Murder At the Mystery Mansion

by Serena B. Miller

  That woke me straight up. I found out that I’d kicked all the covers off and was shivering again—which explained about the cold and the baby’s afghan I suppose. I made myself some cocoa. Then I grabbed my Bible and tried to calm myself down by reading the Psalms. It helped some. It helped enough that I could start to think clearly again even if it was plumb in the middle of the night.

  The thoughts that started coming weren’t good ones, though. They weren’t good at all. I had to rock and pray about them for a long time before I got some peace and could go back to bed. My sleep was uneasy because of what I knew I needed to do once the sun came up.

  The next morning I watched as Glen left with the youngest daughter riding beside him heading off to that band camp the girls had told me she was going to down in Lexington. That left only Jerri Lynn and the baby. I didn’t want them around while I did what I had to do so I called Jerri Lynn and told her I needed me some Epsom salts and rubbing liniment for my sore back and would she mind too much driving over to Walmart and getting me some. I didn’t lie. I did need me some Epsom salt and rubbing liniment. I was truly out of it, but I didn’t need it so bad that she had to go right then.

  Sweet thing that Jerri Lynn is, she agreed immediately even though it was going to mean dragging the baby out. She stopped by and I hobbled out onto the porch to give her the money—making sure I walked bent over so she wouldn’t think I was faking it—which I wasn’t. At least not entirely.

  “Will you be all right here by yourself, Miss Doreen?” she asked.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I just need me a little sit-down in a bathtub of salts and some liniment. I appreciate you doing this for me.”

  “I’ll be right back,” she said. “I needed to pick up some diapers anyway.”

  With that she pulled on out to the highway and was gone. I figured I had about an hour before she came back.

  I hurried up and got me a crow bar out of my daddy’s old shed out back. I weren’t happy about what I was going to do, but I knew it had to be me that did it. I weren’t going to involve anyone else. If I was wrong, then it would just be me that was wrong. Nobody else would have to take any blame—not even Ben. Sometimes it pays to be an old lady. No one expects all that much out of you. If nothing else I’d pretend dementia had finally kicked in. Dementia is always good for an excuse when you need it.

  Problem was, I was pretty certain I wouldn’t need any excuses. I was too afraid I was right.

  Here’s the thing. A man raising two daughters on a principal’s salary ain’t likely to write off a freezer full of good meat. I knew that he’d bought a full side of beef right before Samantha left. He and one of my cousins had split a steer. Even in his mental fog, Glen had to eat and I figured that for most men, if there was only a little bitty lock between him and several hundred dollars’ worth of Angus steaks he’d find a way to get to them, even if he had lost the key.

  I was thinking it was a whole lot more likely that he’d thrown the key away or hid it—and that made me feel kinda sick to my stomach.

  I felt a little conspicuous walking down the street with a crowbar in my hand, but nobody stopped me or asked me where I was going. I had one hour at the most, and I intended to use a lot less than that. I like my sleep. I was tired of having nightmares and this was the only way I knew I might get me my sleep back again.

  Jerri Lynn hadn’t locked the screen door on their back porch. I knew she wouldn’t. Weren’t anything there worth stealing. I was grateful the back porch faced the river instead of the road. It meant there was no neighbors watching when I popped the lid on that chest freezer.

  It didn’t take all that much effort. Not even for me.

  The really big effort came in trying not to scream bloody murder when I saw what was a’layin’ there on top of all that beef. I took one look, dropped the crow bar, threw my hand over my mouth, slammed the freezer door shut, and went as fast as my old legs would take me right back to my own house where I locked the door and stood inside, leaning against the door, trying to calm down enough to keep my heart from jumping plumb out of my chest.

  As soon as I quit whimpering, I dialed Ben’s number and told him what I’d seen and hoped never to have to see again. He came lickety-split over to my house.

  When he knocked on my door, I managed to pull myself together and let him in.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “I might be old, but I can still tell the difference between a side of beef and a woman still in her nightie with her head bashed in.”

  “You stay here,” he said.

  He didn’t have to tell me that twice. I weren’t sure I’d ever stick my nose out of my house again. Not with these types of goings on in the neighborhood.

  Weren’t long before the police went to the school and arrested Glen Hutchins for the murder of his wife. I saw them drive him home in the squad car to talk to him about what they’d found in the freezer. Ben told me later that he’d never seen a grown man cry so hard. When they got him to the jail, they had to put him on suicide watch.

  Turned out that most of his story was true. He and Samantha hadn’t been getting along so good, although they’d been good at hiding it even from their girls. He was trying to be reasonable. She was wanting to go away and “find herself.” He knew that was usually short-hand speak for “I think I can find someone better than you.” He got scared he was going to lose her.

  The girls were both having sleepovers with girlfriends that night. Samantha and Glen were free to fight as much and as loud as they wanted. Samantha was ready to march right out the door, nightgown and all. Glen was determined that she was going to listen to reason. They wrestled around in that overstuffed parlor in front of her picture. He shoved her. She tripped over a ceramic cat on the floor and fell backwards against one of them marble-topped tables and the woman never woke up again. When he realized she was dead and he might have been responsible for killing her, he panicked. The girls were due home in a few hours and there was blood on the floral carpet and splashed around on some of the furniture. He stashed Samantha away in the first place that came to mind, just temporarily, to give himself some time to wash away the blood, clean himself up, and think things through.

