Emily hated to be called “dearie” as much as she disliked the term “little lady”.
She said nothing, simply nodded for Lorelei to continue.
“I’m very protective of Melanie. She’s had a rough life with that husband of hers. What a bum he was. I thought you were being honest with me when you said you wanted to help her, but, when I talked to Detective Lewis this afternoon, he said you were simply trying to win some kind of bet with him.”
“There was no real bet. I’m trying to point out how wrong he can be about human nature.” The woman sure had a busy afternoon, thought Emily. Lunch with Hap, a tete-a-tete with Lewis and now a rendezvous with Donald.
“You mean about how jealousy and love can be powerful motivators for criminal acts? As important as greed?”
“Yes. Why were you talking to Detective Lewis? And why mention me?” Emily found the woman’s behavior puzzling.
“I went to him because I think there’s a relationship between the murder and the attempted poisoning. I wanted to tell him so. He told me that’s what you thought.”
“So you think your sister-in-law tried to poison her husband and then got impatient and bopped him with the fire poker?”
“No! I don’t think Melanie was the one, but it was someone close to the family, someone Everett saw frequently.”
Emily sighed in frustration. “Lorelei, you’re making a case for Melanie. Who was closer than she and cooked his meals?”
“He ate only half his meals at home, Melanie told me. When they were at the cook-offs, he ate there, and no one would take the chance of poisoning barbeque meant for everyone. I told the detective to take a look at his women, and there were a lot of them over the years. The man was a satyr. Melanie said so.”
“I can guess what Detective Lewis said. He’s got his man and the poisoning issue is secondary now.”
“Well, he hinted he had some questions about his case.”
Did he? Emily was not surprised. Bill Harper certainly had motive to kill Everett since the man beat Bill at every contest in the last six months, but Toby had found the fire poker in Bill’s truck. Where Toby was involved, there had to be something wrong.
“Did Melanie tell you their names? And why wouldn’t she give them to the detective?”
“Well, I guess she did, but until now he wasn’t real interested. I think he still thinks the murderer was one of the barbequers.”
“Where do you fit in this, Lorelei?”
“I know Melanie didn’t poison him because she saw the hell I went though when I was accused of killing my husband. Not only is Melanie not a violent person, she’s seen firsthand what false accusations do to a family. She’d never do that to her family. Not Melanie.”
Emily gulped. “You were accused…”
“My first husband died under suspicious circumstances. They never found the cause of death, but the authorities suspected me although they never brought charges. I finally moved away from Milledgeville. I’m sure your friend Daisy told you all this. She must have recognized me.”
“Uh, no. She didn’t.” Emily kicked herself for not insisting Daisy tell her about Lorelei.
“Anyway. Here.” Lorelei handed Emily a piece of paper with several names written on it. “You can get the jump on your detective friend. Between you and Detective Lewis, I like you better. I’m not fond of cops after what the authorities put me through with my husband’s death. Besides, women need to stick together.”
Lorelei got up from the booth without another word and wandered back to the bar where she and Donald took up their conversation where they’d left off. Soon the two of them were laughing. He reached over several times and patted Lorelei’s shoulder.
The woman certainly was full of surprises. She had to be twenty years older than Donald, yet she exuded a sexual attraction as alluring as a minnow for a fish. Emily dropped her glance to the paper in her hand. Five names. Emily raised her eyes to the twosome at the bar. She wondered if those were the only women Everett pursued.
“It was nice of Rodney to come along.” Emily and Daisy were a good quarter of a mile north of the Pratt’s trailer, but according to the records in the county clerk’s office, they were still on land owned by the family.
“He’s a dear man, and he likes to feel useful.”
“Right, but I also think he’s worried about this adventure and wants to be close by if we need help.” Emily stopped walking and peered off to the right.
