The Feed Store Floozy (The Penelope Pembroke Cozy Mystery Series) (5 page)

CHAPTER NINE

Bradley and Rosabel showed up for dinner that night. “It’s just leftovers,” Penelope warned
as she handed out plates and motioned for them to help themselves from various dishes on the cabinet and stovetop.

“It’s always good,” Rosabel assured her.

“Besides, beggars can’t be choosers,” Bradley added.

Penelope punched his arm. “Did I mention you have to pay for your food with some information?”

“Yeah, dish up the dirt,” Jake said.

“Now, Pawpaw, you know I can’t talk about work.”

Jake gave his grandson a long look. “It’s all over town anyway, and I was there. So was your mother.”

Rosabel carried her plate to the table and sat down. “The two of you were on the square this afternoon?”

“Heard it all,” Jake said. “Harry called Hal Greene a Judas, and Wally Powers cussed like a sailor. Expected the ladies to get the vapors and faint all over the sidewalk.” He joined Rosabel at the table.

“Yeah, Parnell told me he broke things up,” Bradley said. “I wish things would settle down like they used to be.”

“It’s the times, Brad,” Jake said. “Nothing stays the same. Let’s thank the Lord before the food gets cold.”

****

“I don’t know what Mayor Hargrove is so upset about,” Rosabel said, spreading her napkin in her lap. “Nobody cares what his great-grandfather did a hundred years ago.”

“I think he’s carrying it a little too far,” Penelope agreed. “Mary Lynn, too.”

“I just want that Powers fellow to get his story and get out of town,” Bradley added. “He’s a loose cannon.”

Jake looked up. “A loose cannon?”

“I just mean he’s been in some situations before, Pawpaw. I checked him out when he started rubbing people the wrong way with his big-city act. It’s public information.”

“So tell the public,” Jake said.

“He’s been married several times.”

“Three,” Rosabel chimed in.

“And he’s had a string of libel lawsuits against him as long as my arm, but he always came out smelling like a rose. He proved what he wrote was the truth.”

“Truth is a good defense for libel,” Jake said. “John Peter Zenger.”

Penelope frowned. “What?”

“I read that somewhere.”

“Oh.”

“Well, you’re right, Pawpaw. Facts are facts. Malicious intent is one thing, but if a writer sticks to the facts, he’ll stay clean as far as the law is concerned.”

“And facts are what Parnell took to Hal Greene,” Rosabel said. “He says he almost wishes he’d left well enough alone, but he didn’t like the idea of Brice Dolan reneging on his promise to Mr. Greene.”

“Speaking of Parnell,” Penelope said, “he said you’d gone out to Possum Hollow this afternoon.”

Bradley nodded. “I hate going out there.”

“Why?” Jake asked. “Is it dangerous?”

“It can be, but that’s not why I hate it. I hate seeing the way people live, especially the kids.”

“Some get out. Elbert
Hadden did.” Penelope buttered a crescent roll and waited.

“He’s one of the few who ever did. The kids are dirty, and sometimes when it’s cold weather, they don’t even have shoes.”

“You know Mary Lynn and I try to see that they do, at least at Christmas.”

“I know, Mother. That’s why I don’t say anything about the two of you going out there.”

“You always send Parnell along.”

“It makes me feel better.”

“Then he comes back and reports what he sees, I bet,” Jake said.

Bradley nodded.

“He said something this afternoon about moonshine,” Penelope said after a minute.

“I wish that’s all they did.”

Penelope glanced up. “That’s what he said.”

“Drugs?” Jake asked.

“I can’t talk about it, Pawpaw.”

“Sure, sure, I understand. Did you serve your warrant?”

“Took me a while, but I found who I was looking for.” The pager Bradley wore on his belt went off. He looked at it, then got up and went to the phone on the wall and punched in some numbers. “What? Oh, crap.”

Jake, Rosabel, and Penelope stopped eating and waited.

“Oh, shoot,” Bradley said, apparently remembering who was listening to him. “I’m on my way.” He hung up.

“Should I keep your plate warm?” Penelope asked.

Bradley shook his head. “It might be breakfast tomorrow morning before I got back to it.” He pecked Rosabel on top of her smooth, dark head. “Mother will have to run you home. I’ll call and fill you in.”

She nodded. “Sure.”

When Bradley had gone, Jake picked up his fork again. “I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts somebody’s done something to that Wally Powers.”

