You Can't Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet: A Study Club Cozy Murder Mystery (The Study Club Mysteries Book 1) (16 page)

“Rolene, too?” Wanda Jean asked, examining the certificates.

“Yes,” Sugar said. “If we don’t ask them both, Rolene will just get her back up. We might learn more this way. Tell them I wanted to treat you all to a day at the salon after the stress of the funeral. Hair and nails. Flowers, do you mind?”

“Not a bit,” Flowers said, puffing on her cigarette. “I haven’t had this much fun since the pigs ate my little brother.”

Chapter 17

The County Clerk’s Office and the Sheriff’s Office sat at opposite ends of the first floor of the courthouse. Every morning at 7:45, Mae Ella Gormley and Flossie Henderson used their keys to open the north and south doors of the building. Down the long expanse of dim hallway tiled in deep moss green, the two women would each raise a hand in greeting before walking into their respective domains.

It was rare for either of them to traverse the length of the hallway to speak to the other, however, so Flossie’s face registered surprise when she found Mae Ella standing outside the Sheriff’s Office waiting for her first thing Monday morning.

“Morning, Mae Ella,” she said, shifting her oversized purse to her other arm. “What are you doing down at my end of the hall?”

“Morning, Flossie,” Mae Ella said, watching as the other woman unlocked the office door. “I wanted to talk to you in private before the boys get in.”

“Oh, Lester and Hank won’t be here until at least 8:30,” Flossie said. “They have to stop and get their coffee and gossip at the cafe first. Come on in.”

Mae Ella followed Flossie into the room. “I thought you all had a night dispatcher?” she asked.

“We do,” Flossie said, “but the dang kid went and caught that teenage mono . . . nucleo . . . kissing disease thing. Doc says he has to stay home for a few days, so people will just have to wait to call the Sheriff until the sun comes up. I’m too old to be sitting down here all night waiting on the phone to ring. Come on back here and sit down while I make the coffee.”

Flossie held open the gate to the area behind the counter and waited until Mae Ella pulled out one of the desk chairs before she busied herself opening a fresh can of coffee. As she worked, Flossie said, “So what’s so important it got you all the way down to this end of the hall?”

Mae Ella shifted in the rolling chair, the squeaking casters punctuating her words. “Flossie,” she said, “I’m just gonna cut to the chase.”

“Nobody expects anything else from you, Mae Ella,” Flossie said, filling the pot with water from a jug under the counter.

“You know that Wanda Jean Milton is a member of my Study Club and that Lester thinks she killed her husband?” Mae Ella asked.

“I do,” Flossie said, measuring out scoops of Folger’s, “and it’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard of. I can see a Bodine woman shooting her husband, but stabbing him? That ole dog just won’t hunt.”

“That’s what the Club officers think, too,” Mae Ella and said. “Clara is determined that no Club member is going to be charged with murder while she’s the president, so we’ve been asking questions and getting some strange answers. Do you know anything about the fire at John Powell’s hardware store?”

Flossie’s coffee scoop paused in mid-air. “How did we get from Hilton Milton getting stabbed to John Powell’s fire?” she asked.

“We got there through talk about Hank Howard,” Mae Ella said. “Have you all got yourselves a sheep-killing dog in the Sheriff’s Department?”

“I might have known this was gonna come down to some dang fool thing Hank’s done,” Flossie said. Then she paused and stared perplexingly at the coffee pot. “How many scoops did I put in there?”

“How the hell should I know?” Mae Ella said. “You were the one doing the counting.”

“Well,” Flossie said, still peering into the recesses of the coffee pot, “you threw me off. I’ll just put in one more for good measure. There’s no such thing as coffee that’s too strong.”

“That’s what I tell those girls that work for me when they go to spitting and choking over the coffee I make,” Mae Ella said. “Bunch of little sissy weaklings. Now, getting back to Hank.”

“Oh, right,” Flossie said. “I was wondering how long it was gonna be before that popinjay got himself in trouble.”

Mae Ella raised her eyebrows over her wire-rimmed spectacles. “Hank has a high opinion of himself, does he?” she asked.

