Mother Knows Best (A Margie Peterson Mystery) (12 page)

“The cops just left my house. I don’t know why, but they think I had something to do with George Cavendish’s death.”

“Becky—”

“I’m a mess, Margie. What do I do if they arrest me? If only I hadn’t written that stupid article. Or even applied to that stupid school—”

“Becky. There’s something I have to tell you.”

There was a clicking sound. “Damn. That’s the other line; it’s probably Rick. I’ll call you later.”

She hung up before I could tell her I was the one who had dropped her card.

I hit Peaches’s number; she answered on the second ring.

“The police think Becky killed Cavendish,” I told her. “It’s all because I dropped that damned card. I have to tell Detective Bunsen what we did.”

“Hold on there, buttercup,” she said. “If you do that, we’re all in the soup. You, me, Desiree . . . They’ll haul us all off.”

“But I can’t let Becky go to jail to protect us! I have to tell the police the truth.”

“And wind up in jail while the murderer runs free? Think about it for a minute,” she said. “Somebody is responsible for what happened to Aquaman, and we’re in the best position to find out who.”

“More than the police?”

“We’re investigators, remember? People pay us to do this stuff. Plus, we know more about the crime scene than the police do.”

“Only because we illegally moved the body,” I pointed out.

“So? You put a murderer behind bars a while back, didn’t you? And rescued a bunch of folks from Mexico. Right?”

“Well . . .”

“This is a piece of cake compared to that,” Peaches said.

“But it’s not ethical,” I said, leaning up against the overloaded garage shelves and dislodging a plastic sand bucket. It rattled to the floor, disgorging a pair of sandy shovels and distributing a good portion of the Galveston beach onto the garage floor. “Peaches, I have to tell the police.”

“I know you’re trying to do the right thing, kid, but if you do, I could lose my license and we may both go to jail,” Peaches told me. “You won’t see your kids for years.”

“But Becky will go to jail if I don’t,” I said. “I can’t do that to her.”

“You’re right,” she said. “You can’t.”

“So I’ll call.”

“Call if you have to. But can you give us a week before you do it?” Peaches asked. “We’ve got access to the school, his associates . . . We can figure this out.”

I poked at a shovel with my toe. “You think so?”

“I know so,” she said. “We’ll go talk to Desiree and find out everything she knows, and I’ll bet you’ve already got a few leads.”

I thought of Deborah Golden’s odd conversation at the coffee. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

“And if we don’t figure it out,” Peaches continued, “I’ll call Detective Bunsen myself and tell him I strong-armed you into it, and that you and your friend had nothing to do with it.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

I took a deep breath and wondered if I was insane. “Okay,” I said.

“I’m working on digging up dirt online. You have time to go to Holy Oaks this afternoon? Think you can talk them into letting you volunteer?”

I glanced at my watch. “I was about to pick up Bubba Sue, but that shouldn’t take too long.”

“Get the pig, stick it in your laundry room, and see if you can get into his office.”

I took a deep breath. “What do I tell Becky in the meantime?”

“Tell her whatever the hell you want,” Peaches said. “But unless they’re hauling her off in handcuffs, don’t say anything about what happened last night.”

“Okay,” I said.

“While you’re at Holy Oaks, I’ll call Desiree and set up a time to go talk to her.”

“I’m still not sure I shouldn’t call—”

“One week,” Peaches repeated. “Now, stop worrying and go get that pig.”

Bubba Sue’s address was on the south side of town, not too far from South Lamar. Although the developers seemed intent on turning the area into a monument to concrete, there was still a lot of eccentricity to be found, and the address listed in the file was no exception.

Becky was still in the back of my mind as I cruised past the house. It was a faded green bungalow with watermelon trim. A giant dinosaur that appeared to have been constructed from hubcaps and discarded lounge chairs squatted in the middle of the unmowed front yard, and a 1980s-era pink couch sagged on the front porch. There was no car in the driveway, and boxes showed through the clouded garage windows; it looked like no one was home. An overgrown Turk’s-cap bush obscured what looked like a gate to the backyard, which was a bonus—less chance of being spotted by neighbors.

