Hung Out to Die

by Sharon Short

  I went into my kitchenette and put on a kettle of hot water.

  I got out one of my TOADFERN’S LAUNDROMAT—ALWAYS A LEAP AHEAD OF DIRT! mugs, a promotional giveaway left over from years before, when I took over the laundromat and changed its name from Foersthoefel’s to Toadfern’s to really make it mine. Then I got out another mug, this one imprinted with GLEN ARM INN, a souvenir from a romantic getaway overnight I’d shared not too long before with Owen.

  My heart panged. But my only other two mugs in my sparsely outfitted kitchen were filled with sudsy water and sitting in the sink.

  I stuck my peanut buttery spoon in one of the mugs, suddenly so nervous that I didn’t even want peanut butter, recapped the peanut butter jar, and put it back in the cabinet, and pulled out the honey and box of chamomile tea bags.

  I squirted honey from the top of the plastic bear container into each of the mugs and plopped a chamomile bag in each mug. By the time I’d tucked away the honey and tea bags, the kettle of water was whistling. I finished making our mugs of tea and carried them the few steps into my living room. I gave Mama the Toadfern’s Laundromat mug.

  See, Mama, I thought. Your baby made good, after all, even if you did just up and leave.

  But she didn’t even glance at the mug. She’d kicked off her shoes, spit-washed the mascara from her face, and tucked her legs up on my couch. She’d taken off her fur coat and turned it around backward, and spread it over her, like an afghan. I eyed the afghan I keep folded over the back of my couch. The afghan is a sky blue and sea-foam green crocheted creation I’d purchased from the Antique Depot. Maybe I should offer it to Mama, I thought. But I resisted the gesture.

  She closed her eyes and inhaled the steam from the tea and suddenly looked at peace. She took a long sip, opened her eyes, and smiled at me.

  “Thank you. That’s better after all than cranberry juice and vodka,” she said. “Chamomile tea and honey—it’s just what I used to make you, you know, whenever you were ill. It’s what my mother always made me.”

  And suddenly I remembered that was true. Not the part about my grandmother having made the beverage, too—that was news—but that my mama had served this to me when I was sick, and just the smell of it made me feel better.

  But I took a sip, then said, “Hmm. I don’t recall.”

  A flash of sadness crossed my mother’s face, and I instantly regretted my comment.

  But Mama shrugged and said, “I’m not surprised. You were so young when I left you with Chief Hilbrink and his wife. How are they?”

  She didn’t know, I thought. As a kid, at least for the first few years, I imagined she had checked up on me, would be back anytime for me, have a great explanation. But then I became, emotionally, Uncle Horace and Aunt Clara’s daughter, and Guy’s sister, and got caught up in just living my life. I stopped imagining.

  But still, the fact that she hadn’t checked at all shocked me. She looked in great health. And like she’d lived a blessed life for quite a few years. So there’d been nothing to stop her from checking.

  “Chief Hilbrink died three months after you left,” I said. “Mrs. Hilbrink left to live with her sister in California and I lost touch with her. I lived in the orphanage for several months because the Toadferns wouldn’t have me and Uncle Horace didn’t want me, either, at first. But Aunt Clara put her foot down and they adopted me.”

  Mama sipped her tea and nodded. “Mmmm,” was her only acknowledgment, and I wasn’t sure if it was of the tea or my story.

  “Uncle Horace died when I was still in high school, and Aunt Clara passed away a few years after that. I inherited the laundromat and now I’m Guy’s guardian.”

  Again, she sipped and nodded.

  I sat my mug down too hard in frustration, and some of the tea sloshed out on top of my stack of magazines, which were from the bookmobile.

  “Damn it,” I hollered, and trotted into the kitchenette for a paper towel, then came back and blotted up the tea before it could soak into Nicole Kidman’s lovely face on the cover of People—a magazine that is one of my secret pleasures. Underneath the stack of magazines, though, were books, including Pride and Prejudice. Which I was re-reading. Truly.

  I sat back down and glared at Mama. “So. How have you been?”

