Murder on the Ballot

by Elizabeth Spann Craig

  Apparently, according to the shriek Myrtle heard behind her, Pasha must have taken the opportunity to leap somewhere on Jenny with all of her claws poking into her. Then the cat yowled angrily as Jenny apparently flung her off.

  Jenny grabbed Myrtle from behind and shoved her on the floor, raising the wrench.

  Suddenly, the newsroom was flooded with light and Sloan stood there, looking thunderstruck at the sight of local socialite Jenny preparing to hit his old schoolteacher on the head with a wrench. “Jenny?” he asked slowly.

  “Call Red,” said Myrtle in her most commanding voice and Sloan immediately dug his phone out of his pocket. To Jenny, she said in a steely tone, “Put the wrench down.”

  Jenny didn’t, but was so distracted by the sight of Sloan dialing Red that Myrtle was able to knock it out of her hand with her cane.

  Jenny took off for the door, pushing the still-shocked Sloan out of the way.

  Myrtle rushed after her, yelling, “Stop! Murderer! Help!”

  Jenny came to a skidding stop right outside the newspaper office. Wanda and Miles were standing there, Wanda staring gravely at Jenny.

  “Where you gonna go?” asked Wanda intently. “Gonna leave yer boy?”

  Jenny’s shoulders slumped. Then she slowly shook her head.

  Wanda said, “Should’a slept. Shouldn’t have gone out that night and done what you did.”

  Jenny nodded and quietly said, “I know.”

  After that, Jenny was quite placid as they waited a few minutes for Red to appear. Jenny stood demurely with her hands folded and a blank expression on her face. Wanda stood silent and grim. Miles looked nervously around, hoping Red would appear at any moment. Pasha gave herself a bath and then loped away. Myrtle convinced Sloan that she must be the one to write the story and that perhaps it qualified as a rare “special edition” for the newspaper. Onlookers craned their necks curiously as they strolled by.

  Red finally arrived, looking hassled. Lieutenant Perkins was right behind him. “Mama,” he groaned.

  Myrtle threw up her hands. “I didn’t do a single thing, Red! Jenny stalked me. She followed me into the newsroom and created the entire scene.”

  “So I need to add ‘stalker’ to the list of crimes I hear Jenny has committed?” Red looked at Jenny and said, “I have to admit I’m surprised by this, Jenny. I never had you down as a murderer.”

  Myrtle said, “That’s how she was able to fly under the radar.”

  Perkins smiled at Myrtle. “Sort of the way you’re able to fly under the radar, I suppose.”

  Myrtle beamed at him as if he were a favorite student. “Precisely! Everyone tends to underestimate the elderly, don’t they?”

  “To their detriment, if they’re dealing with you,” muttered Red. He turned to Jenny. “Now, what have we got on our hands here? Two murders?”

  A flash of dislike appeared on Jenny’s features. “Just the one.”

  “She’d never have done anything to hurt Royce,” said Myrtle. “That’s the whole point.”

  “Should’a just slept,” murmured Wanda again.

  Red gave Wanda an apprehensive look. Then he glanced around him where a small crowd of onlookers was gaping at them. “All right, first things first. Let’s move this conversation off the sidewalk and into the station.”

  “Everyone?” asked Miles, looking uneasily around him. He apparently did not want to be in this parade of killers and witnesses heading to the police station.

  “Everyone,” said Red firmly as he handcuffed Jenny and strode with her down the street to the small police station at the town hall.

  It was quite a motley crew parading down the sidewalk. Miles looked down at the sidewalk as Myrtle puffed up with pride and was practically waving as they went.

  “Miles,” she hissed at him. “You look very guilty with your head down like that. Everyone’s going to think that you’re the culprit or had something to do with it.”

  Miles said darkly, “I had nothing to do with any of it. I hardly think anyone is going to believe otherwise, considering that Jenny is the one in handcuffs.”

  They quickly arrived at the station. Perkins set up a digital recorder to record everyone’s statements while Red took the more old-fashioned approach of finding actual paper statements for everyone to fill out. Miles jotted down what he’d seen when he’d arrived at the station. Wanda dictated her account. Sloan, who was now getting a bit sleepy from the effects of his midday beer drinking, quickly wrote down what had happened when he’d opened the newsroom door and then asked to be excused.

  “Good idea,” drawled Red. “In fact, I’m going to go ahead and ask Wanda and Miles to leave too, since we have their accounts, if that’s okay with Lt. Perkins.” Perkins gave a nod and Red continued, “This police station is too small. Mama, I do want to hear a little more of an explanation as to what happened from you. And Jenny—well, you know you’re detained for the foreseeable future.”

