by Teresa Trent
Enid Sanford walked back to her car.
The judge called after her, “Are you leaving us, Enid?”
“I can’t stand here another minute and face this injustice. This lady has obviously had a professional gardener in here fixing her garden.”
I started to go after her, but the judge held my elbow. “Don’t worry about her. It’s about time somebody knocked the bloom off that one.”
What a pleasant surprise. I thought these gardening ladies were all joined at the hip. “I really did get advice from somebody. You know, I think I’m starting to like gardening.”
“Watch out,” she laughed. “You’ll be planting every year now. I was so awfully sorry to hear about your rough start to the contest. Have they found out who murdered that man yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Is it true that he had three wives? Talk about overfertilizing.”
I laughed. The more I talked to Glory McGiver, the more I liked her. “Yes, it is all true.”
“Well, then, that’s the first place I would look. Especially if one of them knew about any of the others. There’s an ant trail to follow there.”
“I thought about that too, but I couldn’t figure out why the wronged wife would kill Wade. Wouldn’t he be the one she wanted to keep?”
“It might be pretty hard to love somebody when you find out they’re fathering children with other people.” Glory had a point. Just how angry was Wade Atwood’s killer? A disturbing thought occurred to me. Had I been spending time with that person since his death? Although being at the hospital was a way to stay in Pecan Bayou, Susie and Elizabeth were ready to leave and start their lives. Before she left, I decided to give a going away dinner. Susie’s parents went back to their home to prepare for the baby, and I offered to have their daughter one more night. She and the baby could take off first thing in the morning. I invited Daisy and her mother as well as Emmie. They had been strangely thrown together, but they were a family, whether they liked it or not. With my family and the Atwood wives, the table would be full. I wanted Aunt Maggie there, but sensing I already had enough going on, she volunteered to drop by for dessert instead. Danny wanted to see the baby, but I didn’t know where I would fit him in. I was grateful for her contribution. When it came to baking, Aunt Maggie was the queen. Sometimes my efforts in the kitchen involved the terms “slice and bake” and “direct from your grocer’s freezer.”
Susie had spent most of the day dealing with her discharge papers at the hospital and now sat on my couch, exhausted, holding little Elizabeth. Coco brought out a toy baby bottle to feed the baby. Susie propped it up to little Betsy’s face, and Coco squealed in delight.
“What a beautiful baby,” Emmie said as she came into the living room. “I hope you don’t mind, but I invited Wade’s mama. She’s taking his death pretty hard. Wade’s daddy died some years ago. I thought she might enjoy seeing her new granddaughter. She asked for a rain check. Like I said, this is hitting her hard, poor dear.”
Something seemed different about Emmie. There was a softness that hadn’t been present the day she showed up and laid claim to the lamp. Maybe losing Wade for good, not just for a weekend, was changing her.
“Would you like to hold her?” Susie asked.
“Could I?”
“Of course. This is our last part of Wade, and I’m happy to share.”
Emmie’s eyes glistened. “That’s very kind of you.” She took the tiny baby in her arms and ran her fingers through the baby’s fine blond hair.”
“She has the dimple,” Daisy said as Anna came in and grabbed Coco. The two little girls, already thick as thieves, ran upstairs to Coco’s room.
“I know,” Susie said. “I think her eyes will stay blue, too.”
Daisy smiled at the infant.“Babies sure have a way of making you feel like everything is going to be all right.”
I watched the assembled crowd and again felt sorry for them. They had all loved a good man, but he had been a glutton for matrimony.
Naomi called from the kitchen, “Uh, Betsy, could you come in here for a minute? I can’t figure out how to turn on this oven.”
Daisy smirked. “Unbelievable, my mother can’t turn on the oven. Never thought I’d live to see the day.”
I turned to the kitchen, hating to leave my guests. “It’s an old oven. Let me help her. I’m sure whatever she brought is going to be delicious.”
