2 On the Nickel (8 page)

I winced inwardly, though I was
careful not to let my personal misgivings show. Doubts and fears congested my
thoughts. Public office meant your life was examined under a magnifying glass.

My heart sank.

Jonette was true blue, the best
friend anyone could ask for, but there were chapters of her checkered past that
might not bear intense scrutiny. Or even casual scrutiny.

On the other hand, she positively
bristled with enthusiasm. I couldn’t let her down by pointing out the negatives
to her idea. I’d manage them behind the scene so that she got what she wanted. Loyal
and trustworthy and hardworking, that was me.

The good news was that I was
fairly certain it was already too late in the year to file for president of the
United States. Perhaps there wouldn’t be as much mud-slinging for a lesser
election. Whatever it was, Jonette had my unconditional support.

My smile was genuine. “Sure. What
are we running for?”

“Mayor.” Jonette grinned. “I’m
gonna hit that lard-ass Darnell Reynolds right where it hurts.”

Chapter 6

After folding church bulletins in the cave-like Trinity
Episcopal workroom for an hour on Friday morning, my brain was fried. My arms
ached from fatigue, and I desperately needed a nap. How did Mama do this
mindless physical labor week after week?

I picked up another lightly
creased cream-colored bulletin. Inserted it into the antique homemade press. Pulled the lever arm down. Removed the creased bulletin. Rotated it. Inserted the
other side. Pulled the lever arm down again. Removed the finished product.

“How many bulletins are there?” I
asked, flexing my aching hands. No matter how fast I went, my to-do pile never
got smaller. I was definitely the weakest link in this production process.

“Doesn’t matter how many they
are,” Francine said, hand-creasing the left seam on yet another legal-sized piece
of paper. She passed the half-folded bulletin to her sister Muriel and started
creasing the next one. “They all have to be folded.”

I gestured toward the steel monstrosity
I’d been operating. “Why doesn’t the church invest in a more modern piece of
equipment? This thing looks older than I am.”

“You young people have a lot to
learn.” Muriel folded the second crease in the trifold bulletin before she slid
it down to me. Light glinted on her large glasses. “Newer isn’t always better.
Our generation does things the right way.”

I selected another loosely folded
bulletin from the pile and put it through the mashing process. “I’m not
following you.”

“The church tried a new machine
about ten years ago,” Francine said. “It jammed and hissed and broke and wasted
our time. We were lucky to get our money back for that piece of junk.”

We worked in silence for a few
minutes. I had the routine down cold. Insert. Pull. Remove. Rotate. Insert.
Pull. Remove.

If the excess bulletins were made
of chocolate, I would’ve eaten the extras when I fell behind, but my
paper-eating days were far behind me. Besides, with such close scrutiny, I
couldn’t get away with making a single mistake.

Francine and Muriel worked like
twin automatons, all the while keeping their hawk-like gazes on my dubious
progress. Who knew that their sixty-something gnarled and bent fingers could
move with such surprising speed and economy of motion?

“How long have y’all been doing
this?” I fed another bulletin into the machine and flattened it.

“As long as the church needed it
done, dearie.”

Muriel’s comment irritated me. There had to be a better way. This medieval process was like trying to fill a
hole with steam. “Why don’t they hire someone to do this?”

“Money.” Francine’s lips pressed
into thin, disapproving slashes of apricot lipstick. “Hiring people costs money,
and then the church would need to take in more money. It’s better all the way
around if this activity is staffed through volunteers.”

“How about recycling? Why don’t
we reuse the same bulletins each week?”

Francine shot me a caustic look. “The liturgy changes by season and occasion. The readings and the hymns
change each week.”

Duh. I knew that. I’d been raised
Episcopalian. Still. It galled me that so much effort went for a single-use
disposable product. “Does anyone ever notice how flat the bulletins are? Why do
they have to be pressed anyway?”

Muriel sighed and tossed another
bulletin on my to-do pile. “If you don’t want to fill in for your mother,
leave. Francine and I can manage.”

I couldn’t imagine how long it
would take the two women to perfectly crease all these bulletins. No way could
I just walk out of here. Especially when I hadn’t gotten any of the answers I
needed.

Silly me.

I had assumed I would breeze in
here, dazzle the seniors with my dexterity and youthful energy, and worm their
secrets out of them before they knew what hit them. Instead, I felt like I’d
been hooked up to an embalming pump and my internal fluids had been replaced
with a numbing preservative.

