Murder Shoots the Bull

by Anne George

  I thought of Sophie lying across the seat of Arthur’s car, the convulsions wracking her. Poison? I felt cold again.

  Woofer came out of his doghouse and ambled over to the oak tree that he has left a white line around over the years. He marked his territory again, stretched, and lay down in the sun.

  But Mitzi wasn’t going to let me escape. She took several sips of coffee and continued.

  “I said, ‘Lord, Arthur, maybe it was something she was deathly allergic to, especially with her diabetes.’”

  I nodded. “Arthur was eating some peanut stuff. A lot of people are allergic to peanuts, just being around them. And there’s all kinds of stuff like monosodium glutamate in Chinese restaurants.”

  “He said no. It was some kind of poison.” Mitzi put her cup down. “And you know what was ironic? Sophie had told her girls that if anything happened to her, they were to call Arthur, and he was the one who had to call them.”

  “Sounds like she was scared something was going to happen.”

  Mitzi shrugged. “She knew she was sick.”

  “True.”

  “But he said that last night he felt like he was just in the way. There wasn’t anything he could do for Arabella and Sue. Maybe comfort them a little. Sue and her husband live down in Pelham. She pretty much fell apart.”

  “That’s understandable.” I looked at the newspaper again. One tiny paragraph stating the fact that a woman had died a violent death. Somehow there should be more. There were sixty-four years here of loving, and child-bearing, of work and fun, and, yes, suffering.

  The phone rang again. I ignored it. The answering machine would pick it up.

  “Mary Alice again, you think?” Mitzi asked.

  “Probably. Let me pour you some more coffee.”

  “No, but thanks. I have to go. I need to go get myself cleaned up. Get myself pulled together.” Mitzi pushed her chair back. The phone quit ringing; the machine picked up.

  I followed her to the door. “Where’s Arthur this morning? Is he at home?”

  “He’s gone to the office. He said he had some work he had to do. I don’t think he’ll stay long, though. He’s too upset, and neither one of us got a wink of sleep last night.” Mitzi turned and hugged me. “Thanks for listening.”

  “Anytime. Call me if you need me to do anything. And, listen. Don’t worry about Bridget moving to Atlanta. It’s just a couple of hours drive.”

  “Two hours too far.”

  I watched her go over and pat Woofer before she opened the gate and went into her own yard. Amazing. I had lived next to Mitzi and Arthur for almost forty years and thought I knew the basic facts of their lives. Well, scratch that belief.

  The phone rang again. I almost didn’t answer it because I needed time to sit down and digest what Mitzi had told me. But, figuring it was Mary Alice and that she would call every five minutes, I picked it up and said hello.

  “Aunt Pat?” Debbie whispered.

  “What’s the matter? Why are you whispering?”

  “Because Lisa’s in the bathroom.”

  “Lisa who?”

  “Lisa, your daughter-in-law Lisa.”

  “Lisa? What’s she doing here?”

  “She’s left Alan.”

  Granted, my nerves were already shot from Mitzi’s visit. Now, with this news, I was so shocked, I couldn’t think of anything to say. Alan is our middle child and he and Lisa were married the week they graduated from college. They have two sons, Charlie and Sam, and a nice house in the suburbs of Atlanta. They are our good yuppie children who are leading the great American middle-class life.

  “Aunt Pat? You okay?”

  “She’s at your house right now?”

  “In the bathroom. She’s real upset. She may be throwing up.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. Do you think you could come over here, though? Just act like you’re dropping in?”

  While I was trying to absorb this information, Debbie whispered, “Gotta go,” and the phone went dead.

  And there I was on the horns of a mother-in-law dilemma. If Lisa had wanted me to know about their separation, she could have come to my house. Instead, she had gone to Debbie’s. On the other hand, what in the world was she doing in Birmingham, anyway? Just a few weeks earlier, she and Alan had been at Haley’s wedding and had seemed lovey-dovey. Maybe too lovey-dovey?

