Baby Daddy Mystery

by Daisy Pettles

  “You hang in there,” said Veenie.

  Once we were back in the Impala, Veenie turned to me. “If he knew his mama wasn’t home, why you suppose he came over to her house? Don’t that seem suspicious to you?”

  I shrugged as I fired up the Impala. It was getting hot, so I cranked a window down and popped open the wing on the window to let in extra air. Veenie did the same, but then her door knob came off in her hand. She pulled the Philips head out of the glove compartment to screw it back on. She had it fixed in a jiffy.

  “I dunno,” I said. “Maybe she asked him to look in after something or maybe he keeps his lunch at his mama’s place. He’s got no wife or kids around here. Lives alone in that big old place out at Camelot. He is kind of a mama’s boy. Nothing criminal about that.”

  “He seemed kind of shifty to me. Didn’t he seem shifty to you?” Veenie pointed to the porch. “And lookie there! He’s peeking out the window, checking to see if we’re still out here.”

  I looked up just in time to see the curtains flutter. I didn’t see Bert though. For all I could tell, it was the air conditioning blowing the curtains around inside.

  “Lord All Mighty, Lavinia, you watch too many murder mysteries on the Hallmark Channel. Maybe he just didn’t like you snooping in his mama’s windows. A lot of people would find that kind of behavior peculiar and nosey.”

  “I’m not nosey. I’m a paid professional.”

  “You were hoping to get some dirt on Avonelle. Admit it.”

  “I’m telling you, Ruby Jane, there is something odd about this whole case. I don’t think we should stop snooping.”

  “Well,” I said as I keyed the Impala, “I agree with you on that.” I checked my wrist watch. It was late morning. If Avonelle had an afternoon board meeting, it’d probably be best if we left her to her work. I said as much to Veenie. She agreed and suggested we go out to Camelot Court to visit Gretal, see what she thought of her husband’s official cause of death.

  I put the pedal to the metal, and we gunned it that way.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Gretal was home, but she didn’t look to be home for long. Her fancy red leather suitcase sat open on the bed. She was throwing clothes into the case with mad abandon. “Frankly, I don’t care how he died. Like I told you, we weren’t that close. I stayed with him for appearances’ sake. He’s gone now, so I’m out of here, and damned happy about it too.”

  I asked if she’d ever seen Bromley faint or heard him complain about heartburn or shortness of breath.

  “He ever wheeze when he walked?” Veenie asked. “I do that sometimes when I feel a spell coming on. Got a bad ticker myself.”

  Gretal eyed Veenie. “Not that I can recall, but you’re asking the wrong person. I didn’t spend that much time with him. Why not ask his girlfriends?”

  Veenie asked Gretal if she had a list of them.

  “No.” Gretal went back to the closet and pulled a few things off hangers. She flipped these things into log rolls and stuffed them into her bag.

  Remembering that Bert had told me that he thought Bromley stored his little black book on his cell phone I asked Gretal if she had her husband’s cell phone. She went over to the bedside table and pulled an iPhone out of the drawer. “Help yourself.” She tossed the phone my way, and I pocketed it.

  I asked if she had any idea why Bromley had been dressed in a scarecrow outfit.

  “God, no. Don’t know. Don’t care to know. Probably hillbilly hanky-panky with some farm girl. Dressing up. Role playing. He liked a lot—and I mean a lot—of weird stuff. He was probably going at it with some skank who had a wet spot for scarecrows. Maybe she was Dorothy, and he was the big bad scarecrow. Who knows?” Gretal stuffed a couple more pairs of pricey shoes into her suitcase and zipped the bag shut.

  “That a real thing?” Veenie asked. “I mean, a scarecrow fetish? I guess that could be a real thing. But if it was me, I’d be going after the lion. I like a man with hair, especially on the chest. Not on the rear, though. If a fellow has too much hair on his rear, count me out. How about you, RJ?”

  I definitely wasn’t getting dragged into that one.

  Gretal shrugged. “Around these parts, nothing would surprise me.”

  I wondered what I was missing. Bromley was found at Barbara’s house, on her porch, dressed like her scarecrow. Barbara seemed like the logical choice for a hanky-panky partner with Bromley, but she’d been inside with us the whole time between our seeing that scarecrow and Bromley ending up dead on her porch swing. Besides, I tended to believe her when she said she loved old William, the Pappy Apple. As far as she was concerned, she and William were family, what with the kids and all.

