by Tonya Kappes
Sunny’s words rang out in my head about how Junior had complained of a headache a couple weeks ago that had progressively gotten worse.
I reread the label of the moisturizer. My heart sank. Was Dixie Dunn somehow getting these elderly people to put her in their will and then poisoning them through moisturizer?
“No.” I pondered the possibilities.
“That’s my good cream.” Junior appeared next to me when I shut the door “It did good on my skin.”
“I’m not sure Dixie Dunn did you one bit of good.” I held the jar in my hand. “Did you have Dusting Dixies clean your apartment?”
“I did. Fine job too.” He looked out the door of the bathroom. “Cleaning fool. When I had to cancel because I had a doctor’s appointment, she asked me what for and I told her I had bad itchy eczema. Other than that, I was pretty healthy.”
“Did you happen to change your will over the past few weeks?” I asked.
“How did you know?” He looked at me with an open mouth.
“Who changed your will?” I asked.
“Some guy came here.” He thought about it for a minute. “Strange name.”
“Emmitt Moss?” I asked.
“Hot dang.” He smacked his leg and did a jig. “That’s his name. That eczema cream fixed me up good. The cleaner said she didn’t have enough money to get the cream into stores. I gave her a few thousand dollars to get some marketing help and even decided to give her a couple million in my will.”
“Couple million?” My eyes bolted open. “How in the hell did she get you to give her money in your will?”
“I can’t take it with me up there. And she wasn’t getting it until I was dead. She kept me company. I told you,” he rolled up his sleeve again, “she fixed me up good.”
“She sure did fix you up good. Fixed you dead,” I said matter-of-factly.
Chapter 24
Fluggie, where are you?” I said into her answering machine. “You better be knee deep in research, because I have found out some information you aren’t going to believe. I’ve got to stop by the funeral home and then by Beulah Paige’s hospital bed to see if my hunch is right. I’ll be by if I don’t hear from you first.”
With Junior’s jar of cream in my hand, I wanted to get back to the fancy lab Vernon Baxter had in the basement of Eternal Slumber. A few months back, the city council had voted to equip Vernon Baxter’s lab with the latest in DNA and autopsy technology with the incentive money the state had awarded the city. It included poison testing. Vernon would be able to tell me if my hunches were right.
Since Vernon Baxter had retired and moved to Sleepy Hollow, the police had been keeping him busy with autopsies. Plus he did all the embalming for Eternal Slumber.
I pulled into the driveway of the funeral home and was happy to see Charlotte Rae’s car wasn’t there. I didn’t want to spend any energy on her or hearing her yell at me, though she would’ve been excited to know I had gotten fifty new pre-need arrangements from Happy Times Retirement Community. Now she wouldn’t know. Even though Hardgrove was in another city, it was still competition. Charlotte Rae was now on the other team. Blood or not.
I didn’t bother using the elevator to go downstairs to where we kept our clients cold and Vernon did his handiwork.
“Hey, Emma Lee.” He took his eyes off the microscope and peered at me over the top of his glasses. His steel-blue eyes were striking, like those of old Hollywood film legends Gary Cooper and Peter O’Toole. He ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “I overheard the ruckus this morning between you and Charlotte Rae. I’m sorry.”
“Oh don’t worry about her. We are going to be just fine.” I handed him the jar of moisturizer. “Listen, I need you to do a side job.”
“Oh-kay.” Reluctantly he took the jar and looked at it. “Moisturizer?”
“I think there is some sort of poison in the moisturizer.” I watched his expression go from shocked to confusion. “I know it sounds weird. But I think there is a serial killer in Sleepy Hollow.”
“Serial killer?”
“Serial killer.” The sound of those two words made the hairs on my neck stand up. “I think Junior Mullins, along with another resident of Sleepy Hollow, were poisoned to death. And I think she might have struck again with Beulah Paige.”
“Did you get clearance from Jack Henry about this?” he asked.
