Secrets, Lies, and Crawfish Pies Page 12

  “I know. It’s not an app. It’s built into the phone.” As if she knew more about a cellphone than I did. She didn’t even own one. “But there is no reason to take a picture of that.”

  “It could be the murder weapon,” she said.

  “No, it couldn’t,” I said.

  “How do you know?”

  I pointed to the box of ammunition. “He wasn’t killed with a slug.”

  “What?”

  “There were pellet entry wounds all over his back.”

  “Oh,” she said. She seemed deflated.

  “What did you expect to find here?” I asked. “A smoking gun?”

  “No,” she said and flapped her arms, then pointed at the shotgun. “But I was hoping that maybe it was the gun.” She huffed. “Not exactly sure what I’d find,” she admitted. “I was just hoping.”

  “Hoping that it was my Aunt Julep and not your friend whodunit?”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “Oh brother,” I said. “Can we go before she sees me?”

  “You don’t want her seeing you?”

  “No. I don’t. Not while I’m out here with you looking for clues that will make her a murderer.”

  “It won’t be my fault if she is,” Auntie Zanne said in a huff. She swiped the barrel of the shotgun that was laying free. She knocked it on the ground and started walking back to the car, cutting across the grass in a diagonal, not even worried even a little bit about trespassing through the neighbor’s yard.

  “You can’t force the shoe to fit,” I called to her. I bent down to pick up the barrel. “Don’t you remember the story of Cinderella? No one could make the shoe fit their foot,” I said as if she didn’t know the fairytale. “Same thing with Aunt Julep.”

  “Can I help you?” A rather tall, wide black man stood on the porch. He stuck his hand out and wiggled his fingers. I looked down in my hands, I was still holding on to the barrel. “That,” he said, “belongs to me.”

  I didn’t know who he was, but I handed it to him, then hightailed it the heck out of there.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was a tug of war with Auntie Zanne to get the keys from her after we got back to the car. I wasn’t going to sit idly by and let her drag me to any more of her imagined crime scenes. And I was ready to get back to the house. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what Roble’s Social Queen Bee had planned.

  “I need to make a stop,” Auntie Zanne said, two blocks before our street.

  “Where?” I asked. “You want to go plant evidence at Aunt Julep’s house?”

  “No,” she said. She looked at me disapprovingly. “Aren’t you snippy? I have to go and check-in at Angel’s Grace.”

  Grace Community Center, nicknamed Angel’s Grace, was Auntie’s hub. It was the home of Roble’s Belles, the high school booster club, her food and clothing drive operation, and the county’s soup kitchen. And it was her hangout. It was the second place I’d look if I needed her and she wasn’t at the funeral home.

  I did a U-turn. “I don’t want to go there and stay all day,” I said.

  “Day’s more than half over. Couldn’t stay all day even if I wanted to.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I won’t stay but a minute,” she said. “I just have to check out everybody.”

  By everybody, I knew she meant her first-tier gossip mill.

  I put the blinker on to turn into the parking lot. “You think someone here might have seen my Aunt Julep carry the body in?”

  “It’s possible,” she said, more seriously than I liked. “Pull over there.” She pointed. “I have a reserved spot next to the door.”

  “Figures,” I said. I parked and waited for her to get out.

  “Come in,” she said. “Everyone wants to see you.”

  “Did you tell them I was here to stay?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” she said, acting surprised. “I wouldn’t say that to anyone.”

  “You’ve told that to everyone else.” I turned the car off and got out.

  “No I haven’t,” she said, waiting for me to come around the car.

  “You told Catfish and Rhett.”

  “Oh,” she said and looked at me sheepishly. “I just told them in case they wanted to make a move. They wouldn’t feel like they were wasting their time.”

  “Make a move? Auntie!” I said. “I don’t want anyone to make a move on me.”

  “Not yet, but once I can get some of my tea in you, you’ll be singing a different tune.”

  “Hi!” Auntie was greeted at the door by her fellow Belles. Chester, the only male Belle, yanking it open before she could even grab the handle. Mark, Leonard and Flannery stood waiting with nervous smiles on their faces.

  “Are you okay?” Mark and Leonard asked at the same time. They stood on either side of her and placed their hands on her arms.

  Mark and Leonard were twins. Twin girls. They loved their father so much that after he died, when they were only seventeen, they changed their names to his. Typical to people in the south, he’d had two names and so they each took one. At least that was the story that Auntie Zanne told me. Of course, by the time I met them, they already had their current monikers.

  Our next-door neighbors, they were in their mid-seventies, and their names were the only things different about them. They were identical in every other sense. Their mannerisms, dress, and ailments. I heard many a time about Auntie having to go over to take care of them both getting sick with the same thing at the same time. Although being members, along with Auntie Zanne, in the Distinguished Ladies’ Society of Voodoo Herbalists, one would think they could heal themselves.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” Auntie Zanne said. “But I had to have Romaine drive me over. This is all a lot to take in.”

  I just shook my head at my auntie’s exaggeration. She’d been driving most of the day.

