May Cooler Heads Prevail (11 page)

I shut up and waited for them to put two and two together. Judging from the blank stares, they were coming up with a
grand total of zero.

“Don’t you get it? Truman lives on the other side of town. His newspaper office is on the other side of town also.” I pointed and waved my hand in the direction of his home and office.

Their faces still registered zero.

“Oh, for crying out loud. Unless the man is stupid enough to circle the entire town square, he doesn’t drive by the flower shop on his way to work, and that’s what he told Otis he did.”

Finally! It registered.

Aunt Connie looked up at Uncle Rudd. “I do remember Truman telling Otis that.”

Uncle Rudd took a deep breath and let it out. “Have to admit, it’s a little odd that he would say that. On the other hand, he could have a good explanation. Maybe he was on some sort of errand that took him near here.”

“Why wouldn’t he just say, ‘I was on an errand and drove by the shop’?” I asked.

“I dunno.” Uncle Rudd shrugged his shoulders almost up to his jaws. “He just might’ve, I guess. Look, you may be right. Truth is, I don’t know if he’s the killer or not, but if he is, we may be in a pack of trouble if he saw that headline on the article.”

“Maybe we should read it right now,” I suggested, pulling the article back out of my purse and spreading it out flat on the worktable.

Uncle Rudd nodded then looked at his watch. “Let’s wait a few more minutes. Nissa should be back any time now.” He looked around the room. “Where’s Freedom? He’ll want in on this, too.”

“He’s upstairs,” Aunt Connie told him. “After you left for the library, I sent him back to his place to take a nap. That boy was tuckered out. Rudd, you go wake him up and tell him to come on down. I’ll go upstairs with you and get the food Nissa sent over. When Nissa comes we can eat lunch down here and go over that article you keep talking about. Dixie June, no fair reading it without us.”

I almost groaned out loud with frustration. I was pretty sure that real detectives wouldn’t have to wait for fried chicken, potato salad, one aunt, and a sleeping sidekick.

In an effort to keep my sanity, I reached into my purse and pulled out my cell phone. “Since we’re waiting, I think I’ll check in with my secretary and see how things are going at the clinic.”

Estelle Biggs was just the person I needed to talk to right now. Always cool and always calm, that’s Estelle. In fact, I looked forward to talking to her. She answered on the second ring.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

H
i Estelle. How are things at the office? Who did you find to take care of my clients?”

I waited for her to answer, but there was nothing more than dead air on the line.

“Estelle? Can you hear me?” I thought maybe we had a bad connection.

“I can hear you. I am trying to decide how to phrase my reply.”

I knew that couldn’t be good. “Have you decided?”

“Yes, I’ve decided. I got ahold of Dr. Gaitherman, and he is seeing your clients for the rest of this week.” Estelle enunciated each word and spoke more slowly than she usually does.

This was not going to be an easy conversation. I gathered my quickly diminishing supply of false bravado. “I’m glad he was available. So, how are things going then?”

“The answer is that they are not going well at all. At the moment, Mr. Woodbine is hiding in the coat closet in your office, refusing to come out.”

“I see. Well, actually no, I don’t see. Why is Mr. Woodbine in my coat closet?”

“Because he is afraid,” Estelle answered.

“Estelle, Mr. Woodbine is afraid of roughly 87 percent of the known world. That’s why he’s in therapy. Could you be more specific?”

“Maybe it would be best if you spoke to Dr. Gaitherman. Would you like for me to get him on the line?”

Yes, I would, but before I could say anything, Aunt Connie walked into the shop, followed by Aunt Nissa and Freedom, along with Uncle Rudd carrying a picnic basket and a large jar of iced tea. I could either talk to Dr. Gaitherman or I could read the article.

“Estelle, I don’t have time to talk to him right now. Tell Dr. Gaitherman that I think he can get Mr. Woodbine out of the coat closet if he will take one of the candy bars out of the stash I keep in my desk and offer it to him. Mr. Woodbine is not afraid of candy. I once got him out from under my desk that way. Try it and see. I have to go now. I’ll call you back as soon as I can. Good-bye.”

