Felicia drew in a deep breath and let out a dramatic sigh. “How should I know, Detective Chan? I told you we weren’t that close. And frankly, this has been a very exhausting morning for me. I had to go down to the morgue at the hospital and identify my father's body and then sign one paper after the next. I can't even begin planning for his funeral until the state returns his body from the crime lab.”
“Your father was poisoned.”
“How do you know that?”
Michelle carefully clasped her hands together. “That’s not a detail the police department is authorized to share at this time, sadly. But I can share that I know Mr. Graystone was poisoned. And that we don't know who poisoned your father.”
“A very sick and disturbed person, obviously,” Felicia said quickly, in a nasty voice, and then added: “By the way, Detective Chan, you never told me where my father's body was found. May I please know?”
“No,” Michelle said, “you may not. My apologies. If your father's murder is due to involvement with drugs, gambling, a grudge, or some other reason, then the person who killed your father may still be lurking around town. Your life could be in danger, too, in fact.”
Momma Peach smiled again. Michelle was a pro. “I understand,” Felicia said in a falsely worried voice. “So, you think the person who killed my father may come after me?” she asked.
“It's possible.”
“Oh, dear,” Felicia said. “Maybe I should call my husband and have him come down here immediately.”
“Tomorrow before noon will be fine,” Michelle told Felicia as she suppressed a smirk at this sudden change in Mr. Garland’s availability. She snuck another glance at the one-way mirror. “Mrs. Garland, I need you to stay in town. Don't leave. An officer will be watching your home, just in case.”
“I understand.” Michelle could see a tiny muscle in Felicia’s neck twitch at that. She thought she had escaped suspicion – she wasn’t expecting surveillance.
“I also need you to write down the names of anyone you know who associated with your father. Relatives, friends, co-workers, old Army pals, anybody. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“I need names, addresses, phone numbers, anything you can come up with. I know you were estranged, but you are our best source of information right now,” Michelle explained. “We’re reaching out to his Army buddies, but from my initial call it doesn’t sound like he actually spent much time with the veteran’s group.”
“I'll do my best,” Felicia promised.
Michelle stood up. “I think I have all I need from you for now. We'll speak more tomorrow when your husband comes down to the station.”
“I'm free to leave?”
“Of course,” said Michelle with a look of innocent surprise. “You were never under arrest, of course. After you write out your statement and the names of anyone who was associated with your father, you can leave. But stay in town. If you leave, that'll make my superiors think you did have something to do with your father's murder. As it stands right now, I think you're in the clear.”
“I didn't kill my father, Detective Chan,” Felicia said in a voice filled with petty disdain.
“Let’s do our best to make sure you fill out the paperwork so we can prove it,” Michelle said, and walked out of the interrogation room. Momma Peach remained in the viewing room. She watched Felicia glance at the one-way mirror and shake her head in frustration. “Okay, little girl,” Momma Peach said and rose to her feet, “I know who you are now and I am going to play your twisted little game.”
Momma Peach walked out of the viewing room and met Michelle in the hallway. “Well?” Michelle asked.
“I have a lot of thoughts walking back and forth in my mind,” Momma Peach told Michelle in a solemn voice.
“Did Felicia Garland kill her father?” Michelle asked.
Momma Peach glanced up and down a long, gray, brick hallway. The hallway was clear. “I think more than one person killed Mr. Graystone, the poor soul. I think Felicia Garland is a hideous black widow spider married to a deadly scorpion.”
“I was thinking something along that line,” Michelle said and leaned back against the wall. “Momma Peach, even if you get past her awful attitude, there's a sour smell coming from Felicia Garland that made me want to kick her right in the face. It took everything in me to control my temper.”
“You did good,” Momma Peach promised Michelle. “I saw the warrior in your eyes desperately wanting to pull out her sword and issue justice. And justice will be served soon, and with a large spoon.”
Michelle nodded. “Want to go to the motel now?”
“Yes,” Momma Peach said, “but first, I want to ask you a few questions.”
“Okay.”
