Murder Boogies With Elvis (12 page)

We came to a window like the windows in a doctor’s reception area that you can’t see through. A sign-in sheet was on the counter in front of the window, and both Timmy and Jasper signed in. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the window had opened and a receptionist had demanded my medical insurance card. But nothing happened.

“This way, Mrs. Hollowell,” Timmy said, pointing toward a door that had a red light above it and a code box on the side. He punched in several numbers, there was a grinding noise, a green light came on, and he opened the door into a narrow hall. “On the left,” he said.

We turned into a very pleasant room. There were two desks and a round table with chairs around it. A long counter ran down one wall with bookcases above it. In one bookcase, African violets flourished under fluorescent grow-lights. In a corner was a corn plant, tall, healthy, reaching toward the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling. Bulbs that gave off a familiar slight buzzing sound, familiar because Robert Anderson High was one of the experimental schools built in the late sixties without windows. For thirty years that buzz had been part of my life.

A pretty young woman sitting at the front desk looked up. I thought for a moment that she had very short blond hair, but when she turned slightly, I saw that it was pulled back into one long plait. She said, “Hey, Tim. Hey, Jasper,” and looked at me curiously.

“Charity, this is Mrs. Hollowell. She was my English teacher at Robert Anderson.”

“Wow.”

Wow, indeed. The lovely Charity wouldn’t have even been a gleam in her father’s eye at that point in time.

“We’re booking her for suspicion of murder,” Jasper added.

“Wow.” Charity’s eyes widened. “And she looks like a nice lady.”

The three of them looked at me. I said, “I am a nice lady,” and they all nodded.

“Well, I am,” I insisted.

“She really is,” Tim said, a little late, I thought. I frowned at him.

Charity reached into her desk and pulled out some forms. “Well, y’all fill these out.” She leaned over and touched an intercom button.

“What?” an irritated loud voice answered.

“Need some fingerprints here, Jean.”

“Snowed under back here. I’ll get to you soon as I can.”

“She’ll get to us soon as she can,” Charity announced as if we were deaf.

“I have to go to the ladies’ room,” I said. “Right now.”

Charity stood up. “I’ll walk you down there. It’s right down the hall.”

“There’s a problem with the handcuffs.”

Tim, on his way over to the table with the forms, said, “Jasper, get those damn handcuffs off. Excuse the language, Mrs. Hollowell.”

“Who do they think you murdered, Mrs. Hollo
well?” the lovely Charity asked as we walked down the hall.

“A Russian guy at the Alabama Theater.”

“Oh, I heard about that. Somebody stabbed him on the stage while he was doing an Elvis dance.”

“And I was in the audience.” I pointed to the door with
WOMEN
on it. “Do you have to come in with me?”

“Oh, no, ma’am. There’s no way to get out of there. I’ll just wait here.”

I thanked her and walked into the restroom to be confronted with the witch from hell. It took me a few seconds to realize that what I was facing was a full-length mirror.

Good Lord have mercy. The only thing I recognized was the navy suit. I was pale as a ghost except for my eyes, which looked like black holes. A sinus infection and getting arrested did not improve one’s appearance. Or one’s frame of mind. In my whole life I had gotten one speeding ticket, and here I was in the Birmingham jail under suspicion for murder of a Russian Elvis impersonator. Now what were the odds of that?

My head was pounding. When I came out of the stall, I wet a paper towel and held it against my face. Then I fished around in my purse (not the same one I had found the switchblade in) and located a couple of Extra Strength Tylenol. I cupped my hand under the faucet and managed to get enough water to wash them down. I should have brought my antibiotic, I realized. I was supposed to take it four times a day. Damn. I held the paper towel to my eyes.

“Mrs. Hollowell, you okay?” Charity called through the door.

“I’m coming,” I said, throwing the towel in the wastebasket.

“We’re going on down to the voice analyzer,” she said as I came out. “She’s not busy right now.”

“How long does it take? I’ve got a splitting headache.”

“Depends. You can wait on your lawyer if you want to.”

I had no idea how long it would take Debbie to get my messages, and I couldn’t think of any way that I could incriminate myself by answering some questions, so I said, “Let’s get it over with.”

Charity led me into a small but very pleasant office. A very pregnant woman in her early thirties stood and introduced herself as Margaret Sayres. Charity said she had to get back to work. Margaret invited me to sit down, which she and I both did. She reached in her desk drawer, pulled out a huge bottle of Maalox, and took a swig.

“You remember what the last month is like?” she asked.

I nodded. “I have three children.”

“This will be my third.” She turned a picture on her desk so I could see it. Two blond little girls in front of a Christmas tree.

“They’re beautiful.”

She studied the picture. “Yes, they are. We’re having a boy this time.” She placed it back on the desk and said, “Ready to get down to business?”

“How does the test work?”

