Murder At The Mystery Mansion
I’ve seen a lot of things in my life I wish I hadn’t.
My name is Doreen Sizemore and I’m seventy-two years old. Take my word for it. If you ever get to be my age you’ll see things you’ll wish you never saw neither. Things that make you want to just wash your eyes out with lye soap. Most of them things happened to me while I was trying to help out my kinfolk.
Being tender-hearted can get a body in a world of trouble.
I live in a little bitty river town called South Shore, Kentucky. It might just be a blip on the map to some people but it is paradise to me. I especially love my little town after going away on some of them trips where I was a’trying to help somebody out and got my fool self scared half to death stumbling over dead bodies.
Like I always say, nothing good ever comes from traveling. Bad things happen when I’m far away from home.
I was born and raised in Kentucky and proud of it. Up until the past couple years, the furthest I ever traveled was over the bridge to Portsmouth, Ohio where I had a job working at Selby Shoe Factory. I started in sewing shoes right after my graduation from Greenup High School. That’s what us girls used to do around here. If you didn’t get married and start having babies, you got a job at Selby’s.
If you were fast at piecework--and I was--you could make a pretty decent wage. I used my pay check to help out Mama and Daddy with groceries and for things like buying football cleats for my little brother who weren’t all that little in high school and had to have them cleats special ordered. Back then, I’d also buy a little lipstick and rouge from time to time.
My life in this river town has been a good one. At least for the most part it has been. The people tend to be pretty decent. I’m kin to some, friends with others, and I can tolerate the rest. We got us a high rate of unemployment just like everywhere else in the country right now, but the difference between us and the rest of the country is that we’ve been in a recession for so long we hardly notice it. We’re good at rolling with the punches here in Appalachia. We have to be.
I remember seeing pictures awhile back in some magazine of a little kid with a dirty face a’playin’ in the dirt. Underneath it they was asking for funds to help poor little Appalachian children. Them pictures were a puzzle to me. That child just looked like about half the other kids running around town needing a good face-washing before dinner. I couldn’t see what the fuss was about, but then maybe they know something I don’t.
Now where was I?
Oh yes.
People in South Shore, Kentucky know how to roll with the punches and help out a neighbor. It feels real safe when I’m here in my little house on the river where I belong.
So, after coming home with Lula Faye after that incident on the river boat that landed both of us in jail, I had it all figured out. I wouldn’t leave town no more ever and nothing bad could happen to me. Nope. I’d stay in Kentucky where it was safe and I would mind my own business. That way I could depend on not getting mixed up in any more murders. Come heck or high water I weren’t leaving town ever again and that was that.
I got me a nice life. I like being able to walk over to the beauty shop. I like being able to walk down to Foodland and get me some fresh pickle loaf every now and again and maybe a moon pie if I feel like it. Sometimes I splurge and get an RC cola. It goes real good with the home canned green beans I raise in my vegetable garden in the back yard. RC kinda cuts the bacon grease I use to season the green beans.
When I’m outside walking someplace or working in my garden, I talk to my neighbors if they’re around and that gives me a good feeling. I have my social security check and my soaps on the television set every afternoon and a nice little church to go to come Sundays. And that’s exactly the way I like it. Everything stays nice and safe as long as I mind my own business and stay where I belong right here in South Shore, Kentucky.
One of the best things about staying put in the town you were born and raised in is that you know where everybody fits and what their temperament is and who you can depend on and who it’s good to steer clear of. For instance, there’s the little couple next door. My cousin, Bobby Joe and his wife, Esther. She’s got a brand new baby—her second one in two years. Her husband is not real work-brickle but he’s young and strong and can be helpful in a pinch. It’s good to have young muscle around when something needs to be moved or lifted and he’s nearly always around.
Then there’s old Mrs. Anthony who lives two doors down in that little bitty trailer that has all the rusty buckets of roses growing around it. I know I call myself old sometimes, but Charlotte Anthony is really old. She’s a hundred and one and still hobbles around with a watering can talking to her roses every morning and evening. Them roses must like what she’s a’saying because they grow awful good. Her daughter says if the roses ever start talking back to her mother they’ll put her in a home, though. Her daughter used to be my high school teacher, so being around them two makes me feel like a young pup.
My neighbors directly behind me, the Bruce’s, has a house that kinda hangs out over the the Ohio River. Since he retired from working at the A-plant over in Ohio, they become snowbirds who like to live in Florida all winter and come home during the summer. That’s fine by me. When they’re gone, if it ain’t too cold, I sometimes sit a spell in one of them deck chairs they leave out and then I got me a nice comfortable place to watch the Ohio River roll on down to Cincinnati.
They don’t mind me sitting back there on their porch. They like it. They even give me their phone number to call them in Florida if anything bad happens to the place while they’re gone, and a key to get in if I need to check on something like a busted water pipe. That key is not a temptation to me. I know I could go in and snoop, but what’s the point? Everybody’s life is about the same as another’s anyway. At least it is around here. A little more money here or there, maybe a little more booze, or a few more kids, but all in all we’re mostly just hanging on trying to make sense of things and cause as little fuss as possible.
Three doors down are the Hutchins family. He’s a Greenup County boy, born and raised. He got his wife someplace else though. I can’t remember exactly where. I think it was some place exotic like Nashville. I’ve always liked Glen Hutchins. He worked his way up to principal at the elementary school and he and Samantha have two fine-looking girls. One’s a senior at Greenup High and the other one is a freshman. Good girls, too.
Mrs. Hutchins, Samantha, is polite but she’s never warmed up to me much. I hear she was trying to get a name as a country-western singer back when they first met. Then the oldest girl baby came and Glen got a job back here at home, and whenever I’ve tried to talk to her she always looks like she’s either someplace else in her mind or wanting to be. I know I’m not the most interesting old woman on the planet, but I try not to outstay my welcome when people are busy.
They live in a house that Glen inherited from his grandma on his momma’s side. It’s a fussy sort of place. One of them Victorian-type houses with lots of porches and banisters and lace curtains in every window. I’ve read that some people call houses like that Painted Ladies—like some of the old people used to call women who made their living doing things with men that they shouldn’t have been doing.
I can see why them kind of houses are called that. The Hutchins’ place has that sort of personality, like there’s been things happen behind closed doors that shouldn’t have happened.
Which seems likely. Glen’s great-granddaddy weren’t exactly a church-going man. He made his money as a gambler on the old river boats. His name was Mack McMurphy and it was rumored that he built that Painted Lady house out of gambling money. Not honest gambling money, mind you. Mack McMurphy was rumored to be an expert at cheating.
According to stories my grandma told me, McMurphy’s wife must have been a hard woman, too. Grandma said that Henrietta McMurphy ran a speakeasy in the cellar of that house at night during Prohibition. Then she’d turn around and serve tea and fancy little cakes to the neighborhood ladies in her formal parlor in the afternoon. I guess she thought it would make people less suspicious of the goings-on in the cellar.
People say that one of the builders told his wife there was some hidden rooms and secret passageways in the place. He weren’t supposed to tell, though, and he swore her to secrecy. But some people don’t stay sworn. She told a friend, who told another friend, and then it was Katie-bar-the-door and everybody in town thought there was some secret rooms—but nobody ever saw nothing and the speculation died down about it. Glen always laughed if anybody brought it up and would say that he wished the rumor was true, but he’d been all over the place and never found nothing.
