Murder Gets a Life (15 page)

Kerrigan began to deal the cards. “Nora was at the house when Mama showed up sick. She and Eddie are temporarily separated, but she was there picking some clothes up. She was the one who called 911.” Kerrigan stopped. “You want me to deal you in, Mrs. Hollowell?”

I shook my head no.

“Personally,” Kerrigan continued, “I think Nora was there looking for Sunshine. They’re real close. Nora’s the one who helped her in the Miss Alabama contest.”

This caught my interest. “Sunshine was in the Miss Alabama contest?”

Kerrigan nodded. “Last year and this year. Last year
she was a brunette and didn’t make the finals. So this year she went blonde. Still didn’t make the finals.”

Everybody picked up their cards and started sorting them.

“What’s her talent?” I asked.

“Fly-fishing,” Howard said. “She’s great at it.”

I thought about the stage at Samford University where the Miss Alabama contests are held. Fly-fishing?

“They play the music from
A River Runs Through It
and Sunshine does a little dance while she flips the rod and hits targets. This year she and Nora decided to do away with the waders and have her wear a bathing suit, but she still didn’t make it to the finals.” Kerrigan reached over and drew a card. “She wasn’t too disappointed. She had the trip to Bora Bora coming up.”

I got up and walked to the window. Everything seemed normal down there on Nineteenth. Across the street my car was gone from the valet parking booth. And I had no parking ticket, no way to identify it.

“Has anybody heard from Sunshine?” I asked.

“Nope. Gin.” Howard slapped his cards down.

“Where are Pawpaw and Eddie?”

“Eddie had to go back to work, and we decided not to tell Pawpaw until we know what’s what because of his spells,” Kerrigan explained.

“How did you do that so soon?” Sister asked Howard. “You really got me that time.”

A young couple pushed an elderly woman in a wheelchair into the waiting room.

“We’ve got to go, Sister,” I said. “By the time we locate my car, we’re going to be in rush hour traffic.”

“Okay.” Mary Alice pushed back her chair. “Y’all
call us if we can do anything or if there’s any change.”

“We will,” Kerrigan promised. “And you let us know if Junior Reuse wanted anything important with Ray.”

“I will. I doubt he did, though. That man just likes to have people roll over when he says to.”

“God’s truth,” Kerrigan agreed.

I apologized to them both for letting their mother go out in the heat.

Howard smiled. “Don’t blame yourself. I’d like to have seen you try to stop her.”

This assuaged my guilt slightly. Enough so that in the elevator when Mary Alice turned to me and said, “Fly-fishing?” I burst out laughing. We were laughing so hard when the elevator opened in the lobby, we were hanging onto each other. Everyone, I’m sure, thought we were crying. Which was more appropriate, given the location.

We jaywalked back across Nineteenth and rapped on the window of the valet parking booth.

“I need my car,” I said. “A blue eighty-eight Chevy.”

“Where’s your ticket?”

“You know I don’t have one.”

“Gotta have a ticket.” He shut the window and turned back to his TV. Mary Alice opened the window, lifted several sets of keys from the wallboard, and dropped them into her purse.

“A blue eighty-eight Chevy?” the man asked. “I think I remember.”

When he brought the car up, Mary Alice rewarded him with the keys she had snitched and a five-dollar bill. Then we got in and hauled.

“What did Meemaw want to tell you?” I asked her as we headed up the mountain.

“I don’t know. All she kept saying was ‘Sunshine turkey.’ Just over and over, ‘Sunshine turkey.’ Didn’t make sense.”

“Well, maybe it did. Maybe she was saying that Sunshine left the turkey on your front porch. When I mentioned the turkey, she said that was what Gabriel had sent her to find out.”

“Find out what?”

“Gabriel wanted her to know that someone left a turkey on your front steps. I think.”

“Why?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I’m not a channeler.” I thought for a moment. “And this whole thing is tacky. I hate to say it, Sister, because they’re your in-laws, but I think our dear mother would have said that whole Turkett bunch is common as pig tracks.”

I didn’t get the reaction I had expected. “You’re right,” Sister agreed. “But you’ve got to admit our holidays are going to be interesting from now on. Think about it.”

I didn’t want to.

Every sprinkler was on in the Redmont area where Mary Alice lives. Hers are timed to come on, rain or shine, as I assume most of the others are, too. It’s disconcerting during a thunderstorm to see water shooting up from the ground.

