Guns, Wives and Chocolate

by Sally Berneathy

  “How long you been married?” Grace asked.

  “Three years. How long you been married?”

  “Not quite a year.”

  Silence.

  I clapped my hands. “Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s all have a Coke and chill out. If you don’t have any cold Cokes, Grace, I’ve got plenty at my house.”

  Nobody seemed enthusiastic about my idea of a peace drink.

  “Must be a different Chuck Mayfield,” I said again. “It’s a common name. Let’s all forget this ever happened.”

  “Show her your wedding picture, Mama. I’ll get it.” Rickie darted into the house. The screen door slammed behind him.

  The two women continued to glare at each other.

  Another prediction…when Stella saw her husband in Grace’s wedding picture, World War III was going to erupt.

  I thought briefly of running home and hiding, leaving the two of them to fight it out. But Grace had called me her friend. She’d attacked the woman who punched me. I had to stand by her in this no-win situation.

  I prayed for a distraction...a small tornado going down the middle of the street, a vegetarian lion running amuck, a major eclipse of the sun.

  Same success as when I pray for the winning lottery ticket.

  Rickie came out with an eight-by-ten picture frame. The screen door slammed behind him.

  He handed the picture to Grace.

  She looked at it closely as if seeing it for the first time.

  I grabbed it from her. “I’ve never seen your wedding picture, Grace! What a pretty dress.”

  “It’s my waitress uniform. We didn’t have a fancy wedding.”

  “Neither did we.” Stella reached for the picture.

  I moved backward, up the porch steps, holding it away from her.

  She had longer arms than I realized. She grabbed one side of the frame. “Give it to me.”

  “I’m not through looking at it.”

  She yanked the frame from me.

  I held my breath.

  Nobody moved.

  Even the infamous Kansas City wind that never stops blowing held its breath.

  Finally she gave the picture to Grace and took a cell phone from the back pocket of her jeans. She scrolled through a few screens then handed it to Grace.

  I leaned over and saw a picture of Stella and Chuck.

  Grace’s knuckles turned white as she clutched the phone.

  Rickie snatched it out of her hand. “That man’s not my daddy. He doesn’t look anything like my daddy.”

  Grace looked at me, eyes filled with hope.

  I couldn’t betray that hope. “I think Rickie’s right,” I said. “See the distance between the eyes? That’s critical when they do the facial recognition thing on TV. In this cell phone picture, the distance is only about an eighth of an inch. It’s closer to half an inch in Grace’s picture.”

  The two women looked at each other then back at me.

  “My picture’s bigger,” Grace said. Her voice was low with defeat, but her eyes still held that desperate need to believe.

  “Well, um, it’s all in the perspective.” That made no sense, but I’d run out of blarney.

  Grace slumped onto the top porch step.

  Stella sank beside her.

  Rickie threw her cell phone at her. “I hate you!”

  The phone bounced off her shoulder and landed in the grass. She didn’t seem to notice.

  Rickie ran back in the house.

  The screen door slammed behind him.

  “He said I was the only woman he’d ever loved.” The small voice coming from Stella’s not-so-small body sounded strange.

  “He told me the same thing,” Grace said.

  “I don’t understand,” Stella said.

  I understood. The man was a lying, cheating bigamist scum.

  I refrained from expressing my opinion.

  “Them people on the phone said Chuck’s dead. Is that true?” Stella asked.

  Grace drooped lower. “Yeah.”

  “What happened? He never got sick.”

  Grace sniffled. “I don’t know. We were unpacking and he just fell over.”

  I needed to leave and let the two wives-in-law figure things out for themselves. Stella seemed as confused as Grace about Chuck’s double life. Unlikely she killed him.

  But I was on the porch, and they were on the steps. I’d have to ask them to move aside. I didn’t want to interrupt them. More importantly, I didn’t want to draw their attention to me.

  Maybe I should go inside Grace’s house and out the back door.

  I didn’t want to encounter Rickie.

