The Complete Honey Huckleberry Box Set

by Margaret Moseley

  “Of course,” she said.

  “I believe her,” said Steven Hyatt.

  “Well, it doesn’t sound very scientific to me, but if it’s true, then which one killed Steven Miller?”

  TWENTY–FOUR

  We argued about who was Steven Miller’s murderer over lunch at the Black-Eyed Pea. Steven Hyatt had us in stitches as he kidded us and made fun of each suspect on our list: “Yeah … uh-huh … well, it’s perfectly clear to me. If Honey didn’t do it, then I did!”

  “Are you confessing, Steven?” asked Janie, not in the least ruffled by Steven Hyatt’s cavalier attitude toward our deductions.

  “Sure,” he said lightly. “It makes as much sense as your … let’s see your notes here … your Steven Miller, Jr.”

  “Well,” she said defensively, “maybe he didn’t want to be a junior all his life.”

  “Hush, you two,” I protested. “Janie, mark that name off your list; that’s his daddy we buried today, for crying out loud.”

  It was only after we had returned home and Steven Hyatt left us to go outside and upstairs to take a nap that Janie and I got down to the real brass tacks.

  As she filled me in on her original self-elected assignment to gather details on the laboratory explosion in Florence, I reminded myself to tell her during the next lull in her story what I already knew about Stephen X’s involvement with the incident.

  “It really is a sophisticated formula, Honey. One that’s sure to work. Well, was going to work. No one can find it now. Reckon it must have burned up in the fire and there’s no record of it anywhere.”

  “I just don’t understand, Janie. What makes this Italian discovery or invention, or whatever you call it, more likely to work than all the other ones that hit the headlines? Steven Miller told me that someone announces every day that they have the perfect substitute for gasoline, but you don’t see us driving around using it, do you?”

  “This one was different; not only did it work, but it was cheap to produce and …” Janie referred to her notes and read, “ ‘… little or no expense to the consumer for conversion to the system.’ “ She looked up. “That’s been the real hang-up on alternate fuel, you know … the cost of conversion. It’s not that all these scientists couldn’t invent one, they just couldn’t figure out how to get it to work in the cars and trucks we’re driving around in now.”

  I began to understand. “And this one did?”

  “Right. You just pumped it in, and it worked like the good old super unleaded stuff.”

  “No buying new cars? No extra cost for a doo-hickey for the engine? Just pump it in and drive off?” This was beginning to sound familiar to me, but I couldn’t remember why.

  “Yeah.” She thought she was agreeing with me. “Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Oh, well.” And she flipped that part of her notebook closed. “We were probably barking up the wrong tree, anyway, trying to connect something of this magnitude with Steven Miller’s death.”

  “No,” I interrupted her and when she looked startled, I realized I had uncharacteristically yelled out the word. I lowered my voice. “What I mean is, what I meant to say is …” Good grief, I didn’t want to alarm Janie or send her off onto new tangents of thought, but I knew the Italian explosion was connected with Steven Miller’s death. Stephen had convinced me of that. But if I told Janie all that I knew … “What else did you learn about the Italian thing? Read me the rest of your notes.”

  Janie seemed dubious, but having gone to the trouble to compile the research, I think she was tickled that I wanted to know about it, even if she didn’t now think there was a link between the two events. “Actually, it is interesting. The scientist who died wasn’t Italian. Not full-blooded, anyway. He was an American whiz kid in agricultural biology … botany …” She looked up. “You know what I mean,” she said, but went on to explain in her own Janie way. “It’s the kind of science that deals with increased grain production, and a better grade of grain, too.”

  I stretched, trying to act only casually interested in her research. “I understand, but if he was American, what was he doing in Italy?” I added, “Do you want some iced tea?”

  “Sure,” she replied.

  Of course she did, iced tea is the year-round state drink. I headed for the kitchen, and Janie followed, bumping into the dining room table in her single-minded concentration on the notes she read while she walked.

