Doing It at the Dixie Dew Page 5

  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, w
as 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.”

  “The situation is different,” Ethan said. “There’s not competition of chain hotels and motels.”

  “Which we don’t have in Littleboro.”

  “Because we don’t need them in Littleboro. If a need for them existed here, somebody would have built one years ago.”

  “But that doesn’t mean a B and B can’t make it … once I get known in the trade.” Now I knew why most lawyers and businessmen did well financially. They weren’t in the least romantics. Their hearts didn’t move a muscle in their heads. In fact, they probably went out of their way not to communicate with each other.

  “Miss Lavinia came to Littleboro to visit friends,” I told Ossie DelGardo. It’s a coincidence she died in my B and B.

  “Poison is no coincidence.” Ossie DelGardo went to the window, pulled the blind, then turned to look at me. “Was Father Roderick a coincidence, too? There was no one in the chapel but you.”

  “I called you,” I said. “Would I have done that if I had killed him?” I wished Ethan would get here. He probably had to dress. At least put on his shoes this time of night, find his car keys.

  “Women’s weapons,” Ossie mused. “Poison. And silk underwear. Teddy, my wife calls it. Fanciest one I’ve ever seen, French label and all that … makes me wonder.” He turned to look at me. Stared as though he wanted to see right through my clothes. His stare … him … it all made my skin crawl!

  “I’m wearing my own underwear, not a teddy. Thank you very much,” I said as huffily as I could. I fully expected him to ask my size, come over to me as if he’d like to check for himself. I glanced at the door, wondered if I could beat him to it if he even tried to touch me.

  Ossie tapped his glass desktop with his ring again. “When I find the owner of all that silk and lace, I’ll have my murderer, Miss Beth … and it might be you.” He smiled a quirky little fat-cat Cheshire grin.

  At that I sprang from the chair and slammed out his door. I couldn’t wait any longer for Ethan Drummond’s shoes and car keys. As it was, Ethan came rumbling up just as I opened the door to Scott’s truck.

  “There was nothing he could hold you on,” Ethan said, stuffing his pajama top in his pants. “You go on now. I’ll take care of Mr. Ossie myself.”

  Though it was only three blocks to the B and B, too much had gone on in Littleboro this week for anyone to go walking in the dark. Scott didn’t say a word driving home; he just drove while I sat there and steamed like a summer storm.

  When I got home, I headed straight upstairs. “I want a bath. I want to wash this day and some of the looks I’ve gotten from some people … wash them off and send them down the drain.” Then I filled Mama Alice’s old footed cast-iron tub with the hottest water I could stand, poured in some lemon bath salts and climbed in. I soaked and steamed and steamed some more. I was so mad. The nerve of Ossie DelGardo thinking I had anything to do with either death. He made me feel dirty with all his accusations, his insinuations, sly looks and mumblings under his breath. The way he kept playing with his desk drawer as if I laid the right amount of cash in it he’d look down, close the drawer and dismiss me with a wave of his hand. He’d close the case and not even look up as I went out. Why did I have that feeling? Because he was not “native Littleboro”? An “outsider?” Acted “big-city crime stoppers, gangbusters, TV cop, tough stuff?” He just seemed oily, that’s all. Oily and slick, as if he could slide through anything he wanted or shove anything he didn’t want under the table and look away.

  I had loved the way Scott’s truck smelled of leather and soap and oil. The kind of oil Mama Alice used on her sewing machine, a light golden and pleasant fragrance that made me nostalgic. Made me want more than ever the Littleboro of my childhood, where you could walk anywhere any time of day or night and be perfectly safe doing so. The kind of town where no one ever locked their doors, just hooked the latches on the screen doors at night and slept unafraid. There was nothing to fear. Crime and robbery were things that happened in big cities. And murder? Murder only happened in books and on the movie screens. Or television. It wasn’t a real thing. Not until this week and Miss Lavinia, though it still felt unreal.

  I was out of the tub, wrapping a thick, white terry robe around me, when Scott tapped on the bathroom door. “I’ve made hot toddies. You’ll need something. Oh, and Mr. Lucas checked in. He was late.”

  “Ohmygosh. I forgot him. Thank God he was late.” I scooted into furry red slippers that were scuffed from all those New England winters but warm as old friends.

