Murder on the Ballot

by Elizabeth Spann Craig

  “Yes, and we spoke to him on the way back. He says that Dusty dropped him by the store to pick up soup for supper before taking him back home last night.”

  Wanda asked, “Could he have come back to town?”

  Myrtle shook her head. “Not without some sort of help. His car is in the shop and he lives even more remotely than you do, Wanda. And that’s really saying something. He’s either lying about having gone home or he got a ride back to town. I hardly think Dusty would have been in the mood to do that much driving back and forth, even if Foley has been helpful.”

  Miles said, “Foley also managed to contradict Scotty’s account of where he was last night.”

  Myrtle sighed. “It’s all very vexing. Scotty says he was working late last night and went to his mother’s house to collect some things he’d left there. He said she was sound asleep. However, Foley says he saw Scotty leaving the barbeque restaurant in the early evening when Dusty was driving him to buy soup for dinner.”

  “You could check it,” said Wanda in her grating drawl.

  Miles said, “Wanda’s right. You could call up the barbeque restaurant and confirm that Scotty actually worked late last night.”

  “All right. I think I’ll do that. I can always just hang up if I get Scotty on the line.”

  Miles said, “They may think you’re being really nosy, though.”

  Myrtle snorted. “They won’t think twice about it. That’s one of the very best things about being an octogenarian. Everyone just thinks you’re a crazy old lady . . . but completely innocuous.”

  In fact, Myrtle decided to use her best little old lady voice when she called the barbeque restaurant. When a young woman picked up, she said, “Hi . . . I was in just a little while ago eating a late lunch and had such a nice conversation with that lovely young man, Scotty. I was thinking maybe I could do that again.”

  The young woman, perhaps thinking Myrtle sounded a little lonely, said cheerfully, “Of course you could, darlin’.”

  “Could you let me know when his shifts were?” asked Myrtle in her most elderly sounding, tremulous voice.

  The young woman consulted a calendar and then rattled off a list of upcoming shifts.

  “That’s very helpful,” said Myrtle sweetly. “Oh, and I thought I saw Scotty out last night, but I wasn’t sure it was him. I waved at him, but he didn’t wave back. I do feel foolish when I wave at the wrong person. Could you tell me what his shift last night was, just to relieve my mind?”

  “Sure, sugar. He worked an early shift yesterday. Got off right before the dinner rush started up.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Myrtle. “You’ve been most helpful.”

  “Are you his granny?” asked the young woman with some interest.

  “Oh no, no. Just a friend of his mother’s.” Myrtle hung up quickly before any other questions might crop up. “I have the feeling she might be telling Scotty that I called.”

  Miles shrugged. “You didn’t identify yourself.”

  Myrtle snorted. “I believe he’ll be able to figure it out.”

  There was a knock on the door and Myrtle glanced in that direction in surprise. “Visitors? I was thinking we’d just hang out and watch Tomorrow’s Promise.”

  “It’s Puddin,” said Wanda.

  Myrtle, walking toward the door, turned to give Wanda a look of admiration. “Your psychic skills are really helpful, Wanda.”

  Wanda drawled, “Naw. I just heard Dusty’s truck. An’ Dusty wouldn’t be helpin’ with the gnomes.”

  “Excellent point.” Myrtle opened the door and sure enough a sour-looking Puddin stood slouching on the front porch.

  “I wasn’t really expecting to see you today,” said Myrtle. “But I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, either.”

  Puddin turned and picked up a large tote bag that was full of cleaners.

  Myrtle gaped at it. “You mean you actually brought your own cleaners?”

  Puddin shrugged a shoulder, her dour, pale face wearing a most annoyed expression. Dusty gave the horn a gentle honk and Puddin waved him off, angrily and stomped inside the house. Dusty, being ensured Puddin was inside, drove away, his engine . . . indeed, the entire truck . . . clanging and thumping.

  Puddin slapped the tote bag onto Myrtle’s coffee table and gave the assembled group a belligerent look.

  Myrtle said, “I’m going to guess that Dusty put you up to this today.”

  Puddin raised her chin but didn’t say anything.

