A Murder in Mount Moriah

by Mindy Quigley

  “Well this sure is a surprise!” Warren exclaimed. “When did you get back into town? You were living up in Columbus, right?”

  Lindsay rose from the couch and hugged her old friend. “Yes, I was up North for a few years after I graduated from college. But I’ve been back in Mount Moriah for about two years now. Have you been here that whole time? I can’t believe we haven’t run into each other.”

  “I’m over in New Albany. I don’t get over this way much and when I do, I’m afraid it’s only for work. I work on violent crimes—thugs and drugs—so I tend not to see ‘normal’ people very regularly. At least not while they’re still alive.” A flush rose in his cheeks, highlighting a smattering of freckles. “Sorry, Kimberlee. I really am sorry about your loss.”

  “Of course, honey.”

  Lindsay registered a bizarre disconnect in Kimberlee’s expression. For a moment, the lower half of Kimberlee’s face was fixed into a polite smile. Her eyes, however, flashed like daggers.

  Kimberlee cleared her throat. “So, is there any news on the investigation?”

  “The SBI lab over down in Raleigh is still running some tests on all those reenacting guns we collected out there, but we haven’t turned up anything.”

  “Why don’t you come in and sit down awhile? Lindsay here was just having some fruit. What can I get you? I’ve got cold chicken and berry cobbler. Do you want a sandwich? Some sweet tea?”

  “I’m all right, thanks.”

  “I’ll just make you up a little plate, then.”

  Kimberlee flitted off to the kitchen. Hearing the clinking of cutlery and the opening of the fridge, Lindsay realized now how lucky she was to escape with only a fruit basket.

  “It’s a real pleasant surprise to see you here, Lindsay. I didn’t know you and Kimberlee were friends.”

  “I’ve run into her a few times over the years, but only in passing. I’m a chaplain at the hospital. Kimberlee called me up when they brought Vernon in, and I stayed with her while he was in a coma and when he passed away. Now I’m doing the memorial service.”

  “A chaplain? I can’t believe nobody told me that! I guess it’s been a long time since I ran into anybody from the old crowd.”

  “They probably wouldn’t remember me, anyway. You were the only jock who condescended to talk to me.”

  “Condescended, hell! If it wasn’t for you, I never would have passed Trigonometry. And thank goodness I did pass. After I wrecked my elbow pitching senior year, all the big schools that had been dangling scholarship offers suddenly disappeared. Wofford was the only place that would have me, because I had halfway decent grades. Without a college education, I never could have made sergeant this fast. So I owe my whole career to Lindsay Harding, the math whiz!”

  Lindsay rolled her eyes. “I’m sure all of your success as a police officer is down to the Trig homework I helped you with when we were sixteen.”

  “Absolutely,” Warren said, nodding earnestly. “People think police work is all clues and leads and suspects, but really, we solve a lot of cases with cosines and tangents. We plug all the variables into a special computer, do some calculations, and it spits out a list of suspects.”

  “Really?”

  “Um, no,” Warren said, laughing good-naturedly. “That would at least make things interesting. We get at most three murders a year, and usually the suspects are just obvious. Two guys argue over a girl in a bar. One of them ends up beaten to Jell-O salad with a tire iron. You search the other guy’s car and find a bloody tire iron. Case closed. Every once in awhile, one comes my way that takes a little more proving—someone killed for the insurance money or something. A couple years ago, I had a woman try to put out a hit on her ex-husband over custody of their cockatoo. Ninety-nine percent of the time, though, it ain’t exactly CSI. The real hard part is doing everything exactly by the book so the charges will stand up in court.”

  Kimberlee returned, bearing two plates laden with sandwiches, fried chicken, coleslaw, and pie.

  “You looked hungry, Lindsay, so I brought you a little something.” She took a seat on the pink leather La-Z-Boy chair opposite them. “Well, Warren, what is it you want to know?”

  Chapter 7

  “We just need to find out a little more about Vernon,” Warren began, opening a small, spiral-bound notebook. “What he did, who his friends were. I know you already went over a lot of this with the Mount Moriah police, but there are still a few pieces missing. I wanted to talk to you more informal, you see, because we know each other from way back.”