  Myrtle said, “I do have one question for Wanda before she goes. How did you end up at the newspaper office? Miles was taking you back home.”

  Wanda said in a quiet voice, “You was in danger.”

  Myrtle felt very relieved The Sight had finally provided a little clarity in its message.

  After the others left, Red prompted his mother. “Now. Let me hear how you ended up in this situation.”

  Myrtle put her nose in the air. “I was simply minding my own business.”

  Perkins smiled at her. “What makes me think that you might have also wanted to speak with the editor about writing a story about Preston’s murder?”

  Myrtle gave him an admiring look. “You’re absolutely right. In fact, now Sloan has assigned me with an even bigger story. This one. Anyway, as I said, I was minding my own business.”

  Jenny made a disbelieving huffing noise.

  Perkins said to her, “You disagree with that, Mrs. Rollins?”

  Jenny said, “I certainly do. The last thing Myrtle Clover does is to mind her own business. She minds everyone else’s business. That’s why we’re all here right now.”

  Myrtle gave her a cold look. “No, the reason we’re all here right now is because you took the ill-advised approach of taking justice into your own hands.”

  Jenny opened her mouth to respond and then shut it again.

  Myrtle said, “That’s right. You don’t have a response to that because it’s true. Instead of informing the police that you’d seen Preston leaving a crime scene, you decided to mete out your own justice in the form of revenge.”

  Jenny’s eyes narrowed. “I already told you—”

  “Oh, I’m well-aware of what you’ve already told me. You didn’t want to call the police because you thought it would make you look guilty because you’d been at a crime scene. I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t wash with me. What happened is that you were furious. Even though you knew Royce wasn’t faithful to you, you still loved him fiercely. I heard accounts of how protective you were towards him in public if you felt he was being attacked in any way. You were angry you couldn’t provide that role of protector in time to save him . . . so you switched it, didn’t you? You set out to enact revenge on his killer.”

  Jenny had already been informed of her rights, of course, however she seemed inclined to forget the need of an attorney as Myrtle got her riled up. Perhaps Jenny Rollins had never been challenged in such a way. At any rate, it made her see red.

  “Why shouldn’t I have?” she said in a haughty tone. “I had no guarantee that he was going to be apprehended for killing my husband. And no guarantee that a jury of his peers wouldn’t be stupid enough to give him a minor sentence.”

  “So you stalked Preston,” said Myrtle.

  “Followed him,” corrected Jenny, shortly.

  Myrtle narrowed her eyes. “If you were waiting outside his home, you were stalking him, not following him.”

  Red groaned. “Mama, can we dispense with the semantics right now and get on with it?”


  “Fine! So you saw Preston leave the garage very late and head home. Then you saw him head toward Erma Sherman’s house,” said Myrtle.

  Jenny just watched her with cold eyes.

  Myrtle continued, “You must not have been too surprised, however. After all, Erma had made quite a scene at Royce’s funeral reception, claiming to have information that she was going to pass on to Red about Royce’s death. That was clearly why you decided to stake out his house. Preston must have been sweating bullets, worried sick about being exposed.”

  “He was a ridiculous man,” snapped Jenny. “He tried to talk to me at Royce’s funeral, blaming Royce for having an affair with Cindy. No respect for me or for the dead. I didn’t want to hear anything about it.”

  “He was so ridiculous, in fact, that you decided to murder him. So you did—right there in Erma’s yard. Erma, who’s become something of a light sleeper, heard some noise out there. You slipped away before she could investigate and drove back home where you could plead ignorance to the murder. But there was someone who knew you weren’t where you’d said—Scotty.”

  Jenny looked down at the linoleum floor of the police station.

  Myrtle said, “Scotty, being a loyal son, wasn’t quite sure what you’d been doing, but knew you needed an alibi. So he gave you one. The only problem is that Scotty wasn’t actually working when he said he was that night. It made it look like Scotty was the one who’d killed Preston, even though he’d only given the wrong information to protect you.”

  “You were determined to find out that Scotty had lied about when he’d worked,” said Jenny.

  Red chuckled. “Mama has a way of getting into other people’s business, Jenny. I know you’re not from around here, but that’s something everybody knows here in Bradley.”

  Perkins said, “So what made you decide to come after Mrs. Clover?”

  “Stalk me,” said Myrtle.

  Jenny said, “No, no. I actually followed this time. I didn’t wait outside your house, I just happened to see you as I was walking through downtown. I thought it might be a good time to find out exactly how much you knew—and if you were suspecting Scotty.”