  “Sworn to secrecy, are you? I have the feeling that the fact I collected Foley for gnome duty rattled Dusty. He wants to make sure that I realize the value in my current yard and housekeeping crew.”

  Puddin looked sullen, but didn’t dispute this.

  Myrtle, however, had ways of making Puddin talk. “I will say that Foley has been most helpful. He’s provided all sorts of information that have helped me with these murder cases.”

  Now Puddin looked even more irritated. She was the one who liked to have information. “Foley’s not all-that,” she hissed.

  “I’ll tell you how you can be helpful, Puddin. You can actually put a little elbow-grease into your cleaning. When you left last time, there was still a lot of mess to be cleaned up. In fact, I’m not at all sure that you didn’t cause some of the mess in the process of trying to clean it up. I was seriously thinking that hiring your cousin Bitsy might be worth exploring.”

  Puddin narrowed her eyes. “Bitsy’s too pricey.”

  “Yes, but people pay her price because she does a good job and she’s reliable,” said Myrtle. “As long as one can overlook the fact that Bitsy is a terrible gossip.”

  Puddin said spitefully, “Bitsy’s gonna price herself out of a job.”

  “I suppose some people will pay for quality,” said Myrtle. “Not everyone is on a retired teacher’s budget.”

  Puddin’s expression was dark but then suddenly brightened and she looked smug. “I know sumthin’ Bitsy tole me. About Jenny Rollins.”

  Miles asked, “Bitsy works for Jenny?”

  Puddin beamed at him. “She does. An’ she tole me that Jenny is done broke up to pieces.”

  “All right. Well, there are different ways of being broken-up. Is she referring to physical or psychological or emotional issues?” asked Myrtle.

  Puddin looked at her with dislike. “That Jenny is cryin’ a lot. All the time. Bitsy’s been runnin’ the vacuum all the time so she don’t have to hear it when she’s there.”

  Myrtle frowned. “That’s rather surprising. She seems so very calm and pulled-together when she’s in public.”

  “Hides it well,” croaked Wanda.

  Puddin suddenly switched her attention over to Wanda. “You been watchin’ them game shows we was lookin’ at?”

  Wanda nodded. “Sometimes.”

  Puddin said, “I still think you need to go on one of them. You’d make money—bein’ a witch an’ all.”

  Myrtle grated, “She’s not a witch, Puddin. She has psychic powers. There’s a huge difference. Now, if you’ve come to clean, maybe you’d better get to it.”

  Puddin walked toward the closet that held the vacuum and Myrtle said, “But don’t vacuum first. We want to watch our show.”

  Miles, as usual, flinched at the mention of the soap opera although he’d expressed interest to Myrtle earlier in seeing one of the weird love triangles on the show resolved.

  Myrtle got out the remote, turned on the television, and started up the recording. Wanda curled up on the sofa with Pasha, who had leapt through the kitchen window and sought her out. Miles pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked as if he might be trying really hard to pay attention to the soap opera so that he wouldn’t miss anything.

  Ten minutes into the show, Myrtle looked behind her to see Puddin leaning in the kitchen doorway, blatantly watching the soap opera. “I’m not paying you to watch TV!” fussed Myrtle.

  “Done in the kitchen,” said Puddin in a sullen voice.
/>   “Then clean up my fridge. It doesn’t have a lot of food in it right now, so it should be a pretty easy job.” Then Myrtle turned back around and became absorbed in the show.

  After it wrapped up, Myrtle sat looking thoughtfully at the television. “That was really thought-provoking.”

  “I never considered this particular program very thought-provoking,” said Miles. “It’s mostly good for entertainment value.”

  “On the contrary, I think it’s quite educational,” said Myrtle.

  Wanda gave her a perceptive look and nodded her head.

  “See? Wanda gets it,” said Myrtle.

  Miles looked baffled. “Gets what? What sort of insights are you deriving from this soap opera? All I got out of it was that having multiple affairs at once can lead to a lot of complications in your life.”

  “Love,” croaked Wanda.

  “Exactly,” said Myrtle, beaming at Wanda. “The show is about love.”

