Wedding Bell Blues (7 page)

Then she graduated me to blouses, skirts and dresses. When I got to art school I met girls in the dorm who'd never plugged in an iron. I had to teach them to press creases in their jeans when they “dressed up” for dates. Otherwise all of us wore our jeans like a second layer of skin, just not washed as often. The more paint caked your clothes, the more impressive. A pallet of paint colors were like merit badges showing how serious an artist you were, how hardworking.

“You look done in,” Ida Plum said over a heaped laundry basket of wet sheets. “You need a nap.”

She'd read my mind, which was a frequent occurrence.

“Not even thinking about a nap,” I said. “Got food to do for the mayor's big trashion thing. And paperwork in my office.”

I thought ironing would be much more pleasant with its certain soothing rhythm and the wonderful smell of clean—soap and water and sunshine—than what I had to do.

I had lied about the paperwork. I did not plan to go to the little Dixie Dew office that used to be Mama Alice's pantry and bury myself under the stack of forms and bills and just plain stuff. I had other plans.

I finished the last of my iced tea (June is the time I mostly switch to the iced stuff, but sometimes, at stressed as well as quiet moments, only the hot kind will do), put my dishes in the dishwasher and sneaked out the front door.

 

Chapter Ten

If the wallet wasn't at Motel 3 and not in Lady Bug where was it? Somewhere, it had to be somewhere. I must have dropped it, but where? Where had I been with this stuff for Reba before I put it in Lady Bug?

Of course. Pastor Pittman's car. And where would that car be now? Home, if he wasn't out rounding up “lost sheep.” Pittman lived in the Presbyterian manse three streets over behind the Dixie Dew.

I cut through several backyards and onto Iona Street, where I saw the two-story redbrick Williamsburg-style house with black shutters that had always been the Presbyterian manse. Hadn't changed a bit. I went to a lot of Presbyterian Youth Club things there. Weiner roasts, scavenger hunts, volleyball games.

There had never been a garage. So where did he park his car? I walked up the flagstone walk between the two rows of boxwoods, thinking, thinking. And smelling. American boxwoods are bigger than their sibling English ones and have a pleasant lemony herb scent. Nice, but I didn't have time to stop and smell the boxwoods.

When I got to the front door, I decided not to ring the doorbell. What would I say? I want to look in your car to see if I dropped something, but I can't tell you what? I walked around back to try to find the car. Maybe a garage had been added on over the years.

I was right. There in back of the manse was a double garage and lucky, lucky day, both garage doors were up. I could pop in, check inside the car and no questions asked. No explaining to do.

The garage was dark. Pastor Pittman's silver BMW was there, parked serenely next to a sporty Carolina-blue Miata convertible. His other car, a fun car, or Mrs. Pittman's? Hers, I decided. The dome light came on when I opened the door of the BMW. I didn't see anything on the seat. I crawled in to check the floor. I felt under the seat. Nothing.

Just as I started to back out, someone said, “You trying to steal my car?”

I started to rise up. It was Pastor Pittman.

“No, no, no,” I said from my compromising position on my knees, butt in the air.

“Beth McKenzie?” He laughed. A nice laugh. He gently shook his head side to side like he was saying to himself, Not again. Not this girl who keeps popping up in all kinds of places. Here she is on all fours in my car. “So,” he said, “if it's not my car you're after, you must have designs on me, then?”

“No, no,” I said again and felt my face flush. “Just looking for something.”

“And did you find it?” he asked, leaning in so close I felt his body heat.

“Not yet. Just something I thought I left in your car, or dropped when we were at the motel this morning. I didn't want to disturb you.”

“No problem. Can I help you look?” he asked.

“Thanks, but no.” I straightened up. “It's not that important.” It was, but not to him, just to me and Reba and maybe Ossie, and maybe whoever that was sprawled across the picnic table by the Interstate.

I thanked him and waved goodbye. He stood there shaking his head, looking totally confused, as though this town and some of the people who lived here were beyond his comprehension.

What next? Where next? The only place left where that wallet could possibly be was back where I had originally found it: Motel 3. Allison had played games with me.

