Looking for Lillian (Hunter Jones Mystery Book 7)

by Charlotte Moore

  “You mean back to the house in Atlanta?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she said. “That’s our home. You know mom and dad were living there when I was born. She’s the one who chose the house and all the furniture and everything.”

  “But she’s living in Spain now,” Tab said. “She got married again.”

  “Well, she’s coming home now,” Caitlin said with a shrug. “And I want to stay in Atlanta.”

  The girl at the drive-through window said, “That will be $14.99,” and Tab, suddenly aware that his funds were running low, turned to his sister.

  “Have you got any money?” he asked Caitlin.

  “Yeah, sure,” she said, digging into her shoulder bag and coming up with a crumpled hundred dollar bill.

  The girl at the take-out window frowned and went to have it approved by her manager.

  As he reached for the boxes of fried chicken a few minutes later, Tab was worrying that his sister was going to be disappointed about the plans her mother had for her. Probably, he thought, she’d be moving to Spain, like it or not.

  He didn’t want to get into it, so he handed her the change and let her ramble on.

  “You ought to move to Atlanta, too,” Caitlin said. “You could stay with us, and you could take me to try getting my drivers license again. I failed the dumb test the first time. I probably ought to practice some more before I take that test.”

  Tab was only half listening. He decided Caitlin’s mother could deal with Caitlin. His head was still reeling from learning that he wasn’t going to be rich after all, and he realized that he needed some time away from his whole family.

  Lucasta Tilling was furious and didn’t hesitate to show it. She slammed the door behind Sam Bailey and Taneesha Hayes.

  “The nerve!” she said to her cats, “The gall of them to think I might poke around in that old lady’s things or steal her silly pearls.”

  She had even told the sheriff that he was welcome to search her house right that minute and they had the gall to spend a half hour poking around. At least Sgt. Hayes had taken the bedroom so that the sheriff wasn’t going through her undies.

  Chapter 31

  Tucker Townsend was getting coffee at R&J’s when Skeet Borders waved to him from one of the back tables.

  He walked over, juggling the two foam cups. Skeet was having coconut pie and coffee.

  “Sit down for a minute,” Skeet said. “I need free advice. I want to buy India a new laptop for her birthday.”

  Tucker made a few suggestions, which Skeet wrote down, and then he said, “You know, Skeet, I need some free advice, too. It’s about Mallory.”

  “I’m no expert on women,” Skeet said with a grin. “Ask India.”

  “Well, this is about her half-brother,” Tucker said, lowering his voice, to explain about Ben Barstow’s visits.

  “She thinks I don’t like him, and I’m being possessive, and you know, stuff like that, but I honestly think he’s interested in her. I mean he’s flirting with her, and I don’t think it’s all that brotherly, and he’s not really related to her.”

  Skeet consider it over his last few bites of pie, and said, “Well, India has a brother, and the first time we got together, he didn’t say a thing to her about how cute she looked. Instead, he really grilled me.”

  Tucker waited.

  “He had known me all along,” Skeet said, “And all of a sudden he had this attitude. He wanted to know what my intentions were toward India. Probably like her dad would have done if he’d been alive.”

  “Yeah, well, Ben Barstow isn’t doing any of that stuff,” Tucker said. “He’s just smiling and telling Mallory how pretty she looks and how her dress matches her eyes, and he likes the way she’s wearing her hair now,” Tucker said.

  “I think you’re got it figured out right ,” Skeet said, getting up.

  “So what would you do?” Tucker asked.

  “I don’t know,” Skeet said after some thought. “Maybe I’d hit him.”

  “That’s no help,” Tucker said. “He’s taller than I am and I think he works out. Besides, Mallory would have a fit.”

  “You said he’s going back to Savannah when the trial’s over,” Skeet said. “When’s the trial over?”

  “Probably today,” Tucker said.

  “So he’ll be gone,” Skeet said with a shrug, “Unless you think Mallory’s interested in him, what’s the big deal? It’s not like he’s living here. Don’t let it bother you so much.”

