“It sure is,” I said, doing my best to suppress that ugly image from reappearing in my head. “I guess you can see now why I’m curious about it all.”
“Sure,” Melba said. “What was it you wanted to ask me?”
“I know Godfrey came back to Athena on a regular basis,” I said. “He had quite a track record with women, like the episodes with Julia and Peter Vanderkeller’s wife. Are there any other outraged husbands or boyfriends or spurned women in the area?”
Melba was silent for a moment. “The first one that comes to mind is the woman who owns that bookstore on the square. Can’t remember her name at the moment.”
“Jordan Thompson,” I said. “I heard about her. Can you think of anyone else?”
“The other one that comes to mind is Frank Ledbetter.” Melba sighed into the phone.
“Frank Ledbetter?” Why did that name sound familiar?
“My ex-husband,” Melba said.
“Oh,” I said, too stunned for the moment to say anything else.
“I know,” Melba said, sounding sheepish. “It’s not something I’m proud of, let me tell you. But I had a brief fling with Godfrey about ten years ago, and it cost me my marriage.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I had no idea.” Poor Melba. I knew she was divorced, but that was pretty much the extent of my knowledge.
“Frank and I were going through a bad patch,” Melba said. “Old, old story. And here comes Godfrey on a book tour. I went to hear him talk, there were some sparks, and I went out to dinner with him afterward. And you can guess the rest.”
I could, but I was curious about one thing. “I do have to ask you one question.”
“Shoot,” Melba said.
“Did Godfrey hang around town while you had this, er, relationship?”
“I wasn’t stupid enough to run off to California with him, thank the Lord,” Melba said. “Yeah, Athena was the last stop on his tour, and he was planning to stay here for a couple of months, doing research for a book.”
“And when he finished, he went back to California?”
“And I stayed here,” Melba said. “By then I’d realized what a fool I’d made of myself, and poor Frank, too. He filed for divorce right away.”
“Another question,” I said, “and forgive me for asking it, but I have to. Did either you or Frank hate Godfrey enough to kill him?”
“Ten years ago Frank was ready to skin him alive—and he loved to hunt,” Melba said. “But by the time Godfrey came back to town a couple years later, Frank was remarried.”
“And you?” I prompted her gently.
“I hated him, too,” Melba said. “But I hated myself more, let me tell you. I learned my lesson from that.” She laughed, a little wildly, I thought. “I got back at Godfrey in my own way, though.”
“How so?” I was almost afraid to ask, uncertain of what I would hear.
“I took every one of his books I owned and sat down in front of the fireplace. I ripped out every page, one by one, and burned them. It felt pretty good, though of course I don’t normally hold with burning books.”
“That’s a good thing,” I said, trying to ease the tension a little. “Especially since you work in a library.”
She laughed, and I felt relieved. I couldn’t completely cross her off the suspect list, but it sounded to me like she had worked through her feelings.
I wondered if things might be awkward between us at work after her confession, and I hoped they wouldn’t be. I liked Melba. Her sunny, upbeat disposition made her fun to be around, and I would hate for her to feel embarrassed with me.
“I appreciate you telling me all this,” I said.
“No big deal,” Melba said, though her tone belied the words. “I figured somebody was bound to bring it up sooner or later, and I’d rather you heard it from me.”
It was time to move on. “Can you think of anybody else?” I didn’t want to say it, but Godfrey, I was sure, probably found a different, but willing, woman whenever he popped back into town for a visit.
“Besides Julia, the bookstore lady, and me?” Melba snorted. “The notches that man must have had on his bed. Well, there is one more that I know of. Janette Turnipseed.”
“That’s an odd name,” I said. “I don’t recall anybody by that name.”
“No reason you should,” Melba said. “She was a professor at Athena, a post-doc in the English department. She was here about six years ago. Godfrey spent three months here one fall in that writer-in-residence program they have, and apparently they had quite an affair.”
“She left after her post-doc?” I said.
“Before it was finished,” Melba replied. “Poor woman. She left at the end of the fall semester. I think I heard she went to some school out in Nebraska or Oklahoma.”
