Overdue for Murder (Pecan Bayou)

by Trent, Teresa

  I wasn't so sure either. My emotional state anticipating our reunion ranged from excitement to disgust to terror. What do you say to a guy who dumped you and dumped on you at the same time? "I guess I'll see him," I said. I tried to make my tone light, knowing I probably wasn't putting too much over on old Officer Judd.

  "You sure?"

  "Sure."

  "Good idea. See you then."

  I hung up, feeling the dread creeping in. Why couldn't he have stayed hidden and out of our lives. Glancing back at the legal pad, I walked to my computer to search All Health Nutrition Centers on my computer. Zach had left his blue backpack on my desk chair when he came in, so I lifted it to put it on the floor. He had not properly zipped it up, and I could see the little journal his teacher had him fill out every morning when they first got to school. His journal didn't have a lot of words in it as much as pictures about whatever it was that was going on in his life at the time. I expected today's picture to be of Danny's party and the singalong. I leafed through the notebook until I found today's date scrawled in Zach's third-grade handwriting.

  He had drawn a picture of me holding a candelabra standing next to a woman who was laying on the floor. He had taken a red crayon and filled in where he thought the blood would be. It terrified me to look at it. Did he think he think I killed Vanessa? Had I been so busy that I missed the fact we had had a murder happen and I hadn't taken the time to help my son navigate through the scary parts of it all?

  I decided to wait on the computer search and walked into the den, where Zach was being mesmerized by various talking animals on the television. "Zach, I need to ask you something." He didn't move his eyes from the screen.

  "Uh, if this is about that book report, I'm almost halfway finished with the book."

  "Zach." Still no change in the direction he was looking. I picked up the remote control and turned off the TV. "Zach, tell me about this drawing you made in your journal," I demanded.

  He looked at the paper slowly as if he were just seeing his own artwork. "Oh, that. Some of the kids told me about you finding the lady in the library. I didn't know they found you holding a candlestick over her.

  "Who told you that?" My father, Aunt Maggie and I had been careful to shield both him and Danny from the gruesome details of the crime. Here it all was in front of me in living crayon color.

  "The kids at school knew all about it. It was in the paper. Mr. Rocky wrote about it."

  Thanks, Mr. Rocky. "I need to ask you something really important," I said. "I'm holding the candlestick in the picture, and it looks like I'm the one who hurt Miss Markham. Do you think I would do a thing like that?"

  "No!" He sat up straight on the couch. "You wouldn't hurt anybody, Mom. I know that," he reassured me. "You just found her. You didn't kill her." He did quite a job at making me feel dumb for asking.

  "Good." I took his hand. "I want you to know that because I was standing there, some people thought I was the one who hurt the lady. They are wrong, and you are right."

  "You bet your ... " he stuttered, realizing what he was just about to say in front of his mother. " Uh ... you bet."

  "Zach! Where did you hear that?"

  "Grandpa," Zach answered simply.

  "Grandpa. I should have known. Well, he may say it but you're not allowed to."

  "Even after I'm as old as him?"

  "Even then, young man," I said as I exited the room. I was relieved to know my own son didn't think I was a murderer. I was not happy to know I was the subject of the gossip at Buzz Aldrin Elementary. I placed the journal back in Zach's backpack and zipped it up.

  Sitting at the computer, I looked up All Health Nutrition in Houston and started dialing the first of three offices. I found Xavier Frank at the second office.

  "Mr. Frank, this is Betsy Livingston in Pecan Bayou. I knew Vanessa Markham and was given the responsibility of cleaning out her desk at the Pecan Bayou Gazette. I noticed you were on her appointment calendar just a few days before she died. If it isn't too personal, may I ask why she was meeting with you?"

  "Miss Livingston, it really was a personal matter between the two of us."

  Had I been right about her being involved with yet another man? "I'm sorry if this is none of my business. I just assumed this had something to do with all of the research she had been doing on nutrition before she died. I didn't realize that it had to do with ... something else."

  "Something else?" Mr. Frank stopped for a moment. "Oh, something else. No ma'am. I'm a happily married man, Miss Livingston. It was nothing of that sort. No, not at all. She simply brought me some food she wanted me to analyze for its nutritional content. She was very conscientious about what she put into her body. I wish more people were like her. Heart disease and diabetes in this country would become a thing of the past."

  "Did she mention that she was maybe writing a cookbook or a book about nutrition?"