  “All right, then. Shoot,” Kimberlee said.

  “Well, I’ll start with an easy one. How did you and Vernon meet?”

  Lindsay sensed an undercurrent of seriousness in Warren’s tone that belied his friendly words. She suddenly felt out of place. “Should I leave you guys to hash through this?” she asked.

  “No, honey,” Kimberlee said. “Just sit yourself down and enjoy your food. I’m sure this won’t take long.” She turned to Warren and began an exhaustive retelling of her early courtship with Vernon, detailing everything from what Vernon wore when she first saw him (“…jean shorts and a light blue polo shirt and light blue is my favorite color so I knew that was a good sign…”) to the pizza toppings on the first meal they shared (“…pepperoni with mushroom and extra cheese, and I said, ‘That’s my favorite, too,’ and Vernon said…”).

  “How did you end up going to college in Boston, anyway?” Warren asked, trying to derail a blow-by-blow recounting of Kimberlee and Vernon’s fourth date (…to a Red Sox game. We sat in the fifth row, behind the Sox’s dugout, and Vernon caught a foul ball, which I still have around here somewhere if you want to see it…).

  “It was a music conservatory. I got a scholarship for banjo performance. My sister Kathilee went there, too. Don't you remember? We used to play at school assemblies and stuff. The Bullard Banjettes?”

  Warren flipped through his notes. “As a matter of fact, I wanted to ask you about that very thing. Didn’t you gals usually play at the reenactment?”

  “Yes, sir. I was there every year for the past 13 years. Except for this one.” Kimberlee paused. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to redo that day since it happened. Maybe if I had been there, I would have noticed something. Maybe I would have seen Vernon fall and made them check on him sooner.” As she spoke these last words, Kimberlee’s joviality rushed out of her. She sat for a moment, her hazel eyes suddenly the color of thunderclouds.

  “Why didn’t y’all play this year?” Warren pressed.

  “Well, the Banjettes did play. All except me. We had a catering order to get out for that evening. Silas Richards’s daughter’s pre-engagement party? They’re having the real engagement party in a couple of weeks out at the country club, so this was the pre-engagement one where all of them that are planning the real engagement party can get together. The groom is from New Albany. Morgan Partee? Maybe you know him? His daddy owns Partee Auto World? Anyway, Momma couldn’t fix all the food and pack it up by herself so I stayed at the restaurant and helped her cook.”

  “It was your idea to stay behind?”

  “I think it was Vernon who suggested it. Or maybe Momma,” she said with a vague wave of her hand. “I can’t rightly recall.”

  “Couldn’t somebody else have helped your mother so that you could perform at the reenactment? You guys have some hired help out there, don’t you?”

  “Well, I suppose one of the guys that work in the kitchen could have stayed behind, but they all wanted to go out to the reenactment with their kids. They all have kids, you see, and that Civil War stuff is fun for them,” Kimberlee replied.

  “You didn’t like watching the reenactments?”

  “You’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all. I mean, I’m glad Vernon had a hobby that he enjoyed so much, but that was his thing, not mine.”

  “So you just worked at the restaurant all day with your mother?”

  “Yes, I told you that already,�
�� Kimberlee said.

  Lindsay was feeling increasingly uncomfortable as Warren’s pretence of a friendly chat began to fall away. It was now clear that there was a deeper motive behind his visit. Warren also seemed to sense Kimberlee’s darkening mood, and he changed his tack. He took a bite of fried chicken smacked his lips. “Now that is a beautiful piece of poultry. I swear the Bullards can do voodoo with a deep fryer.” He settled himself back into the pink leather couch. “Now then, how did Vernon get interested in reenacting?”

  “It was the movie Glory, really,” said Kimberlee, brightening a little. “You know? The one with Morgan Freeman? Even in his history classes in college, Vernon had never heard that black soldiers played such a big part in the actual fighting of the war. He did some looking and next thing I knew he’d up and joined with the US Troops Colored Infantry Regiment in Massachusetts.

