Halfway to Half Way (34 page)

David and Junior exchanged glances. Truth be told, the coroner's summary had straightened the kinks out of the chain of events.

 

 

"That GMEI envelope was the key piece of evidence," Marlin said. "Not the envelope itself. The fact it was open and empty. We all assumed it was junk mail, and none of us wondered what happened to the contents."

 

 

It was found between the seat and console in Bev's car, along with a couple of other innocuous pieces of mail. David could now picture Bev pulling up in her car beside the curbside mailbox. It was raining; the box's contents were hastily retrieved, dropped in her lap, the lid pushed shut again. Spying the topmost envelope's return address, she ripped it open, expecting a check to fall out.

 

 

Whatever the letter said, it wasn't
Congratulations, Mrs. Beauford, Your Money Troubles Are Over.
In a rage, she drove into the garage, oblivious to the envelope and another few pieces of mail sliding off the clothing catalog's slick cover and landing beside the seat.

 

 

She stormed into the house, slapped her purse and the rest of the mail on the kitchen counter and called Chlorine Moody. Fifty thousand now, she'd surely demanded, or else.

 

 

"I'll grant that Chlorine killed Royal," David said, "and might have contributed to Larry's death. But even if Bev threatened Chlorine, I don't see that homicide as premeditated."

 

 

Marlin agreed. "At the scene, we all thought the scarf as a garrote leaned to opportunity more than means." He added, "That doesn't change the fact that once Bev called Chlorine, the proverbial powder keg was lit. Whether Chlorine consciously decided to kill Bev or not, the outcome was fated. If Bev hadn't been wearing a scarf, Chlorine would have bashed in her head, or stabbed her…or something."

 

 

Something
alluded to a weapon she might have brought with her, then opted for one literally at hand. Chlorine wasn't an Amazon, but taller and considerably stouter than her blackmailer. Bev was angry and desperate. Chlorine was terrified, desperate and had already killed at least once.

 

 

Cops are trained not to pull their guns unless mentally prepared to use them. Chlorine might not have been armed, but Bev's fate had been sealed before Chlorine entered the house, the same way Bev did. That's why the doorknob was wiped clean.

 

 

Astonishment and a note of frustration laced Junior's voice. "I can't get over how nothing fit and now everything does. When Rudy wasn't playing cop, he was glued to TV crime shows. From them, or from tutoring him all those times he flunked out of the academy, Chlorine would have picked up some tricks like lowering the thermostat to delay decomposition."

 

 

Marlin added, "And how to fake an alibi. She got too cute, though. And not cute enough. She knew we'd get call records on Bev's phone. She didn't want her number to be the last dialed, so she called Glo-Brite Cleaners. Could be, she thought that'd help skew time of death, too.

 

 

"When Phelps contacted her about the call from Bev, Chlorine had a plausible explanation ready. As for Chlorine's alibi, my contact at the phone company confirmed that within minutes of Bev's call to Chlorine, an almost two-hour outbound call from Chlorine's number went to—get this—a national dial-a-prayer service."

 

 

"Called and left it off the hook," David said. "Can't prove she was listening. Can't prove she wasn't."

 

 

"It does infer premeditation. Why phone Jesus and leave him hanging? It might have worked, if Chlorine had put away Bev's groceries and taken that time-stamped receipt. Sure, Bev was so furious when she read that letter from GMEI, she forgot her frozen dinner, but if she was alive ninety-some minutes later to call Glo-Brite, she'd have unloaded her car by then."

 

 

"The jewelry," Junior said. "Chlorine didn't know Bev had already hocked it. That's how you knew the burglary was staged. A real thief wouldn't bother dumping her jewelry box."

 

 

Marlin clapped his shoulder. "Nice try, but me and Hendrickson knew it was staged from the get-go."

 

 

He went on, "Chlorine's getting rid of the evidence that Larry, then Bev, used to blackmail her was another dumb move. Natch, Chlorine thought she'd got away with Bev's homicide, too, but if she hadn't destroyed evidence of the Beaufords' extortion, a sharp defense attorney could've made an argument for mitigating circumstances."

