Murder At the Mystery Mansion

by Serena B. Miller

  This upset Jerri Lynn so bad and she was sobbing so loud, I hardly knew what to do with her. She was so near term, I was scared she might accidentally start her labor right then and there. She just sat there on my old green couch and howled. I guess she’d finally had enough. The poor little thing had tried acting up, and her mama hadn’t come home. She’d tried being a good girl and getting good grades and her mama hadn’t come back. The whole time I think she was expecting Samantha to show up and get things back to normal again. This last phone call had taken that hope away. I know she was frustrated nearly to death that she hadn’t been home to talk to her mama when she called.

  I did the only thing I knew to do. I fixed her some tea and patted her hand and listened. But while I listened, I did a slow boil. I don’t get mad very easily anymore. Seems the older you get, and the tireder you get, the less effort you want to expend getting upset. Just doesn’t seem worth the bother. Over the years I’ve had about every emotion in the book. Some were enjoyable. Some weren’t. Mainly they was all useless because a person still just has to go on doing what they gotta do anyway. No matter what their feelings are. Getting all up in arms about every little thing doesn’t ever do a body any good.

  But this time another woman’s choices was just breaking my heart. I wished Samantha was there in front of me right then and there so I could give her a good talking to and ask her what in the world she was thinking of going off and leaving behind her two beautiful, good, daughters who loved her and needed her. Some people are almost too selfish to live and I decided that Samantha Hutchins was one of them people.

  Tea and cookies can’t heal heartbreak, but they gave that little pregnant girl something else to think about for a few minutes. She was hungry and they must have tasted good to her because she finished off the whole package before she went back home. When I walked her out onto the porch I could hear the mournful sound of her little sister practicing her clarinet. Jerri Lynn heard it, too.

  “That’s about all Maggie does these days,” Jerri Lynn said. “I sometimes get awful sick of hearing it, but practicing makes her feel better. Thanks for the cookies, Miss Doreen. I’d better get back to my sister now. At least we have each other.”

  I watched as that girl squared her shoulders and walked back to her daddy’s. I never wished for someone else’s daughter to be my own before, but that girl was starting to get under my skin. She was a brave one that one was.

  Right before June turned into July, we had us a brand new baby girl in our neighborhood. Prettiest little thing you ever saw.

  I don’t know if it was being abandoned by her mama that caused Jerri Lynn to be so focused on becoming a good mother, or if it was just part of who she was deep down. Maybe a little bit of both. All I know is that every day about one o’clock when the baby woke from her nap, Jerri Lynn took to walking down to my house with her little one so I could see some new marvel. Like watching her turn over, or sprout a new tooth. By the grace of God she was a good baby which made it a little easier on Jerri Lynn.

  It made me feel good to see my little next-door-neighbor, Esther, also taking Jerri Lynn under her wing. My neighbor weren’t the best mother in the world, but she was far from the worst, and Jerri Lynn needed a friend nearer her age than me. She’d pretty much lost the ones she had at school. Of course to hear her tell it, she’d dropped them. Didn’t matter. It’s hard to run around with girlfriends when you’re the only one toting a diaper bag and a baby.

  Glen perked up a little after the baby got here but he was still on a slow downward slide and neither me nor Jerri Lynn had a clue what to do about him. I’d never put much stock in somebody dying of a broken heart, but that Glen seemed like he just might. I never saw a man fall so low for so long. If he’d a’ asked me I’d of told him he needed some of them anti-depressing pills. But he didn’t ask me so I didn’t say nothing. Still, I was afraid if Samantha did happen to get tired of her other boyfriend and come back, after one good look at Glen she might high-tail it out of here again.

  I didn’t even know Samantha had a sister until the girls’ aunt came in from Wisconsin about the middle of July to see the baby. Turns out there was only a couple years between Samantha and her younger sister, Charlene, and they looked a lot alike. Jerri Lynn was so happy having her aunt there. She toted up that baby and brought Charlene down to meet me.