  “Your boy called him daddy,” Stella said.

  “Chuck was going to adopt him. His real daddy signed the papers. We were going to see the judge on Monday.”

  Stella snorted. “We were trying to have a baby. It would have been his kid, not some other man’s.”

  “He couldn’t have kids. He had a football injury.”

  Football? It was hard to imagine skinny Chuck playing football.

  Stella looked smug. “He never played football. He lied to you.”

  “How many babies you had?” Grace asked.

  Stella hunched forward and wrapped her arms around her knees. “None.”

  “Maybe he lied to you.”

  “Maybe.”

  The fighting was over. Time for me to go but, short of levitating over their heads, I had to make one of them move.

  Rickie came outside.

  The screen door closed quietly behind him.

  “That man’s phone is ringing again.”

  That man’s phone? Chuck was no longer Daddy.

  Nobody moved.

  I took the phone from him and looked at the display. Higgins Farm Machinery. A Kansas area code.

  I accepted the call, put the phone to my ear, and grunted in an effort to sound like a typical man.

  “Hi, sweetie pie. When you coming home?”

  I stared at the phone in horror. Not another one!

  Was Chuck a trigamist?

  I looked up at the silent people around me.

  Rickie turned away and went inside.

  Grace and Stella sat frozen in place on the porch steps.

  “What states did you say Chuck’s territory included?” I asked.

  “Missouri,” Stella said. “And Kansas.”

  “Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Iowa,” Grace added.

  Two wives in Missouri, maybe one in Kansas. Had he branched out to Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Iowa as well?

  “Who was that on the phone?” Grace asked.

  “Higgins Farm Machinery.” Once again no earthquake, tsunami, or tornado appeared to save me. I was going to have to tell Grace the truth. “I’m not sure who the caller was, but she wanted to know when sweetie pie would be home.”

  “Higgins Farm Machinery,” Stella repeated quietly. “That’s one of his clients.”

  “In Hutchinson, Kansas,” Grace said.

  I offered the phone to her. “We should probably go through Chuck’s list of contacts and see how many clients he has.”

  Grace sat on her hands. “You do it.”

  Stella folded her hands in her lap. “Yeah, you.”

  I did it.

  There were twenty-six.

  Twenty-six suspects?

  Grace’s number was listed under Maxwell Mowers and More.

  “Surely Chuck isn’t married to twenty-six women,” I said. “Some of these places must be legitimate.”

  “We can call those numbers and see who answers,” Grace said.

  “Good idea.” Again I extended the phone to her.

  “I can’t stand to hear one more woman say she’s married to my husband.”

  I offered the phone to Stella.

  “You do it. You weren’t married to him.”

  “She’s right,” Grace agreed. “You have to do it.”

  I’d won the election and I hadn’t even entered the race.

&
nbsp; “All right,” I said, “I’ll find out who belongs to these phone numbers.”

  But not by calling them.

  This was a job for the Fred-man.

  Chapter Six

  I offered Fred chocolate chip cookies in exchange for tracking down all those numbers on Chuck’s phone. He asked for brownies as well. We struck a bargain for cookies and brownies. I got a deal. He didn’t know I was willing to go cookies, brownies, and Shannon’s Double Chocolate Double Caramel Cake.

  When Trent called that evening, I spent the first ten minutes telling him about my confrontations with George and Stella.

  “The woman hit you? Are you okay?”

  His concerned tone sent sparkles through my heart. He was worried about me. He cared about me. “I’m fine. A little sore.” I tried to sound brave and strong but wounded at the same time.

  “How about Grace and Rickie? Were they hurt?”

  My sparkles dulled. Grace had no one to worry if she’d been hurt in the fight. The man who would have worried about her was dead. Worse, he was the cause of the fight.

  “They’re all right, but both of them are upset. Rickie has stopped calling Chuck his father. Now he’s just that man.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “I’ll take her more chocolate tomorrow.”

