You Can't Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet: A Study Club Cozy Murder Mystery (The Study Club Mysteries Book 1) (4 page)

He stared at the coroner’s report and shook his head. That old fool Bill Simmons, who doubled as both the coroner and the local undertaker, had written, “Apparent cause of death 10-inch Old Hickory kitchen knife.” Apparent? That was like telling a woman she might be pregnant because she just had a baby.

After Clara Wyler embarrassed Lester Harper on the courthouse square, hauled him into D.T. Armstrong’s office, and derailed any real questioning of Wanda Jean Milton, the Sheriff packed up his gear and headed to the river to fish in peace. He left Hank in charge of the office, confident that his young protégé could handle whatever came up.

So far that had involved, yet again, explaining to Wanda Jean that she could not go home because her house was a crime scene. Yesterday he’d stood guard at the bedroom door as she tearfully packed a bag and allowed herself to be driven over to her sister Rolene’s house.

He’d had to turn around and go back to the Milton residence three times to get things she forgot, so in the end, one bag turned into four. Hank wasn’t exactly sure why she needed a pink-and-white go-go dress or how come she broke into sobs when she took it off the hangar, but then there was no understanding women.

The matter of Wanda Jean’s current place of residence had thrown the townsfolk into a quandary. Without a body laid out at the funeral parlor for public view, the usual custom of making food and delivering it to the family at the house had been somewhat derailed. Of course, it was always better if the family took the body back
to
the house, but the Bodines didn’t follow the custom of laying grandma out in the living room.

The tide of curious commiseration was held at bay until the most persistent local busybodies determined Wanda Jean’s location and decided to forge ahead with the customary post-fatality feeding. They descended on Rolene’s place armed with the typical West Texas bereavement cuisine. Certainly no one would accuse them of trying to catch a glimpse of the prime suspect, also known as the grieving widow, if they showed up with a proper culinary offering.

Rolene, who was not the most patient woman on earth even under the best of circumstances, met each one at the door with a Marks-a-Lot in one hand and a roll of masking tape in the other to label the dishes. Not getting the correct dish back to its owner in pristine condition was a social crime that could require years of absolution.

Everyone in town knew that Ida Belle Banners, the “social” writer for the paper, was still hot under the collar about the Pyrex casserole dish that disappeared after Leroy Gibbons died. Ten years after the mistake, Sue Beth still hadn’t been able to locate a replacement that met Ida Belle’s exacting standards.

Hank had also fielded several calls from Wanda Jean’s neighbors reporting a steady stream of cars driving by the house slowly, but the deputy knew that none of those people were guilty of anything more than rubbernecking. Besides, they weren’t going to see anything at the “crime scene” but Wanda Jean’s pink flamingos standing guard over the fake whitetail deer statue in the front yard, while the garden gnomes looked on from the depths of the portulaca.

That deer statue had, in fact, caused Hank more trouble than Hilton getting himself killed. When Wanda Jean first put that silly deer out there, people kept trying to shoot the dang thing. It was her own fault for picking out the buck instead of the doe at the garden store in San Antonio. Even Hilton said the same thing.

What man in his right mind was going to pass up a shot at an 8-point just standing there asking for it? Hank had to admit that Wanda Jean, who was known for being crafty, did a good job of patching the bullet holes, but she still had to tilt the deer to one side and pour the water out when the sprinklers got pointed in the wrong direction. As yard decorations went, that was just too much trouble in Hank’s mind.

If Hank were to be honest, all of those Bodines had been a pain in his backside at one time or another. Even though Rolene’s liquor store was across the county line, she had a habit of bringing “inventory” home and storing it in the garage to “serve” to friends who just happened to come by and conveniently “drop” money in her presence.

Even though there was a fifth of something in pretty much every cabinet in town, the leading citizenry, especially the “good Baptists,” were stout in their assertion that the county was “dry.”

As long as Earl Dean Bodine kept the high school football team in a winning position, his own minor legal infractions could be pretty much ignored. The man insisted on keeping livestock inside the city limits and calling them pets. Hank could understand a few chickens, but a back yard full of goats and a resident hog were a little beyond his tolerance level.

