn’t doing anything but walking along frowning like she always did, and my little dog just always had to bark
at her, so I always just crossed the street.”

  “You saw her that Monday before her body was found?” I asked.

  “Yep,” he said. “She was on Mulberry Street heading toward Morgan, and I was heading away from Morgan. It was about five.”

  “Do you remember what she was wearing?” I asked.

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “One of those pants suits things. Same ugly yellow they got all the fire hydrants painted now. In fact, when I saw her coming I told my dog ‘Now Teddy, that ain’t no fire hydrant.’”

  He laughed at his own joke, and said, “Nice talkin’ to you, Miss Katie. I’d better get me some of that chicken salad before they get it all.”

  I made a note in my notebook to tell Daniel O’Reilly that Eddie Roebuck of Camelot Court had actually seen Meredith Merkle heading toward Morgan Street at five p.m.

  Then I got to work taking pictures and notes. After everyone had been seated with food, Jade Montgomery managed to mention dozens of people by name and handed out dozens of certificates in plastic frames. There was one for Friendliest Neighbor, one for Most Caring, one for Best Holiday Decorations, Most Active (the one with the best attendance at events planned by Jade), even one for Good Shepherd, which turned out to be Hester Foley, who had conducted a Bible study. The Most Physically Fit, which went to Eddie Robuck. Maxie Lewis won the prize for the Most Attractive Patio, which appeared to be a coveted award with a tiny trophy.

  I kept glancing at my cell phone, hoping to hear from Chief O’Reilly.

  As I was about to leave, Jade and Maxie Lewis cornered me about taking a photo of Maxie in her prize-winning patio.

  “I wouldn’t think of putting it in my River Valley Ramblings,” Maxie said. “People might think I was bragging.”

  As it turned out Maxie’s apartment was quite close to the office, and the patio was worth photographing. It was bright with pots of flowers and wicker furniture that looked as if it were brand new or had been freshly painted. There was a rabbit, painted white with pink eyes that I commented on.