  Myrtle snorted inelegantly. “I think there was a little more thought to it than that and a lot more malice. I hardly believe that Jenny carries a heavy wrench around with her on a daily basis.”

  Jenny shrugged.

  Myrtle said, “The problem was that Jenny didn’t think before she spoke. So she ended up telling me that Royce was pushed down a staircase.”

  Red’s and Perkins’s eyebrows shot up simultaneously.

  “That’s right,” said Myrtle smugly. “Jenny knew precisely how her husband had died, even though Red said that information was to be kept secret. After that, everything devolved into a total circus.”

  “If Jenny immediately pulled out the wrench, how did you manage to get away from her?” asked Perkins with interest.

  “Pasha. My little love.”

  Jenny made an irritated click with her tongue.

  Perkins frowned and Red explained, “Mama’s feral friend. It’s a black cat.”

  “And she’s brilliant.”

  Red gave Myrtle a doubtful look, but didn’t seem to want to argue the point.

  “Pasha defended me with great passion and earnestness, surprising Jenny enough so I could run toward the door. But Sloan’s clutter derailed me and I tripped over one of the many boxes he left scattered all over the floor. He fortunately redeemed himself by returning from the bar or wherever he was and interrupting Jenny before she could silence me, too,” said Myrtle.

  Jenny pressed her lips together.

  “Okay, well, I’ve heard enough,” said Perkins. “We’re going to need to get you processed, Mrs. Rollins. Mrs. Clover, I hope you’re going to go home and put your feet up for a while.”

  “Oh, I will. As I write the news story about how I solved the case,” said Myrtle, with a sly look at Red.

  Red growled.

  “Or I could re-open my bid for town council,” said Myrtle with a sweet smile.

  “Happy reporting,” said Red dryly.

  About the Author:

  Elizabeth writes the Southern Quilting mysteries and Memphis Barbeque mysteries for Penguin Random House and the Myrtle Clover series for Midnight Ink and independently. She blogs at ElizabethSpannCraig.com/blog, named by Writer’s Digest as one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers. Elizabeth makes her home in Matthews, North Carolina, with her husband. She’s the mother of two.

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  I love hearing from my readers. You can find me on Facebook as Elizabeth Spann Craig Author, on Twitter as elizabethscraig, on my website at elizabethspanncraig.com, and by email at elizabethspanncraig@gmail.com.

  A special thanks to John DeMeo and Karen Young for their support!

  Thanks so much for reading my book...I appreciate it. If you enjoyed the story, would you please leave a short review on the site where you purchased it? Just a few words would be great. Not only do I feel encouraged reading them, but they also help other readers discover my books. Thank you!

  Did you know my books are available in print and ebook formats? Most of the Myrtle Clover series is available in audio and some of the Southern Quilting mysteries are. Find the audiobooks here.

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  I’d also like to thank some folks who helped me put this book together. Thanks to my cover designer, Karri Klawiter, for her awesome covers. Thanks to Freddy Moyano for the concept! Thanks to my editor, Judy Beatty for her help. Thanks to beta readers Amanda Arrieta and Dan Harris for all of their helpful suggestions and careful reading. Thanks to my ARC readers for helping to spread the word. Thanks, as always, to my family and readers.

  Other Works by Elizabeth:

  Myrtle Clover Series in Order (be sure to look for the Myrtle series in audio, ebook, and print):

  Pretty is as Pretty Dies

  Progressive Dinner Deadly

  A Dyeing Shame

  A Body in the Backyard

  Death at a Drop-In

  A Body at Book Club

  Death Pays a Visit

  A Body at Bunco

  Murder on Opening Night

  Cruising for Murder

  Cooking is Murder

  A Body in the Trunk

  Cleaning is Murder

  Edit to Death

  Hushed Up

  A Body in the Attic

  Murder on the Ballot

  Death of a Suitor (2021)

  Southern Quilting Mysteries in Order:

  Quilt or Innocence

  Knot What it Seams

  Quilt Trip

  Shear Trouble

  Tying the Knot

  Patch of Trouble

  Fall to Pieces

  Rest in Pieces

  On Pins and Needles

  Fit to be Tied

  Embroidering the Truth

  Knot a Clue

  Quilt-Ridden (2021)

  The Village Library Mysteries in Order (Debuting 2019):

  Checked Out

  Overdue

  Borrowed Time

  Hush-Hush

  Where There's a Will (2021)

  Memphis Barbeque Mysteries in Order (Written as Riley Adams):

  Delicious and Suspicious

  Finger Lickin’ Dead

  Hickory Smoked Homicide

  Rubbed Out

  And a standalone “cozy zombie” novel: Race to Refuge, written as Liz Craig