The Wiles of Watermelon (Scents of Murder Book 2)

by Lynette Sowell

  “Oh. Does it open?”

  “It’s stuck, so I’ve never tried to find out,” Vivian admitted. “I didn’t want to break the hinges or anything.”

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to sound nosy.” I licked my lips. “My aunt who, um, passed away years ago had one like it. I actually wouldn’t mind finding a similar one for my mom.” Which I actually hadn’t decided until now. At least it sounded like a good idea.

  “There’s probably a lot of necklaces in little stores in these backwoods towns around here. The store in Adamsville is called Vintage Treasures.” Vivian moved to the wall calendar and erased some class schedules.

  “Good idea.” I ignored her crack about backwoods towns and toted my bag to the first machine. Hurt people hurt people, so the saying goes. “Do you mind if I just drag my bag around with me? I’m not planning to stay long.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  I started with the warm-up machine, a gentle stair- stepper. “So, do you think Curtis will come back? Is there a chance?”

  Vivian sank back onto her stool at the desk. “I don’t know. Would you believe, for the first time in twenty years, I don’t know what to do? This isn’t my town. I never wanted to come here. No offense.”

  “Is there someone you can talk to? A minister?”

  “No preacher could help us.”

  “God can fix your marriage. I know I’m new to being married, but I’ve heard of other couples who’ve come back from the brink of divorce. After infidelity, addiction.” Already I could feel my muscles getting stronger as I worked along the circuit.

  “I’m not into anything like that. But thanks for the suggestion, anyway.” She smiled at me as if I were a child proposing to mop up a dirty kitchen floor with one paper towel. “If you need anything, holler. I’ll be in the back.” With a whirl, Vivian retreated to the office where Curtis usually holed up.

  I forced my attention back to the machines and battling my body into submission. So I probably hadn’t taken the best approach with Vivian. I’d tried. Maybe someone else could help her one day.

  Of course, someone could tell us the truth all day long and if we didn’t believe it, there was nothing the other person could do. Or we could even know the truth ourselves but still not be convinced of it all the way down to our souls. The whole motherhood thing, for example. I dashed some sweat from my forehead.

  People could tell me what a great mom I’d be, how it’s always different when they’re “your kids.” Even the other day talking to Di at the bank about her experiences being a mother still couldn’t convince me until I was ready. The same thing about a person’s reliance on God, or lack thereof.

  One thing I did know, I had family praying for me. Not so much that I’d “see the light” and have a child. But more that I’d realize I didn’t have to repeat the mistakes of the family before me, that like it or not, my little future angelic children would get minds of their own and test their limits, and that free will stretches a long way. And God’s grace stretches even farther.

  I’d almost made the circuit around to the beginning, just like my thoughts came around full circle and brought me back to Vivian’s situation. How could I share with her the very thing I struggled with myself: believing that God wanted to take care of us in our frailty. Maybe I couldn’t get past the times it seemed like He’d failed me. But I knew He never failed us or looked the other way. Yet Aunt Jewel still ended up in an early grave. I made myself stop that line of thought. Just like I’d “seen” Aunt Jewel in my dream, so God had seen her make poor choices, and let her make them. Free will. A double-edged sword. Faith in His love tempers the blade, but my human self still hurt.

  My arms throbbed from the biceps and triceps machines. I was more than reaping the consequences of my free will in the past by slacking off on workouts. This afternoon I’d be no use to Di except to lounge around on her porch and drink tea. Maybe I could haggle with yard sale customers, but that bordered too much on retail activity for my day off. Still, I’d treasure the time spent with her. And I’d wonder how many people had called the newspaper about Bobby Johnson.

  Chapter Twenty

  By Tuesday morning Greenburg had embraced its latest fad. Someone had started distributing buttons that proclaimed I Saw Bobby Johnson in red, white, and blue. I was walking down the sidewalk toward the post office when I saw one for the first time.

  “Where did you get that button?” I asked the gray- haired man so loudly that it startled him.

  His hearing aid squealed, and he adjusted it. “Some kid was selling them down near the town square. A dollar. It’s a fund-raiser.”

