1 In For A Penny

by Maggie Toussaint

  I’d forgotten about the soup when Mama charged back in with the girls and the dog in tow. Mama’s tray held a large bowl of soup with orange slices on the side, but more importantly, the cup of coffee that I needed to keep going. “Thanks,” I said, shuffling papers to the side of my desk.

  “Cleo, I’ve just had the most marvelous idea.” Mama’s face glowed like a light bulb. “Why don’t you finish up out here while the girls and I prepare dinner?”

  The rich aroma of chicken soup stirred the juices in my stomach. Okay, so I was hungry. I glanced at Charla and Lexy. They weren’t protesting about helping Grandma which should have been a big clue something was up, but my brain was working out the details of the Shady Hills audit and I wanted to get back to it.

  Turning Mama loose in the kitchen was risky. If she’d stuck to the grocery list, she couldn’t have too many rogue ingredients to choose from for dinner. Her track record of being unconventional when it came to meal preparation shouldn’t come into play.

  “I guess that would be all right,” I said slowly, inventing damage control on the fly. “The girls are supposed to change the bed linens this afternoon. Lexy, why don’t you help Grandma in the kitchen? Charla, you set the table and make up the beds.”

  “Don’t you worry about a thing.” Mama adjusted the ice bag on my foot and patted my shoulder. She seemed giddy with excitement. “We’ll have everything ready before you know it.”

  Mama’s cheeriness put me on notice. Something was definitely up, and she didn’t want me anywhere near the kitchen. Danger, danger, danger.

  In case the girls didn’t know the menu, I recited it as they left. “Lasagna, salad, rolls, iced tea, and a double batch of chocolate pudding.”

  My words were drowned out in squabbling as Lexy jostled the dog leash out of Charla’s hand on the way out the door. I sipped the homemade soup and enjoyed the silence. There was nothing like working through a tangled accounting problem to sharpen one’s wits. The pieces of Shady Hill fell rapidly into place.

  While I formatted the audit report, I thought about the police investigation of Dudley’s murder. Britt Radcliff and the mayor were wrong. Jonette wasn’t a murderer. She had hated Dudley since forever, and she probably would still hate him on her deathbed.

  If it weren’t for Dudley, her life would have taken a much different path. But she wouldn’t kill him because of that. She couldn’t even kill her frog in tenth grade biology class, and she didn’t have any reason to like it either.

  If I was going to clear Jonette, I needed to question Violet Cooper, Jasper’s mother. If Violet was as good a marksman as Jonette claimed, then she was a much more likely suspect than Jonette. And, if she had Jasper’s quick temper, so much the better to paint her as the logical suspect. She’d never know that I was checking her out as I pried out of her who she was using for her accounting needs these days.

  On my calendar, I scribbled a quick note to interview Violet Cooper on Monday. And if Violet wasn’t the murderer, I’d keep looking until I found the real killer. Jonette wasn’t going to jail for a crime she didn’t commit.

  * * * * *

  Bitsy Davis, Dudley’s ex-wife, wandered into my office about six with two scotches in her hands. Her blond hair hung lank about her pale face. The light in her sky-blue eyes appeared to have been snuffed out.

  I closed the folder I was working on and hobbled around to sit with her in my guest chairs. “I’ve missed you, Bitsy. I’m sorry about all this.”

  “It isn’t your fault.” She embraced me then eased into her chair. “Trust Dudley to find new ways to screw up my life.”

  I knew exactly what she meant. Charlie’s infidelity had cost me more than my marriage. I’d lost my self-confidence and opened myself up to the worst kind of pain. “How’d it go at the funeral home?”

  “I wanted to put that SOB in the cheapest, tackiest coffin they had, but I couldn’t do it.” Bitsy drained her glass. “I bought the top of the line model because I couldn’t bear for the boys to see me being hateful.”

  Children had a way of knowing things. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bitsy’s sons knew exactly what she thought of their father. My Lexy was plenty astute. She didn’t need to be told that it was over between her parents.