  Gretal rolled her suitcase toward the door. “If you ladies will excuse me, I’m headed up to Columbus. My sister has a condo up there. I’m done hanging out in Hooterville. Kimmy’s back in college over at Bloomington. Avonelle can have this drafty old house. Thing was built on the cheap by old tight-wad Fussy Jones, anyway. It’s Avonelle’s name on the mortgage. Bromley never could hold onto money.”

  Veenie and I followed Gretal out the front door. We waved good-bye as she climbed into her red BMW and squealed out of the asphalt driveway.

  “She seemed kind of in a hurry to me. She seem in a hurry to you?” asked Veenie.

  “Not everybody’s made for country life,” I said.

  A door flew open across the street, and Fussy strolled out. Sassy popped out of the doorway behind him. She waved at us with both hands, like a windmill. “Yoo hoo! Gals!”

  I heard Veenie’s false teeth click. “That woman burns my bacon.”

  “Really? You hide it so well.” I waved back at Sassy before reluctantly loping across the street to see what she wanted.

  Veenie climbed into the Impala and stuck an eight-track tape into the deck. Loretta Lynn’s “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man,” rolled out the open windows.

  Sassy gave me a big old hug. “Veenie ain’t coming over?”

  “She’s catching up on her Facebook.”

  Fussy was dressed in his Commodore’s outfit, except his jacket was white now, with a little gold anchor stitched on the pocket. Sassy had changed into a new outfit that I’d never seen before. She was dressed in a long, red silk Chinese tunic with a Chairman Mao collar and black, stretch pencil pants. She had on a topknot hair piece with chopsticks stuck in her hair. She slipped one of her arms around Fussy’s waist and held him tight, like she was afraid a tornado might swoop down and suck him away. He didn’t seem to mind.

  Fussy asked me what was up with Gretal. “Boy, she really tore out of here. Came out to see what all the commotion was about.”

  “She’s going to stay with her sister up in Columbus for a spell.”

  Sassy nodded and looked sympathetic. “She all tore up about the hubs passing?”

  “Yeah. Something like that.” I saw the pontoon boat in the driveway. It was spit clean and shiny. The harpoon rigging glinted like a row of silver swords along the bow. The contraption was so big you would have thought Fussy was outfitted to drag Moby Dick ashore. The pontoon boat was yoked to a sparkling, yellow Ford double cab truck. “Truck new?” I asked.

  “Just bought her from Sammy Spray over in Salem. Was thinking of hauling the pontoon up to Lake Monroe after the regatta. I’m a member of the yacht club up there. Got an annual pass. Sassy’s never been.”

  Sassy beamed. “You and Boots ought to drive on up to Lake Monroe. We could have us some cocktails on the lake. Watch the sunset.”

  It seemed no matter what I said, Sassy and half the town was determined to mate me up with Boots. “Thank you,” I said, “but Boots and I are not an item.”

  Sassy nudged me with her elbow and said, “Right. Wink. Wink.”

  “No,” I said. “Really.”

  Veenie laid on the horn of the Impala.

  I tried ignoring her.

  Fussy shaded his eyes and looked over toward the Impala. He said, “I think your friend is tryin
g to get your attention.”

  “You go on,” said Sassy. “We’re headed over to Salem soon as we put the boat in down at the White River Yacht Club. They got a new German sausage house opened up down there. Fussy here is taking me out for dinner. I’m probably not going to be home until real late tonight, so don’t you and Veenie wait up.” She winked at me.

  Veenie horned me again.

  “Hold your horses!” I cried over my shoulder at Veenie. “Nice seeing you again,” I said to Fussy.

  “Same,” he said as I loped away.

  Back in the Impala, Veenie bellyached about being left alone in the hot car. She fanned herself with a Hoosier Feedbag coupon flier and coughed like she had a hairball. “I got a bad heart, you know. Not supposed to get overheated.”

  “That was your choice,” I said. “You could have come on over and said howdy to Sassy and Fussy with me.”

