07-Peaches And Screams

by G. A. McKevett

  “That’s good, very good,” Savannah said, meaning it. She was convinced that a thorough investigation was the only hope Macon had.

  By re-examining the corpse, Sheriff Mahoney might be just trying to get more evidence on her brother, but he might also be questioning his own original conclusions.

  Savannah walked up to Herb Jameson and laid a hand companionably on his arm. “Mr. Jameson,” she said, “I’m Macon’s sister, but I’m here as a professional. I used to be a police officer, and now I’m a private investigator.”

  She saw the guarded look come into his eyes and knew he had guessed what she was going to ask next. So she hurried on, before he had a chance to say no.

  “I’m trying to help my brother, it’s true,” she said, “but I’m also trying to find out what really happened to the judge. I’m looking for the truth. That’s all.”

  He shook his head and gave her the same sad, compassionate look she remembered from her grandfather’s funeral. But it didn’t look practiced; Herb Jameson really was an empathetic soul.

  “I really shouldn’t, Savannah. If the sheriff found out, he’d—”

  “He won’t. I give you my word, he won’t. And I promise not to even touch the body. I just want to look at it.”

  She gently squeezed his forearm. “I have some experience in these matters. I’ve investigated numerous homicides in my career. I know more than I want to know about murder, Mr. Jameson. And knowing it has scarred my soul. Please, let me use what I know to help my brother. Please.”

  Savannah was mildly surprised to see that Herb’s preparation room appeared to be state of the art. Although she hadn’t spent a lot of time hanging out in the mechanical bowels of funeral homes, she was impressed with the display of stainless steel and high-tech looking equipment. In some ways the room reminded her of the autopsy suite of her friend, Dr. Jennifer Liu, the coroner back home in San Carmelita.

  Well organized, glass-fronted cabinets held uniformly labeled embalming supplies. Countertops and the linoleum floor gleamed like those of an operating room. A modern autoclave and a disinfection tray on the wall held instruments to be sterilized. A small washer and dryer in one corner stood ready to clean soiled linens and clothing. One of several chemical odors she smelled was good old-fashioned bleach.

  At the foot of the embalming table, a ventilation fan hummed, pulling the air out of the room and away from the practitioner. And beside the table sat a rolling utility cart, upon which was laid out an array of cosmetics and intricate tools she didn’t recognize.

  But whether surrounded by the trappings of modern science or not, the body on the table still looked profoundly dead.

  The judge was nude, lying on his back, a bright lamp on an extendable arm shining directly on his face. The brilliant light made him look pathetically pale, vulnerable, and weak.

  Not at all the way Savannah remembered him when he had been passing out paper cups of orangeade to the kiddies at Halloween.

  Herb Jameson took a snowy white towel from a nearby cupboard and spread it across the judge’s midsection. The gesture touched Savannah and gave her a warm feeling toward the undertaker, who cared about a man’s modesty even after the man himself was long past caring about such things.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “I was just starting to close up the wound in his forehead there. If you’d come along half an hour later, you wouldn’t even be able to see it.”

  She smiled at him. “Pretty good at what you do, huh?”

  “I am, if I do say so myself. When the family looks at him for the last time, they’re going to carry that memory picture with them for the rest of their lives. It’s my job to make him look as much like the man they knew and loved as I possibly can.”

  She saw a glow of pride in his eyes, and for the first time she saw why, maybe, someone might choose this line of work.

  “It’s not just a technical, mechanical, biological function we perform,” he continued. “It’s an art, an important art.”

  The image of her grandfather in his casket flashed across her memory. He had looked so natural, so peaceful, as though he had simply fallen into a deep sleep. Herb Jameson had done his job well then, too.

  Then she thought of the people she had spoken to so far about the judge. Unlike her grandfather, he didn’t seem to be particularly loved or deeply grieved.

  “Who are you doing it for?” she asked. “Why don’t you just have a closed casket?”