  “Here it is,” she announced as she joined me in the kitchen. “Arthur Roselli, thirty-eight. Born Hobbs, New Mexico; died … well, you know that.”

  “Arthur?”

  Janie looked up. “Pardon?” she said.

  “His name is Arthur?”

  She checked her notes. “Yes,” but she amended her statement by saying, “Was. Was Arthur Roselli. His father was the Italian half; that’s why the Roselli. Why? What’s wrong with Arthur?”

  Not Stephen?

  Janie closed the notebook. From memory, she summed up the rest of Arthur Roselli’s story. “Invited to participate in international agricultural research exchange … four, no, five years ago. Chose Italy because … first, his family was from there, and second, because the Italian government gave him a full laboratory for personal research.” She paused to thank me as I handed her a glass of tea. “Which,” she continued, “we know he did, because he discovered that which he died for … and with.” Pleased at her report, she smiled and drank her tea.

  “Won’t someone else be able to figure out his discovery?” I asked.

  “Nah, why should they want to? Stuff blew him up, didn’t it? Would you want it in your car?”

  “I see what you mean,” I said. Actually, I saw more than that.

  TWENTY–FIVE

  Naps are a habit in the South. Always have been. Maybe it’s the heat. Probably it’s the heat.

  Anyway, I wasn’t surprised when Janie asked if I minded if she took a small nap before she headed on back to West. It was only a little more than an hour away, but it was going on two-thirty now, and we had eaten a large lunch after a taxing morning.

  Anyway, I answered, “Sure,” and showed her upstairs.

  “My mother’s room okay for you?” I asked. “I keep it up.”

  “Fine,” she answered as we turned the curve in the landing. She’d been upstairs already. I never did know why we hadn’t a bathroom on the ground floor.

  Before entering my mother’s small bedroom, she pointed to the middle room and asked, “Now, Honey, what did you say you call that room?”

  “The war room.”

  “ ’Cause …?”

  “ ’Cause that’s where I do all my planning … on where I’m heading next and who I’m going to see when I get there. Oh, yeah, and how I’m going to get there and, of course, what I’m going to wear once I’m there.” I indicated the rows of shrouded clothes.

  “I’m impressed,” she said as she stepped into the room and checked out the tags on the individual bundles. “But doesn’t it take an awful lot of time? I mean, what with figuring everything out and sorting it out and then writing it down and all?”

  “Maybe so,” I replied, “but, Janie, if I don’t do all this, I wouldn’t know where I’m supposed to be or what I’m supposed to do when I get there. It’s just my way of getting organized.”

  I gently tugged on her arm to get her moving on toward her nap, but nothing would do but she had to inspect my bedroom, too.

  “Now, what I don’t understand is how all these rooms are the way they are and your room—and the war room—are so … different.”

  I explained as I continued to edge her toward the back bedroom. “The rest of the house? The furniture, the antiques? That’s all the aunts’ doings. My mother liked it, so they never changed it. Father did add the paneling to his room. And my room? Well, I use it every day. Guess it’s just worn out.”

  Janie continued to ooh and ah as we pulled down the flowered embroidered counterpane on Mother’s bed. “This headboard must be eight feet tall
, Honey,” she said as she measured the distance with her eyes. “And the footboard? What … four feet?”

  “Think so?” I asked and I left her stretched out on the crisp, cool sheets that I changed whenever my Day-Timer dictated. Why, Mother would have died if she ever thought I’d let her room get dusty and stale smelling, I was thinking as I went back downstairs.

  “Honey.”

  From the bottom of the stairwell, I turned my face upward to see Janie leaning over the top banister. She had dark circles under her eyes and I could tell the excitement of the day had tired her. “Honey,” she repeated, “I just thought of something. Do you think we should have gone on out to the cemetery?”

  “What makes you think that, Janie?”

  “We might have missed him. He might not have gone to the funeral parlor; he might have gone straight to the cemetery.”

  “No, I think we did just right,” I reassured her. She seemed to feel somehow responsible for solving Steven Miller’s murder. “Look at all the suspects we’ve listed.”

