They sat on metal folding chairs at long tables covered with white paper. Every person in the room turned to stare at us as we entered.
After a moment of curious silence, there came a chorus of: “Hey, Garnet.” “Yo, Chief. How’s it hanging?” “Ten-four, good buddy.”
Garnet returned the greetings: “Hey, Darnell.”
“Hi, Luke.” “Yo, Marlin.” “Got ya, Peck.” “Prettier than ever, Roxy.” “How’s the baby, Myrna?”
It took about fifteen minutes to hail and yo our way to the food table.
A three-hundred-pound woman, with a disastrous permanent, lumbered around the counter to embrace Garnet. He almost disappeared in the rolls of blubber but didn’t seem to mind at all.
“How’s my favorite girl?” he asked.
She trilled that familiar girlish giggle that he so often managed to elicit from women. “Jest fine, Garnet. Gittin’ married again, next month.”
“Who’s the lucky fellow this time, Velvet?”
“Phares McPherson. Know him?”
“Sure do. He’s a good man. I wish you both all the best.”
“At least he ain’t a drinker like the last two.” She smiled at me. “You the chief’s girlfriend?”
Garnet broke in quickly, “This is a friend of mine, Tori Miracle. Tori’s a writer, Velvet.”
“No kidding? Do you write for them love-story magazines? I really like them …they’re so true to life and all.”
“No, I write books.”
She was obviously disappointed, but patted me on the shoulder and said, “I’ve never been much for reading books. But that’s okay, hon. You jest write what makes you happy.”
“Thank you,” I murmured weakly.
“Land sakes. Here I am a-jawin’ away and you’uns starvin’ to death. I’ll jest dish you’uns up the best dinner you ever et.”
She proceeded to heap food upon two enormous white Styrofoam platters. First there was a thick slab of some kind of mystery meat wrapped around stuffing. Over that she poured two huge ladles of gravy, the color of dandelions. That was joined by a heaping spoonful of sauerkraut and another spoonful of green beans, potatoes, and ham chunks. The whole thing was topped, like a sundae, with a bright red, peeled hard-boiled egg.
Garnet and I carted our overflowing plates to an empty table in one corner. Velvet followed carrying two plastic bowls, which she plunked down in front of us.
“You’uns forgot your slippery pot pie,” she said with a smile. “Now, when you’uns is ready for dessert, jest wave. I’ll save yuh some shoofly pie.”
Garnet had already cut his red egg in half, revealing the brilliant yellow yolk in the center.
“Why is it red?” I asked.
“Beet juice,” he said as he stuffed half the egg in his mouth. “Try it. It’s good.”
I cut a small slice and took a bite. He was right. It was good. I decided to be brave and try the meat, after first scraping off the congealing yellow gravy. It was sort of grizzly and greasy, but I did like the stuffing in the middle.
The slippery pot pie was strange to my tastes. I think it had some chicken in it and some hunks of slimy boiled dough. “Are you going to tell me what I’m eating?” I asked, taking another mouthful of meat and stuffing.
“Hog maw.”
“What’s that?”
“Just your basic pig’s stomach, stuffed and baked.”
The food in my mouth refused to go down. I tried to chew it some more, but finally gave up and spit it, surreptitiously, into my napkin.
Garnet didn’t notice. He was eating his with obvious enjoyment. “It’s a local favorite. On the nights it’s served at the Moose, you can’t get in.”
You can spare me the pleasure, I thought.
Velvet descended upon us bearing steaming mugs of black coffee and about a quarter of a pie for each of us.
I took a bite of the pie, found it much too sweet, and pushed the plate to one side. Garnet finished his and started on mine.
“Garnet,” I asked, “how is the murder investigation going?”
“You mean Richard’s murder?”
“Of course I mean Richard. Are there any others?”
He stuffed a forkful of pie into his mouth and shook his head. “About as well as can be expected, I guess.”
“Meaning …you don’t know who did it, right?”
