Mama Pursues Murderous Shadows (18 page)

The heat from the night felt like a suffocating blanket. I couldn’t help but wonder—what if the killer didn’t come? What if he was smart enough to slip past Rick and Abe? I wanted to share my doubts with Mama but decided against it; she had enough to worry about already.

We were inside where a ceiling fan sent warm air throughout the living room. Mama looked around, then picked her spot. It was an upholstered chair next to the window, one of two windows that, in the daytime, looked out onto the front porch, the yard, and the road beyond. But now the shades were drawn.

My father shook his head as if he couldn’t believe he was going along with this, then he crouched behind Mama’s chair, within arm’s reach of her body.

I had been instructed to find the light switch to the front porch and be ready to turn it on. I took a deep breath, and crouched down on the floor directly in front of the switch. It was an awkward position, one that had me sitting with my back against a wall ready to spring up like a frog at the sound of Abe’s or Rick’s voice. “Suppose he doesn’t come,” I whispered, forgetting my earlier inclination not to throw water on Mama’s fire by sharing my doubts.

“He’ll be here,” she whispered back impatiently. “Now don’t say another word!”

Abe and Rick were out there, supposedly hiding within a few yards of wherever the killer chose to take a swipe at Mama. Cliff was behind the sofa. He had come out of his comatose posture of not believing what Mama was going to do, and had agreed to accompany us. I was trying to figure what he could do to save Mama from behind the couch.

The stillness was punctuated by another dog’s bark. Mama sat straight up in the chair. The light from a small lamp threw the shadow of her silhouette against the window shade, giving the killer a clear target.

I sat, wondering how long we’d have to wait before things started to pop. A squirrelly feeling in the pit of my stomach started when I began to imagine the killer slithering behind a tree, the moonlight revealing the sinister look in his eyes. I strained to listen
for the sound of a twig breaking, a leaf rustling, but the only sound was my heartbeat.

I drew my knees tight against my body and held my breath. My imagination started up again: In my mind’s eye I could see the killer wipe his mouth, then move closer to his prey—my mother!

Nervously I put my finger to my mouth, as if to remind myself to keep quiet. Again I began to imagine the killer, to see his lips pulled back tight in a half-crazed smile as he eased up to the uneven stone steps that led to the front porch. I swallowed hard past the lump in my throat.

I imagined the killer lifting his gun and aiming it at Mama’s head. My imagination became reality when I heard Abe’s voice. “Put it down easy and nobody will get hurt!”

My heart pounded like a drum. Drops of sweat rolled down my face. I swear the next thing I heard was the killer’s finger tightening on the trigger.

I jumped up and switched on the porch light.

My father pulled Mama to the floor.

A bullet zinged through the room and lodged in the wall above the sofa.

Mama wasn’t hurt, and Herman Spikes would never kill again.

“ ‘I
have occasionally had the exquisite thrill of putting my finger on a little capsule of truth, and heard it give the faint squeak of mortality under my pressure,’ said E. B. White,” Mama said, smiling.

We were in the Otis Community Center putting the last-minute touches on the decorations twenty minutes before the guests were due to arrive. Yasmine, Ernest, Rodney, Will, Stacey (Will’s “special lady”), Cliff, my father, and I had stopped working. We were all listening to Mama tell how she had figured out that Herman Spikes had killed his wife. Daddy and Cliff and I had heard it before, of course, but we were enjoying hearing Mama tell it again.

“I touched a little capsule of truth when, as I listened to Sarah’s story and looked at the scarf around her neck I realized that the cloth Simone had wrapped Sparkle, Curtis and Mack’s cat up in, was
identical to a red and brown scarf I’d seen in Ruby’s bathroom floor in a pile of discarded clothes,” she told them. “Jeff Golick, the manager of the Avondale Inn, told us that Ruby wore a reddish brown scarf the night she checked in. Inez Moore told me that the plant manager at the garment factory allowed every employee to take two scarves from each lot. I asked myself, how did Ruby’s scarf get to Betty Jo Mets’s house? Simone picked up the soiled and wrinkled scarf from Betty Jo’s house thinking it was a piece of rag.

“Sarah’s story of how she’d spotted Laura Manning’s killer because he’d picked up a special pen made me wonder whether or not Ruby’s killer picked up her scarf to wipe his fingerprints from the gun and the room. Suppose he took it away with him but then left it at a place where he stashed the money. Suppose he didn’t realize what he’d done until he saw Simone bring it out of Betty Jo’s house and wrap poor little Sparkle in it.”

“And,” I interrupted, “he might have shot at you to draw me away from the car so that he could get the scarf back.”

“Exactly,” Mama said.

“What?” My father asked. “Herman Spikes had shot at you once before?”

Uh-oh, here we go, I thought. We’d managed until now to keep him in the dark about that.

“We didn’t know it was Herman at the time,” Mama told him.

I wasn’t about to mention the hood flying up on
the Honda. I knew my father’s blood pressure was already going up. There was no reason to upset him further by telling him we suspected Herman had released the latch on the Honda and that Herman might have bumped us and sent us flying into the ditch. We couldn’t prove it anyway.

