Death of a Cantankerous Old Coot (Lizzie Crenshaw Mysteries)

by Teresa Watson

  “We’re good,” I assured him. “Owen was here two hours ago, and explained why he told you to ask your questions.”

  T.J. smiled. “What can I do to help?”

  “You can check the grill to see if it is hot enough while I finish this salad. What else do you want with the steak?”

  “Nothing. I think we have enough,” he said as he walked out the back door.

  As I put my hand on the freezer door, the phone rang. I grabbed the handset off the counter. “Hello?”

  “Lizzie? It’s Dale Gordon.”

  I groaned. Dale owned the city’s newspaper. He got his journalism degree back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Rude, obnoxious and inconsiderate, he called me occasionally to ask me to write an article for his paper. “I understand you were the one who find Amos in the park this morning.”

  “No comment.”

  “Work with me here, Crenshaw. I’ve got a newspaper to run, and I need some information.”

  “So call Owen. I’m sure he’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  “I already talked to him.”

  I knew what the answer was going to be, but I asked it anyway. “What did he say?”

  “The same thing you did.”

  “Imagine that.”

  “Give me a break,” Dale growled. “I need to know what happened this morning.”

  “Well, I drove downtown…”

  “Hold on,” he interrupted, “let me grab a pen.” I could hear papers being moved around. “Okay, I’m ready. Go ahead.”

  “I drove downtown…”

  “I got that part!”

  “Do you want this story or not? I drove downtown, went to the hardware store, bought beige and blue paint, came home, and painted my shed. Right now, I’m about to grill steak…”

  All I heard was a long string of curse words. “You’re not going to help me, are you?” he finally said.

  “Nope.”

  “What if I let you write the story?”

  I thought about it. “Tempting, but no.”

  “You can have full control of the story from beginning to end. No interference from me.”

  “Wow, it must be killing you to say that.”

  “You have no idea. So how about it?”

  “Are you going to pay me?”

  I heard drawers opening and closing, followed by the rattle of a bottle, his antacids, probably. T.J. came back in and signaled the grill was ready. “Who’s on the phone?” he whispered.

  “Newspaper,” I answered as I pulled the steaks out of the fridge. He rolled his eyes, took the steaks and the corn and slipped back outside. “So, Dale, are you going to pay me or not?”

  “Am I going to get the story without paying you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Fine! I want that story on my desk first thing in the morning, Crenshaw.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Bye, Dale.”

  “Are you really going to write an article for him?” T.J. said, handing me the steak dish.

  “If Owen says it’s ok. I’m not going to give him any information that he doesn’t want released to the public. It’s going to totally infuriate Dale.”

  “What’s your beef with him?”

  “He says I’m not a real writer because I haven’t been published yet.”

  “Ouch. That’s harsh,” T.J. replied.

  “He’s been after me for three years to write for the paper. It’s just not my thing.”

  “So why don’t you?”

  I handed him a pair of tongs. “Because financially, I don’t need to. Sanity-wise, it’s better to stay far away from Dale.”

  “Why is that?”

  I followed him outside. “Because he has gone through ten reporters since I have been here. He runs them into the ground, paying them as little as possible. He doesn’t like to play by the rules.”

  “Meaning he breaks the law once in a while?”

  “Let’s just say he bends it to the point of breaking.”

  “Apparently he didn’t pass his ethics class in college.”

  I laughed. “Apparently not.”

  Thirty minutes later, dinner was ready. We made small talk while we ate. After we washed the dishes and put the food away, we sat on the swing in the backyard. The stars were just beginning to come out, twinkling like tiny LED lights. Babe curled up next to the swing and sighed. It was peaceful and quiet, until the shrill ring of T.J.’s cell phone echoed through the air. “Reynolds.” He listened for a minute, frowning. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” He stood up and started for the side gate.

  “Be where?”

  “Earline’s house,” he called over his shoulder. “Someone just blew it up.”

  Chapter 11

  It took some coaxing to convince T.J. to take me with him. We raced to the old side of town, where the Gardner homestead was located. As we turned down Heritage Road, you could see plumes of black smoke in the air. The house was located in the middle of the cul-de-sac. What was once an old gingerbread, two-story house was now a pile of orange-red flames. Pieces of the house littered the neighborhood. The Gardner’s neighbors had their garden hoses out, dousing burning pieces of wood that had fallen in their yards. Our small fire department consisted of one truck, and this blaze was more than it could handle. Apparently, the call had gone out to the neighboring towns, because the Rosewood and Greenbrier trucks were also there.

  We were forced to park in the middle of Heritage Road. I spotted Owen standing by one of the fire trucks and pointed him out to T.J.. “What happened? Where’s Earline?” I asked when we reached him.

  “No one knows,” Owen replied. “Her Cadillac, or what is left of it, is here, but we aren’t sure if she was in the house or not.”