Lied like a rug. And I sure didn't want to go back for more, but that had to be where it was. Should I go trucking over there now or put it off and maybe Allison would be a bit friendlier, forget she'd thrown a wallet at me? Cool down, calm down. Maybe she thought she was being cute—but I just didn't think so. I thought she was hiding something bigger than a wallet.

I decided no good would come of procrastination so I cranked Lady Bug and back we chugged to Motel 3.

At Motel 3, Allison had parked her cleaning cart in front of the room where Reba and the mystery man had their fateful picnic. The door was open, the crime scene tape taken down. That sure was some fast “collecting evidence from a crime scene” if indeed that's what Bruce had done.

“Knock, knock,” I said as I marched right in.

Allison had the vacuum cleaner going and a radio playing reggae music, but she turned around. “You must like this place. You keep coming back like some warped boomerang.”

I didn't answer.

She turned off the vacuum, came from behind the bed. “What now?” She stood with her arms crossed across her wide and blooming chest.

“The wallet, please.” I held out my hand. “The real one this time.”

“I don't know what on earth makes you think you have to have the damn thing. There's no money in it.” She now stood with both hands on her hips. A defiant pose if there ever was one. A pose that said, you're going to have to knock me down and take it.

“Believe it or not, it's not money I'm after.”

“I don't believe it. Everybody in this world is after money. The most they can get and get away with.” She gave a long, lingering sigh.

“I need the pictures … the photos.” I was tired of playing games with her.

“I should have buried the thing.” Allison reached down and pulled the wallet from between the mattress and box springs. “Take it if you think it's going to do you any good. Been bad luck for me.”

She handed it to me with a kind of good-riddance thrust.

I knew that wallet was not between the mattress and box springs when Bruce did the room for evidence. Even if he or someone else had done a cursory job, they would have found it. Anything between the mattress and box springs was an old, old cliché of a hiding place. Anyone would look there first. Allison probably had the wallet the whole time. But why?

This time I said, “Thank you very much,” whirled around and left as fast as I could, got out the door before she changed her mind and tried to snatch it back. Life had sure seemed to toughen up Allison. Remembering the rumors I'd heard in high school as well as fairly recent ones, she wasn't somebody I wanted to trust. Not even with an empty wallet.

 

Chapter Eleven

This time when I went into the police headquarters I stopped to speak to Wanda Purncell, who only sighed and nodded me toward Ossie's office, where he was at his computer working. He sat bent to the screen, staring intently. Even the set of his shoulders said, I'm into serious business here. Don't interrupt me.

“I got it,” I said and waved the wallet.

He looked up and blinked, like he was asking, Who are you? What do you want and it better be important?

I said, “Proof. You wanted proof the guy on the picnic table that Reba absolutely did not kill is not the husband who is missing. The husband of this bonko lady who's threatening me. Here it is.”

He reached for the wallet.

I held it away from him, flipped it open to the photos. “This,” I said and pointed to the photo, “is the woman who is threatening me. And
this
is Butch Rigsbee, who I think Reba kept calling God.” I told him about the phone call at Motel 3 and my other suspicions that this woman was following me and meant to do me harm and that Allison said Butch Rigsbee had left, but his truck was the one Bruce drove here. “The one right out there in your parking lot.” I pointed out the window, but Ossie didn't even look.

Instead he took the wallet, glanced at the photos, opened it all the way flat and felt in the compartment that would have held cash. “It's empty,” he said, folded it back together and slid it in his desk drawer.

“That's evidence,” I said, shocked at his nonchalance. “Aren't you going to tag and bag it?”

“Tell me something I don't already know.” He turned back to his computer.

“I know this woman is threatening me. Threatening me with bodily harm. And her husband is missing. Missing. Maybe murdered.” When I said it, my voice shook and I felt like crying. “She called me a hussy.”

“So, are you?”

“Am I what?”

“A hussy.” His voice almost sounded like it had half a chuckle in it. He gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Little girl, go home. You are into something you don't know anything about.”