 

 

Junior recoiled. "What difference would that make?" He pointed toward the backyard. "Her husband's mummified corpse is in a hole she dug twenty-three years ago. If Chlorine hadn't murdered the poor man, there wouldn't have been anything to blackmail her
with.
"

 

 

Marlin flicked his smoldering cigarette into the gutter. "Spoken like an undertaker. If Moody goes to trial, her counsel will trot out everything from spousal abuse to diminished capacity to sway a jury."

 

 

His face reflected the numerous other contentions available to the defense. "Between Bev pressuring her and the new gas-line construction, Chlorine freaked. She shut up Bev permanently, but some dude from the public works department said they were widening the trench. Chlorine was digging up Royal to move him someplace safe when me and Phelps got here to ask about those phone records."

 

 

Marlin looked at David. "Amazing coincidence about that prowler complaint to the Sanity PD and the two geezers who pointed Constantine and Sheib at Royal's grave. Want to bet one of 'em was decked out like a referee and the other was fat and bald?"

 

 

"Nope."

 

 

"Want to bet the call to 911 came from the same pay phone as the one to Toots?"

 

 

"Nope."

 

 

"Want to bet a certain wacko wannabe Sherlock's fingerprints are on that shovel handle, along with Chlorine Moody's?"

 

 

"Yep. Twenty bucks?"

 

 

Marlin deliberated, then muttered a curse. "All right, all right. If the old bastard finished what Chlorine started, he'd have been smart enough to wear gloves."

 

 

"Black ones is my guess." David grinned. "You know. To match the paint job on his golf shoes."

 

 

 

18

F
rom the outside, Claudina Burkholtz's house was a bleak, asphalt-shingled rental, but the home's drabness ended at the front door. Gallons of brightly hued paint had transformed the ugly birch paneling into pastel galleries for the kids' framed artwork.

 

 

Dressed in panties, nylons, ecru stiletto heels and a longline bra, Hannah stood on a sheet laid over the floor's crazy-quilt carpet squares, while the Great Slip Debate raged on behind her.

 

 

"Quit being so bossy, IdaClare. The slip goes on first, then the dress over it."

 

 

"I am not being bossy,
Margaret.
If you think Dixie Jo slaved for an hour on that mop of hair just to wreck it, you've gotta another think comin'."

 

 

Mop
of hair? This from a woman who dyed hers pink? On purpose? Hannah gritted her teeth, determined not to morph into Bridezilla, regardless of provocation. The Constitution only guaranteed a fair trial, not the jury of twelve newlywedded women who'd acquit her in a nanosecond.

 

 

"Margaret?"
Rosemary laughed. "Whenever I called one of my kids by his Christian name, it meant somebody was about to get a whipping."

 

 

IdaClare harrumphed. "The somebody that ought to be whipped is whoever thought one o'clock in the afternoon in August was the perfect time for an outdoor wedding."

 

 

Jeremy Burkholtz, sitting in the recliner in his underpants and black dress socks, aimed a sympathetic look at Hannah. He and his sisters had been privy to a couple of Claudina, Luke and Hannah's prenuptial meetings. Jeremy raised a small bowl of M&M's where she could reach them, as if it were a last treat before the flogging commenced.

 

 

"Thanks, sweetie, but I can't breathe as it is." Hannah smiled. "Okay, exhaling is doable. It's the inhaling that makes me see spots."

 

 

"How come?"

 

 

"Because wedding dresses are torture devices in disguise, and women are insane enough to buy them."

 

 

Jeremy's freckles shifted as he pondered, then asked the inevitable "Why?"

 

 

An attempted chuckle sounded like the Heimlich maneuver performed on a duck. "For the same reason we buy blouses that button up the back and shoes that hurt to walk in. To look pretty for you guys."

 

 

"Sheriff David says you're pretty because you don't put too much gunk on your face, and you laugh a lot and you don't get mad when you get dirty."

 

 

Hannah's belly did a little flip-flop. Eat your heart out, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. "That's why I'm marrying him. Sheriff David likes me just the way I am."

 

 

Jeremy popped a few candies in his mouth and crunched them. "Then how come you've got a lotta gunk on your face and you haven't laughed once all day?" A rhetorical question, apparently, since he wriggled around in the recliner and returned his attention to the cartoon on TV.

