Death Crashes the Party

by Vickie Fee

  As a party planner, I absolutely depend on a cadre of professionals, from caterers to musicians, from florists to magicians. And I depend just as much on my part-time, as-needed employees, who help me pull it all together, especially Holly Renfrew, assistant extraordinaire.

  Wilson Washington, manager and trombonist with the Dixieland band I had hired for the Erdmans’ party, confirmed the details and asked me to e-mail him a map to the Erdmans’ house.

  “The van’s got GPS, but I don’t trust it. Sometimes it acts crazy, you know?”

  “Yes, I’ve had that experience on occasion, where the GPS voice keeps saying, ‘Recalculating,’ over and over. And if you do have any problems, you have my cell number. Feel free to call me anytime,” I said.

  Hiring Washington’s Ragtime Band for the party was a real coup. They’re top-notch and get booked months in advance. Before Hurricane Katrina, the band was based in New Orleans. They moved to Memphis after the devastating storm and eventually decided to stay.

  I finally broke down and phoned Mrs. Erdman. I was starting to get worried that she had gone so long without calling me. I was surprised when she picked up on the first ring.

  “Rose, is that you?”

  “Uh, n-no, ma’am,” I stuttered. “This is Liv McKay.”

  “Oh, Liv, I’m sorry. I’m expecting a call from my sister. Why are you calling?”

  “I just wanted to touch base. I haven’t talked to you since . . .” I paused before adding, “Monday.”

  “Yes, that was quite a shock,” she said. “And what a strange coincidence that both those young men worked for your husband. Don’t you think?”

  I wasn’t sure what she was trying to imply.

  “It’s been quite a shock for Larry Joe and his dad, that’s for certain,” I said.

  “Yes, I’m sure. Well, hopefully, the sheriff will arrest someone soon, so we can all move on with our lives,” she said.

  “One of your guests called about a costume fitting. I told her I was certain you would go ahead with the party, not wanting to disappoint your friends. You do want to proceed with the party?”

  “Why, yes, of course,” she said, sounding put out. “Those unfortunate boys have nothing to do with us. I can’t imagine why anyone would leave them in our garage, can you?”

  Again, I wasn’t sure just what she was implying, but I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  “No, Mrs. Erdman. I really can’t imagine.”

  “Well, I really can’t talk right now, Liv. I’ll call you if I think of anything,” she said before hanging up abruptly. It chafed me that Mrs. Erdman seemed to imply that my family could have somehow been involved in the murders. But this is a small town, and I knew the dead men’s connection to McKay Trucking was bound to fuel gossip.

  My nerves were feeling a little frayed, so I decided to give up on work for the day. I’d go home and work on painting my living room ceiling. The never-ending chore of painting our fixer-upper house had become a kind of therapy for me.

  Chapter 4

  I had the presence of mind to stick my cell phone in my pocket before I climbed up to slather another coat of paint on the ceiling. I didn’t, however, have the presence of mind to stick a cloth in my other pocket to clean the paint off my hands. This thought occurred to me as my ringtone started playing. I knew from the tune that it was Larry Joe. I wiped my hands on my T-shirt and answered the phone.

  “I heard you had breakfast with another man this morning,” Larry Joe said from the other end of the line.

  “Don’t you have anything better to do than track my every move?” I said, feeling a bit peeved.

  “Oh, Dad and I just met a client for lunch at the diner, and Margie mentioned seeing you this morning, that’s all.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “Not really. I figure the sheriff is just zeroing in on you as his prime suspect.”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t think Dave actually has any suspects at this point.”

  “I’m sure he has his hands full with this one. So do we,” he said. “Rumors are starting to circulate that we aren’t going to be able to keep up with orders. That’s why I’m calling, to tell you not to expect me for supper. Dad wants me to go to the Jaycees dinner and meeting tonight to do some glad-handing and rumor quashing. He’s going to his Elks Lodge meeting tonight to do the same.”