  “I’m just hoping he doesn’t call again and want to go out and celebrate or something,” Tucker said. “But you’re right. I ought not to let him bother me so much. It’s just one of the few things Mallory and I have ever argued about.”

  They headed outside, and when they were about to part ways, Skeet gave Tucker a light punch on the arm, and said, “By the way, Tucker, I do have a brotherly attitude toward Mallory, and I’ve been wondering what your intentions are.”

  Chapter 32

  Hunter left work at mid-afternoon, stopping by the grocery store for baking supplies before picking up Tyler at India’s Play School and Bethie at Magnolia County High School.

  “I’ve got everything for Toll House cookies,” she said as Bethie buckled her seatbelt. “Do you want to learn how to make them?”

  “Cookies!” Tyler said, clapping his hands and kicking his feet up and down. “Yay! Cookies!”

  “Dad’s the same way,” Bethie said, laughing. “We’d probably better make a double batch so there’ll be plenty for the cookie monsters.”

  “I thought of that,” Hunter said.

  Tucker stopped by the newspaper office with the coffee and found Mallory alone. She gave him a slightly worried and questioning smile, and his heart melted.

  “We probably need to put his coffee in the microwave for a minute,” he said, and then he put on his best smile and asked, “What have you heard from Ben? Did he win his case?”

  “I haven’t heard,” she said with a return smile.

  “Look, Mallory,” he said. “I’m sorry if I haven’t been much fun this week. I guess I really have been sort of possessive, but I’m not used to sharing you with other guys, especially guys who give you a lot of compliments.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I guess I’ve just been thinking of him as the brother I never had, and I thought you’d understand that. Anyway, he’s probably already halfway back to Savannah, and it’s popcorn and movies for us tonight.”

  “Great,” Tucker said. “I’ve just got one more customer to see.”

  He had been gone ten minutes when Mallory heard from Ben.

  “How’d it go?” she asked. “Where are you calling from?”

  “From Perry,” he said. “The judge had some kind of family emergency, and we won’t be finishing up until Monday.”

  “Well, are you staying over?” Mallory asked, a little tentatively.

  “No,” he said, “I have to go back because the head of the firm’s having this big party tomorrow night and I really need to be there. That’s why I’m calling. I just thought I could make a good thing of this since I’ll be coming back to Perry Sunday night.”

  Mallory waited, wondering what the good thing was.

  “This would be a great time for me to show you around Savannah,” Ben said. “And I need company for that long drive. Why don’t you throw some things together and I’ll drive over and pick you up in about an hour.”

  “That sounds like fun, but it’s not going to work,” Mallory said, “Saturday’s a work day for Tucker.”

  Ben was silent for a moment.

  “I wasn’t really inviting Tucker,” he said. “I was inviting you.”

  “Oh,” Mallory said.

  “You’re not that serious about him, are you?” Ben asked in a cautious voice.

  “Well, yes, I am,”
Mallory said. “Yes, Ben, I really am that serious about him.”

  The rest of the conversation was awkward but mercifully brief.

  Chapter 33

  On Saturday morning Hunter was up early with Ty, letting Sam sleep late.

  Ty had finished his cereal and was happily building towers of blocks and knocking them down with his yellow dump truck.

  Looking at the backyard through the kitchen window, she could tell that it had rained during the night, but she didn’t see the glint of ice, and she decided to stick with her plan to visit the McFalls with Bethie.

  She had two goals for that visit: one was to get into a comfortable conversation with Pink McFall and ask about Martha May McFall. The other was to have Caitlin McFall over for a visit and maybe even for supper if Bethie gave the idea a thumbs up.

  As she poured herself a second cup of coffee, Ty discovered his new favorite book under this toys and came over with it, saying, “Read my book!”

  Hunter took him on her lap and opened The Snowy Day.

  “Why don’t you tell me about the story?” she said.

  He turned the pages and pointed to the boy.

  “That’s Peter!” he said.

  “Right!”

  He turned another page and said, “No!”

