Overdue for Murder (Pecan Bayou)

by Trent, Teresa

  "Maybe that's why she was so hard to get along with."

  "There's more. She was fooling around too, with a vampire writer."

  "A what?"

  "You know, a guy who writes stories about vampires."

  "I really don't get what the fuss about vampires and their love lives is all about," he said. That was something else we agreed on.

  "Well, this guy is really sexy, and I saw him and Vanessa together at the mall."

  "What were they doing?" Fitzpatrick asked. He must have figured it out, because I started blushing.

  "Oh."

  "They were all over each other that day, but then she brushed him off," I said.

  "Maybe he kept leaving little teeth marks in her neck?" Fitzpatrick said. As I laughed, I felt my skull rocking with pain again and had to stop.

  "Have the police questioned him? A disgruntled lover is never a happy guy and often a prime suspect."

  "I don't know. I'm not even sure how much they know about all the partner-switching going on in that marriage."

  "You do know you are still the one they think did it, right?" Leo asked.

  "Yes, I do." I looked at the standard-issue hospital clock on the pale green wall. Today's still Saturday, right? Damien Perez is doing a book signing at Petal's Books, here in town. I could go talk to him."

  "Don't you mean, we could go talk to him?"

  "Okay. How long are you here?"

  "I have twenty-four hours, and then I have to get back. I left Mrs. Alvarez there with Taylor, but we've had some twisters along the Panhandle that I need to keep track of. Work gave me twenty-four hours to check on you and get back."

  "Do the girlfriends of weather forecasters feel abandoned during hurricane season?"

  "Pretty much," he answered. "I'd rather predict one than be in one. But I'm here with you for now, so let's make the most of it." I suddenly noticed he had drawn closer to me during our conversation. Very close. He leaned in for a kiss, a sweet kiss appropriate for someone coming out of a drunken, maybe comatose, state. It was nice. I reluctantly pulled away and asked softly, "Was making the most of it talking to Perez or kissing me?

  His voice was hoarse as he said, "Let me call a nurse and see if we can start working on exit paperwork."

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  We walked into Petal's Books about an hour later. It was an old building that had been modernized with pleasant tan siding. It had big picture windows that were always beautifully decorated for every season. Right now, the windows were filled with spring flowers and books with pink and blue covers. I spied Pattie's pink-striped book in one of the displays. I would have to remember to tell her about it.

  Petal, who was the daughter of two flower children, had chosen the location for her bookstore very carefully in the downtown area. Her store was on the end of the street, right next to the city park and playground. Every Saturday she would ring a ship's bell she had mounted outside her door to announce story time to the children playing in the park. It was a wonderful idea, and she made a lot of money doing it, too. She also had a poetry reading night, political meetings and coffee always on. Petal might have been the daughter of free spirits, but she also believed in a free economy. Her husband was my accountant.

  Damien Perez was sitting at a small table near the door, speaking to a couple of teenage girls who were clutching his red-and-black book and giggling. "Well, I hope you enjoy the vampires, girls," he said. They giggled again and turned abruptly, nearly knocking Fitzpatrick and me down.

  "Betsy?" said Damien Perez, eying the bandage on my head. "What happened to you? Did someone come after you with a candlestick?"

  "No, they slipped her a mickey," Fitzpatrick said, extending his hand to Damien. "I'm Leo Fitzpatrick, a friend of Betsy's."

  "How do you do," Damien said warmly, shaking his hand. "So, did you pass out and fall over?"

  "No, I crashed my car into a tree."

  "Oh, my ..." He shook his head from side to side. "Unbelievable. This town is a dangerous place for writers."

  "Not until this past week. I was wondering if we could ask you about Vanessa."

  "I know as much as you do about her murder," Perez sighed.

  "I know that, but I wanted to know about your ... relationship with her before the murder."

  "Before the murder? You must be mistaken."

  "Mr. Perez, I saw you and Vanessa in the mall last week."

  Perez leaned back in his folding chair and touched the tips of his fingers together. I could tell he was deciding just how much to tell me. When he brought his chair back down to the floor, he looked back to Petal's location in the bookstore. She had gone into the back room. He began speaking in soft low tones. "We were lovers. We were together for almost six months, and then she ends it." He tapped his heart with both hands. "She broke my heart," he said, rolling the "r" in heart.

  "How did that make you feel?" asked Fitzpatrick.