  “A fund-raiser?”

  “Supposedly to help pay for burying the girl found in that field.”

  I quickened my pace. I was going to hurt Travis Bush, and I would be put in jail for it. Ben would hear about it on the news, and so would Di, all the way up in Jackson. My heart ached. Di and Steve’s moving van had already come and gone, and they were spending the kids’ last week of summer vacation in their new home. I figured I ought to take it out on someone.

  There he was, the young blond story-hunter, strolling around downtown, schmoozing as if he were running for office. When he saw me, a big grin spread across his dimpled face.

  “Mrs. Hartley! Isn’t this great?” He looked like someone had held him down and pinned red, white, and blue buttons all over the front of his shirt.

  “Travis. What are you doing?”

  “I’m helping you find Bobby Johnson.” Travis unpinned a button from his shirt and held it out to me. “Here. Your button is free. Aunt Fleta filled me in more after I talked to your mother. I think a Memphis or Nashville television might be picking up the story. A producer called the Dispatch this morning.”

  “You don’t say.” I held the pin like it might bite me. “A man told me something about this being a fund-raiser?” If this was a scam of any kind. . .

  “After I wrote your mother’s article, I started thinking.” At this, his face grew serious. “Your mother’s family had no insurance for her sister’s burial. And it’s the least we can do around here to pitch in. Hopefully by creating a buzz about Bobby, people’s memories will be jogged. Especially the forty-five-and-older crowd. Think of it as Greenburg’s Most Wanted.”

  “Don’t you realize what you’re doing?” I stuffed the button in my purse.

  “You’re not going to wear your button?”

  “Yes. No. But this might drive Bobby into hiding. Maybe he’ll leave and then we’ll never hear from him again.”

  Someone drove by, horn honking. “I saw Bobby Johnson! Whoo-eee!”

  “This is making a mockery of our story.” Momma was going to have a fit, and I’d hear about the whole thing when she called me. She probably thought she would gain some closure, and maybe help someone else who’d lost a loved one like she’d lost Aunt Jewel, but this. . .this sideshow?

  A couple was leaving City Hall and approached us. “What are those buttons for? Is someone running for office?”

  “No. We’re looking for a missing man, gone for thirty years.” Travis whipped out a brochure. “And here’s the story of a long-lost love.”

  “Oh, how sad,” the wife murmured as she scanned the page. She tugged on her husband’s sleeve. “Honey, let’s donate something to that poor girl’s family.”

  After the couple moved on to their car, I looked at Travis. “Don’t you need a permit or something like that to sell anything, even for a fund-raiser?”

  “Got it right here.” Travis slapped his back pocket.

  “Unbelievable.”

  “Scoff all you want. The newspaper has already received over a dozen calls. Look out, guys forty-nine to fifty-three. If you’re really Bobby Johnson with secrets to hide, I’m going to find you. And then the law will want to talk to you. I’m passing everything on to Officer Hartley.”

  “But I know Bobby won’t talk to you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he already talk
ed to me.” I crossed my arms in front of me. “One night he responded to that ad I put in the newspaper. We talked, briefly. He’s a sad man. I just want him to stop running for his own peace, and my family’s. I know Greenburg PD is working to find him, too.”

  “Can I quote you on that?”

  “Quote all you want.” I watched as Travis sold another button. “I have to go open my business.”

  After I picked up my mail and my stamps, of course. I headed into the Greenburg post office and saw Roland Thacker at his mailbox. He looked like a leftover thundercloud.

  Roland slammed the little mailbox door then turned his glare on me. “Are you responsible for that one-man media circus outside?”

  “No, I’m not.” I moved a few steps down to the mailbox for Tennessee River Soaps and almost felt like slamming the door myself. “I think it’s going to do more harm than good.”

  “I’m going to hold you responsible if my name ends up getting dragged into this mess.” Roland pointed at me.

  “He took the story and made it bigger. They’re looking for a man who disappeared a long time ago.” I pulled out a stack of bills and a few catalogs.

  “If he’s not careful, he’ll end up dragging out more than just Bobby’s story.” With that, Roland stalked off toward the front door.

