The Pumpkin Muffin Murder (23 page)

“So this would be a big deal for them,” Mike mused. “Lots of money involved, more than likely.”

“I would think so, yes.”

“That might be worth looking into . . . for Juliette Yorke, though, not you, Mom. And I really shouldn’t say anything else, because the sheriff’s office and the police department are supposed to be on the same side, and I shouldn’t be trying to undermine their case.”

“Well, I think we should all be on the side of justice,” Phyllis said, “and it’ll be an injustice if Dana Powell is convicted of her husband’s murder.”

“Not if she did it.”

Phyllis didn’t say anything. She knew that Mike was right about what he’d just said, but she was stubborn enough to believe that she was right about Dana, too.

“Tell you what,” he went on after a moment, “I’ll call some of my friends back there on the police force and see what I can find out. Maybe they have some evidence that you don’t know about. If they do, I can’t pass along the details to you, but I can at least tell you for sure that your friend is guilty.”

“In the opinion of the police. Of course they’re not going to look for anything that contradicts that theory.”

She felt a surge of anger as she heard him sigh. When you got to be a certain age, your children thought they knew everything again and you knew nothing, just like they did when they were teenagers. She kept herself from making the sharp comment that she wanted to, though.

“I’ll stay in touch,” Mike said. “You’re right, with Thanksgiving coming up in just a few days, not much is going to get done this week. The bail hearing, maybe the arraignment, that’s about it. I’ll be back by the time the case really starts to get going.”

“So you’ll stay in California and let Sarah enjoy the time she has left with her dad?”

“I guess so. If you’ll promise to stay out of trouble.”

This time she couldn’t hold it in. “Bobby’s your child, Michael, not me.”

She heard him take a deep breath. “You’re right. Sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

Yes, he had, she thought, but in the interest of keeping the peace, she didn’t say it.

They said their good-byes instead, and then, feeling vaguely unsettled after she’d hung up the phone, Phyllis went back to the page of hits she’d gotten in response to her NorCenTex Development search. She went to the company’s Web site and got a list of the commercial properties it owned, but the site was lacking in any real information about the company itself beyond a post office box address in Fort Worth, a telephone number, and an e-mail link.

Clicking back to the search page, Phyllis scrolled down the links to newspaper stories that mentioned NorCenTex Development. There were quite a few of them. She had read some of them before Mike called and now checked out several more of them, confirming her impression that NorCenTex Development was primarily an investment holdings company that bought up failing or borderline commercial properties and made successes out of them. The company seemed to have a good track record at that.

There was nothing, though, about a pending mallconstruction deal in Weatherford. If it was true, though, and she had no reason to doubt what she had heard from both Logan Powell and Ben Loomis, it would be a big step for the company, as Mike had pointed out.

She couldn’t imagine what Logan could have done to jeopardize that deal—he had been hoping to cash in on it himself, in fact—but if circumstances had changed abruptly and Logan suddenly represented an obstacle to the mall, how far would the other people in the deal go to make sure it wasn’t ruined?

Phyllis knew that was pure speculation on her part, but she thought it was a question worth asking . . . and answering. She wasn’t sure how to go about doing that, but she was going to give it some thought.

Sam came into the room behind her and rested a familiar hand on her shoulder. “Thinkin’ about the case?” he asked as he looked at the list of links on the monitor.

“That’s right. That was Mike on the phone a little while ago. I told him all about it.”

“Let me guess. He told you to keep your nose out of the case and stay out of trouble.”

Phyllis laughed and reached up to pat his hand where it rested on her shoulder. “How did you know?”

“Hey, I got grown kids, too, who think I’m a dodderin’ old fool.”

“Mike doesn’t think I’m doddering.”

“Well, we’re in agreement on that. You’re about as far from dodderin’ as anybody I know.”

“Can we stop using the word
doddering
?”

“Fine by me. What did you tell him?”

“That there probably won’t be anything going on in the case this week except Dana’s bail hearing. He agreed.”

“So you didn’t actually promise not to nose around in the case?”

Phyllis shook her head and said, “Not in so many words, no.”

Both of them knew what she meant by that. Sam chuckled and tightened his grip on her shoulder for a second. “Here we go again,” he said.

P
hyllis had some vague plans for Monday morning, but before she could get started on them, the phone rang. Phyllis, Sam, Carolyn, Eve, and Bobby were in the kitchen at the time eating breakfast, and Carolyn was the closest to the phone, since she was up pouring herself another cup of coffee.

She picked up the phone, checked the caller ID screen, and said, “It’s Dolly.”

Phyllis stood up and held out her hand. “I called and left a message for her yesterday, asking her to call me back.” Carolyn handed her the phone, and Phyllis pressed the TALK button and said, “Hello.”

“Phyllis? This is Dolly Williamson. I got your message. Sorry I wasn’t able to get back to you yesterday. I was tied up at church nearly all day.”

“That’s all right,” Phyllis assured the former superintendent. “I was calling about Thanksgiving. I got to thinking about people who are going to be alone on that day, without families to gather around them.”

“Oh, Phyllis! How lovely that you thought of me. I’d love to come and spend Thanksgiving with you and Carolyn and Eve. And Sam, too, of course.”

Phyllis’s eyes widened in surprise. She hadn’t really meant to invite Dolly. She had just planned to ask her for suggestions of teachers who might be alone on the holiday. Dolly had grown children with families of their own, and they usually all got together on Thanksgiving.

“You’re not going to be with your own family this year?” Phyllis asked.

“No, they’re all flying off to Disney World or some such. Why anybody would want to spend Thanksgiving in some hotel, I don’t know, but what can you do? This younger generation certainly has a mind of its own.”