  "How do you think it made me feel?" he said. "I was angry. In all my life no one breaks it off with Damien Perez. I am the one who finds the door first. It was humiliating." For a moment he forgot to keep his voice low as emotion overtook him. Was I hearing hurt, or was it anger?

  I stood with my arms folded, listening to him. Damien took it as a judgment. "Ah, but I did not kill her if that's what you're thinking, my happy hinter."

  "Well, you certainly had motive," I said.

  "I had about as much motive as you did, and I'm insulted that you would think I would kill anyone. I am a gentle man. I do not kill."

  Only in fiction, I thought. You not only kill, but you drink their blood.

  "Besides, I saw the UFO man leaning on her car as we left the first night. Perhaps she had moved on to ... how do you say it? E.T.?"

  That was news to me. Oscar Larry, the world's most boring man, was waiting for Vanessa? One thing this whole experience was teaching me was that opposites do seem to attract. Peter and Edith were proof of that. Maybe Vanessa had moved on to Oscar Larry or maybe he was upset about something she had done or said, just like so many others sitting in the library that night.

  An hour later we were back at my house, where Aunt Maggie had thoughtfully put together some chili from the scrounged ingredients in my cabinets. She was just pulling some cornbread out of the oven as we walked in. I could hear Danny and Zach in the den with cartoons in the background. All of a sudden the idea of eating a bowl of chili and going to bed was pretty appealing to me. I yawned and sat down at the kitchen table, where Maggie placed a piping-hot bowl of chili and a glass of milk. Fitzpatrick took the chair across the table from me, and Aunt Maggie set a bowl in front of him.

  "Thanks, Aunt Maggie. I don't know what I'd do without you," I said.

  "So don't start tryin'," she replied.

  Fitzpatrick laughed into his cornbread.

  "Listen here, little girl. You're the daughter I never had, and getting a call that you were in the hospital just about took a year off my life."

  "Sorry."

  "I still don't understand what happened."

  "None of it's very clear," said Fitzpatrick.

  "All I can figure is someone must have followed me, and when I put my coffee in the outer area of the library, they put something in it."

  "I thought Judd always warned you to never put down an open drink, not in this day and age."

  "I know, but the library?"

  Fitzpatrick was already finishing off his bowl. My aunt did make some excellent chili. He swallowed a mouthful, then grabbed a napkin. "Did you see anybody come in?" he said.

  "No, I had my back turned – but maybe Martha did. She was facing the door."

  "If she had, do you think she'd tell you?"

  "No, she revoked my borrowing privileges."

  Maggie scooped up Fitz's bowl. "More?"

  "No, that was wonderful. You should bottle that stuff."

  "She can't," I said. "It doesn't stick around long enough."

  Shouting started in the next room: "Am not."<
br />
  "Are too."

  "You're a silly head."

  "You're a silly head."

  "Uh oh. Sounds like a fight." I scraped my chair out from the table and went toward the noise in the den.

  "What's wrong?" I asked.

  "Zach is a silly head," said Danny.

  "I heard that part," I replied.

  "Danny doesn't want to break a record any more," said Zach.

  "I'm tired," Danny moaned and threw himself onto the couch.

  "But we can't stop now. We haven't broken any records," insisted Zach.

  "I'm tired," Danny repeated, a little louder.

  Zach growled in exasperation and started stomping off to his room. As he got to the door he turned for a parting shot, "Silly head!"

  Danny went over to Aunt Maggie and hugged her around her waist. "I want to go home now."

  "You sure you don't want to eat some chili?" Aunt Maggie asked.

  "No, Mom. I want to go home. I'm tired," Danny said.

  "Hope he's not coming down with something," I said. I reached out and ruffled Danny's hair. "I know how you feel. I'm feeling a little tired too." Danny stood at five-foot-three, a couple of inches shorter than my five-foot-five. I had been five years older than he was, and his development was much slower than mine, so we never played together like he and Zach did. Right now he and Zach were at the same developmental age. I wondered and worried how long that would last. Would Zach enter puberty and leave Danny behind? I guess we would find out in just a few years.

  Maggie gave me a hug before they went out my back door. "Glad you're okay," was all she said, but from the tightness of the hug I knew she felt much more.

  Fitz looked at his watch, "My twenty-four hours are almost up. Will you be alright tonight?"

  "Yes, I'll be fine."

  "Do me a favor and try to stay away from the body finding, tree hitting and all-around dangerous behavior, okay?"

  "At least you started with 'try.' That's the best I can do. As long as I'm the one they think did it, I have to find out who really did it," I said.

