Charlaine Harris - Real Murders

I had my fingerprints taken, too, which would have been very interesting under other circumstances. As I left the room I glanced toward the kitchen without wanting to. Mamie Wright, housewife and wearer of high heels, was being processed as the murder victim . I didn’t know where Gerald Wright was; since the small conference room had been free, he must have been driven home or even to the police station. Of course he would be the most suspected, and I knew chances were he’d probably done it, but I could find no relief in the thought.

I didn’t believe Gerald had done it. I thought the person, man or woman, who’d called the VFW Hall had done it, and I didn’t believe Gerald Wright would have resorted to such elaborate means if he’d wanted to kill Mamie. He might have buried her in his cellar, like Crippen, but he would not have killed her at the VFW and then called to alert the rest of the club members to his actions. Actually, Gerald didn’t seem to have enough sense of fun, if that was what you wanted to term it. This murder had a kind of bizarre playfulness about it. Mamie’d been arranged like a doll, and the phone call was like a childish “Nyah, nyah, you can’t catch me.”

As I went out to my car very slowly, I was mulling over that phone call. It was a red flag, surely, to alert the club to the near certainty that this murder had been planned and executed by a club member. Mamie Wright, wife of an insurance salesman in Lawrenceton, Georgia, had been battered to death and arranged after death to copy the murder of the wife of an insurance company employee in Liverpool, England. This had been done on the premises where the club met, on the night it met to discuss that very case. It was possible someone outside the club had a grudge against us, though I couldn’t imagine why. No, someone had decided to have his own kind of fun with us. And that someone was almost surely someone I knew, almost surely a member of Real Murders.

I could scarcely believe I had to walk out to my car by myself, drive it home by myself, enter my dark home-by myself. But then I realized that all the members of Real Murders, alive or dead, with the exception of Benjamin Greer, were under police scrutiny at this very moment.

I was the safest person in Lawrenceton.

I drove slowly, double-checked myself at stop signs, and used my turn signals long before I needed to. I was so completely tired I was afraid I’d look drunk to any passing patrol officers… if there were any left on the streets. I was so glad to turn the car into my familiar slot, put my key in my own lock, and plod into my own territory. Functioning through a woolly fog of fatigue, I dialled Mother’s number. When she answered I told her that no matter what she heard, I was just fine and nothing awful had happened to me. I cut off her questions, left the phone off the hook, and saw by the kitchen clock that it was only 9:30. Amazing.

I trudged up the stairs, pulling off my sweater and shirt as I went. I just managed to shuck the rest of my clothes, pull on my nightgown, and crawl into bed before sleep hit me.

At 3 A.M. I woke in a cold sweat. My dream had been one big close-up of Mamie Wright’s head.

Someone was crazy; or someone was unbelievably vicious.

Or both.

I turned the water on full force, let it get good and hot, and stepped into the shower. It was 7 A.M. on a cool, crisp spring morning, and my first conscious thought was: I don’t have to go to work today. The next thought was: my life has changed forever.

Not much had ever really happened to me; not big things, either wonderful or horrible. My parents getting divorced was bad, but even I had been able to see it was better for them. I had already gotten my driver’s license by then, so they didn’t need to shuttle me back and forth. Maybe the divorce had made me cautious, but caution is not a bad thing. I had a neat and tidy life in a messy world, and if sometimes I suspected I was trying to fulfill the stereotype of a small-town librarian, well, I had yearnings to play other roles, too. In the movies, sometimes those dry librarians with their hair in buns suddenly let their juices gush, shook their hair loose, threw off their glasses, and did a tango.

Maybe I would. But in the meantime, I could have a small pride in myself. I had done okay the night before, not great but okay. I had gotten through it.

I went through the tedious business of drying my mass of hair and pulled on some old jeans and a sweater. I padded downstairs in my moccasins and brewed some coffee, a big pot. I’d gotten my lawn chairs and table set up on the patio a week before, when I’d decided it was going to stay spring for good, so after getting my papers from the little-used front doorstep, I carried my first cup out to the patio. It was possible to feel alone there, though of course the Crandalls on one side and Robin Crusoe on the other could see my patio from their second floor back bedroom. The back bedroom was small and I knew everyone used it as a guest room, so the chances were good that no one was looking.

Sally hadn’t managed to get the story into the local paper. I was sure that had been printed before the meeting even started. But the local man employed by the city paper had had better luck. “Lawrenceton Woman Murdered” ran the uninspired headline in the City and State section. A picture of Mamie accompanied the article, and I was impressed by the stringer’s industry. I scanned the story quickly. It was necessarily short, and had little in it I didn’t know, except that the police hadn’t found Mamie’s purse. I frowned at that. It didn’t seem to fit somehow. There was no hint of this murder being like any other murder. I wondered if the police had requested that be withheld. But it would be all over Lawrenceton soon, I was sure. Lawrenceton, despite its new population of commuters to Atlanta, was still a small town at heart. My name was included: “ Ms. Teagarden, anxious at Mrs. Wright’s continued absence, searched the building and found Mrs. Wright’s body in the kitchen .” I shivered. It sounded so simple in print.

I’d put the phone back on the hook, and now it rang. Mother, of course, I thought, and went back into the kitchen. I picked up the receiver as I poured more coffee. “Are you all right?” she asked immediately. “John Queensland came over last night after the police let him go, and he told me all about it.”

John Queensland was certainly making a determined effort to endear himself to Mother. Well, she’d been on her own (but not always alone) for a long time.

“I’m pretty much all right,” I said cautiously.

“Was it awful?”

“Yes,” I said, and I meant it. It had been horrible, but exciting, and the more hours separated me from the event, the more exciting and bearable it was becoming. I didn’t want to lose the horror; that was what kept you civilized.

“I’m sorry,” she said helplessly. Neither of us knew what to say next. “Your father called me,” she blurted out. “You must have had your, phone off the hook?”

“Uh-huh.”

“He was worried, too. About you. And he said you were going to keep Phillip next weekend? He wondered if you would be able; he said if you didn’t feel like it, just give him a call, he’d change his plans.” Mother was doing her best not to call her ex-husband a selfish bastard for mentioning such a thing at a time like this.

I had a half-brother, Phillip, six, a scarey and wonderful boy whom I could stand for whole weekends occasionally without my nerves completely shattering. I’d completely forgotten that Dad and his second wife Betty Jo (quite a reaction to an Aida Teagarden) were leaving for a convention in Chattanooga in a few days.

“No, that’ll be okay, I’ll give him a call later today,” I said.