My grandma said that some of the local women told her that they sometimes got the feeling that somebody was peeking at them when they were in the parlor. It gave them the shivers, they said. But my grandma said she was in that house plenty of times and never got the shivers. She said she thought the builder was just trying to make himself look big in his wife’s eyes and it got out of hand.
Anyway, Henrietta and Mack McMurphy’s days were pretty full.
They had one child, a daughter named Elizabeth Ann. Like so many children do when they become teenagers, she rebelled. Problem was, her parents were into so many shady dealings, the only way she could truly rebel was to get religion, so she did. She met a traveling salesman by the name of Hutchins who stopped by the church one Sunday probably hoping his piety would earn him some sales.
He stopped traveling once Elizabeth Ann married him and moved him into the Victorian mansion her parent’s ill-gotten gains had built. They started having Bible studies in the parlor and tried to talk Mack and Henrietta into joining them.
Mack and Henrietta were pretty elderly by then, but they decided that life weren’t hardly worth living anymore with Elizabeth Ann trying to get them to come to Bible studies beneath their own roof, so them two old people bought their selves a little riverboat and took off one night when Henrietta was asleep. They left a note saying they were headed down to New Orleans and for her to leave them alone. I guess she did. I never heard anything different.
You’d think all that drama would’ve rubbed off on the people born there, but Glen’s about as mild-mannered and boring as a man can be. I guess all the interesting part got used up by his ancestors. Elizabeth Ann must have squelched all the interesting right out of that family.
Even though it’s been owned by Hutchins people for years, around here some people still call the place McMurphy’s Mansion, although some started calling it Mystery Mansion because of the hidden rooms rumors. It ain’t really no mansion, of course. At least not anymore. But back when Mack and Henrietta first built it, the thing was so big and pretentious for these parts, calling it a mansion pretty much fit.
Still, it’s always been Glen’s pride and joy and he spends a lot of time painting and scraping on it and keeping the yard tidy. Which, around here is seen as a little eccentric. South Shore ain’t exactly a fussy kind of place. No one minds if there’s a car or two up on blocks in a neighbor’s yard, or if an extra washing machine sits a spell on a front porch, or even if someone takes it into their head to plant begonias in that washing machine. The old McMurphy Mansion kinda stands out in our neighborhood because it’s so nice.
We had a nice, normal, quiet neighborhood until that Samantha Hutchins ran off with a truck driver, leaving poor old Glen and his girls all alone by their selves in that big old house.
“I never should have tried to tie her down to this place,” Glen told me a few weeks later when I took him and the girls a banana cream pie so I could say how sorry I was. “It was like trying to capture a beautiful butterfly and keep it in a jar. Samantha was meant for better things.”
Well, I’d heard about her trying to become a country western star and giving up her dream to have his babies, but from what I’ve seen, people tend to do about what they want to do. There’s some honkytonks around here she could have sung in if she’d really wanted to. Honkytonks was good enough for Loretta Lynn when she was starting out, but I guess Samantha weren’t no Loretta Lynn.
She was a looker, though, I’ll give her that. I’m sure plenty of truck drivers would have been happy enough to have given her a ride. Wait a minute. I didn’t mean that like it sounded. Offer her a ride in their trucks, I meant to say, although I’m not sure that sounds any better. Maybe I better go wash out my own mouth with soap and water right about now.
But anyway, after Samantha took off with the truck driver her daughters and husband didn’t seem to hardly know what to do with their selves. It’s hard on a family when there’s no mother in the house. It was as though they were just waiting around for her to come back and tell them what to do.
Her daughters are pretty girls like their mama, but without her there to guide them they started dressing a little trashy which was something that Samantha never did. Glen just walked around looking lost and sad. It was like they was all playing a part in a bad soap opera--keeping up their end of the deal, until Samantha came back and they could start living their normal lives again.
The house didn’t go to pot, though. Glen has always been good about keeping things clean and fixed up at his place. I guess it goes with the job of being a principle at a school in a small town. You have to keep up appearances no matter what. If anything, he made things a little more neat than usual, like he was keeping it especially nice for in case his wife came back.
It was enough to break my heart to watch that little family try to move on, and trust me, everyone most definitely did watch that family. It weren’t every day that a local principal’s wife took off with a truck driver.
If there’s one thing that I’ve learned about human nature, it is that where there is no information, people will make it up. Somebody will give an opinion and a couple more people will repeat it and before long you’re hearing an opinion stated as a fact. There were a lot of rumors and speculation flying around.
A few people suggested to Glen that he file a missing person’s report with the police because there was no telling what that truck driver might have done with her. Glen shook his head and said that she’d made it pretty clear she weren’t never coming back to him. One person asked him if he’d take her back if she wanted him to. Glen got all misty-eyed and said he’d take her back in a heart-beat no matter what she’d done because he still loved her so much.
The girls had been real involved in school before Samantha left. The oldest was a cheerleader and the younger one was in the marching band. People told me that Glen would go to the games and sit all by his lonesome watching his girls do their cheerleading and band-marching and it would be like he weren’t hardly there. They said he just stared way off into the distance like he was wishing his wife would come back.
As the days went on, there were some single women at my church I overheard talking about how Glen weren’t all that bad looking and why on earth would a woman walk out on a nice man with a good job and he did have that nice big house. I knew it weren’t going to be long before the casseroles would start rolling in. I figured Glen was going to find himself up for grabs soon with or without having any divorce papers.
It got to the point I couldn’t stand listening to the talk any longer. I baked me some brownies, put them on a nice blue-flowered plate that I’d picked up at the Dollar Store, covered it all in tin foil and walked down the road to pay Glen a visit. He invited me in, all nice and polite as usual. I couldn’t help but notice that the house was clean as a whistle, just like he kept the outside.
Weren’t nothing wrong with him keeping the place nice. Cleanliness is next to godliness and all that but it struck me as real sad that the man didn’t have anything more to do with his extra time than clean his house. I mean, he had two teenage girls at home. I figured there should at least be a comb or a shoe lace out of place but there wasn’t.
It made me sad to see that he still had the big picture of Samantha over the fireplace he’d put there years ago. It must have been taken when she was in her country-western mode and was still thinking she’d be a big star. She was wearing a fringed cowboy shirt and tight jeans and cowboy boots and was looking soulfully into the camera while holding a guitar. I have an idea she didn’t know how to play the thing because her fingers looked real awkward on the strings.
You’d think that if a wife ran off with a truck driver the husband would be angry enough to take her silly-looking oversized picture off the wall, but that weren’t Glen’s way. He surely did love that woman.
It started me to wondering if that’s why she left. Some women can only take so much worship before they lose their respect for a man. A woman thinking her husband can’t draw a breath without her is a dangerous thing. In some women’s minds it gives them the license to do whatever they want. A person has to have some self-respect or there are people who’ll run right over you.
I figured Samantha would come home crying as soon as the truck driver dumped her. It weren’t like she was no spring chicken anymore. Samantha had some years on her even if she was good-looking.
It probably sounds like I didn’t like the woman all that much and that ain’t true. She was nice enough. Even brought me some chicken soup once when she heard I’d been laid up with the bronchitis. I guess it was that country-music thing that got under my skin. She’d bring it up now and again as though she needed to remind herself that she was special. I couldn’t see why she wasn’t happy with just having the good luck of giving birth to two healthy girls and having a good man. Seems like some people always take the really important things for granted.
