Edit to Death

by Elizabeth Spann Craig

  “Maybe I’m not, but you’re especially not, seeing as how you killed her,” said Boone casually.

  The police car was at the dealership now, but fortunately neither man seemed inclined to run. Red, wearing a tee shirt and sweatpants, ran up to them, hand on his weapon. When he saw his mother sitting calmly in Hubert’s car, he dropped his hand. “Hubert? Boone? What’s going on here, guys?” he asked guardedly.

  Boone drawled, “Daddy and I have both confessed to your mama.”

  Myrtle put the window all the way down. “Not a full confession, Boone. You didn’t confess to killing Nell.”

  Boone gave a snort. “That’s right. I suppose I lost track with all the confessing going on.”

  “I didn’t confess to anything,” said Hubert sharply.

  “That’s because I confessed for you. I don’t mind getting the blame for Nell and Tara, but I’m sure not taking it for Mama. That’s all on you,” said Boone, eyes narrowing.

  Red was already getting the handcuffs off his belt. “All right, I’ve heard enough. Let’s finish talking about this back at the station. Hands behind your backs.” He carefully cuffed Boone and Hubert and guided them into the police car.

  “Bye, Miss M!” said Boone cheerfully. “No hard feelings about earlier, right?”

  Myrtle rolled her eyes at him and Boone plopped into the backseat of the cruiser.

  Red made a quick phone call to Lieutenant Perkins to update him. Then he looked at Myrtle as he rubbed the side of his face. He shook his head. “I’m really not sure what you’re doing at dawn at the dealership. And in Hubert’s vehicle, to boot. Are you okay?”

  “I’m absolutely fine. Neither of them touched a single hair on my head,” said Myrtle with a sniff.

  Red tilted his head to look at her. “You shouldn’t be driving yourself back home, Mama. You’ve obviously had a really stressful experience.”

  “I’m fine,” said Myrtle through gritted teeth.

  “I’m going to call Miles and get him to come out here and drive you back,” said Red briskly taking out his phone.

  “Good luck doing that,” said Myrtle, holding Miles’s phone up for him to see. “And I have his car, too.”

  Red blinked at it. “Okay, not sure what you’re doing with that. You’ve got Miles’s phone and Miles’s and Hubert’s cars. Seems like there’s a theme of light thievery going on. Never mind, I’ll call Elaine and have her come out and drive you back.”

  “Don’t you dare wake little Jack up,” said Myrtle hotly. “The very idea! I’ll simply drive Miles’s car back to my house. For heaven’s sake.”

  Red said, “Fine. And I’ll follow you home. Which, considering the speed you ordinarily drive, should take us until the end of the day.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  NATURALLY, IT DID not take until the end of the day. Red’s hyperbole made Myrtle drive a bit speedier than her usual twenty-five mile-per-hour clip. She drove straight back to her house, without stopping to drop off Miles’s phone.

  It took Red a little while to process Hubert and Boone’s arrests and to speak with the state police when they arrived. While she was waiting, Myrtle ate another hearty breakfast and worked on her crossword puzzle, which she was able to complete in a mere fifteen minutes.

  When Red and Lieutenant Perkins from the state police finally showed up, Myrtle was just pouring herself another cup of coffee. After seeing Red’s face, she said, “Here, take this one. I’ll make myself another. You need it more than I do.” She beamed at Perkins. “I’m glad we have the chance to talk again! Can I make you a cup of coffee?”

  “Good to see you, Mrs. Clover,” said Perkins in his even voice. “And no, I’m fine, thank you.”

  “You certainly do look better-rested than Red does,” observed Myrtle.

  Red glowered at her. “Some of us aren’t used to getting up before dawn, Mama.”

  “It was dawn. That’s why I was going to the car dealership. It wasn’t even that early,” said Myrtle.

  “Early is relative,” said Red. He took a large sip of the coffee.

  Myrtle settled into a chair. “I suppose Hubert and Boone told you everything?” she asked.

  Perkins shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. Instead, they asked for lawyers. It remains to be seen what information, if any, they’ll provide us. So we’d be very grateful to you if you could share what you know.”

  Myrtle preened while Red glowered at her.

