Thyme of Death (29 page)

“Ah,” he said, arching his eyebrows
significantly. I ignored the eyebrows. “What’s more, Violett doesn’t know how
to type.”

“You don’t need to know how to type
to operate that old clunker on the kitchen table,” Bubba said. “I could type on
that thing, and I’m just a hunt-and-peck man.”

“But look at the note,” I argued. “No
errors, no strikeovers, every keystroke even. The person who typed it was an
experienced typist.” I knew I wasn’t getting anywhere with all this, but I’ve
never been able to leave anything out of final arguments. You never know what
evidence might sway a jury. Bubba wasn’t exactly a jury, but I needed to
convince him. “And there’s the shoes.”

“Funny you should mention shoes,”
Bubba said, sure of his ground on this one. “It so happens that we got a clear
print outta that weed patch next to your cottage. Those sneakers
upstairs—pretty good match, looks t’me like.”

“Maybe. But Violett doesn’t wear
sneakers. She wears sandals, at least lately. She’s got some sort of foot
fungus, and wearing shoes makes it worse.”

“Yeah, well, that don’t mean she
couldn’t put on a pair of runnin’ shoes for a half hour and go out to do a
certain chore—’specially if she figured she’d have to get away fast.”

“I doubt if she
owned
a pair
of running shoes. Violett didn’t go in for jogging.”

“Then who do them shoes upstairs
belong to? And how about the gun? And the note? If she didn’t type it, who did?”
He grinned. “You got any bright ideas, Miz Bayles?”

Regrettably, I didn’t. “But I
do
know,”
I said, summoning the last piece of evidence in Violett’s defense, “that she
wouldn’t commit suicide without providing for her animals.” I gestured toward
the covey of cats and the flock of caged birds on the window sill. “Anybody in
Pecan Springs will tell you she worries more about them than she does about
herself. They’re like her kids.”

Bubba shook his head. “Won’t wash,
Miz Bayles. Way it looks now, I’ve got more’n enough to take this to the D.A.
He’ll be mighty pleased to get it wrapped up, believe me.”

“I’ll bet,” I said dryly. “Maybe the
two of you can catch the fourth quarter.”

Bubba looked hurt. “Now, that ain’t
called for. I’m just doin’ my job.”

I sighed. Yes, he was. Just doing
his job. And doing it with competence and dispatch, too. On the physical
evidence, Bubba was right, and any other cop would have come to the same
conclusions. That’s what’s so scary. That the evidence can lead to such
terribly logical, terribly
wrong,
conclusions.

Bubba gave his pants a yank. “I’m on
my way to the hospital to look in on Miz Hall. If she can’t answer questions, I’ll
put an officer in her room so that somebody’s there when she
does
talk.
Believe me, if she’s innocent, she’ll have plenty of time to say so.”

“Assuming she’s still alive.”

“Assumin’,” Bubba replied agreeably.
“I’ll have to ask you to leave too. I’m goin’ to have this place sealed up.” He
strode to the door, looking like a man whose afternoon had turned out far better
than he’d expected.

“Hey, wait,” I said. “What about the
cats and the birds?”

Bubba frowned. “What about them?”

“Somebody’s got to get in here to
feed them. Why don’t you let me take care of it. I like animals.” That was
stretching a point. But I was keen on having access to Violett’s house.

Bubba hesitated. “Well... I guess
that’d work. You got a key?”

“No, but I’ll see about getting one.
Let your people know I’ll be around to handle the livestock.”

Bubba nodded. I followed him down the
walk, watched him speak to Petersen, and then get in his squad car and drive
off. Petersen stayed behind, obviously waiting for reinforcements.

I stood for a moment, thinking. Then
I got on my bike and rode down the wooded lane. I made a right turn, rode a
block and made another right turn. At the end of
that
lane was where Ima
and Erma Mason lived, with a backyard that butted up against Violett’s backyard.
If anybody in the neighborhood had a clue about what had gone on at Violett’s
since last night, the Mason sisters would. It was worth a try.