  “The judge may not have made a lot of friends in his lifetime, but his little granddaughter loved him. More and more children are coming to funerals these days, and I think it’s a good idea. It shows them that life’s precious, that our days on earth are limited and should count for something. I want her to look into that casket and see the man who played ball with her, who took her for walks and read her stories. I want her to be able to say a proper good-bye.”

  He leaned over and touched the round, black-edged hole in the judge’s forehead. “And I don’t want her to see what your . . . what somebody did to him. She can do without that in her memory.”

  Savannah stepped closer to the table and peered down at the bullet wound. “It’s a neat, round hole,” she said, “not star-shaped.”

  “No,” he said, “it wasn’t a contact wound. And no gunpowder tattooing around the hole, either. I put that in my autopsy report.”

  She was impressed. Not bad for a small-town undertaker and emergency, stand-in coroner.

  Jameson touched the dead man’s shoulder in a sadly comforting manner. “I wonder if he saw it coming.”

  “Did the bullet go straight in?”

  “Front to back, burned a tunnel right through the brain matter. I found it laying right against the skull, a little flattened but still intact.”

  “Then he probably saw it coming. But hopefully, he didn’t have long to think about it.”

  “I’d like to think he didn’t suffer, that it was quick.” He fingered the bullet hole. “Now I have to close this up and make it disappear, as best I can.”

  “That’ll take some careful stitching,” she said.

  He grinned. “No, we’ve got super glue now. You’d be surprised how much we use it to prepare a body for burial. It sure makes our life easier.”

  Savannah didn’t reply. There were plenty of things about the undertaker’s methods that, for her own peace of mind, she preferred not to know.

  She studied the rest of the corpse, looking for any other signs of injury. And found some.

  “His right hand is bruised, here across the palm and especially between the thumb and forefinger.”

  “Yes, the sheriff and I noticed that, too. Don’t know what it means, though. Kind of a strange place for a defensive wound.”

  “But perfectly logical for an offensive wound.”

  Herb looked confused but interested. “How do you figure?”

  “My brother and Kenny Jr. have confessed to trying to burglarize the judge’s house the night he was killed. They say he caught them in the act and took his cane to them. Whacked them both pretty good before they escaped out the front door.”

  Herb nodded and glanced down at the contusion. “That would explain the discoloration there. If he hit them hard enough, he might bruise his own hand like that.”

  “They say they hightailed it out of there, right after he smacked them. That he was alive when they left.”

  “Hm-m-m . . .” He didn’t appear impressed. “That’d be pretty hard to prove, considering all the evidence.”

  “There’s not that much evidence, and none of it’s conclusive.”

  Again, his eyes filled with compassion. “I’m afraid that may be up to a jury to decide, Savannah.”

  She found it hard to look into his face, honest and straightforward, knowing that he believed her brother was a cold-blooded killer. She returned her attention to the body.

  “Mr. Jameson, how long do you suppose it takes for a bruise like that to form after the initial injury?”

  He t
hought a long time before admitting, “I don’t know. Awhile, I suppose.”

  “Yes. A while. He hit my brother and Kenny Jr. hard enough to bruise them and himself, too. If they were the murderers, what do you suppose they were all three doing for that ‘while’ after he hit them with the cane, and they fired the shot that killed him?”

  Herb shook his head. “I don’t rightly know.”

  “I don’t either. But it sounds like my brother might be telling the truth. That he and Kenny Jr. were long gone by the time the judge died . . . with that substantial bruising on his hand.”

  For the first time since she had arrived, Savannah saw Herb Jameson waver, just a little, to her side of the story. And for the first time since she heard her brother had been arrested for homicide, she felt just a wee bit hopeful.

  Chapter 13

  “I really wish you would’ve let us bring home a bag full of burgers for lunch,” Savannah said as she and Dirk sat down to Gran’s table and a meal of Great Northern beans, ham hocks, and cornbread.