To his credit, Earl Dean had put up a good fence and he kept the manure hauled off, that is what he didn’t spread around his prize-winning roses. Maybe Hank Howard suffered from a suspicious nature, but there was something off about a single man who kept a pet hog and raised roses.

With the Sheriff safely out of the office, Hank took the liberty of leaning back in his wooden rolling chair and propping his boots on the edge of the desk; he spent a few minutes admiring the spotless shine he’d applied to the leather just last night.

Before he turned his attention to the scene outside the window, Hank used his handkerchief to remove a few offending flecks of dust from his footwear. After all, a professional lawman should take pride in his appearance.

Over the sharp pointed toes of his boots, Hank’s gaze crossed the green courthouse lawn, skipped over the granite World War I monument, and fixed on a customer talking to Marshall McClean through the walk-up window at City Pharmacy.

The old round clock on the wall above Hank’s head, whose ticking could be heard three offices away, showed ten minutes before five. The usual number of cars motored up and down Main Street, the sounds of the engines floating into the room on the cool spring breeze. In another month it would be hotter than the hinges of hell in Texas and the only air movement would come from the ancient ceiling fan over his head.

At least the Sheriff’s Office, which occupied the front right corner of the courthouse, was dim and cavernous, made cooler by the worn mossy floor tiles and the dark wood counter. The dispatcher’s desk, crammed in one corner, was the most “modern” addition to the room, outfitted with a radio that looked like it might have done service on some remote South Pacific Island in World War II.

Flossie, the day dispatcher, left an hour ago to keep a dentist appointment, and the current high school kid, who worked evenings and nights, wouldn’t show up until after supper. Hank had the place to himself for at least an hour.

When he heard the last of the office doors in the hallway close and he was sure he was alone in the building, Hank reached for the phone and dialed a number. As he listened to the phone ring, he tucked the receiver under his ear and held it in place with his shoulder, then he removed the .45 revolver from his belt, opened the cylinder and emptied the bullets into the palm of his hand before dropping them in his shirt pocket.

With a one-handed motion he flipped the cylinder closed and reclaimed the phone receiver just as a woman answered.

“Hey, sweet thing,” he said as he took aim with the empty pistol and pretended to shoot a car passing by on Main Street.

“Hey yourself, baby,” the voice purred. “Are you sitting there playing with your pistol again?”

“How did you know that?” he asked, centering a pedestrian in the front sights and following the man as he crossed the street toward the post office.

“I heard the hammer drop, silly,” the woman said. “So, where’s Lester?”

“Gone fishing,” Hank answered. “Your sister was a little too much for him today.”

Maybelline Trinkle took a deep drag on her cigarette and tapped the ash into the tray with an expert thump of her index finger, the red lacquered nail emphasizing the impatience of the gesture.

“Do not mention my sisters,” she said. “Rolene has been on me all day to come over and help her deal with people since Wanda Jean just
had
to go to Study Club this afternoon.”

It was a well-known secret in town that both Rolene and Maybelline nursed antipathy toward the Club since neither of them had been invited into its well-cultivated ranks.

“She always has thought she’s better than the rest of us,” Maybelline went on. “Rolene told her in no uncertain terms she should be right there at the house helping to catalog the casseroles, but then Clara Wyler decreed Wanda Jean was going to Club, dead husband or not, and that was that.”

“Clara sure made Lester feel like a cut calf in front of God and everybody this morning,” Hank said, absent-mindedly flipping the cylinder of the .45 open and shut.

“Would you quit playing with that gun!” Maybelline snapped. “You’re getting on my nerves.”

“Well, you could give me something else to play with,” Hank said suggestively. “I’m off duty as soon as the night dispatcher gets here.”

“Hank Howard have you lost your mind?” Maybelline scolded. “I cannot have anybody see you coming through my back hedge, when Blake has only been gone six months, and now my sister’s husband is laying up at the funeral home dead.”

“Aw, darling,” Hank wheedled. “I’m lonesome. How much longer are we gonna have to hide?”

“I didn’t tell Hilton Milton to go walking into an Old Hickory carving knife,” Maybelline snapped. “You can thank that idiot for this situation. Now people are talking about how being married to a Bodine girl is bad for a man’s health, and you want me to be seen fooling around with you when I’m supposed to be prostate with grief?”

