Murder in Her Stocking

by G. A. McKevett

  “I promise. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. And thank you for the . . .” He waved a hand, indicating his injured but newly doctored face.

  “For torturing you with Merthiolate?”

  “Yeah. That. The next time you say, ‘Hold on. This might sting a bit,’ I’m gonna get myself a bullet to bite on.”

  * * *

  True to her word, Stella took less than a minute to retrieve the jewelry box from Priscilla Carr’s apartment. Even if she hadn’t promised Manny, she wouldn’t have hung around the place.

  As before, when she’d been there with the sheriff, she sensed a heaviness in the air, which made her feel the need to literally run from the place once she had the box in hand.

  No doubt, Elsie would have attributed the room’s melancholy aura to the presence of “haunts.” Stella wasn’t sure what this feeling was, but she didn’t want to be around there any longer than absolutely necessary.

  With the door locked behind her and Prissy’s treasures tucked securely under her arm, Stella headed back to her truck.

  Even though someone had replaced the burned-out lightbulb over the tavern’s door and, as a result, the alley was less dark and foreboding than it had been the night of the murder, Stella decided to lock her truck’s doors for the first time since she could remember.

  Spending time in a place where someone had just been murdered, while carrying a box full of a dead woman’s jewelry—some of which was probably the real thing—wasn’t something she did every day.

  She had no desire to make a habit of it.

  As she pulled out of the alley, passed between the Bulldog and the pool hall, and drove onto the street, Stella began to feel better already. With the worst part of the day behind her and only one simple task ahead, she would soon be resting in her comfortable recliner and reflecting on the day’s events.

  You are not likely to forget this one, she told herself as she tried to remember the date for future reference. Her brain was so tired, and her emotions were so scrambled, that it took a while.

  That’s not a good sign, Stella girl, she thought, when it takes that long to remember what day it is. Especially when it’s Christmas Eve.

  She felt a momentary jolt of panic as she considered the too-small collection of gifts on the top shelf of her kitchen cupboard, hidden away from curious grandkid eyes.

  Since September she had been crocheting warm hats with pom-pom balls on the top, house slippers with pom-pom balls, and mittens without pom-pom balls. After completing the twenty-first ball and finishing the last hat and slipper, Stella had decided once and for all that she could happily live the rest of her life without making another pom-pom ball.

  If that meant she was a less than perfect grandmother, so be it.

  Her main present to the children this year was locked away in the shed next to her garden.

  Last August she had found an old, rusted swing set at a garage sale for a price that even she could afford. For the past four months, she had been restoring the sad mess to its original glory. Even better than original, she was proud to say.

  She had found some old but perfectly passable white paint and had given the swing set three thick coats. Once those had dried thoroughly, she had striped its long steel legs and crossbeam with wide masking tape and had spray-painted the remaining exposed areas bright red.

  She was thrilled to death with the results, and she knew her grand-angels would be, too.

  That was one of the few blessings to being poor. Small things mattered so much to those who had nothing.

  Yes, it’ll be a fine Christmas with the grandbabies, she told herself. We’ll have ourselves a merry time decorating the tree and singing carols and making fudge.

  If that stinkin’ Shirley lets you see them, added her darker, less positive side.

  Shut up! she told the ugly voice. I’ve been praying about it day and night, and the good Lord ain’t deaf. He heard ever’ word. Ever’thing’s gonna be just fine and dandy. So, stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

  Stella had just reached the end of Main Street and turned left, heading toward the funeral home, when she heard a siren in the distance.

  She had always hated that sound.

  A speeding ambulance in a small town meant that somebody she knew was in trouble, heading to the hospital with a heart attack or a broken arm. Maybe an asthma attack.

  She never knew what it was until word got around to her later. But unless somebody was in labor and about to bring a baby into the world, it meant worry and maybe even heartache for someone.

  She ran over the short list in her head of the people in McGill who were quite elderly or very sick. Sam Brotherton’s chest cold could have gone into pneumonia. Two months ago, Josephine Collin’s cancer had reappeared, and her chemo wasn’t working very well.

