Dumpster Dying

by Lesley A. Diehl

  “Dad. She gets the picture.”

  “Well, then that settles it. Anybody who has the sense to fire that toilet bowl ring is my kind of client. Of course, your involvement in Davey’s murder complicates this case somewhat.”

  “I’m not involved in the murder,” said Emily. “And if you think so, I’d better leave right now.”

  “Sit down, dearie. It’s my job as your attorney to second guess what the court might think and what your husband’s ex-wife might try to prove. Her lawyer will put your character on trial, don’t think he won’t, so you need to be up front with me about you and Davey.” His sharp eyes met hers and held.

  “There was no me and Davey,” she said. Not really, she told herself.

  “Then why did he hate you so much?” asked Clara.

  Hap shifted his eyes from Emily’s face to that of his daughter. “A good question,” he said.

  “I was the oldest student in the mixology class. The others were kids, and I asked a lot of questions. I even questioned his authority on occasion. He was a real ass, pompous, demanding, and sometimes drunk in class.”

  Clara and Hap nodded their heads in agreement with Emily’s assessment of the man, and Hap dropped the subject. Emily saw no reason why it should arise again.

  ***

  And so it was decided. Emily had herself a new lawyer. When she inquired about his fee, he asked for twelve dollars worth of Florida lottery tickets every week. He said he liked the excitement of not knowing whether he won more than he liked the certain money of a retainer.

  Clara had left the room while he and Emily talked and planned strategy. As Emily and Clara drove away from the retirement center, Emily felt more upbeat than she had in weeks.

  “Your dad told me about your mother and him,” Emily said.

  “He did, huh? What did he say?”

  “That he and your mom weren’t married either, and he understood perfectly my situation. It’s great to have a lawyer who’s personally experienced the legal issue a person is confronting.”

  Clara threw her head back, guffawed and pounded the wheel.

  “Watch it. You’re all over the road.” Emily grabbed the wheel to steer them out of the path of an oncoming truck hauling oranges from a nearby grove. Clara pulled over onto the shoulder, extracted a tissue from her jeans’ pocket, wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

  “What?” Clara’s reaction was ruining Emily’s newly found mood of elation, and she told her so.

  “I’m sorry, honey. That couldn’t be further from the truth. My dad is nothing if not a marrying man. After Mom died, to whom he was married for 30 years, he wed three other women and out-lived all of them. Dad’s hard on women like a cowboy is hard on his boots. Dad likes the retirement facility for a lot of reasons, but mostly because he considers it a great place to hunt for his next wife.”

  “Why did he lie to me then?” asked Emily. Tears began to fill her eyes. She was getting to like her new attorney, and now she found he’d told her a lie, a big one. Could all lawyers have trouble with the truth? Emily hated to believe that.

  “Because he likes you, and he wants you to feel comfortable with him. He thinks he’s showing empathy for your case. And he wants you to like him too.” Clara reached over and patted Emily on the shoulder. “I think you really made an impression on him.”

  Not as much of an impression as he made on me, thought Emily, more confused about the future of her legal defense than ever, but not as bewildered as she was about Clara’s arrest the next day.

  CHAPTER 6

  “I don’t suppose you’d like to go to the coast for some shopping?” asked Vicki. She and Emily sat on Vicki’s back deck watching the calves butt heads and the foals race one another in the pasture across the canal.

  Emily shook her head and reached for the binoculars sitting on the table. “I count three new ones, probably born yesterday or the day before. Time’s getting away from me with this murder thing and my legal worries.”

  “I thought you had a new lawyer, and you were feeling better about your chances in court?”

  “Oh. I am. I guess.” Emily thought back to her meeting with Hap yesterday. He made everything sound so simple, but today her doubts returned. He admitted he hadn’t been in court for over twenty years. Emily hoped he would wear clothes and keep them on during their court date.

  “But, here’s the thing, girl,” he had said to her. “Being a suspect in a murder is bad for this case, but not as damaging as the rumors going around saying you came on to the victim. Gotta get to the bottom of those.” Emily wondered how an issue of sexual morality could be more significant than murder.

