A Peach of a Murder (8 page)

Mike and Sarah Newsom walked slowly around the square, Mike holding his son, Bobby's, right hand, Sarah holding Bobby's left. The little boy could walk with somebody holding his hand, but he was being stubborn about taking that first step on his own. Of course, in the middle of a crowd like this, Mike and Sarah didn't want him even trying. They held on tightly to him. Mike had been carrying Bobby earlier, but the boy had wanted down, and kicked his legs until Mike lowered him to the ground.

"I don't know where he gets that stubborn streak," Mike said.

Sarah laughed. "I do."

"Hey! What do you mean by that?" The grin on Mike's face showed that he didn't take any real offense at the comment.

"Let's get a smoothie at that booth over there," Sarah said, instead of answering the question.

"I think I'll get a frozen lemonade and share it with Bobby."

"He won't want it. It'll be too sour. But I can give him some of my smoothie."

"Okay." The crowd was getting thicker, so Mike leaned down and got hold of his son under the arms. "C' mon, hoss," he said as he picked up the boy. "Don't want you getting trampled in this sea of humanity."

Bobby didn't fuss this time about being carried. He had walked enough, so that he was probably tired.

Mike and Sarah bought a frozen lemonade and a peach smoothie and went in search of a relatively quiet place to enjoy them. That wasn't going to be too easy to find in Weatherford's town square on this particular day. Sarah suggested, "Let's go around on the other side of the courthouse where they're having the cooking contest. It'll probably be a little more peaceful over there."

"Good idea," Mike agreed. "We can give my mom some moral support, too. The judging ought to be starting soon." "You think she'll win this year?" Sarah asked.

"I hope so. I think the contest means more to her than she'll admit, especially since it seems like Miz Wilbarger nearly always wins:'

As they made their way across the courthouse lawn and around the big limestone building, Mike spotted Darryl Bishop and his son, Justin, getting some popcorn at one of the booths. Justin looked like he was enjoying himself, but Darryl wore his usual hangdog expression. He just had the look of somebody who had been beaten down by life until he didn't want to fight it anymore.

Over the past couple of weeks, Mike's investigation of Newt Bishop's death hadn't turned up any new information that amounted to anything. He had talked to quite a few people who had known both Newt and Darryl, and while the consensus was that father and son had never been close, nobody knew of anything that might have driven Darryl to murder, either. Of course, Mike had been careful not to come right out and tell people that Darryl was a suspect, but some of the folks he had questioned had probably gotten that idea, anyway.

Nor had he found any fingers of guilt pointing toward Alfred Landers. As had been the case with Newt Bishop, the real estate man wasn't particularly well liked, but lots of people were acquainted with him, and none of them had anything really bad to say about him. Mike had checked all the records and found that Landers had never been in trouble with the law. Not only that, but he didn't have a history of suing people, or being sued. The legal tussle with Newt Bishop was the only litigation in which Landers had been involved. He was hardly your typical murderer.

But there was really no such thing as a typical murderer, Mike reminded himself. Anybody, no matter how spotless his background or sterling his reputation, could snap and lash out under the right circumstances. Anybody could have gotten angry enough to knock that jack out from under the bumper of Newt's Cadillac. It was just that most folks, when they saw what they had done, would have been horrified and tried to help the man pinned under the car.

To do such a thing and then walk away from it ... that required cold blood, rather than hot.

Mike pushed those thoughts out of his mind. He was at a festival where hundreds of people were having a great time, he had his son in his arms and his pretty wife at his side, and this just wasn't the time or the place for dwelling on morbid things like murder. He had come to the peach festival to have fun. It was just pure chance that he had seen Darryl and Justin and started thinking about the Bishop case.

They walked behind the tables where the cooking contest entries were set up. Phyllis saw them coming and smiled. "Let me see that grandbaby," she said eagerly as she held out her hands. Mike gave Bobby to her and she snuggled the boy against her. "Hello, Bobby. Can you say Grandma?

Grandma?"

Bobby just gurgled.

"He's not saying much of anything yet," Mike said. "And he still hasn't taken that first step on his own, either."

"It'll come, don't you worry," Phyllis said.

Sarah asked, "Wasn't the contest supposed to start before now?"

A worried expression appeared on Phyllis's face. "Ten minutes ago, in fact," she said. "I don't know what the holdup is, but I wish they'd go ahead and get on with it. I don't like this waiting. It's too hard on my nerves."

"There's nothing to be worried about, Mom," Mike told her. "You're a lock to win this year."

"I wish I felt as sure of that as you do:" Phyllis looked along the row of tables and stiffened. "Here they come now. The judges, I mean."

"I'll take Bobby," Sarah said. She lifted him out of Phyllis's arms.

