by Abigail Keam
Ignoring the reference to my late husband’s mistress, Ellen Boudreaux, June asked, “Why was I kept out of the loop?”
“It just happened last night, June. I got home late and went to bed. I haven’t had time to tell anyone, let alone you.”
Bess said, “I made a chocolate mousse cake for tonight, but you can have a piece if you spill. We want the skinny from the horse’s mouth.”
I sat down. “Breakfast it is then. I’ll take one of your bribes anytime, Bess.”
Bess jumped up and served a huge piece of chocolate deliciousness along with a glass of milk. Now, that’s what I call a good breakfast. Sugar and chocolate. Better than caffeine to get a body going.
Amelia said, “It says a young man was found in the trunk of Veritas Noble’s car.”
“True,” I replied, taking a big bite out of the cake. “His name was Shelby Carpenter.”
“The newspaper article said the police weren’t releasing the name of the victim until the family was notified,” Amelia said.
“I’m nothing if not resourceful, Bess. I have my ways.” I wasn’t about to admit that I had sifted through the man’s wallet, even to Lady Elsmere and her peeps.
“Shelby Carpenter. Shelby Carpenter,” Bess mused thoughtfully. “Wasn’t that the name of a character played by Vincent Price in the movie Laura?
“I didn’t know you like old movies,” I said.
“Who was the victim?” June asked, ignoring Bess.
“I looked him up on the Internet. He was a freelance reporter,” I answered.
“What does that mean?” June asked before taking a sip of her coffee.
I replied, “I gather he investigated stories on his own and wrote about them on his blog. Sometimes a newspaper would pick an article up. His blog had over six hundred thousand followers.”
“Impressive,” Bess said. “Where was he based?”
“Washington, DC.”
June asked, “So he wrote about politics.”
“A lot of the time, but anything that interested him I guess.”
“If he was an investigative reporter, what was he doing here?” Amelia asked.
I said, “Better yet, who didn’t want him to nose around the Bluegrass and was willing to kill him over it? Heard anything through the grapevine, June? You always have sources who feed you information.”
“Ah, fiddle de de. Nothing but the scuttlebutt on Ferrina Landau’s party to show off her new necklace bought by her doddering old fool of a husband.”
Bess mused, “Is Ferrina one of those made-up names for white girls?”
“Everything about the woman is made-up from her pumped-up lips to her reconstructed bum.”
“Easy there, June. People might think you don’t like her,” I chided, smiling. I loved it when June brandished her claws. “I take it that you’re going to her party.”
“Oh, wouldn’t miss it for the world,” June answered.
“I didn’t get an invitation,” I said.
“We can remedy that. I’ll take you as my plus one.”
“Ellen Boudreaux is Ferrina’s best friend. She’ll be there.”
June huffed, “All the more reason for you to show up looking fabulous.”
“I can’t, June. I don’t have anything to wear. The police still have my Dior dress. Even if they gave it back, it’s ruined.”
“Don’t you have a little black dress?”
“Yes, but I reserve it for funerals. I can’t be seen gallivanting about wearing it at parties.”
“Very well, then. You can choose one of my couture evening gowns. I’ll even throw in some of my jewelry.”
“To keep? You’re the best.” I just loved teasing June.
June blustered, “To borrow, you cheeky wench. And I want my dress back in the same condition as you took it and the same stones on my jewelry.”
“Switch stones? Good lord. You must think I’m some international jewel thief.”
At the mention of a jewel thief, June pursed her lips. “I wonder how Liam is doing? Does he think of me?”
Who is Liam, you ask? Liam was a thief posing as the valet for June’s nephew, Anthony, who planned to steal and embezzle from June. To make a long story short, Anthony was thrown out of the Big House on his ear, but Liam was allowed to stay as Charles’ under-butler. Charles loathed Liam, but June set out to reform Liam and eventually took him to her bed.
