You Can't Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet: A Study Club Cozy Murder Mystery (The Study Club Mysteries Book 1) (11 page)

"She didn’t tell us to be gossiping," Mae Ella said shortly. "She may come from a trashy family, but she's a good girl. She just told us about it after she found Hilton dead and when we started trying to figure out who did it."

"‘We’ being the Club officers?" Brother Bob asked.

"Sister says it's because she won't have a Club member accused of murder while she's the president, but it's because she knows Wanda Jean is innocent," Mae Ella said. "Sister always has been one to take up for anybody getting picked on."

"Your sister is, indeed, a formidable woman," Brother Bob agreed. "And she has a heart as big as yours. Surely you don’t think I would have killed Hilton because he caught me dancing with my wife, do you?”

Mae Ella fidgeted in her chair looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Certainly not,” she said. “I’m just  . . . well, I’m just . . .”

“Disappointed?” Brother Bob asked.

"You're the preacher!" she exclaimed. "You're not supposed to be doing things like dancing in the parsonage to Ernest Tubb music. That’s just not good Christian behavior!"

Brother Bob leaned back in his chair and sighed. "I may be the preacher," he said, "but I'm a sinner like everyone else, and there isn't anything un-Christian about a man dancing with his wife. Even to Ernest Tubb music."

Mae Ella's jaw dropped. "Brother Bob!" she gasped. "How can you say that?"

"We could sit here a long time and debate the theological implications of dancing and the merits of Ernest Tubb’s songs," he answered patiently. "But the general line of thought is that dancing leads to other behaviors that might not be Christian, especially if they occur outside the bonds of matrimony. Since my wife and I are indeed married, we have God’s permission to engage in those behaviors, so dancing isn’t such a problem. Do you see my point?"

At the thought of what those "other behaviors" might be, Mae Ella's shocked expression turned to outright horror. Her mind was already having too much trouble processing the image of Mr. and Mrs. Brother Bob doing the two step, and mercy, surely they didn’t do the Cotton Eyed Joe, too! Taking out a Kleenex, she coughed quietly into the tissue, feeling a little sick at her stomach.

Seeing her distress, the minister went on kindly, "I'm sorry I’ve disappointed you, Mae Ella. You see, the thing is, I love my wife very much and, well, she loves dancing very much. I can only hope the Lord understands that."

"I wouldn't know what the Almighty does and doesn't understand," Mae Ella said curtly, "but you're still the preacher and it just doesn't seem right. That’s all I’m saying."

He regarded her thoughtfully for a moment and then asked, with no hint of accusation in his voice, "You don't really believe in God, do you, Mae Ella?"

A look of instant guilt rushed over her features as words of ardent protest rose to her lips. "Why, you know perfectly well that I'm in church with Cletus every Sunday morning!"

"You are in church every Sunday morning with Cletus because you love him and he does believe in God," Brother Bob replied. "But you haven't really trusted God since Alice Browning was killed, have you?"

To Mae Ella’s surprise, and considerable consternation, tears filled her eyes and her lower lip began to tremble. The idea that she might cry in front of the preacher seemed to make her instantly furious, because she gave a vigorous shake of her head, and said stoutly, "Well! God didn't do Alice very much good that night at the bridge, now did He? Alice was my best friend. If God wouldn't save her life, then no, I don't have much use for Him, but for Cletus’ sake, I do try."

"Alice was on her way to a dance that night, wasn't she?" Brother Bob asked.

Mae Ella regarded him with flashing eyes. "Now that you mention it, yes, she was," Mae Ella snapped. "So you can see why I might find that particular activity a little suspect."

"Mae Ella, God wasn't punishing Alice Browning because she was going to a dance,” he said. “And I don't think he's going to punish me and my wife, but I do think you’re punishing yourself, Mae Ella, because you’re alive and she isn’t."

At that, Mae Ella stood up abruptly. "Horsefeathers," she barked. "I think we’ve talked long enough, Brother Bob. I just wanted to know about the dancing. I didn’t ask you to go digging eleven years in the past." She stormed toward the door, only to pause at the threshold. Without turning to look at the preacher, she said, "I won't tell anyone. About the dancing."

"It’s okay if you do, Mae Ella," Brother Bob said. “I wouldn’t lie if somebody asked me about it.”

