Murder by Serpents (Five Star First Edition Mystery) (25 page)

As they made their way to the courtroom, Archie kept frowning. “I thought that there were no fingerprints on the handcuffs?”

“There weren’t.” Tony held the door open for the prosecutor. “I lied, but now we know what happened to the cell phone.”

Carl Lee met them on the sidewalk. He smiled as if he’d won a lottery. Standing with him were a stocky young man in a navy blue business suit and a middle-aged woman dressed as his twin. Badges appeared.

The Feds had arrived.

“I don’t suppose you’re here for the biscuits and gravy over at Ruby’s Café?” Tony could only hope. The expression that the agents shared meant more paperwork for him.

As if reading his mind, the woman stepped forward with a sheaf of papers. “Your case against Samson will go on, of course, but we get him next.”

“Why would you want him?”

“I hear your deputy is doing well.” Sunglasses covered her eyes, but her lips lifted in a luminous smile. “I presume your question means you are interested in our charges against him.”

Tony nodded, even as he reluctantly added more papers to his stack. Ruth Ann would not to be happy to see these. “Is this the reason Quentin is still living the good life in our little jail?”

Head bobbing, Carl Lee stepped forward. “I merely suggested that they might be interested in Quentin’s testimony about the theft of certain prescription drugs that were later transported into our state from Kentucky.” He looked at the agents. “Isn’t that the interstate transport of stolen items?”

They nodded.

Tony smiled.

It would be worth the tons of paperwork needed to send Sammy to the Feds. Between parole violations in Georgia, the laws he had broken since his arrival in Tennessee and now the Feds, Sammy would never again see the unobscured light of day.

Unfortunately, Tony believed that Samson had nothing to do with Hub’s death.

Theo wasn’t sure why one of her designs simply didn’t work. The math seemed right. The drawing looked possible. The damned thing would not fit together.

Nina had called three times already this morning trying to explain where it went wrong. Taking a copy of the pattern she had given to Nina, Theo tacked it up on her bulletin board and pretended that she had never seen it before. By the time she worked half way through the process, she had a pile of discarded pieces of fabric at her feet.

“I can’t believe this won’t work. It worked just fine the first time.” She kicked the bits of what she called trial-and-error fabrics around the room. Rather than simply discard a fabric that turned out to be a dog, one that no one would buy, not even to use on the back of a quilt, Theo used it to test her patterns for accuracy.

“Is this a bad time to ask a question?” Jane stood in the doorway.

“Yes.” The glare that her daughter-in-law gave her might have frozen the blood in her veins if she hadn’t had developed an immunity over the years. It was nothing personal. Theo just hated distractions when she designed.

“Yes.” Theo repeated the word and gave the scraps at her feet another good kick. Zoe, the kitten, bounced up the stairs behind Jane. The flying scraps looked like a gift to her. Dashing across the room and pouncing on the little bits, she made a funny littlesound between a hiss and a purr. It brought a smile to Theo’s face and made Jane chuckle.

“Okay, both of you. What’s up?”

“I wondered if I might be able to take some time off this summer.” Jane looked very uncomfortable.

“Of course.” Theo’s reply came instantly. She couldn’t believe that Jane was wringing her hands. Asking for time off couldn’t be that hard. “You aren’t really a slave, you know. I just treat you like one.”

“I’m thinking more like taking the whole summer off.”

Theo stood, openmouthed, staring at her mother-in-law. Jane rarely took a single a day off. She went to work for Theo the first day the shop opened and had been there through thick and thin. In spite of her initial misgivings, Jane hung in there when they adapted the business for Internet shopping. Theo wondered if maybe Jane had some catastrophic illness.“Are you sick?”

Her turn to be stunned, Jane’s mouth dropped open. “Where did you get that idea?”

“Well, I don’t know.” Theo chuckled. “It jumped into my head. I couldn’t imagine why else you would suddenly ask for so much time. So, you tell me what’s going on.”

Jane started blushing like a schoolgirl. “I . . .” she stopped. “That is we, Martha and I, want to do a little something different this summer, something we have wanted to do since she moved here after college. Back then, I had a husband and a family and then it wasn’t long before she married Frank.” With a sigh, she shrugged her shoulders. “Time just got away from us.”

