The Gingerbread Bump-Off (24 page)

“Oh, good grief,” Carolyn said as they approached Phyllis’s Lincoln. “Would you look at that?”

Phyllis slowed the grocery store cart and stared in dismay at the right rear tire on her car. It was as flat as it could be. Flatter than a flitter, as Phyllis’s mother would have said.

“You must have picked up a nail somewhere,” Carolyn went on. “We’re going to have to change that tire.”

Phyllis knew she was right. That didn’t stop her from glancing around to see if there was some man nearby who might be kind enough to offer to help them. Unfortunately, nobody was paying any attention to them. They were all too intent on their own errands.

“Or maybe you should call Sam,” Carolyn suggested.

“We can do this,” Phyllis said. “It’s plenty cool enough out here that the refrigerated things we bought will be fine for a while. Come on.”

It wasn’t like she had never changed a tire before, she told herself. She had, on numerous occasions. But the last of those occasions had been quite a while in the past.

She parked the buggy next to the car and opened the trunk. The carpeted bottom in there lifted up, and the spare and jack were underneath it. Phyllis found the catch and lifted it. Something about the spare didn’t look right to her, however, so she leaned into the trunk, rested her hand on the tire, and pushed. The rubber gave softly under her fingers.

“Oh, no,” she said. “The spare is flat, too.”

“Don’t you check it?” Carolyn asked.

Phyllis looked at her. “When was the last time you checked the spare tire in
your
car?”

“All right, all right, you made your point. So you’re going to call Sam now?”

“I guess I have to. He can take the spare and get it aired up, then bring it back to us.”

Phyllis got out her cell phone and thumbed in the speed-dial number for the house. It rang several times before the answering machine picked up. “Sam, are you there?” she asked. “Sam?” She sighed. “I’ll try your cell, but if you get this and I haven’t spoken to you, call me, please.”

She broke the connection, then called Sam’s cell phone. The call immediately went to voice mail.

“He’s got his phone turned off for some reason,” Phyllis said in exasperation.

Carolyn was starting to look annoyed. “All right, we’ll have to hunt up somebody who’s willing to help us.”

“Wait a minute,” Phyllis said. “I’ll call AAA. I’ve been a member for years, but I hardly ever call them. You know how it is. Our generation was brought up to handle our own problems.”

“You’re handling it,” Carolyn pointed out. “Call them.”

Phyllis opened her purse. “Let me find the card . . .”

A few minutes later, she was connected with a dispatcher who promised to send someone to help them as soon as possible. “This is a busy time of year for us, too, because there are so many folks on the road,” the man told her. “So it may be a little while. Shouldn’t be more than half an hour, though, since you’re right here in town. If it’s that long.”

Phyllis glanced at the groceries in the cart. “I hope it’s not,” she told the dispatcher.

“Is there someplace warm nearby where you can wait?” the man asked.

“Yes. Don’t worry about that. Just get someone here as soon as you can.”

“Will do, ma’am.”

Phyllis hung up and nodded toward the store as she said to Carolyn, “You might as well go on back inside where it’s warm. It’s going to be a little while before somebody can get here.”

“No, I’ll wait here with you,” Carolyn said in a tone that proclaimed she wasn’t going to argue about it. “Do you think these groceries are going to be all right?”

“We didn’t get anything frozen, and it’s almost as cool out here as it would be in a refrigerator, so I think they’ll be fine as long as we keep them out of the sun. They’ll stay cooler out here than they would in the car.”

“Should we get in?”

“I don’t see why not. We can keep an eye on the groceries from in there.”

“That’s a good idea,” Carolyn said. “People these days will steal anything.”

Phyllis unlocked the doors and they got in the car. The sky was partly cloudy today, with enough sunshine to warm the inside of a closed vehicle. It was a little cool in the Lincoln, but not uncomfortable.

As always whenever someone had car trouble, the time spent waiting for help to arrive seemed interminable. Minutes dragged by, and Phyllis kept checking the time on her phone.

It rang suddenly, surprising her. She saw that it was Sam calling and flipped the phone open.

“Hello, Sam.”

“I got your message,” he said with a note of worry in his voice. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s the craziest thing. I’ve got a flat tire, and when Carolyn and I went to change it, we found that the spare was flat, too.”