He shrugged noncommittally.
“Something happened this afternoon that frightened me.” I reached in my purse and pulled out the threatening note that had been left on the sun porch door. Something made me pause as I started to hand it to him.
“What’s the matter?”
I sniffed the paper. “I was too upset to notice it earlier, but it smells like Praxythea’s perfume.”
Garnet held it up to his nose and inhaled deeply. “I don’t smell anything.”
“I have a very sensitive nose.”
He read the note with a frown on his face. “How could anyone get in the house?”
“Alice-Ann doesn’t lock her doors. She doesn’t even know where the keys are.”
“Of all the damn fool things …you bolt those doors from the inside tonight. I’ll send Lucy Lockit out tomorrow to put new locks on.”
“Lucy Lockit? Fowler’s Flowers. Uriah’s Heap. Did anyone ever tell you this town suffers from terminal cuteness?”
He nodded. “My ex-wife. Just before she went back to Philadelphia.”
“I didn’t know you’d been married.”
“Right out of law school. She promised to take me for better or for worse, but not for Lickin Creek. She’s married to another lawyer now and lives on the Main line. We’re all a lot happier.”
“Children?”
“One boy. He’s eleven. Nice kid, I think. Don’t get to see him as often as I’d like.”
“Sorry. It seems I have a talent for asking you irritating questions.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said with a grin. “I’m beginning to enjoy it. But seriously, to get back to what’s important, you have got to leave the detective work to me. It’s obvious someone is worried by something you’ve done. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I have an idea. Let’s list all the suspects and their motives, the way they always do in mystery novels.”
“It’s reassuring to know you listened to every word I just said.”
“Oh, come on. Humor me. You know damn well you don’t know who murdered Richard. What harm will it do to try and figure it out together?”
He shook his head as if I were a hopeless case, but I could see laugh wrinkles form around his eyes. In a few years, he might be all crinkly like Clint Eastwood—which wasn’t bad. He pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket. A fountain pen! He was beginning to earn my respect.
“Here,” he said, handing me the pen. “Make your list.”
“Got any paper?”
“Use the tablecloth.”
I wrote a large number one on the paper. “Who goes here?”
“The first and most logical suspect is always the spouse.”
“Come on, Garnet. You know Alice-Ann’s not a murderer.”
“She’s number one, until I’m proved wrong. She had a motive. He was running around on her, spent all their money, made her life a living hell. And she left the house that night and then lied about it. Motive plus no alibi equals murder.”
I reluctantly wrote down Alice-Ann’s name.
“Number two,” I said as I wrote the number on the table.
“Tori Miracle.”
“What?”
“If you were alone in the house, you have no alibi either. And you’ve never made any secret of your dislike for Richard. You and Alice-Ann were pretty close until he came between you. And you were overheard, at the castle, threatening Richard—something about if it happened, it wouldn’t be an accident.”
“Me? Threaten Richard? I don’t know what you mean. Oh, hell! Yes, I do. But I was threatening him with embarrassment, not murder. I di
dn’t think anyone heard me. Damn grapevine! You mean you were serious earlier when you suspected me of being jealous … of having a … a relationship with Alice-Ann? I can’t believe you’d be sitting here having dinner with me if you thought that.”
“I told you earlier, if I can see you, I know you’re not in trouble. Or causing it.”
“This is ridiculous. If you knew either one of us, you’d know that numbers one and two should be scratched right off this list.”
“Tori, this suspect list was your idea. Now stop being so huffy. Let’s get to number three.”
“Fine!” I wrote Garnet Gochenauer in big black letters.
“Do you want to explain that?”
“Sure. Maybe you used to be sweet on Alice-Ann before she got married. Maybe you wanted to get rid of Richard so you could have a chance with her.”
“That’s asinine!”
I smiled. “No more so than numbers one and two. Shall we go on to number four? How about that escaped convict? What’s his name?”
