Mama Pursues Murderous Shadows (6 page)

My mother shook her head. “Inez is an angry woman, one that’s explosive, one that doesn’t keep wrathful feelings hid inside.”

“If, in her depression, Ruby’s journey to the motel was a cry for help, she came to the wrong place. Saying that, I can’t help but wonder why did Ruby come to the motel to die? Why didn’t she just kill herself in her own house?”

Mama thought for a moment although I didn’t get the impression that the question caught her off
guard. Knowing her as well as I do, it was something she’d already considered. “The talk around town is that Herman Spikes was in the Otis Motel that night with that silly girl Betty Jo Mets so Ruby would have been home alone.”

I was surprised. Mama doesn’t usually speak uncomplimentarily about a person. “Why do you call Betty Jo silly?” I prodded.

“I’m Betty Jo’s case manager. I know for a fact that she’s a lousy mother and she sleeps with anybody that offers her the least bit of money.” Mama shook her head slowly. “What I can’t figure out is why Herman would prefer Betty Jo to his wife, Ruby.”

Abe seemed to have been waiting for us. His smoke-filled office made me think he’d tried to get as much nicotine in his lungs as possible before Mama and I arrived.

Once we were seated, Mama said to him, “Abe, isn’t it strange that nobody heard the shot that killed Ruby Spikes?”

Abe shrugged, picked up a book of matches, then threw them back down on his desk. “There were three other people in the motel that night. I talked to them all and not one of them remembered hearing the shot.”

“The more I look into Ruby’s death, the more questions come up,” Mama told her old friend with conviction strong in her voice.

Abe slid Mama a copy of the police report for her to examine. Mama studied the paper for a moment in silence, then handed it to me.

“I got a statement from Herman,” Abe told Mama. “I had Rick talk to Betty Jo. She swears she and Herman were together from nine-thirty until six o’clock Saturday morning.”

“Who was on duty at the check-in desk at the Otis Motel when Herman and Betty Jo arrived?” Mama asked.

“Nobody,” Abe told her. “Seems that Herman came in about five o’clock Friday evening right after he knocked off from work. That’s when he reserved the room.”

Mama’s eyes widened. “Why in heaven’s name did he reserve the room so early?”

Abe rubbed the bridge of his nose. “According to Herman, he liked getting things ready ahead of time.”

Mama cleared her throat. Then she said, “Abe, do you have the list of the phone numbers that Ruby called the night of her death?”

“Yeah,” Abe replied, digging through a stack of papers on his desk. “She only made two calls. One was to her own house, the other to a Bartow number.” Bartow is twenty-five miles from Otis.

“Would you get the phone company to trace the other number for me? It probably belongs to Ruby’s boyfriend.”

Abe agreed.

“I’m pretty sure that Ruby’s boyfriend is
not
the mysterious Charles Parker,” Mama told Abe. “I’ve talked with Inez Moore, the cleaning woman at the Inn who found Ruby’s body. She knows Ruby’s lover, even though she won’t say his name, but she doesn’t know a Charles Parker.”

Abe’s face darkened. “I suppose Inez didn’t tell you about the fight she had with Ruby a few weeks ago, did she? For over six months, inventory at the factory kept coming up short and Clyde Thinner, the manager, was getting real concerned. But none of Clyde’s efforts to catch the thief paid off. Then one afternoon he got Ruby to pretend she had a bad headache. He had her sit in the back of her car in the plant parking lot.

“According to Ruby, she heard a car come up in the parking lot. She watched as Inez’s boyfriend
parked directly in front of the door. After a few minutes, she saw Inez come out of the factory and slip a big bundle into the car’s trunk. It was during the busiest time of day, late afternoon, when most workers were preoccupied with reaching their daily quotas. Ruby went right inside the plant and reported what she’d seen to Clyde. Clyde called me and I went to Inez’s old man’s house and found bundles of scarves and gloves. It seems as if Inez stole the stuff and her old man took it up north to one of his cousins who sold them and split the profit with Inez and her old man. Naturally, Inez was fired.”

“That explains the hostile attitude I sensed Inez had when we were talking to her about Ruby,” Mama told him.

“Clyde told me that two days after Inez was fired, she sat in her car in the plant’s parking lot and waited for Ruby to knock off from work. The fire in her eyes was like a dragon, he was told. It was like Inez had lost her mind. People saw her tear into Ruby like she was a piece of meat. It took four or five of Clyde’s strongest men to get Inez off Ruby—he claims that several people swear that Inez would have killed Ruby right then and there that very day if she hadn’t been stopped.”

“That’s interesting,” Mama said softly.

“The plant headquarters in New York have instructed their lawyers to press charges against Inez, her boyfriend, and his cousin. Seems to me that Inez Moore and her crew are facing serving some time.”

“Did Inez know about that?” Mama asked.

“Clyde got the news the day before Ruby died. He told Ruby and he told everybody at the factory. I reckon it wouldn’t have been too much of a problem for Inez and her old man to find out that their troubles were just about to begin that same day.”

“So it’s possible that Inez and her boyfriend could have murdered Ruby,” I suggested. “It would have been easy for her to have learned that Ruby was in the Inn, to get a key to her room and give it to her boyfriend. She of all people would know that the motel was almost empty that night. She could stand watch as her old man slipped inside and killed Ruby, then just pretend to find her body the next morning when she went in to clean the room.”

