by Tonya Kappes
The back door was in my vision, and it was probably the best place to enter. Wrong! As soon as I stepped foot in the door, Dixie Dunn was standing there with a half-eaten bologna sandwich in her mouth.
“Good God, Emma Lee, you scared the bejesus out of me.” She choked out a piece of bologna. “Want a fried bologna sandwich?”
“You’re joking, right?” I asked cautiously. “I mean, you are standing here without a care in the world as Beulah Paige is dying because you poisoned her?”
“I’m telling you, Dixie would never hurt me.” Mamie Sue stomped her cane on the floor.
“And her!” I pointed to the air. Dixie’s eyes shifted to the space between us. “You killed Mamie Sue Preston. God rest her soul.” I did the sign of the cross. “And you killed Junior Mullins, and I can prove it.”
“Is that blood on your hands?” Dixie’s frightened eyes looked at my hands, dropped down to the smears on my pants, and back up to my face.
“Yeah, Fluggie Callahan’s.” I glared at her and put both hands up in the air to give her a good look at what she had done. “Guess what? She’s still alive, and you are going to go to jail for trying to kill her.”
Dixie leaned on the counter. She patted her hands on the countertop behind her. “I heard you were nuts.”
“Tell her, Emma Lee.” Junior Mullins stood next to the shadowy figure I had seen a couple times. The figure stepped out into the light. It was a slightly older woman. Not as put-together as Mamie, but not poor. Her blue eyes had dulled, and she had heavy bags under her eyes.
“Pattie?” Mamie Sue put her hand over her mouth before she burst into tears.
“Who’s Pattie?” I looked at the ghost.
“Pattie? That was my momma.” Dixie pulled a butter knife from behind her back. It dripped with mayonnaise. “How did you know?” She jabbed the dull knife in the air between us. “You stay right there.”
She kept the knife in front and used her other hand to grab the phone hanging on the wall.
“You killed your own momma?” I asked in disgust. This was getting way too complicated for me. I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “Go ahead, call Sheriff Ross. He already knows what you have done to Mamie Sue Preston, Junior Mullins and Beulah Paige Bellefry. You can tell him your statement.”
“There will be no such activity.” Tinsie came around the corner of the kitchen, holding the shiniest 9mm and pointing it toward me. “Okay, Funeral Girl. Momma, take her downstairs and then go upstairs and pack our bags. Emmitt Moss is waiting for us at the airport on his private jet.”
“Tinsie! My girl.” Junior Mullins stood with a big stupid grin on his face.
“What are you doing?” Dixie shrieked. “Put the gun away. Right this minute.”
“Oh my God,” I gasped. “You are the killer. Not Dixie.”
“Do what I say and no one will die. At least not you, Momma.” Shy Tinsie suddenly found her voice.
Dixie ushered me down to the basement, which was just as nice as the first floor.
“What is going on?” Dixie asked, looking between me and her daughter.
“It was all going great, Momma. The moisturizer line was going great. But Pattie.” Tinsie’s nose curled. “The woman who raised you. She never wanted to see your dreams come true. She wanted you to stay in Lexington. You had to keep working as a maid. She resented you because you got pregnant with me when you were in high school, just like your real mother got knocked up by good ole Pastor Brown.”
“Shush your mouth,” Dixie scolded her. I put my arm around Dixie. “Are you telling me you killed my momma?”
“Both of them.” Tinsie’s eyes grew black. “It was working out great until little Miss Death decided to go poking her nose into dead people’s business.”
“How did you know?” I asked, taking my arm off Dixie. I wanted to get all the answers I could before she killed me.
“Emmitt and I were going to take Momma and this business to the stars.” With gun in hand, she swirled her hands in front of her and looked out into the beyond. “It was working out great with Pattie out of the picture.”
“We are doing just fine with the cleaning business.” Dixie wasted her breath on a daughter who had already admitted to killing two people. Not Junior or Mamie Sue . . . yet.