“Want to come have supper with us?” I asked. “Shrimp salad.”

“Thanks, but Bill and Ray and I are going somewhere. Maybe that new Chinese place at Brookwood.”

I pulled into her driveway and stopped. “This time tomorrow, Haley will be married,” I said.

“And maybe by this time tomorrow Sheriff Reuse will know which one of the Turketts killed the Indian, and Sunshine can come home.”

“You really think it was one of the Turketts?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Which one is your money on?”

“Howard.”

“Why?”

“He’s the quietest one. That’s always the way it works, Mouse.”

“And why did Howard kill him?”

“Now
that
I don’t know.” Sister opened the door and got out. “But I was watching him while we played gin. He’s the one, all right. Even his eyes are a little shifty.”

“Call the sheriff and tell him. Make his day.”

“That martinet? He can do his own work.”

I drove back down the mountain, past the statue of Vulcan with its huge bare butt reflecting the late afternoon sunlight, down streets lined with trees somnolent in the heat. Fred’s car was in our driveway; I was home.

F
red greeted me when I opened the door with “That cat was on the table when I came in.” He was reading the paper in his recliner, an open beer on the table beside him. Across from him, on the sofa, Muffin, erect as an Egyptian cat, sat watching his every move. “He didn’t get down when I told him to.”

“It’s a she, and don’t scare her. She’s bound to be nervous in a strange place. I’ll teach her not to get on the table.” I sat down beside Muffin who immediately jumped down and disappeared into the hall.

“Ha.” Fred put down the paper and looked at me. And then looked more carefully. “Your eye’s getting black.”

“I know. Down at University Hospital, they thought I belonged in the emergency room.”

Fred looked alarmed. “You’ve been to the hospital?”

“To get Mary Alice.” I told him about Meemaw’s visit and her heatstroke, about driving at least twenty times around the hospital waiting for Mary Alice to show up, and—at this I teared up—about having
nothing to wear to the wedding tomorrow and looking awful.

Fred straightened his chair with a clunk, dropped the newspaper onto the floor, and came over to hold me. “Don’t cry, honey. That won’t do a thing but make your eye swell up more.”

Which was true. Sad but true. I burrowed my head against his chest. He smelled like sweat and Gain detergent and the metals in his warehouse. I could hear the loud thump and the softer thump of his heart, steady, rhythmical. I could go to sleep, I thought. Right here. Right now.

“Let’s go look in the good closet and see what we can find. How about the dress you wore to Debbie’s wedding? That was pretty.”

“Too dressy.”

“Your red suit?”

“Too hot.” Yes, indeed, I could go to sleep right here.

“Well, let’s go look. Or we can go down to the mall tonight and get you something.”

“Okay.” But I held on to him for a few more minutes before I let him move.

“What about this?” He pulled a green linen jacket from the closet while Muffin and I sat on the bed and watched. “Don’t you have a white skirt?”

“An off-white.”

“That’ll look good.”

I was beginning to feel more interested. “And I’ve got an off-white blouse. Almost the same off-white as the skirt.”

“Let’s see it.”

In a moment, my wedding outfit lay on the bed.

“Now you can help me,” Fred said.

“How about a navy jacket and khaki pants?” I was safe; that’s what he always wears.

I don’t know why I thought the night would be busy. As it was, it was very quiet. I went out and walked Woofer around the yard a little and then brought him into the house for a visit and to meet Muffin. The cat bristled a little when she saw Woofer, but he couldn’t have cared less that a cat was in his house. He drank some water and went into the den to lie across the air-conditioning vent, ignoring her.

We ate our shrimp salad and watched the ball game. Around nine o’clock Haley called to say she was still doing last-minute things. I didn’t tell her about Meemaw.

“You need me to come over in the morning?” I asked. “Help you get ready?”

“Maybe get to the church a little early to check me out. We’re not making this a big deal.”

But it was a big deal. A very big deal that would change all of our lives.

“Haley,” I told Fred as I hung up. He nodded but didn’t say anything. Wise man.

The Braves trounced San Francisco but Fred didn’t see it. Sometime during the seventh inning he began to snore. After the ten o’clock news (the weather was the number-one story), I woke him up to go to bed. I thought I would have trouble going to sleep, but the steady hum of the air conditioner was soothing. Muffin joined us, but Fred didn’t know. As for me, I liked her purring.

