The Complete Mystery Collection

by Michaela Thompson

  It took longer than he expected. He had trouble finding things. The cash register at the only checkout stand stopped working, causing much speculation about what the matter was before it spontaneously repaired itself. Next door, the hardware store was possibly out of chicken wire, the clerk speculated, since Miz Johnson had replaced her whole chicken yard last week, but maybe some could be located “out back.” Eventually it was. With the rolled-up wire under one arm and his bag of groceries cradled in the other, Josh emerged onto the now baking pavement.

  He looked up at the courthouse clock. It was late enough. A telephone booth stood on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse. He entered it, put his purchases at his feet, and dug into his pants pocket for a nickel. This time, he had one.

  When the operator came on the line, he said, “Collect to Tallahassee,” and gave the number and his name.

  It took a few clicks before a female voice on the other end of the slightly blurry line answered, “Beverage Department,” accepted the call, and said, “You all right, Josh?”

  Josh allowed himself half a second to wish that he was standing in the office with her, looking out the window over the trees at the dome of the state capitol. “I need to speak to Eddie, Louise.”

  The phone booth was stifling. Josh mopped sweat from his forehead. A hearty voice came on the line and said, “What say, Joshua?”

  “I got some problems. You know about the girl that got killed down here?”

  “Congressman Landis’s daughter. Yeah, it’s in the papers. I heard on the radio they arrested some preacher boy.”

  “I didn’t know that. But listen.” Josh told Eddie about finding Diana Landis’s body and making the call to the sheriff. “She was killed on the same boat that Murphy met that morning,” he concluded. “This whole thing is connected up somehow. We got a mess on our hands.”

  He listened to waves of static for a while until a graver-sounding Eddie said, “Nobody knows who you are, do they, Josh? That part’s all right?”

  “So far so good.”

  “I got to check with the people upstairs. If a congressman’s daughter was involved in some kind of moonshine deal and got herself killed, they may want to handle this a different way. But, for right now, your job’s the same. Find out who’s behind it. Is it as big an operation as we thought?”

  “Big. Fancy. Kerosene blowers, so you don’t see any smoke. Deep well, fancy pump. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were distributing all the way to Atlanta. There’s a lot of money’s worth of hooch going out of there, I can tell you that.”

  “Plumb put the Calhouns out of business for us.”

  “They’ll set up again. But this bunch is giving them some competition.”

  “Shoot. With the taxes up so nobody can afford legal liquor, every moonshiner in the country is going to be driving a Cadillac by this time next year. If we don’t do something about it, that is. Eh, Josh?”

  Josh rubbed his hand across his face. “That’s what I’m trying to accomplish down here.”

  “I know. This is turning out to be a bad one. Keep after it. Call me back as soon as you can. I’ll try to get to the people upstairs today.”

  “It isn’t so easy to call. I’m stuck over on that island.”

  “Do the best you can, old buddy.”

  When Josh hung up, the inner tension that had eased while he talked with Eddie returned. His work as a revenue agent had made him accustomed to being alone and, in many quarters, despised. It was his practice to go on doggedly with the job and not think about it. But seeing the dead girl yesterday had done something to him. The thought of going back to the island, of living with people he was determined ultimately to betray, made him intensely lonely. He opened the phone booth, picked up his burdens, and started slowly back toward the park, the pier, and his boat.

  He was so preoccupied that he didn’t glance across the street at Maude’s Coffee Cup. He didn’t see the woman sitting next to the window get up from a table so rapidly she upset her glass of tea.

  23

  Lily and Josh

  By the time Lily had apologized and paid for her spilled tea, the dark-haired young man had almost reached the corner. Moving at a half-trot, trying to look innocent—as if she’d just remembered leaving the iron on at home—she closed the distance between them.

  She couldn’t see his face, had seen it only in the instant he came out of the phone booth, but she was positive it was the same man who’d made the call from her store. The set of his shoulders, the curly dark hair, even the dirty khaki pants were the same.

