Ann wiggled bringing me back, and I shoved Tombstone onto the back burner. That journey must wait until they finish our Arizona room. Philly would get ornery if I went off chasing Wyatt Earp while he and Wayne... I assume Wayne would supervise every aspect of the Arizona room... were building a room for my stack washer and dryer. He is trying to please his Hunny Bunny.
Before I knew it, Gale finished talking, but I didn’t catch much of Dan’s send off. Droning monotone voices knock me out. The pianist played Amazing Grace, but with Dan properly eulogized, it was time to eat. As soon as the song ended, the doors to the community center magically popped open and the smell of casseroles drifted into the chapel.
Nothing makes me hungrier than a funeral.
I grabbed the Trader Joe’s shopping bag, bent on finding Lulu.
“What’s in the bag?” Milly asked, leaning over the pew back between us.
“A book. For Lulu. Do you know her?”
Milly circled her temple with a finger. “Yeah, ever’body knows Lulu. She’s a real lulu.”
Guess that meant Lulu was another Oasis lunatic. I can pick them up like trash from the ocean. At the end of the bench Milly said, “She’s here somewhere, she never misses a free meal.”
Leaving the chapel was a slow go with everyone stopping to shake hands and hug necks. At the entrance to the community center, the line for the toilet was too long, so I sat the heavy bag on the first table I found, thus saving a place to eat and headed for the refreshment line.
Everyone was too friendly, shaking my hand and saying nice to meet you and hey you, you’re new. Strangers whispered psychic behind my back enjoying my notoriety entirely too much.
When my hand reached for my first iced tea—they sweetened with fake sugar—not the way I make it; Gale grabbed my elbow.
“There you are. Madonna said she’d invited you. Did you bring the album?”
“Yeah, it’s over yonder.” I took a quick sip of tepid tea. I was right; it tasted terrible, but wet and cold.
Gale looked over her shoulder. “Bad idea. I bet it’s gone by now.”
Another woman stepped up beside her. She hauled a wheeled green oxygen tank strung to a nasal cannula in her nose. “Did you find her?”
“She already lost the album. Yea, this is her.” Gale nodded, looking down her nose. “Bunny. This is Lulu.” The old woman eyed me like a vulture setting her sights on roadkill. Her skin was a nasty color of gray, and she nosily sucked oxygen through her nose. “Let’s go. I’m about to drop dead. I can’t stand around here waiting.”
“No, it isn’t lost, I promise. It’s in a Trader Joe bag. You can’t lose one of those; they’re too big and bright.” I scooted toward the table, at least I thought it was the table where I left the bag.
“Let me get it. I’d love for you to have it. Wanda would want...”
Lulu dodged folks like a rugby player, wheeling her oxygen tank. “Heck fire, she don’t want nothing.”
“I’ll find it. I thought maybe,” I shrugged, walking ahead of the lumbering Gale and sucking Lulu.
“Don’t think. It’s a waste of time,” Lulu grumbled. I glanced back again, noticing we had lost Gale. When I got to the end of the table, the bag was missing. I scanned the table tops and looked under the table where I had left it. You can’t trust these Oasis people.
Already people sat eating a smorgasbord of jellied dishes and unrecognizable casseroles from the buffet.
“Pardon me?” I asked the quartet of women watching me over their plates and knocked on the table. “I left a shopping bag right here. Have any of you seen it?”
They shared glances. One said, “Nope. It wasn’t here when I sat down.” The other three nodded in agreement and gratefully they didn’t ask who I was.
“When you find it, come by. I gotta eat.” Lulu whirled her oxygen tank heading for the buffet line.
I didn’t give up. How could I let Wanda down? Several women shook my hand, introducing themselves with a pretense, because they already knew me by name, if not by sight. I’m the infamous idiot dumb enough to move into a house that was a crime scene.
Should I say it’s also haunted? Maybe not.
I didn’t have enough patience to explain to every individual that moving here, sight unseen, was Sweetie Bastard’s bad idea. Saying, Philly said ‘Hunny Bunny, pack your bags’ hundreds of times wouldn’t make a dent in the collective opinion.
Ann slid up holding two overflowing plates of food. “C’mon, I got you a plate. Sit down and eat.” She guided me to two empty chairs.
Pooching out my bottom lip, I moaned. “I lost the wedding album
“It’ll turn up. We’ll check lost and found.” She put the plates and napkin rolled plastic cutlery on the table. “You want water or tea?”
“Water.” I sat happy Ann came to my rescue. Not only did I need to teach Elmer how to make proper iced tea, I needed to write the recipe on the community room’s wall. Black MarksALot would stand out well.
It felt nice to take a load off. Ann left me facing a row of strange women.
On our little lot on Mississippi Road, the enormity of the population hadn’t occurred to me. Here in the crowded community room, I realized I’d never get to know a tenth of the residents.
A gal sitting across the table offered her hand. “Hi. I’m Honoree Wallace.”
“Bunny Winters,” I said, giving her hand a small shake over my plate.
