Betina angled her gaze toward Nellie and said, “He was very interested in everything I had to say.”
“Sounds that way,” said Nellie.
Margie said that it was nice the weather had cooled off a bit. Somebody said the spring has been wet but also hot, so it was nice to get a break. We talked about fascinating items like that until the middle of the afternoon, when Nadine Hines, Chief Tanner’s part-time secretary — administrative assistant, Nadine called it — came in for a haircut.
“I’ve never seen the like of it,” she said. That was the most common observation about the goings-on in Knockemstiff this week. She went on to confirm the new view of Annie: she had been a devil.
“Investigator Woodley and the sheriff’s deputies have found a number of people who Annie tormented in various ways over the years,” Nadine said. “She damaged their property, like with the broken windows. She was handing out false information to patients at the doctor’s office.”
We knew about that one.
“You know old Mrs. Toler?” Nadine asked. Only a couple of us knew her. She lived alone just outside town and had always been a recluse. “Annie told her that her diabetes was much better and that she could cut back on her insulin to save money.”
“She could have died!” said Betina.
“She almost did,” Nadine said. “The ‘mistake’ was discovered by someone. I don’t know who.”
“She’s always been so crotchety, I don’t think she gets many visitors,” Nellie said.
“Mrs. Toler was lucky. Old Man Feazel wasn’t so lucky.”
“She killed him?” several people asked at once.
“No, no, his dog,” Nadine clarified. “She threatened repeatedly to kill Feazel’s dog, according to what he told a deputy, and then he found the dog poisoned. He knew the dog had been poisoned because he found a can of rat poison and some half-eaten hamburger meat next to the body.”
Everybody in the salon thought that killing the dog was about as bad as killing a person.
“Why didn’t we know these things about Annie until now?” asked Dolores Pettigrew, who was sitting in the café area. Dolores had a hard time adjusting to the fact that she had not known everything about everyone in Knockemstiff.
“Annie knew people well enough to know who she could torment without everyone else finding out,” said Nadine. “Apparently, she picked on people who were a little isolated socially for any number of reasons.”
“And Woodley thinks that one of these people killed Annie?” Nellie asked.
“That seems to be the general theory,” Nadine said. “The problem is, she hurt so many people, the list of suspects is long. And it keeps getting longer. And because these people hardly ever told anyone what Annie was doing, lots more of them could be out there, and how would anyone know? Chief Tanner says that the murderer could be some person we don’t see much of in town, somebody who lives way out the Saukum Road or down on the bayou.”
Perfect, I thought. That somebody down on the bayou would be Rudy’s granddaddy. Was that little encounter he’d had with Annie on Tuesday the first time they’d met? What if Annie had already been tormenting him, and that was just the latest incident – the last straw that caused him to kill Annie?
If he wasn’t Nellie’s relation, we could report the incident to Woodley and let him follow up. As it was, we’d have to do a little checking ourselves. As I drove us home that evening, with Nellie in the front seat this time (“I sat in the back seat as long as I wanted,” she said), we agreed that we needed to find out what was going on with the people down at the swampy end of the bayou.
Chapter 10
We got up Saturday before dawn. The weather looked like it would continue clear, which was good because the roads at the swampy end of the bayou were even more swampy in the rain. They could be treacherous, even with Nellie’s 4-wheel drive. We packed a lunch and brought her suitcase-sized first aid kit.
We headed west out of town and turned south on the Old Paudy Highway, which ran roughly parallel to the bayou. The south end of the Knockemstiff Bayou was more than 50 miles from town. It was hard to tell exactly how far it was to the south end because the bayou gradually turned into a swamp that went on for miles. Where did the bayou end and the swamp begin?
As the sun was just peeking up in the east, we talked about what we knew.
“Not much,” Nellie summarized before we started.
“There’s your optimistic outlook again,” I said. I thought about how little we knew. “I share your optimism.”
“With the possible exception of Rudy’s granddaddy,” Nellie said, “none of the suspects we’ve heard about seems capable of killing anybody.”
“We don’t really know some of these people very well,” I said. “I mean, we’ve known Mr. Keshian for ages, but we don’t really know him. I don’t even know his first name.”
“We don’t know other first names,” Nellie pointed out logically. “That doesn’t keep us from trusting Mr. Coffee and Mr. Goodbar.”
“What about Old Man Feazel?” I countered. “Do we trust him? A man who’s been taunted and had his dog murdered could do anything. Also I’m guessing that ‘Old Man’ is not his real first name.”
“An obvious pseudonym,” Nellie said.
I turned in my seat to look at her. “I would not have guessed that you knew that word.”
“Many people have jumped to the conclusion that I’m not very bright just because I’ve done so many stupid things,” she said.
I put my hand on her arm. “Seriously, Nellie, I think you’re smarter than you look.”
“While we’re talking seriously,” she said, “let’s seriously consider that we can’t imagine Old Man Feazel killing anyone. And we can’t imagine anyone else we know killing anyone.”
“OK, so we have lousy imaginations,” I admitted, “which is why we’re talking about what we know, like they do on TV, so we can figure out the known knowns and the unknown unknowns and like that.”