  “So why don’t they send someone in there to check?”

  “Perhaps you haven’t noticed, Lizzie, but there isn’t much left of the house for anyone to check!” Owen snapped.

  “Who called it in?” T.J. asked.

  “Nobody called it in. I was on my way here to talk to Earline. When I turned onto Heritage, the whole place went up like a Roman candle.”

  “Did the explosion come from the center of the house?” T.J. replied.

  Owen shook his head. “No, it came from the left side of the house.”

  “Where the garage is,” I noted.

  We all looked in that direction. The burned out bulk of the Cadillac sat on the concrete slab of what was once the garage. The firefighters had already put the fire out there. “Do you think Earline was in the car?” I asked.

  “Let me talk to one of the guys,” Owen said, walking off. He managed to talk to the fire chief, who gestured at the garage and shook his head. After a few minutes, Owen came back. By the grim look on his face, I knew the news was not good. “I guess you’d better plan a double funeral, Lizzie.”

  I gasped. Granted, Earline was not my favorite person in the world, but I wouldn’t wish a death like this on my worst enemy. Owen wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “Maybe you should call your mom now.” I nodded, unable to say anything.

  “Obviously this has something to do with Amos’ murder,” T.J. pointed out. “It can’t be a coincidence that both died within twelve hours of each other.”

  “It can’t be over the lawsuit,” I said. “Amos didn’t have a leg to stand on, and he knew it. He was just being a stubborn old coot.”

  “What about the men at the hardware store?” T.J. asked. “Has anyone interviewed them yet?”

  “Do you have any idea how long Amos’ enemies list is?” Owen replied. “I might as well just go door to door and interview everyone.”

  “Quit being so overdramatic,” I said. “Why don’t you just ask his lawyer?”

  “Because his lawyer will cite client/lawyer privilege,” Owen said.

  “What client? Amos is dead, and someone blew up Earline! He doesn’t have any clients left.”

  “Or you could just go to City Hall and dig through the court records.” We l
ooked at T.J.. “What?”

  “I don’t think I have enough manpower for that kind of research,” Owen said. “Amos spent his days harassing anyone who crossed him. Either he was suing someone, or they were suing him.”

  “T.J. has a point. He did seem to go after certain people more than others.”

  “It doesn’t matter if he’s right or not,” Owen countered, “I don’t have the manpower to commit to it.” He looked at me. “Unless you’re volunteering for the job, Lizzie.”

  I moved away from him. “Forget it. As I pointed out this afternoon, this is part of your job, not mine.”

  “Outside consultant or temporary office help. I’m sure I can get approval from the city council to hire you for a couple of days.”

  I snorted. “The fact that the head of the city council is your mother is a total coincidence, right?”

  He grinned. “Perhaps.”

  I looked back at the remains of the house. The fire was completely out; the only thing still standing was the brick fireplace. Amos may have deserved what he got, but not Earline. “Ok, I’ll help. But I should warn you that Dale Gordon wants me to cover this story.”

  “That might be a good thing,” Owen said. “I can control the amount of information that gets out to the public, which will drive Gordon insane.”

  The medical examiner’s van parked behind Owen’s car, and Dr. Marvin Endicott got out. “Sheriff,” he nodded, looking toward the house. “I take it there is a victim?”

  “Fire chief says there’s a body in the car, probably Earline Gardner.”

  “Damn shame,” Dr. Endicott said, shaking his head. “Mighty nice woman, when she wasn’t with Amos.” I looked at him. “Yes, I’m talking about the same woman who was dancing around the park this morning. She wasn’t always mean and nasty. He made her that way. But every once in a while, she flashed the good side of her.”

  “What about Amos’ autopsy? Did you finish that yet?” Owen asked him.

  “State crime boys tried to take the body, but I reminded them that I was the county medical examiner and therefore I had the right to take him. He died of the bullet to the brain, in one side and out the other. Better he went that way than the way he was going.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “According to the medical records I got from Dr. Booth, Amos was dying of Stage 4 lung cancer. He had maybe nine months to a year at the most.”

  This was the first I had heard about it, and I was sure my mother didn’t know, either. “Did Earline know?”

  “Yes, she did. She came to me, asking about hospice care for him. I gave her a contact list.”

  “What about treatments? Didn’t he try any of those?”

  Dr. Endicott shook his head. “Booth said Amos was being his usual pigheaded self about that. Didn’t want any heroic measures. He had a DNR in his file.”

  “What’s a DNR?”

  “Do not resuscitate.”

  “What in the hell is going on around here?” a familiar female voice yelled.

  We turned around and gasped. Standing in the middle of the street was Earline Gardner, looking very much alive and well.