Mike leaned over and kissed his mother on the cheek. "Good luck, Mom."

"I'll need it," he heard her mutter.

There were four judges: Donnie Boatwright, of course; Marcia Hannigan, a home economics teacher at the high school; Bud Winfield, the publisher of the local newspaper; and Harley Sewell, a disc jockey from one of the radio stations, who had been playing oldies since those particular records were brand-new. Phyllis knew all the judges, although none of them that Well, and she watched as they moved along the line of tables, stopping to eat a small sample of each contestant's entry. They made notes, conferred with each other, drank some water, and went on to the next contestant.

Phyllis knew from experience that once they had tasted all of the entries, they might go ahead and declare a winner then and there, or they might go back and taste a few of the dishes a second time if they were having trouble reaching a decision. She hoped they wouldn't draw out the torture for too long.

Her heart sank a little when the judges lingered over Carolyn's peaches-and-cream cheesecake. Bud Winfield even exclaimed how good it was, and the others nodded. The smile on Carolyn's face was huge. She glanced along the tables toward Phyllis, and Phyllis thought she saw the gleam of triumph in Carolyn's eyes.

It's not over yet, Phyllis told herself grimly. There was still her peach cobbler to be eaten, along with peach strudel, peach preserves, peach fritters, peach salsa, and all the other entries that hadn't been sampled so far.

Donnie Boatwright took a big swallow of water from his bottle and moved on, the other judges following him. He paused to pull a handkerchief from his pocket and mop sweat off his high forehead. He downed another long drink of water.

"Well, well, what have we here?" he said as he paused in front of the next contestant. His voice was as loud and hearty as ever, but Phyllis thought she heard a slight note of strain in it. Maybe the heat was getting to Donnie, or his stomach wasn't reacting well to all the different peach dishes he was eating. She hoped he wouldn't get sick before he had finished judging the contest.

At last Donnie and the other judges arrived at Phyllis's spot. Donnie smiled at her and said, "Now we get to try this nice-lookin' peach cobbler. Spicy peach cobbler, isn't that right, PhyllisT'

`.

"That's right;' she said as she dipped small servings of the cobbler into bowls that she had ready.

She added a plastic spoon to each one and handed them to the judges. "Spicy peach cobbler with candied ginger."

"That sounds good," Marcia Hannigan said. "I'm eager to try it:'

"Well, let's dig in, folks," Donnie said. He began spooning the sample into his mouth.

Phyllis waited anxiously. She glanced around and saw that Carolyn was watching the judges'

reactions. To Phyllis's surprise, Carolyn looked nervous, too. Maybe she wasn't as confident of victory as she sometimes acted.

Sam had joined the crowd looking on, too, along with Eve and Mattie, and Mike and Sarah and Bobby were still there. She certainly didn't lack for people rooting for her, she thought. She just hoped that she wouldn't let them down.

Donnie finished his cobbler and set the empty bowl on the table. "Mighty good, Phyllis, mighty good," he said, but then he gave a little shake of his head and put a hand on the table to steady himself.

"Donnie, are you all right?" Phyllis asked.

"Yeah, yeah, just a little dizzy. Must be the heat." He lifted his water bottle and drained the rest of the liquid in it. "I'll be all right in a-" he began.

But then he stopped abruptly, and his eyes rolled up in their sockets. The water bottle slipped from his fingers, hit the table, and bounced off to fall on the ground. He lurched back a step.

"Donnie!" Harley Sewell shouted. "What's wrong?" Marcia Hannigan let out a choked cry, and Bud Winfield lunged toward Donnie, reaching out in an attempt to grab his arm and steady him.

Bud missed because Donnie staggered into a half turn, stiffened, and then pitched forward onto his face, toppling like a felled tree. He hit the ground hard, without any attempt to catch himself.

Startled yells came from the men in the crowd, and one woman even screamed.

Phyllis just stood there behind the table, shocked into motionlessness by Donnie's sudden collapse, but Mike's emergency training took over and sent him hurrying to Donnie's side. He rolled the old man onto his back, and Phyllis recoiled in horror as she saw Donnie's glassy eyes staring sightlessly up at the red, white, and blue canopy over the table.

Donnie was dead. Phyllis knew that as surely as she had known it about Newt Bishop on that other terrible day. And to make things even worse, in the middle of all the sudden commotion and chaos, she heard Carolyn exclaim as plain as day, "Oh, my God! Phyllis's peach cobbler killed Donnie Boatwright!"

Phyllis was so stunned that all she could do was stare at Donnie's drawn, lifeless face and wonder if somehow her cobbler had killed him. But then she realized that wasn't possible. The other judges had eaten it, too, and they were standing there just fine, other than being as surprised and upset as everyone else.

