Murder on the Ol' Bunions (A LaTisha Barnhart Mystery)

by S. Dionne Moore

  I touched Valorie’s shoulder. “Your momma wanted you to be the best you could be. You might not have always liked it, and that’s okay.” Beneath my hand, her narrow shoulders twitched and heaved.

  “I tried to please her.”

  “You admitted that you cheated in Ms Letzburg’s class.”

  Valorie nodded, head bowed, hands tightly clinched in her lap. “Straight A’s was all she cared about. I always struggled in Ms. Letzburg’s class. So . . . I began cheating on the tests.”

  “Did you tell your momma the truth first or did she find out from Ms Letzburg?”

  “I tried.” She snatched up her napkin and dabbed at her eyes. “She didn’t believe me! Always thought I was so smart. Maybe she didn’t want to believe me. I think she wanted me to do so well because she never learned to read well, and always had to ask me for help with the books. It embarrassed her.”

  I glanced around the small but elegant kitchen. Its rich cherry cabinets and granite countertops gleamed with good care. The house gave off a show-room-quality feel.

  Superficial.

  Below all the bravado and attitude, Marion’s secret must have haunted her. It explained the reason why she always gave me the store’s paperwork to do and asked me to read off the inventory list.

  Valorie stood up and wiped her eyes again. “I’ve got to get back to packing. My. . .” she hesitated. “My friend will be here any minute.”

  “You take those dumplings with you and share them. No sense in leaving it here to spoil.”

  Valorie’s head dipped once, and a slow, shy smile curved her lips. “Thank you. For everything.”

  “Not necessary.” I huffed to my feet. “I’m here for you, baby. Willing and wanting to help.” Once again I gathered the slender form to myself and whispered in her ear. “God loves you.”

  On the front porch, the sun glinted off the windshield of a car as it slowed at the driveway, but kept going. Valorie licked her lips, her eyes darting to me.

  Feigning disinterest in the car, or Valorie’s reaction, I squeezed the girl’s hand. As soon as I backed out of the driveway, I aimed Old Lou down Nugget Road and onto Gold Street where the strip of buildings included the grocery and Regina Rogane’s salon.

  From my parallel parking spot in front of the grocery, I could see down Nugget Road to the front of Marion’s home. Just as I grabbed a cart and entered the grocery, the same car that had slowed by the driveway minutes earlier, pulled in.

  Mark Hamm got out.

  Chapter Nine

  The aisles of the Bright Sky Grocery remained relatively free of patrons. Passing the display of oranges and apples, I rounded the end of the fruit display toward Shiny Portley’s little stainless steel cart where he stood and sliced fresh pineapple into juicy, sweet chunks. Made my mouth water just watching him.

  As the owner of the store, he made it a habit of being out where the customers could see him and ask questions about his products. I tried to hide my amusement at the bright reflection off Shiny’s bald head as he worked the knife. Shiny’s nickname served him well. Come to think of it, so did his last name. He grinned at me as I parked my cart next to his workstation.

  “You can’t resist this fruity sunshine, LaTisha Barnhart.”

  “Um, and you knows how much Hardy loves his pineapple. I’ll take that one. Can’t get any fresher than that.”

  Shiny slid the golden chunks into a plastic container and slapped a price sticker onto the side. Deep creases formed at the corners of his eyes as the corners of his mouth curved into a smile. His laugh shook his belly. “My pleasure, LaTisha. Tell Hardy to save a piece of the pineapple upside-down cake for us poor single grocers.” He rubbed a hand over his belly and smacked his lips.

  “No sense in hinting around. You give me a free container of that pineapple, and I’ll deliver your cake tomorrow.”

  He held out the one in his hand. “Deal!”

  As I put it in my basket, Shiny leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Who do you think did Marion in?”

  I leaned toward him and grated out my reply. “I did. Don’t tell.”

  He tilted his head to look into my eyes. “I imagine there’s someone with a lot more reason than you, LaTisha. Even with her firing you and everything.”

  “You talkin’ foolish. I quit that job ‘cause Marion tried to boss me once too much.”