“No. I don’t want to say anything until I get these results back.” I pushed the button on the elevator. “Let me know what you find out.”
“Don’t worry. I will.” Vernon opened the jar and immediately started to take samples and put them in little test tubes.
There was no time to waste. I needed to get over to the hospital to see what the doctors were saying about Beulah Paige. If my instincts were right, Dixie Dunn had gotten her toe in Beulah’s door and was trying to kill her with whatever it was she put in the cream.
I looked in the rearview mirror.
“Shit, shit, shit.” I ran my hands down my face. I had slathered that shit all over me last night. But I felt fine. I didn’t feel sick. “Shit.”
It was time to exercise my job as undertaker. I pulled the hearse right up to the emergency room exit of the hospital. No one would dare put a ticket on the windshield or call a tow truck if they thought some poor, pitiful dead person was being taken to their final resting place.
I shimmied through the sliding-glass doors before they were fully opened. The receptionist pulled her glasses off her face, and they dangled from the long chain down her front. She looked past me and saw the hearse.
“Can you please tell me what room Beulah Paige Bellefry is located in?” I asked.
“She didn’t die.” The woman typed away on her computer. “Did she?”
“Not that I know of, but I know her, and while I was here doing my job”—I glanced back at the hearse, and then back at her—“I thought I would pay my respects to her after what had happened.”
“Yes. She’s in ICU north.” She pointed down the hall and gave a few directions on how to get there before she sent me on my way.
She had me so turned around, I have no idea how I got there, but I did.
The sign on the entrance read PUSH THE BUTTON TO ENTER. I pushed the button.
“Can I help you?” a woman’s voice asked through the intercom.
The last time I did this at Mamie Sue’s house, it didn’t go so well.
“Yes.” I did my best Southern drawl, just like Beulah Paige Bellefry. “My dear aunt has had a spell, and I’m here to pay her a visit. Beulah Paige Bellefry.”
“You are her niece?” the woman chirped.
“Yes.” My voice dripped of sweetness and lies.
“Room three.” The door shot open. I half expected to see the woman behind the mic, but no one was there.
The ICU rooms were around the perimeter of a large desk full of people in scrubs looking at computers or talking amongst one another. None of them paid a bit of attention to me as I ducked in room three, where Beulah Paige Bellefry would’ve had a heart attack if she’d seen how her lipstick was smeared and dripping down her face.
Not that I really cared, but I took the sponge at the end of the stick thingy and put it in the water next to the bed. I dipped it in and gently rubbed down her face, getting most of the lipstick smear off.
“Well, well.” I glanced down at her lifeless body. Tubes coming out every which way. The heart monitor she was hooked up to showed that her heart was beating at a steady pace. “Haven’t you gotten yourself in a jam? And it’s going to be little ole me who gets you out of it. Again.”
Once before, not too long ago, Beulah Paige had been right in the exact same place after being attacked. Of course, they’d thought I had done her in, because we had mixed words right in front of Eternal Slumber. My words might hav
e had “death” and “going to kill you” or “over my dead body” in them. Naturally, someone had overheard and had me pegged as the attacker.
She obviously wasn’t too grateful I had saved her life once, because here we were again. Right back where we started a few months back.
“Now.” I looked around the room for a report. I had no idea what I would do with it, but maybe something would jump out.
“Good evening.” A young gentleman came in. “You must be Ms. Bellefry’s niece.”
He shoved his hand into mine, giving it a good couple of pumps.
“Was she feeling dizzy, having headaches, or pains?” He shot questions out to me like firing a semiautomatic. “Vomiting, delirium?”
“I know she had a major headache for a couple days, but since I don’t live with her, I’m not sure about the other stuff.” I was beginning to believe my own lies.
“All her tests are coming back negative. No heart attack, no stroke.” He folded one arm around him and rested his other elbow on it. He wiggled his finger in the air. “You know.” He shook his head. “Nah.”
“What?” I asked. I needed to know what had him so perplexed.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think she had been poisoned with arsenic.” He threw his hands in the air. “The test results will tell us.”
