At that, Mae Ella stood up abruptly. "Horsefeathers," she barked. "I think we’ve talked long enough, Brother Bob. I just wanted to know about the dancing. I didn’t ask you to go digging eleven years in the past." She stormed toward the door, only to pause at the threshold. Without turning to look at the preacher, she said, "I won't tell anyone. About the dancing."
"It’s okay if you do, Mae Ella," Brother Bob said. “I wouldn’t lie if somebody asked me about it.”
Still not looking at him, Mae Ella said shortly, "You're a good man. You're good to your wife. You do good things for this town. That's more than can be said for most. I imagine God will overlook this other nonsense."
"Would you like to come talk to me sometime about Alice?" Brother Bob asked kindly.
Turning towards him she snapped, "Why in the world would I want to do that?"
"Well, for one thing, I didn't know her," he said. "I'd like you to tell me about your friend. I understand she was a very fine young woman."
"Better than either one of those sorry boys in the car with her the night she was killed," Mae Ella said, and without another word, she walked swiftly down the hall and out of sight.
By the time she reached the sanctuary, Mae Ella’s feature had settled into her normal half scowl. Before she joined Wilma, Mae Ella sat directly behind Clara and Sugar and said, in a conspiratorial whisper, “It’s true about the dancing. The man doesn’t even have the decency to be ashamed of himself. But anyway, you can take Brother Bob off the list of suspects.”
Clara turned in the pew and took in her sister’s poorly contained agitation. “That’s all the two of you talked about?” she asked. “The dancing?”
“Yes,” Mae Ella snapped. “And I only did it to help Wanda Jean. I’m going to go sit by Wilma now.”
As they watched her bustle away, Sugar said, “My heavens! That thing about the dancing surely did upset her, didn’t it?”
“Sister doesn’t dance anymore,” Clara said, looking after Mae Ella with a contemplative expression on her face.
“Because she married Cletus and he’s a hard-shell Baptist?” Sugar asked.
Turning back to face the front of the church, Clara said, “Well, yes, that idiot brother-in-law of mine is about as Baptist as they come, but Sister gave up dancing before that.”
Sugar thought about that for a minute and then she put the pieces together. “Oh, Clara,” she said. “It’s about little Alice Browning, isn’t it?”
Clara nodded, “Sister never has gotten over losing her. I swear to God, Alice was the only person on the face of this good Earth who could ever get Mae Ella to loosen up and have some fun.”
“That’s awful sad,” Sugar said sincerely. “I didn’t realize.”
“Mae Ella doesn’t make it easy for folks to sympathize with her,” Clara said. “Sometimes I’d sooner pet a rattlesnake than try to have a conversation with my little sister.”
Just then, two ushers opened the doors of the sanctuary and a steady stream of townspeople began to file into the church. “Here we go,” Sugar said. “What exactly are we looking for?”
“Anything unusual,” Clara said, her eyes on the growing crowd. “Like that,” she said, resisting the urge to point toward the center aisle.
As nonchalantly as she could manage, Sugar followed Clara’s gaze, her eyes alighting on a stylishly overdressed woman wearing entirely too much make-up for 9:15 in the morning. “What in the hell is Melinda Sue Fairchild doing here?” she asked under her breath.
“Sugar!” Clara hissed. “Don’t cuss in church!”
“Sorry,” Sugar said. “But would you just look at that git up she’s got on? Now that is real white trash.”
“Well, she didn’t start out that way,” Clara said, her mouth set in a firm line. “She’s from good people. It’s those pageants that ruined her. She looks like the whore of Babylon.”
“Did Melinda Sue ever actually win one of those pageants after she was Miss Bait and Ammo?” Sugar asked.
“No,” Clara said, “but it wasn’t because she didn’t enter a jillion of the fool things. Her name is most certainly replacing Brother Bob’s on the list of suspects.”
“But we don’t even know if she has any connection to Hilton,” Sugar said.
“That doesn’t matter,” Clara said, watching with open disapproval as Melinda Sue gyrated her hips into a pew down front. “No woman who comes to church dressed like that can possibly be up to any good.”
