“Well, I will just be damned,” Sugar declared. “That man sure had a lot of secret friends.”
“I assume you are speaking of my fellow horticulturist, Mike Thornton,” Millard said. “I do not know if you have sampled his marijuana, but it is, I believe what is called, ‘top shelf.’”
Sugar sat back against the sofa cushions with a shocked expression. “I thought I knew everything that went on in this town,” she said, “and here I am finding out there’s this whole pot-smoking, orchid-growing, liberal political . . .”
As she paused, fumbling for the word, Millard said, “I believe the phrase you are looking for is ‘sub-culture.’ And you are quite correct, Hilton voted for JFK and planned to cast his ballot for Bobby as well.”
Sugar regarded him with horror. “Hilton was a Kennedy supporter?”
“Yes,” Millard said, “which is, I believe, worse than a homosexual on the local scale of immorality and debauchery.”
“If not worse, damn sure neck and neck,” Sugar agreed. “So when Hilton was over here supposedly spraying your house, you two were doing what, exactly?”
“We discussed politics and books, played the occasional game of chess, and discussed orchids,” Millard said. “Hilton had an excellent mind, and he dreamed of doing things far beyond the confines of this little town. It was, in fact, that excellent mind that I believe resulted in his murder. More coffee?”
Sugar nodded numbly and held out her cup and saucer. Aas Millard poured from the silver pot, he continued to talk. “You see,” he said, “Hilton did not approach any topic of study lightly. When he became a volunteer fireman, he began to read about the behavior of fires. When the hardware store burned, he shared with me his belief that the fire was intentionally set. He shared that belief, by the way, with his brother-in-law, Blake Trinkle.”
Wheels were starting to turn in Sugar’s head, a fact not lost on Millard. “I see you are putting the pieces together,” he said, refilling his own cup. “Both Hilton and Blake disagreed with Deputy Hank Howard, who is, as you know, also the local fire marshall, that the fire was an accident. Even after Blake’s untimely death, Hilton would not let the matter go. A week before his death, he told me that he thought there might be a connection between Hank Howard and the insurance company that refused to pay John Powell the claim to which he was due.”
“And Maybelline Trinkle and Hank Howard are supposedly having an affair,” Sugar said thoughtfully.
“Precisely,” Millard said. “I find it something less than a coincidence that the two men who were in the best position to make a case for the hardware store fire being arson are both now dead.”
“And Hilton never said anything about all this to Wanda Jean because he didn’t want to bad-mouth her sister,” Sugar said. “Am I right?”
“Absolutely,” Millard confirmed. “Hilton loved his wife deeply and he was terribly conflicted at the thought that her sister, Maybelline, might be connected to these events or that she might be complicit in her husband’s death.”
“But who did the killings?” Sugar asked. “Maybelline or Hank Howard?”
“That, I do not know,” Millard said. “But I do believe that it is highly likely that one of them is the killer, of both Blake Trinkle and Hilton.”
“My Lord,” Sugar said. “How in the world are we ever gonna prove that?”
“I don’t know,” Millard said. “But Hilton talked to me about his theory at great length and I will be happy to assist you ladies in any way I can.”
“Thank you, Millard,” she said. “We just may take you up on that. I expect I better get going. Slim is gonna wonder where his supper is.”
“Of course, of course,” Millard said. He set down his cup and started to stand, but hesitated, clearing his throat a little self-consciously. “Could I possibly impose on you for a small favor?”
“Sure,” Sugar said. “What is it?”
“Would you assure Mrs. Milton that I am not what she suspects and that neither was her husband?” he asked. “I did not think through my tribute this morning. I realize now that I have put her in an awful position among local gossips. I do regret that. I am genuinely grieved by Hilton’s passing. And, well, if she would consider coming here, with you and the ladies, of course, I would so much like to show her Hilton’s orchids. They are so beautiful, and perhaps it might offer her a small bit of comfort.”
