Murder on a Girls' Night Out (19 page)

“Feel those rocks and see if you can tell if they are real.”

I pushed up the sleeve of my dress and leaned over.

“Oh, my God,” Fussy said. “Oh, my God!” She turned so quickly that she bumped against me and both of us nearly ended up in the waterfall. By the time I had recovered my balance, she was running to the other end of the pool. I could see what she was running toward, though—a large, dark, floating form.

I got there just as she dived into the water. She surfaced, grabbed the man (I could tell now it was a man) and started swimming toward me.

“Help me!”

I jumped in and swam toward her.

“Shallow end,” she gasped.

I grabbed the man’s arm, and together Fussy and I kicked and pushed until our feet touched the bottom of
the pool. We pulled him to the steps and up onto the apron, where we turned him over and Fussy started CPR.

“Help!” I screamed, running up the kitchen steps. “Somebody come help us!”

Several people came to the windows to look out and someone opened the kitchen door. “Get some help!” I screamed to the person standing there and then ran back to Fussy. I knew CPR. We had been required to learn it as teacher in-training.

“Move over!” I said. But Fussy was no longer working on the man.

“He’s dead,” she said.

“Maybe not! You can’t tell!” I pushed her aside and saw that yes, indeed, you could tell. Blood was still running from the great gash that had opened his chest, but he was dead.

“It’s Uncle Jackson,” Fussy whimpered. But I already knew that.

I
t was after midnight before we were allowed to go home. Much of the time was a blur. I remember the sounds of people shouting and running down steps. I remember lights flaring and hearing Haley scream, “Mama!” And then Fred was there, wrapping me in his coat, trying to help me up while Fussy and I held hands across Jackson’s body, still thinking, maybe, that we could cheat death.

And then there were the shakes, shivering so hard that hot water in a tub couldn’t stop it, and a doctor, one of the guests, who asked had I been drinking? No. This will make you feel better. A pink pill. Valium? Probably. And it did. Enough for me to answer the sheriff’s questions. Enough to see the you-again? look on Sheriff Reuse’s face when he came in and saw me wrapped in one of Sara Hannah’s robes, chenille, just like everybody
wears, nothing fancy. Better enough to ask about my new red dress, which I knew didn’t count for much in the scheme of things but which was the only Lillie Rubin, new red dress I had ever had, and to be assured by Mary Alice that her cleaners would fix it as good as new.

I told the sheriff all I knew, which was nothing, and Fussy told him all she knew, which was nothing, and the guests were finally allowed to go home, but not, according to Mary Alice, until they had trampled every blade of grass around the pool and destroyed any evidence the sheriff might have been able to use, such as a footprint.

Richard Hannah, Sr., who had had heart surgery the year before, had been put to bed with a sedative. Richard, Junior, dealt with the newspeople, who had arrived before the sheriff. Finally he gave up and turned his job over to the wrestler guy who had accompanied the elder Richard. He handled them, I understand, by standing on the front steps and growling, “Go away.” Sara and a red-eyed Katie McCorkle said good night to the guests, who were escorted through the tent and away from the media.

Sheriff Reuse was kind; he looked tired, and I remembered he had been in Atlanta all day. “Take some vitamin C,” he told me when I sneezed. And finally: “Go home and get some rest. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

We had to leave by way of the tent since the media seemed to have set up residence on the Hannahs’ front steps. I was glad they didn’t get any pictures of me. I was still wearing Sara’s chenille robe and had topped it with Fred’s coat. One of the deputies took us to the pasture where our car was parked. It was the last car there and it looked tiny and welcoming in that field. All
I wanted to do was get in it, go home and sleep for a couple of days.

The deputy stayed to make sure the car started all right, and then he turned left toward the house while we turned right toward the main road.

“What do you think?” Fred asked.

I was almost asleep. “About Jackson?”

“If the two murders are connected.”

“I don’t even want to think about it,” I said. “I’m just going to go home, lock the door and not go out again. In sixty years I’ve never seen any violence except on TV, and here I’ve seen two murders in a week. Murders.” I felt the shivers beginning again. I closed my eyes and said my mantra. It didn’t work.

“I wonder if this will hurt Dick Hannah’s election bid.” Fred swung up the interstate entrance.

“Maybe help it,” I said. “Who knows?”

There was a sudden rustling in the back and a dark figure rose from the floor. This is it, I thought. This is the murderer and we’re dead.