“Where are you?” Sam asked. “I’m on my way.”

“No, no,” she said quickly. “There’s no need for you to do that. I’ve called AAA, and they’re sending someone.”

“Lord knows how long
that’ll
take. If you’re on the side of the road—”

“We’re not,” Phyllis told him. “We’re in the parking lot at the grocery store. The tire went flat while we were inside. So it’s fine, Sam. We’re perfectly safe, and—” She saw a tow truck turning into the parking lot. “And the person they sent out is coming right now. So you don’t have to come and help us.”

“You’re sure?” He didn’t sound convinced.

The truck pulled up a couple of parking spaces away. STRICKLAND’S GARAGE was painted on the door.

“I’m positive,” Phyllis said. It was possible that the truck
hadn’t
been sent out by AAA, that the driver just intended to go into the store and buy some groceries, but the likelihood of that seemed pretty remote.

“All right, if you’re sure,” Sam said. “But call me right away if you need me.”

“I will, don’t worry.”

They said good-bye and hung up, and Phyllis opened her door and got out of the car as a man in a grease-stained baseball cap, a denim jacket, and jeans stepped down from the cab of the tow truck. He nodded to Phyllis and asked, “You called AAA about a flat tire, ma’am?”

“That’s right,” Phyllis began, “and the spare—”

She stopped short as she recognized the driver of the truck.

He was the man who had been with Laura Kearns at Georgia’s funeral the day before.

Chapter 23

“ I
know you,” Phyllis said. “You’re Laura’s husband, aren’t you?”

The man looked surprised, but he nodded and said, “Yes, ma’am, I am, if you’re talking about Laura Kearns. My name’s Rusty, or that’s what they call me, anyway.” Recognition dawned in his eyes. “You were at the funeral yesterday.”

“That’s right. I’m Phyllis Newsom.”

Rusty Kearns nodded again. “Yes, ma’am. I know who you are now.”

He didn’t sound quite as friendly this time. Maybe that was because he realized it was her front porch where Georgia had been attacked, and the whole situation had caused a lot of stress and grief for his wife. None of that was really Phyllis’s fault, though.

Kearns went on, “I can change that tire for you, if you’d like.”

“I’m afraid the spare is flat, too.”

“Has it been in the trunk for a while?”

Phyllis nodded. “Yes. I don’t really remember the last time it was used.”

“Probably nothing wrong with it, then,” he said. “It just needs some air. I’ve got a compressor on the truck. I’ll air it up and take a look at it, and if it’s okay I can go ahead and put it on the car. You will want to get your regular tire replaced as soon as you can, though.”

“I’ll do that,” Phyllis said.

Kearns got to work, taking the spare tire out of the trunk, rolling it over to his truck, and pulling down a hose attached to some sort of apparatus that Phyllis assumed was the air compressor. The machine made a loud racket as it pumped air into the tire. After a couple of minutes, Kearns unhooked the hose and rolled the tire slowly back and forth on the pavement, leaning down to study the rubber as he did so. When he had checked out the whole tire, he nodded in satisfaction and replaced the cap on the valve stem.

“It ought to be fine,” he said. “It just went down while it was sitting. They’ll do that.”

He used a hydraulic jack from his truck to raise the rear end of the Lincoln, rather than using the jack that was in the trunk. With swift, practiced ease, he removed the flat tire from the wheel and put the spare in its place, then tightly dogged down the nuts.

“You’re good to go, Mrs. Newsom,” he announced as he straightened from his task.

“Thank you so much,” Phyllis told him. “Do you do a lot of this kind of work?”

“Answering stranded-motorist calls for AAA, you mean?” Kearns smiled as he put the flat tire in the Lincoln’s trunk and closed the lid. “Yeah, we handle a lot of ’em, and I’m always the guy they send out.”

“So you’re on call all the time, like a doctor?”

Kearns got a rag from the back of the truck and started wiping grease and road dirt from his hands. “I wouldn’t compare myself to a doctor, but yeah, I can get called out pretty much any time of the day or night. My boss doesn’t believe in hiring a lot of extra workers when he can get by without it, you know what I mean?”

“How does Laura feel about that?”

