Angel at Troublesome Creek

by Ballard, Mignon F.

  She had a point. Something definitely wasn’t right. She and Sam had cooked something up behind my back—at least I supposed it was Sam. And for the first time I began to wonder if I might have been mistaken. How did I know this man was the Sam Maguire I’d known at Summerwood? After all, I hadn’t seen him in twenty years.

  Oh, don’t be silly, Mary George! He looks the way Sam would look and knows the things Sam would know—even calls me Mary G. It had to be Sam. Yet people change, do things, even commit crimes we’d never suspect them of doing: the ones whose neighbors were always reported as saying, “Why, he was such a pleasant fellow, kind to animals, and helped old ladies across the street. He wouldn’t harm a soul!”

  And what about Delia? I knew Delia Sims, had known her most of my life. Surely she wouldn’t do anything to hurt my aunt or me. Delia had come to an intersection in her life and didn’t know which direction to take. Like me. If somebody had steered her wrong, I was sure she thought she was doing the right thing. My neighbor was lonely and she looked on me as her friend. Now I had let her down.

  I called her home and left a message, thankful she was still playing bridge at Phoebe’s and I wouldn’t have to explain. “Just called to let you know I’m fine,” I said. “I’ll get back to you tomorrow. Don’t worry.”

  I couldn’t tell her about the Bible. Not yet. Couldn’t take the risk of anyone else finding out.

  Hairy paced the room whining until I finally let him out. He did his business quickly and galloped back inside, but his uneasiness continued, and so did mine. I made a cup of tea and sat down again with the Bible. It gave me a sense of belonging just holding it, seeing my name on the family tree.

  My great-grandparents, Sarah and George Murphy, had three sons: Douglas (my grandfather), Benjamin, and Horace. Benjamin never married and had no children—at least none that he was claiming. Horace married and had two offspring: Eleanor, who died in infancy, and Fain, who was killed in the Korean conflict. My grandparents, Ola and Douglas, had one son, also named George, who had only me. Unless one of them had a child “on the wrong side of the blanket,” as my aunt used to say, I didn’t know where my competition would come from.

  I looked at the clock. Not quite ten. Would ancient Uncle Ben still be awake? I just couldn’t wait until morning.

  I called information, and then his number.

  “Igor” answered. Igor with an English accent and a pronounced snarl, and from the sound of him he seemed to be having a really rotten day and wished for me the same. Ah! I thought. Milford, I presume?

  Mr. Murphy didn’t take calls after nine o’clock, I was told, and was getting ready to retire for the night.

  And how is dear Uncle Ben? I wanted to say. Tell him to hang on awhile longer, I’ll get there as fast as I can. But I didn’t, of course. I told this snobby servant my name and how I was related to his employer. “I believe my aunt Caroline called several weeks ago?”

  “Yes. Quite a while back.” He wasn’t going anywhere with this, and obviously neither was I.

  “I’d really like to meet him. You see, Aunt Caroline died last spring, and I was going through her things when I found our family Bible. My grandfather, Douglas, and your Mr. Murphy were brothers,” I explained.

  “I see.”

  “And when will it be convenient for me to come?”

  Silence. Then a sigh that must have weighed a ton. “One moment please. I’ll see.”

  He was gone a lot longer than a moment, and if Uncle Ben hadn’t been so rich, I’d have hung up. But to be honest, I did want to meet the old coot—money or no money. He was the only living relative I had, or at least the only one I knew of.

  “Mr. Murphy will receive you the day after tomorrow,” Milford informed me. “He has sherry at five and a light meal at five-thirty. If it’s possible, he’d like for you to join him.” I could tell by the servant’s tone he wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of my coming—and with good reason. If I inherited, he’d definitely be the first to go.

  “I must ask you not to linger after dinner,” he added in a growly whisper. “Mr. Murphy tires easily, and the excitement might keep him awake.”

  “Of course,” I said, and smiled as I hung up the phone. To think that a man would lie awake because of my stimulating company gave my morale an unexpected boost, even if he was as old as Uncle Ben.

