Chapter Eighteen

“This is not what family is for,” I said to Auntie Zanne. She had insisted that she get in the car with me instead of going back home the way she came. I had other plans and she was getting in the way.

“I have to stop at Eugenia’s and get her things for burial,” she said. “I can’t ask them all to go and do that with me.”

“Why not? You had no problem inviting them in on your hostile takeover…your…heist…or whatever it was of the medical examiner’s facility.” I couldn’t even find the words I wanted to use to describe her actions.

“Did you find anything that pointed to Delphine as the murderer?” she asked.

“Is that why you wanted to ride with me?” I asked. “You didn’t get anything from the autopsy, so you figured you’d question me now?”

“You were using all those big words.”

“It’s medical terminology.”

“Doesn’t help me to understand it one bit. I need it in regular English.”

“I didn’t find anything that pointed to Delphine necessarily,” I said.

“There you go again,” she said. “What’s with the ‘necessarily’?”

“It means that I don’t know that she did it from what I found,” I said. “Pogue will have to follow the clues.”

“I don’t think she did it,” she said and locking her eyes on me. I would have stared back but I needed to keep my eyes on the road.

“You said at the medical facility that’s why you brought her with you. So you could snake her out, catch her.”

“I changed my mind.”

“You can’t decide who did it,” I said, not wanting to know her reasons for a change of heart. “You have a knack for that, you know?”

“I do not,” she said and scrunched her nose at me.

“You have to follow the clues,” I said.

“You always say that. And I am following them,” she said, “and the clues tell me that Delphine didn’t do it.”

“Are you getting these clues from some kind of ‘hocus pocus’ source?” I asked.

“No. It’s Delphine. She’s a healer, this wouldn’t be like her. Not in her realm,” Auntie said. “It’s not the kind of herbalist she is.”

“Are there those kinds of herbalists?” I asked. “The kind that have killing in their realm? Whatever that means.”

“Sure there are. It’s what they’re known for. It’s easy to tell their handiwork. People come to them or fear them because of it,” she said. “But doing harm? No, that’s just not Delphine’s style. She helps people. She teaches those classes at her house.”

“The herbology classes?” It was more of a statement than a question. I remembered Delphine telling me about how she taught a steady stream of students that flowed into her home.

“Yes,” Auntie said. “She’s into natural remedies. She’s into healing.”

“She had the ricin that killed Bumper,” I reminded her.

“If you’d take the time to remember the story correctly,” Auntie Zanne said, “instead of giving it your own spin, you’d know she used it as a natural remedy.”

“For cancer.” I nodded my head toward her. “I remember.”

“One murderer in the family does not make a family of murderers,” Auntie Zanne said.

“She did lie about the letter.”

“No she didn’t,” Auntie Zanne said. “She never said it was or was not another part to it. She only shared the one part with us.”

“That’s an omission.”

“Oh please,” Auntie Zanne said.

“And what about the insurance money?” I asked.

“I was thinking,” Auntie Zanne said, completely ignoring my question, “we shouldn’t count Orville out.”

“Oh you think he’s capable?”

“I do.”

“What reason would he have for wanting his wife dead?”

“You mean other than him lying about the arrangements Eugenia wanted. Him trying to cremate her to get rid of the evidence? And him being the last one to see her alive?” She raised one eyebrow. “Other than those things?”

“Those are reasons for us to consider him a suspect,” I said. “But none of those things tell us the reason he would have done it.”

“Money,” she said. “You heard Delphine same as I did. He was all about the money.”

“Seems to me, he had more access to her money when she was alive.” I mimicked her expression and raised an eyebrow of my own.

“He was the last person to see her,” she said.

“You already said that, and we don’t know that for sure. He said he didn’t come home until this morning. She was already dead by then.”

“We do know for sure,” Auntie Zanne said, “that the deed was done at the dinner. That part is certain. But we don’t know that he wasn’t responsible for what happened at the dinner or, maybe, that he did something once she got home.”

“Did something? Like what?” I asked. “It had already been spilled on her.”

“Maybe he put more on her.” Auntie Zanne said holding her hand out and shaking her hand, indicating there was a multitude of things he could have done. “Maybe,” she continued, “he wouldn’t let her get undressed until it was all soaked into her skin to his satisfaction. Maybe,” she clung onto the word, “when she got sick, he held her down and wouldn’t let her call for help.”

