Idonia stood and warmed herself by the fire. “When did you take them?” she asked.
“Yesterday.”
“I’d call them tomorrow and find out if they pursued it. Those clowns will drag their feet from now till doomsday if we don’t stay on their case.” Idonia turned to warm her other side. “Sounds to me like Florence might’ve stayed out there during those two missing nights.”
“At the Folly? Why?” Jo Nell asked.
“Probably stayed in the cottage,” Idonia said. “How else would she get that clay on her shoes? Assuming it came from there.”
Lucy, who had started to the kitchen for refreshments, stopped in mid-stride. “I just thought of something,” she said. “I didn’t think anything about it then, but Florence mentioned something about having breakfast twice, and the day Calpernia was killed, the police found breakfast dishes in the sink out at the cottage. Naturally they assumed Calpernia had spent the night there alone, but maybe she had company.”
“But twice?” Nettie frowned. “Why did she say she’d had breakfast twice? And what would those two be doing together?”
“I haven’t the faintest.” Lucy turned to Zee. “Do you think Jay might have seen her? He was out at the Folly that day. After all, he was the one who discovered Calpernia’s body.”
Zee groaned. “Don’t I know it! I’m sure he would’ve mentioned it, but I’ll ask.” She started to rise. “How ’bout if I give you a hand in the kitchen?” she said to Lucy.
“Doesn’t it make you nervous with that man living right there in your guest house, Zee?” Jo Nell asked. “It gives me the shivers just thinking about it.”
Oh, dear, Lucy thought. Here we go again! But she was surprised when Zee began to laugh. “Jo Nell Touchstone! A four-year-old in a Batman cape would give you the shivers. For your information, even Poag Hemphill admits he doesn’t suspect Jay of having anything to do with Calpernia’s death.” She stood and looked about her. “And since we’re sharing, I’ll share this: Jay tells me he wasn’t even aware that Calpernia had changed her mind about hiring him to head up her project—and what’s more, I believe him.”
Lucy thought she was going to choke on the silence until Claudia spoke up. “So where is Jay this afternoon? I expect he finds the possibilities for entertainment rather limited here in Stone’s Throw.”
“Oh, he manages to keep occupied,” Zee said. “Today he’s sitting in on an art class at the college—some of that modern stuff.”
“You sound less than enthusiastic,” Nettie said. “Don’t tell me the bloom’s wearing off the rose.”
Zee shrugged. “I found we have different interests—which shouldn’t surprise me, only for some reason it did. Can you believe the man has never read To Kill a Mockingbird or Huckleberry Finn? And the other day was the last straw!”
“What do you mean?” Jo Nell gripped the arms of her chair.
“I said I wanted to get a Perry Como Christmas CD when we were in the mall last week, and he said, ‘Perry who?’ ”
This brought a howl from everyone, and Zee laughed along with the others. “Of course he’ll continue to live in the guest house as long as necessary,” she said. “Did you know he’s a gourmet cook? I’ll have to throw a dinner party before he gets away from us. Good food knows no generation gap.”
“I’ve been wondering how that woman found her way to your house,” Nettie said over the spiced tea and scones. “Somebody must have brought her. Didn’t you notice a car or anything?”
Lucy shook her head. “Just the one at the stop sign on the corner.”
“Do you remember what it looked like?” Nettie washed down the last of her scone with a gulp of tea and set her cup aside. “Maybe they dropped her off.”
“Gray or blue, I think, and I have no idea of the make. I wasn’t paying much attention.”
“I think we need to check with the local beauty parlors,” Idonia suggested. “Maybe somebody will remember Florence.”
“That shouldn’t take long,” Nettie told her. “There can’t be more than five. I’ll ask Addie at the Total Perfection when I go for my shampoo and set tomorrow. And Claudia, why don’t you check with that artsy place you go to downtown—the one that takes men and women?”
Lucy smiled. Most beauty salons now welcomed both male and female clients, but any man who dared to enter the sacred portals of the Total Perfection would be reduced to a spineless wimp in seconds by the Blue-Haired Freeze.