“I’m sorry, Fred,” Doris Chapman said, “but you have got to stop the car. I’ve got to pee so bad my eyeballs are floating.”

“No problem,” Fred said. “I suddenly need to go myself.”

“Thank you,” Doris said, getting out of the car.

“You’re welcome,” Fred said. A few moments later, he got out for his turn.

Doris was in the backseat again, and my heart was still beating about a hundred and fifty even with the Valium. “What the hell is this about, Doris?” I asked. “You could have given us a heart attack.”

“Oh, Patricia Anne, I’ve never been so scared in my life!” She started sobbing. Sobbing interspersed with wailing.

“Good Lord!” Fred said, getting back in the car. “What’s the matter?”

“Jackson’s dead. We’re all going to be murdered.”

“Not me,” I said. “I’m going to go home and lock all my doors. Not come out again.”

Fred reached over and took my hand. “What are you talking about, Doris?”

She leaned over the seat between us. “Either of you have a Kleenex? I just used the only one I had.”

I fished one out of my purse. “Talk,” I said, handing it to her.

“I saw Jackson murdered. Right there in front of me. And I loved him. I really did.” She sobbed into the Kleenex. “I’m so scared. I know I’m next.”

“Who killed him, Doris?” Fred asked.

“Katie McCorkle.”

“Katie? She couldn’t kill a fly,” I said.

“She could with a butcher knife, Patricia Anne. You weren’t there.”

“No, she wasn’t, Doris. Tell us about it.” Fred sounded like a TV psychiatrist.

“Are you going to believe me, Patricia Anne?”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Well, I met Jackson in the gazebo and he was glad to see me, but surprised because he didn’t know I was coming, and I told him I’d had a message from him on my phone in Destin that he wanted me to be sure to come to this party. Anyway, he said he was going to get some champagne to celebrate and he went into the kitchen. None of the lights were on in the back, but I saw him coming back down the steps and then I saw Katie coming down after him. She called his name and he stopped by the pool and they talked for a minute and then Katie stabbed him.” Doris shuddered. “And he fell into the pool and she washed the knife off. Just leaned
over and rinsed the blood off right where Jackson was. That’s when I took off. Climbed the railing and hid behind that thing that pumps the waterfall. Good thing, too. She went over to the gazebo and looked around. I saw her.” Doris shuddered again. “I’m next.”

“Of course you’re not,” Fred said.

“But why would Katie McCorkle kill Jackson Hannah and want to kill you?” I wanted to know.

“Beats me,” Doris said. This time we both knew she was lying. “I knew I had to get out of there, though. I went around where they had the car tickets, and while they were out parking cars, I found out what kind of car you had and where they had put it. They were more organized out there than they looked. Then I hightailed it out to the field and found it. I thought you never would come, though.”

“I’m the one found Jackson’s body,” I said.

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“And why us, Doris?”

“Well, you were so nice at supper, and I had to hide
somewhere
.”

“We’ll take you to the police station,” Fred said.

“Oh, no! Please don’t.”

“You have to tell them what you saw, particularly if you think you’re in any danger.”

“Think? Hell, I know it.”

“All the more reason,” Fred said.

“I can’t. I just can’t tonight. Can’t I just go home with you while we figure out what to do?”

“What is this ‘we’ business?” Fred asked. “How can ‘we’ figure out what to do if ‘we’ don’t know what’s going on?”

“I told you, Katie killed Jackson.”

“And you need to tell the police. I’ll take the Gardendale exit.”

“No! Wait!” Doris put her head down on the back of the front seat. “There’s some stuff I haven’t told you.”

“Then maybe we better go home,” Fred said. Why do I ever underestimate this man?

“Thank you,” Doris said again. She sat back and was quiet except for an occasional hiccup or sniff. I thought about what she had told us. Katie McCorkle? Tiny Katie whose church group gleaned for the poor? The wound in Jackson’s chest had been a gaping hole. How in the world could that small woman have opened him up like that? Even with a sharp butcher knife. And why?
If
she had really done it. Maybe it had been someone who looked like her; Doris could have been mistaken. After all, the only light was from the windows. But Doris had watched them standing there talking. She had seen Katie rinse the knife off in the pool. What had Katie done then? Gone back inside and cut some more ham for the buffet? My stomach did a flip.

“Talk about something,” I told Fred. “Anything.”

