Although he seemed to be keeping his voice deliberately light, Myrtle could hear a raspy strain of stress in it. She could dash out the front door and run down to Miles. She could fling open his front door and announce to book club that Tarleton Fleming—who they’d all trusted at the bank for ages with their money—was Neil’s and Lyle’s killer. And they’d all think she’d lost her mind when she started explaining about hats. About Neil being dressy, Erma’s mad mutterings about Miles’s hats, and the way Lyle thought Neil was wearing a hat that day. She could do it, but she didn’t have a bit of evidence. And Red would likely lock her away in Greener Pastures for good this time. He certainly didn’t need any further encouragement.
“Who knows what goes through an old lady’s head these days?” asked Myrtle with a laugh and a shrug. “How are those lightbulbs going?”
Tarleton smiled back. “Oh, they’re coming along. I replaced some of your bulbs with a kind that should last longer.”
Myrtle asked, “Wouldn’t it have been better to have replaced them with a kind that has to be replaced every month? From an employment standpoint, I mean?”
“Probably. But I’ve a feeling there will be plenty of things for me to do around here, anyway.” He descended the ladder carefully and headed toward Myrtle and the front door. “I’ll get the one on the front porch now.”
Myrtle’s phone chirped at her and she grabbed at it, knocking it to the floor in the process.
Tarleton swiped at it, picking it up and backing away from Myrtle. His face grew red with anger as he read the message on the phone. He typed on her phone. “I think I’ll just tell Red that it was a false alarm—that you’d gotten confused about what day of the week it was and you thought you needed a ride somewhere,” he said smoothly. “I think he’ll believe your confusion, judging from what he’s told me about your bill paying issues.”
Myrtle fumed as he texted. She glanced at her cane. It was across the room. But she knew how to move quickly in her own living room. And she did.
Tarleton glanced up from the phone and threw it down. “Come back here!”
Myrtle didn’t feel the slightest bit inclined to obey him. She made sure to knock over the ladder on the way to the kitchen. Her thought was that she could make it to the back door and slide out that way. Maybe Erma had returned from the book club meeting and could provide some semblance of help.
Tarleton cursed as he stumbled over the ladder. But he recovered from the fall quicker than Myrtle hoped. Soon he caught up with her in the kitchen, shoving her hard in her back until she slammed up against the counter, glowering at him.
“Don’t be nice,” she growled. “Wanda’s advice. I shouldn’t have given you work to do here.”
Tarleton, quite out of breath, shook his head in exasperation. “Why’d you have to be so nosy? You’re practically the matriarch of this town. Do you think I like having to get rid of you? I’ve known you my whole life.”
Myrtle looked down her nose at him from her still formidable height. “I’m appalled at your lack of business acumen. Attacking an employer isn’t a good way of getting repeat business, Tarleton.”
“Never mind that! What was it that you figured out?” he hissed. “Who did you tell?”
Myrtle decided that it would be best to throw the entire book club under the bus instead of singling out Miles in her fabrication. After all, the chances that Tarleton would systematically eliminate every member of book club strained even Myrtle’s imagination.
“I made an announcement today at book club,” said Myrtle haughtily. “I reported that I had strong suspicions that you were involved and asked if anyone had any other thoughts on you as a suspect.”
Tarleton said, “There’s no way you’d have done something like that! That’s libel!”
Myrtle shrugged and slowly turned her hips a bit against the counter so that Tarleton wouldn’t notice the movement. “I’m old. I don’t follow the rules anymore. So the book club could be stomping through here at any point, seeing your car out front. And, naturally, if you did anything to me, not only would they suspect you, but the chief of police himself would. Red asked you to come by here. Don’t you think you’d be suspect number one if I were to be murdered?”
Tarleton said, “I’d simply say that I found your body when you didn’t answer the door. That I’d replaced the outdoor lightbulbs first and then got concerned when you didn’t answer when I knocked.” He sighed. “It doesn’t feel right to do this, but let’s face it: you’ve already lived a very long life. Cutting it a little bit short doesn’t really alter anything.” He moved closer to Myrtle, reaching out his hands to grip either side of her neck.
