Out of Circulation (CAT IN THE STACKS MYSTERY)

by James, Miranda

  Thinking guiltily of how soundly I had slept, I nodded. “It’s no wonder you couldn’t sleep. After everything that happened last night.”

  Azalea regarded me warily, her momentary breakdown finished. “What you want to talk about?”

  “Last night,” I said. “But first I need to tell you something. Miss An’gel and Miss Dickce came to see me at the library this morning. They’re concerned about you, too, and they want me to help make sure the real killer is identified. They know you couldn’t have had anything to do with Mrs. Cassity’s death.”

  “That’s mighty nice of them, to be concerned like that.” Her expression hadn’t changed.

  I decided I’d better not mention that Kanesha also wanted me to help. That would put her back up straightaway.

  “Now, about last night,” I said. “I know it’s not pleasant, but I need you to tell me about everything that happened in that stairway. Let’s start with how you came to be there.”

  From the set of her mouth—I knew that stubborn line from compressed lips all too well—I thought she was going to balk. I decided that starting with a specific question would probably work better.

  “It was strange about the door at the bottom of the stairs being blocked that way. Do you know if it was blocked earlier in the evening?”

  “Expect it was,” Azalea said after a moment’s thought. “Think they keeps it like that. Them stairs is old and in bad shape. It’s real dark in there, too. That light don’t do much good.”

  “Where did you enter the staircase? On the second floor or the third?”

  “Second. Ain’t much call to go up to the third floor, and them stairs even worse than the ones down from the second floor.”

  This reminded me of questioning my children during their teenage years—not much volunteered, so I had to keep coming up with the right things to ask. “Why did you come down those stairs? Why not use the main staircase at the front of the house?”

  “Back stairs was closer,” Azalea said. She paused, then all at once the floodgates burst. “Reason I went upstairs, some lady come in the kitchen with her skirt about falling off. Needed it sewn up or she was gonna be parading around showing what the good Lord never intended the rest of the world to see. I said I’d sew it up for her, and Clementine said to go up to the second floor. They’s a little room at the back, right across from them stairs. Miss Dickce turned it into a sewing room.”

  That spate of information ceased as suddenly as it started.

  “You went up by the front stairs, surely?”

  Azalea nodded.

  “How long were you in the sewing room with the lady and her skirt?”

  “Ten minutes, maybe. Lady got dressed again and went back downstairs.” She glanced down at her hands, pleating and unpleating her handkerchief. She’d been doing it for several minutes.

  “But you stayed up there. Why?”

  “Had some personal business to take care of.”

  It took me a moment, but I suddenly realized what she meant and was evidently too embarrassed to say openly. She’d needed to use the bathroom.

  I nodded. “Okay. What happened after you took care of your personal business?” I was getting a headache from the tension I felt. I wasn’t enjoying this, and I’m sure Azalea wasn’t, either.

  “I’s about to go back downstairs, but when I opened the door I heard some people arguing right there in the hall. So I stayed where I was. Hoping they’d go away.”

  “Could you tell who the people were? And how many?”

  Azalea grimaced. “I could tell just fine. They was two of them, Mr. Cassity and Miz Cassity. They wasn’t yelling or anything, but you could tell they wasn’t happy with each other.”

  An argument between Vera and her husband—could it be as simple as that? Morty pushed Vera down the stairs in a fit of anger?

  But then I realized at this point in Azalea’s story, she was still in the bathroom, and the Cassitys were out in the hall.

  “How long did this go on?” I asked.

  Azalea considered that. “Few minutes, I reckon. Kept opening the door just enough to peek out, but there they was, still fussing.”

  “Could you hear what they were saying to each other?”

  She nodded, reluctantly, I could tell. “Some of it. Never heard such words before in my life. Miz Cassity had an ugly way of talking when she be angry. Miss An’gel wouldn’t ever talk like that.”

  “No, I’m sure she wouldn’t. Now, could you tell what they were arguing about?”

