“No one suspected you two did it?”
“Honey, I’m in a wheel chair and my wife is a lady of some standing in the community.” Rodney winked at Daisy.
By the time they got to Melanie and Jasper’s place, it was after nine and there was only one light burning in the trailer.
“They got a dog?” asked Daisy.
“Yep, but he’s usually too tired or depressed to bark. I got this if we need it.” Emily held up a thick steak.
“I’ll stay here and signal if anyone comes. One if the cops, two if the residents.” Rodney held up a large flashlight.
Emily and Daisy left him in the car which they left by the side of the road in a thicket of Australian pines. They made their way up the asphalt and turned into the driveway. The moon was out, and there were no clouds in the sky. It was easy to find the driveway and to see the trailer ahead. Of course, admitted Emily, the light made it easy for them to be seen by anyone inside the trailer too.
“See those hatches underneath? We need to get in there and take a look. I hope they’re not locked.” Emily led the way toward the dwelling and stopped a short distance from it. Something or someone was moving around inside. As she stopped to listen more closely, she smiled.
“It’s the dog. He just resettled himself.” Probably in the forbidden chair, Emily thought. “Hear him? He’s gone back to sleep.”
Sure enough, canine rumbling noises came from within followed by several short snorts and a return to snoring.
Emily tiptoed up the front steps and onto the landing. She looked through the window and into the dimly lit living room. The basset hound, sleepily ensconced in the recliner, raised his head and looked back at her, then lowered it again and gave forth a moan of sheer doggy tiredness.
“We won’t need the steak. He’s more interested in sleeping than eating.” She climbed down the steps and tossed the beef to one side to free up her hands.
While Daisy held the flashlight, Emily opened one of the doors. A tide of trash tumbled out into the yard. If the other hatches contained similar items, there would be enough junk underneath the place to fill a small garage. Everything appeared to have been tossed into the storage area without regard to function.
“We have to sort through all of this?” Daisy sounded dismayed.
“Let’s hurry.”
Emily tossed paint cans, sections of broken ladder, and what looked like parts of an old riding lawn mower out into the yard so they could examine everything more closely. Once one hatch was empty, Emily began on another while Daisy, juggling their flash light in one hand, replaced the articles in the first.
“I’m assuming we don’t need to be too neat. They probably won’t notice if things are a bit jumbled.” Daisy tossed a mower wheel into the hatch and jammed the door closed.
“Here we go. Finally.” Opening the door on a third compartment revealed gardening tools, rusted, broken or covered with caked dirt and a collection of plastic containers—plant fertilizer of various kinds and bags of potting soil, but no rat poison.
“With all this trash, you’d think there would be a lot of pests around here. Why wouldn’t they have rat poison? I can’t see the Bassett hound as much of a ratter. I’ll bet he thinks dog food only comes in a can.” Emily wiped perspiration off her forehead and stuck her head farther into the hatch.
Daisy stood up to move closer to Emily. When she did, she swept the flashlight across the yard. She let out a short gasp. “Oh, I think they have plenty of pests around here.”
“Hey, I can’t see a thing. Shine the light back here.”
“Just close the door and let’s go.”
“But…”
“Now. We’ve got a visitor.” Daisy’s voice took on a note of fear.
Oh, crap, thought Emily, it’s probably Detective Lewis. He always shows up when I don’t want him around. But Rodney hadn’t signaled them. What was going on?
“Who?” asked Emily.
“It’s a what.”
“What what?”
“As in reptile, large, behind you about ten feet. Let’s move, Emily.”
Emily turned around to look into the predatory eyes of a twelve foot gator. “Oh, boy.”
“Run!” yelled Daisy. She grabbed Emily’s arm and the two of them fled across the yard toward the drive.
Emily glanced over her shoulder. “I don’t think we have to worry. He’s not interested in us.” She grabbed the flashlight and shined the powerful beam into the yard to watch the large reptile make a one gulp meal out of the steak Emily had tossed there.
“Don’t be silly. That steak is simply the appetizer. We could be the main course.” With her long legs able to cover more ground than Emily’s short ones, Daisy almost lifted her off the ground as she pulled her toward the car.
“Wait a minute.” Emily stopped short and turned toward the animal. “Shoo.”
“Are you crazy?” Daisy tugged at her arm
The reptile looked at the two women, then opened his mouth and moved toward them.
“Damn. It worked when Donald did it.” Emily let herself be tugged toward the car.
“This Donald some kind of a gator whisperer?” Daisy was nearly out of breath.
“No, he’s some kind of a mean bass fisherman with real attitude. He scares gators.”
“You should have invited him along tonight, or, better yet, not tossed that delicious steak into the yard.”
“It was one I had forgotten in the back of my freezer. I thawed it and found it was freezer burned.” Emily panted between words.
“And you were going to feed it to that poor dog?”
“He’s a dog, not a gourmand.” Emily pulled open the car door and jumped in. Daisy slid into the driver’s seat.
“You find it?” asked Rodney.
