Praying for Peace

by Carolyn Ridder Aspenson

  Sonny’s face reddened three shades darker than a ripe tomato. I worried he would have a stoke right there, and one no Band-Aid and sweet tea could fix. “Over my dead body. That good for nothing boy ain’t getting one square foot of my property.” He grunted and upped the volume of his voice. “I told his aunt last night I’d be dead before I let her take my land, and I sure won’t let that boy take none of it either.”

  Belle whispered in my ear. “What’s he talking about?”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered back. “But it doesn’t sound good.”

  The Sheriff’s Office analyzed the scene, and the coroner removed Myrtle’s body though the back of the house, keeping the onlookers at bay as Dylan pulled rank and sent the crowd home, many of them leaving begrudgingly. He promised to hold a meeting later in the day to keep everyone informed of the situation. When tragedy struck a small town like mine, the rubberneckers sat and watched like their favorite movie was just released on cable. I’m surprised some hadn’t brought popcorn and a cooler full of Coke. I stuck around to answer a few more questions, but Belle went back to our office to attend to our other real estate clients. All three of them.

  Old Man Goodson’s son, Larry Junior—or Junior for short—had been hanging at the back of the crowd quietly watching everything that happened. I suspected he did so because he and Jesse used to be joined at the hip, and he wanted to see how things turned out.

  I always wondered how the two got along. Jesse was the big lug of a man even in high school, and Junior was the skinny kid whose bones threatened to break if he tripped over a rock, but their physical differences aside, their friendship seemed to work, until it no longer did.

  Junior stuck around to mow Myrtle’s property. The go-to guy for most of the old timers in town property needs, Junior had been tending to Myrtle’s acreage for the past few years. Since she’d put the house on the market, she’d wanted to stop, but I convinced her it was more important than ever to keep the yard tidy. Most of the acreage behind the main lot wasn’t all that important since it was wooded, but keeping the landscaped area maintained would be appealing to interested buyers if for nothing other than aesthetic reasons. If a property wasn’t initially visually appealing, typically the buyer couldn’t see past that, even if they planned to tear it down and start from scratch.

  Junior checked in with Dylan to get the official Sheriff’s Office okay to go ahead and drag his John Deere from his truck and do his thing.

  “I need to dig out a few of those old River Birch trees for Mrs. Redbecker first. Those ones on the back edge of the landscaped portion of her property are dying, and she wanted them gone. Made a promise,” he said. “And I’d like to keep it.”

  Before Dylan had a chance to answer, I said, “I’ll be working with the trust responsible for the property sale, Junior, and I’m sure they’ll want you to continue.” I grabbed the shovel next to the window and reached out to hand it to him. “Oh, here, this must be yours then.”

  “Nope, must be Mrs. Redbecker’s.”

  I put the shovel back where I’d found it. “Oh, sorry.”

  Dylan nodded. “Don’t think that will be a problem. Just do me a favor and stay clear of the inside of the property, you got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dylan sent Junior on his way and closed the front door. “You got a few minutes?”

  I shrugged. “Well, considering my appointment is no longer among the living, I think so.”

  The left side of his mouth twitched. “I’d like to go over what you did when you got here this morning.”

  “You mean like reviewing the crime scene?”

  He laughed that same laugh I’d spent countless nights crying over trying to forget. “You really need to stop watching crime shows.”

  How many times did I have to hear that? I had a strong suspicion my face glowed as pink as the polish on my toenails. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Did Myrtle mention anything about her nephew and their relationship?”

  “Let me guess, you think Jesse killed her, don’t you?”

  “This is a lot of land. I’m not sure how much an acre goes for nowadays, but I’m guessing it’ll sell for a pretty penny.”

  “He’s not named in the will.”

  “A will can be contested.”

  “I don’t really know the details, but I do know Myrtle was pretty adamant that her nephew not get any profit from the sale. Whatever she didn’t use or wasn’t specified in the will she said would go to charity.”

