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MARGE GAVE DOLLY A few minutes of choking back her sobs and wailing about how everything was an accident.
“We were both yelling at Wade and he was screaming back at us. He was holding the nail gun and before you know it, one of us, and I really don’t think it was me, nudged the nail gun in Wade’s hand and he shot himself in the foot. Yes, there was blood, but it went through his heel. Not enough to kill him. I mean, is it our fault that Wade was so fragile that one little nail would kill him?”
Marge had seen Wade Guillory that morning. There was clearly more than one nail sticking in him. There were many. And not just in the foot. But she let that go for the moment.
“Okay, Miss Dolly,” Marge said calmly, “I want you to start from the beginning. Why did you and Gill go over there in the first place?”
She looked up at Marge, her face glistening with tears. A line of nasal discharge was tickling her lip. “Gill? Who said anything about Gill? He wasn’t there that night. Paul was.”
“Paul?” Ida Belle asked from the front seat. She had since lessened her speed.
“Paul Corbett,” Dolly spit out. “He was there to confront Wade about renting to you three girls instead of to him and Ellie. I was there to give Wade a piece of my mind about him sneaking around and carrying-on with Bonnie Cotton. He denied it, but I knew better. His wife Philomena told me he was seeing her.”
“So you were mad that Mr. Guillory was cheating on his wife?”
“No!” she said, screwing her face at Marge. “I don’t give a damn about him cheating on Philomena. Hell, she’s on her way out anyway. But I told him I wouldn’t stand for him cheating on me.”
Marge could feel her eyebrows lift. “You were having an affair with Wade Guillory?”
“Why do you say it like that? I may be a few years older than Bonnie Cotton, but I’m still a looker. And I didn’t mind obliging Wade on some of his more... oddball requests... sexually.”
Marge prevented her face from cringing. She glanced at the rear-view mirror. Ida Belle did the cringing for her. Marge turned back to Dolly. “Okay, so you went there, and Paul was there.”
Dolly shook her head. “No, I arrived first. And then Paul came in and started yelling at Wade and I said, ‘Hey, wait your turn.’ Wade had the nail gun in his hand, and I pushed Paul away from him, only instead of falling away, Paul fell into him. That caused Wade to shoot himself in the foot. He started screaming. The big baby. He said he was going to go call the sheriff. I said, ‘Go ahead! You do that and I’ll tell the sheriff that you and I are trying to kill your wife.’ Well, that shut him up.”
“Wait. What?” Marge asked. “You and Mr. Guillory were trying to kill Philomena? The woman dying of leukemia?”
Dolly folded her lips into her mouth, took a moment, then said, “I didn’t say that. You heard me wrong.”
Ida Belle pressed on the gas, throwing Dolly back in her seat. “Slow down! Slow down!”
But Ida Belle didn’t. She sped up, aiming for a pothole in the road. The Wienermobile bounced over it. Dolly grabbed onto Marge. “Okay, okay. Wade Guillory and I were having an affair. At first, I hated him for how he stuffed my cat. I told him that Crackers crossed her paws right over left, yet for all eternity my poor little kitty has left over right. Why some people refuse to follow directions is beyond me.”
“Forget your stuffed cat!” Marge said. “Tell me about trying to kill Philomena.”
“Well, at first I hated him, and he hated me, but, you know, that can be a bit of a turn on to some people, myself included, so we started sleeping together. He said he’d marry me after Philomena died. But damn, she had six months left! I’m not getting any younger. So we thought we’d help her go sooner. Her doctor said with her medicine she would have six months. So I took the job as her helper and started putting sugar in all her pills. But so far it hasn’t had any effect. The damn woman still hasn’t died!”
Marge’s jaw dropped.
“You’re not going to mention that part of the story to Sheriff Lee, are you?” Dolly asked.
Marge turned away, fighting the urge to strangle her.
“What about Gill?” Ida Belle asked. “Did he know about it?”
“Why would I tell him? He thinks that baseball cap was his uncle’s. I had him go find it for me in the woods, which he did. But that’s all he knows about it.”
Marge turned and stared at her. “Then Gill wasn’t the one who tried to steal it from the Hebert’s back porch?”
“No. That was Paul. What a moron. He didn’t trust me to get it back, so he went himself hours before I was supposed to drop by and pick it up. But then he called and told me Gertie chased him away, so I went there early on my walk and looked in the bushes where he said he threw it.”
Dolly tossed doe eyes at Marge. “Do you think your mama will understand? I’d hate to lose her friendship.”
Marge pulled away from her. “I don’t think someone who’d try to kill a dying woman would top my mama’s list of friends.”