  And that’s what he’d been doing all this time—trying to think of a way out of this mess he’d gotten himself into. No matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t come up with anything.

  I said before that Glen was kind of a soft man. He might have gotten mad enough at Samantha to shove her, but he didn’t have enough gumption to march down to the police station and own up to what he’d done. He said later at the trial that he knew it would probably cost him his job and he didn’t want to lose it.

  To the very end when they led him away to prison, he was still trying to make sure everyone liked him and didn’t think he was a bad guy who had killed his wife on purpose. He kept saying it was all an accident and a misunderstanding. I’m sure it was. But really. What kind of a man sticks his wife in a freezer?

  It was the most excitement South Shore had experienced in a long time, but it was the bad kind of excitement. The murder was interesting, but you felt bad thinking or talking about it. People were careful around the girls. We’re all hoping it’s the last excitement we’ll have for a long while.

  Bless that Ben’s heart, he played down my part in the whole thing the best he could, but it still got out that I’d been the one who had put two and two together. Some people thought Samantha’s spirit was calling out to me, but I don’t buy that. If her spirit was going to call out to anyone’s it would have been one of her daughters or her sister. As I said before, I ain’t no psychic and she and me weren’t close.

  I know it was my subconscious trying to tell my fool self what I should have figured out long before—a woman might walk away from Glen, but she’d never walk away from her daughters without at least talking with them. I hadn’t known Samantha well, but I did know her daughter’s and it was a decent, cari
ng woman who’d raised them two. Young mothers as loving as Jerri Lynn didn’t learn how to love her baby all by herself. That girl had been nurtured.

  It was also my subconscious or God or just common sense that made me figure out that the old chest freezer was the perfect place to store a dead body until a man could figure out what else to do with it.

  It was no wonder Glen had gotten a little seedy-looking considering everything that must have been going around and around in his mind all that time. It must have been terrible for him knowing what he’d done and then trying, like some little boy, to cover up his mistake before anyone could find out.

  It weren’t easy on the girls. They loved their daddy, but they’d loved their mama more. It was hard for them to figure out how to act. Especially the youngest. That fall, there was a lot of mournful clarinet playing in our neighborhood and no one said a word about it. I hear she’s got a music scholarship to Morehead State come fall, though. I guess there’s a silver lining to everything—although that one is a little thin.

  Jerri Lynn is working her way through the nursing program over at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth right now. She still talks of eventually going on to becoming a pediatrician, and I’m starting to think she has enough gumption to do it. That girl is awful determined. This ain’t a bad step for her. A nurse can make good enough money to support a youngin’ or two. Haven’t seen any boys nosing around, though, which is hard to imagine as pretty as that girl is. I think maybe what happened to her mama has put her off men for a while. Someday somebody special might come along, though. In the meantime I’m proud of how she’s doing. Proud as if she were my own. She still comes to see me, too.

  Aunt Charlene came back to stay with the girls after her divorce. Both girls were still under age and needed an adult relative there so they could keep living in their home. Charlene seemed to be in a good patch as far as rehab, so that worked out pretty good. From what I can tell, she’s still clean and sober. Sometimes I wonder who is raising who, though. Jerri Lynn is a lot more mature-acting than her aunt. I think it gives the girls comfort having her there, though. She does look a lot like their mama.

  Got us a new principal down at the elementary school. I think it’s working out a lot better. Glen seemed to have some trouble keeping his mind on his work.

  As for me? I don’t know. This was a bad one. It weren’t just that I got myself involved in solving another murder. The thing that troubles me is that the murder was here at home. A person needs to feel safe where they live. Now my faith in my home has been shaken. I can’t pretend that bad things only happen in other places anymore. I have to admit that there’s plenty of bad anywhere you want to look, and sometimes it takes opening up other people’s chest freezers to find it.

  I figure a person has a choice in this life. You can see evil, or you can see good. I find it less stressful to see good as long as the evil don’t get up in my face. When it does, I try to deal with it the best I can. That’s all anybody can do.

  Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I just made me a fried bologna sandwich with a thick slab of ripe tomato straight out of my garden on it. I got my shoes off, an ice-cold can of RC cola to wash it down with, and Days of Our Lives will be coming on any minute.

  P.S. One of them good things I try to believe in happened to me a few months later. I was minding my own business when somebody came a’knocking on my door.

  I about dropped my teeth when I saw who was standing there. Captain Evan Wilson from the Mississippi Queen had come a’looking for me just like he said he was gonna do some day. It was dead winter when he came and it turns out that they don’t like for the boat to run in the middle of the winter months. It’s a danger to the ship and besides that, most people don’t want to cruise on the river in January anyway.

  Evan ain’t that shy boy I once knew back in summer camp and met again fifty years later when my cousin talked me into taking a cruise on that river boat. No, Evan ain’t shy at all. He told me straight out that he’d deliberately come courting. He said I was the most interesting woman he’d ever met and he weren’t about to let me get away from him a third time.