  “Keith, my brother, is a big history buff, too. When we moved back here last year, he and Vernon thought it would be funny if Vernon switched to the other side. It was kind of a joke at first between them—a black rebel soldier. Vernon found out, though, that there were a few black guys who fought on the Confederate side. Slaves that went into battle alongside their masters and some free blacks who sided with the South for whatever reason. He and Keith signed up together to start reenacting with the local group here.

  “A lot of the reenactors take on personas, you know. They pretend to be a specific person from history. Vernon’s ‘impression’—that’s what their pretend self is called—was based on an actual guy from North Carolina, from Alamance county, in fact. A freed slave named Samuel Wilcox who kept a journal about his life. Vernon was researching every detail he could find about that man’s life. I can’t say I ever understood the appeal of any of it. Who wants to spend their free time reading some dusty old book? But he loved it. Every spare weekend, he’d pass hours in the library—finding out what Samuel Wilcox ate for breakfast on a Monday morning in 1862. That kind of thing. He spent so much time and money scouring eBay and all these specialized reenacting sites for the right kind of clothes to wear. And then going out to these events, or battles, or whatever you call them, every few months.”

  “Sounds like a serious hobby. He must have been pretty gung ho.”

  “Oh, he liked to be authentic, in terms of the history stuff and the clothes, but he wasn’t really hardcore. Not compared to some others. His regiment was mostly farby guys.”

  “Farby?”

  “Far be it from authentic. Farbs. That’s what the real hardcore guys call guys like Vernon. The Hardcores sleep outside before the battles and spoon together in the dirt to keep warm. They go number two outside.” She pursed her lips, clearly horrified. “They even starve themselves to look thin, like real soldiers. Vernon liked his indoor plumbing and he was most certainly never one for starving himself!”

  Lindsay wondered if her erstwhile date, Doyle, might eventually become a Hardcore. Certainly peeing on your clothing must be some kind of gateway excretion. It was a slippery slope between that and al fresco pooping.

  “Still, you said that his reenacting took up a lot of his time and money.” Warren said.

  “He did spend a fair amount of money on it, but I don’t reckon it was any worse a hobby than golf or fishing.”

  “And money was not a problem for you guys?”

  Kimberlee eyed him warily. Asking about another person’s intimate marital finances was not a fitting thing to do in mixed company. A Southerner should know better. “We did all right.”

  Warren would not be bought off with this evasive half-reply. “How good is all right?”

  Kimberlee frowned, regarding Warren as one might regard a child who takes off his pants at a church picnic. “Well, if you must know, we did quite well. When we moved back down here, Vernon worked for the city manager’s office, with their databases. He had an idea, though, that Momma and Daddy could expand Bullard’s catering business by doing fancy barbecues at people’s houses. I remember he said that he wanted to ‘bring down-home nostalgia food to the Southern Living crowd’. Momma and Daddy didn’t cotton on at first, but they let him try it out. He printed up some fancy menus on real thick, shiny paper. They made Bullard’s food sound like something from a French bistro. ‘Pulled pork and vinegar sauce’ became ‘slow-smoked, fork-shredded shoulder of Carolina pork, served in cider jus’. Instead of using Styrofoam plates and paper napkins, he served the food on china and poured the sweet tea with crystal pitchers. It caught on faster than a deer tick on a dog’s behind. After that first summer, he quit his job and started working full-time for Bullard’s. Since then, the money’s been good.”

  “Kimberlee, this question’s real important. Was there anyone that didn’t like Vernon? Any disagreements with any of the other reenactors?”

  “Of course not,” she said defensively. “Everyone loved him. He was a real nice and friendly person. They all were. We’ve had them over to the house for cookouts, for heaven’s sake. All of them got along.” She crossed her arms and turned toward Lindsay. “You know, this is just like TV. They always ask if the victim had any enemies. Why do police always ask that?” She turned back toward Warren and continued, “Wouldn’t I have already told you right away if there was somebody I thought could have killed him?”

  “I’m sure you would have. But sometimes it’s not obvious. When people cast their minds back over things, after something has happened, sometimes it changes how you see things. Can you do that for me a second? Just think about the last few weeks and think if there was anything at all unusual. Did Vernon act strange? Any unusual phone calls at the house? Anything at all? Just close your eyes a minute and think on it.”