Momma Peach took Michelle's left hand and walked her outside into a side parking lot. A soft, warm, gentle breeze was blowing. Momma Peach took a few seconds and soaked in the breeze with grateful eyes. She breathed in the afternoon air with love and gratefulness. “The Good Lord sure knows how to make the air sweet.”
The heavy scent of dogwood and magnolia trees played in the air, mingled with a dash of honeysuckle and roses. Michelle looked up through the branches of a large mighty pine tree and spotted a soft, blue sky shimmering through the branches like a faraway lake dancing in the bright sun. “Lovely day to take a picnic down by the lake.”
“Yes, it is,” Momma Peach agreed. “But I can't pack us a picnic right now.”
Michelle nodded and looked into Momma Peach's thoughtful face. “What questions did you want to ask me, Momma Peach?”
“Michelle,” Momma Peach said, “is it possible, in your own mind, that Felicia Garland and her husband hired a killer to poison Mr. Graystone? That poor, poor, soul.”
“Maybe,” Michelle answered. “I don't think those two are the kind of people who like to get their hands dirty.”
“I felt that in my heart, too,” Momma Peach admitted. “We have a lot of folks in the kitchen right now that need to be sorted out. I want to sort each person out one at a time in order not to get her mind confused. My, but Aunt Rachel confused my mind enough already this morning...oh, give me the strength to deal with that woman...give me the strength.”
Michelle grinned. “Momma Peach, do you really think Aunt Rachel loses your checks on purpose?”
Momma Peach narrowed her eyes and hunched her shoulders in distaste. “That woman is torture some days...torture, I tell you. I know she lays awake at night thinking of ways to torment my mind. I can feel her lying awake, staring at my photo, smiling to herself.”
Michelle let out a quick laugh. “Aunt Rachel is an old lady, Momma Peach. Surely she isn't as evil as you think.”
Momma Peach nodded. “I know the devil’s handiwork when I see it. Aunt Rachel has too much idle time on her hands in that rest home, and I pray she finds something better to do than call my bakery whenever she wants to stir the pot. Now, let me ask you one last question and then we'll go.”
“Fire away.”
“I want to know what you found in Mr. Graystone's wallet. Did you find a bank card?”
Michelle shook her head no. “No, Momma Peach. I found Mr. Graystone's driver’s license, social security card, some photos of his wife, and over eight hundred dollars in cash. I didn't find a bank card.”
Momma Peach nodded. “And Mr. Graystone paid for my peach pie with cash, too.”
“Momma Peach, what are you getting at?” Michelle asked.
Momma Peach rubbed her chin with her left hand. Holding her blue pocketbook looped over her right shoulder was a real chore, but a proper woman, Momma Peach told her babies, never left home without carrying her pocketbook. Of course, Momma Peach knew, there were times when stuffing a simple wallet down her bosom seemed tempting. Men had it easy. Women had to carry everything and the darn kitchen sink around in their pocketbook.
“Michelle,” Momma Peach told Michelle, “I bet you ten of my peach pies that Mr. Graystone closed down his bank account long ago a
nd that all of his money isn't where Felicia Garland thinks it is. No ma’am,” Momma Peach said in a confident voice, “I know what kind of woman Felicia Garland is. I saw her eyes. I looked into her heart.”
Michelle stared at Momma Peach, curious about this potential line of investigation. “I'll run a check and see, Momma Peach.”
“After I examine the motel room,” Momma Peach told Michelle and patted her hand. “Now, take me to the motel and afterward help her cleanse her body with bleach and rubbing alcohol. Oh, give me the strength...give me the strength to enter the den of sin that is the Pine Eagle Motel.”
Chapter Three
Momma Peach watched a gruff-looking character with long, stringy gray hair open the dirty motel room door with a key dangling from a ring of half-rusted keys. “I don't like cigarettes,” she said, waving away the thick smoke rising from a cigarette the man held in the corner of his mouth.
The man shrugged his shoulders, popped open the door, and looked at Momma Peach with his gray eyes. “Not my problem. Lock the door on your way out,” he said in an irritated voice.
“Show some manners,” Momma Peach said with a scowl and smacked the man in the head with her pocketbook. “I don't tolerate no rudeness, Mr. Thompson.”
