Paper-Thin Alibi

by Mary Ellen Hughes

  “Let go!” Meg cried, yanking at Jo’s hair hard enough to snap her head back. Several of her kicks connected, but Jo managed to keep hold of Meg’s gun arm. One particularly painful kick nearly buckled her knee. Jo snapped her own foot back with all her strength at Meg’s own legs, knocking her feet out from under her.

  Meg went down and the gun flew from her grasp. Jo jumped atop of Meg to keep her from scrambling after it and felt the fight suddenly go out of her.

  Meg went limp. “Why didn’t you let me kill myself?” she cried. Her knees pulled up into the fetal position, her face buried in her sleeves, and her words came out in a high pitched wail between sobs. “I want to die! There’s nothing left. All I had to live for is over.”

  The sobs grew heavier as Meg lay there, curled tightly, heaving.

  Jo stood and limped over to where the gun had spun. She bent down to pick it up and let her breath out in a long sigh, then looked out toward the bright lights.

  They could turn them off, now, she thought.

  It was over.

  CHAPTER 31

  Her ordeal over, Jo was rapidly surrounded by Mark and the others who insisted she be taken immediately to the hospital. She readily agreed, though not for medical attention. Her bruises could wait. What she really needed and wanted was reassurance that Russ was all right, that he hadn’t badly strained himself while working on her behalf.

  Once Mark understood that, he saw that she was escorted directly to Russ’s room – the same one she’d last visited him in, though it was not nearly as peaceful as it had been then. The room was packed with fellow police, civilians, and medical personnel, all joyously celebrating the successful end to the hostage situation.

  “So this is command central, huh?” Jo called out, standing on tiptoe just outside the doorway.

  Heads turned in surprise, then cheers and welcomes broke out. Arms engulfed her, hugging and propelling her slowly toward Russ, who sat propped up in his hospital bed, surrounded by equipment and people. Carrie was one of those people, and, at sight of Jo, she cried out and scrambled her way through to her. Carrie hugged Jo ecstatically, then immediately scolded her soundly for putting herself in such a dangerous position.

  Ina Mae, Dulcie, Loralee and Javonne also appeared from various parts of the room to surround her, confirming Jo’s assumptions of who all had been called on to help. Jo was happy to see them, but began to wonder when she would reach the person she had first and foremost come to see.

  Finally, she worked her way to Russ who had been not-so-patiently waiting. He pulled her to him and she sank against his good shoulder and pressed her cheek against his wonderfully scratchy one. They remained that way for a long time, not speaking, until Jo realized that the room had grown much too quiet. Peeking up, she saw far too many pairs of eyes focused on them, and she reluctantly pulled herself out of Russ’s one-armed but still powerful embrace saying, “Let’s resume this a little later.”

  Russ nodded, grinning.

  “So,” she said to her hovering craft shop friends, “there was a major team effort going on here, huh?”

  “The lieutenant got us here lickety-split,” Loralee said. “As soon as Charlie contacted the police.”

  “Charlie!” Jo cried. “Where’s Charlie?”

  “Over here, Aunt Jo.” Charlie’s voice came from near the window and Jo looked to see a hand waving behind a couple of tall patrolmen. They parted to let Charlie through and Jo hurried over to give him a big hug.

  “You’re my hero, Charlie!” she said. “If it weren’t for you who knows what might have happened.”

  Charlie shrugged and grinned modestly. “It was just lucky Mrs. Chatsky wanted another vase, so that I had to call you.”

  “But you understood what I was trying to tell you, Charlie. I was afraid you might think I had lost my mind.”

  “You did throw me for a bit, but I could tell from your voice that you were really serious. I mean,” he said, grinning, “I know you don’t drink much, Aunt Jo. I also knew from the background noise that you were on the road. Mentioning that photo of the tobacco barn was all I needed to figure out where you were headed.”

  “Many people would have needed a lot more,” Ina Mae said, patting Charlie on the shoulder.

  “We’ll have to sign this boy up for the department,” an officer Jo didn’t recognize said, slapping Charlie on the back.

  “Let’s let him get his driver’s license first,” Dan quipped from nearby, bringing general laughter.

  Jo hated to spoil the mood, but there was an important thing she needed to know. “How is Kevin Boyer? Russ, you told Meg he was doing worse.”

  “That was just part of the pressure I tried to put on her. Actually, he’s coming around, last I heard.”

