Soup...Er...Myrtle!: A Myrtle Crumb Mystery (Myrtle Crumb Mystery Series)

by Gayle Trent

  “Okay. I want to take a couple names from each page so I’ll get a good sampling,” she said.

  I smiled from ear to ear. I was proud of how well Faye was taking to detective work, and I knew Sunny would be proud too.

  The back door opened, and all three of us nearly jumped out of our skins. An elderly man with a shopping bag came into the large room and pulled the door closed behind him.

  “Is Frank here?” he asked. “He called me yesterday afternoon and said y’all got in a bag of those old fashioned cream drops. You know, those chocolate drops with vanilla cream in the middles?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I know what you’re talking about. I saw them when we were stocking shelves a few minutes ago.” I went over to the shelf and got him the bag of cream drops.

  “Thank you. These are fairly hard to come by, so Frank lets me know when he gets any in.” He put the cream drops into his shopping bag.

  “What’s your name?” Faye asked.

  “Wilmer,” he said. “Wilmer Doss.”

  “Good to meet you, Mr. Doss. I’m Faye, and this is Myrtle and Melvia.”

  “Proud to know you,” said Mr. Doss. “But where’s Frank? Is he sick?”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “We’re just filling in for him so he could take a couple of hours off.”

  “That’s nice of you,” he said. “I know Frank works awful hard.”

  He went to peruse the shelves and added several other items to his bag. When he finished, he brought the bag to the table so we could check his items off the inventory list.

  “It appears that Frank runs a pretty tight ship,” Melvia said. “I’d almost say he goes beyond the call of duty when it comes to writing things down about folks.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Mr. Doss.

  “Well, it’s just that he keeps pretty detailed accounts of everybody’s business.” Melvia shrugged. “Does he really need your address and stuff?”

  “He sends us birthday cards, Christmas cards…stuff like that,” said Mr. Doss. “He’s mighty thoughtful.”

  “He must be,” I said. “Talking to you makes me want to get to know Frank better. He’s always seemed so quiet at church.”

  “Well, you know what they say…them still waters run deep.” Mr. Doss nodded. “Frank is quiet, but he’s a good man. He watches out for us.”

  “That’s nice,” Faye said.

  “It is. You don’t find too many people like that anymore.” He started toward the door.

  Doris poked her head through the door leading into the hallway. “Hello.” She noticed Mr. Doss. “Oh, hi, Wilmer! Did you get your cream drops?”

  “Sure did. Thank Frank for me.”

  She frowned as she looked around the room. “Where is he?”

  “I believe he had to run an errand,” Melvia said. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

  “I suppose I should call him,” Doris said. “It isn’t like him to up and leave his post like this.”

  “If you or Frank needs anything, let me know,” Mr. Doss said. He opened the door and let a cold blast of air into the room as he left.

  As the door closed behind Mr. Doss, Doris’s frown deepened. “What in the world would make Frank do this? This is inexcusable! Did he even give you any instructions about how to handle a transaction?”

  I handed her the inventory list Frank had made for us before he left. “We kept track of everything that Mr. Doss took. I’m flattered that Frank felt confident enough with us to trust us with the food bank while he ran his errand.”

  “What errand?” Doris demanded.

  Melvia shrugged. “I figure he didn’t feel like that was any of our business.”

  Doris blew out a breath. “I just came over to tell you to come over and have your lunch. Since Frank is gone, I suppose I can manage the food bank for a few minutes.”

  “No need,” I said. “Melvia can go on and eat, and then when she gets back, Faye and I will go. We wouldn’t dream of taking you away from y our duties in the soup kitchen.”

  “Thank you,” she said stiffly. “I’m going to call Frank and see what’s the matter with him.”

  Doris left, closing the door behind her.

  “I’m not that hungry,” Melvia whispered. “I can stay and snoop.”

  “No. You go on and eat,” I said. “Faye and I will stay here and snoop. When you get back, we’ll tell you whether or not we found anything new, and you can take up where we left off while we eat.”

  She nodded. “Sounds like a plan. I’ll hurry.”