“OK,” Nellie said, “what about the Paramabets? We’ve only known them approximately forever, and we don’t know their first names. That little one who takes care of the cash drawer could be killer material.”
“There you go. Now we’re getting somewhere. When I pay for a taco, the gleam in his 9-year-old eyes is sharp as tacks. Count your change.”
“So we’re back to having no one to suspect.”
“With the possible exception of Rudy’s granddaddy,” I said. Then I named the person we’d been trying to avoid naming. “And August?”
“August as a murderer?” Nellie said.
“Isn’t it suspicious that she’s disappeared?”
“Seems to have disappeared. And having SLUT painted on your windshield doesn’t seem like the sort of thing you’d kill a person for. I mean, if you’re the kind of person who would feel that wounded by being called a slut, are you the kind of person who would go shoot somebody?”
“So you figure that you have to be an outgoing personality type to shoot somebody?” I wondered.
“Let’s try to imagine a shy, retiring slip of a girl using a thirty-ought-six at close range.”
We drove in silence for a couple of minutes. The sun was well up, and we were driving past a field planted with some kind of low-growing crop. Soybeans? When I used to ride in the car with my parents, they would comment on all the crops. “The corn isn’t very high for this time of year,” they’d say. Or “nice-looking alfalfa.” I assumed that when I got to be an adult, I’d know everything about crops, too. That’s the kind of thing that adults knew. I didn't.
On the other side of the road was a line of scraggly trees and bushes, then a tiny cemetery with no fence around it. We crossed a creek that was full from the rain earlier in the week. A white cattle egret flew up from the creek bank as we drove past.
“Maybe we just have lousy imaginations,” I said. Again. “Or maybe we don’t know everything that Annie did to August. From what we’ve heard, Annie
tormented some people for years. What if the SLUT thing was only the latest insult? What if it drove August bonkers?”
“What if it drives us bonkers?” Nellie said.
We went over another creek that broadened into a swampy area on the right side of the road. We were passing fewer fields and more stretches of road that were lined with trees on both sides. We went by a dirt road marked with a homemade sign that said “Moody.”
Another mile or so on, we passed a cinder block building that had once been painted white. The windows had disappeared long ago, and vines were growing up the sides of the building and across the gravel parking area. Hanging from the front was a rusted sign that said “Henry’s.”
“Did you know that place?” I asked.
“It was open when I married Rudy, when he brought me down here for the first time. I don’t remember when it closed.”
“Well, that liquor store was the only business around here for a long, long time.” I said. “When I was very young, there was a wooden building there. At some point it burned, and only a brick chimney was left standing. Then they built this cinder block thing.”
“How do you come to know so much about this part of the country?” Nellie asked with some surprise.
“My parents loved to drive all over the place,” I said. “On any given Sunday, we’d drive out to a far corner of the parish or over to the Atchafalaya. I thought it was so much fun just to go for a drive.”
“The fun part of our little drive is about to start,” Nellie said. “Here’s our turn.”
She slowed to a crawl to make the drop off the pavement onto a dirt track and stopped the SUV.
“How do you know this is the turn?” I asked. “It looks like every other dirt road along here.”
“See that live oak along there a little ways? That’s our street sign.” She got out of the SUV and locked the front wheel hubs.
“Looks like all the other live oaks along here,” I said.
“It does, actually, but it happens to be almost exactly a mile and a half from Henry’s,” Nellie said as she climbed back into the SUV. She engaged the 4WD lever, and we started down the muddy track that ran in the general direction of the bayou. We lurched and splashed through mud puddles and broad washes.
“This is muddier than I expected,” I said.
“And this is after it hasn’t rained for a couple of days,” Nellie said.
The road skirted open boggy areas and hugged the edges of slightly higher ground that was wooded or dense with saw palmetto. Every now and then the twisting track branched, and Nellie took the left or right fork, pointing out some little road mark that reminded her which way to go.
I was getting nervous about getting lost. “How far is it?” I asked.
“We’ll be there when we get there,” Nellie shouted.
“Seriously, how far is it?” I asked again.
“Seriously, I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe 10 miles? I don’t generally pay much attention to the odometer when —.”
Her answer was cut short by a boom near the left side of the SUV, followed by the sound of a pump-action shotgun being pumped and another boom, followed by another pump. Nellie took these shots as a hint that she should stop the SUV. We looked into the dense bushes to the left but couldn’t see anyone.
“Run for it?” I asked.
“No way in this place,” she said. “Maybe I made a wrong turn.”
She rolled her window down. As soon as the window was all the way down, a woman called out with one of those voices that a dog would not dream of disobeying, “Let’s see your hands.”
We raised our hands as Nellie called back, “Sorry if we’re trespassing. We’re trying to find Horace Conway Phlint. Could you tell us which way we should be going?”
At that, a huge old woman in a blue dress with little pink flowers on it stepped from behind a scrub oak pointing the shotgun directly at us.
“Who are you?” she asked, squinting in the bright sunlight. Before Nellie could answer, the woman said, “Nellie? Is that you?”
“Nellie, yes, Aunt Hattie. It’s me.”
“Nellie, it’s so nice to see you.”
“Nice to see you too, Aunt Hattie.”