  “About him tomcatting around on her. That ain’t a Christian way to behave. You marry somebody, you don’t run around like that.” She shook her head. “But when you married to poison like her, well, can’t say as I blame him too much.”

  “Did you hear any threats from either of them?”

  “No, ’cepting him saying he was going to divorce her, and she telling him he could try, but she’d take ever’ bit of his money.”

  That was a powerful motive. Vera’s refusal to give Morty a divorce, along with the monetary threat, might have goaded him past endurance—and then he pushed her down the stairs as a solution to his problems.

  “Anything else you hear that sounded bad?”

  “No, sir. They both got real quiet then, and when I looked out I saw them going into a room down the hall.” She paused. “Well, I know I saw her. That big ol’ skirt she was wearing, you couldn’t miss. I reckon I thought he was in front of her, but I can’t be sure.”

  “Do you think he had time to reach the stairs and head down?” If my scenario were to hold together, then Morty probably would have gone into that room with Vera.

  “Maybe.” Azalea didn’t appear too certain.

  I’d come back to that.

  “What did you do after they went into the other room?”

  “I was gonna go down the stairs, but I heard her talking. The door was open about halfway, and I didn’t want them seeing me if I went past.”

  “Was that when you remembered the back stairs?”

  Diesel was getting restless. I felt his head butt against my thigh twice, and I stilled him by scratching his head. He purred in response. As long as he received some attention he would be okay, and I could continue questioning Azalea.

  Azalea nodded. “I ducked back down the hall and opened the door. Had to find the light switch, and when I did, it didn’t do a whole lot of good. I was gonna go back and try to get down the front stairs, but then I heard her out in the hall again. So I started down. Had to go kinda slow. Them stairs is so old I was afraid some of ’em might be rotten.”

  Now we were getting to the critical part. I tried to keep my tone calm as I asked my next question.

  “Think carefully now, and tell me what happened next.”

  “I got all the way down. Reckon they’s about twenty-five steps, something like that. Got to the door and tried to open it, but it was dark down there and I couldn’t see much. Light’s back up near the top. Kept twisting the knob and pushing, but couldn’t get the door to move, not one bit.” She shuddered. “I don’t like being shut up like that in the dark. I’s about to go back up when I heard the door up there open.”

  I didn’t prompt her when she stopped. I could tell she was reliving the experience.

  After a moment she continued. “Saw somebody step inside. Had to be her, because the skirt was so wide. That was about all I could see. Then she said something like ‘Why you wanna go in here?’ I didn’t hear nothing right after that, then she said, ‘Well, if this is the best way to catch them at it, okay.’ She took a couple steps down, and then…” She stopped and shuddered again.

  I waited and nodded encouragingly when she looked at me. She took a deep breath to steady herself. I could sympathize with her, because I was seeing that scene play out in my mind, and I knew what was coming next.

  “She came down a couple steps, I guess, then all of a sudden, I heard her grunt real loud, and she came flying down the stairs. Groaned when she landed,
and then she was quiet.” She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “Reckon I could use some water, Mr. Charlie.”

  “Right away.” I jumped up to get it for her.

  When I brought it to her, she had her eyes closed. I touched her gently on the shoulder as I set the glass in front of her. She nodded, then took the glass and drained two-thirds of it. “Thank you.”

  “Do you feel like telling me the rest of it now?” I asked gently.

  She drew another deep breath. “I couldn’t move, I was so scared. Then I figured I’d better get to her to see if they was something I could do. But when I touched her I knew the spirit had done left her. They wasn’t a thing I could do for her. After that all I wanted was to get out of there. Couldn’t go up. Her and her skirt blocked the stairs, so I started banging on the door till somebody heard me and let me out. Thank the Lord you come along when you did.” She drank the rest of her water.

  “What do you think happened? Do you think she tripped, maybe caught her foot on her skirt and fell?”

  “No.” I barely heard her.

  “So somebody pushed her?”

  Azalea nodded, eyes averted.

