by Teresa Trent
I realized then I had never mentioned to Naomi that the fourth woman was engaged to Wade. How could she have known that? The only way she would have known would be if she was the one that called Lainey. She must have searched Wade’s phone. What else would she have found out?
“You know, we’ve heard so much about how Daisy felt when she found out that Wade had two more wives, but I was curious how that made you feel?”
“I don’t know. Angry, I guess. To be totally honest with you, I never really liked Wade. I had my suspicions about him all along. My little Daisy deserved better. She certainly didn’t deserve a man who would go off and father children with God knows how many other women. It’s always been my job to take care of her, and when Wade came along, I lost that responsibility. She would tell me she was fine, but was she really? She spent her days waiting around for that devil to release himself from the arms of another woman? I would have been happier if Wade had never showed up at the truck stop.”
“Do you think you hated him enough to kill him?” My words were simple and yet as poisonous as that vine in my garden.
“Betsy!” Aunt Maggie scolded. “I apologize, Naomi. Sometimes Betsy forgets the police detective in our family is not her but her father.”
Naomi, who had registered shock at my initial assertion, now closed her eyes to slits and cocked her head. It was if she were summing me up once more, reevaluating the threat I posed to her.
“Yes, I suppose I did hate him enough to kill him, but I didn’t. You see, I’ve always prided myself on keeping things in control. Killing another human being would be the opposite of that. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“I’ll say. By the way, what was your alibi for when Wade was shot?”
“My alibi?” Naomi acted as if there was a bad taste in her mouth. “I have not been asked to provide an alibi.”
“Okay, so what were you doing when Wade was killed?”
“I think I’ve had quite enough of this conversation.” She picked up the chocolate cake and the large cake knife. “The accusations you are making are rude and unkind. As much as I disliked Wade, I would never hurt my daughter or granddaughter that way. Daisy is in a much better place living with me. I can’t believe that you would accuse me of such a thing.” Naomi stomped out of the room while carrying the cake.
Aunt Maggie gazed at me in horror, “You sure stirred something up in her. You’d better watch out playin’ with fire, darlin’.”
“I’m headed out there. Call Dad and give him an excuse to come over.”
“You got it, sunshine, but why?”
“The only person who could have known Wade Atwood was engaged to a fourth woman was the killer.”
When I rejoined the women with the tray of coffee, Naomi, knife in hand, was slicing cake. She was smiling and laughing until I caught her eye, and then she pulled her lips back slightly, revealing her teeth.
“About time,” she said softly. She was skilled at cutting and delivering cake. She was skilled at many things in the kitchen.
Aunt Maggie re-entered and nodded at me.
“There is one more thing I wanted to add before we end our dinner this evening. When I was looking at Wade’s phone, there were five numbers he called in the last twenty-four hours of his life.”
“I was one,” Susie raised her hand. “I was so near to delivery that he called to check on me. He was so anxious to meet our Elizabeth. The last time he called, I had no idea it would be the last time we would ever speak and that he would never meet his daughter.” Susie started to cry.
“I was another,” Daisy added. “Who were the other three calls?”
I paused for a moment and then rested my eyes on Naomi, who was now cutting cake for the kids. “Two of them were calls to his delivery stops. Probably standard procedure to call beforehand.”
“That leaves one more call. Who else? I know it wasn’t me.” Emmie said.
“Well, that’s the most interesting part. It was a cell phone. When I called it, a woman answered.”
Emmie rubbed her hands together and braced herself. “I hate to think where this is going.”
“It was a young woman who claimed to know Wade.”
“How did she know Wade?” Emmie grumbled.
“Oh, you know, the usual way women know Wade.”
“I’ll be ...” Susie muttered but was interrupted by Naomi.
“You can bet if it had something to do with Wade it would be something like this. I hate to be insensitive at a time of mourning, but that’s just the way that man was. Frankly, I think you’re all better off.” Naomi said.
“Betsy?” My father said from the hallway.
“I’ll be right back.” I stepped out and quickly briefed him on the situation. He walked into the room, brushing rain off his Stetson. Behind him was Lionel Boyle, who had his hands in the pockets of his jacket.
“Good evening, ladies. Heck of a day for a funeral. We were having a friendly poker game with Boyle here and decided to stop in to my daughters.”
“Friendly?” Boyle said. “Playing poker with a cop and a coroner is bordering on crazy. How long have you and Art Rivera been playing together?”
“Don’t worry. You can pay us back at the next game.” My father said, flashing a grin that would have betrayed any attempt at a poker face. He and Art had been poker buddies for years, and I was secretly glad they had just fleeced Boyle. “Mind if we have a little of that coffee?”
Aunt Maggie returned to the kitchen and came back with two cups.
“Betsy here tells me that there might be a fourth woman involved in ya’ll’s case.”
“It’s news to us, Lieutenant,” Naomi said.
“Is it now?” Boyle took a sip of his coffee. “You know, Naomi ... I can call you Naomi, can’t I? Funny thing about this investigation is we checked all these ladies’ alibis, and each one of them was solid.”
Naomi had finished cutting the cake but still held the knife close to her.
