Murder on a Girls' Night Out (10 page)

“He was going back to Atlanta to see about his sick parents,” Sister said. “They shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

“I think he was from Charleston,” I said, “and his parents are dead.”

“Who told you that?” Mary Alice asked.

I couldn’t think of a lie. “Henry.”

The sheriff nodded. “Mrs. Hollowell is right. We have his service record, which lists compassionate leaves for his parents’ deaths. Apparently they died fairly close together. And we know he had a wife for a while, because the Navy paid her dependent allotment for about a year. Then that stopped. Marriage didn’t work out, I guess.” The sheriff drummed his fingers on his desk.
“And he didn’t have any brothers or sisters who we can find any record of. We’ve had the Charleston police helping us.”

“Well, what can we do?” Mary Alice asked.

“I thought maybe he mentioned some friends. Maybe somebody helped him get started with the Skoot. If we could find someone who knew him well, they might know about aunts or cousins, somebody.”

“I never heard him mention a soul,” Sister said, “and he paid cash for the Skoot. He didn’t owe a dime on it.”

The drumming on the desk got louder. “Then why did he want to sell it?” the sheriff murmured thoughtfully, as if he were talking to himself. Sister and I looked at him. We certainly didn’t know.

“Maybe,” I surmised, “he was going to go into some other kind of business. Or even the same business somewhere else.”

“But why would he lie about his parents?” Mary Alice asked.

The sheriff shrugged. There were obviously bigger questions to be answered. Like who had cut the guy’s throat.

“And if you can’t find any relatives, what will you do about a funeral?” Mary Alice pulled her purse up from the floor like Grandpa used to pull a bucket of water from his well. It probably weighed as much. She fished around for a package of mints and offered one to the sheriff and one to me. We declined.

“Those are terrible for your teeth,” I said. “You need to get the sugarless kind.”

Mary Alice popped one into her mouth. “Sugarless leaves that awful taste at the back of your tongue. You know, like you ate something bitter a half hour ago or chewed on a peach branch.”

“Chewed on a peach branch?” I had this mental picture of my sister chomping down on a peach tree.

“Not a whole branch, for God’s sake. A twig.”

I tried to remember chewing on a peach twig and how it tasted, but the memory escaped me.

“The county has a cemetery,” Sheriff Reuse said, rubbing his temples. “We’ll make every effort to locate some relatives, though.”

“He’s in the morgue now?” Sister asked.

The sheriff nodded.

“Frozen?”

A slight nod.

“There’s no hurry, then. Who was it they kept frozen for so long, Mouse? Some celebrity.” She thought for a minute. “Was it Kate Smith? Wasn’t there some reason why they didn’t bury her? You’d think the United States government would have given her a patriotic funeral at Arlington, wouldn’t you? With some big star singing ‘God Bless America.’ Maybe Jessye Norman or that religious lady who does the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ so good when they’re having the Fourth of July fireworks. The one whose name sounds like a mud pie.”

“Sandy Patti. And I don’t remember Kate Smith not getting buried. I know Billy Rose stayed frozen for a long time, though.”

“Maybe that’s who I’m thinking about. But I don’t know why I would get him mixed up with Kate Smith, do you?”

“Who’s Billy Rose?” Sheriff Reuse asked.

Mary Alice and I shook our heads at his ignorance. “Just the greatest showman who ever lived,” she declared. “He did the Aquacade at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, and Mama and Daddy took Patricia Anne and I—”

“Me,” I corrected, “and I was only three so I don’t remember anything about it.’

“And all these gorgeous women swam and made designs in the water like in the Esther Williams movies, and the star’s name was Eleanor Holmes. I remember she’d get out of the pool and come back five minutes later and her hair would be dry. I still wonder how they did that. I think he married her.”

“Billy Rose married Eleanor Holmes?” the sheriff asked.

“She was so beautiful, you wouldn’t believe,” Sister declared. “It was the dry hair got me, though. You don’t think they’d swim in a wig, do you?”

“Probably not,” Sheriff Reuse said. “It would have been real hair back in 1939 and expensive as hell.”

“He married Fanny Brice, too. Didn’t he? In
Funny Girl
?” I asked.

“Barbra Streisand,” the sheriff said.

“But she was playing Fanny Brice.”

“No, that was Omar Shariff,” Sister said. “I think it was the next one she married Billy Rose in. Anyway, I saw my first television at the Fair, President Roosevelt talking.” She sighed. “He looked so handsome. Nobody knew until years later they had him propped up. Poor man.” She thrust the package of mints at the sheriff. “Here. You look like you need some sugar.”

He took one and chewed it. Mary Alice and I cut our eyes around at each other. Which one of us was going to tell him he should never chew hard candy? Neither, we decided. We watched him rub his temples and break his teeth.