  “Take your time,” Faye said. “I think we’ve found just about all we’re going to find here anyway.”

  When Melvia left, Faye shook her head. “She really seems to be getting into this spy stuff, doesn’t she?”

  “Yeah. I understand where she’s coming from, though. I want to see whoever is doing this stopped and brought to justice myself.”

  “I do too, Mother.” She glanced at the closed door that led out into the hallway and then took my elbow and led me to the other side of the room. “Here’s the thing. If Frank is the identity thief, then Doris has to be in on it too, don’t you think?”

  “Well, I think it’s more than likely…but on the other hand, you hear all kinds of stories about spouses leading double lives and the other one just dumb as dirt to the whole thing,” I said.

  “Maybe so. But I believe they’d have to at least suspect something.”

  “I know for a fact that you can keep secrets from the people you live with,” I said. “You know that china cabinet in the living room? There’s a blue ginger jar on the top shelf that I’ve stashed money away in for years. Neither you nor your father ever knew about it.”

  “We always knew about your mad money, Mother.”

  My smug smile dropped to open-mouthed astonishment. “You did not! You’re only saying that to prove your point!”

  “I am not. You wouldn’t believe how many times Dad and I borrowed from that jar only to sneak the money back in later before you noticed it was missing.” It was her turn to smirk. “You were our own personal little bank, and you didn’t know it!”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You always did like your father better than you did me.”

  “Maybe a little,” she said.

  I gave a high-pitched squawk of indignation that probably set dogs to barking all over town.

  Faye laughed. “I’m just kidding.”

  “No, you’re not. But that’s fine. I can take it.” I turned my attention back to the drawer where we’d found the ledger. “I’ll see if I can find anything else that could be considered incriminating.”

  “Mother, come on. It was a joke.”

  “Have you got everything you needed from that ledger?” I asked.

  She blew out a breath. “Yeah, I think so.”

  “I can’t believe you knew about my jar,” I muttered, as I rifled through the drawer. “Did you know about my affair with the postman too? He’d always ring the doorbell twice so I’d know it was him.”

  “That was a movie with Lana Turner, and you know it,” Faye said. “And she wasn’t having an affair with the postman. The guy was a drifter.”

  I shrugged. “Lana had her indiscretions, and I had mine.”

  “Wait a minute. Our mail carrier was Ms. Wiley!”

  I laughed. “Maybe. And maybe you only think you know everything, Miss Smarty Britches!”

  Melvia came back in time to hear the last part of my comment—the part about Faye thinking she knew everything. Her eyes flared with excitement. “Did you find something else?”

  “No,” I said. “Not yet. But would you please tell Faye that you can keep secrets from people you live with? She thinks that if Frank is behind this whole identity-theft thing, then Doris must be in on it too.”

  “Oh, no. I know for a fact that families can keep secrets from each other,” Melvia said. “There’s a movie of the week about that very thing nearly every Saturday.”

  “See, Faye? Now let’s go
eat. Melvia, we’ve been going through this drawer, but we haven’t found anything new.”

  “You two go ahead,” she said. “I’ll check around for secret panels.”

  As we stepped out into the hallway, Faye said under her breath, “Melvia is like Miss Marple on steroids.”

  “Yeah, well…I’m glad she’s found a hobby she enjoys.”

  Chapter Nine

  The soups du jour were bean, split pea, and tortilla. Either way, I figured we’d be getting a bowlful of heartburn. I decided to pass on the soups altogether and just have a biscuit with butter. Faye went with the split pea soup.

  I saw that there was a spot open at the table where Heather and her little girls were sitting.

  “That’s Heather,” I told Faye. “Come on. I’ll introduce you.”

  Heather caught a glimpse of me moving her way, and her eyes darted toward the door…like she was trying to see if she could make a run for it. I thought that was mighty peculiar. I hadn’t been anything but nice to the girl. Now, granted, I might’ve been a little too nosy about her husband. But he needed to be home helping to take care of these precious children.

  “Hi, Heather,” I said, sitting down directly across from her. “This is my daughter Faye. I’ve told her all about you and your little angels here.”

