May Cooler Heads Prevail (5 page)

I almost got whiplash turning my head so I could get a good look at Uncle Rudd’s face.

He never flexed a muscle when he said, “As far as I know, they did their talking on the phone.”

Accepting Uncle Rudd’s answer, Otis waved a hand goodbye. “Don’t bother gettin’ up Rudd, I reckon I can see myself out the door. See y’all later. Stop in and see Martha if you
get a chance, Dixie.”

We heard the door shut, and both of us huddled up by the window so we could watch Otis pull out the driveway.

“We’d better get on upstairs, Dixie-gal,” Uncle Rudd said. “Since we heard that one noise coming from upstairs, they’ve been awful quiet up there. Too quiet, if you ask me.”

A
s soon as we saw Otis’s taillights, Uncle Rudd and I bolted up the stairs. We found them in the blue room. Aunt Nissa was placidly rocking back and forth in an old sewing rocker, quilting on what looked like a pillow top. Aunt Connie, on the other hand, was not nearly as placid. She was busy wriggling around on the bed, all neatly bound and gagged with colorful scraps of quilting material. Her dark green flower-print dress was hiked up past her bony knees, exposing two scrawny-looking legs encased in rolled-up stockings.

I was speechless.

Uncle Rudd was not. “Good grief, Nissa, did you have to truss her up like a chicken?”

Aunt Nissa shrugged. Then jutting her chin out, she answered, “Don’t get huffy with me, Rudd Tanner. Connie had another one of her spells. I didn’t know what else to do. You said to keep her quiet, so I did the best I could with what I had.”

Uncle Rudd patted Nissa on the shoulder. “Now, don’t
get upset, honey. I know you did what you had to do.”

Since neither of them seemed the least bit inclined to untie my trussed-up aunt, I decided to do the job myself.

I started toward her, but Uncle Rudd grabbed my arm before I could begin untying her. “I wouldn’t do that just yet,” he warned.

“The sheriff is gone. You can’t possibly leave her like this.” I looked at my poor aunt wrapped up in everything from stripes to gingham to checks. “If you won’t untie her, I will!”

Uncle Rudd gripped my arm tighter. “Maybe you should sit down for a minute, and let’s talk about it.”

I jerked my arm away from him and huffed. “Aunt Connie needs to be untied right this minute. Then we can talk.”

It is my belief that I huff very well. After all, I have seen Tanner aunts, uncles, cousins, and parents do it for years.

Uncle Rudd started talking as fast as he could. “Wait! Look at her eyes, Dixie-gal. They look like they did last night when Nissa and I found her. Nissa’s right, I think she’s having one of them spells like she did last night. Maybe we ought not to be so quick to untie her.”

I peered around Uncle Rudd and looked at Aunt Connie’s eyes. I had to admit they were frantic and darting, but that didn’t mean she was having a “spell.” I couldn’t help but think that if I were bound and gagged with all that material, my eyes would be frantic and darting, too. “Uncle Rudd, she’s scared, that’s all.”

“You’d better tell her how Connie has been acting the past few months, Rudd,” Aunt Nissa said quietly, but firmly.

A look of indecision crossed over Uncle Rudd’s face, so I encouraged him. “Aunt Connie’s been acting differently lately? How?”

“Well now, we don’t rightly know what’s going on with her, but she’s been confused and forgetting a lot of things lately. She’s been drivin’ Peggy, the little gal that works for her, plumb nuts. At first we figured it was just age, but it seems like lately it’s a little more often than normal.”

“Have you taken her to see Doc Mayfair?” I asked.

“It was sure enough almost a dog fight, but Nissa and I insisted she see Doc last week,” Uncle Rudd replied. “He wanted her to go over to the hospital at Brogan’s Ferry so they could run some tests. Connie wouldn’t hear of it. She and Doc got into one of their shoutin’ matches. Finally Doc said he guessed he’d just have to wait until she lost all her marbles and couldn’t tell who she was before he could figure out what’s wrong.”

“But she could be having mild strokes, or getting senile, or a hundred other things,” I wailed. “She has to go have those tests.”

At that moment Aunt Connie began wiggling with all her might and managed to wiggle right off the bed, landing on the floor with a
thud
.

In one swift fluid movement, Uncle Rudd reached down and picked her up like she weighed no more than a ten-pound
sack of potatoes and plopped her right back on the bed. Then he looked at me like nothing had happened. “We’ve tried our best to get her to go for those tests, but she’s a might stubborn.”