They left the car parked at the beginning of a gravel road set up by the county for hiking and bicycling. The trail wound through hammocks of pine and clusters of oak trees and meandered around a pond populated by a few gators, turtles and abundant birdlife, herons, egrets, mud hens. People, mostly snowbirds who had the time and interest in species alien to northern climes, preferred to observe rural Florida’s wildlife here in their natural habitat rather than in the more intimate vicinity of swimming pools, backyards, or under cars.
“Here’s the path. Clara told me teenagers used to come back through here to find hideouts for their beer parties.” Emily stepped into the shadow of the trees.
A few feet up the pathway, they encountered discarded food wrappers, beer cans and bottles and even a pair of girl’s panties. Emily chuckled as she held up the underwear on the end of the walking stick she’d borrowed from Hap.
“Looks like they still party around here.” Daisy passed Emily and continued up the path.
“According to Clara, we should find another path leading off through that stand of oak trees on the small hillock in front of us.”
As they approached the trees, the brush seemed to close in around them and the vegetation grew heavier, saw palmetto making it difficult to walk. Emily caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. A snake slid silently into a heavy clump of vegetation.
“I’m not crazy about snakes.” Emily shuddered and was thankful she thought to wear her heavy boots and borrow the walking stick. Daisy was similarly shod, but carried no stick to help her prod underbrush as they wound through it.
“If there’s a path through those trees, I don’t see it. Maybe it’s overgrown. We’ll have to make our own way, I guess. Maybe this will help.” Daisy set down her backpack and extracted a machete from it.
“Wow! Where did you get that?”
“Heck. I always carry this in the car under my seat. I thought it might come in handy today.” She brandished the huge blade in front of her and began to slash through the heavy brush.
Gosh, thought Emily, it was bad enough everyone around here sported some kind of gun, but a machete? The sight of that huge blade sent a shiver through her body.
“Well, I’ll be dipped in honey and fed to the bears, there it is.” Daisy pointed ahead at a small clearing among the trees.
“Shh. Let’s make certain no one’s around here now.”
A ramshackle shed stood next to the apparatus, a large metal container which narrowed at the top. Metal tubing came off it and into another container, and from this one, the tubing coiled around the inside of a galvanized bucket. It was a moonshiner’s dream, an old still.
“It doesn’t look like it’s been in use for years.” Daisy fingered a piece of tubing which dangled from the first container. “Bone dry.”
“Maybe the barbeque business is more lucrative than Jasper led us to believe, and they abandoned the still.”
“Or they found out the Tobacco, Firearms and Alcohol people were on to them. Good God, there’s a cobweb here the size of a small boat.” Daisy pointed to the gauzy home of a spider which rested in the middle of it.
“Beautiful. A golden orb, I’d guess. Leave her alone.”
Emily swiped her hand across one side of the vessel. Copper shone through the area she’d wiped clean. The narrow neck with the wide bottom gave it a grace despite the grime.
“Shine it up, and it would be a work of art,” said Daisy.
“I wonder if the Pratt family even knows it’s here. Maybe it doesn’t belong to them.” Emily w
alked up to the shed and opened the door for a look inside. It was filled with old jars, many of them broken, buckets dented and stacked in one corner and a maze of tubing which curled its way around the floor of the building. Emily stooped over to pick up one end, but quickly pulled her hand back.
“Yowwee. It’s alive.”
Daisy brandished her machete toward the writhing tubing. “Aw, it’s just an old corn snake. Won’t hurt you.” She touched it with the end of the weapon, and it slid out of sight into the back corner of the shed.
“There’s nothing here. I was so certain this was the answer.” Emily sank down on an old wooden stool which sat near the door. As quickly as she dropped onto the three-legged seat, she popped back up and looked carefully at the ground near it.
Daisy laughed. “No more snakes.”
“Good.” Emily remained standing. “I was sure the Prattts were moonshiners, and so was Hap. He knows everything about this county. How could he be wrong?”
“Might as well return to the car.” Daisy led the way back down the path they’d followed. “Look at it this way. If you were slowly killing someone with poison, and it was discovered, would you keep it around? And even if you did have poison in your shed or under your seat, that doesn’t mean you’re guilty of trying to kill anything other than varmints.”