The sound of the doorbell was part of my dream. I was at a wedding and a bell was ringing.

“What’s that?” Fred grumbled. “The doorbell?”

It rang again. This time both of us came straight
up. I turned on the light. Three o’clock. “Don’t open it,” I said to Fred who was looking for his robe. “It could be one of those home invaders. Some of them ring the doorbell.”

“Home invader, hell. It better be an emergency.”

Oh, God. An emergency. I grabbed my robe and followed.

Fred turned on the porch light and looked through the peephole.

“It’s Sunshine,” he announced.

“At three o’clock in the morning?”

“Right here.”

“Well, let her in.”

“How do we know it’s safe?”

“Sunshine? You think Sunshine might be dangerous?” I looked through the peephole. Bedraggled, still dressed in the same pink dress, Sunshine still managed to look beautiful. And innocent. “Don’t be ridiculous. She was almost in the Miss Alabama finals.” I opened the door.

“Oh, Mrs. Hollowell, Mr. Hollowell.” She began to cry. “I’m so sorry to bother you in the middle of the night, but I’ve got to find out about Meemaw. I just heard she had a stroke and is in intensive care.”

“You heard it at three o’clock in the morning?” Fred asked.

“I know it sounds crazy, and I shouldn’t be here. I apologize. But I couldn’t go to Mother Crane’s. Ray’s there. And I didn’t even know which hospital to call.”

I gave Fred a hard look. “Come on in, Sunshine. Your grandmother is in intensive care at University, but it’s a heatstroke, not a stroke stroke. They think she’s going to be okay.”

Sunshine leaned her head against the doorjamb and cried harder.

“Come on in, honey,” I repeated. “I’ll get us some coffee.”

“It’s just all so terrible.” Sunshine stepped inside, mopping at her face with her palms.

“I’ll get you a Kleenex,” Fred offered. As we got to the den, he came in with a whole box. “Here.”

Sunshine took a couple, sank down on the sofa, and held them to her face. “I really should go. You’re sure Meemaw’s going to be all right?”

“She’s pretty sick or she wouldn’t be in intensive care, but she’s not paralyzed or anything like that. It’s a matter of getting her stabilized.”

“Making sure she doesn’t have brain damage,” Fred added. I gave him another dirty look for that happy information.

“It’s true,” he insisted. “The body’s cooling system shuts down, you quit sweating, and your temperature goes sky-high.”

“Well, when she was here, she said she was sweating like a whore in church, so she couldn’t have been shut down long.”

Sunshine looked up with a slight smile. “That sounds like Meemaw.”

“She’s going to be fine,” I said. “Now how about I fix you some coffee?”

Sunshine sank into the sofa. “That would be wonderful.”

“I’m going back to bed,” Fred said and left.

I got the coffee going and came back into the den. I thought Sunshine was asleep, but she opened her eyes as I sat down.

“Mrs. Hollowell, is Ray all right?”

“Fine. Missing you.”

“I’m sorry to do him this way.”

“Then why don’t you call him?”

“I can’t. I really can’t.”

We were silent for a few minutes. Muffin came in to see what was going on and hopped up on the sofa beside Sunshine. Sunshine rubbed the cat with one hand and mopped tears with the other.

“You’re staying with Dwayne, aren’t you?” It was a guess, but a good one.

“I’m staying with a friend of his. He came and got me, though. At the trailer.” Her voice lowered. “I called him.”

“And he nearly ran us down as we were coming into the highway in Sister’s Jaguar.”

“Yes, ma’am. It scared him real bad.”

“Us, too.” Again there was a pause. The smell of coffee began to waft into the room. “Want to tell me why you ran?”

“I was so scared. I’ve never been so scared in my life.” Sunshine shivered; obviously she was telling the truth.

“But what happened?”

She shivered harder. “Can I use your bathroom?”

“Down the hall. First door on the left. I’ll get our coffee.”

By the time she got back, I had fixed a tray with coffee and the rest of the Girl Scout cookies. Sunshine looked like she needed some sugar; I knew I did.

“Thanks, Mrs. Hollowell.” She put sugar in her coffee, stirred it, and turned to me. It must have been the first time she had really looked at me because she said, “My Lord, what happened to you?”