  Red said, “Of course, it’s just your word against theirs. Hearsay.”

  “On the contrary,” said Myrtle, looking down her nose at Red. “As a matter of fact, Miles has this nifty app on his phone. It’s a voice recorder. While I was in the car, I was able to tape what they said.”

  Perkins raised his eyebrows. “A full confession?”

  Myrtle thought back over the rather tense conversation she’d had with the two men. “I’m afraid not. But there should be enough material there for you to convict them. And I can tell you the rest of it.”

  Red groaned and Perkins gave him a repressive look. “That would be very helpful, Mrs. Clover.”

  “Where should I begin? I’ll start with poor Tara. Because that’s where everything started,” said Myrtle. She frowned. “I’m so annoyed with myself for not seeing it decades ago and for trusting our very incompetent police department at the time. You see, Tara wasn’t the type of girl to run away at all. And she didn’t—she was right here all along. Red knew a very important piece of information.”

  Red cocked his eyebrows and Myrtle continued, “Although he didn’t realize that he knew it or of its importance. Where my book club friend, Georgia, thought that Boone and Tara were dating, Red knew that Boone and Tara were not dating but that Boone wanted to date Tara. There’s a world of difference between those two things.”

  Perkins nodded. “Tara didn’t want to date Boone.”

  “That’s right. It all came to a head the night of the party, which makes sense—no one was on their best behavior because they’d all been drinking. Inhibitions were lowered. Rose argued with Tara that night, despite the fact that they were the best of friends,” said Myrtle.

  Perkins looked intently at Myrtle. “So Rose killed Tara.”

  “No, Boone did. Rose simply argued with her. But Boone, according to him, gave Tara a shove out of frustration. That shove went badly wrong and resulted in Tara knocking her head and dying from her injury,” said Myrtle. “You can hear that on Miles’s phone.”

  “Okay,” said Red. “Boone tried to persuade Tara once again to be his girlfriend. She rejected him and he pushed her, causing a freak accident and Tara’s death. Then they bury the body where the sewer line was being installed. So where does Pearl’s death come in?”

  Myrtle shot him an annoyed look for rushing her through her spotlight performance. “I was getting to that. Thirty years ago, Pearl and Hubert, totally unsuspecting, come back from their weekend away. They discovered a very different Rose.”

  Perkins asked, “Boone didn’t change?”

  Red said, “Boone became even more Boone-like, if that makes sense. Boisterous, sometimes-sullen, prone to drinking and partying. But he didn’t change like Rose did.”

  “Rose became a shadow of herself. She was jumpy, cried a lot, and didn’t want to leave the house. She gave up her old friends and just stayed with her family. Rose was a mess,” said Myrtle.

  Perkins asked, “And what did her family make of all this? Is that when they realized that Tara Blanton was buried in their front yard?”

  Myrtle shook her head. “No. They probably told themselves that it was a natural reaction to Tara ‘running away.’ That Rose missed Tara or perhaps felt guilty about her role in helping Tara run away. Then, about ten years ago, Pearl discovered Tara.” Myrtle looked at both men. “It’s on Miles’s phone.”

  “How did Pearl do that?” asked Perkins.

  “One of Pearl’s favorite pastimes was gardening. She was working to create a bed at the front of the
house and made a terrible discovery. Boone said that his mother shouldn’t have been gardening around the sewer lines to begin with, but Pearl carefully planted shallow-rooted butterfly weed, daylilies, and native ornamental grasses. I walked over there last night to see what was there. But she somehow managed to keep that discovery a secret for the next ten years. I have a feeling Hubert persuaded her to do so. He was very protective of Rose—and he and Pearl both apparently thought that Rose had been responsible for Tara’s death.” Myrtle took a sip of her coffee and watched the men’s reaction.

  Red said, “Why would they think that? If anybody in their family acted like he might have killed somebody, it would have been Boone. He was the bad boy of the family.”

  Myrtle shrugged. “But Boone hadn’t perceptibly changed. Besides, Boone allowed them to believe that Rose had been involved and Rose was too weak at the time to set the story straight. Or maybe she didn’t care to—because Tara was dead and nothing would change that. Plus, Rose felt very guilty over everything that had happened: that she’d had a party, that Tara had been there, that she’d argued with her friend, and that her brother had killed her. She even said that it was all her fault.”