  After he hung up, I tried to remember if Margie was the short, plump waitress or the one with the beehive kind of hair thing going on. If she was the beehive, I regretted leaving her the extra tip.

  I heard a knock on the front door, followed by a “Hey, it’s me.”

  “Come on in,” I called out.

  I heard Di’s voice from below as I continued painting the ceiling of my living room a very calming shade of periwinkle. I was at that moment perched on tiptoe on a dining chair that was sitting atop the dining room table, both of which were covered with a painter’s drop cloth and a fair amount of paint spatter.

  “They’ve invented these nifty things called ladders that let you reach high places without having to climb on top of a pile of furniture. I like that color, though.”

  “Thanks. I think I’ve earned a break,” I said, descending from my aerie with as much dignity as I could muster. Judging from Di’s suppressed giggles, it wasn’t much. I didn’t tell Di, but Larry Joe had a ladder up on the second floor. I was just too lazy to haul it down the stairs.

  Di followed me into the kitchen, where we popped open a couple of cold ones—Diet Cokes, that is.

  “Liv, why the heck are you swinging from a chandelier with a paintbrush, anyway? You really should make Larry Joe do the painting, at least the ceilings.”

  I knew if I waited for Larry Joe to get around to painting the living room, the walls would be covered with moss. Not that it could be any uglier than the wedding mint-green shade on them already. “I just couldn’t stand looking at these walls any longer. Besides, Larry Joe is still busy ripping holes in the upstairs bathroom.” I really wanted him to focus on the upstairs bathroom. I was getting tired of having to trek downstairs to take a shower.

  “At least the kitchen’s beautiful,” Di said.

  “Yeah.” I exhaled a sigh and admired my granite countertops.

  It’s become a running joke about how nice the kitchen looks. When we bought the rambling Victorian almost two years ago, the previous owners had completely ripped out the kitchen as the first step of a never completed remodel. Not wanting to live in the house without at least some semblance of a kitchen, Larry Joe agreed to hire professionals to do the work. It’s likely the only room in the house that will ever be finished. The house was built in 1900, a garage was added in the early 1940s, and an enclosed ramp connecting the garage and the house was added in the 1950s.

  The ongoing construction site status of the house is one of the reasons I keep an office downtown instead of conducting business out of my home. My mother likes to refer to our house as “the nightmare on Elm Street.” Okay, so we do live on Elm Street. But I see our somewhat ramshackle painted lady as an unpolished—and badly in need of painting—gem.

  Di left to run some errands, and with Larry Joe out of the picture for supper, we agreed to meet for dinner at Taco Belles at a little after 6:30 p.m. After I rinsed the paint off the paintbrush and scrubbed the paint off the rest of me in the downstairs shower, the only working shower in the house, I dressed and headed to the restaurant.

  Arriving at the restaurant before Di, I got us a table and ordered a couple of jumbo margaritas. A squashed mosquito adorned the wall next to the booth, its remains plastered beneath an oversize sombrero.

  Owned by sisters Maybelle and Annabelle Wythe, probably now in their seventies, Taco Belles doesn’t come close to approximating authentic Mexican cuisine. Still, the catfish tacos aren’t bad.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Di said as she slung her purse and then her backside onto the bench seat.

  I could tell from her leotard and pajam
a-style pants that she’d just come from her weekly yoga class. Di walks what must be miles a day on her mail route, so she doesn’t really need the additional exercise. But she says pounding the pavement every day does a number on her joints and muscles, and the stretching and toning she gets from yoga is therapeutic, as well as relaxing.

  “I haven’t been here long. I went ahead and ordered us a couple of margaritas.”

  “That sounds good. As long as we eat some real food along with our liquor,” Di said. “I had a headache yesterday that just wouldn’t go away. I think the fact that we consumed huge quantities of daiquiris the other night with only a handful of nibbles probably instigated that headache.”

  A perky young waitress sat two fishbowl margaritas down in front of us, and we both ordered without bothering to peruse the familiar menu.

