Ed Lynskey - Isabel and Alma Trumbo 03 - The Ladybug Song (11 page)

“I could
tell she was delaying for the time to gin up a credible fib. ‘Well, you see
Rosie,’ she says to me. ‘I have to get it gold-plated to use as a ceremonial
shovel in the future recreation center’s groundbreaking event.’ I knew she’d given
me an obviously untrue story, but I didn’t feel it was my place to call her on
it. I just smiled, telling her I hoped the weather turned out to be nice and
sunny for the occasion. She thanked me, and we moseyed on our separate ways.”

“Are you
certain it was a garden shovel?” asked Alma.

Rosie gave
Alma a candid look from the sofa. “Alma, I think I know what a garden shovel is.
I was a pig farmer’s daughter, and I used one plenty of times.”

“Why did
she lie about why she bought the garden shovel?” asked Isabel, thinking Ladybug
had used it to bury the money suitcase, and she didn’t want anybody to suspect she
was doing it.

Rosie
chuckled. “Maybe she was going to dig up a pirate’s treasure chest.”

Rosie‘s joke
hitting so close to the truth startled Isabel.

Lotus
drew up her chest swelling with pride. “We use garden shovels all the time in
what we like to do. Isn’t that correct, Rosie?”

Alma smiled, trying to keep her rising wave of laughter in check.

“Both of
us are blessed with natural green thumbs,” replied Rosie. “Did you happen to notice
our showy red peonies blooming this past May?”

“How
could we have missed seeing them?” replied Isabel. “They would have captured
the top blue ribbon at the garden club’s flower show.”

“Thank
you for the generous compliment, Isabel,” said Rosie.

“Now about
the persistent itch under your leg cast,” said Isabel. “Don’t try to sift baby
powder down into the leg cast, or it will rot and smell unpleasant. I’d rub a
cotton ball soaked in alcohol around the skin at the top of your leg cast to gain
a little relief. Whatever you do, don’t go jabbing a stretched out wire hanger
down inside your leg cast to get at the itch.”

“Did you
also meet with a bad accident?” asked Rosie.

“My boy Cecil
broke his leg while racing on his go-kart when we lived on the boulevard,” replied
Isabel. “Cecil then did all the wrong things I just cautioned you against, and
his fracture took that much longer to heal, and the surgeon to remove his leg cast.”

“I
appreciate you sharing your helpful tips,” said Rosie.

“You’re
more than welcome,” said Isabel. “We’ll better be going now. Just keep on healing
quickly.”

“That is
my number one goal,” said Rosie. “Be sure to tell Sheriff Fox we said hey the
next time you see him.”

“What?”
said Alma, stunned.

“It’s the
talk of the town he’s asked you to assist him in Ladybug’s murder investigation,”
said Lotus.

Alma nodded. “Nothing stays a mystery in our Peyton Place for very long. I only hope that
also holds true for our identifying the killer.”

“Let us
know if we can be of any further help,” said Rosie.

“Nobody living
in Quiet Anchorage wants to see justice carried out for Ladybug’s murder more than
I do,” said Lotus. “Her killer must not get away with doing such a heinous
crime.”

Are
you
just saying that when
you are the killer?
thought
Isabel. “Thanks, Lotus. I have a feeling we’ll want to speak to you again soon.”

Alma nodded before she sent Isabel the eye signal to go.

***

Matthiessen’s
Hardware Store on Main Street was a low-lit space stocked with different nail
bins and shelves of deadbolt locks that smelled of house paint and green sawdust.
Alma posed the sisters’ questions.

“Ladybug
acted rushed like she was off to a fire,” said the burly Blaine who wore a blue
plaid shirt with a stubby pencil lodged behind his ear. He’d been munching on a
strawberry moon pie and sipping from a bottle of Mello Yello.

“Did
she pay you for it with a one hundred-dollar bill?” asked Alma.

Blaine smiled. “My garden shovels are made of tool steel, not twenty-four karat gold, so
she just paid me the right amount.”

“Did
she say what she intended to do with it?” asked Alma, recalling their futile room-by-room
search of Ladybug’s townhouse finding no garden shovel.

Blaine shrugged. “It didn’t come up in our conversation, no ma’am.”

“Do
you sell any luggage or suitcases?” asked Alma.

“My
main deal is hardware, and the closest product to a suitcase I stock is burlap
sacks,” replied Blaine. “Can I interest you in buying a pack of them? They make
great doghouse liners.”

“Thanks
but our pooch takes turns sleeping at the foot of our beds,” said Alma.

“We’ll
pick up a couple of your new broom rakes though,” said Isabel.

“Excellent,”
said Blaine. “Tell me something. Is it true your pooch growls and bares his
fangs at Sheriff Fox?”