  “That must have upset Jesse.”

  “I have no idea.”

  He rubbed his hands together. “So, let’s start from the beginning. You come over, and what? Knock on the door?”

  I nodded. “Myrtle wanted a regular Monday morning coffee appointment to discuss the update on the sale of her property, even if there wasn’t an update.” My throat tightened. “I think she was just lonely and wanted the company.”

  “Probably. Obviously, she and Jesse weren’t close, and she didn’t have a reputation for being the most pleasant person in town.”

  “No, she definitely didn’t.” I exhaled. “But this time we had a reason for the meeting.”

  “Which was?”

  “She’s got three bidders vying for the property. All are builders looking to build multi-housing units like condos, and she’d made a decision on which bidder she decided to sell the property to.”

  “She tell you that?”

  “On the phone, yes. Just not which bidder, though I have a pretty good idea.” I didn’t offer him anything else about the bidders, and he didn’t ask. “So, I knocked, but she didn’t answer. I checked the door, and it was unlocked, so I cracked it open a bit and yelled in for her, but of course, she didn’t answer that either. That’s when I noticed the glass pieces on the kitchen floor. I worried she might have fallen or something, so I went in to check. I saw the glass was actually from the backdoor window, and when I got closer, that’s when I saw Myrtle lying on the floor. I could tell she wasn’t alive anymore, but I checked for a pulse just in case. There wasn’t one.” I wiped a tear from my eye. I hadn’t even realized I’d started to cry. “And then I called 9-1-1.”

  “You didn’t see or hear anyone in the house? Didn’t touch anything?”

  I shook my head. “Not that I’m aware of, but I wasn’t in here for long.”

  “You’ve been here before, correct?”

  I nodded. “Several times.”

  He opened the front door for me, but I hesitated before entering.

  “You okay?”

  I cupped my left elbow with my right hand and nodded. “Yeah, I think so. It’s just weird. Someone died in here.”

  He nodded. “Do you need a minute?”

  I shook my head. “I’d rather just get it over with.” I took a deep breath and walked inside. It was one thing to watch a fictional crime investigation on TV but entirely different to be a part of a real one.

  I glanced around the house and though everything was the same, it was all different, too. The rooms felt different. The air had a thicker feel to it, and when I breathed, I almost had to swallow over letting it just float through my nostrils like it normally did.

  “Why does everything feel different?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like the air. It’s—” I paused, trying to find a way to explain what I meant. “It’s thicker, heavier, and it’s got a weird smell to it now.”

  “Like metal maybe?”

  “I…I don’t know. I don’t really remember it smelling before when I came in and found Myrtle.”

  “You were in a heightened state then. Your adrenaline was pumped, and now you’re feeling different. It happens sometimes. Take your time. If you need to sit down for a few minutes, go ahead. We’re not in a hurry.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’m fine.” I didn’t want him to think I couldn’t handle it. I wasn’t sure I could handle it, but I didn’t want him to think I couldn’t.

&
nbsp; “Okay then, look around. Anything appear different to you? Anything seem out of place or missing?”

  I glanced around the kitchen. “Do you think maybe they were trying to rob her?”

  “I’m not sure what I think yet.”

  There were little yellow A-frame tents with numbers on them spread throughout the kitchen. One marked the area where Myrtle’s body had been, another where the killer left the cast iron skillet on the counter and one marking the glass by the backdoor. “How come there’s only one of the markers by the backdoor? Shouldn’t there be at least two?”

  “Why do you say that?” Dylan asked. “Maybe the big cities use one for each piece of glass, but out here, we count the glass as one item.”

  “I’m not talking about the glass. I’m talking about the caked mud. Wouldn’t that be considered separate evidence?”

  “What mud?”

  “The mud that was on the floor.” I stared down at the worn linoleum and pointed as I walked back to where I’d found Myrtle’s body. “In fact, the mud went all the way to here.” I turned around and headed toward the back hallway and the den. “And if I remember correctly, I noticed a bit of it in the hallway here, too. Why aren’t there markers here?”