“Katie McCorkle’s pearls were gone,” Fred said. “When we were in the living room talking to the sheriff.”

“Talk about something else,” I said. “She probably put them in her purse. Talk about the Grand Canyon.”

“The Grand Canyon?”

“Sure.”

“It’s real big, and you can take helicopter rides into it and camp down in the bottom of it.”

“That’s better. Are we going to go there when you retire?”

“Absolutely.”

“Those were beautiful pearls.” Doris spoke up from the backseat. “I noticed them when we were getting our supper. Opera-length. Didn’t look like Katie.”

“I must have noticed them, too,” Fred said, “to remember she didn’t have them on later.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” I lifted Fred’s coat over my head and covered my ears with my hands. When Fred woke me up as we pulled into our driveway, I was dreaming Mary Alice and I were in a red convertible. She was driving, and we were hell-bent for the rim of the Grand Canyon.

Fred fixed coffee while Doris took a hot shower and put on one of my nightgowns and Sara Hannah’s robe. I had switched to my own pink chenille one. The short nap had refreshed me. Maybe I was getting used to sleep deprivation. I had even combed my hair, brushed my teeth and put on lipstick, which I was happy I had done when Doris came out. Even with her eyes swollen from crying, she was still gorgeous. I began to have serious doubts concerning my adamant stand against cosmetic surgery.

Fred had just poured each of us a cup and was getting the milk out of the refrigerator when there was a loud knock at the kitchen door.

“Oh, shit!” Doris disappeared under the table. I couldn’t think that fast, maybe because of the Valium. By the time I was ready to hit the floor, Fred was saying, “It’s Mary Alice,” and letting her in.

She swept in, still in her butterfly caftan but with a fur coat on. “Who’s that under the table?” she asked.

“It’s Doris Chapman,” Fred said.

Mary Alice sat down at the table and leaned over. “Hi, Doris,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about coming back to work at the Skoot ’n’ Boot.”

“Thank you,” Doris said, “but I don’t think so.”

“Well, you’ve got a while to think about it.” Sister turned to me. “I just came to check on you, Mouse. I
was proud of you diving into the pool that way to rescue Jackson Hannah.”

A wail came from under the table. Mary Alice leaned down again. “What’s the matter, Doris?”

“He was her boyfriend,” I explained.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I wondered what she was doing under the table.”

Fred caught my eye and held his hands together in a V. He says Mary Alice’s thought processes are like a train that occasionally veers from the main line. “Let me pour you some coffee,” he said.

“You poor thing.” Mary Alice helped Doris get up. “I don’t know what the world’s coming to. People didn’t get murdered when Patricia Anne and I were young.”

Fred snorted, but it seemed to me that Sister was right.

“Doris saw it happen,” I said.

“The murder?”

Doris was back in her chair by now with her head on the table. “Katie McCorkle,” she mumbled.

“What did you say, dear?” Sister asked.

“She said Katie McCorkle killed Jackson Hannah.” I was beginning to feel like an interpreter.

“Oh, surely not!”

“She saw her stab him with a butcher knife,” Fred said, sitting down and stirring his coffee.

“Oh, my God!” Mary Alice reached over and patted Doris’s arm. “How awful. And I’ll bet Sheriff Reuse just upset you more. That man’s a martinet. Remember I told you that, Patricia Anne?”

“He doesn’t know about it,” I said.

“Doesn’t know about it? Why not?”

“Let Doris tell you,” Fred said.

Doris lifted her head. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time.” Mary Alice slipped out of her coat
and leaned forward, her butterfly wings cascading around the end of the table.

Doris told the same sequence of events she had related in the car, and Mary Alice asked the same questions we had: Why didn’t she go to the police and why should Katie want to kill her?

“This is between you and me, and you’ve got to help me. Okay?” Doris took a paper napkin out of the holder in the middle of the table and held it to her eyes.

“Okay,” Mary Alice agreed.

Doris sighed. “Old man Hannah and Katie have had a thing going for a long time.”

“I thought they were cousins,” I said.

Fred frowned at me. “Let her tell her story.”

Doris continued. “Anyway, this went back a long time.”

“What about Fly?” Sister asked.

“Shut up, Mary Alice,” Fred said.

“I think he knew about it,” Doris said. “Anyway, it had been going on for a long time. Even when Jackson ran for governor. You remember that?”