The Party Line, a Myrtle Crumb Mystery Prequel (2 page)

"Okay. Thanks."

You know, at that point, I
agreed with Melvia that there probably wasn't anything any of us
could do. Imagine my surprise when Doris May turned up dead. I
reckon somebody did do something
.

Come in and let me tell you the latest. You
know that Doris May Culpepper turned up dead, don't you? They found
her face down in a pot of beef vegetable soup in that diner she
works at. Pretty disgraceful and humiliating, if you ask me. No
drugs or alcohol turned up in the autopsy, so the police are
investigating this thing as a homicide.

I got to thinkin' about it: the police don't
know the situation and the folks involved as well as I do. So I
figured I give 'em a hand with their investigation. I put on my
beige poly-blend suit, black pillbox hat and black pumps. I looked
very "Jackie-O," I thought. I imagined that people would open up to
me more if I looked like Jackie.

The first person I went to see was Melvia.
After all, she'd offered to smack Doris May up side the head. Maybe
Melvia went plumb wild and drowned Doris May in that pot of soup.
You never know.

Melvia answered the door in a housedress, so
I had the upper hand right off…me lookin' like Jackie and all.

"Where are you off to so gussied up,
Myrtle?" Melvia asked.

I told her I had some errands to run. "I
thought I'd stop by and see if you needed me to pick up anything
for you while I was out," I said slyly. "Like, maybe…oh, I don't
know…your dry cleaning?" Beef vegetable leaves a terrible stain,
you know.

"No, honey, I don't need a thing," Melvia
said, "but thanks for asking."

From Melvia's, I walked straight to Tansie's
house. Melvia watched me. I know because I turned and saw her
peekin' out the window. Pretty suspicious behavior, if you ask me.
Spying on a solicitous neighbor.

Tansie looked a little better than Melvia.
She had on a pale blue pantsuit that brought out the blue tint in
her hair. Obviously, she was getting ready to go somewhere…maybe to
the dry cleaners. I'm telling you, beef vegetable really does stain
awful. Faye once bumped my elbow, and I spilled a whole spoonful
down the front of my sweater. A white sweater. I wound up having to
put the thing in the dog's bed. But back to Tansie.

"Why, Myrtle, what a nice surprise."

The way she said it made me think it wasn't
nice or a surprise either. I figure Melvia wasn't the only sister
who spied on her neighbors.

"Well," I said, "I'm getting ready to run
some errands so I thought I'd check and see if you or Ada need
anything while I'm out. Just bein' neighborly, you know."

"As a matter of fact, we're goin' out, too.
Appreciate you stoppin' by, though."

I want you to know that she all but tried to
push me right out the door. I thought that was pretty shady of her.
So, I stood firm—braced myself against the doorpost even.

"Terrible about Doris May, wasn't it?" I
asked.

"Yes…yes, it was.” She looked over her
shoulder. “Ada, honey, we need to be going!"

"The funeral home'll have a time getting
that soup out of her hair in time for the viewing. Faye once got
spaghetti sauce in her hair—she was just little, you know—and it
was the devil to get out."

"I'm sure it was," Tansie said, glancing
around again to see if Ada was coming yet.

"Washed it three times, and it still had a
pink cast to it."

"Well, Myrtle, I really would love to chat,
but—"

"In a way, I guess this whole thing's a
relief, ain't it?" I said, refusing to be so easily dismissed. All
them detectives on television are tenacious, and I wasn't about to
do any less than they would do.

Tansie gave me the owl-eyes. "What do you
mean by that?" she asked.

I gave her the old
nonchalant shrug. "Doris May
was
tryin' to take Ada's man. This has to be a worry
off her mind."

Tansie gasped. "What a terrible thing to
say!"

"Maybe, but it is true, ain't it?"

Wouldn't you know it? Right then, Ada came
down the stairs. She took one look at Tansie's owl-eyes and slack
jaw and said, "You ready, Mama?"

Tansie nodded her head, and Ada took her
Mama's arm and they strode right past me. I took a good hard sniff,
but I didn't smell any beef vegetable lingering on either one of
them. They forgot to pull the door up, so I did that for them. It
was the least I could do. I like bein' neighborly.

