Leftover Dead (33 page)

“No, I’m okay. I’m just thinking.”

Jack didn’t have to ask her what she was thinking about.

“At least some good has come of all this,” she said. “Thank goodness, Rocky has rescued Sandra June from that awful husband of hers.”

“And Rocky doesn’t have to worry about being arrested for murder anymore,” Jack added. “But the fact that he had to wait so long to be exonerated still makes me angry.”

“I know, honey. That’s the worst part of it, how much time it took.”

They both fell silent again, and when they did talk, they made an effort to speak of something else. “Thank the Lord Mayrene wasn’t hurt when she tackled Marysue.” Wanda Nell shuddered at the memory. “If she’d gotten shot, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“Well, she wasn’t.” Jack reached out a comforting hand, and Wanda Nell smiled. “She’s pretty tough.”

“She is.” Wanda Nell drew a deep breath. “I wish we could get other things to work out as well as that.”

“You mean Teddy, don’t you?”

Wanda Nell nodded. “At least he’s willing to talk to us about it, so I guess that’s some progress.”

“It’s a positive sign.” Jack squeezed her hand. “He’ll come around before long, honey. He’s got a good heart. I think he’s just a little confused, with his daddy telling him one thing and us telling him something else.”

“I sure hope you’re right.” Wanda Nell sighed and leaned her head back.

A little after eleven-thirty, Jack pulled up in front of Miss Lyda’s house in Hattiesburg. Wanda Nell had actually dozed off, and Jack wakened her gently. “We’re here, love. Miss Lyda’s on the porch waiting for us.”

Wanda Nell yawned and stretched. “I’m awake.”

Jack came around and opened her door, and together they proceeded up the walk to where Miss Lyda waited for them.

“Oh, I can’t tell you how good it is to see you,” Miss Lyda said, with a huge, happy smile. “I know it’s on sad business, but I can’t help feeling glad that you’re here.”

Wanda Nell and Jack took turns hugging Miss Lyda and kissing her cheek. “We’re so glad to see you, too,” Wanda Nell assured her.

“Now come on in the house,” Miss Lyda said. “Rufus ought to be here any minute, and I declare it’s too hot to be out on this porch for more than a few minutes. So y’all just come on into the kitchen, and we’ll have something cool to drink.”

They were seated at the kitchen table, sipping ice-cold lemonade, when the doorbell rang. “I’ll go,” Jack said, rising from his chair.

Miss Lyda beamed up at him. “Thank you, Jack.”

Jack was soon back with Rufus King. The policeman greeted Miss Lyda warmly, then spoke to Wanda Nell. “I hear y’all had a bit of a rough time.”

“Yes, but things are getting better. It’s just going to take time.”

“Rufus, you sit down, and let me get you some lemonade,” Miss Lyda said, popping out of her chair. King knew better than to protest, so he did what he was told. Miss Lyda handed him a glass of lemonade, and he raised it in a toast. “To Jack and Wanda Nell. Thanks to them, Jenna Rae Howell can rest in peace now.”

“Amen to that,” Miss Lyda said. “Now I know some terrible things happened, but I’ve said a prayer of thanks to the Lord every night on behalf of that dear girl.”

“Thank you both,” Jack said. “That means a lot to us.”

“It sure does,” Wanda Nell added. She appreciated their words, and the thoughts behind them, but she knew it would be a long time before she could rest completely easy. Would Evangeline Connor be dead now if she hadn’t gone to the nursing home and stirred things up?

When she had confessed those thoughts to Ernie Carpenter, Ernie had regarded her with sympathy. “I can understand how you feel, Wanda Nell, and I’d like to be able to tell you that things would have happened differently if you hadn’t gone to the nursing home that day. But you’re not stupid, and I’m not going to lie to you. But believe me when I tell you this, Evangeline Connor was a nasty, venal, heartless woman. She put herself in that situation by trying to blackmail Jackson Dewberry. If she had left well enough alone, she’d still be alive and terrorizing the poor folks at the nursing home. But she wanted money, and she was determined to get it. She got something else instead, and it may not be very Christian of me, but I don’t feel one bit sorry for her. Especially since she’s the one who called Marysue back to the nursing home. She always wanted people dancing to her tune, and look where it finally got her. It’s poetic justice, if you ask me.”

Wanda Nell had tried to take heart from Ernie’s words, and she understood how Ernie felt. She knew that Mrs. Connor had made her own choices, but still couldn’t help feeling guilty over the role she had played.

“So what did Mr. Dewberry do after they revived him?” Miss Lyda asked. “I would have figured a heart attack would have been the end of him, right then and there.”

“He’s got a strong heart, which is pretty ironic,” Jack said. “He came out of it a good bit weaker, but he’s hanging in there.” He shook his head. “After all that happened, I’m still having a hard time believing he survived.”

“He did admit that he was Jenna Rae’s father,” Wanda Nell said. “Elmer Lee Johnson, the sheriff, told us about it. He was there when Mr. Dewberry talked to the police.”

“Did you ever find out what Howell was doing in Tullahoma in the first place?” Rufus King asked. “That’s one thing I haven’t been able to find out.”

“Dewberry explained that,” Jack said. “Turns out Howell served in Korea with Dewberry’s youngest brother, Raymond. Howell had done a few favors for the brother, and when Howell got out of the army, he came to Tullahoma looking for Raymond. Raymond Dewberry helped him get a job at the high school, and he worked there for almost two years.”

