The Angel and the Jabberwocky Murders (16 page)

“I'm getting hungry,” I said, leaning against a sweet gum tree to rest. “How long before we eat?” I had slept late that morning, then hurried home to change and throw a picnic lunch together. I hadn't had time for breakfast.

Ben turned on the trail to look at me. “We've only been walking half an hour, Lucy Nan. And you ate all those doughnuts on the way.”

“Two. I ate two, and they were small ones, at that.” I yawned. “Does this seem steeper than usual to you?”

Ben and I stepped aside to make room for a troop of Brownie Scouts chasing one another up the mountain path, and it exhausted me to look at them. The walk up Kings Mountain wasn't a challenge for even an inexperienced hiker and I had climbed to the top more times than I could count, but today the incline seemed straight up and down.

“Look, you're tired. We can go back down,” Ben said. “We don't have to do this, you know.”

“I know, but I want to—if only it would level off a little.” I shoved him ahead of me. “Press on and don't pay any attention to me.”

He gave me one of those looks that made me want to run up the mountainside with a big smile on my face. “I think you know better than that,” he said. I took a deep breath and chugged along behind him.

As tired as I was after the horrible experience of the night before, being in the woods—even on a well-traveled path like this one—was calming. As a child, when I was upset or worried I would roam the hills above Stone's Throw and let the peace seep in, and I needed that experience today. But Kings Mountain, the scene of a bloody battle during the American Revolution, had not always been a peaceful place.

It was after two by the time we reached the top, where we found a patch of sun-warmed grass and sat on our jackets to eat. Ben unwrapped one of the pimento cheese sandwiches I had made that morning. “Why would anybody want to kill—what did you say his name was?”

“Londus Clack.” I swigged tepid water. “I can't imagine unless they thought he knew something. And it would have to have been a man, or else a woman with a lot of strength, to hoist him up there like that. I'm just glad it was dark so I couldn't see any more than I did.

“Wonder how long he'd been there?”

“Couldn't have been too long. He was alive when Celeste and I came out of that Haunted Garden thing, and then we cleared out like everybody else. Must've been about ten.” I bit into a pickle and edged away from an inquisitive yellow jacket. “I think he wanted to tell me something. Wish I knew what it was.”

He frowned. “What makes you think that?”

I told him what Londus had said and how he had been following the girls. “I don't blame them for being nervous, but I really don't think the poor man meant any harm.”

Ben twirled a crimson sweet gum leaf that had drifted into his beard. “Maybe he was trying to protect them,” he said.

“Maybe. I don't know. Blythe started to tell us something about Londus last night—something she suspected, I think, but I guess she realized she'd said too much already.”

I watched him polish an apple on his sleeve. “Could've been Monica Hornsby,” I said. “She's tall enough, and she was prowling about the campus last night.” I realized I
wanted
the woman to be Londus Clack's killer because I didn't like what I'd heard about her, but it was hard to imagine her bashing him over the head and stringing him up in the Tree House. Monica would be the type to use poison, maybe, or a ladder with the rungs sawed through.

I crumbled the rest of my bread for the birds and held out a hand to Ben. “Come on, let's walk around some. I don't want to share my chocolate chip cookies with these wasps.”

“Thought you were too tired.” He took my hand as we walked. “You just wanted to get me off to yourself, didn't you, so you could have your way with me?” He aimed a kiss at my neck.

“Cramp in my leg,” I said, laughing, although actually it wasn't a bad idea. We stopped to look at the view. Although it was the last of October, the mountain was still a bright smear of color and the sky an incredible blue that rivaled the brilliance of Ben Maxwell's eyes.

For the last several weeks I had been around college students so much it was a relaxing experience to have a conversation with someone near my own age. Was I mistaking my pleasure in intelligent adult company for something more? Whatever it was, I was enjoying it.

A chill had crept into the air, a gust of wind sent a scurry of leaves around us, and Ben hurried me along. “Guess we'd better be starting back if I'm going to cook you dinner,” he said. “It has to simmer awhile.”

I had never heard of simmering steaks, which is all I thought he knew how to cook, but I kept my mouth shut.

I was happy to be wrong, and tried not to look astonished on our return when he dumped his collective ingredients on my kitchen table and went about assembling them into a stew almost as good as my mother used to make. Augusta had left a Bundt cake saturated with rum for our dessert and even the smell of it made me dizzy.