The back-door’s handle rattled loudly. Tarleton grunted, twisting his head around as the door pushed open to reveal a very startled and guilty-looking Puddin.
“Yer supposed to be at book club!” Puddin said accusingly. Then Puddin noted Tarleton’s hands around Myrtle’s neck and her eyes grew huge.
As Tarleton gaped at Puddin, his hands still around Myrtle’s throat, Myrtle pivoted, grabbing the fire extinguisher off the counter and swinging it as hard as she could at Tarleton. He crashed to the floor. Wanda was right—it paid to listen to Red. Fire extinguishers were useful.
Puddin had her hands up in the air as if Myrtle had gone wild and might use the fire extinguisher on her next.
Myrtle said, “Puddin! I never thought I’d be this happy to see you. Tarleton is the killer! Call Red for me.”
“Don’t have no cell phone,” muttered Puddin, stepping back away from Tarleton’s inert frame as if his murderous germs might be catching.
“Just use my house phone, for heaven’s sake! I tried texting Red, but he didn’t come. And help me keep an eye on him in case he regains consciousness,” said Myrtle, panting a bit from the exertion of knocking Tarleton completely out.
“Him’s out cold,” observed Puddin. But she loped over to the phone and started dialing as Myrtle hovered over Tarleton with the fire extinguisher at the ready in case he came to.
Puddin shook her head a minute later. “Him’s not answerin’,” she said with a shrug.
“Yoo-hoo!” called a voice from Myrtle’s living room.
“Erma! Erma, can you see if Red is home?” called Myrtle, stress dripping from her voice. “I need him here.”
Now Erma’s voice was farther away and more muffled as she looked out the window at the front of the house. “Um ... let’s see. His car is there. Oh yes. He’s outside, Myrtle. Looks to be doing yardwork.” Erma’s voice came closer. “I left the book club meeting when you did and I found my paper! Remember the one I was telling you about? The one on the Insiders where I made the A!”
“Go get Red!” yelled Myrtle and Puddin in chorus.
Chapter Twenty
MINUTES LATER, RED arrived. He also handily dismissed the extremely-curious Erma. Red rushed in the front door while he talked on the phone with the state police. “Mama?” he called out.
“In the kitchen. With the perp,” Myrtle called back. “He hasn’t woken up yet.”
Red jogged in to see his mother brandishing her new fire extinguisher over Tarleton’s head, Tarleton lying in a heap on her kitchen floor, and Puddin standing sullenly off to the side as if ready to flee at any time.
“Will he wake up?” asked Red. “Have you checked for a pulse?”
“Oh, he’s alive. Although I can’t seem to muster much sympathy for him,” said Myrtle.
“I had Erma call an ambulance,” said Red. “Even though I wasn’t exactly sure what type of emergency I was walking into here.” He paused. “I’m taking it that Tarleton must have done something fairly egregious for you to swing a fire extinguisher at him.”
“He certainly did. He was planning on killing me with his bare hands and telling you that he found me like this when he came in to change out lightbulbs,” said Myrtle.
“I saw him tryin’ to kill her. Nasty man,” said Puddin, eyes narrowing as she glared daggers at the un
conscious man.
“A nasty man who shouldn’t have been sent here to do work for me,” pointed out Myrtle.
Red rubbed his forehead with one hand. “Who’d have guessed that Tarleton Fleming would be a two-time murderer? I’d pretty much focused on other suspects and counted him out.”
“Which suspects had you focused on? Perhaps Holt Kelly?” asked Myrtle sweetly. She liked to demonstrate that she was several steps ahead from where her son might think she was.
“Maybe,” said Red, crossing his arms and frowning at his mother.
Puddin growled, “Another nasty man.”
“Holt has his issues, for sure. And he definitely doesn’t need to be an administrator in a high school. But he didn’t kill Neil and Lyle,” said Myrtle.
Red said, “I’m guessing that your sudden professional aspirations had to do with arranging conversations with Holt?”
“They might have,” said Myrtle carelessly.
“Not nice when folks don’t talk English,” Puddin muttered.