  I understood Bitsy’s protective nature. Sometimes mothers did things for their kids that went against the grain. It was natural to want to shield your children from the hatefulness of the world. “I won’t think any less of you for that.” I covered her hand with mine and squeezed gently. “I understand.”

  “Damn him for getting himself killed.” She closed her eyes for a moment as if she were summoning energy to continue. “Why did he do this to me? And why now? We were just getting to the point where we didn’t argue over every little thing.”

  I’d never seen easygoing, mild-mannered Bitsy quite so shaken. Usually she took everything in stride, whether it was a tsunami or a broken nail. “I’ve been out of sorts since I found him,” I said.

  “I’m sorry you had such a shock, Cleo. This can’t be easy for you, either.” Bitsy gazed longingly at the drink I’d immediately put down. “I just don’t know how I’m going to get through this.”

  Getting smashed had never solved anyone’s problems, but who was I to judge? I handed her my drink. “Here. You need this more than I do.”

  She took my glass and knocked the contents back quickly. “How do you do it? How do you live in this small town where everyone knows everything about anything? How do you handle seeing Charlie with Denise?”

  I grimaced. “It’s hard, all right. But I was Cleo Sampson long before I was ever Cleo Jones and I’m not going to let him take away my hometown too.”

  “But the whispers and the covert glances.” Bitsy’s shoulders slumped. “Don’t they bother you?”

  I wasn’t so good with this true confessions stuff, but Bitsy was my friend. It was eye-opening to see how raw her pain still was when she’d been divorced twice as long as I had. I had assumed the bitterness lessened with time.

  “Sure,” I said. “But I don’t let that stop me. What’s hard for me is realizing I’ve stored up bits and pieces of my day to tell Charlie and then I remember I don’t do that anymore.”

  Bitsy nodded in agreement.

  Maybe it was helping her to hear that I was so dysfunctional. I shared another slice of my soul. “When Charlie heard about Dudley, he came over here expecting me to comfort him as if I were still his wife. It was extremely awkward.”

  Bitsy nodded again, tears filling her eyes. She clutched her hands tightly together in her lap. “I know what you mean. Every time I heard a woman’s name linked with Dudley’s I wanted to yank the hair out of her head. Maybe if they had all been bald, Dudley wouldn’t have looked at them.”

  I searched her gaunt face. Her color was off, greenish even. “Bitsy, is there something you’re not telling me?”

  Bitsy set down the glass so hard I thought it would shatter. She ran her fingers through her lank hair. “You’re never going to believe this. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but it’s not something I can keep hidden for much longer. I’m three months pregnant, Cleo. With Dudley’s baby.”

  I blinked in astonishment.

  She was pregnant?

  With Dudley’s baby? Never in a million years would I have guessed such a thing. Questions like how and when surfaced in my head and I torpedoed them immediately. Pregnant. I was stunned by the news.

  I’d rather be run over by a herd of wild elephants than let Charlie sleep with me again. And Charlie had only slept with one other woman. Dudley had slept his way through the alphabet.

  After disbelief rolled through, anger swept in. Given that Bitsy was pregnant, she should be taking better care of herself. She had no business drinking that scotch.

  “Are you trying to give that baby brain damage? What’s going on in that head of yours?” In spite of my good intentions the next question slipped out. “How could you be pregnant by your ex-husband?”

/>   Bitsy bent her head forward and wept. I mentally kicked myself to the street and back for opening my big mouth. This wasn’t an accounting problem I could shift around until everything fit in the right blanks. I wished I could take back my words, but I kept my mouth shut to keep from digging the hole deeper.

  When her tears subsided, Bitsy said, “I got pregnant in the usual manner. Do you remember that Dudley refused to have a vasectomy like Charlie did after Lexy’s birth? Once I divorced him, I discontinued using birth control. And in a moment of weakness three months ago, I allowed him to charm his way back into my bed. Everything felt so good and right between us. I believed he wanted us to be a family again. But when I came to town to see him afterwards, he was entertaining a woman for lunch. After waiting in his office for two hours, I knew I’d been had.”

  Poor Bitsy. She’d given Dudley her heart time and again and he’d never cherished her love for the precious gift it was. Dudley had been a fool and it had cost him everything.