  “Romaine!” Mark exclaimed. I guess they had just noticed me. “It’s so good to see you!” She came over and took my hand. “Look, Leonard, isn’t she still just as beautiful as the day we first seen her?”

  “Yes, she is,” Leonard said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  The twins were always reminiscing. It seemed easier for them to remember what happened thirty years ago than what happened the day before. But even with their shaky memories, Auntie swore she couldn’t run the center without them. Without any of them, including Chester and Flannery.

  “So good to see you,” Flannery said and came over. Squeezing past Mark and Leonard, she hugged me. “Spoon told me he’d just seen you.”

  “Yep. Over at the house. He’s in the zydeco band,” I said.

  “He is,” Flannery said with a smile. Just as pretty as the last time I’d seen her. “And I think him playing those drums makes him happier than me.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” Auntie Zanne said. “But I came over to get information.”

  She had a need to be the center of attention.

  “I need your help. But I want to keep all of this amongst ourselves,” Auntie said.

  “Of course,” Mark said and took Auntie’s hand and led her into the back kitchen. “Come on, let’s get a seat.”

  Chester ran ahead and pulled a chair out from the table that sat in the corner. The room was all stainless steel and commercial grade. Auntie and her clan had served many a Thanksgiving and Christmas meal from there.

  Auntie took a seat and put on a fake exhausted look. “I just don’t know what’s going on at my funeral home,” she said. “I leave for two weeks and the whole thing goes to hell in a handbasket.”

  “It’s terrible,” Chester said, shaking his head.

  Chester wore his Roble Belles-monogrammed shiny blue jacket with pride and participated in gossip just as much as the women.

  “How
do you think it happened?” Flannery asked.

  “I don’t know. All I do know is that Josephine Gail didn’t do it.”

  “Of course she didn’t,” Mark and Leonard said at the same time.

  “How could anyone think such a thing?” Leonard asked.

  Auntie looked over at me. All I could think was that if she mentioned my Aunt Julep, I was going to scoop her up and stuff her inside the kitchen’s commercial fridge till she cooled down.

  “I don’t know,” Auntie said. “But you know she is the one that found the body.”

  “Well, what about your new girl?” Mark asked. “Did she see anything?”

  “She just started,” Auntie said.

  Mark and Leonard looked at each other.

  “What?” Auntie asked.

  “Well...” Leonard started. “We saw her.”

  “Go into the funeral home,” Mark added.

  “While you were gone,” Leonard finished their sentence.

  “At first, we thought maybe she was set to begin working,” Mark said. “But...”

  “She never came back,” Leonard said. “At least not until the day after you got back. You and Romaine.” She smiled at me.

  “That was the day she was supposed to start,” Auntie Zanne said.

  “Oh,” they said.

  “What do you think that means?” Chester asked. “Do you think she did it?”

  “I don’t know,” Auntie said, shaking her head. She tugged on her bottom lip. “But I don’t think so.”

  “What’s her name?” Flannery asked.

  “Floneva Floyd,” Auntie answered.

  “She’s from Hemphill,” I said. I looked at Auntie. “A hop, skip and jump from Yellowpine.”

  “She sure is,” Auntie said, nodding.

  “You better check her out,” Chester said. “She seems like a good candidate.”

  “Who do you think, Babet?” Flannery asked.

  “We’ve got a couple of leads we’re following. But I don’t think it was anyone around here,” Auntie said. “Because wouldn’t that just be awful?”

  “Awful,” the twins said in unison.

  “Maybe Leonard and I should come over and view the body,” Mark said.

  “Good idea, Mark,” Leonard said. “To see if we recognize him.” She nodded. “You are going to have a viewing, aren’t you?”

  “What a good idea,” Auntie Zanne said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said, which made everyone looked at me disapprovingly.

  “Oh look,” Chester pointed out the mullioned front windows. “It’s Coach Williams.”

  “The coach?” Auntie said, her attention diverted just that quickly. “I need to speak with him about summer practice.” She looked at me. “You can get the car. I’ll be right out.”

  “He coaches high school football,” I said, guessing. Auntie wouldn’t have called him “Coach” otherwise.

  “Yes,” Mark and Leonard said together.

  “The leader of our Roble Belles,” Flannery said.

  “Amen,” the four of them chimed.

  Chapter Eighteen

  We had finally made it home. Auntie still had enough energy to go and embalm our John Doe.

  I sat on the back porch with J.R. and a glass of ice-cold lemonade. Sweat dripped down the side of it, lemon, mint, and ice packed into the glass. I laid my phone on the banister and put my feet up next to it.

  “Long day, huh, J.R.?” I said.

  He went over and laid down at the top of the steps.

  “Exactly how I feel,” I said.

  I looked around and remembered how I used to hang out on the back porch. It was so calming and gave off such good vibes. The back of the house was so different from the front.

  There were lots of live oak trees that covered every part of the property, in fact every inch of Roble, and why not. The town’s name meant oak in Spanish.

  There was no definition to Auntie Zanne’s backyard. No rhyme or reason. Auntie’s perennials grew tall and wild all over the yard. A plethora of colors, a bouquet of fragrance. Butterflies flitted and bees buzzed about.