“Oh, Momma. Look at me! I said look at me!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Do I look like I want to clean someone else’s shitter the rest of my life?”
Dixie’s head fell. Tears rolled down her face.
“What about Mamie Sue Preston?” The words came out of Dixie’s mouth as if she were a little child. “Did you kill her?”
“You mean your real mom, who was gracious enough to give you a cleaning job? You weren’t good enough to be her daughter, but you were good enough to be her maid?” Tinsie cocked a brow.
“I was young. So was Eugene Brown. It was the summer before he was going to seminary school. Zula Fae had the biggest crush on him.” Mamie Sue told the story. “The night before he left, Zula Fae slipped into his room and found me in his arms. After that, he left for seminary. Zula Fae wouldn’t talk to me. I left town when I found out I was pregnant. Only I couldn’t care for a child.” Mamie Sue stood next to Dixie like she could be heard as she bared her heart out. “I made sure I kept in touch with Pattie. I wanted to keep my eye on you. I wanted to make sure you were taken care of. That is why I left you this estate.”
“But she left Dixie the estate. Which ultimately meant you,” I answered Tinsie.
“I watched my momma scrounge her way to the top of the chain for this damn moisturizer line. Beg and plead for people to see her. She didn’t deserve to wait until the old bag who threw her away like a used cleaning cloth died a natural death.” Tinsie snickered. “Emmitt told me how I could get this arsenic pretty easy and slip it in the moisturizer. Then he came up with the brilliant idea to use the cleaning service to get into these rich nursing homes, become friends with them, have them change their wills, and give them a little cream to help out with their eczema.”
Tinsie made her way over to the bar. She poured herself a shot of whiskey. Without taking her eyes off me, she slung back the tan liquor, crunching her face up as the elixir slid down her throat.
“Ahh.” She shook her head from side to side.
She opened the cabinet.
“Aw man,” Junior shuffled his feet. “I thought I had a shot with that little cutie.”
“Just like you did Junior Mullins,” I stated. “Why Beulah Paige? She wasn’t going to leave a cleaning lady any sort of money.”
“You have your little snooping to blame for that.” Tinsie wiggled the gun to the left, telling me to scoot. She pointed to the floor. I slid down the wall and sat down with my legs bent. “Emmitt told me you came around asking all sorts of questions about Mamie. We knew we had to do away with you.”
Tinsie laid the gun on the counter of the bar. She pulled out a couple of vials of a powdery substance and held them under one of the can lights.
“This will kill you in an instant.” Her eyes slid from the vial to me. “Just enough of this sprinkled into . . .” She took a jar of moisturizer out of the cabinet, leaving the doors wide open. I could see her little lab of death inside. “. . . this little jar like this.” She unscrewed the lid of the jar and sprinkled in a little bit of the powder. Slowly, she mixed the two and continued to tell her sordid tale. “If you apply our wonderful cream to your face as instructed, you will die a slow death. A death that will go undetected unless a little snooping bitch like you gets involved. That is why I have my dearly beloved boyfriend, Emmitt, waiting for me and my momma, along with a case of cash from Junior Mullins’s estate and Mamie Sue’s.”
“I get why you killed your grandmothers, but why Junior?” I had to ask.
Junior sat in the corner with a sad look on his face. He needed an
swers before he crossed over. Pattie and Mamie Sue stood in the corner, hugging each other.
“Men are men. No matter what age.” She grinned. “I don’t mind using my girly figure to get more money from a horny old man like Junior Mullins. I saw his bank statement while I was cleaning. A girl can never have enough cash.” She winked, sending shivers up my legs.
“I’m not a horny old man!” He stomped. I noticed the smoke from his toupee was no longer there.
