“What do you have?” my voice a low, raspy whisper.
“What? I can’t hear you,” she said. Then she held up her index finger telling me to wait a minute.
“Yoo-hoo,” She yelled toward the house next to Gemma’s.
“What are you doing?” I was about to freak out. Was she letting the neighbors know we’d just committed a whole slew of felonies?
Up went that finger again.
“Yoo-hoo. MayBelle. You home?” she said in a sweet, sing-songy voice.
By this time she was standing to the side of – MayBelle’s – I guessed, porch, but still in Gemma’s driveway. I jerked my head around to check and make sure The Roommate hadn’t made her way back from the diner. And jerked it back to look at Miss Vivee. She seemed oblivious to the fact we might get caught and was concentrating on getting “MayBelle” out of the house.
I heard a screen door swing open. I just wanted to dive behind the azalea bushes and hide.
What was she doing?
“Well, I say. If it ain’t Vivienne Pennywell,” the rotund woman clad in a flowered peach duster exclaimed as she pushed herself out the door and came to the edge of the porch. “What are you up to?”
Now we had witnesses.
“And who is that you have with you?”
“That’s Cat. My dog.” Cat let out a yelp.
“No I mean the young woman.” She looked down the driveway at me.
“That’s Logan Dickerson. She’s an archaeologist from Ohio,” Miss Vivee said stuffing the paper she’d purloined from the house into her purse. “She’s down here to do some work on Stallings Island.”
They won’t even have to put me in a line up. Miss Vivee just gave that woman all my vital statistics.
“Logan Dickerson, huh?” MayBelle, committing my name to memory, eyed me suspiciously. “That’s a nice jeep she’s got,” she said pointing to my car. “My Jimbo’s got one just like it. Only it’s black.” She looked at me. “White’s a nice color, though.”
May as well just take down the license plate number.
“And how is your boy, MayBelle? He got himself a wife yet?” Miss Vivee seemed to let her comment out with a snicker.
“Oh no.” she said smiling. “He’s still here with me.”
“Figures,” Miss Vivee mumbled. “MayBelle,” Miss Vivee spoke louder. “I was trying to pay my respect to Gemma’s houseguest.” She wagged a thumb back toward Gemma’s house. “But it seems like no one’s home.”
“She goes up to Jellybean’s on Saturdays for Viola Rose’s Shepard’s Pie,” MayBelle said.
“Dang it,” Miss Vivee said and snapped her fingers. “I so wanted to tell her how bad I felt about Gemma’s passing. I understand that’s her cousin from up north.”
How does she come up with this stuff?
“Wherever did you hear that from?” MayBelle said. She leaned on the porch’s banister and did what she thought was whispering, but I could hear her clearly from where I stood.
“They ain’t no relation, not by blood anyway.” She leaned in further. “I think they may be partners.” She almost mouthed the last word.
“Partners?”
“Yes. You know.” She cocked her head and winked. “C’mon Miss Vivee, you aren’t that behind the times, are you?”
“Oh,” Miss Vivee said and nodded her head. “Well to each its own, I always say. What’s her name, MayBelle? Gemma Burke’s partner?”
“I can’t say that I know.”
“Well. I guess I’ll see her at the funeral.” Miss Vivee feigned disappointment.
“You going?” Maybelle asked.
“Of course I am. I delivered that girl. Brought her into this world. I couldn’t miss her home going services.” She started walking down the driveway, Cat at her heels and threw her hand up in a wave without looking back. “See you around, MayBelle.”
I opened the passenger car and Cat scrambled into the car without any help. Miss Vivee required a push.
“We might have to get another car,” she said after I got into the car. She gave me a sideways glance. “This one is too high for me.”
“Did you really deliver Gemma Burke?” I asked, ignoring her comment.
“No! Goodness no.” Miss Vivee frowned. “I couldn’t stand her momma. I would have thrown up if I had had to see that women’s innards during childbirth.”
