The Complete Mystery Collection

by Michaela Thompson

  Dominating the room was a console-model television set, the first ever in St. Elmo when the four Calhoun boys had given it to their parents two years ago. Since the nearest broadcasting station was a hundred miles away in Tallahassee, the set rarely picked up anything but snow despite the tallest antenna money could buy. This didn’t prevent the Calhouns from having it turned on all day long and, the sound a bare murmur, it was on now.

  The old man’s voice was bumpy with phlegm, and spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth as he spoke. The boys sprawled on the uncomfortable furniture, all looking as if they were listening to something they had heard before.

  Purvis, the baby at age twenty-six, finally interrupted. “Daddy,” he said, speaking loudly and slowly, “we’ve said if we find out who done it they’ll be sorry. But what else can we do?”

  Old Man Calhoun’s sparse gray hair stuck out featherlike from the top of his head. He blinked at Purvis, looking like a baby bird. “I don’t give a good goddamn—” he began, but Bo waved his hand, saying in a low voice, “Don’t bother him about it, Purv.”

  Bo, the second son, was the unofficial leader of the younger Calhouns. Sonny, the eldest, was too soft, Lester too dumb, and Purvis too young for the position. Bo was the only one the old man would shut up for. Although the room fell silent, Bo seemed disinclined to continue. He was, in fact, more distracted than he usually was at Calhoun family meetings.

  Before the old man got his breath back, Bo’s wife Sue Nell entered the room and said, “Miss Myrna wants to know do you-all want coffee.”

  Sue Nell had always been more than any of the Calhouns, including the old man, could handle. Quirky and given to sulks, she had alienated the more conventional wives of the other Calhoun sons, who retaliated by telling each other she was cruel to her three children, although there was no evidence of this. She and Miss Myrna got along only marginally, Sue Nell pretending no interest in the Daughters of the American Confederacy. Her offer of coffee was an uncommon occurrence. She looked bad today, her skin the color of curdled milk.

  “I’ll drink a cup, sugar,” said the old man, and Sonny, Lester, and Purvis nodded assent. She looked at Bo. “Do you want some, William?”

  “Sure, honey,” he said, not looking at her.

  When she left the room, Lester said, “How come it is she called you William?”

  Bo shrugged. “It’s my name.”

  “Yes, but—” Lester began, but Old Man Calhoun evidently felt he had yielded the floor long enough.

  “What I say,” he began, “is that nobody blows up a Calhoun’s still and gets away with it. Don’t you boys have a bit of pride? If my daddy had saw that, he would’ve pumped every ass in the county full of buckshot. But you boys—you boys let the time go by, and—”

  Sue Nell reentered, carrying mugs on a tray. “Help yourself, William,” snickered Lester in an undertone. Sue Nell glared at him, her eyes poisonous. The mugs rattled when she set the tray on the coffee table, startling Deacon and sending him, toenails clicking, down the hall. Somewhere in the house a phone rang once.

  “Daddy,” Bo said distinctly, “I will promise you this. We’ll get even. Take my word that we’re working on it. Will you do that for me?”

  “I be goddamn,” started the old man, but subsided when Sue Nell handed him his coffee.

  He slurped at it, attention distracted. Sue Nell sat on the arm of a chair while the Calhoun sons talked among themselves.

  “I been in touch with Elmore,” said Sonny.

  “What’d he say?” asked Purvis.

  “Well. ” Sonny put sugar and cream in his coffee. “He didn’t say a whole lot, but looks to me like he ain’t hurting while we’re out of business. He says he’s cutting back, but I tell you the truth. I think he’s getting liquor somewhere else.”

  Lester socked his fist into his palm. “I’d sure like to get ahold of that—”

  “Shut up.” Bo glanced at their father, who was drinking noisily, then surveyed his brothers. “You all know what we have to do?”

  “Watch Elmore,” Sonny said.

  “Damn right, watch him,” said Bo. “Find out who the hell he’s getting that whiskey from. Find out, and you’ll find the son of a bitch that blew up the still.”

  The room was silent except for the old man’s slobbering. Then came the sound of footsteps, and Miss Myrna entered the room.

