You Can't Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet: A Study Club Cozy Murder Mystery (The Study Club Mysteries Book 1) (20 page)

Wanda Jean regarded her with the look of a deer caught in the headlights. "Why was my husband here at this house the day before he was murdered?" she asked. And then, all in a rush, she blurted, "Were the two of you up to something?"

Melinda Sue's face took on a perfectly aggrieved look of pitying indignation. "Oh, Wanda Jean, honey. I forgive you for saying such a thing because I know it’s just your inconsolable grief talking. Hilton was here that day because I've got termites in my runway."

The women exchanged confused looks, and Mae Ella said, “Come again? Termites in your what?"

"In my runway," Melinda Sue said brightly. “It’s an indispensable part of my pageant preparation formula. Y’all come on out back and I'll show you."

Warily the women followed Melinda Sue to the backyard where they stopped dead in their tracks and beheld a full-sized plywood pageant runway situated under the spreading and intertwined branches of two old pecan trees.

"Well, I will just be damned," Flower said, lighting a Lucky. "What in the hell do you do with that thing, Melinda Sue?"

"As a pageant professional," Melinda Sue explained, "I have to practice my technique and timing. People think all you have to do is walk the runway, but that's just not true." With dainty steps she climbed the four steps, took a deep breath, and then stepped onto the boards.

The instant her foot made contact with the surface, Melinda Sue's posture elongated. "Pacing and conformation are crucial," she said, starting down the length of the center extension with an even, gliding gait. "You must know when to wave, when to turn, how to display yourself to the best advantage to the judges relative to their position in the auditorium."

"So, Hilton was here because you've got bats in your belfry?" Mae Ella asked, yelping when Clara’s elbow made contact with her ribs.

Melinda Sue, focused on waving to the nonexistent but adoring crowd was oblivious to the thinly veiled insult. “No,” she said. “Termites in my trusses.” Melinda Sue turned, paused, and then gazed coquettishly over her shoulder without missing a beat. "Hilton was here to treat the wood."

The prancing performance left the Study Club officers uncharacteristically silent until Sugar took the lead and asked, "Did that treatment involve a pair of control top pantyhose from J.C. Penney's?"

Melinda Sue froze for a second, then resumed her well-rehearsed walk. "It's not a matter of needing the control top," she said, looking at Sugar with eyes that were going glassy. "You just don't want any lines under your evening dress. The judges say they won't mark you down for it, but you'll lose points for panty lines. I learned that the hard way when I entered the Miss Paint and Turpentine pageant."

"So you and Hilton were working on your termites and your panty lines?" Clara asked. Then mouthed silently to Wilma, "Is she nuts?"

Wilma waggled her hand back and forth and shrugged, as if to say, "Your guess is as good as mine."

“Hilton had a rare sense of fashion for a man,” Melinda Sue said, reaching the back of the runway, where she turned and struck a classic pageant pose, one toe pointed just so. “Until he said that awful thing to me.”

Clara looked up at Melinda Sue. “What awful thing?”

“I had some nylons drying in the bathroom,” Melinda Sue said, staring straight ahead, her best smile frozen in place. “There was a pair missing after Hilton was here, so I went over to his house the next day to ask him about them. I thought maybe he took them to remind him of me.” She turned and looked down at Wanda Jean. “He was very handsome and I thought maybe he took the pantyhose because he was interested in me, so I wanted him to know I’d be interested, too. But then he said the awful thing.”

“What was it?” Wanda Jean asked.

“He said he was in love with you and he just took the pantyhose because he had never tried control tops before,” Melinda Sue said.

“So you were upset that he wanted to put them on?” Wanda Jean asked. “You killed my husband because he wanted to put on your control top pantyhose?”

“Oh, no,” Melinda Sue said. “I didn’t kill him because of that. I killed him because when I asked him why he would pick you over me, he said it was because you dress so much nicer than I do.”

A slow smile began to spread over Wanda Jean’s face, a radiance that filled her eyes with shining joy. “Hilton didn’t cheat on me,” she said breathlessly. “He turned you down.”

“Well, yes,” Melinda Sue said, “but I’ve been turned down before. I killed him because he clearly was not in his right mind and I couldn’t have him influencing the judges with that kind of talk.”

“What judges, Melinda Sue?” Clara asked.