  “Could you tell who was on the stairs behind her?”

  After a nearly imperceptible pause, she whispered, “No.”

  Had it not been for that slight hesitation—so slight I might easily have imagined it—I would have believed her. As it was, I was convinced she wasn’t telling me the truth.

  Why?

  NINETEEN

  The obvious answer—Azalea was protecting someone.

  Or maybe she saw something and wasn’t certain what to think, how to interpret it.

  I decided to take a slightly different tack.

  “Could the person who pushed Vera have seen you?”

  Azalea shook her head. “Don’t think so. It was dark down where I was, and I scrunched up against that door. Didn’t want nobody to know I be there.”

  No hesitation there. Good. “After you heard Vera fall, what did you do? Take me through it again.”

  She frowned at me. I thought she was going to protest, but she complied after a brief hesitation. “Like I done said, I went up to her to see if they’s anything I could do, but she was dead.”

  “Did you look up at the top of the stairs at all?”

  She nodded. I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t.

  “When did you look? Before you went to check on her?”

  “I don’t rightly remember,” Azalea said slowly. She glanced away.

  Again it didn’t feel right. I pressed her. “Was the door at the top of the stairs open or closed when you looked?”

  “Closed.”

  “So whoever it was got out of the stairwell before you looked up?” I felt like I was leading the witness, so to speak, but I had to wring whatever information I could from her.

  “Reckon so.” Suddenly she pushed back in her chair and stood. “Ain’t nothing more I can tell you, Mr. Charlie. I need to get back to finishing my dusting.”

  “Okay, Azalea. You go on ahead.” There was no point in my insisting that she stay. Frankly I was surprised I’d managed to keep her talking this long.

  Diesel butted my leg with his head again. Evidently he had gone too long without attention, and he was letting me know. My mind remained elsewhere as I rubbed his head and down his spine.

  Despite what Azalea had told me—that the upper door was closed when she looked—I was convinced she was holding something back. She must have seen something. But what? Or whom?

  Then again, maybe I had simply misread her body language. Was I too anxious for a simple solution to this mess?

  A simple solution would be that Morty Cassity pushed Vera down the stairs, angry because she refused to divorce him.

  I needed a drink. My throat felt dry after my interrogation of Azalea, so I got up and poured myself a glass of water and downed it.

  That was better. I leaned against the counter and stared down at Diesel. He sat at my feet and stared up at me as if to ask, “Okay, what now?”

  “I’m not sure, boy.”

  He meowed and thrust out a paw to touch my leg. I had to smile. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to convey, but the fact that he always seemed to respond when I talked to him made me feel like we were having a conversation.

  My cell phone rang, and I peered at the number that came up on the screen. I frowned. Why was Melba Gilley calling me?

  I answered the call and before I could do more than utter hello, Melba was off and running.

  “Charlie, the weirdest thing. One of the work-study students just walked over from the main building with a letter for you. Apparently it got delivered by mistake over there and was sitting on somebody’s desk since Monday. Anyway, you’ll never guess who it’s from.”

  I suppressed a sigh of irritation. I loved Melba dearly, but she could be exasperating—especially when she thought there was gossip involved. “No, you’re right, I’ll never guess. So who’s the letter from?”

  “Vera Cassity.”

  I nearly dropped the phone.

  “Charlie, you still there?”

  “Yes, I’m here.” Shaken, but here. Why would Vera write to me?

  “Don’t you think you ought to come and see what’s in the letter? Or I could bring it to you in a little bit, when I go out to lunch.”

  “I’ll come get it,” I said. “I’m feeling a bit better now, and the walk will do me and Diesel good. We’ll see you in about fifteen minutes.” I ended the call.

  A letter from Vera—that was distinctly creepy. Obviously she had written and posted it late last week, probably after she came to see me at the archives. It might not be anything more than another attempt to coerce me into letting her nose around in the Ducote papers.

  Too late for that, I thought grimly.