  Lord, Lord. Pregnant. How was she going to deal with that? In this day and age there were other options when it came to pregnancy. Would she choose to keep the baby? “What are you going to do?”

  Tears brimmed in her eyes. She inhaled shakily. “I’m having the baby. It’s all I have left of Dudley.”

  I exhaled slowly. Bringing a baby into the world when there were two people sharing the parenting load was a lot of work. Doing it alone was gutsy.

  “Did Dudley know about the baby?” I wanted to recall my uncensored question immediately, but the damage was done.

  Bitsy stood and walked over to look out the gingham-framed windows, her hand curved protectively over her womb. Now that I knew about her pregnancy I saw that she was already rounding. “He knew. And he seemed relieved because in his mind, we had to get married again, only I wouldn’t have it. Not when he hadn’t mended his ways. He swore he’d changed and that he deserved a second chance, but I foolishly believed him.”

  Bitsy turned to face me. “Oh, Cleo, what am I going to do? I loved that man beyond all reason, and now he’s gone and gotten himself killed. How am I going to raise this child on my own? I can’t bring myself to tell Mother or the boys about the baby.”

  I could just imagine Mama’s hysterics if I was three months pregnant with a dead man’s baby. And my Mama had adored the ground Charlie walked on until he’d cheated on me. Bitsy’s mother had hated Dudley from day one and she constantly found ways to let Bitsy know she’d married beneath herself. I didn’t know how Bitsy lived with that harpy.

  My heart went out to my friend. “I’ll help you any way I can. Are you going to stay in Virginia?”

  Bitsy strolled back across the office and stopped near my chair. “I don’t know. I want to move out, but Mother was so good to take us in after the divorce. I hate to uproot the boys again, but what choice do I have? Mother has every right to throw me out on the street. I’m an unwed mother at thirty seven. My father is probably spinning in his grave at the disgrace.”

  All Bitsy had ever wanted was Dudley, and he hadn’t lived up to her trust and love. The least I could do was to offer her shelter. “Bitsy, you and the boys are welcome to stay here for as long as you like. It won’t be good for the baby if you and your mother are arguing a lot.”

  Dudley had paid Bitsy child support. With his death, all of that would stop. A cold chill snaked down my spine all the way to my throbbing ankle. How would Bitsy make ends meet? Was she financially unable to leave her mother?

  What if she actually took me up on my offer and came to live with us? At that thought I turned slightly green. How could I afford to feed three and soon to be four more people? Would I need a second job?

  Bitsy’s lower lip trembled. She reached over and squeezed my shoulder. “You’ll never know what your offer means to me. You’ve always been my friend, Cleo. Thank you for standing by me. Thanks but no thanks.”

  She took a deep breath and stood tall. “We should be okay financially. I was worried at first because his investment accounts were cleaned out, but Dudley always lived larger than life. He always had one deal or another on the horizon where he was going to make it big. Fortunately for me and the boys, Dudley never changed the life insurance policy he bought early on in our marriage. I’m the sole beneficiary of that policy.”

  Dudley had bragged incessantly to Charlie of how well off he would leave his family in the event of his untimely demise. If memory served me correctly, Bitsy stood to receive ten million dollars from that policy. She’d never have to worry about money again.

  Because my mind is always thinking of ways things fit together, another thought occurred to me that I couldn’t make go away. Even though Bitsy lived in another town, she’d been wronged by Dudley. Could she have shot him knowing that insurance money would free her from him and her mother for the rest of her life?

  How could I ask her if she had an alibi for the night of his death? She was my friend and this was definitely her hour of need. Later when things were calmed down I could, in a nonthreatening way, ask her about her alibi. Right now Bitsy needed my support, not my suspicion. “I’d forgotten about the insurance policy. How do you go about getting that money?”

  Bitsy’s face turned an interesting shade of green. I recognized that shade from my pregnancy days. Bilious green. Moving quickly, I opened the bathroom door and flipped on the light and the fan.

  “I already contacted them.” Bitsy brushed past me into the bathroom, closing the door.