“You hear anything from Samantha?” I asked Glen, as I handed him the brownies. “It’s been what, going on a month now?”
“Twenty-eight days,” he said. “It’s like I got a counter in my head clicking off the time. And no, I haven’t heard a word. Do you want to sit down?”
“Sure.” I knew he’d probably rather I’d leave him alone--grief does that to people--but I took a seat anyway. Sometimes what people want ain’t exactly what they need. I figured Glen needed to talk to someone and I’ve found that people tend to talk to me because they figure I don’t count all that much anyways.
That front room was interesting. Old Mrs. Hutchins had always called it a parlor and only used it for company. She was one of them women who collected things and the parlor was stuffed with doilies and antique dolls and pretty china figurines. There was a flowered carpet on the floor and tassels on all the lamps. Truth be told, it was kind of a smothery room. It surprised me that the only thing Glen had changed over the years was hanging Samantha’s picture over the mantel.
He offered me one of my own brownies and a napkin. Then he brought out some coffee and I settled in for a good chat. I had some things to say to that man whether he wanted to hear them or not. After all, I’d known him since he was a boy and I figured I had the right.
“There’s some women at our church starting to talk about how you ain’t that bad-looking and they don’t understand why a woman would up and run away from you like Samantha did,” I said. “I’m thinking you might have a string of ‘em lining up on your porch before long if you ain’t careful. It happened to my uncle when his wife run off. Trust me—taking up with some other woman right now won’t do your girls a bit of good.”
“I’m not interested in other women.” He had the grace to turn a little red in the face. “The only woman I’ll ever love is Samantha.”
“That’s probably not true.” I took a bite of brownie and chewed while I thought about his comment. My brownies are from a box, they ain’t nothing special, but they’re still pretty good. “I think you’ll get over this someday and start to notice other women, but I think it might be best to wait until your youngest is graduated from high school before you start in with all that mess of dating.”
“Seriously, Doreen,” he said. “I’m quite sure I’ll never be interested in another woman again as long as I live.”
“Unless Samantha comes back.”
“Yes, of course. Unless Samantha comes back. She was my soulmate.”
Well, I always find that soulmate talk kind of gaggy. Especially when a man says it. That’s the kind of thing women say. Not men. I also noticed he weren’t eating any of the brownies. Instead, he just kept his head down while he busied himself weaving his fingers in and out with each other like he was trying to weave himself back together.
My problem was, being me, I kept thinking there must be a clue. Something he’d overlooked. Like one of them computer dating things that might lead him to know where she went and who she went with so he could go try to get her back. Then it struck me that men who talked about soulmates are probably not the kind of men likely to go get their wives back. At that point I didn’t have a lot of hope for Glen.
“Did Samantha spend a lot of time on the computer?”
“What?” His head jerked up. The man had been a million miles away in his head. “Oh—I see what you’re asking. No. She wasn’t much one for computers. She left that up to the girls and me.”
“So she didn’t meet some other man on-line?” I was proud of myself for knowing the term.
“No,” Glen said. “She just up and went off.”
“Did she tell you she was leaving before or after she climbed into the truck?” I asked. “Were you there?”
He shook his head. “She left a note. I found it when I got home from work. It was lying on the ironing board.”
“Oh.” This was the first I’d heard of a note. “What did it say?”
“Just that she’d found someone else, a truck driver, and wouldn’t be back.”
“No word to the girls?” I asked. “No excuses for what she was doing?”
“Not really,” he said.
“Do you still have the note?”
“I threw it away. I couldn’t bear to look at it and I didn’t want the girls to see it.”
“Oh.” I guess that made sense. The note had brought him a lot of pain. I suppose it would be normal to throw it away.
“Are you sure you shouldn’t talk to the police?” I asked. “Maybe they could at least go find her. Your girls need to hear from their mother.”
He looked up at me with the most sorrowful eyes I’ve ever seen. “You think having the police make her contact us would make the girls feel any better?”
I shook my head. It wouldn’t, of course. Them girls were going to have to live with the knowledge that their mother had abandoned them as well as their daddy. It ain’t a good thing to have a mother abandon you for a truck driver, not a good thing at all. Although with some teenagers I’ve known I could certainly see why it would be tempting.
I couldn’t come up with anything else to say and Glen didn’t seem interested in keeping up his end of the conversation, so I left. I’m not sure what I wanted to discover, but there was nothing there. I walked back to my little house and sat for a while and stewed. Seemed to me if I was a husband, I’d be chasing that woman down and giving her a piece of my mind over what she was doing to me and them girls. But Glen just weren’t the type I guess. Made me wonder what kind of principal he was. From the looks of things, maybe not a very good one.
Life is hard, plain and simple. It just is. People need to get themselves some gumption if they’re going to get through their lives with any self-respect at all. I’d always known Glen was a nice man but I’d never suspected until now that having his wife leave would cause him to sit there in his house like a noodle.
It weren’t long until them girls of his weren’t only dressing trashy, but they were acting trashy, too. The oldest one got kicked off the cheerleading squad for picking a fight with another girl. The youngest one quit the band for no particular reason. Just walked off the field smack dab in the middle of a half-time show. At least that’s the way I heard it down at the beauty shop.
“She was a good player, too,” Holly said as she pulled the curlers out of my hair. It was a relief to get them curlers out of there. Holly rolls a really tight perm and I’m always glad to get it over with. One thing good about getting a perm though, is that you can learn a lot while you wait around for your hair to process.
“According to my daughter,” Holly said, as she pulled the curler papers out, “The Hutchins girl said she was tired of practicing that stupid clarinet and now that her mom was gone, she was going to have some fun.”
“Uh-oh,” Edith said. “That don’t sound good. Teenage girls having fun means we’ll probably see another welfare baby showing up before long.”
Edith works in housekeeping down at King’s Daughters Hospital in Ashland. One glance at her poor legs and feet and it’s easy to see why she never has anything good to say about anything or anybody. Edith’s been through too much and has gotten a real negative attitude. She’s also helping raise two grandbabies right now because there’s no daddy in the picture. Edith definitely considers herself an expert on what happens when teenage girls are out having fun.
“It’s Jerri Lynn, the oldest girl, that I’m worried about,” Holly said. “She seems to be the one most tore up, picking fights with the other cheerleaders like that.”
“Glen will have them girls running all over him before long,” Betty said. “He’s too nice of a man to try to keep two daughters out of trouble all by himself. He can’t even make the kids at school behave is what I heard. One of his teachers says she don’t bother sending a trouble-maker to the principal’s office anymore because the kids know that nothing bad will happen to them. She says Glen tends to have a long talk with them and send them back with a piece of hard candy in their pocket. All the teachers are upset about it. It ain’t much help when the principal is nicer than the teachers.”
“I never cared much for Samantha,” Holly said. “She always drove all the way to Huntington to get her hair done—like my beauty shop just wasn’t good enough for her. Now that she’s gone I keep wondering if we all should have been nicer to her or something.”
We all sighed. The fact of Samantha taking off with that truck driver had blown a big hole in our little neighborhood and there weren’t nothing that could be done about it except maybe try to keep an eye on the girls and help out when we could.