  Ain’t that something?

  He’s been a widower for a long time and it turns out he has a big family strung around all over the place. Four sons and two daughters and a dozen grandchildren at last count. He says he can’t wait for me to meet them. He says they’ve been after him to find some nice woman and settle down.

  It’s early days yet. I ain’t jumping into something right off the bat like Lula Faye did. But I’m having an awful good time getting to know this man.

  I’ve talked it over with Jerri Lynn, and she tells me I need to “go for it.” I think I just might take her advice. That girl has a good head on her shoulders.

  Once while we was a’talking, I told Jerri Lynn all about them rumors of hidden rooms and secret tunnels. She asked Glen when she went to see him in prison and he didn’t seem to know anything about them. So, level-headed girl that she is—she didn’t go hunting around. Nope. She just asked a contractor to take a look and see if there was any evidence of it.

  Turns out there was a tunnel that led to the river she’s sure her great-grandma Henrietta used to secretly transport bootlegged whiskey up from the river back during Prohibition. She knows that was what it was used for because when they opened it up, there was a bunch of old whiskey bottles someone had left down there and forgotten about. Jerri Lynn found a collector who paid good money for the bottles and the story.

  The contractor also found a secret room off the main bedroom on the second floor that Henrietta had evidently ended up using to store the fancy clothes she’d worn. Flapper-type dresses. Good ones. Totally out of style when Henrietta took off with Mack for New Orleans, but beaded originals worth a mint now. Some nice jewelry, too. Jerri Lynn is using what she gets out of the clothes and jewelry to help her with tuition and books.

  I asked her if she was going to keep anything as a keepsake for the baby when she grows up. She said she thought getting an education so she can take good care of the baby might be a better use of the money. I agree.

  Still, the other day she showed me one of Henrietta’s dresses she’s not planning on selling. At least not right away. It’s all white with crystal beads. She tried it on for me and it drapes around that girl’s body like it was made for her. Has a fancy-sounding label from Paris in it. Jerri Lynn said she thought it might do for a wedding gown someday so she thinks she’ll keep it just in case.

  I think “just in case” might come along before she realizes it. Ben was awful solicitous of her and the baby right after that awful time when I discovered her mother’s body. I see him now regularly dropping by to check on her. Just a few minutes every week or so. A few words while he’s standing there on the porch. Sometimes I see a teddy bear or other small gift in his hand. I know he’s not the handsomest men in the world, but she could do a whole lot worse.

  I always did think Ben had good sense and watching him these past months proves it. She’s young, he’s a good eight years older, so he’s giving her time to grow up. She doesn’t seem to mind his little visits one bit. I see him standing outside the door, talking to her, and I smile knowing what’s probably coming in a couple years. I’m hoping I can see her put that pretty dress of her great-grandmother’s to good use.

  There’s a saying that life begins at forty. I don’t think I can go along with that. Forty weren’t nothing special to me. For me, life didn’t really take off until my seventy-first year when I pulled together what courage I had and stepped onto that train to go help my brother take care of my sister-in-law while she had the chemo. It was a hard thing to leave everything I’d ever known and go to Texas, but I did it. Now Evan says if I’ll marry him we can travel the river together on a little houseboat he bought after he retired. He wants us to live part of the time on the river in his houseboat and part of the time here in my little house. I ain’t said yes yet, but I’m surely studying hard on it. Evan say
s not to study too long because we got us a lot of living to do.

  Jerri Lynn says if we get married she wants to make the wedding cake. The girl has been studying a YouTube video on cake decorating and she’s getting real good at it. I guess maybe it wouldn’t be too bad to travel outside of South Shore, Kentucky after all. Especially if I was on the river with Evan, and especially when I can always come back home for a spell. He says he’s got a great-grandbaby fixing to come along pretty soon. A little boy. I bought me some fluffy blue yarn yesterday.

  Imagine. Me. Who never had a child of my own getting a chance to be grandmother to twelve and a great-grandmother, too.

  I’ve changed my mind since Evan showed up. It does pay to travel outside of Kentucky every now and again. In fact, sometimes it pays off real good.

  Also by Serena B Miller

  The Doreen Sizemore Adventures

  Murder On The Texas Eagle (Book 1)

  Murder At The Buckstaff Bathhouse (Book 2)

  Murder At Slippery Slop Youth Camp (Book 3)

  Murder On The Mississippi Queen (Book 4)

  Murder On The Mystery Mansion (Book 5)

  The Accidental Adventures of Doreen Sizemore (5 Book Collection)

  Love’s Journey Series

  Love’s Journey in Sugarcreek: The Sugar Haus Inn (Book 1)

  Love’s Journey in Sugarcreek: Rachel’s Rescue (Book 2)

  Michigan Northwoods Historical Romance

  The Measure of Katie Calloway (Book 1)

  Under a Blackberry Moon (Book 2)

  A Promise to Love (Book 3)

  Uncommon Grace Series

  An Uncommon Grace (Book 1)

  Hidden Mercies (Book 2)

  Fearless Hope (Book 3)

  Uncategorized

  A Way of Escape

  More Than Happy: The Wisdom of Amish Parenting