Hung Out to Die (20 page)

“Well, he must have been quite successful in his plumbing business to afford something this nice,” I said. “Even though he didn't like plumbing.”

Aunt Nora's face suddenly became guarded. “He liked it well enough.”

Uh huh, I thought. Uncle Fenwick had said the afternoon before, at the disastrous Toadfern Thanksgiving dinner, that he'd hated plumbing. True, plumbing business owners could make a nice profit. But most entrepreneurs don't make a lot of money unless they like the trade they're in. And even if he had made a lot of money, this decked-out trailer probably cost more than a lot of the stationary homes in Paradise. Certainly more than double wides permanently double parked in the Happy Trails Motor Home Park, just outside Paradise. Definitely more than my laundromat/apartment combo.

How, I wondered, had Uncle Fenwick afforded this?

It was just one of several things that didn't make sense to me about the Toadfern family. But I couldn't ask about Uncle Fenwick's fortune directly. Aunt Nora's expression told me she'd just shut down. And although I was curious about his fortune, there was no real reason to think it pertained to his murder.

I decided to try a different approach. “You know, Aunt Nora, there are so many secrets in this family. I just found out today that my parents had a child before they had me.”

Aunt Nora startled. “Who told you about that?”

“A friend here in Paradise. And Mamaw Toadfern. She told me also about how wild my parents were. That they hurt a lot of people. Including you,” I said as gently as possible.

Aunt Nora looked away. “Yes. Your mother and Fenwick hurt me. I admit I wasn't sorry to see Henry leave town, or your mother's pain after that.” She looked back at me, anger flashing in her eyes. “Does that make me awful?”

“I think it makes you human,” I said.

“Well, I wasn't sorry to see your mother go, either. All I know is that after they left, Fenwick seemed happier. Freer. He started making a lot more money.”

“In his plumbing business, of course?”

Aunt Nora looked away again. “Of course.”

She was hiding something.

“You're good at keeping secrets,” I said. “Like your cranberry sauce recipe.”

She whipped her head back around and glared at me. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Your husband's been murdered. My daddy's been accused. Maybe it really was something as simple and awful as sibling rivalry. But I don't know. It doesn't quite feel right to me. After all, Daddy wanted to show his brother that he could be just as successful. Kind of hard to do, with Uncle Fenwick dead.”

Aunt Nora gasped, realizing the truth of what I said. And the minute I said it, I realized it, too. Daddy hadn't killed Uncle Fenwick. Maybe he was capable of it. Sure, I could see him reacting in anger to Uncle Fenwick, and maybe hitting him hard enough to kill him. But only after FleaMart was a big success and Fenwick had finally—grudgingly—given him the recognition he wanted.

“If not your daddy, then . . . who?” Aunt Nora's question was nearly a whisper.

“I don't know,” I admitted. Maybe you? I thought. Jealousy over Mama? I eyed the trailer door. I was just a few feet away in case I needed to make a dash for it. “But anything you can tell me about their quarrel yesterday might help. Daddy was only gone an hour. Mamaw said Uncle Fenwick never came back to the house. Did he come back here? Talk with you?”

“He came here to take off his shirt before going on the walk with your daddy. Didn't want the cranberry sauce to get into the inside of his jacket, plus he didn't want to wear a messy shirt.” She half smiled. “He was always like that after plumbing jobs. Wanting to clean up as soon as possible. Didn't like being messy. But he seemed in a hurry to go on the walk, so he just put his jacket back on. I worried he'd be too cold, and he told me not to be silly.”

“So then he went on a walk with Daddy. And didn't come back. And you didn't miss him or worry about him?”

Aunt Nora cut her eyes away from me. “I found the argument at supper yesterday afternoon to be emotionally exhausting. I came back here and took a nap.”

I considered the timing. I'd left Mamaw Toadfern's at about 2:30. Shortly after that, by all accounts, Aunt Nora had come back to the trailer. Uncle Fenwick had come back long enough to change shirts, then went on a walk with Daddy. Mama had left for a drive. Daddy came back at 3:00. Mama came back at 4:00. About a half hour later, I arrived at the Burkettes'. An hour or so later, Rachel and I discovered Uncle Fenwick's body, stabbed and hung from the telegraph pole. By the time the police came and Chief Worthy and I came to Mamaw Toadfern's, it was nearly 7:00.