Chapter 12
Melinda Sue Fairchild’s “git up” did flaunt the usual conventions of appropriate funeral attire. Granted, she was wearing black. At least the top half of her was wearing black. The strapless low-cut bodice of her dress was skin tight, boosted to its full potential by what was, no doubt, a “lift and separate” Playtex bra living up to its promise to make a woman “shapely.”
Every man in the sanctuary that morning offered up silent but reverent prayers, earnestly entreating the Almighty to please make Melinda Sue bend over just enough that they could be treated to the religious experience of her décolletage in all its glory.
Her waist was cinched into a black patent leather belt from which descended a gaudy harlequin check full skirt, resplendent in diamonds of pink, red, black, and green. She was using her impeccable pageant posture to balance on a set of black stiletto heels that looked more like weapons than footwear. And, of course, there was her trademark hair ribbon, scarlet satin today, taking the place of the tiaras she longed to win and could only glimpse from afar.
Yes, Melinda Sue had been Miss Bait and Ammo when she was 16, but there had been no tiara, only a camouflage sash emblazoned with her title and a rhinestone headband. It had been a bitter disappointment for Melinda Sue, but in those days, there were so many pageants ahead of her and she entered them all.
Little could she know that she, like her idol, former Miss Oklahoma 1958 Anita Bryant, would be denied her rightful crown. Anita was robbed of the Miss America title in 1959 by that trashy Mary Ann Mobley from Mississippi, an experience Melinda Sue herself relived on runways all over Texas and the South. It was, of course, jealousy on the part of the judges. As a good Christian, Melinda Sue knew this, and she tried to bear her cross fashionably and without bitterness.
Although Clara Wyler and Sugar Watson were not the only people looking at Melinda Sue askance, she was oblivious to any implied criticism. An audience was, after all, an audience, even with a casket in the room, and all concerned were presented with her carefully crafted smile, perfected by hours of practice in front of the mirror. “Be pleasant, but don’t look too eager,” her pageant coach, Dodie de Bellevue, taught her. “Let your inner light shine, Melinda Sue.” Miss de Bellevue made no allowance for the dimness of the bulb screwed into Melinda Sue’s socket.
No sooner had Melinda Sue settled into her pew than Sugar and Clara fixed their appraising gazes on the town’s token Yankee, Millard Philpott, who entered the church wearing a seersucker suit. To their certain knowledge he was the only man in the county, and perhaps in the state of Texas, who wore seersucker, and that alone was enough to raise suspicions about him.
“Would you just look at Millard,” Clara whispered to Sugar. “He looks like an ice cream man in that silly suit.”
“You know,” Sugar said, “I’ve seen pictures of Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote wearing seersucker. I think Millard is trying to look more like a Southern man.”
“Harumph,” Clara said. “I don’t think Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote are very good reference sources on Southern manhood. You wouldn’t catch Rhett Butler wearing seersucker.”
With all the pews filled and the clock now reading a quarter of ten, the organist began to play subdued hymns. The pallbearers came down the aisle first, each pausing for a moment in front of Hilton’s casket before taking his assigned seat on the front left pew. Mike Thornton was among the select six who would carry Hilton to his grave. Wanda Jean decided to include Mike at the last minute. When questioned by
her sisters, she offered a truthful, albeit veiled explanation. “Hilton and Mike share an interest in plants.”
Under duress, brother-in-law Cooter Jackson was doing his family duty, although judging from the strangled look on his face, a necktie was on par with a hangman’s noose in his estimation. The other four men were all Hilton’s Masonic Lodge brothers, older and more experienced at the business of hefting a casket on their shoulders. After a certain age in a small town, a man could expect to be called upon to be a pallbearer on a regular basis, and there were always those men who fulfilled the role at the last minute when the family suddenly realized there weren’t six men in town who liked Grandpa well enough to tote him to his reward.
Once the pallbearers were seated, the congregation stood respectfully as Bill Simmons led the family to the reserved front pew on the right. Wanda Jean, dressed tastefully in a simple black dress, led the way, her hair freshly combed by Sugar early that morning at Rolene’s house.
