Edit to Death

by Elizabeth Spann Craig

  Hubert shrugged. “That’s different. They were paying their respects to Pearl. Everyone loved her.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes, something that was likely not going to make them any less-bloodshot. “The thing is that I loved her, too. I feel bad that I didn’t tell Pearl that more when she was alive. You always feel like you’ve got tomorrow and sometimes you just don’t.”

  “There are never any guarantees,” said Myrtle nodding. “But most of the time we don’t expect our loved ones to be taken before their time like Pearl and Nell were. And Tara.”

  Hubert was quiet, staring at the ground. He glanced over at the police. “You know that I was away that weekend with Pearl. I wish I hadn’t been, now. Maybe none of this would have happened.” He looked steadily at Myrtle. “You know that my kids had nothing to do with this. They were too busy being host and hostess at the party.”

  Myrtle resisted the urge to say that Hubert was making it sound like some sort of elegant soiree instead of a keg party thrown by kids whose parents were out of town. Boone and Rose were hardly ensuring the catering staff were passing around the canapés. She said instead, “I’m sure they were.”

  Hubert, feeling encouraged, continued. “It was probably one of the other kids at the party. You know what high schoolers are like.”

  “I do indeed, having taught them for so long,” said Myrtle. She didn’t ask any questions, considering the fact that Hubert was doing an excellent job volunteering information and ideas about what happened.

  “Maybe one of the kids was drinking too much and started arguing with Tara,” he eagerly continued. “Maybe he didn’t mean to, but pushed at her or something. Maybe she hit her head real hard. She wasn’t but a little thing.”

  “Maybe so,” said Myrtle noncommittally.

  Hubert rubbed his face again. “This whole thing is such a mess. Can’t even pay respect to the dead without more stuff happening. You know who I blame for all this?” He looked at Myrtle with his bloodshot eyes. “Edward Hammond.”

  “You blame him how?” asked Myrtle. “Not for Tara, I wouldn’t think. Since it was most unlikely that he was at that party.” The last was in a tone of asperity, regardless of her attempt to make it level.

  He gave her a hasty glance. “No, not for Tara. Unless there’s something I don’t know,” he said in a hopeful voice. “But for Pearl and for Nell? I totally do. He must have done them both in. Who else could it have been?”

  There are none so blind as those who will not see. Myrtle pursed her lips together.

  Hubert hurried on. “Anyway, here we are. It’s a total mess. I’ve been a wreck. Since Pearl has been gone, I’ve been drinking too much, eating just awful, and sleeping day and night. Today was the first day that I felt a little more human.” He snorted. “Isn’t that crazy? On the day of my wife’s funeral, I’m finally able to pull myself together. I got up early even though I didn’t sleep much last night. Then I ate pretty well this morning, went to the service, went to the reception, and came back home.”

  Myrtle said, “Maybe it’s because the funeral is allowing you some closure.”

  Hubert said, “Maybe. Or maybe I just needed something to provide a framework for my day. I’m retired, so I don’t have a job to fill the void. And I haven’t been the most disciplined guy. But today felt good. So I’ll try to get some sleep tonight.” He snorted. “Might not happen. But I’m going to give it a go. Then I’ll meet up with Boone early tomorrow and we’ll have breakfast together at the diner. Get the day started off right. Then maybe I’ll take a stroll after that. Just get some structure for my days.”

  Myrtle nodded. “That’s what I do. The sleeping part, not so much. But I do like structure for my day.”

  Hubert was still watching the police with a worried expression on his face.

  Myrtle said, “I’d better be on my way. Take care, Hubert.”

  Later, as Myrtle stared at the ceiling of her bedroom, she decided that it was definitely not a good night’s sleep, at least not for her. She had the feeling that Miles might be experiencing the same thing. After very busy days it could be hard to wind down. She looked at the clock for the fiftieth time and saw it was nearing five. Myrtle got out of bed, dressed, and ate breakfast. Pasha pressed her furry face on the other side of her kitchen window and Myrtle let her in and gave her a can of cat food, which she happily inhaled. She jumped on the windowsill to ask to go out again and Myrtle acquiesced.

