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

by Toni L. P. Kelner

  “Off of Gibson Drive. Why do you want to know? He won’t be having another sale until next month. Now if you want to go to a good auction, I’ll take you to Bob and Barbara’s place. They sell some good pieces there.”

  I rooted around in my pocketbook, found Paw’s map, and thrust it in front of her. “Which way would Paw have gone that night?”

  “Laurie Anne, what on earth is the matter with you?”

  “Please Aunt Maggie, I can’t explain right now, but it’s important.”

  “All right.” Aunt Maggie pulled her half-glasses from her apron pocket, perched them on top of her nose, and looked at the map. “Now that’s Gilmore, where the house is.” She pointed it out. “And Red’s place is about there.” She pointed again.

  “So Paw would have gone this way?” I followed the straightest route with my finger.

  “Probably not. He would most likely have taken the old tobacco road behind the house to Rock Creek Road. That’s not on this map.”

  “It runs from about here,” I pointed to the location of Paw’s house, “to here, doesn’t it?”

  “Right past where that X is.”

  She was right! There was an X there, and it looked like it had been made with the same pen Paw had used to mark the spot Melanie’s car was found.

  “If someone was here,” I said, pointing to the X for Melanie’s car, “the tobacco road would be the quickest way back to town, wouldn’t it?”

  She nodded. “Depending on traffic, it can be a lot quicker. Now I won’t go that way at night, because there’s not a soul near there and not the first sign of a light, but Ellis used it all the time. A man doesn’t have to worry the way a woman does.”

  I folded up the map, my hands trembling with excitement. I was willing to bet that somewhere along that dirt road was where Melanie had been killed. That X was marking something. Whatever Paw had seen, he had to have seen it there.

  “Aunt Maggie, I love you!” I threw my arms around her and kissed her cheek with an audible smack.

  Aunt Maggie stepped back. “Laurie Anne, I think you need to wear something on your head to keep the sun off. It’s hotter than the hinges in hell out there.”

  “I’ve got to go now, Aunt Maggie,” I said. I pried Aunt Nora away from the curtains and pulled her along with me to her car. I think I would have run if she hadn’t been with me.

  “Can I drive back?” I asked Aunt Nora when we got back to the car.

  “If you want to,” she answered.

  I used every trick I had ever seen used in Boston, including a few that would make a taxi driver blanch, to get back to Aunt Nora’s in record time. I didn’t know who had killed Melanie, but I was sure I knew where she had been killed. There had to be something there to lead me to the murderer. As soon as I caught up with Richard at Aunt Nora’s, we could go find out.

  I turned the corner toward Aunt Nora’s house, and saw the empty space in the driveway. “He’s not here,” I said stupidly.

  “Who?” Aunt Nora asked, and then she chuckled. “You mean Richard? Goodness gracious, you saw him just a few hours ago. Anyone would think you were newlyweds.”

  I followed her inside, hoping for a note from Richard, but was disappointed.

  “I guess Buddy and Willis decided to go watch the ball game with the boys after all,” Aunt Nora said after checking around. “Thaddeous isn’t here either, but he said he had a couple of errands to run.”

  The next hour was endless. Where was Richard, anyway? What was taking him so long? I shouldn’t have let him go alone. He was probably lost. I thought I was hiding my agitation but Aunt Nora finally said, “Laurie Anne, what’s the matter with you? You’re acting as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”

  I put down Thaddeous’s bronzed baby shoes, with which I had been fidgeting, and smiled weakly. “Sorry, Aunt Nora. I’m just waiting for Richard to get back. There’s something we need to do this afternoon.”

  “I’d think you’d be better off waiting until later this evening.”

  “How come?”

  “Haven’t you heard the thunder?”

  I pushed the curtain back to look out the window, and realized how dark the sky had become, changing from sunny to cloudy as it only could in summer. Dark bundles of grey clouds were rolling in, and as I watched, a triple flash of lightning forked across the sky.

  “Oh lord. Not yet!” Those clouds foretold at least an hour of hard, pounding rain that would dig rivulets in the red clay, and meanwhile destroy every bit of evidence that might be left along the tobacco road. There wasn’t time to wait for Richard.

