Authors: Earlene Fowler
“Has Gabe seen it?” I asked apprehensively.
“Yes, he has,” he answered, walking into the kitchen. “Don’t worry about it.” He opened the refrigerator and took out a pitcher of grapefruit juice. His casual acceptance of the probably negative article made me suspicious, but I didn’t press it. Maybe he was learning to accept the fact that he and I were destined to be one of San Celina’s more colorful and controversial couples.
“Are you coming to the festival with me?” I asked.
“No, I’m going to work on the thesis-with-no-end,” he said, pouring a glass of juice. “I’ll drop by later on this afternoon. I don’t want you alone after dark.”
On Saturday everything went by without a major hitch. I nervously attended both Peter and Roy’s performances. They kept their word to me and didn’t cause any trouble. Ash and Dolores’s San Celina historical stories were naturally a big hit. They were a wonderful storytelling team, with an instinctive ability to read each other’s cues and follow each other’s rhythms. I was glad that Jillian was at the horse show in Santa Barbara today so she couldn’t see how attractive they looked together. Dolores’s scary story about La Llarona came back to me, and I couldn’t help but wonder if sooner or later that little triangle was going to explode. The fact that my cousin Rita was smack dab in the middle of it didn’t make my heart sing. Maybe I should try to hunt Skeeter down and let him know what was going on here.
Maybe you ought to just mind your own business,
a little voice said as I walked into my office.
Let these people work out their own problems. You’ve got a festival to get through, a household of people to get rid of, and a husband who is teetering on the edge of an emotional abyss. Rita and Skeeter’s love life should be the least of your worries.
Gabe showed up promptly at dusk and tagged after me like a trained guard dog. We left at nine that evening when I found my head lolling toward his shoulder during Roy’s cowboy poetry reading, something I normally would have enjoyed.
I was so tired when we got home I just crawled into bed, gave Gabe a distracted kiss, and went to sleep. I remembered the homeless man’s keys Sunday morning when I was brushing my teeth. I went into the kitchen all primed to tell Gabe about my theory—until I saw the look on his face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He stared stonily out the kitchen window. “Nothing.”
“So what are you going to do today? Work on your thesis again?”
He shrugged and continued to stare and sip his coffee.
“So, if you aren’t going to work on your thesis, do you want to come to the festival with me?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “You’ll be home before dark tonight, right?”
“Sure, don’t worry about me. I’ll be careful.”
“Maybe I’ll take a drive up the coast, then.” He stood up and started toward our bedroom.
“Wish I could go with you,” I called after him. He didn’t answer. Something had to have happened this morning because he’d been fine last night when he’d come to the festival, even cheerful because he’d written five whole pages on his thesis.
Dove came in dressed for church and started closing her Bibles and reference books, stacking them neatly on the kitchen counter.
“Giving up?” I asked hopefully.
“Not by a long shot,” she said. “I’m taking Mac to lunch after church today so I can pick his brain.” Mac-Kenzie Reid, or Mac as he’d always been called, was our minister at First Baptist. A local boy who’d gone away to play football at Baylor and live in Los Angeles for a while, he was now back shepherding the local Baptist flock. In his early forties, he was big as a grizzly bear, widowed, and so handsome that attendance among single women had tripled since he’d arrived.
“Don’t you think that getting a professional involved is cheating?” I asked. “Sort of like using a ringer?”
“Garnet’s been calling Brother Connors back in Sugartree,” Dove protested. “I can tell.”
“You don’t know that.” By the peeved tone of Dove’s voice, I was safely guessing that Garnet was coming up with some zingers. “Maybe she’s just using all your reference books. Heaven knows, you have enough of them, and they’re all at
her
disposal.”
Dove’s face blanched. I guess she hadn’t thought of that.
“That settles it, then,” she declared. “Going to Mac will even things out. He’s got a computer program. You just punch in a word, and presto, there’s a verse.”
“Then good luck, I guess.” I picked up the Tupperware container of keys I’d left on the counter last night and contemplated them again. Were they significant? I stuck the container in a drawer. No time to think about it today. The time for that was
after
this festival was over.
“By the way, did something happen with Sam and Gabe before I got up? Gabe’s in a foul mood, and he won’t give me a clue why.”