  She nodded and her stocking feet shuffled back into the bedroom. I went on outside, intending to run up to the third floor, but I became distracted when I saw Joaquin and Ralph in the yard, talking and nodding their heads. So, instead of heading up to see Steven Hyatt, I joined them in the back just as Ralph turned to walk away. It might have been my imagination, but I thought Ralph looked halfway angry at something.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I asked Joaquin, who was kneeling on the ground, staring after the doctor.

  He smiled his warm-eyed smile at me. “Guess I’m not moving fast enough for him.”

  “Oh, come on now,” I exclaimed. “How could he think that? You’ve already done the iris bed and this one.” I pointed to the recently tilled rectangular bed Joaquin had told me was mine to decide what went in it. “Hey, have you already planted it? I haven’t decided yet.”

  “I decided for you.” He laughed.

  And I decided not to be angry or hurt about it. “Oh, and what did you plant in such an all-fired hurry?” I asked, but laughing as I said it in such a way that Joaquin knew it was all right.

  “A little of this and a little of that. You’ll see soon enough. Or you’ll see some flowers soon,” and he pointed to the asymmetrical rows of miniature green plants. “The seeds will take awhile, but you’ll like the results.” I could tell he was genuinely pleased with his efforts, and he described what he’d chosen for the new bed. “It’s like an informal English garden,” and he went on to say names that meant nothing to me.

  As a matter of fact, I was only half listening to him when I heard him say “… and you’ll have to lift the burlap up carefully when the ones in this corner have sprouted.”

  “What? Me? What about you?”

  He straightened his back, rubbing it slightly as he arched. He looked tired. “Sure, I’ll do it. I just thought you’d like to know how … in case …”

  “In case what?”

  “In case Ralph fires me,” he said unexpectedly.

  “Why should he do that? You’re doing a wonderful job.”

  Joaquin took his yard broom from the nearby cart and began sweeping the loose soil on the sidewalk back into the bed. “I’m only kidding.” And he added, “Doan worry so about et.”

  His lapse into a singsong Spanish accent reminded me of how accustomed I had become to hearing him speak good English. I persisted, “Ralph seemed okay when you drove him to Steven Miller’s funeral today.” And then, “Why did you do that, Joaquin? Drive Ralph, I mean? Why didn’t he drive himself?”

  Like he shouldn’t be telling me, like it was something dirty he was going to say, Joaquin bent his head down, and I instinctively stepped in closer and raised my head to hear what I knew were going to be lowered tones. “Ralph’s not feelin’ so good theese mornin’. He had another round with hees ole lady, and I’ma bettin’ she won.”

  I punched his shoulder. “Stop that,” I said. “Speak right,” I demanded, infuriated at his behavior. “You don’t talk like that.”

  “Sumtimes, I do,” he insisted, laughing as he wheeled his cart down the path toward the clinic garage.

  I was so frustrated I wanted to spit in his newly planted garden. The only reason I’d come on out in the yard was to question him about the missing tape cassette, and now I was watching him effortlessly lift the toolladen cart over the dividing curb between my property and the clinic, and I hadn’t confronted him about a thing.

  “Wait,” I yelled.

  “Yes?” Joaquin turned and looked back at me.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Yes?” he said again and rubbed his hand over the dark hair that hung over his eyes. His dirty hand and sweaty brow connected to leave a grimy palm print on his forehead. I stared at it, fascinated.

  Without moving my eyes, I said, “I’m going shopping.”

  “So?”

  “What?”

  “So …?” He looked puzzled and stepped back over the curb, moving slowly toward me. “Honey,” and his voice sounded far away, although he was coming closer.

  I was remembering something … but … what?

  Then it came to me: Joaquin’s use of the word so had prodded my memory of how Harry had used that same word … with the same inflection. “I think it is rude,” I had told Harry. “It sounds like you’re saying ‘so what,’ which also sounds childish, like kids shouting ‘ya-ya-yuh-ya-ya’ on the playground.”