“But…” I said.

He didn't even look up.

I let myself out and when I walked by Wanda's desk she gave me a look of pure sympathy and an uplifted finger of a wave that seemed to say, Honey, you just got a taste of what I work with every day. Goodbye and good luck.

Near the back entrance I saw Bruce Bechner's office. Hmmm, I thought. Maybe Bruce would be the one to get his mind on what was going on in Littleboro since he didn't have wedding jitters.

I opened the door and poked my head in. No Bruce. The office was empty except for a desk, a file cabinet, a one-cup coffeemaker and a whole windowsill of African violets in a profusion of purples and pinks and whites.

Out the window I saw the white van and on Bruce's desk lay a set of keys that looked like a jangle of truck keys.

“Hmm,” I said, out loud this time.

I picked up the keys, went out the back door and jogged over to the truck. I knew Ossie could see me from his office, but my latest encounter with him told me he wasn't interested in anything I said or did. I'd bet anything he still had his nose glued to that computer screen.

I tried one of the keys in the rear lock and heard a rumbling noise as the gate lifted. Nearly scared me to death. I jumped back. Who knew that was the right key and that it worked the lift gate? The gate rose very slowly until the whole interior of the truck was wide open. Wide open to dark and more dark. Empty. There was nothing in that truck bed but a small stack of white boxes. I climbed into the truck bed and opened one of the boxes. Rows of dozens of new orange prescription bottles. Empty ones. Was Butch hauling pharmacy supplies?

So what was all this fuss about?

I closed the boxes, jumped down and pushed the button to lower the gate, all the while checking to see if Ossie or Bruce had seen me or heard something.

All was still. All was quiet.

I slipped back in the office to lay the keys exactly where I found them on Bruce's desk. I tiptoed in and was ready to lay the keys very carefully and without a single jangle when I felt a big, heavy hand hot on my shoulder. “Ohhhhhh,” I said and pivoted into a tall and wide masculine body. Bruce Bechner.

“Hey there,” he said. “Admiring my babies?”

I held my breath, backed up and very slowly laid the keys on the desktop. Not a single jingle jangle sounded. Whew.

“Ba-babies?” I stuttered.

“My violets.” He smiled and lifted his chin. “There,” he indicated. “On the windowsill. The light is perfect. Aren't they amazing?”

“Beautiful,” I said. “Just beautiful.”

He walked to the window, lifted up a fluffy pink African violet, said, “This pretty little girl is my Apache Primrose. One of my best sellers. At home I got two basement rooms filled with these violets in every shade of pink, purple and white. Some double, triple, some big, some small. Every week mama and me ship out dozens … all over the country. You'd be surprised how popular these things are.”

“I'm sure,” I said. “You really must have a green thumb.”

“Not green.” He placed the potted African violet back on the sill, “They're easy to grow.”

I told him about the wallet I'd just given Ossie, that it was proof the man Reba
thought
she killed was not the one she was engaged to, who was a Butch Rigsbee who sounded like one of Allison's regulars and whose presence in Littleboro was unaccounted for.

He scratched the side of his face, but listened intently, thanked me and headed down the hall toward Ossie's office.

In the parking lot, I jumped in Lady Bug and scooted back to the Dixie Dew. Those keys on that desk were too easy. Too deliberate. They were either meant for somebody to find or simply there because Littleboro's “trained professionals” were totally inept.

Either way I'd found something, but I didn't know what I'd found. Certainly no body and no money. But I had recovered that wallet and turned it over to Ossie and that was one step toward finding out what was going on with this latest crime caper, maybe even a murder, in Littleboro. Not good stuff.

 

Chapter Twelve

In the Dixie Dew kitchen Ida Plum poured me iced tea and put the pitcher back in the fridge. At the Dixie Dew we don't use the regular pound-of-sugar-per-tea-bag recipe. We leave it unsweetened and offer a sugar syrup, and always have fresh lemon at the ready. Mama Alice used to say, “We boil water to steep it, ice to cool it, sugar to sweeten it and lemon to spike it.”