Before anyone could chomp into a piece of Aunt Nissa’s fried chicken and I had to wait any longer, I said, “Let’s read that article right now before we eat lunch.”

We gathered around the workbench where I had spread out the article earlier. Realizing it was a tight squeeze for the five of us to read it together, I grabbed the article and read it out loud.

The report was short and not so sweet. The missing woman’s name was Dolly O’Connell. She was from Brogan’s Ferry. Dolly went missing the same night as the bachelor party. Her boyfriend, Chad Gunther, reported her missing two days later. Clothes and luggage were missing from her apartment. Even though they found her car a few miles from Addison’s Mill, the conclusion was that Dolly had simply run off and there was no foul play, so they called off the search.

“I can see why this article piqued your interest, Uncle Rudd,” I said. “Do you think Aaron ran off with this woman, and that’s why he left town? Surely that wouldn’t get him murdered.”

“Aaron didn’t run off with no Dolly what’s-her-name,” Aunt Connie exploded. “He wouldn’t do that! I know he wouldn’t.”

“Simmer down, Little Sis. I don’t think that’s it at all. I do remember that some of the guys at Aaron’s bachelor party were talking about a woman named Dolly. Seemed like the talk was that she was sort of fast and loose, if you know what I mean. But I’d never met her and didn’t know who she was. I got the impression that Aaron didn’t know her, either.”

“Told you so.” Aunt Connie crossed her arms across her chest and looked directly at me.

“But everyone else knew her?” Freedom asked.

Uncle Rudd thought a moment then nodded. “Near’s I can remember, most everyone else had either heard of her or knew her.”

“So, if I follow you,” Freedom said, “you’re thinking that one of these guys at the bachelor party murdered Dolly. Somehow Aaron found out about it, or maybe saw it, someone threatened him, and he was scared enough to leave town. Then when Aaron comes back into town, the murderer gets spooked, follows him, and kills him?”

Uncle Rudd nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”

“That certainly makes sense, except that it’s true we still don’t know why or if Dolly was murdered, or who did it,” Aunt Nissa interjected.

“I know Aaron loved me.” Aunt Connie spoke the words so softly that all four of us turned to look at her and saw the tears flowing down her cheeks. “He told me the truth. He didn’t have a choice, he had to leave town. He was trying to protect me.”

I put my arms around her and let her cry on my shoulder. There was nothing for any of us to say. This was Aunt Connie’s time, her moment of bittersweet memories. After all these years, she had some closure. What she didn’t have was Aaron Scott.

Aunt Nissa reached in her purse and handed Aunt Connie a tissue. She dabbed her eyes and blew her nose. Taking a deep breath, she looked at each of us in turn. “I’ll be okay. It’s just that after all this time… well, I need to get ahold of myself. There will be plenty of time to grieve later. We got to find the one that killed my Aaron.” She looked directly at Uncle Rudd. “I just wish all this hadn’t happened the way it did.”

“Baby Sister, I want you to know that even though Aaron Scott wasn’t high on my list of favorite people, for your sake, it don’t bring me any joy that he’s dead.”

“I know that, Rudd.” She dabbed her eyes one more time then straightened her shoulders and put on a brave face. “So, what’s our next move?”

Uncle Rudd pulled on his lower lip for a bit. “Okay, here’s the thing. We got to figure out if anyone was going to see Dolly after the bachelor party that night. I’m not sure just how to go about that. I’ll have to think on that awhile. But in the meantime, Dixie-gal, you go with Freedom and bring Scott’s body back here. Whoever killed him has already checked this place out, so his body should be safe here for the time being. And as long as the killer doesn’t know where it is, we’re safe. In the meantime, the three of us will figure out a way to go snooping around for the information we need. How’s that sound to everybody?”

I didn’t know about “everybody,” but I would rather not run around the countryside lugging around dead men. Been there, done that. But from the look on Uncle Rudd’s face, I knew I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.

“Seeing that no one’s got any objections,” Uncle Rudd said, “it’s settled then. You two better grab you some chicken to eat on the way.”

Surprising all of us, Aunt Connie piped up and said, “Wait just a minute, Rudd. I got something to say ‘bout this plan of yours.”

Uncle Rudd barely got the words “you do” out of his mouth.

