Murder on the Ol' Bunions (A LaTisha Barnhart Mystery) (22 page)

The letter I had found on Dana’s end table came back to me and I wondered if it had anything to do with the diary.
Probably not.
Who was Jackson Hughes anyhow?

Hardy made a racket pulling the chicken out of the oven. I watched as he dumped the chicken on a plate and spooned potatoes on the side, potatoes falling off the spoon and bouncing off the stovetop. He was as sloppy as the person who had shoved Marion was sly. I felt no closer to a solution now than I had two days ago.

Hardy plunked my plate down and sat down with his. “Let’s pray and slay.”

He spat his typical prayer. Mentally, I added a postscript. There’s something here I’m not seeing, Lord. Open my eyes.

We split the stack of diaries between us and ate in silence as we read.
Page after page after page, until Hardy finally put down the last in his pile.
“Maybe the diary isn’t a big deal. You bark up the wrong tree and you’re
gonna
waste more time.”

“
How’m
I supposed to know what to look for?”

“You don’t, which is why we’re going through these. I’m just saying you shouldn’t forget other avenues left unexplored.” He stood, stretched, and wiggled his fingers. “I’m going to go play the piano. Isn’t Payton coming to tune it after the funeral sometime?”

“Supposed to.
Wonder if Dana ever got hers in tune.”

“We could try it out tomorrow. Give you a chance to ask her about the diary.”

And possibly I could find out where she’d gone for those few minutes left unaccounted on the day Marion died. We’d go over all that after the funeral sometime.

I stuffed the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and worried over Regina. The girl’s love for her mother still touched me. If Marion had been the one blackmailing Regina before, who was taking up. .
.

I sucked in a breath. Betsy
Taser
!

Certainty swelled in me. It made perfect sense. Betsy’s “Put it on my tab” comment, as if Regina somehow owed her something, coupled with the fact that Betsy would have insider knowledge of the events surrounding the theft of money. I felt good.

I punched in the number for Chief Conrad’s private residence and waited for him to answer so I could pour all the details in his ear. Plus, he could pay Mrs.
Taser
a private visit to see if her fingerprints matched the ones on the envelope.

 
He answered and I loaded him down with my theory. When I hung up the phone, I felt both relieved and confident that Regina’s part in Marion’s death had been solved. I could strike her name from my mental list of suspects.

I peeked at the clock. Eleven fifteen. I knew I’d better get to work on the diaries again.

In the background, Hardy played fun little tunes. When the kids had been young, they’d spent hours making up words to the tunes Hardy would concoct. The children got to where they begged their daddy to sit down with them every night and play their little game.

The memory took the edge off my enthusiasm. Funny how a momma raises her babies to be loyal to family, then when they get out on their own, they put that in to practice by loving their own family . . . to the exclusion of their own mother and father.

Time for me to realize that all children eventually spin away on their own axis, away from the sun and moon of momma and daddy.
And that realization didn’t hurt nearly as much as it had two days ago.
Grandmotherhood
would be my future. If Cora had her baby tonight, I’d be in a real pickle, what with singing at the funeral and needing to talk to Dana and let Payton in to tune the piano.

Hardy’s playing framed my thoughts as I hung the dishtowel over the oven handle and decided to get those boxes prepared to drop off at the school on Monday. It sure would be a relief to have them out of the way and off my mind.

 
I nudged the big box closer and peered in. Right on top, its cover crinkled and ripped, sat a book with the word diary written in faded gold across the cover. I didn’t remember it being there when I’d purchased the neatly stacked books underneath it. My fingers grew warm as I reached in and lifted it out.

I cracked the front cover and read the date and the name of the author, and I knew the search was over. The name matched the one I’d read in that old letter on Dana’s end table. Coincidence this was not.

I opened my mouth to yell out to Hardy,
then
clapped it shut. Something about that tune he was playing.
Something familiar.
It brought to mind that day in Payton’s when I’d had this same sensation as Hardy played and the chief asked me his questions. I closed my eyes trying to capture that elusive connection between this tune and that moment. It scratched at my brain until I thought I’d scream. Maybe Hardy could help.

 
“Hardy,” I yapped his name before rounding the corner into the living room.

He didn’t miss a note, but the lack of music in front of him didn’t help me know the title of the piece either.

“What’s that you’re playing?”

“A tune I composed myself,” he said.

“I know that. What’s the name of it?”

He did a little flourish on the keys and finally answered, “I call it, ‘
Breezin
’ Across.’”

The name didn’t push an automatic recall button as I’d hoped it might, but it tied into Marion’s death somehow, I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

“Well, I’m going to bed. Got some notes to look over for Tuesday’s class, before I read through this diary. I’m thinking it’s the one we’ve been looking for. Found it right on top of the other books in that box I bought.”

Hardy, lost in his music, simply nodded.

The music followed me up the stairs and floated over me, soothing, as I got ready for bed. I snapped on the light on my side, eyed my notebook from class, and shoved it aside. The diary drew me. In order to get peace, I needed to know for sure this was the one we’d been looking for. I read through what was obviously a man’s chronicle of events. Sentences were written tersely, with little description. After the first four pages, I almost put it aside to study my notes for class, but I read another paragraph, then another, until, finally, I found it.

I worked on my new project.
Took up the old wood.
Easy work.
Had to do it at night to keep it a secret, but tacked a blanket over the window to keep the light in. I’ll start small. Work my way up from there. People trust me and I’m the only assayer around for miles.

