Overdue for Murder (Pecan Bayou)

by Trent, Teresa

  "After reading the drivel she wrote, I was understandably angry. Who really cares about a new handbag line compared to life on other planets?"

  My thoughts exactly. "So how do you feel about my column?"

  "At least your column is useful to people. By the way, I read your column about digital coupons and used your advice here in the store. We put one up on the website for glow-in-the-dark alien putty. We sold out in a week."

  "So who do you think killed Vanessa?"

  "It wasn't me. Frankly, I was pretty sure it was you," he said, putting the little rubber alien back in its cardboard box on the counter. "The more time I spent around her, the more I found myself disliking her. This whole shop is built around alien encounters, but also fears of something that is unknown, hidden and possibly dangerous. Most importantly, these things are real. Vanessa Markham was not. She was all about the appearance of something, a show. Even with all that, I felt sorry for the woman, and well ... there is an opening at the paper again, now isn't there?"

  Would Rocky include this guy's column right next to mine? I could just see it in the latest addition, Betsy tells you how to get that stubborn stain out while Oscar Larry talks to you about getting that troublesome alien to stop popping out of your chest cavity.

  "Did you ever speak with Vanessa?" I pressed.

  "Yes, just briefly before the night I spoke to the library audience. She made some derisive comments about my work. I'm not proud to tell you I returned the favor and called her a shallow, hedonistic idiot."

  "Nobody told me that."

  "We were quite alone at the time, and I would appreciate that being kept quiet."

  He could appreciate all he wanted but a fact like that needed to be in the hands of the police.

  He continued, "Besides, you had words with the victim as well. I'll bet if we lined up every person there that night with a beef of some sort with Miss Vanessa Markham Scarlett, the line would have stretched around the block."

  "You may be right about that. I know I didn't kill her, but trying to find someone who didn't have a motive is getting pretty tough."

  "Well, scratch me off your list. I am interested in life, alien or otherwise." Oscar Larry then noticed his clerk dragging an alien display across the room and abruptly ended our conversation. "No! No! Not on that side, we already have the alien autopsy photos over there."

  Was he right? Was he too busy with his business to murder Vanessa? How much did he really want that column? Was it enough to kill?

  *****

  As Zach and I pulled up into our driveway later that day, I recognized Edith Martin's car. She was sitting in the front seat tapping away at a tablet computer and promptly snapped the deep red cover closed when she saw us. As she opened her car door to get out, I noticed a pink-and-white striped box from PattieCake's. Today she had on a denim skirt and multi-colored geometric knit top that showed off her slender, if not downright bony, form.

  "What a surprise," I said, noticing the scowl on her face.

  "I needed to speak with you," she said.

  "So you drove all the way over from Andersonville? I'm surprised you didn't just call me."

  "I didn't have your number, and I used this as an opportunity to stock up on baked goods from your friend Pattie's bakery." In the backseat there had to be a dozen boxes of cupcakes. Edith caught the look of surprise on my face and quickly cut me off. "They freeze beautifully. I find eating a cupcake is a terrific writing aid for me. You know, chocolate imitates the feeling of falling in love. It is very helpful to be able to reproduce that feeling on a regular basis for the type of literature I produce." Looking at the backseat I could predict a chain of thirty books on the bestseller list for old Edith. She was quite the consumer.

  Zach came out of our car playing with a little green plastic flying saucer he had begged for at Oscar Larry's shop.

  "Won't you come in?" I said.

  "That's not necessary," she cut me off. "Peter tells me there is nothing going on between the two of you, and I just wanted to make sure you feel the same way."

  "I know what you came up on that day, but truly, I was just expressing my condolences and he hugged me. That's all."

  "Good."

  "So you and Peter are out in the open now about your relationship?"

  "Why not. She's dead now. No reason to sneak around any longer."

  "Aren't you worried the police will question you about your motive?"

  "Possibly, but I didn't kill her, and that's all they need to know."

  "Um, how did you and Peter meet?" I asked.

  "Don't you really want to ask how did an old lady like me get together with a pretty boy like Peter?"

  I paused a moment. She was right. I did want to know, but it was nosy of me to ask right out. "I was curious about that," I admitted.

  "I'm ten years older than Peter."

  I raised my eyebrows as I mentally did the math.

