Doing It at the Dixie Dew (6 page)

Linda Eller sat alone in the choir loft. She worked at Belk's cosmetic counter, sang for every funeral. I remembered her from high school, short, curly haired, dated Ron Eller, married the week after graduation, had a baby nine months later. Everybody counted on their fingers. It gave the town gossips exercise, kept their math working. That and bridge and Juanita's Beauty Shop. I wondered what the talk had been this week at Juanita's about Miss Lavinia's death at the Dixie Dew. Folly? Beth McKenzie's Waterloo? Who's ever going to go to a place, sleep in the same bed where somebody died? Somebody was sure to say, “That's one business that's dead before it even got started good.”

Pastor Pittman took the pulpit with Father Roderick beside him and both conducted the service. They read the prescribed scriptures about everything in its time and I wondered somehow if this really had been Miss Lavinia's time. If so, would she have left such a strange note? Two words. “That is…” Those two words had haunted me ever since. What should I do about that note? Did it mean anything? I had been tempted to show it to Bruce Bechner, then changed my mind. He didn't seem all that quick on anything. Struck me as the good ole easygoing kind to just do what they're told, get their paychecks every Friday and keep their mouths shut.

Pastor Pittman? I could have shown the note to him, but somehow if it didn't have some president's picture on it I didn't think he'd be interested.

Now in his church he presided with Father Roderick as backup. Both men alternated with a few short prayers, and Linda sang all the verses of “Ave Maria,” which really was lovely, if a little long; then they followed the casket out. As I started to leave the church I saw Father Roderick in the vestibule talking to an intense woman in a red tee-top (no bra) and tight jeans. The woman reached up, brushed lint off Father Roderick's shoulder in a possessive, familiar gesture and continued talking, her long silver earrings swinging back and forth in a fast, angry rhythm. She pulled back her long, grayish hair with a brisk toss. I noticed her clear plastic spike-heeled shoes. She was not your ordinary, run-of-the-day citizen of Littleboro. Not in those shoes.

All kinds, I thought as I walked to the door, priests and ministers work with all kinds and at all times.

“Lovely, just lovely,” Verna said. She held her flat black book of a purse over her head. “It's too hot to walk to that cemetery, and if I know Lavinia, and it was my funeral, she wouldn't walk there either.” She turned toward home.

I don't know why, but I decided to go on to the cemetery. To see the thing through, I guess. The rain had stopped and when I left the church I reached for my sunglasses. Everything had a bright, bright shimmer: trees, streets, the sidewalk. I laid my umbrella on the porch swing at the Dixie Dew, heard strains of the music from
Aida
blasting from the sunporch and continued walking toward the cemetery.
Aida
meant Scott was painting the rest of the windows, which meant the Pink Pineapple Tea and Thee would soon be a reality.

In the Littleboro Cemetery, the hearse was already backed up to the mausoleum. Pastor Pittman stood beside it, Bible in hand. Off in the corner of the cemetery under a dripping dogwood tree, Elsie Shimpock watched. Like a buzzard, I thought. Lord, she's got to have some sort of empty life if going to funerals is her hobby, her kick. That woman dresses in black and creeps to funerals like a buzzard. Harmless, no one had ever known her to be otherwise, she just had a fetish for funerals. Still, she made me uncomfortable.

As Pastor Pittman finished his few verses, two men walked up: one tall and bald with the build of a football guard, sweating in a tight tan sport coat, the other wearing green polyester pants and a plaid coat in a matching green and black. He had a beaky parrot nose and small, dark eyes. They shook hands with the preacher and I heard something about “lawyer…” cousin … got lost, “too late for the funeral, and where in this godforsaken place could you go to get a drink?”

I felt myself tickle out a half smile. At least they'd asked the right minister. Ask the one at the First Methodist or First Baptist and they would have gotten a frosty stare. Pittman and his parish knew their liquors and wines, where to find them. He'd probably invite these two odd fellows home, saying, “A little toddy after a rain will help get the dampness out of one's system.” He'd intone,
hurmph, hurmph,
and lean the decanter their way, pouring a generous share.