  Gran placed a bowl of mustard greens on the table along with an enormous pitcher of iced tea. “Hamburgers, donuts, and pizza. Lord have mercy, y’all will die young, eating garbage like that. It clogs up a body’s system.” She turned to Dirk, “You want a bologna sandwich with that, hon? Pa always had to have a bologna sandwich with his dinner or it wasn’t a meal to him. I’ve got white bread and mustard for it, too.”

  Dirk grinned, and Savannah silently blessed him for not pointing out the inconsistencies in a line of logic that considered hamburgers garbage and bologna nourishment.

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Reid. This is more than enough, really.”

  “You don’t have to call me Mrs. Reid, child. I’m Gran to everybody in town, except at church where they call me Sister Reid.”

  “Okay, Gran. Thanks for making the cornbread. We love it when Savannah makes it for us back in California.”

  Gran beamed at Savannah. “So, you find time to do a bit of home cooking, in spite of that busy schedule of yours?”

  “Oh, she spoils us rotten,” Dirk answered for her. “Fried chicken, barbecued ribs, even catfish and hushpuppies sometimes.”

  Savannah shrugged. “Gotta make sure nobody faints dead away from hunger.”

  “Nobody’s ever going to die of hunger in the presence of a Reid woman,” Dirk said. “It just isn’t allowed.”

  Gran eased herself into her chair at the head of the table. Savannah noticed with dismay that she was moving a bit slower these days, and she grimaced sometimes, as though her arthritis were acting up.

  “Well, I’m afraid that don’t apply to all the Reid females in this house. Alma’s about the only one who’s taken to cooking. The others would live off cold cereal and TV dinners if I didn’t put something better before ’em.”

  “You’ve gotta stop that, Gran,” Savannah said, reaching for a square of the hot cornbread. “You’ve spoiled those kids something shameful, and they’re lazy as can be. They’re not children anymore. They’re adults who should be fending for themselves . . . and taking care of you in your old age.”

  Gran puffed up like a river toad. “Whose old age? Ain’t nobody old around here.”

  “Okay, chronologically enhanced,” Savannah offered.

  “That’s better . . . I think. . . .” Gran grabbed Dirk’s glass and filled it with tea. “But you’re right. I’m starting to see that now. Chances are, I haven’t done them any favors, letting them get away with mur . . .”

  Her voice trailed away, and a sadness came into her eyes that hurt Savannah deeply. Gran shouldn’t have to grieve; she had suffered too much already in her long life.

  Dirk cleared his throat, breaking the awkward silence. “How did it go over at the funeral home?” he asked.

  “Mr. Jameson was nice. He’s a good man.”

  “Always has been,” Gran interjected.

  Savannah continued, “He even let me see the judge’s body . . . for all the good it did.”

  “Nothing helpful?” Dirk asked.

  “Not really. The shot was fired from several feet away. And that doesn’t tell us much. No other wounds, except a bruise on his palm. The darkest part being right here. . . .” She pointed to the area between her own thumb and forefinger.

  “He probably gave himself that when he hit them with his cane,” Dirk said, cramming his mouth full of beans.

  “Yeah, that’s what I told Mr. Jameson.”

  “Does any of that help or hurt our Macon?” Gran asked.

  Savannah sighed. “Not really. It substantiates his version, in the sense that the bruise would have taken a little while to form. It wasn’t done immediately before death.”

  “But that doesn’t really help Macon either,” Dirk said. “The sheriff or Mack Goodwin could say they hung around a while, giving the old man a hard time before they finally shot him.”

  “How did you do with Elsie?” Savannah asked him.

  “Not even as good as you did. She hated me on sight. Said she’d already had it up to here with cops asking her questions. Practically threw me out of her kitchen.”

  Gran chuckled. “That sounds like Elsie. She and I’ve gone to the same church for years. I always did like her. She’s full ‘o vinegar, that one. Speaks her mind, she does.”

  “Yeah, well . . . she spoke it quite loudly to me today,” Dirk agreed. “I think if I’d hung around another minute or two, she would’ve started chucking pots and pans at me.”