Since Theo knew that Martha recently turned fifty, their plans had certainly been on hold for a long time. That pair sure kept their share of secrets. First there had been the purchase of the motel. What had possessed them to buy that old thing and start making plans to turn it into a museum? “Does this have anything to do with your museum plans?”

“Not directly.” Jane’s flushed face grew brighter.

Pushing her glasses higher up on her nose, Theo leaned forward. “Spit it out then,” she said. “Your mysterious activities are making me nuts.”

“We used to be a sister act.” Jane’s answer came out so fast that it sounded like one word. “I played the piano and Martha sang. We started when she was just a tiny little tot. She always had a voice that sounded mature, you know, kind of like Charlotte Church. We performed at every opportunity we could find, from the Sunday school pageants to the local radio show.” Jane’s voice slowed and finally halted.

“So you and Martha are going on the road?”Visions of Tony’s mother and aunt singing in smoky roadhouses, the entertainment between bar fights, flashed into her brain. A sense of dread grew in the pit of her stomach. Hollywood could not have produced a more lurid picture. Theo hoped Tony didn’t have a stroke when he found out. He might be the youngest of the siblings, but he felt responsible for his mother’s safety. It was just that simple.

“I’m afraid Tony would have a stroke if he heard it put that way.” Jane’s words echoed Theo’s thoughts to perfection. “For that matter, Gus and Callie would too. Even Virgil would get involved, and he never gets involved.” Her eyes flashed. “Not that it’s any of their business, but we sent a bunch of demo CD’s out and from them we got offered a summer job at a little place near Chattanooga. We drove down a week ago last Saturday and took a look and we’re in.” Her grin looked like she had just hit the game winning home run.

“You’ve been planning this that long?” Gaping at Jane as if she had transformed herself into a little green Martian, Theo collapsed onto the chair in front of her sewing machine. “You don’t just get a CD made and mail it out and get a job over the weekend. What about your museum project?”

A rush of words poured from Jane like water released from a dam. They buffeted Theo’s ears and brain. She did manage to hang on to enough of them to determine that something the mayor’s wife had done would delay the museum project indefinitely. Since that had fallen through, neither sister wanted to say anything about the singing project for fear of jinxing it. Superstitious, but true. The last bit of information Theo grasped was the name of Jane’s summer replacement. Gretchen Blackburn, Ziggy’s wife.

Theo almost groaned out loud.

Gretchen was a sweetheart and Theo loved her, but, she could talk the nuts off a Jeep. On the plus side, everyone liked Gretchen, probably because she laughed constantly.

Raised in Ohio, Gretchen went to Indiana University to major in vocal music. Built like a Wagnerian heroine, Theo thought she would look at home armed with a spear and shield and her long blond hair in braids. But, ten years ago, she was singing at a gospel music convention in Pigeon Forge when she met Ziggy. Two weeks later they were exchanging vows in the Heartland Wedding Chapel in Townsend. Nine months after that, she presented Ziggy with twin daughters. She might have given up on her dream of singing arias at La Scala, but she became the mainstay of the Baptist choir.

Her quilt-making skills were so-so, but each quilt she made was better than the last. In the years since she had taken the beginning class, she had come to Theo’s shop at least once a week, sometimes daily. She probably knew the inventory as well as Jane did.

After giving it some thought, Theo smiled. Maybe this would be a change for the better. At least she wouldn’t be worried about her mother-in-law wearing out while working for her. Gretchen would have no difficulty carrying several bolts of fabric at a time.

Tony sat behind his desk, pouring over the printout of the cell phone records of the late Harold Usher Brown. The man must have spent most his time dialing or talking. The bulk of his calls were to the Atlanta area, but he had made some to almost every state east of the Mississippi River.

On the night he died, he made four calls between the time his preaching ended and the time his life ended. One call was to Atlanta, one to Knoxville and two to Park County numbers. Tony recognized the mayor’s home phone number. He dialed the other, but no one answered. It didn’t take him long to find out that it belonged to one of the pay phones outside the Okay Bar and Bait Shop. That one would have to wait.