  Perkins thought this over for a minute, nodding. “Pearl and Hubert harbor this terrible secret that ends up damaging their family. They go on as normal, though? No one notices a change in the two of them?”

  Myrtle said, “I wasn’t surprised when I heard that they’d found out about Tara in the last ten years. That’s because both of them did change, and rather dramatically.”

  Red stared at her. “What do you mean? Pearl was still out doing good everywhere she could, and with a big smile on her face, same as always.”

  “Yes, but she threw herself even more into her charitable acts. She was fervent. Obsessed, even. I remember wondering if she was trying to escape Hubert, which is why I didn’t really question Pearl about it. That’s when Hubert went on his self-destructive mission, remember?” asked Myrtle.

  Red frowned. “You mean the drinking? Mama, I have to break it to you—Hubert always drank.”

  “Not like that,” said Myrtle. “He was even drunk at the garden club gala.”

  Red snorted. “All the ladies are tipsy at the garden club gala. And look at your book club! They were all toasted.”

  Myrtle glared at him. “This wasn’t the same. Hubert showed up intoxicated at the garden club gala. Then he drank more and had to leave. And if I dropped by the house to see Pearl, he was always drinking.”

  Perkins asked, “Always drinking . . . in the evening?”

  “No, I’m talking about ten a.m.,” said Myrtle. “I’m serious—he had a problem. I assumed that his problem was what was driving Pearl out into the world of volunteering. But maybe Pearl was trying to make amends for the fact a member of her family had taken a life.”

  “So we have a real change in behavior in the family after Tara is discovered,” said Perkins. “Then what? How about Pearl’s sister . . . Nell? How did she change when she heard the news?”

  Myrtle shook her head. “Nell wasn’t originally told. I’m certain of it.”

  Red said, “Now this we can agree on. I don’t see Pearl and Hubert telling Nell, either.”

  “Why is that?” asked Perkins.

  “Because Nell was a virtuous woman. If Pearl had breathed a word of Tara’s death to her, she’d have picked up that big pocketbook of hers and stomped right off to the police station to tell them. No, they had to keep it from her. And that’s likely another reason why this huge secret started to weigh so heavily on Pearl. It came between her and her sister,” said Myrtle. “Pearl told me as much herself when she was dropping her manuscript by my house.”

  Perkins said, “So Pearl decided to unburden herself of her secret and share it with the world. She’d have known what would have happened . . . that someone in her family would go to jail.”

  “In her mind, her family had already gotten a ‘get out of jail free’ card for decades. She saw the effects that keeping secrets was having on her family—Hubert was drinking too much, Rose’s personality completely changed. Boone . . . well, he was just even more Boone. She warned them all that she would write a book,” said Myrtle. “And then she announced later that she’d finished it. The thing is that the person who was most obviously and immediately upset was Edward Hammond. He ended up storming out.”

  Red snorted. “He sure got the wrong impression of what the book would be covering.”

  “Pearl had said it would be a memoir. To Edward, that meant that there wouldn’t be a whole lot of material and that it would also cover the lives of those close to Pearl, like her sister. He felt that Nell’s reputation needed to be protected. But, despite his strong reaction, someone else that night had an equally-strong reaction—Boone. It just wasn’t evident at the time. But the next morning, he made sure to retrieve the laptop from his mother’s house when she left. Then he broke into my house after his mother had dropped off the manuscript.” Myrtle pressed her lips together in displeasure.

  “He didn’t really break in, considering that all of your windows were open,” said Red dryly.

  “As an invitation to a cat. Not for anyone to just come climbing in my windows,” said Myrtle.

  Perkins said, “Then he went back to his parents’ house and pushed his mother down the stairs. That’s pretty cool and collected.”

  Myrtle shook her head. “I think you’ll find that Hubert pushed Pearl down the stairs.”

  “What?” Red and Perkins chimed in together.