  “I don’t care for Sassy or Fussy. Never did like him. He carries a purple umbrella with tassels on it when it rains. My God, what kind of man does that? You know as well as I do that he’s got a right peculiar side to his personality.”

  “Some people say that about you.”

  “Yeah, but I’m peculiar in interesting ways. I’ve got character. People are always telling me that.”

  “Mostly what they say is that you are a character,” I said. “There’s a difference.”

  Veenie handed me my cell phone. “Thing’s been buzzing like a nest of drunk bees. It’s your daughter again. You were right. She thinks her husband is getting his corn dog battered on the side.”

  “You read my texts?”

  “You left it here on the seat. I was checking to see if it was an emergency.”

  I scrolled through the texts. They were more frantic than the day before. “For Christ’s sake,” I muttered as I read the texts, “can’t anybody in this state keep their zipper up or their skirt down?”

  “Just you, Ruby Jane. The way you live, I don’t see why you just don’t turn Amish.”

  “It’s the bonnets,” I said. “I never did like hats.”

  I texted Joyce and told her to drive down to my place for dinner. I promised I’d whip her up some fried chicken and persimmon pudding, her favorites, and we’d talk about her problems. She lived a little more than an hour away. This way we could talk without her husband suspecting anything. He wasn’t the sharpest saw in God’s tool chest, but if he saw me rattle up to their house on a weekday for no good reason, he was bound to be suspicious.

  Joyce texted back a mess of smiley faces and upturned thumbs and hearts.

  I wished people would use words, but it was a losing battle. Everybody was illiterate these days. They talked in pictures. Maybe it was for the better. Nobody under the age of forty could spell worth a spit anyway.

  “Fried chicken,” said Veenie. “That’s smart of you. Ain’t nothing fried chicken can’t fix. You making real gravy?”

  “I reckon.” I could tell by the look on Veenie’s little face that she’d already invited herself to supper.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I had a mess of fried chicken forked onto the serving platter by the time Joyce blew into the kitchen. She looked more like her daddy’s side of the family, the Waskoms, than my kin. She was just over five feet tall with a teased hairdo that added another five inches. She was plump. She’d gained weight since I last saw her at Christmas. Her blue blazer wouldn’t quite close around the middle. She wasn’t sleeping well. I could tell by the extra white cover-up she had slathered under her eyes. And her mascara was sloppy, not like her. She had some new eyeglasses, red plastic ovals that made her look like a chubby cheeked owl. Her hair was a new color, kind of auburn. She plopped her purse down on the kitchen table and climbed onto a chair. She was weeping by the time I got to the table with the platter of chicken. She yanked a chicken leg off the platter and started gnawing. She always had been a stress eater.

  Veenie plopped down in a chair across from Joyce while I mixed up a pitcher of iced tea.

  By the time I sat down, half the chicken was gone.

  “Have some mashed taters and gravy,” I said to Joyce as I slid the gravy pitcher and a steaming bowl of taters over her way.

  Joyce shoveled a mountain of taters onto her plate, then mashed a valley in the middle and poured in a lake of gravy.

  Veenie followed suit.

  In no time flat, the bowls were empty.

  Veenie licked the gravy bowl.

  Joyce started weeping again. “He’s leaving me this time.”

  “You sure?” I asked, mostly because with Joyce you never could tell if something was all that serious. A hangnail could make her go on like she was having her hand amputated.

  “Mama, he’s cheating on me. Cheating!”

  Veenie sucked down some iced tea. “Men are like that, honey. Fergus Senior used to paddle up hoochie-coochie creek with every skank that shot him a smile.”

  “But Russell is refined. He’s college educated.”

  “His willy never went to school,” Veenie said. “And men think with their willies, don’t they, RJ?”

  “Mostly,” I said. “What evidence you got of cheating?” I asked Joyce.

  Joyce started bawling again.

  I brought a plate of persimmon pudding to the table, topped it off with whipped cream, and handed Joyce a fork.

  She lit into the pudding.

  Veenie had to fight to get in there and yank out a piece for herself.

  When the pudding was gone, I cleared the table and threw the dishes into the sink to soak with some warm water.

  By the time I got into the living room, Veenie was comforting Joyce. Joyce had kicked her heels off and was sitting next to Veenie on the davenport. She had her legs tucked up under her, ripping through a box of tissues. Veenie was patting her hand.