Dove’s white eyebrows arched. “Could be that
Tribune
article from yesterday.”
“He was fine with it yesterday. That’s old news now.”
“Apparently someone left him another copy on the kitchen table this morning—parts about Gabe’s incompetence underlined. He saw it before I could throw it out.”
“Someone who is royally pissed at his dad maybe? Next time I see Sam, he’s really going to get it.”
“Stay out of it, honeybun,” Dove said.
“Why should I?”
“Do you remember that bull we had back in the late eighties, the speckled-face one?”
“Sure, King Arthur.”
“Remember his son? The one with the crooked tail?”
“Lancelot. He was a good bull. Kinda wild, but good.”
“Don’t you remember, though, that we always had to keep three pastures between those two? Never saw two bulls so willing to hurt themselves just to get at each other. It’s ’cause their hormones came from the same pot. They both wanted to rule the roost.”
“I think you’re mixing your animal similes, but I get your drift. But the way we solved it was by selling King Arthur to that guy from Kern County. What am I supposed to do here?”
“Wait. Eventually they’ll work out a pecking order they’re comfortable with. Just takes time.”
In this case I knew I should bow to her expertise. “Okay, I’ll back off, but if it’s not resolved soon, it’s the Templeton stock auction for them.”
“They appear to have good bloodlines,” Dove said, winking at me. “Bring a fair price, I imagine.”
Sunday’s storytelling sessions went by without incident. At three o’clock I finally found the time to grab a barbecued chicken dinner and hide in my office for a few minutes. I was chewing a mouthful of coleslaw when the phone rang.
I paused for a moment, swallowing, then said, “Hello. I mean, Josiah Sinclair Folk Art Museum. Benni Harper speaking.”
“Sounds like you got a mouthful of mush,” Emory said.
“You should talk,” I said, taking a drink of Coke to clear the mayonnaise taste out of my mouth. “Did you find out anything?”
“I’m just fine, sweetcakes, and how are you?”
“Oh, for pete’s sake, Emory, just tell me what you found out.”
“My, my, we’re sounding premenopausal today.”
“Emory—” I warned.
“Just ribbin’ you, cousin. Actually, I couldn’t wait to call. Just talked to Neil and have I got some dirt.” His voice was gleeful over the phone. Part of me was feeling the same kind of surreptitious curiosity that compelled me to read the Tattler every week, but a part of me felt sick, knowing now how much public discussion of a person’s private problems hurts. But if something in Evangeline’s or Ash’s background helped solve these murders, that was the important thing. Nora might have had some truly despicable traits, but that didn’t give someone the right to take her life.
“What did you find out?”
“First, Mr. Ashley Stanhill. Our Mr. Stanhill has been a very, very bad boy. He has quite a few people in Mississippi mighty peeved at him.”
“Why?”
“Apparently our boy is one platinum-tongued devil. He’s convinced more than one group of investors into putting money into a business he has proposed. Then he does very well for the first year, paying them their dividends and a year-end bonus. Then the second year the business takes a dive and the investors lose all their money. I don’t know the particulars—you know the only thing I know about money is how to spend it—but apparently Mr. Stanhill always comes out of it with a pocketful of change and smelling like a truckful of magnolia blossoms heading to a cotillion.”
“How many times has he pulled this scam?”
“About four times in Mississippi that Neil knew about. Mr. Stanhill’s been involved with an ice-cream parlor, an arts-and-entertainment magazine, a fried-chicken restaurant, and an art gallery. Every one of them made tremendous profits the first year and bombed the second.”
“So you’re saying he embezzles money?”
“That’s such an ugly word, sweetcakes, and so inflammatory. Don’t forget, nothing was ever proven in any of the cases. His paperwork was meticulous. The man is Teflon-coated down to his Calvin Klein boxers.”
“It certainly sounds like he wore out his welcome in Mississippi.”
“Truer words. California was probably looking very good to him. He missed being indicted on the last one by the hairs of his chinny-chin-chin.”
“And if Nora found out about it, and I’m assuming she did, that could ruin his new image here in San Celina. Quite a few important people have invested in Eudora’s. The question is, would he kill to keep it quiet?” I wrapped the phone cord around my finger. “Okay, what about Evangeline?”
