Calamity @ the Carwash (Parson's Cove Mysteries) (12 page)

I couldn’t imagine dropping Flori, as
Melanie put it. However, if Flori happened to be spending more time with other
people than with me, would I drop her then? That, of course, was very
hypothetical because Flori would never do that.

“I wasn’t thinking about what Prunella
said, Erma, I was wondering about what Murray said. He told me that Melanie
might have felt like killing Bernie sometimes.” 

Her coffee cup stopped in midair. “He
told you that? Are you sure you heard right, Mabel? I know you’ve been having
trouble seeing lately, do you think you might be getting hard of hearing, too?”

“Trust me I have no trouble hearing or
seeing for that matter.”

“Oh, I thought Flori mentioned something
to me about your eyes. I could be wrong.”

“You’re not wrong. Flori is. For some
reason she thinks my eyesight is getting bad but trust me, Erma, I can still
see and hear very well. That’s why I know what Murray said to me. He said that
Melanie probably felt like murdering Bernie sometimes.”

“He said, ‘murder?’”

“Well, if he didn’t say ‘murder,’ he
said ‘kill’ and that’s the same word in my vocabulary.”

She drained her coffee, refilled both
our cups and put two muffins on a plate.

“Have a muffin. I know I won’t be able
to get Murray to eat and I don’t want to eat alone.” We sat for several
minutes, silently eating and drinking. “I don’t know what to say, Mabel. I have
no idea what was going on with Bernie and Murray. For sure, I don’t know what
was happening with Bernie and Melanie. I thought they were a normal married
couple. Melanie never mentioned anything to me. That’s why I didn’t believe all
those things that Prunella was saying – you know, Melanie threatening to kill
him. That didn’t make any sense. Let’s face it, even if you might threaten it
but if you were really going to do it, you wouldn’t shout it out on the street
for everyone to hear, right?”

I shook my head. My mouth was full.

“I honestly have no idea what Murray was
talking about.” She popped the last of the muffin in her mouth. “These are
really good.”

“You’ve never had one of my muffins
before?”

Erma thought for a moment and then shook
her head.

“You want me to try to find out what
Murray was talking about, Mabel?”

“If you can.”

“I’ll work on it.”

“And, I was wondering, Erma, where did
Murray find Biscuit?”

“Oh, didn’t you hear? Some kids found
him in the vacant lot across from Krueger’s old house. I guess they were
tramping through the empty lot and almost tripped over him. He’d been gone for
most of the day but he sometimes would go out on his own. He always came back
home so Murray wasn’t worried. The boys were very upset. You know, most kids
have never seen anything dead.”

“What about the brick? Where was the
brick?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

It was almost noon but I wanted to talk
to Prunella before I went home. It seemed the whole town was now aware that she
had a drinking problem. I doubted that she’d been a secret drinker all the time
though. Well, let’s face it; I was a secret drinker. I’m sure there’s a
difference between being a secret drinker and a secret drunk. Of course, I had
seven cats to talk to while I was sipping my gin. However, I’m sure Flori
wouldn’t consider that as not drinking alone.

Prunella wasn’t sitting out on her
veranda so I went around to the back door. Everything was very quiet. Her
flowers in the front and along the side of the house were looking droopy and
there was a nice variety of weeds competing for space. Usually Prunella is out
weeding, watering and pruning every day. After all, her last name is Flowers
and as she jokes, ‘she has to live up to her name.’

The inside door was closed so I opened
the screen door and knocked. There was no answer. I opened the door and yelled
Prunella’s name. There was no answer except I thought I heard something like a
low moaning sound. That was enough for me. I went inside. The kitchen was a
mess. The rum bottle on the kitchen counter was still there but now empty. Or,
perhaps it was a new one.

I called again and this time followed
the sound. It took me to a small bedroom off a short hallway. Prunella was
there, sprawled out on her bed. If she hadn’t moaned, I would’ve pronounced her
dead on the spot. Her eyes were open but unseeing. Her one arm hung over the
side of the bed. The white sheet had more color in it than her skin did. Except
for the bright red. The blood seeping from the side of her head onto the pillow.

I didn’t waste time searching for a
pulse. I raced back to her kitchen and dialed 911. 

Chapter
Eighteen

Hermann Wheeler must’ve been sitting in
the ambulance because within seconds I could hear his siren wailing. I made
sure to say that I thought Prunella was dead because then Doc Fritz would come.
There was no way I wanted Hermann trying to do CPR on Prunella. Or, on any
other living thing for that matter.

I waited for them on the front veranda
where just days before Prunella had enjoyed her ‘iced tea.’ Seemed hard to
imagine she might be the next victim in Parson’s Cove. If she died we would
have two murders to solve.

The ambulance flew into Prunella’s
narrow driveway and skidded to a stop. The siren howled to an end as if being
let out of its misery and both men jumped out and bolted for the front door.

“Get out of the way,” Hermann yelled,
almost knocking me over with the gurney he was trying to hold under his arm and
drag along at the same time.

“Show me where she is,” Fritzy shouted
and whipped out in front of Hermann.

I hurried ahead of the doctor not
wanting to be side swiped by the gurney and showed him into Prunella’s bedroom.
I have to admit the old doctor went right into action. From where I stood
Prunella looked very dead but Fritzy must’ve found a pulse or some sign of life
because within seconds he said, “Wheeler, get that gurney over here and let’s
get her to the hospital.”

“Is she alive?” I asked.

“Barely,” is all he said.

The two of them gently moved her onto
the gurney, which was no small feat in such a narrow space, and Hermann wrapped
her in a gray blanket.

Neither man said anything to each other
or to me until I started to climb into the ambulance. Then, Fritz said, “What
do you think you’re doing, Wickles?”

