Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 05 - Tight as a Tick

by Toni L. P. Kelner

  “Don’t remind me,” she said, ruffling her hair. “I hope this mess grows out quick.”

  “And she was hit from behind.”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “Maybe whoever it was thought it was you, just like I did. From behind, it would have been an easy mistake to make.”

  “Why would anybody come after me?”

  “I told J.B. what Richard and I are up to, and he might have told somebody else. Or the killer might have figured it out for himself. He could have been trying to scare us off.” As soon as I said that, I knew it didn’t make sense. “No, this was the worst possible thing he could have done. If he’d laid low, there was a chance that Richard and I would give up and go home. Hurting you would guarantee that we’d never give up.”

  “Laurie Anne, I think that’s the nicest thing you ever said to me,” Aunt Maggie said.

  I looked down at Mary Maude, a little embarrassed. It was true that I wasn’t overly demonstrative with Aunt Maggie, but that’s the way I thought she wanted it. Didn’t she know how much I cared about her? I’d have to make sure that she knew, but this wasn’t the time or the place.

  “Come to think of it,” Aunt Maggie said, “how would anybody know I’d be here? We didn’t decide to come until we were on the way.”

  “Good point,” I said, relieved that she hadn’t been the target. “Maybe he was searching for whatever it was that Carney had.” Of course, I was still assuming that Carney had had something worth killing for.

  “So Mary Maude showed up while he was looking, and he hit her with that?” She nodded at a cast-iron bookend that was under one of the tables. In all the excitement, I hadn’t seen it. “That wasn’t there last night, and I don’t think those stains are rust.”

  “I think you’re right.” Our killer’s ability to find weapons everywhere made me nervous.

  “I’d like to know what Mary Maude was doing in my booth.”

  “We’ll ask when she wakes up.” I didn’t bring up the possibility that she might not wake up. Mary Maude wasn’t a young woman, and it looked like her attacker had meant to kill her. I was surprised he hadn’t hit her again to be sure she was dead. Maybe he’d heard Richard and Aunt Maggie outside, or me and Bender at the front, and ducked out one of the building’s other doors. It had probably been him that Bender and I had heard leave. I kept telling myself that so I wouldn’t imagine him lurking nearby.

  Richard came back, and said that the ambulance was on its way and that he’d called both police departments. He also brought Bender and Rusty, who hadn’t been able to catch the car we’d heard.

  After we quickly explained the situation to Bender, he and Rusty went to find Mavis. A few minutes later, in she ran, calling for her sister.

  Aunt Maggie said, “Miz Dermott, I’m afraid your sister’s been hurt.”

  Mavis screamed and threw herself at her sister so hard I was afraid she’d hurt herself and Mary Maude. I didn’t get all of what she was saying, but it was clear that she thought we’d attacked Mary Maude.

  I was trying to keep Mary Maude from being too badly jostled while Richard tried to gently untangle Mavis. Then Aunt Maggie got a hold of one arm and pulled her up. Mavis was still screaming at us when Aunt Maggie slapped her right in the face.

  I’d heard about slapping hysterical people for years, but that was the first time I’d seen it done. It worked. For the first time since I’d known her, Mavis was speechless.

  “Miz Dermott,” Aunt Maggie said, “you don’t know what you’re saying. We did not hit your sister. Laurie Anne found her this way, and we’re doing what we can for her. Making all this fuss isn’t going to help her one bit!”

  Mavis looked down at me, and I did my best to look like somebody who’d never dream of hitting an old woman.

  “Who else would care about your date book?” Mavis demanded.

  “What’s my date book got to do with this?”

  Mavis didn’t say anything, and after a second, Aunt Maggie answered her own question. “That’s what you two were doing here. I told y’all I’d left my book out here, and y’all wanted to find out when the auctions are. Mary Maude came in to find it while you played lookout and kept us talking outside so we wouldn’t catch her in the act.”

  Mavis looked embarrassed for maybe ten seconds, but then said, “It doesn’t matter now. Mary Maude’s hurt!”