Just to see what would happen, he dialed the Atlanta number. An artificial voice informed him that the number he dialed was not in service. The Knoxville number was only slightly more productive. At that number, a recording of a real voice gave him a list of the movies playing and the times they would be shown.

He debated with himself whether or not to wander over to the mayor’s office, situated in another wing of the city building or to arrive, lights flashing, in front of his house. Maybe he could get a search warrant and then he could enlist every deputy, even those off duty, to help him comb the mayor’s house. It was a lovely dream but he decided to go casual. After all, receiving a telephone call from a snake-handling, drug-smuggling preacher just minutes before he died was not a crime. An ugly coincidence, to be sure, but not a crime.

With the printout in hand and Wade trotting along beside him,Tony marched out the front doors of the Law Enforcement center and over to the main doors of the City Building. He chose that route because he felt like doing something petty, and this route was much more public than using the tunnel system. If the mayor didn’t remember the phone call, Tony could still use the patrol car and lights to visit with the Missus. Queen Doreen was six times more annoying than the mayor. Tony wouldn’t mind causing her a little embarrassment.

Justifiably, the town of Silersville refused to pay the salary for a full-time secretary for a part-time mayor. Marigold Flowers Proffitt took his telephone messages and did occasional typing on his official stationary when she wasn’t tied up with her real job, which was taking care of the city’s finances. If Marigold had too much to do, by her standards, the mayor did his own typing.

Like her younger sister Blossom, Marigold had been gifted with very little hair. Instead of taking Blossom’s approach of doing the best she could with what she had been given, Marigold had long ago shaved her head. She owned an array of wigs and turbans that she wore, changing them with the rest of her ensemble. Today Marigold was coifed in a wig of short russet curls. Tony thought it looked exceptionally nice with her stylish navy dress and red high-heeled shoes. They added four inches to her height. Marigold had lovely legs and knew it. She made sure that they were always on display.

Tony could probably count on one hand the number of times she had worn slacks to work. She had been overweight as a girl, although never as heavy as Blossom, and had worked tirelessly to change that. Someone once mentioned that Marigold’s husband ate three meals a day at Ruby’s because his wife didn’t allow food in her house.

At the approach of Tony and Wade, she looked up from her computer screen and gave them a big smile. Her teeth were perfect, small and pearl-white. Tony thought they were probably not original equipment.

“Morning, gentlemen.”

After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Marigold informed them that the mayor was indeed in his office and that if he was busy, it was most likely not because he was working on city business. Calvin’s mayoral duties were mostly ceremonial. Only on rare occasions did the office require actual work. A combination of wanting more business for his wife’s gift shop and the need to show the voters that they ought to keep such a paragon in office fueled his current campaign to enhance area tourism. After all, it was an election year.

Tony knocked on the mayor’s door. He didn’t wait for an answer but strolled on in.

Calvin’s head swiveled as he looked from him to Wade and back again, sending his mop of blond hair into his eyes. If the pinched expression around his mouth meant anything, he wasn’t pleased to see them. “What can I do for you, Tony? Deputy? Come on in and have a seat.” The words were pleasant enough, but the tone was as sour as unripe berries.

“This is official business, not social.” Tony sat but Wade merely propped a shoulder against the doorframe and watched, his arms crossed over his chest and his fingertips pressed against the underside of his biceps. The pose made his bulging muscles bulge even more. No doubt about it, Wade made an impressive bodyguard.

Tony said, “
I’m
a busy man so I’ll get right to the point.” He enjoyed the mayor’s frown as he caught the intentional dig. “I want you to tell me all about your relationship with the late Harold Brown, also known as John Mize?”

“There’s nothing to tell.” The mayor’s answer was immediate and a little too loud. “I’m positive I never met the man.”

“Really?” Tony didn’t need to look at the printout again, but opened it and made quite a production of silently reading it. He held the paper so that he could watch the mayor without lifting his eyes. Judging by the way Calvin was craning his head around to see what Tony held, it was clear that curiosity was burning the man alive. Tony looked up. “You have talked to him though.”