“Is there anything else we can do to help you?” Sister asked. “’Cause we don’t know a thing about Ed Meadows.”

The sheriff smiled, actually a very sweet smile, and
stood up. We took this as a signal that our talk was over and we got up, too.

“I don’t believe so. But thank you, ladies, for coming in.”

“You’ll let us know when Ed’s funeral is, won’t you?” Mary Alice asked.

“I certainly will,” he said.

“There just might be a place for him at Elmwood,” I offered.

“Mouse!” Mary Alice swung her purse at me, landing it squarely on my rear end and nearly catapulting me out of the sheriff’s office. “Enough!”

“He could have asked us what we knew about Ed on the phone,” Mary Alice complained on the way home. “In fact, I think he already
has
asked us about a dozen times.” She pulled into the curb market we had noticed on our first trip to the Skoot ’n’ Boot, the one with pumpkins of every size stacked around it. “You know, Patricia Anne, I’ve decided we make him nervous. Have you noticed how he starts rubbing his head?” I nodded. “The thing about it that drives me nuts is he isn’t rubbing the same way. One hand is going clockwise and one counterclockwise. I think it signifies something about his brain function.”

“What do you mean, it signifies something?” I was chagrined that I hadn’t noticed this particular aspect of the sheriff’s mannerism.

“I don’t know, but you try to do it.” Mary Alice got out of the car. “You want a pumpkin?”

“Sure.”

We walked around the orange stacks trying to find one without a flat side. I tried to rub my fingers on my temples in different directions. Mary Alice saw me and grinned.

“One for each of the babies,” she said, putting her selections in the car, “and one for me.”

“This one is for Fred.” I put my pumpkin into the corner of the backseat so it wouldn’t roll.

“Hey, ladies.” The voice came from above us. We looked up to see Fly McCorkle perched on the roof of the curb-market shed. He was leaning over, grinning, and looked for all the world as if he were going to live up to his nickname. “Wait there,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”

F
ly McCorkle scampered agilely down a ladder propped against the side of the building. His flip-flops squished against the rungs.

“You ladies out here at the Skoot?” he asked, wiping his forehead on a bandana he pulled from his back pocket.

“The sheriff won’t let us in,” Mary Alice said. “He called us all the way out here to ask if we knew any of Ed’s relatives. I told him I hardly knew Ed, let alone any of his relatives.”

“He’s trying to find somebody to claim the body,” I added. “I don’t think they can have a funeral until they make every effort.”

“What about his folks in Atlanta?”

“Dead,” Mary Alice said. “In Charleston.”

“What?”

“A long story. It seems that Ed wasn’t exactly wedded to the truth.”

“Well, that’s not news.” Fly put his bandana back into his pocket. “You knew half the time he was lying. Like that tattoo. He had at least ten stories about where he got it. They were so good, though, you had to appreciate them.” Fly brushed sawdust from his arm. “I believed that story about Atlanta, though. A sick mother?”

“Nope.” Mary Alice shrugged.

“I’ll be damned.”

We nodded in agreement.

“The sheriff say when you could have the Skoot back?”

Mary Alice shook her head. “It wasn’t mentioned.”

“I’ve got a couple of good-sized jobs coming up. I was hoping I could get to the Skoot before I started on them.”

“Won’t the Skoot take a long time?” I asked.

Fly shook his head. “Looks worse than it is.” He brushed his arm again. “Damned dust.”

“What were you doing up there?” I asked, pointing at the roof.

“Place leaks like a sieve. My old lady closes it up in the wintertime, and I said let’s just put plastic over it. She wouldn’t go for it. Wants a rainproof roof.” Fly shook his head as if this were the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard of.

“This is your wife’s curb market?” I asked.

He nodded. “People go right by the Birmingham Farmers’ Market, where she buys the stuff, and come out here and load up. Guess they think it comes out of the fields back there. Who knows?” He remembered we had stopped to buy something and grinned. “What do you need? Pumpkins? Tomatoes?”

“Pumpkins,” Mary Alice admitted.

“Well, we got plenty of them. Y’all find what you want and I’ll put them in the car for you.”

“Thanks, we’ve already picked them out. I see one over there I like, though.” Mary Alice wandered over to one of the piles of pumpkins, but I stayed back.

“Fly,” I said, “I need to know where Doris Chapman is staying in Florida.”

“Who?” he asked.

“Doris Chapman, the waitress at the Skoot ’n’ Boot.”

“Oh. Doris. I don’t have any idea.”

“I thought you did.”

Fly looked at me blankly, and I remembered that the lady who had told me about the dog hadn’t remembered the exact name of the man who was keeping it. I was the one who had supplied “Fly.”

