Charlaine Harris - Real Murders

I whacked at him with my free hand out of sheer aggravation. “I’m not trying to get you to help me, I want to tell you something!”

He steered me into a chair in the little conference room and put on a waiting face.

“I was supposed to lecture tonight on the Wallace case, you remember? William Herbert Wallace and his wife, Julia, England, 1931?”

He nodded his curly pale head and I could see he was a million miles away. I felt like slapping him again. I knew I sounded like an idiot, but I was coming to the point. “I don’t know how much you remember about the Wallace case-if you don’t know anything, I can fill you in later.” I waved my hands to show that was inconsequential, here came the real meat. “What I want to tell you, what’s important, is that Mamie Wright’s been killed exactly like Julia Wallace. She’s been arranged .”

Bingo! That blue gaze was almost frighteningly intense now. I felt like a bug impaled on a pin. This was not a lightweight man.

“Point out a few comparisons before the lab guys get here, so I can have them photographed.”

I blew out a breath of relief. “The raincoat under Mamie. It hasn’t rained here in days. A raincoat was found under Julia Wallace. And Mamie’s been placed by the little oven. Mrs. Wallace was found by a gas fire. She was bludgeoned to death. Like Mamie, I think. Mr. Wallace was an insurance salesman. So is Gerald Wright. I’ll bet there’s more I haven’t thought of yet. Mamie’s about the same age as Julia Wallace… There are just so many parallels I don’t think I could’ve imagined them.”

Arthur stared at me thoughtfully for a few long seconds. “Are there any photographs of the Wallace murder scene?” he asked.

The xeroxed pictures would have come in handy now, I thought.

“Yes, I’ve seen one, there may be more.”

“Was the husband, Wallace, arrested?”

“Yes, and convicted. But later the sentence was overturned somehow or other, and he was freed.”

“Okay. Come with me.”

“One more thing,” I said urgently. “The phone rang when I got here tonight and it was someone asking for Julia Wallace.”

The silent hall was not silent anymore. As we left the conference room, the law came in the back door. It was represented by a heavy-set man in a plaid jacket who was taller and older than Arthur, and two men in uniform. As I stood back against the wall, temporarily forgotten, Arthur led them down the hall and opened the door to the kitchen. They crowded around the door looking in. They were all silent for a moment. The youngest man in uniform winced and then wrenched his face straight. The other uniformed man shook his head once and then stared in at Mamie with a disgusted expression. What disgusted him, I wondered? The mess that had been made with the body of a human being? The waste of a life? The fact that someone living in the town he had to protect had seen fit to do this terrible thing?

I realized the man in the plaid jacket was the sergeant of detectives; I’d seen his picture in the paper when he’d arrested a drug pusher. Now he pursed his mouth briefly and said “Damn,” with little expression.

Arthur began telling them things, going swiftly and in a low voice. I could tell what point in his narrative he’d reached when their heads swung towards me simultaneously. I didn’t know whether to nod or what. I just stared back at them and felt a thousand years old. Their faces turned back to Arthur and he continued his briefing.

The two men in uniform left the building while Arthur and the sergeant continued their discussion. Arthur seemed to be enumerating things, while the sergeant nodded his head in approval and occasionally interjected some comment. Arthur had a little notebook out and was jotting in it as they spoke.

Another memory about the sergeant stirred.

His name was Jack Burns. He’d bought his house from my mother. He was married to a school teacher and had two kids in college. Now Jack Burns gave Arthur a sharp nod, as clear as a starting gun. Arthur went to the door to the meeting room and pushed it open.

“Mr. Wright, could you come here for a minute, please?” Detective Arthur Smith asked, in a voice so devoid of expression that it was a warning in itself.

Gerald Wright came into the hall hesitantly. No one in the big room could fail to know by now that something was drastically wrong, and I wondered what they’d been saying. Gerald took a step toward me, but Arthur took his arm quite firmly and guided Gerald into the little conference room. I knew he was about to tell Gerald that his wife was dead, and I found myself wondering how Gerald would take it. Then I was ashamed.

At moments I understood in decent human terms what had happened to a woman I knew, and at moments I seemed to be thinking of Mamie’s death as one of our club’s study cases.

“Miss Teagarden,” said Jack Burns’s good-old-boy drawl, “you must be Aida Teagarden’s child.”

Well, I had a father, too: but he’d committed the dreadful sin of coming in from foreign parts (Texas) to work on our local Georgia paper, marrying my mother, begetting me, and then leaving and divorcing Lawrenceton’s own Aida Brattle Teagarden. I said, “Yes.”

“I’m mighty sorry you had to see something like that,” Jack Burns said, shaking his heavy head mournfully.

It was almost like a burlesque of regret, it was laid on so heavily; was he being sarcastic? I looked down, and for once said nothing. I didn’t need this right now; I was shaken and confused.

“It just seems so strange to me that a sweet young woman like you would come to a club like this,” Jack Burns went on slowly, his tone expressing stunned bewilderment. “Could you just kind of clarify for me what the purpose of this-organization-is?”

I had to answer a direct question. But why was he asking me? His own detective belonged to the same club. I wished this middle-aged man with his plaid suit and his cowboy boots would melt through the floor. As slightly as I knew Arthur, I wanted him back. This man was scarey. I pushed my glasses back up my nose with shaking fingers.

“We meet once a month,” I said in an uneven voice. “And we talk about a famous murder case, usually a pretty old one.”

The sergeant apparently gave this deep thought. “Talk about it-?” he inquired gently.

“Ah… sometimes just learn about it, who was killed and how and why and by whom.” Our members favored different “W’s.”

I was most interested in the victim.

“Or sometimes,” I stumbled on, “depending on the case, we decide if the police arrested the right person. Or if the murder was unsolved, we talk about who may have been guilty. Sometimes we watch a movie.”

“Movie?” Raised beetly brows, a gentle inquiring shake of the head.

“Like ‘The Thin Blue Line.’ Or a fictionalized movie based on a real case. ‘In Cold Blood’…”

“But not ever,” he asked delicately, “what you would call a-snuff movie?”

“Oh my God,” I said sickly. “Oh my God, no.” In my naivetй, I said, “How could you think that?”

“Well, Miss Teagarden, this here is a real murder, and we have to ask real questions.” And his face was not nice at all.

Our club had offended something in Jack Burns. How would Arthur fare, a policeman who was actually a member? But it seemed he would be working on the investigation in some capacity.

“Now, Miss Teagarden,” Jack Burns went on, his mask back in place, his voice as buttery as a waffle, “I am going to head up this investigation, and my two homicide detectives will work on this, and Arthur Smith will assist us, since he knows all you people. I know you’ll cooperate to the fullest with him. He tells me you know a little more about this than the others, that you got some kind of phone call and you found the body. We may have to talk to you a few times about this, but you just have patience with us.” And I knew from his face I had better be willing to turn over my every waking minute, if that was required of me.