I left the Atwood wives alone. What would they talk about? Oh, to be a fly on the wall. Would they discuss their day-to-day lives with Wade? Would they figure out how he juggled them all? Would they share the most intimate details of their relationships? Did he have the same pickup line for all of them? Okay, maybe I was glad I wasn’t in there to hear all of it.
“I’m sorry, Betsy. I keep trying to turn it on, but it won’t heat up.” My oven was a sickly shade of goldenrod that had been installed in the seventies, along with the sunflower wallpaper and the shag carpet. For all its ugliness, it still worked, and my policy had become: if it ain’t broke, don’t buy a new one. At least when you had three kids, it seemed to be the goldenrod rule.
“Here, let me. It’s a little tricky.” I adjusted the heat, and Naomi slid in a tin foil covered pan. The casserole dish looked big enough to feed my growing boys.
“I really appreciate you having all the girls together like this, Betsy. This is an odd situation for sure.” Naomi said as she snapped the oven door shut.
“What did you think when you found out about Wade?” I asked, curious how she felt.
“We were all in utter shock. Daisy loved that man so much she would have followed him anywhere. He was gone all the time, but she didn’t seem to mind. Let me tell you, my mister and I were married for twenty-five years before he passed, and I can count the nights we spent apart on the one hand. We got married because we wanted to be together. Of course, back in those days, there wasn’t so much going on before the ‘I do’ as there is today, if you know what I mean, so couples rushed to the altar a little faster.” She snickered at her own joke. Thinking about Wade and his desire for children, it would be hard to see him and Daisy waiting. “Sure, there were times when we didn’t get along, but I could always depend on him to be there. You know what I mean?”
“Did you get along with Wade?”
She paused for a moment, choosing her words. I was always amazed how well my father and Leo got along. It was like they joined forces for me, or maybe just to deal with me. Men. I waited for Naomi’s answer.
“Most of the time. When you’re the parent, it’s a delicate balance between taking care of your child and letting her live her own life. It can be pretty hard to let go sometimes,” Naomi admitted. I thought of Coco and my reluctance to let her go to daycare. I had such a mix of emotions. I wanted the freedom, but something inside of me just couldn’t let her go. That was exactly what I had been going through, and I wasn’t even facing the challenges Naomi had confronted with Daisy.
Naomi continued, “So, you do what you can to smooth things over. I’m so thankful you’re helping her get her GED. I work on Saturdays at the store. Having a place for Anna to go is really a generous thing to do on your part.”
“Anna keeps Coco busy, so it’s a great deal for both of us.”
“Good. Now that Wade is dead, it’s almost as if Daisy can start her life over, and this time maybe she’ll do it right. I know that sounds awful. Forgive an old woman for trying to see the bright side.”
She was right. How long would Daisy have stayed a waitress living off tips and the third of the salary Wade was parceling out? It was true. Daisy was better off without him.
Nick stuck his head in the kitchen door. “Is it all right if I crash this party?”
Nick’s arrival was a surprise, but was it really? He’d visited Susie at the hospital every day. “Not at all. Susie is in the living room with the baby. Why don’t you go see her?”
Naomi watched him leave and turned her head and smiled with a twinkle in he
r eye. “Is something happening there?”
“I believe so.”
“Didn’t take her long to find a new man. What a go-getter that one is.”
CHAPTER 18
“Wow, this is a lot of food,” Leo whispered into my ear.
“I didn’t cook it all. Daisy’s mother and Emmie both brought dishes, and Aunt Maggie is bringing dessert.”
“Pecan pie?” he asked.
You would think, living in Pecan Bayou, that was all we ate, but we branched out to chocolate now and again. Life is all about variety. “You’ll have to wait and see,” I whispered back. With the wooden plank extension now in place in my dining room table, we had just enough room to fit everyone, including babies. As it happened, Tyler and Zach were both out for the evening at two separate school functions. I had promised to make leftover plates for each of them. Little Elizabeth was slumbering in her new car seat. I was fortuitous that Susie had spent these days with us because I had not yet cleaned out Coco’s baby clothes. Once I got to digging, I also found crib sheets and a few other baby things. I didn’t plan to be going into the baby business ever again, and now we had more room for all the preschool paraphernalia Coco was beginning to collect. There was nothing like organizing to lift my spirits.