Sugar looked at him curiously. “Millard,” she said. “Why don’t you want people to know that you’re a nice man?”
“I haven’t done well in the company of other people in my life,” he said, looking down awkwardly. “Hilton was the first friend I have made in many years. He, too, thought I should assume a more active role in the community. I don’t know if I can do that. I am a creature of habit. But I would very much like to extend the hand of friendship to his widow. Would you help me do that?”
Sugar smiled. “You bet I will,” she said. “I think that would make Wanda Jean very happy.”
Chapter 15
When Sugar got home from her talk with Millard Philpott she fixed Slim his supper. Once he was settled down in front of the TV watching My Three Sons, she called Clara and reported the details of her conversation with Millard.
Clara, who had stretched the cord from the kitchen phone around the corner and into the laundry room, perched on a stool and sipped a tall glass of iced tea while they talked. “Well, I will just be damned,” she said. “I thought Millard was light in his loafers sure as the world.”
“Me, too,” Sugar said, sitting down at her kitchen table and lighting a cigarette. “You are not gonna believe his house. I’d give anything in the world to be married to a man who could keep a house like that, and I wouldn’t care if he was a homo-sexual.”
On the other end of the line Clara let out a short laugh. “Don’t I just know it,” she said. “I swear to God if I trip over Clint’s boots in the middle of the floor one more time I’m gonna put the boots in the closet and throw him out in the front yard.”
“It’s socks and boxer shorts with Slim,” Sugar said. “The man can put a fishing lure under the branch of a pecan tree clean across the river without getting his line tangled, but he can’t hit the hamper to save his life.”
They let out twin sighs of wifely frustration, and then Clara asked the $10,000 question. “So, how are we gonna ask Wanda Jean if she thinks her sister might be a murderer or might be sleeping with a murderer? Even I’ll admit that’s kind of a delicate question.”
“Well,” Sugar said, puffing contemplatively on her Camel, “how about we all go down to the shop after church tomorrow and figure that out? We need to make sure we don’t get interrupted while we’re talking to her and I damn sure don’t think we ought to be talking about this in front of Rolene.”
“Oh Lord, no,” Clara agreed. “That we do not need. I don’t think Clint’s coming with me to church in the morning, so I’ll just tell him I’m gonna stay in town awhile.”
“What about his Sunday dinner?” Sugar asked.
“We had a big ole pot roast for supper tonight and I brought home all that extra funeral food that Rolene just insisted I take. He’ll be fine,” Clara said, the clink of the ice cubes in her glass floating down the wire with her words. “You all going to the cafe like usual?”
“Always,” Sugar said. “Slim wouldn’t miss the Sunday special for anything. Soon as we get back here, he’ll hit the couch and be out like a light in 15 minutes. How about we meet at 1:30 at the shop and ask Wanda Jean to come down at 2:30?”
“Good plan,” Clara said. “I’ll tell Mae Ella and Wilma to park in the back so nobody will notice our cars and start wondering what we’re up to.”
From the other room Slim hollered, “Come on, Sugar! Hogan’s Heroes is about to start.”
“I gotta go, Clara,” Sugar said, stubbing out her cigarette. “Slim has a fit if I don’t watch that silly program with him. Do you mind letting the girls know?”
“You go on,” C
lara said. “I’ll call them right now. See you tomorrow.”
After she signed off with Sugar and called Mae Ella and Wilma to fill them in on the plan, Clara walked out on the covered back porch where Clint was watching a crowd of deer and turkeys mill around the feeder at the edge of the yard. The Wylers had never gotten around to buying a TV set when they were all the rage in the 1950s, and neither one of them could see they were missing much by not having one now. Besides, way out here, they’d need to put an antenna up on the roof to get a signal, which was more money and more trouble just for a fuzzy channel or two. They listened to the news on the radio and read at night, turning in long before the people in town.
