Edit to Death

by Elizabeth Spann Craig

  Miles said, “He wasn’t actually abusive, though, right—or was he?”

  Edward said, “Well, he wasn’t kind. Pearl would be all gussied up for a Christmas party or some other occasion and Hubert would hoot about the fact that Pearl wasn’t a fashion model. He just wasn’t much of a husband and Nell would tell Pearl to leave him and to live with her. But Pearl would stand up for Hubert.”

  Miles said, “Your first instinct was that Rose would be the most likely suspect in her mother’s death. But could Hubert have shoved Pearl down the stairs?”

  Edward immediately shook his head. “Hubert isn’t a physical man. Like I said, his normal pose is slouching on a sofa in front of a television. I can’t see him acting out that way.” He picked up his check. “Now, if y’all will excuse me, I have some stuff that I need to do. Thanks for eating with me.” The last was said in an uncertain tone as if the lunch hadn’t been exactly what he’d expected.

  Myrtle frowned at him as he walked away. “He sure is throwing suspicion on everyone but himself. And yet he’s the only one who we’ve heard was angry when Pearl announced that the book was finished. There’s more to that story.”

  Miles said dryly, “Well, unless we’re going to run after him and interrogate him, our conversation is over with.”

  Myrtle snorted. “He said he had ‘stuff’ he needed to do. I bet when we leave he’ll be camped out again on that bench out front with a fresh coffee.”

  “Regardless, he’s done with us for now. And I’d like to get out of here, myself. There are more people coming in, which means a whole fresh assortment of germs.” Miles was gazing at the door with concern as a large family with several children came in.

  They paid their bills and walked out of the diner. Sure enough, Edward was sitting on the bench, talking to a couple of old men.

  “Typical,” hissed Myrtle as they climbed into the car.

  Chapter Eleven

  MILES SAID IN A HOPEFUL voice, “You’re dropping me off at home, right?”

  “But I’m having such a good time driving! I feel like there’s more work I can do on this case, too.”

  Miles said, “We’ve spoken to everyone, Myrtle. Everyone who’s associated with the family has told us where they were, their relationship with Pearl, and who they think might have killed her. We’ve earned the opportunity to rest for a while.”

  Myrtle snapped her fingers. “I just thought of something. We should go to the newspaper office and read up on the old papers from when Tara Blanton disappeared. Maybe that will help jog my memory.”

  “Why can’t we just go home and read up on it online?” asked Miles.

  Myrtle said, “Do you really believe that Sloan Jones has scanned all of those old papers and made them available online? You wildly overestimate his work ethic. Speaking of, considering what I saw yesterday, I should make sure that he’s working on tomorrow’s edition.”

  Miles said, “You mean he hasn’t had a student intern scan old papers? Or a part-time worker? All of that stuff should surely be online by now.”

  “Welcome to Bradley,” said Myrtle with a sniff.

  Myrtle drove the very short distance to the newspaper office and parked in front. When she and Miles walked in, Sloan was so deep in thought that he didn’t even react.

  “He’s in a bad way,” murmured Miles. “He wasn’t even startled when you walked in. He always jumps when he sees you.”

  They walked over closer to Sloan, who was at the far end of the dimly lit newsroom.

  Myrtle said crisply, “Are you all right? I feel the sudden need to follow up and make sure that the next edition of the newspaper is ready to go to press.”

  Sloan nodded. “It’s ready. Don’t worry—you made your point last time. And you’re absolutely right that the readers should get their newspaper every day.”

  Myrtle said, “Well, that is a relief since I don’t really have the energy right now to produce an entire newspaper with you at the end of the day today. But I do need something from you . . . some back issues of the paper.”

  Sloan nodded his head toward a mass of papers in a haphazard stack on a shelf. “Those are from the last two months.”

  “No, I mean real back issues, from when you were in high school and weren’t working here. Where would those be?” asked Myrtle.

