Looking for Lillian (Hunter Jones Mystery Book 7)

by Charlotte Moore

  “What about her lost love?” Sam asked, slicing more cheese and stacking it on a cracker to hand to her.

  “I haven’t found Wilbur Parks’ death notice yet,” Hunter after munching a while. “I got stuck on the Spanish Flu. Tyler said he died in a ship that sank. I think it must have been the Otranto. That was a ship that sank with nearly 400 soldiers in it, and a bunch of them were from Georgia. I found it on one of the Georgia history sites. It was like one awful thing after another that fall. Well, I guess the Armistice wasn’t awful, since they had a big parade, but…”

  “I’m sorry I asked,” Sam said, holding up his hand to interrupt. “Want some more wine?”

  Later, when she couldn’t get to sleep, Hunter sat down at her computer and discovered a message from Nikki Daniello.

  Hi, Nikki wrote, I just saw on TV that there’s been another death in Merchantsville. Why don’t you ever tell me anything? Is Sheriff Gunsmoke on top of this one already?

  Hunter responded by attaching some of the pictures she had taken at the McFalls’ house—the ones she couldn’t use in the paper. Nikki was a professional photographer herself, so Hunter was always picky about the ones she sent.

  “Here’s Sam with Buzz McFalls’ parents,” she wrote under one. Under another, she wrote, “This is Sabrina McFall, now Buzz McFall’s widow.”

  Then she wrote about getting interested in discovering the real Lillian McFall, visiting the cemetery and looking into the old volumes until she glanced at the clock and realized it was nearly one a.m. and she had written nearly five hundred words. She momentarily considered deleting the whole thing, and then yawned and sent it.

  Chapter 23

  On Thursday morning, things had warmed up a little, with a predicted high in the low sixties.

  Sam was thankful for that. The community he served knew many ways to get cool in the summer, but never seemed to be prepared for really cold weather. Many people on low incomes didn’t have warm coats. Children showed up at school without gloves or caps.

  He was also glad that the McFalls wouldn’t have to shiver too much through the graveside service.

  “Don’t get too happy,” Hunter said when he brought this up over breakfast. “It’s supposed to drop back down by the weekend and be rainy on top of that.”

  She poured him another cup of coffee before getting a damp paper towel to clean the peach preserves off Ty’s chin.

  “There’s some kind of virus going around school,” Bethie said. “The school nurse got on the intercom yesterday and told people to stay home if they had a fever or a sore throat, and that we should all cover our mouths when we coughed. Like we didn’t know that.”

  “Lots of people don’t,” Sam said. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Yes, Dad,” Bethie said. “I’m fine.”

  “Yes, Dad, my Bethie fine!” Tyler said in exactly the same patient tone his sister had just used, and they all laughed.

  Mallory had updated the Messenger’s website and was about to leave for a Board of Education meeting when she remembered something she wanted to tell Hunter.

  “Miss Rose is sort of depressed,” she said, “She lost that cute watch you gave her at Christmas, and she’s all upset about it. You know she just loved it, but besides that, she was fussing yesterday about how she’s getting old and forgetful. She had thought she left it at the McFalls, but Miss Ellie looked for it, and it wasn’t there.”

  “I’m glad you told me,” Hunter said, “I can order her another one just like it. “

  “Well, don’t tell her I told you,” Mallory said. “Maybe you can get another one, and I can say I can drop it into her purse or something.”

  “Well, let’s give her a couple of days for it to turn up before we do that,” Hunter said, laughing. “Keep an eye on her wrist!”

  Then she asked, “How’d dinner go last night?”

  “It was fine,” Mallory said, and then she frowned a little. “Except Tucker and I had a silly argument on the way home. We made up, though. He was saying that Ben was flirting with me when all he did was say my dress was pretty, and the color went with my eyes. I have told Tucker twice already that Ben just sees me as a little sister, and to me, he’s like the brother I never had. I’m just sorry that Tucker doesn’t seem to like Ben.”