  Charlene looked so much like Samantha it was startling. At first I thought Samantha had come home. Then I took a second look. Charlene had a little more sag in the hips and was a little less plump in the face. Still, she wore her straight brown hair long and swinging like Samantha always did and frankly, I thought she had a more genuine smile.

  “Oh, shoot!” Jerri Lynn said after she’d introduced us. “Emma has dirtied her diaper again and I didn’t bring anything with me. I’ll be right back.”

  I noticed that Charlene didn’t make a move at going back to the house with Jerri Lynn. I got the feeling she wanted to talk with me and I was right.

  “Glen called and told me what happened back in September when my sister disappeared,” she said. “I haven’t heard a word from her. Do you have any ideas?”

  “Ideas?”

  “Jerri Lynn tells me that you’ve solved a few mysteries in the past.”

  “But them were murders,” I said.

  Charlene didn’t say nothing. She just sat there looking at me like she thought I should say something more.

  “I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time,” I said. “I’m no detective.”

  Charlene still didn’t say anything.

  “Are you thinking your sister didn’t run off with a truck driver after all?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Charlene said. “She hasn’t called me. Not once in ten months. That’s not like her.”

  “Maybe she thought you’d scold her,” I said.

  “Me?” Charlene laughed. “I’m on my fifth marriage and it’s getting shaky. I’ve been in and out of rehab so many times I’ve lost count. Just got out two weeks ago. I’m hoping it takes this time. I’m the black sheep of our family. Samantha knows I don’t have a leg to stand on if I gave her a hard time about leaving old Glen.”

  “And she ain’t contacted you?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Well, I been thinking,” I said. “Me and the girls down at the beauty shop have been talking about what might have happened. Menopause can make a woman a little crazy and Samantha is about the right age. Edith says she started pitching perfectly good furniture out the door when she was going through the change. Betty says she started writing letters to an old boyfriend she hadn’t even cared all that much about. Fortunately she got her good sense back before she mailed any of ‘em. Do you think going through the change might be a possibility of why your sister lost her mind and took off?”

  “Maybe, except it never mattered how bad I messed up or how long I was in rehab, Samantha always stayed in touch with me one way or another.”

  That worried me. A woman might leave her husband for another man and never look back, but there’d be no reason not call her sister.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what to think. I sure don’t want to get my nieces any more tore up than they already are. I know I’m an addict and always will be, but I love my sister. I have a feeling I need to try to find her.”

  Well, that set my old brain to churning which is never a good thing. It kept me up most of the night examining other possibilities. None of them possibilities made a lick of sense, though. Glen said she’d left with a truck driver and called back only once. Glen Hutchins might be falling apart from grief over his wife’s abandonment but I’d never known him to be a liar.

  I hated to get something started, but after that conversation with Charlene, I decided to go have a chat with our local sheriff. Ben’s a good boy. The fact that his granddaddy ran a moonshine still didn’t hurt him in the election as much as what most people might expect. If any
thing, it helped. We tend to feel a little bit protective of our moonshiners around here, especially since most of us are kin to one or two of ‘em. Ben’s mama was a Culp, and they’re good people. She taught Ben right from wrong and I don’t think the family moonshine still is running anymore. Of course I could be mistaken about that. Ben’s granddaddy did have a good reputation for quality. Not that I ever sampled any. I’m a teetotaler born and raised, but I’ve heard rumors.

  Anyway, I went to have a friendly chat with Ben.

  “What if somebody disappeared and the spouse said they’d left with somebody else and no one ever heard from them again. Would that raise your suspicions?”

  “You’re talking about the Hutchins?”

  I nodded.

  “There’s nothing to make me think it’s anything more than what Glen’s been saying,” Ben said. “His wife got fed up with family life and decided to make a clean break of it. It happens.”

  “She just never struck me as the type,” I said.

