Soup...Er...Myrtle!: A Myrtle Crumb Mystery (Myrtle Crumb Mystery Series) (8 page)

I shrugged. “Lana had her indiscretions, and I had
mine.”

“Wait a minute. Our mail carrier was Ms. Wiley!”

I laughed. “Maybe. And maybe you only
think
you
know everything, Miss Smarty Britches!”

Melvia came back in time to hear the last part of my
comment—the part about Faye thinking she knew everything. Her eyes flared with
excitement. “Did you find something else?”

“No,” I said. “Not yet. But would you please tell Faye
that you
can
keep secrets from people you live with? She thinks that if
Frank is behind this whole identity-theft thing, then Doris must be in on it
too.”

“Oh, no. I know for a fact that families can keep
secrets from each other,” Melvia said. “There’s a movie of the week about that
very thing nearly every Saturday.”

“See, Faye? Now let’s go eat. Melvia, we’ve been going
through this drawer, but we haven’t found anything new.”

“You two go ahead,” she said. “I’ll check around for
secret panels.”

As we stepped out into the hallway, Faye said under her
breath, “Melvia is like Miss Marple on steroids.”

“Yeah, well…I’m glad she’s found a hobby she enjoys.”

The soups du jour were bean, split pea, and tortilla.
Either way, I figured we’d be getting a bowlful of heartburn. I decided to pass
on the soups altogether and just have a biscuit with butter. Faye went with the
split pea soup.

I saw that there was a spot open at the table where
Heather and her little girls were sitting.

“That’s Heather,” I told Faye. “Come on. I’ll introduce
you.”

Heather caught a glimpse of me moving her way, and her
eyes darted toward the door…like she was trying to see if she could make a run
for it. I thought that was mighty peculiar. I hadn’t been anything but nice to
the girl. Now, granted, I might’ve been a little too nosy about her husband.
But he needed to be home helping to take care of these precious children.

“Hi, Heather,” I said, sitting down directly across from
her. “This is my daughter Faye. I’ve told her all about you and your little
angels here.”

“Hello,” Heather said to Faye. “It’s nice to meet you.
Thank you for the coat.”

“Oh, you’re welcome. I’m just glad someone could use
it,” Faye said. “What are your daughters’ names again? I’m sure Mother must’ve
told me, but I’ve forgotten.”

“The oldest is Elizabeth, and the younger one is Miranda
Sue,” Heather said.

“Pretty names for pretty girls,” Faye said.

The girls smiled at us shyly.

“You know, I was talking with Opal Grady yesterday,” I said.
“She was talking about what a sweet person you were to show such interest in
her.”

“She’s a nice lady,” Heather said. She glanced around
the room. “Hurry up, girls. We need to go.”

“Big day planned?” I asked.

“Uh, yeah…lots to do,” Heather said. She stood and
pulled on her coat. “Girls, we need to go.”

“But I not done,” Miranda Sue said.

“You can take your biscuit with you,” Heather said.
“Come
on
.” She got the girls’ coats on them, said her goodbyes, and
high-tailed it out of there.

Faye and I looked at each other.

“Wonder what that was about?” Faye asked softly.

“It seemed mighty suspicious to me,” I whispered. “I
hatethat we knocked those poor babies out of getting to finish their lunch….
But I think it’s pretty obvious that Heather’s hiding something.”

* * *

Faye dropped me off at my house. I invited her in, but
she said she had to run by the grocery store before she went to the school to
pick up Sunny.

Matlock met me at the door, and I patted his big, square
head.

“Need to go out?” I asked.

He’d started toward the backdoor before I’d even
finished asking the question, so I took that as a yes. I followed him and let
him outside.

I turned around and saw that the answering machine light
was blinking. I played back the message to hear Cooper’s deep, husky voice.

“Hello, darlin’. Give me a call when you get this. I
have some news I believe might interest you.”

I deleted the message and called Coop. His receptionist
answered, but she put my call on through.

“Why, hello, sweetheart,” he said when he came on the
phone. “I’ve got some news about Craig Flint. I told you about the petty
larceny charge here in Virginia. Well, there’s a warrant out on him for a minor
drug charge in North Carolina.”