  She didn’t stop to wonder what she was doing. The sight of him, after he’d been so much on her mind, made following him a necessity. Woody might not care if this man had made the anonymous call about Diana’s murder, but she herself, she realized now, was convinced he had. And whether or not Woody cared, she did.

  The man turned toward the city park and municipal pier as Lily, now fairly close to him, followed. The narrow street was one of the oldest and least desirable residential areas in St. Elmo. Many of the houses were close to tumbling down, their porch screens rusty and bowed, paint peeling from weathered boards, yards full of sandspurs and dollar weeds.

  From a block away, Lily saw with consternation that Ludie Mims was sitting on her front porch. Josh was approaching her house now.

  Ludie, who had passed ninety last year, spent her days in her porch swing, her feet barely touching the ground, watching with bright black eyes whoever happened along. Often, she hailed a passerby and asked for help reading a letter, claiming to have lost her spectacles. This had been going on for quite some time, and everyone in St. Elmo knew the letter was a circular left in Ludie’s door several years ago by the gas company. She always carried the circular in her apron pocket, and she always asked anyone who consented to read it whether it was from Charles.

  Charles, Ludie’s husband, had been dead for twenty years. Still, the reader, having been through the ritual before, usually thought it mannerly to say yes, it was from Charles, that Charles was doing fine and sent his love. On hearing this, Ludie would return the letter to her apron pocket, and the passerby would be free to continue.

  Lily saw Ludie’s head snap around when Josh walked by, and knew he was about to be caught. A rusting truck was up on blocks in the front yard next door to Ludie’s. She stepped behind it. By craning her neck she could see what was happening.

  “Hoo! Young man!” Ludie called.

  Josh’s pace slowed and he glanced Ludie’s way briefly. The glance, Lily knew, was his mistake. Ludie jumped to her feet, flapped her apron at him and screeched, “Young man!”

  Lily felt a flicker of approval at seeing Josh stop and realizing he was polite enough not to ignore Ludie. “Ma’am?” he said, sounding wary.

  Ludie hobbled to the edge of the porch. As shrunken and stooped as she was, her voice was strong. “I need me some help.”

  Josh walked toward the house. “Help with what?”

  “This here letter.” Ludie removed it from her pocket and waved it at him. “I need to read it, and I can’t find my spectacles.”

  Lily saw Josh hesitate, then lift his shoulders in evident resignation, set his groceries and chicken wire on the front walk, and take the letter. He unfolded it and stood reading while Ludie watched. “Is it from Charles?” she asked.

  He glanced at Ludie, then back at the letter. “Well, no’m,” he said finally. “It’s from the West Florida Gas Company, wanting to know if you could use—”

  “But is it from Charles?” Ludie leaned forward.

  “—a new dryer. A gas dryer.”

  Josh and Ludie regarded one another.

  Lily saw Ludie straighten as much as she could with her back the way it was. “What does Charles say?” she asked.

  Josh glanced back at the paper, then at Ludie again. He refolded the paper and handed it to her. “He says he’s just fine. Sends his regards.”

  Ludie returned the paper to her pocket. Before Josh
could turn away she said, “What’s your name, young man?”

  “Josh.”

  “Where do you stay at?”

  Lily moved closer as Josh said, “Just visiting.”

  “But where do you stay at?” Ludie’s voice got louder as Josh backed away.

  “Not around here.”

  “The island?”

  “Well—”

  “You got to watch out on that island.” Ludie started down her front steps. “There’s chiggers as big as horseflies. Charles went over there hunting once, they like to eat him up. Had to bathe him and the dog in turpentine when they got home.”

  “Yes’m.” Josh scooped up his bundles.

  “You got your boat down to the pier, I reckon. Won’t take more than half an hour to get over there. That about right?”

  “I never said—”

  “Where you staying at over there? The Elmo House? Best creamed corn I ever did eat, when Charles and I went over there on a Sunday. The lady that runs it, Miss Rose, she still there?”

