Murder Comes by Mail (3 page)

Not Michael. He didn’t need to throw his dollars away trying to win instant wealth. He was content with what he had. Content with his ordinary life in Hidden Springs where he grew up. His ancestors, generations back, lived in Hidden Springs—from Jasper Keane, the founding father, right on down to Aunt Lindy. Michael fit in Hidden Springs.

After the play, that’s what Julie Lynne said she’d never done. Fit in Hidden Springs. And never could. The whole bunch of them trooped backstage with Clara to see her after the final curtain came down.

“Please just Lynne.” Her eyes danced through the lot of them as if she could barely keep from bursting out laughing.

She came out of the hole-in-the-wall dressing room to speak to them, barefoot and still wearing the flesh-toned body suit she’d worn for the last scene. Michael suspected she would have been just as relaxed in the buff. Her formerly kudzu hair was now honey-blonde tresses flowing silkily down her back. Her eyes were an unusual blue-green. Nothing like they were in high school.

“Contacts and a great hairdresser,” she told her aunt when Clara said she hardly recognized her.

Michael couldn’t spot even a trace of the girl who shared that disaster date with him. He stayed behind the other ladies in hopes nobody would bring up how they went to school together, since he figured she wouldn’t have a bit of trouble seeing the boy he used to be.

Julie Lynne hugged Clara without touching much but their cheeks. “I would have known you anywhere, Aunt Clara. You look just the same as the day I left Hidden Springs. You people must have a fountain of youth there.” She turned on the other women. “And there’s Miss Janet, my old Sunday school teacher, and Mrs. Jenkins. You lived down the street from us. How is that Paula Jo? Paula Jo and I used to giggle till we were sick, and you’d tell us we must have turned our giggle boxes upside down.”

She didn’t give Mrs. Jenkins time to tell her about Paula Jo, which was just as well. It wasn’t a story Mrs. Jenkins relished telling all that much anyway, since Paula Jo was living in a leaky old trailer and working on her second divorce. Julie Lynne’s eyes jumped over to Aunt Lindy. “And Miss Keane, the meanest teacher in Hidden Springs, maybe even the whole world.”

“Thank you.” Aunt Lindy smiled, not a bit upset by her description.

“X plus Y equals something, I’m sure.” Julie Lynne laughed. “I never was that great at math. And you had a nephew. What was his name? I went out with him once. Disaster of the decade.”

Some of the ladies tittered and peeked back at Michael.

Julie Lynne finally looked directly at him. She’d been sliding her eyes across him occasionally almost the way a cat might rub against someone’s legs to get attention. “You?”

“Mr. Disaster in person.” Michael stayed where he was, but the ladies in front of him stepped aside, ready to watch another show.

Julie Lynne gave him the once-over and then touched the tip of her tongue to her top lip. “You ask me to dance again, Mike, and the dance floor won’t know what hit it.”

Michael smiled. “I’m still not much of a dancer.”

“Oh, but I’ve learned lots of new steps since I left Hidden Springs.” Julie Lynne kept her eyes locked on him as if all the ladies around them had vanished into thin air. “And I’m a great teacher.”

Aunt Lindy cleared her throat and stepped between Michael and Julie Lynne. “Well, it has certainly been nice seeing you again after all these years, and we did enjoy your performance. It must be exciting to be an actress.”

“It has its moments.” One corner of Julie Lynne’s mouth twisted up in a sideways smile as she slid her eyes from Michael to his aunt. “Just like life. And the same as life, we play some of the scenes right and some of them wrong. Except in life, you don’t get the chance to play the scene over.”

“Have you a lot of scenes you wish you had played differently, Julie Lynne?” Aunt Lindy didn’t bother remembering to call her only Lynne.

“Of course. Don’t we all?” Julie Lynne raised her eyebrows at Aunt Lindy and then let her smile come back full force as she looked back at Michael. “Actually the worse things about acting are the layoffs between parts. As a matter of fact, once this run is over in a few days, I’ll have a week or two of downtime. Maybe I’ll come for a little R & R in Hidden Springs. You’d put me up, wouldn’t you, Aunt Clara?”