“You’ll have to excuse our mistake. Old Lionel, here, is new. We never thought about asking about your alibi.”
“And why would you?”
My father acknowledged Naomi’s reasoning and continued. “I hear you’re quite a cook and that Wade was one of your biggest fans.”
She smiled and blushed. “Guilty. He loved my cooking.”
My father had struck at one of Naomi’s proudest achievements. It would be the thing that would take her down. I spoke up. “He especially loved your breakfast burritos. Something you delivered to him early in the morning sometimes.”
“I hardly see how this is important.”
My father played with his hat as he spoke in a calm voice. “Stomach contents are easy to discern. Not only did we pick up toxins but also what he had for breakfast. Ground beef, chili powder, spinach.”
“I’ve had enough of this. Your daughter made accusations in the kitchen, and now you are doing the same. Why would I want to kill my daughter’s husband?”
“Control,” I said. “You couldn’t stand it, and when you found out he was cheating on her, something flipped a switch in you. You spoke to the fourth woman on the phone.”
“You don’t know that.”
“But I do.” I answered. “She told me I was the second woman to call her. You were the first. It’ll just take checking some phone records to verify it.”
Boyle added, “Wade Atwood was sedated before someone faked his suicide. He ate food lovingly prepared for him by someone he trusted. That someone was you, wasn’t it Naomi?”
Naomi thrust the knife forward and then grabbed Maggie by the shoulders. Naomi had a good eight inches of height on my aunt.
“Daisy, get Anna. We’re going.”
“Mama.” There was horror in Daisy’s eyes as she watched her only parent wielding a knife. “Mama, tell me you didn’t do this.”
“Couldn’t you see that man was ruining your life? He was cheating on you, just like your daddy did to me. All you had to d
o was look at the man’s cell phone. You were always too trusting.”
“Mama, put down the knife. You can’t do this.”
“I’ve always taken care of you. Trust me, this is the best way. We’ll go away where they’ll never find us.”
“What if I don’t want to go?”
Naomi looked confused as her daughter’s words registered. “Of course you’ll go with me. That’s the way it works. I only want to take care of you. Now go get Anna.”
“No.”
Again, Naomi’s confusion was evident. Having a daughter say no was not part of her idea of their mother-daughter relationship. She had never let go. It was if she still saw Daisy the way I saw Coco, a small child who needed her love and supervision. She couldn’t comprehend that her daughter was now a grown woman who could make decisions on her own.
I put my fingers on the table, slowly inching along until they came upon the handle of my coffee cup. If I could aim at Naomi, hopefully I would only get a little on Aunt Maggie, who was so much shorter than her captor.
“What do you mean, no? Get Anna. We’re going.”
“You killed my Wade. How could you do that? How could you kill the man I loved?”
“A lot of people loved that cheater. You are worth so much more than to get so little attention. He should have worshipped you ... given you his unending devotion ...”
“I don’t care. I loved him. He was mine, and you thought you had the right to just take him away like some toy?”
Naomi processed Daisy’s accusations. “I had to. Trust me, I knew what I was doing ... It was for your own good ...”
I held my breath and splashed the coffee into Naomi’s face. As Naomi used her one free hand to cover her face, Aunt Maggie scrambled away. Boyle and my father swooped in and wrestled Naomi to the ground.
It was over, and the wives of Wade Atwood had their answers.
CHAPTER 26
“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. We are really pleased to have the newest member of our gardening guild, Susie Atwood, joining us for this very special awards ceremony. We all loved Susie’s first column in the Pecan Bayou Gazette, and Rocky here has promised me that she will be a regular contributor to the Gazette. She may be young, but this lady seems to be channeling years of wisdom that can only benefit our gardens,” Glory McGiver said.
Delta Haney was noticeably absent, as evidenced by the empty chair next to Enid. After being disqualified from the contest, she put a for sale sign in her yard, telling friends and neighbors that she had decided to move closer to her daughter in Paris, Texas. The real truth was she had been caught stomping my tomato plants and couldn’t stand to show her face in Pecan Bayou. Enid had also come down a notch or two after the incident. She started out being the most skilled gardener in the bunch and now found herself pulling weeds alone. She still didn’t have any love for me, of course.
“And the winner of this year’s contest is Pastor Green, who wowed us all with his climbing pole beans. A tribute to Mother Nature and our Lord.”
Surprised looks registered across the room. Most people thought Enid would win the contest. She had what seemed to be one the finest gardens in Pecan Bayou. Everyone had been sure it was going to be either Enid or Delta. Like Aunt Maggie told me once, you can plant it, but you can’t always predict it.
Pastor Green stood up, “Will miracles never cease? Thank you! I would like to ask if any member here has a bountiful harvest to set some aside for the community food bank to feed our families in need.” Pastor Green had a way of putting things in perspective. It wasn’t about the most beautiful vegetable but how the gardener shared it.
Enid started packing her things and grumbling under her breath, “I never. This contest is nothing but a sham.”
