Dead On the Bayou

by June Shaw

  Eve had started telling me something. With all my concerns about repairs, I needed to catch up to the explanation. “…and if they don’t install the granite top tomorrow, we would need to wait almost six weeks before they could get to it.”

  “Tomorrow?” My tone was weak. I knew what else needed to be done by tomorrow. My fate rested on it.

  “Yes. Get Cherry on the phone and make sure she’ll be home, and it’s okay for them to install it then.”

  “And if not?” I knew the answer before I completed my question.

  “You know.” Eve turned hooded eyes toward me.

  That would be too late for us to do the job at her house, and we would be without that much-needed money. The roof of my house, too, would soon need replacement, and a hurricane could come. I scrolled to Cherry’s number on my phone. If she didn’t answer, how would we know if it was okay to get the material installed there? I mentally shook my head.

  Before I pulled out of the parking lot, I tapped in Cherry’s number.

  “Yes!” she said, answering on the first ring and hearing my question. “What time will they come here?” Before I could say I would try to find out, she blurted, “Oh, never mind. I’ll be home. Ooo, I can’t wait.”

  She was the only one of us who looked forward to getting that done by tomorrow. I flew back to Eve’s house. There she retrieved the measurements we had taken and called them in to the granite store, letting them know the owner of the house would be there to let them in. Thank goodness, we wouldn’t need to also be around when they delivered and did their installation, which should take only a handful of hours. Eve released a long breath and faced me. “You know I can’t quite remember which color we chose to have installed on her island.”

  “Hmm.” I ran my mind back through colors and textures. Detective Wilet had me on the phone during that time, and I’d rushed out the store. “Nope, I can’t either.”

  “I’m sure it’s pretty.”

  “Definitely.” The uncertainty in my voice made Eve send me a concerned look that said she doubted my assuredness. I scrambled my thoughts again through samples in the place. I’d been running out the door, pointing back across the showroom toward… Nope, nothing.

  I left her so we could each work on our own ideas alone. She would toss off her clean dress, throw on older things, and enter her art room. With paints, she would be able to let her mind ramble and possibly focus on what we needed to do next. We needed answers, we agreed before I drove away. As I did, I noticed that again I avoided passing in front of the Wilburns’ house, the route I formerly almost always took before I’d go around the long block to reach my street.

  My phone rang. “What’s all that stuff going on with that guy you like?” my friend Amy Matthews asked.

  Her question surprised me. It was one I didn’t want to answer right now. “What do you mean?”

  “Girl, don’t kid me. I saw in the paper that he was arrested for murder. Are they kidding me? Did he do it?”

  “Absolutely not. That’s going to be proved soon, but right now I’m in a rush and can’t talk.”

  Her silence let me know she wasn’t certain she believed my response. “All right. We are going to talk really soon.”

  “You got it.”

  Sweat popped out at my temples, I realized once I hung up. I didn’t know what to tell her or anyone else yet about the two people who died. Their deaths were haunting me. I needed to figure out what I might do about that and the woman who had aborted Royce’s baby. Back in my own house, I locked the doors, drank milk with toast and a big bowl of instant grits, wishing I had smothered shrimp in gravy to put on them, and went for the shower. I stayed beneath it, letting the warm steamy liquid soak into my skin as though I were enjoying a sauna. Instead, I was forcing my mind blank. Whenever my thoughts strayed to one problem or another I needed to deal with, I forced them to back away. After I totally relaxed, I would deal with all the difficulties once again.

  Hopefully, good solutions would come.

  Chapter 23

  Steamed, sated, and dressed for bed, I sat at my dining room table with a pen and legal pad, my mind clear and ready to work. I put on my glasses I didn’t wear often enough and then wrote a heading: Suspects. I felt rather strange doing that, like who did I think I was—the police? But then I reminded myself I probably knew almost as much about or maybe more than some of them did about Eve’s neighbors who perished.

  Of course finding killers wasn’t the only situation I needed to deal with.

  On the second page, I wrote across the top: Cherry’s house. That was another situation with a ticking clock.

  Fix the police car headed the third page.

  Mom has a boyfriend? As soon as I wrote the words on the next page, I scratched them out. That wasn’t enough since I could still see parts of each word underneath. Besides, I didn’t want to concern myself with this situation, if there was one, right now. Other major priorities came first.

  I needed to get the name of the woman who had been with child by Royce. I looked at the wall clock. Too few hours left. I hoped the woman with her picture would be back at the manor by morning or maybe the employee herself and wanted to rush there first thing. Because of that, I wrote as number one on the first page: The woman in navy from the manor. Why I thought she could possibly be a suspect in Royce’s murder, I had no idea, but maybe I would get another thought about that. Anyway, I needed to learn her name and get it to Detective Wilet before midafternoon.

  Number two on my suspect list became the young man who lived beyond the wooden fence behind the Wilburn yard. If he had discovered Royce watching his wife sunbathing naked, he could have easily yelled at Royce that day Mrs. Hawthorne had heard him yelling at someone. And he could have easily followed up by getting into Royce’s yard and bashing his head in.

