Dead as a Door Knocker

by Diane Kelly

  When we finished the meal, we gathered in the family room to let the food settle for an hour or so before attempting dessert. Some of us napped. Some of us watched college football on television. As for me, I plunked myself down in a beanbag chair and played game after game of Candy Land with my oldest niece, carefully watching that the younger two didn’t steal the pieces and try to eat them.

  Finally, my meal had settled enough that there was room in my belly to add a slice of Aunt Nancy’s sweet potato pie. Of course she’d made pecan, blueberry, and peach pies, too, everyone’s favorites. I packed up the game and stood. “Who’s ready for pie?”

  Unanimous and simultaneous shouts of “Me!” sprang from everyone’s lips.

  I went to the kitchen and prepared plates for everyone, carrying them back two at a time to the living room. Once the pie had been distributed all around, I eased back into the beanbag chair with my fork and plate, took my first bite, and closed my eyes to better savor the delicious flavor. Mmm.

  At the end of the day, Aunt Nancy sent me home with a full pie of my own. She pointed a finger in my face as she ushered me out the door. “That’s all for you. Don’t share it with anyone.”

  “Not even me?” Buck asked.

  She chucked her eldest son on the chin. “Especially you.”

  CHAPTER 28

  MOMMY AND ME

  SAWDUST

  Sawdust knew Whitney wasn’t actually his mother, though she served many of the same purposes. She fed him. Curled up next to him when he was napping to make sure he was warm enough. Kept him clean. She didn’t lick him clean like his real mother had, though. Instead, she occasionally gave him a bath in the sink. It wasn’t nearly as nice as a tongue bath.

  It had been nice to see his cat mommy again today. She always seemed glad to see him, gave him a kiss or two. But those pesky little girls were a different matter, always following him around and picking him up awkwardly. He knew they meant well, but frankly he was glad to be back at the big house, stretched out on the bed next to Whitney, back to back. She was something he was truly thankful for.

  CHAPTER 29

  MANY HANDS MAKE LIGHT WORK

  WHITNEY

  Friday was the last day of November. Every year since we’d been old enough to venture to the mall on our own, Colette and I would go shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, snag some good Black Friday deals. Not this year, though. Until things turned around, my buying anything other than absolute necessities was out of the question. On the bright side, Buck and I could get to work on the house today.

  As I drove over that morning after indulging in a nice slice of sweet potato pie for breakfast, all I could think about was that Buck and I had a mortgage payment due on the place soon. I could manage my half of the installment because my paycheck from Home & Hearth had just cleared the bank, but there would be virtually nothing left over. Now that we’d lost the Abbot-Dunaway Holdings account, there’d be less work for me to do and my next paycheck would be much smaller. I’d have to watch every cent I spent. No stopping for an occasional latte. No mani-pedis with Colette. No special tuna treats for my cat. My hair needed a trim, but that would have to wait, too. Maybe I’d get lucky and split ends would become the new rage.

  As I pulled into the driveway behind Buck’s van, I looked out at the house and heaved a heavy sigh. Despite all the awful things that had happened here, this was nonetheless a beautiful, classic house, exactly the type I’d want to live in myself if I could afford it. Surely someone would appreciate the home’s timeless stone, the generous closet space, the beautiful kitchen we planned to install, the claw-foot bathtub. But could a potential buyer overlook the fact that a murder had taken place here? I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that a body in a flower bed could devalue the home and put me and Buck underwater. An appropriate term, because it felt as if I were drowning.

  I found Buck inside, ripping out the damaged hardwood. “’Mornin’,” I said.

  “’Mornin’,” he replied.

  He seemed to have things under control in the house, so I decided to start with the outside. Though I wasn’t normally one to rush the holidays, I figured it couldn’t hurt to go ahead and decorate even if it wasn’t yet December. Christmas would soon be here, but the holiday spirit was eluding me. Maybe decorating would put me in the mood. I could certainly use some holiday cheer after everything that had transpired over the last few weeks. The events had left me feeling ho, ho, hopeless.

