Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 01 - Down Home Murder

by Toni L. P. Kelner

  “I guess that’s a compliment,” I said doubtfully. “Turn right.”

  “Anyway, he wants me to put together a syllabus immediately.”

  “Isn’t it too late for next semester?”

  “That’s what I thought, but apparently one of our senior faculty members has a book to finish and wants to bow out of a course she was supposed to teach. I get to rush into the breach.”

  “That’s wonderful. Now turn onto the highway.”

  He obeyed and said, “Did you see Paw?”

  “Twice. Once this afternoon, and then for a minute this evening. Richard, he didn’t hardly look like himself.”

  He nodded sympathetically.

  I spent a few minutes guiding him through a potentially confusing set of exits and turns, and then said, “There’s something else.” I wasn’t real eager to talk about it. What if he didn’t believe me either? “You remember that when Aunt Nora called me this morning, she said that Paw had been in an accident at the mill.”

  “Right.”

  “When I saw Paw this afternoon, he told me that it wasn’t an accident. He said that someone hit him. On purpose.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. That’s all he could get out before the nurse made me leave.” I looked at his face for signs of disbelief, but was reassured to see only concern.

  I went on. “Everyone else thinks it was an accident. I tried to tell Aunt Nora and Aunt Daphine about it, but they kept saying that it must have been the drugs talking. When I asked Uncle Loman if the police had looked into it, Linwood made a huge joke out of it, and everyone just stared at me. I don’t know what they thought I was trying to do. Just trying to stir up trouble, I guess.”

  “Poor Laura. I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner,” he said, reaching over to rub my shoulder.

  “You’d think that I’d be used to my family not understanding me after all this time,” I said sadly.

  “Let me get this straight,” Richard said. “Someone tried to kill your grandfather, and you’re the only one who believes it. Except the attempted murderer, of course.”

  I looked at him in surprise, but he was serious. “I hadn’t thought of it that way—as murder. I just thought someone wanted to hurt him.”

  “From what you told me of his condition, whoever did that was trying to kill him.”

  I shivered, and slid closer to him on the seat. “That’s crazy! Why would anyone want to kill Paw?”

  “Why does anyone kill anyone?”

  We pulled up in front of Paw’s house, and trudged inside, lugging our suitcases.

  There was no sign of Aunt Maggie, so I scribbled a note about Paw’s condition and left it on the kitchen table. My old bedroom was a little dusty, but I was in no condition to be picky. After I sniffed the sheets to make sure they weren’t too musty, we crawled into bed.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I said once the lights were out. “I don’t think I should go to the police, not after the way everyone reacted tonight, and I really don’t have anything to tell them. But I can’t just go on like he never said anything.”

  “‘The tongues of dying men enforce attention like deep harmony,’“ Richard quoted. “King Richard II, Act I, Scene 1.”

  I winced at the word “dying” and said, “Eloquent, but not very useful.”

  “Sorry. I can’t help it.”

  I swallowed hard. “If Paw dies and we don’t do something, his murderer is going to get away with it. Richard, what are we going to do?”

  He rubbed his eyes wearily. “I don’t know, but I do know that there’s nothing we can do tonight. Maybe some of this will make sense in the morning.”

  “You’re right. Good night.”

  “Good night, Laura.”

  “Oh, say that again.”

  “Good night?”

  “No, the Laura part. Say it for me a few times.”

  “Laura, Laura, Laura, Laura,” he said in a variety of voices ranging from the tender to the husky to a decent Mickey Mouse imitation.

  “That’s better,” I sighed.

  “I still think that if you asked them, your family would call you Laura instead of Laurie Anne.”

  “No they wouldn’t. Aunt Daphine would try, and Aunt Nora would call me, ‘Laurie A—Laura,’ but the others would just say I was trying to put on airs. There’s no worse sin around here than putting on airs.”

  I was nearly asleep when I remembered the news I hadn’t told him about. “Richard, are you asleep yet?”

  “Yes.”