“Why would you think that, Daddy?”

He tilted his head and concentrated on the asparagus tips with Hollandaise sauce. “I’ll bet you a beer and a Reuben I’m right.”

Penelope sighed. “I’d buy you a beer and a Reuben just to celebrate if you’re wrong. We don’t need any more trouble in this town.”

Rosabel patted her future mother-in-law’s arm. “Maybe it’s nothing.”

“When Bradley says ‘crap’, it’s something,” Penelope said. “When he was a little boy, he got his mouth washed out with soap more than once for saying that word.”

“That would be called child abuse today.” Jake chuckled and speared the asparagus.

“In my day, it was called good parenting,” Penelope said. “Mum did the same thing to me when I came home from third grade with a few new words.”

“Times have changed,” Rosabel said. “And not for the better.”

CHAPTER TEN

“You’re blessed hysterical, Mary Lynn. Calm down so I can understand you, or I’m going to hang up.”

A hoarse, shuddering sound met Penelope’s ear. “Your son—my godson—has been here questioning my husband!”

“About what?”

“Like you don’t know.”

“Listen to me, Mary Lynn, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
Dear Lord, I do. Daddy was right. Somebody killed Wally Powers, and Harry’s a suspect because he got into it with him yesterday.

“It’s that
slime ball Wally Powers. Somebody snuffed him.”

“You know good and well Bradley would never suspect Harry.”

“He was here for two hours tonight.”

“Mary Lynn, Harry doesn’t even like to go fishing because he feels sorry for the fish. The whole town knows what a softie he is.”

“He hasn’t been a softie since Wally Powers showed up. Oh, Pen, why did Brice Dolan have to buy that place and tell everybody what he found upstairs?”

“I’ll admit I wish he hadn’t, but I have to say Wally
Powers got what was coming to him.” Penelope closed her eyes and muttered a quick prayer for forgiveness. Human life—even a life like Wally Powers’—wasn’t to be dismissed lightly.

“Anybody in town could’ve done it. He made everybody mad the way he poked his nose into their private business. He even asked Miss Maude Pendleton if
any of her relatives worked as…”

Penelope choked. “He didn’t!”

“He did. Miss Maude ran him off with her grandmother’s antique pearl-handled umbrella.”

A mental picture of
the seventy-plus-year-old former English teacher who’d struck fear into the hearts of generations of Amaryllis students flitted across Penelope’s mind. “There’s nothing left of that but the spines.”

“And she laid them across his back, according to her niece Prissy who’s here visiting.”

“Good for her.”

“Imagine asking Miss Maude Pendleton
something like that. The Methodist Church couldn’t open its doors without her waiting to go in.”

“Miss Maude is a formidable foe, I’ll admit.”
If Bradley questions her, she’ll beat him to death with that umbrella, and that’s a fact, even if he was her pet in school.
“So how did whoever did it do it?”

“I don’t know. Bradley didn’t say, just asked Harry where he went after that disgraceful scene at the newspaper office yesterday afternoon.”

“Where did he go?”

“Home with me, and he never left. I wouldn’t let him.”

“So he has an alibi.”

“He doesn’t
need an alibi! Harry wouldn’t…”

“Don’t yell at me, Mary Lynn. I just made an observation.”

“Oh, Pen, it’s too awful, just too awful.”

“It’s also ten-thirty at night, and I’m going to bed. Come over in the morning for coffee. I bought some fresh kolaches at Rose’s Bakery on the way home yesterday.”

“If I can. Harry’s so upset I’m not sure he can even go to City Hall tomorrow.”

“Sure, he can. Harry’s not going to let something like this keep him from doing his mayoral duty. Doesn’t the Town Council meet on Thursday morning?”

“You know it does. I’ll see you sometime tomorrow then.”

“Goodnight, Mary Lynn.” Penelope hung up the phone and sat on the edge of the bed considering what was coming. Another murder in Amaryllis. A scandal that could reach back into almost any family who’d lived here since the early days—and those made up three-fourths of the town. She got up and walked to the bureau for a fresh nightgown.
Brice Dolan, why didn’t you just remember who you are—an Amaryllis boy born and bred. Why did you open this blessed can of worms?

****

Shana called mid-morning while Penelope and Mary Lynn were having coffee and kolaches. “I guess you’ve heard what happened.”

“Somebody killed Wally
Powers.” Penelope pushed the button for speaker so Mary Lynn could listen.