  “I don’t—”

  Lily thought of the Elmo House as it was now, boarded up for years, sand sifting through cracks in the windows and crabs scuttling across the front porch.

  Josh was backing down the street nodding good-bye to Ludie.

  Ludie’s right, thought Lily. He’s staying on the island.

  She waited until Josh turned around and Ludie was struggling back up her steps, then slipped by Ludie’s house. Josh was deep among the pines and azaleas of the overgrown park, but Lily no longer cared about catching up with him.

  She heard a motor sputter and come to life. By the time she reached the pier he was a blot on the green water. A blot moving, she noted as she stood shading her eyes, directly toward the southern end of St. Elmo Island.

  24

  Lily Visits Wanda

  Lily leaned against the railing of the pier. The young man—Josh, he had told Ludie his name was—had made the anonymous call and told Woody where to find Diana’s body. She was sure of it. But how would he have known? He had been up to something. Maybe he killed Diana himself. Maybe he was a man she ran into somewhere and treated mean. He might’ve been the one who wouldn’t stand for it.

  But Woody had said Wesley confessed to killing Diana. Lily thought of Wesley in his choir robe, his hair bristling, his Adam’s apple bobbing as the choir struggled through “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” Wesley and his tract about lust. Wesley admiring the Island Queen. Her eyes burned from the dazzle of the water, and she turned away. Religious fanatics had caused a lot of trouble in the world before now, she knew. But Wesley had always seemed more pitiful than dangerous.

  She wandered back toward her car. Now that she was in town, she supposed she ought to visit Wanda. She contemplated her daughter without enthusiasm. Something had gone wrong between her and Wanda. Perhaps it was Wanda’s insistence on marrying Woody. Their son, Junior, had always acted like a smaller version of his father, and Lily had never warmed up to him much. She and Wanda had fallen into a routine that could barely pass for intimacy. And now with Aubrey the way he was, who did she have left? Lily blinked the thought away as she slid into the baking-hot Nash. Wanda would know the sheriff’s department gossip about the murder, and that was good enough reason to visit.

  Wanda and Woody lived in a fairly new house in what once had been planned as a subdivision. The developers had found, however, that few St. Elmo citizens were interested in moving from town to the sandy, blistered, shadeless lots of St. Elmo Heights. Only a handful of flat-roofed, pastel-painted stucco houses had been built before the project was abandoned. Woody had bought one, so Wanda lived surrounded by an acre of sandspurs with no water, not even a stream, in sight. Lily wondered how she could stand it.

  As she turned into the driveway, she realized it was getting toward noon, and hoped Woody would be too busy to come home and eat dinner. She had seen enough of him for one day.

  Wanda was wearing shorts and a sleeveless blouse, her legs and arms looking white and thin. Her brown hair was in pin curls with a bandanna tied around it. She invited Lily into the shadowy living room, the Venetian blinds angled against the sun. An ironing board was set up on the back breezeway, and on a table next to it the radio was murmuring.

  “I was just about to have some Jell-O. Would you like some?” Wanda’s offer was listless.

  The Jell-O was lime, with fruit cocktail suspended in it, and it started to form a green puddle as soon as it was put on the saucer. Wanda served it with Saltine crackers and a dot of mayonnaise on top. Over that and iced tea, Lily learned that her grandson was enjoying third grade. When the subject was exhausted, Lily said, “Guess Woody’s been busy, with Diana Landis getting murdered.”

  “St. Elmo will be a better place with her gone.”

  Wanda seemed to expect life to be as spotless as the rooms pictured in fancy magazines. “Diana had troubles, just like the rest of us,” Lily said, distressed by the admonitory tone in her own voice.

  “She certainly has caused Woody enough trouble.”

  “How? He’s arrested Wesley, hasn’t he?”

  Wanda’s mouth was tight. “Yes he has, and thank goodness. Now maybe things can settle down.”

  “Has Snapper been rough on Woody?”