  I heard the sound of retching. The fan kept the sour odor of vomit contained. With any luck, all that scotch would come back out too.

  Just then, Bitsy’s youngest son, Grant, dashed into the office. The door crashed against the wall with a loud bang. “Mom! Aunt Cleo! Come quick. The dogs are fighting.”

  Chapter 11

  “Hey, Grant.” I crushed him in an embarrassing hug. Dudley’s slate-gray eyes stared back at me from the boyishly angular face of his youngest son. At thirteen, Grant was all elbows and knees with manly feet he had yet to grow into.

  I glanced at the closed bathroom door. Grant didn’t need to find out about his mother’s pregnancy this way. Who knew how long Bitsy would need to pull herself together? The least I could do was handle her dog problem.

  “I’ll take care of this, Bitsy,” I said to the door. “Take your time and join us in the house when you’re done.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  I followed Grant outside. The two Saint Bernards were behaving in less than a saintly manner. There was a lot of teeth snapping, rolling on the ground, and general racing around. But there was a distinct masculine gleam I recognized in Mozart’s eye when he chased Madonna that gave me the biggest clue to what was going on. I was certain canine mating behavior was unsuitable for an impressionable teen.

  I was about to suggest to Grant that we leave them alone when Grant observed in a squeaky voice, “Great gravy. Mo’s humping her.”

  Good thing my teeth were still original or they would have fallen out for sure. Regardless of the level of Grant’s sexual education, I wasn’t prepared to discuss doggie sex with him. It had been traumatic enough talking to my own kids about the facts of life. That settled it for me.

  I wasn’t going to come between consensual sex between two jumbo dogs, and even if Grant was familiar with procreation, he didn’t need to watch. “Grant, why don’t you go inside and help set the table for dinner?”

  Grant remained intently focused on the dogs. “Look at him go. He’s never done my leg as many times as that. Do you think they’ll have puppies?”

  The awe on Grant’s boyish face made me groan. Men and boys. Leave it to them to be amazed by another male’s prowess.

  What would Bitsy do if these super-sized dogs reproduced? Having never had dogs, I didn’t know how long the gestation period was, but quite possibly Bitsy could be having puppies about the same time as she was having her baby. Thank God I wasn’t in her shoes.

  I latched the wooden gate and s
hooed Grant into the house. I didn’t need to see the dogs go at it either. It was a sad state of affairs when your pet had a sex life and you didn’t. I might as well have a big “L” for loser tattooed on my forehead.

  As I passed through the kitchen, I sniffed lasagna in the air and a faint tang I couldn’t quite place. A sense of foreboding flitted through me. “Mama? How long until dinner?”

  “It’s all ready, dear,” Mama said. “We’re in the dining room.” I followed her voice to discover that Grant had spread the word. Everyone had their noses pressed up against the glass to see the doggie antics.

  This was not good. Would I be arrested for showing doggie pornography to minors? What would my oddball neighbor Ed Monday think of all the yipping and racing about? Would he murder us for disturbing his peace? I hoped not. At least not until after dinner. I was starved.

  I hugged Dudley’s older son. Artie blushed furiously. Mostly because he was fourteen but also because he seemed embarrassed to be caught watching the dogs go at it. “When are you going to talk your mom into moving back to Hogan’s Glen so that we can see more of you?” I asked as I ruffled his wavy hair.

  Artie had gotten the best combination of his parents’ physical features. From his father, serious gray eyes and dark poetic hair; from his mother, a cherubic face and lush eyelashes. He was as handsome as sin and looked as innocent as a lamb.

  Artie’s voice was as deep as Dudley’s had been. “Mom said we might be moving back.”

  Charla squealed with glee. “Really? That would be so cool. Mama, Artie plays football. He’s the starting quarterback on his JV team. If they moved back, that’d be awesome.”

  Artie seemed fairly enthralled by Charla’s exuberance. Charla was four months older than Artie, but because of their birthdates, they’d been in different grades throughout their education. I’d be worried about his potential attraction to my daughter if I didn’t know Artie.