It was the beginning of September when Samantha left and it had already turned November when I had the occasion to talk privately with Jerri Lynn. I was sitting on the Bruce’s back porch a’watching the boat traffic. We’d had a late fall and the colors of trees along the riverbank on the other side of the river were really something. I’d made me a late dinner of boiled potatoes, cottage cheese, and creamed peas with a little bit of green onion in them and I weren’t thinking about anything much except how pretty the fall colors were and how good my stomach felt.
I didn’t hear Glen and Samantha’s oldest until she’d already sat down beside me on the old glider I was using.
“Well, hello there, Jerri Lynn,” I said. “I didn’t hear you sneaking up on me. Gonna have to get me some hearing aids I guess.”
Truth be told, I was tickled she’d come to see me.
“I was taking a walk, Miss Doreen,” she said. “And saw you here. I thought it might be nice to have someone to talk to. Momma always liked you. She said you had a lot of good sense.”
Well, that was a revelation. I’d always thought Samantha was kind of stand offish with me. Never dreamed she’d ever bother to say something good about me to her daughters. I realized I was hearing a catch in Jerri Lynn’s voice. I took a good look at her and saw that the girl had been crying her eyes out. She’d taken to wearing too much eye make-up since her mother had left and now it was messed up all around her eyes something terrible. The poor girl looked like a blonde raccoon sitting there beside me with her hanky all wadded up in her hand.
“Always glad to have some company,” I said. “What’s troubling you, girl?”
Instead of answering me directly, she pulled something out of her pocket and handed it to me like I was supposed to know what it was. The thing was slender and plastic and I had no idea what I was supposed to do with it. I looked at her, puzzled.
“It turned pink,” she said.
Jerri Lynn started sobbing, and then I got it. I’d never seen a gadget like that up close before but I was pretty sure this was one of them home pregnancy kits they’re always advertising on television, usually with the woman being all excited about it.
This poor girl weren’t excited. She was devastated. I just hate it when Edith is right. I had hopes she’d be wrong this time and this girl wouldn’t be doing nothing except getting ready for college next fall.
“You’re having a baby?” I asked.
She nodded.
“And you’re not happy about it?”
She shook her head vehemently.
“You going to keep it?”
She shrugged.
“Have you told your daddy yet?”
She shook her head, no.
“Ah.”
I didn’t know what to say after that, so I sat there looking out over the river, rocking gently on the glider with that seventeen-year-old bundled up in her coat beside me, blowing her nose from time to time.
I guess I did the right thing just keeping quiet because after a while I felt a hand creep into mine and we sat that way for a long time, just holding hands, thinking our thoughts. I’d been the old lady down the street for most of her life, and I guess just being with another person gave her some comfort.
“Did you ever have any kids?” she asked, after a while.
“No.”
“Do you regret it?”
I had to think about that for a while. Not having children was a mixed bag for me. On one hand, it would’ve been nice to have had a son or daughter. On the other hand, from what I’d seen, children tended to break their parent’s hearts pretty regularly.
I answered truthfully. “Sometimes.”
“If you’d ever had kids, would you have walked away from them to take up with some man?”
“No.” That was something I could answer truthfully. “If I’d ever had children, there’s not a man in this world who could have made me leave them.”
I was sorry the minute I said it. It sounded like I was criticizing her mother and I wasn’t. It was just how I felt.
“Sometimes I wonder what I did wrong to make my mom want to leave and never come back,” she said.
“You don’t know that she’s never coming back,” I said. “She might. People change their minds.”
“But she didn’t even send me and my sister a note. I don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand either, Jerri Lynn,” I said. “I guess the only thing you can do is take good care of your own baby now that you’re going to have one.”
“Do you think Daddy will be mad?” She sounded like a five-year-old child who’d spilt some milk instead of a nearly-grown woman getting ready to give birth in a few months.
“I think your dad will be surprised, but he’ll help you.”
“Thank you.” She gave me a quick, totally unexpected kiss on the cheek and then flew off, leaving me there on the glider with that stab in the gut that I get sometimes when I allow myself to wonder why some people get to have such sweet children and don’t appreciate them. And them of us who would have cherished even one chick have to live our whole lives trying to convince ourselves that we didn’t really want a child at all.
I did something the next day I hadn’t done in a long, long time. I went to the Dollar Store and bought me some baby yarn and a crochet hook and set to making a little yellow afghan.
In the meantime, I was proud of Jerri Lynn in spite of the circumstances. The pregnancy kind of settled her down and made her serious. She studied hard while her belly grew. The younger sister, Maggie, seeing the fix her sister had found herself in, straightened up and got serious about her school work, too. She even took up the clarinet again.
Glen, however, just kept looking seedier and seedier. His hair went uncombed a lot, his overcoat developed a drooping hem and he didn’t do nothing about it. When I tried to talk with him, he seemed preoccupied and distant. I began to wonder if the man might lose his job from sheer grief. Or maybe his mind. He even kinda drooped when he walked. The talk at church about him being a good-looking man with a good job who’d been abandoned by his wife died down. None of the single women brought any casseroles over that I know of. Jerri Lynn told me that she and her sister started teaching themselves how to cook off of YouTube…whatever that was.
There was a bond between me and Jerri Lynn from that night on the river bank when she showed me the results of her home pregnancy test. She started dropping by from time to time after school. Sometimes she’d just want to talk. Sometimes she’d show me a little outfit she’d bought. Sometimes she’d just sit beside me while I watched my soaps—not talking, not crying, just needing a little company from someone who didn’t judge her for what she’d done.
The thing about being a washed up cheerleader was that there weren’t a lot of her girlfriend relationships that lasted through the pregnancy. I never asked about the boyfriend. She never told me about him, neither. I got the impression he hadn’t stuck around or else she hadn’t wanted him to.
Christmas weren’t much to write home about. I saw Glen putting up some lights around the house but he didn’t bother to take them back down again afterward. That’s not too unusual in our neck of the woods. Taking down Christmas lights tend to be more optional here than in other places, but in the past Glen had always taken them down the morning after New Year’s.
My brother and sister-in-law in Texas sent me a scarf and gloves and I sent her a nice box of chocolates and him a fruitcake. My brother hates fruitcake, so that was fun.
Jerri Lynn graduated with honors in the spring. She told me she intended to take on-line college courses for a while until the baby was older. She wanted to be a pediatrician. I didn’t think there was much chance of that happening but I’d been wrong about other things so I didn’t discourage her none. This was one of them things I hoped I was wrong about.
It seemed to me like the bigger Jerri Lynn got around the middle, the skinnier her daddy got. Glen had been kind of a rounded-out man before Samantha left. Not really fat, but not muscular either. The kind of man who looked like he spent a lot of time eating good and sitting at a desk. The further she got in her pregnancy, the more cadaverous her daddy became.
It was early June when Jerri Lynn came to my door crying her eyes out again. Once she stopped crying long enough to talk, it turned out that her mama had finally called but it was while she and Maggie was out getting groceries. Her daddy had taken the call. He said her mama was traveling way out West someplace and told him again that she weren’t coming home ever. She said she was having too good a time with the man she was traveling with. Told him she was tired of being a wife and mother and liked going new places. She’d used a pay phone so he couldn’t call her back.
