Chapter Fourteen
“Keisha?” I stared out the window again instead of working.
“What’s on your mind now?” she drawled.
“Well, I think…you know it’s been since long before Halloween since the serial killer struck, and now it’s almost Thanksgiving. You think he’s through…or moved on to another neighborhood?”
“Be nice to think that, but I ‘spect it’s a dangerous line of thinking. Why don’t you put your mind to Thanksgiving. You gonna cook the big bird or you want your mama and me to do it at her house? I think that would kind of tickle her, and I’d go get my mama.”
“Could we have Claire and the girls, and Anthony and the boys and Theresa and Joe?”
“Why not just invite all of Fairmount?” she muttered. “And we got to have Ralph Hoskins—your mama wouldn’t hear of leaving him out.” Then, “Yeah, we could feed all of them if we did it buffet style. Your mama’s got a card table, and so does my mama….”
“And I have a six-foot folding picnic table,” I said, beginning to plan. “I’ll make the green bean casserole….”
“That stuff with French fried onions on the top? Do we have to?”
“Yes, we have to. My girls will want it. And I’ll make cranberry relish….”
“I like the jellied kind from a can.”
“Yuck! You can have that if you want.”
What started as a discussion about murder, ended up as a menu-planning session, and I had no new thoughts about the serial killer. Keisha was right. It wasn’t long enough to sound the all-clear. But the line about inviting Ralph Hoskins to dinner stuck with me—yes, I guessed we’d have to do it. Mike would be better natured about it than I was.
****
Thanksgiving was a resounding success. Mom and Keisha worked themselves to a frazzle, and Mom would not put up with my suggestion of high quality disposable plates.
“It’s one of the major holidays of the year, and I will serve dinner on china,” She made it plain this was a firm stance.
“But, Mom, there will be nineteen of us.” I was taken aback by the number.
“I have nineteen plates, Kelly. They’ll just be two sets of china, but no one will mind.”
“And we’ll have enough places to sit?”
Keisha raised a hand, a joking gesture as though to backhand me. “You keep out of this and go make your green bean casserole and cranberry relish. Your mama and I got it all figured out, and my mama is bringing the pies. That woman…she can make a pumpkin pie that will melt your heart.”
“The girls won’t touch pumpkin pie.”
“Oh, she’ll make chocolate meringue and apple too. Need at least three pies for all those people. And Mama will bring ice cream—Blue Bell, of course.”
I could see that this was beyond my control.
“You just make sure everyone’s coming,” Mom said. “Except Ralph. I already invited him, and he was delighted. Poor thing. I think he always eats holiday dinners alone.”
She was right, I thought. Claire accepted, as did Anthony and Joe and Theresa, and I decided I would do my best to make it a festive occasion. The girls and I went to the Dollar Store and bought Thanksgiving-themed decorations—a cornucopia and dried gourds and corn to fill it, Thanksgiving paper napkins (Mom would want her linen, but what the heck!) and fall-looking straw flowers to put in vases.
Mike was the problem. “Save me some turkey,” he said. “I have to work that day. Sorry, Kelly, but everyone can’t be off on Thanksgiving, and I drew the short stick.”
Some of the fun went out of it for me—a lot of it in fact. I counted on Mike to be my rock through a dinner with Ralph Hoskins. Now I’d have to wing it.
Ralph was pleasant, focused on Mom. “Cynthia, let me carry that for you.” “Cynthia, surely there’s something I can do to help you. You seem to be working so hard.” I wanted to tell him work, as in cooking, was good for her, but before I could say anything, Keisha leapt in.
“Ralph Hoskins, you go on outta this tiny kitchen and talk to the menfolk. You’re in the way.”
He looked astounded at being talked to that way but then grinned a bit and faded into the living room, a glass of wine in his hand. In the end he spent a long time talking to Anthony about Fairmount and how much they both loved the neighborhood. Ralph advised Anthony that he should move his family to the neighborhood, and Anthony threw me a sly look. “I’m thinking about it.”
Dinner was traditional and delicious, and we ate at various tables, seated on the couch at the coffee table, wherever we could find a perch. Keisha’s mom and my mom had the places of honor at both ends of the picnic table I brought. It was crowded and noisy, but it was joyous. And after the full dinner and two pieces of Keisha’s mom’s pies, I knew I overate.
Weight Watchers, here I come!
The girls and I were sound asleep when Mike came in, but I left him a note on the kitchen table and a plate in the refrigerator. Dimly, in my sleep, I heard him puttering around in the kitchen, and then I knew he kissed me when he came to bed and he smelled of pumpkin pie. But that was all I remembered.
The next morning, a holiday for all of us, except Mike who was on duty that afternoon, I woke him up to say, “Ralph Hoskins’s not the killer. He’s too…well, he was too at ease with everybody last night. He’s strange, and if he ever becomes my stepfather, I’ll adjust. But we’ve got to keep looking for the killer.”
“Who’s we?” he grumbled sleepily. “I told you, it’s a police matter.”
****
The serial killer was not through. He struck again the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but no one found the victim until the middle of the night. Mike’s phone rang about two in the morning Sunday, and when he answered it—well, what he said is not to be repeated. He jumped out of bed and began fumbling for his clothes.
“Mike? What?”
“Elderly woman found dead,” he mumbled, pulling on his pants and stumbling around for his shoes. “Fell inside her house and hit her head—or was hit in the head. Her son got worried when she didn’t answer the phone all evening and came over from Dallas to investigate. Found her.”
“Where?”
“South Adams Street. One of those huge two-stories just south of Elizabeth Boulevard. More in Ryan Place than Fairmount but close enough to count as the work of the serial killer. Woman lived alone but had a state-of-the-art alarm system and all.”