Clementine was clamoring to be let out and I noticed the kitchen trash can needed emptying as well, so while Ben was chopping onions I decided to take care of both. The dog usually runs around the yard three times before retiring to do her business behind the summerhouse. I followed her, plastic bag in hand, to add her contribution to the garbage when I noticed an empty cake-mix box in the kitchen trash. First a slow cooker and now cake mix! Augusta was beginning to adapt to modern ways and I couldn't wait to see if she would mention it. The note she had left on my dresser said she had gone to help Ellis with a sewing project but I couldn't imagine what it was. Ellis had shown me the nursery-rhyme cross-stitch she'd completed for the expected new grandson, which was a miracle in itself. I couldn't imagine her starting another project and wondered why she hadn't mentioned it to me. Was Ellis giving Augusta lessons in shortcut cooking? I laughed just thinking about it.

“What's so funny?” Ben wanted to know when I came in smiling.

“Just Clementine,” I explained. “She gets carried away and runs so fast she falls all over her big feet. Makes me laugh every time.” And that was true enough.

We ate in the sitting room at the small round table that had belonged to my mother. As a child I did my homework there and the surface was nicked and ink-spattered, so I dug out my old wedding linens and we did it up right with candlelight and wine.

The stew was delicious, served with hot crusty French bread and a fruit salad, followed by Augusta's cake and coffee.

“This cake's wonderful, but how did you find time to make it?” Ben asked.

“Oh, Augusta made that,” I said. “The woman who rents the room upstairs. She loves to cook.”

He finished his last bite as I collected the plates. “I'd like to meet her sometime.” I answered with conviction that Augusta would like to meet him, too.

We lingered over coffee catching up on his family and mine. Ben's son is completing his residency in internal medicine at Emory University in Atlanta, and I told him about Julie's new job. As the fire flickered low, we took our second glass of wine to the sofa where we set our glasses on the coffee table. He pulled me closer and kissed my ear. I sighed and turned my face toward his. The phone rang.

“Where've you been?” Weigelia said. “Been tryin' to reach you all day. Heard you found another body last night.”

At that particular moment I considered adding a third. Hers. But there was no use trying to put her off. I took a long sip of wine and gave her the rundown. “Celeste is fine,” I assured her. “Missed out on some sleep, but not as much as I did. She tell you about it?”

She made an irritated big-sister noise. “Went to Clemson to some kind of goings-on over there, and no tellin' where that girl is now.” Weigelia growled again. “You'd think she'd at least give me a call to let me know she's okay.”

I didn't think Weigelia was high on her sister's list of priorities right then, but I was reluctant to say so. “Maybe you can catch her tomorrow,” I said. “By the way, they picked up Monica Hornsby. Have you heard any more about it?”

“Kemper says they got her for unlawful entry, but he didn't know how long they could make it stick. What you reckon that woman was doing there?”

I told her briefly about the manuscript that was hidden behind the trophy case, and then I told her good-bye.

“Who do you think hid that box back there?” Ben asked when I got off the phone.

“Had to be D. C. Hunter,” I said. “And I think I know when she did it. Must've been that Friday night after Clay Hornsby broke up with her, right before she was killed. I heard she had a key to his office. Probably took the manuscript for security.”

He frowned. “Security?”

“Against losing him, I guess, or for blackmail. From what I've heard about his new novel, it sounds like he copied it word for word from Amos Crockett's book.”

Ben laced his fingers in mine and drew my hand to his chest. “You'd think he would've gotten rid of it, wouldn't you? Wonder why she hid it there?”

“I guess she thought it would be too easy to find in her room, and didn't have time to look for a better place.”

“This isn't looking good for the professor, is it? He had motive enough as the girl's callous lover, but now it seems she might have been threatening to expose him as a plagiarist.”

“What I can't understand,” I said, “is why Monica Hornsby would go to so much trouble to try and save that jerk's hide. She would've been in real danger if the campus security guards had seen her—especially after all that's been going on. I'd let the turkey steam in his own juice!”

“You're a heartless woman, Lucy Nan Pilgrim.” Ben stretched his legs to the glowing coals. “Maybe he offered her a major portion of the royalties, or convinced her he'd never,
never
stray again. This guy has a reputation as a Romeo, you know. He's got to have a certain amount of deceptive charm.”

“Huh!” I said. “And speaking of Romeos, I found out last night that Tommy Jack Evans had dated
both
D. C. Hunter and her roommate, Sally Wooten.”

“Tommy Jack Evans? Sounds like a stock-car racer.”

“Football coach at one of the county schools. Used to play for the university, I think.”