Shock colored with a dash of dismay flashed across Clara’s face before her inbred hospitality came to her rescue. “Well, of course, Lynne. My door’s always open to family, but I’m afraid you might find us a bit dull, dear.”

“Extremely dull,” Aunt Lindy stuck in as if trying to do what Clara clearly couldn’t. Snatch away the welcome mat before Julie Lynne could step on it.

“Dull sounds delightful right now.” Julie Lynne aimed her smile squarely at Michael.

“Besides, it’s not all that dull.” Edith Crossfield launched into the story of Michael pulling the guy back over the railing at the bridge. Several of the other ladies chimed in with their versions.

During the third recap, Michael grabbed his opportunity to exit. He grinned and waved at Julie Lynne, then made his escape to bring the bus around.

The streetlights were blinking on in Hidden Springs by the time Michael pulled the bus into the First Baptist Church parking lot. The trip home was uneventful. Nothing vital fell off the bus, the ladies settled on the first fast-food restaurant they saw, and the Eagleton Bridge was empty of jumpers.

Aunt Lindy hadn’t done much talking on the way home, but then Aunt Lindy wasn’t the type to waste her breath making small talk about whether or not it looked like rain or about the sun going down when any idiot knew the sun went down every day.

She did have something to say as Michael drove her home. She waited until they were turning into the street leading down to what some in Hidden Springs called the Keane mansion. It was far from mansion size, no bigger than most of the other houses on Keane Drive, but the stone structure sat impressively on the end lot with ancient oaks around it to prove it had been there a very long time.

A Keane had founded the town and Keanes had played a major part in the town’s history ever since. But now the town was down to its last two Keanes.

Aunt Lindy accepted being the reigning Keane in Hidden Springs as the natural order of things. Should anything ever threaten the town’s existence, Michael had no doubt she would marshal whatever defense necessary to save the town. He also knew she was determined to keep the next generation of Keanes in Hidden Springs. If indeed there ever was a next generation of Keanes.

So Michael wasn’t surprised when, without preamble, she said, “I would advise you not to encourage Julie Lynne if she should decide to carry through with her threat to visit Clara.”

“But, Aunt Lindy, just last week you were telling me I needed to settle down, get married and produce some little Keanes.”

“Not with Julie Lynne Hoskins.”

“What’s wrong with Julie Lynne? You practically forced me to ask her out when we were in school. You must have thought we’d get along then, and I’m beginning to think you might be right.” Michael kept the smile off his face. “You have to admit she’s grown up nicely.”

“Yes indeed.” Aunt Lindy kept her eyes forward and her voice unperturbed. “And no telling what it cost her to do the growing. Still, I suppose if one is going to take one’s clothes off in public, it’s best to be sure everything is properly filled out and inflated.”

“It looked all natural to me.”

“I’m not going around in circles with you on whether or not Julie Lynne’s curves were all her or part fiberfill, Michael. I’m merely pointing out that encouraging her would be foolhardy.”

Michael finally let himself laugh. “If we ever discover the woman who meets both our qualifications, she’ll probably tell me to get lost.”

Aunt Lindy didn’t laugh. “If she did that, then she definitely wouldn’t meet the qualifications I would have for her. If indeed I did have such qualifications in mind. Which I do not.”

Michael pulled into the circular drive in front of the house. He stopped in front of the entrance. “I’ll walk you around to the back door.” He turned the key off and reached for the door handle.

“No need in that.” Aunt Lindy gathered up her purse.

Aunt Lindy lived in three rooms in the back, while she let the ghosts of Keanes past haunt the rest of the house undisturbed. Once a year she flung open the heavy doors into the front rooms to decorate for the ghosts and all of Hidden Springs to come to a Christmas tea. It was a Keane tradition.

That was where Michael used to imagine he would get married. In that huge front parlor at Christmastime. He could see himself in a black tux and a woman in a lacy gown beside him with the eight-foot tree sparkling beside them.

Then, when he was a mere lovesick teenager, it had been Alex wearing the white wedding gown. Even now, he could see no one else there beside him, but he had a hard time believing Alex would ever be ready to share that wedding dream.

Alex Sheridan was on the fast track, an attorney in DC with clients whose names made headlines. She thought Michael should be on a fast track somewhere too, instead of poking along here in Hidden Springs. The idea of Alex settling down in Hidden Springs was too ludicrous to even consider, and the idea of him in DC was worse than ludicrous. It was terrifying.