And close enough to Mom’s house to cause me a momentary panic.
“Call me when you can?” I asked as he leaned over to give me a quick peck on the nose.
“Yeah. Don’t count on me for supper. You’ll have to cook.”
Sleep was gone but I cowered in my bed, thinking about Florence Dodson and Adelaide McLaughton and Mrs. Glenn—funny, I never did know her first name. She was always Mrs. Glenn, and now she was gone to Midland or wherever that daughter took her. But what…why did a killer single out those women? Nothing fit a pattern. There was no sense to it. And now this latest victim.
I dragged myself to the coffee pot and then the computer about seven. The murder didn’t make the newspaper headlines, but it was on the internet, and the neighborhood bulletin was abuzz. The victim was Juliana Gibson, a widow of eighty-nine—the oldest victim so far. She lived alone, as Mike said, though she had a security system and a large dog that did not sound any alarm. Mrs. Gibson, whose husband had been a railroad executive, never knew what hit her. This was the first victim who wasn’t in her garden. There went part of any theory I had. I fought the urge to drive down South Adams and see if Mrs. Gibson had a garden. How would I explain this to the girls?
The girls and I stayed home all day, although I didn’t tell them what happened. I didn’t want to leave the phone, but they were antsy, sensing something was wrong, asking for Mike.
Mom called in the afternoon, and I asked how her day was. Her voice was bright and cheerful as she reported that she and Ralph went to the eleven o’clock service and then to lunch at Luby’s and did I know that they made the best salmon cakes ever? No, Mom, I didn’t know. She had no clue about the most recent murder, and I wasn’t about to tell her.
In mid-afternoon I gathered up the girls and went to the store, where I bought a roasted chicken, fresh asparagus, a baguette of French bread, a packaged angel food cake, and fresh strawberries and blueberries. That, I thought, is dinner. But even at the store—I went to a local market and not all the way out to Central Market—there was tension in the air. People scurried about their business, looking worried. It reminded me of a friend who had to fly shortly after 9/11 and remarked, “You can’t help but look carefully at everyone getting on the plane and wonder which one, if any, is a terrorist.” That was how the neighborhood felt—and I’m sure the feeling spread throughout the city. I sensed that I set myself up for a nightmare if Mike didn’t come home that night.
It might have been funny in other circumstances but not that night.
Mike did come home but not in a communicative frame of mind, and I left him alone.
****
The next morning the paper’s headline blared, “Serial Killer Strikes Again!” The accompanying article didn’t add much that wasn’t already been on the neighborhood grapevine, except the fact that Mrs. Gibson had a son who lived in Dallas and found his mother’s body in the middle of the night. The police were going on the theory that it was the same killer, although there were a few differences from the previous cases. Conroy was quoted as saying the victim was indeed hit in the head while she sat in a wingback chair in her living room. There was a cup of tea on the table besides her and another on the coffee table in front of the couch. I knew without reading on that there would be no fingerprints.
The Tuesday morning paper carried an obituary for Juliana Gibson. She was one fascinating woman. Born in Austria, she came to this country as a child to escape the Nazis. Somehow, though her family was poor, she trained at Julliard and sang professionally in New York before marrying George Gibson and moving to Texas. Once here, she abandoned her musical aspirations to devote herself to community activities—a member of the library board, a member of the Jewel Charity Ball, an active member of her church’s woman’s circle. You guessed it! The Methodist church! And services were to be held at that church on Thursday.
“Guess we’re going to church again,” I told Keisha.
“Kelly, we didn’t know this lady.”
“No, but we have to see who’s there.”
“Why we?”
“Because Mike won’t go with me. In fact, he’s forbidden me to go.”
“You know already Ralph Hoskins will be there.”
“Yeah, but I want to see.”
Ralph Hoskins was there alright, and my mother was on his arm.
“Mom? I didn’t think you knew Mrs. Gibson?”
She clung to Ralph’s arm. “I didn’t, but Ralph knew her since he was a child. She was a close friend of his mother. And he wanted support for the services. So I thought it was only the Christian thing to do.”
I was dumbfounded. Ralph ushered us all into a pew near the front, and my mind rushed so hard that Keisha prompted me when it was time to stand or pray. Needless to say, I didn’t tell Mike we were going to the funeral. In fact, I didn’t talk to him much about this latest murder, though I longed to pour out the fact that it ruined my theory that the killings were over. But now I had no suspect. There was Ralph Hoskins at the end of the pew, reaching out to pat my mother’s hand now and then. For a minute, I thought I might faint. Keisha must have seen me, for she gave me a sharp elbow in the ribs, sharp enough to bring me back to my senses, sort of.
We went back to the office—the service was at eleven and we didn’t go to the graveside—but I was once again useless. My mind kept going back to the small Methodist church in the neighborhood. It was the thing that bound all these women together, and it held a clue to the murders. About two, I turned off my computer, shoved the open desk drawers shut, and grabbed my briefcase.
Keisha stared at me. “Going somewhere?’
“Yeah. To church.”
She looked at me skeptically. “Think I need to go with you?”
“Nope. I can go by myself.” I knew what I was going to find out, and I just had time to do it and pick up the girls, but I wouldn’t delay.
The church was a wonderful red brick building, charming and old, with marble work over the arched double doors into the sanctuary and stained glass windows along the side of the main building. But I bypassed that for the office wing attached at the back of the church and parked in the lot behind it. A sign pointed me to the office.
I thought of twenty different stories I could give the church secretary—anything but passing myself off as a police officer. But in that short walk I discarded them and settled for the truth.