  “It’s Snow,” Hunter said. “Ssssssnow! ”

  Ty nodded and agreed with a smile. “It’s No! Nowy Day!”

  They were halfway through the book when they heard Sam taking the stairs two at a time.

  He had dressed in a hurry and was rebuttoning his shirt when he reached the kitchen. He took her coffee mug straight out of her hand and drank some of it, before getting his overcoat. He looked worried and angry.

  “Gotta go,” he said. “McFall house. Something’s happened to Augusta Wren.”

  Taneesha was already out of her apartment.

  “It’s Miss Augusta,” she had said to Jeremy, as he sat up, barely awake, watching as she pulled on slacks and a sweater. “Something’s wrong. They called the EMS and Sonny Layfield says we need to look into it.”

  The paramedics had gotten there first, and a shivering Pink McFall had stood aside to let them into the guest house. She was wearing a winter coat over satin pajamas, holding a ring of keys in her hand.

  “She’s breathing, but she won’t wake up,” Pink had said, pointing the way to the bedroom. “Thank heavens I came out to check on her.”

  Augusta Wren was in her bed under a tangle of covers. There was blood on the side of her head.

  “You go back to your house and stay warm,” Sonny Layfield had said to Pink. “We’ll take care of her.”

  By the time Taneesha arrived, Augusta Wren was carefully moved to a gurney.

  “She’s got a strong pulse,” Sonny told her. “But we can’t wake her up. Looks like a skull fracture. There’s alcohol on her breath, so maybe she fell and hit her head and got to bed before she passed out, but I think it’s more likely somebody hit her with something hard. I took some pictures with my cell phone before we moved her.”

  Taneesha, who was shivering from the cold, took a closer look at Augusta’s head and shook her head.

  “Somebody hit her,” she said. Then she noticed the thin blanket they were using. “Here. Take this quilt. She’s had a bad cough. Don’t let her get chilled.”

  She yanked the quilt off Augusta’s bed and saw out of the corner of her eye that something tumbled to the floor .

  When they left, Taneesha knelt on the floor, getting a closer look at the embroidered bag that was lying there.

  Sam passed the EMS ambulance on his way. It was headed toward the Magnolia County Medical Center at top speed with its siren blasting, and he took that to mean that Augusta Wren was still alive.

  When he pulled to the end of the driveway, he saw Barnard McFall coming out of the house barefoot in his pajamas, looking bewildered. Seeing that Taneesha was on the scene, he took the time to lead the shivering old man back into the house.

  “What’s all the commotion about? It’s time for breakfast,” Barnard demanded. “Somebody needs to make my breakfast. Where’s Augusta?”

  Caitlin was standing in the kitchen looking out the window. Her dark hair was uncombed, and she seemed to be wearing one of her brother’s t-shirts, with a good deal of bare leg showing.

  “Where are they taking Augusta?’ she asked Sam.

  “They’re taking her to the hospital. Where’s your grandmother?” he asked her.

  “In her room getting dressed, I guess,” Caitlin said. “She said she was going to the hospital. What happened to Augusta? Is she dead?”

  “No,” Sam said. “She’s not dead. How about getting your grandfather some breakfast? Fix him some cereal or something.”

  She looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language.

  Sam realized she wasn’t used to helping, or maybe she was upset. He found the cereal and milk himself. He needed to get the old man settled down.

  By the time he had Barnard McFall seated at the table eating a bowl of cereal, Pink had come into the kitchen, hastily dressed.

  “Oh, Sam, thank you so much for getting him something,” she said.

  “What’s wrong with Augusta?” Caitlin asked her. “Nobody’ll tell me anything. Where’s Tab? He’s not answering his phone.”

  “Augusta’s head’s bleeding,” Pink said abruptly, almost angrily. “She’s unconscious. And I can’t reach Tab either. Will you please go put some clothes on?”

  Caitlin looked surprised at her grandmother’s tone and then left.

  Pink sighed and said to Sam, “I shouldn’t have been so sharp with her, but this is all so hard, and I’m just not used to today’s teenagers. You’ve got a teenaged daughter, haven’t you? Are they all so.. so..”