  I didn’t balance on the horns long. Resisting the urge to crawl back in the bed and pull the cover over my head, I brushed my teeth, combed my hair, checked on Woofer who was enjoying rolling over and scratching his back in the grass, and was off to Debbie’s in all of five minutes.

  Debbie answered the door with a bright and loud, “Why, Aunt Pat, what a surprise. Come in. You’re not going to guess who’s here.”

  This child will never be standing with an outstretched hand saying “You like me! You like me!” on Oscar night. Sally Field is perfectly safe.

  My performance wasn’t any better.

  “Oh?” I said, just as brightly. “Who?”

  “Lisa. She just came in from Atlanta.”

  “Lisa? Why how wonderful.”

  I walked past Debbie into the living room where my daughter-in-law was sitting on the sofa. Sitting isn’t the right word. More like crouched into the corner.

  “Well, this is a surprise, honey. How are you?”

  Stupid question. She looked like hell. Her eyes were almost swollen shut from crying, and her hair, usually a smooth, shiny reddish brown, was white and standing up in spikes.

  I’d heard of this, someone’s hair turning white overnight because of a trauma. It had happened to the father in Twin Peaks, still one of my favorite TV shows. But this was my first time to witness it.

  “I’m fine,” she said, reaching over to the coffee table for another Kleenex and blowing her nose. “I’ve left Alan.”

  “I’ll get us some tea,” Debbie said in her fake cheerful voice.

  “You have any Tums?” I asked.

  “Always.” Debbie disappeared into the kitchen, and I turned to look at Lisa.

  “Is Alan okay?”

  “I reckon.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “No.” Then the polite Southern child. “No, ma’am.”

  I sat in a chair facing the sofa. “What about the boys? How are they?”

  “They’re fine. They’re in school.”

  “What about when they get out of school?”

  “They’ve got keys.” A reach for another Kleenex.

  Un huh. I digested this news for a moment. Charlie and Sam were borderline, as far as I was concerned, for being left totally unsupervisd.

  “I left them a note,” Lisa volunteered.

  Great. The kids would come home from school and find a note saying their mother had left their father. And them.

  “What about Alan? Does he know you’ve left?”

  Lisa sighed and burrowed deeper into the sofa corner. “He will when he gets home. Whenever that is.”

  “But you don’t want to talk about it?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Excuse me a minute, Lisa.” I got up and went into the kitchen where Debbie was pouring tea into three glasses.

  “Did she say anything?” she asked.

  “Just that she left the boys a note saying she’d gone and that Alan would find out whenever he got home.”

  “Whenever?” Debbie raised an eyebrow.

  I shrugged. “I can’t imagine what’s going on. I don’t know whether I should call Alan or not. He really needs to know where she is.” I looked at my watch. “She must have barreled over here.”

  “You want me to call him? I don’t care if he thinks I’m butting in.”

  “Would you?” I handed the job over to Debbie without a moment’s hesitation. Fred’s mother, the only woman in the world who could put the fear of God into Mary Alice, had taught me the hard way to stay out of my children’s marital problems. “You have the num
ber?”

  She pointed to a bulletin board and handed me a bottle of Tums.

  I took a couple and chewed them gratefully. “Find out what’s going on if you can. Just ask him.”

  “I will.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “This is turning out to be the day from hell. Mitzi Phizer’s just been over to the house telling me about Arthur’s first wife getting murdered.”

  “My Lord, Aunt Pat. Whose first wife?”

  “Arthur Phizer next door’s, Debbie. It seems that he was married when he was a teenager to a woman named Sophie Vaughn. The police think she was poisoned yesterday. In fact, your mama and I were there when she died. Right outside the Hunan Hut.”

  “What, Aunt Pat? I’m confused.”

  “So am I. I’ll explain it later. Where are the twins?”

  “At the park with Richardena.”

  “Every mother should have a Richardena.”

  “I’m blessed.”

  I picked up two of the glasses and started back into the living room when I realized Debbie probably shouldn’t even be at home.

  “You working at home this morning?” I asked.

  “I have to be in court in an hour.”

  “Well, don’t let this hold you up. I’ll try to find out what’s going on.”