  “Not really. He even refused absolutely to use his pull in Tallahassee to get any help with the investigation. Woody was gratified. But Woody was walking on eggs the whole time. All he had to do was rub Snapper the wrong way, and…” Wanda’s voice trailed off at the image of Woody’s wrecked career.

  Lily remembered Snapper’s expressed faith in Woody’s ability as a lawman. But Woody had never investigated a murder before. “Is Snapper satisfied it was Wesley?”

  “Seems to be. What Snapper’s really thinking about, Woody says, is the election, because now he’s sure to win.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Diana was costing him votes, and now she’s gone. It gets his name all over the papers, too. There was a reporter from Tallahassee here, and somebody may even come up from Jacksonville. Snapper can run for senator next time, Woody says.”

  Lily crumbled a Saltine. “How did Woody know that Wesley did it?”

  “That little fellow that sells bait? Gus Avery? The one with the thing on his neck? He’d been off fishing and come back, and he saw Wesley high-tailing it away from the Southern Star and into the woods. He didn’t think much about it then, because Diana usually had men around, so he went on home. When he heard she’d been killed, he told Woody.”

  “So Woody tracked Wesley down?”

  “Didn’t have to. Went to his rooming house and there he was, with his Bible on his knees, reading about the whore of Babylon. He practically fell all over Woody to tell him he killed her.”

  “Did he say why?”

  Wanda’s cheeks colored. “No. But you can just about bet she tried to get him to do something—you know.”

  Lily knew, and in fact it sounded plausible. Why, then, did the young man named Josh still seem so important? “Did Woody find out who made that call? The anonymous one?”

  “Woody figures it was just somebody passing who didn’t want to get slowed down. Would you like a piece of pound cake?”

  Lily left Wanda ironing Woody’s uniforms and listening to “The Romance of Helen Trent.” The store, dusty and quiet as it was, looked like a haven. She paid Sara Eubanks and sat on a stool behind the counter, glad for a glimpse of the bay through the screen door.

  She wondered if anyone on the island knew the man named Josh. She needed some more nets from Sam Perry. It wouldn’t hurt to go over there one day soon, and—

  The screen door flew open, and a group of children banged in, shouting about candy.

  25

  Wesley Incarcerated

  Whatever Lily was going to do about Josh, it would have to wait for another day. In the meantime, her thoughts turned to Wesley again and again during the long, sleepy afternoon. He might have killed Diana, but he had also stoo
d beside Lily and admired the Island Queen, and she had felt in that moment that he wasn’t a complete fool. He would need more than Mrs. Chillingworth’s cake to let him know somebody was thinking about him.

  She told Aubrey at supper. When she explained about Wesley’s being in jail and ended, casually, “So I thought I’d drive in to see him this evening,” Aubrey’s reaction surprised her.

  “What for?” he said, marking the first time in months he had asked her a question.

  She was almost too astonished to reply. “Just to, you know, see how he is, maybe take him something,” she fumbled.

  “Boy killed somebody. Better stay away,” Aubrey said, and reached for another corn muffin.

  Lily was in a dilemma. Aubrey had shown a slight concern for her welfare. To encourage him, surely she should give in and do as he advised. What difference did it make if she went to see Wesley or not? Yet she knew, as sure as she was sitting there, that she meant to go ahead with her plan.

  “I won’t stay but a minute,” she said, and Aubrey finished eating in silence.

  The courthouse was locked, and the entrance to the jail around back was dark and forbidding. Clutching a few back issues of the Saturday Evening Post and a bar of lavender soap for Wesley, Lily approached the dimly lit concrete stoop. Through the screen door she could see a desk and, seated at it, Deputy Cecil Barnes. Wesley was too important, she judged, to be guarded by the regulars, most of whom would, so Lily had heard, turn their backs on anything if you gave them a pack of chewing gum.

  Cecil was cleaning his fingernails with an attachment on his pocket knife. He looked up when Lily entered, and his voice registered surprise when he said, “Good evening, ma’am.”