  Miss Myrna, small and white-haired, had spent her life turning her back on what her husband did for a living. The effort had left her dazed, and befuddlement was her usual expression. Now, however, she looked more alert than usual. “The most awful thing,” she said. She looked around, waiting until the old man noticed her and put his coffee cup down.

  “That was Voncile, down at the post office,” she said. “There’s been a murder. At the landing.” She stopped to let attention build. “Diana Landis got beat to death with a cast net and thrown in the water. She was hanging there all tangled up.”

  A second or two of shocked silence followed. Bo, with a convulsive motion of his arm, knocked his mug of coffee to the floor. Sue Nell stared at him, her eyes brackish in her pale face.

  Miss Myrna looked at the spilled coffee and said, “Oh my.”

  “What happened? Somebody killed?” snapped Old Man Calhoun.

  Miss Myrna leaned closer to him. “Diana Landis!” she bawled. “Snapper’s daughter! Murdered!”

  “I swan,” said the old man.

  Miss Myrna did her best to answer the questions that followed, but she knew little else except that Sheriff Malone had discovered the body after getting an anonymous phone call telling him where to look.

  “Do they know who did it?” Bo’s voice sounded pinched.

  “No idea at all, Voncile said.”

  “One of her gentlemen friends, most likely,” said Sue Nell. Her lips were trembling.

  “She’s dead and gone now,” said Miss Myrna. “Don’t speak ill.”

  Bo and Sue Nell looked at each other. Sue Nell seemed about to speak, then pursed her lips. Bo’s face, pale up till then, began to grow pink.

  Miss Myrna cleared her throat. “How about if I get you all some cake?”

  Bo didn’t seem to hear her. He got up and walked out the front door. In a moment, the Calhouns heard the sound of his car engine, which soon faded as he drove away.

  15

  Condolence Call

  Lily took the peach cobbler out of the oven, turned off the gas, and swayed, overcome by the heat. Jell-O mold would have been easier and cooler, but on these occasions it was important to take trouble. Setting the hot dish down and removing her apron, she walked out of the kitchen and sank into the rocking chair on the screened porch, leaning back and pulling the damp, humid air into her lungs. She’d have to bathe before she left.

  Sitting in tepid, rust-colored water in the deep, claw-footed tub, dusting herself with talcum powder afterward, Lily wondered how Snapper really felt about Diana’s death. He was sure to do and say the proper things, but it was no secret that Diana’s reputation had hurt him in the last election, and the challenge from Gospel Roy was the strongest he’d ever had. “Talks about weeding out the subversives. He can’t even handle his own daughter”—Lily had heard that more than once since the campaign had gotten under way.

  Still—she pulled her second-best dress, navy with white polka dots, over her head—a daughter was a daughter. Lily didn’t always see eye-to-eye with her own daughter, Wanda. Wanda, Lily had always thought, lacked spunk. Marrying Woody Malone was a good example. But Lily certainly would be terribly upset if Wanda were murdered, spunk or no spunk.

  It was too bad Diana’s mother had died, and Snapper had always been so busy. The girl had been left to the maid, Pearl, who did her best, but—Lily zipped her dress and ran a comb through her hair.

  The cobbler had cooled a bit. Lily stuck a piece of adhesive tape, on which she had printed Trulock, to the bottom of the dish, pulled on her white gloves, and, carrying the cobbler and with her w
hite purse under her arm, she started out.

  Once she had the Trulocks’ Nash pointed toward the highway, she resisted the temptation to detour by the store and see how the Eubanks girl, who’d agreed to see to the place for the afternoon, was getting along. There really wasn’t time, and, besides, Sara Eubanks got sulky if she thought you didn’t trust her.

  When Lily pulled up at Snapper’s house, the circular drive in front was already filled with cars. She parked on the shoulder of the road and made her way to the front door, which stood half-open, a babble of voices drifting out. She pressed the bell, and in a moment a tall black woman, hook-nosed and broad-shouldered, appeared. Lily recognized Marinda Washington, daughter of Snapper’s maid, Pearl.

  “Evening, Marinda,” said Lily. “Came to pay respects to Snapper.”