“I guess I was mistaken,” I said.

Fly shrugged. “Wish I could help you. Mrs. Crane thinking about trying to hire her back?”

“Yes,” I lied.

A black BMW pulled into the parking lot. Fly looked up and waved. “That’s Dick Hannah,” he said. On his face was unmistakable relief.

My children have always sworn they couldn’t get away with the slightest lie, that somehow I always knew when they weren’t telling the truth. And they were right. It’s a kind of radar; something blips onto the screen that shouldn’t be there. Right now I felt like a traffic controller at a busy airport. I watched Fly walk over to the BMW. He had definitely been lying about Doris. The question was, Why?

Dick Hannah unfolded himself from the car. He was a big man, more handsome in person than he was on TV, which meant very handsome indeed. I guessed him to be about six foot two or three. At thirty-eight, he still
had the build of the star football player he had been at the University of Alabama. If looks could do it for him, he was a shoo-in for the Senate. And if the polls were right, he was a shoo-in.

“Oh, my,” Mary Alice said right into my ear. I jumped. I hadn’t heard her come up beside me. “And he’s just as smart and nice as he looks.”

“He’s already got my vote,” I murmured.

“Mine, too,” Sister agreed. “Have you ever noticed, Mouse, how much easier it is to suffer a fool if he’s handsome?”

I cut my eyes around at her. “You just said he’s smart.”

“Oh, he is. I meant fools in general.”

Sister seldom means things “in general.” I wondered if Bill Adams, the line-dancing devil, was not about to be pushed from their love nest. He had already hung in there longer than most of her men. Except the husbands, of course. I didn’t get a chance to ask her, though, because Fly and Dick Hannah were heading our way. Halfway across the parking lot, they stopped for what seemed to be the punchline of a joke Dick was telling. They both roared with laughter, Fly slapping his leg like an old man. He looked diminutive beside Dick Hannah, probably coming up to his chin. They were still laughing when they reached us.

“Sounds like we missed a good one,” Sister said.

Dick Hannah gave us an “aw, shucks, ma’am, just a good-ol’-boy” grin and held out a hand to each of us. No limp cold fish there. His warm hand swallowed mine. “Just discussing foreign policy, ladies. How are you, Mrs. Crane?”

“I’m fine, Dick. Foreign policy, huh?”

“A laughable matter at times, Mrs. Crane.” His teeth were so white they were startling. But there was no
acrylic shine to them. A football star with beautiful teeth. Amazing.

“This is my sister, Patricia Anne Hollowell, Dick.” Mary Alice introduced us.

I didn’t say, “How do you do.” I just blabbered, “I’m voting for you,” which I hadn’t been positive of until that moment.

Dick Hannah was used to flustered females. He simply said, “Thank you, Mrs. Hollowell. I appreciate that.” He pointed toward the pumpkins. “I guess you ladies are here on the same serious business I’m on. I’ve got two kids can’t wait another day for a jack-o’-lantern.”

“I’ve already got some in the car,” Mary Alice said.

“Well, well, well, Dickie boy. It’s about time you got those babies their jack-o’-lanterns.” A small woman who had to be Mrs. Fly had emerged from the shed into the parking lot. Short and plump, she was smiling widely.

“Cousin Katie.” Of course, in Dick Hannah’s Alabama accent, it came out “Cuddin Katie.” He went over, lifted his cuddin’ off the ground and gave her a big smack.

“Kissing cuddins,” I murmured. Mary Alice gave me a black look.

“Quit that, Dickie Hannah.” Cuddin Katie giggled.

“I’ll protect you, Kate.” Fly strutted over to the two, looking so much like a bantam rooster, it was unbelievable. “Unhand my woman, you lout.” He doubled up his fists and danced around the laughing Dick Hannah, who held Kate away from him and lowered her to the ground as if she weighed mere ounces. Chances were, I realized, that we were not going to have just the handsomest senator in Washington, but also the strongest.

“Mind your own business, you old fool.” Kate
smiled affectionately at Fly and, poking her shirt back into her jeans, came over toward us, calling over her shoulder, “Six dollars a pumpkin, Dick. No haggling.”

Kate McCorkle, like Fly, was obviously an old hippie. Her light brown hair, liberally sprinkled with gray, was pulled back into a single plait that hung to her waist. Her jeans were bell-bottoms, which made her legs look even shorter than they were. She wore red rubber flip-flops, and her toenails (hopefully) were painted green, though they looked for all the world as if each had been slammed into a car door recently. Her brisk walk reassured me on that point. She wore no makeup and probably never had. Her skin was flawless, and like her husband, she had an aura of youth that made it impossible to guess her age. Fly came up behind her and introduced us.