Susie, who was sitting in a desk next to me, winked and smiled at Enid’s protests. Glory spoke again, “And we have one member who was a new gardener and doing a wonderful job but then suffered under the angry actions of another. We have put together a special gift basket for our friend the Happy Hinter, Betsy Livingston ... Fitzpatrick.” She added the last name as a second thought, still thinking of me before I added Leo’s last name.
“Betsy? We heard you often asked about Brussels sprouts with Joe. We noticed there were none in your garden, and we all decided to donate ours to you. So I have made you a gift basket of your favorite vegetable, Brussels sprouts. We hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed growing, and now we will share them with you.”
Rocky, who sat behind the moderator, grinned widely as he knew how much I detested the little green balls of bitterness. I rose and accepted my gift.
“Thank you for this ... delicious gift. It’s an awful lot for my family, so I would like to donate some of it to Pastor Green’s food bank. It’s all about how we share it. Right, pastor?” They all clapped as I escaped back to my seat with the nasty basket of Brussels sprouts.
After the awards ceremony broke up, Susie and I walked out to the parking lot, where Daisy was on her way to pick her up. We sat on one of the front benches and waited for her.
“How is Daisy doing now that her mom is in jail?”
“Pretty good, actually,” Susie answered. “You know, this is really selfish, but it worked out well for the two of us. We’ve split the house in half. Elizabeth and I are on the top floor and Daisy and Anna are on the bottom. We share the kitchen. The house is paid off. It’s really great. I know that sounds awful.”
“My father told me Naomi will probably be in prison for the rest of her life. I know that has to be hard for Daisy, knowing her own mother killed her husband.”
“Yes, but what her mother did was so incredible.”
“The rest of the story came out. She made a batch of spinach burritos that were laced with some of the sleeping pills she had prescribed for herself. Once he was out, she grabbed his concealed carry gun out of his truck. She put his hands around the gun and put it up to his head and shot. Because it was a semi-automatic, there was almost no gun residue around the scene, and it happened so early in the day that no one saw her. She rolled his body off the loading dock into the open gate of the truck and then closed it. The sides of the truck were so high that no one saw him. Joe from Sprouts delivered the dirt at the end of the day, covering for Wade, and the dirt actually buried him in my yard. I didn’t know he was there until I hit him with a shovel the next morning.”
Susie winced. “I can’t understand why she would do that. He wasn’t hurting anybody, if you don’t count the extra wives and children. I was in this mess, but I was happy with my life. You go to jail for something like that, but you don’t get shot in the head.”
“Now that you’re the mother of a daughter, you’re going to find that it’s really hard to let her go, even just a little bit.”
“That’s silly. Of course, I can. I long for the day Elizabeth becomes more independent.”
“Oh, you say that now. Coco is only in daycare, and it’s been hard for me to let her go. Now, granted Miss Aileen doesn’t make it easy, but I know there will be all kinds of people who I feel shouldn’t be with my baby. Naomi felt that about Wade. He wasn’t good enough for her, and then she found the other women’s phone numbers on his phone. She knew he had been cheating on her daughter. Motherhood can have a pretty wicked side when you feel your baby has been wronged.”
Daisy drove up with both little girls in the car. She rolled down the window. “Hate to tell you this, but I think Elizabeth needs changing.”
Susie rolled her eyes and smiled. “It never ends, but having Daisy around has really helped.”
I thought of my Coco. “Treasure it. Treasure every diaper, every spit up, every smile, and even every temper tantrum. They go away in the blink of an eye. More things come along, but it all goes so fast.”
Daisy, her arm resting on the car window added, “Oh, and Nick stopped by. He wants you to call him.” Daisy wiggled her eyebrows twice and smiled. Had Nick decided having her nearer to him was not so uncomfortable?
“I don’t know. We’re taking it day by day. I guess when I had the baby, I was a little lost and there was a man in the room and I clung to him. Now I feel like I want to be self-sufficient before I go out with somebody.”
“Sounds good.”
It was plain to see that Susie was going to find her own way before she started trying to find another man in her life.
After leaving Daisy and Susie, I returned to my own home, where Leo was weeding out in the garden while Coco played in her sandbox. I was sure he was now applying some of his scientific principles to the garden. He had even been patient with me when he found out how much money we really spent to make this little patch of God’s green earth.
“Where are the boys?”
“They mentioned something about a death challenge in one of those video games. They should be back in an hour or two. They’re at Charlie’s house.”
It was so easy letting them do things on their own now. Of course, we kept track of where they were, who they were with, and when they would be back. It was freedom with structure, which they hated. I wasn’t sure I would feel as comfortable with Coco as an adolescent. Whatever I felt, I was sure Leo would be even more protective of his little girl.
“You’ll never guess what I won.”
“What? Did you win the contest?”
“No. They gave me a great big basket of Brussels sprouts.”
Leo laughed out loud and slapped his knee, causing dirt to fly. Coco looked up from her sandbox. She ran over to us, “I want Brussels sprout.”
“And you shall have them.” Less for me.
“You know, Betsy, I don’t want to tell you your business, but my mother used to make Brussels sprouts all the time. I loved them. Great source of vitamin C.”
“You would, you son of a science teacher.”
Leo smirked. “But she had a secret. She put a little sugar in the pot, and it took away the bitterness.”