Myrtle gave a long-suffering sigh. “I pretended I wanted to return to teaching so that I could ask Holt Kelly questions.”
Red said, “At any rate, he’s not employed by the high school any longer. What’s more, he’s looking at some jail time. Apparently, he was resuming his bad Boston habits. The state police got word that he was starting back up with drug dealing. We had to bust him late last night since we were worried he planned on having students as customers.”
Myrtle raised her eyebrows. “That might explain why he was spotted at the park around the time of Lyle’s murder. Perhaps he was picking up or distributing contraband.”
Myrtle added, “You might also have thought that Adelaide Pound was a good candidate for the killer. Especially since Tarleton blathered all over town about her and how she was ‘stalking’ Neil Albert.”
Red said, “Well, I have to hand it to him because it was an excellent diversionary tactic.”
“And Clara was likely a major suspect,” said Myrtle.
“The spouse always is. Besides, they didn’t always get along. Not that that automatically leads to murder, of course,” mused Red.
Tarleton started stirring on the floor and gave a little moan. Puddin yelped and backed farther away from him.
Red’s phone rang and he picked up. After listening for a second, he said, “If you could search Tarleton Fleming’s house? Yes. He tried to kill my mother, an act that was witnessed by my mother’s housekeeper.”
Myrtle said, “Perhaps they should look for a bloodstained shirt.”
Puddin gasped as if the word bloodstained invoked unspeakable horrors.
Red raised his eyebrows and added, “My mother suggests searching for a bloodstained shirt. That’s correct.”
Red hung up and then said, “So he realized you were on to him, is that right? Surely you didn’t say something to him about it?” His voice was stern.
Myrtle put her hands on her hips. “You think I went right up to the two-time murderer and told him that I knew all about his dastardly deeds? Give me some credit. No, I didn’t say a word. But he realized, just the same.”
“If I ask you how you figured it all out, am I going to get a convoluted answer about soap operas and Miles and all sort of assorted craziness?” demanded Red.
“Certainly not. I simply realized that Tarleton was wearing a hat. It’s been knocked off his head now, of course. Lyle told Sally (and Sally told me) that Neil had been wearing a hat when changing his tire. But, then I went to book club,” said Myrtle. “And that’s when everything started falling into place.”
Red rolled his eyes. “Assorted craziness it is,” he interjected.
Puddin said reproachfully, “I thought you was still at book club. You said ten o’clock. You bolted from there early.”
“I was wrong—the meeting was at nine o’clock. Anyway, while I was at book club, Tippy mentioned something about Neil always being ‘so elegantly dressed’ or something like that. Typical Tippy remark, but she was right. Neil certainly wouldn’t have been wearing a baseball cap, especially on his way back from the bank. Lyle must have seen Neil’s killer, not Neil, by the side of the road,” said Myrtle.
Red said, “How could Lyle make such a huge mistake? Tarleton is a good deal older than Neil and looks completely different.”
Myrtle said, “I think that Tarleton was mostly obscured by the car. He’d clearly just put Neil into his own trunk and was leaning over. But Lyle must have recognized Tarleton’s outfit later when he saw him out and realized that he’d made a mistake. That he’d seen Tarleton, not Neil.”
“Wouldn’t Lyle have seen Tarleton’s car? Surely that would have been a dead giveaway,” said Red.
“No, because remember where Neil had the flat. He was right over there by the factory and that spilling-over parking lot and the parallel parking on both sides of the road. It’s a wonder that even Neil could find a place to pull over. Tarleton’s car would have simply blended in with all the other cars. Neil stood out only because he was changing the flat,” said Myrtle.
“And then Tarleton somehow saw that Lyle knew the truth,” said Red.
“An’ killed him!” said Puddin, scowling viciously at Tarleton, who was now starting to groan.
Myrtle said, “Lyle most likely saw Tarleton wearing the same clothes that he thought ‘Neil’ was wearing while changing out his flat tire. Tarleton probably hadn’t realized that he’d been spotted by anyone. Maybe he hadn’t even heard the car drive by because he was so absorbed with disposing of Neil’s body.”