Clint loved his Zane Grey stories and Clara went to the library every week to get some new novel that had just come in on loan. All the little libraries in the area regularly traded books to give their patrons more variety. There was talk of trying to move the existing local library out of the cramped, converted storeroom it now occupied and into the courthouse to a larger, as yet undetermined, location. Clara was planning to bring the matter up with the Study Club at the next meeting so they could participate in the fund raising. She liked the idea of the group supporting books in the community. It seemed fitting.
If they’d had kids, Clint and Clara’s summer evenings would have been far different. That’s what they’d talked about when they first married, imagining games of cowboys and Indians in the front yard and pillow fights at bedtime. But that was not to be. Neither would admit that they tried to make the empty hours when the work day was over pass productively and quickly so they didn’t have to think about that.
Sometimes Clint would clean his guns or mend tack and Clara did needlepoint. Once daylight savings time kicked in and the light lasted longer, they could sit on the porch until it got dark and listen to the sounds of the deepening country night fall around them. But it was always a relief to go to bed knowing they’d wake up to a full day of chores. Both the Wylers were happier when they were occupied, which is why Clara founded the Study Club and poured all her extra time and effort into making it a force for good in town.
She knew that people made jokes about the ladies not “studying” anything but the bottom of their coffee cups. The people cracking those jokes didn’t know that the program committee actually worked hard to bring in speakers or to deliver their own carefully researched presentations. There was a silent agreement among the members that it was best no one know they had considered the merits of the Peace Corps, the shocking poverty of the surviving American Indians, or just what it was Betty Friedan had to say in that book The Feminine Mystique.
The Club members were the daughters of women who had kept ranches running while their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons went to war. Clara was born the year Hitler invaded Poland, and too little to understand anything about Pearl Harbor in 1941, but she remembered the end of the war when she was five, and the men coming home to take over what their wives had handled so well while they were gone to fight.
Having to go back to the way things were before was easier for ranch women, who were used to working, but Clara knew women her own age whose mothers had been told to just go home from their jobs in war plants or accept demotions and loss of responsibilities because their bosses had returned to take over. While she, herself, didn’t feel any need to be “liberated,” stories like that rankled Clara. It just didn’t seem right to make a woman step down from a job she was doing perfectly well just because a man wanted it back.
Sure, America won the war, and the prosperity of the 1950s made up for all the sacrifices of those years, but Clara could see why so many women who talked to Betty Friedan said they were unhappy with their lives. Clint never told Clara what to do and he was a good man, but what about women like Lura Belle Taylor? Why were people supposed to look the other way when a sorry son of a bitch was beating on his wife? Because you were supposed to tend to your own business? And she was getting what she deserved for marrying that piece of trash? That last line of thinking really set Clara off. No woman married a man thinking he was gonna hit her.
So, yes, even a conventional woman like Clara Wyler found herself asking unconventional questions these days, which was really the reason she wasn’t going to let Lester Harper or anybody else railroad Wanda Jean Milton. The way Clara saw it, there were plenty of women who had reasons to kill men and showed remarkable restraint by not doing it. Neither Clara nor any of the other Club officers would have called what they were doing an act of “feminism,” but damn it all to hell, men weren’t right nearly as much as they thought they were. Wanda Jean wasn’t going to go to jail just because a fat-gutted sheriff assumed “the wife is always guilty.”
All of this and more was running through Clara’s mind when she stepped onto the porch with Clint, patting him on the knee as she took her seat. “You get enough supper?” she asked.
“Lord, yes,” he said happily. “But I am thinking about another slice of that pecan pie here in a little bit.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes enjoying the cool of the evening. Clara finally broke the reveries when she asked, “You have any opinion of Hank Howard?”
“Lester’s deputy?” Clint said. “I can’t say as how I really know the young feller. He sure does like to keep a shine on his boots though.”
“Kind of a dandy, is he?” Clara asked.
“Looks like it to me,” Clint said. “But being a dandy’s not a crime. Why are you asking me about Hank Howard?”