“You think those warrants are what’re keeping him from
coming home to his family?” I asked.

“I believe that if Craig Flint was any kind of man, he
wouldn’t let the measly charges against him keep him from his young ‘uns,” Coop
said. “Going on the assumption that he’s
not
any kind of man, I’d about
guess he’s had his fill of Heather and is keeping her on the string to keep
from having to pay child support.”

I gasped. “That no-good, rotten scoundrel! Let’s load up
and go get him!”

Cooper chuckled.

“I’m serious,” I said. “Let’s find him and drag him back
here where he belongs.”

“Well, for one thing, you’re not law enforcement…and
you’re not Liam Neeson either. And I’m fairly glad about that last part. For
another thing, we don’t know where Flint is at.”

“That’s because whoever’s looking for him lacks motivation.”
I huffed. “Fax the agencies a picture of those two little girls. That might
light a fire under them.”

“I hate to burst your bubble, darlin’, but I don’t think
it would,” he said. “Truth is, most of our police departments are overworked
and understaffed. It’s not likely they’ll find the Flint needle in that
deadbeat haystack unless he comes across their path for some other reason.”

“Then what can we do?”

“The tasks you find the hardest—being patient and
waiting.” He gave a soft, gentle laugh. “On the upside, he’s on their radar for
having outstanding warrants. So if he as much as gets a speeding ticket, I’ll
be notified.”

“Right…if he’s not using some fake I.D. or something,” I
said.

“We’re doing all we can do, Myrtle.”

“I know.”

“So let’s move on to our other case,” Coop said. “Did
you find anything helpful today?”

“We found out that Frank Phillips keeps the most
organized records any of us—me, Faye and Melvia, that is—had ever seen. And
Faye took a sampling of the names from different parts of Frank’s ledger,” I
said. “She’s going to run credit checks on them tomorrow to look for suspicious
activity.”

“Let me know what she finds.”

I promised him I would, and then he had to get back to
work.

I piddled around the kitchen for a few minutes, wondering
what I’d throw together for Matlock and me to have for dinner. I didn’t come to
any satisfactory conclusion. Then I opened the door and called Matlock to come
back in. He didn’t want to mind me, so I bribed him with a doggie cookie shaped
like a lion.

Who in the world had come up with the idea of making
doggie cookies that looked like lions, bears, chickens, and bunnies?
Furthermore, reckon they made good money off of that concept? I’d bought a box.
And Matlock liked them, so I’d buy more when he ran out. I guessed the doggie
cookie makers
did
make decent money.

I got me a glass of water and went to the living room to
kick my shoes off and put my feet up. Frank or Heather? Heather or Frank? One
of them
had
to be the identity thief. But, then, neither one of them
looked like they had two nickels to rub together. If I was robbing folks, I’d
have something nice to show for it. I mean, look at what a big risk this
identity thief was taking. That person could get arrested, have his or her
reputation ruined, get talked about ugly in the newspaper, have to eat old
nasty prison food, wear those horrible jumpsuits that don’t flatter a soul….
It’d be awful.

I took a drink of my water and thought about it some
more. Matlock ambled into the living room and lay on the floor in front of the
couch.

What if the thief wasn’t after material comforts? I
remember hearing tell of a show where this man sold drugs so he could pay for
cancer treatments. It could be something like that.

I was feeling sad over the possibility that Heather or
Frank could have some bad disease when the phone rang. I nearly jumped out of
my skin. Thank goodness, I didn’t spill my water. I put the glass on a coaster
on the coffee table before answering the phone.

Despite getting jarred out of a terrible thought where
Heather’s teary-eyed daughters were asking me if they were gonna be orphans, I
answered the phone nicely. Anything
but
nice was the goon on the other
end. It was Tansie, and she was madder than an old wet hen and clucking twice
as loud and fast.

“What’ve you done to my sister, Myrtle Crumb? You’ve
brainwashed her or something—that’s what you’ve done! She thinks she’s some
kind of
detective
or something! She even wants to sign up for the police
department’s ride-along program…like she’s some kind of—“

“Melvia’s a grown woman,” I interrupted calmly. “She can
do whatever she wants.” And then I hung up on her.