  “Yes’m.” Marinda opened the door wider, and Lily stepped inside.

  The smell of coffee drifted from the dining room on her left, while across the entry hall the living room was full of voices and smoke. “Lot of people here already?”

  “A right smart of ’em,” said Marinda.

  “Peach cobbler,” said Lily, offering Marinda the dish.

  Marinda received it without comment, and Lily thought how much less pleasant she was than her mother. “Where’s Pearl?” she asked.

  “Not here.” Marinda turned and started down the hallway toward the kitchen, tossing “coffee and cake in the dining room” over her shoulder.

  The dining room was set with oval platters holding neatly-arranged slices of pound cake, banana nut bread, and Lane cake. The silver coffee service, presided over by the ladies of the Wesleyan Service Guild, was on the sideboard. An assortment of townsfolk was gathered around the table, talking and chewing, the crumbs trickling down onto Snapper’s floral-patterned carpet.

  Lily got coffee and pound cake and crossed the hall into the living room. Snapper was there, surrounded by six or seven solemn-faced St. Elmo citizens. He wore a black suit, stiff white shirt, and black tie, and was nodding to a group of departing guests.

  “Blessed be the name of the Lord,” he said as Lily walked up. He turned to her, seized her hand, and said, “Miz Trulock.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about Diana,” Lily said, feeling slightly awkward. “I remember when she used to buy candy from me.”

  Snapper’s eyes glistened. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” he said.

  Someone brought her a chair and she joined the group around Snapper. Turning to Brother Chillingworth, whose bald head glistened in the close atmosphere, Snapper said, “Woody wasn’t there when the call came in. Cecil took it and he thought it was a joke.”

  Lily felt uncomfortable at the mention of her son-in-law and his deputy. Woody, as she saw it, was little more than a laughingstock.

  “Cecil was still chuckling over it when Woody got there,” Snapper went on, “and since he didn’t believe it was serious he can’t remember a teetotaling thing the man said. He thinks it was just, ‘There’s a body hanging in a net under the docks on the canal.’ But you know how Cecil is.”

  “Got no business being a deputy,” said a disgruntled listener.

  Snapper made a pacific gesture. “I don’t say that. The law enforcement in this county is the finest of anywhere. I completely trust Woody and Cecil to find out who killed my little girl.”

  How strange it is, thought Lily, that Diana’s death has peeled ten or twelve years from her age. Instead of the twenty-year-old troublemaker she was, who had gone to bed with—Lily glanced around—three or four men in this room, she had become in memory the motherless child whose passing was easier to regret.

  “But who the hell—excuse me” (the last was for Lily’s benefit) “would call up like that and leave no name?” one of the group wanted to know.

  “The one that did it, that’s who,” retorted another.

  Snapper shook his head. “Let Woody and Cecil figure it out. They’re the experts.”

  Lily doubted Woody was an expert in anything except grunting for earthworms on the courthouse lawn. Something else was bothering her, though. “You mean they found out about the murder because of this telephone call?” she asked.

  “Yes ma’am,” said Snapper. “Cecil took it, like I said, but when Woody came in after his supper he thought maybe they should see about it. They took a run out there, and—” He bent his head and reached for his handkerchief.

  “Hold on, boy,” someone said.

  Snapper mopped his face. “Lordy,” he said.

  “What time did the call come in?” asked Lily.

  Snapper shrugged. “Six or so, I reckon.”

  Brother Chillingworth gripped Lily’s shoulder and whispered, “Don’t make him talk about it.” Lily lapsed into silence, but not because of Brother Chillingworth. A picture had come into her memory. A young man, black curly hair, dark eyes, holding out a wrinkled dollar bill. At six o’clock, or thereabouts.

  “Where’s your old man?” Snapper had to repeat his question before Lily realized it was addressed to her.

  “Aubrey? Oh he wasn’t feeling well enough to come. He said to give you his condolences.” Only after the sentence was out did Lily realize she hadn’t thought twice about the lie. Aubrey, at his apiary since dawn, didn’t even know about Diana.

  Lily rose. “I’ll be going.”

