The Saucy Lucy Murders (5 page)

She cried out when the vehicle smacked her old truck from behind and her head snapped forward, then back, like a rubber band. Her brain hammered like it had been bounced across the floor. Outraged, Lexie turned around to holler at the dark vehicle.

Amazed and still somewhat in shock, she watched as the mystery car, neat as you please, pulled out around her truck and shot through the intersection. Squinting, she tried making out the license plate. Nice try, no cigar. It was too dark and her head hurt
like hell.

Butt wipes. They could have at least stopped to make sure she hadn’t conked her head on the dashboard and swallowed any teeth.

The light turned green and Lexie still sat in a daze. A wicked bout of hiccoughs jolted her back to reality and she put the truck in gear and drove home. Should she call the cops? No. She really had nothing to report—no license plate, no car description.

Besides, this is what would happen if she tried to tell her brother-in-law, the sheriff. He’d sit back in his office chair, hands laced over his potbelly, chewing on a pen cap. To make it look good, Otis would nod occasionally and pretend to jot notes in dog-eared notebook. Then he would proceed to do nothing.

Hiccough. Hiccough.
Lexie’s hands trembled on the steering wheel, but she was really all right. And her old, dinged-up truck would live to fight another battle.

Only two more years,
she told herself as she parked and went inside her house. Then she’d have Eva’s car paid off and she could buy herself more reliable transportation. That wasn’t so far off. She could keep her truck band-aided together till then.

“Eva, I’m home,” she called wearily as she started up the stairs, her feet heavy as boulders and her knees still watery. In the small living room she walked past Eva who was plinking away on the computer. Eva didn’t even look up when Lexie sighed and flung herself onto their old, overstuffed couch. Her mind reeling from the night’s events, she stared
like a zombie at a Venus flytrap atop Grandmother Castleton’s antique fern stand.

“Back already?” Eva twirled around in the office chair, one leg crossed over the other. She stared at her mother with a perplexed expression.

“It was perfectly awful. Just like I expected.” Lexie hiccoughed.

“What happened?”

“He was all over me.”

“So, did he kiss you, or what?” Eva popped her gum.

“Slobbered me,”
hiccough,
“is more like it. Then I went home.”

Eva made a time out sign with her hands. “TMI, Mom. Too much info.”

“You asked.”

“OK, so he doesn’t turn you on. But you’re obviously a hottie. Consider yourself lucky that at your age you’ve still got it.”

“At
my age?”
Lexie stared at her daughter.

Eva shrugged. “I just mean that you should be grateful. If you’d been a real hag or something he wouldn’t have asked you out.”

“Wow. I’m comforted.”
Hiccough, hiccough.
Lexie stretched her legs out on the wicker coffee table. She sucked in her breath and held it, then forced burps. OK, so she sounded like a garbage disposal with a paperclip in crosswise, but this was a guaranteed hiccough killer.

“You know,” Eva popped her gum again. “I
heard you have to date a hundred men before you find the right one.”

Lexie stopped burping. She suddenly did not feel well. “A hundred men? I’d rather have a hundred root canals, thank you.”

Lexie tossed and turned all night. By morning she was tired and stiff. When 5 a.m. rolled around, sleep was not an option. She decided the garden therapy must have taken its toll and she made mental note not to go at it with such gusto on Sunday. She did, after all, need to take into account her advanced years, as her daughter so kindly reminded her.

“Good morning, sweetie,” she said to Eva as she shuffled into the kitchen, surprised to see her at the kitchen table hitting the books at this unholy hour of the morning. She headed for the coffee pot that was set on a timer. A rich hazelnut brew called to her, the aroma tickling her nostrils. “You’re up way early.”

“Morning,” Eva mumbled around a mouthful of fruit loops, then swallowed. “I need to get ten chapters of this history book read by Monday or I’m dead.”

“We wouldn’t have been
procrastinating,
would we?”

“I got busy.” Eva glared at her book.

Lexie imagined the busy part had something to do with dorm parties and such. “You need anything for your room? Junk food? Sheets? Stuffed
animals? Voodoo dolls?”

“Nope.”

Ahhh. She hadn’t even caught the joke. “How about your roommate? Is she working out?”

Eva shrugged, her gaze plastered to the textbook. “OK, I guess.”

Lexie poured herself a cup of coffee. Leaning back against the counter sipping the hot brew, she began to go over her to-do list for the day. Then it hit her.

I left my purse at Captain Caveman’s place.

Crapola, she’d completely forgotten about it. Growling with frustration, she told Eva she’d be right back, ran upstairs and dressed, then drove over to his pumpkin-colored cottage.

As she approached, she wondered why Tiny wasn’t barking his fat head off. She checked the bushes and spotted the dogless chain on the ground. He must have run off again. She knocked on the ripped screen door. No answer.
Ru roh.
Whitehead was probably still in bed. He’d think she was nuts for coming over so early. Oh, well, too bad. She really needed her purse.

The front door was ajar. Stepping inside, Lexie spotted her purse sitting beside the coffee table.
All righty then. I’ll just slip in real quiet like, get what I need and beeline outta here.

Feeling like a thief and sweating like a pig, Lexie tiptoed inside and snatched her purse. But as she turned to go, her eye caught something in the
kitchen that froze her legs in place like pretzels in plaster castings. Her heart flip-flopped and started to play the tango.

In the middle of the floor, Whitehead lay in a pool of blood.

L
EXIE REELED BACKWARD AND LEANED AGAINST
the wall for support. Unwelcome memories of her last date with Hugh Glenwood flashed through her mind. One minute they’d been laughing in the crisp winter woods, his snowmobile slicing through the trails while she rode on the seat behind, clinging to his waist. The next, he’d fallen sideways, tipping them over onto the cold ground.