  “Aunt Nora, can I borrow your car?” I tried to think of what else I might need. “And your camera? And do you have any baggies?” I brushed off my aunt’s concern and gathered up all the sandwich bags in the house, Aunt Nora’s camera, and a pair of tweezers.

  “What is going on?” Aunt Nora asked.

  “Aunt Nora, I’ve got to go out.”

  “Now? It’s fixing to storm.”

  “That’s why I’ve got to go now. If Richard gets back before I do, give him this.” I took Paw’s road map out once again, and drew in the tobacco road in red felt-tip. Then I drew arrows pointing to it to make sure he would know that this was where I had gone.

  “Tell him to come meet me here.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “There’s no time to explain,” I said and headed for the door.

  “Is this about Paw’s death?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then wait for Richard! Or I’ll track down Buddy and Willis to go with you.”

  “I can’t. There’s no time.”

  “At least take a raincoat.” Aunt Nora reached inside the coat closet, and pulled out a bright yellow slicker. “Take Thaddeous’s.”

  I shoved my arms into it and left her watching me through the open door.

  Chapter 37

  The storm was threatening to break at any moment as I climbed back into Aunt Nora’s Buick. I drove as fast as I could, not even looking at Paw’s house as I turned down the tobacco road. The rutted dirt road was barely wide enough for the car, and looked more like a seldom-used driveway than a road.

  The dark clouds looked even more ominous out in the open, looming over the dusty, brush-covered fields. Trees had encroached onto the once-clear ground, blocking the view. Though I knew there was a busy, friendly neighborhood just behind me, it still looked as if I was in the middle of nowhere. The only structure visible was the weathered, grey tobacco shed up ahead.

  The murderer would have been coming from the other direction, of course, driving toward Byerly instead of away from it, and the tobacco shed would have been the marker that he was about to reach Gilmore. Either Thaddeous or Arthur would have known that. So logically, if he was planning to attack Melanie, he would have driven no further than the shed.

  The road widened slightly as I approached the shed, and I stopped the car and got out, stuffing camera, baggies, and tweezers into the pockets of the raincoat. There were tire tracks all around. I tried to decide how fresh they looked, and wished I had paid more attention to tracking in the Girl Scouts. To my untrained eye, it looked as if there were at least two sets of tracks.

  That fit in with what I suspected. One set would have been the murderer’s, and one set Paw’s. Paw drove up, stopped, and saw…. I still didn’t know what he had seen. I took pictures of both sets of tracks, and stepped carefully over them.

  Now, where were the driver and Melanie when Paw arrived? In the truck? No, Paw would have seen them struggling and he would have done something. Think it through, I told myself. I’m Melanie, and the man who picked me up has parked his truck and now he’s making a pass. What would I do? Jump out and make a run for it. I looked at the ground on the passenger side of both sets of tracks. Was that a footprint? I couldn’t tell for sure, but I snapped a picture of it anyway.

  Where would Melanie have run? Down the road? No, the driver could have caught
up with her in the truck. Across the field? Maybe, though according to Aunt Maggie, there wouldn’t have been a single light to guide her. What about the shed? Would Melanie have realized that it was abandoned, that she wouldn’t find any help there? Maybe not. If she were panicked, and goodness knows she had reason to be, maybe she would have thought it was someone’s house.

  I looked up at the shed unhappily, not wanting to go inside. It never had been a very sturdy-looking building, and it looked even worse today, swaying in the wind. I didn’t much care for the idea of it collapsing with me inside. The shed had been built to lay burley tobacco to dry out, so the roof was good tin but the floors were just rough planks and the walls had gaps between each board that had grown larger as the wood rotted.

  Another grumble of thunder made the ground tremble, and the wind was blowing up to whip my hair in front of my face. Now was not the time to be squeamish. I had to look inside.