  It must have been a strain for her, but Aunt Maggie said, “You’re right, Miz Dermott. Taking care of Miz Foy is the important thing.”

  Mark arrived then, followed a few seconds later by Belva, and they tried to make sense of our stories. It would have been easier if they’d quit interrupting each other, and if Mavis had quit interrupting Aunt Maggie and me. I don’t know how much they’d figured out when Trey Norton brought in the EMTs a minute later.

  They examined Mary Maude and got her out of my lap and onto a stretcher to carry her to the ambulance. Mavis trailed along behind them, looking nearly as sick as her sister.

  Belva said, “This puts a whole new light on the Alexander case. I think it’s pretty obvious that we’re dealing with a serial killer preying on flea market dealers.”

  Richard and I looked at each other. That possibility hadn’t occurred to us, but it sure didn’t sound right. In fact, it sounded downright silly.

  I guess it sounded silly to Mark, too, because he said, “You’re making something out of nothing, Tucker. It was another robbery attempt. Drug-related, probably. Nine times out of ten, it comes down to drugs.”

  That didn’t make sense either, because nothing had been taken. In fact, Aunt Maggie didn’t have anything that would be attractive to a thief wanting to convert goods to cash in a hurry.

  I wanted to add my opinion, and I could see that Richard was dying to join in, too, but we both resisted. Mark and Belva were too busy arguing with each other, and they’d made it plain that they wouldn’t listen to us, so we just asked if it was all right for us to leave. When they said it was, Aunt Maggie got her date book, and we headed to Aunt Nora’s for supper.

  I realized I was shaking once I got in the car, and at first I thought it was delayed reaction. Then I figured out what it really was. I was angry. I hadn’t known Carney Alexander and maybe I hadn’t taken his death all that seriously, but I was taking it seriously now. Somebody had nearly killed Mary Maude, and I was furious because it could have been Aunt Maggie in that ambulance.

  Chapter 32

  Out of deference to Uncle Buddy’s queasy stomach, we waited until we’d had our fill of pork chops, mashed potatoes with gravy, and string beans to tell Aunt Nora, Uncle Buddy, Augustus, Thaddeous, and Willis what had happened to Mary Maude.

  After warning us to be careful, Uncle Buddy settled in front of the TV, Willis left to work the night shift at the mill, Thaddeous grabbed the phone to call Michelle, and Augustus said he was going to take a walk. I knew they all knew about Richard’s and my investigation and were probably curious, but I also knew that Aunt Maggie had told Aunt Nora to keep anything she knew under her hat. Besides, everybody knew that all the Burnettes were going to find out sooner or later.

  That left Aunt Maggie, Aunt Nora, Richard, and me sitting around the kitchen table to hash over what we knew and what the police thought they knew.

  “A serial killer?” Aunt Nora said.

  “Belva figures that Carney’s death was just the first,” I said.

  “Don’t serial killers usually kill the same kind of person? Like all tall blondes, or all women who look like their mothers?”

  Richard raised one eyebrow.

  “I watch Unsolved Mysteries,” she explained.

  “I think you’re right,” I said. “Serials also tend to use the same M.O.” I watch Unsolved Mysteries, too. “Switching from a knife to a blunt instrument doesn’t fit, but Belva thinks the pattern is using the dealer’s own merchandise: Carney’s knife and Aunt Maggie’s bookend.” I imagined Bob killed with needles and Tammy run over by a Harley, and what
I came up with for Obed was enough to turn my stomach.

  Aunt Maggie said, “The only serials around here are the Saturday morning ones Belva watched too many of when she was a little girl. Carney’s killer was looking for something, but Mary Maude showed up, and he wanted to shut her up.”

  “What could he have been looking for?” Aunt Nora asked.

  “We don’t know,” I said. “Aunt Maggie, did Carney ever give you anything?”

  “He never gave me the time of day, but now that you ask, I’ve got an idea. He usually got out there before I did, so he could have hidden something in my booth.”

  “Don’t you think you’d have found it by now?” Richard objected. “You had to sort through most of it to clean up after the break-in.”