She remembered screaming, then blood on snow …
crimson soaking into white.

With a sudden jolt, she was back in the present. A small voice told her to do something, call someone for help. An ambulance?

Lexie had no medical training, but from the looks of Whitehead, he was no doubt beyond any paramedics’ ability to resuscitate. His hairy skin had a bluish tinge and his lips were set in a silent scream. The front of his shirt was ripped and covered in blood.

Unable to stomach the sight any longer, she turned away, fumbling for her cell phone in a jacket pocket. She dialed 911 with trembling fingers. Struggling with a bout of hiccoughs, she told the operator how she had found Whitehead and gave her the address.

“I don’t … I don’t think he’s alive,” she told the operator in a thin, trembling voice, her hiccoughs escalating.

The operator promised to dispatch an ambulance from Westonville Medical Center and told Lexie to stay at the scene.

Lexie did not want to look at him again, so she stumbled into the front room and sat stiffly on his black vinyl couch. She wrapped her arms around herself to try and quell her shaking, then her nose began to twitch. Lord, it smelled in here. Henry had an even stranger odor than before. But of course, that was to be expected. He had an excuse to smell now.

How crude.
Lexie mentally kicked herself for having such wicked thoughts of the recently departed.

Lexie managed to dial one more number on her cell phone. Moose Creek Junction’s sheriff, Otis Parnell. He was pretty incompetent, but he was Lucy’s husband, and he wore the badge. Also, he was the only law around for miles.

“Hello?” Lucy answered groggily.

Lexie hiccoughed. “Lucy?”

“Well, it’s sure not the Avon lady at …” She must have glanced at the clock. “Six a.m.? Gracious,
we’re still in bed!”

“Something t-terrible has happened.” Lexie hiccoughed.

“Lexie? What’s wrong? You sound like a chipmunk on steroids.”

“Otis needs to come over to Henry Whitehead’s place immediately. I think … I think somebody murdered him.”

“Lord have mercy.” Silence thrummed on the cell for a second and Lexie heard her sister say something to her husband, then she heard Otis’s corresponding grunt and a string of gruff expletives. “He’ll be right over,” Lucy told her.

Lexie flipped the cell phone closed and slipped it back into her pocket, numbness seeping into her limbs. Even her toes had gone numb and her mind reeled with disbelief.

Who killed Henry Whitehead? And why?

The man might have been a creep, but he didn’t deserve to be murdered. Lexie’s hiccoughing got worse and she held her breath. It seemed inappropriate to do the burping backward thing with a corpse in the next room, so she held off.

As Eva would say, this whole thing was
so
not good. Lexie was probably the last person who had seen Whitehead alive, besides his murderer, and Otis would rip her apart. Just thinking about it made hiccoughs ricochet through her diaphragm with a vengeance.

Suddenly, there was noise on the front porch and Lexie nearly jumped through the roof.

“Get your lazy butt up and answer the door, Henry,” a female voice called through the open screen. “I thought you was gonna pick up the kids this morning!”

Whitehead’s ex-wife, Violet, Lexie thought. Maybe she’d off’d him last night after Lexie left. She seemed resentful enough toward him, so she had the motive. But why would she show up on his doorstep this morning after she’d murdered him last night? Maybe to throw off suspicion? And what would she do if she found Lexie here?

Stop being paranoid, Lexie told herself, remembering Lucy always complained she had a wild imagination. What did she know? She was no Sherlock Holmes.

She walked toward the screen door, immediately recognizing Violet standing on the porch in a gray sweat suit and running shoes. The heavyset brunette gave her a she-devil look, just like the one at the picnic. She was indeed creepy, as Whitehead had said.

“What the hell’s goin’ on? Where’s Henry?” Violet scowled. “Oh, I recognize you. You’re one of Henry’s new floozies, ain’t ya?”

Lexie’s face flushed with embarrassment. “This isn’t what it seems.”

“Geez, I knew Henry was a sleaze ball, but couldn’t he at least lay off the broads long enough to pick up his kids like he promised?
Crud.
He was supposed to be over to my place a half hour ago.”
Violet heaved herself inside.

“I don’t think you should be here,” Lexie said. “There’s been an … incident.”

“Sure, and I’m the queen of Sheba.” Violet shoved her hands on her hips. “Hey, Henry Horatio Whitehead,” she hollered. “Get your butt-skee out here.” She smirked at Lexie. “He hates when I call him that.”

Lexie noticed Violet’s chipped front tooth and her dirty fingernails. As unpleasant as Violet was, and as much as she seemed to dislike her ex, Lexie still figured she would not want to see him laid out on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood. She was the mother of his children, after all.

“He can’t,” Lexie said.

“Can’t what?”

“Come out here. Like I said, there’s been an incident.”

“Oh, I got it.” Violet tossed her dark head. “You two had a hot and heavy night so he’s sacked out cold in bed. Far be it from me to disturb his lordship. So do me a favor, toots, and go get the jerk for me.”

The wail of a siren sliced through the air and Lexie decided there was no point in trying to spare Violet Whitehead any longer. She pointed into the kitchen. “Go get him yourself. He’s in there.”

Swearing like a sailor, Violet stomped into the kitchen, complaining about the filthy stench. Suddenly she fell silent, then stumbled back into the front room, her face drained of all color. “I knew he
was a son of a bitch, but why’d you go and kill him?”

Lexie hugged herself and shivered. “I didn’t. I found him like that.”

“God damn.” Violet shook her shaggy dark head. “I always told the butthead he’d better watch out where he poked his pecker or some pissed-off husband was going to fix his bucket.” She blinked several times, made a gagging sound, and ran outside.

Lexie heard her dousing the bushes with her breakfast.