“You say that Dee isn’t feeling
well.” Francine’s beady brown eyes surveyed me through the top of her bifocals.
“What’s wrong with her?”

The pale green walls of the tiny
workroom seemed to close in on me. I had planned to say Mama was under the
weather and we were worried about the flu. The possibility of contagion would
surely cause her friends to shun her for weeks, which would help me to keep Mama safely at home.

Notice I wasn’t saying she had
the flu, only that we were worried about the flu. Truthfully, who wasn’t
worried about the flu?

Before I could utter a word, my
conscience got the better of me. I was on church property, and I was planning
to deceive the faithful? Not a very Christian attitude. I grabbed a bulletin
and smashed it into the folding machine. Only I hadn’t just grabbed one. Two
bulletins went in, two came out folded flat.

Hmm.

Francine and Muriel hadn’t mentioned pressing multiple bulletins during their brief recitation of the machine’s operating
instructions. I blinked at the implication of what that meant.

They wanted me to fail.

Or at the very least to leave
them alone.

My gaze narrowed and my resolve
strengthened. Francine and Muriel couldn’t run me off that easily. Mama’s
freedom hung in the balance. I could take whatever heat they dished out.
Especially since I’d discovered the secret of the mashing machine.

I cleared my throat. “Mama isn’t
herself.” I flipped the two bulletins over and flattened the remaining fold. “She’s
moping around and spending a lot of time staring into space.”

Muriel’s gnarled fingers spasmed and crushed the sheet of paper she was folding. She pushed the crumpled bulletin to the
reject side of the table. “Has Delilah seen her heart doctor?”

I nonchalantly stacked both
perfectly folded bulletins in the completed box. It took everything I had not
to smile in triumph. These wily ladies wouldn’t beat me today. “She won’t see
anyone. But I wouldn’t let her stay home if it was her heart. I’d see that she
got immediate medical attention.”

“Then it must be that young man
you’re seeing.” Francine pushed another bulletin toward my end of the table. “Dee
worries you’ll put her out in the street.”

Outrage boiled out of me before I could close my mouth. “I would never put Mama out in the street, and she knows that.
I can’t believe you would even suggest such a thing.”

Muriel shrugged her hunched
shoulders. Her thin neck momentarily disappeared. “It hurt her deeply that you
went behind her back to get the deed to her house.”

I crammed a handful of bulletins
in the mangler thingy and smashed them flat. This accusation was worse than the
last. But the bulletin sisters weren’t going to break me. “I did no such thing.
Daddy expected me to look after Mama’s finances. That’s why he deeded the house
over to me.”

“Dee knows how to look out for
herself. Why would she suddenly need your help?” Francine asked.

Heat flamed my cheeks. This
question had hovered in the back of my mind, too. Mama wasn’t senile or demented. She was just Mama. Daddy had trusted her to work in his office. Why hadn’t he trusted
her with the deed to their house? “I didn’t go behind Mama’s back. Daddy came to me and told me it was a done deal.”

“If you’re feeling guilty for
cheating your mother out of her inheritance, you could sign the house back over
to her. Get one of them, what’cha’macallits.” Muriel looked over at Francine. “You
know what I mean, Francy. That legal thing that Wanda’s daughter did.”

Francine snapped her fingers in
the air until her memory banks engaged. “Oh yeah. A quit-claim deed. She signed
everything back over to her mother.”

My chin went up. I crammed a handful of bulletins into the machine. They came out of the pressing machine with a thick
wrinkle down the center, obscuring the text in the middle of the page.

Grinding my back teeth together
in frustration, I dumped the ruined bulletins into the reject pile with
Francine’s crumpled efforts. “I’m not doing that. Daddy wanted me to have the house. He knew I would never evict Mama.”

“Until you move that new man in,”
Muriel predicted, shaking a thinly veined finger at me. “Then you’ll turn Dee
out. I’ve seen it happen time and time again.”

My blood pressure spiked. I
grabbed the rounded edge of the table and counted to five. “I am not turning
Mama out on the street. I can’t believe you’d say such a thing. Please, let’s
change the subject. What about Wednesday’s tragedy? What about Erica Hodges?”

“Why would we talk about her?”
Francine asked. “She’s gone, and we’re glad of it.”

Francine and Muriel nodded in
tandem. Two sisters with one brain between them.

If they knew how much I wanted
answers, they’d clam up to spite me. I had to be smarter than them. “I believe
Mama’s funk is related to the feud she had with Erica. Do you know why they
didn’t get along?”

“Sure,” Muriel said. “I’m old but
I’m not senile.”