“I’ll be glad to,” Claudia said, “and while I’m at it, I’ll drop by Cleo’s Clips down the street, but there are a lot of people who do this kind of thing out of the home. How do we find them?”
“You’re right,” Nettie said. “They have their own small group of customers and they don’t advertise. I know Emma Joiner over on Forsythia Street does practically everybody from my Sunday school class. You did it for a while, didn’t you, Zee?”
“Lord, that was ages ago, before Melanie was born! Didn’t last long. What a catastrophe!” Zee made a face over her cup. “Opal Henshaw never has forgiven me for that permanent I gave her. Said it made her look like the Cowardly Lion…Lucy Nan, have you been taking a cooking class? You’ve always been a good cook, but these scones just melt in your mouth. Are those cranberries in there?”
“New recipe,” Lucy said, nodding in Augusta’s direction.
“I’d sure like to have it,” Jo Nell said. “This is scrumptious.” She dabbed her lips with one of the last of Lucy’s scarecrow napkins. “By the way, did Florence’s rings ever turn up? You said she was wearing some rather large stones, didn’t you, Lucy Nan?”
“I’m sure we would’ve heard about it if they had, and I could be wrong, but they didn’t look worth stealing to me,” Lucy said.
Idonia snorted. “The scum who took them wouldn’t know that. Imagine being so cruel to that poor soul. How could they live with themselves?”
“How do you know somebody took them? For all we know, Florence might have left them here.” Zee held out her cup for more tea. “Whoever broke into this house was looking for something. Those rings might be worth more than you think, Lucy Nan.”
“If they were after money, they came to the wrong place,” Lucy said. “Besides, where could she have left them? We’ve looked under the bed—everywhere, And she had a habit of slipping them off and on, so she could’ve lost them somewhere between here and the Methodist Church.”
“Did you tell that to Ed and Sheila?” Claudia asked.
“Didn’t think about it, but I will,” Lucy said. “They’re welcome to come and look for them, but I’m sure I would’ve noticed if she dropped anything that gaudy in our yard.” She pulled her chair closer into the circle. “Maybe you’ll find a ruby among your chrysanthemums, Nettie! She had to cut through our backyards to get there or we would’ve seen her when we were out front picking up all that mess from the garbage cans.”
Jo Nell reached across to pat Lucy’s arm. “I just hope these hoodlums don’t come back. If I were you, I’d get my locks changed, Lucy Nan. With all this meanness going on, I’m almost afraid to go out in broad open daylight, and now look what’s happened to poor Boyd Henry! Why, Bernice Okey told me she heard he had a bruise in the middle of his back like somebody’d poked him with a stick or something.”
“How does Bernice know that?” Lucy asked. Jo Nell’s nextdoor neighbor always seemed to know everything even before it happened, but Lucy thought surely the police would have notified Ellis about it first. Or not. She frowned. Now they were certain to think Ellis had something to do with it.
“Said everybody was talking about it at the doctor’s office this morning,” Jo Nell said. “You know how poor Bernice suffers from bronchitis.”
“This doesn’t look good for Ellis,” Nettie said, slipping out of her shoes. “Ahh!” she said. “That’s better! Blasted callus is killing me…”
After a brief moment of shoeless bliss, Nettie McGinnis looked about. “Girls, we have a murderer in our midst! Sure as I
’m sittin’ here, somebody drowned Boyd Henry Goodwin because of something he knew—or saw.”
“What do you mean, in our midst?” Claudia asked. “Surely you don’t think one of The Thursdays—”
“Of course not!” Nettie told her. “I meant here in Stone’s Throw, and I’m gettin’ sick and tired of it. I’m almost sure I remember seeing Boyd Henry out there working in his tulip bed when I left you that night, Lucy Nan.”
“What do you mean, almost sure?” Idonia asked.
“Well, it was dark, for one thing, and I was about to freeze. Lucy Nan and I had been out there cleaning up all that garbage some fool knocked over and I was ready to get home, but I seem to remember seeing Boyd Henry out there planting bulbs. At least I reckon it was Boyd Henry. I wondered at the time how he could see what he was doing, with it being so dark and all.”