  “It’s probably not about Ben,” Hunter said. “It’s about you. Tucker loves you a lot, and he’s not used to sharing your attention. When’s Ben going back to Savannah?”

  “Saturday, probably,” Mallory said. “He thinks the trial will wind up Friday. That’s what I was telling Tucker. I might not see Ben again for another year or so.”

  Novena arrived with the morning’s mail as Mallory was leaving for her meeting, and Hunter told her that Tyler had sent compliments on the advertising sales. Then she settled in to listen to what the community was saying about the McFall situation.

  “There are some people—I won’t say who—who are spreading it around that his new wife must have done it,” Novena said, “I’ve told them you said she was downstairs the whole time. Of course, nobody knows how it happened, but they’ve figured it couldn’t have been a gun. Some people are saying that Lucasta Tilling must have strangled him. Bobby’s brother Jake said he noticed what big hands she has when she was on television. And you know, she’s lives here, but she’s not from here.”

  “I know,” Hunter said with a grin. “Neither am I. It’s an incurable condition.”

  After Novena had gone off to sell ads, Hunter made plans to meet Taneesha for lunch at R&J’s.

  “Just for fun,” she said over the phone. “We don’t need to talk about the McFalls.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Taneesha said. “And let’s not talk about ghosts either! I’ll meet you there at twelve. I’ve got to go now. Our guests from Atlanta just arrived.”

  Chapter 24

  Sam thanked Dawson and Declan Reeves for stopping by.

  “We’re trying to create a timeline,” he said. “Just to pin down where everbody was during the time that Buzz was upstairs. Declan, I’ll talk with you first.”

  Despite the suit and tie he had put on for the funeral, Declan looked like a kid sent to the principal’s office. Sam had a moment’s hesitation.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Twenty-three,” Declan said.

  “Okay,” Sam said. “We don’t need for your dad to be with us. Dawson, there’s coffee in the staff room down the hall if you want some.”

  Dawson Reeves shrugged and left. Skeet arrived to join Sam.

  “So, Declan,” Sam said, turning on a recorder and opening his notebook at the same time. “Let’s start when you arrived at the McFall’s house.”

  “It was a little after four,” Declan said. “Dad can tell you better. I was right behind them.”

  “You mean you came in separate cars?”

  “Yeah, dad drove the campaign van with Buzz and Sabrina, and Caitlin rode with me.”

  “You’re pretty good friends with Caitlin?”

  “Well, sorta friends, I guess,” Declan said, shifting in his chair. “She’s just a kid. I’ve met her a couple of times before, but that was the first time we spent any time talking. She didn’t really want to go at all. Dad asked me if she could ride with me because they were going to be talking politics. She had some CDs she wanted to play.”

  “So when you got to the house, what did you do first?”

  Declan frowned a little.

  “What I did was haul everybody’s luggage upstairs, and haul all the campaign signs into that little room in the front. That sort of thing isn’t really my job, but I got stuck with it.”

  “And what did you do after that?” Skeet asked.

  “Nothing much,” he said after giving it some thought. “It turned out that the old lady, I mean Buzz’s mother, was mad about the ad I put in the paper down her
e. I think my dad told you about that. Anyway, I heard her complaining to Buzz about that, and he told her I did it, so I sorta stayed out of her way. Then Dad and Buzz went into that back room and shut the door and went into a huddle, so I was, uh, well, you know it’s supposed to be a professional job, but…”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  Sam and Skeet both nodded sympathetically, and Declan hesitated and continued.

  “I wound up going out to my car and running the motor so I could stay warm and listen to some music. Uh, I even rode around a little so I wouldn’t run the battery down, but I, uh, came back.”

  “You were trying to avoid Buzz’s mother?”

  “Well, yeah, sort of.”

  “And when did you come back in?” Sam asked, remembering Hunter’s note that Declan hadn’t been around when Dawson Reeves made his introductions.

  “I don’t know exactly,” he said, “I, uh, mainly stayed in the kitchen having some sandwiches and, you know, just sort of staying out of the way.”

  “Did you see Buzz come out of the family room and go upstairs.”