  “Here’s to the hair of the dog that bit you,” I said, lifting my oversize glass with both hands.

  “You’ll never guess who’s joined my yoga class.”

  “Mr. Sweet?” I said facetiously.

  “No, but I’d pay to see that.”

  We both grinned at the thought of my spindly landlord twisting and lunging into some awkward yoga pose.

  “Who, then?”

  “Deputy Ted Horton.”

  “Oh, my,” I said. “Why would he take up yoga, do you think? Is he keeping an eye on you dangerous subversives?”

  “I think he’s keeping an eye on us, or at least some of us, all right. I think it’s probably a desperate attempt to meet women.”

  Poor Ted, I thought. He’s a thoroughly nice guy. Unfortunately, a picture of him could serve as an apt illustration next to the definition of pencil-necked geek.

  We had drained about half our fishbowls before the waitress returned with our catfish tacos and a squeeze bottle of chipotle tartar sauce.

  I told Di how I’d ended up having breakfast with Sheriff Dave and how a lack of progress in the double-murder case seemed to be weighing pretty heavily on him.

  “Oh,” Di said, raising her fork to indicate she had more to say as soon as she had swallowed. “Apparently, there’s been some progress on the case since this morning. I talked to Dave briefly, and he said they found some interesting stuff in a mini-storage unit rented by Darrell Farrell.”

  My curiosity was divided between wanting to know more about Di’s “brief ” conversation with Dave and wanting to know more about the “stuff ” at the mini storage. The mystery of the storage unit won out.

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Oh, it was all their Civil War reenactment gear and whatnot. But get this,” she said, stabbing the air with her fork. “According to one of the reserve deputies who’s involved in that kind of thing, a bunch of the clothes and weapons and equipment were the genuine articles, not reproductions. And the Farrell boys wouldn’t have been able to amass that kind of collection on their salaries.”

  “So the sheriff thinks they had a cache of stolen goods?”

  “Either that or some high-quality counterfeit stuff that only an expert could tell the difference. Dave has contacted some history professor from the University of Memphis to come look at it all tomorrow. Either way, if they were mixed up with theft or a counterfeit ring, it could be what got them killed,” Di said.

  “I hope Dave nabs a suspect soon. Today I felt like Mrs. Erdman was trying to imply that I had something to do with the murders, or that Larry Joe did. The Dixieland band I booked for her party may be playing a funeral march if she keeps it up. She makes me so mad,” I said before finishing off my margarita.

  “Don’t let her get to you, Liv. You already know that woman’s a nut.”

  “It’s not just her. I haven’t wanted to think about it, but while I’ve had plenty of calls from nosy gossips, my phone hasn’t exactly been ringing off the hook with calls from prospective clients since I discovered the bodies.”

  After dinner, we ordered some coffee to quell the goose bumps stirred up by the gale-force air-conditioning and to offset the stupefying effect of the jumbo margaritas.

  Miss Maybelle delivered the coffee to our table.

  “Here’s something to warm y’all up,” she said, setting down the tray and filling two white ceramic cups with steaming coffee. Her white hair was carefully coiffured, and she was wearing a lightweight cardigan, one almost the same color blue as her eyes. “They nearly freeze me to death in here, but most folks seem to like the air conditioner on high. I think spicy food just makes some people sweat, no matter what the temperature.”

  Seemingly without taking a breath, Miss Maybelle leaned in to the table and continued in a stage whisper. “Olivia, it must have been just awful for you, finding those young men who went and got themselves killed like that.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ve had better days.”

  “It’s tragic, of course. But I’ve always found it to be true that those who come to a violent end most often had a hand in bringing it upon themselves. It’s no secret their mama’s always been on the wild side. While they were alive, her grandparents did the best they could, but I don’t think those boys were brought up properly at all. . . . ,” she said, breathing a sigh. “Still, it is sad—and so unfair to you, dear. I certainly hope it doesn’t put a damper on your little party business.”

