Maya Mound Mayhem (A Logan Dickerson Cozy Mystery Book 3)

by Abby L. Vandiver

  “And,” Mac offered to Viola Rose, “Vivee is a lady. Not a goat.”

  “I wish I could say the same thing about you, Mac,” Miss Vivee said. “But ‘goat’ fits you to a T.”

  Viola Rose clicked her pen again and turned on her heels.

  “What do you think?” I turned and looked directly at Miss Vivee after Viola Rose left. “You’re just this little crime solving machine?” I asked her. “You’ve got Viola Rose fooled, and you may have solved a murder-”

  “Two,” she corrected. “I’ve solved two murders.”

  “Yeah, well. There are people who solve crimes as their actual job. They may let you do things here in little bitty ole’ Yasamee. But Gainesville is a big town. A city. No solving murders there.” I leaned back on the bench and crossed my arms across my chest.

  “Phooey. I can do it. And it would seem that you’d want me to.”

  “Why is that?” I scrunched up my nose and raised my eyebrows. My voice up an octave.

  “Because you are a suspect.” She dug in her purse and pulled out a brand new memo pad. How’d she gotten it I didn’t know. She always had me go to Hadley’s Drugstore to pick one up for her when she was set to solve a murder.

  I looked at the notebook and then back at her. “What are you doing, Miss Vivee?” I asked.

  “Writing your name down as a suspect.”

  Viola Rose came back with our drinks, and even though Miss Vivee was bad mouthing me, she remembered that I never drank iced tea, I always had a coke.

  But even her kindness didn’t take away the hurt I suddenly felt from Miss Vivee’s comments about me. I felt tears sting my eyes and I blinked hard to keep them from falling. I couldn’t believe Miss Vivee could think something so bad about me.

  Me. A murderer. Geesh.

  But then again, she had written her own daughter’s name on her suspect list. Renmar had made it on her list. Twice. Still, I wanted to let her know how I felt.

  “Miss Vivee that really hurts my feelings, you saying something like that about me.”

  “You’ll have more than hurt feelings if they decide you are responsible for that dead body you found.”

  “Why in the world would they think I had something to do with it?”

  “Wasn’t it on your excavation site?” Mac asked.

  “Yeah. But that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “How many other people are allowed in that place?” Miss Vivee asked. “Isn’t that the same place that they had locked up and you tried to sneak into?”

  When you’ve committed a crime, I’ve learned it’s just better not to admit to anything.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “Have you and Bay consummated your relationship?” she asked like it was a natural line of questioning in our conversation.

  What the hey? Was she asking me if I’d had sex with Bay?

  “You don’t consummate a dating relationship, Miss Vivee,” I said trying to avoid answering her question. “Just a marriage.”

  “Well, whatever you want to call it, I’m thinking you should make sure you get the deed done. Otherwise it might be a long time before you have the opportunity again. I don’t think they allow conjugal visits in prisons anymore.” She looked at Mac. “Do you know if they do?” she asked. Apparently genuinely concerned for me.

  Chapter Eight

  “Miss Vivee they haven’t even figured out who those bones belong to,” I said pushing my plate of burger and fries away from me. “Nor do they know how long he’s been buried there.” Viola Rose had delivered our supper, but all of Miss Vivee’s talking had made me lose my appetite.

  “He?” she asked.

  “Yes. He. It was a man.”

  “Well if you don’t know who it is, how do you know that it’s a ‘he?’” Miss Vivee asked.

  “From the bones,” I said. “I could tell from the shape of the bones.”

  “Oh,” Mac said smiling. “Like the girl on that television show.”

  “The one that’s an anthropologist?” Miss Vivee asked. “And works for that institute in Washington, D.C.?”

  “I’m an anthropologist,” I said. Seems like I was always fighting for my worth. “That’s how I knew.”

  “Yes. That’s the one,” Mac said still talking to Miss Vivee like I wasn’t there. “It’s called Bones.”