“I've heard of roommates sharing things,” Ben said, “but that's going a little too far.” He shifted my head onto his shoulder. “Of course my grandmama used to tell about this family lived just outside of town. Must've been about ten of them, and they all came down with typhoid or something awful like that at the same time. Didn't have but one pill…

I knew he was watching me, so I closed my eyes and tried not to smile.

“So their mama, she tied a string to it, you see—”

“Oh, shut up,” I said, and stopped him the best way I knew how.

“Well, it's been one hell of a weekend,” Joy Ellen said when I saw her before class on Monday.

“Tell me about it,” I said, and meant it. “Have they found out who killed Londus?”

“They questioned Monica Hornsby, even held her for a while, but I don't think they know any more than they did before.

Frankly, I don't think she did it. No motive.”

I agreed. I couldn't imagine why anybody would want to hurt the kind-hearted maintenance man. “Londus must have weighed close to two hundred pounds,” I said. “It would have to be somebody hefty.”

Joy Ellen shook her head. “Not really. Whoever was in charge of the dummy neglected to take it down after the festival the other night, and you know how Londus is—was—or maybe you don't, but he couldn't stand loose ends. Anything out of place or left where it wasn't supposed to be bugged the devil out of him.”

She slammed a battered satchel crammed with papers onto a tabletop and hung her familiar blue blazer on its hanger. “They think now Londus must've seen the dummy hanging there while he was carting off trash that night. Knowing him, he'd have gone up there to take it down.” Joy Ellen looked out at the knot of subdued students hurrying past the window. “That's when he was hit,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“The dummy had been thrown to the ground under the Tree House. They found it there not too far from where you saw Londus.”

I felt sick remembering the man's body swaying inches from my face. I wasn't sure I would ever be able to handle a Halloween carnival again. “So somebody was up there waiting for him?”

“Probably. It makes sense. Once he was unconscious, all they had to do was put the noose around his neck and drop him over the side.” Joy Ellen lowered her voice. “I'm not supposed to know this, but they believe they've found what was used to hit him. It was his own hammer.”

I made an effort to appear calmer than I felt as the first students entered the room. “How
do
you know all this?” I asked.

With a slight smile, Joy Ellen shrugged. “My sister-in-law's next-door neighbor works in the County Office Building.”

Ellis was right. Stone's Throw didn't need a newspaper.

“Coroner thinks he'd been dead three hours tops by the time he saw him,” she added.

I made a face at two girls who had taken seats in the back of the room and they grinned and moved closer to the front.

“Today, I'd like you to imagine yourselves women in a middle-class home before the beginning of the twentieth century,” I said when everyone was seated. “Think about it for a while, make notes if you like, then for the rest of the period, I want you to write a diary entry, or a letter, from that person's point of view, describing how they spent their day.”

This was met with a chorus of groans, but after the usual shuffling of papers the class settled down and began quietly scribbling. Other than answering a question now and then I observed them from the sidelines, glad that the activity required less than usual of my energy and enthusiasm because I didn't have much of either.

The students seemed relieved as well, I think, to escape into another period in time and meditate about something other than murder.

I sat at the end of the table at the back of the room where Joy Ellen attempted to compile test questions for her freshman history class, but I could see her mind wasn't on it. Finally she shoved her books aside and put down her pencil. “This is getting to me,” she said under her breath. “It's getting to everybody. Lucy, if they don't straighten this shit out soon, Sarah Bedford's going down the tube. I heard three more students withdrew just today.

“R.U. has scheduled one of his rare speeches this afternoon. Required attendance. Calls them ‘Earnest Discussions.'” Joy Ellen shook her head. “Naturally he does all the discussing, but this time he's welcome to it. The girls are scared.
I'm
scared.”

“I heard they locked up Riley Herman,” I told her.

“Who?”

“Riley Herman, Willene Benson's ex. He nearly scared the daylights out of my cousin and me at the festival Saturday night.” I told her what had happened.

Joy Ellen nodded. “I keep forgetting Willene took back her maiden name. Blythe told me they arrested him for stalking, slapped his hand, and sent him on his way. If he shows up here again, they might even make him stand in the corner.”

“Then they must not think he had anything to do with what happened to Londus.”

“Guess not. He had an alibi.”

“What kind of alibi?” I asked.

“The best. He was locked up in jail.”

I didn't mention Leslie Monroe's absence or the problems she was experiencing emotionally, although I knew she was in Joy Ellen's freshman class. It wasn't my place to discuss it and I felt Joy Ellen would resent the intrusion, but I wanted to butt in in the worst way. Joy Ellen had admitted earlier that she'd been coerced into heading my class. She was not domestically inclined, she informed me, and didn't give a rat's ass how great-grandma knitted a bedspread out of goat hair and stewed up remedies from weeds.