  Sloan said, “Those will be on microfiche, Miss Myrtle. Sure you want to go back that far?” He sounded hopeful that she would give up and leave the newsroom altogether so that he could be alone with his melancholy again.

  “Where is the microfiche reader?” asked Myrtle, narrowing her eyes as she surveyed the chaos of the newsroom.

  Sloan sighed as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. He stood up and unerringly walked to a back corner of the newsroom. Somehow, although this space was always the picture of pandemonium, Sloan always seemed to know where everything was. You could ask him for a printed photo from ten years ago and he’d go right to a teetering stack and find it buried within.

  Sloan proceeded to excavate a heap of old equipment—computer monitors from the eighties, desktops from the nineties—and pull out a contraption old enough to make the ancient computers look relevant. “Here you go.” He carried it over to a table, shoved aside papers and a box containing pens, rubber bands, and paper clips and plugged in the machine.

  “Remember how to work one of these beauties?” asked Sloan in the tone of someone who really didn’t want to provide instruction.

  “I can figure it out. I’ve used microfiche before,” said Myrtle. Decades ago, but still.

  Miles said, “Where are the archived newspapers on microfiche?”

  Sloan showed them a cabinet, also obscured by old technology, that had deep drawers containing boxes of dated film. “You should find everything here,” he said. Although he sounded rather doubtful. He walked back to the other side of the newsroom to continue whatever it was that he’d been doing.

  Myrtle and Miles spent the next fifteen minutes figuring out the filing system for the archived stories and finding the year they were looking for.

  Myrtle fiddled with the microfiche reader for about fifteen minutes more until she found the headline she was looking for. “Here we are,” she breathed.

  Myrtle and Miles were silent for a while as they read the story. Myrtle sat back and shook her head. “What a terrible time.”

  Miles said, “Well, at least we have a date and some more information.” He glanced over at Sloan, slumped over the desk. “Would he mind if I used some of his paper and a pen to jot down notes?”

  “Heavens, no!” said Myrtle with a snort. “Look at this place. You could bring in a forklift and remove paper and pens and he’d never even notice. In fact, a forklift is probably what this room needs.”

  Miles carefully chose a notebook and a pen from a nearby desk and wrote the date of Tara Blanton’s disappearance. “This is all new to me,” he murmured.

  “It’s been so long that it’s almost as if I’m reading about it for the first time, myself. What are you writing?” asked Myrtle.

  Miles cleared his throat. “That Tara Blanton, aged 15, was an active and popular girl at her school. That she was a good student and cared about her grades.”

  Myrtle nodded. “That’s all true. She was a cheerleader and an academic, to boot. That’s what struck me as so odd. Runaways aren’t ordinarily girls who have lots of friends and are conscientious about grades and showing up for their activities. Everyone just assumed that she’d left home because murder just didn’t happen in Bradley.”

  Miles raised his eyebrows. “From what I’ve seen, it happens fairly regularly.” He glanced back again at the old article and then said, “She left her house one afternoon and didn’t return. But the paper points out that she didn’t take a suitcase or anything with her.”

  Myrtle said, “As I recall, they thought she might have had an accident. They did search the lake.”

  Miles nodded. “Which the story mentions. But it a
lso raises the question of why she would have even been at the lake. It wasn’t a nice day, and it was wintertime. She wasn’t wearing a swimsuit and hadn’t told anyone that she had plans to swim or go boating.”

  Myrtle nodded. “I’d always wondered exactly how she would have run away. She was only fifteen years old. She couldn’t drive a car by herself and even if she could, her parents’ cars were still at their house.”

  “Bus?” asked Miles.

  “The nearest bus stop is in the next town over,” said Myrtle.

  Miles said, “Maybe one of her friends gave her a lift to the bus stop?”

  Myrtle said, “She would have had friends who could drive. But I find it hard to believe that one of them would drive her to the bus stop, drop her off, and then never give the police or her family any information about Tara’s whereabouts. I mean, her parents were frantic. I can’t imagine that a teenager would want them to be that way when they knew she was safe.”