  Ben clasped his hands behind his head, leaned back and stared out the window. “I was suspicious when I first heard, and I did a background check on both of them. Glen’s squeaky clean but so is Samantha. No domestic disputes. Not so much as an overdue bill or a parking ticket. With the exception of their daughter getting pregnant, it’s been the perfect family. There’s no reason to think otherwise.”

  “I’m sorry I bothered you,” I said, feeling a little silly. “It’s just that the girls miss their mother. Glen says she called recently and is way out west. It’s the only contact they’ve had with her and they’ve been upset ever since.”

  Ben nodded. “She’s a grown woman. If she wants to gallivant all over the place with whoever she pleases, I can’t exactly arrest her for it. There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.”

  “I guess I’ll have to leave it alone then.”

  “Miss Doreen?” he said, as I was leaving.

  “Yes.”

  “If you see anything unusual, let me know. I’ll pay attention to anything you got to say.”

  That made me feel a little better. “You’re a good boy, Ben. You tell your mama I said hi.”

  “I surely will.” He smiled. “You take care of yourself, now.”

  Ben is not a bad looking man, but he does have them ears that stick out too far just like his daddy and a lot of freckles. Makes it a little hard to take him seriously as a law officer, even though he’s a good one.

  So, life went on. The baby got two bottom teeth and was the cutest thing you ever saw when she grinned at you—and that baby grinned a lot. She didn’t know things weren’t right at home. As long as she had her mama to hold onto, plenty of warm milk in her belly, and dry diapers, all was right in her little world.

  With summer, the sadness over Samantha’s leaving seemed to lift a little bit. Our neighborhood sort of shrugged and turned its attention elsewhere. I got used to the rhythm of Jerri Lynn’s daily visits, watching the baby grow, and sometimes when there was a little extra left out of my social security check, I’d buy a play-pretty for the baby.

  Jerri Lynn grew into the role of taking over the running of the household. She learned herself how to cook and watched over her little sister like a mother hen. She fussed over her daddy and got him to spiff up a bit, too. Even the Christmas lights came down. In August, which didn’t seem hardly worth the trouble to me.

  One evening that fall while Glen was at a school meeting, Jerri Lynn called and asked if I had an extra pound of hamburger. She was trying to make spaghetti and hadn’t realized she was out. Foodland was already closed and she didn’t want to have to drive all the way across the river to Walmart to get some. Well, I did happen to have a fresh pound of hamburger in the Frigidaire and since it was a nice evening I offered to bring it down to her so she wouldn’t have to get the baby out.

  I don’t know about where you live, but in our part of Kentucky a lot of people tend to do their visiting through back doors instead of the front. I guess it just feels friendlier. So I didn’t think nothing about it when Jerri Lynn motioned me through the back door into the kitchen, which meant walking through the screened-in back porch.

  It was the kind of porch somebody probably once thought would make a nice sitting place if it had screens on it to keep the bugs out. But like a lot of porches around here these days, nobody sat out there anymore. If they wanted to sit, they went inside and the porch just ended up being a catch-all place for boots and coats and odds and ends. Some people kept their chest freezers on their porches, too, and I noticed that that’s where Glen’s family stored theirs.

  “You don’t have any room for a pound of hamburger in that big ole freezer out there?” I asked, kind of teasing-like, as I handed her the hamburger.

  “Oh, there’s probably all kinds of hamburger in that freezer out there,” she said. “But daddy lost the key awhile back and we haven’t been able to find it since. He says it’ll turn up sooner or later.”

  Well, I weren’t surprised to hear that. Glen had been walking around in such a fog he probably hardly remembered his name most of the time, let alone where he’d put a freezer key.

  She told me to have a seat at the table while she worked on the spaghetti so I did. She was a’ bustlin’ around the kitchen like she was a grown woman instead of only seventeen. I think she was showing off just a little bit for me and I didn’t mind admiring how competent she was becoming. The baby was off in the other room being watched over by Maggie. I figured Jerri Lynn wouldn’t be in my life much longer. She was a cute little thing and some guy would probably snap her up before long, baby and all and she’d forget all about her friendship with old Doreen. It made me sad to think that—I’d gotten real attached to the girl and her baby—but that’s just the way it is sometimes with young people.