“High opinion?” Flossie snorted. “You could comb your hair in the shine he keeps on those boots. Do you know that he actually carries an extra handkerchief just to wipe’em off? Can’t stand so much as a little speck of dust. Here about a month ago, he and Lester had to go out and look at a fence at Bob Conroe’s place that got cut. Hank stepped in a cow patty by accident. I swear to God you’d have thought he had himself a case of the bu-bonic plague the way he took on. Insisted on going home and getting another pair of boots, he told me he spent the whole evening saddle soaping the others. Over a little cow crap. Honestly.”

“Were they expensive boots?” Mae Ella asked.

“Well, yes,” Flossie said. “I will give you that. Hank has his boots handmade at M.L. Leddy’s in San Angelo.”

“He what?!” Mae Ella exclaimed. “Handmade boots on a deputy’s salary? How does he manage that?”

“Danged if I know,” Flossie said. “You want a cup of this?”

“Yes, please,” Mae Ella said. “Black is fine.”

Flossie handed her a steaming cup and sat down, rolling her own chair around to face Mae Ella. “Just after that fire at John Powell’s, Hank showed up to work on a Monday morning with a gold horseshoe ring on his little finger. You know, the kind with the diamonds in the horseshoe?”

“I do,” Mae Ella said stoutly. “And they’re tacky. Looks like something a Matamoros pimp would wear. Where did Hank say he got the ring?”

“Claims it was a gift from his parents,” Flossie said. “But Ima Jean Trugood told me that according to Millie Houston, who heard it from her cousin, who lives up around Synder -- that’s where Hank’s from -- that his parents are just oil field trash. Millie also told Ima Jean that her cousin said Hank couldn’t wait to get out of the oil fields. He went to the Army and was a military policeman, but they let him go on account of something medical.”

“He didn’t go to Vietnam?” Mae Ella asked.

“No,” Flossie said, “and he sure enough doesn’t like to talk about that. He gets all defensive and talks about how he tried to go and serve his country. Hank wanted to be one of those boys that wear the funny little hats. You know, like in that John Wayne movie that’s coming out next month.”

“The Green Berets,” Mae Ella said.

“That’s it!” Flossie said. “Hank wanted to be one of those boys, but he couldn’t pass some kind of medical test for getting in.”

“Hank look like he’s got any physical problems to you?” Mae Ella asked.

“Not really,” Flossie admitted. “He comes bouncing up the front steps two at a time just to show off. Seems like a strapping young feller to me.”

Mae Ella snorted. “From what I hear about the way he’s carrying on with Maybelline Trinkle, he’s not lacking for stamina. Is any of that true?”

Flossie looked around and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Well,” she said, “one afternoon last week I forgot my library book. It’s the one about the big airplane that gets in trouble?
Airport
? You ought to read it now that I’ve checked it back in, Mae Ella. It’s awful good. I hope they make it into a movie. Anyway, the book was gonna be overdue, and that’s a 10-cent fine, so I came back to get the book. Hank was here by himself because Lester was out at the river running his trot lines. Hank was sitting right here with his boots up on his desk and his back to the door talking on the phone when I came in and . . . well . . . I heard him say something real . . . suggestive.”

Mae Ella, who had been listening as patiently as possible to Flossie’s recitation, waited a minute and then said, impatiently, “And? What did he say?”

Flossie winced as if she found what she was about to say painful in the extreme. “I don’t mean to be indelicate,” she said, “but his exact words were, ‘Baby, I want to see you in a bikini dancing like that Goldie Hawn on Laugh In.’”

Mae Ella sat back as if she’d been slapped. “Dear God,” she finally managed to say. “That is just disgusting. Is he some kind of sexual pervert or something?”

“I do not know,” Flossie said, shaking her head. “But as you can well imagine, I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. I guess he must have heard me because his boots hit the ground right quick and he said into the phone, ‘Thank you for the report, ma’am. We’ll get that possum taken care of right away.’ He was red as a beet when he hung up and started stammering just like Mel Tillis. Have you heard that new song of his, by the way? It’s called ‘Who’s Julie?” and it’s real catchy. Kind of a little two-step.”

“No, I haven’t heard it,” Mae Ella said absently, mulling over this latest bit of information. “So you think Hank was talking to Maybelline about Goldie Hawn and the bikini?”