  She smiled at me, ignoring my sarcasm. “The tea was lovely. I feel so much calmer now,” she said, putting her empty mug on the coffee table. She cleared her throat. “So. Your daddy is in jail for murdering his brother Fenwick. I know that must shock you.”

  I met her gaze with a most unshocked look. After all, I was still reeling from the shock of my parents’ sudden appearance and the shock of finding Uncle Fenwick hung out to die. After all of that, my daddy—whom I barely knew, after all—in the role of murderer didn’t seem so shocking. Plus, I recollected, I’d witnessed their fighting and threats at the Toadfern Thanksgiving dinner.

  “Maybe I should just start at the beginning—about what happened after you left,” Mama said.

  Or maybe, now that she was calm, I should just drive her back to the Red Horse. But—I admit—I was curious. I decided I’d listen to what she had to say—just to satisfy that curiosity—and then drive her back to the Red Horse. And then I’d never have to deal with my mama and daddy again. It would be as if they’d never reappeared.

  Why do I allow myself to believe such things?

  “It took a while after you left for all of us to calm down Mamaw Toadfern and Nora,” Mama said.

  “Understandably,” I said.

  “Yes. Although Fenwick always was such a gruff, resentful man. I really never did see why he was Mamaw Toadfern’s favorite—or why Nora doted on him so.”

  She looked at me as if expecting some agreement that Uncle Fenwick had just not been very lovable. Well, how would I know? I didn’t have any memories of him. And for all I knew, he would have been very enjoyable if Mama and Daddy hadn’t shown up.

  “The truth is,” Mama went on, “I don’t know if they ever did calm down. I said something pleasant—about how God works in mysterious ways and maybe somehow this was all for the best—”

  That startled me. She’d said what?

  “—and you’d have thought I’d said something truly awful, like Fenwick deserved it or something, and the next thing I knew, Nora was screaming at me, and so was Mamaw Toadfern, that I always had been an insensitive troublemaker, and if it weren’t for me, Henry and Fenwick would have gotten along, and Henry said, well, we certainly didn’t need to put up with this kind of treatment—that’s not what we’d come back for—and I said, of course not, we came back for a business deal, and it was only because we have good manners that we dropped by at all, and so we left and went back to the Red Horse Motel.” She wrinkled her nose. “Awful accommodations, really, but the only place in town, of course. I think they have mildew problems.”

  “It’s owned by the Rhinegolds—good customers and friends of mine,” I said. “I’ve gotten to know them very well over the years. And I don’t think they have mildew problems.”

  “Hmmm. Well. You might suggest they update the décor. Anyway, we’d finally gotten back and had started getting ready for bed when there was a knock at the door. It was Chief Worthy.” She shook her head. “Handsome fellow. Seems to me you and he are the same age. I didn’t notice any wedding band. But please tell me you aren’t dating him.”

  “I’m not,” I said, “although I did back in high school, until I found out he was two-timing me. At which point I dumped him and . . .”

  . . . and ran home and cried on Aunt Clara’s shoulder, until she’d had enough of my sniffling and fed me hot chocolate and cookies and told me I deserved better in life.

  Is that what she’d say about my situation with Owen? I wondered. I had a feeling it was . . .

  “Well, I’m not surprised he cheated on you. His father was a two-timing twit, too,” my mother was saying.

  My eyebrows went up at that. “I always thought Mr. Worthy was a fine, upstanding citizen
.”

  My mother hmmphed. “You’ve got to look past surfaces, you know. C. J. Worthy was a successful businessman, owned a plumbing company locally. Your daddy and Uncle Fenwick worked for him, before Fenwick started his own business. C.J. was a terrible flirt with me at cookouts he used to have. Made his wife—a dowdy little thing—very jealous. And it didn’t make the Worthys very happy that Fenwick started a rival business up in Masonville. But that was after both Henry and I left Paradise.”

  I hadn’t known that my daddy had been a plumber once. I realized I’d never actually thought about what he might have done for work. All I knew was that he’d left when I was little and that my mama always called him “that good for nothing.”