The members of that “younger generation” Dolly referred to were middle-aged adults, since she was in her late seventies. Phyllis didn’t point that out, though. She did the only thing she could and made the best of the situation by saying, “Of course we’d love to have you spend the day with us, Dolly. In fact, I was thinking about inviting several teachers who might be alone otherwise.”

“What a wonderful idea! Who did you have in mind?”

“Well, Jenna Grantham mentioned that she couldn’t afford to fly back home to Wisconsin. . . .”

“I know Jenna. Lovely girl.”

Phyllis wasn’t surprised that Dolly was acquainted with Jenna. Dolly might be retired, but she kept a finger on the pulse of the school district. Phyllis sometimes thought that Dolly knew every teacher who had ever taught in Weatherford, going all the way back forty years or more and continuing right up to the present day. She was familiar with a lot of teachers from surrounding districts, too, such as Sam, who had taught at Poolville for most of his career.

“What about her friends Taryn Marshall and Kendra Neville? I know they’re both single, but I don’t know what their plans are for Thanksgiving.”

“Let me find out about that,” Dolly volunteered. She loved to organize things, so the offer came as no surprise to Phyllis. “I’m sure I can come up with some other teachers who’d be glad to have a place to go for Thanksgiving, too. How many people can you handle? A dozen?”

Phyllis had been thinking more along the lines of three or four guests, but she had to admit that a dozen would help fill the house up and make it feel more like an old-fashioned Thanksgiving. She said, “Around a dozen would be good.”

“But of course we can’t expect you to prepare a dinner for that many people all by yourself.”

“I won’t be,” Phyllis said. “Carolyn will be helping me.”

“That’s still not enough. I can bring my baked mashed potatoes with sour cream and cream cheese. They’re wonderful. I’ll tell everyone who’s coming to bring a side dish or dessert. How will that be?”

It would certainly be easier if everyone pitched in by bringing food, Phyllis thought. And that was something of a tradition at family get-togethers, too. This was shaping up to be a bigger affair than she had expected, but she found herself looking forward to it.

“All right, that’s fine,” she told Dolly.

“This will be fun. It’s a wonderful, generous idea on your part, Phyllis. Now, you just relax and let me handle all the details.”

“Okay,” Phyllis said with a smile. Despite her age, Dolly was a force of nature, like a blizzard or a typhoon. There was no stopping her, and it was a waste of time and energy to try.

“All right, I’ll stay in touch, and I’ll let you know exactly who’s coming and what they’re going to bring.”

“That’s fine, Dolly, thank you.”

They said their good-byes and hung up. As Phyllis replaced the cordless phone on its base, Carolyn said, “You just got steamrollered by Dolly, didn’t you?”

Sam grinned and put in, “I always thought of her as more like a velvet sledgehammer.”

Phyllis thought both of those descriptions were pretty accurate. She said, “Dolly sort of invited herself for Thanksgiving, and she’s going to line up some other teachers who’d be alone for the holiday otherwise. We may have a dozen people here.” She looked around the table. “I hope that’s all right with the rest of you. I mean, this is your home, too.”

Sam shrugged. “The more the merrier, as far as I’m concerned.”

“I think it’s a fine idea,” Eve said.

“We don’t have to cook for that many people, do we?” Carolyn asked. “I don’t really mind, but I’ve spent a lot of Thanksgivings where I hardly got out of the kitchen all day.”

Phyllis shook her head. “No, we’ll just prepare like we would have anyway, although I might go ahead and cook an extra turkey. But everyone who comes is supposed to bring a covered dish, so we should have plenty of food.”

Bobby asked, “Who’s Dolly? What’s a covered dish?”

“Dolly is the lady that all of us used to work for,” Phyllis explained. “Except for Sam, because he taught in a different school district.”

“But I know her,” Sam added. “Dolly knows all the teachers for miles around.”

“And a covered dish is food,” Phyllis went on. “People make green-bean casserole, Jell-O salad or desserts, things like that, then cover the dish with aluminum foil and bring it with them so that everybody can have some of it.”

“That sounds good,” Bobby said. “Well, maybe not the green-bean part.”

Phyllis smiled. She was about to tell him that she could prepare green beans so that he would like them, but the phone rang again first. This time she was the closest, so she picked it up and saw that Juliette Yorke was calling.

“Hello? Ms. Yorke?”

“That’s right,” the lawyer said, “but you might as well call me Juliette. I just wanted to let you know that Ms. Powell will be arraigned at nine o’clock, and I plan to ask for bail at that time. I think it would be a good idea for you to be there, in case I need to show that she has the support of some solid citizens in the community.”

“Of course,” Phyllis said. She could pick up with her other plans later. “I can do that. Should I bring Carolyn with me? What about her friends who are still teaching? It’s kind of short notice for them to get substitutes. . . .”

“I think you and Ms. Wilbarger will be sufficient. I don’t see any need to take those other ladies away from their jobs. And I know this is short notice for you, too, so I appreciate it.”

Phyllis glanced at the clock and saw that it was a few minutes past eight o’clock. “That’s all right. We’ll be there.”

Juliette gave her the number of the courtroom, which was in the district court building a block off the square in downtown. Phyllis still thought of it as the old post office building, which it had been for years before the post office moved to a larger facility on the south side of town.

“Who’ll be where?” Carolyn asked as Phyllis hung up the phone.

“You and I are going to Dana’s arraignment and bail hearing.” Phyllis looked at Sam and Eve. “I hate to ask the two of you to be responsible for looking after Bobby again. . . .”

“Shoot, it’s no problem,” Sam said. “I got boards that need sandin’. I reckon he can handle a piece of sandpaper without hurtin’ himself, can’t he?”