  “That girl on that show is really smart,” Miss Vivee said.

  And what about me, I wanted to say.

  I played with my food, biding my time until Miss Vivee and Mac finished so I could take them home and do as I first planned. Bury my face, and the rest of me, under the covers in the bed.

  “Why are you playing with your food?” Miss Vivee asked once again acknowledging my presence. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” I said. But I knew I wasn’t fooling anyone with the long face I had.

  “You want some tea,” she asked me. “We can get Viola Rose to bring you over a cup. It won’t do the job, but it’ll work until I can get you home and brew you up something to help your mood.”

  Oh now she wants to be nice.

  “No I don’t want any tea,” I said.

  “I know what you’re thinking.” She nodded her head. “You’re worried about what will happen with that body you found. Don’t worry.” She patted my arm. “Everything will be okay. Especially after I make you some of my special tea,” she said. “It calms the nerves. Very soothing.”

  She did seem to know how I was feeling, but what I was thinking was that tea wasn’t going to cut it. And that instead of coming to Yasamee, I should have gone home. If I was home, my mother would be in the kitchen cooking my favorite meal and trying to take me shopping to cheer me up. She wouldn’t be accusing me of murder. That’s for sure.

  My mother. I really did need to talk her. I picked up my phone.

  I probably should have called her first anyway.

  As I started to call her, my phone rang and I noticed the area code. The call was from Gainesville.

  “Hello,” I said after answering.

  “May I speak to Logan Dickerson, please?”

  “Speaking,” I said.

  “This Detective Charlie Cecil Davis with the Gainesville police.”

  Charlie Cecil. I wondered was that one name?

  “How are you,” I said.

  “Well,” he said and hesitated like he was debating if he should ask me how I was doing. I was sure he really didn’t want to know.

  “I needed to speak to you. Get your statement,” he said instead, kind of hesitantly. “Can you come in to see me?”

  “When?”

  “You can come in now. I’m here. Or. I can see you this after I take my dinner break. Say about six. Six-thirty.”

  I looked at the clock on my phone. Four o’clock. It took almost two and half hours to get to Gainesville from Yasamee. No way was I going to make it. Plus, I was too tired – and sad – to drive.

  “I can’t make it in today,” I said. “It’ll take longer than that to get there.”

  “Where are you, Ms. Dickerson?”

  “It’s Dr. Dickerson.” I needed to keep some semblance of respectability after all of Miss Vivee accusations of me being some low life murderer. “And I’m in Yasamee.”

  “Yasamee?”

  “Yes. Down near Augusta.”

  “Georgia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did anyone tell you that you could leave?”

  “Leave?” I asked.

  “Gainesville.”

  “Uhm. No. But-”

  “Then you shouldn’t have left,” he cut me off before I could finish my explanation.

  “I suggest that you get back here.” He paused. “And as soon as you get here, come in to see me.”

  I got off the phone and held my head. All of the things going on were just too much. Couldn’t dig. Was being made to return back to Gainesville. Had to go in for questioning.

  I looked at Miss Vivee. Y
ep. I felt just like a criminal.

  Chapter Nine

  When Miss Vivee found out that I had to go back to Gainesville she was livid. She didn’t like that that “Dadgum copper,” as she called him, was summoning me like I was “some common criminal.”

  When I told her I had to make a statement, “Just to rule me out,” I’d told her, it upset her even more.

  I guess she forgot that she was suspicious of me, too.

  “I’m going to Gainesville with you,” she said. “And I’ll call Mac. He’ll come, too. He’s a doctor, he’ll know what to do.”

  Why she thought Mac could help because he was a physician was a mystery to me. But so was most of Miss Vivee’s reasoning.

  “You can’t go, Miss Vivee,” I said. “I stay in a camper and there isn’t enough room.” I shook my head. “I can’t sleep in the bed with you and Mac.”

  “Who says we’d sleep together? Stop talking crazy. We’ll get a room,” she said and looked at me. “Separate room for Mac. At a hotel.” She nodded her head like it was final. “Someone has to be there to protect you from those vultures.”