“I fell over a turkey somebody left on my sister’s front porch.” I emphasized “somebody.”

But it apparently struck no guilt chord. “How
could you fall over a turkey?” Sunshine asked, her eyes wide.

“Easy. It was a dead feathered one, split down the middle and right in the front door.” I picked up my coffee, keeping an eye on Sunshine. Old schoolteachers can spot in a minute when somebody’s lying. “We figured it was a warning of some kind.”

“Of what?” She looked sufficiently bewildered. Maybe she hadn’t known about the turkey.

“We don’t know,” I admitted. “You got any ideas?”

She shook her head slightly. “Doesn’t make sense. Are you okay?”

“Just bunged up.” I sipped my coffee; Sunshine sipped hers. I ate a cookie; Sunshine ate one. The deep silence of 3
A.M.
begged not to be disturbed, but there were questions that needed answering. I put my cup down. “You were going to tell me why you ran.”

Sunshine put her cup down, too. “I was so scared. The man who killed the other man saw me. I was asleep and I heard all this commotion and opened the bedroom door and there he was. The man was on the floor with the knife in him”—Sunshine shuddered—“and this guy was looking right at me. I figured I was dead. I could hear him at the door when I crawled out of the window and ran toward the woods.”

“You saw him?”

“Close as I am to you.”

“Did you know him?”

“No idea who he is. I don’t think he followed me, though. I hid and called Dwayne.”

“You grabbed your cell phone on the way out of the window?”

“Yes, ma’am. And this one dress.” Sunshine plucked at the material as if she were sick of it.

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“I was too scared. I just knew I had to get out of there and quick. I’m going to Sheriff Reuse tomorrow—today, I mean. I’d already decided that when Dwayne came in and said Meemaw was sick. He works at a bar on Southside part-time and doesn’t get off work until two.”

“What was the man like, or do you mind answering these questions?”

“Oh, no, ma’am. I don’t mind.” Sunshine picked up her mug and held it with both hands as if trying to warm them. “He was in his fifties, partly bald. Had a big stomach, but he wasn’t really fat. You know how men do sometimes. Get a beer belly.” She bit her lower lip, thinking. “Probably almost six feet tall, and he had great big hands with the veins sticking out on them like he’d been working real hard.”

“He had,” I said. “He’d been sticking a hog-butchering knife through a man.”

Coffee sloshed from Sunshine’s cup onto her pink dress. She grabbed a Kleenex from the box Fred had left. “I’m still scared to death,” she said.

That part I believed. The mystery-man story was so full of holes you could use it for a colander.

“Anyway,” she said, mopping at her skirt, “I probably shouldn’t have, but I ran.”

“Sometimes it’s the wisest thing to do.” I got up and took her cup. “Here, let me get you some fresh coffee.”

“I really need to go.”

“Well, I was going to tell you some more about Meemaw.”

“What about her?” She held out the cup. I went
into the kitchen to refill it. “I was at the hospital this afternoon,” I called. I came back into the den. Sunshine was stroking Muffin and crying again. “Your Aunt Nora was with her. Your mother and Uncle Howard were in the waiting room. And my sister. But your Aunt Nora was with Meemaw.”

Sunshine nodded. “That’s good. Aunt Nora’s the best one of the whole bunch. I’m glad she was with her.”

“But she and your Uncle Eddie are separated?” I was trying to be subtle and find out more about the family relationships. Sunshine was obliging.

“He works all the time. All the time. They’ve got that gorgeous house and if I hadn’t been there with her most of the time since the boys left for college, Aunt Nora would have been rattling around up there by herself. The man’s crazy. All he thinks about is money.”

I took another cookie and sat down. “What about your Uncle Howard?”

“You mean does he have a wife? He’s had six. Pawpaw says you’ve got to give Howard credit, he believes in the institution of marriage.” Sunshine reached for a cookie. “Now Mama, on the other hand—” She didn’t finish the thought, just sat back and nibbled on the cookie.

“But Meemaw raised you, didn’t she?”

“Meemaw and Pawpaw.” Her expression softened. “I guess my first memory is Pawpaw taking me fishing on the Tennessee River when we lived in Muscle Shoals.”

“That’s a nice memory,” I said. “I remember my grandfather taking me fishing, too. He only took Mary Alice once, though. He told my grandmother that Mary Alice needed the gulf to fish in.”