  The windows in the white-framed greenhouse sparkled. Auntie Zanne’s place was a potted palace. There were rows of the annuals she grew for the front of the funeral home, and the plants and herbs she used for her teas and brews she made from recipes she claimed were hundreds of years old. But there was nothing old about her greenhouse. It was modern with ample room to expand and plenty of head room. There was a mist system, a heating system, and a wall for all of her coveted tools.

  And to the rear of it, a rambling pebble stone walkway staggered its way down to a white gazebo that bordered a small pond, the verdant grass surrounding it was lush and vast.

  The sun seemed to shine brighter in this part of the house. None of the gloom or the sadness that surrounded all that entered through the other side.

  The front of the house was stately. A testament to its time and era, updated and preserved, it had found a new, useful purpose–one, my auntie taught me from the first day I arrived, that will never be outdated.

  Ball Funeral Home & Crematorium was a haven of sorts for exuding the care and respect due not only to families at the low points in their lives–but to the dignity, transport, and shelter of the remains of the decedent. It was a beautiful facade to the public, a sanctuary to the grieving.

  I took a sip of my lemonade and thought about my first day back in Roble. I closed my eyes.

  Back in Roble...

  I didn’t want to say back home, even though Rhett had given me grief about that. I just needed to keep telling myself that being back was only temporary and not let myself forget that I was going to make a way back.

  The day had been so crazy and busy that I’d almost forgotten how unhappy I was supposed to be. Crazy and busy was what I was used to, but this kind of busy had been different. It had felt good doing that autopsy. And the possibility to get more involved and help Pogue was intriguing. In my position in Chicago, I’d always just handed over my findings to the detective in charge and that ended my involvement. Law enforcement would ask me for the cause and manner of death, an approximate time, and perhaps a handful of questions, but that was as far as it ever went. I was never a part of putting the clues together. I ran my hand over my arm. I had goosebumps thinking about the opportunity.

  I didn’t know what I was going to do about Auntie Zanne, though.

  For some reason she was dead set on my Aunt Julep being the murderer. And my little old auntie was a force to be reckoned with. She would be in the way, demanding to be heard, coming up with all of her own theories, and causing all kinds of confusion. Everyone in Roble respected her and listened to her. Pogue would have to fight against that to solve this murder. I guess I could run interference. Not a job I was looking forward to.

  And one my auntie wouldn’t make easy for me to do.

  I could do so much to help if Auntie Zanne would let me and Pogue do this. Help Pogue make a name for himself and keep my Aunt Julep from being accused and Auntie Zanne dragging her name through the mud. We could help Josephine Gail, which seemed to be all Auntie Zanne wanted. Perhaps she didn’t realize that it was what I wanted too.

  I picked up the phone and googled the name of the man registered at Grandview Motor Lodge. I didn’t find one thing about him. It was like he didn’t exist.

  Then I thought about Josephine Gail. I wondered if when she was feeling bad–deeply lost in her depression–did it feel like how I’d been feeling? I had always wondered if she was feeling the way I did when I lost my parents, or how I felt now that I had to come back to Roble.

  Yeah. If I were completely honest with myself, I’d have to say that I knew exactly how Josephine Gail felt. The only difference was I didn’t know how sh
e could make it back after going down that road so many times. I’d only felt that way a time or two and right now I wondered if I could. It must be hard for her living in that world all the time.

  I let out a long sigh.

  But I needed to convince myself that I could make it back to normal–heck, to happy even–if I could just get back to my life. My apartment. My job. And to my Alex.

  Well, he wasn’t completely mine.

  Still, a girl could hope.

  He had promised me, and I believed him, that one day soon we’d be together. After we’d met and started dating, he was what seemed to complete the life I had been chasing when I left Roble. After finding him, I had everything I wanted.

  But maybe now that I’d left, he’d forget about me. About his promises. I wondered did he even think about me. I’d been busy all day and it was just now that my thoughts had settled on him. Had his thoughts come around to me?

  I looked at my phone.

  I hadn’t heard from him. Sure, he had stopped by before I left Chicago, and gave me a call to make sure I’d arrived safely once I got to Roble. But neither time were we able to talk.

  I missed him terribly. I wondered if he missed me the same way.

  Then my phone rang and startled me.

  Maybe it was Alex.

  I took my feet off the banister, sat up and picked up the phone, my heart pounding I mentally crossed my fingers. Wouldn’t it just be such a coincidence if it were him?

  I looked at the phone screen. The number that was shown wasn’t a number I recognized, but it was from a Chicago area code. Maybe it could be...

  I answered it, only to find it to be a telemarketer.

  How did they even get my cell number?

  Shoot.

  I started to lay the phone back on the banister and thought, why not just call him? I didn’t have to wait until Alex called me.

  I put in the code to unlock my phone and clicked on the dialer icon. Then I just stared at the screen. I blew out a breath and punched in his number. Before it started to ring, my fingertip hovered over the END button. I needed to talk to him, so I hung on.