This upset Jerri Lynn so bad and she was sobbing so loud, I hardly knew what to do with her. She was so near term, I was scared she might accidentally start her labor right then and there. She just sat there on my old green couch and howled. I guess she’d finally had enough. The poor little thing had tried acting up, and her mama hadn’t come home. She’d tried being a good girl and getting good grades and her mama hadn’t come back. The whole time I think she was expecting Samantha to show up and get things back to normal again. This last phone call had taken that hope away. I know she was frustrated nearly to death that she hadn’t been home to talk to her mama when she called.
I did the only thing I knew to do. I fixed her some tea and patted her hand and listened. But while I listened, I did a slow boil. I don’t get mad very easily anymore. Seems the older you get, and the tireder you get, the less effort you want to expend getting upset. Just doesn’t seem worth the bother. Over the years I’ve had about every emotion in the book. Some were enjoyable. Some weren’t. Mainly they was all useless because a person still just has to go on doing what they gotta do anyway. No matter what their feelings are. Getting all up in arms about every little thing doesn’t ever do a body any good.
But this time another woman’s choices was just breaking my heart. I wished Samantha was there in front of me right then and there so I could give her a good talking to and ask her what in the world she was thinking of going off and leaving behind her two beautiful, good, daughters who loved her and needed her. Some people are almost too selfish to live and I decided that Samantha Hutchins was one of them people.
Tea and cookies can’t heal heartbreak, but they gave that little pregnant girl something else to think about for a few minutes. She was hungry and they must have tasted good to her because she finished off the whole package before she went back home. When I walked her out onto the porch I could hear the mournful sound of her little sister practicing her clarinet. Jerri Lynn heard it, too.
“That’s about all Maggie does these days,” Jerri Lynn said. “I sometimes get awful sick of hearing it, but practicing makes her feel better. Thanks for the cookies, Miss Doreen. I’d better get back to my sister now. At least we have each other.”
I watched as that girl squared her shoulders and walked back to her daddy’s. I never wished for someone else’s daughter to be my own before, but that girl was starting to get under my skin. She was a brave one that one was.
Right before June turned into July, we had us a brand new baby girl in our neighborhood. Prettiest little thing you ever saw.
I don’t know if it was being abandoned by her mama that caused Jerri Lynn to be so focused on becoming a good mother, or if it was just part of who she was deep down. Maybe a little bit of both. All I know is that every day about one o’clock when the baby woke from her nap, Jerri Lynn took to walking down to my house with her little one so I could see some new marvel. Like watching her turn over, or sprout a new tooth. By the grace of God she was a good baby which made it a little easier on Jerri Lynn.
It made me feel good to see my little next-door-neighbor, Esther, also taking Jerri Lynn under her wing. My neighbor weren’t the best mother in the world, but she was far from the worst, and Jerri Lynn needed a friend nearer her age than me. She’d pretty much lost the ones she had at school. Of course to hear her tell it, she’d dropped them. Didn’t matter. It’s hard to run around with girlfriends when you’re the only one toting a diaper bag and a baby.
Glen perked up a little after the baby got here but he was still on a slow downward slide and neither me nor Jerri Lynn had a clue what to do about him. I’d never put much stock in somebody dying of a broken heart, but that Glen seemed like he just might. I never saw a man fall so low for so long. If he’d a’ asked me I’d of told him he needed some of them anti-depressing pills. But he didn’t ask me so I didn’t say nothing. Still, I was afraid if Samantha did happen to get tired of her other boyfriend and come back, after one good look at Glen she might high-tail it out of here again.
I didn’t even know Samantha had a sister until the girls’ aunt came in from Wisconsin about the middle of July to see the baby. Turns out there was only a couple years between Samantha and her younger sister, Charlene, and they looked a lot alike. Jerri Lynn was so happy having her aunt there. She toted up that baby and brought Charlene down to meet me.
Charlene looked so much like Samantha it was startling. At first I thought Samantha had come home. Then I took a second look. Charlene had a little more sag in the hips and was a little less plump in the face. Still, she wore her straight brown hair long and swinging like Samantha always did and frankly, I thought she had a more genuine smile.
“Oh, shoot!” Jerri Lynn said after she’d introduced us. “Emma has dirtied her diaper again and I didn’t bring anything with me. I’ll be right back.”
I noticed that Charlene didn’t make a move at going back to the house with Jerri Lynn. I got the feeling she wanted to talk with me and I was right.
“Glen called and told me what happened back in September when my sister disappeared,” she said. “I haven’t heard a word from her. Do you have any ideas?”
“Ideas?”
“Jerri Lynn tells me that you’ve solved a few mysteries in the past.”
“But them were murders,” I said.
Charlene didn’t say nothing. She just sat there looking at me like she thought I should say something more.
“I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time,” I said. “I’m no detective.”
Charlene still didn’t say anything.
“Are you thinking your sister didn’t run off with a truck driver after all?” I asked.
“I don’t know what to think,” Charlene said. “She hasn’t called me. Not once in ten months. That’s not like her.”
“Maybe she thought you’d scold her,” I said.
“Me?” Charlene laughed. “I’m on my fifth marriage and it’s getting shaky. I’ve been in and out of rehab so many times I’ve lost count. Just got out two weeks ago. I’m hoping it takes this time. I’m the black sheep of our family. Samantha knows I don’t have a leg to stand on if I gave her a hard time about leaving old Glen.”
“And she ain’t contacted you?”
“Not a word.”
“Well, I been thinking,” I said. “Me and the girls down at the beauty shop have been talking about what might have happened. Menopause can make a woman a little crazy and Samantha is about the right age. Edith says she started pitching perfectly good furniture out the door when she was going through the change. Betty says she started writing letters to an old boyfriend she hadn’t even cared all that much about. Fortunately she got her good sense back before she mailed any of ‘em. Do you think going through the change might be a possibility of why your sister lost her mind and took off?”
“Maybe, except it never mattered how bad I messed up or how long I was in rehab, Samantha always stayed in touch with me one way or another.”
That worried me. A woman might leave her husband for another man and never look back, but there’d be no reason not call her sister.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“I don’t know what to think. I sure don’t want to get my nieces any more tore up than they already are. I know I’m an addict and always will be, but I love my sister. I have a feeling I need to try to find her.”
Well, that set my old brain to churning which is never a good thing. It kept me up most of the night examining other possibilities. None of them possibilities made a lick of sense, though. Glen said she’d left with a truck driver and called back only once. Glen Hutchins might be falling apart from grief over his wife’s abandonment but I’d never known him to be a liar.
I hated to get something started, but after that conversation with Charlene, I decided to go have a chat with our local sheriff. Ben’s a good boy. The fact that his granddaddy ran a moonshine still didn’t hurt him in the election as much as what most people might expect. If anything, it helped. We tend to feel a little bit protective of our moonshiners around here, especially since most of us are kin to one or two of ‘em. Ben’s mama was a Culp, and they’re good people. She taught Ben right from wrong and I don’t think the family moonshine still is running anymore. Of course I could be mistaken about that. Ben’s granddaddy did have a good reputation for quality. Not that I ever sampled any. I’m a teetotaler born and raised, but I’ve heard rumors.
Anyway, I went to have a friendly chat with Ben.
“What if somebody disappeared and the spouse said they’d left with somebody else and no one ever heard from them again. Would that raise your suspicions?”
“You’re talking about the Hutchins?”
I nodded.