  But something else struck me about what my mama was saying. She’d heard about Uncle Fenwick starting his own plumbing company. That meant she’d stayed in touch with someone in Paradise all those years. New plumbing companies in small towns in Ohio wouldn’t have made the news anywhere outside of the immediate area, so she couldn’t have learned about it—wherever she’d been all those years—from any other source than someone in Paradise.

  Uncle Horace and Aunt Clara? No, I didn’t believe that. Someone from the Toadfern family? No, that didn’t seem likely, either.

  But she’d kept up on Paradise news with someone . . . and yet hadn’t known what had happened to me right after she left. Who had she stayed in touch with?

  I filed the question away, telling myself it didn’t matter and I didn’t care.

  “Anyway,” Mama went on, “that little brat John Worthy came to our room with some other officers and said they had to question us. Worthy said they’d gotten an anonymous call about the fight Henry and Fenwick had at dinner, that Henry had threatened to stab Fenwick. Like a fool, Henry admitted it. Worthy asked him if he had a knife. Henry showed him the collection of antique hunting knives he’d brought up as gifts and to sell to a local dealer. We really do have some knowledge of the flea market business, you know. Anyway, Worthy took all the knives. I don’t understand why.”

  While I had been at Mamaw Toadfern’s after the murder, John Worthy had only said that Fenwick had been murdered—not how.

  “Uncle Fenwick was stabbed,” I said. I didn’t see any reason to bring up the fact that someone had first attempted to hang poor Uncle Fenwick from a telegraph pole.

  Mama blanched. “Oh. Well, Henry is being held in the Paradise jail. Given that it’s the holiday weekend, I don’t know if I’ll be able to get him out by Monday. I called our lawyer down in Arkansas, but he just looks over our real estate contracts and can’t practice here in Ohio, anyway. He gave me the name of a Columbus attorney to call tomorrow morning . . . but, oh, Josie . . . we need your help! We need you to find out whoever the killer is!”

  She burst out crying, reverting to the sobbing persona who’d appeared at my door just a half hour before, and yet studying me between her fingers, with a look in her eye that told me she was watching my face to see if the sobbing was having an effect on me.

  I stared at the woman on my couch . . . this woman who was my mama, but yet, who wasn’t, who wavered between being just like the woman I remembered as Mama and this other manipulative creature she’d reinvented herself into . . . and I thought why? Why would they want my help . . . and why would I want to give it?

  The question must have showed on my face because she said, “I read about your involvement in solving the murder of Tyra Grimes.” She was referring to a nationally known domestic diva/media mogul who’d come to our town and been murdered the past spring. Unfortunately, there had been several local murders since then, and I’d gotten involved in those, too, because of my curiosity-giftedness (as I like to think of the trait everyone else calls “nosiness”), but those cases hadn’t made national news.

  “Josie,” my mama said, sniffling, making her eyes wide, “we—your daddy and I—need your help. In finding out who set your daddy up as his brother’s murderer. I imagine it was one of the Toadferns—but who? And that twit Worthy hates us, so he’s just all too willing to look no further than an anonymous phone call. Henry needs to get out of jail and have this wrapped up so we can go ahead with our FleaMart plans for the orphanage . . . and I need Henry to get out of jail because I miss him!”

  Now, I have to admit I was tempted, then and there, to say, sure I’d help, simply because I was curious: why did John Worthy hate my parents? Did it have to do with his daddy having flirted with my mama, way back when? Maybe that had something to do with how meanly he’d treated me, ever since we broke up, way back in high school? But if he’d known about anything between my mama and his daddy, he’d never mentioned it, either while we dated or after.

  Maybe he just had an airtight case against my daddy, and Mama didn’t want to admit it.

  After all, it sounded like there was some pretty good evidence against my daddy in the killing of Uncle Fenwick. I shuddered before finishing off the last of my now lukewarm tea, and fixing my gaze on Mama.

  “No,” I said. “I can’t help you with this.” I stood up. “I’m going to get on my tennis shoes and coat and drive you back to the Red Horse Motel. I recommend that in the morning you also call Elroy’s Filling Station to have your car towed to his shop, before your car gets impounded.”

  I picked up Mama’s mug from the end table, turned, and stepped toward the kitchen—and stopped at her next words.

