Progressive Dinner Deadly (12 page)

“You killed her!” Cullen said in a vicious voice. “It was you, it must have been. You hated Jill.”

“I hated the fact that she was sponging off of you with Dad’s money! That money should have been mine. And then you drank the money, instead of doing anything useful with it at all. If
I’d
had that money…”

“Oh
right
. Because if
you’d
had Dad’s money, you’d be a Nobel Prize winner. Right. Same old story.”

Simon stood very still. “I would have made something out of myself. Dad didn’t mean for his money to be spent on booze,” he said. “And it would kill him that your wife was cleaning other people’s houses. There’s no excuse for the way you’ve been just bumming around the house, drinking, while your wife works two jobs to scrape together a paycheck. What kind of man are you? She was scrubbing our toilets last week.”

“It was the old man’s money,” said Cullen, ignoring Simon’s mention of Jill’s housekeeping. “He could do whatever the hell he wanted to with it. So he did. He didn’t like your lifestyle…”

“There
wasn’t
any lifestyle,” said Simon in a very quiet voice. “Lies. You lied to the old man to get his money. And somehow he believed you. And now you’re trying to pin Jill’s murder on
me
? You didn’t give a rip about Jill.”

“I
did
,” said Cullen. His hands were clenched in fists at his side.

“Really? Because I’m thinking you got rid of her so you could mess around with…”

Cullen gaped at his brother. “You think I
killed
her? She cooked for me. Cleaned for me. Did my yard work. Are you nuts?”

How touching, thought Myrtle. Really, he was just in the same position she was in with Puddin and Dusty—he hadn’t wanted to lose his housekeeper and yard man.

“Besides, you couldn’t stand Jill, either. And nobody knows what you were doing when she was killed. I’ve got a good idea…I think you murdered her.”

Simon gave a short laugh. “Why would I do that, Cullen? For what possible reason?”

“Plenty of them. You’ve always been embarrassed by Jill. You thought she wasn’t good enough for our family. And maybe…I think she figured out why Dad cut you out of the will. Maybe she didn’t want to hold her tongue like I always have.”

Now Simon’s eyes were coldly furious. “There’s nothing to find out. You made it all up. I didn’t go near Jill. And get off your high horse, Cullen. If you’d cared anything about Jill then you wouldn’t have been cheating on her right up until she died.”

Myrtle’s eyebrows shot up. She looked around to see if Sherry were listening and what her reaction was, but apparently Sherry had retreated to the back of the gym.

“Just because I cheated on her doesn’t mean I didn’t love her,” said Cullen in what Myrtle considered a staggering lack of logic. “The affair didn’t mean anything. Jill and I understood each other.”

“It sure would’ve been
convenient
if Jill had been taken out of the way. Then there would have been nothing standing in the way of you two,” said Simon. “How can you handle living in this town where everybody knows what a lazy, no-good guy you are? You had
plenty
of money. I heard about that windfall. But you were still happy to have Jill out there working like a dog.”

And that was the moment when Cullen threw the first punch. Myrtle suddenly heard Red’s voice bellowing out, “All right.
All right
! That’s enough. Break it up, you two,” and her son quickly strode into the lobby, reaching down a big hand to yank apart the brothers.

It only took a second for Cullen and Simon to separate. They stared at each other, panting. “Cullen, I know your sorry hide doesn’t have a gym membership here. Get out before I charge you with trespassing. Simon, you better start exercising before you’re charged with public fighting and disturbing the peace.” Red waited while Cullen slunk out and Simon, still bristling, grabbed his workout bag and stalked into the weight room.

Red finally noticed Myrtle standing to the side, clutching her coffee. “Mama? What are you doing here?” he squinted suspiciously at her. “You always turn up like a bad penny whenever there’s trouble. Should I be looking around for a dead body?” He did double take as he took in Myrtle’s athletic outfit. “You’re here to work out?”

Red’s delight really made Myrtle steamed. She hated having him think he’d won that argument. But it would be worse having him think she was snooping around on his case. “Miles got me to go. He’s been talking up this place for months. So I figured, why not? I didn’t mind so much if I had somebody to exercise with me.”

“Well, I’m just glad to see you here, Mama, whatever the reason was. You’ve been trained on the equipment and everything?”

“Yes, some man yesterday showed me how to use it. You know, I didn’t see Sherry here yesterday. I didn’t even know she worked here.”

Red hoisted his workout bag back onto his shoulder. “Yeah, I usually see her in here when I come. She doesn’t work every day, though.”