  I was still smiling when Doc Nichols called to tell me Aunt Caroline’s house was on fire.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I got there in time to see a black tower of smoke eddy and climb above the charred remains of what once was Uncle Henry’s garage. A timber fell, sending dark ashes swirling in a gust of wind, and I jumped when a hand clutched my shoulder.

  “Thank God they got to it before it reached the house!” Doc Nichols said behind me. “Fred Mabry told me if it hadn’t been for the rain, it would’ve spread before they could stop it.”

  Fred Mabry was Troublesome Creek’s fire chief who now stood to the side with his hose crew watching to see if the flames would leap up somewhere else. I didn’t see how they could, the whole place was drenched in swamp-black water. Oily puddles, like tentacles, reached for our feet, and everyone stepped back—everyone being the crowd of onlookers that seem to appear within five minutes of disaster. Every town has them, and ours is no different. There’s Emma Norris down the street who always embroiders on even the most horrifying facts, and poor old Millie Satterfield, who cries. Millie cries not only at disasters but at football games, parades, graduations, and cats stuck in trees. And then there’s Mr. Puckett, the butcher at Anderson’s Market, who thinks everything’s a communist plot. Delia says she just runs when she sees him and has about decided to become a vegetarian.

  “Fire didn’t start by itself,” he announced, shoving his soot-smeared face into mine. “Looks like somebody tried to burn you out, little lady!”

  I cringed, more at the “little lady” than at the Puckett Pronouncement, because this time he was right. It didn’t take a bloodhound to detect the stinging smell of kerosene, and later Fred Mabry told me one of his men had found a shred of oil-soaked rag.

  Arms grabbed me around the waist and somebody’s hair tickled my chin. “Mary George, thank heavens you’re all right!” Delia said, looking up at me in the glare of a gawker’s headlight. “I didn’t know where in the world you were. Came home and heard the sirens—dear God, it scared me half to death!” And she gave me another squeeze.

  I put my arm around her, led her away through the thinning crowd. People were going home now that they realized the show was over. “I’m sorry. I left you a message … and I’m okay. It could’ve been a lot worse.” My legs felt so shaky I had to stop a minute and hold on to the scaly old sycamore in the front yard. We were due to close on the house in a few days, and if that fire had spread, I wouldn’t have had anything to close on. There was no telling how much it was going to cost to get the burned debris cleaned up.

  “Mary George, why don’t you stay with me tonight?” Delia said. “I hate to think of you being alone.”

  “I’ll be okay as soon as I can get home and wash this smoke from my hair,” I said. My clothes and everything were permeated in the dark, smothering smell. And frankly, I didn’t want to wake the next morning and look out on the sad mess in my aunt’s yard. “And don’t forget, I have Hairy here.” I tapped on the back window of my car where the big dog lay sleeping. I wasn’t about to leave him at home with all this going on.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll see her home,” Doc Nichols said. “Sport, are you okay to drive?”

  I nodded. “I’m fine. Really.” Why was everybody treating me like an invalid? I was shaken, but I was also good and mad. Why would somebody do this to me? It didn’t make sense. If somebody wanted to put me in danger, why set fire to an empty house on the other side of town?

  Still, I was glad for the doc to follow me home, and he waited dutifully on my doorstep while I unlocked my front door. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was re
lieved when he insisted on coming inside—to scare off any critters, he said.

  “At least it won’t take long,” I told him, trying to make a joke. “After we check my one closet and look under the bed, there’s no place for anybody to hide.”

  But the doc’s face was grim when he stepped past me and looked about. “Looks like we’re too late, Sport. I’m afraid your visitor has come and gone.”

  This time the searcher had been more careless. Cushions were upturned on the sofa, the drawer of the end table had been emptied on the floor, pots and pans littered the kitchen, cabinet doors swung open. I dreaded to look in the bedroom.

  Dresser drawers and closet were all in disarray, sheets wadded and thrown to the floor, and my mattress had been pulled from the bed, but it didn’t look like anything was missing.

  Now I knew why somebody had set fire to Uncle Henry’s garage. “Three guesses as to what they were looking for,” I said.