  “Come on, boy, we’re going back to work.” Diesel waited for me by the door as I scribbled a quick note for Azalea and left it on the table. I wanted to let her know that I would be back for lunch later on. If I didn’t turn up as usual, I would mess up her routine, and I had upset her enough already today.

  When Diesel and I walked into the library director’s suite, Melba’s face lit up with excitement. She bobbed up out of her chair and came to greet us. She and Diesel were great pals, and she squatted to put herself on face level with him. They rubbed noses, and she scratched his head and talked nonsense to him while I stood patiently by.

  At last Melba stood, brushed some hair from her bright turquoise pants, and said, “Charlie, I know you’re tired, but you have to tell me all about what happened last night.” She pointed to a chair by her desk. “Now, sit and spill.”

  I’d known Melba since elementary school, when she was a gap-toothed, pigtailed nuisance who could talk the hind legs off a mule. Forty-odd years later she was an attractive, stylish woman, but her mouth hadn’t slowed down. I had to be careful what I told her, because it would be all over town ten minutes after I left her.

  I started out with a carefully edited account of the gala, but Melba interrupted with questions.

  “How was Vera dressed? The article in the paper didn’t say anything about it, and they haven’t run any photos from the gala yet.”

  “She came as Scarlett O’Hara, and her husband was Rhett Butler.”

  Melba snorted with laughter. “You have got to be kidding me. Vera Cassity as Scarlett O’Hara? That must have been a sight.”

  I winced, thinking of Vera’s corpse on the stairwell, with that hoop skirt billowing up, stuck in place. I wasn’t going to share that detail with Melba, however.

  “Sorry.” Melba looked almost contrite. “I know it’s terrible of me to make fun of her like that, but a woman her age dressing like that. She should have gone as Scarlett’s grandmother, Lord have mercy. She was seventy-five at least.”

  That surprised me. “I thought she was about sixty. She sure didn’t look seventy-five.”

  “Well, she was.” Melba’s tone br
ooked no argument. She was invariably right about these things. “Don’t forget, honey, she had the money for plastic surgery. She’d had everything that sagged tucked up so many times it’s a wonder her toes weren’t on top of her knees.”

  “Then her husband must have had surgery, too, because he doesn’t look much more than sixty himself.”

  “That’s because he’s only about ten years older than you and me, honey.” Melba shook her head at my obvious denseness. “Vera was at least a dozen years older than Morty. I thought you knew that.”

  “I had no idea,” I said. “Why did he marry a woman that much older?”

  “Money.”

  “I thought Vera came from a poor family.” This wasn’t adding up.

  “She did,” Melba said. “Dirt-poor. But Vera’s mama inherited some money from some old aunt in Georgia, or maybe it was Florida, around the time Vera was almost thirty. Then her mama died and left it all to Vera. Morty came calling soon after, and he used Vera’s money to get started in business.”

  “He couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen at that point.”

  “He wasn’t,” Melba said. “But they got married, and within ten years Morty had three car dealerships. He’s got seven now, I think. Loaded, and it all started with Vera’s mama’s money.”

  Diesel, tired of being ignored, crawled into Melba’s lap, and she laughed. “Sweetie, I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting you.” She loved on him as she continued, “I got you sidetracked, Charlie. Go on, tell me the rest of it.”

  I spent another fifteen minutes talking, until I got to the point where I found Azalea and Vera’s body in the stairwell.

  “That’s the end of it,” I said, my throat dry. “After that we all had to wait to talk to the sheriff, and then we were able to get home.”

  Melba’s eyes narrowed. “I know you’re leaving out a lot. You can’t fool me.”

  “I’ve told you all I can,” I said. “I’ll have to leave it at that, but I promise to tell you, as soon as I am able, anything else that I might have left out. Deal?”

  Melba sighed and nodded. “You’re going to be nosing around again, aren’t you?” She didn’t wait for an answer as she reached into a drawer and pulled out an envelope. “Here’s your letter.”