  "If she was, she didn't mention it to me." I heard a phone buzz in the background.

  "Forgive me, Miss Livingston, but if that's all you need I have another call."

  "Thank you for your time, and if you should remember anything else ... "

  "I have you on my caller ID," he said.

  So Vanessa had been interested in nutrition but hadn't told Xavier Frank why. So who knew? Her husband? Her lover? Her ghost writer?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  After an uneventful evening working with Zach on his book report, I sent him off to school the next day healed from the perils of cheesy dogs. As I settled down to work at my computer, I heard the gravel in my driveway crunch and looked out to see a white sedan coming to a stop. When the driver's side door swung open, I recognized the face of Police Chief Arvin Wilson.

  He wore a tan straw Stetson, a white shirt and a navy sport coat. He looked a little older than his 60 years, probably because of his hefty frame. A tiny cigar dangled from his mouth as he came up my steps. He stubbed it out on the porch and tapped on my door.

  "Hello, Betsy," he said. "I wanted to ask you a few questions about what happened down at the library last week."

  "Certainly, come on in." He stepped over my threshold and took off his Stetson, revealing thinning gray hair. I motioned for him to come into my kitchen.

  "Am I still a suspect?" I asked as we sat down at the table.

  "Let's just say you are a person of interest." Always the diplomat.

  "Have you looked into all of the other people she had ticked off in the week before her death?"

  The chief smiled. "There does seem to be quite an extensive list. Can you tell me about the exchange you had with her at the Pecan Bayou Mall where you were competing in a ... " He opened a little black notebook like my dad carried and then pulled out a pair of black reading glasses. "A cooking contest?"

  "Vanessa was always very competitive, and we were pretty sure she pulled out one of the leg supports on Pattie's display, making herself the winner by default. Pattie had by far the best creative cooking there, but once her table collapsed she was out of the competition. Vanessa blamed it on my son and cousin and ... we exchanged words."

  "Who was standing there when the table collapsed?"

  "My son and cousin."

  "So she was correct?"

  "She was and she wasn't. They leaned on the table, but she had set it up so that any weight on it would make it fall."

  "So you say," he said, writing down my words.

  "So I know." It was easy to see whose side he was on.

  "Then you had another argument with her at the library?"

  "She accused of me of making the whole incident up in front of all of the people waiting to hear the speakers in the library. What she was saying wasn't true." I felt the back of my neck heating up.

  "How angry did this make you, Betsy?" he asked.

  "Not angry enough to bash her in the head with a candlestick."

  "Can you account for your whereabouts the afternoon before the second author's meeting?"

  "Yes, I c
an. I was with my son. He was trying to break a world record. I left him with my father before I came to the meeting."

  "And you never left here between the hours of 3 to 6?"

  "Nope. Just ask Zach."

  "And how old is he?"

  "Eight."

  *****

  As the morning progressed after Chief Wilson left, a feeling a dread rushed over me. Did I need a lawyer? Could this really be happening? I started looking through my address book heaping with business cards I had stapled onto the pages. I jumped when Rocky Whitson knocked at the door. I didn't even know he knew where I lived.

  "Hi Betsy, can I come in?"

  "Sure. Is everything alright?"

  "Oh, um, well ..." he stammered

  "Come in." He pressed on the squeaky handle of my back screen door and then placed his hands in the pockets of his brown corduroy pants. I pulled a chair out for him at my kitchen table.

  "We just received word of a letter that was left at the library for Martha Hoffman. It was a threat against her life."

  "You're kidding. Too many library fines?"

  "Betsy, I'm being serious, now. The letter was pretty graphic about how somebody was going to do in Miss Hoffman before the week was out."

  "Do you think this is somehow connected to the Vanessa Markham killing?"

  "Pretty sure of it."

  "Why? Do you think it might be from Vanessa's killer?"

  "I certainly hope not. It was signed by you ..."

  "By me?" I interrupted.

  " ... and Martha Hoffman is dead."

  "She's dead?"

  "They found her just an hour ago. Your dad was busy with the crime scene and asked me to come and talk to you. She was killed at her house, strangled with her own bathrobe belt. It looks like whoever killed her, she let into the house. There was a second note at her home, signed by you."

  "And the note said I killed her?"

  Rocky tried to remain calm, probably in effort to keep me calm. This was becoming a nightmare. It seemed like more and more things were happening and happening to me. "Yes, they found the note on her desk in her home office. It was typed, but signed by you."

