The Mommy Detectives and the Bingo Hall Mystery

by Alathia Paris Morgan

  “How is going to the police a bad thing? Aren’t they supposed to help us and lock up the criminals?”

  “Babe, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. You’re just so naive.” Daniel crawled into bed and tried to hug her.

  “How am I naive? Because I trust the police to do their job? So that makes me stupid?” Sunni threw back at him, giving him the evil eye.

  “Let me rephrase this—you’re too trusting. When someone says something, you just automatically assume it’s true.”

  “Hmpf. So basically, what you just rephrased was that I make an ass out of myself?”

  Daniel tried to tread carefully through this verbal minefield. “Honey, the police do a great job, but when it comes to our son, I just want to make sure he doesn’t take the blame for something he didn’t do.”

  “What about the drugs? If Dusty knows something about who’s supplying them, don’t you think he should tell them?”

  “It’s tricky, honey. If he outs the ones doing drugs, they could come after him. Should he? Probably. But if he put a stop to it, there must be a reason.”

  Sunni’s thought to herself, Guess, I won’t be telling him about the stuff going on at the bingo hall. It’s always better to ask for forgiveness then permission, after all.

  “Hopefully, you can spend some time with him this weekend and see what he’s thinking. I know it shook him up pretty good.”

  “I’ll make it a point for us to spend some time together and talk about more than tables and chairs. So are you still mad at me?”

  Hand under her chin, Sunni pretended to think about it. “Not really. I’m very trusting of people, and just like to believe the best in them.”

  If you only knew how much you shouldn’t trust me to stay out of trouble in the near future, Sunni thought again to herself as she accepted his open arms.

  “Not too much snuggling because I have to get up at three to put the turkey in the oven.”

  “Seriously, a few minutes of snuggle time won’t stop the turkey from baking,” Daniel whispered suggestively.

  “I might take you up on that snuggle time.” Sunni agreed, reaching over him to turn out the light.

  Chapter 6

  Thanksgiving Day dawned cold, but Sunni decided that a T-shirt with shorts would work until their guests arrived. Working in the kitchen with both the stove and the oven going could cause her to get overheated. She could change when the first person pulled up, but Sunni knew if she didn’t take extra precautions early, the rest of her day would be miserable.

  The dinging of a timer made Sunni hurry to the kitchen to pull out the turkey for basting.

  Wrinkling her nose as the smell of meat cooking filled the kitchen, she lifted the lid and grimaced.

  The poor turkey was doing nicely, but Sunni wasn’t really a fan of eating animals. The tofu turkey didn’t take nearly as long to cook so she would get it started after breakfast.

  As she turned to get the baster and stifled a scream with her hand.

  “What on earth are you doing up, young man?” Sunni exhaled slowly, thankful she hadn’t had the turkey pan in her hands when she turned.

  “I was too excited to sleep,” Flynn acknowledged, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “I could hear the turkey calling me to come shoot it with my bow and arrow, like the Indians did.”

  “Well, I have to say, you’re a little too late, sweet pea.” Sunni returned to basting. “Someone already shot the turkey.”

  “What did they do with its feathers?” Flynn peered into the pan.

  “Be careful.” Sunni kept an arm between him and the turkey. “I think they pluck them off and put them into pillows and coats for people to use.”

  “Sounds poky.” Flynn stood on his tiptoes and tried to take a closer look. “Are you going to let us eat some this year?”

  His big eyes looked pleadingly at her.

  “I guess you could have a small portion this year.” Preparing herself for his whoop of victory, Sunni was astonished when he just looked thoughtful.

  “What’s wrong?” Sunni asked, placing the lid back on the turkey.

  “I don’t think it will taste as good as if I had shot it myself. It takes all the fun out of it. Well, there’s always next year, I guess.” Dragging his play bow behind him, Flynn disappeared as quickly as he had arrived.

  “Oh boy.” Sunni wiped a weary hand across her forehead. “I might just break all the rules today and have a cup of coffee.”