“Who you got with you there, Nellie?” she asked, gesturing in my direction with the shotgun.
“This is my friend, Savannah Jefferies. I work in her hair salon. The Teasen and Pleasen?”
“Jefferies? You Ellis Jefferies girl?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” I answered.
“Well do tell,” Hattie said. “How is your daddy?”
“He passed away four years ago this fall,” I said. “His heart.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Hattie said. “My, my, what a character he was.” She lowered the shotgun as she looked down and shook her head. “What a character.”
Nellie and I tentatively lowered our hands.
“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Savannah Jefferies,” Hattie said.
“Pleasure to meet you, Aunt Hattie,” I lied.
She came out of the bushes and put her hand on the window frame of the SUV, peering in at me. “You do favor Ellis, child. I can see his eyes right there on your pretty face.” She patted the window frame and repeated, “Right there.”
Hattie looked at Nellie. “What brings your girls way out here to see Conway?”
Of all the things Nellie and I had talked about on the way, we had not taken a moment to come up with a rationale for this visit. We’ve come to see if you murdered a woman?
“Aunt Hattie,” Nellie said, “Savannah and I were talking about her family, and about how her mama and daddy have passed, and her grandparents gone years ago, and how she misses having family around her, and I told her that’s a shame. Family’s one of the most important things we have. And since Rudy’s gone with the boys out on the Tickfaw, I thought why not Savannah and I visit some family? Sit and talk, maybe shell some beans?”
Hattie looked at Nellie with amusement in her eyes. “The Tickfaw, you say.”
“He went out there earlier in the week,” Nellie said.
“I see,” Hattie said. “Well, I don’t know what you girls are up to, but I don’t reckon there’s any harm in you passing the time of day with Conway.” She took her hand off the window frame and straightened up. “Bear in mind he’s got no beans to shell.”
She turned and said over her shoulder, “Hold on a second.” She walked back into the bushes.
I whispered to Nellie, “She doesn’t reckon there’s any harm? That’s an odd way to put it.” I looked out at Hattie in the bushes. “Is she talking into a walkie-talkie?”
“Kinda looks that way,” Nellie whispered back.
“Nice line of fluff, by the way.”
“She didn’t buy it,” Nellie whispered.
“I think she was tickled with your efforts,” I whispered. “Where did you get the beans?”
Nellie pointed to her head.
Hattie came back toward us with the shotgun on her shoulder. “Sorry about the 12-gauge,” she said. “We get too many varmints in here joyriding.” She opened the rear door and got in. “Ease on down to your left there and then around to the right. I’ll show you a shortcut.”
Nellie guided the SUV off the track we’d been following, through an axle-deep wallow, and around the little stand of scrub oaks that Hattie had been hiding in. Soon we found ourselves on a hard-pack surface that was more or less even and free from major potholes.
We rolled along in silence for a couple of minutes until Hattie said, “Stop here, Nellie.”
Hattie got out and walked about 10 yards along the road to where some rusty barbed wire was tangled around a fallen tree. With one hand she lifted the end of the tree trunk and walked it out into the road in front of us. We could see now that the trunk was balanced on a pivot that made it easy to move. Hattie motioned us through the opening where the tree trunk had been.
When Nellie had driven through, Hattie pulled the tree bunk back into
place and got back in. “All right, Savannah, welcome to Phlint Swamp.”
We rolled along the road for another 50 yards or so, and then the solid ground fell away on either side. We were surrounded by cypress swamp. The road wound among the huge trunks and knees of the bald cypress trees, with cascades of Spanish moss hanging from the branches overhead in gray-green curtains. The sun glinted here and there off the water. It was absolutely beautiful.
We wound in and out of the cypresses for a while and then pulled into a small clearing, where the weedy hulks of two pickup trucks and a tractor sat rusting in front of a grey-shingled shack built on stilts at the edge of a patch of open water. Several sets of deer antlers were mounted on the side of the shack, along with some large fish heads, bleached white by the sun.
As we got out of the SUV, an old man came out onto the front porch and let the screen door slam shut behind him. “Nellie,” he said. “Come on in the house.”
Now that we were out of the SUV’s air conditioning, an odor of dank, fungousy decay hung over everything, making the air seem thick, almost liquid. I could hear bugs humming and buzzing all around and swatted at a horsefly that landed on my arm. I walked up the wooden steps behind Nellie.
“You must be Savannah,” the old man said to me.
“You must be Rudy’s granddaddy,” I said. How did he know who I was? “Have we met?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “You’ve done some growing since then.” He opened the screen door and motioned us inside. He was wearing Dickies bib overalls over a T-shirt that he had on inside-out.
“Will you come in, Hattie?” he asked. “Join us for something cold.”
“Believe I will have a sip,” Hattie said.
“Ya’ll go on around to the shady porch,” Conway said.
Hattie led Nellie and I past the kitchen and through a shabby living room to a screened porch that faced onto the bayou and the cypress swamp. A hound dog lifted his head and looked at us with mild interest.
A Hair Raising Blowout: Cozy Mystery (The Teasen & Pleasen Hair Salon Cozy Mystery Series Book 1) Page 8