Читать книгу Dead on the Bayou - June Shaw - Страница 10

Sugar Ledge Manor welcomed me as it would everyone who drove up. The crepe myrtles lent clouds of soft pink, and numerous palm trees gave an air of a tropical island near the pale blue stucco two-story building. I rushed inside, past sweet-scented roses growing next to the archway, looking forward to seeing my mother, to enjoy her comforting arms around me while that could still happen.

Instead of her sitting in the midst of her Chat and Nap Group, she and all the others were scattering from their normal places.

“Hey, Mom.” I needed to walk faster before she and her buddies went off.

My mother gave me a soft smile and quick hug. “It’s so nice to see you, Sunny.” She pecked a kiss on my lips. “Now I have to go.”

Some of the other ladies turned their heads back to me and nodded.

“What? Where? Is Bingo ready to start? I could play with y’all.”

“No Bingo today. I’m getting my hair done,” Mom said.

“And I’m going to the bathroom. My Metamucil started working,” one of her friends told me while she shoved her walker toward the hall.

“Congratulations,” I called to her along with a big thumbs-up since I knew of her lingering problem.

She didn’t look back. “Thank you.”

“I’m hungry. I’m going to have a snack,” a gray-haired lady in a wheelchair said.

“Wait a minute. Do any of you know Clara Wilburn?” I needed to lift my voice to ask it since they were all scooting like sprayed red ants.

Two shook their heads as they moved off. The one using a three-pronged walker glanced back. “I might. I don’t remember.” Beyond her, two young women wearing the cotton navy pantsuits of many who worked here turned toward me. From their intense stares, I got the feeling they knew Mrs. Wilburn. Maybe they would come to ask what I wanted to know.

I hadn’t thought about the consequences of having someone tell me they knew the deceased woman. What was I going to say—that someone murdered her? No, that wasn’t my place. I couldn’t announce Eve’s neighbor’s demise. Word would get out soon enough. By tomorrow, it would be in the local paper. Then I could come back and ask more questions.

Uh-oh, I hoped the paper wouldn’t mention Dave’s camp as the murder scene or any of us being there.

I would have offered to go upstairs with Mom to get her hair fixed, but at this point, didn’t want anyone asking why I had mentioned Eve’s neighbor. I called, “Bye,” to my mother and rushed out of the building, not asking why she was having this done so late in the day. Residents had their hair fixed whenever the kind volunteers could come over.

In the parking lot, I sat in my truck, lowered the windows, and thought about Dave. What was his connection to Mrs. Wilburn? Why would anyone put her body inside his new place? He had probably seen her watching him through her window when he’d gone around Eve’s house taking measurements and recording windows for the alarm system his company installed. He may have noticed her there at other times when he’d gone to Eve’s—to carry out the work, to eat the rare meal she’d cooked so she could keep him there.

He had seen or maybe met her when she came over to Eve’s front lawn to see the baby right before Noah’s parents took him away to Houston. Dave said he didn’t know her otherwise, and I believed him. There was no way I could imagine him killing anyone. But even if he had killed the dead woman in his new place, why would he keep her there?

Unless he planned to dispose of her body later.

I shook my head to push that thought out. What was I thinking? Dave couldn’t kill anyone. I was sure of it.

“Are you okay?” A man outside my door leaned to my open window, startling me. “Do you need help starting your truck?”

“No, I’m fine. And my truck works.” I shifted my shoulder away from the window and cranked the motor, telling myself this was not the place to sit in contemplation. “But thanks.” As he stepped away, I checked behind and around, ready to back up and go.

“I heard you asking about Clara Wilburn,” he said.

“Yes.” As much as I’d decided I wouldn’t speak about her until others in town knew she died, I cared and wanted to know all I could about her.

“She’s my aunt.” He stood about five-foot-six and wore a button-down shirt and pinched expression. Either he knew about her demise, or he didn’t care for her.

I didn’t back up. “She lives—uh, her house is next door to my sister’s,” I said, correcting myself but trying not to give away anything more.