“Nothing to it. We just talk. I ask you a few questions, and you answer. Give me a yes or no or say anything you want.” She pointed to what I had thought
was a small radio on her desk. “This picks up our voices, measures the amount of stress. Actually”—she reached over and patted the box—“this is better than a polygraph, believe it or not. They’ve found out that every person’s voice is as distinctive as their finger-print or their handwriting. You can take a tranquilizer or some other drug and fool a polygraph but not this baby.” She leaned back. “Now I want you just to relax, Mrs. Hollowell.”

Fat chance in hell. And I decided not to correct her grammar, too.

“Your name is Patricia Anne Tate Hollowell?”

“Yes.”

“How old are you, Mrs. Hollowell?”

“Sixty-one.”

“How long have you lived in Birmingham?”

“All my life.” I began to relax a little.

“Have you taken any drugs today?”

“An antibiotic and two Extra Strength Tylenol. I’ve got a sinus infection. Splitting headache.”

“But no narcotics? No cough syrup with codeine?”

I shook my head. “Makes me sick.”

“Did you know Griffin Mooncloth?”

“No. I was sitting in the front row of the Alabama when he was stabbed. He came right toward us and fell into the orchestra pit. It upset my husband and me both so much that we left immediately.”

Margaret leaned forward to adjust a knob on the voice analyzer, not an easy thing to do at eight months pregnant.

“Where are you having your baby?” I asked.

“Brookwood. I like their birthing room.”

“My niece just had a baby there. She’s a lawyer. Debbie Nachman. You may know her.”

“Oh, sure, I know Debbie. She had a little boy, didn’t she?”

I nodded. “David Anthony. They’re calling him Brother.”

Margaret patted her stomach. “I’ll bet that’s what happens to this one, too.” How’s Debbie doing? Is she back at work?”

“Part-time. I hope she’ll be down here to get me out in a little while.”

“Mrs. Hollowell, do you have any idea how the switchblade knife got in your purse?”

“I’ve narrowed down the number of people who could have done it to four.”

“And you didn’t kill Griffin Mooncloth?”

“Of course not. The extent of my killing is putting out Combat bait for roaches.”

Margaret reached in her desk drawer and pulled out the Maalox bottle again. “I’ve got a little refrigerator. You want a Coke? Caffeine-free?”

“I’d love one.” I pointed to the voice analyzer. “Are we through?”

“Oh, sure.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “This whole thing is ridiculous. They brought me in in handcuffs.”

“Tacky. It’s policy, though.”

“So I’ve heard. Where’s the refrigerator? I’ll get the Cokes.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Hollowell. It’s over in the corner under that table.”

I got the cans of Coke and handed one to Margaret. “My daughter’s pregnant, too.”

“When is she due?”

I felt better than I had all day. The Tylenol was taking effect, and I had obviously passed the voice-stress
analyzer test. Or so I assumed. We had finished the pregnancy conversation, and I was listening to Margaret tell about her daredevil daughter Rosie’s exploits when the phone rang.

“Debbie’s here,” she said when she hung up.

I
t took Debbie more than an hour to get me out of the police station. I think she talked to everyone there before she came back to Margaret’s office and told me I was free to leave. By that time, Margaret and I had gotten to be good friends.

“Your aunt’s innocent as a baby,” Margaret told Debbie when she finally showed up.

“Of course she is.” Debbie eyed Margaret’s girth. “Speaking of babies, are you going to make it through the day?”

Margaret sighed and reached for the Maalox. “Lord knows. I hear you had a boy this time. Me, too. Are they very different?”

“You have to be a lot more careful changing their diapers.”

Margaret smiled, swigged the antacid, and tapped
her chest with her fist. “I just want him out. We’re running out of room here.”

We all knew the feeling. During the last month of pregnancy you get scared that nature has played a trick on you, that you will always be pregnant.

“Hang in there,” Debbie said.

Margaret stuck out a white-coated tongue at her.

“Am I really free?” I asked Debbie as we went down the hall.

“They agreed that suspicion of murder was pretty far-fetched since half of Birmingham saw you were sitting in the front row when the Mooncloth guy was killed.”

“Good.”

“They still have some questions about the knife, though, Aunt Pat. About how it could have gotten in your purse. Tim Hawkins said he would be over this afternoon to talk to you. He said he knew you didn’t feel like staying around here.”

“They arrested me, Debbie. Read me my rights, handcuffed me.”

“That’s what I heard, Aunt Pat. I’m sorry.”

We exited into a beautiful spring day. Debbie asked if I wanted to stop and get lunch somewhere, but I didn’t feel like it. Not only did I have the sinus, but I was depressed. There’s tacky, there’s common, and there’s common as pig tracks. Being arrested for suspicion of murder and handcuffed would have to rank in the latter category. Grandmama Alice was probably flipping over in her grave right this moment in spite of the fact that I was innocent. On her list of common as pig tracks were such things as chewing on a toothpick and, God forbid, smoking in public. Compared with
those, being arrested would warrant the creation of a whole new category.