Before I could explain that Prunella
might like a friend along with her, the door slammed shut in my face.

It was probably best that I didn’t
accompany the ambulance to the hospital because I realized I had only a short
period of time to check the house for clues before the police arrived. By
police, it would undoubtedly mean Captain Maxymowich and not Reg Smee.

I figured the intruder would go in
through the back door so I went around to the back of the house. It’s so much
easier to solve a crime in a city because if the door isn’t bashed in, it means
the victim knew the intruder. In Parson’s Cove, however, no one ever locks
their doors so it could be a neighbor or serial killer. Besides, if there were
any footprints or anything like that, they would be mine anyway.

This time I stood back and took a good
look around the kitchen. Someone had been to visit Prunella. There were two
glasses on the table. One was empty but there was a small amount of light brown
liquid in the other one. The empty one was where Prunella sat when I’d visited
her and knowing how much she liked her rum and coke, I assumed the empty one
was hers. I bent over to smell the contents in the other glass. It was
Prunella’s drink of choice all right. I hoped that Maxymowich could get some
prints off it.

One thing that I found puzzling was how
Prunella got to the bedroom. Had her assailant hit her and then dragged her to
the bedroom or was she there when he or she assaulted her? If she were dragged,
some furniture or perhaps one of her shoes or something would’ve been found on
the floor. It was hard to tell because Hermann’s gurney had knocked half the
furniture down on the way to the bedroom. What he didn’t knock over on the way
in, he did on the way out.

I went into the bedroom. As much as I
hated snooping through Prunella’s things, I knew it was necessary. There was
only one large dresser along one wall. There really wasn’t room for any more
furniture. I opened each of the drawers to made a quick search. Nothing drew my
attention until I opened the last drawer, which hadn’t been shut properly. On
the bottom in plain sight, I found a brown leather zippered case. Inside that
case, I found a roll of money and a small packet filled with white powder.

I was standing there, staring at the
case when Captain Maxymowich walked into the room. 

Chapter
Nineteen

To say that I jumped ten feet into the
air wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration. How anyone could sneak up like that
without making a sound is surely a talent. He stood staring at me but I
couldn’t utter a sound until my heart stopped hammering.

When I finally regained my normalcy, all
I could do was babble, “I wasn’t going to steal this money, Captain Maxymowich.
I happened to open the drawer, which by the way, wasn’t closed properly and
there it was. I’m sure it isn’t stolen though. This packet of white stuff? I
know there’s an explanation. I know Prunella and she isn’t a drug addict. She
might drink a bit too much now and again but she’s been going through a lot of
stress. Well, if you saw her at the hospital you’d know how much stress she’s going
through. I have no idea who beat her up. She was in bed already when I got
here. If I hadn’t heard her moan, I would never have walked right in. Do you
think it has something to do with Bernie’s murder? This vicious assault on
Prunella? I mean, she’s the one who witnessed Bernie and Melanie fighting.”

I said all that without taking a breath.
(Try reading it without taking a breath.)

“Are you finished, Mabel?”

“I reckon I am.”

“That’s good because I’ll take that roll
of money from you and that packet that you have in your other hand.” He turned
to the uniformed cop who’d come up behind him. “Could you escort Miss Wickles
out the back door?”

“You don’t have to escort me. I can find
my way, Captain.”

“No problem.” He smiled. Literally,
smiled. “We don’t want you to get sidetracked on the way out.”

He relieved me of the money, pouch, and
packet. The slightly overweight balding officer took my elbow and steered me
through the hallway, the kitchen and then out the back door. I’m not saying
that the man shoved me out the door but I did feel some pressure in the small
of my back.

By the time I reached the gate, there
was another cop car pulling up. I was pleased to see that one of them was a
woman. I gave her a big smile in case we happened to meet up again and I needed
someone to stand up for me.

I could hear my phone ringing before I
opened the door. The answering machine was blinking too so I figured it was
Flori. I grabbed it on the fourth ring.

Before I could say a word, Flori was
yelling, “Mabel, where have you been? I’ve been calling all morning. I even
sent Jake over to look for you and he said you weren’t home so I asked Delores
to search your house. She said you weren’t there. Where the heck were you?”

“Wait a minute, you sent Jake over?”

“Yes, I did. I also asked him to go back
and look inside your house too but he wouldn’t. I told him that you could be
lying dead on the floor but he still wouldn’t look. Where were you anyway?”

“And you sent Delores over to search
through my house?”

“Well, what was I supposed to do? No one
answered my calls and I phoned several times. Where the heck were you?”

I looked at my answering machine. “You
didn’t phone several times, Flori; you phoned exactly nine times. That goes
beyond ‘several.’”

There was silence on the other end.

“That’s a lot of times, Flori.”

“Where were you, Mabel?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I had a
couple of places to go. They probably wouldn’t interest you, Flori.”

“If you don’t tell me right now, I’m
going to come over with Jake’s old shotgun and blow your living room window
out.”

“You have never threatened me before.”

“You have never irritated me so much
before, Mabel. It isn’t a joke. I always worry about  you -especially if I hear
sirens ringing. I know I don’t need to know your every move but I feel much
better when I do.”

There was a sniff and I knew I’d better
start talking before the tears erupted.

“I’m sorry, Flori. I really do wish you
wouldn’t worry about me so much. I’m sure I told you that I was going over to
visit Erma and Murray. I feel so sorry for them. Murray isn’t doing too well,
you know. It must be awful to have your best friend and your dog both clobbered
by the same brick. And, both die. I took some muffins over for them. I think
Erma really appreciated my visit. Murray’s pretty much a basket case right now.
All he does is sit and stare at the lake. Do you think Jake would go and visit
him, Flori?”