“So why did you say that?”
“In case MayBelle’s starts mouthing off to Gemma Burke’s houseguest. She’ll think I really had a reason to come over and won’t think I was just snooping.”
I let my eyes roll upward.
“So, this is an interesting twist, huh?” I said. “Gemma and the girl.”
“Oh. Phooey,” Miss Vivee said. “They weren’t partners. That girl was straight as an arrow.”
“You knew what she meant?” I said starting up the car and putting on my seatbelt.
“Of course I knew what she meant. You think they just made gay people yesterday?” She pulled her seatbelt across her and I took it and buckled her in. “Gemma Burke didn’t swing that way,” she said and pursed her lips. “Gemma dated plenty men before she left town. And Colin Prichard was sweet on her since the both of them were knee high to a grasshopper.”
Ah, the cute deputy.
I guessed he probably wouldn’t chase after a girl he didn’t have a chance with. But I didn’t know him that well. Yet.
“People can change,” I said.
“She didn’t.” She dug down in her purse. “I found this.” She whipped out a folded piece of paper with a flourish and a smile.
“What is that?”
“A love letter.”
“Let me see.” I took the letter from her and gave a sideway glance. Who would have guessed she was such a criminal.
What she’d found was a letter, addressed to “Gemma Bear” from a Jeffrey Beck. He was pouring his heart out in the letter saying he couldn’t live without her and he’d do whatever it took to win her back, including he wrote, leaving his wife, Miranda.
“This isn’t a love letter, Miss Vivee.”
“It’s about love and it’s a letter. Ipso facto, it’s a love letter. That gives us two more suspects,” she said pulling out her notebook and a pencil giving the tip of it a lick.
“Who?”
“Jeffrey and Miranda Beck.”
“A love triangle?” I nodded my head. “It makes sense.” I don’t think I’ve met them,” I said.
Five hundred eighty three residents weren’t a lot, but I didn’t see how I’d ever meet all of them. Soon, I was sure, the thrill for Miss Vivee of being Miss Marple would fade, and I’d be on Stallings Island. Or going home.
Either one was fine with me.
“The Becks don’t live in Yasamee.”
“Oh,” I said. “Where do they live?”
“Don’t know. Found the letter tucked inside her drawer. Her panty drawer.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “That means she still had feelings for him.”
“It does?”
“Sure it does. Women only keep things men gave them in their underwear drawer if they like them.” She looked at me. “There or a box that you keep all of your special memories of him in.” She nodded. “If you didn’t like a man and he gave you something, what would you do with it?”
I hunched my shoulders. “I’d throw it away.”
“Exactly,” she said with a nod.
Her eyes fixed, she let her hand hover over her notebook. “But what I want to know is why the two of them were so secretive about this girl’s name. She eats at Viola Rose’s every week, and lives next door to MayBelle Hutchinson, the two biggest gossips in Yasamee. Heck in Augusta County. And neither one of them knows her name.”
“We could just ask her her name,” I suggested.
“Don’t be silly. We’ll ask Mae Lynn to find out for us.”
“Who is Mae Lynn?”
“She’s the dispatcher over at the Sheriff’s office.”
“How will she find out her name?”
“We’re going to file a complaint. Say we saw some suspicious happenings at the house. The Sheriff will go and check it out. She’ll have to tell him her name.”
“Uhm . . .” I squinted my eyes. I wasn’t exactly following her line of reasoning. “Wouldn’t the Sheriff go and question her anyway? She was Gemma’s roommate, it stands to reason that she might know something about her death.”
“The Sheriff might not know she had a roommate. And he hasn’t determined yet that Gemma Burke was murdered, and if he’s beginning to lean toward that conclusion he thinking it was Renmar’s bouillabaisse that killed her. He’s got no reason to go looking for clues at her house. Not yet anyway.”
“And we do?”