I parked the minivan down the street and walked down the tree-root-buckled sidewalk, trying to act like I often went for a stroll with an empty cat carrier. A few new modern houses had sprouted up like mushrooms among the aging bungalows, their grassy front yards replaced by swaths of designer pebbles or glass, but most of the street was still old-Austin funk.

When I got within a few houses of Bubba Sue’s temporary residence, thankful that I seemed to be the only one out for a walk, I heard a low grunting. I glanced around to ensure I was alone, then waded through the overgrown bush blocking the gate in the privacy fence.

The grunting grew louder as I jiggled the rusted latch, trying to free it. The grunting seemed awfully low for a teacup pig. On the other hand, I had never met a teacup pig.

I was about to, though.

After a couple of thwacks, the latch came free and I managed to push the door ajar; it had fallen half off of the hinges and was wedged into the ground. The mounds of freshly dug earth piled up against the gate proved a challenge, too, but I managed to squeeze through.

Although there was still grunting, mixed with the occasional
oink
, there was no teacup pig in sight. There was, however, evidence of the pig—either that or a drunken sprinkler-system installer. The entire side yard had been dug up, leaving only a few islands of weedy grass and a distinctive livestock aroma.

I shoved the gate closed behind me and opened the door of the cat carrier. “Bubba Sue!” I crooned, clucking a few times. “Here, girl!” I unwrapped a cheese stick, tossed it into the cat carrier, and backed away, hoping I wasn’t stepping in pig poop. “Here, Bubba Sue!”

There was a loud oinking, coupled with a few menacing grunts. I took another step back. “I brought you a snack!”

I heard an ominous thudding—Bubba Sue had an awfully heavy tread for a teacup pig—and then, from around the corner of the house, loomed a sow the size of a small refrigerator.

She might have been cocoa-colored, but it was hard to tell, since her entire bristly coat was covered in dried mud. I thought I could make out a white spot on her snout, but when she curled back her lips, exposing two rows of white, piggy teeth, I stopped paying attention to her snout.

I froze as the beast snuffled a few times and stepped toward the cat carrier, eyeing me warily with her little piggy eyes. Which were the only things little about Bubba Sue. There was no way she was fitting in that carrier. In fact, I wasn’t sure she could get her
head
into that carrier.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try, though. As I watched in horror, she snuffled some more, trying to identify the source of the cheesy aroma. She approached the carrier, and I edged toward the gate. Maybe she’d get the cheese stick out and I could reclaim the carrier and slip out the gate without bothering her. Maybe I could find a vet who would prescribe piggy Valium, and I could drug her and somehow truss her up and drag her out in a piggy sling. Maybe I could get out of here without being trampled or gored.

She poked an exploratory snout into the cat carrier. I had tossed the cheese to the far back, so it wasn’t easy to get. She leaned in farther, and I could hear a smacking and grunting noise that indicated she had located her prize.

I waited for her to pull her head out and amble off, maybe in search of a few blades of grass she hadn’t yet uprooted—something to complement the cheese. And she did back up after a moment. Unfortunately, the cat carrier backed up with her.

If I thought there was a lot of grunting before, it was nothing compared to what was happening now. There were grunts—low, menacing grunts—as she swung her head around, trying to dislodge the cat carrier. Unfortunately, she managed to thwack the carrier into the side of the house, which only pushed it down farther.

Then the grunting stopped, replaced by loud, human-sounding squeals. She rocketed around the side yard like an angry bull, the cat carrier clunking as it rammed into the siding, and the fence, and then the siding again. And then suddenly, the cat carrier was pointed at me.