  “That’s true,” Aunt Maggie said.

  We kicked around other ideas, ranging from the unlikely to the outlandish, but none of it was very useful. Finally Aunt Maggie said she was going to watch TV with Uncle Buddy, and Aunt Nora said she wanted to get the supper dishes cleaned up.

  “Can I help?” I asked, expecting to be turned down.

  Instead Aunt Nora said, “I hope so, Laurie Anne.” I reached for a dirty plate, but she put one hand over mine. “Not with the dishes. What I’d really like is for you to talk to Augustus. You know he was two hours late yesterday afternoon? That’s why I didn’t send him to get you. I am at my wit’s end with that boy, and Buddy is out of patience. If something doesn’t change soon, I’m afraid there are going to be hard words.”

  “Don’t you think it would be better if Thaddeous or Willis talked to him?”

  “They’ve tried, Laurie Anne. I’ve tried, Buddy’s tried. Maybe he’ll listen to you. He’s always respected you for being the first to leave Byerly. He says you inspired him.”

  “Really?” I hadn’t known that. We’d talked about our plans to get away, but I’d never thought of him as following in my footsteps. “I’ll try, Aunt Nora.”

  “I sure would appreciate it.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Richard asked.

  “No, I ought to talk to him alone.” I didn’t want Augustus to think we were ganging up on him.

  “Then I’ll help Aunt Nora with the dishes,” he said.

  “No, you won’t,” Aunt Nora said. “You go watch TV.”

  “But I don’t want to watch TV.”

  They were still arguing when I went outside.

  Augustus wasn’t hard to find. I just followed my nose. He’d climbed up into the tree house he and his brothers had built years ago. It didn’t take a psychologist to figure out that there was something meaningful in his retreating to a boyhood hiding place.

  “Hello up there!” I called out. “Does your club allow girls?”

  There was some hurried scuffling, and then he called back, “I guess I have to—I wouldn’t want you to sue.”

  I climbed the rungs that were nailed into the trunk to make a ladder, thinking that it had been an awful long time since I’d done that, and hoping the tree house was strong enough to hold us both.

  The tree house was just a wooden platform with a ceiling that slanted down away from the trunk, but it was roomy. The boys used to keep crates of comic books and baseballs and such in there, but the only thing still up there was an ashtray that Augustus dumped overboard as soon as I got up.

  I sat down next to him, both of us leaning up against the thick tree trunk.

  “I thought you and Mama were gossiping,” Augustus said.

  “It’s not gossip. It’s networking.”

  “My mistake,” he said, and there was still enough light for me to see him grin.

  I didn’t say anything for a while, partially because it was a nice evening and I didn’t want to spoil it, but mostly because I was stalling. Finally I said, “Is this where you do your toking?”

  He didn’t answer for a long while, but then sarcastically said, “You really have become a detective.”

  “It didn’t take much detecting. Aunt Nora’s bound to catch on soon, if she hasn’t already.”

  “Well, it can’t do anything but confirm her opinion of me.”

  “Augustus! She always thought the world of you, and you know it.”

  “Did you use the past tense? Does that mean she no longer thinks the world of me? Why is that? Because I’m a pot-head?”

  “I’m not being judgmental,” I said, hoping it was true. “A lot of our friends in Boston smoke pot, but you just don’t seem the type.”

  “Why? Because I’m a good ole boy, and us good ole boys are supposed to get high on Budweiser instead of on weed?”

  “You’re not a good ole boy, Augustus. You’ve seen as much of the world as I have, maybe more.”

  “But here I am again,” he said bitterly.

  “Don’t you want to be here?” Aunt Nora had told me he’d decided not to reenlist.

  “Wanting doesn’t have anything to do with it. I have to be here.”

  “Augustus, you can go anywhere. If you’d like to give Boston a try, you’re welcome to stay with us. Our place is small, but—”

  “You don’t get it, Laurie Anne. I have to be here.” He shoved his hair back from his forehead. “You remember how I was when I left? I couldn’t wait to leave. I knew that if I stayed, I’d end up working at the mill for the rest of my life, and I couldn’t stand the thought of that. Don’t get me wrong. Daddy makes a good living there, and Thaddeous and Willis have done well, too, but the place would have been like a prison for me.”