  Miles furrowed his brows. “All right. I don’t think it’s about love as an ideal, though. It’s a bit more tabloid-like than that.”

  “Yes, but underlying everything is love. Different types of love. And that’s what we’re looking at with this case, isn’t it?”

  Miles said slowly, “I suppose so. There’s Cindy. I can’t quite figure her out. Who did she really love—Preston, the football hero who later became her husband? Or Royce, who she dated in high school and later engaged in an affair with?”

  “That’s easy. She loves both of them. Her heart is big enough. But now, she’s full of guilt and she’s lost both men,” said Myrtle.

  “Workin’ a lot,” said Wanda.

  “Well, that’s good. I was wondering what she was going to do now. Maybe work can help her make it through this time,” said Myrtle. “But that’s not the only love story going on with these murders.”

  Miles offered, “Jenny? We heard she had a very protective approach to Royce and Puddin just said she’s been very upset over Royce’s death.”

  “Precisely. She obviously cared a lot about Royce. But I don’t think that excludes her from killing him if she was really upset when finding about his affair with Cindy. It could have been one of those things where she found out about it, lashed out, and spontaneously pushed Royce down the stairs. Maybe one of the reasons she’s so upset about Royce’s death now is because she feels guilty.”

  Miles said, “What about Preston? He’s the one I can’t really figure out in this whole mess. I keep thinking that everything would have been explained with Royce’s death if Preston wasn’t a victim. Then it would have been nice and neat—we’d have known that Preston killed Royce because he was furious that Royce was having an affair with Preston’s wife. But with Preston dead, it doesn’t make sense.”

  Myrtle said, “I really hate to say this, but I keep thinking that Erma must know something. I know when I spoke to her on the phone that she sounded clueless but maybe now that a little time has passed, she might realize she knows something important.”

  Miles groaned and even Wanda made a face. Miles said, “Erma so rarely does.”

  “I know, but this time it really might be different. Perhaps I should go over there.” Myrtle squared her shoulders as if facing an attack.

  Wanda croaked, “Maybe you should have a way to git outta there fast.”

  “An excuse perhaps. Or maybe an excuse to get over there and then get out.” Myrtle snapped her fingers. “A casserole! I could bring her a casserole.”

  Miles frowned. “One of your casseroles-for-the-grieving? But she’s not grief-stricken.”

  “This time it will be a sorry-there-was-a-body-in-your-yard-casserole.” Myrtle walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge door and her pantry for inspiration. “Unfortunately, the cupboards are looking rather bare. I’m not sure Puddin did a great job wiping down the fridge, even so.”

  Puddin, apparently listening in to everything from a distance, hollered from the direction of the bedrooms, “I done a good job!”

  Myrtle perused the choices, ignoring Puddin completely. “I suppose I could do a cream-of-something soup and a selection of vegetables. I could call it vegetable pie.”

  Miles looked rather stricken at this.

  “I’ll just throw it together real quick. It’ll be done in forty-five minutes. You two can find something else to do, can’t you?”

  Miles obediently tackled the Sudoku in the newspaper. Wanda started playing solitaire. Myrtle preheated the oven and then opened some canned vegetables, drained some of them and forgot to drain others, mixed them in a casserole dish along with a can of cream of celery soup, and stuck it into the oven.

  Later, the pungent aroma indicated the casserole was done. Myrtle pulled it out of the oven and Miles and Wanda walked over to take a look at it.

  “Maybe I should even call it modified shepherd’s pie,” said Myrtle.

  “What did you throw in there?” asked Miles, looking at the casserole distrustfully.

  “Whatever I had in the kitchen. Creamed corn, canned beans of various sorts, some diced tomatoes. Carrots, I think.” Myrtle shrugged. The point of the exercise, to Myrtle, hadn’t been what was going in, the point was filling up the dish with various vegetables.

  “Maybe some cheese on top?” asked Wanda.

  “Good idea,” said Myrtle. She couldn’t find her shredded cheddar so substituted some Swiss cheese slices she found in a drawer in the fridge. She laid them on top of the dish and stuck it back in the oven for a few minutes.

  When it was done, Myrtle asked, “Does anyone want to go over to Erma’s with me?”