Clara leaned into Sugar and whispered, “That was so nice of you to go do her hair at the crack of dawn.”
Sugar whispered back, “She really needed a comb out and some fresh spray. She was looking worse than Hilton.”
Brother Bob came down from the pulpit and privately spoke a few comforting words to Wanda Jean. Then he turned toward the congregation, held up both hands, somberly flapping his wrists downward to indicate everyone should be seated. He turned and regarded Hilton prayerfully for a long moment, and then climbed back to the pulpit, adjusted the microphone, and intoned the first words of his sermon.
“Friends and neighbors, we are gathered here today to pay our last respects to Hilton Fulton Milton, beloved husband of Wanda Jean Bodine Milton. Although their union was not yet blessed with children, Hilton was a part of the larger family of this community, coming into our homes and using the talents the Good Lord gave him to rid our dwelling places of all manner of tiny, crawling infestations. While these creatures are, too, part of God’s creation, the Almighty gave man dominion over the beasts of the earth, and so, in that sense, Hilton Milton did the Lord’s work in his profession as an exterminator.”
Although she had been true to her promise to keep her mouth shut up to this point, Mae Ella could not resist at that moment turning to Wilma and whispering, just a little too loudly, “Isn’t that stretching things a mite?”
Heads swiveled in the congregation, and Clara covered her eyes with her hand. Brother Bob, who appeared to be smothering what looked very much like a smile, continued with his remarks unperturbed. “In that work, Hilton fought the good fight . . .”
A collective sigh of relief rose in the crowd as Brother Bob lapsed into a more doctrinally safe West Texas funeral sermon. Anyone sitting there that day could have delivered a good facsimile of the remainder of the service, which was liberally salted with tried and true injunctions about Jesus going to prepare a place for us in a house not made with hands, thus alleviating any apprehension about the valley of the shadow, for that threat passed over us as surely as the plagues of Egypt passed over the houses of the faithful, marked by the blood of the lamb.
There was a restless stirring when Brother Bob used the word “blood.” For as much as Hilton’s friends and neighbors were truly sitting in the Baptist Church to pay their last respects, they all knew a murderer was likely sitting there among them -- possibly even tastefully clothed in black and sporting a freshly combed bouffant on the front pew.
Forty-five minutes later when Brother Bob finally wound down and the choir completed warbled renditions of standard hymns, Bill Simmons wheeled Hilton’s closed casket down the center aisle, positioned it by the door, and opened the lid once again. Harold Insall began directing people to leave the church, one row at a time, the line passing beside the casket and out to the front lawn, where the townspeople formed a silent wall of well-mannered bereavement on either side of the walkway. The hearse, backed into the center parking space, stood ready to receive Hilton’s body for transport to the cemetery.
Because they had taken seats at the back of the church on purpose, the Study Club officers were in the first batch of mourners to exit the building and were able to position themselves to the immediate right of the open hearse doors. No sooner were they in place than Clara leaned down to Mae Ella and said, “I thought I told you to keep your damn mouth shut.”
Mae Ella fixed her with a placid expression. “How was I supposed to know the church would get quiet just as I made a simple observation?”
“Simple observation my backside,” Clara snapped. “What would Mama think?”
“She’d think Brother Bob had to dig pretty deep in the Bible to come up with the notion that a man who kills bugs for a living is doing the Lord’s work,” Mae Ella shot back.
The two sisters stood glaring at each other until Sugar and Wilma deftly inserted themselves between the siblings. “That’s enough out of both of you,” Wilma said. “We can talk about it in the car on the way to the cemetery.”
The ladies had, in fact, a great deal to talk about on the way to the cemetery, a conversation that started almost the instant the doors of the hearse slammed shut, and continued until they were carefully picking their way over the rocky ground to the graveside. They discussed not only Mae Ella’s social gaffe, Clara’s considerable outrage, and the quality of Brother Bob’s sermon, but also Melinda Sue Fairchild’s outlandish appearance.