“There’s nothing to make me think it’s anything more than what Glen’s been saying,” Ben said. “His wife got fed up with family life and decided to make a clean break of it. It happens.”
“She just never struck me as the type,” I said.
Ben clasped his hands behind his head, leaned back and stared out the window. “I was suspicious when I first heard, and I did a background check on both of them. Glen’s squeaky clean but so is Samantha. No domestic disputes. Not so much as an overdue bill or a parking ticket. With the exception of their daughter getting pregnant, it’s been the perfect family. There’s no reason to think otherwise.”
“I’m sorry I bothered you,” I said, feeling a little silly. “It’s just that the girls miss their mother. Glen says she called recently and is way out west. It’s the only contact they’ve had with her and they’ve been upset ever since.”
Ben nodded. “She’s a grown woman. If she wants to gallivant all over the place with whoever she pleases, I can’t exactly arrest her for it. There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.”
“I guess I’ll have to leave it alone then.”
“Miss Doreen?” he said, as I was leaving.
“Yes.”
“If you see anything unusual, let me know. I’ll pay attention to anything you got to say.”
That made me feel a little better. “You’re a good boy, Ben. You tell your mama I said hi.”
“I surely will.” He smiled. “You take care of yourself, now.”
Ben is not a bad looking man, but he does have them ears that stick out too far just like his daddy and a lot of freckles. Makes it a little hard to take him seriously as a law officer, even though he’s a good one.
So, life went on. The baby got two bottom teeth and was the cutest thing you ever saw when she grinned at you—and that baby grinned a lot. She didn’t know things weren’t right at home. As long as she had her mama to hold onto, plenty of warm milk in her belly, and dry diapers, all was right in her little world.
With summer, the sadness over Samantha’s leaving seemed to lift a little bit. Our neighborhood sort of shrugged and turned its attention elsewhere. I got used to the rhythm of Jerri Lynn’s daily visits, watching the baby grow, and sometimes when there was a little extra left out of my social security check, I’d buy a play-pretty for the baby.
Jerri Lynn grew into the role of taking over the running of the household. She learned herself how to cook and watched over her little sister like a mother hen. She fussed over her daddy and got him to spiff up a bit, too. Even the Christmas lights came down. In August, which didn’t seem hardly worth the trouble to me.
One evening that fall while Glen was at a school meeting, Jerri Lynn called and asked if I had an extra pound of hamburger. She was trying to make spaghetti and hadn’t realized she was out. Foodland was already closed and she didn’t want to have to drive all the way across the river to Walmart to get some. Well, I did happen to have a fresh pound of hamburger in the Frigidaire and since it was a nice evening I offered to bring it down to her so she wouldn’t have to get the baby out.
I don’t know about where you live, but in our part of Kentucky a lot of people tend to do their visiting through back doors instead of the front. I guess it just feels friendlier. So I didn’t think nothing about it when Jerri Lynn motioned me through the back door into the kitchen, which meant walking through the screened-in back porch.
It was the kind of porch somebody probably once thought would make a nice sitting place if it had screens on it to keep the bugs out. But like a lot of porches around here these days, nobody sat out there anymore. If they wanted to sit, they went inside and the porch just ended up being a catch-all place for boots and coats and odds and ends. Some people kept their chest freezers on their porches, too, and I noticed that that’s where Glen’s family stored theirs.
“You don’t have any room for a pound of hamburger in that big ole freezer out there?” I asked, kind of teasing-like, as I handed her the hamburger.
“Oh, there’s probably all kinds of hamburger in that freezer out there,” she said. “But daddy lost the key awhile back and we haven’t been able to find it since. He says it’ll turn up sooner or later.”
Well, I weren’t surprised to hear that. Glen had been walking around in such a fog he probably hardly remembered his name most of the time, let alone where he’d put a freezer key.
She told me to have a seat at the table while she worked on the spaghetti so I did. She was a’ bustlin’ around the kitchen like she was a grown woman instead of only seventeen. I think she was showing off just a little bit for me and I didn’t mind admiring how competent she was becoming. The baby was off in the other room being watched over by Maggie. I figured Jerri Lynn wouldn’t be in my life much longer. She was a cute little thing and some guy would probably snap her up before long, baby and all and she’d forget all about her friendship with old Doreen. It made me sad to think that—I’d gotten real attached to the girl and her baby—but that’s just the way it is sometimes with young people.
Jerri Lynn put a tea kettle on and served some to me just like she was used to being the lady of the house. Then she finished up the spaghetti and filled three plates without even asking me if I wanted to stay. Like I was part of the family or something. It was real nice and homey. Her little sister brought the baby in and put her in the high chair and we had us a sort of spaghetti and tea party. Nothing is much cuter than watching a baby with only two bottom teeth trying to eat spaghetti.
Glen walked in and his face brightened at the sight of his daughters and grandbaby. He and me have always gotten along, so he didn’t seem upset to find me there neither.
I walked home afterward feeling pretty good about things and thinking that maybe that little family was going to be all right after all. I was glad for the small part I’d had in what healing they’d had. I try to keep my nose out of people’s business, but sometimes you can’t help it. This time I was glad I got involved.
That night I slept like a baby until about four o’clock in the morning and then I had one of the worst nightmares of my life. I dreamed that Samantha was in trouble and was calling out to me. I could see her so well in my nightmare and could hear her voice so clearly that it made me sweat. She was just a’begging and a’begging me to help her.
The nightmare was so real that I woke up shaking and shivering and with my heart going ninety-miles an hour. I got up to get a drink of water, hoping I could finish getting myself out of the feeling of being in the middle of that nightmare. I just about fell down because my knees was so weak from the upset I’d had.
There weren’t going to be any more sleep for me that night, so I started in on a project I’d been putting off a long time—cleaning out the pantry. By six a.m. I’d thrown out so many expired canned goods that I was ashamed I’d let it get to that state. I had seen that hoarders show when I was at my nieces down in Little Rock and she had cable TV. It give me shivers to see all them people who let things pile up around their ears. I was determined not to let that happen to me. I didn’t want to end up on no TV program looking like a crazy lady.
So by around seven, I had eaten my breakfast, the nightmare had pretty much worn off, and I was feeling fairly good about things again.
I finally got the little afghan I’d been crocheting finished while I watched my stories that afternoon. My fingers ain’t as nimble as they used to be. I was a little late with it, but better late than never, I always say. I wrapped it up all fluffy in some nice tissue paper and walked it down to the Hutchins. Nobody was at home, so I left it on top of the freezer on the back porch. I thought about what a nice surprise it would be for Jerri Lynn to find the present waiting for her when she got home.
Weren’t long before she called to thank me. She’d taken the baby out for a checkup at the doctor’s office and found the package when she got home. I went to bed that night feeling real good about myself. I figured that since I hadn’t eaten a big plate of spaghetti before I went to bed this time, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have me any more bad dreams.
I was wrong. This time the nightmare was even more intense. Samantha was still calling for help. I was struggling to get to her, but I couldn’t. It was so strange. When I woke up I couldn’t figure out why this was happening now instead of all them months ago when her leaving was still fresh. All this time I’d known she was gone I’d been worrying over Glen and the girls and the baby. I’d never worried a whole lot about Samantha—except for wanting to smack her for leaving her family.