“It’s a good thing you were here when
you
were, Red. Considering that fight.”

Red rolled his eyes. “Those two just don’t get along. You’d think that brothers would have more in common. Seems like I break up a fight between those two every few months.”

Myrtle trod carefully. She wanted to try and get information from Red, especially since she sensed he’d been knocked off-guard by her sudden interest in exercising. But she didn’t want to supply him with any information he didn’t already have. “It sounded to me,” she said slowly, “like they were fighting over money. Like Simon was upset that their father had cut him out of his will and given the money to Cullen.”

“Well, if that’s what they were fighting about, it sure isn’t the first time,” snorted Red. “You’d think they’d stop going round and round on that subject. Cullen pressed charges years ago against Simon after the will was read and Simon jumped on him. Sounds like nothing much has changed. Do you remember how they were when they were boys?”

Myrtle said, “It wasn’t too bad at the school because they were in different grades. But I remember a couple of times I heard about fights on the school bus.” She snapped her fingers. “Almost forgot. I wanted to ask you how Maisy Perry is.”

Red looked grim. “She’s doing okay now that they pumped her stomach out. She was a

lucky lady that she got sick where she did. If she’d been at home then she probably wouldn’t have made it. Having all the church ladies jump in like they did really made a difference.”

“But she wasn’t just
sick
, was she? I’ve never in my life seen someone get
that
sick,
that
fast. Was she…poisoned?” She didn’t want him to know that Elaine had been blabbing to her about it.

Red rubbed his eyes. “Yes, Mama, she was. Somehow her drink was poisoned with liquid nicotine. But I can’t for the life of me think why someone would want to kill Maisy Perry. Did she upset someone with her horoscopes? I can’t even ask her anything because she’s still in bad shape. Seems like the whole town is going to hell.”

“
Liquid
nicotine? So that means that it was in her drink?”

“That’s right.” Red glanced at his watch. “We’ll have to catch up later, Mama. I’ve got to squeeze my workout in and then get back to work. Perkins and I have to get started in about an hour.”

Myrtle raised her eyebrows questioningly when Red paused. “You coming?” he asked.

She groaned, threw her cup in the trash can and went in to face her doom.

M
yrtle found, to
her great surprise, that the workout wasn’t as bad as she’d expected. The weights were set to her specifications, there were several people she knew in there (including Miles, who was already on the stair climbing machine and looked pleased to see her), and she felt like she had more energy at the end of the exercise. She made plans to return to Fit Life on Monday. But only, she told herself, because that would give her another chance to see Sherry and Simon.

Red, luckily hadn’t seemed too upset by the fact that she was asking questions, and hopefully no one else was, either. Maybe Red was right. There was absolutely no reason for anyone to murder Maisy. She was fluffily innocuous and her horoscopes were a favorite feature in the
Bradley Bugle
. Besides, Willow had taken over writing the horoscopes for a whole week before Maisy was poisoned. If anyone was upset about a prediction, they had only Willow to blame.

But there were definitely reasons for someone to want to murder
My
rtle
. Most people just thought of her as a snoopy old lady. For someone who really had something to hide, though, they might consider her a threat. Erma’s loud mouth at the visitation had broadcast that Myrtle knew exactly who the killer was. And then Sloan ran that big story about his octogenarian investigator. Myrtle locked her front door behind her as she went in—a rare daytime occurrence.

She opened the door back up again when there was a soft “meow” outside. Pasha, thought Myrtle. It was amazing how used she was getting to that cat. She’d really beefed up, too. She wasn’t the scrawny creature she’d been a week ago. And she had all the tuna cans in the trap to thank for the fat grams.

“Hey, kitty,” cooed Myrtle as she opened the front door. “How’s Pasha today?”

Pasha darted in furtively and, to Myrtle’s horror, appeared to have something in her mouth. “Pasha?”

Pasha turned and, seeing she had Myrtle’s attention, made a great show of putting a chipmunk down on Myrtle’s throw rug. To Myrtle’s gaping horror, the chipmunk began hobbling around drunkenly. Pasha looked disapprovingly at Myrtle. It was clear that Myrtle was not doing what she was supposed to. She gave the chipmunk a swipe and looked up at Myrtle. Myrtle still stared openmouthed at the wounded creature. Finally, in disgust, Pasha lifted a paw and, swiftly brought it down again onto the chipmunk. She leaned over again and picked up the chipmunk by its neck and looked at Myrtle as if to say, “See? This is what you’re supposed to do.”

Myrtle opened the front door. Pasha shot her an icy glare and left with the chipmunk firmly in tow. Thankfully.