  In addition to the inflatable snowman I’d bought at the home improvement store, I’d brought along several strings of icicle lights, three reindeer formed from twigs, and a half-dozen wreaths with red bows for the front door and windows. The latter items had been appropriated from my parents’ garage. Rather than repeat a certain look for the house or tree as a tradition, Mom liked to shake things up and choose a new holiday theme each year. She planned to go with elves this time around. I’d had to fight a scream when the garage door went up and I found myself face-to-face with a dozen of the creepy little guys, staring vacantly out at me.

  I summoned my courage and approached the flower bed, gathering up the plastic flats of purple pansies I’d been planting when I found Dunaway’s body. The poor flowers were withered beyond hope, their leaves and blooms faded and dried to a crisp. I placed them at the curb for the trash men to take away.

  Returning to my car, I opened the back hatch to retrieve Buck’s old toolbox, which he’d loaned me. The thing was made of metal and maintained a few remnants of red paint where it wasn’t dented, dinged, or scratched. The toolbox was also as heavy as a kettle bell. Merely carrying the thing was a workout. I had to lean to the left to keep from keeling over.

  I set the toolbox down in the middle of the yard and went inside to retrieve an extension cord and the box that held the inflatable snowman. After spreading the snowman out on the lawn as per the instructions, I used my new dead blow hammer to pound four stakes into the soil to tie the inflatable down. Didn’t want my new carrot-nosed friend going airborne and ending up in a Kentucky farmer’s back forty. Once he was secured, I plugged him in and watched as he filled with air and came to life, like my own personal Frosty.

  Buck came to the window and opened it. “That thing’s as full of hot air as Detective Flynn!” he called.

  “You got that right.”

  With the snowman lording over the left side of the center walkway, I decided the deer should have their own space on the other half of the front lawn. One by one, I situated the trio on the grass, trying different positions to see which held the most visual appeal. As I worked, a car rolled slowly by, the man at the wheel gawking at me. I recognized him as one of the residents from across the street. He seemed surprised to see me out of jail. I tried not to be offended by that fact. Like Detective Flynn, he didn’t really know me. Nevertheless, it cut to my core. I’m a nice person! Really! I wanted to holler.

  Perhaps I should bake a batch of gingerbread men for the neighbors and deliver them with a festive holiday card. Then again, the smiling cookies looking up at them from the plate might serve to remind them of the real man who’d been found lying on his back in my garden. Yep, those cookies could backfire, big-time.

  Owen arrived as I finished placing the herd. He parked his van at the curb and climbed out. “What’s all this?”

  “I thought some holiday decorations would make the place look more homey, give it some extra curb appeal.” Maybe they would help everyone forget about the house’s horrible history, too. “Grab your stepladder. I need help hanging the wreaths on the windows.”

  I planned to affix the wreaths to each of the front windows using the double-sided magnets designed specifically for this purpose. I showed Owen how the magnets functioned. “I’ll need to go inside so we can hang them.”

  “All righty.”

  While Owen held up each magnet on the outside, I matched it to its polar opposite partner on the inside. Voilà! As for the wreath on the door, I hung that with a good old-fashioned n
ail.

  Owen climbed back up the ladder to hang the icicle lights. As he did, Patty happened to pass by her living room window, the movement inside her house catching my eyes. When she spotted me holding the ladder, she dashed to her drapes and yanked them closed. Will I ever live down my arrest?

  When we were done decorating, we rounded up Buck and the three of us stepped back to the curb to take it all in.

  “It looks great,” Buck said.

  “Sure does,” Owen agreed.

  “All but the flower beds.” The beds contained nothing but soil, no foliage of any sort. But I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to work in that cursed soil again.

  Buck cut a glance my way and, as if reading my mind, offered to take care of the matter. “I’ll put in some flowers. You want to go with purple pansies again?”