There are people who make claims to being psychic. I’m not one of them people. I’ve heard tell of parents who dreamed that their children was in trouble and then found out that they really were. I’ve even heard of spouses so close to each other that they could tell when one or the other had died clear around on the other side of the world, but I don’t have that in me. Even if I did, why would Samantha try to contact me of all people? I weren’t all that close to her.
It just didn’t make sense.
The third night, I laid down in my bed kinda careful-like, half afraid of what kind of nightmare I might have this time. I didn’t even make it to two o’clock before I had another bad dream. This time, Samantha was crying out that she was cold and needed the baby’s afghan to cover herself.
That woke me straight up. I found out that I’d kicked all the covers off and was shivering again—which explained about the cold and the baby’s afghan I suppose. I made myself some cocoa. Then I grabbed my Bible and tried to calm myself down by reading the Psalms. It helped some. It helped enough that I could start to think clearly again even if it was plumb in the middle of the night.
The thoughts that started coming weren’t good ones, though. They weren’t good at all. I had to rock and pray about them for a long time before I got some peace and could go back to bed. My sleep was uneasy because of what I knew I needed to do once the sun came up.
The next morning I watched as Glen left with the youngest daughter riding beside him heading off to that band camp the girls had told me she was going to down in Lexington. That left only Jerri Lynn and the baby. I didn’t want them around while I did what I had to do so I called Jerri Lynn and told her I needed me some Epsom salts and rubbing liniment for my sore back and would she mind too much driving over to Walmart and getting me some. I didn’t lie. I did need me some Epsom salt and rubbing liniment. I was truly out of it, but I didn’t need it so bad that she had to go right then.
Sweet thing that Jerri Lynn is, she agreed immediately even though it was going to mean dragging the baby out. She stopped by and I hobbled out onto the porch to give her the money—making sure I walked bent over so she wouldn’t think I was faking it—which I wasn’t. At least not entirely.
“Will you be all right here by yourself, Miss Doreen?” she asked.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I just need me a little sit-down in a bathtub of salts and some liniment. I appreciate you doing this for me.”
“I’ll be right back,” she said. “I needed to pick up some diapers anyway.”
With that she pulled on out to the highway and was gone. I figured I had about an hour before she came back.
I hurried up and got me a crow bar out of my daddy’s old shed out back. I weren’t happy about what I was going to do, but I knew it had to be me that did it. I weren’t going to involve anyone else. If I was wrong, then it would just be me that was wrong. Nobody else would have to take any blame—not even Ben. Sometimes it pays to be an old lady. No one expects all that much out of you. If nothing else I’d pretend dementia had finally kicked in. Dementia is always good for an excuse when you need it.
Problem was, I was pretty certain I wouldn’t need any excuses. I was too afraid I was right.
Here’s the thing. A man raising two daughters on a principal’s salary ain’t likely to write off a freezer full of good meat. I knew that he’d bought a full side of beef right before Samantha left. He and one of my cousins had split a steer. Even in his mental fog, Glen had to eat and I figured that for most men, if there was only a little bitty lock between him and several hundred dollars’ worth of Angus steaks he’d find a way to get to them, even if he had lost the key.
I was thinking it was a whole lot more likely that he’d thrown the key away or hid it—and that made me feel kinda sick to my stomach.
I felt a little conspicuous walking down the street with a crowbar in my hand, but nobody stopped me or asked me where I was going. I had one hour at the most, and I intended to use a lot less than that. I like my sleep. I was tired of having nightmares and this was the only way I knew I might get me my sleep back again.
Jerri Lynn hadn’t locked the screen door on their back porch. I knew she wouldn’t. Weren’t anything there worth stealing. I was grateful the back porch faced the river instead of the road. It meant there was no neighbors watching when I popped the lid on that chest freezer.
It didn’t take all that much effort. Not even for me.
The really big effort came in trying not to scream bloody murder when I saw what was a’layin’ there on top of all that beef. I took one look, dropped the crow bar, threw my hand over my mouth, slammed the freezer door shut, and went as fast as my old legs would take me right back to my own house where I locked the door and stood inside, leaning against the door, trying to calm down enough to keep my heart from jumping plumb out of my chest.
As soon as I quit whimpering, I dialed Ben’s number and told him what I’d seen and hoped never to have to see again. He came lickety-split over to my house.
When he knocked on my door, I managed to pull myself together and let him in.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I might be old, but I can still tell the difference between a side of beef and a woman still in her nightie with her head bashed in.”
“You stay here,” he said.
He didn’t have to tell me that twice. I weren’t sure I’d ever stick my nose out of my house again. Not with these types of goings on in the neighborhood.
Weren’t long before the police went to the school and arrested Glen Hutchins for the murder of his wife. I saw them drive him home in the squad car to talk to him about what they’d found in the freezer. Ben told me later that he’d never seen a grown man cry so hard. When they got him to the jail, they had to put him on suicide watch.
Turned out that most of his story was true. He and Samantha hadn’t been getting along so good, although they’d been good at hiding it even from their girls. He was trying to be reasonable. She was wanting to go away and “find herself.” He knew that was usually short-hand speak for “I think I can find someone better than you.” He got scared he was going to lose her.
The girls were both having sleepovers with girlfriends that night. Samantha and Glen were free to fight as much and as loud as they wanted. Samantha was ready to march right out the door, nightgown and all. Glen was determined that she was going to listen to reason. They wrestled around in that overstuffed parlor in front of her picture. He shoved her. She tripped over a ceramic cat on the floor and fell backwards against one of them marble-topped tables and the woman never woke up again. When he realized she was dead and he might have been responsible for killing her, he panicked. The girls were due home in a few hours and there was blood on the floral carpet and splashed around on some of the furniture. He stashed Samantha away in the first place that came to mind, just temporarily, to give himself some time to wash away the blood, clean himself up, and think things through.
And that’s what he’d been doing all this time—trying to think of a way out of this mess he’d gotten himself into. No matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t come up with anything.
I said before that Glen was kind of a soft man. He might have gotten mad enough at Samantha to shove her, but he didn’t have enough gumption to march down to the police station and own up to what he’d done. He said later at the trial that he knew it would probably cost him his job and he didn’t want to lose it.
To the very end when they led him away to prison, he was still trying to make sure everyone liked him and didn’t think he was a bad guy who had killed his wife on purpose. He kept saying it was all an accident and a misunderstanding. I’m sure it was. But really. What kind of a man sticks his wife in a freezer?
It was the most excitement South Shore had experienced in a long time, but it was the bad kind of excitement. The murder was interesting, but you felt bad thinking or talking about it. People were careful around the girls. We’re all hoping it’s the last excitement we’ll have for a long while.
Bless that Ben’s heart, he played down my part in the whole thing the best he could, but it still got out that I’d been the one who had put two and two together. Some people thought Samantha’s spirit was calling out to me, but I don’t buy that. If her spirit was going to call out to anyone’s it would have been one of her daughters or her sister. As I said before, I ain’t no psychic and she and me weren’t close.
I know it was my subconscious trying to tell my fool self what I should have figured out long before—a woman might walk away from Glen, but she’d never walk away from her daughters without at least talking with them. I hadn’t known Samantha well, but I did know her daughter’s and it was a decent, caring woman who’d raised them two. Young mothers as loving as Jerri Lynn didn’t learn how to love her baby all by herself. That girl had been nurtured.
