Pretty is as Pretty Dies (A Myrtle Clover Mystery) (26 page)

Myrtle slipped her key into the keyhole, pulled on the brass
knob on the Bradley Bugle's door, and walked into the paper-congested newsroom, stopping in front of Sloan's desk.

It was empty. At least, it was empty of Sloan, not of stacks of
paper, photographs, books, and the giant trophy. Myrtle grinned.
She'd figured she'd run him off with her demand to talk to him
about her column. She walked over to josh's desk, which was covered with neat piles of folders and papers. Not sure what she was
looking for, Myrtle opened the top drawer of his desk. If she could
only find some evidence to match josh with the murder scene. A
deep voice behind her said, "Miss Myrtle? Dropping off a column?"

FEAR KNOTTED INSIDE HER, the color draining from her face as
she slowly turned around. Josh stood close behind her, hooded gray
eyes revealing nothing. He smiled, but it was a cold smile. He looked
pointedly at her empty hands that weren't holding a column.

"It was kind of odd for you to call me with a lead, Miss Myrtle.
Especially since you've been bound and determined to solve this
case yourself. I thought I might just stick around and see exactly
what you were up to."

Myrtle stood straight and faced him squarely, one hand leaning
back on Sloan's desk, holding on to the corner for support. "No,
Josh. I was looking for you, actually. I wanted to talk to you about
Parke Stockard." Remembering her tape recorder, she slipped her
hand inside her dangling handbag to hit the record button. If
nothing else, their recorded meeting would provide all the evidence Red and Lieutenant Perkins needed for a day in court. Off
balance, Myrtle dropped her cane. Josh leaned over to pick it up,
then swung it at her purse, sending it and all its contents flying across the floor. "Remember our lunch at Bo's Diner, Miss Myrtle?
You seemed very proud to show off your reporting tools to me."
He gave a mirthless laugh and kicked the contents of her purse a
few feet away from them on the tile floor as he dropped the cane
with a clatter to the floor.

Myrtle's voice came out like a croak. She cleared her throat and
said, "I used to think that you blushed when you heard Parke's
name because you were lovesick," said Myrtle. "But it wasn't a
blush, was it? You were flushing with anger. You hated Parke Stockard for what she'd done to you."

Josh gave a dry-sounding laugh. "You've really been doing some
investigating, haven't you? You must have finally caught up with
Aunt Althea. I should have known she would end up giving it
away.

"That Parke was the person who told the Times that you were
fabricating details in your articles?"

Josh looked irritated. "That's just it. They were minor details.
Small embellishments to make a couple of stories more interesting."

"You and Parke were friends in New York, then? She knew your
articles weren't completely factual?"

Josh grunted. "Saying we were friends is a stretch. We were professional acquaintances who sometimes ended up in the same
places. My ex-wife was a friend of hers, though."

"And one day you added some parts to a story that Parke knew
were not true."

"It wasn't even a major story. It was just a piece about changes
taking place in hospitals around the country. I was under deadline
pressure and included some quotes to support the facts I already
knew. Parke happened to be at a hospital benefit the following day and realized I couldn't have spoken to the people I quoted." He
glowered. "She was always looking for information on people. Always looking for something to hold over their heads-a little bit of
power to make them nervous with."

"So she told the paper. And they let you go."

Josh nodded. "They'd already had enough bad publicity with
other journalists who printed inaccuracies. They fired me and
printed a small article as quietly as possible. Not quietly enough
for my wife to ignore, though. She left me. And not quietly enough
for me to be able to get a job with any major newspapers in New
York or elsewhere."

"So you came back home," Myrtle said. "And you got a job with
the local paper and said you'd come back to take care of your parents. And you protected them from knowing what had happened
in New York. In their mind, you came home to watch out for your
aging parents and your wife was probably painted as no-good. Everything was fine for a while. Until Parke Stockard moved here."

Josh said nothing and Myrtle continued. "Parke probably
wanted to be a big fish in a little pond. She was looking for a place
with good real estate to be exploited. She remembered all the great
things you said about Bradley. And maybe your ex-wife echoed
those same things. Parke decided to move down here. You must
have been horrified. She wasn't the kind to be discreet. But she
was, perhaps, the type to blackmail other people."

Myrtle cocked her head to the side, her wispy hair flying around
her from the breeze off Sloan's oscillating fan behind her. "What
happened that morning, Sloan? Did she arrange to meet you at the
church since you were both already planning to be there? Did she threaten to tell everyone the truth about your past? And so you
murdered her?"

Josh sighed, as if he couldn't believe he was having to go through
so much trouble. "Actually, Miss Myrtle, it didn't happen that way at
all."

Myrtle interrupted him. "No, I suppose it didn't. She would have
threatened you before you went over to the church that morning.
When you entered the sanctuary, you saw Parke Stockard on the
floor-unconscious. You probably couldn't believe your good luck,
could you? You thought she was dead and that someone else had
done the favor for you. But then she stirred and you realized she was
still alive. So you took the nearest thing at hand, the collection plate,
and bashed her over the head with it. This time you knew she was
dead.

"But Kitty Kirk saw something that she couldn't figure out. She
saw you sneezing and your eyes running like you were still in the
grip of an allergic reaction. She was very familiar with your allergy
since she made sure every week that roses weren't part of the altar
bouquet. When she said there weren't any roses, she meant that
there weren't any roses on the grounds outside the church that
would have made you sneeze like that. You'd been around the massive arrangement that Parke brought in."