“No kidding?” I said. “I'd never guess.”

She laughed. “Guess I have been a pain in the patootie. But it does give me a chance to grade papers, and that old recipe you gave me for apple butter turned out pretty good.”

“
You
made apple butter?”

“Hell no! But my sister did. I'll save you a jar.”

I didn't want to risk an uneasy truce by voicing my concerns about Leslie, but the girl could use a break. Her aunt, usually as solid as Mount Rushmore, had cried in my kitchen just the day before.

I had been throwing together a last-minute picnic lunch for the hike with Ben that morning when Nettie came over to borrow Mama's old rug-shampooing machine.

“Leslie's going to be staying with me for a few weeks when she gets back,” she said, wiping her feet on that old rag rug on the back porch. “I thought I'd put her in that rose-papered room upstairs, the one she liked when she was a little thing. Remember what a quaint child she was, Lucy Nan? Always making up stories and drawing pictures to go with them. Cute as a June bug—and clever, too—and now…

“Anyway, that old rug in there could do with a scrubbing.”

She looked so forlorn standing there, I put my arms around her. “How is she, Nettie? Do they think she'll be able to come back to class anytime soon?”

She came inside and sat for a minute at the kitchen table. “We hope so. Maybe next week, but her folks think it would be best if she stays with me for the rest of the term.”

Nettie cleared her throat and smoothed her graying hair, patting a stray wisp into place, and I knew she was trying not to cry. I got her a drink of water and a handful of tissues and sat across from her looking so concerned that she laughed. And then she cried. “I'm really worried about her, Lucy Nan. She's not herself anymore. Do you know that Leslie's afraid the other students think she might be involved in that Hunter girl's death? It's no secret she couldn't stand her, and I think the two of them had words a few times.”

“True, but I haven't met one person who admits to having liked D. C. Hunter,” I said.

She wiped her eyes. “I know, but it's more than that. Something she's not telling us, and it's eating her alive.”

“She's seeing a specialist, isn't she?”

“Her family doctor's referring her to a psychiatrist, yes.” Nettie sighed as she stood to go. “If he doesn't find out what's wrong with her soon, he'll have to take me on as a patient, too.”

I kissed her cheek. “Oh, come on! The man's a doctor, not a magician!” I knew I could make her smile.

“Nettie's already planning what to cook for Leslie,” I told Augusta when I got home that day. “Her niece isn't due to move in for several days yet, and she's already making out menus. If anybody can get Leslie to eat, it'll be Nettie McGinnis.”

Augusta laid aside the copy of Dorothy L. Sayers's
The Nine Tailors
and made room for Clementine's large head in her lap. “Speaking of food,” she said, “wouldn't you like to have some of that good relish to go with those turnip greens Ben brought? That would just strike the area, don't you think?”

First I had to get past “strike the area,” which I figured must mean “hit the spot.” “Are you talking about chow-chow?”

She nodded. “Why, yes, that's what she called it. Lillian Preston—I was only with her briefly—used to make it every fall. Kept jars and jars of it in her pantry.” Augusta smiled. “Had a bit of a zing to it.”

“My grandmother made it, too,” I said. “Mimmer put horseradish in hers. My brother Joel and I used to ladle on most of the jar to kill the taste of the turnip greens.”

“Do you know how to make it?” Augusta reached for her apron.

“Green tomatoes and cabbage, I know, and onions, of course, but I've never made it. It takes all day to grind up all that stuff and then it has to simmer awhile—and you have to have canning jars. Smells up the house something awful.” I paused. “I think Bobby Tate Murray sells something like that at the Down Home Store.”

“But it wouldn't be the same.” Augusta folded her arms. She was standing her ground. “Do you think your grandmother's recipe would be in that cookbook of hers?”

I knew very well it would, as I'd skipped by it often, thanking the good Lord above I didn't have to make it. I sighed. “I'll get it,” I said.

“Of course we'll need a food grinder,” Augusta said after reading the recipe.

“What's wrong with the food processor?” I asked. After Augusta had learned not to puree everything, she had become quite adept at using it.

“It wouldn't be the same,” she said.

And all because Ben Maxwell had brought me a mess of greens.

“You want green tomatoes? Come and get 'em!” Ellis said when I called. “I'll even
pay
you to take them off my hands. Bennett always plants too many and I've pickled them, fried them, and done everything with the bloomin' things except invent a cure for the common cold. I keep hoping a killing frost will come along and do them all in!” Ellis paused. “You have a food processor, don't you?”