I was so stunned at Uncle Rudd’s actions, I failed to notice that Aunt Nissa was trying to talk to me until I felt her gently tugging at my arm to get my attention. When I looked at her she smiled shyly and said, “Dixie dear, why don’t you have a little talk with Connie about having those tests run? Rudd and I have tried everything we know to do. We even asked Pastor Jeff to talk with her, and all I can say about that incident is that he truly is a forgiving man. She might listen to what you have to say, though. After all, you’re a psychologist, dear. It certainly couldn’t hurt to try.”

“That’s a great idea,” Uncle Rudd added. “And while you’re at it, see if she remembers anything else about the murder yet. Nissa and I will be out on the front porch.”

They scooted out of the room and shut the door before I could yell, “Help, I’m being held hostage by my relatives!”

I looked at Aunt Connie and decided that I would untie her hands first, so that she could help me get the rest of the quilting strips off her. That was a mistake. As soon as her hands were free, I felt a sharp sting on my cheek and my head jolted back. In one swift motion she had slapped my face. Out of self-defense I grabbed both her wrists and kept a firm hold on them. As calmly as possible I said to her, “Aunt Connie. I’m not going to hurt you. Now, if you’ll stay calm,
I’ll untie you. You have to promise me that you’ll keep your hands and any other parts of your body to yourself. If you agree, blink twice.”

Her body relaxed, and she blinked twice. I carefully let go of her wrists and held my breath. She folded her arms across her chest and stayed very still. I breathed a little easier. She was going to cooperate.

Aunt Nissa had done an excellent job. I’d have to ask her how she got Aunt Connie to stay still long enough to tie her up. As near as I could figure, the quilt pieces must have already been on the bed. Then, remembering that in her younger days Aunt Nissa could rope and tie a calf better than most men, I formed a mental picture in my mind of Aunt Nissa throwing Aunt Connie on the bed and landing on her like she would a calf at a rodeo. Briefly, I tried to calculate how long it actually took Aunt Nissa to tie her up. Did it take one minute? Two? Couldn’t have taken very long, according to the thumps we had heard downstairs.

Getting back to the business at hand, I said softly, “I’m going to untie your ankles now.”

Slowly I moved to the end of the bed to untie the bright yellow quilt piece that was wound around her ankles. I jumped back a little, but she didn’t try to kick me. So far so good, I thought.

The gag around her mouth was next. I braced myself and untied the gag and took out all the stuffing Aunt Nissa had managed to put in her mouth.

She laid there, eyes looking straight ahead. She was so still it worried me.

Gently shaking her shoulder, I said, “Aunt Connie, are you all right? Can you hear me?”

She slowly turned her head toward me and whispered, “If you don’t watch out, the boogeyman is gonna cover you in red.”

Uh-oh, I was about to experience one of Aunt Connie’s so called “spells” firsthand.

I wondered if I should go to the window and call Uncle Rudd and Aunt Nissa back upstairs. I started to get up, but Aunt Connie grabbed my arms so tight her fingernails dug into my flesh.

“Be careful, Dixie,” she moaned, “or the boogeyman will get you, just like he got my Aaron. All covered in red carnations. There were so many he couldn’t breathe.” She suddenly let go of my arm and brushed her hands up and down her chest, moaning in a low, eerie voice, “No breath, no breath, all gone, and not even a blue note. No blue note, just gone.”

Was this waking nightmare she was experiencing her response to trauma? It was certainly probable. Was there something else in addition to the trauma going on? Possibly. I just didn’t have an answer.

Wanting to do whatever I could to help her, I shuffled around on the bed until I could put my arms around her. Gently rocking her back and forth, I whispered in her ear,

“Don’t worry, I’ll take you to see Doc Mayfair first thing tomorrow morning. He can set up those tests, and I will take you over to the hospital myself. I promise I will stay with you every minute; you don’t have to be afraid.”

Wallowing in frustration and helplessness, I held her tighter and buried my head on her shoulder.

Never one to abide anyone’s wallowing, Aunt Connie pushed my head aside and gruffly said, “Stop it, you dummy, you’re choking me.” Apparently she was herself again. The sudden flip-flop from crazy to cranky was startling. Waving a spindly finger in my direction, she added, “Don’t think for one minute you’re going to weasel me into going to that hospital. I don’t need to spend my hard-earned money letting some doctor tell me I’m crazy. Rudd and Nissa tell me that all the time for free.”

“But maybe there is more to this than just trauma,” I sputtered. “Maybe there’s some sort of treatment or medication that would help you.”