  Vicki’s words broke into her thoughts. “Shopping might cheer you up, you know.”

  “Using what for money?” asked Emily.

  “Sorry. That was insensitive of me. I could loan you . . .”

  “And I’d pay it back working in the prison laundry, right?”

  “Guess I did it again. Sorry.”

  “Oh, quit apologizing. I know you’re trying to help. But to be honest, I never much liked shopping unless it was finding a bargain at a yard sale. Now that I find thrilling. Pre-used things so you don’t have to guess whether they’re tasteful. If you hit the good neighborhoods, you can rely on their judgment.”

  Vicki gave her a look of disbelief.

  “Anyway,” Emily continued, “I’ve got an errand to run today.”

  “Oh, good. What? I’ll go with you.”

  “I’m going to have a chat with Lucinda Davey. You know. Marcus’ wife. Still want to come?” Emily’s eyes twinkled. She had told Vicki about her encounter with the victim’s wife at the club.

  “No thanks. I’d rather wrestle an alligator. The woman sounds dangerous. I don’t think you should go either.”

  “Got to. Hap says I need to get to the bottom of her innuendo that I came on to her husband. I thought I’d confront her about her story.”

  “Take Hap along.”

  “Oh, believe me, I’m going to.” Emily put the field glasses to her eyes again. “Oh, look,” she said. She handed the glasses to Vicki. “Another foal, a black one.”

  They both agreed the foal’s appearance was an omen for a good day ahead.

  As with so many things in Emily’s presently chaotic life, her sense that the day would go well was wrong. When she pulled up at the Blue Heron Retirement Center to pick up Hap, she found him in bed with a migraine, and one of the female residents at the center.

  “She’s giving me a massage,” Hap said, after he introduced the two women. “That’s the only thing for a migraine. Massage and relaxation. Bed rest. Tomorrow we’ll visit Mrs. What’s-her-name. Now don’t you go taking her on by yourself. I’ll be out of bed by then. Or the day after.”

  The white-haired lady in the red teddy smiled at Emily, shook her head in agreement, and continued in her ministrations to Hap’s scrawny neck and shoulders. That scene was more than Emily wanted to know about or see this morning.

  Emily checked her watch as she left Hap’s room. Vicki would have already left for the coast, but maybe she could get Clara to accompany her to visit the Widow Davey.

  No one answered her knock at Clara’s. Since it was Monday, the day the bar opened in the evening and the restaurant was closed at the course, Emily knew Clara couldn’t be there. Maybe Clara had gone shopping, too.

  Emily stopped at the Round-Up convenience store, bought a microwave burrito, and asked for directions to the Davey ranch. She didn’t want to call first. She thought it best to take Mrs. Davey by surprise so that she didn’t have the advantage of loading her guns. Or getting the ranch hands to throw Emily off the property before she could talk with the woman.

  The convenience store clerk was right. You couldn’t miss the turnoff to the property. On either side of the stone pillars marking the gate to the ranch stood life-size bronze statues of horses, reared up with their forelegs off the ground.

  The gate was closed. And locked. Damn. Emily con
sidered climbing the fence and walking up the lane to the house. A herd of cattle grazing behind the fence deterred her. Several of them looked like bulls. She wasn’t willing to risk her skills at making bovine friends today.

  A brown sedan turned off the road and pulled up behind her car. Detective Lewis stuck his head out of the window. Oh crap. Emily wanted to go home and crawl under her covers. She never should have gotten out of bed today.

  “Ms. Rhodes,” he said. He tipped his hat to her. “Here to harass the Widow Davey?”

  “That’s not my style. In fact, I wanted a word with her about why she thought I was coming on to her husband. Given how he felt about me, it’s an absurd tale. Why would he tell her that?”

  “Let’s ask her. Together.” The detective flipped open his cell phone and made a call. Thirty seconds later, the gate rolled back. “Well? Let’s get moving before it closes on us.” He swept his arm toward the driveway, a gentlemanly gesture for her to lead the way.