“When you get back to Blakely, how long will you take for your maternity leave?” Naomi asked.
“Not long. Probably only about four weeks. I can’t afford to be out of work much longer.”
“Will your folks help with the baby?”
“Hopefully.” Susie glanced at Nick. “Right now, everything is pretty up in the air. I guess I should have planned better, but I always thought Wade would be there to help me with all of this.”
“We all did,” Emmie said. Out of Wade’s three wives, his first wife’s story was the saddest. At least his other wives had his children. Emmie ended up with the insurance settlement, but she already lived comfortably. The money wouldn’t bring her husband of so many years back to her.
At the end of the table, Coco was teaching Anna how to push her peas off the plate and down to the waiting mouth of Butch, part-time watchdog and full-time scavenger. He was the only dog I ever knew who ate peas. Every once in a while, I’d see that chocolate-brown snout, lift over the rim of the table like the Hungry Hungry Hippos board game Coco loved. Coco and Anna with their heads together, shiny mahogany curls next to raven black strands, could have inspired a painting.
“They’re sweet, aren’t they?” Daisy asked, her eyes also on the girls.
“If you count feeding their vegetables to the dog, oh yeah.”
Daisy grinned and nudged my shoulder. “You know what I mean.”
“I guess you’re right. It’s wonderful to see our girls getting along.”
“And they didn’t fight the whole Saturday Anna was here?”
“Not a bit. I worked in the garden, and the girls played. I think they adopted Butch as the third little girl when they started dressing him in doll clothes. He put up with it, to my great surprise; and, for the most part, they behaved.”
Susie, sitting across the table from us asked, “How did you do at the last garden contest judging? I forgot to ask.”
Leo pointed his finger at me. “She was the surprise hit of the tour. All your advice paid off. She was even accused of cheating. Now that’s the mark of a winner.”
“Cheating? If anything, you were doing things to make yourself lose,” Susie said.
“You know, it was that Enid woman. She hates to see me succeed and hates that I caught her at the gardening store buying replacement plants. I’m pretty sure she’s the culprit behind my tomatoes getting abused,” I said.
The baby started to stir, and Susie rose from the table. “Did you know Wade hated her?”
“Wade knew Enid Sanford?”
“Sure. Wade had a few occasions to deliver sod and dirt to Mrs. Sanford and could never make her happy. She even blamed him once for poor dirt that she said led her to losing a rose competition she was involved in.”
This was news. Enid Sanford could be very vindictive. It might be a stretch, but would she have gone so far as to kill Wade? It seemed farfetched, but I had to put her on my list of suspects. Gardeners are notorious for pulling weeds, did that extend to people they considered weeds as well?
“Was there any reason she might have been angry with him right before his death?”
“Who knows,” Susie answered as she picked up Elizabeth, who had now launched a full-throated scream, causing Butch to crawl under the dining room table for protection. I felt his soft form bumping up against my calf, seeking me out as a port in a storm. Leo reached under the tablecloth and petted Butch’s head. Susie stepped into the kitchen to feed the baby. Once the baby stopped trying to break the windows with high-pitched squeals, Daisy spoke up.
“You know, the police think whoever sedated Wade did it early in the morning. Did she ever show up when you opened the doors?”
“Sure. Mrs. Sanford was an early riser. We didn’t see her as much at my store as Wade saw her here, but she was there.” Susie said as she re-entered holding Elizabeth, who was slugging down a bottle.
“Sounds fishy to me,” Naomi added.
Just another fact that confirmed Enid needed to be on my father’s suspect list. I’d give him a call as soon as I ushered my last dinner guest out the door.
The rest of the evening went amazingly well, especially when Aunt Maggie and Danny showed up with her—what else—pecan pie. Danny held the baby carefully in his arms, stroking her hair with his short, stubby fingers.