  ------------------

  The group that filled Sunni and Daniel’s house was quite diverse on a normal basis, but when Kristi arrived with Carolina Leigh, things took a fork in the road. Daniels’ father, Sam, got cornered as Carolina began to grill him on his fantasy football picks, until Aunt Marie took pity on him and suggested the ladies help in the kitchen.

  Since Sunni had been up at seven, there wasn’t much left to do except wait on the food to finish cooking, so the ladies were standing around, talking.

  “Have you heard about the situation Sunni has gotten herself in to?” Aunt Marie asked, oblivious to Sunni’s frantic head shaking.

  Launching into a recap of the past few weeks, Marie embellished the story in several areas.

  “Our prime suspects are Alexander Fine and a young man that Sunni is certain is selling drugs.”

  After hearing about their two prime suspects, Carolina interjected. “I could do some undercover work for you. I used to work at the post office, and still occasionally cover someone’s route when they’re out. Let me know who you’re looking for and I’ll find you all sorts of stuff about them.”

  “Well, while I appreciate that—” Sunni started, until Marie interrupted her.

  “You can come with me on Tuesday to, and we can follow him when he leaves so we can find out where he lives,” Marie said excitedly.

  “Don’t you think that’s a little dangerous, Carolina? I mean, what if he sees you? How is that supposed to go?” Kristi asked, hoping to divert them from the task.

  “Dangerous? Ha! We won’t be getting out of the car. We’ll just drive by and see where he stays. I don’t plan to do anything that will make him think he’s being spied on.” Aunt Marie responded with a hurt expression clouding her face.

  “I’ll bring snacks in case we need to stay for a few more hours. He might be picking up a delivery or dropping off his cash, so we need to make sure that’s where he lives.” Carolina hurried to cheer Marie up.

  “He seems really nice,” Sunni added, blushing so furiously that she turned to check the turkey in the oven to cover it quickly.

  “Wait, what did you say?” All four women waited for Sunni to turn back around.

  “I said, he seems really nice. I ran into him at the grocery store earlier this week and he was gentle with Lily.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this when you brought the kids over yesterday?” Marie demanded.

  Closing the oven door with a slam, Sunni turned.

  “I ran into him, literally, okay?” She threw the hot pads on the counter, frustrated with her uncontrollable response to the younger man. “We spoke for just a second and I raced over to the produce section so that I didn’t comment on how amazing he looked.”

  “Sunni, I don’t understand? You’re married to my son. How could you think another man looks amazing? That’s just wrong.” Helen shook her finger accusingly into Sunni’s face.

  “Now, hold on a second. There’s nothing wrong with looking at or acknowledging that a man looks good. It’s only if she acts on it that it causes problems.” Aunt Marie defended her niece.

  “I can’t believe you ran away from him when we’re trying to get more information. You literally fled the scene.” Kristi laughed at the image.

  “Young women these days have no respect for their marriages. It’s no wonder a man won’t marry you, Kristi. He knows you wouldn’t stay with him. You’d be chasing off after the first piece of new meat that you saw.” Helen spoke casually, not realizing how rude her comme
nts sounded.

  “First off, Helen, if you can’t be nice, then go in there with the men.”

  The look of shock on Helen’s face at such a suggestion was humorous, but at this point, Sunni had overcome her shyness and was angry.

  “I love your son and have no plans to jump ship. God created everyone, and if he didn’t want us to look and appreciate them then he would have made us blind,” Sunni spat out in a rush, then covered her mouth with both hands.

  “Oh, Helen, I’m sorry. I don’t know where that came from.”

  “Don’t apologize. I have to admit, your blushing threw me off. You’ve never been anything but good to my son.”

  “I just haven’t had a man who wasn’t Daniel flirt with me in a long time, and I didn’t know what to do.” Shrugging her shoulders, Sunni attempted to deflect the conversation back to a less volatile topic.