  “Good idea. But if George comes to her house while you’re there, don’t confront him again. Go home, call me, call Fred, call 911…just stay away from that man.”

  “Grace shouldn’t be alone with him. I don’t trust him.”

  “I don’t either. That’s why you need to stay away from him.”

  We needed to stay away from that subject. Next thing I knew, Trent was going to be asking me to promise to stay away from George, and I couldn’t do that. I had to protect Grace from him. “I have to go. Henry wants catnip.” It wasn’t a lie. Henry always wanted catnip.

  “Lindsay, listen to me, please. George is a dangerous man.”

  “I know. I’ll be careful. Love you.”

  He sighed. “Love you too. If you get in trouble, you have my number.”

  Trent knows me too well.

  

  The next day I lost myself in serving chocolate to the masses and was able to put Grace’s dilemma out of my mind for a few hours.

  When I arrived home, King Henry greeted me at the door, half-dead from starvation.

  Sometimes my cat’s a little melodramatic.

  I poured food into his bowl and he dove in, crunching loudly.

  I got a fresh Coke and went into the living room to relax.

  Someone knocked...light, rapid knocks.

  Probably not George.

  I opened the door.

  Grace stood on my porch, hands clenched, eyes wide. “Chuck was murdered!”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “The cops were here all afternoon.”

  I was dating a cop, but I was the last to hear when somebody got murdered? They spent the afternoon across the street from my house, but I had to learn about it from a neighbor? Had Trent known about Chuck’s murder when we’d talked the night before?

  He had. That’s why he’d been so adamant that I avoid George. Did that mean George was a suspect?

  “Come in. Would you like a Coke? A glass of wine?” I looked behind her. “Where’s Rickie?”

  “Sophie came over after the cops left and asked if she could take him for ice cream.” Grace crossed the room and sank onto my sofa with a sigh. “Yeah, I could use some wine. You got any of that pink stuff? I really like the pink stuff.”

  I went to the kitchen, poured half a glass for me and a full glass for Grace.

  She accepted her drink. “Thank you.”

  Grace had much better manners than Trent’s ex who had sneered at my choice of wine. I’m a connoisseur of chocolate and only drink real Coke, but when it comes to wine...those boxes fit much better in my refrigerator and have a handy spigot. And it tastes just fine to me, especially the pink stuff.

  I sat in my arm chair. “Chuck was...?” I couldn’t bring myself to say the m word in front of her. “He didn’t die from natural causes?”

  Tears gathered in her eyes. “He was poisoned.”

  “Poisoned?” My gut clenched. He’d been at my house minutes before he died. I’d given him a cookie. “Was he allergic to nuts?”

  “No, he loved nuts. Why?”

  “I thought maybe...I mean...nobody else at the party died so I thought he might...” Shut up, Lindsay! “I’m sorry. What kind of poison?”

  “Cyanide.” The tears spilled from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “And they think I did it!”

  “I’m sure they don’t think that.” A white lie. The spouse is always the first suspect, and the suspicion likely increased with the number of spouses. I could only hope they wouldn’t put Grace, Stella, and Higgins Farm Machinery in the same prison cell. That could bring on another murder. Or two.

  She wiped at her tears. No mascara today. “It was horrible. They asked me all kinds of questions. They know about Stella.”

  I flinched. “Trent probably blabbed. I’m sorry. Sometimes he takes that cop thing too far.”

  “It’s okay. They were bound to find out. They searched the house, went through all the boxes that weren’t unpacked already, and made a big mess.”

  “Cops can be real pigs.”

  “Trent told them to put things back the way they found them. I told them not to bother. I have to get everything unpacked and organized for Rickie’s sake. He was supposed to start his new school today, but I couldn’t make him face a bunch of strangers when his daddy just died.” She took a long drink of wine and looked forlorn. “Well, he was almost Rickie’s daddy.”

  “He was Rickie’s father. Having the judge approve those papers was a technicality.” I couldn’t believe the words that came out of my mouth. Had I really stood up for the bigamist jerk?