  The door into the shed was around the side, and as I walked toward it, I found a whole footprint. It looked like a man’s shoe, but it wasn’t Paw’s. His feet hadn’t been much bigger than mine, but the shoe that made this print was two inches longer than mine. I took another picture, then tore one of the plastic bags open to lay it carefully over the footprint and weighted the makeshift tarp down with a couple of rocks. It probably wouldn’t do any good, but it was worth a shot.

  I went on a few more steps, then saw a tiny scrap of green cloth caught on a plank that had half-fallen off of the wall. Hadn’t Richard said that Melanie had been wearing a green shirt when she was last seen? I took another picture, used Aunt Nora’s tweezers to retrieve the scrap and place it into a baggie, and stuck the baggie into a pocket. Then I poked another bag on the end of the plank as a flag to mark the spot, winding it tightly and hoping it would withstand the coming rain.

  At first I thought the door was open, but then I saw it was hanging on one hinge. It had been intact the last time I saw it, but I couldn’t honestly say how long ago that had been. Had it finally given way, or had it been burst open? By Melanie? Or by her pursuer? I took a deep breath, and stepped inside.

  I waited a minute for my eyes to adjust to the gloom, and jumped when I heard a loud crack. It was just the wind breaking off yet another fragment of wood. Though the shed masked some of the sound of the wind, the weird whistles and howls as the wind ripped through gaps were hardly comforting.

  Now what? I didn’t see a thing. No, that wasn’t completely true. There were random pieces of wood and rusty nails scattered about, and dust everywhere. Except over there. In one corner, the floor looked relatively clean. I went closer, and amended my thought. The floor in that corner might be clear of dust, but there were dark brown stains that had seeped into the wood.

  I fought the churning in my stomach as I recognized the stains for what they were. Blood. Melanie’s blood.

  I returned to my mental reenactment of Melanie’s flight. Melanie hadn’t gotten far before her attacker caught her. This must be where he had pushed her onto the floor, pinning her to the floor so he could rape her. Then he killed her. The picture of Melanie’s body lying there was suddenly all too clear.

  A thunderclap startled me out of my imagination, and reminded me of the coming storm. I steadied my hands enough to take several pictures of the stains, thankful that I had remembered flash bulbs.

  I heard a sharp ping on the tin roof, followed by another. The rain was starting, but I no longer cared about it. The roof would preserve the evidence long enough for me to call the police.

  The stains were something concrete, something I could take to Junior. Then she and the county police could find out who the murderer was.

  I took a deep breath, and realized I was actually relieved. Let the police figure out who had killed Paw and Melanie. They would be avenged without my having to play Judas. With luck, and Junior’s cooperation, no one would have to know how far I had gone toward implicating one of my own family.

  I turned back toward the doorway, eager to get to a phone, but then I saw the shadow of someone standing outside the door.

  “Richard?” I said, but he wasn’t tall enough to be my husband. I moved back a little and called out, “Who’s there?”

  The man stepped forward as if to answer me, but didn’t say anything. When I saw the rifle he was carrying, a chill ran down my spine, the sensation Paw had always said meant that someone was walking over my grave.

  “Uncle Loman?” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  Uncle Loman looked around the shed. “Where’s your husband?”

  “He’s not here,” I said. What was going on? Uncle Loman couldn’t have killed Melanie. He had been at the lodge and then with Uncle Conrad. Then I remembered what Richard had suggested about two men working together. Only it hadn’t been Arthur and Thaddeous—it had been Loman and Conrad. All the bits and pieces I had been collecting finally made sense.

  I should have been scared out of my wits, but I was too mad to be scared. “You son of a bitch! You killed Paw! That’s what I couldn’t figure out. You couldn’t have killed Melanie because you were at the lodge Friday night, and Conrad couldn’t have killed Paw because he was home all day Sunday. But Conrad could kill Melanie, and you could kill Paw to cover it up!”

  Loman spat onto the floor and said, “When you started asking questions, I figured Ellis must have told you something. I’ve been keeping an eye on you ever since he died, but I didn’t think you knew enough to matter until I followed you here. I guess you’re smarter than I thought.”