“We found something.” Emily slid down in the seat in despair. Someone close to Everett had to have been feeding him that poison. It had to be someone in the family. Where would they keep it? She thought back on what she knew of the family. Hap seemed to know of them before the murder. Hap knew everybody around the area.
She sat up and poked her head into the space between the front seats. “You two busy tomorrow?”
“Honey, we are not going back to that place. The family will come home and know someone was searching through their storage area.” Daisy turned onto the main highway.
“No, not the house. I thought we might go for a stroll through the woods. I’ll have to leave you out of this one, Rodney. Sorry.” Emily leaned toward Daisy to try to catch the expression on her face.
“What do you have in mind?” Daisy sounded interested.
That’s my girl, thought Emily.
Chapter 13
The next day Emily took Daisy with her when she stopped by Hap’s room at the Blue Heron Retirement Center.
“You’re gonna do what?” Hap sounded surprised, but not horrified at her idea.
Emily shook her head up and down. “But I’m not wasting my time if you think I’m on a wild goose chase.”
“Likely not. The Pratt family, at least Everett’s branch of it, has been around here for generations, and they have a reputation for ignoring the law. I can’t say for certain, but I’d guess this would be one of those times the family would want to stick it to the system. And it would make them money on the side.”
Someone knocked on Hap’s door.
“You expecting company? We’ll leave.” Emily got up from the bed where she’d been sitting.
“Lorelei’s coming to take me out to lunch. You could join us.”
The door opened, and Lorelei stepped in. Today she wore a red warm-up suit and her shiny white curls were drawn back into a ponytail. She looked twenty years younger in this outfit. The frown on her face when she spotted Emily put the twenty years back on.
“Oh, it’s you.” Lorelei walked across the room and put her arm around Hap.
“Let me introduce you to my friend Daisy St. Simonton.”
Lorelei hesi
tated a moment, then stuck out her hand. “You aren’t from around here, are you?”
“No. My husband and I live in Brunswick, Georgia. We’re here to visit Emily and take in some of the sights.”
Lorelei let out what sounded like a snort. “Sights! Not much to see in this place, unless you like cattle and cowboys.”
“Well, we do.” Daisy smiled.
“I asked the girls to come to lunch with us.” Hap opened the closet door to pull out his white straw hat.
“But we already have plans.” Emily thought Lorelei looked relieved they wouldn’t be joining Hap and her for lunch.
“I wouldn’t have minded having lunch with them, but you sounded as if you didn’t like the idea.” Daisy slid into the passenger’s seat of Stan.
“I want to like that woman, but there’s something about her that bothers me. I can’t put my finger on it.” Emily waved to Hap and Lorelei as she steered the car past them and onto the road.
“Maybe I can help.”
Emily looked at Daisy with curiosity. “How?”
“I think I met her years ago, and what I know of her isn’t good, although it’s mostly rumor, one you might want to explore some.”
As they drove back to Rodney and Daisy’s motel, Daisy began her tale.
“You might say we were white trash, but Mama wanted me to be raised as a southern lady, go to the best schools, have my coming out party, meet all the right people, so she sent me to a women’s college in Milledgeville, Georgia—a finishing school That had to cost her a bundle. Luckily she sold all that land to the developers when I was in my teens or we couldn’t have afforded it.”
Emily glanced at Daisy and chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’m having a heck of a time imagining you as a ‘finished’ southern belle.”
Daisy tried to put on an indignant look, but Emily could see it failed as one side of her mouth lifted. Soon laughter poured out of Daisy’s lips.
“I guess I did get into a bit of trouble there.”
“Tell me.”
“I thought you wanted to know about Lorelei.”
“I do, but I’ll bet your days at that school are far more interesting. Lorelei can wait.”
“Well, okay. One story about me and then back to Lorelei.”
Daisy settled herself into the seat more comfortably. “The head mistress was a real pain. Rules, rules, rules, and she intended to enforce them. The curfew was nine o’clock on weekdays and eleven on weekends. I thought that was just stupid. When I was home, mama let me stay out on the weekends as long as she knew where I was. I was a wild one, true, but I was smart, too. At school I kept accruing late minutes by coming in after curfew. The punishment was spending an entire weekend in my room.”
“I’m certain you found a way around that.” Emily sped up and passed a Cadillac with two white-haired folks in it.
“It was a challenge. Whatever I did to get out of my room had to be clever enough that I wouldn’t be caught or eventually I’d be expelled. Mama’s money would be wasted.”
“What did you come up with?” Emily turned into the motel parking lot, eased Stan into one of the open slots and let Daisy continue the story.
“There were two women who were assigned the job of checking to make certain I was in my room. The monitor spies, we called them. I found out their weakness and simply bought them off.”
“With what?”
“Godiva chocolate. It took a good bit of my allowance, but it was worth it. Anytime I got stuck in my room and decided to sneak out, I could count on their ignoring my absence if I slipped them a box of chocolates. That took care of that, but how could I find a way to get around coming in late? I knew if I did it many more times, the head mistress would finally recommend my expulsion.”
“Somehow I doubt your choice was to come in early.”