“Well, Lord God,” Flossie said, “as much as I even hate to think about what Maybelline Trinkle would look like in one of those skimpy little bathing suits, yes, I think it was her on the other end of the line. And if he wasn’t talking to her, I certainly hope he was talking to some woman, because if he was talking to some ole boy, we’ve got a bigger problem.”

“I have heard more talk about homo-sexuality in the last two days than I ever want to hear again in my life,” Mae Ella muttered.

“Excuse me?” Flossie said with a startled expression.

“Nothing. Never mind,” Mae Ella said. “Now, why exactly was it that Lester let Hank investigate the fire up at the hardware store all by himself?”

Flossie scowled and let out a disapproving gust of air. “If you ask me,” she said, “Lester lets Hank do too many things by himself. But Hank’s more than willing to look like a big shot and all Lester wants to do is fish. Hank went and took this course on fire investigation so he could take over and be the fire marshal. He had just finished the course before the hardware store burned, so that’s why Lester let him work the case. John Powell was fit to be tied when Hank said the cause of the fire was owner negligence. John came down here and bowed up at Lester, and Lester stood right here in this office and told him, ‘John, the boy went to school on this. He knows what he’s doing.’ And then there’s the thing about the business card.”

“What thing about the business card?” Mae Ella asked.

“Two days after the hardware store burned, I was straightening up the office,” Flossie said, “and there it was, laying right under Hank’s desk where he dropped it, a business card from the insurance company that wrote the policy on John’s store. Big as life. Right there on the floor.”

“What did you do with it?” Mae Ella asked.

“I picked it up and put it on Hank’s desk,” Flossie said. “And when he came in I told him, ‘You dropped a business card on the floor under your desk and I put it on your desk.’”

“And what did he say?”

“He thanked me and said the insurance company was anxious to get the report on the fire.”

Grudgingly, Mae Ella said, “Well, that could be true.”

“Yes,” Flossie said, “it could. But then that next Monday, Hank came to work wearing that diamond horseshoe ring.”

“Are you saying Hank took some kind of bribe from the insurance company to falsify the report?” Mae Ella asked.

“I’m just saying diamond rings don’t grow on trees,” Flossie answered. “Leastwise not any tree I ever saw.”

Chapter 18

Sugar flinched as Rolene Jackson popped her gum for what must have been the 10,000th time in the last half hour. There was something about a woman chewing gum in the beauty parlor that she simply could not stand.

Every day Sugar swept up mountains of cut hair off the floor in the Style and Spray and the idea of hairy Juicy Fruit just about sent her over the edge. So the fact that Rolene plopped down in Sugar’s chair bright and early Monday morning and unwrapped not one, but two pieces of Super Bubble had Sugar reaching for her Camels at an even faster than usual rate.

When Wanda Jean showed up with those gift certificates for the full treatment at the salon, both of her sisters reacted with that predictable get-something-for-nothing Bodine attitude that had long given the family a bad name in the county.

As Sugar watched Rolene rhythmically chewing her cud, all she could think was, “
Poor Wanda Jean
.” She was the only Bodine making a real effort to rise above her raising, and her trashy family was not helping.

Yes, Earl Dean was doing a fine job with the football team and he did grow pretty roses for a man who kept a pet hog. But the sisters?

Rolene was the over-permed, bleached blonde proprietress of a liquor store and Maybelline made Anne Bancroft in
The Graduate
look like a nun. Then, to top it all off, Hilton had to be inconsiderate enough to get himself killed on the new shag carpet.

Sugar had done a good job so far of keeping her mouth shut. Mae Ella and Flowers were dispensing plenty of unsolicited color commentary on the whole situation. But Sugar was just boiling mad at Hilton for the things he made Wanda Jean deal with. The cross-dressing was more than any woman should have been asked to stand, but he and Wanda Jean managed to keep that nonsense between themselves.

Now Wanda Jean was by herself and she was finding out about his pot and growing flowers with a Yankee and Hilton’s liberal political leanings. Don’t men ever stop to think it’s their wives that pay for such shenanigans? Sugar had given Slim a good earful about it yesterday when she came home from the shop.

“Slim Watson,” she declared, standing in front of her befuddled husband who was still half asleep on the couch, “if I ever find out that you voted for a Kennedy, I will divorce your ass.”

Blinking up at her in complete confusion, Slim said, “But, honey, I voted for Barry Goldwater.”