  Miles said, “But maybe they were scared to give information. Maybe they thought they’d get into trouble. These were teens, so they might not have been thinking all that clearly.”

  Myrtle shrugged. “But those kids were all very tight. It was a very loyal friend group. I just don’t see it.”

  “Maybe she hitched a ride?”

  Myrtle made a face. “No one really hitchhiked back then. No, I think Wanda’s right.”

  Miles frowned. “Wanda said something about it?”

  “Oh, that’s right; you weren’t there. Wanda said Tara Blanton didn’t run away. The implication is that she was murdered,” said Myrtle.

  Miles looked agitated . . . either because of the possibility of yet another victim or because the mention of Wanda had reminded him of her prediction for him (that he had somehow forgotten since he arrived at the newsroom). “Aren’t you going to let Red know?”

  “I’ve already mentioned Tara Blanton to Red, mostly because he knew her growing up. They are all the same age. But can you see me telling Red that Wanda the psychic says that the girl never left town? He’d probably think that Wanda was somehow either involved in her disappearance or that she knew something about it,” said Myrtle.

  “And you don’t think she does?” asked Miles.

  “Not like Red suspects. Wanda wasn’t at school with them. She would never have known Tara. Anything that Wanda knows, it’s because of her . . . talent.” Myrtle was aware that Miles started getting uncomfortable if the conversation veered too much into Wanda’s unusual gift.

  Miles looked at the article one more time. “It says that some neighbors and other residents were questioned but no one had any information. And that the Blanton family claimed that they’d not had any sort of argument or disagreement with Tara before her disappearance.”

  “They must have spoken to the Epps family when they were asking questions. Tara was always over at that house to see Rose,” said Myrtle. She removed the microfiche film and turned off the reader. “That’s probably all we’ll get from the paper. After all, it was the lack of information that made the police assume Tara had run away.” She called out to Sloan as they headed to the door, “I’ll have another news story about the Epps murder soon.”

  Sloan raised a hand in response and then continued gazing morosely at his phone.

  Myrtle grumbled as she and Miles walked out the door, “We’re going to have to do something about Sloan. Maybe I can help find him someone else to date.” She brightened. “I suppose there’s always Rose.”

  Miles knit his brows. “I certainly hope you’re talking about another Rose. A Rose who isn’t an emotional disaster and a suspect in a murder inquiry.”

  Myrtle said, “Oh, she’s not that bad. She simply needs someone to distract her.”

  “Distract her from what?” asked Miles.

  “Life in general,” said Myrtle with a shrug. “She needs a better companion than all of those dogs, cute as they are.”

  Miles said, “Let’s put that off until we figure out what’s going on with the Epps family. Apart from the gratuitous matchmaking, what are our plans next?”

  “I want to get back home and feed Pasha. She’s probably waiting on the front step now and I couldn’t leave the windows open because Red would have had a hissy fit. But tomorrow morning, we should see Nell again,” said Myrtle.

  Miles held onto the door as Myrtle drove off. “Don’t you need to drop this car off at the dealership? I could follow you over there.”

  “Nope! Boone doesn’t care—he just wants to sell the car. I’ll park it at home tonight and then we can go by the dealership and trade it out for another vehicle tomorrow.” Myrtle had a smug smile on her face. “Red’s brain will be boggled when I park different cars in my driveway every night.”

  “Getting back to Nell. How are we supposed to make this visit a natural thing?” asked Miles.

  Myrtle pulled into his driveway. “Easy. I’ll go back to collect my cassoulet dish.”

  “But it’ll have only been 24 hours, Myrtle. She may not even have eaten the thing yet,” said Miles.

  Myrtle shrugged. “Then maybe she’ll feel awkward about that. That’s not really my problem.”

  “Or maybe she’ll think you’re a little crazy and pushy,” suggested Miles.

