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“YARN OVER,” THE GRAY-haired woman instructed Marge, who was doing her best to get the hang of knitting. This was Millie, Marge’s target for the evening.
Millie looked to be in her early seventies and was the older gal who had witnessed a man running from the scene of last night’s murder. When questioning targets, or witnesses in Millie’s case, Marge had often found she got better results by engaging them in activities that put them at ease.
“That’s yarn under,” the woman said impatiently. “You need to go yarn over.”
The woman reached over and grabbed Marge’s hand and forced the needle under her line of yarn. Shook her head. “Are you sure you’re Acadia Boudreaux’s daughter?”
Marge sighed. Engaging in activities as a spy for the U.S. Army could mean a whole host of things, from dancing, having a few shots of whiskey, or playing cards. This was the first time she’d knitted. Something told her this would be the last time.
Millie looked over at Acadia, who sat knitting and gossiping with Gertie’s mother Beatrice and several other women across the room.
“Acadia?” Millie called over. “Are you sure this is your daughter?”
Acadia stopped chatting and pulled her gaze to Millie. “I gave birth to her and raised her, so yes, I’m sure.”
“She knits for crap,” Millie said.
Marge glanced over at Ida Belle, who sat in one of the folding chairs that formed an arc across from the sofa. Sitting next to her was another woman, Sarah, who witnessed a man emerge from the woods one street over from the rental. Marge rolled her eyes at Ida Belle and received one in return.
“Marge may be a lousy hooker, but she’s dating one of those boys who drives the Wienermobile,” Acadia said proudly.
“No I’m not, Mama,” Marge said, pulling the yarn through the slipknot. The slipknot had been easy to make. Knots were her specialty. Just ask anyone she’d ever tied to a palm tree in Vietnam.
“I hear the Martin brothers are driving the new model Wienermobile,” Millie said, reaching over again and correcting Marge’s placement of the needle. “Oscar Mayer made the wiener bigger and added a bun.”
“About time they did that,” Beatrice said. “The Wienermobile they were driving before was an early sixties model. The dog on top looked like a puny Vienna Sausage compared to the wiener they have today.”
Marge blew out a breath as the other women in the room agreed loudly with Beatrice. Hot dogs had always been a big deal in Sinful. Ida Belle lifted her brows, signaling it was time to start pumping the ladies for information about what they’d seen.
“So... Miss Millie...” Marge said, “I heard you may have seen someone running away from the rental property where Mr. Guillory was murdered.”
Millie stopped her knitting and frowned. “At least I thought I did. ‘Course, if I’d a known he killed Mr. Guillory... why I woulda pat him on the back!”
Dolly dropped her knitting and rushed over, squeezing on the sofa between Marge and Millie, causing Marge to scoot over several inches. “Millie, how can you say such a thing?”
“Well, let’s see,” Millie said, laying her knitting on her lap. “He treated his wife like crap, what with his gambling and all.”
Another woman wandered over and sat in one of the folding chairs. “And he was a skirt chaser. And with his wife being sick!”
Millie nodded in agreement.
Dolly leaned in toward Millie. “Who are these women anyway? We hear about them, but does anyone know who they are?”
Millie shrugged. “Wade was a sneaky one. Could be anyone. She’d have to be desperate to go out with him.”
Or forced to go out with him, Marge thought, an image of Bonnie Cotton popping in her head.
Dolly folded her arms. “That’s a nasty thing to say. Philly’s married to him, you know. She could have had her pick of Sinful men at one time.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Millie said. “Don’t get your knitting needles crossed.”
“I just feel sorry for Philly is all,” Dolly said, getting defensive. “She’s just devastated, of course. I sat with her for a while today and she was just in shock.”
Millie patted Dolly on the knee. “That’s so nice of you, considering you and Wade butted heads about that stuffed cat of yours.”
Beatrice and Acadia wandered over and joined in on the discussion. “I still can’t get over that nitwit Broussard interrogating you about Wade’s murder,” Acadia said.
Marge leaned forward to look around Dolly at Millie. “You are certain you saw a man running from the rental, aren’t you?”
Millie shivered. “I thought I was, but now I’m not so sure.”
“Why the doubts, Miss Millie?”
“That nincompoop deputy had me so befuddled. Now I’m not so certain it was the rental he ran from. And then Broussard said that moonshiners will often deliver their hooch to their buyers in the woods, so maybe the man was just a moonshiner.”
Sarah piped up. “I heard that Buster Bussey saw a convertible at the rental house during the murder. You own a convertible, don’t you, Dolly?”