“He would watch me clean his apartment in my skimpy maid outfit.” She giggled in a sick, perverted way. “I made sure I bent way over to dust his TV while he was watching.” She wiggled her way down into the pose she was talking of. “I gave him my sad story of being born from a whore who could never afford to give me a life outside of cleaning other people’s toilets. And I had this wonderful cream that would clear up his eczema. You should have seen him get all excited when I rubbed some cream on his arm. Oh, he wanted me to rub more.” She swayed back and forth. “I told him I have always been looking for a man like him. You can only imagine my surprise when he told me he wanted to marry me and leave me the fortune he got from playing the stock market.” Her eyes hooded. “I told him I had a great lawyer, Emmitt Moss, who would discreetly change his will before we got married.”
I glanced over at Junior. He hung his head in shame.
“What?” he chimed in when he looked up and saw the look on my face. “I’m still a man that believed in love.”
“That’s all it took, besides a couple weeks of him using my cream.” Tinsie screwed the lid on the jar.
I wanted to jump up and grab her, but there was too much distance between us. She would have the gun in her hand and the trigger pulled before I got halfway there.
A cell phone chirped out a typewriter ringtone. A ringtone I knew well . . . Fluggie Callahan’s.
“Oh God,” I cried out and flung my head back. “You are the one who tried to kill Fluggie. And you took her phone?” Tears streamed down my face.
“Too bad she keeps all her notes on her phone and no one is ever going to read them.” An evil grin pressed on Tinsie’s lips.
My tears wouldn’t stop no matter how hard I tried to mentally stop them. They were tears of hate-filled anger. It was more than personal. Everyone I had come in contact with was on Tinsie’s death list.
“What about my granny and that plaster you gave her?” I asked. My stomach knotted in fear at her answer.
The thought of me not having my granny was too much to bear. I wanted Tinsie to shoot me now.
“Just kill me! Kill me now!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
A shot rang out. I crunched down and squeezed my eyes shut. A loud ringing beat in my ear. When I realized it was the sound of my heart beating loud, I squinted. Gun smoke hung in the air, parting a little. Like an angel, Dixie Dunn stood over the top of her own daughter, pointing a gun directly at Tinsie Dunn.
Chapter 26
Do you think you are going to be okay?” Jack Henry grabbed the last box out of Charlotte Rae’s office.
“Yeah.” I smiled on the outside, but my insides were aching. I still couldn’t believe Charlotte had taken the job at Hardgrove, even after she knew about the deal I had with the clients of Happy Times Retirement Community.
Jack Henry stood next to me, holding the box and looking at my face.
“New beginnings,” I assured him. “Plus I might be able to talk freely to my Betweener clients.”
“Let’s hope you don’t have any more of those.” He kissed my cheek. “I’m going to put this in the moving truck, then I’ll meet you over at the Inn?”
“Yeah.” I plopped down behind the empty desk in what used to be Charlotte’s chair. “I’m going to sit here for a minute and look around. You know,” I hesitated. “I always wanted this to be my office.”
“And you look beautiful in it.” Jack Henry darted out the door.
I leaned way back in the chair and propped my feet up. It was the first time I had been alone since the takedown of Tinsie Dunn at Mamie Sue’s house.
I felt sorry for Dixie Dunn. She hadn’t known her real momma was Mamie Sue. Tinsie had told Jack Henry how she had overheard Pattie Dunn talking with Mamie Sue Preston. Actually, they’d been arguing. Mamie Sue had had one sexual encounter with Eugene Brown—Pastor Brown—before he’d left for seminary school. That one encounter had gotten Mamie pregnant with Dixie.
Mamie’s parents hadn’t allowed her to keep the baby, and they’d sent her away to work on part of their coal mine business on the clear other side of Kentucky. Mamie had been smart and had kept in touch with Pattie Dunn throughout the years.
Pattie hadn’t had a lot of money, but Mamie had. So Mamie had paid for all of Pattie’s needs. When Dixie had ended up pregnant, like her real momma, Pattie had made Dixie get a job cleaning houses. Dixie had been good at making homemade creams and facials, since they hadn’t had a lot of money, and she’d begun to make the moisturizer on the side.
Pattie had still refused to tell Dixie about her real momma, and that was the conversation Tinsie had overheard. Tinsie had had Emmitt Moss look into it. She and Emmitt had hit it off after coming to an agreement about the millions of dollars Mamie Sue had had.