  Lisa was scrunched down even farther in the corner of the sofa.

  “Here’s your tea,” I said. “Sit up and drink some of it. It’ll make you feel better.”

  “Alan doesn’t love me any more,” she sniffled.

  “Of course he does.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  I was in no mood to stand there holding cold glasses.

  “Well, be that as it may, here’s your tea.” I put Lisa’s glass on the coffee table and sat down. I glanced at my watch. Not quite 10:30. If I hadn’t retired from teaching last year, I would be in my AP Modern British Lit class. September. We’d be doing Yeats, the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun, and the smell of frying chicken would be permeating the building. I wouldn’t have met Sophie Sawyer at the Hunan Hut or found out about her murder this morning. I wouldn’t be sitting here wondering what was going on with my son and his wife. I’d be insulated in a classroom. Just me and twenty sweet, well-behaved teenagers, all of whom had been cleared by the metal detector at the front door.

  I swear I felt tears in my eyes.

  Lisa sat up and reached for her glass. It was my first close look at her white spikey hair which I realized immediately was the result of peroxide, not trauma.

  “My God! What have you done to your hair?”

  It just popped out, and I could have bitten my tongue. But Lisa didn’t seem to take offense.

  She patted the spikes. “This beautician in Atlanta did it. I’m supposed to look like one of the Spice Girls. I don’t know which one.”

  I didn’t either. I’d seen the Spice Girls on Regis and Kathie Lee and didn’t remember a Spike Spice.

  “Alan hates it. I told him, I said, Tough titty, Alan. It’s my hair and my head.”

  “And what did Alan say?”

  “He said my brains are scrambled.” Lisa put the tea back on the table without drinking any. For a moment she stayed hunched over.

  “He may be right,” she added.

  “Of course he’s not,” I assured her, trying to be a good mother-in-law.

  The phone rang and Debbie answered it in the kitchen. I hoped it was Alan calling back, but in a moment she stuck her head into the living room and told me her mama wanted to speak to me.

  “Did you get him?” I whispered as I went past her.

  “Not yet.”

  I picked up the phone and said hello.

  Sister informed me that she had had a terrible time finding me, that I really needed a pager.

  Right. For all the emergencies that come up while I’m at the Piggly Wiggly.

  “Listen,” I said, “I can’t talk now. We’re trying to get in touch with Alan.”

  “For what? What’s wrong?”

  “Lisa’s here. She says she’s left him. We’re trying to find out what’s going on.”

  “What does Lisa say is going on?”

  “She says she doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  “That means she does. Call me back as soon as you can. You’ve got to hear about Cedric.”

  I was suddenly exhausted. “Listen,” I said. “I don’t want to hear about Cedric. I don’t want to hear about some Englishman’s pencil thin whatever when serious things are happening like people getting poisoned.”

  “Lisa’s poisoned?”

  Lord. I hung up the phone, marched back into the living room and told Lisa that she was going home with me, that Debbie had to go to work, and that the nanny would be back in a little while with the girls.

  “Okay,” she said and stood up. I had expected some argument, but she seemed to be beyond arguing. Which suited me.

  The phone rang again.

  “If it’s your mama, tell her it’s Sophie Sawyer who got poisoned, I’m sorry I hung up on her, and I’ll talk to her later.” I gave Debbie a hug, and ushered Lisa out to the car.

  So here I was, on a beautiful late summer, early fall day, with Spike Spice for a daughter-in-law, a next-door neighbor whose husband was attracting disasters like fleas, and a loony sixty-four- (really sixty-six) year-old sister who was sleeping with every Tom, Dick, and Cedric. Lord.

  Six

  When we got home, I suggested to Lisa that she lie down on the guest-room bed for a while.

  Again there was no arguing. She asked for a couple of aspirin, took them, and disappeared down the hall. When I checked on her a few minutes later, she was already asleep, curled up like a child, her hand cupping her cheek.

  I spread a light blanket over her and saw tears at the corner of her eyes. Lisa has long, dark lashes, and their shadows made the circles under her eyes seem even deeper.

