Murder by Kindness

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Murder by Kindness Page 16

by Barbara Graham


  “I’m on my way.” Tony was still talking to Rex as he climbed into the Blazer.

  Rex spoke crisply. “You better not stop talking to me. Er, sir.”

  Mrs. Burleson’s house wasn’t far from Tony’s boyhood home. He’d played in her front yard often as a boy. Her son had been on many of the same sports teams as he had, but after college he’d decided city life was more his style. As Tony sped down the road, lights flashing, he was alert, looking for anything out of place. He saw Holt’s vehicle parked near the curb in front of the Burleson house. “Rex? Anything?”

  “Sir, still nothing from Holt.”

  Tony saw Wade driving toward the house from the other end of the street. “Wade’s arriving here, too.”

  Even with their quick examination of the yard, it was easy to see that neither Holt nor Mrs. Burleson was anywhere in it, front or back. The shrubs were neatly trimmed, although not many plants were brave enough to grow at the moment. Spring would arrive soon.

  Tony considered their options. He could walk up and ring the doorbell or he and Wade could creep around the house and try to see in the windows. Neither option sounded great. A moment later the decision was made for him.

  “Help.” A woman’s voice called softly. “Help.”

  If Tony hadn’t been standing where he was, close to the window on the side of the house, he would probably not have been able to hear it. “Mrs. Burleson?”

  “Help,” was the faint response.

  Tony carefully peered through the window closest to the sound. It was hard to distinguish much through the sheer curtain so he leaned forward. Suddenly he realized what he was seeing. He spoke to Wade. “Holt’s flat on the floor and it looks like Mrs. Burleson’s trying to move him.”

  Tony heard Wade talking to Rex, relaying the message.

  Everything he saw and heard made Tony confident they could enter the house without jeopardizing anyone. “We’re coming in, Mrs. Burleson.”

  Silence. Tony turned the knob on the door and the door swung inward. “Help.” The voice came from the left. Two steps took them to the doorway. Darren Holt was unconscious on the floor and Mrs. Burleson was pinned to the floor by the weight of the much larger man. “What happened?”

  Wade relayed the scene on his radio. “We need the ambulance.”

  Tony hurried forward to see what he might be able to do to help either or both of them. “Mrs. Burleson. Are you injured?”

  “Not bad.” She smiled up at him from the floor. “He’s heavier than he looks.”

  Relieved she could smile, he looked at Holt. The deputy was moving. “How long’s he been unconscious?”

  “I’m not sure. It feels like a long time.”

  As if realizing they were talking about him, Holt’s eyelids fluttered and lifted. His eyes seemed unfocused, though. “Sir?”

  Tony considered it both good and bad. Good that Holt was regaining consciousness and bad that he’d been knocked out. “The ambulance will be here soon.”

  Wade gently helped Mrs. Burleson to her feet. She wobbled and gripped his forearm with both hands.

  Tony watched Holt and Mrs. Burleson with concern. “What happened? We came because Holt wasn’t reporting in or answering his radio.”

  “I heard it.” The elderly woman pointed toward the blue and tan, striped curtains. “When the radio call came, he had both arms full, helping me get Snowflake off the top of the curtains. All at once, that darn cat leaped right at his face and knocked him over, and as he fell into me and started to knock me down, he tried to twist around. He was trying not to land on me, but he landed on me anyway and his poor head just slammed into the floor. She patted Holt’s shoulder tenderly. “I couldn’t get up and I didn’t know what to do.”

  Just then, Snowflake strolled near, leaped onto the sofa, sat down and proceeded to lick one small orange paw. As befitted her status as royalty, she didn’t make eye contact with any of them.

  “Is your telephone off the hook?” Tony didn’t see one. “When we tried calling, we kept getting a busy signal.”

  “Really?” Mrs. Burleson’s shocked expression was priceless. She pointed to a small table behind Tony. “It should be right there.”

  A glance showed the receiver was on the floor, dangling from the cord. Wade picked it up and returned it to the cradle.

