May Cooler Heads Prevail (8 page)

“Yes, I’m all right.” I was relieved that other than looking sleepy, she seemed as sharp as ever. “How did you and Peggy get along after we left? Do you think she really believed she must have mistaken that scarecrow for a dead body?”

Aunt Connie shrugged. “She didn’t come right out and say it, but she’s pretty sure one of us belongs in the loony bin, and it ain’t her.”

I flopped down on the couch next to her, untied my hiking boots, slipped them off, and curled my feet up under
me. “After this escapade, we may all bypass the so-called ‘loony bin’ and end up in the so-called ‘hoosegow.’ By the way, how are you feeling after all of this?”

Although I was truly worried about my aunt’s state of mind, I must admit my motives weren’t entirely pure in asking her how she felt. There was the blue note issue to settle.

“If you mean am I about to have one of those episodes, I don’t know. And if you mean how do I feel about Aaron’s death, I don’t know how well I’m doing in that category, either. I mean, after all these years, I never expected to see him again. It took me a good while, but I had made my peace with that. Then out of the blue he comes back to town, calls me, shows up here, and gets himself killed. I know it happened, but it doesn’t seem real to me yet, so I don’t know how I feel.”

Aunt Connie sniffled and suddenly got up mumbling, “Excuse me,” and went into the bathroom. I didn’t try to follow her. I thought she probably needed a little privacy about now.

After a few minutes she came back with a bunch of tissues in her hand. Sitting down on the couch, she blew her nose, leaned toward me, and said, “Now listen, Dixie. I know Rudd is trying to do everything he can to protect me, even to the point of not letting me know everything that’s going on with his investigation. I love him for it, but we almost got into a pack of trouble tonight. I never would’ve called
Peggy to come in if I had known where they hid Aaron’s body. Whether Rudd likes it or not, I loved that man, and I intend to do the best I can to bring his killer to justice. To do that I need to know what’s going on. So, as hard as it is for me to bear, I want to know where you put his body. Then we are going to put our heads together and see if we can come up with something that will help Rudd solve this thing. You understand me, Dixie June Tanner?”

CHAPTER
SIX

O
nce I explained to Aunt Connie where we hid the body and why we picked the place we did, she smiled wistfully. “Aaron loved to explore caves. It was sort of a hobby with him. When we were courtin’, we went out to Calley’s Spring many times with a picnic basket. We would eat by the spring and stick our feet in the water. Then when we got tired of that, we would take our blanket and sit at the mouth of the cave and talk for hours. Dixie, you don’t need to worry about putting him in that cave. He would have approved.”

Then she sat up straight and briskly nodded her head. “‘Course, it ain’t whatcha call practical to keep him in the cave.”

I nodded my head, too, like I understood the logic. Although it seemed to me that keeping a body in a flower cooler didn’t qualify as practical either.

Aunt Connie acknowledged my nod. “I know we’ll have to put Aaron back in the flower cooler. That’s probably the safest place for him, so I gave Peggy the next five days off. She didn’t want it at first, but when I sweetened the pot by
giving her time off with pay, she finally agreed. So you and Freedom can bring Aaron back to the shop first thing in the morning. Now, what do you think we need to do next? Work on my memory or something like that?”

I took a deep breath. “Aunt Connie, I don’t know why you’re having what we now call episodes. I’m pretty sure you can’t remember what happened because you were so traumatized. With time, the memory of that night will come back. But this afternoon, when you were up in the bedroom, you mentioned a blue note. Aunt Nissa had an idea that you might be referring to the note Aaron sent to you the day of the wedding, because it was written on blue paper. Do you still have it? I truly don’t mean to cause you any more pain, but we think it might be important.”

Aunt Connie gave a sad sigh. “Yes, I kept the note. I know what it says by heart, but if you think it might be important, I’ll go get it and let you read it for yourself.”