“Petey
Samson has picked up my bad habits,” said Alma.

“He
just has a wicked sense of humor,” said Isabel.

“Indeed
he must,” said Blaine.

“Aren’t
you a Bingo fan?” asked Isabel.

“You
can just about every week find me sitting at my lucky spot,” replied Blaine. “Phyllis used to sit in the chair, but she stopped coming to Bingo, so I claimed it.”

“Did
Ladybug ever sit in and play Bingo with you regulars?” asked Isabel.

“She
came just the one time I ever knew about,” replied Blaine.

“What
happened that time?” asked Isabel.

“Ladybug
stopped in the doorway, scanned the seated Bingo players, and did an
about-face,” replied Blaine.

“Any
idea what made her leave so abruptly?” asked Isabel.

“She
spotted Lotus sitting with Rosie and decided Bingo wasn’t the right game for
her,” replied Blaine. “Those two ladies, Ladybug and Lotus, did not get along
with each other.”

“Some
people just don’t click with each other,” said Isabel.

“Did
Lotus dislike Ladybug with enough venom to go and murder her?” asked Blaine.

Alma gave him a frank gaze. “You knew both of the ladies, Blaine. Give us your read on that
question.”

The
noncommittal Blaine shrugged. “Hey, I just sell nails and deadbolt locks. That
sort of outlaw question is best left for Sheriff Fox to answer.”

“We
feel the same way,” said Isabel, turning on her heel for the aisle with the
broom rakes out on display.

Chapter 19

While
Isabel grew up on the Trumbo farm, her favorite season was autumn and her
favorite autumnal month was October. The first hard frost killed the night insects,
especially the cicadas, raising their discordant racket all summer long. The
new silence reigning under the luminous harvest moon and smattering of stars grew
deafening. The sisters’ evenings spent playing cards and board games on the
wraparound porch ended, and they retreated to the cozy warmth indoors and circled
the kitchen’s toasty woodstove.

Despite the
utilitarian stressed over the frills farmhouse kitchen, Isabel loved it. After
she was married and moved away to live on the city boulevard, she discovered
the convenience and ease of using an electric range, and she would never go
back to using a woodstove. The sisters had baked enough pies in the woodstove oven
to feed a multitude of churchgoers lined up for dinner on the grounds.

While it
wasn’t a bake off awarding the top blue ribbon to the most delicious pie, no
sister was shy about showing off her baking skills. Louise excelled at making apple
pies from the apples hand-selected from their farm orchard. Alma was proud of
her cherry pies, the cherries harvested from the trees behind the raspberry
canes. Isabel with her icebox persimmon pies thought she outdid Louise and Alma.

The Southern persimmon is a native tree. Late
October’s frosts do their magic to bring the silver dollar-sized fruit to its
sweetest flavor, a process known as bletting. The frosts neutralize the tannin
causing the green persimmon’s chalky aftertaste that puckers the cheeks and
tongue if eaten too soon. The opportunity to gather up the ripe persimmons is limited
since the hungry wild critters go to work fast.

When
the right time came, Isabel left the farmhouse. She leaped down from the ha-ha
wall, a retaining fence erected from river stone, separating their yard from
the fields. She was off to raid the persimmons growing interspersed between the
staghorn sumac, pin oak, and sassafras. Sometimes Alma and less often Louise tagged
along with Isabel, but she was most pleased to slip off with only her shadow
for company.

The
persimmons were easy to spot since most of the yellow leaves had dropped from
the denuded branches, leaving only the clusters of fruit visible. The brown-amber
persimmons resembled a wrinkly small plum. They yielded more thumbnail-sized dark
seeds and leathery skin than they did the desirable tasty pulp she was after.

Isabel
shaking the trunk as if the wind was passing through the branches detached the
ripest persimmons to plummet to the ground. She also wore shoes, trousers, and
gloves since she occasionally shinnied up the dark-gray, spindly trunks for the
persimmons. The farm girls developed sinewy muscles from performing their daily
physical tasks. Due to their small size, she had to collect enough persimmons
to fill her tin pail.

Isabel
bundled off her ambrosia to the kitchen. En route, she couldn’t resist chewing
on a few mushy persimmons as appetizers. Once back home, she fired up the
woodstove and then squeezed the persimmons through a mesh laundry bag to strain
out the stems, skins, and seeds from the pulp. It was messy going, and she had
to tie on the one-piece cotton apron Gwendolyn had passed down to Isabel.