Mama continued. “Then there were the brand new twenty-dollar bills that Betty Jo gave her boys. Where did she get the money from? Now, I knew Betty Jo very well. She had low morals but she was neither a thief nor a liar. Then I remembered our last conversation the night before her death. She told me she was confused by something, and she asked me to meet her at Portia Bolton’s house. I assumed she wanted to ask me something about the care of Curtis and Mack. But when I started thinking about it, I remembered Susy, Betty Jo’s cousin, telling me Betty Jo had mentioned having a dream that seemed so real. She told me she stopped talking about the dream when Herman walked up, and that Betty Jo moved into his house right around then.

“Suppose, I continued thinking, that Betty Jo Mets fell asleep after she and Herman had sex at the Otis Motel. Suppose Herman slipped out, went to Avondale, killed Ruby, stole her money, and stopped by Betty Jo’s house, which is located between Avondale and Otis, to stash the money for the time being. Suppose, as he slipped back into the motel room, Betty Jo roused and he quieted her, telling her that she was dreaming.”

“Then Herman killed Betty Jo?” Will asked.

“Yes,” Mama answered. “The truth will come out in the trial, but once I’d talked to Inez Moore and let it out that Ruby might have been murdered, Herman started becoming uncomfortable. I think he overheard Betty Jo talking to me on the phone and decided she wasn’t going to be as good of an alibi as he’d first thought.”

“He suffocated her like he’d done Ruby,” I interjected.

“Problem is, he didn’t have time to make it look like she’d killed herself, so he pretended that she died in her sleep,” Mama said.

“He didn’t know that the autopsy would show that she’d been killed,” I said.

“No,” Mama admitted. “Still, I had to come up with a way of catching him trying to murder again. It would have to be something that linked him with Ruby and Betty Jo. I decided that link was Betty Jo’s concern about a dream that she thought might have been real.”

“So after Mama convinced us to let her sit as bait, she called Susy Mets,” I said.

“Susy agreed to call Herman and tell him that she’d been thinking about the dream that Betty Jo had mentioned to her,” Mama explained.

“Of course, Mama had Susy add a bit more to the conversation that she’d had with her cousin than actually took place,” I said.

“It was the only way to get Herman to react,” Mama said.

“What did you tell Susy to say?” Ernest asked.

“I asked her to tell Herman that Betty Jo had told her that she saw him come into the motel room sometime after midnight but that Herman had told her she’d been dreaming. Susy assured Herman that she hadn’t told anybody what Betty Jo had told her but said that she was thinking about mentioning it to Abe the next morning.”

“Then you sat in the chair and waited for Herman to try to kill you?” Rodney asked Mama.

“I couldn’t put poor Susy into that position, now could I?”

“Your mama had to be the hero!” Daddy chided.

Mama smiled at my father. “No, James, you were the hero. You pulled me out of the line of Herman’s fire, remember.”

Daddy nodded, but he wasn’t flattered.

“Why did Herman kill Ruby and try to make it look like she’d killed herself?” Rodney asked.

“Inez Moore and Leman made it clear that Herman was being laughed at because of Ruby’s extramarital affair. No doubt Herman found out that Ruby had a large sum of money and confronted her. She probably told him she was going to leave him. The thought of her leaving him for Leman with all that money was too much for him.

“Why he decided to kill her in the motel room, I don’t know,” Mama admitted. “What I think happened is that he secured the room at the Otis Motel for him and Betty Jo before he went home from work.

“Once at home, he started a fight with Ruby, no
doubt hitting her and telling her to get out. Ruby pulled together a few things and left. The only place she had to go was the Avondale Inn, since Leman had already told her that he was ready to end their relationship.

“Herman followed her and, at a safe distance, saw which room she went into. Then he came back to Otis and made plans to spend the night with Betty Jo.”

“Why was Leman Moody following you and Simone?” Yasmine asked.

“Leman wasn’t following us. It’s true he thought that he was suspected of killing Ruby for her money. But he just happened to be passing by when Simone and I came out from Betty Jo’s place after Sparkle was taken from our car. Simone called Abe from Atlanta and told him that she thought Leman was the one who had shot at us. Abe pulled Leman in and told him that if anything else happened to us, he’d be the first person questioned. Leman stayed away from Otis and Avondale until after Herman was caught.”

“And Inez—what happened to her and her old man?” Will asked.

“They’re going to trial soon for stealing from the plant,” Mama told him.

“The rapist, Honey Man, had nothing to do with Ruby’s murder?” Stacey asked.

“Nothing at all,” Mama said. “But I’m glad he was caught.”

“The chase is over,” I said, ready for a festive
spirit to take hold. “Let’s get into the best thirty-fifth wedding anniversary party this town has ever seen!”

My father didn’t need any further encouragement: he reached out and pulled Mama into his arms, her jade dress swirling around her ankles. Together they took a few dance steps across the floor. He kissed her lightly on the lips. “Candi and I are going to really do it up tonight,” he said proudly.

Mama’s body was relaxed; she swayed to imagined music. Now that she had solved the latest mystery in Otis, she was ready to concentrate on their celebration. “Yes, James honey,” she agreed happily, “we’re really going to do it up tonight!”

We applauded.

And Mama smiled.

If you enjoyed Nora DeLoach’s

Mama Pursues
Murderous Shadows

you won’t want to miss any
of the tantalizing mysteries
in this series!

Look for the newest
adventure featuring Candi
and Simone Covington
,

Mama Cracks a Mask
of Innocence

at your favorite bookseller’s
in spring 2001
.