“Vernel Burkholtz.”
I wrote it down. “Maybe, while he was escaping, he encountered Richard on the road and killed him to keep from being sent back to jail.”
“Wrong, Tori. Vernel Burkholtz walked out of the synagogue and across the street into the AMVETS, where he proceeded to get stinking drunk in front of about fifty people. He turned himself in this morning, with a hell of a hangover and a perfect alibi.”
So much for Vernel.
“Let’s get to my favorite suspect,” I said. He watched as I wrote Praxythea’s name next to number five.
“Mind telling me why?”
“Does the name Marlin Kirkpatrick, Jr., ring a bell?”
“Of course. He died earlier this year. What’s he got to do with this?”
“I did a little research today, at the library and the newspaper. Marlin was a relative of Thomas Alva Edison, and he remembered Edison visiting his family back in 1920. I have good reason to believe that Edison came here to experiment with a strange invention, which he left here in Lickin Creek. And I think it’s something that Praxythea would kill for …did kill to own.”
“And just what was this strange invention no one’s ever heard of before?”
“A machine to communicate with the dead.”
His burst of laughter raised eyebrows all around the room.
I told him about the highlighted paragraph I’d seen in the book, mentioning Edison’s attempts to talk with the dead. And Richard and Sylvia’s sudden interest in Edison after Richard had been involved in selling Marlin Kirkpatrick, Jr.’s estate. And that I believed Edison had brought the machine to his cousin’s house and left it there. And that Richard had found the machine there and stolen it to use as a research project to earn membership in the prestigious Historical Society.
“Richard told me, and I believe he was right, that he had discovered something that would make him famous. Now, Sylvia already is established as the local society leader and member of the Historical Society, not to mention her position as founder of the modern Rose Rent Day, so she really doesn’t need any more glory. I think Richard enlisted her help because he realized he couldn’t handle the research himself, and I think she agreed to help him because she enjoyed playing the part of the local history expert.”
Garnet finished my pie. “I still don’t see where Praxythea fits in, or why you think she murdered Richard.”
“They brought Praxythea in to help them. She recognized an opportunity to become world famous. Think about it, Garnet. She’s already got some national recognition as a psychic who helps police solve crimes. If she could produce a machine that can communicate with the dead—whether or not it works—it would make her career. She’d be right up there with—uh—-Jeanne Dixon or Peter Herkos or—”
Garnet interrupted. “Why would someone in her position take a chance on ruining an already successful career by committing murder?”
I shrugged. “Why does anybody commit murder? Most people would never consider it to be an option, no matter how much they had to gain; others are willing to do anything to get what they want.
“Remember I told you I saw a suitcase on Richard’s motorcycle? At least I thought it was a suitcase then, now I’m not sure. I think I saw it again at the castle the night of the seance. It was stuck away in a dark corner of the library, and I thought it was a tape recorder. After the children came in and told us they’d found a body, there was a lot of confusion. Later, the case was gone. Nobody else admitted having seen it. I think Praxythea hid it because she knew it would be incriminating.”
Garnet looked skeptical. I couldn’t blame him. It had all seemed a lot more credible in my mind, unspoken. “How do you think she got the machine?” he asked.
“I overheard Sylvia tell Richard to ‘get here with it early’ because she wanted ‘it’ set up before the others arrived for the seance. She told me it was a tape recorder, but I believe ‘it’ was the Edison machine. After the fight with Alice-Ann, I think Richard decided to go ahead and take the machine over to the castle that night.”
“And I suppose you think Praxythea met him at
the door, clobbered him with Alice-Ann’s hammer, and stole his discovery.”
“She’s the only one with a motive.”
“It’s possible, I guess, but I have a hard time with it. I’ve worked with Praxythea. The first time she came to Lickin Creek was when she saw a picture of a missing girl in a New York paper. She said she’d had a vision of the girl lying in the dark near the edge of running water. She described the landfill near Pig Run so accurately that we drove there immediately and started digging. Unfortunately, she was right. We found the girl with a bullet hole in her head, buried under a couple of tons of trash.”