  Snapper stood and took her hand. “Thank you for coming, Miss Lily. You can tell that old man of yours I said to take care of himself.”

  Lily picked her way through the crowd and let herself out the front door. When she got the Nash started, she didn’t turn toward the beach and the store. Instead, she swung the car toward town, the courthouse, and the office of Sheriff Woody Malone.

  16

  Bo and Sue Nell

  “She made a humming noise in the back of her throat,” said Bo Calhoun.

  It was late afternoon, the same hour Lily was sipping coffee at Snapper’s house. Bo was drunk. He was sitting on the front steps of his house, a jar of pale liquid and a glass at his feet. The air was heavy, sweet with honeysuckle that overhung the porch and made, where the sun shone through it, dappled patterns on Sue Nell’s yellow blouse.

  She stood behind him, taut, near the front door. At her feet was a worn duffel bag. She was going, she told Bo, to stay at the Calhouns’ fish camp on Tupelo Branch. The only access to the camp was by boat. When she told him she was leaving Bo said only, “Take your boat this time. That’s what I bought that damn bateau for. I’m sick of you going off in mine.” The house was empty, the children sent to visit their cousins at Uncle Sonny’s. On the floor inside, glittering where the light picked them out, were shards of crystal goblets that had belonged to Bo’s mother’s mother, goblets that had been carefully portioned out to Miss Myrna’s sons as each married. When Sue Nell had smashed the last one on the wall next to the chair where he was sitting and drinking, Bo had picked up his jar and glass and stumbled out. He had only gotten across the porch to the steps before he had to sit down. “A humming,” he repeated.

  “What else?” Sue Nell’s voice was harsh. Bo didn’t reply. She strode down the steps and turned to face him. When he refused to meet her eyes, she slapped his face, the solid sound of the blow attesting to the strength behind it.

  Bo swayed to one side slightly, his head still bent. When he regained his balance, he said, “She would say things. Call out.”

  “Call what?”

  “Call me, I guess I mean.”

  “When you were doing it? When she got her feelings?” Bo closed his eyes.

  Sue Nell leaned close to him. Almost whispering, she said, “She must have told you how you were better than anybody else. Did she say that?” She jerked his chin up, forcing him to look at her. “Answer me.”

  “Yes.”

  She let go of his face with a choked laugh. “You ought to be proud, Bo. The very best in all of St. Elmo. She had a lot to go by for comparison.”

  For the first time, Bo was roused from passivity
. He looked up at Sue Nell. “She wasn’t doing that anymore,” he said. “Not since me.”

  She twisted off a tendril of honeysuckle and began stripping it of its leaves. Bo tipped the contents of his glass down his throat.

  “She wrote poems,” he said. “Rhymes.”

  Sue Nell didn’t reply, but he seemed almost eager to continue. “She would read them to me. She could always make it come out so it rhymed.”

  “Poems,” Sue Nell said. Her voice had lost its edge.

  “Songs, like,” said Bo. “Only without a tune.”

  Sue Nell sat down on the step below Bo and rested her head on her knees. Bo, staring ahead, didn’t look at her. “She’d bring me a new one every so often,” he said. “She liked to write them. She’d say—”

  “Hush,” said Sue Nell.

  Bo stopped, confused. “But you were asking, making me tell you everything, all about what we did—”

  “Just hush.”

  Bo tipped several inches of liquid into his glass and swallowed half of it. He waved the glass at Sue Nell. “Want a drink?”

  She rocked her head back and forth against her knees. When she spoke, her voice was rough. “Why did you do it, Bo?”

  He rolled the glass between his hands. “I don’t know.”

  “Were you in love with her?”

  “She gave me a lot of trouble.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “She’s dead now, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, she’s dead. She’s dead.” Sue Nell raised her head and turned her wet face toward her husband.

  17

  Lily at the Courthouse

  The county courthouse was a two-story building of dusty-red brick, topped by a clock tower and overlooking a lawn of tired-looking grass. It stood on the corner of the beach highway and Milton Avenue, a heat-baked street with a straggling line of drugstore, dime store, hardware store, grocery store, and filling station.