“Arsenic?” I whispered.
Going back to mortuary school, I remember them saying something about how arsenic can be disguised in many things and can be absorbed through your skin pores. Even the ones on your face.
“Moisturizer.” I smacked my hands together and grabbed the doctor, giving him a big kiss on the cheek. “Thank you, Doctor!”
I scrammed out of the ICU and took the stairs down the four flights as fast as I could.
“Thanks!” I yelled to the receptionist in the emergency room as I flew by her desk.
“Wait!” she screamed. “Did you forget a body?”
“Oh.” I stopped in front of the sliding doors and waited for them to open. “The damnedest thing. He started breathing as soon as I put my hand on him to take him to the freezer.”
The doors opened, letting me escape back into the safety of my hearse. Nervously, I fumbled for my phone. I had to call Jack Henry and tell him what I had found out.
Chapter 25
Was there a party and I wasn’t invited? I asked myself while I waited for the beep on his answering machine. When it picked up, I said, “I know you are going to be mad at me and I’m apologizing. Or I’ll make up for it later. But Dixie Dunn is swindling old rich people out of their money and getting them to change their wills, leaving her millions in cash. She is killing them by having them use this moisturizer cream laced with arsenic.” I sucked in a breath before I continued. “The moisturizer is nice. But Beulah.” I tapped the wheel. “Beulah has arsenic poisoning. I took her jar of cream. Details later, but that’s what is wrong with her. I gave Vernon Baxter the jar I had taken from Junior Mullins’s apartment in the old folks home. Only it’s not an old folks home, and you need to give Imogene a ride.” I rambled on. I wasn’t sure what to say. “Okay. Fluggie Callahan is probably at the old mill, and she’s been helping me. Emmitt Moss is a bad, bad man. Damn!” I screamed when his tape ran out of room.
I had already said enough for him to go and investigate. It took everything in me not to rush over to Mamie Sue’s and gather evidence that might be there. Might was the operative word. Jack Henry had warned me not to get involved. It was high time I listened to him. I was confident he would get my message and follow up on the leads. He would call me and let me know what was going on.
Fluggie still hadn’t called me back or texted me. I could picture her on the phone getting all sorts of good information. In order to keep me out of trouble but not fully out of the investigation, I decided to head out to the old mill and see what she had uncovered. If she wasn’t there, I could wait until I heard from Jack Henry.
As soon as I turned on the old country road, my thoughts did change gears to Jo Francis Ross and Jack Henry. I had been able to stick the entire situation in the back of my head. Mamie Sue’s and Junior’s deaths helped keep the heartache at bay. The idea of Jack Henry moving hours and a state away left a heavy feeling in my stomach. It wasn’t what I wanted. It had always been what he wanted. I will never forget a single detail of the most embarrassing night of my life. High school and the ill-fated game of spin the bottle.
Jack Henry probably didn’t remember how he’d talked about his future and how he dreamed of being an FBI agent. He said he was going to make it happen, even if he had to move up in ranks. That was right before the bottle had landed on us to kiss and he’d run off. No one wanted to kiss the creepy funeral-home girl.
I let out a heavy sigh, putting the bad memory back in the depths of my brain. Fluggie’s old junker station wagon was parked right next to the old mill.
The door of the old mill was locked. I tugged harder. The old mill door was never locked, even before Fluggie moved her office back in there after being gone for a brief absence. I walked over to the window and used my hand to wipe a circle in the dust and filth. Using my hands, I cupped them over my eyes and pressed my nose up against the glass. My eyes shifted left and right before they zeroed in on a pair of feet sticking out from behind Fluggie’s desk. I pulled back. Blinked my eyes to make sure I was seeing what I thought I had seen.
I stuck my face up against the window for the second time, immediately feeling sick when the feet were still there.
I ran back to the door.