  Then Myrtle set out for Miles’s house with her cane in hand.

  It looked as if the lights were out at Miles’s, but Myrtle had also known times when he’d been awake and just sitting in the house with the lights off. She rang the doorbell. And waited. Apparently, Miles was not awake.

  She was turning around with a sigh when she heard the sound of the front door being unlocked. Miles was standing there, bleary-eyed and perspiring.

  “You look awful, Miles!” said Myrtle.

  He didn’t motion her in. “I feel awful. I must have picked up something from the funeral today. Those people were coughing behind us and probably contaminated me.”

  “It was way too fast to get sick from that. It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours. It must have been that crazy book club meeting. You know what this means? Dear Wanda lied about lying to you about the germs! She wanted you to continue sleuthing with me instead of being worried about getting sick,” said Myrtle. “Maybe she needed you with me at the funeral or at the dealership.”

  Miles said sullenly, “Maybe ‘dear Wanda’ wanted me sick for some other reason. A reason yet to be revealed.”

  “Why Miles! It almost sounds as if you believe in her gifts!”

  “Only because I’m feverish and delusional. Things are not going well. Not only am I extremely ill, but I’ve lost my new phone as well,” said Miles miserably.

  Myrtle said, “It’s lucky for you that I happen to be an expert at finding lost things. All we have to do is retrace your steps and we’re sure to find it.”

  “I don’t really feel up to doing that,” said Miles, clutching at his stomach as if it were about to detonate.

  “You’re lucky again that I spent most of the day with you and I can retrace your steps all by myself.” Myrtle paused for a few minutes. She leaned on her cane as she thought and Miles leaned on the front door. Finally, she said, “I’ve got it. It must be at the car dealership.”

  Miles considered this. “You know, you might be right. I stooped to pick up Boone’s pen and I believe I put my phone down on the hood of a car to reach it.”

  “I’ll simply head over there now and pick it up,” said Myrtle carelessly.

  Miles’s face was horrified. “You can’t do that. It’s not even dawn! The dealership will be closed. You might even get arrested for trespassing.”

  Myrtle pointed behind her. “Dawn is breaking now. Besides, there aren’t any fences at the dealership. I can simply walk in. I’ll need to take your car, of course. Boone may even be there. Hubert said at the funeral that Boone is always at the dealership and he also said that he might join him for an early breakfast today.”

  Miles sighed and then disappeared into his house for a minute. He returned with car keys, which he thrust at Myrtle.

  “Thanks. I’ll just let myself in when I come back and will stick your phone on the coffee table. You won’t even have to get up.”

  “Thanks,” said Miles rather ungraciously. He gently closed the door and then locked it.

  Myrtle pulled up to the dealership and then drove inside the grounds. Although it was deserted, it was brightly lit. She slowly drove to the area where she and Miles had been talking with Boone. Sure enough, Miles’s phone was sitting right on top of a white sedan. She parked the car and slid the phone into her purse.

  As she was driving back to the entrance, she saw that the lights were also on in the showroom, clearly visible through the glass walls. What was more, she saw that Boone was sitting, crouched over a computer at one of the desks lining the showroom walls.

>   Myrtle decided she would go in and chat for a few minutes. Tell him that she was also a fellow insomniac—because why else would Boone be at the dealership this early?—and inform him that she’d picked up Miles’s phone.

  She parked close to the showroom and then walked to the door. When she got there, she paused. Boone was intently looking at a very old, clunky laptop with stickers on the outside. Exactly how Pearl had described her computer.

  Myrtle’s eyes opened wide and she hastily turned toward Miles’s car.

  But it was too late. “Miss Myrtle?” drawled Boone’s laconic voice behind her.

  Chapter Twenty

  MYRTLE SLOWLY TURNED around. There was no way she’d be able to outrun Boone. And Boone wasn’t going to allow her to pull up the phone app and dial 911. But she did manage to hit a button on Miles’s new phone.

  “I always said you were a sharp old lady. Of course, back in school, I thought you were old then, and you were just a few years older than I am now. And here you are, sharp as a tack, in your 80s. Will wonders never cease?” He grinned at her, but his eyes were hard as flint.