Lucy moved about with a tray collecting cups and plates. “If we can find out what happened to Florence, I think the rest will fall into place. If she didn’t get off the bus in Stone’s Throw, then where did she get off?”
“Let’s start here. Claudia, I’ll help you cover the beauty salons tomorrow,” Zee offered. “And Nettie’s going to check with Addie at the Total Perfection—right? But what then? How are we going to trace her back all the way to Chicago?”
“Let’s all sleep on it,” Idonia said. “Maybe we’ll come up with something.” She looked at her watch. “I didn’t realize it was this late and I still have to get to the grocery store. Promised I’d bake cookies for the harvest festival, and here it is only two days away.”
Jo Nell said she was making popcorn balls and Claudia, chocolate cupcakes, and for a few minutes, hearing them chatter as they prepared to leave, Lucy was reminded of happier autumns. She wondered if Julie had received the Patches doll she sent.
The house seemed quiet after everyone left and Lucy finished gathering cups and napkins and took them into the kitchen. Augusta sat reading the newspaper in the rocking chair by the window, with Clementine on the rug at her feet. “Doesn’t seem to be anything but bad news in here,” she said, laying the paper aside. “Oh, and there were several leaflets in your paper box. I put them on the table.”
“Just junk, usually,” Lucy said, shuffling through them before throwing them in the trash. “People advertising maid service and pizza, trying to sell memberships at a spa.”
“But you read them first,” Augusta said, “so it must be worth the effort.”
“I guess it pays off or people wouldn’t keep doing it,” Lucy said. “And it is a cheap way to advertise.”
Augusta pulled the puppy into her lap and nuzzled her ears. “Suppose you wanted to advertise in another town?” she asked. “How would you go about it?”
“You’d have to distribute them somehow. Go there yourself or have someone else do it. Why?”
Augusta Goodnight didn’t answer. She only smiled.
“Augusta, have I ever told you you’re an angel?” Lucy asked.
“You might have mentioned it once or twice.”
“This is exactly how we need to go about trying to find somebody who might have ridden the bus with Florence! The man at the bus station here gave me the schedule from Chicago…hold on a minute, let me get it.”
“Okay, once it got past Kentucky,” she continued, “the bus stopped in Knoxville, Tennessee, then Asheville, North Carolina,” she said. “I suppose she could have gotten off in one of those places, but that’s a long way from here.”
“Then what?” Augusta stroked the puppy’s soft neck.
“It stops in Hendersonville, North Carolina, before crossing into South Carolina for passengers in Greenville, then Greenwood. That’s the last stop before this one. Those last two cities aren’t very far from here. We could make a day trip out of it—post flyers in and around the bus station.”
“What about those other places, the ones between Knoxville and Chicago? You can’t possibly travel everywhere,” Augusta said.
Lucy stooped to rattle dog food into Clementine’s bowl and the puppy immediately abandoned Augusta’s lap to begin gulping it down. “Darn it, Augusta!” she said. “Aren’t you supposed to be able to fly?”
Augusta shivered. “It’s October! You know how cold-natured I am.” She brightened. “But couldn’t you use that new beeping machine?”
“Beeping machine?” Lucy frowned.
“The one that buzzes and spits out paper—makes all kinds of noise.”
Lucy grinned. “A fax! Of course we could if they have a machine. But we’d have to depend on somebody else to post the notices for us. My old college roommate lives in Asheville. I’ll bet she would put up a few, and Nettie’s niece teaches in Knoxville. We’ll get them out one way or another.”
“I’ll call her tonight,” Nettie said when Lucy phoned her a few minutes later. “I’m sure she’ll be glad to help, but aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?”
“We’ll need a picture of Shirley/Florence,” Nettie said. “Wasn’t there one at the funeral? Seems I remember seeing a photograph of her next to a vase of roses in the narthex. Leonard brought it, I reckon, but he probably took it back home.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Lucy told her, and punched in Ellis’s familiar number.
“It’s right here,” Ellis said. “Why do you want a picture of Florence?”