  The grateful expression on Grace’s face told me I’d said the right thing even if I’d told a lie.

  Maybe it wasn’t a lie. Who knew what was going on in Chuck’s mind?

  “The cops want his phone. I told them I gave it to you because I didn’t want it around with Stella’s messages and all. Rickie said he can erase those phone numbers and messages before we give it to the cops. Did you find out if there’s any more...” She swallowed. “Any more of them?”

  “Fred’s checking. I’ll call him.”

  She sat forward. “Fred? He knows about the others?”

  Had she hoped to keep Chuck’s duplicity a secret? Pleasant Grove’s a small town. A murdered bigamist would be the hottest new story since Mrs. Henderson’s registered poodle gave birth to a litter that strongly resembled Mr. Johnson’s rescue dog next door. “It’s okay. Fred’s much better at keeping secrets than Trent.”

  I took my phone from the pocket of my jeans and tapped his name.

  The strains of classical music came from outside.

  The music stopped.

  Fred answered the phone. “I’m on your front porch.”

  Should have known Fred would have classical music for his ring tone. “Come in. The door’s unlocked.” Not that a locked door would stop Fred.

  My psychic (or psychotic) cat streaked across the room and exited the house as Fred entered. As usual, they ignored each other.

  “Good afternoon, Grace. I noticed you had a rough day.”

  “It wasn’t much fun.”

  I stood. “We’re having wine. Can I bring you some?”

  He looked at my glass and shuddered. “No, thank you.”

  “I have chocolate chip cookies.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Have a seat. Don’t start without me.”

  I hurried to the kitchen and returned with a plate of cookies.

  They had started without me. Fred sat next to Grace on the sofa. She clutched a cell phone and regarded Fred with wide eyes.

  He glanced up when I set the cookies on the coffee tabl
e then returned his attention to Grace. “Some of the entries were dealers. Chuck transacted business deals with them.”

  “He was good at his job,” Grace said proudly. “He was a top salesman.”

  “Actually, his sales placed him at the bottom of the pyramid.”

  Grace’s lower lip trembled. “No. He made good money. He took care of me and Rickie.”

  “You were moving to a house owned by your ex.”

  “Chuck wanted to pay Rick for the house. He said we didn’t need anything from him, but Rick wanted to be sure we couldn’t come after him for back child support when Chuck adopted Rickie. Rick doesn’t trust people.”

  “We judge others by our own standards,” I said.

  “What?” Grace asked.

  “Rick isn’t trustworthy so he thinks nobody else is.”

  “Chuck had no money problems?” Fred ignored my profound observation.

  “No.” She held up her left hand to display a gold band and a ring with a stone so large I’d assumed it was glass. Maybe crystal. Maybe not. “He bought me and Rickie anything we wanted.”

  “Did you see his tax returns?” Fred asked.

  “Of course not. That wasn’t any of my business.”

  I couldn’t decide if I was more aghast at Grace’s assertion that she didn’t consider her husband’s tax returns any of her business or the notion that not even the IRS could hide from Fred. “Fred, did you see his tax returns?”

  Fred arched an indignant white eyebrow. “Are you suggesting I hacked into the IRS database?”

  “Yes, and I’m impressed.”

  “Grace, your husband’s income as an independent farm machinery salesman was barely above poverty level. Did you actually see evidence of money, or is it possible Chuck was bragging? Maybe he offered to buy the house from Rick because he knew he wouldn’t have to.”

  “No!” Grace bristled. “He had money! I saw it.”

  “You saw what? Bank account records?”

  “Chuck didn’t trust banks. He had cash. Lots of cash.”

  “Cash,” Fred repeated. “He had $42 in his wallet.”

  Grace’s jaw tightened. “He had more.”

  “I found five additional wives, all of whom have low-paying jobs yet live in decent homes.”

  Grace went eerily still.

  “Grace? Are you okay?”

  “Five?” she whispered. “Five besides Stella and me?”