  “I know how you feel. I used to love visiting Paw at the mill, but the older I got, the less I wanted to go there. I kept picturing myself in one of those smocks the women used to wear, working my way through the ranks until I became one of those cranky old women who fuss when somebody else puts his lunch in her spot in the refrigerator. Going to college was my way of making sure that never happened.”

  “My problem was that I wasn’t smart enough for college.”

  “You were plenty smart enough,” I protested. “Your grades were always good.”

  “All right, maybe I could have,” he admitted, “but I didn’t want books; I wanted the real world. The army seemed perfect. They said they’d train me and give me a chance to travel. I was so happy to get that uniform that I thought I’d bust. I was sad to be leaving Mama and Daddy and everybody else, but I didn’t look back.”

  “So what happened?”

  “At first I loved it. Germany was even better than I’d dreamed it would be. The buildings, the people, the food—it even smelled different over there. The other countries I went to were just as wonderful. I made friends all over, and I dated women with accents that made my name sound like something special. For the first year or so, I thought I had the world by its tail.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I started to realize that I wasn’t having fun anymore. The buildings were incredible, but after a while they didn’t look right to me. And the people’s faces were funny, and the food didn’t taste good. I got tired of being with women I could barely understand. At first I thought it was something physical, but the doctor said I was fine. He thought I needed a change of scenery, so I transferred to another post. That helped for a while, but after a few months, I was as bad off as before.”

  “What was it?”

  He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “One of my bunk mates figured it out first, but I didn’t want to believe him. It sounded right foolish to think that a grown man would have that happen.”

  I waited for him to go on.

  “I was homesick, Laurie Anne, pure and simple. Just like a little kid.”

  “Augustus, that’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You’ve never been homesick.”

  I had to laugh. “If you had any idea of how miserable I was my first semester in Cambridge, you wouldn’t say that.”

  “But you got over it, didn’t you? Not me. I’d talked so big, and here I was pining for home. I’d never felt s
o ashamed in my whole life, so I decided I was going to fight it, that I wouldn’t come back.”

  “Is that when you stopped coming home on leave?” Aunt Nora had fretted about it, but had convinced herself that Augustus was just using his time off to see more of Europe.

  “That’s right. I was afraid that if I came to Byerly for even a little bit, I’d never leave again. So I went anywhere but here: Paris, London, Amsterdam. It didn’t help.”

  “Is that why you started smoking pot?”

  “It wasn’t pot—it was hashish. Hash is stronger; but I can’t get it in Byerly, so I switched to pot. Anyway, I was in the red light district in Amsterdam and one of the guys had some. It’s legal over there, so I figured it couldn’t be that bad. I tried it, and I found out that when I was high, I wasn’t homesick anymore. Drinking didn’t help me a bit, but hash sure did the trick.”

  “How long have you been smoking it?”

  “A couple of years. I guess my commanding officer could tell after a while. He didn’t say anything, but there were surprise inspections, and they posted the rules about drugs on our bulletin board. I thought I’d be safe as long as I didn’t smoke on base, but one day the CO found me in a park smoking. That was it for my army career.”

  “He didn’t court-martial you, did he?” I asked.

  “No, he just took my stash away and made sure I didn’t get off base much after that. And he suggested that I not reenlist. He didn’t actually say that I’d be in trouble if I did, but I got the idea. So here I am, back in Byerly, and I guess I’ll end up working at that damned mill after all.”

  “There’s other things you can do.”

  “Like what? Byerly isn’t exactly a hotbed of industry. The army did teach me some things, but I can’t make a living around here repairing radio equipment.”

  “What about someplace else in North Carolina?”

  “I thought about that. After I was discharged, I spent a couple of days in Charlotte and a week in Raleigh, seeing if it was just the States I was missing. I was still miserable. It’s got to be Byerly. So tomorrow I’m going to go see Bill Walters.”