“I thought that was you. Your photo is hanging on the new resident’s bulletin board.”
“That so,” I said, trying to be nice. “Have you seen a Trader Joe’s bag?”
Madonna squeezed in next to Honoree balancing a plate. “There you are. I’ve been looking for you. Hey, Honoree, how are you?”
Honoree nodded. “Good. You?”
“You looking for this?” She slid her plate onto the table and eased the Trader Joe bag between our chairs.
Potato salad dangled on the end of my fork. “Oh good, you found it.”
“I didn’t,” she said. “Lulu found it. Gave it to me after she looked at the album.”
I put my fork down. “What did she say?”
I pushed the flashy bag under the table between our chairs. As conspicuous as it looked, I didn’t want to explain its contents to the entire table full of gawking Oasis funeral goers.
“Nothing much,” Madonna said. “She reminded me that back when Dan and Wanda moved to the Oasis, they were married.”
“What.” My puckery lips formed a smoochy O. “Wow. That makes sense.”
I couldn’t explain to Madonna how upset Wanda was over Dan’s death, not without sounding like a raving lunatic.
Had she arrived to escort Dan to the other side? Did she get confused about her ghostly duties? That would explain her rattled behavior and why she was bemoaning his death.
“What makes sense? Dan’s roving eye.” Madonna roved her eyes.
Honoree’s ears perked picking up the gossip. I pouted, nodding about Madonna’s roving eye example.
“Dan didn’t hack her to pieces, then?” That was a dumb question.
“I’d guess not. But that was before I moved in. He never talked much about the situation.”
“Was Wanda cremated?” I asked, thinking of my creative project.
Madonna shrugged. “Lulu would know.”
“Has Minette come back?” Minette might be my last resort, maybe she could take another look at the album. If Dan hadn’t killed her, the secret to her murder might not lie within the wedding album and it was only a forgotten memento.
“She and Hugo went to Colorado; guess it was too hot for them still. By mid-December they’ll be back.”
“Figures,” I said, picking at the yucky jumble of casserole and sticky gelatin dishes on my plate. I hadn’t taken a single bite of food. Are there doggie bags for funeral food?
Ann returned and sat two icy plastic glasses of water on the table. “Looks like the bag turned up.”
“Thanks.”
I chugged ice water.
Madonna asked. “You forgot your water, didn’t you?”
I grimaced, ready with a lie. “No, I drank it and put the bottle in the recycle bin.”
Madonna’s eye twinkled, letting my lie go. “Maybe you’ll figure out the Wanda mystery. Find rest for her soul.”
Gratefully, the conversation turned away from Wanda’s album. Several more women introduced themselves, but I wouldn’t remember their names or faces. I needed a visual prompt—a dead body or a bloody knife to associate with a name before I could remember it.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The Bloody Knife
When Madonna dropped us at our carport, a car blocked the drive.
“Looks like trouble,” Ann said, hopping out before the golf cart hardly before it stopped. “I’m bushed. All that talking wore me out.”
I grabbed the Trader’s Joe bag. “Wonder what’s going on?” The more I carried the album the heavier it got. “Me too, I’m tired. Thanks for the ride.”
Madonna leaned over. “You’re welcome. By next week after you get your driver’s license you’ll be a pro at finding your way around.”
“Don’t remind me of my expired license.”
“Somebody has to.” Madonna grimaced, lifting a brow at the car. “Maybe for once, that’s good news. Night.”
Philly and FBI Agent Masters stepped from the shadows. Wayne wasn’t there, thank goodness it was after five o’clock.
“Bout time you got back.” Philly looked tired. “Arnold’s got good news.”
“At last.” I handed Philly the shopping bag, and he sat it on the veranda’s steps.
“What’s up?” I needed my threadbare nightie and some big-time alone time. I had funeral overload—too much handshaking and blabbing for one evening.
“Sorry to come out so late, but I wanted to give you the news.” Arnold smiled.
“Arnold, right?” I glanced between the two men, trying to figure out if he had already told Philly the news.
“Yes’m.” He had dressed in his shirt sleeves instead of a black jacket. “I got word about the knife.”
“Beer?” Philly asked, heading for the ice chest. He wouldn’t be offering the kid a brew if it wasn’t bad news.
Arnold nodded. “If you don’t mind. I am off duty.”
Bad news always starts with if you don’t mind.
Philly passed out cold ones, drawing on my last ounce of patience. They sipped beer giving me more time to stew, but I didn’t fidget or huff.
Arnold wiped his chin with the back of his hand. “It’s cat blood”
“Oh, my word. It’s Mrs. Coker’s cat. I thought... No, it can’t be.” I couldn’t believe what I heard. Someone hacked the 4th of July cat into pieces and then hid the bloody knife behind our fridge.
Philly giggled.
Madonna mentioned the renters hated living in Wanda’s house.
Arnold’s shoulders shook with silent laughter. “I had to come over and personally tell you. I thought it was that good. It’s not a murder weapon after all.”