  “Hello,” Heather said to Faye. “It’s nice to meet you. Thank you for the coat.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome. I’m just glad someone could use it,” Faye said. “What are your daughters’ names again? I’m sure Mother must’ve told me, but I’ve forgotten.”

  “The oldest is Elizabeth, and the younger one is Miranda Sue,” Heather said.

  “Pretty names for pretty girls,” Faye said.

  The girls smiled at us shyly.

  “You know, I was talking with Opal Grady yesterday,” I said. “She was talking about what a sweet person you were to show such interest in her.”

  “She’s a nice lady,” Heather said. She glanced around the room. “Hurry up, girls. We need to go.”

  “Big day planned?” I asked.

  “Uh, yeah…lots to do,” Heather said. She stood and pulled on her coat. “Girls, we need to go.”

  “But I not done,” Miranda Sue said.

  “You can take your biscuit with you,” Heather said. “Come on.” She got the girls’ coats on them, said her goodbyes, and high-tailed it out of there.

  Faye and I looked at each other.

  “Wonder what that was about?” Faye asked softly.

  “It seemed mighty suspicious to me,” I whispered. “I hatethat we knocked those poor babies out of getting to finish their lunch…. But I think it’s pretty obvious that Heather’s hiding something.”

  * * *

  Faye dropped me off at my house. I invited her in, but she said she had to run by the grocery store before she went to the school to pick up Sunny.

  Matlock met me at the door, and I patted his big, square head.

  “Need to go out?” I asked.

  He’d started toward the backdoor before I’d even finished asking the question, so I took that as a yes. I followed him and let him outside.

  I turned around and saw that the answering machine light was blinking. I played back the message to hear Cooper’s deep, husky voice.

  “Hello, darlin’. Give me a call when you get this. I have some news I believe might interest you.”

  I deleted the message and called Coop. His receptionist answered, but she put my call on through.

  “Why, hello, sweetheart,” he said when he came on the phone. “I’ve got some news about Craig Flint. I told you about the petty larceny charge here in Virginia. Well, there’s a warrant out on him for a minor drug charge in North Carolina.”

  “You think those warrants are what’re keeping him from coming home to his family?” I asked.

  “I believe that if Craig Flint was any kind of man, he wouldn’t let the measly charges against him keep him from his young ‘uns,” Coop said. “Going on the assumption that he’s not any kind of man, I’d about guess he’s had his fill of Heather and is keeping her on the string to keep from having to pay child support.”

  I gasped. “That no-good, rotten scoundrel! Let’s load up and go get him!”

  Cooper chuckled.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “Let’s find him and drag him back here where he belongs.”

  “Well, for one thing, you’re not law enforcement…and you’re not Liam Neeson either. And I’m fairly glad about that last part. For another thing, we don’t know where Flint is at.”

  “That’s because whoever’s looking for him lacks motivation.” I huffed. “Fax the agencies a picture of those two little girls. That might light a fire under them.”

  “I hate to burst your bubble, darlin’, but I don’t think it would,” he said. “Truth is, most of our police departments are overworked and understaffed. It’s not likely they’ll find the Flint needle in that deadbeat haystack unless he comes across their path for some other reason.”

  “Then what can we do?”

  “The tasks you find the hardest—being patient and waiting.” He gave a soft, gentle laugh. “On the upside, he’s on their radar for having outstanding warrants. So if he as much as gets a speeding ticket, I’ll be notified.”

  “Right…if he’s not using some fake I.D. or something,” I said.

  “We’re doing all we can do, Myrtle.”

  “I know.”

  “So let’s move on to our other case,” Coop said. “Did you find anything helpful today?”

  “We found out that Frank Phillips keeps the most organized records any of us—me, Faye and Melvia, that is—had ever seen. And Faye took a sampling of the names from different parts of Frank’s ledger,” I said. “She’s going to run credit checks on them tomorrow to look for suspicious activity.”

  “Let me know what she finds.”

  I promised him I would, and then he had to get back to work.