“Not me. I set up a committee. Anyone needing to stay out late on a weekend submitted their intentions to the Late Minutes Committee. Of course I was the head of it. Then we developed a plan for getting them back into the dormitory without being noticed or using up their allotted minutes. It took planning and forethought. No one could just pop in late and expect us to rescue them.”
“That was the smart part of your wildness, right?”
Daisy nodded and continued her story. “Sometimes it was as simple as someone else signing them in when the head mistress wasn’t looking and bribing the monitor spies with chocolate when they came around to do bed check. On one occasion so many girls wanted to stay out for a dance at the boy’s school down the road, someone set the head mistress’s wig on fire, and the fire department arrived. There was so much chaos, she never knew who came in that night. We used so many ploys to get extra time out, and they were so clever, we wrote them up in a book and gave them to the school when my class graduated. I think the book is still in the library.” Daisy broke out in laughter and Emily joined her.
“I certainly picked the right partner for my stroll in the woods.” Emily laughed and slipped her arm around Daisy as they walked to Daisy and Rodney’s room. As Daisy inserted the key card in the lock, the door opened and Detective Lewis stood there glowering at them.
“What’re you doing here?” Emily’s good mood fled.
“The Pratt’s reported a break in last night.”
“Oh? Anything of value taken?”
“Nothing taken they could determine, but their storage area below the trailer had been riffled through. But why am I telling you this? You must already know about it.”
Emily batted her eyelashes at Lewis. “I’m not the kind of little gal to steal.”
“I know that. As I said, nothing was taken. Someone was simply looking around. That couldn’t have been you, could it?”
No one said anything.
“Here’s the odd thing. When they got home, not only was there, uh, stuff, all over the lawn, but a big ole gator was sitting there acting as if the place was his.”
“So it was the gator’s doing.” Emily couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
“Someone saw a car parked on the road up from their place. You think the gator drove there?” Lewis wasn’t smiling when he spoke, and his clenched jaw forced his cheek to jerk. The guy had no sense of humor.
He sighed, strode to the door and clapped his hat on his head. “Don’t make me mad. And don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m not two steps ahead of you. I could have told you there was nothing in those storage compartments.”
“How do you know that?” Emily was getting the feeling Lewis really was two steps head of her. Damn.
“We executed a search warrant yesterday afternoon.” He smiled, tipped his hat to both of them and turned to leave, but stopped before he opened the door. The twinkle left his eyes, and his expression was once more serious. “You’re playing around with murder. Stay out of my investigation, Emily.”
“Or you’ll do what? Arrest me?”
“Worse, much worse.” A tiny smile moving its way across his lips broke up the stormy expression on his face. “I’ll tell Donald Green you have a crush on him.” He left, slamming the door behind him.
Rodney and Daisy exchanged looks.
“That man has got it bad for you. He’s acting as stupid as I did when I courted Daisy.”
Back in her park model, Emily realized Lewis’ visit swept away all thought of what Daisy was going to tell her about Lorelei. Well, no matter. They could talk on the way to their rendezvous later this afternoon. She checked her watch. Time to jump into her work clothes and head for the country club. She ground her teeth together in frustration when she remembered she’d scheduled Donald to work afternoon and evening shifts. Fortunately she’d see him only when she set up. It was the Twelve Oaks RV Park’s tournament dinner, and the bar would be swamped. That would be Donald’s problem to handle.
As she drove toward the country club, she thought about Lewis’ remark about telling Donald she had a crush on him. She hoped he was k
idding. If Donald believed that, she didn’t know if he’d drool over her or find the idea of romance beneath him. What did she care how he felt? Liking Donald was not an easy thing since it was never clear if he liked her back or merely tolerated her company. He had tried to kiss her once, but that was only when they both thought they were going to die. Imminent death did funny things to people, Emily thought.
Seated on a stool in the empty country club bar was Lorelei Pratt. She and Donald seemed to be having a laugh together. The woman must have something going for her, Emily decided as she entered the room and grabbed her apron from behind the bar. Donald was not easily amused. Or at least, it was difficult to tell if he was ever amused since his expression rarely deviated from dour, but Lorelei whispered something in his ear as he leaned forward and the two of them grabbed hands and laughed loudly.
“Hi there, Donald. I’m surprised to find you here, Lorelei.”
“I came to see you.”
Odd, thought Emily. She had gotten the distinct feeling the woman did not like or trust her. With good reason, of course. Emily had lied to her about helping her sister-in-law, Melanie.
“And here I am.” Emily started prepping the bar for opening.
“Could we talk, somewhere more private?” Lorelei threw Donald a look. “Girl talk.”
“I’ll finish setting up. You gals just babble away.”
Babble? Donald said babble?
Emily gestured toward a booth in the corner. “This is as private as it gets here. And we’re expecting thirsty hoards to descend in less than a half hour.”
Lorelei slid into the booth and looked across the room at Donald. She waved a pinky at him, and he winked at her. Wow, thought Emily, the woman sure had a way with men if she could take on curmudgeonly Donald.
“I know we got off on the wrong foot, dearie.”
Grilled, Chilled and Killed Page 12