  Myrtle gave him a reproving look. It hadn’t worked in high school and it didn’t seem to be working now, either. “Sharp? In what way? The fact that I found Miles’s phone that he lost here earlier? That was fairly sharp of me; retracing his steps and then coming here to retrieve the phone.”

  Boone slowly shook his head. “Nope. You can’t pull one over on me, Miss M. Maybe you did come out here to get the phone, but your face a minute ago told me that you realized something. Didn’t you? You can’t deny it.”

  Myrtle shrugged. “All right. It looks like you’re on your mother’s laptop. It was as good a place to keep it as any, wasn’t it? I suppose you had it here the whole time and then you’ve been keeping odd hours so that you can read her book. Even though you knew what the book would say. That you killed Tara Blanton, hid her body, and then went on your merry way pretending that nothing was wrong. Because that’s the kind of person you are—you’re tough. But it’s nearly killed Rose, hasn’t it?”

  Boone just stared at her with that fixed grin.

  She cleared her throat. “But your plan was quixotic.”

  Boone snorted. “I never was good at English, Miss M. Remember?”

  “Unrealistic. Impractical. Somebody, somewhere, sometime, would find Tara. And somebody did,” said Myrtle. “And what happened to your mother and your aunt all dates back to what happened to Tara. Here’s what I’ve heard. You wanted to date Tara, but she didn’t much want to date you, did she?” She walked toward Boone, into the showroom.

  He stepped back a little, reflexively, then leaned casually against the wall, blocking the door. “She didn’t really know me.”

  “You decided to persuade her to date you at the party you and Rose were throwing. But she still wasn’t interested. And, thinking on it, you two had nothing in common, Boone. You were a partier, an extrovert. Somebody who was very loud and outgoing. Tara was quieter and more studious. So what was the attraction for you? Just her looks? When she rejected you again, you must have really lost it,” said Myrtle.

  Boone shrugged. “It was all an accident. There was nothing violent going on that night. You’re making it sound like some crazy party . . . like your book club.” He gave an unpleasant grin. “Instead, it was pretty tame. We played the radio and drank a little. And yeah, when Tara turned me down, I was a little intoxicated. I might have pushed her some. Because the beer made me more uncoordinated than I usually am, I pushed her harder than I thought. It was just bad luck, Miss M. Just rotten, bad luck.”

  Myrtle backed a couple of steps into the showroom. Boone didn’t move at all. She said, “So when Tara stumbled backward, she fell into something and hit her head wrong. Is that what you’re saying, Boone? Did you panic then? Shut the party down? It would have been hard to bury someone with a party going on.”

  “She wasn’t breathing. I tried to do some CPR on her, but she was gone. And no, I didn’t panic,” said Boone shortly.

  “No, you wouldn’t have. Rose would have, wouldn’t she? Has Rose been the problem all along?” asked Myrtle. “Because that’s when the big change happened with Rose, didn’t it? I’d thought that she’d argued with Tara because Tara was rebuffing you, but she really was arguing with her about something petty, wasn’t she? And she’s always felt guilty. That’s when she turned into a shadow of herself. You were the one who did that to her by forcing her to lie to the police and lie to Tara’s poor family.”

  “Lie?” drawled Boone.

  “That’s right. The two of you told everyone that Tara said she wanted to run away. But Tara didn’t. Tara never went anywhere except right in your parents’ yard. And at that point, luck was in your favor because the city was connecting your street to the sewer line. All that ground was dug up, and it was easy to conceal a body and cover it back up with the dirt. But that’s also where you were being quixotic again, Boone,” said Myrtle.

  “Was I? Let’s see . . . unrealistic? Is that it?”

  “Exactly. Because the workers should have found her. But they didn’t. Apparently, they were right at the point of the project where they’d laid the pipe and hadn’t covered it all up. You were lucky,” said Myrtle. She gasped dramatically and gaped, pointing, into the darkness outside the showroom. “Red?”

  Boone turned and Myrtle hurried to the showroom display car and pulled the door handle, praying that the car was unlocked. It was, and she jumped into the driver’s seat, locking the doors behind her.