  Dylan raised an eyebrow. “We didn’t find any mud.”

  I jabbed my finger repeatedly at the linoleum. “Really? There was caked mud on the floor. Pieces of it. Like it had come out of the crack of someone’s shoe.” I stared at the floor again and then raised my eyes slowly up to his. “Oh my gosh. He was still here. The killer was still in the house when I found Myrtle.” I leaned against the kitchen counter and forced myself to breathe in slow, deep breaths. I didn’t want to hyperventilate. The last time I did that in Dylan’s presence was the night he broke up with me, and there was no way I’d ever let him see me do that again.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded but kept focused on my breathing. “Fine.” I waved my hand because I couldn’t say much else. I wobbled a bit against the counter.

  He lightly gripped my shoulders with his hands, steadying me better than I could myself. I wanted to push his hands away. I would have told him to not touch me, but in that moment all that mattered was that I could have been killed by the same person that killed my client. “Lil, the killer couldn’t have still been here. Myrtle’s body is in rigor. Her body temperature is the same as the house, and it takes hours for that to happen.”

  I breathed in one last deep breath and felt calm enough to speak an entire sentence. For the most part, at least. “I don’t understand.”

  “Granted, it’s hot as blazes in here, but still.” He moved away from me and then back again toward me but not close enough to touch. “A body cools in death. Drops about a degree and a half an hour, give or take, until it hits room temperature.” He showed me a page on his little note pad. “Coroner took Myrtle’s temperature—trust me, you don’t want to know how—and checked it against the thermostat. Based on the rough math, she’d already been dead about nine hours by the time you got here. That’s just an estimate of course. We’ll know more once the autopsy is done. But that means there’s no way the killer was here with you.”

  Unless he came back.

  “But there was mud on the floor Dylan. I swear I saw it.”

  “People don’t realize how stressful it is to see a dead body. That’s why we question witnesses more than once. Things come up. Things change. You’ll remember things differently, or you’ll remember things later that you didn’t remember now. Maybe you’re misplacing the mud from another memory. Happens all the time in these kinds of situations.”

  “I guess.” Dylan was the expert, so he was probably right. Finding Myrtle dead was stressful, and who knows what kind of tricks my mind could play on me in that kind of situation. Ask me about selling a house, and I was the expert. Ask me about murder and my knowledge was limited to fictional crime solving from prime-time TV. Gosh, Belle was right. I really did need a hobby.

  “How much home improvement work did you have Myrtle doing around the house?” he asked.

  “None, actually. Like I said, she’s planning, or she planned to sell the house to a multi-unit builder, not a single family. I suggested she keep the main lawn area and the house tidy, but no changes. Why do you ask?”

  “The attic’s tore up pretty bad. Wasn’t sure what the point of that was for the home sale.”

  “The attic?”

  He nodded. “Holes in the drywall and the floor’s pulled up in spots. From the fresh drywall dust everywhere, looks like it’s new work. Figured you’re the one that told her to do it.”

  “Can I take a look?”

  He flicked his head toward the stairs. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  I appreciated that. Even though the killer was obviously not in the house at that moment, I didn’t feel comfortable going to the attic alone.

  Dylan was right. The entire attic was in shambles. The walls had holes randomly punched throughout them, and the old wood floor was pulled up in various spots, no rhyme or reason to any of it whatsoever.

  I had to climb over books, boxes, tools, and all sorts of odds and ends tossed around on the ground from the shelves and maybe the drawers of the cabinets and dressers just to get around the crowded, tight room. If I had any sort of claustrophobia, it would have sent me into a panic attack, but thankfully, I didn’t. “Dylan, I didn’t tell her to do this, and it wasn’t like this the other day, I swear.” I carefully maneuvered through the small, stuffy room. “I was just here. In fact, Myrtle had asked me to take a look up here and make sure the door was locked. She didn’t want anyone coming up here when viewing the property. Said there were some family things she didn’t want disturbed. I told her she wouldn’t have to worry about it, but she insisted.”