  “We’re your parents, Josie! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  There were all kinds of answers—mostly angry—that came rushing to my mind all at once. Foremost—I was your kid. Didn’t that mean anything to you? Oh, wait, I know the answer . . . No!

  But Uncle Horace and Aunt Clara had reared me better than that. Maybe it had been a bad idea to give in to Sally’s wheedling and attend the Toadfern Thanksgiving Family Reunion. If I’d known my long-gone parents would have wheeled into Mamaw Toadfern’s driveway, would I have gone?

  I wasn’t sure. When I was little, my curiosity made me wonder about them from time to time. Why had they left? What were they like? What were they doing? Was it somehow my fault they’d left? I’d asked Aunt Clara that once, and she’d sternly told me no, I must never think that, and I’d believed her, and after that the questions about my parents started to fade and other questions about the world and life and my role in it took over.

  So, I guess I had long ago stopped trying to imagine what my parents were like, but now that I’d met them, I was disappointed. They were self-absorbed and arrogant, seeming completely unaware that by leaving Paradise as they each had, they’d hurt a lot of people—and that by returning with a plan to build a FleaMart, they were going to hurt a lot more people.

  I turned and looked at my mama, thinking about her question. We’re your parents . . . doesn’t that mean anything to you?

  “Yes, it does,” I said slowly, carefully. “I’m thankful that I’m alive, that you two created me, that you gave birth to me. Thank you for that.”

  Mama hmpphed, rolled her eyes in a gesture that was similar to my own eye-rolling habit.

  “No, really, I do thank you for that. And I don’t know what I can really say beyond that, except . . . I’m not the right person to help you and Daddy with this situation. You need to follow your attorney’s advice.”

  I took the mugs into the kitchen, filled them with soapy water and set them next to the other soapy-water-filled mugs. I’d wash them all in the morning.

  Then I went into my bedroom and slipped on my sneakers and my coat, grabbed my purse and keys from the dresser, and went back out to the living room.

  But Mama was sound asleep, snoring.

  At least, she seemed to be. Maybe she was just playing possum, managing to somehow look sad and lost and vulnerable all at once, knowing at some level I’d fall for it, even though I had every reason in the world to shake her awake and take her back to the Red Horse Motel and never have another thing to do with her and Daddy.

  But instead, I felt sorry for
her. Had she manipulated me like that when I was a kid? I wasn’t sure. Maybe.

  It was too late at night—or too early in the morning—to try to figure that one out. Instead, I unfolded the afghan and spread it over Mama.

  Then I went back to my room, shut the door, took off my shoes and coat and fell at last into blessed, dreamless sleep.

  9

  Mama, as it turned out, was next to impossible to wake up.

  Right after I woke up at 7:55 A.M.—fully wide awake, right before my alarm went off at 8:00 A.M., which is how I always wake up, even after a night of less sleep than usual—I padded out to my living room. I lightly shook Mama. She moaned.

  I decided to give her a few minutes. I showered, then dressed in jeans, black boots, an off-white turtleneck, and an ordinary burgundy cardigan that did not feature a single flashing turkey. I fluffed my short cropped do, and put on moisturizer, a dash of beige eye shadow, and a single coat of Cover Girl mascara, the brand that comes in the hot pink and lime green tube, because Cherry swears by it.

  After all that, Mama still wasn’t awake. So I pressed a cold, wet washcloth to her face. She flailed.

  So I had breakfast as loudly as possible, clattering around in my kitchenette as I made a pot of coffee, washed the previous night’s mugs, and had a bowl of Cap’n Crunch cereal with chocolate milk. My breakfast rowdiness didn’t rouse her, so I gave her yet a few more minutes of sleep while I brushed my teeth and dabbed on lip gloss. Then I called Elroy’s Filling Station and left a message about having Mama’s car towed there.

  Then I came out and stood over her and sang “Rise, and shine, and give God the glory, glory,” in the loudest, most nasally voice I could muster—just as a counselor once did to me at Ranger Girl Camp Wren-E-Na-No-Tikki. That experience is what gave me the ability to come fully awake a few minutes before whatever my alarm is set for.

  But Mama just wriggled down further under the afghan.