“Oh, crap. Sheriff’s Department,” Ida Belle said, looking in the rear-view mirror. “He’s flashing his lights.”
Ida Belle began to slow her speed, pulling off the highway.
Dolly’s face brightened. “Oh, I get it. You didn’t borrow the Wienermobile. You stole it. Tell you what, I’ll back up whatever story you give him if you forget this little discussion we had.”
Marge leaned into Dolly. “I would happily go to jail for joyriding if it means you are sent to prison for murder and the attempted murder of Philomena Guillory. Maybe they’ll let you knit all the prison uniforms.”
Dolly pulled away from her.
––––––––
IDA BELLE DREW IN A deep breath and blew it out. She glanced up at the rear-view mirror as the deputy stepped out of the Sheriff’s Department cruiser. She groaned.
“It’s Walter.”
She shook her head as she heard his boots approaching. He stopped at the driver’s side window, which was elevated so that it was level with his shoulders. “Jeez, Ida Belle, if you wanted to see me, you didn’t have to steal a car and get arrested to do it.”
“We didn’t steal it,” Marge said from the back seat. “The Martin Brothers said we could borrow it anytime we wanted.”
“Is that true?” he asked Ida Belle.
“In a manner of speaking, they did.” Ida Belle jabbed her thumb back toward Marge. “Marge said to them, ‘Hey, maybe we could borrow it sometime.’ They said, ‘Hah, hah, anytime.’”
“Ahh,” he said.
“This is anytime,” said Marge.
Walter looked into the back seat. “Is that you, Miss Dolly?”
“They kidnapped me!” she screamed. “You can’t believe a word they say. Especially if they say I said something I didn’t.”
Walter looked questioningly at Ida Belle.
“I believe if you take Paul Corbett’s and Miss Dolly’s fingerprints, you’ll find a match to the fingerprints on the nail gun,” Ida Belle said.
Walter cocked his head at her. She’d known him long enough to know that meant he was totally confused. But she continued anyway. “And if you check Philomena’s medicine, you’ll find they’re sugar pills, courtesy of one Dolly Harkins, who conspired with one Wade Guillory to ensure his wife died sooner than her given six months. Dolly admitted to the whole thing.”
“Not true!” Dolly yelled, but then looked at Marge and muttered, “I don’t get it. The bitch is still alive. She should be gone by now.”
Ida Belle rolled her eyes. “As for ‘stealing’ the Wienermobile, well, the Martin brothers did say we could borrow it ‘anytime.’ Did they mean it literally? Who am I to say? Marge did double-check. Can we help it if they meant it as a joke? To that, I say they should learn how to joke better.”
Walter shook his head. He told Ida Belle to follow him to his vehicle. Once he finished radioing into the sheriff’s department to inform them of everything she’d just told him, he turned to her and sighed.
“Broussard’s not going to like it that two girls solved his crime for him. You best watch your back with him. He could make your life rough.”
“Then it’s good Sheriff Lee’s looking for a replacement. Broussard shouldn’t be a deputy if he gets mad that the truth comes out and justice is served. Maybe you’ll think about going permanent on the department.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I’d rather run the General Store. I have to tell you, I don’t much like arresting you. And I have a feeling I’d have to do that a lot in the future if I stayed on. Wouldn’t look good for a deputy to have to keep arresting his wife.”
The word was like a bucket of ice dumped over her head. It shook her core. “Wife? Says who? Because I don’t recall me ever saying, ‘yes’ to marriage. In fact—”
He held up a hand to stop her. “I know. You said, ‘Aww, Walter, why ruin a good thing? Besides, I’ll only be in Sinful for three months.’ I think you’re afraid if you stay, you’ll say ‘yes.’”
She brought her eyes level with his. Was he right? She wasn’t sure. That’s what bothered her. “I say you’d better take your prisoner back to Sinful jail and let us get the Wienermobile back to the Martin brothers before they wake up.”
Walter removed a kicking and screaming Dolly from the Wienermobile and waved goodbye as he sped off with his prisoner. Ida Belle turned to find Marge in the driver’s seat.
“My turn,” she called down to her, grinning.
Ida Belle crossed to the other side and climbed the ladder into the cabin, sliding into the passenger seat. “Before we return our ride to the Martin brothers, we should cruise on back to the turnout to the pond and check on Gertie and Gill.”
“You read my mind,” Marge said, peeling away from the side of the road. “She still thinks Gill’s in on the murder. That can make a girl do crazy things.”
Ida Belle nodded. “And when the girl is Gertie, you can multiply that by ten.”