Police and emergency personnel were on duty at the festival, of course, and the uproar caused by Donnie's collapse quickly caught their attention. Mike had been kneeling at Donnie's side, checking futilely for a pulse, but he stood up and stepped back as a couple of EMTs from the Weatherford Fire Department came running up. Even in her rattled state, Phyllis recognized them as Calvin Holloway and Ted Brady, two former students of hers and friends of Mike's.

Calvin was six-foot-six and almost three hundred pounds and had been all-state on both the offensive and defensive lines for the Weatherford High School Kangaroos before going on to Grambling State University over in Louisiana. He had played a year for the Cowboys as an undrafted free agent before coming home to Weatherford and becoming an EMT.

Ted was about half the size of his partner, with red hair and a multitude of freckles, a terrier to Calvin's Great Dane, as Phyllis often thought of them. Or Mutt and Jeff, although come to think of it she hadn't seen a Mutt and Jeff comic strip for thirty years or more, and didn't think the newspapers even published it anymore.

"What happened?" Calvin asked Mike as Ted dropped to a knee beside Donnie and started checking his vitals, even though it was obvious the man was dead.

"Mr. Boatwright just collapsed," Mike replied. "I didn't find a pulse. I guess it was probably a heart attack or a stroke, something like that."

He glanced at Phyllis, and she knew suddenly that he had heard Carolyn's ridiculous accusation, too. But he had to realize. how crazy the idea was. A bowl of peach cobbler couldn't kill anybody.

Could it?

"Was he showing any signs of distress before he collapsed?" Calvin asked.

Mike shook his head. "Not that I noticed:'

Phyllis felt like she had to speak up. "He was sweating," she said. "And he said he felt dizzy."

"It's hot out here," Mike pointed out. "Everybody's sweating."

Determinedly; `Phyllis said, "Yes, but it seemed a little worse with Donnie. And he was drinking a lot from his water bottle, like he was dehydrated:"

Calvin frowned. "Heatstroke, maybe:'

From his kneeling position beside the body, Ted said, "Heatstroke victims are usually flushed.

Look at his face, Calvin. It's got a bluish tinge, not red:"

"Blue?" Calvin repeated as he knelt at Donnie's side, too. "That's usually an indication of . . ."

He didn't go on, and Phyllis said, "An indication of what, Calvin?"

The big EMT didn't answer. He just looked up and said, "Mike, can you get some other cops and move all the people back? We're gonna have to get an ambulance up here:'

"Sure:' Several officers from the Weatherford Police Department were on the scene by now, and Mike relayed Calvin's request to them. The officers spread out and began urging the crowd to step back and give the emergency personnel some room.

"What about the contest?" Carolyn asked. "The judges hadn't announced a winner yet. They hadn't even tasted all the entries yet."

Harley Sewell said, "It looks like there won't be a winner this year, Miz Wilbarger. I don't see how we can go on without Donnie "

Carolyn looked like she wanted to argue, but then she clamped her lips tightly shut. Clearly she didn't like the decision, but it would have looked awfully insensitive if she insisted that the contest go on even though one of the judges had just dropped dead.

The terrible thing, Phyllis thought, was that she almost felt the same way. Of course she was song about what had happened to Donnie, whether it turned out to be a stroke or a heart attack or some other medical problem, but after all the weeks of preparation, it was a terrible letdown to know that there wouldn't be a winner this year. She understood why the other judges didn't want to continue, though.

For one thing, they might be afraid that whatever had happened to Donnie would happen to them, too. They didn't want to be taken down by a killer cobbler. Phyllis noticed that none of them had finished the samples in their bowls, but had instead placed them back on the table and unobtrusively pushed them away.

Sam, Eve, and Mattie made their way to Phyllis's side, although they had to go around quite a distance because of the large area directly in front of the tables that had been cleared by the police.

When they reached Phyllis, Eve clutched her hand and said, "This is just terrible, dear."

"My cobbler didn't do it," Phyllis said. Eve stared at her. "What?"

"I said, my cobbler didn't kill Donnie:' Phyllis's jaw tightened. "No matter what Carolyn says!"

Sam said diplomatically, "Well, I don't guess she meant it quite that way."

"You all heard her," Phyllis cut in. "She accused me of killing Donnie Boatwright with my cobbler!" Phyllis knew her voice had risen a little, but she couldn't seem to do anything to stop it.

Sarah was still standing there holding Bobby. She said quickly, "Nobody thinks that, Phyllis. We all saw it with our own eyes. It was just a coincidence that."