  The thought of that happening to anyone, even Royce, a fellow I knew little about and who had not been at the top of my favorite people’s list, squeezed a tear from my eye and tension into my stomach.

  The police, of course, would already be looking into the possibility of that young man as the person who did away with Royce. Possibly, too, Royce supposedly gambled so much during the time he lived in Las Vegas that he could have lost a lot of money and owed someone. He couldn’t pay it all back, so the loaner cashed in another way. That scene was only conjecture on my part, although it might have happened. I wrote that possibility as number three with a large question mark behind it. A quick rummage through my mind gave me nothing else, so for number four I admitted it easily could have been someone I knew nothing about.

  Then what about Royce’s mother? Dave was in jail for her murder, which he didn’t commit. Then who did?

  I wrote Mrs. Wilburn in the center of the page and beneath that began a new set of numbers. I thought back to that dreadful moment when I found her stuffed in a garbage bag in the camp Dave had recently bought. A new set of reactions hit my body. A giant cottonmouth seemed to swim through my stomach and carry chills down my arms and around my fingertips. Heat built up behind my eyes. I wanted to retch.

  “Okay, who did this to you?” I asked out loud, which stopped the gagging instinct. Yes, who indeed?

  Mind back at Dave’s camp, I envisioned the man from out of state who owned the camp beyond it. I pictured the fellow using his fine tools out on his wharf and throwing Eve and me an ugly attitude when we went to speak to him. The deceased at Dave’s camp had been killed by blunt force just like her son, although that didn’t mean the same object or person had taken the lives of both. She had probably been killed somewhere else and then placed in the bag and brought there. Could she have known the man with the camp next to Dave’s, and for some motive I wasn’t aware of, he cracked her over the head and dumped her in the nearest place, Dave’s camp next door? I definitely knew little about him but placed him as a suspect for Royce’s mother’s murder.

  Of course, there was an alligator or two or possibly f
ifty in the area, but even if one of those would have pulled her underwater and done the death dance with her on the bayou’s floor, it surely hadn’t carried her back up and tied her inside a garbage bag.

  Who else?

  Royce I wrote immediately. Yes, I hated to think it, especially now that he was also deceased, but I, and I believed Eve, had begun to get suspicious about that possibility since right after she died, he began to make large purchases like the fine car and motorcycle. He’d also hurriedly put up a For Sale sign in her front yard, which still remained. The large phone number he had penned with a black marker was surely theirs. Was a phone there still connected? I imagined walking on that side of Eve’s house and hearing a phone ringing from inside their home and needed to struggle to quell a new set of shivers.

  There had been no notice of his death or funeral arrangements in the paper. Again, I did a quick check online. Nothing was said about him in the up-to-date obituaries.

  How awful. There was no closing ceremony to remember the life of either he or his mother. Those two people had lived their lives, had touched other people. Hadn’t they had any relatives?

  Yes. For number three under Mrs. Wilburn’s name, I wrote what I had heard from the fellow I spoke to outside the manor who’d heard me mention her name. He was her nephew Andrew Primeaux, who apparently had his niece Jessica living with him, and he’d let me know he was angry with Mrs. Wilburn because she almost never visited her stepmother in the manor. He’d shocked me by insisting that all of their other relatives couldn’t stand her. This didn’t give me an exact person’s name to write, although I put down his and then penned the other things I knew or had heard from him.

  My eyes fluttered, I realized much later when my lids pulled open, an ache in my cheek seeming to wake me. My head was down on my list, the back end of my ballpoint pen pressed into the side of my face.

  I sat back and found all the lights still on. A sliver of drool may have caused the small blob amid the names on my list. Not wanting to think of that list now, I rose and went to bed.

  Morning woke me with a ringing phone. The one next door to Eve’s—the one still inside the Wilburns’ house?

  My mind scrambled and brought up the knowledge that this was a new day, and I was in my own house. A glance at the clock beside my bed told me I had slept later than normal. A quick thought between the ringing reminded me of the most urgent thing I needed to do this day—learn the name of the woman who’d gotten pregnant by Royce and rush that name to Detective Wilet.

  I didn’t believe the caller was ready to give me the name of the once-pregnant woman, and I didn’t recognize the number of the caller. I sat up, deciding I might not answer and instead rush to get ready and out of the house, yet I grabbed it. “Hello.”

  “Hello. Is this Sunny? Sunny Taylor?”

  The woman’s voice didn’t sound familiar. Was she going to tell me I’d won a trip to Hawaii? If so, I’d tell her to take it herself and remove my name from her list.

  “It is,” I said, waiting to hear my fake prize.

  “Hi, Sunny. This Dave Price’s sister Penny.”

  I shot up to my feet. “Oh, my goodness, how good to hear from you.” I was ready to blurt about Dave but stopped myself. What if she didn’t even know about his arrest? Should I be the one to break this bad news to her?

  “Sunny, I went to see Dave.”

  “You did?” How wonderful. How awful to see him in jail.

  “Yes. That was pretty tough, you know, going to visit anyone in jail. Especially your own brother. Especially him.”

  “I can’t imagine.” Although I wanted to. I wanted to be there to see Dave, to assure him things would be all right. To assure myself.