“
The
judges,” she said, turning toward Clara. “They’re always against me and it just never made any sense. And then I realized it just had to be a conspiracy. Like the Communists. It’s the only explanation. I did everything perfectly and I still didn’t get the tiaras that were rightfully mine.”

“You killed Hilton because you thought he was working against you with the pageant judges?” Clara asked.

“I couldn’t risk it,” Melinda Sue said. “You see . . ..” She faltered and then seemed to gather up her courage. “You see, I’m running out of time.”

“You sure as hell are,” Mae Ella said, shaking her head.

“And Hilton just stood there?” Wanda Jean asked.

“I told him I needed to use the ladies’ room,” Melinda Sue said. “I went in your kitchen and found the knife. I held it behind me and walked right up to Hilton and just aimed for his name tag. He tried to catch my hand, but he grabbed my charm bracelet. And then he just kinda fell back on your shag carpet. I am sorry about the rug.”

“Melinda Sue,” Clara said, “you need to come down to the Sheriff’s Office with us now and tell Lester about all this.”

“You mean about the conspiracy?” Melinda Sue said hopefully. “Do you think Lester can help me stop them?”

“Yes, I do,” Clara said. “Come on now. We’ll put a stop to all this conspiracy nonsense right now.”

“That’s so Christian of you, Clara,” Melinda Sue said, coming down the steps. “Just let me fix my hair before we go. Would you help me, Sugar?”

Sugar looked at Clara, who nodded. “Of course, I will,” Sugar said. “We’ll make you look real pretty, Melinda Sue.”

Melinda Sue turned a radiant smile on her. “Thank you, Sugar,” she said. “I do always like to look my best for the judges.”

As she and Sugar walked away, Mae Ella said, “I think there’s just one judge she’s gonna have to be worried about this time.”

Chapter 22

Melinda Sue Fairchild related the tale of Hilton Milton’s death with animation and pitch perfect elocution to Sheriff Lester Harper. For his part, Lester listened to her story with what appeared to be rapt attention and complete sympathy. When she began to detail the long crimes of the “conspiracy” that had so long deprived her of her dreams, Lester nodded as if the scales were falling away from his eyes and everything had become perfectly clear.

“This is awful, Melinda Sue,” he said in a tone meant to convey both comfort and outrage. “We need to get you someplace safe while we prove what these people have done to you. It won’t be as nice as what you’re used to, but it’ll just be for a little while. You may have to go into hiding, but I know a nice place in Big Spring where these awful people will never find you.”

Across the room, Wanda Jean leaned toward Clara and whispered, “What’s in Big Spring?”

“The State mental hospital,” Mae Ella supplied in a helpful but far from hushed tone.

Lester shot her a warning glance and she waved an apologetic hand in his direction before he turned his full attention back to Melinda Sue, who had taken ahold of his hand and was now gushing her gratitude.

“Oh, thank you, Lester,” she said breathlessly. I should have come and talked to you a long time ago.”

Lester patted her hand and said, “There, there now. We’ll take care of this whole mess. Now you just go with my deputy and let me make some phone calls.”

After Melinda Sue and Hank Howard left the office, Lester had the good manners to apologize to Wanda Jean, and stood there like a man taking a tongue-lashing from Clara about the state of the carpet, promising to take up the matter of reimbursement with the Commissioner’s Court.

In general, Lester looked like a man who had been freed of a terrible burden — an unsolved murder and a gaggle of unhappy women — until Clara said,  “And we have a few other things to tell you.”

As she began to talk, Lester’s face turned an ashen gray. He looked like he’d just taken a bullet to the chest. He sank back in his chair and tried to absorb all the “additional facts” Clara and the women had uncovered over the last week. For just a fleeting instant he’d thought his troubles were over, and now it was painfully clear that his fishing was going to be interrupted for days.

It was a week, in fact, before Lester Harper was able to retreat to the safety of the riverbank. During that time, the real truth about the hardware store was fully revealed, including Hank Howard’s falsified report in exchange for a bribe from the insurance company. To save his own hide, Hank made a deal with the District Attorney and gave up the name of the arsonist.

Hank’s desk yielded up a full set of notes explaining the real nature of the fire, and the evidence that led him straight to Leroy Taylor, who set the fire. The destruction was in retribution for John Powell’s refusal to do business with him after Leroy wrote one hot check too many to pay for merchandise.