Yeah, I wince at the thought of those two together as well. The upshot was Liam did steal some fabulous gemstones, but not from June, and no one had seen him since. The scuttlebutt was that he sold the gems on the black market and was living like a king in Europe. Since the gems had been missing for decades, and the true owner, Bunny Witt, had been murdered, no one filed a police report on them. So they officially never existed. No crime had been committed. Liam was free as a bird.
June had been bereft ever since. She longed for her “girl toy.”
“Didn’t you date Ferrina’s husband, King?” I said, changing the subject.
“I did for a very short time after my first husband had passed away. Oh, my word, King was tedious. I think one of the reasons I went to Europe was to flee him. He ended up marrying one of my good friends, and, of course, they divorced several years later. I can only imagine how my friend must have suffered from boredom. It was much later when King met Ferrina and married her. He must have been in his fifties then.”
Amelia said, “Ferrina had a baby right quick, too.”
“Babies are always an insurance policy for a woman in May-December marriages, especially if there is a prenup involved,” June said.
“Yes. Babies. They certainly can upset the apple cart though,” I mused, thinking about the documents Shelby Carpenter was carrying with him when he died—among other things.
“What does that mean?” Bess asked.
“Nothing. I think I’ll go up and select a dress now.”
“I mean it, Josiah. No rips. No tears. No stains or you’ll pay to fix it.”
“Yes, your majesty,” I called over my shoulder, heading toward the elevator. I took it up to the second floor and entered June’s glamorous bedroom with its metallic silver wallpaper with Chinese pink blossoms and a silver bedspread on her king bed. I entered June’s massive closet, which was as big as my bedroom suite and began going through her evening gowns. The closet even had its own filtering system to keep dust off June’s clothes.
June had grouped her gowns into eras. All the gowns purchased in the sixties were grouped together as well as those from the seventies, eighties, etc. You get the picture. I skipped looking at the seventies gowns. Nothing pretty came of the seventies, so I headed for the sixties era. Each gown was tagged with the date purchased, where June had worn it, and what jewelry accessorized it.
There was another reason I looked through the sixties gowns. June had shrunk with age, so her dresses had become more diminutive over time. I thought I had the best chance of finding a dress that would fit me from the sixties. I had shed quite a few pounds over several years, but I knew the gowns from the nineties were a lost cause even with my weight loss. As I went through the couture gowns, I hummed the theme song from The Avengers. What would Emma Peel wear?
Pulling out one gown after another, I almost despaired. I couldn’t find a dress that would fit me nor something I liked. Apparently a lot of ugly dresses were made in the 1960s as well as the 1970s. Then I came across a little black number that reminded me of the dress Audrey Hepburn wore in the opening scene of Breakfast At Tiffany’s. I pulled it out and looked in the full length mirror while holding the dress in front of me. It would do. Simple but elegant.
By that time Amelia had come upstairs and poked her head in the closet. “Need any help?”
“What do you think?” I held out the dress.
“Lady Elsmere hasn’t worn that dress in decades. It goes well with your hair.” She looked at the tag. “She last wore this dress for a New Year’s Eve party in London. Just been gathering mot
hballs ever since. Glad to see you’re going to take it out and give it a spin.”
I looked back in the mirror, cocking my head from one side to another, trying to make up my mind. “Do you have any long black evening gloves to go with this?”
Amelia went over to a wall of drawers and rummaged through one. “These will do.”
I put them on. “They’re perfect, don’t you think?”
Amelia nodded. “How are you going to wear your hair?”
“I was thinking an updo.”
“Perfect for the era. What about jewelry?”
“Does June have a tiara comb?”
Amelia laughed. “You mean like the one Audrey Hepburn wore? Every white woman wants to look like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany’s. Are you going to a party or dressing up for Halloween?”
I grinned sheepishly and shrugged. “Guilty as charged.”
Amelia patted my shoulder. “Let’s see what we can find. June has a choker that I think would look splendid.”