“From what I hear, Everett Pratt was a varmint.” Emily pushed damp tendrils of hair off her face. Summer was descending upon the county with a vengeance.
She gave some thought to what Daisy had said.
“If you thought this trip was for nothing, why’d you come along on this jaunt then?”
Daisy turned to look back at her. “Because you might have been right. And it sounded like fun.”
Chapter 14
Daisy and Emily continued to make their way back to the car.
“Hotter than a branding iron.” Daisy wiped her forehead with her hand. Emily nodded and continued to trudge along the path.
“Honey, I’m real sorry this didn’t turn out better. I know you wanted to show up Stanton, but Rodney and me need to get back to Georgia. I miss those coastal winds.”
“Stanton? No one calls him Stanton.” Emily slid the name across her tongue to try it out. It felt odd and sounded worse.
“His ex calls him that. I guess I picked it up from her.”
“Did he spend much time in Brunswick with her? The four of you socialize?”
“God no. To both questions. She couldn’t stand rural Florida and moved back to Brunswick less than a year after they married. He visited some, tried to live there for a while I guess, but then came back here. She and I ran into each other at some community events. She always talked as if he was some big shot in an urban police department. She led everyone to believe it was Tampa or Orlando. They were a mismatch from the beginning.”
“There’s the car.” Emily strode out of the woods and onto the gravel road where the sun beat down more fiercely. “I kind of wish I was coming with you.”
“You know that’s a big lie. You like this detecting business even if you aren’t one officially. And don’t you worry about Stanton. He’ll come around.”
Emily was about to ask Daisy what she meant by “come around” when Rodney yelled at them from the car.
“I thought you girls would never come back. Let’s get out of here and get some cold ones. We passed a bar down the road.”
At the Owl’s Nest Bar they grabbed three drafts and took a table in the corner away from the pool table where three young men were shooting a game. Rodney rolled his wheelchair around to watch the men while Emily and Daisy chewed over the afternoon’s adventure.
“I’m going to forget the moonshine idea and have a talk with the women whose names I got from Lorelei. They’re supposed to be the ones Everett was messing around with.” Emily took a long draw on her beer, then set the frosty mug down on the table with a sigh of contentment. “Hot work.”
“I wish I could go with you, but I think Rodney and I will leave early tomorrow for Brunswick. You’ll keep us posted on what’s happening, right?”
“Sure.” Emily stared across the bar and out onto the wooden patio.
Daisy’s gaze followed her friend’s. “Something bothering you?”
“Can you imagine how Melanie must feel? She even knew the names of the women he was fooling around with. He obviously didn’t try to hide it from her.”
In Emily’s eyes it was looking more and more as if Melanie had reason to want her husband dead. The look Daisy gave her said she’d come to the same conclusion.
“That’s got to be the strongest motive for murder. Slow with poison or fast with a barbeque poker, either way the wife of a philandering man has to be a top suspect in his murder. I’m probably wasting my time.” Emily tossed down the rest of her beer, looked at Daisy’s mug and Rodney’s and signaled the bartender by holding up three fingers.
“Hope you gals don’t mind, but I haven’t played pool in a long time.” Rodney wheeled the chair up to the table and placed two quarters on the corner of it. One of the players lined up his shot at the eight ball, drew back on his stick and sank the ball. His bad luck. He also sank the cue ball. The other man let out a whoop of glee.
“Let’s lay some money on this game, pops,” said the youngest of the three players and default winner of the last game. Emily watched him give Rodney a condescending smile and turn to wink at his companions mouthing a “Let’s get this old man’s money.” His hair was bleached blond, not from working outdoors, Emily suspected, but from follicle familiarity with a dye bottle. On his face was the beginning of a mustache which Emily knew would only grow in when he was much older. He was a kid with a snotty attitude, and Emily wished someone would take him down a peg. Too bad Lewis wasn’t here. She bet he could handle a pool cue with finesse.