She let out a groan. “Of course we do,” she said with some agitation. “Because her house could be where the crime occurred.” She ran her hand over Cat’s head and let her gaze drift out the front window of the car. “Even though I didn’t see anything that could be the murder weapon. Still. This girl might have something to do with it.”
“Is she going on the suspect list?”
“How can I put her on the list when I don’t know her name?” She shook her head, threw Cat toward the back seat, pushed the notebook down into her purse, and sucked her teeth. “Home, please,” she said and put on her sunglasses.
Chapter Eighteen
Sunday Morning, AGD
Miss Vivee’s first day out in twenty years took a bigger toll on her than expected. She decided to sleep in late, a rare occurrence I was told, but it gave me the morning free. I decided it was time for me to visit Stallings Island.
I drove to Mims Point Park where Miss Vivee and I had been the day before. I parked the car and walked down the stone steps, wondering all the while was it really the way Gemma had come the day she died.
I ambled through the tall blades of sea oats that grew out from the patches of sand, and along the marshy shoreline of the Savannah River. The oats grew high over the morning glories, and saw palmetto scattered about. I breathed in the moist air and exhaled.
Perhaps I was meant to come here. To Stallings Island. I had had only one real job as an archaeologist and that was as the lead of an excavation team in Belize. I’d stumbled on a stone slap with a message written in Mayan hieroglyphs that lead me to previously undiscovered underground tunnels that ran from Panama to Guatemala. But I was never able to share my find with the scientific community because what I found was connected to the whole Mars Origin Theory my mother had discovered. Plus, I learned that I had only been put in charge of the excavation as part of a setup. A crazed man had wanted to kill my mother and used me to lure her in. He knew, with me being young and inexperienced, that being the lead member of an excavation team would be too much for me and I would call in my mother. Of course I did just that. And because I did, I saw a man get killed and my mother and I got kidnapped.
Life’s too short. Gemma Burke’s death is proof of that.
As I walked past two weathered boats moored in the sand, I wondered if I’d ever be an archaeologist that would make a significant contribution without being in the shadow of my mother. I wondered would I ever be as insightful and scientific as she was. The youngest, I was the only one of her three children that followed in her profession – my brother, Micah was a lawyer, and the oldest, my sister, Courtney was a teacher – and I know it made my mother proud that I was an archaeologist, and it made her want to help me that much more. But I just wanted to do something on my own. Not be the “baby” anymore.
Maybe this was it. Stallings Island.
My chance to shine.
There was so much history on the small island, but maybe, just maybe that small island had a big connection to a possible Maya migration. And if I found something here, on my own, not connected to my mother in any way . . .
Wouldn’t it be something if I discovered there was?
That’s probably the reason I risked trespassing on Track Rock Gap. I had something to prove.
Once I started college, I spent all my time preparing to become an archaeologist and to make a mark in the field. I didn’t take time out to date, go out, or do any of the things most women my age did. I didn’t have many friends that were married, but they all found the time to have men in their lives. Maybe I wouldn’t be so “uptight” as my father says about being a famous archaeologist if I took some time out for myself. By that he meant to date.
And maybe my father was right. Gemma Burke gave up on love, albeit the guy was married. But she didn’t take a chance on it. For some reason she came back home, moved some unknown girl in with her and then, according to Miss Vivee, got herself killed. Her life over, and my father would say, with nothing to show for it.
Maybe it’s time I took my father’s advice.
My father wrote a syndicated sports column. He and my mother had been married for more than thirty-five years. Most fathers are leery of their daughters dating, no man’s good enough. Not my father. Andrew Mase Dickerson, called Mase by all, was gung-ho on his baby girl finding a man.
With my mother believing in Martians, my daddy trying to marry me off and all the other craziness I had to deal with growing up in my house, it’s no wonder I took to Miss Vivee and her outrageous schemes.
As I rambled along the shore, the waves of the river’s blue water brushed lazily upon the sand and I spotted the shoal that led over to the Island. It wasn’t more than a couple yards from Oliver’s beachfront house.