  Shiny bobbed his head. “Yeah, I can understand that. One time she came into the store with Tiffany and demanded to know why the sell-by date on my milk wasn’t as fresh as the Grab-N-Go.”

  “You should’ve told her to buy her own cow.”

  “I told her if Grab-N-Go was so much fresher, go buy her milk there and leave me alone.”

  I wagged my finger at him. “You keep talking like that and everyone’ll think you have a motive.”

  He leaned in again. “Between you and me, I think old Payton had enough of her mouth. That whole thing about Marion’s building being a historical site might be true, but not every old building can be saved. Marion sure didn’t have a problem selling when the contractor waved the money under her nose.”

  “Let me lay this one on you. You have any idea why Mark Hamm recused his vote?”

  Shiny shrugged and selected another pineapple. “He’s a strange bird.” His blade winked and flashed, then descended with a solid thunk. “Don’t know about him. Must have something to do with the whole mess. Valorie sure seems to like him.”

  As Shiny lifted the knife for another whack, I had the strange urge to holler, “Hei-yah!” As good as his aim was, maybe I should hire him to work on my bunions. He’d take his pay in pineapple upside down cakes.

  He pointed with his knife in the direction of the west wall, beyond which lay Wig Out, Regina Rogane’s salon. “You know who has their ear to the ground is Regina. She knows most everything that goes on in this town, even the hush-hush, because she’s around gabbing women all day. And with all the spats she and Marion had over the politics in this town, I wouldn’t doubt for a minute that somewhere down deep, she has a motive for giving Marion the push.”

  “Our good police chief would caution you not to jump to that conclusion.”

  He waved his knife in the air. “I know, I know. She could have just fallen onto that radiator. But you know as well as I do, and everyone else in town, that she was pushed. I’d bet my new toupee on it.”

  I arched my brows. Shiny’s last attempt with a toupee had left the entire town in stitches for the three weeks before he finally decided to give it up for lent. “Why don’t you grow your eyebrows extra long and comb them upward. That might work.”

  He grimaced as he scooted more pineapple chunks into a container. “Very funny. Don’t be forgetting my cake, either.”

  Chapter Ten

  “You get yourself down here right now, Hardy Barnhart. I’m not waitin’ on you another minute. No way am I gonna be late again for another Wednesday prayer service. You hear me? You’re as slow as a wart dissolvin’.”

  “And you’re bossier than a whole army of drill instructors.”

  “You get your sorry self down here and let me look at you before we leave. Genghis Khan knows you’ve probably got on those plaid pants I keep tryin’ to hide.” I glared at the ceiling, waiting for the telltale creak of the floorboards, or the scuff of socked feet that heralded his appearance.

  Nothing.

  He’d probably wore himself out hiking his britches up and decided to lay down across the bed. I’d fix him. Grabbing the broom I kept leaned against the hall table for just such occasions, I thumped the stick straight up into the ceiling three times.

  A thud on the floor right where the bed was located proved me right. Hardy’s voice howled down the steps. “I’m coming. Don’t you put a hole in that ceiling, neither. I’ve done patched enough of your broom handle holes to last me a life time.”

  “You’re not gonna have any life left if you’re not down here lickety quick.”

  Hardy appeared at the top of th
e steps, polyester pants riding high.

  “Woo-wee! For sure you better yank them things down or you’ll be singing high tenor at church.”

  He sent me one of his longsuffering grins. “I like them this way.”

  I shook my head, pursed my lips and heaved a dramatic sigh. Love him or leave him. And I loved him too much, high tenor or not. “No time now for me to be stewing about you, we gotta get.”

  Hardy turned toward the hall mirror and adjusted his tie. “I look pretty good for an old man.”

  “To someone with bad vision.”

  “Your vision’s pretty good.”

  “Until I get a good look at that plaid, then I go cross-eyed.”

  He shot a glance at my pillbox hat. “You stir up any trouble today?”

  “What you meanin’? The only trouble I stir is when I smack your lazy bones off that sofa.”