“It’ll be interesting to know what Inez and her boyfriend were doing the night Ruby died,” Abe said.

“She told me and Mama that she was riding in Avondale around midnight,” I said.

“She also told us that she saw Ruby’s boyfriend in Avondale about the same time,” Mama said thoughtfully.

“I’ll get Rick to talk to Inez and her old man,” Abe said.

“By the way,” Mama said to the sheriff, “Jeff Golick told us that Ruby had a scarf around her neck when she checked into the Inn.”

“Her clothes were there but a scarf wasn’t in that room,” he answered.

“I also told Jeff Golick that you would be wanting a list of the dates Ruby spent at the Avondale Inn
during the past six months, and the phone numbers she called while she was staying there.”

“You want me to call him and remind him to get it for me, right?” he asked Mama.

Mama flashed him a “yes” smile. “Jeff also told me that Ruby had a large sum of money in her purse that night.”

“I suspect you’ll want to see this too.” Abe handed Mama another piece of paper. “Delcena Walker, the teller at the Otis bank, gave this to me. You’ll see the savings activity shows that six months ago, in March, Ruby had a balance of $35,000. She’d been withdrawing an average of five hundred dollars a month until finally she withdrew $33,500 in May, almost exactly three months before the date of her death. Her checking account shows that she deposited seven thousand dollars six weeks ago, in July. She withdrew all seven thousand dollars the day before she died.”

“There was no money in her motel room?” Mama asked.

“Not a dime,” Abe answered.

“Except for the receipt for that five-thousand-dollar certified check you found in Ruby’s purse, there’s no trace of all that money,” Mama murmured.

Abe’s expressive face turned sour. “Ruby could have shot herself because the money got away from her,” he pointed out.

Mama looked thoughtful. “Did you ask Herman Spikes about Ruby having that much money?”

“Herman told me they kept their money separate.”

Mama shook her head. “This is all so puzzling.”

“You might as well know that the gun Ruby used to shoot herself was reported stolen by a Jason Tuten who lives near Cypress Creek, not far from your cousin Agatha.”

“When?”

“July twentieth. Two days after the attempted rape on Ruby,” Abe said.

“When did Jason Tuten say he missed his pistol?”

“He said he usually kept it in his pickup. He was fishing, saw a snake, went to his pickup to get his .22 and it was gone. He came right to the office and reported it stolen.”

“Did he know Ruby? Or remember seeing her anytime before he missed his gun?”

“Nope. Jason swore to me that he never met Ruby Spikes, never even heard of her until I mentioned her name.”

Mama had a look on her face like she was trying to figure things out. She took a deep breath, then stood up. “This is all so confusing, Abe. Simone, let’s go. I want to stop by to check on Sarah before we go back to the house.”

My heart sank. “Do we have to visit Sarah tonight?” I asked, not wanting to hear Sarah whine about not having enough money to pay her taxes or the evilness of her neighbor who was lurking about, waiting for her to lose her property.

“Jeff Golick made it clear to us that he got the impression that Ruby didn’t have any friends, at least none close enough for her to confide in. But Sarah was Ruby’s godmother—Ruby might not have told Sarah everything, but I’m willing to bet there isn’t much that Sarah Jenkins, Carrie Smalls, and Annie Mae Gregory don’t know about Ruby Spikes.”

T
here is still a lot of daylight at seven on an August evening. As I opened my car door, I saw a white Volvo 940 parked directly across from Abe’s office. The windows on the automobile were darkly tinted, so I couldn’t see the driver. Still, I had the distinct feeling that my mother and I were being watched. I started to say something to Mama, then decided it wasn’t anything to call attention to; the feeling was so faint it was probably foolish to mention it.

As I had expected, Sarah Jenkins’s comrades, Carrie Smalls and Annie Mae Gregory, were keeping vigil with her on her front porch. “Candi,” Sarah asked excitedly as Mama walked up the front steps, “have you found who killed poor Ruby?”

It’s only because I know my mother well that I saw the shadow of caution cross her face. “Sarah,” she replied gently, “how are you feeling this evening?”

“You haven’t found anything, have you?” Sarah asked without answering Mama’s question.

Mama shook her head. “No.”

“Simone, go in the house and fetch you and your mama a chair,” Carrie Smalls ordered, shaking her head as if she was not pleased with Sarah jumping right on Mama about Ruby before offering her a chair to sit in. “Might as well sit down and rest your feet.”

I hurried inside, found two folding chairs in the kitchen, and brought them out to the porch.

“Sarah,” Mama said once she was seated, “I’ve talked to a few people and—”

Sarah cut in.
“Ruby didn’t kill herself, Candi
. I tell you, that girl didn’t shoot herself and you’ve got to prove it by August thirtieth. I’ve never been so embarrassed in all my life. Everybody is talking about me, saying that I was stupid to send my tax money to Canada—you’d think the people in Otis are the smartest people in the world! The only way I can stop their wagging tongues is to pay my taxes on time just like everybody else. And people been calling me trying to steal my land for nothing. It’s getting so I can’t answer my telephone. I told Carrie and Annie Mae that is the only way I can shut the mouths of the people in this town and stop them from talking about me and my business like I was some low-life—”