  “Caitlin’s had a rough week,” Sam said, not wanting to say that Bethie was a constant source of joy in his life. Have you heard from her mother?”

  “Oh yes,” Pink said, lowering her voice. “She’ll be here tomorrow afternoon. I talked to her again yesterday, and she says she’s made arrangements to put Caitlin in a private girls’ school in Virginia. I told her I’d let her explain that to her daughter because Caitlin’s got some notion she’s going to go back to Atlanta. She probably misses her friends there.”

  When Sam went back outside, Taneesha was already putting crime tape around the guest house.

  “I’ve called her daughter, Marietta,” she said. “She and Kenyatta are going to the hospital, and she’ll let the others know.”

  “Good,” Sam said, “I take it you’re sure there was a crime?”

  “Yes. There was blood on her head, and there’s an embroidered bag on the floor in the bedroom,” she told him, “It was under the quilt on her bed. I’m pretty sure it’s the one with Miss Pink’s pearls in it.”

  They went into the bedroom, and she pointed it out. Sam pulled on gloves, picked it up and opened it. He saw pearls and a few glitters of other jewelry and coins before closing it again.

  “Now that,” he said, “is interesting.”

  “You don’t think Augusta took them, do you?” Taneesha said, giving him a stern look.

  “No, I don’t,” Sam said. “I think whoever hit her put it there for us to find.”

  He placed the bag on the bed and frowned.

  “What I hate is that now I’ve got to check out Lucasta Tilling’s alibi for last night because she really did have the opportunity to steal that bag of jewelry.”

  “But how would she know that Augusta was sleeping in the guest house?” Taneesha asked.

  “Maybe it narrows things down a little,” Sam said. “How many people knew that Augusta was here? Hasn’t she been spending most nights in the house lately?”

  “Maybe they didn’t know,” Taneesha said. “Maybe they wanted to plant the jewelry bag, and it turned out she was h
ere.”

  In the house, Pink had reached Deb, who said she’d come over, and wanted to know if Tab was there.

  He wasn’t.

  “He left before I woke up,” she said. “I thought he must have gone over there. How about waiting a while to go to the hospital? You’re probably not going to be able to see her right away, and we’re going to need to find somebody to keep an eye on Mr. Barnard, and I don’t expect that Caitlin can do that.”

  “Yes, you’re right we’ll really have to,” Pink said sadly, “He went outside barefoot in his pajamas this morning. And Caitlin certainly can’t be responsible for him.”

  Taneesha was assigned to stay at the hospital. Family and friends were gathering rapidly, filling the lobby outside the emergency room, some crying, some praying.

  Taneesha spoke first to Marietta Wren Johnson, and to her daughter , Kenyatta, who looked a little under the weather.

  “Kenyatta was there with me last night,” Marietta told Taneesha, going into every detail. “Mamma had that bad virus that Kenyatta had, but Kenyatta’s almost over it. I had to take Mamma canned chicken soup because there wasn’t time to fix the broth, you know. She said canned was fine, but she did eat about half of it, and then she took a hot shower and got ready for bed, and I fixed her a toddy.”

  “With whiskey?” Taneesha asked.

  “Yes. Bourbon. She never drinks at all except for medicinal purposes,” Marietta said, “I brought some over. I made the toddy with whiskey, sugar and hot water and lemon. It was pretty strong, and it seemed to help the coughing a lot. She got in bed, and we talked a while, and she fell asleep. We stayed a while after that, and then I felt her forehead and could tell her fever had broken , so I thought she’d probably feel a lot better in the morning. We left then. I had to see about my younger kids.”

  “Did you lock the door when you left?” Taneesha asked.

  “I went out the door on the side,” Marietta said. “The one near the driveway, not the one facing the back of the big house. It locks when you shut it. I don’t know if that front one was locked or not.” She looked anguished. “Oh, I should have checked, or left Kenyatta there with her . That’s what I should have done. Mamma’s always been one to lock up, but she was sick.”