  Harry had just laughed and said that in Europe so was used to express interest, not derision. Joaquin’s use of the word—expressing interest in my shopping trip—caught my ear and reminded me of Harry. I felt so guilty about not calling him … but …

  “Honey,” Joaquin said again. He had reached me, and his hands grabbed my arms. “Hey, are you okay?”

  “Sure,” I answered, pulling away from his grasp, which would have left dirty prints on my upper arms if I hadn’t been wearing my dark sweater. “Why?”

  “You said you were going shopping .. . and then you just stood there. I thought something was wrong with you.”

  “No, I’m fine. Oh, a little tired. We all seem to be tired, don’t we? I was just going to tell you that I’m going to buy a new tape cassette for my answering machine.”

  He bent down, looking at my eyes for another second before slewing around toward the parking lot again. “Great,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Then you won’t miss any phone calls, will you?”

  I agreed by weakly nodding my head toward his receding back. I had wanted to seriously confront Joaquin about taking the tape from my machine, but I hadn’t pursued the subject. Sighing from my wasted opportunity, I turned toward the house, determined to follow through on at least one intention.

  TWENTY–SIX

  Steven Hyatt was awake, dressed in a pair of khaki walking shorts and a cotton shirt that I felt sure had been originally purchased for the Australian outback or “Down Under” as Prusilla and I called it. I giggled.

  “So, what’s so funny?” he asked.

  “Nothing, that is, nothing to do with you. Just remembering a ‘friend’ of mine. Wondering where she’d got to is all,” I finished.

  “For a person who has no friends, you seem to have collected a number of friendly nonfriends around you this trip,” he said as he led the way back to the beanbag chairs.

  As I sank into my chair, I put my finger to my screwed-up lips and replied, “Yes … and do you know? I have absolutely no idea how this all came about.”

  “Well, from what you said last night, it all blew up when you found Steven Miller’s body.”

  “No, it was before then. It was the telephone call. Nothing has been the same since I answered that first telephone call.” I had told Steven Hyatt about the subsequent calls, and I think I had told him everything else that was going on, but I wasn’t sure. Had I told him about the money, I wondered? I was going to have to make out a list like I did with my travel schedule so I’d know to whom I had told what. I’d
told Janie about the telephone calls, but not about the money. I’d told Steven Bondesky about the money, but not about the telephone calls. I’d not told Silas Sampson about the telephone calls or the money. I’d told. ..

  “Silas Sampson …” And Steven Hyatt paused, “God … what a name. Remind me to put him in one of my movies … his name, that is. Where was I? Oh, yes. Silas Sampson thinks the telephone calls and the murder are unrelated, but I think they are.”

  “You do?” I was surprised.

  “Yeah. Don’t you?”

  “Well, yes, I do; but, Steven, I think it has something to do with what you were telling Joaquin last night.”

  “About your father’s work?” he asked.

  “How did you know that’s what I was thinking?”

  “ ’Cause it probably struck me about the same time it hit you. Your father was the only other person in this world, the only person besides you and me, who knew about our unknown poets game.”

  “Mother,” I added honestly.

  “Honey,” he said gently, “your mother never knew the police band was playing past a few months after I met you. She checked out long before we made up the game.”

  It hurt to remember, but it was true. Steven Hyatt had been a godsend to Father. His taking me to and picking me up from school had been the only way I could have attended, it never occurring to any of us that I could have ridden the school bus. Father had to stay with Mother, who wandered the house like a pale dust mote blown not by a healthy breeze but by the whisper of a forgotten current gliding through the maze of her understanding.

  “She went to bed so early,” I remembered. “Then Father would join us for the evening, reading his books and papers. Or working on my … toys.” I had the grace to blush as I recalled what I had called the models.

  “Something else, Steven,” I said, “before I forget. Ideas and thoughts have been drifting through my head today like a sieve. Am I crazy or do I vaguely remember Father telling you about an automobile fuel converter for a gasoline substitute?” There, for once today, I’d remembered a complete thought and managed to convey it to someone.