Leroy broke into the hardware store and poured kerosene in concentric circles around the building, igniting the liquid with one of his cigarettes on the way out the door. It was difficult to tell what made Lester Harper more apoplectic; the fact that Hank covered up the arson or that he let an arsonist and notorious wife beater go scot-free.

Lester used his fury to hide the fact that he was bitterly disappointed in his young protégé and his distress over the fact that now, without a deputy, he would be called upon to enforce the law more and fish less.

No sooner was Leroy Taylor in handcuffs than the Study Club officers appeared on Lura Belle’s front porch with an offer to help her file for a divorce. The poor woman stood there with a black eye and a split lip and said, “But I don’t have any money.”

“You let us worry about that,” Clara said. “Just tell us you want to get away from that son of a bitch.”

“I want to get away from that son of a bitch,” Lura Belle whispered obediently but fervently.

Predictably, however, it was Maybelline Trinkle who threw the biggest fit over the outcome of the investigation. Oh, she was glad Hilton’s killer had been identified, but she was not pleased to lose the ever attentive Hank Howard. And then there was the fact that her sister and the women actually thought she might have killed Blake.

In the middle of the tirade she threw in front of the Study Club officers, Maybelline declared, “I am telling you it was the pot Blake smoked that killed him. That damn stuff was making him sick and he just wouldn’t listen to me. Just kept lighting up like some damn-pinko-commie-hippie flower child . . ..”

Wilma stopped Maybelline in mid-description. “Do you still have the pot?” she asked.

Maybelline frowned. “I guess so,” she said. “Blake kept it in his extra tool box under the socket wrenches. Help yourself. I don’t smoke that crap. You can have it.”

Wilma took a day off and drove a sample of the pot to San Antonio to be analyzed by an old Army buddy who now worked in a research laboratory. The weed came back positive for an insecticide called Paraquat, which, when ingested in large quantities, can trigger a heart attack. In short order, Sheriff Harper was shutting down Blake’s supplier before the contaminated weed killed anyone else.

When Wilma delivered the news to the Study Club officers, Clara said, “Huh, I guess there’s something to be said for Mike Thornton’s organic gardening after all.”

“So that’s it?” Sugar asked. “We’re done? Things can get back to normal?”

“Well,” Clara said, “we figured out who killed Hilton, caught an arsonist, uncovered insurance fraud, got a woman away from her abusive husband, shut down a poison pot grower, and the county paid for Wanda Jean’s carpet. I’d say our work is done for now.”

Wanda Jean was so grateful to the women for solving Hilton’s murder and clearing her name she invited them all to dinner that night. The ladies were welcomed at the front door by a smiling hostess and a heavenly aroma of cooking food.

“My Lord, Wanda Jean,” Sugar said, “what are you fixing us for supper? It smells wonderful.”

“I made a big ole pot of spaghetti and homemade sauce and baked the bread myself,” Wanda Jean said. “It’s not very I-talian, but there’s chocolate cake for dessert.”

“Chocolate is a food group,” Sugar observed. “It goes with everything.”

The group made a point of studiously ignoring the pink spot on the carpet as they followed Wanda Jean into the dining room where she’d set the table with her best china, silver, and crystal.

The meal, which started out slow, became livelier with each bite. Every story seemed to be funnier than the last, and then a mellow, feel-good air seized them all.

“I just love you all so much,” Sugar said, dreamily twirling spaghetti on her fork until she was staring at an entwined lump the size of a golf ball. “The Study Club just gives me a reason to live.”

“That’s how I feel about doing nails,” Flowers said, buttering her sixth slice of bread. “Some days I just feel like that Emory board grinds away the problems of the world.”

Sugar leaned into Flowers and said, “I didn’t know you felt like that, Flowers. You’re just a beautiful person inside. Don’t you think Flowers is a beautiful person, Clara?”

“I do, I do,” Clara agreed, but then she frowned and squinted across the table at Mae Ella, who was holding her dinner fork six inches from her face and staring at it with rapt fascination. “Sister,” Clara snapped, “what in the hell are you doing.”

“Have you ever really looked at a fork?” Mae Ella asked, her gaze never leaving the utensil in her hand. “I mean really looked at one? Can you just imagine some cave man looking at a stick and thinking, if it had four pointy ends, and not just one, maybe my food wouldn’t fall off?”