Rodney broke, dropping two striped balls into a side and a corner pocket, but he missed a bank shot for his next ball.
“Watch this, pops.” The kid scored three balls and looked as if he would run the table, but he failed to put backspin on his next shot and the cue ball chased the three into the corner pocket. He slammed the butt of his stick onto the floor, then smiled. “I’ll get it back after this shot,” he said to his companions.
“Pops” never let him take back the table. With a flair that belied his seat in the wheelchair, Rodney ran his stripes and sank the eight.
“How about another one? You can get even with this old man.”
Daisy leaned across the table and whispered in Emily’s ear. “He’ll beat the pants off him in this one too. We’d better be prepared to blow this place. These young whippersnappers will be mad.”
“Okay, but I’ve gotta pee first.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Daisy and Emily left for the bathroom. When they returned, Emily caught sight of a familiar back at the pool table. The presence of the detective had obviously settled the young men down, and they seemed content to have the table back with no more damage done to them than the loss of several fives from their pockets.
Lewis did not hear the women approaching.
“Thanks for watching out for them the other night and today.”
“Rodney did what?” Daisy’s voice was coated with steel.
Lewis whirled around to face her and Emily. Rodney, his view of the women blocked by the big detective until now, reddened.
“Sorry, honey, but he asked me to keep an eye on you gals. Just to make sure… ”
Emily finished the sentence for him, “Just to make sure we didn’t find anything that might make the detective look bad. Right?” Her face looked as if she had bitten into a bag of nails and was about to spit them into Lewis.
“Men,” the two women said in unison. They turned on their heels and walked out of the bar.
Daisy then turned and stuck her head back in the door. “I’m sure Detective Lewis will be more than happy to give his little spy a ride back to the motel.”
Daisy and Emily jumped i
nto the Cadillac and sped off, gravel spraying from the back wheels.
“I heard from one of my contacts that the Rhodes woman’s daughter was coming here for the barbeque festival. We can take care of them then.” Toby sat in the driver’s seat of his beat-up truck parked driver door to driver door next to the silver Lexus driven by Naomi’s ex-husband, Barry. Mr. Smith sat in the passenger’s seat, rethinking his decision to transport Barry’s ex-wife and her mother to North Africa to be sold into slavery. A cold fate for the two women, worse than death. It was the only thing about Barry that Smith respected. Both Barry and Toby made his head hurt. They were so inept, clumsy, such rubes. He was bored. And very unhappy. Unhappy made him want to hurt someone, and he didn’t care who.
Their rendezvous took place under a large palm tree at the edge of highway 710 outside Indiantown.
“Where the hell are we?” Mr. Smith had said little at this meeting, but he telegraphed his attitude about the location and Toby’s plan to kidnap the women by sighing and rolling his eyes. Neither of his companions was smart enough to understand how close he was to exploding. He tried a more direct approach.
“It’s hot sitting here. We could have met on my boat. We could have lured them over to the coast instead of trying to play cowboys and Indians in this wasteland.” He swept his long fingers in a disparaging motion toward the fields of grazing cattle that bordered the roadway.
“Too complicated.” Barry’s curt dismissal of Mr. Smith’s objections to the plan further irritated the international criminal. I’m dealing with two ex-cops, and I’m beginning to see why they no longer hold their positions. He sighed, this time loudly. But the money’s good, I’m unknown around here, and I’m between jobs.
“I’ve got this covered. You two stay out of sight until we make our move. Then we can meet up and head for the boat.”
Toby the toad had spoken. Smith imagined killing him by throwing him into the canal that ran along the road. If the alligators didn’t grab him, thought Smith, perhaps pond scum, giardia, or other bacteria would slowly eat away at his intestines or his flesh. The image these thoughts conjured up in Smith’s brain amused him. He chuckled.
Grilled, Chilled and Killed Page 13