  "That is the absolutely stupidest thing I've ever heard," I said. "If I was going to murder someone, I sure wouldn't leave a signed note."

  "Well, the police would tell you that people who murder other people aren't always the sharpest in the knife drawer," Rocky said.

  I grimaced. "Strangled. Martha Hoffman was never nice to me. She never got my name right, and she belittled what I do for a living, but she didn't deserve that." This also proved to me that whoever killed her also killed Vanessa and was now using me as his or her scapegoat.

  "What were you doing last night? Do you have an alibi?"

  "Last night I was here with Zach," I said. "He was recovering from cheesy dog poisoning, remember?"

  "Can you prove that?"

  "Sure, Zach can tell you."

  Rocky drummed his fingers on the table. "What about after he fell asleep?"

  "First of all, I would never leave my child alone, and second, I didn't do it."

  "I'm just saying these are the questions the police will ask you."

  *****

  Two hours later, I found myself sitting at a gray folding table in the Pecan Bayou Police Department across from Arvin Wilson.

  "So you're saying you didn't send this letter?" Wilson asked.

  "Uh, no. If I were going to threaten to kill someone, do you think I'd be dumb enough to sign the letter?"

  "I have no idea what you might be dumb enough to do, Betsy."

  I heard a knock on the two-way mirror behind the chief and could pretty well tell that had to be my own father.

  "Listen," said Chief Wilson, now getting exasperated having to deal with a real case and a real suspect, "I want to believe you, Betsy. For goodness' sakes, you're the daughter of one of my best men, but every time I turn around this case leads me back to you."

  "I didn't threaten Martha Hoffman with a note, and I certainly didn't kill her," I said.

  "But you did have an argument with her just a few days ago."

  "Yes, and then someone put something in my coffee cup after Martha told me to place it out of my own reach. What about that one? I ran into a tree and ruined my car. I didn't see you dragging her in on that one."

  "She was questioned about the matter. But that makes you angry because maybe you don't feel like she was given the same treatment as you?"

  "I didn't write that note. For some reason, somebody is setting me up to look guilty. Maybe the killer wrote that note because I was your main suspect anyway. What a way to assure not being caught – pin another murder on me. Have you thought about that?"

  "Let me read the note to you," he said:

  Dear Martha,

  I know you put a sedative in my cup the other day. For that you must die. If you don't think I can do this, then you are wrong. You'd better keep an eye out behind you, Martha dear. You're dead.

  "How do you keep an eye out behind you?" I asked.

  "Is this your signature?" The chief pointed to the bottom of the note. It sure looked like I signed it.

  "Sort of."

  "So you admit to writing this note?"

  "Nope, and until you can prove I wrote this note, this interview is over." I rose from the table and was greeted at the door by my father. He took me by the elbow.

  "Thanks, Arvin. From here on out Betsy will be sharing information with you through her lawyer. Just to be on the safe side, you know. We'll have the handwriting expert from the county check out the signature. I'm sure it will show it isn't Betsy."

  My dad propelled me toward the outer door of the police station. "Good job in there, Betsy," he said. "You need to know that innocent people have been known to go to jail in Texas and have ended up with a death sentence. We need to work fast and smart to find out who is setting you up."

  We walked out of the police station into the beautiful midday sun. The air felt thinner and cleaner out here somehow.

  "We'll get you out of this darlin', I promise."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  As we started for my car, George Beckman pulled in to park in front of us. I couldn't believe my timing. Barry was sitting in the backseat.

  I had rehearsed what I would say to Barry for the last eight years, but right now I found I was at a loss for words. I think I knew more what I wanted to do than say, and it wasn't give him a basket from the Pecan Bayou Welcome Wagon.

  George Beckman got out of the car, stretched and then opened Barry's door. As he pulled him out of the car by the elbow, he smiled and they chatted as if they had been buddies on a long car trip. Barry came out and looked up at the building, shading his eyes from the sun. He looked so different from the handsome young man who had walked out into the night so many years ago. He now had a dark brown beard. It was well trimmed, but his hair had thinned some on the top, taking away some of his boyish look. His midsection was just a little bit thicker than the well-toned abs he had left with. George held him by the elbow as they came up the stairs to the glass doors. I stood back, the pressure of my father's hand the only thing keeping me from screaming out what a bastard I thought he was.