“Bradley’s already been in here this morning asking about what Wally said when he came in the other day.”

“I didn’t know he’d been there.”

“He’d heard about the old papers in the storeroom.”

“Who told him?”

“Everybody knows they’re there, waiting on somebody from the historical commission to come get them.”

“I’ll call up there again and see if I can light a fire under somebody. What did you tell Powers?”

“That our offer to donate them had been accepted, so they were technically the property of the state, and he couldn’t mess with them.”

“I bet he didn’t like that.”

“He called me a…well, I would’ve slapped him, but the thought of touching him made me nauseous.”

“Just as well. He’d probably have filed charges against you for assault. He painted the air blue in the newspaper office yesterday afternoon.”

“He kept on at me, even offered me a sizeable bribe, until I told him I’d call the police if he didn’t leave. So he left and said he’d be back with a better offer.”

“But he never came back.”

“No, but that photographer gal he brought in did.”

“Jill Jerome.”

“Right. She wanted to take some pictures of the boxes. Said she’d call them ‘historical mystery in a box’. I told her she couldn’t, and she left.”

“No argument?”

“Nope. Smiled and told me to have a nice day—like she meant it, which she
probably didn’t.”

“What are you going to do this afternoon?”

“I’m driving to Little Rock to pick up Tabby from preschool. Her grandparents are coming, and Peter’s on a job in Benton. So I get to chaperone their visit.”

“Lucky you.”

“Yeah, aren’t I?”

“Call me tomorrow and tell me how it went.”

“If there’s anything left of me.”

“You just look them in the eye, smile sweetly, and keep your smart mouth shut.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Gotta run.”

Penelope sat down again. “Well.”

“Poor Shana. They’ll eat her alive.”

“Maybe not. If they want to see their grandchild, they’d better make nice.”

Mary Lynn reached for her zebra-striped bag. “I’m going to check on Harry. He sure didn’t want to go to that Town Council meeting this morning.”

“Here, take him a kolache.” Penelope slipped one into a plastic baggie. “It’ll sweeten him up.”

“Thanks. I’ll tell him you said so.”

“Mary Lynn, just chill out. Harry’s no more a suspect than you or me.”

Mary Lynn raised her eyebrows. “Maybe you’re not, but I’ve got motive.”

Penelope laughed. “You? Well, did you do it?”

Mary Lynn rolled her eyes and stalked out the back door.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“It’s all over town,” Jake said, arriving home from a day-long session with the Toney twins. “Wally Powers was either shot or stabbed or strangled or beaten to death. Take your pick.”

“Well, now we know how, so what about who?”

Jake grinned. “If you took a poll in town, the butler did it.”

“I take it nobody cares.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, but everybody agrees he got what was coming to him for trying to stir up trouble in Amaryllis.”

“That’s pretty cold, isn’t it?” 
But
I thought the same thing. After everything that’s happened, maybe we’re all turning into icicles.

“The one thing I do know for sure is it happened at the feed store. There’s police tape around it, and I saw Brad going in and out a couple of times.”

“What about Brice and that lady photographer?”

“Haven’t seen him, but the little gal was everywhere, taking pictures, getting names and having releases signed. Says she’s going to do a photo spread for some magazine.”

“She didn’t take your picture, I hope.”

“No, she was finished before she got around to me. But I did talk to her.”

“Really? About what?”
            “I guess somebody told her I was Brad’s grandpa. She wanted to know what I thought about everything.”

“Did you tell her?”

“I just told her I took the fifth—lived here all my life, wanted to stay on. ‘Course, what I really think is the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot as your mother used to say. Can’t imagine what Harry’s so stirred up about.”

“I’ve been thinking that. I never heard of Malachi
Sanborn until Mary Lynn mentioned the name.”

Jake gazed out the window above the kitchen sink and then turned around, squinting. “The
Sanborns were his mamma’s family. I remember his grandfather. He was born here, but when he died, Harry’s mamma and daddy took him up north for burial. I remember everybody talking about it.”

“That’s odd. Not people talking but taking him out of Amaryllis.”

“He married a woman from somewhere up there. Maybe she was buried there. I don’t remember ever seeing her.”

“Well, then, it would make sense for him to want to be buried by his wife.”

“Sure, it makes sense, but I remember everybody talking about it, which makes me wonder now just why it didn’t make sense to them.”