  I’m guessing in this case “those vultures” were the police officers. I wondered who was going to protect me from her.

  I knew there was no talking her out of something that she had decided to do. And her daughters, Brie and Renmar couldn’t convince her otherwise either. Bay was definitely no help. He was always cheering her on with her antics because he felt it helped her keep her independence. He felt that people pushed the elderly around. Treated them like children. Even thought his mother treated Miss Vivee like that.

  So it looked like it was a road trip for the three of us.

  Wouldn’t be the first one. That had been to a strip bar. Hopefully, this trip would be much less eventful.

  “When you get there, I don’t want you to talk. Don’t say a word,” she said. It was early the next morning when we left for Gainesville. I had tossed and turned all night. Definitely not looking forward to going into a police station.

  “I have to give a statement,” I said and glanced over at her. “It kind of defeats the whole purpose of me being there if I don’t talk.”

  “Well don’t sign anything. Right, Mac?” she turned her neck but she was too short to see over her seat to the back where Mac sat.

  “That’s right, Vivee.”

  “And if you feel like they’re backing you into a corner, or asking you things you don’t want to talk about, you ask for a lawyer.” She looked at me. “You know any good lawyers? I hear they’re very expensive.”

  “My uncle and brother are lawyers.”

  “Well, you’d better leave me their numbers before you go in. In case I have to call them. I brought my American Express Blue in case I have to bail you out.”

  “You know Miss Vivee, you aren’t helping me to stay calm.”

  “I’m just trying to help you stay on your toes.” She pointed her finger at me. “No unnecessary talking. Don’t let your mouth talk you into trouble that my American Express Blue and your uncle can’t get you out of.”

  “And my brother. Remember he’s a lawyer too.”

  “If he’s anything like you,” she said. “You might be better off with a public defender.”

  I just shook my head.

  “So tell me about the body,” Miss Vivee.

  I hadn’t yet told her the story of my “find.”

  So I gave her a detailed description of how I found it. I told her how there was a bunch of coffee colored goo all around and how brittle the bones were. And how I knew that that the skeletal remains weren’t very old because of the dental work.

  “Mid 1800s,” Mac said.

  “What you say, Mac?” Miss Vivee said.

  “That’s when they started using fillings in teeth instead of extracting them.”

  “So you think the body is that old,” Miss Vivee asked. Her face in a frown. “Because if it is, Logan couldn’t have done it.”

  “Do you want me to be the murderer?”

  “I only meant, dear,” she said emphasizing the “dear.” “That you wouldn’t need us to solve it if it was that old. That’s all.”

  “Sounds like someone tried to get rid of the body,” Mac said. “I’d say it was a few weeks old from what Logan says. If whoever did it put something on it to help it decompose, it could be a week old. Probably no more than three weeks old.”

  “Used something to help with decomposition?” I looked at Mac through my review mirror. “You think that’s what happened?”

  “It’s possible,” he said. “That would cause the goo, as you called it, and the brittle looking bones.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” I said focusing my eyes back on the road. “Some kind of acid, huh?”

  “No. An acid would’ve destroyed everything. There wouldn’t have been any bones left. Something like sodium hydroxide would make the remains look like what you described.”

  “See.” Miss Vivee hit my arm. “Told you Mac being a doctor would help,” Miss Vivee said quite pleased with herself.

  Chapter Ten

  When we got into Gainesville we checked into a Marriott. Miss Vivee always wanted the best. We got a room together. Double beds. And Miss Vivee made Mac get an adjourning room. Then we piled back into my car and went to see the detective.

  When we walked into the police station a wash of butterflies started to flutter in my stomach. I was feeling hot and my throat seemed to be closing up. I dreaded, for a reason I just couldn’t understand because I hadn’t done anything, going in to see that man.

  I checked in at the desk. Pulled an ID out of my knapsack at their request and then took a seat to wait for the detective to come out.