Lucy told her of her plan to circulate the woman’s photograph. “Maybe somebody who remembers her from the bus will get back to us,” she said. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am that you still have the picture. Nettie and I were afraid Len had taken it home.”
“Luther found it in the narthex the day after the funeral,” Ellis said, speaking of the sexton. “I forgot all about it with everything else going on, and Leonard never mentioned wanting it back. He never would’ve brought it in the first place if I hadn’t asked him to.”
Lucy hesitated to ask the question foremost on her mind, then decided to plunge in anyway. “Is it true that Boyd Henry had a bruise on his back?” she said.
“Several, in fact, and that detective couldn’t wait to tell me they might’ve been made with the handle of our pool net.”
“What detective?” Lucy asked.
“The one with the hemorrhoids. Remember? The one who wouldn’t sit down. But Lucy Nan, anybody could’ve used that net scoop. We keep it hanging beside the pool. And he said the abrasions we noticed were probably made when his face scraped the side of the pool.”
“Oh, Lord, Ellis! Poor Boyd Henry!” Lucy heard the clatter of dishes on the other end of the line. “I’m not interrupting your supper, am I?”
“Nope, Bennett and I had waffles tonight and I’m stacking the dishwasher,” Ellis said. “He offered to take me out, but I’m leery of the paparazzi.”
“You’re a nut!” Lucy told her. “I’ll be by to collect Florence’s photo tomorrow.”
“What if somebody does recognize her?” Ellis asked. “What then?”
“Then I’m hoping they can tell us where she got off the bus.”
Lucy remembered Mimmer’s batter-spattered recipe for waffles pressed between the pages of her grandmother’s cookbook and rummaged in the cabinets until she found it, then hauled out her old waffle iron. “Tonight I’ll stir up something heavenly for you,” she told Augusta, assembling the ingredients.
The two of them had just sat down to eat when the telephone rang. “Drat!” Lucy put down her fork. “It never fails! Bet that’s Opal Henshaw bugging me about those decorations for the harvest festival. Well, if she wants any more cornstalks, she can get them herself!”
Reluctantly she pushed back her chair and went to answer the phone.
“Mom?” Julie said. “Guess what came in the mail today!”
Chapter Eighteen
“Tran across Patches in the attic the other day and thought you’d like to have him,” Lucy said. “After all, your grandmother made him for you.”
“Thanks, Mom. Remember h
ow I used to sleep with him? He’s propped up on our bed right now, and I don’t think he’s aged a bit.”
Our bed. Lucy managed to suppress a shudder. “And how is Buddy B—uh…is everything all right?” Please tell me he’s volunteered for a year-long experiment on the moon! If so, it would be the longest stretch he’d ever worked at a time, she thought. Her daughter’s boyfriend drifted from one job to another with less sticking power than a stale wad of gum.
“Fine, Mom, and guess what? I’m finally getting a chance to write features! Did one this week on this man who makes jewelry out of chicken poop. Encases it in acrylic. I’ll send you a copy.”
Lucy laughed. “Just don’t send me any of the jewelry!” she said. Julie had been writing for a newspaper in a small Georgia city since graduation from college and Lucy was grateful she had at least one stable thing in her life. “So, things are going well at work?”
“Great! I’m learning a lot.” Did her daughter’s voice have a forced brightness, or was she just imagining it?
“I’m glad, honey. And are things about the same with you and Bu—”
“Hey! What’s all this about the mystery woman who turned up on your doorstep?” Julie said. “Even the Associated Press picked it up. Did she really get mugged behind the Methodist Church? What’s going on over there in Stone’s Throw?”
Lucy told her daughter what she wanted her to know. “We’re planning to circulate some leaflets with Florence’s photo to see if we can locate anyone who might have seen her on the bus,” she said.
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Oh, just some of The Thursdays,” Lucy said.
“Want me to post some around here?”
“The bus doesn’t come through Georgia on that route, but I don’t suppose it would hurt. Thanks, I’ll put some in the mail this week…And, Julie, you will try to get home for Thanksgiving, won’t you?”
“I don’t know if I can get off, Mom. We’ll see.”
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