  “Lord, whoever it is, help ’em out,” she prayed as she drove. “Help them get to the hospital in time. Or if it’s your will that they go, let their passing be a gentle one, for them and for their loved ones.”

  The siren continued to get louder and louder. Stella looked in her rearview mirror and saw the flashing lights coming up behind her.

  Dutifully, she pulled over to the side of the road, onto the shoulder.

  When the vehicle shot past her, going at a high rate of speed, she realized it wasn’t an ambulance at all.

  It was a big black-and-white cruiser.

  Sheriff Manny Gilford’s car.

  But she had left Manny not that long ago at the station. He had told her he couldn’t leave with a jail full of prisoners. Why was he racing down the highway like his life depended on it?

  Or someone else’s?

  She checked her mirror again, to make sure no one else was coming, then pulled back onto the road.

  She had to find out what the trouble was. For all she knew, he could be headed for a bad situation, like the one he’d been in earlier at the funeral home, and might need some assistance.

  She stepped on the gas, driving faster than she was accustomed to, though she knew she’d never catch up with him.

  Maybe it’s just down the road a piece, she thought, her pulse pounding.

  She rounded a curve and there, less than a quarter of a mile away, she could see the cruiser, lights still flashing, stopped in the middle of the road.

  As she drew closer, she saw Manny rushing around, lighting and throwing flares onto the pavement.

  She saw a vehicle in the ditch on the right, resting on its passenger side.

  On the visible door was the large, distinctive logo of a snarling bulldog.

  Chapter 20

  “No,” Stella whispered as she brought her truck to an abrupt stop in the middle of the road, near the cruiser. “No, no, no.”

  She got out of her truck and raced to Manny, who was on his hands and knees at the side of the road, talking to someone lying there.

  “You’re going to be okay. Do you hear me?” he was asking the still figure. “Say yes if you hear me.”

  “Yes.”

  Stella knew the voice. It was Waycross.

  “No!” she heard someone scream.

  Then she realized it was her.

  Manny turned, saw her, and jumped to his feet. He ran to her and grabbed her by her shoulders. She could see tears in his eyes.

  “The kids? Is it my kids?”

  He pointed toward the person he had just been comforting. “Waycross is there. I think he’s okay.”

  She felt like her throat had closed. She could barely manage to say, “The others?”

  “Spread around.” He waved his arm, indicating the road, the ditches on either side, the fields beyond. “The damned bitch had them loose in the back of the truck.”

  Stella didn’t think to ask him where Shirley was.

  She didn’t care.

  Peering into the darkness beside the country road, she couldn’t see much, except what was illuminated by the cruiser’s and the truck’s headlights.

  Oth
er than Waycross, who was sitting up now, she saw no one.

  But she could hear her grandkids crying, and she felt her heart shattering into what felt like a thousand jagged glass shards.

  “Flashlight!” she screamed at Manny. “Gimme a flashlight!”

  He disappeared for only a moment, then raced back with two heavy-duty lights and shoved one into her hand.

  “Help’s on the way, Stella,” he said. “I called. They’re coming.”

  The next few minutes were a blur, as she raced up and down the road with Manny Gilford, locating and trying to comfort her hurt, terrified grandchildren.

  After a quick word of reassurance to Waycross, who appeared to be more frightened than hurt, they located Jesup and Cordelia, huddled in the pickup’s cab, clinging to each other and softly crying. Manny yanked the driver’s door open, then climbed down inside, gently pulled each one out, and gave them to Stella.

  “Oh, babies, don’t cry,” she told them, kissing their wet cheeks as she ran her hands over their arms, legs, and torsos, searching for wounds. “Granny’s got you, darlin’s. You’re gonna be okay.”

  She and Manny carried them over to where Waycross sat on the grass beside the road.

  “Here, sugars. You two stay here with your brother and keep him company while we round up the rest of you kids.”