Clara told Clint all the details of Sugar’s visit with Millard Philpott. When she was done, Clint sat staring into the twilight thinking for a minute before he said, “Seems to me that Hilton and Blake might have been onto something about the fire at John Powell’s store.”
“Why do you say that?” Clara asked.
“Well, right after it happened, I went by there and saw John running that bulldozer, so I stopped and asked him if there was anything I could do to help him,” Clint said. “We got to talking and he started telling me how the insurance company wasn’t gonna give him any settlement money. We walked around to the parts of the foundation he’d already got cleared off and he showed me the scorch marks from the fire there on the concrete.”
“What’s unusual about there being scorch marks after a fire?” Clara asked. “Isn’t that normal?”
“Well, sure,” Clint said, “but that fire burned in concentric circles.”
Clara turned in her chair to look at her husband in the dimming light. “Are you serious?” she asked.
“Dead serious,” Clint said. “I saw it with my own eyes. John was just fit to be tied that the insurance company wouldn’t admit it was arson, but they were going entirely by Hank Howard’s report as fire marshal, and Hank wouldn’t change his mind.”
“Did he tell John why?” Clara asked.
“Yeah, he fed him some cock-and-bull story about paint cans blowing up after rolling around on the floor,” Clint said. “Then when John told him that was ridiculous, Hank came up with a different story and said John made the marks himself on the concrete with the bulldozer and they didn’t mean anything. John told me that he and Hank almost came to blows over it, and then Hank warned John to simmer down before he got himself arrested.”
“That sorta sounds like a threat, doesn’t it?” Clara said.
“To me it does,” Clint agreed. “What if Blake and Hilton were trying to figure a way to go over Hank’s head and get somebody else to investigate the fire and tell the truth?”
“But what would be in it for Hank?” Clara asked. “Why would he falsify the fire report in the first place?”
“Well,” Clint said reasonably, “seems like to me it would be a lot cheaper for an insurance company to pay off a crooked fire marshal than it would be to cover the whole inventory of a hardware store. If Lester Harper and the City Council found out Hank did that, at the very least he’d lose his job, but I reckon he’d probably get brought up on some kind of charges, too.”
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br /> “Like what?” Clara asked.
“Probably fraud and accepting a bribe,” Clint said, standing up. “It’s an interesting theory, honey, but hard as hell to prove. And right now the only criminal thing I’ve got on my mind is stealing another slice of that pie. You want one?”
“No. Thank you though,” Clara said absently.
Clint went in the house and Clara sat alone thinking about their conversation. Prison was certainly the last place a lawman wanted to wind up, but would he commit two bigger crimes to keep that from happening? Clara didn’t have any trouble seeing how somebody could put a knife in Hilton Milton’s chest, but how would a killer go about making Blake Trinkle have a heart attack in the john? Unless Blake died somewhere else of another cause and the whole thing was staged. Ida Belle Banners made a good point when she said it wasn’t much of a trick to put a dirty magazine in a dead man’s hand. But if all of this was true, what was Maybelline’s part in it?
Clara shook her head and stood up, changing her mind after all about that piece of pie. As much as she hated to admit it, everyone’s life would have been a hell of a lot easier if Wanda Jean had run that Old Hickory knife between the “l” and the “t” on Hilton’s name tag.
Chapter 16
Sugar parked in her usual spot behind the Style and Spray and opened the door a little after 1 o’clock on Sunday afternoon. By the time she heard car tires on the gravel in the alley, she already had the coffee made.
Clara arrived first, with Wilma, Mae Ella, and Flowers not far behind. Since there wasn’t enough room in her small office for everyone to sit comfortably, Sugar drew the blinds in the main salon and they all settled on the couch and chairs in the waiting area.
Without the dryers all going at once, the usual cloud of cigarette smoke hanging near the ceiling, mixing with the Aqua Net fumes and the undulating glow of the lava lamp, the beauty shop seemed uncharacteristically somber.
You Can't Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet: A Study Club Cozy Murder Mystery (The Study Club Mysteries Book 1) Page 11