Michelle watched Mark Thompson stumble backward and nearly trip over his own skinny legs. He managed to catch his balance before backing up into the filthy parking lot. “What's with you, lady!?” he yelled and began rubbing the right side of his face with his left hand without realizing that the cigarette in his mouth was now crushed.
Momma Peach wound up her pocketbook and prepared to launch a second attack. “Watch how you speak to your betters. You say you run this place but you smell like a wet rat,” she growled, “I don't like wet rats. And look at your shirt. Is that a white t-shirt or a yellow one?” Momma Peach swung her pocketbook in Mark’s direction with a menacing look. Mark ran further into the dirty parking lot and hid behind a tan 1988 Oldsmobile. “You're crazy!” he shouted. “Arrest her,” he tried to order Michelle.
“I have real work to do,” Michelle told Mark in a cold tone. “Don’t you?”
Momma Peach watched Michelle ease her way under the yellow crime scene tape and into the motel room where Mr. Graystone had been found dead. “Go wash your face and brush your teeth,” she told Mark in a voice that would have made a herd of lions run scared. “I try to see the best in people, the way Jesus teaches me to. Jesus never said we had to live this life dirty and smelling like a rat. Somewhere there has to be some good in you.”
Mark finally took the hint and hurried away toward the run-down green building that served as the motel’s front office.
Momma Peach sighed. “Going back to the bottle, no doubt,” she said in a sad voice. “Well, I have work to do.”
Momma Peach walked under the yellow tape and through the door, entering a dimly lit, smelly room covered with ugly green carpet and even uglier green walls. Two queen beds stood in the room like twin dead brains, each covered with a blanket in a disgusting hue of decaying pinkish-brown. The color of the blankets against the hideous green of the walls made for a terrible contrast. A flimsy, chipped table equipped with two rickety wooden chairs was shoved up against the back wall, near a rusted sink. Momma Peach didn't see a television set or night stand. “I love the color green,” she told Michelle, “because green covers the earth. But this green...no sir, I don't like this green at all.”
“It is ugly,” Michelle agreed and closed the door. She looked around with dismay. “Momma Peach, someone has been in this room. Smell the smoke?”
Momma Peach sniffed the air. “Cigar smoke.”
Michelle nodded. “Smell the cologne, too?”
Momma Peach nodded. “Yes, I smell it. I also smell a second cologne.” Momma Peach walked to the flimsy wooden table, bent down, and sniffed one of the wooden chairs sitting at the table. Then she moved to the second wooden chair and sniffed it. “Mr. Graystone, rest his soul, was sitting in that chair,” Momma Peach said and pointed to the first wooden chair.
“Yes, he was,” Michelle confirmed, impressed as always by Momma Peach’s quick work and unerring sense of smell.
“He was wearing a very nice cologne that I like,” Momma Peach added. “But the other cologne infesting this room smells like money.”
“I agree,” Michelle told Momma Peach. They each privately wondered about the second cologne. It clearly hadn’t come from the motel’s proprietor. The room had been cleared to be cleaned under supervision, but after that, any police officer’s visit would have been logged, and they had checked the log before their visit. Who had been in the room?
Momma Peach grew silent. Slowly and methodically she began to explore every aspect of the ugly room. Michelle leaned back against the door and watched. “Take notes.” Michelle nodded her head and pulled a small writing pad out from the inside pocket of her black leather jacket. “Carpet has been vacuumed...both beds have been made...table has been wiped down with furniture polish...” Momma Peach braced herself and entered the bathroom. “Oh, give me strength,” she cried as her eyes took in a filthy toilet, a gray tub ringed with soap scum, a green tiled floor splattered with grime and who knows what varieties of contagious diseases. To cap it all off, a roll of cheap toilet paper sat askew on the toilet lid. She backed out of the bathroom as if someone had hit her in the head with a baseball bat and slammed the door shut. “Scald me down with bleach!” she yelled.
“Yeah, it's pretty bad in there,” Michelle said wryly.
Momma Peach backed further away from the bathroom door, staring at it like it was the devil incarnate. “This room has been cleaned...bathroom untouched...write that down.”