  Chapter 12

  After I had dropped off the article Dale wanted, I stopped at the café for breakfast. Earline’s miraculous “return” from the dead was the talk of the café Saturday morning. The biggest speculation was reserved for whose body was in the pink Cadillac.

  “Probably somebody trying to steal her car,” Gladys said to Charlene and Iris, who nodded in agreement.

  “If you want a man’s opinion,” Harold Norwell, Gladys’ husband, replied, “Earline rigged her car to blow up and hightailed it out of there.”

  “You don’t know what you are talking about, Harold,” Gladys retorted. “Why would she do a thing like that?”

  “To collect the insurance money, of course,” he said wisely. “She is a money-grubbing…”

  Gladys glared at him. “If anyone was going to blow up their house for insurance money, it would have been Amos. He was always looking for a way to make a fast buck.”

  “Why would she put a body in the car if she was trying to claim the insurance money?” Iris said. “If she was declared dead, she wouldn’t get any money.”

  “Hey, stranger.” I looked up to see Trixie Greene standing next to me. Even when she wore jeans and a t-shirt, she looked better than any other woman in the room did. “What are you doing here so early?” she said, sitting down next to me.

  “I had a deadline to make this morning, so I decided to come here for breakfast.”

  “Translated, you came in here to listen to the gossip,” she laughed.

  “What’s your excuse?”

  “I came to listen to the gossip.” She placed an order with Carla. “So, what have I missed so far?”

  “Gladys thinks the dead body is a car thief, and Harold thinks Earline blew it up herself.”

  “And Gladys basically told Harold he was an idiot.”

  “Basically. Others seem to think it was just an accident and that Earline was lucky to be alive.”

  “You don’t think it was an accident, do you?” she said.

  I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

  “But…?”

  “But I don’t think it was an accident.”

  “Owen doesn’t either,” Trixie said. “He came by the house late last night and talked to Mother for a while. I couldn’t hear all of their conversation, but he did ask her about the lawsuits Amos had filed against the club.”

  “Is there anybody in town Amos didn’t sue?”

  “Maybe Earline.”

  Carla brought Trixie’s breakfast, which consisted of scrambled eggs, crispy bacon and buttermilk biscuits with homemade strawberry jam. “Owen told me that a deputy would be coming out to the club to interview me. Do you know who it is?”

  “His name is T.J. Reynolds.”

  “And?”

  “And what? You asked for a name.”

  “Oh come on, girl, give me the details!”

  “Handsome.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Draw your own conclusions when you see him.”

  Spreading some jam on a biscuit, she said, “Owen tells me that you had dinner with the deputy last night.”

  “Yes, we did.”

  “Just dinner?”

  “There was hardly time for anything else, considering Earline’s house went up in a million pieces.”

  “Hm,” Trixie murmured, taking a bite of the biscuit. “Did you want something more to happen?”

  “Oh good grief, Trix, I just met the guy yesterday, over the dead body of my estranged grandfather! Hardly an appropriate place to pick up a date, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Honey, I see all kinds of hook ups at my club. I don’t think there is an ideal place to pick a person up. If the sparks fly over a dead body, God forgive me, then go for it!”

  I pulled some money out of my back pocket, left it on the counter, and stood up. “I’m not looking right now, Trix. He’s a nice guy, but I’m not interested in a relationship.”

  She laughed. “Most people aren’t looking for a relationship, Lizzie, it just happens. Owen said he could tell you two were very interested in each other last night. Go for it. Who knows, maybe it’ll give your writing the spark you say it’s missing.”

  “Have you thought about writing an advice column for the newspaper, Trixie? You’d be great at it.”

  “I give out advice like that every day at the club. And I get paid better money for it than I could ever get at the newspaper.”

  “Just a suggestion.” I gave her a hug. “Go easy on T.J. when he comes to see you. He has preconceptions about gentlemen’s clubs.”

  “Oh, he expects them to be filled with scantily-clad women and sex-starved men, does he? I will be very happy to rid him of those ideas when he comes out there.”

  I headed for the door when she said, “One more thing. Do you want me to find out if he’
s interested in you?”

  Every head in the room turned to look at me. I felt my face flush. “Your choice. I told you I’m not interested in a relationship right now.”

  “I know what you told me, Lizzie. But if you aren’t interested, then why is your face turning bright red?”

  I couldn’t think of a response, so I left. Before I could get into my car, T.J. pulled up. I glanced over my shoulder and noticed Gladys, Iris and Charlene gawking at him as he got out and walked over to me. “Hello, Lizzie,” T.J. said. “How are you this morning?”

  “Just fine, thank you for asking.”

  “I was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute.”

  I could feel three sets of eyes burning a hole in the middle of my back. Grabbing his arm, I steered him across the street toward the park. “Let’s talk over here, away from prying eyes and curious minds.”

  We sat down on a bench, not far from the merry-go-round. “I was wondering if you would…” he faltered.