“She’s beautiful, and her name means Betsy. She’s going to be like you, Betsy,” he said, happy to have made that connection.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said.
“And what would be so bad about having another Betsy in the world?” Aunt Maggie said, speaking in her best baby-voice dialect.
“My thoughts exactly,” Susie added. Nick, who was quiet at dinner because I made him promise not to print a word that was said, seemed to be enjoying Susie’s companionship. It was hard for me to think of a single guy embracing a young mother with a newborn. Then again, she was a recent widow who wasn’t at all bothered by the attentions of a new man. You couldn’t deny the pheromones in the air.
“You’ll be okay. Driving back home tomorrow?” Nick asked.
“I’ll be fine. This time, I don’t have to worry about going into labor. Having a baby doesn’t destroy your ability to drive, you know,” she answered.
Leo stood in the hall with his keys, ready to pick up the boys at two different functions. “Which is crucial when your child gets to be a teenager and you find yourself the official chauffeur.”
Once everyone left that evening, my shoulders ached from exhaustion. The kids were all in bed, and Leo and I were still cleaning up. Leo had just headed out the back door with a bag of trash when the doorbell rang.
“Who could that be at this time of night?” He asked. “Let me get it.”
I continued wiping down the counters while I listened to two male voices, one being my husband’s.
“Don’t you think it’s kind of late to do a police interview?” Leo asked.
“Not really. I believe in working a case until it’s solved; there are no breaks in homicide work.” I dried my hands with a towel and walked to the door.
“Lionel?” He stiffened at my use of his first name. I suppose he would have preferred to be called Sergeant Boyle or, better yet, Detective Boyle. I called everyone who worked with my dad by their first name. Any other way would have seemed strange.
“Good evening. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions?”
“About what?”
“About the Wade Atwood case. There are just a few areas I’m still a little cloudy on.”
“Is my dad with you?”
Boyle’s chin went up, and he put both hands in the pockets of his jacket. “No, he isn’t. I’m here on my own.”
“Why?”
I felt Leo’s hand go around my waist. “Betsy, let’s go to the den so we can all be more comfortable.”
Yeah right. I was going to feel relaxed answering questions without my father here? In all my years living in Pecan Bayou, I had never been interviewed by the police, no matter how many bodies I tripped over.
Once we were settled in the living room, Boyle continued. “So, I wanted to ask about your relationship with the three women who were Wade Atwood’s wives. How exactly did you know them?”
“I didn’t. I found Wade in the dirt, and they just started showing up.”
“I see. And is it correct that you are helping one of the women get her GED and was the birth coach for another?”
When he put it that way, it sounded like my relationship did seem a little wacky with people who had been strangers to me a month ago.
“Betsy is a very giving person. When she sees a puppy to rescue, she’s all over it,” Leo assured him.
“These women are hardly puppies. Are you sure you didn’t know any of them before Atwood’s murder?”
“Yes.” I wasn’t sure if I was registering panic or anger as the little man in the cheap brown suit kept assuming I was somehow connected to the murder.
Boyle exhaled audibly. “Would you be willing to submit to a polygraph to prove you have no prior relationship?”
A polygraph? I didn’t know if the police station even had one of those things. “Why would I do that? I told you the truth. My father knows me. He can tell you these women were all complete strangers before this happened. Why don’t you ask him?”
Boyle cleared his throat. “I find that sometimes when someone is too close to a suspect, they can’t make an accurate observation of them. Your father loves you very much.”
Leo stood up. “I think we’re done here, Boyle. Betsy will not be taking a polygraph to prove something that everyone else in Pecan Bayou already knows.”
“Everyone here knows Betsy, that’s true. The Happy Hinter is a very popular column around here. That’s what makes her even more compelling as a suspect. She’s known for helping people with her clever tips. Maybe that feeling of being a superhero for others has extended to helping three women who were being cheated on by Wade Atwood. Helping them to the point of murder?” Lionel Boyle rose and turned, “I’ll find my own way out.”