  “He told me you were his friend.”

  I had only seen him a few times, but had gotten the feeling he wanted to explore a relationship with me, just like I wanted with him.

  “And he’s told me how close you are to him.”

  “He’s a really great guy.” An image came—him in a prison jumpsuit, him with few good meals to eat. “How is he doing?”

  “He’s doing okay. You know Dave. Or I don’t know how well you really know him, but he can put up with lots of turmoil and negatives. He’s sure he’ll get freed soon.”

  The concept of Dave walking out from behind the bars of that jail strengthened me. The image of the horrible dog that walked back and forth, following us inside the fence came. He would not be around. Dave would be wearing his own clothes and look great. And I would be there to greet him and—

  “He wanted me to tell you he’s thinking of you. And he really appreciates the card you and Eve brought him.”

  The one the guard ripped apart.

  “Wait, I remember he said you live in Shreveport. If you’re here in Sugar Ledge and want to stay awhile to visit him more, you can come and stay at my house. I have plenty of room.”

  I imagined a smile crossing her sweet face, a face I never had seen but Dave had told me about. Actually, he’d told me what a wonderful person she was and that she continued to keep in touch with him almost like she would want to be taking care of him. But she was the one in the wheelchair.

  “Thank you so much, but Stan and I already have a room rented for a few days at the hotel in town. You know I’m engaged to your sister’s ex-husband, Stan.”

  He had been the second man Eve married and divorced, a pleasant divorce as they all had been. Stan seemed an especially agreeable person. “That’s wonderful. I really like Stan. But both of you could come and stay here.”

  “I really appreciate the offer, but we have handicap facilities here, which are excellent. I need to go now. I’ll let you know when I have anything else to report about Dave.”

  I thanked her again, asked her to give him an extra hug from me the next time she saw him, and we hung up. I stood clasping my phone and inhaled deeply, imagining Dave telling her those nice things about me. She hadn’t quite said the same about Eve. Would she be calling her, too? Had she relayed a message to my sister before she contacted me? I dropped my hips to the edge of the bed.

  My phone rang. Quite possibly it was her calling me back, remembering something else Dave said to tell me. “Hello.” I spoke quickly, my voice cheerful.

  “Sunny.” Her tone was extra loud. “Sunny, this is Cherry Cleveland. Your sister’s phone didn’t answer, so I thought I’d try you.” Okay, now what? “That granite you two picked out for our kitchen arrived. The installers are putting it in place.” So that was the background noise.

  “Nice.” Except that would mean we’d need to get busy soon doing the extra work on our end.

  She grew quiet a second, strange for her. She must have walked away from the kitchen since all of the voices and other sounds slacked off. “The white countertops on the back wall look fresh and lovely. I’m sure what you ordered for the top of the island will look great once it’s all put together.” Her tone sounded anything but certain.

  “That stuff in there looks like crap!” This from a man in the background.

  “Oh, honey, I’m sure it’ll be all right. These women are professionals. They know what they’re doing.” That was Cherry. She wasn’t speaking to me.

  “Well, if they don’t, they’re sure as hell going to get that gross-looking stuff out of our house.” A door slammed.

  I remained silent, feeling my heart thump until Cherry spoke. “I’m sure you both have something wonderful planned,” she said in a lower uncertain tone. “So I can’t wait to see what it is.”

  Thanking her for believing in Twin Sisters, I assured her we would get a terrific job that she would love completed in her kitchen before she knew it. She agreed, reminding me of the approaching due date for completion, and we hung up.

  Elbows on knees, I gripped my head. What color granite had we chosen for the island? Replaying the event in my mind, I recalled Detective Wilet phoning me. I stepped away from the counter with the display pieces th
e salesman had been showing us so the sales guy wouldn’t hear. The detective had wanted to come over to my house, and I tried to stall, saying I would be at the station in an hour or so. I waved to let Eve know we needed to go, and the salesman called out, asking which one we’d chosen. I pictured myself rushing out the door and pointing back. And good grief, who knew what color I selected?

  Okay, I asserted, getting up. That was another matter Eve and I would deal with, and we needed to do it soon so we would get paid.

  First things first—I had to get to the manor to find out if the woman with the phone holding the picture of the woman whose name I needed to know would be there now. If not, I might soon be modeling the prison jumpsuit that Dave would be removing.

  Chapter 24

  I raced out the door as soon as I dressed. Without checking with Eve, I sped across town until I reached the manor. A couple of people I recognized as residents were walking to their cars, surely having finished the early breakfast. I wasn’t concerned with them—only one person here who drew my interest had that phone and photo—unless I came across the staff member who had been pregnant herself. If so, I would ask a resident the woman’s name or if need be, I would ask the woman. I could introduce myself, say something nice about her, repeat her name in my mind until I was certain of it, and get that name to Detective Wilet. Before noon, if I was lucky, because what if he went out for a long lunch and didn’t answer calls while he ate? Matching orange jumpsuits sprang to mind as I ran toward the main entrance. Me and Dave, a nice pair. Only he would be getting out of jail. I would be going in?