Beyond that, the crowd at the church was, in their judgment, not conspicuous in any way. The turnout was as large as everyone expected, and a veritable throng now stood around the open grave. A few people surreptitiously checked their watches to see if the funeral would end by noon. Those that didn’t intend on going to the Catholic Annex for the reception wanted to make certain they made it to the cafe before the lunch special ran out. Saturday was, after all, meat loaf day with coconut cream pie for dessert.
After Hilton’s Masonic brothers performed their rituals, Brother Bob made blessedly brief remarks and people began to form a loose line to pass by the family and offer words of condolence. And that’s when it happened. That’s when Millard Philpott stepped out of the crowd in that seersucker suit, approached Hilton’s casket, and laid a single orchid tied with a lavender ribbon on the lid before turning and walking away, without so much as a word to Wanda Jean as proper etiquette required.
The assembled townspeople stood frozen in place watching his retreating blue-and-white striped back, and then the murmurs started.
“Did you see that?”
“What did he put up there?”
“Is that an orchid?”
From their position standing behind the chairs in which the family members were seated, the Study Club officers were just as shocked as the rest of the mourners. Finally, after swallowing a time or two, Sugar managed to croak quietly to Clara, “Maybe those panty hose of Hilton’s meant something after all.”
“Lord God,” Clara said, her eyes still on Millard Philpott’s retreating back. “It was bad enough for Hilton to go and get himself murdered, but how in the world is Wanda Jean ever gonna hold her head up in this town now?”
Chapter 13
After they left the cemetery, the Study Club officers rode in complete silence for three blocks. Then they all began to talk at once. “What in the hell was that all about?” Wilma demanded, just as Mae Ella said, “Wonder what Wanda Jean has to say about Hilton’s manhood now?” which ran over Sugar’s question, “Does Millard Philpott realize he just put a prom corsage on a dead man’s casket?”
From behind the wheel, Clara issued a presidential edict. “There’s no two ways about it, we have to talk to that little peckerwood Millard Philpott.”
“How are we going to cook up a reason to do that?” Mae Ella asked. “It’s not like any of us have ever had anything to do with him before.”
“We’re not cooking up anything,” Clara said. “We’re going to march right up to his house and ring the doorbell.”
“And say what?” Wilma asked.
“He just pretty much told the whole county that Hilton Milton was a sissy,” Clara said. “I don’t think even an ignorant Yankee wouldn’t realize that might raise some questions.”
“You don’t really believe that Hilton and Millard were . . .,” Sugar faltered. “That maybe they liked Liberace?”
“I don’t believe that about Liberace,” Mae Ella said stoutly. “And don’t you start saying anything bad about Rock Hudson either.”
Clara shot Mae Ella a look in the rearview mirror and just shook her head. “I don’t know if Hilton and Millard were . . . listening to Liberace or not, but that would certainly be a reason to kill a man, now wouldn’t it?”
“You do realize that you’re talking about murder in self-defense?” Wilma said quietly.
Sugar turned in the passenger seat to look at her. “What do you mean?” she asked, frowning.
“If there was something going on between Hilton and Millard, do you have any idea how fast that could have gotten either one of them killed?” Wilma asked.
“What are you saying?” Clara asked.
“I’m saying that we don’t need to do anything to start any more rumors about Millard Philpott that he hasn’t already started himself by laying that orchid up on that casket,” Wilma replied. “We could get him killed. He might not be the murderer, but he sure as hell could be the next victim.”
Silence fell over the car again. Finally Sugar said, “Let me go talk to Millard.”
“Why you?” Clara asked.
“Like I told you before, I knew some boys like that in beautician school,” Sugar said. “They were awful sweet, and like Wilma says, they got picked on a lot. If Millard is like that, I think maybe I can tell just from talking to him.”
“Okay,” Clara said, pulling into a parking space at the Catholic Annex. “See what you can find out. We have to get in there and support Wanda Jean.”
You Can't Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet: A Study Club Cozy Murder Mystery (The Study Club Mysteries Book 1) Page 9