“And then when Jackson Dewberry needed someone to take Margaret Lewis and the baby off his hands, he paid Howell to do it,” Rufus King said.

“Exactly. Dewberry promised Howell three hundred dollars a month, and over the years, he increased the amount, until it was a thousand dollars a month.”

“Surely he wasn’t spending that much money on liquor every month.” Miss Lyda was appalled.

“No,” Rufus King said. “We’ve dug further into his finances. He was pretty heavily in debt. Turns out he had a gambling habit, too. On the Internet, if you can believe that.” He shook his head.

“If that don’t beat all. What about Dewberry’s daughter? Marysue, isn’t that her name?” Miss Lyda asked.

“That’s right,” Jack replied. “She’s in jail right now. They’re holding her without bail until she can be indicted. She still hasn’t admitted anything, but her father says she killed Jenna Rae.”

“And we know she killed Howell,” Rufus King said. “We’ve traced the phone calls he made that night, and one of them was to her number. She had moved back into her father’s house, and I guess that was the only number he knew to call. As soon as she knew what he wanted, she drove down here and killed him.”

“And to think I saw her going into that house.” Miss Lyda shivered. “It makes my blood run cold.”

“It was your description of her that made me realize she really was the killer,” Wanda Nell said. “You remember what you told us, about the odd way of walking she had?”

Miss Lyda nodded.

“I saw her running, and she ran funny,” Wanda Nell said. “Like she had some problem with one of her feet. And it turned out that she has a club foot.”

“No one at school knew about it,” Jack said. “I certainly had never seen her running, and she didn’t seem to have any problems with walking.”

“But when she ran, she couldn’t run evenly, and that’s what we both saw,” Wanda Nell said. “Elmer Lee said there’s something wrong with the muscles in the leg that has the club foot.”

“And her parents never did anything about it?” Miss Lyda asked, plainly incredulous.

“Who knows?” Jack said. “It was pretty obvious that they didn’t pay much attention to her.”

“If you could have heard the hate coming out of her . . . It was horrible.” Wanda Nell looked away for a moment.

Miss Lyda reached over and patted her hand. “It’s okay, dear. Don’t dwell on it.” She sighed. “But that sure seems to be a theme here, doesn’t it? Unhappy daughters.”

“Yes,” Jack said. “There was Marysue, growing up in Tullahoma with rich parents and a nice house. But she didn’t feel loved or wanted, and she felt deformed. Then there was Jenna Rae, beautiful, poor, but loved at least by her mother. When Jenna Rae went to Tullahoma, the first member of the family she met was Marysue.”

“How old was Marysue?” Miss Lyda asked.

“She had just turned sixteen,” Wanda Nell said.

“Oh, my.” Miss Lyda sighed. “To think of a girl that age, killing someone. But I guess when she looked at Jenna Rae, she saw a girl who was everything she was not.”

“According to her father, that was exactly it,” Jack said. “Once he knew Marysue was safely behind bars, he couldn’t talk fast enough. Marysue had come to him, thirty-one years ago, and she told him what she had done. In order to keep her out of jail, he paid for a cover-up.”

“Who left Jenna Rae on that football field?” Miss Lyda asked.

“It was Marysue,” Wanda Nell said.

“According to the statement I read,” Rufus King added, “she lured the victim to the football field late that night on some pretext, and she killed her right there. With a baseball bat. She stripped off all her clothes, took her purse, and drove the victim’s car back to the motel where she was staying.”

“How did she get home?” Miss Lyda asked. “She surely couldn’t have walked very far.”

“She walked about half a mile down the road to a service station,” King said. “She called her mother, and her mother came and got her. According to Mr. Dewberry, the girl told her mother she had gone out with a boy, and he had put her out of his car because she wouldn’t have sex with him.”

“Oh, dear, that poor girl,” Miss Lyda said. “Both of them. Poor girls. It just breaks my heart to think of them, and all they wanted was the same thing.”

They talked for a while longer, and then Rufus King said he had to be going.

“Are you sure you can’t have lunch with us?” Jack asked. “We’d love to have you come with us.”

“Thanks,” King said with a smile. “I’d love to, but if my wife found out, she’d have my hide. She’s real serious about me eating healthy and losing weight. And if I go with y’all, I sure won’t be able to restrain myself.”

They bade him goodbye, and King said, “Y’all have a safe trip back. I’ll see myself out.”

“We will, and thanks for everything,” Jack said. The two men shook hands, and King departed.

“Now, Miss Lyda, where would you like to have lunch?” Wanda Nell asked.

“I know a wonderful little place that makes the best fresh rolls. I know you’ll love them. But before we go, I wanted to ask you something else.”

“What was that?” Wanda Nell asked.

“Did you find her grave?” Miss Lyda asked, her eyes suspiciously damp.

“We did,” Jack said. “And Dewberry is arranging to have a headstone placed on it. He’s going to acknowledge that she was his daughter.”

“I’m glad,” Miss Lyda said. “I’m so very, very glad.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sauté onion and garlic in olive oil over medium heat. Add ground beef and stir until beef is brown. Add mushrooms, ketchup, chili sauce, and herbs; stir and simmer slowly for about 7 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook spaghetti. When spaghetti is done, drain, but retain liquid.

Add drained pasta to meat sauce. If sauce is too thick, add a little of the pasta water. Ladle mixture onto plates and sprinkle with grated Parmesan and chopped parsley.

Serves 2-4.