So Jackson Hughes was the assayer of Maple Gap back in the days of Dana’s great-grandfather. And if this assayer was the same one murdered during Dana’s great-grandfather’s days as sheriff, I could understand the girl’s interest in the diary. Maybe Jackson even told the story of how he robbed the townsmen of their gold?

I fanned the pages, noticing the writings did not go all the way to the end, but stopped in the middle. I fanned the pages again, slower, and stopped at a crude drawing that took up two pages. Smudged badly, the picture sported rough lines that imitated the outline of a building with two smaller rectangles, like rooms within rooms. Not understanding exactly what I was looking at, it did occur to me the map might be one of the reasons Dana found the diary so interesting.
The legend of gold and all that.
To top it off, this map, combined with any other facts the assayer’s diary provided, could be the very reason Marion wouldn’t give it back to Dana.

But Marion couldn’t read.

I flipped back to the front and continued reading, but the assayer went on to other subjects and my eyes grew too heavy to continue.

As I drifted off to sleep, one question rang in my head. Would Dana
Letzburg
kill for this diary?

Chapter Twenty-One

Saturday morning, bright and early, the phone rang. Cobwebs clung to my brain until Cora came to mind. I sat bolt upright as the phone rang a second time, and nudged Hardy none too gently. “Did Tyrone leave a number?”

“His cell phone, but he can’t use it inside the hospital.” He rolled toward me smothering a yawn.

The phone rattled again. We stared at each other for one strained, anxious moment,
then
I yanked the receiver up, both excited and nervous.

“Hello?”

“
LaTisha
?”

I blinked hard, not registering the voice. My heart slammed hard and sunk to my toes.
A doctor?
Definitely not Tyrone.

 
“
LaTisha
?” Chief Conrad’s tenor finally registered a face to match the voice.

“Who else would it be?” I barked, yanking my arm away from Hardy’s relentless patting. I shook my head at him, hoping he would understand my silent message and leave me be so I could concentrate on what the chief was saying.

“Sorry, this is Chief Conrad. Something’s happened down at Marion’s shop. Since you were in there with me the last couple of times, I wanted you to come down and tell me what you think.”

“Someone break in?”

“I uh-,” his voice held a note of uncertainty. As if saying more than he was might reveal more than he wanted.

Hardy slid up in bed and raised his brows in silent question.

Chief’s voice came through, low and deep, as if he had cupped his hand around the receiver so his words wouldn’t be overheard. “Yeah, someone broke in.”

“I’ll be there,” I promised.

“Thank you.”

I bounced myself to the side of the bed and lunged upright. Hardy’s voice trailed over my shoulder.

“Can’t you get up without creating a tidal wave for the rest of us?”

“You need to get your sorry self out of that bed anyway.
Lots to do before the funeral.
I want you to try calling Tyrone and make sure they’re okay. Then you can make the phone calls to cancel Regina’s appointments.”

“I
ain’t
the one who volunteered to do all that.”

“Maybe not, but that was Chief on the phone. There’s trouble down at Marion’s place and he wants me there. I can’t make those calls and get down there, too, so you’re
gonna
have to help.” I glared at him. “And what’s all that
fussin
’ in my face while I’m on the phone? If it’d been Tyrone, I’d have told you so.”

“You weren’t talking a blaze like usual, so I thought it must be bad news.” He climbed from bed as if he was being slowly poured onto the floor. “This is the thanks I get for staying up most the night reading over that diary.”

That brought me up short. “You read the whole diary?”

“Sure did.” He stretched again, jaws wide open in a humongous yawn. “Know what I think? I think that there little drawing is what Payton and Dana
were
looking at the other night.”

“
You talking
foolish. How could they when the diary was in the box in the car?”

“Maybe she’d made a copy.”

It gave me something to think on. “What else did it say?”

“He confesses that he hid the gold under the floorboards in a niche.”

“That’s all?”

He sent me a look of pure disgust. “You want me to go dig it up for you, too?
How’m
I supposed to know if that’s all? That’s all that I read, I can tell you that.”

When I glanced at myself in the mirror, my twists were
lookin
’ mighty sad. Since I had to go straight from Marion’s to the funeral, I’d have to do something with my hair, unless I wanted to look like a well-stuffed scarecrow as I sang.

“You get Regina’s cell phone number the other night?”

“Yeah.”
He pointed at the pair of pants hung over the chair.

It took me a minute to locate the piece of paper and make the call. No answer. I decided to call the home and see if I could get Regina that way.

“Yes, I’m calling to talk to Regina
Rogane
, daughter of Eloise
Rogane
.”

The nurse took her time responding, and a bunch of whispering voices in the background made me wonder what was so secretive. “Mrs.
Rogane
is still not doing well. Eloise’s nurse reported that Regina left early yesterday evening. If you see her, could you please send her
back.
Her mother has been asking for her.”

I think I said good-bye. The shock of knowing Regina had left right after we’d dropped her off . . . The obvious questions flooded my mind. I knew if I sat and pondered for too long, I’d be late for everything the entire day. Best to think on my feet

First, the problem of my hair had to be solved. I typed
twistouts
in the search engine on the Internet and got directions I could follow. When I took out all the twists Regina had so carefully put in, my hair looked lovely, though I had to do some greasing of the ends a bit to get them tamed and not so fuzzy. After all these years of relaxing my hair, I couldn’t have been more pleased at the simplicity of
twistouts
.

By the time I emerged from the bathroom, Hardy had regressed back to the horizontal position. Instead of wasting time on him, I planned a new attack.