  “Naughty cat.” Mrs. Burleson frowned at the cat. Unperturbed, the cat continued grooming, until the arrival of the ambulance crew. Suddenly, all types and sizes of feet and some wheels interfered with its bathing. With an irritated look, it leaped onto the chair near the phone and leaped again up onto the chair’s tall back. Without hesitating, another leap and the cat settled onto the top of the curtain.

  The paramedics checked Holt’s condition. “He looks fine, but we’ll haul him over to the clinic and let one of the doctors decide if he needs more doctoring, some rest or you send him back to work.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The morning of the shop hop Theo was up long before daylight. She had explained in depth to Tony and the boys and to May-belle what she expected for the day, including having no time for any of them. Even so, she had spent the whole night wide awake, worrying. There was no sense telling herself again that worry never solved anything. Thousands of worries traveled through her brain every day. She considered herself fairly smart, but she was still an expert worrier. Even as a small child her grandmother had dubbed her “worry wart.”

  Theo did the best she could with her hair, which always picked the most inconvenient days to totally frizz and go all wonky. She stared at it. Poked at it. Then she sighed, accepting her hair for what it was, and headed to the shop.

  The morning actually went well, better than she expected. There were regular shoppers in and out chatting and making their purchases. All the preparations for the actual shop hop seemed under control. Ruby had called to confirm the time for lunch delivery and the makeshift cutting stations looked like they would work perfectly.

  All that changed the moment the chartered bus pulled up. Suddenly there was chaos in the shop. The powder room toilet backed up. The second toilet, the one upstairs in her office, wouldn’t flush. Theo was forced to send her customers, a horde of middle-aged women, elsewhere while she tried to get the plumber on a Saturday. DuWayne Cozzens, the plumber, sounded like he found the situation amusing. Nevertheless, he promised to come as soon as possible.

  Ruby and her little girl arrived with the lunches. While she unloaded the boxes filled with gourmet sandwiches, some of Blossom’s best cake and bottles of water, Theo got to hold the little girl. She promised to be as gorgeous as her mother and was just as sweet.

  The delightful lunch provided by Ruby had a calming effect on most of the women. They continued shopping and taking turns at the cutting table and at the eating tables. Theo breathed a sigh of relief. She had a successful event, businesswise, and had made at least enough money to pay the plumber.

  Suddenly she heard a commotion in the far corner of the shop. The screeching and thudding sounded like one of the fights between her sons. As Theo made it from the workroom to the corner of the fabric salesroom, she saw two women, much larger than herself, fighting over a bolt of fabric.

  “You’re not taking all of that!” A tall quilter wearing an elegant black and gold patchwork jacket blocked the aisle.

  A chunky woman in a blue sweatshirt had both arms wrapped tightly around a lovely floral fabric. Her lower lip moved forward like that of a two-year-old just before the tantrum started. “I am, too.”

  “No!” The tall woman without the fabric made a fist, hauled back her arm and punched the other woman squarely in the jaw. As the chunky woman starting falling, releasing part of her grip to break her fall, her attacker snatched the bolt of fabric. “You can’t have it all.”

  “Stop that!” Theo hurried to help the woman on the floor and turned to the taller woman. “Give her back the fabric.” Theo had never been involved in a brawl in her whole life. The closest she’d been was w
hen she separated her sons if they got too carried away when they wrestled with each other. That was comparatively simple. Growing up sheltered and without siblings, she hadn’t learned to bite, kick or throw a punch. The two women fighting over the fabric seemed like professional prizefighters or cage wrestlers, or whatever they were called, in comparison. Not to mention that their extra six to ten inches in height and fifty pounds in weight made her feel smaller than ever.

  Theo quickly realized she didn’t stand a chance. Sassy attitude and no skills versus anger, avarice and size.

  The tall woman with the stolen bolt was clinging tightly to her purloined treasure with one arm and pounding the shoulder and cheek of the other woman with her fist. The chunky woman was grappling with the bolt of fabric, setting her elbow into her opponent’s throat. Theo guessed she’d been in a fight before. She seemed quite adept.