I spent the next hour trying on the dress with different pieces of June’s jewelry and finally selected two pieces. The dress was very tight, so Amelia was going to let out the seams for me. We made a pact not to tell June about the alterations. June’s good nature would only go so far, and altering her clothes did not fall under the rubric of “borrowing” a dress.
I left feeling lighter knowing my fairy godmother had come to my rescue and instead of cinders and soot, I could go to the ball with my head held high. Cinderella had nothing on me.
5
For the next several days, I helped Eunice, my business partner, prepare baby quiches and double-chocolate peanut butter brownies for a wedding reception. On the day before the event, the tables were already set up on the patio around the pool, and several fountains had been installed in the pool water, giving a festive spray accented by rotating colored lights to delight the guests.
The local florist came and installed pink and white centerpieces and matching floating bouquets in the pool, while the wedding planner set the tables with white china with gold-rimmed bands, Waterford stemware, and pink lace napkins. Eunice set out the chafing dishes and then we took pictures before covering the tables with clear plastic tarps. I can say with absolute honesty that the Butterfly looked stunning.
The wedding was set for eleven the next day at an old stone church nestled between two horse farms, and the reception was for one o’clock sharp. Eunice and I would return to the Butterfly around eight in the morning, finishing up with cooking honey-glazed salmon with bourbon sauce, potatoes au gratin, and asparagus. I was assigned to pull out trays of Jell-O and use cookie cutters to produce wobbly dinosaurs, Sasquatch and R2D2 figures. Eunice thought this task was so simple that even I couldn’t screw it up.
It was late, and we both were exhausted. I locked the front door to the Butterfly, and Eunice and I went our separate ways for the night. She went home to Versailles, and I took my golf cart to Matt’s bungalow where Baby waited for me.
In the morning, Malcolm, Charles’ grandson, would come for my English Mastiff, Baby, and take him to the Big House when I rented out the Butterfly. The cars and noise upset Baby prompting him to protect our home. It was best that he stay with Bess to whom I usually gave fifty dollars to babysit my big pooch until the event was over.
As I arrived and unlocked the door to the bungalow, I could hear Baby thumping his thick tail against the wall, waiting for me. There’s no joy like a dog greeting his human mommy. No matter how tired I was, Baby always made me feel better because he was genuinely glad to see me.
I opened the door expecting a wagging tail and a big tongue lick. Instead, Baby shot past me, ran down the few steps into the yard, and tinkled. I went inside and poured myself bourbon neat. With glass in hand, I went back outside and sat on the porch watching Baby sniff here and there before he plopped down by my chair, happy that I was with him. I rested my feet on him, and Baby sighed deeply, content he was not alone anymore.
Matt’s house sat on a ridge, so I could see the gentle rolling hills of the Bluegrass give way to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains miles away. We called those foothills the knobs around here.
I sipped on my drink grateful that the day was over. Glad to have some free time, I turned on my phone and studied the pictures of Shelby Carpenter I had surreptitiously taken. I was thinking Shelby had been standing by Veritas’ car when he was pinned by someone with another car. Being unable to run, Carpenter was shot point blank and thrown into the trunk of the car, which popped open by the collision. That would mean Carpenter would have more extensive damage to his body than just a bullet hole. The impact would have caused major trauma.
How could such a thing have happened downtown without any witnesses? And how long would it have taken someone to ram Carpenter, get out of their car, shoot him, pull their car back, get out of the car again, pick up Carpenter, and then throw him into the trunk, close the trunk, get back in their car, and drive off?
It had to have been a man. A woman alone couldn’t have lifted Carpenter and deposited him in the trunk.
Putting my drink aside, I stepped over Baby and went to my golf cart. Curious, Baby followed me. Seeing me get into the cart, Baby jumped in, too, thinking he was going on a ride. Timing myself, I re-created the sequence of events I believed to have taken place. I repeated the actions several times. The shortest time I could achieve was four minutes. However, I believed a strong male could have accomplished the murder in three minutes.