  “You sure about that?”

  I climbed back down the stairs. “Yes, Sheriff Roberts, I am sure.”

  That annoying adorable twitch thing at the corner of his mouth started again. “What day were you up here?”

  “Thursday.”

  “And as far as you know, Myrtle didn’t have any plans to alter this room in any way?”

  “She told me to lock the door so she could keep people out, Dylan. She was eighty-five-years-old. You think she was going to come up here and do a remodel herself? No, she had no plans to remodel this room.”

  He nodded and headed toward the front of the house.

  “Why would someone do this? Do you really think it was Jesse?” I hit him with a list of questions a mile long. By the time we got to the front door, I could tell I’d worn him out. “Maybe you’re right.” I kind of talked more to myself than to my ex-boyfriend. “Maybe there’s something of value to Jesse up here, and he wanted it, so he killed her and came looking for it after? Or maybe he came looking for it before he killed her and couldn’t find it, so he killed her because she wouldn’t tell him where it was?”

  He stepped outside and rubbed his short, cropped blond hair before putting his hat back on. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  I cocked my head to the right and shook it. “You didn’t hear a thing I said, did you?”

  “Sure, I did.”

  ‘Liar. You’re doing exactly what you did when we dated.”

  His head flinched back ever so slightly. “I’m what?”

  “You acted like you listened then, but you didn’t, and you’re doing the same thing now.”

  “I did listen, both then and now.”

  “Fine. Then answer my questions.”

  “Which ones?”

  “All of them. Any of them.”

  He couldn’t.

  “You didn’t hear any of them.”

  “I’m sorry.” He sighed. “I don’t have any answers at the moment anyway, Lil. What I do have is more questions for you.”

  I tensed my jaw, focusing hard on letting the past stay where it belonged for the moment so I could focus on poor Myrtle Redbecker. “Okay, go ahead.”

  “You d
idn’t notice anything before you went inside? Maybe you heard something you didn’t realize before?”

  I replayed the events back in my head. “I don’t think so. But you know, Sonny Waddell mentioned he came by to see Myrtle last night. He gave me the impression they had words. Maybe you should talk to him.”

  “Did he say what time he came by?”

  I shook my head. “But I talked to her at about 4:30, so she was alive then.”

  He nodded. “Anything else?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  He held onto the brim of his hat with his thumb and forefinger and tipped it toward me. “Thank you, Lilybit.”

  “You know I hate that.”

  His mouth twitched. “I know.”

  That twitch. Lord, that twitch. It would be the death of me.

  On my way to the office I stopped at Millie’s Coffee and Cakes to grab an iced vanilla coffee and one of Millie’s famous raspberry lemon scones to go. I ordered a sweet tea and blueberry scone for Belle also. I went through the motions of my normal day even though Myrtle’s death left me a bit shell shocked and out of sorts. I figured it was the best way to return to normal.

  Millie handed me the change from my twenty-dollar bill. “Can you believe it?” She shook her head. “Myrtle Redbecker dead. Bless Patsy, I knew that old coot would kick the bucket, but I never thought someone would kill her.”

  Word traveled fast in a small town.

  “It’s sad, I know. No one deserves to die like that.”

  “It’s awful, just awful.” She closed her register and leaned toward me. “I’m not one for spreading gossip, but I hear Sheriff Roberts already has her killer, that nephew of hers. That poor boy, he just ain’t been the same since his family passed. And I heard he’s in debt something fierce. Bad business deal or something like that. Needs the money from the sale of the property to keep his garage now, I hear.”

  “Now Millie, don’t you go assuming something without knowing the facts. You know what my momma always said about that.” I winked without saying exactly what my momma always said about that, thanked her for the food and headed to the office.