Philly snickered all out and Arnold wiped his sweaty chin with his sleeve. They were a pair of comedians.
“I’d bet the cat though it was murder. My word, the renters killed the cat.” My knees shimmied, and I hurried for my chair before I sank onto the driveway. “Amelia will want to know. She said something about an unsolved cat murder.”
Philly continued to chuckle, so I asked, “And pray tell, how did a butcher knife covered in cat’s blood get behind the refrigerator?”
“Who knows,” Arnold chuckled, shrugging. “That’s how unsolved mysteries work. Sometimes the leads come to a deadend and we never know who committed the crime. Wanda’s case is an old unsolved mystery.”
I squinted at the impropriety of his comment. If the FBI’s representative doesn’t give a wit about a murdered cat, I do. Now I’ll have a cat’s ghost meowing and wailing at all hours. Philly will hear a haint. I felt a willie coming on. A dead cat and a dead domino dominatrix. You might know.
“Young man, that isn’t funny. Murdering an animal is worse than a person. At least with a person you can have a motive.”
“That’s true,” Arnold said.
“Hell, Hunny Bunny, I wanted to kill that cat of yours plenty of times. Peeing in my shoe.”
“Shut up. She had issues.”
“I’ll say.” Philly giggled, snorting beer.
Arnold downed the rest of his beer. “I wanted to deliver the news. My granny, Mary, lives on Nebraska. I’ll stop by and check on her before I leave the Oasis.”
“Wish I could leave the Oasis,” I muttered under my breath. Arnold chucked his empty beer bottle in the overflowing Home Depot bucket, climbed into his obvious FBI vehicle and left.
I crossed my leg and jiggled it. “There’s a demerit for an overflowing bucket.”
Philly climbed the veranda steps. “It’s a recycle bin. It’s legal. You should read the manual.” He sat and squeezed my knee, and my leg reflexed almost kicking the iron railing.
“Ouch. Don’t you know how much I hate that?” Daddy taught him to squeeze my knee. He called it showing me how a horse eats an apple. Freddy was a comedian, too.
“Yeah, that’s why I do it.” He patted my knee, rubbing away the pain.
The sun was setting; soon the vampires would come out. We sat quiet for a few minutes.
My thoughts rambled through the days we had lived here, and I whispered, “A friggin’ cat.”
“How was the wake?” Philly asked.
“Fine. Lots of food. You hungry?”
“Yeah. Alice invited me to supper, but I didn’t go. Thought you’d bring a doggie bag.”
“Pish. You don’t bring home a doggie bag from a funeral. You know that.” I had thought of the doggie bag business, and I’d never tell him that truth. Best he still believes me to be a lady with manners and class.
“Guess so.” He reached for the Jesus fan and fanned us. I’ll never become acclimated to Tucson’s stifling heat. Tomorrow, I will look for the goodness in the Oasis. I must come to love something about the asphalt jungle.
“You can have a bowl of Cheerios.”
“Okay.”
As much as Arnold enjoyed delivering the message personally, my issues were unresolved. I still had a problem with Wanda’s unsolved murder. Lulu dismissed the album like she was looking through a stranger’s high school annual. Madonna and Ann lost interest. With Dan put away nicely, and I might never piece together the puzzle. Madonna told me Wanda’s murder was the Oasis’ biggest unsolved crime, and now I believe her. Maybe next week, I’ll find more clues to my new housemate—sheesh a ghost or whatever. Go figure.
Now, this amused kid FBI agent was drinking Philly’s beer, chuckling because of cat blood on a hidden knife. How did that happen? Had her murderer caught her cat watching and killed it too? Talk about covering up your tracks. A cat can’t testify in court.
Bless the kitty’s heart. She or he didn’t deserve such a gruesome end. Now, I have an unsolved cat murder to worry about.
“I gotta get a shower,” Philly said, winking. “I’m hot.”
I chuckled. He was hot for an old geezer in more ways than one. At least I didn’t need to worry about the domino dominatrix kidnapping him.
“What’s up next?” I asked. I had a list a mile long of things to do.
“The liquor store, I’m out of scotch.”
Our AC unit kicked on. Pumping hot air into our sweet little park model.
“We need a car.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Can you order one from Amazon?”
He scrubbed his five-day stubble.
“You out of razors?”
“Don’t think so. I can look though.” I couldn’t tell if he was out of razors or would buy a car online.
He stood up and held out his hand. “C’mon, I need you to wash my back.”
“Oh, you old romantic, you.”
Afterword
I hope you enjoyed the first book in the Desert Oasis Cozy Mystery series.
Just a note: Wanda's murder is an unsolved mystery which carries through to the other books. As a reader, I can understand your frustration with not learning who killed a character, but as an author, I haven't been told who or why she was murdered. None of us may not ever know who killed Wanda. She was sent to carry out a mission, to help Bunny adjust to her new life, and I hope Wanda accomplishes her goal and settles happily-ever-after behind the pearly gates.
...Violet
The Gilda Gardener Cozy Mystery Series
Coming Soon
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