“Wonder how she liked
them
apples, Matlock?”

He thumped his tail.

I laughed and laughed…and, you know, I believe Matlock
was grinning too.

* * *

 I didn’t go to work at the food bank and soup
kitchen the next morning. Melvia and I had talked it over the night before and
had decided that since Tansie, Bettie, and Dephine were going, we’d just sit today
out. Melvia had heard about my hanging up on Tansie, of course. Shoot, half of
Backwater probably knew about it less than twenty minutes after it happened.

Anyway, I believe Melvia was half afraid that me and
Tansie would get into it if I went to the soup kitchen. We probably would
have—not that it would’ve bothered me to get into an argument with Tansie
Miller. We’d argued before and, as long as there was breath in both our bodies,
would again. But I decided to stay home because I didn’t want Frank or Heather
to know I was investigating the identity thefts and that they were suspects.

I explained my reasoning to Melvia and she agreed that
we should stay home today, mull over the evidence we already had, and see what
else Faye came up with. We didn’t want to tie up the phone in case Faye called,
so we agreed to meet for dinner here at my house this evening. I told Melvia
I’d invite Cooper, Faye, and Sunny too. I generously offered to invite the
other M.E.L.O.N.S. but Melvia said we should keep it small…limit it to the ones
doing the real investigating. I was glad. I didn’t have to invite Tansie and
the others, and not inviting them had been Melvia’s idea. It was a win-win for
me.

So today I sat by the phone waiting for Faye to call. I
hoped she’d have some news for me. What if nobody else on Faye’s list was the
victim of identity theft? Did that mean that the fact that Opal Grady and Harry
Loomis were both victims who came to the food bank and soup kitchen was merely
a coincidence? That the i.d. thefts weren’t tied to someone who worked at or
frequented the food bank and soup kitchen after all? Would that put us back at
square one without a single suspect? I didn’t like that idea…not one bit. The
very thought made me so nervous that I’d cleaned the entire house and made two
batches of preacher cookies—one chocolate and one peanut butter—by the time
Faye called.

Even though—or maybe because—I’d been waiting for the
phone to ring, I jumped like I was shot when it did.

“Hello? Faye?”

“Yes, Mother, it’s me.”

“What’d you find out?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” she said. “How are you?”

“Impatient. Did you find anything or not?”

“Yeah. Of the ten names I ran, three were likely victims
of identity theft,” said Faye. “None of the three had active bank accounts. One
was old, one was young, and one was deceased.”

“Deceased? Oh, good grief!”

“After I saw that, I got curious.” She took a deep
breath. “I ran Dad’s name through.”

“Faye….”

“Let’s just say I know for a fact that he didn’t buy a
jet ski for Christmas last month.”

 By the time Faye, Sunny, Melvia, and Cooper got to
my house for dinner, I had enough food fixed to feed half the population of
Backwater. I had chicken parmesan, salad, lasagna, chicken alfredo, and the
preacher cookies I’d made while waiting for Faye to call. I’d also thawed out
the cupcakes from the other day.

Sunny was the first one to get to the kitchen. “Wow,
Mimi! Who all’s coming?”

Faye, who was behind her, sighed when she saw that I’d
set the counter up like an all-you-can-eat Italian buffet. She turned and
hugged me. “I’m sorry, Mother. I shouldn’t have told you about Daddy over the
phone like that.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I needed to know.”

“What about Granddad?” Sunny asked.

“We’ll talk about it when everybody gets here,” Faye
said.

Melvia was the next to arrive. She brought one of those
fudgy chocolate cakes that you ice while it’s still hot. They’re out of this
world good. I wondered if being out of sorts gave her the baking bug too. I
thanked her for the cake and put it on the counter next to the cookies.

“I appreciate this, Melvia,” I said. “I got to making
the main dishes and almost plumb forgot about dessert except for these few
cookies and those store-bought cupcakes.”

Melvia was only half paying attention to what I was saying.
She was frowning at all the food on the counter.

“What’s happened?” she asked, her voice barely above a
whisper.

The oven timer went off. “There’s our breadsticks,” I
said, grabbing the oven mitts.

The doorbell rang just as I opened the oven door.