She
created enough thick, bright orange purée to fill the piecrust lining the fluted
pie tin she used. Her secret ingredients—add one extra teaspoon each of nutmeg
and cinnamon with a tad of lemon juice—made her golden brown pies taken out of
the woodstove oven baked to perfection. Then she left out the pies to cool on
the kitchen windowsill for a half-hour before she set them in the icebox. Later,
she cut the first pie slice to serve to Woodrow.

“Excellent
pie, Isabel,” he said after eating the slice.

“Thanks,
Dad,” said Isabel. “I gathered the persimmons from behind the farm.” “I know
where they grow,” he said. “I planted the saplings there before you were born.”

Alma and Louise felt gypped by Isabel protecting her baking secrets and holding back on
them. A little culinary spying was in order. They peeped over the kitchen windowsill,
and Isabel drew the red-checkered curtains closed. They whispered behind the
doorjamb, and she shut the kitchen door. She plugged its keyhole with a wad of dough.
One day she might divulge her baking secrets, but not as long as they tried to
one up each other with their pie making. Even so, their sibling rivalry was all
in good, clean, and delicious fun.

“Do you
remember baking day on the farm?” Alma asked while Isabel and she ate at the
table.

Isabel
finished chewing before replying. “I do since I liked to lick the spoons, forks,
and mixing bowls. What brought that up?”

“We had
a passion for baking pies. Louise preferred cherry pies, I favored apple pies,
and weren’t you the persimmon pie chef?”

Isabel
knew where their conversation was headed. They’d held the same one no less than
a week ago. Alma was tenacious as a badger when it came to learning about the different
things that sparked her curiosity.

“We’ve already
established I made the best persimmon pies,” said Isabel.

“Right,
so we did. You were awful cagy when it came to sharing your recipe.”

“What troubles
you so much to know about my recipe?”

“How did
you make your persimmon pies taste so good? Was it the dollop of whipped cream
we liked to add on the top of the slices?”

“That piece
of information is locked away in a vault.”

“Are you
telling me you will take your recipe to the grave with you?”

Enjoying
their banter, Isabel shrugged. “I may decide to pass it on to Megan before I untie
my apron strings for keeps.”

“Then our
dutiful niece will whisper it into my ear, and I will be the new Chef Isabel,”
said Alma.

“Assuming
you go after I do, but I’ll have you know I’m healthy as a horse so be prepared
for making a long wait.”

“Since
I’m the younger sister, I believe I’m safe in assuming I’ll still be around
after you go.”

“Shifting
our perspective from persimmon pies to garden shovels, I’ve been mulling over Lotus’s
purchase of hers.”

“It
doesn’t take much of an imaginative leap to link it to her burying the money
suitcase where we found it.”

“You
mean where Petey Samson found it.”

“If you
insist, yes, he did. Why did she leave Chicago after she had made it her home?”

Isabel set
down her fork. “Evidently living in Chicago didn’t do a lot of good for
Ladybug. She departed right after her divorce from Curt was official. My guess
is she liked Quiet Anchorage because it is within driving range of Washington, D.C. while at the same time it’s still country enough to be able to see the many
stars come out at night.”

“Then Ladybug
and Phyllis got together and did their stuff again,” said Alma.

“They had
been friends since Hector was a pup is what Phyllis tells me.”

Alma took a careful sip of her iced tea then locked eyes with Isabel. “I’ll ask you point
blank, and you can tell me what your gut says. Did Phyllis Garner kill Ladybug
Miles? Did Phyllis go to such elaborate lengths to cover up her bloody misdeed?”

“My gut
tells me it never happened like that, and I always trust my gut.”

“You’ve
read enough mysteries to know anybody pressured by the right set of circumstances
is capable of committing murder.”

“All
right, but why did Phyllis come seeking our assistance?” Isabel paused. “That is
the last way we’d expect the killer to behave. Moreover, what possible motive
did she have? If it was to steal Ladybug’s money, Phyllis missed the boat on
getting her hands on it.”

“She
almost jumped up and down insisting we split up the money.”

“But
then you did the same thing, Alma. Are you the killer?”

“Of
course not and Phyllis isn’t the murderer we’re after either.” Alma brooded with a scowl furrowing her forehead. “Just between you and me and the icebox, I’m
as stumped as I’ve ever been on a case.”

“Three
heads are better than two goes the wise saying,” said Isabel. “Give Louise a
ring and see if she can shed any further light on it.”

“You can
do it instead of me,” said Alma. “Right now I’m so fed up that I’m left almost
tongue-tied.”

“Your tongue-tied
frustration doesn’t seem to have affected your appetite any.”

“Just
shush. While I clear away the dishes from the table, you can be talking to Louise.”

“Are you
also volunteering to wash the dishes?” asked Isabel.

Alma picked up her plate and drinking glass. “I’ve got it all covered while you go on and pick
our kid sister’s brain.”