  Kimberlee frowned, but dutifully closed her eyes. She nodded her head slightly back and forth, as if she were watching the past play like a silent film across her mind. After a moment, she stopped and her eyes sprang open suddenly.

  “You know, I almost don’t want to say this, because I don’t want to admit that you were right about the remembering, but I do remember something. I’m not going to say ‘It’s probably nothing,’ because that’s what they say on TV when they think of the thing that they didn’t think of before. Vernon said that he’d read something in that diary—Samuel Wilcox’s—that he said was going to be big. That a lot of people would be real interested. He was excited over it. More than excited, even. Agitated, is what I’d say. He didn’t want to say too much about it right then, he said, because he wanted to look into it some more. I never really asked about his history stuff, because it was about as interesting to me as a tree made out of wood. I only remember it because of how he was acting.”

  “I don’t suppose you have a copy of that diary?”

  “I’m afraid not. It’s a one-of-a-kind type of thing. They keep it in a special room down at the county library. Vernon had to go down there whenever he wanted to look at it.”

  “Did Vernon keep notes?”

  “Not that I know of. I think he just read it.”

  Warren jotted a few things down in his notebook and then flicked the cover shut. “Well, I think that’s about all for tonight. It was real nice to see you again, even under these circumstances. I hope we’ll have some news for you real soon.”

  Lindsay looked down and noticed that Warren had eaten everything on his plate.

  “You know, it’s gotten awful late somehow,” Kimberlee said, yawning. “Why don’t we take care of all this memorial stuff tomorrow, Lindsay? Do you have some time? I don’t want you driving home in the pitch darkness.”

  “That’d be fine. I can stop by in the afternoon, after work,” Lindsay said. She was enormously grateful to be let off the hook, as she was already having trouble keeping her eyes open. Night shifts always threw off her body clock for days afterward. She rose to leave.

  Warren stood as well, but then caught sight of the papers on the table upon which Kimberlee had printed the readings and songs for the memorial service. “The Soldier’s Last Battle. That’s one
of my favorite poems. Did you print this out?”

  “Yes, it’s for the memorial service. I found it online somewhere and I remembered that Vernon had liked it.”

  “Would you mind if I took this? Can you print another copy for yourself?”

  “Sure, be my guest.”

  “Thanks for the food. Make sure you call me if you think of anything else.”

  Chapter 8

  Lindsay and Warren walked away from the Youngs’ house into the twilit evening. The dissonant music of crickets and locusts filled the air. At the bottom of the Youngs’ driveway, Lindsay turned toward Warren.

  “I didn’t want to ask inside because I didn’t want to upset Kimberlee, but why do the police think that it’s murder?” Lindsay thought back to yesterday’s conversation with Anna and Rob. “Couldn’t it just have been an accident? Maybe someone just used the real bullets instead of blanks?”

  “Not likely. Right before any reenactment each company’s officers do a safety check where they inspect all the weapons. Every guy who was out there swears that they did the check that day, and that nothing was out of the ordinary with any of the weapons. We collected all the guns that were used, just in case. The State Bureau of Investigation has already started doing ballistics comparisons to see if any of them could have fired the bullet that killed Vernon. But regardless of how those tests turn out, we have reason to believe someone had it in for Vernon.”

  “What reason?”

  “I can’t really talk about it.”

  “Oh, come on. We’re old friends,” Lindsay said. “Without me, you’d be nothing, remember?” Warren remained silent. Lindsay batted her eyes coquettishly. “Pretty please, with maple syrup on top?” Still no response from Warren. “This is my best Southern belle impression, Warren Satterwhite. I can’t believe this doesn’t have you eating out of my hand.” She crossed her arms and frowned. “If you’re waiting for me to flash my petticoat, it’s not going to happen.” Warren stayed mum, mirroring Lindsay’s crossed arms and allowing only the slightest hint of a smile to creep across his face. Lindsay altered her tactics, putting her hands on her hips. “As a chaplain and a bone fide minister, I’m a professional secret keeper. It comes with the territory. You wouldn’t believe some of the death bed confessions I’ve heard.”