There was a snuffling sound, and a loud braying noise, and she rocketed toward me. I darted to the side, reaching for the gate, but she backed up and charged me again, hitting the boards of the fence with a sickening thud. One of the screws came out of the cat carrier, opening it up a few inches and giving her a better view of her prey. She pawed the ground once and hurled herself at my knees. I jumped up, clinging to the top of the fence, my feet balanced on the wooden crossbar as the fence shuddered beneath me.

She backed up and took aim again. I heaved one leg up over the side of the fence, discovering reserves of gymnastic ability I hadn’t known existed, and pulled myself to the top just as Rufus’s carrier connected with the rotting wood—right where my legs had been. I had worked my other leg over, congratulating myself on my quick reflexes, when there was a sliding sensation from my left pocket, and a clatter against the fence.

I looked down in horror.

Elsie’s fry phone had slipped out of my pocket, right into a pile of pig manure.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I
t was almost two o’clock by the time I finally gave up on retrieving Elsie’s fry phone. Bubba Sue was still hurling herself against the fence, grunting furiously, the cat carrier still attached to her head. With a stab of guilt over my broken promise to Elsie, I wiped my sneakers as clean as I could on the grass and climbed into the minivan. I thought about stopping home to change, but that would mean I would have to face my mother, so instead I steered the Grand Caravan toward Holy Oaks. I wasn’t assigned to any volunteer work today—my first library shift wasn’t until Thursday—but I was hoping to find a way into George Cavendish’s office.

And maybe, I thought with a flutter in my stomach, check and see whether Elsie is holding up okay.

As I pulled past the manicured front entrance to Holy Oaks, which was decorated with the school’s symbol—a big blue H in a triangle with a banner over it that looked more like a coat of arms than a logo—I again had the unsettling feeling that I was entering into a different world. A world that involved custom golf carts, second homes on the Riviera, and cosmetic-surgery bills that rivaled my mortgage payment. Even if Elsie could keep her canine fixation under wraps, would she be able to find any common ground with her schoolmates?

My mother-in-law thought so, but I had some serious doubts. I paused at the gleaming plate-glass windows by the entrance, checking myself in the reflection. My hair was brushed and relatively clean, but nothing about me said “couture.” In fact, other than wedges and belted dresses, I wasn’t sure what constituted “couture” these days; instead of keeping up with glossy magazines, I spent most of my spare reading time devouring books like
When Your Husband Stops Wearing the Pants in the Family
and
Toughing It Out
. Neither of which, frankly, had been helpful.

My thoughts strayed to Elsie; I hoped she was having a good first day. She was a shy girl and had always had difficulty making new friends; she and Zoe had been best friends for the past few years, and she hadn’t really gravitated toward anyone else. She could be bright and lively once you got to know her, but I was afraid no one would give her a chance.

The police were gone when I stepped into the chilly lobby, but the perky front-desk woman was still ensconced in the front office. “Can I help you?” she asked in that friendly robotic way that made me suspect she had been programmed.

“Yes,” I said. “I had a few hours free,” I lied, “and wondered if you needed any help in the office.”

“It’s your child’s first day, isn’t it?” she said with a look of pity.

“Um, yes.”

“Well, I’m sure she’s doing just fine, and to be honest, we don’t need any help in the office today,” she said, smoothing back a strand of stick-straight blonde hair. “There’s a lot going on.” At that moment, Kathleen Gardner rounded the corner, carrying a stack of library books and wearing a look of determination.

“You’re the new mom from the coffee, aren’t you?” she asked when her pale eyes lit on me. “Mary, isn’t it?”

“Margie.”

“Margie,” she repeated, pronouncing it with a soft
g
like
margarine
. Ah, well.

“Do you need some help with that?” I asked, pointing to her stack of books.

“No,” she said. “I have it under control. But we could use a little help erasing pencil marks in the SAT prep books, if you’re interested.”

“Sounds great,” I said, surprised she wasn’t more concerned about the headmaster’s demise. The school must still have been keeping George Cavendish’s current medical condition under wraps.