“All I have to say is y’all are sitting in a real sweet little nest of water moccasins there.”
“What?”
“Just a minute, let me decipher my notes here.” I heard a shuffling of papers. “Evangeline Yvette Boudreaux Savoy. She has quite the dramatic history, little Evangeline Yvette does. Got this from a stringer for the
New Orleans Picayune
. Met her at a newspaper convention five years ago. Gorgeous little Cajun girl. Man, that girl could dance, not to mention—”
“Twenty-five words or less, Emory.”
“All right, keep your britches on. It appears Evangeline is very fond of target shooting—”
“Emory—” I whined loudly, and slumped down in my chair.
“Using her husband as the target.”
I bolted up. “What?”
“In shorthand, cuz, she blew her husband away.”
I switched the phone to the other ear, not quite certain what I was hearing. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Your little quilter killed her hubby in cold blood with one gunshot wound to the chest. Then again, with a shotgun I guess one’s all you’d need.”
“But . . . what . . . how . . .” I stuttered, trying to connect this with the gentle, peace-loving woman I thought I knew.
“Here it is in jingle length, as you requested. Husband drank. When he drank, he beat her. She didn’t leave, heaven knows why. She had a baby. Baby cried one night and irritated drunk husband. He backhands baby. Baby dies. Your friend gets a shotgun and pumps him full of buckshot. She gets off with temporary insanity. Case closed.”
“And apparently she and D-Daddy moved as far away as they could to start a new life.”
“Appears so. She and Mr. Stanhill both had very valid reasons to leave their respective homes and head west.”
“And reasons to kill someone who might reveal their secrets.”
“Like I said, a nest of water moccasins. But tell me, wouldn’t your dear husband be privy to this sort of sordid background history?”
That was a very good question. “Thanks, Emory. Can’t wait to get together. Hugs and kisses to you and Uncle Boone.”
“Don’t forget our agreement,” he was saying as I hung up the phone. “Tell Elvia my lips are anxiously awaiting hers.”
I hung up. “Over my dead body,” I said to the phone, knowing that’s exactly what it would take for him to get a kiss from Elvia.
I leaned back in my chair and pondered the information Emory had given me. A soft knock sounded at the door. “Benni?” Evangeline’s soft voice called through the door.
“Come on in,” I said, feeling a spasm in my stomach.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Sure, have a seat.” I started shifting things around on my desk, picking up my stapler and setting it neatly next to the tape dispenser. Then I started fiddling with the pencils in my pencil cup, hoping my face didn’t reveal the shock I was feeling.
Her gaze was cool and level. “I saw my file open on your desk the other day. You know, don’t you?”
I nodded, not knowing what to say.
“I didn’t kill Nora,” she said, lifting her heavy black hair and laying a hand on the back of her neck. “Let me try and explain. She and I became pretty close, as you probably guessed. We were drinking wine one night at her place, and she started telling me about how she felt when her son was dying. After a couple of glasses, I don’t know, my guard came down and I hadn’t talked to anyone about it for so long. And with her losing a child, too, I just thought—” Her eyes darkened. “I told her about Antoine. He was my little boy. I had no idea she wrote that column. And I had no idea what sort of person she was.”
“Was she going to put it in her column?” The thought of it shocked me as much as the discovery about Evangeline. “How could she do that to you when you both had lost a child?”
Her laugh came out harsh. “Because after she heard my story, she became furious. She said that, unlike her, at least I had some control of the situation. I could have saved my child. That I could have left or shot Joe before he killed Antoine.” Her chin dropped to her chest, and her voice became a whisper. “Didn’t she think I’d thought of that so many times myself? Those same thoughts keep me up night after night until sometimes I feel like I’ll go crazy. That’s why D-Daddy brought me here. Everything in Louisiana reminded me of Antoine and how I failed him as a mother. But I guess Nora felt I hadn’t been punished enough. She was going to make sure people knew just what sort of mother I’d been.”
The barbecued chicken rose up sour in the back of my throat.
Evangeline looked up, her cheeks wet, and said, “Gabe knows.”
“He does?”
“He didn’t tell you? I thought you were looking in my file for him.”