  “You’re looking piqued,” Miss Vivee said. She took my hand and held it. Mac gave me a smile. I swiped at a bead of sweat that was threatening to roll down my temple.

  Why was I nervous?

  People came in and out of the small lobby of the police department in a steady stream. Locals coming in to make reports, to visit people in jail. It was so busy. I tried to people-watch to take my mind off of meeting with the two-named detective.

  One woman caught my eye.

  She looked familiar but I couldn’t place her. She was tall, and thin, blonde. Dressed in a suit. More sophisticated looking than the others I’d seen come in. She just didn’t seem to fit in as the usual customer. She seemed more at ease among the police officers. Her clothes, shoes and purse were expensive. But even so, she still she looked distressed.

  When “Charlie Cecil” finally came out, he nodded at the blonde and called my name. Miss Vivee rose from her seat almost before I could. I had to tell her to sit back down. That she couldn’t go in. That didn’t sit too well with her.

  The detective ushered me into a small room off the main hallway. The beige and cream colored painted walls had seen better days. They were scuffed and peeling. It was gloomy in the room, the old fluorescent light casting a harsh, yellowish glow. He gestured me toward the scratched, wooden table that sat in the center of the space, and pointed to one of the two old, metal chairs.

  “Have a seat,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” And at that he left. Closed the door behind him. I wondered if he had locked it. I was tempted to get up and check it, but I wasn’t sure if my knees could carry me that far.

  This was going to be much harder than I ever could’ve imagined.

  After Detective Davis left I started feeling paranoid. I didn’t know if he and his cohorts were watching me on some hidden camera. Trying to gage my guilt. To see my reaction to being locked up. My eyes scanned the room for a camera. I didn’t see one, but if they were watching me to test my calmness, I’d have failed miserably.

  I bit my bottom lip, my thumbnail, twirled my hair and let out all kinds of moans and groans. All signs of the nervous agitation of a person with something to hide.

  It seemed that I sat in that tiny room – it felt like it was the size of a phone booth – for a
long time. The longer I sat, the more I believed the walls were closing in on me. I stared at the door.

  What is he doing out there?

  I pulled my iPhone out of my knapsack and tried to play on it to keep my mind occupied, but I couldn’t get a signal. That was their doing as well, I was sure. I laid it on the table and then I stared at it.

  When the detective finally opened the door to come in, it startled me and I nearly jumped out of my seat. I did knock my phone on the floor. I could have sworn that I saw a small smile cross his face.

  He sat down in the chair opposite me as I leaned over to fetch my phone. He had a small notebook, the kind Miss Vivee uses on her “investigations,” and a manila folder. He placed them both on the table. He sat back, folded his arms but didn’t say one word. Not for a long while.

  I thought I was going to throw up. I could picture the projectile all over his nice white shirt . . .

  “We’re going to help out the FBI a little and take statements from a few of the people that worked at Track Rock Gap,” he said not looking up at me. He seemed to be studying his notes. “I’ll take your statement,” he paused and decided to acknowledge me sitting there. “If that’s alright with you.”

  “Sure,” I said and tried to keep the shakiness I was feeling out of my voice. “That’s why I’m here.” I gave a weak smile. It was the best I could do.

  He tossed the notebook down on the table. Folded his hand and leaned into me. “I heard you were trying to hide the bones that you found.”

  Just right off the bat he was hitting me with that crazy story. Geesh.

  “I wasn’t . . . hiding . . .” I closed my eyes to collect my thoughts. “Anything,” I finished my sentence. “I-I . . . was . . . I was,” I stumbled over my words trying to find the right ones to say.

  “Hiding?” he offered.

  He looked at me expectantly and I didn’t want to say anything until I felt I could stop stuttering. And when I didn’t say anything neither did he. He just let that silence hang in the air.

  That silence became nerve wrecking.

  I guess that’s what he intended for it to be.

  After a while, he picked up his notebook and started flipping back and forth between the pages.