  “So, Carolina, what are you doing with your time now that you’ve retired?”

  “A variety of things. I have a small garden, and I tinker with things. I knit blankets for my church, and I also volunteer at the shelter for animals.” Carolina almost purred the last sentence. “Bet you can’t figure out which animal is my favorite, but I love cats. I do have a dog named Mutt as well, and he’s a great guard dog. Oh, but my girl cats are my favorite. They just need so much love, and so many people just abandon them.”

  “So when you said, ‘tinker with things,’ what does that mean exactly?” Helen asked, eyeing Carolina’s outfit warily. “Fashion design?”

  Her outfit screamed fashion, but more in the sense of disaster. Her brown polka dot pants didn’t match her black paisley shirt that had clearly seen time in the ’80s, and needed to be placed on a quilt instead of worn in public.

  “Oh gracious, no. I like to tinker with engines and fix things around my house. When a neighbor is having trouble with something, I always assess the problem, and then come up with a solution for them. Most people don’t really think outside the box, if you know what I mean.” Carolina had lowered her voice in a conspiratorial whisper, glancing toward the living room where the men were sitting.

  Kristi held back her laughter as the other three women looked at her, questioning the validity of Carolina’s statement.

  “Carolina really does come up with some amazing fix it solutions. Tell them about the problem with your dog and the garden,” Kristi urged.

  “They don’t want to hear about that.” Carolina waved Kristi off, but relented when she saw her audience was listening. “Well, I guess I could explain it, although it is pretty lengthy,” Carolina warned.

  “We have plenty of time. The rolls haven’t even gone in yet,” Marie assured her.

  “You see, I had this problem with plowing up the back yard because my dog would mark his territory all the time. I mean, can y’all imagine having him spray the tomatoes every day, then you’re supposed to eat them knowing what’s been going down in the backyard? Of course you can’t, because nobody should be subjected to that. Right, ladies?”

  At everyone’s nods, she continued. “So I decided to take the dog out of the problem. I took all the tubs they had at the dollar store and poked holes in the bottom and put them up on pallets. They were up high enough that Mutt couldn’t reach them, but then there were the outside cats to worry about.

  “Now the cats like to dig in the dirt and do their business in the flowerpots, so I had to come up with something that would keep them out of my garden tubs. I sprayed the outside and the pallets with skunk and dog spray to keep them away.” The entire time, Carolina’s hand moved in motion with her description.

  Kristi grinned, knowing the end result of the story.

  “The cats stayed out of them, but one morning I let Mutt outside, only to have him race out, barking out into the yard to do his business when I noticed that he was actually chasing something.

  “A skunk had been hanging out in the garden, and Mutt didn’t want it around.” The ladies were all breathlessly waiting to see how the story ended.

  “Evidently, I hadn’t specified that I wanted male skunk spray, and had gotten the female spray. So there were several skunks that had been attracted from the forest area over by the park who came to find the female skunk.” Carolina was oblivious to the fact that no one else would have bought the skunk spray to begin with.

  “So there were all these males, and Mutt was chasing them all over the yard, but the one hole in my fence wasn’t big enough for them to all fit through at the same time.

  “They all lined up, trying to escape, then Mutt would make a sweep through, scattering them around the yard, causing them to spray the house and Mutt several times.”

  “She had to leave her house for about two weeks and go stay with her sister because the smell was so bad.” Kristi wrinkled her nose at the memory of the smell.

  “She took a sprayer and doused her entire yard with tomato juice, as well as the house and everything else three times, then rinsed it with water. But by that point, all we could smell on our street was skunk. We told her to consult a profession in the future.”

  “Actually, it was the HOA that made me do it. They said if I didn’t consult a gardening and pesticide professional, that they’d start fining me $500 a day until they made sure something like that would happen again. I really don’t like the two old coots who live behind me. I know they were the ones to come up with it, and since their wives don’t like me, they went along with it.”