“I certainly do! Did it ever occur to any of you that Aaron probably intended to stay around town for more than a day? If he did, he had to check into a room somewhere.” Aunt Connie looked very proud of herself as she stood there with her hands on her hips, tapping her little foot, encased in the latest style of orthopedic footwear, on the linoleum flooring.

That really was good thinking on her part. I could see the possible problem. “Uh-oh, you’re thinking that if he doesn’t come back to pick up his luggage or pay his bill, then someone’s going to call the sheriff. And of course, you would be one of the first people Otis would want to question!”

Now it was Aunt Connie’s turn to look surprised. “Oh, well, no, that’s not what I was thinking at all. Although, I’ll be sure to worry about that now that you mentioned it, young lady! I was thinking more along the lines that maybe we could get into his room and rummage through his luggage for any clues.”

All of us stood there and stared at each other. With ten or fifteen years of training, we might make it to amateur detective status.

Freedom broke the silence. “While it would be nice if we could get ahold of Scott’s luggage, Dixie has a good point. It’s likely he did check into a room somewhere, and somebody is bound to get suspicious that he hasn’t come back. The most
logical place for him to check into would be Tance’s Bed and Breakfast. Anything else would be too far out of town. The easiest way to find out is for Rudd or Connie to call over to Tance’s and ask for Aaron Scott and see what they say. Then we’ll have a better idea of what we might be dealing with.”

Uncle Rudd answered, “I think maybe Freedom is right. We’d better call the bed and breakfast and see if we can find out anything.”

“You do it, Rudd,” Aunt Connie pleaded. “The number is on that sheet taped on the wall by the phone.”

Uncle Rudd nodded and started toward the phone.

It was nerveracking for all of us to wait. Aunt Connie grabbed my hand and held it tight in both of hers. Freedom paced back and forth. Aunt Nissa picked imaginary lint off her sweater.

Finally Uncle Rudd hung up the phone. Turning to us with a huge smile on his face, he said, “I talked to Tance. We’re okay!”

Aunt Connie flashed Uncle Rudd a toothy grin and demanded a blow-by-blow account of his conversation with Tance Laribee.

“Okay, the upshot of this thing is that Scott did check into Laribee’s late Friday night, around midnight. He didn’t call ahead, he just got Tance out of bed. She said if this wasn’t her off-season and she didn’t need the money, she never would have answered the door that late at night. She didn’t recognize him at first, but when he told her who he was, she
asked what he was doing back in town. He told her he was here to settle something and try to get back what he lost. He had one suitcase and a briefcase with him. He paid his bill Saturday morning, but the strange thing was that he asked her to hold a room for him. He said that if all went well he would be back late that night; if not, he wouldn’t. He took his luggage with him. She told him there was no rush on rooms, it wouldn’t be a problem. She said he never came back; ‘course, we know why.”

I wondered out loud why Aaron would settle his bill but reserve a room for that night.

“I don’t know the answer to that one, Dixie-gal. Like I said, that is the strange thing. Maybe he thought if things worked out with Connie, he’d stay. If not, he’d leave.”

“Did Scott drive into town?” Freedom asked.

Uncle Rudd snapped his fingers. “Oh yeah, almost forgot about that! Tance said that he told her he came in on the bus.”

One other thing occurred to me. “Uncle Rudd, you said that Tance told you that Aaron took his luggage with him. What did he do with it when he came over here to see Aunt Connie?”

After a short discussion, we could only surmise that either Aaron hadn’t brought his luggage and briefcase, in which case we had no idea where those things were, or the killer took them with him. Either way it seemed to be a moot point for us.

“Okay, there’s nothing we can do about Aaron’s stuff, but we’re still safe, for the time being, anyway. As it turned out, it’s a good thing Peggy saw Aaron and you had to move his body. Otherwise whoever murdered him would have found it. We still have the body and the upper hand, so let’s get back on track here.” Uncle Rudd reached over and grabbed a plate out of the picnic basket and started putting pieces of fried chicken on it. “Freedom, you and Dixie take this with you to eat on the way to the cave. I know it’s not much of a lunch, but it’ll have to do for now.”