She went into her bedroom and came out a few minutes later with a yellowed envelope and handed it to me. I carefully took the note out of the envelope, opened the folded blue paper, and read what it said:

I read the note once more, then carefully refolded it and put it back into its yellowed envelope. I handed it back to her and asked, “I know it’s none of my business really, but what are your thoughts about why he left town so suddenly?”

Staring at the envelope, she said, “Certainly I’ve thought about it. I don’t think he met someone else, although that’s what most folks thought.” She stopped talking and I saw the tears forming in her eyes. How painful that must have been for her, not only to lose the love of her life, but also to bear the rumors that must have been going around at the time.

She reached over to the side table where she had put her stash of tissues, grabbed one, and dabbed her eyes. “There was nothing I could ever think of that made any sense. Rudd always said Aaron seemed to be just fine at the bachelor party the night before.”

This news about the bachelor party gave me the germ of an idea. If he wasn’t a reluctant bridegroom that night, then something happened after the party and before the wedding. That narrowed the time frame we were looking at considerably.

I found myself asking Aunt Connie if I could use her phone to call Uncle Rudd. I only asked to be polite. I was already dialing the number by the time I finished asking.

After a mumbled and sleepy hello from Uncle Rudd, I got right to the point and told him I had the blue note and what it said. By the time I finished, he was wide awake.

Pressing on to the next point, I asked him, “Now, what
I need to know is, did anything funny, or out of place, or somehow different, happen at Aaron’s bachelor party?”

“Not that I remember. It wasn’t whatcha call a wild party or anything like that. We rented one of those little cabins on the lake and did a little fishing off the bank. That evening we sat around, ate fish, and talked. That’s all.”

“My, that was tame. You’re sure no one snuck in a few beers to wash down that fish?”

“Dixie-gal, not a one of us had anything stronger than soda pop that night!” he boomed into the phone. “And you know good and well I don’t hold with no drinkin’. None of us Tanners do.”

It’s true, the Tanner clan doesn’t drink. We run from mildly eccentric to outright insane, but none of us drink. Go figure.

“Okay, but what about women? Any good-looking young girls jumping out of cakes?”

“Of course not!” he boomed again. “I told you, it wasn’t one of those wild bachelor parties. Even if we had wanted to do that, which we didn’t, Nissa and Connie had already put the kibosh on any girlie stuff. Me, Otis, and Dennis Reager were already married, Latham Sheffield was engaged. The rest might have had steady girlfriends, I don’t remember. We weren’t interested in that kind of stuff. We just wanted to catch some fish, fry ‘em up, and have a good time.”

“Simmer down, Uncle Rudd, you’re going to wake up Aunt Nissa. I was doing a little fishing myself, only for information. However, that brings me to the next question.

Can you remember who all was at the bachelor party?”

“Well, if I can’t, I’ll wake Nissa up. Her memory is a sight better than mine. Let’s see, I’ve already mentioned Latham Sheffield, Otis Beecher, and Dennis Reager. ‘Course, there’s me and Aaron.” He hesitated a little before he said, “Oh yeah, it’s coming back to me now. Truman Spencer was there. And Mitch Barker, Earl Standings, Daniel Martin, and Ed Baringer. I’m pretty sure that’s it. I can check with Nissa in the morning.”

“So there were ten of you there. No one acted funny. No hesitation from Aaron about the wedding?”

“No. Why? What’s going on in that head of yours, Dixie-gal?”

“Well, since Aaron didn’t seem to have any reservations about the wedding at the bachelor party, and nothing strange happened at the party, then that means something happened after the party and before the wedding.”

Even though we were on the phone, I could almost feel the light dawning in Uncle Rudd’s head. “Why, that’s right smart thinking! That means not counting me and Aaron, we now have us eight suspects.”

“I don’t know about having any suspects, as you call them. You said everything was fine at the bachelor party.”

“It was, as long as I was there.”

“You mean you didn’t stay the whole time?” That certainly put a whole new light on this suspect business. “When did you leave?”

“Whew, I haven’t thought this closely about that bachelor party for years.” I could hear him take a deep breath and let it out. “I think it was maybe ten, no later than eleven o’clock, when I headed out. I was the first one to leave, so I don’t know how long the party went on.”

