Murder Comes by Mail

by A. H. Gabhart

  Michael scooted his feet to make the man think he was shuffling back a couple of inches. “Okay. I’ll stay back, but don’t you want to tell me your story first?”

  “If I told you, you’d tell me to go ahead and jump.”

  “It can’t be that bad.” Michael kept his voice even, with no idea whether it was bad or not. The man looked like a regular Joe, but then so did the worst miscreants sometimes. “But whatever it is, we can talk about it.”

  A car door slammed behind him, and Michael dared a glance over his shoulder. Not good. Hank Leland was headed toward them, camera in hand. The newspaper editor must have been on this side of town and tuned in to his police scanner. No other way could his old van beat the ambulance and sheriff, who were speeding down the hill with sirens screaming and lights flashing.

  Poor Jack Smith, alive or dead, would be this week’s big story in the Hidden Springs Gazette. That and the snail-paced response time of the emergency vehicles. Hank never passed up an opportunity to get in a shot or two at the county officials. He claimed it boosted circulation.

  The sirens cut off, and in the sudden silence the click of the camera was easy to hear. The man pulled his gaze away from the water to look past Michael.

  He made a sound that might pass for a laugh. “I thought here in Hidden Springs a man could find a little peace and quiet to do himself in.”

  Michael took another look over his shoulder. Things were going downhill fast. Hank was right behind him, focusing furiously. Even worse, some of the Sunday school ladies had climbed down from the bus and a couple of them, Sue Lou Farris and Judith Phillips, were tottering toward the bridge, their white hair flashing in the bright sunshine. They had their phones up and ready to capture all the action. The two pudgy Aunt Bea–sweet women competed for who could take the worst photos.

  The sheriff climbed out of his car and moved purposely toward the two women to shoo them back as fast as his heavy frame allowed. He swiped at the sweat on his face while he talked to them. It took something big to pull Sheriff Potter out of his air-conditioned office on a hot, muggy July day like this.

  At the ambulance, Gina and Bill bustled around opening doors, pulling out their equipment. Not that any of that would help if the guy jumped. Any minute they’d be rushing toward Michael and the man as though they expected the guy to climb back over the rail into all the commotion and lie down on their stretcher.

  A few men in pickup trucks had chased after the sirens to be in on the action or maybe just to be sure the ambulance hadn’t been headed after their mother, father, sister, or brother. The ambulance didn’t go out all that often with sirens going full blast.

  “I don’t believe this.” The man fixed his eyes on the two women protesting the sheriff’s pointing them back to the bus. “This is just too crazy. One of them could be my mother.”

  “Your mother?” Michael jerked his attention back to the man.

  “Tell her I’m sorry. That she wasn’t the reason I ended up bad.” With those words, something changed in the man. He was no longer a mass of fear unsure which way to lean.

  Michael was already diving for him when Hank shouted, “He’s going, Mike.”

  At the very instant the man turned loose of the rail, Michael grabbed him in a kind of sideways tackle. A half second later the man would have been gone, but in that vulnerable moment of unbalance, Michael managed to topple him back over the railing onto the road. The man groaned when his head banged hard against the pavement.

  Michael stayed astride the man, afraid to turn him loose, while at the same time wondering if he might have killed the poor guy in the process of trying to save him. Behind him, Hank Leland’s camera still clicked. Michael looked around straight into Hank’s viewfinder. “Put that fool camera down and grab his shoulders, Leland, so I can see if he’s breathing.”

  Hank dropped the camera to let it dangle by its strap around his neck. He had the grace to look a little shamefaced as he moved over to grab the man’s shoulders. “Sorry, Mike, but you know real news doesn’t show up often in Hidden Springs, and half the time when it does, I’m on the other side of the county covering a pig calling contest or whatever.”

  Michael slowly lifted up off the man. He didn’t want to chance the jumper scrambling to his feet and taking a leap yet. One thing he had learned while working in the city was to never underestimate a person’s strength or quickness. Adrenaline was a powerful stimulant.

  “Is he dead?” Hank whispered beside him. “He cracked his head pretty hard.”