“Why did women keep falling for him? Surely they knew about his past?” I realized my questions could be insulting, but Melba seemed not to take them that way.
“He could be incredibly charming when he wanted to,” Melba said. “He’d focus those eyes on you, and suddenly you felt like the most desirable woman in the world.” She laughed. “Listen to me. I sound like a teenager. But he made me feel that way.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” I said wryly. “I’ve been reading his new book, and I have to say, the way he writes about women makes him seem like a misogynist.”
“That’s the weird thing,” Melba said. “I got that from his books, too, but in person he wasn’t like that. I think he truly liked women, and that was his problem. He liked them so much he couldn’t limit himself to one, or even one at a time.”
“Then I wonder why he wrote about them with such disdain?”
“Only his shrink knows for sure,” Melba said.
Diesel appeared in the doorway and ambled over to my chair. He leaped into my lap, and I tried not to wince from the impact. I grunted into the phone anyway.
“Are you okay?” Melba asked.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just a bit winded from being the landing spot for a large cat.”
Melba laughed. “I can see it now. He’s pretty big for a lap kitty.”
“Try to tell
him
that,” I said as I shifted in the chair to redistribute some of Diesel’s weight. “Okay, now I can breathe again.”
Diesel chirped at me, and I rubbed his head with my free hand. He would be happy to sit like this for an hour or two—or until my hand cramped and my legs went to sleep, that is.
He laid his head against my chest, and when he did that, I forgave him everything. He was such a loving companion, and if it hadn’t been for him, I don’t know what I would have done the past couple of years.
“Thanks for all the information,” I said. “So far, though, I don’t think any of these people—especially you—sounds like a good suspect, though. Can you think of anyone else? I believe Godfrey’s parents have passed away, but did he have any other family?”
“Some distant cousins, I think,” Melba said. “On his father’s side. But they live in south Alabama. I don’t think Godfrey’s parents had much contact with them, though.”
I was about to ask another question when Melba continued.
“The only other one I can think of is his half brother,” she said.
“Half brother?” That was news to me. I didn’t remember ever hearing that Godfrey had any siblings.
“Yeah, he’s about ten years older. Godfrey’s mother was married to someone else before she married Mr. Priest.”
“I never knew that,” I said. “And I sure didn’t know about a half brother.”
“You know him. You just don’t know you know him,” Melba said, an impish tone in her voice.
“Okay, I give. Who is it?” I said. I really had no idea.
“Rick Tackett, the operations manager.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“So Rick is Godfrey’s half brother,” I said.
Was that why he was so interested in the value of Godfrey’s papers?
“Yeah, I guess a lot of people probably don’t know that. I don’t think they ever had much to do with each other,” Melba said. “What I heard was that the boys’ mama left her first husband, Mr. Tackett, and Rick for Godfrey’s daddy. This was back in the fifties, and I reckon it was a real scandal for a while.”
“She left both her first husband
and
her son?” I said. “That’s really sad for the son.”
“I know,” Melba said. “I’ve always felt a bit sorry for Rick on account of it. His daddy wouldn’t let him have anything to do with his mama. But apparently Godfrey took after
his
daddy in a lot of ways.”
“So old man Priest was a ladies’ man, too?”
“From what my mama told me, he was,” Melba said. “But they stayed married, even if he did run around on her. She got paid back for running out on her son like that.”
“They sound like such lovely people,” I said, my tone sour. I had no respect for men who behaved like that. Or for women who ran off and left their children for some man. I didn’t know all the details, so I could be misjudging Rick and Godfrey’s mama, but still.
“Mrs. Tackett, as she was then, was the organist at her church, and her sister was the preacher’s wife.
That
sure caused some talk.”
“I guess Peyton Place had nothing on Athena,” I said.
“Not then, or now,” Melba said. “People don’t change that much. They’re always gonna get themselves into all kinds of messes.”
“I guess so,” I said. “But what I have to wonder is, could one of those messes be related to Godfrey’s death? What about Rick, for example?”
“Like I said, I don’t think he and Godfrey ever had much to do with each other. I never heard that they did, anyway. Rick, though, has had a pretty hard life.”