“Uh, honey, I think you mean prostrate,” Hank said. “The other is a . . .”

“Whatever,” she said curtly. “My point is that it just wouldn’t look right.”

“Well, okay,” Hank said mournfully. “I guess you’ve got a point there.”

Changing topics, Maybelline said, “Did you get the money?”

Hank set his pistol on top of the desk and brought his boots down solidly on the green floor tiles. “We can’t talk about that while I’m at work,” he hissed.

“Lord God in Heaven, Hank,” Maybelline said, “you just told me you’re by yourself. Answer the question.”

“Yes,” he said, glancing around nervously. “I got the money.”

“Good. Where is it now?”

“In a Folgers coffee can in my gun cabinet behind the bird shot,” he whispered. “I wrote ‘gunpowder’ on the can so it wouldn’t look out of place.”

“Good thinking,” Maybelline said. “And you don’t think anyone else will be asking questions about what happened?”

“No,” Hank said. “Blake and Hilton were the only two who thought anything looked funny.”

“That’s the trouble with volunteer firemen,” Maybelline said, tapping more ash off her cigarette, “they all have a hero complex.”

Hank glanced at the clock and saw it was past 6 o’clock. “I have to let you go, honey,” he said. “Lester will be back any minute, and the kid who works nights comes in right after supper.”

“Lester catch anything on his trot lines?” Maybelline asked.

“No,” Hank said. “He’s gonna move’em upstream a little bit.”

“All I can say is thank God that man is better at catching catfish than people,” she said, stubbing out the last of her smoke. “You just be patient, baby. As soon as we get Hilton planted, you can start sneaking through the hedge again.”

Chapter 5

By the time Wanda Jean finished describing her dead husband’s recent work schedule, there were five homes on the list that the Study Club ladies found of interest.

The first belonged to the county agricultural extension agent, Mike Thornton. A “proper” ag agent was a country boy with a calling to give back to the ranching world, but Thornton was a city slicker with a college degree and far too many “scientific” ideas.

He wore his hair just a little too long, touching the top of his shirt collar, and although he affected the requisite Stetson, it never seemed to sit quite right on his head. Most of the men in the county looked at him with tolerance and little more because of “the rumor.”

The rumor held that Mike Thornton grew marijuana in his basement. The local authorities had no probable cause to search the premises, and Mike had never been caught selling grass to anyone, nor had he ever appeared to be under the influence in public.

Still, everyone knew that smoking those funny cigarettes just led to worse things. Hilton Milton had a standing appointment to spray Thornton’s house each month and Wanda Jean said Thornton insisted Hilton use a special chemical.

“Was it a stronger poison?” Clara asked, who was by now taking her own set of notes.

“Oh, no,” Wanda Jean said. “Hilton had to order it special. It was something you can use on organic plants.”

“Organic?” Sugar asked. “Doesn’t that just mean something that’s living?”

“Mike told Hilton it’s a way to grow plants without using any chemicals that will make you sick if you eat them,” Wanda Jean said.

“Horsefeathers,” Clara snorted. “Don’t you mean smoke the plants?”

“Hilton never said anything about that, but he did bring me back some nice dried oregano the last time he was over at Mike’s,” Wanda Jean said. “It smelled kind of funny, but I made the best spaghetti sauce with it. We enjoyed the meal so much, I just giggled through the whole thing.”

“I’ll just bet you did,” Wilma said drily. “Oregano will do that to you.”

Mae Ella looked up over her glasses. “You do a lot of cooking with oregano, do you, Wilma?”

Wilma didn’t flinch. “Upon occasion.”

Mae Ella shook her head and returned to her legal pad. The second name on the list was the town’s resident Yankee, Millard Philpott. His neighbors looked askance at Philpott not only for his northern origins, but for his open and vocal support of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and now Bobby Kennedy in the 1968 election.

“Philpott’s a radical, pure and simple,” Mae Ella declared, her mouth set in a firm line. “He’s sitting right in the middle of LBJ country and doesn’t have the good manners to keep his mouth shut. He doesn’t support the boys in Vietnam. And, well, I hate to say this, but I hear he sympathizes with that Martin Luther King.”