Kearns made a face. “She puts up with it, whether she likes it or not, just like I do. This day and age, with money as tight as it is, what choice does anybody have?”

“That’s certainly true. It would be nice if she could afford to take over Georgia’s business.”

“Yeah, since she spends nearly all her time there anyway,” he said. He shook his head and went on, “But there’s no chance of that. We could never afford to have our own business.”

“It’s a shame, though.”

“Yeah.” Kearns tossed the rag back into the truck. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Mrs. Newsom?”

“No. Like you said, I think we’re good to go.”

“All right. I need to get to my next call, but before I go, I’ve got some paperwork you’ll need to sign so we can bill AAA.”

He filled out one of a stack of forms on a clipboard, checking his watch to make a note of the time, then handed the clipboard and pen to Phyllis and pointed out where she was supposed to sign. When she had done that, he tore off a carbon copy and handed it to her.

“There you go. Thanks.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kearns.” Phyllis held out a ten-dollar bill she had taken from her purse. She didn’t know if she was supposed to tip him, but she wasn’t going to take a chance.

Kearns hesitated before taking the bill, but only for a second. “Thanks,” he said again.

“Say hello to Laura for me,” Phyllis called after him as he climbed into the truck.

Kearns nodded but didn’t say whether he would pass that sentiment along.

When Phyllis got in the car after putting the groceries in the backseat, Carolyn commented, “You spent a lot of time talking to that mechanic.”

“Didn’t you recognize him?”

Carolyn frowned. “No. Should I have?”

“That was Laura Kearns’s husband.”

“You’re talking about the woman who worked for Georgia Hallerbee?”

“That’s right,” Phyllis said with a nod.

“So you were just being polite because you know his wife?”

“Yes.”

But in truth, it was more than that, Phyllis realized. Something Rusty Kearns had said had set her mind to working as she remembered something else she had heard. The wheels of her brain were turning now, turning like the wheels of a car with fully inflated tires. She wasn’t sure what the thoughts whirling through her head added up to, if anything, but she was certain about one thing.

She was going to have to find out.

 

 

 

Sam must have heard the garage door going up, because he was waiting in the open doorway to the kitchen when Phyllis pulled in. “Let me give you a hand with the groceries,” he said as he came into the garage while Phyllis and Carolyn were getting out of the car. “I’m sorry I didn’t hear the phone when you called.”

“That’s all right,” Phyllis said, then asked, “What were you doing?” before she realized that maybe it was none of her business.

Sam reached into the backseat to snag several of the bags. “I was takin’ a nap,” he said with an embarrassed look on his face.

“Well, goodness, there’s nothing wrong with that,” Phyllis told him.

“Yeah, but I’m a grown man, not a toddler.”

“You’re an old man,” Carolyn said bluntly. “I’m not surprised you get cranky when you get sleepy in the afternoon. Old men are
always
cranky.”

“That’s not true,” Phyllis said.

Carolyn made a scoffing sound. “It is in my experience.”

“Anyhow,” Sam said as the three of them carried the grocery bags into the kitchen and set them on the counter, “I didn’t hear the phone because I was poundin’ my ear when you called the first time. I’d turned off my cell phone, too. I won’t let that happen again.”

“Nonsense,” Phyllis said. “Take a nap anytime you want to.” She paused. “It’s actually sort of cute.”

Sam rolled his eyes and said, “I’ll get the rest of the groceries.”

When he had gone back out to the garage, Carolyn leaned closer to Phyllis and asked quietly, “Did you know he takes naps?”

“No. It’s none of my business.” Her look and tone of voice made it clear that she didn’t think it was any of Carolyn’s business, either.

“
If
that’s actually what he was doing,” Carolyn went on.

“Why would he lie about something like that?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, but with most men, you’d be doing good to take everything they tell you with a grain of salt.”

Phyllis didn’t believe that, but she knew better than to argue with Carolyn on the subject of men. It was a waste of time.

Anyway, she had a lot more important things on her mind right now. Her information had sent Detective Latimer probing deeper into the whereabouts of Chris Cochran on the night of Georgia’s murder, but she didn’t feel quite as strongly now that Chris was guilty. The question of how he would have known where to find Georgia had continued to nag at Phyllis, and now another theory had begun to form in her head, one that didn’t involve Chris at all.