“What do you think could be more common than pig tracks?” I asked Debbie.

“Nothing.”

That cheered me up some.

“I’ve been thinking,” I said as we went up the entrance ramp to the Red Mountain Expressway. “This Griffin Mooncloth is Russian, he’s defected, and he’s been murdered. How come the state department isn’t involved? Or the FBI or something?”

Debbie checked the oncoming traffic and pulled onto the expressway. “I guess they figure it’s not a political thing. You take all of those illegal aliens who work in the poultry plants up in north Alabama. One of them gets stabbed to death, and it’s up to the local police to find out who did it.”

“That’s true. But this Mooncloth guy was outstanding enough to be involved in a cultural exchange. And the Russians are still pretty strict about what they allow their citizens to do.”

Debbie passed a truck loaded with huge steel coils that were bouncing ominously. I breathed a sigh of relief to be past it.

“I don’t know, Aunt Pat. Just about all of the Russian ice skaters live here now. And I’ll bet if you looked at the rosters of the largest ballet companies, half the names would be Russian. And I think that everyone’s pretty sure that Griffin Mooncloth’s murder wasn’t a political one. Somebody had it in for him personally.”

“You’re right. I’ve seen too many Cold War movies.”

I glanced up at Red Mountain and depression descended again. It looked bare without the statue of Vul
can raising his torch and mooning all points south. We needed him back. Vulcan Park was closed, but one night recently some teenagers had sneaked in and painted the dismantled statue’s toenails red. If he wasn’t back on his pedestal soon, there would surely be more vandalism. Whoever had had the bright idea to fill the largest iron statue in the world with concrete should have his head examined. Particularly when they left a hole in the statue’s head that allowed water to get in and freeze.

I rubbed my forehead.

“Headache?” Debbie asked.

I nodded.

“He had a nice voice. Not much of an accent.”

“Griffin Mooncloth?”

Debbie signaled and got into the turn lane. “He left word on my answering machine that he needed an appointment. When I called him back, I got his machine. I told him three o’clock the next day and if that wasn’t okay to call me back. That was the day he was killed.”

“He had an answering machine?”

Debbie nodded. “I’m sure it was one of those little portable ones you can stick on any phone. I called the police and told them when I heard what had happened to him. Gave them the number.”

“So he wasn’t staying at a hotel?”

“It was a direct line. Some of these business suite motels have them, though.” Debbie took the exit. “I wish I knew what he wanted and how he got my name. He just said I’d been recommended.”

“Hmm.” I closed my eyes. I was almost home. I would put on my robe, open a can of chicken noodle soup, take another antibiotic. Muffin and I would watch the Rosie show or a movie on Lifetime.

“Mama’s at your house,” Debbie said.

I opened my eyes. Mary Alice and Tammy Sue Ludmiller were standing in my front yard talking to Mitzi.

“Where in the world have you been?” Sister asked as I got out of the car. “Mitzi said you left with two men in suits.”

Tammy Sue said, “Wasn’t that a movie title?
Two Men in Suits
?”

Sister shook her head. “I think it was
Two Men and a Baby.”

“Three Men and a Baby
,” Mitzi corrected her. “And she did leave with two men in suits. I saw her out of my kitchen window. She was all hunched over, and I came right out to see about her, but they were gone. I had to put on some clothes, so it took me a minute or two.” Mitzi turned to me. “I was worried about you though, Patricia Anne.”

All of them looked at me for an explanation as to why I had worried them.

“I was arrested for suspicion of murder. I’ve been at the police station.”

“Have mercy,” Mitzi exclaimed, clutching her chest. “And on top of the sinus.”

“It was the knife,” Debbie came around the car explaining. “But everything’s cool now.”

Cool? Everything was cool? Dear Lord. I hadn’t heard that expression in ages.

Tammy Sue rolled her eyes. “They think she killed the Mooncloth guy? That’s ridiculous. She was right in the front row.”

“They’ve pretty much ruled out her murdering him,” Debbie said.

“Well, I should hope so. And, besides,” Tammy Sue continued, “Larry caught a glimpse of the person who
did it just as they started toward the front doing their kick, so it couldn’t have been Mrs. Hollowell.”

“Patricia Anne’s not strong enough to stick a switchblade knife in anybody anyway. She’s always been weak as a kitten what with her eating problems,” Sister said.

The way they were talking about me was beginning to make me feel invisible. I drew myself up to my full five feet and announced that I was going into the house to take some aspirin and antibiotics and open a can of soup.

“But we came to take you to lunch at Tannehill. I want to show Tammy Sue the church and see what she thinks about the reception.”

Apparently Sister was making some headway with her soon-to-be stepdaughter by getting her involved with the wedding plans.