  Doc Nichols nodded. “Well, they didn’t find it here.”

  And they wouldn’t, because I had taken the family Bible along with me when I met the doc at Aunt Caroline’s, and he’d locked it safely in the trunk of his car.

  We tried not to touch anything while we waited for the police, but we did look around to see if we could find out how the intruder came in, and Doc found a broken window over the kitchen sink, and shards of glass were scattered on the ground below.

  “Looks like somebody broke the glass, then reached inside to unlatch the window, and climbed in over the sink,” I said. But the doc didn’t answer. He only shook his head.

  “Pack a bag, you’re coming home with me,” Doc said after Dennis Henderson and another policeman had come and gone. “We have plenty of room, and that’s what guest rooms are for.” He grinned. “Besides, it’ll give Kate an excuse to make her blueberry waffles for breakfast.”

  “What about Hairy?” I asked.

  “The beast comes too.”

  I didn’t argue.

  That night I dreamed about Augusta. It was funny, but with all the weird things going on, I hadn’t thought that much about her; I guess I didn’t have time, but I did miss her company and wondered if Bonita Moody was going to pull through.

  As if in answer to my thoughts, Ray Moody called me the next afternoon at work. His wife had regained consciousness, he said, and wanted to talk with me. I told him I’d come by the hospital as soon as I could get away, but she stayed on my mind the rest of the day. Did Bonita Moody know more than she was telling about the way Aunt Caroline died?

  The police hadn’t found any prints in my apartment other than those that would have been there anyway, and seemed to be thoroughly bamboozled. And so was I. From what Doc and I learned from our local spy sources, there weren’t any unfamiliar prints on the car that hit Bonita either. Whoever was doing this had watched enough detective shows on television to know to wear gloves. Well, Aunt Caroline always said a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and I just had to hope my intruder would eventually trip himself up.

  Bonita was sleeping when I stopped by to see her after work, but the nurse insisted on waking her. It was time for her supper, she said. Since Ray had gone down to the cafeteria for a bite, I positioned the tray over Bonita’s bed and cranked up the head so she could eat her chicken soup and disgusting green gelatin. I could tell she wasn’t real excited about it, and who could blame her?

  Bonita was still kind of groggy and didn’t seem to remember me, so I wiped her face and hands with a damp cloth and that perked her up a little. I looked around for Augusta, but she must’ve gone on break too. Maybe the hospital cafeteria was featuring chocolate cake.

  I waited until she’d finished most of her soup before I reminded her who I was. “Your husband said you wanted to see me,” I said.

  She looked blank.

  “Mary George Murphy,” I said. “My aunt Caroline—”

  Bonita sipped water from a straw. “Oh, yes. Right. There was something—well, it might not mean anything—but the day I was there, the day your aunt died, I heard somebody in the house.” She took my hand and squeezed it and was surprisingly strong, I thought, for somebody who had been in a coma. “Listen, I know they were there, I could feel it. And there was that sound, that soft, creaking kind of shuffling sound people make when they’re trying to be quiet.”

  “Did you see anything?” I refilled her water glass.

  “I saw a car. Black or dark blue, I think. It was parked out back, sort of hidden by a trellis. I didn’t hang around to find out who it was.”

  “So you didn’t actually see them?” I had been hoping for more than this.

  “Just a shadow there at the end of the hall, then it sort of disappeared into the kitchen. It could have been anybody, but it definitely wasn’t my imagination.”

  “Why didn’t you say something about this before?” I’m afraid my impatience showed in my voice.

  Her eyes sparked back at me. “For the very reason you see me in this hospital bed! I didn’t want whoever was there to know that I’d seen them.”

  But somehow they had found out. And they still didn’t know Bonita Moody hadn’t gotten a look at their face. Before I left that day, I waited to tell Ray Moody what his wife had said. “If I were you,” I warned him, “I’d ask the police to put an extra guard by her door.”