“Wait a minute, Daddy, I thought Malachi
Sanborn’s wife sold the saloon and got the you-know-what out of Dodge.”

“Yeah, that’s what Hal wrote in the
Bugle
.”

“But Harry’s grandfather came back and raised a family here?”

“I guess so.”

“Now that’s downright spooky.”

“Why?”

“His mother leaves town, shakes the dust from her feet, so to speak, but one of her sons comes back and spends his life here.”

“Maybe Harry knows.”

Penelope chewed her lip. “Maybe what Harry knows is why he doesn’t want the story out.”

“I don’t know, Nellie. Let’s get a beer and a Reuben at the Sit-n-Swill tonight. Mike and Millie are bound to have picked up some scuttlebutt.”

****

“He’s been here all afternoon,” Millie said, nodding in the direction of Hal Greene, who sat nursing a beer at a back table.

“How much has he had to drink?” Penelope whispered.

“Not that much. Mike asked him if he wanted something to eat, but he said no. That was about four o’clock. I guess he’s a prime suspect in this latest situation.”

“Situation. That’s putting it nicely.” Penelope watched Jake take a bottle of beer from Mike and head to Hal’s table.

“Penelope, Mike and I thought we were moving to a nice, quiet, slow-moving town, in spite of what happened at Pembroke Point before we got here. But now I don’t know. Bones under the boiler at the old school, a body in the basement, a haunted fireplace here, and who knows what else.”

“You don’t believe the fireplace
was really haunted,” Penelope said.

“I didn’t think so, but it’s like the town is jinxed all of a sudden.”

Penelope watched Jake lean forward across the table as Hal’s lips moved, though not enough for her to read them. “I don’t think it’s jinxed, Millie.”

“I hope not. We like it here.
Did you and Jake come for a Reuben?”

“I thought so, but Daddy seems to have forgotten all about that. I wonder what Hal’s saying?”

“More than he’s said to Mike or me all afternoon.”

“I’ll settle for some sweet tea and a bowl of those special chips from Dallas.”

“Make yourself comfortable, and I’ll get them.” Millie bustled off.

Penelope took the table by the wall where the evaporative cooler had once groaned its life away. Now an electric unit filled the room with a silent chill. Millie came
back with two teas and a large bowl of chips with salsa and sat down across from Penelope. “We’re never very busy on Thursdays.”

“You make up for it on weekends though.”

“Absolutely.”

“Bikers coming back?”

“A few once in a while, but none of the hardcore type, at least not often.”

“What type is that?”

Millie laughed. “The tattooed, pierced kind who scare everybody half to death.”

“They didn’t bother Roger Sitton when he had this place.”

“They don’t bother Mike and me either, but some of the people who never came here until we took over are put off when two or three of them roar up.”

“Do they cause any trouble?”

“Drink their beers and leave.”

“What did you do with that pool table Roger had in the back room?”

“It’s still there. A couple of older men come in to play once or twice a week. But we don’t advertise it. We don’t want to get anything started we can’t live with.”

“Trouble with a capital T,” Penelope said.

“Something like that. Somebody came by the other day and wanted to put some slot machines back there, too, and Mike told them when hell froze over.”

“Are those even legal? I mean, I know they have some games down in Hot Springs, but I thought that was a special deal.”

“It’s called gaming, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s legal or not—we don’t want any part of it .”

Across the room,
Hal Greene rose so abruptly his chair turned over, threw down a bill on the table, and walked out. Jake joined Penelope and Millie. “Says he didn’t do it,” he said.

“Everybody heard Wally
Powers threaten him.”

Jake nodded. “Uh-huh. And guess who found the body upstairs in Miss Madeline’s room?”

Penelope’s mouth dropped open. “Not Hal.”

Jake nodded. “Bingo.”

Millie’s eyes widened. “Poor guy. Watching those old clothes and other stuff brought up out of the fireplace over there was bad enough, but at least we didn’t find a body—and a fresh one at that!”

“He’s pretty shaken up.”

“Surely the police don’t suspect him—do they?” Penelope asked.

“Nah, at least not right now, but somebody else does. When he opened up this morning, he found a letter somebody slid under the door. It said he’d better watch his step.”

“This is worse than a soap opera,” Millie said.

“It gets a lot worse,” Jake said. “He gave the letter to the police, but
not before he took a good look. It was on city stationery—from the office of Mayor Harry Hargrove.”