  “That will be her own misguided issue, then. At any rate, I have a real excuse. But let’s get there early,” said Myrtle.

  Miles said, “Sure. That way we can wake her up as well as force her to clean out a full dish.”

  “I merely want to get more information on her relationship with Edward and if she thinks he lost his temper and shoved her sister,” said Myrtle with a sniff. “You’re acting as if I’m doing some horrible thing when I’m only trying to help Nell by finding out what happened to her sister.”

  “Right,” said Miles with an eye roll. “Okay, well let me know when you’re ready to head out tomorrow.”

  “I’ll text you,” said Myrtle.

  After feeding Pasha, who was indeed at her door and looking reproachfully at her when she arrived, Myrtle surprised herself by actually falling asleep and sleeping through the entire night. Usually there would be ordinary, regular noises that would disturb her slumber: a dripping faucet somewhere or a dog barking at intervals outside, or even the air conditioning turning on and off. But on that particular night, she slept like the proverbial dead.

  When the morning light came through her window, it startled her enough to wake her up fully. “What on earth?” muttered Myrtle. She wasn’t sure when she’d last slept through the night. Maybe when she’d been a teen.

  She texted Miles and got no response. “For heaven’s sake,” she hissed. It certainly wasn’t the break of dawn.

  Myrtle finished getting ready and then looked for ways to kill time while she waited. She ended up attacking her junk drawer in her kitchen. She found that she had way more junk in the drawer than she’d remembered. Apparently, anything that she’d come across that she wasn’t sure exactly what its purpose was, she’d flung into the drawer to deal with later.

  Finally, her phone rang. “Hello? Miles?” she asked impatiently. She glanced at the mess on her counter from the junk drawer. She’d just have to address it later.

  There was a sigh from the other end. “At some point yesterday, I must have encountered a germ. I don’t feel so hot, Myrtle.”

  Myrtle frowned. “What are your symptoms?”

  There was a pause. Then he said, “Malaise.”

  “That sounds less like a symptom and more like you just don’t want to get out of bed this morning,” said Myrtle suspiciously.

  Miles said, “There may be other symptoms too that just haven’t manifested themselves yet.”

  “Well, let’s not give them a chance to. We’ll head on out and get our stuff done and you’ll be so busy that you’ll forget all about your malaise,” said Myrtle briskly. “We won’t be gone too long.”

  Forty-five minutes later, a rather sullen Miles showed up at Myrtle’s door. “All s
et?” asked Myrtle. “Let’s head on over.”

  Then it was just a few minutes more when Myrtle knocked on Nell’s door.

  Miles said, “Perhaps she’s sleeping. People do that sometimes.”

  Myrtle ignored the sarcasm. “But I don’t think Nell does; at least not all that much. Her car is here.” She pressed on the doorbell.

  “Maybe the doorbell doesn’t work,” suggested Miles.

  “But then she’d surely hear the pounding on the door,” said Myrtle.

  Miles sighed. “The poor woman could be in the shower or something. Come on, Myrtle. Let’s just try again later. Maybe next time we can call before we come.”

  But Myrtle was shaking her head. “I’m not getting a good feeling about this.” She reached out and turned the doorknob. The door opened.

  Miles balked. “We shouldn’t go in. She’s not expecting us and it’s still rather early.”

  “It’s nine o’clock! Practically the middle of the day. I’m going to check on Nell,” said Myrtle.

  Miles hovered on the doorstep as Myrtle pushed the door and walked into the house. “I’m hanging back here. I have no intention of catching Nell in a state of dishabille.”

  Myrtle ignored him. “Nell!” she bellowed. “Nell, it’s Myrtle Clover! I’m here for my cassoulet dish!” She turned around. “You’re safe, Miles. Nell may be many things, but she isn’t deaf.”

  Miles reluctantly entered the darkness of Nell’s front room.

  Myrtle was already heading deeper into the house. “Nell!”

  Then there was a long pause.

  Miles said, “Everything okay, Myrtle?”