  "I know you do, but don't you have a highly experienced and qualified police professional in your family who is doing the same thing?"

  "Yes," I admitted.

  "So don't go all junior detective on us." He reached out and pulled me in, giving me his own version of goodbye.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  On Sunday, after finishing my latest blog post about using dryer sheets to dust baseboards, I headed to the land of little green men in San Antonio. Zach was still pretty down after Danny had given up the pursuit of world records, so the idea of going to a store devoted to aliens helped to bring him around to his old self.

  According to my GPS device, Oscar Larry's shop was right on Alamo Square. What would the original fighting men of the Alamo have thought if they walked into the structure they so ardently defended to find it surrounded by shops, restaurants and tourists? Remember the ... T-shirts, posters and tasteful gifts for your loved ones! Not the same, I thought.

  As we entered the busy store, Zach's eyes grew big as he came face-to-face with a life-sized alien doll. It was standing by the door holding a sign that said "Greetings." "Cool," he said, now spinning around as he took in alien T-shirts, books, DVDs and games. Up on the wall next to the register was a flatscreen TV playing a documentary about the discovery of alien life forms in Nevada.

  Oscar Larry was not at the register, so we walked into a second room of the store. It was Sunday afternoon, after all. Maybe I should have called first. The inner room was a large area with bookshelves lining the walls, filled with what looked like hundreds of green and silver items. The other side of the room had rows of chairs and a video screen for presentations. Oscar Larry had probably bored thousands of people with his endless slides. Over in the corner stood Mr. Larry with his arms crossed and his thumb tapping at his chin as he listened to a small man adamantly telling him a story. He held up his hand to stop him.

  "That is not what I told you to do! I wanted the pop-out aliens right there at the front door."

  "Sir," the little man said, pushing up his glasses, "don't you think that might be a bit frightening for children who come into the shop?"

  "All the better!" It seemed the mild-mannered alien researcher was pretty demanding with his clerk. Is that how he ended up first on the program and then chose to ignore the time limit?

  What kind of name was Oscar Larry? Was Larry really his last name, or had he just dropped the last part of his name and stuck with first and middle name? Another mystery of the universe.

  Today Oscar Larry wore a T-shirt on his thin frame that featured the familiar lime-green alien head with "Resistance is Futile" written around it. He recognized me as we approached him. He patted the short man on the back as if to dismiss him and turned toward me and Zach. "Well, hello. You're one of the authors from Pecan Bayou. It's Becky, right? So nice of you to come over and see my shop. I could tell just by looking at you that you had a heart for alien investigations." Oscar looked down at Zach. "Is this your son?"

  "Yes, this is Zach, and my name is Betsy, not Becky."

  "Oh, my apologies, Betsy. What do you want to see first?" He gestured to encompass the entire store.

  "Could I look at that video game over there?" Zach said. There was a small game set up for customers to play while in the store that had caught Zach's electrical gadget fancy.

  "Certainly!" We went over to the game setup on the counter. Oscar Larry reached behind the counter and produced a high stool for Zach to sit on while he played the game. Zach started pushing buttons, and Oscar showed him how to shoot down asteroids and aliens with great skill.

  "This is great, Mom!" Zach said.

  "Thanks," I said to Oscar Larry. "I was wondering if I could ask you some questions."

  "Of course! That's what I'm here for. Have you had an encounter or perhaps you're accounting for some missing time? Don't be embarrassed, you'd be surprised all the stories I've heard."

  "I'll just bet you have," I agreed, "but my questions have more to do with the murder at the library."

  He straightened up. "Oh. I know very little about that."

  "Had you ever met Vanessa before the author's night?"

  "No, not really. I had seen her column in your local newspaper."

  "Really?" I was a little surprised Oscar Larry had taken the time to read a column about fashion, but I guess men were allowed to be interested in fashion, too.

  "It's not what you might think. I approached the editor of the Pecan Bayou Gazette – what's his name, Shifty?"

  "Rocky."

  "Yes, right, Rocky. I wanted to write a weekly column about UFO sightings in the Texas area. I am constantly being told stories by people coming to visit the Alamo. It would have been a wonderful sharing of insights and information about the subject matter that I hold dearest. Unfortunately, your editor did not share my enthusiasm and chose to include that woman's fashion blog instead." He stopped talking for a moment and fingered a small rubber alien on the counter, rolling its little head between his thumb and forefinger.