  I had left Hairy with Doc’s wife, Kate, that morning, and now stopped to collect him on my way home. I found him happily splashing in the wading pool with the children next door. Of course he didn’t want to leave, so I had to lure him into the car with a doggie bone and a sugary voice. When I reached home I was tired and irritated and dreaded the prospect of cleaning up last night’s topsy-turvy mess.

  Kate Nichols had offered to come and give me a hand, but I was reluctant to share the bits and pieces of my personal life that had been scattered throughout my three small rooms.

  The first thing I noticed was the front screen door. It was slightly ajar, and for a minute I froze in the middle of the walkway with my hand on Hairy’s collar. I was sure I had pushed the screen shut when Doc and I left the night before. Damn! Had my vandalizing tormentor come back again?

  At least now I knew who it wasn’t. It wasn’t Todd Burkholder. Dennis Henderson had called me at work to tell me Todd was in Richmond on a business trip and had spent last night at a hotel there. Maybe this would let him off the hook with his employer.

  I found the package propped between the screen and the door. It was large and flat, wrapped in brown paper, with a message scribbled on the front in bold, black ink:

  Mary George,

  Here’s the portrait of your aunt commissioned by her church. I hope you will deliver it for me and that it meets with their approval. Please remember what I said last night, and follow my lead. Be careful, and good luck!

  Kent

  “Follow my lead?” What did he mean by that? And why didn’t Kent deliver the portrait himself? I knew the police had questioned him about searching my apartment the night before, but as far as I knew nothing had come of it. Would Kent have had time to douse Uncle Henry’s garage with kerosene and set fire to it after sharing my meager meal? Maybe, but I wasn’t sure. And hadn’t he tried to warn me? What was it he’d said? “Get out of this place,” or something like that. Which meant that Kent Coffey knew something I didn’t.

  It also meant he had left, flown the coop, so to speak. When I went upstairs to check, I found his door unlocked and his few possessions gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Physical labor is supposed to be a calming process. It wasn’t. I picked up pots and pans, stacked them in my gaping cabinets, collected the strewn contents of dresser drawers, straightened a lampshade here, a sofa cushion there, and all the time I was thinking, somebody is watching me, somebody is waiting. Waiting for me to lead them to the Bible. They had killed for that Bible and I didn’t think they would have any qualms about doing it again, only this time the victim would be me—Mary George Murphy!

 
Uncle Ben had asked me to bring the family Bible along as proof of our kinship, but a birth certificate would do as well, and I had a copy of mine. The person who killed Aunt Caroline hadn’t meant for me to learn about my rich old uncle Ben who was just about to totter into the Everlasting Arms. But now that I had, there was only one solution. I had to be eliminated. Then the Bible, of course, would be destroyed. The stark reality of my predicament was not reassuring.

  If anything happened to me, who would suspect that an Orphan Annie like Mary George Murphy might stand between my aunt’s killer and Uncle Ben’s fortune?

  Delia would know about my family connections. And Sam—although I wasn’t sure Sam believed me. And that wasn’t all I wasn’t sure of about Sam Maguire. He had dropped back into my life with his familiar Peter Pan enthusiasm, and now he was gone. Again. Where?

  Doc Nichols knew about the family Bible, and with my permission had locked it in his safe deposit box at Troublesome Creek National Bank until I needed it for my meeting with Uncle Ben. The doc would create a great big stink if somebody did me in, I was sure of it. But would the killer care? I doubted it.

  And then there was Kent. He had followed me to the post office and home again. Quite possibly, he had even set fire to the garage on Snapfinger Road so he could search my apartment … and then had the nerve to warn me before he disappeared. I flopped on the sofa and pulled Hairy’s big head into my lap. Had Kent Coffey warned me against himself?

  Kent Coffey. Coffey. When I made the connection, it blinked in my brain like a misspelled word on a computer screen, and I ran to the kitchen for Aunt Caroline’s copy of Troublesome Creek Cooks. There it was, just where I’d left it on the shelf by the sink, only the page with the recipe was missing. I thumbed slowly, carefully through the book, shook the pages, but it just wasn’t there. Never mind. I remembered seeing the page my aunt had marked in the open cookbook in her kitchen, and it was turned to a coffee dessert!