They'd done got in Tansie's Cadillac and
gone by the time I got off the porch. That was fine by me—I had
more investigating to do.

I decided to start with Bill, Ada's
husband.

I found Ada's husband Bill down at his
office. His secretary must've been at lunch or something, because
Bill was sittin' at her desk. We'd only met a handful of times, so
he didn't recognize me. That gave me a chance to get his initial,
unguarded reaction.

"May I help you?" he asked.

"Certainly," I replied. "You can tell me
whether or not you drowned Doris May Culpepper in a pot of beef
vegetable soup."

His eyes got as big as saucers; and when he
spoke again, it was in a squeaky voice. "Who are you?"

"Myrtle Crumb. I'm Tansie's neighbor."

"And you think I killed Doris May?"

He didn't offer, but I pulled up a chair and
sat down. "Come to think of it, that wouldn't make a lot of sense,
would it? Why would you wanna kill Doris May?"

"I wouldn't!"

"'Course not. That way, if Ada decided not
to come back, you'd have Doris on the string."

He opened his mouth to say somethin', but
nothin' came out so he shut it again.

I leaned my elbow on the desk. "What about
Ada? You reckon she did it?"

He sputtered like a drenched chicken for a
minute and then asked, "What's it to you?"

"I'm giving the police a little assistance
on this one." I held my mouth the way I figured Jackie-O would've
after making such a bold statement.

"Oh, are you, now?"

I gave him what I considered to be a regal
nod.

"Have you been deputized?" he asked, with a
little sneer to his voice. "Because if you haven't, then you're
trespassing and you need to leave."

I stood. "Seems to me you're pretty
defensive for a man who claims he has nothing to hide."

"Good day, Ms. Crumb."

"Good day, Kill…I mean, Bill." And with that
Freudy slip, I left.

I didn't know much about Doris May's
ex-husband, so I went to the beauty shop. The gals at the
Tilt-A-Curl can give you the low-down on anybody.

"Why, Myrtle!" Bess exclaimed. "You look
like you just stepped out of a band box!"

"Thank you, Bess. I wondered if Trudy might
be able to work me in for a manicure?"

Bess looked at the messy appointment book.
"Not today, honey. Wanna come in on Friday?"

"No, I was really hopin' she could take me
today. Wasn't that awful about Doris May Culpepper?"

"Oh, terrible. Terrible! And what a way to
go!"

"You know how bad beef vegetable stains," I
said.

"Oh, I know," Bess agreed. "She got her hair
done here, of course, so I know for a fact that her hair is very
porous. It no doubt soaked that soup right in…and her a Champagne
Platinum Number 42."

I tsked and shook my head. "Who do you
reckon would've done such a thing?"

"I watch Court TV," Bess said, "and it's
always the husband."

"But I thought they were divorced."

"They were, but he was still hung up on her.
Betcha dollars to doughnuts it was him."

After Bess told me that the ex-husband's
name was Donnie and that he worked at the furniture store, I headed
on over. This detective stuff was getting hard; but, hey, I had my
civic responsibilities, right?

I went to the furniture store on the guise
of looking for an end table. I said a friend had recommended a
salesman named Donnie Culpepper, but they said that Mr. Culpepper
had had a death in his family and would be out for the rest of the
week. When I asked for his home address and telephone number, I was
told to leave the store. So that trip was a waste.

But that was okay. The funeral parlor wasn't
so picky about giving out information. When I told them I was a
friend of Donnie's mother—I had to ask God to forgive that little
white lie—and said I wanted to take over a plate of food, they all
but drove me over there. I stopped by the Piggly Wiggly deli and
got him a little cake so that wouldn't be a lie, too. A little
cake, a plate of food, same difference.

I had to knock on the door two or three
times before Donnie Culpepper would show his face. When he finally
did come to the door, he asked, "Who're you?"

I told him who I was and that I'd brought a
cake over as a token of my sympathy.

He looked down at the cake and snarled up
his nose. "Happy Birthday? It ain't my birthday."

"Well, it isn't mine,
either, but they didn't have a cake that said, 'Sorry your wife is
dead.' You
are
sorry, aren't you?"

He scratched his belly. "'Course I'm sorry.
What do you mean by that?"