“Didn’t anyone say anything the next day about how you missed a good party and when it ended?”

“Dixie-gal, that next day all any of us had on our minds was that Aaron Scott left my baby sister standing at the altar all dressed in her fancy white wedding gown. No one cared about the bachelor party.”

It was my turn to take a deep breath and let it out. “Okay, I’m convinced. Not including you and Aaron Scott, we have eight suspects.” I turned to Aunt Connie and asked for a pen and some paper then said to Uncle Rudd, “Give me their names again. I’m going to write them down.”

Once I had pen and paper, I wrote the names down and looked at them. “Uncle Rudd, I know everyone on this list except for this Earl Standings. Who is he?”

“He’s a distant cousin of Aaron’s. I know they grew up together. Come to think of it, he was the one who delivered the note and flowers. He said he found them in his car when he got in it to come to the church. Think that means anything?”

“Not that I know of. Listen, it’s late, and all of us need some sleep. Tell you what, tomorrow I’ll run over to the library and check the back issues of the newspaper around that time period. It’s a long shot, but there might be an
article that could throw some light on this. Maybe there was some mysterious happening that no one in the family caught because everyone was focused on Aunt Connie at the time.”

“Now you’re thinking like a real Tanner,” Uncle Rudd gushed.

That struck me as a thoroughly frightening thought.

Just as soon as I put the phone down and started to get up off the couch, the phone rang again. Aunt Connie and I looked at each other. I reached over with a bit of trepidation and picked it up. “Hello?”

“Dixie-gal, I got one other thing to tell ya,” Uncle Rudd informed me. “Before you go to the library, you need to go with Freedom to help him out with Scott’s body. I’d do it, but I planned on taking apart that CJ-7 of yours to see if I can get it fixed for you. No sense putting too many miles on my Mustang. We’ll come on over there around lunch and see if you’ve made any headway at the library. Nissa plans on us bringing some fried chicken and all the fixin’s, so be sure and tell Connie. Oh, and tell Freedom he’s invited to lunch also.” He hesitated a moment then added, “Never mind about telling Freedom, I’ll call him first thing in the morning and tell him our plan and invite him to lunch myself. Well, good night, sleep well.” Then he hung up.

Oh yeah, I was going to sleep well. I had so much to look forward to.

Aunt Connie and I hugged each other and tottered off to our respective bedrooms. After I put my pajamas on, I
didn’t waste time with any nightly healthy-skin rituals. I just planted my tired bones on Aunt Connie’s slightly lumpy guest bedroom mattress and fell asleep.

Lumpy mattress or not, it didn’t stop me from having a vivid nightmare. In the nightmare it was my wedding day, but instead of a flowing white gown and veil, I was wrapped up head to toe in pink cellophane, and I had to be carried down the aisle. Everyone stood up and clapped, only they kept making this banging noise. I tried to make them stop, but they kept it up. Finally waking up, I realized that the people in my nightmare weren’t clapping, someone was banging on Aunt Connie’s door.

Aunt Connie came stumbling out of her bedroom at the same time I stumbled out of mine. I mumbled that I’d get the door. She nodded and veered toward the kitchen.

After tying my robe, I opened the door, and there stood a grim-looking Freedom Crane. “You and Connie had better get dressed and come on down to the flower shop. Somebody broke in there last night.”

I started to push past Freedom, but he stopped me. “No, whoever was in there is gone now. It won’t make a bit a difference if you take a few minutes to throw on some clothes before you come down. I’ll go on back down and wait for you.” With that he turned and went back down the stairs.

As Freedom’s words began to sink in, Aunt Connie walked into the living room and asked what was going on. Judging from her reaction when I told her, she is not a morning person.

It was barely six, still dark outside, by the time we dressed and met Freedom down in the flower shop. Aunt Connie and I stood just inside the doorway and looked around. It struck me that it was an odd sort of burglary.