  Miles shuddered and shook his head. Wanda reluctantly said, “I’ll go if you want me to.”

  Myrtle sighed. “No, it’s fine. I don’t know why I thought anyone would want to go there. Anyway, if we all go, it may be harder to extricate ourselves. Erma is so very nosy.”

  Miles and Wanda shared a surreptitious look. Myrtle was rather nosy, herself.

  So Myrtle placed the casserole in a tote bag and walked bravely across the lawn to Erma’s house. She knocked firmly on the door before she could back out.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  There was a small shriek from inside and then a trembling hand pushed the blinds to the side to peer cautiously out the window. Myrtle gave a small wave and managed a smile.

  Erma swung the door open wide. “Goodness, Myrtle, you about scared the life out of me.”

  “By knocking on the door?” Myrtle walked inside.

  “Yes! Well, you can imagine I’m on edge after what happened with Preston.” Erma sat down on her sofa, pushing a variety of medical-related looking devices out of the way and covering herself up with a large, bright-pink blanket. Then she stared at the bag in Myrtle’s hands. “Ooh. Did you bring something for me?”

  Myrtle set the tote bag down on Erma’s coffee table on top of a stack of very old-looking magazines. “Yes. It’s a vegetable pie. Sort of a modified shepherd’s pie.”

  Erma said, “Well, thanks. I’ll have to try it later.”

  Myrtle didn’t want to get into one of Erma’s extended health-related conversations, but she did feel that all of the medical paraphernalia perhaps needed to be addressed. “Are you feeling all right?” she asked, gesturing at the collective equipment.

  Erma’s eyes lit up at the opportunity to jump into her favorite subject. “Oh, I’m sort of poorly. It’s one reason why I dropped out of the campaign, Myrtle. The doctor said it’s the stress—I’m sure you can understand. Can you imagine the horror of finding a body out in your backyard? And then the realization that the body was probably there in the first place to attack you?” Erma shuddered and grabbed a large pill bottle, shaking out a couple of capsules and washing them down with a large glass of water. She glanced back at Myrtle. “I guess you’ll be the new town councilwoman.”

  Myrtle shook her head. “No. No, I dropped out, too.”

  Erma gave her a wide, delighted, toothy grin. “Really? Did you? Was that to
show solidarity?”

  “Oh, I guess it was for a variety of reasons. One of them was that once Tippy started running for the open spot, I decided she’d do a fine job.”

  Erma nodded solemnly. “I didn’t realize she’d become a candidate.”

  Myrtle said, “I did want to check up on you and bring you some food, of course, but I also wanted to see if you’d thought of anything that might be helpful in catching the perpetrator. Have you come up with anything that might give us a lead? Or have you spoken to anyone who could shed a little light on any of this?”

  Erma wrinkled her brow. “No, and it’s all I can think about. I keep running over and over in my head what happened after the debate. Then I start thinking about Preston in my yard and whether I saw or heard anything that would help. But I can’t.”

  Erma, like Puddin, also liked being someone who knew things. This, of course, was likely the entire reason she ended up with a body in her backyard. If she hadn’t been bragging about knowing information, no one would have tried to eliminate her.

  Myrtle gritted her teeth in a grin. “You haven’t had any glimmers of an idea? You were there at the town hall when Royce was killed. Has anything about that night occurred to you?”

  Erma looked as if she very badly wanted to say yes. Then she slowly shook her head. “Nope. Not a thing. But Myrtle, it was pouring cats and dogs and I was really focused on just that one thing—my medic alert bracelet. I didn’t know there was a killer running around.” Then she looked pleased with herself as if something had suddenly come to mind. She added in that smug voice of someone who knows something, “But guess who I did talk to? No, you’ll never guess! It was Cindy Cook.”

  As hard as Myrtle tried not to be obviously surprised by anything Erma said since it only encouraged her, this did surprise her. “Did you go see Cindy?”

  “No, of course not! Go to the house of someone who tried to kill me? Even if he’s dead now, there’s no way I would do that.” Erma gave a shudder that shook her jowls around. “Cindy came to see me.”

  “Why would she do that?” asked Myrtle.