“I don’t really know anything about him,” I said, knowing that Melba would fill in the details.
“For one thing, he was in Vietnam, right at the tail end of the war, and the Lord only knows how that affected him,” Melba said, the pity obvious in her voice. “Old Mr. Tackett was a hard man, they say. He was a farmer, and you know that’s not an easy life. Rick worked on the farm until he was old enough to enlist in the army.”
“Couldn’t wait to get away, probably,” I said. “That’s what it sounds like.”
“Probably,” Melba said. “Rick’s been married a couple of times too, and has three kids, I think.” She paused for a moment. “Yeah, three. Two boys and a girl. He had another daughter, though, but she died when she was only nine or ten.”
“That’s awful,” I said. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than the death of one’s child.
“She had some kind of cancer,” Melba said. “They took her to St. Jude in Memphis, and I reckon they did everything they could for her. But they couldn’t save her.”
“Poor Rick,” I said.
“Yeah, he’s had a hard row to hoe all his life,” Melba said. “And there’s his half brother, rich as all get out from his books, and Rick struggling to raise his family and get them through school.”
“Godfrey probably never did a thing to help them,” I said. I couldn’t imagine Godfrey being that charitable. Of course, Rick might not have wanted anything from his brother.
“Not that I ever heard,” Melba said. “Those kids are smart, though, and one of them’s really talented. I heard her sing in the church choir. She has a beautiful voice, and the last I heard she was off to one of those high-toned music schools back east. I think she wants to be an opera singer.”
That wouldn’t be cheap, I thought. Godfrey’s money could make all the difference, if he were inclined to help.
I chatted a few minutes longer with Melba, but she had no further skeletons to reveal. I finally ended the call and put my phone aside.
Diesel was sound asleep in my lap, and my legs were beginning to ache a bit from his weight. I woke him gently and shifted him off my lap to the floor. He blinked up at me, yawned, and hopped on the bed where he went back to sleep.
I got up and stretched my legs before going into the bathroom for a drink of water. My throat was dry after the long conversation with Melba.
After I brushed my teeth I climbed into bed beside Diesel, thankful that for once he had left me plenty of room, so I didn’t have to move him.
I lay there in the dark for a while, thinking about all Melba had told me. Godfrey had caused a lot of heartache—as had his mother and father, apparently. But out of all those sad little stories, was there one relevant to Godfrey’s death?
The one that seemed like the only real possibility was that Godfrey had a half brother. I could see where Rick might resent his brother, especially since Godfrey had become rich and famous while he had to struggle just to get by.
Even if Rick resented Godfrey, though, was that a strong enough motive for murder? From what Melba told me, it didn’t sound likely to me that Godfrey would have put Rick and his family in his will. There was probably no monetary gain, then, from Godfrey’s death.
Or could it have been the product of sheer envy, turned deadly by years of disappointment and resentment?
Troubled by these questions, I had a hard time going to sleep. Eventually I drifted off, Diesel by my side.
When the alarm sounded the next morning, I felt groggy and inclined to stay in bed. My sleep hadn’t been restful, and I knew I’d be logy all day. Diesel poked his nose close to mine and warbled at me. When I didn’t move, he put a paw on my arm and warbled again.
I opened my eyes and glared at him. “Oh, all right. I’ll get up. I’m sure you’ll faint from hunger if I don’t get up and feed you right this minute.”
Diesel walked across me and jumped down onto the floor, ignoring my grunt of pain as he stepped on my stomach. That put me in my place, so I got up.
Downstairs I put the coffee on, filled up Diesel’s bowls, and cleaned the litter box. While the cat munched happily on his food, I retrieved the paper from the front lawn and sat down to read it.
That coffeepot better hurry up
, I thought. I needed the caffeine to kick-start my brain into gear.
Godfrey’s death was still front-page news, though I was pleased to see the article mentioned no names of suspects. I’d have to thank Kanesha Berry later for keeping my name, as well as those of Julia and Justin, out of the paper. I realized then that the local reporter had not been pestering me any further either, so I owed Kanesha for that, too.