  Maybe I should have kept quiet, but anger carried me recklessly on. “Paw called Conrad, didn’t he? He saw Conrad’s truck here that night. When he started to figure out what Conrad had done, he called him and told him.”

  Loman didn’t look much interested in my narrative, but he didn’t interrupt.

  “Conrad must have put him off somehow, and then called you,” I continued. “You got to the house in time to see him driving to the mill, and while he was at the security booth, you drove over behind the mill and snuck in that hole in the back fence. You’re a supervisor, so you must have a key to the door. You waited for him, and you hit him from behind like a…”

  My voice cut off in a gasp. I didn’t know a word low enough to describe what he had done. “He treated you like his own family ever since you and Aunt Edna were courting!”

  “There’s family, and then there’s family. It came down to him or Conrad. If he hadn’t been messing in things that didn’t concern him, nothing would have come of it.”

  “What about Melanie? Was she nothing?”

  “You’re as bad as Ellis, aren’t you? I knew he’d never let go until he put Conrad in jail and no blood kin of mine is going to jail, for not giving some tramp what she was asking for in the first place. I should have made sure he was dead in the mill, but as old as he was, I didn’t think he’d live long enough to tell anybody anything.”

  “You bastard!”

  “I didn’t think you’d understand. All them college degrees of yours don’t mean spit! Blood’s what’s important.”

  “Paw was my blood!”

  “And Conrad’s mine.” He hefted his rifle. “Now you walk in front of me and get into the truck. We’re going to go find your husband.”

  I knew he was planning to kill me and Richard, but I didn’t move.

  “I said, get in the car. You mind me, hear?”

  “No, Loman. If you want to shoot me, you’re going to have to do it right here.”

  Deliberately he lifted the rifle and brought the sights to bear on my forehead. “I’ll do what I have to.”

  “You’re pretty good with women and old men,” a voice said from behind Loman. “How are you with a healthy man, Uncle Loman?” Thaddeous was standing in the doorway with Great-Great-Uncle Thaddeous’s shotgun perched on his shoulder.

  Loman turned just enough to see him, but didn’t move his aim from me. “Boy, you put that down,” he said.

  “No sir, I won
’t. You killed Paw, but I’m not about to let you kill Laurie Anne.”

  “Are you going to let your Uncle Conrad go to jail? For her? Her and her computers and her college professor husband—she’s never had any use for any of us. Are you going to let our family get smeared all over the papers because of her?”

  “Conrad stopped being any kin to me when he hurt Melanie, and the same goes for you. Now put that gun down before I show you how my family deals with trash like you.”

  There was a deadly pause, then Loman swung toward Thaddeous. I screamed a warning, but it wasn’t needed. Without seeming to react, Thaddeous squeezed the trigger and the report of Great-Great-Uncle Thaddeous’s shotgun shook through the shed. Loman dropped his gun, staggered, then fell back. With a crack of thunder, the rain poured down.

  Chapter 38

  “Are you all right?” Thaddeous asked.

  “I think so.” I looked down at Loman’s body. It looked so odd to see his eyes open and unblinking. I realized that I was wobbling, and turned away.

  “Come on,” Thaddeous said.

  We walked back to the road, where Thaddeous’s and Loman’s pickup trucks were parked behind Aunt Nora’s car, and he helped me into the cab of his truck. Then he walked around to the other side, and carefully hung Great-Great-Uncle Thaddeous’s shotgun on the rack at the back of the cab before climbing in himself.

  He started the engine, clicked on his CB radio, and twisted the knob to station 9. “Breaker, breaker. I’ve got an emergency. Are there any Smokies out there with their ears on?”

  Almost immediately, a voice replied, “This is Deputy Trey Norton of the Byerly Police. What do you need?”

  “Trey, this is Thaddeous Crawford. Do you know the old tobacco road that runs by my grandfather’s house?”

  “I know it.”

  “There’s a dead body in the tobacco shed out here.”

  “Jesus! What happened, Thaddeous?”

  Thaddeous ignored Trey’s question and added, “That shed is also where Melanie Wilson was killed, so you better bring whatever you need to check it out.”