“Auntie—”

“You don’t know,” she said. “It’s possible. You didn’t see her. Lying there. Posed. Looked like she’d been placed in a casket by a skilled mortician. Who dies like that?”

“Maybe he put her like that because…he…loved her.” I could barely get the words out of my mouth. He certainly hadn’t appeared to be the loving, caring type when he showed up at the funeral home. Still, people love and grieve in different ways.

“You know what time she died?” Auntie asked.

“Approximately. She’d already been put in the cooler at the hospital morgue when I got her. No temperature taken beforehand.” I looked at Auntie. “Why? What do you know about his whereabouts last night?”

“Nothing. Yet.” Her eyes looked forward, but I could see the firm nod she gave. It meant that she was going to find out.

“Don’t go trying to force him into a confession,” I said. “Follow the clues.”

“He knows something.” Her thoughts were miles away from my warning. “Did you see him practically go into convulsions when we mentioned an autopsy?” She turned to me.

“No,” I said.

“Tsk,” she sucked her teeth. “Yes you did,” she said. “We’ve got to investigate.” She rocked her head back and forth. “Maybe the both of them. Orville and Delphine. So we don’t look biased.”

Now she wanted to carry on a fake investigation side-by-side with the real one. I had to chuckle, anyone could see who her pick as the murderer was. The only thing I could do was try to stop her from going too far, although that was almost an impossible task.

“Pogue said—” I started to say.

“For me not to go poking my nose in anything,” she finished my sentence. “I already know that. But you can’t expect me to sit idly by with my dear friend, Eugenia, murdered and another friend and Eugenia’s husband as the murder suspects. I’m too far in.”

“You’re not in at all, Auntie Zanne.”

“I can’t do it,” she said, shaking her head so vigorously I thought she’d rattle her brains. “I have to do something.”

“Pogue expects you to not do anything.”

“I don’t know how many times or how many ways I’ll have to tell you that Pogue ain’t got the sense God gave a watermelon. He can’t solve a murder. He needs me whether he knows it or not.”

“Watermelons don’t have any sense,” I said. “They don’t have a brain.”

“Exactly,” she said and lifted her eyebrows. “And I wouldn’t have to go around asking a whole bunch of questions,” she continued, “if you would share with me—in English—what you found at the autopsy.” She swiped her hand across her forehead. “So now I have to ask questions to put the pieces together.”

There wasn’t anything I could say about Pogue to make her change her mind. She’d thought something was wrong with Pogue’s head from the time he was born.

What the heck. I always ended up sharing what I knew with Auntie anyway, I had even told her when I tried to get her to leave that I’d tell her what I found when we got home. I had to share. I knew that. I did it to both keep her from harassing—what she called “interrogating” people—and to keep her from going down the wrong road when it came to the right suspect. Which she did often.

“So,” I said, trying to slow her impending inquest, “I didn’t see anything in the autopsy that gave me any kind of clue about who did it.” I nodded and glanced at her, wanting for her to not go off the deep end. “All I know now is that she was poisoned. And from what I learned this morning about hydrofluoric acid, that’s probably what did it.”

“Now was that so hard to tell me?” she asked. “Plain English is always best.”

“No. But you shouldn’t have hijacked the medical examiner’s office and have me drive you to do errands to prod me for information. I can’t give out autopsy results to just anybody. I said. “We live in the same house. You could have just asked me later.”

“You don’t have anything else to do,” she said. “Why should you mind helping me see to my friend? Or helping all of us do that?”

That made me pause. Not the part about seeing to their friend. The rest of what she’d said was the part that cut. It wasn’t too long ago that she’d told me that I didn’t have any friends. And evidently, she had a slew of them. Now, added to that, it was I didn’t have anything to do. Just what Rhett had said to me earlier.

I guess I really did need to get a life.

“I do have something to do,” I said defensively.

“What?”

“I’m going over Catfish’s. We’re catching crawfish, drinking beer and making étouffée.”

“Does Rhett know you’re going over there for a date?” she said, an eyebrow arched.

“Rhett?” I glanced over at her. “Why would I tell Rhett that I’m going over Catfish’s house?” I shook my head. “And it’s not a date.”

“I thought you and Rhett were an item,” she said.