“The Skoot?” she asked. She shook her head when Mary Alice said yes. “That poor Ed Meadows. You just don’t think something like that’ll happen to people you know and right in your own neighborhood. Fly worries about me being here by myself so much, but it’s never bothered me. Maybe I trust people too much. I didn’t even have a lock on the door for years, figured the only thing to steal was peanuts and turnip greens, and if they were that desperate, let them have them.”

“Did you know Ed well?” Mary Alice asked. “The sheriff’s trying to locate his family.”

“He’d stop by sometimes. Liked boiled peanuts.” Kate McCorkle sighed. “I liked him, you know? Never said anything about his background, though. Did he, Fly?” She turned to her husband, who was drawing patterns in the gravel with the toe of one flip-flop.

“That thing about his folks being sick in Atlanta.”

“I didn’t even hear that from him. You told me.”

“Wasn’t true, anyway. His folks were already dead.
That’s what the sheriff told these ladies today. Seems Ed was from Charleston and his folks were dead.” Fly shrugged.

“Why would he lie about it? That doesn’t make a lick of sense.” There was a look of chagrin on Kate McCorkle’s face, and I remembered what Bonnie Blue had said about her knowing and spreading all the news. Here was a tidbit that had obviously escaped her. It dawned on me that she might be the source of information about Doris Chapman.

Sister said that the world was going to hell in a hand bucket when people told such outrageous lies, that her daughter Debbie was a lawyer who said you couldn’t believe half of what folks said in a courtroom under oath, wasn’t that right, Patricia Anne?

The question was rhetorical, fortunately for me.

“God’s truth,” Katie McCorkle commiserated. Then she straightened her shoulders bravely and got back to business. “Well,” she said, “you ladies finding what you want?”

“We’ve got four pumpkins in the car and I’m going to find one more,” Sister said.

“I got a lady cans soup mix for me,” Katie said. “Best stuff you ever put in your mouth. All you got to do is add a little stew meat, or just a bouillon cube if you’re scared of the fat. She brought a new batch in yesterday and it’s about gone already.”

“Sounds great,” I said. “I think I’ll get some.”

“Get me some, too,” Sister said. “I’m going to pick out another pumpkin.”

“I’ll help you,” Fly volunteered. “That stack over there where Dick is has some great ones in it.”

I followed Katie McCorkle into the curb-market shed. The jeans, stretched over her ample behind, were alarmingly worn at the seams, in imminent danger of disin
tegrating. But they were bell-bottoms. Twenty years old? At least.

The shed had the smell of all old curb markets, the smell of overripe bananas and apples, the earthy smell of root vegetables. Open bins of corn, tomatoes and okra as well as other vegetables were lined up in two rows along the hard-packed dirt floor. Along the back wall of the shed, Fly, presumably, had built a small platform and counter on which were a cash register and a small TV. Shelves filled with jars of homemade jellies and relishes lined the wall behind the platform.
Jeopardy
was playing loudly on the TV.

“Up here,” Katie said. I followed her up the one wooden step. The jars jiggled and clanked as we stepped onto the platform, which I hoped was not indicative of the quality of Fly’s work.

“Huron!” Kate screamed suddenly, wheeling around.

I jumped backward so quickly, I nearly toppled down the step.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry.” She reached out to steady me. “It’s just that those idiots”—she pointed to the TV—“never know the answers to the Great Lakes. Much as they ask them.”

I held my hand against my galloping heart. The past few days had shot my nerves to hell and back.

“You okay?” Kate asked.

I nodded. “You just surprised me.”

“Sorry. It just ticks me off, though. They have to pass tests and everything.” Katie scowled at Alec Trebek. “You think he’s putting something on his hair? I don’t think he’s gray as he was last week.”

I shrugged. Given Katie’s emotional involvement with the program, I felt it best not to comment.

“Maybe not,” she said, letting me off the hook. She walked to the shelves, motioning me to follow. “Soup
mix is here”—she pointed—“and here’s new pear relish and chowchow. The pepper jelly’s just come in, too. Red and green both.” She held two jars of the pepper jelly up so the light shone through them. They reflected against the wall, red, green, red, green. And for a second I was back at the Skoot ’n’ Boot and the music was pounding and the lights were flashing on the dance floor, red, green. There was something I should remember. Something…

“Two and a quarter for the little jars,” Katie McCorkle said. “Three dollars for the soup mix.”

I must have had a strange expression on my face. Katie read it as my being critical of the price. She frowned. “That’s cheap.”

Some important fact was still gnawing at the edge of my mind. But I was back at the curb market and Katie McCorkle was holding the jelly and looking displeased.

“Even the jars cost a fortune nowadays,” she said.