Angel at Troublesome Creek (15 page)

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Authors: Mignon F. Ballard

BOOK: Angel at Troublesome Creek
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“Ow! Goddamn it, Mary George, I just want to talk!” Todd Burkholder snatched away his injured digit. I had managed to shove him outside, but he blocked my way back in. To say that my heart raced would be an understatement. I didn’t know hearts could beat that fast—I don’t know why I didn’t pass out.
Maybe because I was mad. “You’ve picked a hell of a way to go about it,” I said. “What in the world is the matter with you? Can’t you understand? We have nothing to talk about.”
For the first time I noticed his car in the deep shadows at the far end of the yard, partially screened from view by the overgrown crape myrtles beside the driveway. Todd had parked it at the top of a slight slope facing the street—for a quick getaway, I supposed.
I forced myself to space my breathing, to speak evenly. I had to get rid of him. “Look, Todd,” I said. “Why don’t you come by the clinic one day next week? We can talk there if you want, but this is not the time or the place. It’s late—and frankly, you frightened me.”
“I did?” I think he smiled. Again his hand tightened on my arm. I had a sickening feeling I had said the wrong thing.
That did it. “Damn it, go away! I never want to see you again. Get lost, asshole!” I shoved against him with all my strength, but I might as well have been pushing on a stone wall.
And then I heard it: the deliberate grinding of gravel, the sound of a car beginning to roll. Todd’s car. Slowly it began to inch down the driveway, sideswiping a shrub along the way. Pine cones crunched beneath the tires.
Unfortunately he didn’t seem to notice. “Excuse me,” I said in as loud a voice as I could muster, “but isn’t that your car?”
“Oh, my God!” Todd Burkholder vaulted from the stoop and took off running while I squeezed inside and double locked the door.
“Mary George Murphy, there’s just no excuse for such filthy language!” Augusta Goodnight said beside me.
And then I could have sworn she laughed.
 
T
he next day I found out that somebody had run down Bonita Moody that night in her church parking lot, and she was lying in a coma over at Culpeper General with extensive internal injuries.
I should have guessed something had happened because it took the police over an hour to check out my complaint about Todd the night before, and even then the man they sent was filling in for somebody else.
By then, of course, Todd the clod was long gone, and the investigating officer (and I use that term loosely), seemed to think I was seeking revenge after a lover’s spat. I could swear out an injunction, he said, although it didn’t look like I’d suffered any bodily harm. Yawning, he told me there was a law now against stalking that might keep my “boyfriend” at a distance, and if I’d come down to the station he was sure they’d be glad to take care of it for me.
By then it was so late I could barely keep my eyes open, so I told him I’d be there tomorrow. After all, Todd had scurried off like a roach in the kitchen light, and I had my very own guardian angel for the remainder of the evening.
But then I didn’t know yet about Bonita.
I heard it first from Fronie Temple who learned about it at church. I had slept late that morning—in spite of Augusta’s little tuneful reminders. I’d heard her humming as she puttered about the living room, but it took me a while to identify the song as “The Little Brown Church in the Wildwood.” Augusta’s not always on key.
Anyway, I must’ve dozed through several stanzas before the smell of coffee brewing finally lured me out of bed, and I was outside getting the Sunday paper when Fronie pulled into her garage. I heard her car door slam and turned to find her trailing after me down the drive, face all flushed, oversized crocheted handbag dangling from one arm.
“Worst thing!” she said breathlessly. “Some woman was just about killed last night right there in the parking lot at Rising Star Church of the Lamb—you know, out on the old Charlotte Highway. They said she’d gone there to practice the piano. Now, I ask you, where can a person be safe if not in her
own church?”
“Apparently not in the parking lot,” I said, hoping no one could see me standing there in my short summer pajamas. And then a little warning bell tolled in my head.
She had gone there to practice the piano
. “Do you remember who it was?” I asked.
Fronie shifted her purse and frowned. “Why, yes, I believe it was that same woman you asked me about, Mary George. Used to take piano lessons from Caroline. Happened after dark. Whoever hit her just drove off, they said—probably some dope dealers from out of town. Doubt if they’ll ever catch them now.” And my landlady shook her head until a yellow curl slipped over one eye.
I knew it wouldn’t be long until Delia reported in, and sure enough, the phone rang about fifteen minutes later. Bonita had been in surgery for over three hours, she told me, and had been given several units of blood. The ministers in the community had issued an appeal on Bonita’s behalf, Delia said, to replace the blood she’d used, and I couldn’t think of any reason—except an intense dislike of needles—why I shouldn’t donate some of my own.
Also, it might give me an opportunity to find out just how Bonita’s domineering husband had reacted to her “accident.” It seemed a little too much of a coincidence to me that this awful thing should happen just after I heard him reading her the riot act at the picnic a couple of days before. Bonita Moody was afraid of something, and I was pretty sure I knew what—or who—it was.
 