“I want to go with you,” Debbie said, “Can I go? I’ll have to stop by the house and feed Brother first. Can I meet you down there?”

“We’ll just go by and pick him up. How about that?” Sister turned to Mitzi. “You want to go, Mitzi? I need all the input I can get. Like whether or not long dresses would be a problem.”

“Just let me get my purse.”

For a moment I considered climbing into the car and going with them. Then I remembered that Tim Hawkins was going to come by that afternoon to ask some questions. So I waved them off and went in to heat my soup.

There were three messages on my answering machine, two from Fred and one from Bernice Armstrong. Fred wanted to know how I was feeling, and
Bernice was thanking me for calling to check on Dusk the night before. She was sorry they had missed the call. Dusk was feeling much better and would probably go back to New York in a couple of days. Give her a callback when I got a chance.

I called Fred and told him I was all right. I had decided that I would wait until he got home to tell him about being arrested. That would take more than a phone call. Bernice’s line was busy, so I warmed my chicken noodle soup and sat down at the kitchen table. I was hungry, I realized, when I tasted my first spoonful. Here, at my kitchen table, was normality. The sun was shining through the skylight in the den, Woofer was marking his tree in the yard, and Muffin was stretched out on the sofa. I crumbled some crackers into the soup and relaxed for the first time that day. Handcuffs? Miranda rights? Voice-stress analyzer? The whole morning was becoming as unreal as a trip to Mars.

But someone had put a murder weapon in my purse. That was real. I could still feel it in my hand—cold, metallic—see the switch shaped like a crown, hear the
swoosh
of the blade. I shivered and forced myself to think pleasant thoughts. Haley. Joanna.

I was so lost in those thoughts that the phone’s ringing startled me.

“Mrs. Hollowell?” a deep male voice said when I answered. “This is Larry Ludmiller. Is Tammy Sue there by any chance? I know she’s with Mrs. Crane, and I called her house and Tiffany said they were probably with you.”

“They’re on their way to Tannehill for lunch,” I explained. I gave him Sister’s car phone number. He
thanked me and hung up. I didn’t think any more about this conversation until hours later. At the time, it didn’t seem important.

Tim Hawkins showed up alone around four o’clock. By then, I had had a short nap and the antibiotics seemed to be kicking in. I felt better.

“Do you have your handcuffs?” I asked him when I opened the door.

“No ma’am. I’m so damned sorry about that, Mrs. Hollowell.” He actually blushed. “Excuse the language.”

“I know. Policy.”

“Yes, ma’am. My mama would have a fit. I’m sure you remember her. President of the PTA? Got the stage lights put up? The spots?”

“Little bitty? Space between her teeth?”

“That’s her.”

“Well, how’s she doing?”

“Just fine.”

“Give her my regards. Tell her they’re still enjoying those lights at the school.”

While this exchange was going on, I led Tim back to the den and motioned for him to sit on the sofa. He turned down the offer of coffee and got out his notebook.

“Mrs. Hollowell,” he said, “I know you didn’t have anything to do with the stabbing, but we need to find out how the knife got in your pocketbook.”

“We sure do,” I agreed.

“Do you have a theory?”

I told him all about the dinner party at Mary Alice’s house and how the purse had sat on the table. I named the people who had had access to it and said how I
hated to think that it was one of them because my sister was going to marry Virgil Stuckey and all of them were related to him.

Tim wrote down the names and allowed as to how Sheriff Stuckey was a good man. “I’ve worked with him on several cases,” he said. “You know who he reminds me of? Willard Scott.”

I allowed as to how he reminded me of both Willard and Norman Schwarzkopf, and he was, indeed, a good man.

“Timmy,” I said, when I had told him all I knew about Virgil, Jr., Larry, Tammy Sue, and Olivia, which wasn’t much. “Do you know what Griffin Mooncloth was doing in Birmingham?”

“No, ma’am.”

He was lying. Thirty years of teaching is better than any polygraph or voice-stress analyzer for spotting a lie.

“He made an appointment with my niece, who’s a lawyer, so he needed some legal advice.”

“Yes, ma’am. Your niece called us. We’re checking it out.” He looked down at his notebook. “What we’ve got to figure out now is which one of these people could have had the knife. I think that would tell us a lot.”

Tell us a lot? I looked at Timmy to see if he was serious. He was.

I said, “Any one of them could have had access to my purse, since it was right on the game table. But do you know what doesn’t make sense to me? The fact that whoever it was carried a bloody switchblade around for a couple of days. Why didn’t they just throw it away somewhere in a ditch or something? Why put it in my purse?”

“Trying to set you up?”

Again I checked him out. Yes, he was serious.

I shook my head. “They all knew I was in the audience.”

“Trying to set someone else up?”

“By planting a knife on me?”

“Stranger things have happened.”