I knew I was still young and that if fame and fortune was what I wanted, I picked the wrong profession. So, I was okay with not having it. I just wanted to make a contribution. I just didn’t want to end up like Gemma Burke – dead before my time.
I don’t know why I hated to admit it, although I used this fact whenever I needed to, but my mother was very successful. There weren’t many in our field that were as accomplished as she was. Yet, she was so down to earth. So normal. I knew that I’d never make a find as big as the one my mother had made, but if I could be just as good . . .
I stepped timidly across the shoal, the fishy odor abruptly invading my nostrils. I found myself holding my breath, arms out to keep my balance and anticipating what may lay on the Island for me to discover.
I was so excited.
Unfortunately the first thing I found when I got there was Renmar and Oliver. I ducked behind a tree and thought about what to do. They had been so secretive since Gemma’s death. And even before that conspiratorial.
What if they really were the killers?
I turned around and went back to the Maypop.
Chapter Nineteen
Sunday Afternoon, AGD
“Mae Lynn called me this morning,” Miss Vivee said in a strained whisper. She grabbed my arm and pulled me into the closet under the stairs as soon as I walked in the door from Stallings Island.
I didn’t even know there was a closet there.
I twisted myself around in the small space. It was pitch black and even with Vivee’s small frame it was tight for the both of us. “You couldn’t tell me that out there?” I said bumping my head on the angled ceiling. I had taken to whispering too.
“No. I don’t want nobody else to hear. Renmar is still a suspect you know.”
“I just saw Renmar over on the Island,” I protested. “She’s not even here.”
My eyes adjusted to the dark and I felt around on the wall by the door for a light switch, but found the light bulb was attached to a long cord that hung from the ceiling. I yanked on it and a beam of light broke up the darkness.
“What did Mae Lynn say?” I said in a regular voice.
Miss Vivee reached up and jerked the chain turning the light back off. “Shush. Not so loud.” I could hear her breathing hard. “I wrote it down in my notebook.” She started moving around. I could tell she was fiddling around with her purse.
“Oh shoot,” she said. “I can’t read it in here it’s too dark, dang it. That’s okay, I reme
mber what she told me.”
“Well, what did she say?”
“She said that the girl is from Atlanta, her name is Koryn Razner. And it looks like Gemma Burke had lived there for a while too. So maybe that’s where they met.”
“How come we can’t have any light?”
“I don’t want anyone to know we’re in here.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“We have to talk to Colin Pritchard,” she said.
“The deputy?”
“Do you know another Colin Pritchard?”
I guess I didn’t.
“He went to Atlanta to do his Peace Officer training. Would’ve been there the same time that Gemma Burke was there.”
“I thought you told me that he did his training up north?”
“Ain’t Atlanta north of here?”
“Yeah, but I thought you meant the real north. Like Ohio.” I shook my head. “Never mind.”
“Can you take me over to see him?” she asked.
“On a Sunday?”
“You think the Sheriff’s office takes a day off?”
“Sure,” I agreed. “I’ll take you.”
Anything to get out of this closet.
“Are we telling Renmar the truth about where we’re going?” I asked.
“Of course not.” She groped around and found my arm and patted it. “But you leave the lying up to me.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” she repeated. “Now when we go out, just act natural.”
Right.
I turned the knob and opened the door, my eyes adjusting back to the sudden flood of light saw a large figure standing in front of me. Turning my face to the side, squinting, I saw out of the corner of my eye that the big, looming figure was Bay. He had that stupid smirk smeared across his face.
Crap.
“What are you doing in the closet?” he asked.
“I was in there with Miss Vivee,” I said in my defense.
Didn’t he see her?
“Hello, Grandson.”
“Hello, Grandmother. Aren’t you looking lovely today?”
“Thank you,” she said and wrapped her hand around his arm. “Logan was giving me a little training,” she said.
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