“No you didn’t,” I said. There was no reason for her to think that. At least I hoped I hadn’t outwardly shown what I’d been internally thinking about that man. “Now you’re just fishing.”

“Just trying to keep up with you,” she said. “You lose your job up north, come home and then you just do… nothing.” She looked over at me, it seemed it was concern that was emanating from her brown eyes. “I just want to know what’s going on with you.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You heard from Alex?”

“Fishing.” I looked at her and put on a fake smile. Then I put my eyes back on the road and chewed on my bottom lip. I couldn’t even believe what I was about to say.

“I do have something to do, Auntie,” I said in earnest. “I’ve decided to be the medical examiner for Sabine, Shelby and St. Augustine counties.”

“What?” She reached over, took ahold of my arm and jerked it so hard that I almost lost control of the car. “You’re going to be the tri-county medical examiner?” She shook my arm with each word.

“Whoa!” I said. “You’re gonna make me have an accident.”

“When did you decide that?” She turned my arm loose and rocked back in her seat, a big smile across her face. “When do you start?” Excitement in her voice. “I’ll pack you a lunch every day and a thermos of tea. Maybe I can come help out sometime. You know when I’m not busy.” She slapped her hand against her forehead. “What am I saying, I’m always busy.” She grabbed my arm again. “How much are they going to pay you?”

I laughed and rubbed my arm. She had had a firm grip. She was more excited than I was about my revelation. “You’re awfully nosey,” I told her.

“I’m going to need you to pay rent, just wondering what would be fair.”

“The house is paid for,” I said. “Why do you need rent from me?”

“I can’t just let people stay in my house free of charge. It’ll make people think I’m running a flophouse.”

“It’s my home, Auntie.” I shook my head. “And I can’t answer any of those questions now, anyway,” I said, “because I don’t know.”

“They didn’t tell you?”

“I didn’t tell them. Not yet, anyway, that I’d take the job.”

“Oh my goodness!” she said. She grabbed my purse and dug down in it.

“Get out of my purse!” I said.

“I need your phone,” she said still digging. “You need your phone. You need to call them now.”

“No I don’t.” I put my hand down on my purse so she couldn’t rummage through it.

“Yes you do,” she said in a huff. “How do you know they even still want you?”

I hadn’t thought about that. Guess it was kind of arrogant for me to think they’d just wait for me to make up my mind. Especially since whenever I got the chance, I told everyone how much I hated being home and couldn’t wait to get back to Chicago.

But then it hit me. Auntie reading me my life. Me happy about the autopsy although I could hardly get through it with all the cackling from the girls going on. Spending time with family—even if it was on a murder investigation.

Pogue, Aunt Julep and Auntie Zanne were the only family I had, and I had missed them. I needed them. And with Alex being divorced and me discovering that maybe I didn’t care as much as I thought I would…It had all been a catalyst, I guess, to making up my mind.

Just like that. Just in that moment I decided. And I felt good about my decision.

I pulled my arm away from my purse and put my hand back on the steering wheel. No, I decided, putting a smile on my face, I felt really good about my decision.

I looked at Auntie holding my purse, poised ready to assault it so she could search for my cellphone if I gave the word.

I shook my head. “I can’t call Auntie, it’s Saturday. I’ll call them Monday.”

“You should call now.”

“No one is there.”

“You can leave a message.”

“No time,” I said. “We’re almost here,” I pointed out the window. “We’ll be pulling up at Miss Eugenia’s house any second.”

She looked out the window as I turned the corner onto Maple Grove where the Elders’ house set mid-block.

“Oh good,” she said, lifting herself up and squinting her eyes to get a better look. “They’re there.”

As I got closer to the house, I saw who the “they” were. There was a big car sitting in the driveway that I knew didn’t belong to the Elders. I knew because it hadn’t been there this morning.

It was a gleaming white, Buick Electric 225.

A deuce and a quarter according to my Auntie Zanne. And I knew I had been duped.

“I thought you said you needed me to bring you because they couldn’t?” I said. I could see her partners in crime mingling around boxes that sat in front of the Elder home.

“Did I say that?” Auntie Zanne said, a confused look on her face. “I don’t think those were my exact words.”

“You know,” I said, “if we are identifying killers based on their omissions and lies, you would be the number one suspect.”