“Phooey, ain’t nothin’ but old age. After all, I am in my late fifties, though of course I don’t look it.”

Aunt Connie was the youngest of the Tanner offspring from my grandparents, and by my calculations she was sixty-two, but I didn’t argue with her about that. Instead I focused on the most important issue. “You still need to see Doc Mayfair and let him give you a good physical. Trauma may not be the only thing going on with your mind and body.”

I might as well have been talking to the old oak tree out
by the driveway, because all she said was, “Where’s Nissa?”

I gave up for the time being and followed her lead. “She’s out on the front porch with Uncle Rudd.”

Aunt Connie looked around and sighed. “I guess I must’ve had one of them spells and run her off.”

“You didn’t run her off. But you were having a pretty rough time. They just thought they would give us time together and maybe I could help you. Do you remember anything at all about this episode?”

“Episode?” She rolled the word around on her tongue several times like she was infatuated with it. “‘Episode.’ I like that word, ‘episode.’ Doesn’t make me sound so crazy when you say ‘episode’ does it? And no, I don’t remember anything about my episode. I never do. What’d I say?”

I was afraid to give her the details. Afraid it might send her back to that dark corner of her mind at worst, and at best, worry her even more than she was already. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Nothing much, you just talked about red carnations and a blue note.”

“Blue note.” The words were spoken so softly I almost didn’t hear what she said.

“Do you know what ‘blue note’ means?”

“Of course not! I was having an episode, remember?” She vigorously shook her head and changed the subject. “But I do remember Otis was here. What did he want? Did he find the body?”

Aunt Connie’s eyes widened a little when I finished
telling her about Otis’s visit. She bit down on one of her fingernails and seemed to be thinking about the close call they had last night.

“So, if I’m understanding this right,” she said, “whoever killed my Aaron tried to get Otis there in time to pin it on me.”

“Looks that way.” I nodded

“Well, I’ll be hornswoggled. Rudd’s right about this, ain’t he? We’ll have to find out who killed Aaron ourselves. Well now, if I’m gonna help with this family investigation, I need my beauty sleep. You go on out and tell Rudd and Nissa that after I take a nap I’m going straight on back to my place.” Having said her piece, Aunt Connie pulled the blue and white dove-in-a-window quilt at the end of the bed all the way up to her chin. “Now, go on, git,” she commanded and waved her hand toward the door then rolled over and closed her eyes.

Oh joy, now she not only approved of Uncle Rudd taking the law into his own hands, she planned to help! I stayed beside her for a few more minutes. When she started snoring I got up and tiptoed out the door.

Aunt Nissa and Uncle Rudd were sitting side by side, holding hands, on the front porch swing. Aunt Nissa motioned for me to sit down on the wooden rocker nearby. “I laid an afghan there for you, dear. It’s a little chilly out here. How’s Connie?”

I slid into the rocker, pulled the afghan around my
shoulders like a shawl, and told them everything that happened after they ducked and ran, including the part about the red carnations and the blue note.

When I finished talking, Uncle Rudd heaved a heavy sigh. “I think you’re right about blood looking like red carnations to Connie, but I don’t have any more notion than you do about what that blue note is about.”

“I might,” Aunt Nissa said quietly. “I mean, I know what it reminds me of, anyway. Rudd, you remember the day Connie was supposed to get married.”

“I do.” Uncle Rudd huffed. “One of the blackest days in Tanner history. Why that spineless excuse for…”

“Yes, I know, dear,” Aunt Nissa gently interrupted. “But what I was getting at was that Aaron sent a bouquet of handpicked red carnations and a letter to Connie. I was with her when she opened the letter. The note was written on light blue paper. I was thinking that maybe the blue note Connie referred to upstairs must have something to do with the Dear Jane note that he sent to her on her wedding day.”

“Why, you wonderful woman!” Uncle Rudd reached over and hugged her. “We might just have our first clue. What’d the note say?”

“I’m sorry, dear. I don’t know what the note said. Connie never let anyone read it that I know of.”

I watched Uncle Rudd’s face fall and his shoulders slump in discouragement. He was so sure that we would
have three or four good clues before bedtime and be hot on the trail of the killer by dawn. I felt so sorry for him that I opened my mouth without first asking permission from my brain. “Look, you both know that Aunt Connie doesn’t like to throw things away. She even leaves bologna in the refrigerator long enough for the stuff to learn rudimentary sign language. Surely she would save the last letter from the love of her life, even if that letter were painful to read. She probably stuck it somewhere in her apartment.”