  “Now, Carolina, you have to give them credit. They put up with a lot of your ideas, but the skunks were just a little over the top,” Kristi admonished gently.

  “I guess so. Every meeting, though, I’m the only one on the list that has to change or fix stuff.” Carolina pouted.

  Trying to change the subject, Sunni proclaimed, “I think the turkey is done, so let’s get it out and the rolls in so they’ll be ready by the time we get the table set.”

  The ladies moved quickly and had the food, children, and men at the table less than thirty minutes later.

  Once seated, the family started their tradition of saying one thing they were thankful for, but what the guests didn’t know was that the person with the most interesting blessing would get to do the honors with the wishbone.

  “I’m thankful that the Indians shared their food with all of the white people so they didn’t starve.” Flynn got the group started with his usual flare.

  “Well, I’m thankful that there are other girls to play with besides my brother, who is a boy.” Lily slid in a passive aggressive blessing.

  Kristi’s girls, not wanting to be left out, gave their blessings.

  “The turkeys are my favorite bird because they has such pretty feathers, all green and blue,” Joanna, the three-year-old chimed in.

  “Silly, those aren’t turkeys, they’re peacocks. You don’t even know the right things to be thankful for.” Six-year-old Hanna discounted her little sister’s blessing while adding her own wisdom to the mix. “The things we should be thankful for are having food to eat, like macaroni and cheese.”

  “I’m really thankful for parents who love us and take care of us.” Dusty spoke quietly without being prompted for the first time ever, ignoring the younger children.

  It continued until Caroline spoke. “I’m just really thankful for folks who care about each other, unlike those gentlemen who shall remain nameless that were trying to see me and all my parts naked the other night.”

  The room grew still as the adults tried to process the oversharing of information.

  “Carolina wins.” Daniel broke the awkwardness by holding out the wishbone from the turkey.

  In her eagerness to grab it, Carolina had tried to stand quickly and lean forward, but instead, managed with her momentum to slide across the table on her stomach, landing on the floor on the opposite side of the room.

  Sitting up, she held her arm up, clutching the wishbone tightly. Daniel and Dusty were the closest and helped her to her feet.

  Sheepishly walki
ng back around to her side of the table, Carolina proclaimed her second blessing as she held the wishbone up for inspection.

  “I’m just thankful there’s plenty of padding on this old girl because the only broken thing is this wishbone.”

  “We’re very happy you’re not hurt. Is everyone ready to eat?” Sunni tried to salvage the mood.

  The flight across the table seemed to sap some of Carolina’s extra enthusiasm, and the rest of Thanksgiving Day continued without any other incidents.

  Chapter 7

  True to her word, Carolina had Kristi drop her and Marie off at bingo on Tuesday.

  Marie was glad for the company because she had a baggie of pills hidden in her purse.

  What had seemed like a good idea to have someone with her as a distraction was causing Marie to grow more worried by the moment.

  Carolina had never met a stranger, and by break time, everyone in the hall knew who she was.

  Unsure if she could go through with the switch off, Marie made her way to the bathroom with her purse. Standing in the shorter line at the back, Shelia slid in behind her.

  “Did you bring them?” she whispered in Marie’s ear.

  Marie placed a hand on heart and tried to act normal, nodding her head in reply.

  “Here’s the book I was telling you about. Murder by Ingredients is a great book to start with.” Shelia held out a hardback.

  Marie barely had time to take the offered book when the door to the bathroom opened and out walked Carolyn.

  “Hey, Marie. Whatcha got there?” Carolina’s still dripping hand moved to grab hold of the book.

  “Oh, it’s a book recommendation from Sheila. I’d let you look at it, but it’s a special copy and your hands are still wet. Maybe on the way home you can check it out?” Marie deftly moved out of Carolina’s reach and into the now empty bathroom.

  She hurried to lock the door and leaned back against it in relief. If Carolina had gotten a hold of it, she would’ve discovered the empty pages and blown the entire undercover operation.