He nodded, his lips tightening in a grimace. “I came to visit my grandmother. That’s her stepmother, but she never comes here.”

So he did not yet know Mrs. Wilburn died. I needed to find out more. “I really never got to know her very well.”

“Hmp, and you don’t want to.”

“Why is that?”

“Nobody in our family likes her. I doubt if she has any friends either.” He pulled an electronic cigarette with a thick base from his shirt pocket, started it up, and sucked on the thing. Smoke swirled in the air.

Who are some people in your family? I wanted to ask, but couldn’t think of an appropriate explanation for why I wanted to know. If I pried, he’d get suspicious and ask why I was inquiring so much about his aunt. If she upset him so, he would probably spout about disturbances with her.

Instead, he shifted back from my truck, face muscles and shoulders relaxed now with his smoke.

“What’s your grandmother’s name?” I tilted my head toward the manor.

“Adrienne Viatar. Who do you have in there?”

“My mom. It was good talking to you.” I took off before he could ask my name or hers. I wanted to know who might have a motive for killing Mrs. Wilburn, but didn’t want to let him know she was dead or where she’d been found. Or that I was the person who had discovered her body.

I’d try to get more information about their family from Mrs. Wilburn’s stepmother once that elder had time to learn and digest the fact that she’d died.

The phone in my purse rang. “Where are you?” Eve asked.

“Leaving the manor.”

“Come over. I’m back home.”

“What’s up?”

“We need to go next door and give Royce our condolences.”

Doing that was not tempting, but given the circumstances, it was the right thing to do. “All right.”

“Good. And while we’re there, we might be able to get some ideas about who could have wanted his mother gone.”

My foot tapped my brake, an automatic reflex in response to what she was suggesting. “Don’t you think the police are checking into that with him?”

“Absolutely, but when I’m questioned by police, I feel much more tense and concerned and don’t always get my thoughts straight.”

“I’m the same. Okay, be there soon.” I’d wait to tell her what I learned here when we were face-to-face.

* * * *

As I pulled up to Eve’s, I spotted Mrs. Wilburn’s older model car parked in her driveway and realized I’d hoped it would be gone. That would mean Royce wasn’t home, and we would not have to go over there yet. Guilt pinched my heart for my attitude, but I hated to face the bereaved child of a parent who just died, especially one who was murdered.

My finger was going for Eve’s doorbell when she jerked her door open. “Let’s go.” She stepped outside. “This is a task I dread just like I’m sure you do, so let’s do it now.”

“Front door or back?” I gripped her arm. We both glanced toward the front of the house. Even though darkness had set in, the place was visible. My gaze ran along all the windows. Sadness crimped inside me. I couldn’t believe we would never see her there.

“If we go to the front, he might think it’s somebody trying to sell something or preach. In the back, he’ll figure it’s friends,” Eve said.

I believed the same thing, so we walked past the large bushes that separated their backyard from Eve’s and across the grass to the storm door. Taking a breath, I exhaled as Eve rang the bell. Who would speak first, her or me? What would I say? Certainly Eve was wrong about thinking we might question him so soon about possible people who might have killed his mother. This was a time of grief, not a time for us to thrust questions at him.

Sorrow shot through me when the wooden door inside opened. Royce stepped closer to the outer storm door that was glass with the bottom half screened, and I waited for him to open it. We could just stay in the doorway to express our sympathy unless he invited us inside.

“You!” Beyond the glass, he thrust a finger at me. “I can’t believe you would come to this house!” His reddening face looked like it might burst into flames.

“Why not?” Eve asked, as I’d thought of doing, although I couldn’t get words to shake out of my mouth.

“Or you either!” He aimed his finger at her.

“Royce, we are so sorry about your mother. She was a kind woman,” I said, although I actually had seen no evidence of her kindness. And I didn’t understand his fury although he was probably experiencing mixed emotions, sadness, and anger. “We wanted to pay our respects.”

“Yes, and ask if there’s anything we can do,” Eve said.

His chest rose. “You’ve done enough. You helped.” He thrust his finger back at me like a weapon. “But you’re the one who killed her!”