 
Ray Moody was either on the verge of a nervous breakdown or he was a darn good actor. I found him pacing the corridor outside his wife’s hospital room while nurses changed her linen. I wore an adhesive bandage on my arm and a bright sticker that said Be Nice to Me—I Gave Blood Today! I’d had a doughnut and a carton of milk and felt just fine.
But Ray Moody didn’t, or at least he didn’t look fine. He looked awful. His eyes were puffy and red rimmed in a white, drawn face, and when I stopped to introduce myself I could see my words didn’t register. At first.
“What was your name again?” he asked, stopping to lean against the pale green corridor wall. The man looked as if he hadn’t slept in a year. I had come here prepared to blame him for what happened to Bonita. Now I wasn’t so sure.
“Mary George Murphy,” I repeated. “Your wife Bonita took—”
He nodded impatiently. “Piano lessons from your aunt.”
“How did you know? I thought—”
“What do you mean, ‘How did I know?’ Bonita told me.” Ray Moody glanced at the room behind him and came almost close to smiling. “Or, I should say she finally got around to telling me after that happened to your aunt. She’s a funny one, Bonita is … Lord, if I’d known she wanted to learn that bad, we could’ve worked it out somehow. I should’ve just gone on and gotten her a keyboard or something so she wouldn’t have to practice at the church.” Bonita Moody’s husband took out a wrinkled handkerchief and blew his nose. “That’s what she was doing over there, you know. Told me she wasn’t going to stay that late.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “How is she?”
Head down, he rubbed his eyes, then looked away. “It don’t look good, but they say she has a chance. If the preacher hadn’t come by about then to get the notes for his sermon, she probably wouldn’t even be alive. I think they meant to kill her.”
“Did he get a look at the car?”
“Yeah, but it went screeching past him in the dark, and he didn’t even see Bonita lying there until the car that hit her was gone. Says he thinks it was a Ford—gray, or maybe pale blue or white. Like I said, it was dark.”
Gray. The same color as Todd’s Mustang. And he’d left in a huff—actually more than a huff—just before Bonita was struck. But why would Todd want to hurt Bonita Moody?
The nurse came out and nodded to him, and Ray started to go back into the room. “Wait,” I said, and touched his arm. “I think your wife was afraid of something.”
There, I’d said it. I began to feel a little weak. Maybe from loss of blood; maybe from being chicken hearted. Or a little of both.
He frowned. “You’ve got that right. I told her she should’ve told somebody, but Bonita—well, she was scared to talk about it.”
“About what?” I asked.
Ray Moody led me aside, glanced behind him and whispered, “Look, Bonita didn’t quite tell you all the truth that day you come by. She had to change her lesson day because our Margo had a dentist’s appointment that Monday before your aunt died … . It was Bonita who found her body.”
I think I gasped. Somebody did. I knew someone had called for an ambulance because they reported my aunt hadn’t come to the door and they couldn’t get a response. It must have been Bonita Moody.
“But why was she afraid?” I asked.
“Because she thought she heard somebody in there that day. Somebody who didn’t want to be seen. The front door was unlocked, so she just come in like she usually did and yelled to let your aunt know she was there. She was already dead when Bonita found her.”
“Are you sure that’s all?”
Ray Moody paused at the door of his wife’s room. “That’s all she’ll admit to, but Bonita’s been acting mighty funny. I think she might’ve seen something too. And she forgets sometimes and talks about it—about finding her. I’m just afraid she might’ve mentioned it to the wrong person.”
“Aren’t you going to say something to the police? This might have had something to do with what happened in the parking lot. She shouldn’t be left alone.”
“Why do you think I’m still here? I’m just waiting for our minister to spell me so I can get a short nap. The police know all about it, but they think this was done by a teenager who’d had too much to drink.” Ray Moody shook his head and I felt so sorry for him, I tasted tears trickling into my throat. “They don’t pay much attention to the likes of me,” he said. “We’re just hoping they can find that car. The front of it oughta at least have a dent or two.”
 
 
On my way home from the hospital I stopped at the Troublesome Creek police station to file my complaint against Todd Burkholder. The local police department is housed in a scruffy red brick building behind the bus station that usually isn’t included on the town garden tour. I wasn’t looking forward to going there, but at least things seemed to be on the quiet side.
Until I got inside. I recognized the voice first. It belonged to Mr. Hildebrand, my high school algebra teacher, and he was not pleased.
“Aunt Alma’s going to be furious!” he thundered, marching back and forth in the front cubicle of an office. “And with good reason. Whoever’s responsible for this should be made to pay! She’s had that car three years and never put a scratch on it … . Now this.” He reached the end of this three-step pace and turned abruptly. “Of course she’s going to blame me. I was supposed to be keeping an eye on it while she was gone.” And Walter Hildebrand, usually straitlaced and always proper, said “
Shit
!” Said it loud. And on a Sunday afternoon.
I dodged just in time to keep from being seen and clamped a hand over my mouth. Imagine! The man was human after all.
“May I help you?” A female officer greeted me from behind a counter at the far end of the room. She frowned at me, then stared until I wondered if I’d done something wrong. “Mary George, is that you?” she asked, looking closer.
That voice. I knew that voice. “Pat?” I looked at her again. “You look great! I didn’t know you worked here.”
“Been a long time since high school,” she said. “Had to lose weight to pass the physical. I’m about thirty pounds lighter than when you last saw me.”
Pat Callaghan and I had played clarinet together in the high school band, and she’d been one of those people we’d predicted “would be really pretty if she’d just lose weight.” Well, she had lost weight, and Pat was a knockout.
“Do you know who that is in there?” I asked, pointing to the other room. In all the excitement, I’d forgotten for the moment why I’d come.
She laughed. “Old Starched Shorts himself! How could I forget? He’s been going at it for ten minutes.”
“What’s going on?”
She crooked her finger, motioning me closer. “You know about that hit-and-run in a church parking lot last night? Well, looks like the car involved belonged to Starched Shorts’s Aunt Alma. Mercury Cougar. Been in her garage for about a month now while the aunt was visiting her grandchildren up in Maine, and he was supposed to keep it running, take it out now and then.”
I nodded. “Only he didn’t.”
“Right!” Pat grinned. “Seems Walter didn’t do his homework. Auntie’s due home tomorrow, and when he went over there to check on the car after church today, he found the front dented and the Cougar covered in dust like it had been out in the country somewhere.”
Like to Hughes
? “Didn’t he have the key? How could anybody else drive it?” I asked.
“He thinks his aunt Alma kept an extra hidden under the floor mat.” Pat shrugged. “Looks like somebody else must’ve known about it too.”

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