“Fluggie! Fluggie!” I beat my palms up against the door. I was hoping she was diabetic and was in need of some sugar, but my gut told me Dixie Dunn had gotten wind of Fluggie’s snooping around and had done something to her.
“Fluggie!” I grabbed the handle and violently shook my body back and forth, trying to force it open, to no avail. “Damn.”
I went back to the window. I took my shoe off my foot and began to beat the windowpanes. Thank God the Hardys, who owned the old mill, didn’t replace the old windows when they did the remodel after the explosion. The windows were paper thin, making this one easy to bust.
I made sure the shards of glass weren’t going to jab me when I slipped through the window and rushed to Fluggie’s side.
“Oh no, oh no,” I cried, rolling her over.
There was a pool of blood on the floor, and her hair was matted to her head from the blood.
I put my finger on her neck to see if I could get a pulse. When I didn’t feel anything, I flung my ear down on her chest. Nothing.
I moved down to her wrist. There was a faint pulse.
“Oh, God. Oh God!” I wasn’t much of a religious person, but I could sure use some help right now. “I’ll volunteer! Anything!”
I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and frantically dialed 911. My fingers shook trying to punch each number.
“Nine.” I took a deep breath, trying to focus my eyes. I continued, “One, one.” Fluggie was on borrowed time, and there was no time to call Jack Henry.
“I need an ambulance at the old mill!” I screamed through the phone when I heard the dispatcher answer. “Head injury, barely breathing, blood everywhere! Hurry! Call Sheriff Jack Henry Ross immediately!”
I put the phone back in my pocket; I crawled on my knees up to Fluggie’s face and gently placed my bloodstained hands on each side. I bent down and whispered in her ear, “I’m so sorry. Do not die on me,” I begged her. “I have to stop Dixie Dunn. The ambulance is on the way. Please, please, please don’t die.”
There wasn’t any more time to be wasted. I couldn’t wait for Jack Henry to go through the clues I had left on his voice mail. I had to stop Dixie Dunn before she killed someone else.
I unlocked the old mill door and ran out of there as fast as I could, wiping my hands down my pants to get off the dripping blood.
I floored the hearse as fast as it could go, hugging the curves of the country road. Triple Thorn was clear across town on a different country road, and I needed all the time I could get.
I thought about Dixie and why she would have killed them. Mamie and Junior had both told me they had offered her money to start her business, but she’d refused. Was Dixie that deranged that she would get pure enjoyment out of the thrill of the kill and getting them to put her in their wills?
I didn’t have all the answers, but it was a pretty good start. Mark my words, I would have the answers shortly. My eyes darted between the rearview mirror and the side mirrors as I made sure no one was following me. Mamie Sue’s file from Doc Clyde’s office slid around the front seat. I reached over and grabbed it. I opened it and tried to drive and read at the same time.
The words on the page jumped out at me. The word SYMPTOMs was printed in black letters at the top of the page. Underneath it were the words vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness, headaches . . .
“Headaches.” I threw the file down and gripped the wheel while pressing the pedal to the floor. I said, “Mamie Sue had all the symptoms the doctor at the hospital asked me if Beulah had. Mamie Sue was poisoned.”
I grasped the armrest of the hearse as I skidded in a tight left into the subdivision. The hearse gained speed, barreling down the street, coming to an abrupt halt when I got to the gate. I didn’t dare take any chances of any landscapers seeing me. I pulled the car a few doors down and pulled up into Beulah’s driveway. The neighbors were going to go crazy seeing a hearse in her circular drive.
Luckily, the house had only large hedges. Mamie Sue’s was the only one with a fortress around it. Good for me that I was a loner as a kid and did a lot of tree climbing and hiking in the woods around the caves. I hoisted myself up and over with a little bit of muscle and landed on my feet like a cat. I waited and listened for sounds before I decided to make my way up to the house. I checked my phone. There wasn’t a call from anyone, and the reception was spotty. I only had one of five bars, which meant no one was going to get hold of me. I just prayed Jack Henry had gotten my messages.