  I piddled around the kitchen for a few minutes, wondering what I’d throw together for Matlock and me to have for dinner. I didn’t come to any satisfactory conclusion. Then I opened the door and called Matlock to come back in. He didn’t want to mind me, so I bribed him with a doggie cookie shaped like a lion.

  Who in the world had come up with the idea of making doggie cookies that looked like lions, bears, chickens, and bunnies? Furthermore, reckon they made good money off of that concept? I’d bought a box. And Matlock liked them, so I’d buy more when he ran out. I guessed the doggie cookie makers did make decent money.

  I got me a glass of water and went to the living room to kick my shoes off and put my feet up. Frank or Heather? Heather or Frank? One of them had to be the identity thief. But, then, neither one of them looked like they had two nickels to rub together. If I was robbing folks, I’d have something nice to show for it. I mean, look at what a big risk this identity thief was taking. That person could get arrested, have his or her reputation ruined, get talked about ugly in the newspaper, have to eat old nasty prison food, wear those horrible jumpsuits that don’t flatter a soul…. It’d be awful.

  I took a drink of my water and thought about it some more. Matlock ambled into the living room and lay on the floor in front of the couch.

  What if the thief wasn’t after material comforts? I remember hearing tell of a show where this man sold drugs so he could pay for cancer treatments. It could be something like that.

  I was feeling sad over the possibility that Heather or Frank could have some bad disease when the phone rang. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Thank goodness, I didn’t spill my water. I put the glass on a coaster on the coffee table before answering the phone.

  Despite getting jarred out of a terrible thought where Heather’s teary-eyed daughters were asking me if they were gonna be orphans, I answered the phone nicely. Anything but nice was the goon on the other end. It was Tansie, and she was madder than an old wet hen and clucking twice as loud and fast.

  “What’ve
you done to my sister, Myrtle Crumb? You’ve brainwashed her or something—that’s what you’ve done! She thinks she’s some kind of detective or something! She even wants to sign up for the police department’s ride-along program…like she’s some kind of—“

  “Melvia’s a grown woman,” I interrupted calmly. “She can do whatever she wants.” And then I hung up on her.

  “Wonder how she liked them apples, Matlock?”

  He thumped his tail.

  I laughed and laughed…and, you know, I believe Matlock was grinning too.

  * * *

  I didn’t go to work at the food bank and soup kitchen the next morning. Melvia and I had talked it over the night before and had decided that since Tansie, Bettie, and Dephine were going, we’d just sit today out. Melvia had heard about my hanging up on Tansie, of course. Shoot, half of Backwater probably knew about it less than twenty minutes after it happened.

  Anyway, I believe Melvia was half afraid that me and Tansie would get into it if I went to the soup kitchen. We probably would have—not that it would’ve bothered me to get into an argument with Tansie Miller. We’d argued before and, as long as there was breath in both our bodies, would again. But I decided to stay home because I didn’t want Frank or Heather to know I was investigating the identity thefts and that they were suspects.

  I explained my reasoning to Melvia and she agreed that we should stay home today, mull over the evidence we already had, and see what else Faye came up with. We didn’t want to tie up the phone in case Faye called, so we agreed to meet for dinner here at my house this evening. I told Melvia I’d invite Cooper, Faye, and Sunny too. I generously offered to invite the other M.E.L.O.N.S. but Melvia said we should keep it small…limit it to the ones doing the real investigating. I was glad. I didn’t have to invite Tansie and the others, and not inviting them had been Melvia’s idea. It was a win-win for me.

  So today I sat by the phone waiting for Faye to call. I hoped she’d have some news for me. What if nobody else on Faye’s list was the victim of identity theft? Did that mean that the fact that Opal Grady and Harry Loomis were both victims who came to the food bank and soup kitchen was merely a coincidence? That the i.d. thefts weren’t tied to someone who worked at or frequented the food bank and soup kitchen after all? Would that put us back at square one without a single suspect? I didn’t like that idea…not one bit. The very thought made me so nervous that I’d cleaned the entire house and made two batches of preacher cookies—one chocolate and one peanut butter—by the time Faye called.