Still not looking at him, Mae Ella said shortly, "You're a good man. You're good to your wife. You do good things for this town. That's more than can be said for most. I imagine God will overlook this other nonsense."

"Would you like to come talk to me sometime about Alice?" Brother Bob asked kindly.

Turning towards him she snapped, "Why in the world would I want to do that?"

"Well, for one thing, I didn't know her," he said. "I'd like you to tell me about your friend. I understand she was a very fine young woman."

"Better than either one of those sorry boys in the car with her the night she was killed," Mae Ella said, and without another word, she walked swiftly down the hall and out of sight.

By the time she reached the sanctuary, Mae Ella’s feature had settled into her normal half scowl. Before she joined Wilma, Mae Ella sat directly behind Clara and Sugar and said, in a conspiratorial whisper, “It’s true about the dancing. The man doesn’t even have the decency to be ashamed of himself. But anyway, you can take Brother Bob off the list of suspects.”

Clara turned in the pew and took in her sister’s poorly contained agitation. “That’s all the two of you talked about?” she asked. “The dancing?”

“Yes,” Mae Ella snapped. “And I only did it to help Wanda Jean. I’m going to go sit by Wilma now.”

As they watched her bustle away, Sugar said, “My heavens! That thing about the dancing surely did upset her, didn’t it?”

“Sister doesn’t dance anymore,” Clara said, looking after Mae Ella with a contemplative expression on her face.

“Because she married Cletus and he’s a hard-shell Baptist?” Sugar asked.

Turning back to face the front of the church, Clara said, “Well, yes, that idiot brother-in-law of mine is about as Baptist as they come, but Sister gave up dancing before that.”

Sugar thought about that for a minute and then she put the pieces together. “Oh, Clara,” she said. “It’s about little Alice Browning, isn’t it?”

Clara nodded, “Sister never has gotten over losing her. I swear to God, Alice was the only person on the face of this good Earth who could ever get Mae Ella to loosen up and have some fun.”

“That’s awful sad,” Sugar said sincerely. “I didn’t realize.”

“Mae Ella doesn’t make it easy for folks to sympathize with her,” Clara said. “Sometimes I’d sooner pet a rattlesnake than try to have a conversation with my little sister.”

Just then, two ushers opened the doors of the sanctuary and a steady stream of townspeople began to file into the church. “Here we go,” Sugar said. “What exactly are we looking for?”

“Anything unusual,” Clara said, her eyes on the growing crowd. “Like that,” she said, resisting the urge to point toward the center aisle.

As nonchalantly as she could manage, Sugar followed Clara’s gaze, her eyes alighting on a stylishly overdressed woman wearing entirely too much make-up for 9:15 in the morning. “What in the hell is Melinda Sue Fairchild doing here?” she asked under her breath.

“Sugar!” Clara hissed. “Don’t cuss in church!”

“Sorry,” Sugar said. “But would you just look at that git up she’s got on? Now
that
is real white trash.”

“Well, she didn’t start out that way,” Clara said, her mouth set in a firm line. “She’s from good people. It’s those pageants that ruined her. She looks like the whore of Babylon.”

“Did Melinda Sue ever actually win one of those pageants after she was Miss Bait and Ammo?” Sugar asked.

“No,” Clara said, “but it wasn’t because she didn’t enter a jillion of the fool things. Her name is most certainly replacing Brother Bob’s on the list of suspects.”

“But we don’t even know if she has any connection to Hilton,” Sugar said.

“That doesn’t matter,” Clara said, watching with open disapproval as Melinda Sue gyrated her hips into a pew down front. “No woman who comes to church dressed like that can possibly be up to any good.”

Chapter 12

Melinda Sue Fairchild’s “git up” did flaunt the usual conventions of appropriate funeral attire. Granted, she
was
wearing black. At least the top half of her was wearing black. The strapless low-cut bodice of her dress was skin tight, boosted to its full potential by what was, no doubt, a “lift and separate” Playtex bra living up to its promise to make a woman “shapely.”

Every man in the sanctuary that morning offered up silent but reverent prayers, earnestly entreating the Almighty to please make Melinda Sue bend over just enough that they could be treated to the religious experience of her décolletage in all its glory.

Her waist was cinched into a black patent leather belt from which descended a gaudy harlequin check full skirt, resplendent in diamonds of pink, red, black, and green. She was using her impeccable pageant posture to balance on a set of black stiletto heels that looked more like weapons than footwear. And, of course, there was her trademark hair ribbon, scarlet satin today, taking the place of the tiaras she longed to win and could only glimpse from afar.