  Damn it. Alan had better have some good explanation for this.

  I closed the door, went back to the den, and called Debbie.

  No, she hadn’t gotten Alan, and she was about to leave. She had left word on his voice mail, though, that Lisa was at my house. And her mama had wanted to know who Sophie Sawyer was and she had told her Mr. Phizer’s first wife. That was what I had said. Right? Mama hadn’t believed it.

  I told her it was, and thanks. Then I went out and sat on the steps to wait for Mary Alice.

  But I was wrong. She was a no-show. I finally went in, fixed some tuna fish salad, decided that wasn’t what I wanted and ended up with a peanut butter and banana sandwich and a glass of milk which I ate while I watched Jeopardy!

  Lisa slept.

  I called to see if Mitzi was okay and got an immediate pick-up on her answering machine which meant she was on the phone. Busy, probably, helping to make arrangements for Sophie’s funeral, something Mitzi would be nice enough to do even though Sophie had had first dibs on Arthur. Maybe, I thought, I ought to carry some food over. After all, it was a death in a neighboring family. Sort of.

  I looked in the freezer to see if I had something like a squash casserole that I could take over. Wishful thinking. I did have two packages of Stouffer’s spinach souffle, though. I dumped them into a small casserole dish, added a little butter, and stuck them into the microwave. In ten minutes I was headed across the yard with a neighborly offering of hot food. We do live in good times.

  But no one was home at the Phizers’. I got back to my driveway just as Mary Alice pulled in.

  “You’re late,” I said.

  “Don’t be tacky.” She unstuck herself from between the steering wheel and the seat and climbed out. “What’s in the casserole?”

  “Spinach souffle.”

  “Stouffer’s?”

  “I added some butter.”

  “Remember how gritty spinach used to be? Mama would wash it over and over and it would still be gritty. The only thing that saved it was the sliced hard-boiled egg on top. Lord, I hated sp
inach. You could pick it up and look under it and there was green grit.”

  “There was not. Mama washed it better than that.”

  “There was, too. Green grit. Made funny noises on your teeth and we thought we had to eat it because it made Popeye strong. He always ate the canned, though.”

  “The canned’s bitter.”

  “Put a little sugar in it. In fact, Henry says the secret to all good cooking is a little sugar.”

  “Really?” I was in awe of Mary Alice’s new son-in-law’s culinary skills. Sugar. How about that.

  The spinach conversation had gotten us to the back door.

  “Okay,” Mary Alice said, holding it open for me, “Who’s dead and who’s getting divorced? I think Debbie was a little confused.”

  I set the casserole on the stove. “Nobody’s getting divorced. The dead person is the same lady we saw yesterday with Arthur Phizer. She was murdered.”

  “That’s what Debbie said, but I can’t believe it. What happened?” Sister sat down at the kitchen table and pulled off her shoes. “Lord,” she said, reaching down and squeezing her foot. “These shoes are at least a size and a half too small. Cuts off the circulation. But it was the only pair they had in this style.”

  “Somebody poisoned her is what happened. Mitzi came over this morning and said she and Arthur were up all night. It seems this lady who was killed was Arthur’s first wife and he’s very upset.” I thought about this for a minute. “Not that he wouldn’t have been upset anyway having a woman die on the front seat of his car. I know it would upset me.”

  Sister looked up from the foot massaging. “Debbie told me that, too. I didn’t know Arthur had been married before.”

  “It was a teenage thing. Their folks had it annulled. But he’s still shaken up, of course. It’s in the paper. Poison.”

  “Yuck.”

  I handed Sister the newspaper which was still on the table and she read the notice.

  “That doctor said it was her heart, Mouse. The one in the white tennis shorts.”

  A heart in white tennis shorts? Fighting Sister’s grammar is a losing battle. So all I said was, “Well, maybe her heart was bad, too. Mitzi said she had diabetes and a lot of circulatory problems. Maybe that’s why she was having trouble walking yesterday.” I sat down across from Sister. “Mitzi said that now she wouldn’t have to suffer.”