  Emily jumped into Stan, then killed the engine trying to put it into gear, but she finally coaxed the recalcitrant vehicle down the road with Lewis close behind.

  If Emily expected a ranch house, she was disappointed. The structure before her looked as if it walked off the pages of Margaret Mitchell’s novel. Columns stood on each side of the wide double door. A veranda surrounded the house with floor-to-ceiling windows across the front.

  Servants singing old spirituals and a woman with crinolines and a hoop skirt on the front steps would have completed the antebellum picture. Instead she got Lucinda in purple capris. Her blonde tresses hid most of her face with the exception of her carmine mouth set in a severe line across her teeth.

  “You stretch my patience, detective, bothering me again with your questions. But now you bring that woman with you. I won’t tolerate her on my property.” She stood on the veranda steps, her hands on her hips, long crimson nails glistening in the sunlight.

  “No choice, ma’am. She was waiting on the road and pulled in front of me, and got through the gate when it opened,” he said.

  Emily was about to deny his lie, but the detective cut her off. “I wanted to talk with both of you, so why don’t we do it now? Here.”

  He brushed by Mrs. Davey and walked across the porch to a grouping of chairs and tables. He selected a rattan rocker and sank into it, throwing his hat on the glass-topped table alongside.

  Emily followed him and positioned herself on the settee across from him. There was little hope of getting a lemonade out of Lucinda, but Emily was parched and the burrito was working its way back up her esophagus.

  “Mrs. Davey,” she said, “could I trouble you for a drink of water?”

  “You’ve troubled me and my family enough, haven’t you? And now you want me to offer you southern hospitality? Marcus said you were a forward, Godless hussy.”

  “He said that about me? Well, I knew he didn’t like me much, and the feeling was mutual.”

  “He said you hated him. That you were a poor student and he was going to deny you your mixology certificate, so you tried to get it out of him by offering him favors, but he said no. So you killed him.” She loomed over Emily, who inched back in her seat eyeing Lucinda’s twitching blood red fingertips.

  “Did he say Ms. Rhodes threatened him?” asked Detective Lewis.

  “Well, yes, of course. She grabbed him after class one night and suggested they get a hotel room. When he said no, she took a knife out of her purse.”

  Emily popped off the couch and stood nose to bosom with Lucinda. She wanted to grab her by her fake eyelashes and shake the truth out of her, but Detective Lewis held up his hand and gestured at the couch, “Sit,” he said. And she obeyed.

  “Were there any witnesses to this confrontation?” he asked.

  “Witnesses?”

  “Was anyone else there?”

  “Are you saying dear Marcus was a liar?”

  “In a criminal matter such as this, we need corroboration.”

  “No. He was alone. With just her there.” She nodded her head at Emily, then slid into the chair beside Lewis’s. She reached for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the table, lit one and took a deep drag off it.

  “None of this makes any sense. I got my mixology certificate, so I had no reason to kill him,” said Emily.

  “You were a woman scorned twice over. Your man wouldn’t marry you and then died, leaving you not a penny. When you tried to get my Marcus’ attention, he blew you off.”

  Emily ignored the interruption. “And, as I was about to say, Marcus always drove to the class with Weston Quigley and the two of them rode home together too. Ask Quigley about my coming on to him after class.”

  “I will,” said Lewis. “Thanks for the information.”

  “Aren’t you going to arrest her?” asked Lucinda. Each word she uttered produced a puff of smoke from her mouth.

  “Corroboration, Mrs. Davey. That’s what I’m after right now.” He unfolded himself from the chair, removed his hat from the table, and placed it on his head. With a tip of it to the widow, he walked down the veranda steps to his car.

  Emily started to follow him, but stopped at the bottom of the steps.

  “I think you made up this whole story, Mrs. Davey. And I wonder why.”

  “Wait a damn minute,” Lucinda said. “Now you’re calling me a liar. Are you going to let her get away with that, detective?”

  “She’s not breaking any law, ma’am,” Lewis said.