 

 

Months ago, Polly had taken Hannah's breath away with a similar dead-on remark. Breathing being severely compromised at the moment didn't lessen the impact of Jeremy's observation. Whatever the older Burkholtz kids might have inherited from their father, their directness came from Claudina.

 

 

Rosemary gasped and said, "Hey, I know. We'll put a bag over her head while we pull the dress over it. Surely Claudina has a paper grocery sack, somewhere."

 

 

"If she doesn't," Marge said, "a plastic one will do. We'll just have to hurry so she won't suffocate."

 

 

IdaClare insisted, "Dress first. Slip pulled up from underneath. And that's final."

 

 

Hannah pictured herself in the strapless bra, hose and heels, with her head stuck in a Price-Slasher supermarket bag like a frozen Thanksgiving turkey. The giggles amped to whoops of laughter. It hurt like hell, but she couldn't stop.

 

 

At a teary-eyed glimpse of the three horrified godmothers clutching her dress, the crinoline slip and, in Marge's case, a plastic shopping bag with the empty shoe box inside, Hannah lost it again. She clogged in place, as Dixie Jo's artful, sausage-curled creation yielded to hysterics and gravity.

 

 

Claudina rushed in from the back bedroom, where she'd been helping Polly and Lana into their flower girl ensembles. "What's going on? Hannah? Are you okay? Lord-a-mercy, girlfriend, are you laughing or crying?"

 

 

Both, actually. Hannah waved a hand, not trusting herself to answer without going loony tunes again.

 

 

IdaClare, who was seldom at a loss for words, diagnosed prewedding jitters. She sniffed, huffed, then sniped, "I suppose we needn't worry about mussing her hair anymore. Dixie Jo is going to faint dead away when she sees what you've done."

 

 

"Let her," Hannah said, not unkindly. "Look, I love you all and I appreciate everything you've done, but I'm just getting married, not ascending the freakin' throne."

 

 

She took the slip from IdaClare. Teetering on one leg, she inserted the other through the waistband. "I mean, c'mon. It's ninety-seven in the shade outside. Instead of birdseed bags, we're doling out tiny bottles of sunblock. The county coroner's officiating, so nobody'll get mad that we picked minister
A
over minister
B
through
Z.
A bluegrass band named for their overalls is playing the wedding march, and the ring bearer's still in his Batman Underoos."

 

 

Pulling the slip into position, Hannah fumbled for the zipper. "We—me, especially—caught a bad case of perfect wedding-itis." Chin down, more or less addressing her crotch, she added. "Heck with perfect. Legal, binding and fun, we can shoot for. If we're lucky, nobody'll pass out from heatstroke and need the ambulance standing by behind the gazebo."

 

 

She grinned and planted her hands on her hips. "So here's the drill. Claudina, pop a Travis Tritt CD into the stereo."

 

 

"Yeehaw." Claudina sashayed across the room, twirling her index fingers in the air. "Exactly what this party needs. A little boot-skootin' bootie shakin'."

 

 

Hannah regarded Lana, a frail blond angel in a ruffled blue, dotted swiss dress. "Do you like your hair up in that french twist?"

 

 

The little girl touched a curly tendril with reverence. "Oh, yeth, Mith Hannah. It'th beeyootiful."

 

 

"It certainly is, honey. Now, would you please go find your brother's suit and his shoes?"

 

 

To Polly, the eldest, whose skinned knees matched her elbows, Hannah said, "I know you're mad about the dress, but I promise Sheriff David won't think you've gone over to the dark, girlie side."

 

 

"It's okay, I guess, on account of blue's his favorite color." The girl cut a scathing look at IdaClare, clad in pink from hairdo to pumps. "It's this doughnut thing stuck to my head that sucks."

 

 

Dixie Jo had wrapped and pinned Polly's waist-length braids into a coronet.

 

 

"You want your pigtails back?" Hannah asked. "Fine with me, but you've gotta make it quick."

 

 

IdaClare blanched and clapped a hand to her bosom. "No, please," she said, a tremor in her voice. "You can't…I won't let you spoil everything, I've…" Lips pressed tight, she struggled to fight back the tears rimming her eyes.

 

 

"Excuse us." Hannah led IdaClare into the kitchen for a private talk they should have had days ago. After seating her in a chair, Hannah looked for a tissue and settled for a paper napkin from a keeper on the counter.