  After almost a week of the “I saw Bobby Johnson” ruckus, Ben and I made an executive decision, took the weekend off, and fled to Jackson. I made sure I called Momma on our way home again to Greenburg.

  Understandably, Momma still had strong opinions about the Bobby Johnson buttons. “Would you believe the nerve of people? No respect for the dead, I tell ya.” Her anger crackled across the phone line. “I know they said they’re helping pay her funeral bill, but. . .”

  I’d already checked my voicemail and there was no news from Travis Bush. “But maybe someone will believe us that there really is a Bobby Johnson around Greenburg and actually help us find him.”

  “I don’t know if that’ll work. Maybe I shouldn’t have talked to that reporter.” Momma heaved a sigh. “Are you on your way home yet?”

  “Yes, Momma.” I smiled across the cab of the pickup truck at Ben. “We left Jackson half an hour ago. You’re going to love Di and Steve’s house.”

  “I’d love it if it were closer.”

  “I know. But now when we want to get out of town, we have somewhere to go.”

  “Now, what would I want to get out of town for?” Momma clicked her tongue. “Your daddy and I are going up to visit them on Labor Day weekend. One of the boys said something about a train museum.”

  “That’s right. They have a Casey Jones museum. We could hardly get Taylor to leave with all the trains.” I smiled at the memory.

  “Sounds like you’re practicin’ for some kids.”

  “Maybe.” I didn’t want to talk about that at the moment.

  “Call me when you get home.”

  “I sure will, Momma.” I glanced up as we ended the call. Ben and I were approaching the sign for Leisure Lodge. “Honey, let’s stop and say hi to Papaw. I told him I’d bring you the next time I came.”

  Ben drove into the parking lot and acted like he didn’t want to get out of the truck. “All righty then.”

  “It’s not so bad. Just think of Papaw and how happy he’ll be to see us.” With this latest development of attacking visitors, I wondered if they’d moved Papaw to a more secure unit. We started crossing toward the main doors of the home. Ben hung back.

  “Baby, are you okay?” I slowed my pace.

  He reached for my hand. “It’s just hard comin’ here. Every Sunday when I was a kid, my parents would drag me to visit my grandparents. Not a fun place to visit. I’ll try, but it’s hard.”

  “We won’t stay long. I keep thinkin’, the whole time I’m here, that I’m doing it for Papaw. To make his day happier. It’s not about me.”

  Ben pulled the handle on one of the large wooden doors to the home. “I’ll try.”

  We headed for the reception desk. I found out Papaw was still in the same room. Today he reclined on his bed and had his newspapers spread out over his lap.

  “Andi-girl, you came back.” He smiled, and I saw the Papaw I’d remembered as a child. “And you brought your Ben, too.”

  “I said I would.”

  Ben dragged an extra chair to Papaw’s end of the room. “So, how are you, Mr. Kincaid?”

  “Fair to middlin’.” Papaw’s smile left. “They doped me up some more. Stupid doctors. But I know what I saw. Bobby Johnson in the flesh, walkin’ down the hallway.”

  “Are you sure? It’s been a long time since you’ve seen him. People change over the years.” I glanced at Ben, who was reading one of Papaw’s scandal papers with the headline, “Frozen Aliens Found in the Alps.”

  “Put forty pounds on him and a bunch of pomade on that hair of his, but it’s still him under all that tryin’ to look like someone famous.” Papaw tossed the paper he’d been reading and picked up another one. “The dummies can’t see what’s under their noses.”

  “Momma was really worried about you the other day. Papaw, you just can’t go around hitting people.”

  “Stop talkin’ to me like I’m a five-year-old. He made me so mad, I couldn’t help myself.”

  I changed the subject to Diana and Steve’s move and how we’d all get to see Papaw more now that we’d be going back and forth to Jackson. He would look at Ben, then at me, and then at his papers. Momma must have brought them.

  When the first snore came from Papaw’s mouth, I whispered to Ben, “I guess we can go now.” Ben nodded and closed the magazine he’d been reading.