  Someone or something distracted Miss Maybelle, and she breezed away from the table.

  “Lord, help me.”

  “I wouldn’t pay too much attention to Miss Maybelle,” Di said. “In case you haven’t noticed, she’s not the most positive or least judgmental woman in the world.”

  “Maybe not. But she also has a knack for saying out loud what a lot of other people are probably thinking.”

  Chapter 5

  We paid for dinner at the cash register and grabbed a couple of after-dinner mints after dropping a donation in the jar for the Lions Club to help the sight impaired.

  “You feel like walking a bit?” Di said.

  “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt me to burn off a few of these calories,” I said, patting my bulging midsection.

  “Good. Well, follow me home, and we can take a stroll through the trailer park.”

  As we made the short drive to Sunrise Mobile Village, I couldn’t help thinking what a misnomer mobile was. I’ve watched Di check the tie-downs before tornado season. The anchoring system underneath the trailer includes steel rods several feet long that screw into the ground and steel straps bolted to the rods that fasten around the trailer frame. Nobody could just hitch one of these trailers to a truck and drive away.

  We parked in front of Di’s place. I got out of the car and automatically started walking toward the duck pond in the center of Sunrise Mobile, or not so mobile, Village.

  “No. Let’s head in this direction,” Di called to me as she ambled off down a side street leading to the outer circle of the trailer park.

  “Are we just walking, or are we going somewhere in particular?” I asked, wondering why Di seemed to be choosing the far less scenic route.

  “That depends. If you’re still in snooping mode, there’s a neighbor around back I thought you might like to have a chat with,” she said coyly.

  I resented the snooping remark, but I still had to ask, “Who’s that?”

  We walked leisurely, nothing aerobic—it was still too stifling for a jog or even a power walk. But a warm breeze stirred, mitigating, or at least dispersing, the humidity.

  Ray Franklin lived in a section of the trailer park set up for visiting RVs, one with temporary hookups. The section was nearly vacant, except for Ray’s old Winnebago and another rusty camper. These dwellings actually were mobile, although looking at the condition of Ray’s Winnebago, I had my doubts it would start. There are a few retired couples who park their campers here during the winter to be near relatives and to escape the cold and snow of their homes up north. They’re sensible enough, however, not to vacation in the South during the long, hot summer.

  Ray Franklin, who looked to be in his early
forties, had a military-style haircut and the physique of an ex-athlete who had developed a slight paunch. He also exuded a steady stream of smarm.

  “Evenin’, ladies. What brings you out this way?” Ray was sitting in a plastic chair just outside the open door to his camper.

  “Just walking off dinner,” Di said. “You may remember me. I live here, on the front side. I think we met at the Sunrise Village picnic.”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” he said. “I do remember you.” His eyes scanned her figure without the least bit of discretion.

  “This is my friend Liv McKay.”

  “How d’ya do?” he said, his snake eyes slithering in the direction of my bosom.

  I nodded and forced a smile.

  “I’m just having an after-dinner drink. Would you care to join me?”

  “We’d better not,” Di said. “We had drinks with dinner.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said, tossing an empty beer bottle on the ground and reaching into the ice chest beside his chair to fish out another.

  “Liv McKay. I suppose you’re the one that found the Farrell brothers,” he said knowingly.

  “Yes. It was just awful. They were so young. Did you know them?”

  “Course I did,” he said. “Met ’em through Shiloh company. Kinda showed them the ropes. They were good kids. It’s a real shame what happened to them.”

  “That’s what their boss said, that they were good kids. Never in any trouble he knew of . . . . They worked for my husband’s family trucking business,” I added in explanation.

  “It just don’t add up. It’s like I told the deputy. Duane and Darrell kinda confided in me. I think they saw me as some kind of father figure. I served in the Iraq War, which their daddy died in. Maybe I flatter myself, but I like to think if they’d been in some kind of trouble, they would’ve told me. I’d have done what I could to help them out. But then, I guess we never know people as well as we think we do.”