  “I hope not. That would make some headline. ‘Deputy Kills Man, Trying to Save Him.’” Michael looked down at the man’s closed eyes and then his chest. It was rising and falling. “He’s alive,” he said to nobody in particular.

  “Good.” Hank sounded relieved. “‘Deputy—Hero of the Day’ will sell more papers. Especially here in Hidden Springs where the citizens all already think you’re a hero just ’cause you’re so good-looking.”

  The stretcher wheels clattered on the roadway as Gina and Bill ran toward them. Sheriff Potter lumbered along behind them. Michael kept his hold on the man’s legs, pinning him to the road. Even though the man hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d fallen, Michael sensed a resistance in the muscles under his hands.

  Bill knelt beside the man and opened his kit. “Move back,” he ordered. Gina squatted down on the other side of the man, and Hank cheerfully relinquished his hold on the man’s shoulders to pull his camera up again.

  Michael turned loose of the man at last. He was about to stand up when the man’s eyelids popped open to reveal blank, empty eyes, almost as if the man’s spirit had made the jump and all Michael had saved was the empty baggage of his body.

  But then his eyes focused on Michael. “You should have let me go. It would have been over then.”

  “Whatever’s wrong, fellow, we can get you help,” Gina told him as she shined a light in his eyes. “Jumping wasn’t the answer.”

  The man didn’t act as if he heard her. Instead he kept his eyes directly on Michael. “You’ll wish you’d pushed me.”

  4

  Michael drove the ladies on to Eagleton to see the play. There was no reason not to go. That was what the ladies kept telling one another the rest of the ride. After all, the tickets had been pricey and they’d lose their money if they didn’t see the play. It was too late to give the tickets to anyone else, and it wasn’t as if the man had actually jumped. Everything had turned out fine. Michael had seen to that, and then they would beam his way.

  Michael felt their beams even with his eyes firmly fixed on the road as he guided the old bus through the traffic in Eagleton. Once, when he glanced up at the mirror, he’d even caught Edith Crossfield looking at him kindly. He squirmed a little in the driver’s seat under all the benevolence and discovered a broken spring.

  They were trying to make him out as some kind of hero, and what had he done, really? He hadn’t crawled out on a ledge or over the railing to rescue the man. He simply sneaked up close enough to jerk him back from the edge, giving the poor chump a concussion to boot. That didn’t make him a hero. Keeping people from slipping off the edges was part of his job as an officer of the law.

  Not that all that many people in Hidden Springs danced on the lip of danger, or even trouble. A few did, of course. While Hidden Springs might be a little town time seemed to have forgotten, regular folks, not saints, still lived there. So, as a matter of course, trouble showed up now and again. The good thing was that in Hidden Springs, folks generally managed to deal with one round of trouble before another round started.

  Michael liked it that way. He liked being able to keep things under control, maybe even make a difference in the town. His friends from back in the city told him he was deluded. They said he was wasting the best years of his life in a lazy little town that wasn’t likely to make headline news unless one of its citizens happened to buy the winning jackpot lottery ticket. That did have a one-in-several-million chance of happening,
since people in Hidden Springs slapped down their money for the opportunity to strike it rich here the same as any other town.

  Not Michael. He didn’t need to throw his dollars away trying to win instant wealth. He was content with what he had. Content with his ordinary life in Hidden Springs where he grew up. His ancestors, generations back, lived in Hidden Springs—from Jasper Keane, the founding father, right on down to Aunt Lindy. Michael fit in Hidden Springs.

  After the play, that’s what Julie Lynne said she’d never done. Fit in Hidden Springs. And never could. The whole bunch of them trooped backstage with Clara to see her after the final curtain came down.

  “Please just Lynne.” Her eyes danced through the lot of them as if she could barely keep from bursting out laughing.

  She came out of the hole-in-the-wall dressing room to speak to them, barefoot and still wearing the flesh-toned body suit she’d worn for the last scene. Michael suspected she would have been just as relaxed in the buff. Her formerly kudzu hair was now honey-blonde tresses flowing silkily down her back. Her eyes were an unusual blue-green. Nothing like they were in high school.

  “Contacts and a great hairdresser,” she told her aunt when Clara said she hardly recognized her.