Hmm. I sat in the golf cart thinking. Someone must have really hated Shelby Carpenter. It was a vicious murder. The only good thing about it was that his demise must have been relatively quick. Carpenter hadn’t suffered long, although a minute of this torture would have seemed like an eternity if Carpenter was conscious throughout. But there was another possible scenario. It could have played out that Carpenter had been forced into the trunk at gunpoint and then shot because I didn’t see blood on either the pavement or the side of the car. I really needed to see the autopsy report.
Regardless, Carpenter had been followed. I would have bet my house on that. I doubt this murder was one of random opportunity. Robbery was not a motive. As a reporter, he must have discovered something someone didn’t want others to know, but why leave those folded-up documents in Carpenter’s pocket? Did the murderer not have time to search him? Did someone suddenly come along, and the murderer had to shut the trunk to hide his crime? Once the trunk was closed, the murderer could not get it open again. It was only the impact of his or her car that forced VeVe’s trunk to pop open in the first place.
I shuddered.
Going back inside the bungalow, I fed Baby and changed his water. Then I took Baby’s brush and gave him a nice rub down. Lastly, I sniffed his fur. “A bath is in your future, old boy. I smell the very faint odor of a skunk encounter, but it will have to wait for a couple of days. Until then, stay away from wild critters.” Baby knew what the word bath meant, and the displeasure showed on his face.
Scratching and muffled meowing sounded at the front door. Baby pulled away from me, ambled over to the door, pawing at it while glancing back at me.
“Okay. Okay. I thought we could get by one night without your pets.” I pushed Baby aside and opened the door. Five cats ran inside and quickly made themselves at home. How did the Kitty Kaboodle even know we were here?
Baby barked a few times as if to remind the cats that they were guests in Matt’s home. Ignoring Baby, the cats immediately went into the kitchen prowling for some grub. After spooning out some tuna fish for the intruders, I took a leisurely hot shower. That was a plus about living alone. I never had to worry about using up all the hot water.
Afterward, I took my kidney medication, changed my pain patch, massaged my bad leg, made a salad, watched some silly TV, and fell asleep. Not exactly an exciting life, but then again, I was alive.
Not like Shelby Carpenter, who was on a cold slab in the coroner’s office.
I
’ll take pain over death any day. That is—until the pain gets too bad.
6
The wedding reception went off without a hitch. I got to the Butterfly at seven and had started the prep work by the time Eunice showed up. By eleven, the help had arrived and took the plastic covers off the tables which still looked great. No pesky raccoons had investigated during the night and wrecked them.
By twelve everything was in the chafing dishes except for the asparagus. I turned the fountains on and gave everything a last minute look-see before I checked in with Eunice. By twelve-thirty, some early birds began to arrive.
It was time for me to disappear. Eunice shooed me away. She would handle the rest by herself with the staff she had hired. I would come back around three and help with the cleanup. I wished Eunice luck and fled like the house was on fire.
Heading back to Matt’s bungalow, I was going to take a much needed nap without interruption. No big slobbery dog. No meowing menaces. No Eunice snapping orders at me. Just lovely peace and quiet.
Or so I thought.
7
I awoke to the sound of the front door’s squeaky hinges as it opened. I wondered if one of the reception guests was barging in by mistake. I looked at my watch. It was 2:40 in the afternoon. I had to be up anyway.
Jumping out of bed, I put on my shoes and went into the living room ready to help some poor sop find the Butterfly only to discover Matt standing in the doorway, looking around. He was holding his little girl, Emmeline.
I stood dumbfounded.
“Hi,” Matt said with a smile that lit up a room.
Emmeline squirmed, so Matt put her on the floor. She immediately crawled toward me.
I picked her up and kissed her chubby cheeks. “What are you doing here?” I asked her.
She tugged at my hair in response.
“Do you remember me?” I asked. “Do you remember your Auntie Jo?”