Dolly’s face reddened. “That stupid Buster. He was definitely wrong about that. Besides, we all know it was Bonnie.”
Several women were vocal in their agreement. Marge needed to take control of the discussion. “Let’s set aside Buster’s observations and get back to yours, Miss Millie. Did you get a good look at the guy running? Are you able to describe him?”
Millie sighed. “I did until that Broussard got me so confused.”
Marge asked Millie how she felt when she’d seen the man, knowing that sometimes reliving the emotions one had felt at the time could help with recall.
Millie closed her eyes. A moment later they popped open. “My knee. I felt pain in my knee.”
“Pain in your knee?” Dolly asked.
Millie nodded. “Yes, because he fell, tripped on something, I think a tree stump just before disappearing in the woods. I have a bad knee, so whenever I even see someone else fall, my knee hurts.”
Marge then asked Millie to recall seeing the man, starting with the fall and moving backward, another method to help recall. Soon Millie was recalling that the man was wearing a dark sweatshirt, that he was tall and thin, and that he was wearing a baseball cap.
“I think that’s the man I saw as well that night,” Sarah blurted out. “I was on Poitier Street, on the other side of the woods. He came strolling out of the trees between Dolly’s house and the Caissy’s house. Only he wasn’t wearing a hat. But he was wearing a sweatshirt. That’s all I remember.”
Ida Belle put Sarah through the same recall exercise. At the end of it, Sarah remembered that the man was skinny and wore green pants. And he was tall. It was dark on the street and he kept his head down, so she didn’t see his face. She put the time about 9:40.
“I could tell Deputy Broussard didn’t take what I saw seriously,” Sarah said. “My husband said I shouldn’t have wasted the sheriff’s time.”
“It’d be my guess that the man parked on Poitier Street,” Ida Belle said. “He probably figured no one would notice him, especially if he just casually strolled down the street.” She looked at Millie. “Did you tell the deputy about the hat?”
Millie shook her head. “No. I didn’t think that was important.”
“Well, why bother?” Dolly asked. “They’re only going to tell you to stop butting in.”
Ida Belle smiled and stood. Marge knew that her friend was thinking the same thing. The hat might still be in the woods.
Marge stood as well. “Ladies, it’s been fun learning how to knit, but we just remembered something we have to do.”
She and Ida Belle began walking toward the door.
“You’re leaving?” Marge’s mother called out, her tone reminiscent of when Marge was a teenager and would leave the dinner table to go meet her friends. “We still have an hour left of our club meeting, young lady. I made your favorite cookies.”
“And I mixed up a batch of Ida Belle’s favorite lemon-limeade,” Beatrice chimed in, the same level of motherly annoyance in her voice.
“Oh, crap,” Ida Belle whispered to Marge. “I was hoping we could get Gertie and go search for the hat tonight.”
“Let me handle it,” Marge whispered. “I came prepared.” She smiled at her mother. “Of course we’ll stay to the end. And over cookies and lemon-limeade,” she added, pulling out a sheet of paper from her purse, “I was hoping I could get y’all to sign my petition to our legislators regarding voting on the Equal Rights Amendment.”
Several of the women gasped in horror, many showing disgust on their faces.
“Oh, hell,” Millie cried out to Acadia, “your daughter’s a women’s liberator? Is she a hippie too?”
“Of course not, she’s joking,” Acadia said. She rushed over and opened the front door and shoved Ida Belle and Marge outside. “You two have a nice evening,” she said sweetly, although her glower didn’t match her voice.
“I don’t suppose we can borrow your car?” Marge asked her, getting a door slammed in her face as the answer. “Could you at least call Gertie and have her pick us up in her granny’s car?” she shouted through the door.
* * * * *
THE MOOD IN THE RAMBLER wagon was somber as Granny Magoo drove at a snail’s pace to the rental house. The news that Gertie’s granny had seen a woman with a white dog had sent the three girls’ spirits plummeting. To make the situation worse, the mystery woman also smoked, as did Louanne Boudreaux.
Gertie, seated next to her grandmother in the front seat, stared at the speedometer. “Granny, do you think you could go a little faster?”
Her granny turned toward her. “Did I ask you to crawl faster when you were a baby? Hm? Did I?”
While her focus was on Gertie, the car drifted to the left, in the lane of an oncoming car.
“Granny Magoo!” Ida Belle yelled. “Watch that car!”
Granny Magoo swerved to the right and hit the brakes. She stuck her head out the window and yelled as the opposing car passed. “Long-haired hippie! Stay in your own lane!”