Michelle made the note. “Momma Peach, someone came back searching for something, didn't they?”
“Yes, I want to talk to Betty.”
“Me, too,” Michelle agreed and yanked the door open. “I’ve had enough, have you? Let's get out of here.”
“Me first,” Momma Peach said and ran out into the bright sunlight. She hurried over to the hood of the Oldsmobile, yanked open her pocketbook, and withdrew a bottle of rubbing alcohol. “Come to Momma Peach,” Momma Peach said and began pouring the rubbing alcohol all over her hands, arms, and face and then focused on Michelle. “Come here.”
Michelle knew better than to argue, having worked with Momma Peach on cases before. She walked over to Momma Peach with a sense of dread. Momma Peach began dousing her hands with the rubbing alcohol as Michelle tried in vain to hold her breath. Momma Peach went to work on Michelle's face like she was a small child who needed a spit bath. “I can't...breathe,” Michelle said and began coughing. “Fumes...really strong, Momma Peach…can't breathe...”
“Cleanses the lungs,” Momma Peach said with satisfaction, inspecting Michelle's face. “I know about germs. Germs just don't sit on the hands. Those nasty little critters are everywhere.”
“Yes, Momma Peach,” Michelle said and turned her head to the side to gulp in a few deep breaths of air.
Momma Peach finally smiled, put the bottle of rubbing alcohol back in her pocketbook, and threw a disparaging glance at the front office. The motel was surrounded by tall pine trees and raggedy patches of tall grass that hadn't seen a lawn mower in decades, or so it seemed. “This place is a wart on the backside of our lovely town.”
“Oh, well...” Michelle stopped to examine the depressing exterior of the motel, “there's a few more warts in our town, Momma Peach, besides this place.”
“I know there are,” Momma Peach replied and shook her head. “These days I think that most folks don't care what their town looks like in the far corners just as long as they get to sit and sip tea in the pretty places. I remember visiting the old trailer park out on the old farm road.”
“Didn’t the town council condemn that trailer park?”
Momma Peach nodded. “But not soon enough,” she said in a sad voice. “I used to take food to the children living in that awful place. “What
I saw still haunts my dreams today. For the first time in my life, I was grateful to see the Department of Family and Children Services step in. They had to come and remove children from people who cared more about beer than they did about a sweet six-month-old baby sitting in his own dirty diaper for days at a time.”
“How awful.”
“I’m grateful that some of the babies I saw in that trailer park are now in college preparing for their own families,” Momma Peach told Michelle. “Go fetch Betty. I'll stand here beside your car and think some.”
“Okay,” Michelle agreed and walked off toward the front office. Momma Peach smiled. “That's my baby.”
As Momma Peach waited for Michelle to return with Betty, she let her mind wander around a certain question that was buzzing inside of her mind like an early spring bee. “Now where have I smelled that cologne before?” she asked herself. “At the grocery store? Nah. Mr. Bosley doesn't wear money cologne. Maybe at the post office?” Momma Peach wrinkled her nose. “Nah. Mr. Griffin is too grumpy to wear money cologne. Maybe...at church?” Momma Peach shook her head. “Ain't no soul in my church rich enough to wear money,” she chuckled to herself. “Pastor Duncan barely has enough money to buy socks without holes in them, bless his soul.”
A few minutes later Michelle walked out of the front office empty handed. She returned to Momma Peach with a frustrated look in her eyes. “Betty quit,” she told Momma Peach. “And that stubborn mule inside is too busy drinking to care about performing his civic duty to help us.”
“Did you tell Mr. Smelly-Breath you could come back with a warrant?”
“Yeah,” Michelle said with a huff. “But from his response, I don’t think we’d get a thing. It's not likely he has legal employment records because he probably pays under the table.”
“Didn't you get Betty's personal information from her earlier?”
“I did,” Michelle explained, “but Momma Peach, I don’t think the woman gave me factual information.” Michelle cast a furious glance at the front office. “Betty was very nervous when I questioned her. She looked like a street drunk herself who was sober just long enough to earn her next bottle of liquor.”
A Dash of Peach Page 4