  I handed Joyce a cold glass of Big Red.

  She gulped that down then sat up a little straighter. “Oh, Mama, why would Russell cheat on me? I’ve been a good wife.”

  “Wish I could tell you, honey, but Veenie is right. Men get awful addled about sex.”

  “Daddy never cheated on you.”

  “Your daddy wasn’t like most men. Besides, back in our day, people didn’t just pick up and get divorced. We stuck with it. None of us ever expected to be all that happy to begin with.”

  Veenie patted Joyce’s hand. “It probably don’t mean nothing. Rusty is getting to be middle aged. Men get insecure long about then. He said he’s leaving you?”

  “He hasn’t said a single word about the whole thing.” Joyce blew her nose and made a little sigh. She spread out on the couch.

  “Probably a good sign,” I said.

  “Oh heck, yeah. That’s a good sign,” said Veenie. “If this was serious, he’d have been mouthing off about it by now.”

  I asked Joyce how she knew Rusty was having an affair.

  “Oh Mama, I just do. He’s staying late at the office. And he never wants to do it anymore.”

  Veenie nodded. “Male menopause. Saw it on the Discovery Channel. Men got hormones too. Are his nuts drooping yet?”

  “Maybe a little.” Joyce started bawling again.

  I asked Joyce again if she had any hard evidence.

  “Like?”

  “Letters? Phone calls?”

  “He isn’t stupid, Mama. He’s not going to leave handkerchiefs with lipstick on them lying around the house. I just know, that’s how I know. I bet it’s one of those junior agents he works with.” Rusty ran an insurance agency up in Bloomington. In fact, he was Mr. Insurance of Southern Indiana. He was a successful pot-bellied little guy from Atlanta with a hawkish face who I’d always found a wee bit light in the loafers. He was one heck of an insurance salesman though. Old ladies liked to talk to him. He was smart enough to sit with them and compliment them on their looks and hairdos. It didn’t take much of that kind of attention to get a woman in these parts juiced up. Most of them were married to husbands who never paid them much mind
unless it was Valentine’s Day. On Valentine’s Day, a gal could count on a wilted bouquet of carnations from the IGA and some gas station chocolates. That was about as romantic as most Hoosier fellows ever got. That’s pretty much how Joyce got here.

  Veenie asked, “He around women all day?”

  “All day. Every day. He’s got twenty or more of them working for him now. Some college girls too. A veritable harem.” Joyce’s face cracked, and she started weeping again. She took to wringing her hands. “I don’t want to lose him. What will I tell Katey and Riley?”

  Katey and Riley were Joyce’s kids. They were twin teenagers who attended college at IU. They were nice kids, down-to-earth, bookworms. Frankly, given all the fruits and nuts in our family tree, I didn’t know how they turned out so stable.

  Veenie scooched over on the couch and dabbed at the mascara trails that ran down Joyce’s face with a tissue. “Don’t you fret none, honey. Me and your mama will get to the bottom of this. If that skunk Rusty is cheating on you, we’ll set him right.”

  Joyce looked up, her brown eyes big and pleading. She’d cried so much the inside of her eyeglasses were smeared with mascara. “You will?” she choked out. “I was going to hire you. You know, I mean you’re detectives and all, and me and Russell, we have money. You do this kind of thing all the time now, chase down cheating husbands, right?”

  “Yep,” said Veenie. “Matter of fact, we’ve been working on a case that involves some fellow doing the hollow wallow down in Hound Holler.”

  “I read about that online. That dentist? Bromley Apple? Him?”

  “The same. You know him?” I asked.

  Joyce made a face. She was sitting up now, working on straightening herself up. She tugged at her jacket. “He was a year ahead of me in school. He asked me out once, junior year.”

  “I don’t remember you dating him.”

  “I didn’t. He was awful. Creepy.” Joyce shuddered a little. “He was always following us girls around, trying to cop a feel. Cathy Phillips, you remember her, cheerleader, well she had to report him to the principal for following her into the gym shower. His mama gave some extra money to the basketball team to buy new uniforms, so they kept it all hush-hush. Is it true someone killed him?” She blew her nose. “Bet he deserved it. Old creep monster.”