"I'm sayin' that looks like a vegetable beef
stain on your tee shirt, that's what I'm sayin'."

He looked down at the stain and then back up
at me. "I had soup for lunch."

"Was it from the same pot your wife drowned
in?"

"Hey, lady! What're you sayin'? Who do you
think you are?"

"I'm not saying
anything…not to
you
anyway. Here's your cake." I shoved the cake at him and
high-tailed it to the car. Not that I can high-tail it very fast
these days, but I got in my car and locked the doors before I even
looked around to see where he was. I needn't have worried. He was
still standing on the porch lookin' down at that birthday
cake.

On the way home, a new plan began to form. I
knew just how to deal with Mr. Donnie Culpepper.

At precisely 7:42 p.m., I muted "Jeopardy,"
picked up my phone and called Donnie Culpepper.

He answered with a slurred "yeah" that made
me think he'd been washing down my birthday cake with something a
little stronger than milk.

"Mr. Culpepper, it's Myrtle Crumb. I brought
you a cake today?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, I just want you to know that I'd be
willing to forget about that vegetable beef stain on your tee shirt
for…well, for five hundred dollars."

"Five hundred dollars! Geez, lady, you're
out of your mind!"

"Okay, then, I suppose I'll go to the police
with everything I know."

"That's just it—you don't know nuthin'."

"I know plenty of things," I said. "For one
thing, I know you were spotted coming out of the diner right before
they found poor Doris May." I had to ask God to forgive that little
white lie too because I just said that to trip Donnie up.

"That ain't so! They didn't find her until
two hours later!"

"Is that right? So, you admit that you
killed your ex-wife." My Jessica Fletcher-watching was paying
off.

"And what if I did? Huh? What about it?
You're just a senile old lady. Who's gonna believe you? It's your
word against mine."

"The police already suspect you, you know.
If I confirm what I know—"

"You ain't confirmin' nuthin'! You hear
me?"

"There's no need to shout. I'm not deaf.
Here's the deal. You killed Doris May, and I know it. For five
hundred dollars, I'll forget what I know."

He made some sort of
growly sound. "No, lady,
here's
the deal. I killed Doris May, and if you don't
keep your mouth shut, I'll kill you, too!"

"Well, there you have it, folks," I
said.

"Have what?"

"Your confession."

"That's your word against mine, and—"

"Nope," I said, "we all heard it."

"That's right," Tansie said.

"Me, too," Melvia chimed in, "and I have
Officer Rudolph on my kitchen extension."

And that's how I, Myrtle Crumb, became the
town sleuth. But then the telephone company came in and took away
our party lines. So much for progress.

If you enjoyed
PARTY LINE
, the party
continues with the full-length books in the series.

Between A Clutch and A Hard Place

When Myrtle Crumb buys a purse at a
consignment shop, she's surprised to find a note inside. The note
says, "If anything happens to me, look to Jim. He did it." It's
signed Flora Adams. It isn't long before Myrtle meets Jim Adams and
learns he's a widower. Did the man she's dating murder his wife?
Myrtle had better find out in a hurry!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008YPI1KE

When Good Bras Go Bad

Myrtle Crumb, the sassy sixty-something
sleuth from BETWEEN A CLUTCH AND A HARD PLACE, is back. This time
she must go undercover in the middle school cafeteria to prove her
granddaughter is not a thief. Still, Sunny knows more than she's
telling; and it's starting to affect her relationship with her
grandmother. Is Sunny's new friend Alicia the thief? If so, how far
will Sunny go to protect her? Sunny might be fixing to learn a
powerful lesson: that betrayal "is like when a good bra goes bad.
First it lets you down, and then that underwire pokes you right in
the heart."

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AQ4IH96

Claus of Death

Myrtle Crumb, the sassy, sixty-something
sleuth from BETWEEN A CLUTCH AND A HARD PLACE and WHEN GOOD BRAS GO
BAD, is suspicious when the mall Santa is found dead "on the
throne"--the Santa Land throne, that is. The police are saying it
was suicide, but Myrtle knows no self-respecting Santa Claus would
let himself die in front of the children! She goes undercover to
investigate the suicide and uncovers more than she bargained
for!