  "Okay, I'm fifteen years older than Peter," she admitted. "We met two years ago when I attended one of my nephew's football games. That was the year they went to state, and he had mistakenly put another player's name in my nephew's position. I went to the paper to complain, and we got into a long discussion about high school football in this area. I have always been an ardent football fan, and when my nephew started playing I went to every game. We started seeing each other at the games and discussing the plays. You know, football talk. He was not my type, and I clearly was not his, but we were both so comfortable with each other, it just worked. Slowly a romance developed out of that, and before you go imagining, it was nothing like what I write about in my books."

  That was a lot for her to fill me in on, and I was worried she would share more with Zach still standing there swooping his little flying saucer up and down making circles around us.

  "Well, as long as we're clear on who Peter is involved with, I'll be going," she said.

  "You don't need to worry about me," I replied. Zach buzzed up to us. "Mom's got a boyfriend. Mr. Fitz."

  Edith brightened up at that. "Good to know, young man," she said and hopped into her car and rolled her hand out the window to signal me to get the hell out of her way. The world of romance writers was a little too heated for my taste. I decided it was safer to stick to my own little dreary world.

  What would have happened if I had told her I was involved with Peter? How would she have reacted? Was she capable of murder? She seemed quite pleased to be out in the open about her affair with Peter. I knew I needed to check in with my dad to find out how much he knew about all of these people and their crazy love lives.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  On Monday, Aunt Maggie asked me to pick up a special birthday cake she had made for Danny's twenty-fifth birthday. He loved the teen musical "High School Hijinks," and Aunt Maggie had asked Pattie to design something that looked like it.

  An early spring day was one of the best kinds of days in Texas. The wildflowers were blooming in shocks of blues and purples all over the town of Pecan Bayou. Tourists were pouring in on the weekends to see the flowers, and money was pouring into the registers of the local merchants, Pattie included. During wildflower season Pattie kept her shop open seven days a week; she barely had time to restock the baking ingredients to make all of the delicious concoctions she created. I stepped into her pink-striped bakery and once again found myself behind a group of people ordering at the counter. Two women stood behind the crowd, and I stood in line behind them.

  "Well, you know what I heard?" I couldn't help overhearing whatever this woman had heard. "I heard all those writers were lovey-dovey with each other doing God knows what, and one of them got jealous and boom! End of story, if you know what I mean." The other woman laughed at the joke. "All lovey-dovey" wouldn't be the terminology I would use when describing Vanessa Markham's way with people around her.

  "You know the woman who runs this bakery was there."

  "Really?"

  "Oh yes, she was in on it just like all the rest. Now
when we get up there don't let on that we know she was a part of ... well ... whatever happened in that library."

  The other woman nodded in a hush-hush manner, clutching her pocketbook to her ample chest. "Makes me want to check out all my books online."

  The two women approached the counter, where Pattie greeted them warmly and started filling their bakery box. Unable to contain her curiosity, one of the women blurted out, "We hear you were at the library the night that woman was killed."

  Pattie didn't even blink an eye. "Yes ma'am, I was. Can I get anything else for you today?"

  Not to be cut off by Pattie's manner, the woman continued. "Did you see anything or hear anything? Anything at all?"

  "Sorry to disappoint you ladies, but I'm in the dark about the whole murder. Didn't hear or see anything until my friend behind you found the body. The cops think she did it. Came right up on the body without a sound. She's standing behind you, you know."

  The two thrill-seekers jumped and turned around to face me. I smiled and nodded in agreement. The woman with all the questions grabbed the box and grabbed the other woman by the arm, pulling her out of the bakery.

  Pattie and I laughed. "Oh my gosh, you should have seen the looks on their faces when they realized they were surrounded by whatever it was their imaginations were pondering," she said.

  "It was pretty funny. Nothing like being notorious in this town."

  "You got that right. So are you picking up your cake?" Pattie said.

  "Yes, Danny will be so excited to see it. He started reminding us about his birthday last week. Like we could forget."

  Pattie went into the back room case to get Danny's cake. I eyed the chocolate cupcakes in the case and tried to fight off the cravings. It took about thirty seconds before I gave in.

  "Pattie, could you get me one of these chocolate cupcakes?" I said when she returned with Danny's cake in a pink-striped box.

  "Certainly, and for you it's on the house."

  "You probably don't want to start extending credit to me when we're talking chocolate," I said.