It was also my subconscious or God or just common sense that made me figure out that the old chest freezer was the perfect place to store a dead body until a man could figure out what else to do with it.
It was no wonder Glen had gotten a little seedy-looking considering everything that must have been going around and around in his mind all that time. It must have been terrible for him knowing what he’d done and then trying, like some little boy, to cover up his mistake before anyone could find out.
It weren’t easy on the girls. They loved their daddy, but they’d loved their mama more. It was hard for them to figure out how to act. Especially the youngest. That fall, there was a lot of mournful clarinet playing in our neighborhood and no one said a word about it. I hear she’s got a music scholarship to Morehead State come fall, though. I guess there’s a silver lining to everything—although that one is a little thin.
Jerri Lynn is working her way through the nursing program over at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth right now. She still talks of eventually going on to becoming a pediatrician, and I’m starting to think she has enough gumption to do it. That girl is awful determined. This ain’t a bad step for her. A nurse can make good enough money to support a youngin’ or two. Haven’t seen any boys nosing around, though, which is hard to imagine as pretty as that girl is. I think maybe what happened to her mama has put her off men for a while. Someday somebody special might come along, though. In the meantime I’m proud of how she’s doing. Proud as if she were my own. She still comes to see me, too.
Aunt Charlene came back to stay with the girls after her divorce. Both girls were still under age and needed an adult relative there so they could keep living in their home. Charlene seemed to be in a good patch as far as rehab, so that worked out pretty good. From what I can tell, she’s still clean and sober. Sometimes I wonder who is raising who, though. Jerri Lynn is a lot more mature-acting than her aunt. I think it gives the girls comfort having her there, though. She does look a lot like their mama.
Got us a new principal down at the elementary school. I think it’s working out a lot better. Glen seemed to have some trouble keeping his mind on his work.
As for me? I don’t know. This was a bad one. It weren’t just that I got myself involved in solving another murder. The thing that troubles me is that the murder was here at home. A person needs to feel safe where they live. Now my faith in my home has been shaken. I can’t pretend that bad things only happen in other places anymore. I have to admit that there’s plenty of bad anywhere you want to look, and sometimes it takes opening up other people’s chest freezers to find it.
I figure a person has a choice in this life. You can see evil, or you can see good. I find it less stressful to see good as long as the evil don’t get up in my face. When it does, I try to deal with it the best I can. That’s all anybody can do.
Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I just made me a fried bologna sandwich with a thick slab of ripe tomato straight out of my garden on it. I got my shoes off, an ice-cold can of RC cola to wash it down with, and Days of Our Lives will be coming on any minute.
P.S. One of them good things I try to believe in happened to me a few months later. I was minding my own business when somebody came a’knocking on my door.
I about dropped my teeth when I saw who was standing there. Captain Evan Wilson from the Mississippi Queen had come a’looking for me just like he said he was gonna do some day. It was dead winter when he came and it turns out that they don’t like for the boat to run in the middle of the winter months. It’s a danger to the ship and besides that, most people don’t want to cruise on the river in January anyway.
Evan ain’t that shy boy I once knew back in summer camp and met again fifty years later when my cousin talked me into taking a cruise on that river boat. No, Evan ain’t shy at all. He told me straight out that he’d deliberately come courting. He said I was the most interesting woman he’d ever met and he weren’t about to let me get away from him a third time.
Ain’t that something?
He’s been a widower for a long time and it turns out he has a big family strung around all over the place. Four sons and two daughters and a dozen grandchildren at last count. He says he can’t wait for me to meet them. He says they’ve been after him to find some nice woman and settle down.
It’s early days yet. I ain’t jumping into something right off the bat like Lula Faye did. But I’m having an awful good time getting to know this man.
I’ve talked it over with Jerri Lynn, and she tells me I need to “go for it.” I think I just might take her advice. That girl has a good head on her shoulders.
Once while we was a’talking, I told Jerri Lynn all about them rumors of hidden rooms and secret tunnels. She asked Glen when she went to see him in prison and he didn’t seem to know anything about them. So, level-headed girl that she is—she didn’t go hunting around. Nope. She just asked a contractor to take a look and see if there was any evidence of it.
Turns out there was a tunnel that led to the river she’s sure her great-grandma Henrietta used to secretly transport bootlegged whiskey up from the river back during Prohibition. She knows that was what it was used for because when they opened it up, there was a bunch of old whiskey bottles someone had left down there and forgotten about. Jerri Lynn found a collector who paid good money for the bottles and the story.
The contractor also found a secret room off the main bedroom on the second floor that Henrietta had evidently ended up using to store the fancy clothes she’d worn. Flapper-type dresses. Good ones. Totally out of style when Henrietta took off with Mack for New Orleans, but beaded originals worth a mint now. Some nice jewelry, too. Jerri Lynn is using what she gets out of the clothes and jewelry to help her with tuition and books.
I asked her if she was going to keep anything as a keepsake for the baby when she grows up. She said she thought getting an education so she can take good care of the baby might be a better use of the money. I agree.
Still, the other day she showed me one of Henrietta’s dresses she’s not planning on selling. At least not right away. It’s all white with crystal beads. She tried it on for me and it drapes around that girl’s body like it was made for her. Has a fancy-sounding label from Paris in it. Jerri Lynn said she thought it might do for a wedding gown someday so she thinks she’ll keep it just in case.
I think “just in case” might come along before she realizes it. Ben was awful solicitous of her and the baby right after that awful time when I discovered her mother’s body. I see him now regularly dropping by to check on her. Just a few minutes every week or so. A few words while he’s standing there on the porch. Sometimes I see a teddy bear or other small gift in his hand. I know he’s not the handsomest men in the world, but she could do a whole lot worse.
I always did think Ben had good sense and watching him these past months proves it. She’s young, he’s a good eight years older, so he’s giving her time to grow up. She doesn’t seem to mind his little visits one bit. I see him standing outside the door, talking to her, and I smile knowing what’s probably coming in a couple years. I’m hoping I can see her put that pretty dress of her great-grandmother’s to good use.
There’s a saying that life begins at forty. I don’t think I can go along with that. Forty weren’t nothing special to me. For me, life didn’t really take off until my seventy-first year when I pulled together what courage I had and stepped onto that train to go help my brother take care of my sister-in-law while she had the chemo. It was a hard thing to leave everything I’d ever known and go to Texas, but I did it. Now Evan says if I’ll marry him we can travel the river together on a little houseboat he bought after he retired. He wants us to live part of the time on the river in his houseboat and part of the time here in my little house. I ain’t said yes yet, but I’m surely studying hard on it. Evan says not to study too long because we got us a lot of living to do.
Jerri Lynn says if we get married she wants to make the wedding cake. The girl has been studying a YouTube video on cake decorating and she’s getting real good at it. I guess maybe it wouldn’t be too bad to travel outside of South Shore, Kentucky after all. Especially if I was on the river with Evan, and especially when I can always come back home for a spell. He says he’s got a great-grandbaby fixing to come along pretty soon. A little boy. I bought me some fluffy blue yarn yesterday.
Imagine. Me. Who never had a child of my own getting a chance to be grandmother to twelve and a great-grandmother, too.
I’ve changed my mind since Evan showed up. It does pay to travel outside of Kentucky every now and again. In fact, sometimes it pays off real good.