  Scott had made cinnamon toast. I smelled it before I got to the kitchen, where he had laid place mats and napkins and wrapped the toast in a blue-checked tea towel.

  “Preserves?” he asked. “I checked in the fridge, a couple of places I thought you might be holding some, and no luck.”

  I stepped into the pantry and came out with a jar of fig preserves. “Ta-da! How’s this? Mama Alice made these last year.” As I said it my throat filled up and tightened. Last summer my grandmother had bustled about this house doing a dozen things like making fig preserves and catering a wedding reception for two hundred, making the cake, ice rings for the punch bowl, cheese straws and homemade mints. Last year Mama Alice was not only alive; she was also operating at full capacity, amazing for someone heading hard toward eighty. But age was something Mama Alice didn’t think about. She didn’t have time. Until time stopped.

  My hands shook opening the preserves and Scott took the jar, twisted it slightly, then handed it back. I took a tablespoonful and spread preserves with my knife. I tasted my childhood and summer and this kitchen and it was so good I wanted to cry.

  Scott spread preserves on his toast, took a bite and beamed a satisfied smile. “God, these are good. Your grandmother knew food.”

  “Yes,” I said. “She believed in food. Not just party foods, but fresh vegetables. Balanced meals. When I was little I thought she had scales and balanced things in each hand, I heard the phrase so much. Catering was her business and her joy. Maybe that’s why she was so good.”

  I drank my toddy, which surprised me by being absolutely delicious. I tasted honey, lemon, whiskey, nutmeg and cream. Maybe I did need it. Though it was April and the weather was warm, I’d had a shock and a hell of a day. The toddy warmed me inside, then all over. I even felt my toes tingle, they felt so warm.

  “Ida Plum told you about Miss Lavinia,” I said between sips of the golden brew.

  “She didn’t take the time.” Scott pushed the last piece of toast toward me. “But I already knew.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “I saw Bruce Bechner at the service station. He told me.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I didn’t think it would help,” he said. “You were upset already. And somebody who’s thinking of opening a tearoom doesn’t need a dead body in their house in the first place. Especially one who’s been poisoned.”

  “Something like that.”

  He ate the toast I’d pushed back to his side of the table. “There’s an auction in Cameron tomorrow. You need more chairs out there”—he indicated the sunporch�
��“and a worktable in here.”

  “Optimist,” I said. “You’re on if this toddy doesn’t put me out until noon.” Then I embarrassed myself by yawning a yawn big enough to swallow the room.

  “You’ll wake at eight feeling great.” He collected the plates for the dishwasher and kissed me on the nose. I felt myself instinctively tilt back my head in case there was more to come, but he left. “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite,” he said at the door. Scott checked the lock inside, shut the door and checked again from the outside. Then he tapped the glass, wiggled his fingers good-bye and was gone.

  I sat feeling almost contented for a moment, wondering if that butterfly of a kiss counted as brotherly affection, a friendship buzz or an appetizer for something more. Whatever it meant, I only knew I was sleepy and so relaxed, limp as a rag doll. Ossie DelGardo and the rest of the world could go to hell. I was going to bed.

  Chapter Six

  I did wake up feeling good, much better than I thought I would. There had been no nightmares, no reliving over again the moment of finding Father Roderick or hearing again in my mind Ossie DelGardo’s hooded threats.

  I didn’t know what all Scott put in the toddy, but it was what I needed. Sherman was a nice way to wake up. He’d climbed on my bed, licked my cheek. Then Ida Plum. What would we do without her? Funny, in a small town like Littleboro, where everybody knew everybody else, I didn’t know all that much about Ida Plum Duckett. Just that she’d worked for Mama Alice, cooking and serving, the last several years. Years I’d been away when I should have been in Littleboro, making up to my grandmother for all she’d done for me. Instead I’d gone my selfish way, sometimes not even coming back to Littleboro for a few weeks in the summer. Ben had been my life. And then one day he wasn’t.

  Funny, though, Ida Plum seemed to know something about everybody and more than a lot about some people. She wasn’t a gossip, or didn’t seem to be, worked hard and was more than dependable. She read situations, like this morning, and stayed two jumps ahead of them.