  Gran glanced over at the counter and the coconut cake she had baked that morning for the evening’s supper. A grin lit her face. “Elsie’s got a real sweet tooth,” she said. “If you want to try your luck with her, Savannah, I’m sure I could butter her up with that cake. If I know Elsie, she won’t be chuckin’ no pots and pans with one of my homemade cakes under her nose.”

  “We might as well head around to the back of the house,” Gran said when she and Savannah stepped out of the pickup at the Patterson mansion. “This time of day, Elsie will still be working.”

  “Even with the judge dead?” Savannah asked, falling into step beside her.

  “With a house this big, there’s always a heap of work to be done, whether anybody’s living here or not. You couldn’t give me a place like this. Too danged much bother.”

  Savannah smiled to herself, thinking of Aesop’s fable about the fox and the sour grapes. But she thought better of mentioning the fact that it would have been a lot easier to raise a passel of kids in a sprawling mansion than in a shotgun house.

  While little had changed about the front of the antebellum house since the Civil War, the back had been transformed. Instead of stables for horses and an old-fashioned courtyard, there was a modern swimming pool with a whirlpool and a swim-up bar, a tennis court, and a putting green. The barns were now multi-car garages housing half a dozen vintage classics.

  In the pastures, delicate thoroughbreds grazed, instead of the sturdy draft horses that had been used to pull the grand carriages in days gone by.

  They stepped onto the back porch with its white wicker tables and chairs with bright floral cushions. “This is the kitchen door,” Gran said, rapping loudly. “Elsie’s like me . . . spends most her life standing at the kitchen sink. I’d like to have a nickel for every potato the two of us has peeled in our time.”

  A second series of knocks brought Elsie Dingle to the door. Sure enough, she was holding a dish towel in one hand and had suds on the other.

  Gran was right about Elsie’s magnificent head of silver hair. It glowed like a halo around her dark face and softened an otherwise severe countenance that looked as though its owner had endured more than her share of suffering in life. And she was, indeed, a stout lady. She may have been deprived of certain things in her life, but apparently, food hadn’t been one of them.

  Elsie was scowling, as though highly irritated at the interruption . . . until she saw Gran.

  “Sister Reid!” she shouted, reaching out with a soapy hand to grab Gr
an’s sleeve. “Why, come right in, sugar! No point in standing out there in the hot sun. You’ll melt.”

  When Gran held the coconut cake out to her, the grin on Elsie’s face grew even wider.

  “Oh, now, you didn’t have to do that,” she said, grabbing for it. “But I’m just so glad you did! I know how good your cakes are . . . the best part of any church potluck!”

  She pulled them and the precious cake into the kitchen, which was large enough to contain most of Savannah’s California bungalow. With great ceremony, she guided them over to a breakfast nook in one corner and set the dessert in the center of the doily on the table, twisting it first one way, then the other, until she decided it was properly displayed.

  Savannah didn’t recall ever being in this part of the house, and was surprised and pleased to see the blending of old world and new in this cavernous room. On one side stood the brick fireplace with its assortment of cast iron hooks, cranks, and pulleys, where enormous pots had once hung over the blazing fires. Spits, now empty, had turned massive hunks of beef and pork, whole turkeys, grown on the plantation, as well as miscellaneous game from the nearby woods and swamps.

  But on the other side of the room, modern appliances made the cook’s work much lighter: a chef’s stove, microwave/confectioner’s oven, a double refrigerator and walk-in pantry, a center island with a vegetable sink, garbage compactor, and industrial-sized dishwasher.

  White tile and highly polished copper gleamed in the sunlight that streamed through leaded-glass windows with cobalt-blue and yellow accents.

  “Sit yourselves down right there,” Elsie said, pointing to the booth in the nook, “and I’ll fetch you something cold to drink. I’ve got fresh limeade, and iced tea, and—”

  “I think the tea would be best with the cake,” Gran said.

  “Then tea it is. I’ll get us some glasses and some plates, and we’ll be in business.”

  “May I help you?” Savannah asked.