  Jerri Lynn put a tea kettle on and served some to me just like she was used to being the lady of the house. Then she finished up the spaghetti and filled three plates without even asking me if I wanted to stay. Like I was part of the family or something. It was real nice and homey. Her little sister brought the baby in and put her in the high chair and we had us a sort of spaghetti and tea party. Nothing is much cuter than watching a baby with only two bottom teeth trying to eat spaghetti.

  Glen walked in and his face brightened at the sight of his daughters and grandbaby. He and me have always gotten along, so he didn’t seem upset to find me there neither.

  I walked home afterward feeling pretty good about things and thinking that maybe that little family was going to be all right after all. I was glad for the small part I’d had in what healing they’d had. I try to keep my nose out of people’s business, but sometimes you can’t help it. This time I was glad I got involved.

  That night I slept like a baby until about four o’clock in the morning and then I had one of the worst nightmares of my life. I dreamed that Samantha was in trouble and was calling out to me. I could see her so well in my nightmare and could hear her voice so clearly that it made me sweat. She was just a’begging and a’begging me to help her.

  The nightmare was so real that I woke up shaking and shivering and with my heart going ninety-miles an hour. I got up to get a drink of water, hoping I could finish getting myself out of the feeling of being in the middle of that nightmare. I just about fell down because my knees was so weak from the upset I’d had.

  There weren’t going to be any more sleep for me that night, so I started in on a project I’d been putting off a long time—cleaning out the pantry. By six a.m. I’d thrown out so many expired canned goods that I was ashamed I’d let it get to that state. I had seen that hoarders show when I was at my nieces down in Little Rock and she had cable TV. It give me shivers to see all them people who let things pile up around their ears. I was determined not to let that happen to me. I didn’t want to end up on no TV program looking like a crazy lady.

  So by around seven, I had eaten my breakfast, the nightmare had pretty much worn off, and I was feeling fairly good about thi
ngs again.

  I finally got the little afghan I’d been crocheting finished while I watched my stories that afternoon. My fingers ain’t as nimble as they used to be. I was a little late with it, but better late than never, I always say. I wrapped it up all fluffy in some nice tissue paper and walked it down to the Hutchins. Nobody was at home, so I left it on top of the freezer on the back porch. I thought about what a nice surprise it would be for Jerri Lynn to find the present waiting for her when she got home.

  Weren’t long before she called to thank me. She’d taken the baby out for a checkup at the doctor’s office and found the package when she got home. I went to bed that night feeling real good about myself. I figured that since I hadn’t eaten a big plate of spaghetti before I went to bed this time, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have me any more bad dreams.

  I was wrong. This time the nightmare was even more intense. Samantha was still calling for help. I was struggling to get to her, but I couldn’t. It was so strange. When I woke up I couldn’t figure out why this was happening now instead of all them months ago when her leaving was still fresh. All this time I’d known she was gone I’d been worrying over Glen and the girls and the baby. I’d never worried a whole lot about Samantha—except for wanting to smack her for leaving her family.

  There are people who make claims to being psychic. I’m not one of them people. I’ve heard tell of parents who dreamed that their children was in trouble and then found out that they really were. I’ve even heard of spouses so close to each other that they could tell when one or the other had died clear around on the other side of the world, but I don’t have that in me. Even if I did, why would Samantha try to contact me of all people? I weren’t all that close to her.

  It just didn’t make sense.

  The third night, I laid down in my bed kinda careful-like, half afraid of what kind of nightmare I might have this time. I didn’t even make it to two o’clock before I had another bad dream. This time, Samantha was crying out that she was cold and needed the baby’s afghan to cover herself.