  Instantly, Waycross became the protective older brother, pulling his little sisters to his sides and hugging them tightly.

  “I got ’em, Gran,” he said. “You go help the others.”

  It didn’t take long for Stella to locate Marietta, because she was shrieking her fear and indignation to the high heavens. Stella found her sitting in a large puddle of mud just off the road. Fortunately, it was soft mud, and other than a filthy, torn dress and a scrape on her elbow, she seemed okay.

  Stella led her to Waycross and the two younger girls and told her, “Sit down there and stop cryin’ if you can, sugar. You’re okay, and you’re scarin’ your little sisters.”

  “My dress is all dirty!” Marietta replied.

  Stella didn’t have time to debate the matter with her.

  She left to join Manny, who had located Alma deep in the ditch just in front of the truck. She was clinging to its bumper, her eyes wide with terror.

  As Manny pulled her out and handed her to Stella, the child’s teeth were chattering so badly that they could hardly understand her when she said, “Mama . . . Mama had . . . I think, a wreck.”

  “Yes, baby girl,” Stella said. “I think so, too. But it’s all done. The worst is over now.”

  “Are you hurt, honey?” Manny asked her, playing his flashlight beam up and down the child’s small frame.

  “Just here.” She held up her small hand, and both Stella and Manny could see that it was bruised and badly swollen.

  “Can you make a fist with your hand, Alma?” Manny asked.

  She tried but yelped from the pain it caused her.

  “That’s okay,” he told her. “You don’t need to try that anymore if it hurts.” He shot Stella a knowing look.

  The hand was probably broken. Stella could tell, and so could he.

  She hurried Alma over to the increasing knot of children and sat her down with the others. “Watch out for her hand,” she told Waycross.

  He took one look at it and said, “I will. Alma, come sit here by me.”

  Manny came running back from his cruiser with a large blanket under each arm. He tossed one to Stella, and they both wrapped several kids in each blanket.

  “We’ve still got two missing,” Stella told Manny breathlessly. “Vidalia and Savannah.”

  “Okay.” He shouted, “Vidalia! Savannah! Where are you? Holler if you hear me!”

  They paused to listen, and both heard a low moan from farther away, back down the road that the truck and they had traveled.

  “Savannah?” Stella shouted. “Vidalia?”

  Both she and Manny began running down the road, shining their flashlights into the dead weeds on either side.

  The groaning seemed louder as they went.

  “Vi? Vannah?” Stella shouted. “Where’re you at?”

  “Here. Granny, here.”

  The voice was soft and shaky, but Stella knew it well. “Savannah! Savannah! I hear you. We’re coming!”

  Manny’s light found them first.

  To the left of the road, in weeds that were so high that they nearly concealed the children, Savannah was kneeling beside Vidalia, who was lying on her back.

  Stella stumbled and fell as she dove off the road and into the brush. She felt Manny’s hand on her arm as he lifted her back onto her feet, then pulled her along until they both reached the girls.

  Savannah’s face was frightfully pale, and she had blood smeared on her cheek and neck. Her hands and arms were covered with it.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Stella said, reaching her first. “You’re hurt.”

  “Not much. The blood’s Vidalia’s.”

  Savannah nodded toward her sister. Both Manny and Stella pointed their flashlights at Vidalia and gasped at what they saw.

  Savannah had wrapped her thin denim jacket around her sister’s leg and was holding it so tightly that she was shaking from the effort, the stress of the situation, and from the December cold.

  The once blue garment was dark red, drenched in blood.

  “Her knee’s cut bad,” Savannah told them. “I couldn’t see it in the dark, but I felt the blood coming out somethin’ fierce. That’s why I put my coat around it.”

  “You did great, Savannah. No grown-up policeman could’ve done better,” Manny told her as he peeled off his jacket and laid it over Savannah’s shoulders.

  “Or policewoman?” she asked softly.

  He smiled and patted her head. “Or policewoman.”