With Pattie Dunn out of the way, Dixie Dunn had been able to work for whomever she’d wanted, including Mamie Sue Preston, who’d been in dire need of a housekeeper.
It had been great for Mamie. Her daughter had finally been under her own roof. She’d even had her will changed to give everything to Dixie, except for the million dollars she’d given the church. Tinsie had never understood why Mamie never told Dixie about who she was. Waiting on the money, Tinsie and Emmitt had started to get antsy.
That was when they’d devised the plan to put arsenic in the moisturizer Dixie had made for Mamie. Little by little, Mamie had gotten sicker and sicker. It hadn’t been enough arsenic to show on an autopsy. Emmitt and Tinsie had perfected the dose.
It had been bonus money, with all the properties Mamie had owned.
“You got it all figured out.” Mamie sat on the edge of my new desk with her cane dangling off her thigh.
“Dixie is why you left the million dollars to the Sleepy Hollow Baptist Church?” I asked.
“Yes.” She let out a long sigh and hopped off the desk. “I couldn’t bring myself to tell Eugene I had his baby. I couldn’t bring myself to date another man.”
“He could’ve married you and helped you raise Dixie.” I couldn’t wrap my head around her reasoning.
“It was a different time back then. Ask your granny.” Mamie smiled. “She was in love with Eugene. She hated it because he was in love with me. That’s why she holds a grudge against me. It doesn’t have anything to do with what funeral home buried me.”
I could see Granny getting her panties all curled up about a man.
“Zula Fae and I were in competition all our lives. But look at her now.” Mamie stood next to the window, looking out over the square.
The Inn was filled with people. Granny had forgiven Charlotte Rae and was giving her a going-away party. It was against my better judgment, but no one ever crossed Granny.
“My only regret was not telling Dixie I was her momma.”
“Her eyes.” I shook my head. “I swear she and Tinsie have Pastor Brown’s eyes.”
“Did you say my name?” Pastor Brown stood at my new office door.
“Pastor.” I jumped up from the chair. “Do you like my new office?”
“I do.” He smiled and walked in. Mamie Sue stood next to him. Her face lit up. She was obviously still in love. “I wanted to come by and thank you before I headed over to the Inn for the big party.”
“Thank me for what?” I asked.
“For figuring out what really happened to Mamie Sue all those years ago.” He didn’t have to say much for me to kno
w what he was talking about. “Now I know where the anonymous donation of one million dollars came from. I had my hunches, but I wasn’t going to spend a dime of it. Thanks to Mamie, I can spend some money on updating the church and getting to know my daughter.”
“You know about Dixie?” I asked.
“She can’t deny she looks a lot like me.” He smiled. “I only wish Mamie would have come to me when it happened. Things would have been a lot different, and I would have been happy with it.”
A tear slipped out of Mamie’s eye and down her face.
“Can I make one suggestion?” I asked.
“Sure.” He folded his arms.
“Maybe you should have some pew cushions made for those hard pews.” I shrugged.
“I’ll think about it. I’ll see you at the party?” he asked.
“See you there.” I waved ’bye.
When I saw him dart across the square, I knew it was safe to talk to Mamie.
“If it weren’t for that smart boyfriend of yours, you might be dead too.” Mamie reminded me of how Jack Henry had found us at Mamie’s house.
After Dixie had shot her own daughter in the leg, she’d called the cops. Luckily, Jack Henry had been on to the murders, because Vernon Baxter had called him after the poison tests I had asked him to do had come back proving the moisturizer had been laced with arsenic.
Plus the hospital had told him Beulah had a case of arsenic poisoning. Unfortunately, Junior Mullins and Beulah were rich, and Tinsie and Emmitt had wanted more money. The more money they’d wanted, the greedier they’d gotten. Tinsie had only taken jobs with wealthy people. She’d had no plans to make Dixie Dunn’s dreams of producing a moisturizer come true.