I looked at Aunt Nora. “You took a five-hour nap?”

She shrugged. “Like I said, I was emotionally exhausted from the scene at dinner. I told Chief Worthy that yesterday. He didn't question it.”

That, I thought, was because Chief Worthy was more than happy to pin this murder on my daddy—both because of our rocky past and maybe because my mama and John Worthy's daddy had flirted with one another, at the very best.

In any case, I knew Aunt Nora was lying. She was a little, high-strung bird of a woman. A scene like that would have had her too keyed up to sleep. She would have paced the floor, fuming, turning the events over in her mind, wondering if Fenwick maybe really had had feelings for Mama all those years, after all.

“Aunt Nora,” I said gently, “you said you appreciated how I'd helped with Uncle Fenwick's shirt, and that you would like to repay me. Well, someone murdered Uncle Fenwick. And I think you know something that could help us figure out who. I wish you'd tell me—or the police.”

Suddenly Aunt Nora stood up. “Look out that window, Josie.”

I stood, looked, gazed across the yard in the space between two trees.

“What do you see?” she demanded.

“Uh . . . a yard?”

“What's missing?” she asked.

I stared and pondered. And then it hit me. The clothesline that had been strung between the two trees was missing.

I looked at her. “Clothesline,” I whispered.

“That's right,” she said. “And I know who took it. Fenwick. He came back. Got it. I asked him why? And he just snapped at me. Said he had to check on his treasure. But I didn't tell John Worthy that. Worthy didn't say how Fenwick died, just that he was murdered. But every now and then, Fenwick would threaten to kill himself. ‘Just go hang myself from some tree,' he'd say. ‘I'd be worth more dead to you than alive—if the insurance would pay.' I thought maybe somehow Fenwick had killed himself and tried to make it look like he'd been murdered. I didn't want Worthy to know that.”

“Because of the insurance.”

“Yes, but also, I didn't want him to not investigate Fenwick's death. And if he thought Fenwick had a hand in his own death, he might not.”

“Aunt Nora,” I said, “were you the one who called the police, left the anonymous message about Daddy and Fenwick's fight?”

Aunt Nora looked away. “That's one nice thing about a behind-the-times-town like Paradise,” she said. “It's not hard to find a pay phone.”

I imagined her wrestling that RV down the road to the pay phone outside Elroy's gas station, making the call, driving back in the previous night's snow. She was tougher than I thought.

Tough enough to take the news that, even if he had threatened suicide in the past, he had actually been stabbed?

I decided I'd let the police tell her that.

“Aunt Nora, when Uncle Fenwick came back here to change out of his dinner shirt before his walk with Daddy,” I said. “Did he say anything then, about how he felt about Daddy and Mama coming back?”

“Just that he had some old business to settle with Henry and he hoped they could work it out on the walk,” Aunt Nora said. “Then he left. And I took a nap. A long nap, until he came back and took down the clothesline. He seemed excited, more than depressed, so I didn't worry.”

She dropped her head. “I guess I should have. Are you going to tell the police?”

“I think you should,” I said. “This information will help the investigation, not stop it.”

She nodded. “All right Josie. I'll call.”

16

“What you got there, good-lookin'? A laundry list?”

I clapped my hand over the paper that was, in fact, a list of questions based on what I'd learned so far about the circumstances surrounding Uncle Fenwick's murder.

Then I looked up at the source of the question—and it was one of the hunkiest, dreamiest men I'd ever set eyes on. He had just enough wrinkles to save his blond crew cut, baby face, blue eyes, and deep dimples from being overly cute. The dimples punctuated perfectly kissable lips, which were arced in a smile that revealed straight, white teeth. The blue eyes were focused on me, but I was having a hard time focusing on the blue eyes, considering that this gorgeous face was just the icing on the beefcake, so to speak. I didn't even mind the muscle shirt or tight jeans, accentuating as they did a perfectly muscled and fit body. Even the damned boots looked good on this guy.

I made myself focus on the blue eyes. I made myself remember Owen. I made myself say: “That has to be the cheesiest pick-up line I've ever heard.”