  Papaw opened one of his eyes. “You leavin’ me again?”

  “I’ll be back. Promise.”

  “Love ya, Andi-girl.”

  I gave him one last wave before Ben and I headed back to the reception desk. The three-ring binder lay right where I’d left it when I signed us in. Other visitors had come and gone, signing in and signing out.

  “Ben.” A thought struck me. What if Bobby Johnson really had visited the nursing home? And Papaw had really seen him? I started turning pages to find any Johnsons listed on the visitors’ record. The nurse at the desk barely glanced at me and kept talking on the phone.

  Several Johnsons. Sophie Johnson, visited by Judy Kane. Rufus Johnson, visited by Wayne Johnson. Then I found another name. “Pay dirt.”

  Edna Johnson had been visited by Curtis Delane, this very afternoon. Looking like someone famous. Brent Balducci, huh?

  “What do we do now?” Ben gunned the engine as we shot down the road back toward Greenburg.

  “I’m calling Jerry. He needs to know about Curtis visiting Edna Johnson.” Rows of tall pines flashed by the truck. “I just talked to Vivian on Saturday morning. I wonder if Curtis ever came home again.”

  All I got was the ever-efficient Fleta at the dispatch desk. Remembering who her grandson was, I only left Jerry a message, asking him to call us and that it was urgent. A call to Jerry’s cell phone went straight to voicemail. I explained as briefly as I could about Curtis/Bobby then hung up.

  “You were right about the alias,” Ben admitted.

  “But why’d he come back? What would be the point, if he knew he might get caught?”

  “Remember where we came from? Edna Johnson. The lady who owned the egg farm.” Ben shook his head. “Curtis wanted to be closer to his momma. And he dragged Vivian to Greenburg right along with him.”

  “Vivian said he’d left her. So he’s got to be in the area somewhere if he’s still visiting his mother.”

  Clouds rolled in from the west. A welcome late summer storm would descend on us soon. I glanced to the side of the road, where an exit for a rest stop merged off the highway. A familiar figure was walking from the covered patio. Curtis.

  “Ben. . .there he is. . .” My throat constricted. “We need to go back around and talk to him.”

  “What are we going to say, exactly? Beg him to turn hi
mself in?” Ben slowed the truck and got off at the next exit, circled around through the underpass, and got us going back toward the rest stop.

  “I don’t know. Talk to him. Maybe he will turn himself in. Or we can at least stall him until Jerry can get here or send someone. I’ll figure something out.”

  “That doesn’t give me much confidence.”

  In five minutes we were pulling off at the rest stop. My stomach sort of growled anyway. Maybe they had snack machines or something.

  Curtis’s car still remained parked in the lot when we pulled into a nearby space. I glanced inside the passenger window of his average-looking blue sedan. Candy wrappers and fast food boxes littered the front seat. A pillow and blanket covered part of the backseat. So he’d left Vivian but hadn’t gone far. He couldn’t use credit cards if someone decided to look for him. The rest stop was a short trip to Leisure Lodge.

  A van roared off the highway and parked near the covered patio. A family streamed out like a line of circus clowns climbing from a miniature car. The first drops of rain splattered the pavement then turned into a downpour before Ben and I reached the covered walkway to the rest rooms. Two rows of vending machines faced each other, sodas on one side and snacks on the other.

  Curtis stood at a snack machine. He stiffened when he saw us. “Andromeda. Ben.”

  “Um, hello. What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Same as you. Stopping and resting.” He chuckled. I failed to see what Aunt Jewel had seen in him. His left cheek had a faded bruise. From Papaw’s attack, maybe? Normally he wore neatly pressed cotton button-down shirts. This one looked like he’d slept in it for a few days. What happened to the romantic guitar player who wanted to run away and get married, only to get ensnared in a bank robbery? Or was the desire to make something of himself stronger than his love for Aunt Jewel? Children’s squeals echoed off the bathroom walls inside. Someone turned on a sink. More squeals.

  “We just left Leisure Lodge. My Papaw’s there. I try to see him when I can. But it’s hard, running a business.” I studied the snack machine. “Ben, did you want a snack?”