Yes, Melinda Sue had been Miss Bait and Ammo when she was 16, but there had been no tiara, only a camouflage sash emblazoned with her title and a rhinestone headband. It had been a bitter disappointment for Melinda Sue, but in those days, there were so many pageants ahead of her and she entered them all.

Little could she know that she, like her idol, former Miss Oklahoma 1958 Anita Bryant, would be denied her rightful crown. Anita was robbed of the Miss America title in 1959 by that trashy Mary Ann Mobley from Mississippi, an experience Melinda Sue herself relived on runways all over Texas and the South. It was, of course, jealousy on the part of the judges. As a good Christian, Melinda Sue knew this, and she tried to bear her cross fashionably and without bitterness.

Although Clara Wyler and Sugar Watson were not the only people looking at Melinda Sue askance, she was oblivious to any implied criticism. An audience was, after all, an audience, even with a casket in the room, and all concerned were presented with her carefully crafted smile, perfected by hours of practice in front of the mirror. “Be pleasant, but don’t look too eager,” her pageant coach, Dodie de Bellevue, taught her. “Let your inner light shine, Melinda Sue.” Miss de Bellevue made no allowance for the dimness of the bulb screwed into Melinda Sue’s socket.

No sooner had Melinda Sue settled into her pew than Sugar and Clara fixed their appraising gazes on the town’s token Yankee, Millard Philpott, who entered the church wearing a seersucker suit. To their certain knowledge he was the only man in the county, and perhaps in the state of Texas, who wore seersucker, and that alone was enough to raise suspicions about him.

“Would you just look at Millard,” Clara whispered to Sugar. “He looks like an ice cream man in that silly suit.”

“You know,” Sugar said, “I’ve seen pictures of Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote wearing seersucker. I think Millard is trying to look more like a Southern man.”

“Harumph,” Clara said. “I don’t think Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote are very good reference sources on Southern manhood. You wouldn’t catch Rhett Butler wearing seersucker.”

With all the pews filled and the clock now reading a quarter of ten, the organist began to play subdued hymns. The pallbearers came down the aisle first, each pausing for a moment in front of Hilton’s casket before taking his assigned seat on the front left pew. Mike Thornton was among the select six who would carry Hilton to his grave. Wanda Jean decided to include Mike at the last minute. When questioned by her sisters, she offered a truthful, albeit veiled explanation. “Hilton and Mike share an interest in plants.”

Under duress, brother-in-law Cooter Jackson was doing his family duty, although judging from the strangled look on his face, a necktie was on par with a hangman’s noose in his estimation. The other four men were all Hilton’s Masonic Lodge brothers, older and more experienced at the business of hefting a casket on their shoulders. After a certain age in a small town, a man could expect to be called upon to be a pallbearer on a regular basis, and there were always those men who fulfilled the role at the last minute when the family suddenly realized there weren’t six men in town who liked Grandpa well enough to tote him to his reward.

Once the pallbearers were seated, the congregation stood respectfully as Bill Simmons led the family to the reserved front pew on the right. Wanda Jean, dressed tastefully in a simple black dress, led the way, her hair freshly combed by Sugar early that morning at Rolene’s house.

Clara leaned into Sugar and whispered, “That was so nice of you to go do her hair at the crack of dawn.”

Sugar whispered back, “She really needed a comb out and some fresh spray. She was looking worse than Hilton.”

Brother Bob came down from the pulpit and privately spoke a few comforting words to Wanda Jean. Then he turned toward the congregation, held up both hands, somberly flapping his wrists downward to indicate everyone should be seated. He turned and regarded Hilton prayerfully for a long moment, and then climbed back to the pulpit, adjusted the microphone, and intoned the first words of his sermon.

“Friends and neighbors, we are gathered here today to pay our last respects to Hilton Fulton Milton, beloved husband of Wanda Jean Bodine Milton. Although their union was not yet blessed with children, Hilton was a part of the larger family of this community, coming into our homes and using the talents the Good Lord gave him to rid our dwelling places of all manner of tiny, crawling infestations. While these creatures are, too, part of God’s creation, the Almighty gave man dominion over the beasts of the earth, and so, in that sense, Hilton Milton did the Lord’s work in his profession as an exterminator.”