  “No. Let’s go with red camellias this time.” The winter-blooming bushes would add a burst of vivacious color and maybe, just maybe, make my neighbors forget that the ground in which the flowering foliage stood had once been someone’s shallow grave.

  We drove to the home improvement store and selected eight yuletide camellias, four for each bed. As we returned to the house, I spotted several more vehicles lining up along the curb. Uncle Roger’s heavy-duty pickup truck. The Hartleys’ Chrysler sedan. Colette’s Chevy Cruze. My mother’s pearly white Cadillac. As I watched, my family and friends took turns wrangling panels of Sheetrock from the back of Owen’s van.

  My mouth fell open as Buck’s van rolled to a stop in the driveway. “What’s everyone doing here?”

  Buck slid me a sideways grin from his place in the driver’s seat. “They’ve come to help.”

  What a sweet gesture of support. What had I done to deserve such good people in my life? For what felt like the millionth time, tears began to well up in my eyes as I turned to my cousin. “I know you arranged this. Thank you, Buck.”

  He looked at my face. “Don’t go getting all mushy on me, now.”

  “Too late!” I hugged him tight before releasing him and fluttering my hands around my eyes in an attempt to dry them. Finally, I got my emotions under control and slid out of his van. “Good morning!” I called to the crowd. “If I haven’t said it before, I love you all!”

  The group smiled and returned the sentiment.

  While Buck planted the camellias outside, inside Owen gave the group a quick primer in installing drywall. How to measure it. How to score the paper before cutting it. How to anchor it to the wall with screws. When he was done, he distributed gloves, tools, putty knives, and other materials, and assigned each of the novices an experienced partner. Ready to get moving, we all got right down to work. Well, right to work after Buck came back inside, pulled out his phone, and launched his carpentry playlist. All of the songs were country-western tunes, a tribute to our hometown of Nashville. Each song had something to do with houses, too. Sam Hunt’s lively if irreverent hit “House Party.” Garth Brooks’s upbeat melody “Two of a Kind, Workin’ on a Full House.” Miranda Lambert’s more solemn ballad “The House That Built Me.”

  As the music played, we worked along, side by side. I’d been partnered with Mr. Hartley. He seemed to enjoy the task, whistling while we worked our way across the back living room wall. Owen oversaw my parents along the perpendicular wall. Mrs. Hartley toiled under my Uncle Roger’s tutelage in the hallway. Buck and Colette were partnered in the back bedroom that had caught fire, their banter and laughter drifting through the door. The two seemed to be enjoying each other’s company. I was glad my best friend and my favorite cousin got along so well.

  Just a few hours later, new drywall was in place throughout the damaged areas of the house. I gave everyone a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek as they left. “Thank you so much!” I told them. “You’re the best crew ever!”

  Now that it was just me and my cousins left in the house, we completed the finishing work, applying the tape and joint compound needed to smooth the seams, cover the screws, and prepare the Sheetrock for painting. The mud compound, which would smooth and strengthen the walls, would need at least twenty-four hours to dry before the paint could be applied. It was after five by the time we finished. The three of us parted ways with an agreement to return tomorrow.

  * * *

  On Saturday morning, Buck, Owen, and I were back at the house by ten. Patty was in her front yard, hanging Christmas lights on her bushes. As my cousins headed inside, I said, “I’ll be back in a minute. I want to talk to Patty right quick.”

  The woman cast me a wary glance and picked up a large plastic candy cane decoration as I stepped over to speak with her. I supposed she intended to use the candy cane in self-defense, if necessary.

  I offered her a smile. “Good morning, Patty.”

  “Hello, Whitney.” Her greeting was as cool as the outdoor temperature.

  There was no sense beating around the bush. “I was wondering if we could talk about the night Rick Dunaway was killed.”

  She stiffened. “What about it?”

  “I was wondering if you saw anything.”

  “I’ve already told the detective what I saw.”

  “I’m sure you did,” I said. “But I’d really like to help him along if I can, to clear my name. We’ll all be safer when the killer is behind bars. If you could tell me what you saw that night, maybe it would help me help him.”