I groaned with exasperation. “Garnet, that stuff about ‘lying in darkness at the edge of running water,’ that’s exactly how she described the location of the lost diamond, Sylvia’s Star. It’s probably a standard line she uses to impress suckers. For heaven’s sake, there was even a novel written back in the thirties called The Edge of Running Water. It was about a man who was trying to prove immortality and invented a machine to communicate with the souls of the dead. She probably doesn’t think anybody would remember it. And don’t you find the subject matter of that book an odd coincidence, in light of what I’ve told you about Edison’s invention?”
“Despite what you say, Tori, she did find that girl.”
“Sure. And if we go back and dig in that trash dump for the next twenty years, maybe we’ll turn up Sylvia’s Star, too. She just made a lucky guess. If you hadn’t found the body there, she’d have had you digging up every creekbed in the country before she threw up her pretty hands and said there was an ‘error’ in her information source. Look at all the free publicity she got!”
Garnet shook his head. “You’re basing your whole theory on a completely implausible supposition—that Edison did build this machine and that he left it here. Even more implausibly—that Richard found it. What evidence do you have that this machine ever existed?”
“After I read about it in the book that Sylvia asked me to return to the library, I went to the newspaper. I found an article that said Edison had visited your haunted Historical Society building while he was in town—’combining business and pleasure.’ “ Even as I spoke, I knew I sounded like an idiot. It had all seemed so logical when I was at the newspaper office.
“I think we ought to go on to number six,” Garnet said. “There were a lot of people at the castle that night. All of them claim to have gone to bed right after the party broke up, which means none of them really have alibis. Put down Michael Thorne.”
I wrote Michael’s name down. “Why?”
“Revenge. Thanks to Richard, Michael is no longer going to inherit a castle or the very valuable property around it.”
“Michael told me about that. Naturally, he’s upset about it, but I can’t picture him murdering anyone …any more than I could picture his mo
ther doing it.”
“Put Rose down for seven.”
“Rose! You’re nuts.”
“She was there. She had a motive. Put her down.”
I did. “Then Sylvia has to be number eight for the same reasons.”
Garnet shook his head. “Sylvia isn’t in line to inherit the property. There’s no motive there.”
“So you think Rose did it?”
“No. I just wanted to show you how foolish this whole exercise is. Rose looks perfectly normal, but I happen to know she has cancer and has only a few months to live. She’s very weak from chemotherapy—wouldn’t have the strength to bash anyone’s head in. And how would either she or Sylvia manage to ride the motorcycle down the driveway to where we found it?”
“At last, there’s something I know that you don’t. Richard was giving all the old ladies in the castle motorcycling lessons. He thought it was a hoot.”
Garnet scratched his forehead. “Motorcycle lessons. Now I’ve heard everything! Anybody else you want to put on the list?”
I nodded. “Number nine: the missing LaVonna Hockenberry.”
“What’s her motive?”
“Same as Michael’s—revenge. Her husband killed himself because of Richard and his oil scam. The night we went to the seance, she asked me to come back the next morning because she had something she wanted to talk to me about. Maybe she planned to confess, then lost her nerve after the body was found and took off instead.”
Garnet stopped me. “Which reminds me, Tori. I checked out LaVonna’s room. Her purse was not there, in the wardrobe or anyplace else.”
“But I saw it. Someone must have taken it. Rose was putting stuff back into it the last time I saw it.”
Velvet interrupted us. “Everything okay? You’uns ready for some more coffee?” She poured it without waiting for an answer. She noticed the writing on the tablecloth, but if she was curious about it, she didn’t ask any questions.
Garnet took a sip, then added cream and sugar. “You did more than just a little research today. Seems to me you know almost as much about the people in this town as I do.”
1 Death Pays the Rose Rent Page 15