CHAPTER 17

Miss Erma is a frail,
waifish-looking lady in her early eighties with a dowager’s hump on her left
shoulder and wispy white hair cut raggedly to the tips of her ears. She gets
around with a walker, slowly and painfully, but that doesn’t stop her from
working in her garden. She was out there now, dressed in brown pants with a
patch on one knee, a dark green smock, and a canvas hat folded over her ears
and tied under her chin with a man’s blue silk necktie. She was leaning over
her walker as if she were leaning over a fence, snipping chrysanthemums with a
pair of unwieldy garden shears. She peered at me over her bifocals for a minute
or two before she recognized me.

“Oh, Miss Bayles,” she said. “Hello.”
She glanced up at the rosebush on the fence. “I’m afraid you’re a little late
for roses. There aren’t any left to speak of. But if you’d like some
chrysanthemums, help yourself. I’m just cutting them to have something to do.”
She sighed and dropped several flowers in the basket hung on the walker. “My
dear mother always cut chrysanthemums, you know. She had them in vases all
over the house from the minute they started blooming until the frost came. And
they last such a long time too. That’s why we always have them on Mother’s
grave at the cemetery. But Father hated chrysanthemums, so we always put something
else on his grave. He was quite partial to—”

“Thank you, Miss Erma,” I broke in, “but
I didn’t come about the roses. Something has happened over at Violett Hall’s
and I thought you might be able to help me.”

Miss Erma’s canvas hat had tipped
forward over her nose and she pushed it back with a thin, translucent hand on
which the veins stood out as if they’d been drawn with a blue pen. “I believe
you want to talk to Miss Ima about that,” she said. She raised her voice. “Ima,”
she called with unexpected strength, “Ima! Come out here! Somebody wants to see
you.”

A moment later, Miss Ima appeared on
the back porch. Even though she and Miss Erma are twins, the passing years have
wrenched their physical likeness some distance out of alignment. Miss Erma is
bent and fragile with a tendency toward a vague and confused garrulousness. Miss
Ima, on the other hand, is sturdy and ramrod-straight, with a clipped and
precise speech, a habit of sharp observation, and a cultivated sense of
personal style. As she came down the steps, one hand on the wooden safety rail,
she was wearing a baby-blue two-piece pantsuit constructed of some kind of
knobby fabric and buttoned down the front with big gold buttons. A long
blue-green chiffon scarf was furled around her throat, around her carefully
curled white hair, and around her throat once again, where it was secured with
a large gold pin in the shape of a dragon. She wore baby-blue canvas flats in
the same shade as her pantsuit. Miss Ima likes to dress up.

“So Violett’s gone and got herself
in trouble, has she?” she asked sharply, when I had repeated what I had said to
Miss Erma.

“I’m afraid she’s been taken to the
hospital,” I said. “I wondered if you or your sister might have seen something
that would help to—”

“Hospital”
Miss Erma
sniffed. “Well, I don’t wonder.” She gave her sister a meaningful look. “I do
believe you were right, dear, although I hate to say it. A woman her
age.
And
a churchgoer, too.”

Miss Ima adjusted the dragon at her
throat, patted her scarf, and gave a gratified sniff. “I won’t say I told you
so, Erma. But the next time I tell you what I see, p’rhaps you won’t be so
quick to contradict.”

I looked at Miss Ima. “Then you saw
something that—”

“Saw something!” Miss Ima’s amused
laugh was a glassy tinkle that ran up the scale a half octave and back down
again. “My dear young woman, of
course
I saw something. But when I told
Erma, she was so shocked that she just didn’t want to believe me.” She shook
her head. “Erma hasn’t seen as much of the world as I have, you know,” she
confided in a lower voice. “She shocks easily.”

“Well,” Miss Erma said tartly, “I’ve
had plenty to be shocked
about,
Ima. The past is never totally dead, you
know. It keeps coming back to haunt.”