There was a note on the refrigerator when I got home. Ida Plum had gone to Juanita's Beauty Shop. That's where you got the news, found out what was going on in town. The
Littleboro Messenger
came out every Wednesday, had only the old news … things everybody already knew, just had it confirmed. Everybody felt better to see it spelled out there in black and white. That made it official. Speeding tickets, DUIs, pocketbook thefts, bad checks, grass fires, deaths and weddings.

Miss Lavinia had gotten one paragraph on page 2, no photo, stating where she was born, that she was the daughter of so and so and the date of her death. The last line read: “After leaving Littleboro, she lived abroad most of her life.” Interesting, I thought, relieved that the paper had not given her the royal send-off I had imagined.

“Give me credit,” Ida Plum said when she came in. “I can smell them.”

“Who?” I poured glasses of iced tea.

“Father Roderick, money … all that. Miss Lavinia left everything she had to his church.”

“So that's why Father Roderick helped with her service,” I said. “And Pastor Pittman looked so pissed.”

“It was considerable,” Ida Plum said. “Even if you halve the figures they were throwing around in the beauty shop.”

“Millions?” I asked.

“Some got it; some don't,” Ida Plum said. “And even those who got it can't take it with them.”

I still had to refund to the estate Miss Lavinia's two unused days from the check she had mailed to the Dixie Dew those weeks ago. Miss Lavinia's personal effects were still upstairs. Those would have to wait for the police to finish. But I wasn't going to wait or let someone have to ask for the money.

It was nearly dark when I wrote the check, put it in an envelope and walked to St. Ann of the Oaks. The huge old oak trees along Main Street cast black shadows that made me think of Halloween and spooks and here it was only nearing the end of April. I still didn't feel relaxed as I walked. Water oaks were the last trees to get their leaves every spring, remaining bare long after other trees were in full green. The oaks were also the last to let go their thin little finger-sized leaves in the fall.

I crossed the street and walked toward the parish house beside the church. Floodlights on the steeple and church roof illuminated a life-size statue of Mary in the courtyard. I was glad to see lights in the study of the parish house. I rang the bell and waited. When no one answered, I rang again. If Father Roderick had stepped to the kitchen, he might not hear the bell. Or if he had gone to his study in the church, he couldn't hear it either. I thought I saw a curtain move slightly inside the house and peeked in a window. There I saw a lamp burning near an easy chair and on a tray in front of it two empty glasses, crumpled napkins and the remains of a meal. But the room was empty.

I waited, rang the bell again, then tried the door, which was unlocked. As I went inside I called, “Father Roderick?”

I thought I heard a noise in the chapel or in the passageway that joined the parish house to the church. Footsteps? I waited, listening to hear if the footsteps came closer. Instead they seemed to get fainter. Then silence. I heard a door open, click close.

I called again and walked through the passageway, dim with only a wall sconce or two to take away some of the darkness. The only footsteps I heard were my own. In the quiet and dark I saw a small light through the door near the altar of the church.

“Father Roderick?” I went through the door to the chapel. There I saw Father Roderick at the altar. He seemed tilted at an odd angle, half-kneeling, half-falling, half sprawled on the floor.

I hurried to him, bent and met the most anguished eyes. Eyes that didn't move but stared back at me and beyond into a world no one knew, a world as far away from the living as one could get. I called his name again, shook him. He didn't answer.

“Father Roderick?” I said softly, and shook his shoulder, more gently this time, the fabric of his robe rough and rasping against my fingers. His shoulder was still warm and very firm. I pulled him toward me and saw the flesh-colored silk and lace pulled tight around his throat. A strange sort of scarf. “What is…?” I started, then stopped and quickly stepped back. The silk and lace garment seemed to be twisted very tight. I reached down to loosen it and realized it wasn't a scarf at all but a teddy. Someone had strangled Father Roderick with silk underwear as he prayed! “My God,” I said. Then, “Oh God,” and finally I screamed, still holding the lace straps of the teddy in my hand.