  His lips formed a firm line. “That’s your trouble hat. You only wear that thing when you’ve done something you ain’t proud of.” Hardy spit in his hands, focused his brandy eyes in the mirror above the hall table, and tried to smooth the grizzled edges of his hair. “How’s Valorie doin’?”

  I slicked a hand down the back of Hardy’s head, where a clump of hair rose from the rest like a ghost in a graveyard. “She cried like a baby in my arms.”

  He raised his bushy brows.

  “She’s a sweet thing down inside. Her momma pushed her so hard to succeed it made her angry. Valorie’s beside herself with grief. Mark Hamm pulled in after I left.”

  Hardy scooped up his keys and opened the door for me. “Mark?”

  “She was packing her clothes. Told me she had a place to go and then Mark shows up.”

  “See? Told you that hat spelled trouble. You were spying on them.”

  “Course not.” Wiggling my toes, I felt the crease of my hose wearing against my small toe and kicked off my shoe to straighten it out. “I can’t help it that I saw him pull into her driveway.”

  “Umm-hmm.”

  He opened the door for me and locked it, pocketing his key with a little difficulty.

  “You didn’t wear them things so tight and high, you’d have room to wiggle your fingers in your pocket.”

  “If you leave my pants alone.”

  He opened the car door for me, so I waited to continue the conversation until he rounded the front of Old Lou and got in.

  “What I said is true enough. As I was leaving Valorie’s house, a car slowed down right in front of us, then kept going. You know the grocery store looks right down that road. From there I could see when Mark’s car pulled in.”

  “Maybe he wanted to check on her.”

  “No, there’s more to it than that. You mark my words. And I aim to find out what’s going on there.”

  We rode the rest of the way in silence. Almost silence, except for the chug and grate of Old Lou’s engine mirroring the rhythm of my thoughts. Despite my best efforts, I wasn’t learning much. Plenty of people had motives for wanting Marion dead, or at least intimidated by a hard shove that unfortunately ended in death. And if that was the case, someone must be really scared. I wonder how Miss Marple would handle a crime like this?

  Observation.

  Keeping my mouth shut and my eyes open might glean some information, and since almost everyone I could think of went to Maple Gap’s Church on Wednesdays, I should be able to observe everyone in action.

  As Hardy pulled up in front of the redbrick church to let me out, my eyes landed smack dab on the back of Officer Mac Simpson and his conversational companion, Dana Letzburg. Hmm. Body language spoke volumes, and Dana’s wrote a book. She sidled sideways away from Mac. He continued to talk. Looked to me like the boy needed to cool his heels.

  While Hardy parked, I scooted toward the front door. A child went racing by, followed by another tow-headed boy. I snatched at the quickly departing shirttail and managed to grab hold of Tanner Murphy, my Sunday school student. Recipient of many classes on manners and about to become a living example of what happens when boys don’t pay attention in my class.

  He hollered as I reeled him in, and turned his big brown eyes on me. I smiled and motioned to his brother, who had stopped to find out what Tanner was squawking about.

  “I’ll thank you, boys, for not running. You run over one of us old people and you’re liable to get squashed.” I shook my head. “Not a pretty way to die, Tanner. Right, Mickey?”

  They shared a look and nodded at me.

  “There you are.” Their mother, Belinda Murphy, hair blown every which way, hurried up the sidewalk. Belinda Murphy’s natural-high color lent her the look of an athlete. I knew the woman to be a hard worker. Chasing after these boys probably qualified her for the Olympic five-hundred-yard sprint. Her eyes narrowed at her sons. “Can’t you two stay out of trouble for a minute?”

  Tanner and Mickey sent one more glance my way. I gave them my best you’d-better-polish-your-halos-and-be-quick-about-it look. In unison, they nodded, and by some pre-rehearsed miracle, the boy’s each took one of their mother’s hands. Maybe I wouldn’t give them the write-it-a-hundred-times punishment I’d had in mind.

  Belinda released Tanner’s hand long enough to brush back a strand of her tousled hair. “I don’t know how you do it, Mrs. Barnhart.”

  “They’re good boys, Belinda. They listen.” Most of the time. “You’ve done a fine job with them and don’t you forget it.”