  “I forgot to tell you. Thaddeous joined the Ku Klux Klan.” I was asleep before he could react.

  Chapter 9

  For just a moment when the sun poured through the window the next morning and woke me up, I forgot what year it was. I was fifteen again and school was nearly out for the year and I had a whole summer of glorious reading and dreaming ahead of me. Then I felt Richard stir beside me, and remembered that one of the dreams had already come true. Being married to Richard was even more fun than I had hoped.

  When I first got to Massachusetts, every man I met was exciting merely by virtue of not being from Byerly. The problem was I never could picture myself bringing one of those fellows home to meet Paw and the rest of the Burnettes. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t have liked them or they wouldn’t have liked him. I just couldn’t put the two pieces together. With Richard it was different. Despite his Harvard education and Northern accent and his habit of quoting Shakespeare, when it came down to it, he was just plain folks.

  I smiled and stroked his shoulder. It was so odd being with him here, in the room that had been my refuge for so many years. Then I remembered why we were here, and my smile faded.

  From downstairs I heard the phone ring, and then movement and a low murmur as Aunt Maggie answered it. Maybe it was news about Paw. I climbed out of bed, careful not to disturb Richard, and rummaged in my suitcase until I found my bathrobe.

  Aunt Maggie, already dressed in jeans and a red tank top, was still on the phone when I came into the kitchen.

  “Well Nora, I can’t say that I’m surprised,” she said with a sad nod. “I had pretty much given up hope already.”

  I stopped and stared at her.

  “When are they going to have the funeral?”

  It was true. Paw had died.

  I must have made some noise, because Aunt Maggie turned toward me. She looked at me sharply, and must have realized what I had heard because she shook her head vigorously and mouthed the words, “Melanie Wilson.”

  Thank God, I thought in relief, and then felt a sharp stab of guilt. Don’t be silly, I told myself. I was sorry about Melanie, but Paw was my grandfather.

  I found a glass and got some water while Aunt Maggie finished her phone call.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you like that,” she said after she hung up, “but I didn’t know you were behind me.”

  “That’s all right,” I said shakily. “What happened to Melanie?”

  She grimaced. “She was raped and murdered. They found her early this morning in a dumpster in Marley.”

  “Jesus! Do they have any idea of who did it?”

  “Not yet. They’re still trying to find that phone caller who told them where to look. Whoever it is must know something.”

  “Probably so,” I agreed.

  “I’m surprised they hadn’t found her sooner, what with the heat and all,” Aunt Maggie continued in a matter-of-fact voice. “I don’t suppose they’ll be having an open casket ceremony for her.”

  I swallowed hard. The picture Aunt Maggie was conjuring up wasn’t pleasant. “Did Aunt Nora say anything about Paw?” I asked, partially to change the subject.

  She shook her head. “She said the doctor had just been in with Ellis, but he was about the same.”

  I looked at the clock over the stove. It was after ten. “She’s not still at the hospital, is she?”

  “No, she’s finally gone home. I think Nellie is at the hospital now, and Rub
y Lee’s going to take a turn this afternoon.”

  “Good. Aunt Nora is going to run herself into the ground if someone doesn’t make her get some sleep.”

  “I know it. I told her to get right into bed after I hung up, but she said she wanted to cook a ham for the Wilsons so they won’t have to worry about cooking.”

  I sighed. That was Aunt Nora. Her own father was in the hospital, but she still had time to do something for a family in trouble. “Doesn’t she ever rest?” I asked.

  “Not since I’ve known her. I used to have the girls over to spend the night with me once in a while, and every time Nora came she wanted to clean everything.”

  “How did you get her to stop?”

  “Why would I want her to stop? That’s the only time my place got clean. Are you hungry?”

  “A little,” I admitted.

  “There’s not a thing to eat in the house, so I thought I’d run up to Hardee’s and pick us up some sausage biscuits. Would that be all right?”

  “Sounds wonderful.”