Much more of this and I’d be
senile. “What’s the deal?”

Muriel and Francine exchanged a
knowing look that made my back teeth grind together. “Why don’t you ask Delilah
about the argument?” Francine asked.

“I already did, and she wouldn’t
tell me. Please, if you know anything about what went on, I’d like to know. I’m
worried about Mama.”

Muriel folded her bony hands
together on the scarred table. She leaned forward. “Erica was a terrible thorn
in Dee’s side for years.”

Finally.

I was getting somewhere.

I quit smashing bulletins and sat
down across from Francine and Muriel. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know. I can’t tell you how many times I heard Mama complain about
her. Erica never cleaned out the church coffee pot right, Erica used Mama’s
assigned parking space at the hospital, Erica took credit for Mama’s accomplishments whenever and wherever she could. All of that’s water under the bridge. What started this
whole mess?”

“Erica wasn’t a very nice person.
She took pride in hurting others.” Muriel spoke so softly I strained to hear
her.

“Muriel.” Francine’s sharp tone
sounded a clear warning.

My eyes darted back and forth
between the two gray-haired women. I hadn’t come this far to be turned back
emptyhanded. “And?”

“And she wasn’t above bending
facts to suit her purposes,” Muriel said in a breathy rush.

I wasn’t getting the information
I needed. Erica was a nasty user. I already knew that. Muriel and Francine were
loyal to Mama, but I sensed Muriel wanted to tell me something. What was it? I
replayed the last few minutes of our conversation in my mind.

Erica bent facts. Did she have something on Mama? Something worth killing for? My blood chilled instantly.

If Erica had been blackmailing
Mama, that meant Mama had a strong motive to kill Erica. I prayed that wasn’t
the case. I prayed Erica hadn’t pushed Mama over the edge of reason.
Regardless, I had to help Mama out of this deep hole. For that I needed more
information about the dead woman. What other avenues could I pursue with
Francine and Muriel?

Nasty people weren’t just nasty
to one person. Usually. They were nasty to everyone.

If that were true, there might be
other incidents I could uncover. If Francine and Muriel didn’t want to talk
about Mama, would they talk about their own experiences with Erica? It didn’t
hurt to ask. “Did either of you have nasty run-ins with Erica?”

Another covert look flashed
between the two women. Whatever they knew, it wasn’t information they were
anxious to reveal. “I promise to keep it to myself,” I added.

Francine bowed her head and shook
it in mute denial. Whatever Erica had done to her must be too painful to
reveal. I felt for Francine, I really did, but her searing silence galvanized
my need to know.

What did Erica have on these women?

I turned my attention to Muriel.
She barely met my gaze before she averted her eyes. Bony white knuckles bulged
from fisted hands. I was onto something here. Satisfaction hummed through my veins. I waited while she wrestled with her private demons.

“Erica said she had proof my son
cheated on his college entrance exams,” Muriel whispered, her face ghostly
pale, a single teardrop sliding down her rouged cheek. “I didn’t believe her,
but I couldn’t take the chance she would jeopardize Robby’s future.”

Clanging alarms went off in my
head. “What did you do?”

Muriel’s gaze darted sideways
like a frightened rabbit. “I did what any mother would do. I protected my
child.”

I saw the raw emotion in her
eyes. My heart ached for her, but I had to know how she’d handled the
situation. “How?”

Muriel shook her head so fast she
looked like a motorized bobble-head doll gone wild. I was afraid she would bolt
out of the room, and then where would I be? I wouldn’t have the answers I needed
to help Mama, and I’d have to finish folding these stupid bulletins by myself.
Not good.

I placed my hands palm down on
the table and leaned forward. “Please. Tell me what you did.”

“I can’t,” Muriel whispered.

Questions boiled in my throat,
but they were silenced by the sudden appearance of Detective Britt Radcliffe.
His solid law-enforcing presence filled the doorway. His sharp gaze cased the
room. Was that disappointment in his eyes? “Morning, ladies,” he said.

I was still mad at Britt for
handcuffing me and Jonette on Wednesday. He could have just sent us on our way,
but no, he had to be the Cop in Charge. He’d made his point, but in doing so,
he’d burned his bridges with me.

But I wasn’t a regular here. He’d
come expecting to see the bulletin-folding ladies. How did the bulletin sisters
feel about having a police detective in their midst? Leaning back in my seat, I
pasted a benign smile on my face and studied them. Francine and Muriel had
flinched at his deep voice. They knew more than they were telling. Would Britt
notice their unease?