"That Donnie fell over dead just as he finished eating Phyllis's contest entry?" Carolyn asked as she came up. Phyllis's eyes narrowed and she traded glares with Carolyn.She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Sure, there was a rivalry between them over the cooking contest. An intense rivalry, a person could call it. Maybe even, on occasion, a bitter rivalry. But the two of them were friends for the rest of the year, and had been for a long time. For goodness sake, Phyllis thought, Carolyn even lives in my house! Why was she trying to hurt her and ruin her reputation by saying those terrible things about her cooking killing somebody?

"Dear, perhaps you'd better not say anything else," Eve told Carolyn.

°Ì'm just saying what we all saw with our own eyes," Carolyn said stubbornly. "Donnie ate Phyllis's cobbler, and he dropped dead!"

Mike stepped up and in an unusually formal tone said, "That's enough, Mrs. Wilbarger. Everyone's upset already, and there's no point in making things worse."

Carolyn leveled a cold stare at him. "Are you speaking as a sheriff's deputy, Mike ... or as Phyllis's son?"

"Take it whichever way you want, ma'am."

Phyllis admired Mike for sticking up for her, but she didn't want him to be rude and disrespectful to Carolyn-no matter how obnoxious Carolyn was being.

The loud wail of a siren made all of them turn to look as an ambulance with its lights flashing circled the courthouse, bumped up over the curb, and came across the lawn toward the tables.

When it came to a stop, more paramedics hopped out, and they all gathered around Donnie's body, lifting it onto a stretcher and then placing it in the back of the ambulance. Calvin shut the doors and shook his head solemnly.

He motioned for Mike to come over and join him and Ted. The three of them huddled together, and after a minute they were joined by Weatherford Chief of Police Ralph Whitmire, who had just reached the scene. Since Donnie's death had taken place within the city limits-about as much in the city limits as you could get, Phyllis thought, since they were in the middle of the downtown square-Chief Whitmire would be in charge of whatever investigation was carried out. Phyllis assumed there would be an autopsy, since Donnie's death had been not only sudden but also unexplained, but she was sure that would uncover the reason for his unexpected collapse. He had been over eighty years old, after all. Such things happened, sad though they were.

The ambulance pulled away and with its siren still howling, headed down South Main Street toward the hospital. There was no real hurry, of course, since it was much too late to do anything for Donnie, but Phyllis supposed the driver was anxious to get there, anyway.

She realized that the other three judges had wandered off somewhere. They had probably left deliberately so that nobody could pressure them to continue with the contest. She sighed and said,

"I guess everybody might as well pack up their contest entries and go home." She reached for the glass lid, intending to put it back on the dish that contained the rest of the cobbler.

Mike saw what she was doing and stepped quickly away from Calvin, Ted, and Chief Whitmire.

"Wait a minute, Mom;,' he said. "You can't do that."

Phyllis frowned. "Well, why in the world not? I don't want to leave the rest of this cobbler sitting around uncovered:' "You can't disturb any of that stuff." He raised his voice and called to the people behind the tables, "Everyone just leave your contest entries right where they are, please:' Sam motioned toward the half-eaten samples that the judges had set on the table.

"What about those?" he asked. "I was just about to gather them up and put them in one of the garbage cans."

Mike shook his head. "You can't do that, either. Everything has to stay just like it is."

Sam's eyes narrowed, and he studied Mike suspiciously for a few seconds before he said, "You know, Mike, it sounds to me a whole lot like you're treating this as a crime scene."

"A crime scene!" Eve said. "But that's ridiculous." Phyllis thought so, too, but she knew Sam was right. Mike didn't want them touching the food because it might be evidence, and you couldn't have evidence without a crime. Well, you could, but that certainly wasn't the way Mike was acting. For that matter, Calvin and Ted and Chief Whitmire were awfully grim-faced, too, as they came over to the table.

The chief nodded to her and touched the brim of his hat politely, then said, "This cobbler right here was what Mr. Boatwright was eating before he collapsed?"

"He had finished his sample," Phyllis said. She pointed to the table. "There's the empty bowl right there."

"Yes, ma'am. You'll have to leave everything here until we've finished our investigation."

Phyllis felt a little dizzy herself, but not for the same reason Donnie had. She just couldn't believe what she was hearing. If she didn't know any better, she'd think that the police chief was taking Carolyn's crazy comments seriously.

Forcing herself to remain calm, Phyllis said, "Why are you doing this, Chief? Donnie Boatwright was an old man. I know you have to find out what caused his death, but surely you can't suspect any sort of ... of foul play!" She hated the way that sounded, like she was on one of those police TV

shows.

Chief Whitmire just looked across the table at her and said, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Newsom, but from what Holloway and Brady tell me, there's a good chance Mr. Boatwright was poisoned."

And that, Phyllis thought as she struggled to calm her clamoring mind, would make it murder.