The blue eyes flashed confusion, the perfect smile faded. The lips still looked kissable, though, even as they uttered, “Huh? I was serious. Sally there—” he gestured with his thumb, and I looked behind him to the bar, behind which stood Sally, smiling and nodding encouragingly at me while she wiped glasses, “told me you own the laundromat in Paradise. Then she sent me over here. So I thought, you know, maybe you was working on a laundry list.”

I sighed, staring up at the proverbial gorgeous dumb blond, male version. “I am,” I said, folding the list, and tucking it into my jeans pocket. “But I can't show it to you. Trade secret, you know.”

“Oooh,” gorgeous said, nodding his understanding. Then he stared at me, waiting for me to take the conversation from there.

Owen, my virtuous side thought, was a great conversationalist.

Owen, my not-so-virtuous side reminded me, was also not there. He was with his ex-wife and son in Kansas City, interviewing for a job that would require him to move there.

Owen, my virtuous side thought, is still your boyfriend and even if he weren't, you know it's stupid to take up with men just because they're gorgeous. Wait, make that, really gorgeous. Just take Cherry, for example . . .

My virtuous self made me look out on the dance floor, where Cherry was dancing away happily with her own gorgeous hunk, Deputy Sheriff Dean. She didn't look in any danger of being miserable.

And there on the dance floor near her was my mama, dancing happily with some man I didn't even recognize. Mama had had several bourbons. I, being the designated driver, was nursing a Big Fizz Diet Cola, on the rocks, and sitting by myself in a booth. Well, not entirely alone. I had both my coat and Mama's fur wedged between me and the wall.

Which is why, my virtuous self reminded me, you are smart enough not to ask this man to sit down with you at this booth . . .

Shut up, my nonvirtuous self said.

“Have a seat,” I said aloud.

“Okay,” the man said, sitting across from me. He put his bottle of beer on the table. Then he smiled and stared at me. “You know, you're awfully cute. For a laundry lady.”

I tried to ignore the warm feeling that suddenly surged in me. “Oh? What did you think a laundry lady would look like?”

He frowned, thinking it over. Then he smiled. “Very clean?”

I lifted an eyebrow and smiled back. “You think I'm dirty?”

The minute I said it, I moaned inwardly. Oh Lord, I'd just topped his cheesy pick-up line with an even cheesier one.

But he didn't get it. “Oh, no, ma'am, you look clean. Well groomed, in fact. I just meant, um, well, I'm not sure what I meant . . .”

Ma'am? This man had called me ma'am? Then I realized that, despite the few wrinkles around his eyes, he was probably at least five years younger than me. Maybe six or seven. Which meant he was in his early twenties, and I was just a few months shy of thirty . . . I felt like I'd just been dumped in a cold rinse cycle.

“Look, why don't you tell me why my dear cousin—” I glanced over at Sally, glaring, but the bar was too dark and smoky for her to see me glare, and besides, she was paying attention to a customer now “—why Sally sent you over here.”

“Well, see, I help her out on some of her carpentry work on the weekends. I live up in Masonville and work in apartment maintenance and repair during the week. But I like to come to her place and hang out on the weekends. She said that you have two apartments over your laundromat, and you're thinking about converting them to one. So she sent me over to talk to you.”

He took a swig of beer, then went back to staring at me.

“You want to talk to me about a job.”

“Yeah.” He looked worried. “Hope I didn't jinx it by calling you cute. I mean you are cute and all and—”

I held my hand up. “Stop talking.” He stopped. “Thank you,” I said. He took another swig of beer. I sipped my diet cola. We stared at each other a little longer. I ignored the new wave of heat. He was just interested in work, after all. And I had Owen to think about.

“Let's start over, by exchanging names. I'm Josie Toadfern.”

He smiled. “Nice to meet you, Josie!”

I waited. Then I said, “And you are . . .”

“Oh. I'm Randy. Randy Woodford.”

“Randy. It's nice to meet you, too. But the truth is, I'm not quite ready to start converting my apartments over. I'm really just in the planning stages. However, if you'd like to drop by my laundromat sometime during the work week, I could take you upstairs and show you my apartment—”