  Declan paused, frowned, and then said, “No, but I guess he could have. That swinging door between the kitchen and the back hall was shut most of the time. Anyway, I definitely was in the kitchen when all the screaming started. I heard that.”

  He took a deep breath and then seemed to relax a little.

  “How’d you like Buzz McFall?” Sam asked, softening the question by adding, “Did you think he had a chance of winning?”

  “I liked him fine,” Declan said, “He was a smart guy, kind of stuck on himself, but that’s supposed to be a good thing in politics. He was just in a real bad mood that day. Looking back, my dad and I both know he must have felt bad. I don’t understand this business that was in the news about a possible homicide. We thought it was supposed to be his heart. What happened?”

  “We’ll probably release that information later,” Sam said.

  “Okay. Well, to answer your other question, I don’t think he had much of a chance to win the primary,” Declan continued, “ But don’t tell my dad I said that. I think Dad thought he was going to take Bud all the way to the White House.”

  Skeet grinned. Sam kept a straight face.

  “Anyway,” Declan said. “I feel bad about their not liking what I wrote for the ad, but I was just assuming they’d want a big crowd to show up, and it’s a small town.”

  He looked at Sam like a puppy hoping to have his ears scratched.

  “Okay, thanks for your help,” Sam said, “I’ll talk to your dad now.”

  “Pink McFall wants to talk with you,” Shellie said when he came out of the conference room. “It’s about some jewelry of hers getting stolen. Augusta says she won’t talk to anybody but you about it.”

  Sam told Skeet to get Taneesha to join him for the interview with Dawson Reeves.

  Chapter 25

  When he got to the McFall home, Pink McFall had been crying. Augusta Wren looked exhausted.

  “I know I’m silly to make such a fuss about it,” Pink said, “But Buzz gave me that string of pearls and I did so want to wear them to his funeral. There was a cameo pin of my grandmother’s in there, too, and some old coins. And the bag was something my mother gave me.”

  “They were real pearls,” Augusta said to Sam in a hoarse voice.

  “What kind of bag?” Sam asked.

  “A little jewelry bag,” Pink said. “It was something I got when I was a girl.”

  “It was embroidered satin,” Augusta said, “With a drawstring. Not all that big. Somebody could have stuffed it into a coat pocket or dropped it into a handbag. Sheriff Bailey, what about that woman who was poking around up here and found poor Buzz’s body?”

  “When did you last see the bag, Miss Pink?” Sam asked.

  “Oh, Sam, I’m not sure,” she said. “I don’t get upstairs much, but we can’t move everything downstairs, and I usually just get Augusta to get things for me.”

  “She kept it in the middle drawer of her old vanity,” Augusta said. “I know I haven’t gotten them for her since we set up their bedroom downstairs, and that was six months ago at least. I wouldn’t have taken them back upstairs if I’d brought them down.”

  “Didn’t you say you had a cleaning service up there on Monday morning?” Sam asked.

  Augusta nodded and then backed away and covered her mouth to cough.

  “Yes,” she said when she had her voice back.“Squeaky Clean sent a team on Monday morning but they’ve been in business a few years, and I don’t think they would be doing so well if things went missing after they cleaned.”

  “We’ll do what we can,” Sam said.

  At R&J’s Hunter had chicken and dumplings with sides of collard greens and field peas while Taneesha settled for a salad.

  “I’ve got to cut back,” she said, “I’ve been eating way too much ever since before Christmas, and I haven’t been running on these cold mornings.”

  “Are you going to the funeral today?” Hunter asked.

  “Nope,” Taneesha said with a slight smile. “Thank heavens! Skeet and Sam are handling that. I did get to interview Dawson Reeves this morning. Didn’t learn a thing. Sam was going to do that, but he had to go over to the McFall house. He just got back as I was leaving.”

  She lowered her voice and said, “Miss Pink’s pearls were stolen.”

  “Oh, no!” Hunter said.”When?”