  Michael couldn’t spot even a trace of the girl who shared that disaster date with him. He stayed behind the other ladies in hopes nobody would bring up how they went to school together, since he figured she wouldn’t have a bit of trouble seeing the boy he used to be.

  Julie Lynne hugged Clara without touching much but their cheeks. “I would have known you anywhere, Aunt Clara. You look just the same as the day I left Hidden Springs. You people must have a fountain of youth there.” She turned on the other women. “And there’s Miss Janet, my old Sunday school teacher, and Mrs. Jenkins. You lived down the street from us. How is that Paula Jo? Paula Jo and I used to giggle till we were sick, and you’d tell us we must have turned our giggle boxes upside down.”

  She didn’t give Mrs. Jenkins time to tell her about Paula Jo, which was just as well. It wasn’t a story Mrs. Jenkins relished telling all that much anyway, since Paula Jo was living in a leaky old trailer and working on her second divorce. Julie Lynne’s eyes jumped over to Aunt Lindy. “And Miss Keane, the meanest teacher in Hidden Springs, maybe even the whole world.”

  “Thank you.” Aunt Lindy smiled, not a bit upset by her description.

  “X plus Y equals something, I’m sure.” Julie Lynne laughed. “I never was that great at math. And you had a nephew. What was his name? I went out with him once. Disaster of the decade.”

  Some of the ladies tittered and peeked back at Michael.

  Julie Lynne finally looked directly at him. She’d been sliding her eyes across him occasionally almost the way a cat might rub against someone’s legs to get attention. “You?”

  “Mr. Disaster in person.” Michael stayed where he was, but the ladies in front of him stepped aside, ready to watch another show.

  Julie Lynne gave him the once-over and then touched the tip of her tongue to her top lip. “You ask me to dance again, Mike, and the dance floor won’t know what hit it.”

  Michael smiled. “I’m still not much of a dancer.”

  “Oh, but I’ve learned lots of new steps since I left Hidden Springs.” Julie Lynne kept her eyes locked on him as if all the ladies around them had vanished into thin air. “And I’m a great teacher.”

  Aunt Lindy cleared her throat and stepped between Michael and Julie Lynne. “Well, it has certainly been nice seeing you again after all these years, and we did enjoy your performance. It must be exciting to be an actress.”

  “It has its moments.” One corner of Julie Lynne’s mouth twisted up in a sideways smile as she slid her eyes from Michael to his aunt. “Just like life. And the same as life, we play some of the scenes right and some of them wrong. Except in life, you don’t get the chance to play the scene over.”

  “Have you a lot of scenes you wish you had played differently, Julie Lynne?” Aunt Lindy didn’t bother remembering to call her only Lynne.

  “Of course. Don’t we all?” Julie Lynne raised her eyebrows at Aunt Lindy and then let her smile come back full force as she looked back at Michael. “Actually the worse things about acting are the layoffs between parts. As a matter of fact, once this run is over in a few days, I’ll have a week or two of downtime. Maybe I’ll come for a little R & R in Hidden Springs. You’d put me up, wouldn’t you, Aunt Clara?”

  Shock colored with a dash of dismay flashed across Clara’s face before her inbred hospitality came to her rescue. “Well, of course, Lynne. My door’s always open to family, but I’m afraid you might find us a bit dull, dear.”

  “Extremely dull,” Aunt Lindy stuck in as if trying to do what Clara clearly couldn’t. Snatch away the welcome mat before Julie Lynne could step on it.

  “Dull sounds delightful right now.” Julie Lynne aimed her smile squarely at Michael.

  “Besides, it’s not all that dull.” Edith Crossfield launched into the story of Michael pulling the guy back over the railing at the bridge. Several of the other ladies chimed in with their versions.

  During the third recap, Michael grabbed his opportunity to exit. He grinned and waved at Julie Lynne, then made his escape to bring the bus around.

  The streetlights were blinking on in Hidden Springs by the time Michael pulled the bus into the First Baptist Church parking lot. The trip home was uneventful. Nothing vital fell off the bus, the ladies settled on the first fast-food restaurant they saw, and the Eagleton Bridge was empty of jumpers.