  Aunt Maggie picked up her pocketbook and said, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  After she left, I went back upstairs to take a shower and put on shorts and a raspberry-pink, short-sleeved blouse. I decided against using a blow-drier. It was already getting hot, and my shoulder-length hair would dry on its own pretty quickly.

  I went back to the kitchen and turned on the radio to listen to while waiting for breakfast. The news report verified what Aunt Maggie had told me about Melanie, and added that the police were making an extra effort to “… defuse racial tensions.”

  Tensions my tail end. Even people who weren’t in the Klan were going to be in a stew about this. Murder and rape were bad enough, but I couldn’t think of anything that would rouse people more than the idea of a black man raping a white girl, and pretty much everyone who lived in Marley was black. I wondered what Thaddeous was going to think now.

  Aunt Maggie arrived then, carrying sausage biscuits and orange juice. “I got the paper,” she said, “but I guess it was too late when they found the body to get anything into this edition.”

  “Too bad,” I said, but I didn’t mean it. Reading about a murder was not the best way to get enjoyment out of a sausage biscuit, and as long as it had been since I had had one, I intended to enjoy it.

  I opened up a biscuit, bit a corner of a mustard packet, and squeezed a good-sized dollop onto the patty of steaming sausage. Then I put the biscuit back together and gloated over it just for a minute before biting into it.

  It was wonderful. I sighed, and then saw that Aunt Maggie was watching me with a wide grin.

  “Are you enjoying that, Laurie Anne?”

  “They don’t have sausage biscuits in Boston,” I explained sheepishly.

  “What do they eat in the morning?”

  “Muffins and donuts mostly. They’re good, but it’s not the same.”

  “I never could abide anything sweet in the morning,” Aunt Maggie said. “They don’t have grits up there either, do they?”

  I shook my head. “Grits I can kind of understand. They’re an acquired taste. When Richard tried them, he said they tasted like buttered sand.”

  “I’d have asked him what he was doing eating sand,” Aunt Maggie said with a sniff.

  I grinned. “That’s exactly what I said. Then I ate his share.”

  “That’ll learn him. Where is he, anyway?”

  “Still in bed. I thought I’d let him sleep in.”

  Aunt Maggie finished her biscuit, wadded up the wrapper, and tossed it across the room into the trash can. “Well, I can’t be sitting around here all day. Today’s the day they get in the new shipment at the Thrift Store, and I’ve got to get there early if I want to get anything good.” The Salvation Army Thrift Store was a major source of the items Aunt Maggie sold at the flea market.

  “Are you going to the hospital?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ll call to check on Ellis later,” Aunt Maggie said. She stepped out the front door, and then turned around. “Where’s Ellis’s station wagon?”

  I had forgotten all about it. “I left it at Aunt Nora’s last night.”

  She looked at me without speaking.

  “We’ll go get it and bring it back here.”

  She nodded. “All right then. Bye.”

  As soon as she was gone I looked back into the Hardee’s bag. There were three biscuits left. I ate another, and looked longingly at the two remaining. Stop that, I told myself firmly. Richard was going to be hungry, too. I decided I better wake him up before I lost out to temptation.

  When I got back to my room, I found Richard approaching consciousness, so I kissed him in appropriate spots to speed the process.

  “Mmmm…. That beats an alarm clock any day,” he said, reaching for me. “Why are you dressed?”

  “I’ve been up for ages,” I said haughtily. “Country folk don’t spend all day in bed like you city slickers.”

  “Then you obviously don’t understand the virtues of spending time in bed.” He took a moment to demonstrate his meaning.

  “Maybe city living isn’t so bad,” I said, once I was able to speak.

  “Any word about Paw?”

  I shook my head. “Aunt Nora called a while ago, but she said there had been no change.” He squeezed me tightly, and after a moment I said, “Are you hungry? Aunt Maggie brought some sausage biscuits.”

  “And you left me some? What devotion.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him. “You better get moving or I’ll change my mind.” He raced me for the kitchen, but I graciously let him win.