Miss Erma must have been referring
to what Constance called Miss Ima’s “checkered past.” As I’d heard the story. Miss
Ima had joined the WACs during the Second World War and gone off to France,
while Miss Erma had stayed in Pecan Springs. Miss Ima was rumored to have had a
high old time in the Sin Capital of the World. The rumors, in fact, were of Miss
Ima’s making. She had written several revealing postcards home, which were
shared by the postmistress with her most intimate friends and subsequently most
of Pecan Springs. Indeed, gossip had it that she had taken a French lover
several years younger. Whether or not these things were true, something Miss
Ima did caused much consternation in the Mason family and opened a rift between
the two sisters that lasted until their mother died. But since they had each
inherited half of the family home and it was out of the question to sell, they
apparently decided it was sensible to make up their quarrel and move in
together. I wondered if Miss Erma considered Violett’s ravings about Miss Ima
and Mr. Peavy an instance of the past “coming back to haunt.”

“What
did
you see?” I asked. Miss
Ima leaned forward. “We’ve always gotten on well with the Halls, you
understand,” she said, “although I must say that old Mrs. Hall was a mean, abusive
woman. The way she screamed at her husband, why, no wonder he died. He probably
did it just to spite her. And that poor child used to go to school with switch
marks on the back of her legs so that she looked like a—”

“Now, Ima,” Miss Erma put in primly,
“don’t speak ill of the dead. You’ll be dead too, one of these days, and you
don’t want people dredging up
your
old sins.”

Miss Ima frowned. “Whatever her
mother’s
faults,” she said, amending her report, “Violett Hall has always been a
good neighbor.”

“That’s
right,”
Miss Erma
said, clacking her garden shears. “Not any bit like those ruffians across the
street. All those broken-down cars and trucks and dogs and drinking all hours
and young women running around with barely anything covering their naked
behinds.”
Clack-clack.
“And next to them are those people who leave
their Santa Claus on the roof until it’s time to send Easter cards. How’d
you
like red lights blinking every night for six months and when you mention
property values they just laugh like it’s some big joke. And then there’s those
horrid German shepherds—”

Miss Ima reached out a hand to stem
the flow. “Erma, dear,” she rebuked gently, “we’re not talking about the people
across the street. We’re talking about Violett.”

“So am I,” Miss Erma said staunchly.
“I’m saying that she’s not any bit like the people with those red lights on
their roof, like a bordello.”
Clack!

Miss Ima nodded. “Violett’s always
been quiet and a good neighbor—”

Miss Erma hitched her walker toward
a cluster of red chrysanthemums. “Except for those cats,” she said. “I don’t
mind the birds because they don’t get into the garbage, but why a person would
want more than two or three cats, I can’t figure. I swear, Violett’s cats are
every bit as bad as the dogs on the other side of the bordello.” She leaned so
far forward that I was afraid she might tip the walker over and fall face down
in the chrysanthums. “There are three of them, German shepherds, and they—”

“—a good neighbor,” Miss Ima went
on, raising her voice, “a born-again Christian—”

“—run loose around the entire
neighborhood,” Miss Erma continued shrilly, “and that woman who owns them,
anytime you try to tell her that her dogs are doing their naughty business in
your grass, she throws God in your face. But that’s those Jehovah’s Witnesses
for you. Now, Mother was always a Methodist. The Methodists have more tact when
it comes to God.”
Clack-clack-clack.

“—and she kept the backyard mowed,” Miss
Ima finished, lowering her voice now that she was no longer in competition with
her sister. “That’s why hearing about the car in her garage last night was
such a shock to Miss Erma.”

“Shame to say it,” Miss Erma
concluded.
“Shame.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. We’d
gotten down to specifics at last. “Did you recognize the car?”

Miss Ima frowned. “Can’t say as I
recognized it, exactly. But that garage door was hanging open the way it always
does, and I got a real good look. I’ve told Violett over and over that she
ought to get Mr. Peavy to come and fix that door. He’s right handy with things
like that. Hanging open, it just invites tramps and dogs.”

Miss Erma frowned. “Better not
mention Mr. Peavy to Violett, Ima. She’s not a bit balanced where he’s
concerned.” She looked at me. “I don’t suppose you heard—” “The car,” I said
desperately.