The chipmunk incident had completely destroyed her appetite. Which was a shame, since she’d been ravenous when she’d gotten back from exercising. And Elaine had given her a batch of her famous pimento cheese, too. Pity.

She looked at the clock. Her sidekick had left the gym before she had. He should be cleaned up and ready for a phone call by now, thought Myrtle.

“Okay,” said Myrtle
as soon as Miles picked up the phone. “I’ve overheard a little about Cullen and Simon and why they might want Jill dead. I have a pretty good idea about Sherry and Blanche’s motives. And I know Georgia was upset with Jill over money. The problem is,” said Myrtle, “that I don’t have a good excuse to talk to Georgia. And I can’t just go up to her house and knock on her door with no good reason to be nosy. If I start going around and having little afternoon teas with all the suspects, that would
really
worry the killer.” Myrtle thought about the iced tea and wondered again if the killer was already on to her.

Miles straightened his steel-framed glasses. “Is Georgia a regular at Bo’s Diner or anything? Does she have any kind of routine that you can interrupt?”

“I don’t think so. I think she’s trying to save money and doesn’t really go out that much except to work and collect angels from garage sales.”

“Well, can you go to her work?” asked Miles.

“That’s no good. She works in a law office.”

Miles blinked at this. “A law office. Looking like that?”

“I guess she has good typing and phone skills. Who knows? Maybe the lawyers were hard-up or something.”

“Seems like you could just pop by her office for some made-up reason.”

If I just walk through a lawyer’s door it’ll cost a hundred dollars.” Myrtle sighed. Then she slapped her palm on Miles’ end table. “I’ve got it! Since she collects ceramic angels, I’ll invite her to come by and see my collection.”

“You have a collection of ceramic angels?” Miles asked doubtfully.

“No, but I have a collection of gnomes. Aren’t collectors are interested in seeing other people’s collections?”

“Not really,” said Miles. “I think they’re just interested in their own collections. You’d better try again.”

“Or… I could buy a few angels from the drugstore and then have a yard sale. Georgia said she spends her Saturday mornings combing yard sales for angels.”

“Could you rummage up enough stuff to make up a yard sale? Your house seems pretty uncluttered.”

Myrtle waved her hand dismissively. “I could dig up some old things to sell. Or Elaine can go in with me and put out some old baby clothes or something. She’s been talking about having a yard sale for ages. And there’s no time like the present.”

“How ‘present?’”

“This weekend, of course.”

The yard sale
merchandise was a little scarce, but there was definitely enough there to qualify it as a bona fide sale. Elaine had brought over a bunch of layette clothes, a baby exer-saucer, and assorted bottles, blankets, washcloths, and hooded towels. After thoroughly combing her house, Myrtle was able to come up with a few pots and pans (cooking wasn’t Myrtle’s favorite hobby, anyway), some old sheets, a few yellowing paperback books, and the angels she’d bought on the sale aisle of the drugstore.

Myrtle didn’t have the patience to put stickers on everything, especially since she wasn’t really interested in selling the stuff to begin with, and so grouped things together on blankets with signs indicating the price of everything on the blanket. It was a good thing she was a raging insomniac because a couple of what appeared to be professional yard sale shoppers rang her doorbell at five o’clock in the morning. Myrtle, who’d been up for two hours already, wasn’t nearly as cross as she could have been. They took a few of the baby things, but when the couple turned their attention to the ceramic angels, Myrtle shooed them away. This done, she settled into a yard chair to wait for Georgia Simpson.

It didn’t take long for Georgia to show up. She was in an aging pickup truck that under the best of circumstances was probably white. Myrtle noticed there were already clothes, books, and other odds and ends bundled in the back of the truck, so she knew she wasn’t Georgia’s first stop. Myrtle pushed herself out of her yard chair with some difficulty. “Hi Georgia!” she said.

Georgia barely gave her any sign of acknowledgement as she scanned the sale items. It was clear that Myrtle was faced with another yard sale pro. She took some of the baby clothes (the better ones, Myrtle noticed…probably to resell them on the internet) and then gravitated inevitably to the ceramic angels, picking them up and cradling them in her hands.

“These almost look brand-new,” she said in a reverent voice.

Imagine that. “They’re in great condition, aren’t they?” said Myrtle. “Georgia, I was wondering about what you said at the pancake breakfast…”

“How much are you asking for them?” Georgia looked longingly at the little angels.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Myrtle crossly. “Do you remember at the pancake breakfast when you were talking about Jill?”