  Myrtle nodded sagely. “That is correct. You see, Hubert thought he was protecting Rose all this time. Pearl thought the same thing, although she’d thought the time for protecting her daughter was over. Hubert argued with his wife about revealing their secret and in a last, desperate attempt to protect Rose, he gave Pearl a shove that ended up taking her life.”

  Perkins considered this for a few moments. “Boone didn’t do it.”

  “No. As far as Boone was concerned, the problem was solved. He had stolen the book and the laptop,” said Myrtle.

  Red sighed. “But that didn’t really solve his problem. Pearl could have gone to the police and told us about Tara’s death.”

  “I never said that Boone wasn’t shortsighted,” said Myrtle with a shrug. “Or perhaps he felt as though he could use his charm and persuade his mother not to go to the cops.”

  “So Pearl is dead. Why was Nell murdered?” asked Perkins. “It sounds as if she knew absolutely nothing about the secrets in the book.”

  Red said, “Maybe she saw something that implicated Hubert in Pearl’s death.”

  Myrtle shook her head. “Nell died because Rose finally couldn’t take the guilt anymore. She had to unload.”

  Perkins said, “But why not unload her secrets to her father? Wouldn’t that make the most sense? He already knew everything, after all.”

  “He thought he knew. But he didn’t. He thought that Rose had killed Tara. If he’d known it was Boone, Hubert never would have protected him as he tried to protect Rose. In a way, Rose was trying to protect her brother. Plus, she was angry at her father. I’d witnessed her leaving him at the Goodwill. I think she knew that her father was responsible for her mother’s death,” said Myrtle.

  Perkins put a hand up to rub his temple as if a headache was coming on. “Okay. So Rose goes to tell Nell everything. That Boone had killed Tara and that she was buried in the Epps yard. That Boone had stolen the book with all the secrets. That her father had killed her mother. So what happened to Nell? Did Rose kill her so that she wouldn’t go to the police?”

  Myrtle shook her head. “No. Rose wouldn’t have minded at this point if her aunt had reported the crimes. She wanted that responsibility taken off her hands. No, the problem was that Boone had seen his sister go into his aunt’s house. He knew the condition that Rose was in and that she was at a breaking point. He confronted Rose about it angrily and Rose fell apart and admitted that she’d told Nell every
thing.”

  Red said, “But ‘everything’ wasn’t good for Boone.”

  “Exactly. And Nell, as we’ve established, was not the type to keep secrets. She was likely getting ready to go to the police when Boone walked in and murdered her,” said Myrtle.

  Perkins said, “And Hubert just found out that Rose hadn’t murdered Tara?”

  “That’s right. He found out while we were at the car dealership. Boone told him. Hubert and Pearl were convinced it was Rose because they thought her behavior was due to her guilt. Instead, it was just that Rose was keeping a terrible secret and it absolutely ate her up,” said Myrtle.

  Red said, “I just can’t believe that you went out there to confront Boone, Mama.”

  Myrtle glared indignantly at him. “I certainly did not. I was out at his dealership to find Miles’s phone. That’s it. I only went over to the showroom when I saw him in there. I had no intention of confronting him—I was trying to get away from there before he’d noticed. I’d seen Pearl’s laptop, you see. And then all the pieces fell into place.”

  Perkins said, “Well, you’ve surely helped us out, Mrs. Clover. With your recording and with what you’ve just told us, I’m sure we can put Boone and Hubert Epps away for a long time.”

  He jumped as something rubbed against his leg. Seeing Myrtle’s black cat, he reached down and cautiously petted her.

  “Darling Pasha,” said Myrtle lovingly. “Looking for more food.”

  Red said, “That reminds me that I have a passel of coupons to give you. Elaine got some in the mail.”

  “Well, bring them on over later. They’re still running the sale at the store. Maybe once you’re done with everything at the station today, you can drive me over to the grocery store. Those cans of cat food won’t haul themselves, you know. And Miles is apparently too sick to even get out of the bed today,” said Myrtle.

  With that, there was a polite tap on the door. Red opened it up to Miles.

  Miles had made an attempt to look better than he felt. But his hair was askew and he wore track pants and a sweatshirt instead of his usual khakis and button downs. And his eyes were watery and red.