Chapter Five

Ossie DelGardo had slick black hair and was pudgy all over. Even his eyeballs were pudgy. He wasn't from Littleboro. Baltimore maybe? Massachusetts? New Jersey? I couldn't quite place his accent. He wore a ruby ring on his right little finger and tapped the glass on his desk the whole time he talked to me, his small, black eyes going back and forth over the room. He never looked me straight in the eye. The room smelled of smoke and pine-oil disinfectant. Light bounced off the pale green walls of framed diplomas, certificates and a photo of J. Edgar Hoover. All of it made my head ache.

“You're the only thing these two have in common,” Ossie said. “You were on the scene. You don't look like the type, but who does? Anybody who would poison little old ladies and strangle a priest while he was praying is not your average, run-of-the-mill, day-to-day murderess.”

“Poison?” I gulped. “Who?”

“The old bird. Miss Whatshername.”

“Miss Lavinia?”

“That's her. We didn't find out until this afternoon. Didn't see any sense calling you in until we found out. Turned out didn't have to. You called us.” He gave a sharp knife of a laugh.

“What kind of poison?” I asked.

“We don't know yet, but she died in your house, which makes me think something's going on.”

“What?” I still couldn't understand. Miss Lavinia had come to my B and B and gone straight to bed. She hadn't even had a cup of cocoa unless she had gotten up during the night and made it herself, and I had not found any evidence of that sort. Maybe it was an accident. Some medication and she simply took too much, a prescription she overdosed. People that age forgot what they swallowed when they swallowed it. And she had seemed tired, distracted … upset about something, maybe a myriad of things. If she had been poisoned, it surely was not by me.

“Ought to lock you up,” DelGardo said. “Just to keep the rest of us safe.” He played with a ballpoint pen on his desk. “I been chief of police here three years and the most I ever have to deal with is a knifing over in Queenstown one Saturday night a month, a suicide now and then, couple of teens take too much stuff … then you show up and I get two murders in one week. Makes work.” He stood and walked around his desk, the creases sharp in his shirt and pants, his shoes polished as apples. I thought of the cowboy boots Scott wore. They'd never been near a tin of polish but were scuffed brown and tan. They looked soft with honest work.

“Makes me think I ought to go to a big city where I'd get paid enough to do this kind of thing.” Ossie DelGardo turned his back to me, walked to the window and appeared to watch something outside. What could he see in the dark? Then he sat at his desk again, still with his attention on the window. What was out there?

I had been the one to call the ambulance when I found Father Roderick; then I called Ida Plum, who called Scott. Scott was there before the police came, helped me get unhysterical and finally stop shaking.

Until Ossie DelGardo started in. Scott worked with a girl at the desk filling out papers while Ossie DelGardo took me into his office and offered me a cup of coffee … or something stronger, if I needed it. I did, but I'd never let him know, so I took the coffee, thick and black and bitter. I sat holding it after one sip. Then he did give me something stronger … a thorough grilling.

“I didn't know her,” I said. “Miss Lavinia. I'd never seen her before. I had no reason.”

“You wouldn't be the first innkeeper to help yourself,” he said. “There's a rich heritage in the trade of robbing weary pilgrims while they sleep. Except in this case you took it all. Not a few trinkets, but the whole life.”

I wanted to hit him, slap his face hard, leave it stinging, like his insinuations.

He mumbled something threatening and said, “More about that later.”

I didn't like his tone. I didn't like him and somewhere I remembered something about Miranda and rights, but this wasn't official, was it? He'd offered me a cup of coffee. I was glad Ethan Drummond was on his way, though I'd hated to call him to come to the police station at ten o'clock at night. He was more used to it than me, I reasoned. After all, this was my first time. Ethan Drummond had been in law all his life. The last time I'd been in his office, we were settling Margaret Alice's estate and he'd advised me to sell the house, get what I could out of it “in its condition.” He'd looked over his glasses when he said that. “And forget the bed-and-breakfast idea. It's not in the first three rules of real estate. Location, location, location. Littleboro isn't the place for it.”

“I think it can be,” I'd argued. “We're not that far off the Interstate, and with some advertising, listing in bed-and-breakfast directories, people will find us and come back, tell people. The B-and-B experience is unique. Think of England. It's a cottage industry there.”