Casket Case

by Fran Rizer

  “If Levi Pinckney hadn’t thought I had such a wonderful body, I might have let myself get involved.”

  “By ‘get involved’ do you mean get bonked?”

  “No,” I mumbled, “I mean make love.”

  “Well, may I remind you that your headlights weren’t blown up the first time Levi saw you. That’s something you told me yourself. Over at the Dawkins house. You’d forgotten to put on your bra. Remember?”

  “I don’t think he noticed. He wasn’t paying much attention to me that morning.”

  “But he came looking for you that night. He wasn’t lost.”

  I grinned. “Yes, I guess he did. Then I got mad because he stood me up. I even wondered if those flowers, the pretty ones and then the dead ones, were from Levi. Dennis Sharpe took both the bouquet and the dead funeral wreath to my house. He was playing Peeping Tom outside my windows and leaving notes for me, too. He’s even confessed that he tried to drive me off the road in that stolen Tahoe, not to hurt me, but to frighten me because I’d made him mad by not paying enough attention to him. The sheriff said Dennis keeps saying that women make men mad sometimes and that when a woman made him mad, he liked to punish her by scaring her. Turns out that’s why his sister Denise left home as soon as she could. He was always scaring her.” I picked up the lotion and began smoothing it on my legs.

  “And he was infatuated with your body. Wouldn’t it have been a hoot if he’d killed you and then found out what a flatty you are when he undressed you?” Jane giggled.

  I scowled at her, though she couldn’t see it. “I don’t think that would have been a hoot at all.” Pulling two bottled waters from the cooler, I opened both and handed one to Jane. We’d gone on a health kick. Fewer sodas.

  “You still haven’t told me why your dad and the sheriff went to Dennis Sharpe’s cabin.”

  “Frank and Jane got worried when I didn’t arrive at Daddy’s not long after they did. Daddy called the apartment. When no one answered, he got angry and thought I was being stubborn and had gone home instead of following Frank and Jane to his house.”

  “You had gone back,” Jane said and took a long drink.

  “I didn’t go back to stay, though, just to get my cell phone. Daddy was so sure that I was just refusing to answer the phone because I didn’t want to spend the night at his house that he went to get me.”

  “I guess when he saw the Mustang in your driveway, he really thought you were just being stubborn.”

  “Yes, but the broken bathroom window alerted him something was wrong. He kicked the door in and found Carter. He called the sheriff. When they read that suicide note, they knew it wasn’t for real. Daddy and Harmon saw Dennis Sharpe’s initials carved into the handle of the hunting knife, which he had dropped when he forced me out to his van.” I trembled at the memories.

  “Sheriff Harmon knew where Dennis Sharpe lived. He and Daddy arrived just in time to keep Dennis from tranquilizing me and then executing me by lethal injection. He really had the paraphernalia to tie me down and put in an IV to deliver the drugs.”

  Jane reached for the lotion. I handed it to her and she rubbed more lotion on her tummy. “Who trashed your apartment and wrote on the mirror?”

  “Turned out that George did the trashing. He was looking for anything that would lead him to Mrs. Counts. He’d assumed we were friends because I was helping her at Dr. Melvin’s visitation. Dennis went in afterwards and wrote on the mirror. He’d followed me when I was out with Levi, and it made him mad.”

  Jane stretched out on her stomach. “Did I tell you that Pearl White has moved back into the big house and wants me to rent the garage apartment again?”

  My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. I’d really enjoyed seeing more of Jane and had even learned to ignore Roxanne when she worked in the other bedroom—on the phone, of course.

  “What did you tell her?” I asked.

  “I told her no. I’m staying where I am. I don’t want to live over there where that woman harassed me and where her blood’s all over the steps.”

  “They tore those steps down and built new ones,” I said. “How is Pearl doing?”

  “Said she’s fine. She’s back in AA doing her steps again. She says if thirty-six don’t do the trick, she’ll do forty-eight or sixty.”

  “You know, she really loved that rotten con artist, and he would’ve killed her and taken everything she owned without batting an eyelash, but the worst thing he did to her was get her back drinking. You said she’d been dry fifteen years when she met him. I hope she can do that again.”

  “Callie, before Pearl rents the garage apartment to someone else, I want to ask you something.” She set her empty water bottle on the towel beside her.

  “Go ahead.”

  “You always say you’ll never live with your dad and brothers again. How would you feel about one of your brothers living next door to you?”

  I squealed and hugged her. “You and Frank are going to live together?”

  “More than that. How would you like me for a sister-in-law?”

  I promise, I knew I should feel elated and happy for her, but immediately I went into anxiety mode. What if Frank cheated on his wife and she was my best friend? What if my best friend didn’t do right by my brother?

  “What’s wrong? You’ve always said you felt like I was your sister.”

  “Oh, nothing’s wrong. I’m just overwhelmed. It would be wonderful.” Liar, liar, pants on fire.

  “Well, we’re not figuring on beating Bill and Molly to the altar. We’re thinking December, so we don’t even have to talk about it now.” She paused. “Callie, you never told me about Dr. Melvin. Did Roselle or George Carter kill him?”

  “Not at all. The heavy metal poisons tests showed nothing abnormal, but when Sheriff Harmon asked them to specifically test those vitamins and food supplements Dr. Melvin was taking, they found he was overdosing on about everything, including DHEA, which is sometimes known as the ‘fountain of youth’ supplement.”

  “So he actually died of an overdose?”

  “No, the cause of death was determined to be heart arrhythmia.”

  “No kidding? I guess your heart is arrhythmic if it stops.”

  “That’s not what they mean. Some people have arrhythmia for years without having a heart attack. Other people have massive heart attacks that show up during autopsy. They decided that Dr. Melvin’s heart went into arrhythmia and didn’t correct itself. No scar tissue. His heart died immediately.” I sniffled.

  “Toxicology showed no poisons,” I continued, “but he was overdosing on all those supplements. DHEA or ‘youth’ can cause heart arrhythmia. Too much of that stuff can make even a young heart arrhythmic and result in sudden death. Thank heaven the toxicologist discovered it. When Sheriff Harmon told Roselle the cause of her husband’s death, she was shocked. She’d been taking his supplements since he died. She’d thought her heart was racing because she was upset. She’s still grieving. I think she really loved Dr. Melvin.”

  “Goes to show you never can tell,” Jane said. “What about you? Does anyone want to meet Vanessa?”

  “Yes, I’ve had a couple of hits, but you know Vanessa is a bigger fib than my boobs and booty were.”

  “As big a fake as Roxanne?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “I’m getting hungry. What do you have to eat?”

  “I’ve got meatball subs.”

  “You went to Nate’s Sports and Subs on the way home?”

  “Yep, and I asked Levi what he thought about second chances. He’s taking me to the midnight movies in Beaufort tonight.”

  “Why the change?”

  “Remember I said I’d been reading about Abraham Lincoln?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I read a lot of his quotes. One of them was, ‘You can fool some of the people all of the time, and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.’ That’s what I’ve
been doing with my inflated bras and fanny panties.”

  “So, are you going to tell all this to Levi?”

  “Don’t know yet, but I can tell you another famous Abraham Lincoln saying. ‘Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.’ You know what, Jane? I’m going to make up my mind to be happy, and if I succeed with Levi, that will be fine. If not, I’ll still be happy.”

  Jane grinned and turned toward the sparkling sand and whitecapped waves as though she could see them. She said, “You’re so full of quotes. Here’s a Jane quote for you to remember: ‘People who don’t get bonked occasionally might go bonkers.’ ”