  Theo stepped in again, trying to stop the fight and rescue whichever woman she could now hear wheezing for breath. For her trouble, Theo was struck by a fist slamming into her nose and an elbow in her stomach. Stunned, she staggered backwards and fell, crashing into a freestanding display. The display had looked like a butler holding a tray. It had been designed to display a lightweight product, not to be used as the landing site for even a small woman.

  The display collapsed. The butler bent in half. The tall fabric thief now had full possession of the fabric and adamantly refused to return it. The other combatant wheezed, propped against the wall. Theo, now on the floor, reached up and grabbed hold of the bottom of the bolt and this time received a punch in the cheek for her trouble, knocking her glasses sideways on her face. “Ouch.”

  The glasses fell to the floor and the next thing Theo knew chaos erupted in her shop. Theo held her hand over her injured cheek and eye as she searched for her glasses, which had somehow gotten kicked farther away from her than she expected. She had a hand on the errant glasses when she saw newspaper woman Winifred Thornby snapping photographs of the melee. Trying to ignore the presence of Winifred, and at the same time wondering how the woman had managed to arrive in her shop at the worst possible moment, Theo jammed her glasses back on her face and returned to the fray as she tried to pull the two women apart.

  For her trouble she was shoved again. Off balance, she tried to break her fall. With Theo falling, a few formerly noncombatant women surged forward to help her. The actual result was the opposite of Theo’s intention. Theo was crushed to the ground with no fewer than five bodies on top of her. The air rushed from her lungs and she lay gasping for breath.

  The situation escalated. More quilters, the local ones as well as the bus-tour ones, joined the fray, pushing, shoving and grappling with multiple bolts of fabric. Theo finally managed to slither away and made it up onto her hands and knees. It took several moments but she managed to find her cell phone under the broken butler display. She punched the number to dial 9-1-1. Flavio was on the dispatch desk. Theo gasped out a description of the problem.

  Flavio made a choking sound. Theo had never considered that he might find her situation amusing. She could tell, though, that he was fighting back a laugh as he took the information. Tony was supposed to be off for the day but she could guess that was about to end. It made a bad situation even worse. She would never hear the end of it. The only good luck was having Maybelle in charge of the kids.

  Wade was the first to arrive. The flashing lights on his car, parked practically on the sidewalk, framed him like a movie marquee. The handsome deputy stopped in the shop doorway and stared. He looked torn between concern and laughter. He looked uncertain about his next move.

  Theo could only imagine what he was thinking. It was probably the first time he’d entered a room filled with women and had been ignored. As she glanced around the room, she saw quilters struggling with bolts of fabric. Gretchen was shoving a box of tissues at an elderly woman and yelling, “Don’t get blood on the fabric!” The opera-singing salesclerk had an impressive voice and attitude.

  Behind Wade, Theo heard the bus driver yelling, “Ladies, we have a schedule to keep!”

  Coming into this chaos through the back door and directly into the workroom walked Katti Marmot carrying her baby, Pumpkin. Actually the tiny girl’s name was Miranda, but she was born on Halloween and Pumpkin had stuck. Theo’s spirits always rose whenever she spent time with the Russian bride. Katti loved life. She loved their trash hauler/recycler/repurposing guru. She loved her little Pumpkin. And she loved the color pink.

  The baby was crying.

  Katti’s arrival from the back and Wade’s from the front luckily had a slightly calming effect on the frenzied shoppers. Theo was able to work her way to her feet.

  “Wow!” Wade managed to speak. He remained in the doorway but his shocked expression when his eyes met Theo’s held concern. “Is that eye all right?”

  Theo shook her head. Not only were her glasses badly damaged, but the already poor vision in her right eye was worse. She touched her face. It was definitely swelling. Her left eye was working well enough to see her husband arrive. He was not smiling. The ball cap with the sheriff’s department insignia and his duty belt clashed with the jeans and paint-spattered gray sweatshirt he wore.

  “Stop!” Tony’s voice carried through the room. Something in the tone brought the women to attention. They all popped up where they were and fell silent. He looked at Theo and his frown deepened. “What the hell is going on?”

  Theo didn’t know if she should laugh or cry. The women were frozen in place, gripping bolts of colorful fabrics. The room was in shambles. It looked like the scene of a massive storm or earthquake. She had been in the thick of it and wasn’t sure herself what had happened. Feeling almost stupid, she shrugged.