  Boone walked up to the car and shook his head, laughing. In a loud voice that could be heard inside the car, he said, “You’re something else, Miss Myrtle! And you sure are making a lot of assumptions.”

  But Myrtle was already busily making phone calls. Boone would have the keys to the car, considering he was a dealer.

  Red blearily answered the phone. “What’s wrong, Mama?”

  “Boone is holding me hostage in the dealership showroom! Bring guns!”

  “Whaaaat?”

  Myrtle hung up and blared the car horn in long bursts. Maybe it would drive Boone away. Or maybe some irate neighbor would come over.

  Boone was now striding over to a small hallway that likely housed his office. Myrtle hopped out of the car and rushed out the door . . . and straight into the arms of Hubert Epps, arriving to accompany his son to breakfast in the hopes of starting his day off on the right foot.

  Myrtle shoved him out of the way to continue to Miles’s car, but found that Hubert’s car blocked Miles’s car so she jumped into Hubert’s car instead and locked the doors.

  Boone appeared in the doorway, glowering behind the confused Hubert.

  “What’s going on?” asked Hubert.

  Fortunately, Hubert had been short-sighted enough to leave the keys in the ignition. Myrtle started the car and put the window down a hair. In the distance, she could hear the sound of a siren.

  “You know exactly what’s going on, Hubert,” said Myrtle coldly. “You’ve been trying to cover it up for years. Boone killed Tara Blanton and hid her body on your property. And you pushed your wife down the stairs to cover it up because she was determined to get at the truth after all these years. Pearl never stopped feeling sorry for Tara’s parents and felt like they deserved the truth.”

  Hubert leaned his side against his car as if his feet were giving way. “Boone?” he asked weakly. “Not Rose?”

  Boone’s face was lit up with weird shadows from the headlights and his wide grin was more of a sneer as the siren grew louder. “You always did favor Rose, Daddy. You wouldn’t have protected me, would you? You’d have picked the phone right up and called Red. And Mama wouldn’t have been writing a book, either.”

  Myrtle said, “Why exactly did Pearl choose to reveal the secrets with a book? She and Rose were very close—why didn’t Pearl just ask Rose to turn herself in? Convince her that she would have received a lighter sentence and relieved her conscience if she went
to the police?”

  Hubert said, “Pearl tried. Every time that she or I brought it up, Rose would look as if she was on the verge of collapse. Then she’d burst into tears and either leave the house or hang up the phone. Then she’d be a disaster for days. It was impossible to talk with her about it.”

  Then Hubert turned on Boone angrily. “As to whether I’d have protected you like I protected Rose? You’re right; I wouldn’t have. That’s because you never needed protecting. You were always tough. Too tough. That’s why we’re in this mess to begin with. And why wouldn’t I think Rose had done it? She’s the one who fell apart. She’s the one who keeps saying that it’s all her fault. Rose is the one who became a shadow of herself.”

  Myrtle said, “Because she was trying to be a good sister and do what Boone said. She felt guilty for not protecting Tara from Boone and for arguing with Tara about something trivial during their last conversation. Boone said they could get away with hiding Tara’s body—and they did. For a while.”

  “Although it was quixotic of me to think so,” snarled Boone.

  Hubert blinked at him.

  Myrtle said, “What I’m not sure is when and how you and Pearl found out about Tara. It must have been in the last ten years or so. I simply can’t see Pearl keeping a secret for thirty years: not a secret as big and awful as that one, anyway. Was she gardening and came across bones? She always found gardening to be a tremendous escape. How terrible that must have been for her! There she was, planting a bed of bushes and perennials and she found something dark and tragic.”

  Boone sighed. “Mama should have called before she dug. She was too close to the sewer line to be digging there, anyway. And yes, since Daddy isn’t inclined to answer, it was about ten years ago.”

  Hubert was still staring at Boone. Then he lunged at him, reaching for his throat while Myrtle lay on the horn of Hubert’s car. But Boone was lean and fit and easily side-stepped him. Hubert slumped again, still furious, against his car.

  “You’re not worthy to even say her name,” said Hubert, gasping for air.