  I kept him company during breakfast, then called the hospital while he took a shower. The hospital connected me with the nurse’s station on Paw’s floor, and the nurse there called Aunt Nellie to the phone.

  “Aunt Nellie? This is Laura. I was just wondering how Paw’s doing.”

  “About the same.”

  “Oh.” It wasn’t that I had expected a miraculous recovery, but I had been hoping for some improvement. “How are you doing?”

  “All right, I guess.” There was a pause. “Laurie Anne, do you know anything about how they run hospitals?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I was just thinking that as shiny as they keep all these floors, they must go through an awful lot of floor polish.”

  “I imagine they do,” I said with some amusement, remembering Aunt Nellie’s and Uncle Ruben’s latest scheme. “You might try tracking down one of the janitors and asking him who’s in charge of buying supplies.”

  “That’s a good idea! I better go now. Bye.”

  I was still grinning over Aunt Nellie’s entrepreneurial spirit when I went back upstairs to wait for Richard.

  It was the first chance I had had to really look around my old bedroom. The furniture was different from when I had lived there, because Paw had given me all my stuff to take to Boston, but the walls were still covered with the maps I had collected as a teenager. There was one of Middle Earth and another of Narnia, but the rest I had pulled out of National Geographic. Back then, the real-life lands had seemed just as fantastic to me as the imaginary ones.

  My favorite map was the huge map of the world Paw had given me for Christmas one year. I had stuck blue push pins into the location of every place I wanted to go, and then replaced the blue pins with red ones when I actually got a chance to go there. I had marked Boston in red after my first semester at MIT, but it had been years since I had updated the map.

  I opened the top drawer on the dresser, and sure enough, the two plastic boxes of push pins were still there. I was cheerfully replacing blue pins with red ones when Richard came back in, wrapped in a towel.

  “What are you doing?”

  I explained the method to my madness.

  “Don’t forget London,” he said.

  “I got that one first off.” We had spent our honeymoon in England. “I got Stratford-on-Avon, too.” />
  “What about Newark?” he asked.

  “We’ve only been in the airport, so that doesn’t count. Besides, I’m not sure I want to admit going to Newark.”

  He helped me pick out Chicago; New York; Orlando; Washington, DC; and New Orleans.

  “I’d say we’ve done pretty well in three years of marriage.”

  “I’m surprised you left all these maps here,” Richard said as he pulled on jeans and a Harvard T-shirt. “Why didn’t you bring them with you to Boston?”

  I considered it a moment. “There are two times I look at a map: to see where I’m going, and to see where I’ve been. I put these up so I could dream about where I was going. I guess I left them here so that when I come home I can see where I’ve been.”

  I checked my watch and saw that it was nearly eleven-thirty. “Are you about ready to head out?”

  “Lead on, MacDuff.”

  “That’s not a real quote—it doesn’t count.”

  “Pretty swift for a computer programmer.”

  I elbowed him gently in the ribs and said, “We’ve got to run by Aunt Nora’s place to pick up Paw’s station wagon and bring it back. I think Aunt Maggie is afraid I sold it.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  I explained about vultures on the way to Aunt Nora’s house. It was a bright day outside, and that bothered me. It didn’t seem right that everyone was going about their business same as ever while Paw was in the hospital. And what he had said kept sneaking into my head.

  “Richard…” I said, and then stopped.

  “You’re still worried about whether or not someone tried to kill Paw.”

  I nodded. “This is crazy. What do I do?”

  Richard shrugged. “Maybe we’re worrying about nothing. When Paw recovers, he’ll be able to explain everything.”

  The problem was, I thought unhappily, it wasn’t a when. It was an if.

  Chapter 10

  “Do you want to go inside?” Richard asked when we got to Aunt Nora’s house.

  “For a minute, anyway.”

  I tapped lightly on the kitchen door, and opened it when I heard Aunt Nora call, “Come in.” The kitchen smelled heavenly, and I saw Aunt Nora was wrapping a fresh-baked ham in aluminum foil. She stopped long enough to give us both hugs, and I explained why we were there.