  “They discovered what she had given him?”

  “As soon as we knew it was Meg you were with – a couple of on-the-ball nurses gave us that information – we sent a search team to her house. They found quite a cocktail of ground up prescription drugs and who knows what else that she’d mixed together, and rushed it to the lab for analysis. Kevin’s been getting the treatment he needs ever since.”

  “Thank God.”

  “They also found some other interesting items,” Carrie said, her eyebrows raised.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Copies of letters she’d printed out and was apparently sending all over town.”

  “Letters?”

  “Anonymous letters, but saying much more than what yours did. They accused you of poisoning Linda Weeks and getting away with it, and asked if anyone wanted a murderer living in their town.”

  “So of course people were looking at me as though I had two heads.”

  “We never got one of those,” Javonne said. “She must have known better than to send any to the people that really knew you.”

  “Carrie, you said the letters were one of the things that they found at Meg’s house. What else was there?”

  Russ answered. “Photos of Patrick Weeks, lots of them, taken recently and when he obviously wasn’t aware of it.”

  Jo nodded, not too surprised. “Meg told me she had gone to his shop. She didn’t mention having taken her camera. Pat didn’t recognize her, I know, and thought I had sent her to spy on him.”

  “The photos clued us in on his connection to her. That and a scrapbook full of thoughts she had written down about what their life together was going to be like. Weeks was floored to hear about it. I doubt he’d even thought about her for years. Once it sunk in what she’d done and what was happening at the barn, he was more than willing to help us.”

  “She must have been one sick person to do everything she did,” Dulcie said.

  “I can confirm that,” Jo said. “She had reason to be angry with Linda, certainly, but a healthy person would have been able to deal with it long ago and move on. She nursed her grudge against Linda for years, and convinced herself that her one chance at happiness lay with the man Linda had stolen from her. She really had stepped a long way from reality.”

  “How sad that she never got any kind of help,” Loralee said. “So much misery, including her own, might have been avoided.”

  “People with problems of that sort,” a nearby nurse said, “don’t always realize they need help. They can twist things around so gradually that what starts as a defensive alibi becomes rationalization, then finally – to them – the absolute truth. And they often manage to put up a good front of normalcy so that others don’t see what’s churning inside them. Until, that is, something happens to break through that thin covering.”

  “Running into Linda started the break for Meg,” Dulcie said.

  “What will happen to her now?” Loralee asked.

  Everyone turned to Russ, who said, “She’ll be charged, of course, and have to face those charges. It’ll be up to the courts to decide what her state of mind was at the time of her crimes. The best scenario – for her – would be commitment to a mental hospital. This is still
incarceration, but she would receive psychiatric treatment.”

  “As long as she’s unable to hurt anyone else,” Ina Mae said.

  “Amen,” several others in the crowd agreed.

  The commanding voice of a nurse suddenly rose above the others. “Everyone,” she said, “I’m going to have to ask you all to leave, now. Lieutenant Morgan is still recovering from surgery, remember, and needs to get some rest.”

  General murmurs of acknowledgement sounded, and final congratulations and good-nights were called out as people began to shuffle out.

  “Harry will be pleased as punch,” Javonne said to Jo on her way out, “to know that photo of his made such a difference. Someone had to stay with the boys, or he’d be here too.”

  “Tell Harry,” Jo said, “that I owe him a terrific dinner out. Maybe at his cousin Delroy’s restaurant.”

  “Oh,” Javonne said, “and remember Harry’s Uncle Ralph who lives not too far from that barn? Harry called him once he got the word about what was going on, and Uncle Ralph went out to the road to meet the police and make sure they found the way to it.”

  Jo grinned. “Bring Uncle Ralph to the dinner too! And Aunt Eulie. Heck, bring the whole darn family.”

  “Good night, Jo,” Loralee said, waving as she and Dulcie were carried along by the crowd toward the door. “Get a good rest yourself, now.”

  “She’ll need it,” Ina Mae said, “to handle all the customers that will be flowing back to the store, full of apologies, once word of all this gets out.”

  “Knowing the Abbotsville grapevine,” Jo said, grinning, “it’s already out and gone around twice.”

  “Jo, can we drive you home?” Carrie asked, as she and Dan waited for the bottleneck at the doorway to thin.