Apparently, nothing else in the world existed but Georgia and the angels because once again she interrupted, “How much are you asking?” she murmured. “I just don’t know if they’re in my budget…”

“Oh for heaven’s sake! Just take the darned things,” said Myrtle. At Georgia’s startled expression, Myrtle continued in a sweeter voice, “I mean, feel free to accept them as a gift from me. I know how much you enjoy your angel collection and it would mean a great deal to me if you provide them with a good home.”

Georgia was still looking at her with a perplexed expression. Myrtle said, “Sorry to jump down your throat like that, Georgia. It’s been quite a week.”

“I know what you mean, Miss Myrtle.
Every
week is like that for me. Well…thanks. These little angels will fit right into my collection.” She paused. “Was there something you were trying to ask me?”

Now that she had Georgia’s full attention, Myrtle wasn’t exactly sure how to proceed. “Uh. That’s right, I was going to ask you about Jill’s death.” Georgia made a face and Myrtle hurried on, “You see, I think it’s therapeutic for me to talk about it to people. It was just
so
traumatic coming across her body that way. Right in the middle of supper club, too!”

Georgia appeared somewhat discomfited. “I guess it would be a picture that would stick around in your head for a while. I wasn’t with the supper club then, though. You know—I stayed behind. I fell asleep.” She looked hard at Myrtle as if to search for any signs of disbelief.

Myrtle tried to direct the conversation back to the pancake breakfast. “I remember your saying that you were upset with Jill about something….” She trailed off the sentence in the hopes of eliciting information from Georgia, who was perilously close to being distracted by angels again.

Georgia snorted. “
Upset
? I was more than upset, Miss Myrtle. And you would be, too. Jill Caulfield robbed me. She robbed me just as much as if she’d taken a gun and held me up.”

Myrtle waited and Georgia continued with an impatient sigh. “Jill and I went in together to buy lottery tickets at the gas station about six months ago. The deal was that if we won anything, we’d split it.”

“And you got a winning ticket?” asked Myrtle. She hadn’t heard anything about a lottery winner in Bradley, but then that wasn’t usually the kind of news she spent much time following.

“Well, it was fifty thousand dollars! Not the big pot, but a lot of money, you know? She’d bought the tickets and held them, and then turned in the winning one herself. I guess she didn’t want any lowlife relatives creeping out of the woodwork, so she didn’t say anything about it to the newspaper.”

“Didn’t you confront her about it?” said Myrtle.

“I’ll say I confronted her about it. Gave her a black eye, didn’t I? Of course, everybody thought that Cullen gave it to her, and she let them think it because she liked people feeling sorry for her. Saint Jill.” Georgia rolled her eyes.

“It seems like you could have found a lawyer at your office to get the money back for you,” said Myrtle.

“Not really. It was her word against mine, right? It wasn’t like we’d signed a contract with each other, and no one was around us when we decided to go in together to buy the tickets.”

“So Jill had more money than I thought,” said Myrtle, leaning forward onto her cane thoughtfully. “But she didn’t do very much with it, did she?”

“Well, no,” said Georgia in a sour voice, “She wouldn’t, would she? Because of the Saint Jill thing. She wanted to work the two jobs and have everybody think she was God’s gift. So she just sat on the money. But she was worth a lot more than people thought.”

Was that enough money to kill for? Myrtle wondered about Jill’s will. Was there a beneficiary whose life would improve with a quick infusion of cash?

“Besides,” said Georgia, waving an angel in the air, “I wasn’t the only person who had issues with Jill. Her own sister was fighting with her the night of her murder. So you can’t tell me that there weren’t others who saw through her phony-baloney stuff. Maybe Willow was trying to straighten her out.” Georgia gave a vindictive toss of her head.

Myrtle was getting a little bored at the lack of new information. “Well, we all know that Willow was mad at Jill for not leaving Cullen. And she hated Cullen for being a bum and making Jill work to support them.”

“I think it was more than that. Willow saw that Jill would rather complain about Cullen than divorce him. It was more like
Jill’s
fault than Cullen’s. Besides, Willow
hated
the way that Cullen treated Kojak, his dog. She’d get right up in his face and yell at him. Kept trying to kidnap the dog and take him to her house—then Cullen would show up and drag the animal back home. Cullen was just being spiteful because he didn’t like Willow’s meddling.” Georgia shrugged her shoulders. She looked down at the angels she’d cradled in her arms. “Are you sure it’s okay for me to take the angels, Miss Myrtle? I’m used to paying for things I want.
I’m
an honest person, anyway.”