  Taneesha sighed. “Who knows? She was keeping them upstairs, and she hadn’t worn them for months, so we really don’t know, but that means we’ve got to talk with Lucasta Tilling and Stacy Vann all over again, and with the cleaning service—and all of them are going to be really offended. You just wait. It will turn out that they were just misplaced. I remember the time my Auntie Mag was so sure somebody had stolen her purse, and it turned up in the back seat of her car. Shellie’s putting out the usual notices to pawn shops. Real pearls don’t show up that often. Sam says we can wait until tomorrow to do any questioning.”

  “Well, Lucasta Tilling definitely was up there poking around,” Hunter said.

  “I know,” Taneesha said, “T.J.’s done a background check on her, and, she may be crazy, but she’s clean as the driven snow. As much as I hate to admit it, I think she believes everything she says and she really was up there ghost-hunting. All the same, we’ve got to question her. Maybe this will show her the downside of poking around upstairs in other people’s houses.”

  “And here we are, talking about work and about Lucasta Tilling and the McFalls!” Hunter said laughing. “So I’m not going to tell you about the research I’m doing. I’m going to get some banana pudding.”

  Taneesha looked down at her salad plate and said, “Me, too! Maybe I’ll go back to the gym.”

  When they got back their table with their desserts, Taneesha said, “Now, what’s going on that isn’t about work? Think of something.”

  “Oh,” Hunter said. “I almost forgot. Do you remember Ben Barstow, Noreen’s son, the lawyer?”

  “That good-looking guy?” Taneesha said. “Sure I remember him. I’d say he’s a nine. Of course, only Jeremy is a ten.”

  “And Sam,” Hunter laughed. “Anyway, he’s been trying a case in Perry, and he’s been over to see Mallory. She and Tucker took him out for pizza Tuesday night, and he took them out to dinner last night.”

  “So that’s who was driving the Lexus,” Taneesha said. “I saw it in front of the paper Tuesday. What does Tucker think about all this? Him with his jeans and his truck?”

  “I don’t think he’s quite as thrilled as Mallory is,” Hunter said.

  “I can see that,” Taneesha said with a grin as she took her last bite of banana pudding. “If he showed up as my long lost stepbrother, I don’t think Jeremy would be so thrilled either. It’s not like he’s really kinfolks.”
<
br />   Hunter said, “He’s just here for a few days. I imagine Tucker will survive.”

  Chapter 26

  “How was the funeral?” Hunter asked Sam when he got home that evening.

  “Big crowd at the church,” Sam said. “Lots of Atlanta folks. Not so many at the gravesite. Sabrina McFall’s brother and sister-in-law were there with her. They seemed like good people. She was going back to South Carolina with them.”

  “How was Caitlin?” Hunter asked.

  “Poor kid,” Sam said. “She just looked miserable and sort of restless. I’ll be glad for her when her mother gets here. To tell you the truth, though, the one I was worried about most was Augusta. She’s got a bad cough, but she still went out and stood in the cold at the graveside service.”

  “I hope she’s not getting the flu, or whatever it is that’s going around,” Hunter said. “Miss Rose has a cold, too.”

  “I think Augusta spoke her mind to Declan Reeves,” Sam said. “I saw her stopping to speak to him outside the church, and whatever it was she said, he turned red as a beet. We’ll probably never see him in Merchantsville again. I think it was about that ‘open to the public’ ad, and I think he’s been beaten up enough about that.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be on Augusta Wren’s bad side,” Hunter said, and then she grinned and asked, “Did the Paranormal Society show up?”

  “No,” Sam said, “And I had Aaron keeping an eye on the house during the funeral just in case Lucasta decided to look for Lillian again.”

  “She wouldn’t do that, would she?” Hunter asked, laughing.

  “Well, Augusta told me she looked out the front window last night about midnight, and there was a car parked across the street from the house, with somebody with long dark hair looking out the window. She was about to call us then, but whoever it was drove away.”

  At eight that evening, at the house in Atlanta, Sabrina McFall was moving swiftly from one room to another, gathering the things she didn’t want to leave—clothes and shoes mostly, some framed photographs, a box of books and CDs, her laptop computer and a box of jewelry.