“Granny! That was Sheriff Lee’s wife.”
“Are you sure? She looked like one of them long-haired hippie boys to me.”
“Yes, I’m positive,” Gertie said, pursing her lips. She picked up her granny’s purse, which sat between them on the bench seat, and pulled out her granny’s glasses. “Maybe if you would wear your glasses, you’d have been able to see the difference between a forty-something-year-old woman and a young hippie boy.”
“Do I ask you to get married and give me grandbabies? Hm? Do I?”
“In fact, yes.”
Marge leaned into the front seat, between Gertie and her grandmother. “Are you sure you were wearing your glasses last night when you saw that woman?”
Granny Magoo nodded glumly. “For what it’s worth, though, I don’t think it was your aunt. Could have been any number of tall, slender gals who smoke and have white dogs. And there was no convertible. That I’m positive about. There was no car parked on the street except for Wade Guillory’s car.”
“Millie said she saw a man running from the house. You didn’t see that?” Ida Belle asked.
Granny Magoo shook her head. “But Millie and I were going in opposite directions. We passed each other a few minutes before I got to Wade’s street and parked. Even blinked our lights at one another. She would have seen the man running away before I got there.”
Gertie pointed to a road ahead. “Okay, turn right at the corner.”
Granny swerved to the right.
“Not yet!” Gertie screamed. “That’s someone’s front yard. Wait till the street.”
When Granny Magoo finally reached the street and turned right, Gertie pointed to a clear spot along the curb to park. “Okay, you can park here. We’re a few houses away, but we need to be discreet. We don’t want to attract attention. So if you have an urge to yell at something, please don’t.”
Gertie, Ida Belle and Marge exited the car and carefully closed the doors.
Her granny frowned and whispered out the window, “And if you have an urge to give me some grandkids anytime soon, please do.”
When the three were several houses away from the car, they came upon a wooded lot that led into a thick grove of Southern Live Oak. The rental house was situated on property next to the empty lot. Gertie put her arm around Marge’s shoulder. “Don’t you worry. We’re going to find proof that Louanne wasn’t involved.”
Marge nodded and managed a slight smile. “It would be easier if she’d just let Gabby be her alibi.”
Ida Belle stopped and nodded toward the rental they’d hoped to live in for the next three months. Crime-scene tape, wrapped loosely around the porch and forbidding entrance to the house, flapped like ghosts in the breeze.
“It looks sad,” Marge whispered.
They stood silently for a few moments and stared at it, each lost in their thoughts of what might have been.
“That Mr. Guillory didn’t sound like a nice guy, but he didn’t deserve to die,” Gertie whispered.
“Hopefully we can at least give him some peace and help find his killer,” Ida Belle said. “All that other stuff is between him and his maker.”
They agreed to split up and comb the area for a baseball cap that was possibly left by the killer.
Ida Belle disappeared deep into the woods near where the killer would have emerged on Poitier Street, which ran parallel to the street where the rental stood. Marge headed for the midsection of the wooded area. Gertie concentrated on the area nearest the street where Millie had said the man tripped on something before disappearing into the dense thicket. Gertie flashed her light across the lawn and spotted a tree stump, which could have been the reason for the man’s tumble.
After spending a good thirty minutes carefully scanning the area around the tree stump and coming up empty, Gertie flashed her light away from the grassy yard and toward the woods, noticing a downed tree limb. Her Granny Magoo had mentioned that the woman and dog she’d spotted had been standing behind a downed limb. Though the mystery woman could have been just sneaking a cigarette, this area seemed a strange place to do that, though her granny had seen the woman the week prior as well, standing in the same spot.
A snap of a twig brought her attention to her left. A small beam of light danced through the copse. Though it could have come from Marge’s flashlight, instinct told Gertie to remain silent and turn off her light. She watched as the beam came closer. Finally, the figure holding the flashlight emerged from behind a thick oak tree. Although the person had now turned away from her, she could tell the tall, thin individual was a man. And from the look of his skinny frame, he could be Buster Bussey.
It had been more than an hour since she’d left Buster’s house, certainly enough time, Gertie figured, for Buster to drive over to the rental. And the way he was slowly scanning the ground with his flashlight indicated he was looking for something. A hat perhaps?
Lifting her gun gingerly from inside her scarf belt, Gertie moved quietly toward Buster, hoping he would discover the hat and she could catch him in the act. Apparently, Buster had the hearing of a dog, because he shot his head up and froze. Gertie froze as well.
He spun around. Gertie’s eyes focused on the weapon in his hand.