  Lucinda jumped up, tossed her cigarette onto the porch floor, and ground it out with her shoe. “I’m going to put in a call to your boss. You let her come here and insult me, then tell me you’re checking on what my husband told me? She’s a killer. A sex-starved killer, and everyone around here knows it. None of us are safe with her running free. I can’t sleep at night unless I have a gun under my pillow.”

  “I don’t recommend that, Mrs. Davey,” Detective Lewis said. His voice held a cautionary note.

  Emily wondered if he was suggesting Mrs. Davey choose something other than a gun to take to bed with her or she not call Lewis’ boss. But before she could figure out the matter, a chair cushion thrown by the widow hit her on the back of the head.

  Here we go again. She dashed for the safety of her car and spun out on the gravel as she hit the accelerator. In her rearview mirror, she saw Lewis close behind her, his cell phone at his ear.

  Once they hit the highway, Lewis flashed his lights at her, but Emily decided whatever he wanted could wait. She headed for the safety of her tiny park model trailer. Lewis pulled up closer behind her and flashed his lights again. She ignored him and stepped on the accelerator, hoping she wouldn’t have to break any traffic laws getting away. He continued the chase. She put on more speed. He turned on his flashers. Oh, great. Now she’d done it. She was going to get a ticket.

  She pulled onto the shoulder and rolled down her window as he stopped his car, got out, and walked toward her.

  “Why can’t you leave me alone?” she asked.

  “I want to talk to you. Could we go somewhere for a cup of coffee or tea? You said back there you were thirsty.”

  “Talk? About what?”

  “Us.”

  What us? There was no us.

  She hit the accelerator, throwing gravel, which he fended off by holding up his arm. When she looked in the rearview mirror, Lewis was standing at the side of the road, shoulders drooping, gazing at her car as she put distance between the two of them.

  Her cell rang.

  “What? I’m busy trying to evade the cops.”

  “It’s me, honey. Hap. I’m feeling a whole lot better now. Let’s take a drive to the coast and go shopping.”

  “I don’t shop. And I certainly have no intention of shopping with my lawyer. Let’s keep this professional, Hap.”

  “This is professional. I need a new suit for court, and I thought, since I can’t locate Clara today, you’d be willing to advise me what’s in.”

  She ch
ecked her mirror. Good. No Lewis.

  “I’ll buy you lunch,” he said.

  “I already had lunch.”

  “Okay. How about an early dinner?”

  She burped the burrito not settling well on her stomach. “Okay. I’ll pick you up in five minutes.”

  “You sound kind of funny. Something wrong?”

  “No. But the day is not turning out to be what I was promised this morning.”

  “By whom?”

  “By the horses.”

  “Girl, you’re as wacky as me. How’d Fred tolerate you for all those years?”

  “How does Clara put up with you?”

  “You don’t know my daughter real well, do you?”

  Emily thought about that. Hap was the second person who mentioned her not knowing Clara well.

  A bleep from her phone let her know someone else was trying to get through to her.

  “Gotta go. See you in a jiff.” She disconnected and clicked to get the caller on the line.

  Lewis’ voice came through the phone. “The station called. We arrested Clara for Davey’s murder. I thought you’d like to know. And I want to explain about what I said back there. I think you misunderstood me.”

  Emily disconnected without responding and called Hap to say they needed to cancel their shopping expedition.

  CHAPTER 7

  “I want you to stop by my house and get some things,” Clara said. “My arraignment’s tomorrow, and I don’t have a toothbrush or a change of clothing.”

  Emily nodded, still numb with Clara’s arrest.

  She, Clara, and Hap were talking in Lewis’ office rather than in the jail. The detective’s doing, Emily knew, and it made her like him a bit more than she had earlier in the day.

  “I’ll be right by your side, honey,” said Hap. Hap, dressed like a southern gentleman lawyer in a white linen suit, a bit yellowed with age, leaned forward in his chair with both hands on his mahogany cane. Emily had smelled naphtha when she picked him up in her car and surmised he had dragged the suit out of mothballs for the occasion.