  “I’ll see she has an escort home,” Russ said, gripping the hand Jo had slipped into his more firmly.

  “We can drop you off, no trouble, Aunt Jo,” Charlie piped up. “Dad, you have to swing over that way anyway to get Amanda, and – ” Charlie broke off as Dan clapped him on the back and pushed him soundly toward the door.

  “’Night, you two,” Dan said.

  “Good night,” Russ said, grinning.

  The nurse who had started the whole exodus saw the last of the crowd out, then pulled the door behind herself, saying to Jo and Russ, “I’ll be back with your medication, Lieutenant, but it may be a while. Things are pretty busy on the floor tonight, so I could be a very long time.”

  She pulled the door shut with a smile, and Jo felt Russ squeeze her hand. She turned and saw him gazing at her warmly. She smiled, swallowing the lump that had formed in her throat, aware they had both been equally relieved to find each other unharmed.

  Suddenly all the worries Jo had struggled with in the past seemed miniscule. What mattered most was how much she and Russ cared for each other, feelings that had only deepened as old baggage and secrets were swept away and false barriers broken down.

  Jo listened as the voices of the last of the banished visitors faded away into elevators and stairwells, then leaned toward this man who was so wonderful, so intelligent and understanding.

  “Now,” she asked softly, thinking of that earlier embrace that had been cut much too short, “where were we?”

  THE END

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mary Ellen Hughes is the author of two other Craft Corner mysteries: WREATH OF DECEPTION and STRING OF LIES, as well as two Maggie Olenski mysteries, RESORT TO MURDER, and A TASTE OF DEATH. Her new Pickled and Preserved mystery series will be out soon.

  To learn more, please check her website at http://www.maryellenhughes.com

  DECORATED GIFT BOX

  Materials:

  Any size paper board gift box, round, square, or oblong

  Scrapbooking paper in two coordinating colors

  Scrapbooking sticker

  Decoupage glue

  Sponge brush

  Craft knife or scissors

  1.Place upper lid section of box on scrapbooking paper and measure a single piece of paper to cover top, outer sides, and inner sides, extending about half an inch on inside flat portion of lid. Mark with a pencil and cut.

  2. Spread decoupage glue with a sponge brush over those surfaces. Carefully fit the cut paper over lid, pressing and smoothing into place, overlapping the edge and a small amount of the flat, inner lid. Let dry.

  3. Cut contrasting paper for flat, inside section of lid. Brush decoupage glue on that area and press paper in place, covering the edges of the first paper. Let dry.

  4. Measure and cut one piece of paper to cover outer sides of the lower half of your box, the inner sides, and a half inch of the flat, inner bottom. Brush those sections of the box with decoupage glue and press paper into place. Let dry.

  5. Cut contrasting paper for the inside bottom of the box and glue into place, overlapping the edge of the paper already glued in place.

  PAPER-CRAFT TIPS

  1. To add a spectacular effect to your tissue paper flowers, dip the petal edges in white glue, then in glitter.

  2. Add texture and interest to your picture collage with objects such as beads, plant materials, or whatever strikes your fancy.

  3. If your collage arrangement is elaborate, lay it out before gluing until you’re satisfied, then snap a picture before disassembling.

  4. Jo started off her group with simple origami, using regular origami paper. Heavier weight papers can be used for wet-folding, and foil-backed paper is recommended for more complex projects. You might also want to try “Moneygami”, using paper money!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am very grateful to Karlene Hicks, without whose talent and expertise Jo’s gift boxes would never have taken shape. Heidi Abend gets my special thanks as well for her special encouragement and support along with giving me a peek into her very creative mind. Dr. D. P. Lyle helped greatly and generously with the medical questions I needed answers to, as did John Baker concerning photography. If I didn’t get things right, it’s my own fault entirely.

  Once again, my editor Sandy Harding used her amazing skills to keep these many thousands of words on track, as well as bolstering and encouraging generously, along with my agent Jacky Sach, who started the ball rolling. I’m very grateful to you both.

  Of course many thanks to Janet Benrey, Ray Flynt, Debbi Mack, Sherriel Mattingly, Trish Marshall, Marcia Talley, and Lyn Taylor, who kept me on my toes as usual with their “on target” critiques. I could never slip anything past any of them, though I’ll probably keep on trying.

  As for Terry, “thank you” is totally inadequate for the many ways he’s helped. But – there you are.