  Aunt Lindy hadn’t done much talking on the way home, but then Aunt Lindy wasn’t the type to waste her breath making small talk about whether or not it looked like rain or about the sun going down when any idiot knew the sun went down every day.

  She did have something to say as Michael drove her home. She waited until they were turning into the street leading down to what some in Hidden Springs called the Keane mansion. It was far from mansion size, no bigger than most of the other houses on Keane Drive, but the stone structure sat impressively on the end lot with ancient oaks around it to prove it had been there a very long time.

  A Keane had founded the town and Keanes had played a major part in the town’s history ever since. But now the town was down to its last two Keanes.

  Aunt Lindy accepted being the reigning Keane in Hidden Springs as the natural order of things. Should anything ever threaten the town’s existence, Michael had no doubt she would marshal whatever defense necessary to save the town. He also knew she was determined to keep the next generation of Keanes in Hidden Springs. If indeed there ever was a next generation of Keanes.

  So Michael wasn’t surprised when, without preamble, she said, “I would advise you not to encourage Julie Lynne if she should decide to carry through with her threat to visit Clara.”

  “But, Aunt Lindy, just last week you were telling me I needed to settle down, get married and produce some little Keanes.”

  “Not with Julie Lynne Hoskins.”

  “What’s wrong with Julie Lynne? You practically forced me to ask her out when we were in school. You must have thought we’d get along then, and I’m beginning to think you might be right.” Michael kept the smile off his face. “You have to admit she’s grown up nicely.”

  “Yes indeed.” Aunt Lindy kept her eyes forward and her voice unperturbed. “And no telling what it cost her to do the growing. Still, I suppose if one is going to take one’s clothes off in public, it’s best to be sure everything is properly filled out and inflated.”

  “It looked all natural to me.”

  “I’m not going around in circles with you on whether or not Julie Lynne’s curves were all her or part fiberfill, Michael. I’m merely pointing out that encouraging her would be foolhardy.”

  Michael finally let himself laugh. “If we ever discover the woman who meets both our qualifications, she’ll probably tell me to get lost.”

  Aunt Lindy didn’t laugh. “If
she did that, then she definitely wouldn’t meet the qualifications I would have for her. If indeed I did have such qualifications in mind. Which I do not.”

  Michael pulled into the circular drive in front of the house. He stopped in front of the entrance. “I’ll walk you around to the back door.” He turned the key off and reached for the door handle.

  “No need in that.” Aunt Lindy gathered up her purse.

  Aunt Lindy lived in three rooms in the back, while she let the ghosts of Keanes past haunt the rest of the house undisturbed. Once a year she flung open the heavy doors into the front rooms to decorate for the ghosts and all of Hidden Springs to come to a Christmas tea. It was a Keane tradition.

  That was where Michael used to imagine he would get married. In that huge front parlor at Christmastime. He could see himself in a black tux and a woman in a lacy gown beside him with the eight-foot tree sparkling beside them.

  Then, when he was a mere lovesick teenager, it had been Alex wearing the white wedding gown. Even now, he could see no one else there beside him, but he had a hard time believing Alex would ever be ready to share that wedding dream.

  Alex Sheridan was on the fast track, an attorney in DC with clients whose names made headlines. She thought Michael should be on a fast track somewhere too, instead of poking along here in Hidden Springs. The idea of Alex settling down in Hidden Springs was too ludicrous to even consider, and the idea of him in DC was worse than ludicrous. It was terrifying.

  For a while last year Alex actually made sounds of coming to Hidden Springs and letting her uncle add a Sheridan to the Sheridan on the shingle in front of his lawyer’s office on Main Street. Then Reese Sheridan’s health had improved and one of Alex’s big-name clients got embroiled in some sort of meaty scandal in DC. Michael hadn’t seen her since, except for a brief appearance at Aunt Lindy’s open house last Christmas. Alex had zoomed in and out that day. They hadn’t even had time for a good argument.

  Now Michael hurried around to help Aunt Lindy out of his old truck. He walked her up the porch steps to the door with its etched glass panels. No light shone from inside. “You should leave a light on in the front hall.”