  “Thank you.” She grimaced. “With Jack gone all the time, it’s tough sometimes.”

  I patted the younger woman’s shoulder. “I remember those days when Hardy had to leave for weeks at a time. It grows you as a person. Now. . .” raising my voice a bit to make sure the boys heard my next words. “I’ve got a huge caramel-pecan cake that needs eaten. You think you and your boys would like to take it off my hands?”

  Tanner stared up at his mother with longing eyes. Mickey, the bolder of the two, tugged on her arm. “Please, mom? Can we?”

  “That’s very nice of you, LaTisha. You must be missing Lela. Caramel-pecan’s her favorite, isn’t it?”

  The thrust of that question swept the breath from my lungs. Missing Lela more than a flea missed a good dog. “You come on by tonight after service and we’ll hand it off to you and your boys.”

  Mickey did a little dance while Tanner smiled his appreciation. Belinda tried to settle them with a look. “What do you say, boys?”

  “Is it a whole cake?” Tanner piped up.

  I chuckled at Belinda’s horrified look.

  “It’s a whole cake,” I assured the young man.

  As the buzzer signaling five minutes until service sounded, Belinda and I herded the boys through the doors and toward the sanctuary.

  A light touch on my arm let me know Hardy had made his appearance, seconds before his voice whispered toward my ear.

  “You missed the whole thing between that young officer and Dana. I think he was trying to ask her out and she was playing hard to get. When Payton came in she went right to him.”

  I didn’t turn my head, for fear my stare might alert Payton and Dana to my interest. I patted Hardy’s hand on my elbow and dragged him forward through a maze of people and a hailstorm of greetings, before we arrived at our usual spot.

  Immediately, Sara Anne Buchanan, age ten, was at my side and primed for a hug. I pulled the slender body against my shoulder. For two years, the little lady had struggled with leukemia. Before Lela had gone to college, they had declared Sara in remission—all praise to the Lord—but the girl still felt too thin. Her complexion still too pale for my liking.

  Lela and I had taken turns going with Sara’s mother and father to the chemotherapy treatments. Between the two of us, we made sure the Buchanan’s ate well.

  I stroked the hair back from her forehead. “Sweet girl. How’s my baby?”

  “I miss Lela,” Sara whispered.

  Two reminders of my empty nest in one evening. My heart ached from the onslaught. I paused to fight back t
he demons of the depression that tugged on me. “I miss her, too.” Best to get my mind on Sara and off myself.

  “I got a secret. You can’t tell.” I stared into her blue, blue eyes and waited for the sparkle of excitement to shine before I continued. “I made some beef stew last night. Would you like to share some?”

  “Yum! Can I? I’d better ask my mom. She’ll probably say yes ‘cuz I got a good grade on my test at school today. Know what else? I got picked first at recess!”

  Pastor Haudaire took his place behind the podium.

  “Wonderful, baby. You ask your momma." I winked and gave her another hug. "Tell me what she says after service. Okay?”

  Sara leaned in for another hug and a quick, “I love you,” before she slipped out the aisle and down two pews to her mother’s side.

  “You keep this up,” Hardy whispered from my other side, “and we’re going to have to build a drive-thru window onto the kitchen.”

  “Give you some good hard work to do to keep you from harassing me. Now you hush up and let me listen to this music.” I crossed my arms and leaned back in the pew as the first chords of organ music filled the air.

  Hardy slid his arm along the back of the pew and around my shoulders. The gentle press of his body against me swelled my sense of satisfaction. I put my hand over his knee and gave a gentle pat.

  The song leader appeared and with the tilt of his hand invited the congregation to rise and join in a chorus. I reared my head back and let loose. Hardy often warned me about out-honking everyone within a three-pew range, but he conceded that my voice sounded like velvet against the skin. Besides, this is how I worshipped. My surroundings and my cares faded under the flow of the song.

  Chief Conrad stopped me after the last amen. He didn’t look happy. I tried to land my eyes on Officer Simpson to see if the young man might be lurking, waiting to see the axe fall on my neck for my shenanigans the previous day.

  No sign of Mac anywhere.