For a while last year Alex actually made sounds of coming to Hidden Springs and letting her uncle add a Sheridan to the Sheridan on the shingle in front of his lawyer’s office on Main Street. Then Reese Sheridan’s health had improved and one of Alex’s big-name clients got embroiled in some sort of meaty scandal in DC. Michael hadn’t seen her since, except for a brief appearance at Aunt Lindy’s open house last Christmas. Alex had zoomed in and out that day. They hadn’t even had time for a good argument.

Now Michael hurried around to help Aunt Lindy out of his old truck. He walked her up the porch steps to the door with its etched glass panels. No light shone from inside. “You should leave a light on in the front hall.”

“Why would I do that? I have never been afraid of the dark.”

“It’s not the dark. It’s what’s in the dark.”

“There’s nothing in the dark but my house. Our house.” She fished her key out of her purse. “I’ve been locking my door if that makes you feel any better, although I can’t imagine anybody bothering me here.”

“Probably not, but some kid might think it was funny to try to scare you.”

“If you mean one of my students, I sincerely doubt that ever happening. They would know better.” She turned the key, pushed the door open enough to reach inside, and flipped on the porch light.

“Even one you give a bad grade?” Michael teased her.

“They get the grades they earn. I don’t give them anything.” She peered up at him with narrowed eyes. “If you’re trying to get a rise out of me, you should know better too.”

“Right. Sorry, Aunt Lindy.” Michael touched her shoulder to stop her before she went inside. “And don’t worry about Julie Lynne. She’ll never come to Hidden Springs.”

“You could be wrong there. She might very well show up here, but who said I was worried? I know you’ll do the right thing. You always do.” She reached up to lay her hand on his cheek. “I’m proud of the way you saved that man out on the bridge. It could have so easily gone the other way.”

“It was just routine. I did what any other police officer would have done.”

“You kept him from jumping.”

“I didn’t keep him from wanting to.”

She frowned a little. “Wonder what would bring a man to such a state?”

“Who knows?” Michael shrugged. “Money trouble, drugs, women. Depression. It could be anything.”

“Your grandfather always said every man has his demons. The successful man is he who learns to control his.”

“I think this guy needed crowd control.” He remembered the look on the man’s face as he lay on the road staring up at Michael.

“Thanks to you, he will have a chance to work through his problems now. We should pray for him.”

After she went inside, Michael waited until the light came on in the window of his aunt’s sitting room and then headed home. As he drove through the woods to his log house on the lake, he hardly gave a thought to Julie Lynne chasing him down in Hidden Springs. He kept seeing the jumper and hearing his words.
“You’ll wish you’d pushed me.”

It hadn’t exactly sounded like a threat. More like a promise.

5

The next day the weekly issue of the
Hidden Springs Gazette
hit the stands at the local Save Way grocery and the Hidden Springs Grill. Folks could also grab a copy off the front counter in the
Gazette
office, which operated on the honor system. Three quarters in the bowl on the counter bought a paper off the top of the stack.

On the day the paper came out, Hank Leland always stayed out of sight behind the partition that divided the offices from the pressroom until the first flush of buyers passed through. He claimed that was so people would read the news for themselves and not simply stand there wanting him to give a narrative report of what he’d written. Others around town claimed it was more likely Hank wanted a clear path out the back way in case somebody took issue with one of his stories and showed up ready to punch him in the nose.

Either way, Annie Watson kept guard at the front desk. Annie had worked on the paper through three different editors and knew exactly how many words would fit in a column inch and the difference between a nickel’s clink and that of a quarter in the payment bowl on the counter.

Michael didn’t bother picking up a copy on the way to work. Noon would be plenty early enough to see what kind of story Hank had come up with on the jumper, but when he went in the sheriff’s office, Betty Jean Atkins was already well into the middle pages of the paper. Behind her, the coffeemaker made its final gurgles to extract every drop of water out of its innards, and the computers hummed with their cursors flashing at the ready.

Betty Jean peered over the paper at him. “The hero in the flesh.”

Michael groaned and poured a cup of coffee. “How bad is it?”