  Tony’s frown deepened.

  The slight movement of his lips released the spell. Forty women started explaining at the same time. Pointing at each other and flinging accusations. Tony beckoned Theo with his hand. When she got close enough to hear his voice, he sounded more concerned than angry. “What do you want me to do before I take you to the emergency room?”

  Wade vanished, returning seconds later with a cold pack from the first-aid kit in his car. Tony nodded his approval and Theo pressed it against her throbbing face.

  “Their bus will be leaving in a couple of minutes.” Theo saw the shoppers headed to board their transportation out of the county. A few ladies were still having their purchases cut and order was quickly being restored. Theo tried to smile at the woman whose choice of fabrics had triggered the battle, but having a cold pack pressed to her face limited her ability to look cheerful. Theo was happy to see her paying for a lot of fabric. Money wouldn’t make her pain stop, but it certainly wouldn’t make it any worse.

  The moment the bus pulled away, Gretchen and Katti and Susan, the extra help for the shop-hop day, began restoring order.

  “Go.” Gretchen shoved Theo and Tony through the doorway. “See the doctor.”

  Wade escorted them to the clinic. Responding to Wade’s phone call, his own wife, Doctor Grace, met them at the door. “Let’s see,” Grace said, and pulled Theo into the examining room.

  Over the years, Tony had seen all kinds of accidents and brawls. The first night he’d been on patrol, as a young cop in Chicago, he’d had to break up a fight in a bar. Not his most fun memory, but certainly not the last time there had been an alcohol-induced argument. Never in his wildest dream could he have imagined a brawl in a fabric store. All of the participants were sober. At least the women hadn’t taken rotary cutters or scissors to the fight. In the wrong hands, they could be as deadly as a gun. He watched his wife disappear with the doctor.

  “Sheriff?” Wade interrupted his thoughts. “How do I write this report?”

  “I have no idea.” Tony had to laugh. “Maybe you should wait until you can ask Theo what happened. All I saw was pandemonium.”

  “Those women were seriously pounding on each other.” Wade shook his head. “Your wife took the brunt of it, but when t
hat bus reaches home, I’ll bet there are any number of bruises and scrapes. I saw one woman climb into the bus carrying some fabric in one hand and had a plastic bag tied over the other one. She said it was to keep the blood off her new fabric.”

  “It was pretty amazing to see.” Tony could only imagine the news article forthcoming. There was sure to be an editorial about the fight. It would probably be elevated to the status of a riot. “How did Winifred hear about it before you did?”

  “No idea. She was there taking photographs when I arrived.”

  Grace joined the men. “Theo will be fine.”

  Tony thought about kissing the doctor, he was so relieved. “You don’t think I need to take her to Knoxville, to an eye specialist?”

  “No, but she is going to have one heck of a shiner and half of her face will be discolored for a while. Luckily the damage is mostly superficial.” Grace looked at her husband, her face pulled into a frown. “What happened? Theo just kept saying that the shoppers got out of hand. A bunch of quilters?”

  Wade said, “I’ve never seen anything like it. Bar fights are easier to handle.”

  Theo joined them. Her face was still swollen and discolored, her glasses bent, but she was smiling. “At least it was a good day for my business.”

  When they got to the house, the boys were awestruck. “Wow, Mom, you were in a fight?”

  Tony guessed their mother had just moved up several notches closer to “The Most Awesome Mom” award.

  “As exciting as that sounds, I’m going to put a fresh ice pack on my face and go lie down for a while. It’s been quite a day.”

  The headline on the next day’s Silersville Gazette read, “Sheriff’s Wife Beaten.” The photograph just below the headline showed Theo, her glasses wonky, and her face bruised and swollen. The photograph didn’t show any blood, or it could have been the highlight of any gossip rag promising a lurid story. Only if the reader made it through to the end of a detailed listing of Theo’s injuries and interviews with people who heard screams coming from the quilt shop and quotations from some shoppers who recounted a traumatic situation inside would they learn something near the truth of what had occurred.

 

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