Josh gave a forced laugh and wiped a trickle of sweat off his
high forehead. "Miss Myrtle, that's the biggest crock I've ever
heard. You're wasted on the helpful hints column-you should
write novels."

"But you needed some security. You saw Kitty's face at the
church that day and you knew she would figure out what had happened eventually. At Parke's funeral, you made a special effort to swipe Cecil's checkbook. Even then you were looking ahead to the
day when you might have to kill Kitty Kirk ... and pin the crime on
Cecil Stockard."

Josh started to shake his head, but gave up the pretense. "You're
pretty smart, aren't you, Miss Myrtle? Up until now. What made
you think it was a good idea to come here and confront me?" He
looked genuinely sorrowful. "I don't want to have to do this." Icy
fear twisted inside her as he put his hand into his pocket and
pulled out a knife.

Her stomach churned. "No," she said, after clearing her dry
throat. "You just planned on having me drown. That night at the
lake." Myrtle backed up into Sloan's desk and reached behind her
with one hand. There had to be something on that crowded desk
to use as a weapon.

He laughed. "Well, you'd just told me you had some information you needed to talk to me about. I knew how much you'd been
snooping. What was I supposed to do?" he asked, as if his actions
were perfectly reasonable. He took the knife out of its sheath very
calmly. "Actually, I didn't originally plan on drowning you. Smothering you made a lot more sense and would have been a lot easier,
too. I know how all the old folks in Bradley keep their doors unlocked and windows open. I figured I'd just go in that night, hold a
pillow over your face while you were sleeping." He shrugged. "Another old lady dies peacefully in her sleep."

Myrtle's heart pounded so hard she could feel it up in her head,
throbbing. "Too bad I'm an insomniac. I didn't make it easy for
you." Josh advanced toward her and frantically now, she fumbled
behind her. Josh lifted up his arm and ...

"ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME?" boomed the strident voicetone behind them. Josh whirled around with the knife at the sound
of Red's voice. Myrtle crouched down and grabbed her cane off
the floor, then swung it with as much force as she could muster at
Josh's knees.

Josh crashed down to the floor as Myrtle struggled up, pulling
at Sloan's desk in her effort. With both hands she shoved the heavy,
granite-based trophy off the desk and onto josh's body, where it
hit with a thud.

"Yoo-hoooo!" screeched a familiar voice and Myrtle could have
wept with joy as the nasal sound of Erma Sherman reached her ears.
Erma scolded, "You're not canoodling with my beau, are you ... ?"
She cut herself off with a shriek at the sight of josh with the knife
lying on the floor beside him and Myrtle's white face. "You? You're
the killer?" she asked the prostrate Josh. "The one I liked?"

"You harpy!" hissed josh with weak anger. But Erma, pride affronted at having chosen a suitor so poorly, jabbed angrily at him
with her umbrella.

Which was when Sloan Jones peeked in to see if Myrtle was still
there or if it were safe to retrieve his forgotten wallet. His eyes flickered from the sight of Erma Sherman batting his award-winning
reporter with an umbrella, to the large knife lying on the floor of his
newsroom, to the pasty-faced and shaking octogenarian sinking into
his swivel chair, and finally rested in dismay on the worst of the horrors-his adored trophy lying in pieces on the floor, its ornate quill
pen top separated from the granite base. "My trophy!"

"ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME?" blared again behind them
and Myrtle scooted over with the rolling desk chair to scoop the
phone off the floor and answer it. "Red?" she asked weakly.

An hour later, Myrtle was home again with her feet up and a glass
of wine in her hand. Red stood in front of her, alternating between
relief she was all right and extreme exasperation. Lieutenant Perkins sat calmly, looking slightly out of place on her floral sofa,
waiting for Myrtle to swallow the big gulp from her glass and continue her story. Red was less patient. "You know you're lucky you
didn't kill him, Mama. He's in the hospital with a concussion. You
punched his lights out."

"He didn't deserve it?" asked Myrtle imperiously.

At a loss for words, Red just opened his mouth and closed it
again.

Perkins jumped in. "So I understand, Mrs. Clover, how you figured out that Josh Tucker murdered Parke Stockard. You picked
up on the New York connection and figured out Kitty Kirk's comment about the roses. Did you just assume, then, that he'd also
killed Mrs. Kirk?"

Myrtle shook her head. "What actually clued me in was that at
Parke's funeral, Josh came back into the church to find something
he said he'd lost. I was more aggravated with him than anything
else at that point, because he was sneezing like crazy from all the
roses in the sanctuary, and I was trying to listen in on Cecil and
Cecilia's argument"

Red gave a gusty sigh, which Myrtle ignored.

"I was so focused on trying to listen in at the time that I really
wasn't paying attention to what he was doing. He, of course, was
picking up the checkbook to incriminate Kitty Kirk later on."

Perkins frowned. "Was he even sitting that far up in the sanctuary originally?"

"Oh, he was taking a risk. But he had been sitting in one of the
first few pews. I guess he just reached over to the front row and
took it."

Perkins said, "So he knew even then that he was going to kill
Kitty Kirk?" His voice sounded skeptical.

"No, he was just getting the checkbook for insurance. He'd seen
Kitty's expression when he was sneezing outside the church the
day Parke was killed. But Kitty was still thinking that she had killed
Parke. She'd hit her upside the head pretty hard and left before
checking to see if Parke was still alive."