  Pattie's door opened and I turned, expecting to see another crowd of people in for their baked-goods fix. I was surprised to see Oscar Larry heading toward me instead of the counter. He wore another alien-oriented shirt, probably from his own store. This one was a smiley face with two little antennae poking out of the familiar yellow circle.

  "Mrs. Livingston. I took the liberty of calling at your home but you were not there. I was going to ask Pattie if she might know where you would be, but here you are."

  "What can I do for you Mr. Larry? Did you drive all the way from San Antonio to see me?"

  "Yes and no. I drove over here to see if I could get Mr. Whitson to include my column in the Pecan Bayou Gazette. I am rather thrilled that it has been up in two other community papers, and I would love to add Pecan Bayou Gazette to my list of publications."

  "I thought you already had this conversation with Rocky."

  "Yes, I did but that was before ... "

  I was confused. "So why did you need to see me?"

  Oscar Larry put his hands on my shoulders and started steering me toward the door as if I were an errant child. "I need you to go to Whitson and tell him about seeing my presentation at the library. Once he hears how in-depth my research is, I'm sure he will pick up my column for distribution."

  I took his hands off my shoulders. "Wait a minute."

  "What?"

  "What? What?" I couldn't believe I was being pushed around by this guy. Why would he assume I would even want to promote his work with Rocky? "You want me to go and pitch your little-green-men column to my boss. Mr. Larry, you didn't even ask me if I believed in all this ... alien stuff."

  "Don't you? I certainly demonstrated to you the irrefutable truths of the history of alien landings on our planet."

  Pattie shook her head at the counter. "There was a lot of history alright, but that doesn't mean Betsy here buys into it."

  "Ladies, you have become privy to more information than the average American has been given permission to know."

  "Mr. Larry, I'm sorry you came all this way," I said, "but I can't go fight for a cause I don't even believe in myself. If you want this job with Rocky, then you're going to have to go in there yourself and convince him of it."

  Oscar Larry pursed his lips in a sneer. "I cannot believe you could be so ignorant, Mrs. Livingston. I obviously put way too much faith in your intellectual ability. Perhaps some of those things Vanessa Scarlett was saying about you were correct. You are useless to me."

  Oscar Larry turned on his heel and slammed out the door, shaking the pink and white stripes on the valance.

  "That guy needs to go back to Area 51," Pattie said. "You went to San Antonio?"

  "Sure. I seem to be the one the town is blaming for this crime, and I just wanted to see if maybe he could lead me to something."

  "I'm amazed," she said. "Have you talked to anybody else?"

  "I've talked to everybody." I answered.

  "So Sherlock, whodunnit?"

  "If I knew that, I could get the police investigation off of me."

  "So you continue to be the fabled person of interest?"

  "Oh yeah," I nodded.

  Pattie handed me my chocolate cupcake on a napkin. "This might help," she said. I accepted it and sank my teeth into the smooth, creamy icing of one of Pattie's heavenly cupcakes. It was out of this world.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Monday night we celebrated Danny's twenty-fifth birthday at my Aunt Maggie's house. She lived on top of a hill in a dark red brick cottage-style house. Zach handed Danny his present, the latest recording of "High School Hijinks the Musical." It was to be part of the entertainment tonight. Danny was so excited he hugged his cousin until Zach's eyes started to bulge. I took Danny's cake to the kitchen, where my aunt was scurrying about with paper plates and napkins. I volunteered to carry out a bowl of potato salad to the table.

  Danny was horsing around with two of his buddies from Haley Village, where he worked two days a week as a waiter in their tea room.

  "Betsy! It's my birthday!" He rolled off the words one by one. Aunt Maggie followed me in and placed Pattie's beautiful birthday cake in the center of the table.

  "Alright, you hooligans!" my aunt shouted over the noise. "All of you go into the living room and jump around in there for a few minutes while we finish putting dinner on the table." One of the parents of Danny's guests helped to usher them into the next room. My dad came in with a platter of grilled cheesy dogs, Danny's favorite food. He set it down and put his arm around my shoulders. "How is my little prime suspect?"

  "Dad, that is not funny."

  "I know, I know. And you should know, as long as I'm in that office your side will be heard."

  "As a matter of fact Dad, I wanted to talk to you about some of the other people who were there that night. Did you know about ... "

  "The fact that half the people on that panel were sleeping with each other?"

  Maggie dropped her cake-serving knife on the table.

  "Uh, yeah, that's about it. Peter was sleeping with Edith, and Vanessa was sleeping with Damien Perez."