  Stella dropped to her knees beside Vidalia and brushed her granddaughter’s tousled hair away from her face so that she could see into her eyes. “Vidalia, darlin’, it’s Granny. I’m here with you. Can you hear me?”

  Vidalia opened her eyes and nodded, but she looked weak, pale, and stunned.

  “You’re okay. Savannah took good care of you, and now we’re going to help, too. Do you understand?”

  Again, a feeble nod. Then Vidalia murmured, “What happened?”

  “You had a wreck, sugar. But it’s all done now, and ever’thing’s gonna be okay from here on out. You just rest.”

  Manny knelt on the other side of the girl and told Savannah, “You can let go, if you want to rest. I can take it from here. If that’s all right with you.”

  “It’s okay,” Savannah said, but she didn’t release her hold on her sister’s leg. “I’m afraid to let go,” she whispered to Manny. “I’m afraid that if I let go, she might bleed to . . . you know. . . .”

  “Gotcha,” he said. “I’ll hold it tight, too. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Savannah removed her hands from the bloody jacket, and for a moment, Stella thought she might faint.

  “Lay back there and rest yourself a spell,” Stella told her. “You been through a lot, too.”

  “The other kids,” Savannah said, tears beginning to streak the blood on her cheeks. “Are they . . . ?”

  “They’re okay,” Stella said. “We found ’em all. One hurt hand, some bumps and scrapes, but okay. You don’t have to worry anymore. It’s all over, and us grown-ups are gonna take care of the rest.”

  Savannah started to cry with relief but, just as quickly, got herself under control, wiped the tears away, and watched as Manny carefully unwound the jacket from Vidalia’s knee.

  She grabbed his flashlight, which he had laid on the ground, and held it steady, lighting her sister’s leg. “I’m the flashlight holder,” she said, giving her grandmother a silly, weak smile.

  “And a fine one at that,” Stella told her.

  “Let’s see what we’re dealing with here before we move her,” the sheriff said as he unwrapped the last bit of the jacket, exposing the wound.

  The
knee was badly cut from one side to the other. Blood began to flow out of it again, so he quickly replaced the wrapping. “It’s a long, deep cut,” he said, “but I don’t think it’s down to the bone. If we get her and Alma to Doc Hynson’s house, he can look at them both and tell us if he can handle it or if we’ll need to get an ambulance to take them to the clinic in Chesterville.”

  “Okay. Thank you, Sheriff,” Stella said.

  “Yes, thank you, Sheriff,” Savannah added shyly.

  “You’re welcome, ladies. Now, let’s get Miss Vidalia up to the road and into my cruiser.”

  “Can I ride in it, too? Please,” Savannah asked.

  “I think you should,” he told her. “If you’re going to be in law enforcement when you grow up, you might as well get used to riding around in one now.”

  Stella silently blessed him when she saw the bright smile on her grandchild’s face.

  Gently, carefully, Manny scooped Vidalia into his arms and carried her to the road. Stella and Savannah followed, walking hand in hand.

  When they reached the pavement, Stella thought she heard a siren coming toward them.

  “Didn’t you say you called for help?” she asked Manny.

  “First thing when I got here,” he said. “Augustus should’ve been here by now.”

  “Even if another policeman comes,” Savannah said, suddenly looking worried, “we should probably take Vi in your cop car, huh, Sheriff? You can go faster than your deputy can, and you probably know the way to the doctor better than he does, you being a sheriff and all.”

  “Yes, I’ll be taking your sister in my unit.”

  “And me, too?”

  “You and some of the other kids can also ride with me. Okay?” he replied.

  “Okay!”

  The vehicle with the siren came whipping around the curve and headed toward them. Stella could see it was a cruiser.

  Deputy Augustus Faber had arrived in all his glory. He came to a screeching, dramatic stop beside them, tires smoking, and rolled down his window.

  “What have we got, Sheriff?” he shouted.

  “What we’ve got, Deputy, is everything under control. Thanks anyway,” Gilford replied. “Hang around, though. I might have a transport for you.”