  When she simply stared at me, I added, “Please, Patty. I had nothing to do with Rick Dunaway’s death. I swear.”

  Her face bore a drawn, dubious expression. How can I convince her?

  “Think about it,” I said. “If I had killed the man, would I really have left him right there in the flower bed? In front of a house I owned? Of course not. That would be stupid. I would’ve done a better job of disposing of the body and the weapon. I would have taken them somewhere else, hidden the evidence. His body would have easily fit in my SUV. I could’ve driven right down the road and dumped his body in the Cumberland River.”

  She angled her head as she appeared to be thinking things over. Like Detective Flynn, she stared at me intently, as if doing so would tell her whether or not I was guilty or innocent. “All right,” she said finally, apparently determining I was the latter. “I’ll tell you what I saw.”

  Thank goodness. She believes me!

  “Dunaway’s Mercedes pulled up around half past six. I saw the headlights and peeked outside to see who was parking in front of my house. I didn’t much appreciate that. People should park in front of the house they’re visiting. What if I’d had guests coming?”

  I had yet to see anyone come to visit Patty, but I supposed it could happen.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “I saw him get out of his car and head into your yard. Your place was dark, so once he set foot on your lawn I couldn’t see him anymore. A few minutes later, another set of headlights drove past. By the time I got to the window, the car was gone. I don’t know if it was someone just driving down the street, or whether they’d been parked and were leaving.” She raised her shoulders. “That’s all I know.”

  “Did the headlights sit up high, like they belonged on a pickup truck? Or were they low, like a regular car?”

  Jackson drove a pickup. If the lights were higher, it could have been his vehicle that had gone past her house.

  She raised her shoulders again. “My curtains were only open an inch or two, and I was watching the evening news on TV, so I didn’t get a good look.”

  It wasn’t much information, and it was nothing definitive. Even so, it told me that someone other than Rick Dunaway had been in the vicinity around the time he came to the house.

  Patty set the candy cane down and reached into a plastic bin for two strands of green lights. She plugged the end of one strand of lights into the other. “Around eight o’clock that night, I realized I was out of coffee and had to make a quick run to the grocery store to pick some up. I’m an absolute grump if I don’t get my morning coffee.”

  She was a bit of a grump rega
rdless, but I wasn’t about to point that out to her.

  She paused to untangle the other end of the strand, which had tied itself into a knot. “When I came around the corner, I nearly ran into Thaddeus Gentry’s car. You know, the one with his name on the license plates?” She shook her head. “What an ego that man has.” She added a tsk of disapproval. “Anyway, he backed out of the drive at his place without bothering to look back and took off in a hurry.”

  Thad Gentry had been around the night Rick Dunaway was killed? That was certainly an interesting bit of information. “Did you tell Detective Flynn that you’d seen Thad Gentry that night?”

  “Of course,” she said. “I told him if he questioned Gentry, he should have a talk with the man about his driving habits, too.”

  “Thanks, Patty. Any chance you’ve noticed a man in a white sedan hanging around?”

  “Not recently.”

  “But you saw him before?”

  She nodded. “The morning you evicted those boys. The guy was just sitting in the car, reading the newspaper. I thought maybe he was waiting for someone, but he drove off a little later by himself.”

  “Did he talk to anyone?”

  “Not that I noticed.”

  Hmm. I’d assumed earlier that the man might have been keeping an eye on Rick Dunaway, but was it possible that the man in the car had been spying on Thad Gentry instead? And, if so, who was the man and why was he interested in Gentry?

  I gestured to the lights in her hands. “Need some help with those?”

  She, in turn, gestured toward the dogwoods in her front yard. “I’d love to string some lights in my trees. Got a ladder handy?”

  “I sure do.” I went into my house next door, retrieved a stepladder, and carried it over to her yard. I positioned the ladder under her tree and strung the lights up, over, and through the tree limbs as she directed me.