Red frowned. “Tarleton seems too bright to just put on the same clothes he wore that evening.”
“But consider the circumstances. Tarleton had fallen on hard times. He wasn’t really in the position to get rid of perfectly good clothing. He probably just washed the clothes and then put them right back on,” said Myrtle.
Red’s phone rang again and he sighed, pulling it out of his pocket. “Yes? You did? Thank you.” He looked over at his mother. “The state police found a bloodstained shirt and pants in the corner of Tarleton’s closet. Care to fill me in on why you believed they’d be there?”
Myrtle shrugged. “Simple. Tarleton realized that he’d had to kill Lyle because he’d kept the clothes he’d been wearing when he’d murdered Neil. He decided not to take that risk again and just hid the stained clothing. Neil’s murder was spontaneous, but Lyle’s was better-planned. He must have been able to tell by Lyle’s expression that he’d put two-and-two together.”
“Lyle’s expression when?” asked Red. “It couldn’t have been at the park because there was certainly no reason for Tarleton to be there that early other than to murder Lyle.”
“Lyle’s expression whenever,” said Myrtle with an impatient shrug. “It doesn’t really matter. I’d imagine it was sometime the evening before so that Tarleton didn’t give Lyle the chance to share his suspicions. Since everyone knew that Lyle Solomon always visited the park very early in the morning, he waited for him.”
“Like a spider in a web,” said Puddin, shaking her head. Tarleton stirred again, but his eyes remained closed.
Red said, “These were two very different crimes. Neil’s was spontaneous and vicious and Lyle’s was planned and careful.”
Myrtle said, “There were two different motives. It wasn’t immediately obvious, you know, because Tarleton is a very genial man. But he had a strong motive and was very, very persistent. I’d heard that he asked Neil for a job at the bank several times, at least. Most people would have moved on to something else.”
“He did move on to something else, though, Mama. That’s why he was doing odd jobs for you,” said Red.
Puddin said scornfully, “Killin’ people you work for don’t make you much money.”
“Tarleton worked odd jobs to keep his cash flow going, perhaps. But mentally? He hadn’t really accepted his role as handyman. He liked the bank and was an excellent banker. He identified as a banker. When the banki
ng gig was over, he felt a loss of identity and wanted to return to the bank—in any capacity,” said Myrtle.
Red said, “Meaning that he needed to talk to Neil about a job. Which must have stung.”
“Exactly. Tarleton had gone out of his way to help Neil and find him a position at the bank. His act of kindness meant that he found himself jobless. And he continued asking Neil for employment. Tarleton met up with him outside the bank and pestered him in the grocery store. And when he saw Neil on the side of the road with car trouble, what better time to ask him? He was stranded, for heaven’s sake. He had a captive audience.”
Puddin said, “An’ he wouldn’t give him a job. Some friend.”
Myrtle nodded. “And Neil, who wasn’t always the most pleasant person, probably wasn’t in the best of moods while he was changing a flat tire in variable weather conditions. He likely gave Tarleton a piece of his mind. Maybe he even put him down.”
Red finished, “And Tarleton picked up the tire iron and clubbed Neil with it.”
Myrtle nodded “He saw red. And then picked Neil’s body up and stuffed it into the trunk of the car so that no passersby would see him with a body.”
Myrtle added, “The next time, it wasn’t fury fueling him, it was self-preservation. Tarleton probably didn’t feel as if Lyle were such a bad guy. He likely wanted to make sure that Lyle never knew what hit him. Maybe he waited until Lyle was completely absorbed in filling a feeder. He simply needed to make sure that Lyle didn’t reveal the fact that Tarleton was there when Neil was murdered. He must have been very nervous that Lyle might say something to his wife before he had the chance to silence him.”
“Maybe he wasn’t. Lyle and Sally weren’t exactly the sorts to confide in each other all the time. They weren’t even the sorts to be spending very much time with each other,” said Red.
“True. They were more like two completely separate and individual people who happened to be married,” said Myrtle.
Puddin’s eyes lit up at the gossip. Myrtle gave her a quelling look.
A Body in the Trunk Page 17