A Body in the Bargain: A Kate & Kylie Mystery Page 14

  “Millsaps? Oh, my goodness. That must be it,” Aunt Verily said. “You know Maxie’s mother was a Millsaps. That must be what she was after, something by her grandmother or her aunt, and it would be just like Meredith to have hinted she had them but not to share them. We’ll just have to give them to her. I wish she had just come right out and told me.”

  “That may explain where Miss Merkle got them,” I said. “I saw her at the Cadbury yard sale that first Saturday I was home.”

  There were voices in the room, and she said, “I’m sorry, Kate. They‘ve got to run me through another of their machines and make some more money off me. Oh, and I meant to say, the amaryllis is just my favorite flower ever, and I’m so glad it’s a bulb I can plant, and you are the dearest thing to go through all those old papers.”

  John Robert came back on and said, “Well, you’ve certainly cheered her up. “

  “Great,” I said. “I’ll be over to see her in the morning. I have an appointment at 10, but I should be there well before noon if you and the others want to plan to take a break.”

  It was not until I was ready for bed that night that I picked up Catherine Jane Millsaps’ poems. I read the little introduction and learned that Catherine Jane had been born before the Civil War, and died without every marrying. She must have been a sister of Maxie’s grandfather or great-grandfather.

  I read the first poem—about a waterfall—and thought it was nice that somebody had loved Catherine Jane enough to have her poems printed, even it was posthumously.

  Before reaching over to turn off my lamp, I flipped through the booklet and read another one.

  One stanza into it, I was wide awake and out of bed.

  I knew what Maxie Lewis was so frantic about, and why.

  Chapter 18

  I had been up about fifteen minutes, going from the little book of poetry to the to the Literary Society’s website, and then searching for any mention of Catherine Jane Millsaps on the internet, when I heard the noise in the back yard.

  It honestly wasn’t much of a noise, but I went to turn on the back porch light for the first time since I’d moved there, and it had burned out. I shrugged it off, and then I heard something more definite, like twigs snapping.

  I began thinking about what the locksmith had said about having that glass window in my kitchen door, and I’ll tell you the truth, I just got scared.

  I called Kylie and said, “Could I come out to your place?”

  “Sure,” she said, “You sound weird. What’s the matter?

  “I heard some noises in the backyard,” I said. “I just don’t want to be by myself. I know it’s silly, but…”

  “Buddy will come and get you,” she said firmly.

  That’s a best friend for you.

  Buddy was at the door in 15 minutes, looking big and strong in his usual jeans and t-shirt. Just seeing him there made be feel safe—and a little silly.

  However, I had already jumped into my jeans and a t-shirt, thrown some things into my overnight bag, gotten my laptop computer, and both copies of Catherine Jane Millsap’s poems, and I was ready to go. At the last minute, I had even grabbed the one “Merkle Personal Papers” inventory list I had printed out.

  I really started settling down once I was in Buddy’s newest truck, which is way high off the ground.

  Things seemed even better in the Carsons’ kitchen. I wasn’t really hungry, but Darlene had made lemon meringue pie, and there’s nothing better.

  “So what’s going on?” Kylie said.

  “Oh, I was already kind of hyper,” I said, “and then I heard these noises in the back yard, and I guess I just panicked.”

  “Hyper about what?” Kate asked.

  “I’ll have to show you,” I said. I opened my laptop and reached into my bag for a copy of Catherine Jane Millsaps’ poems.

  I opened “Flowings” to the second poem, “Beside the Rushing River,” and opened the River Valley Literary Society’s website.

  Kate and Kylie looked over my shoulder. Buddy yawned and left to check on the boys, who were supposed to be asleep, but apparently were wrestling on the floor.

  “You know I don’t like poetry,” Kylie said. “Do I have to read this stuff?”

  I handed Darlene the open booklet, and she looked back and forth, back and forth.

  “Oh, my goodness, it’s the same poem,” she said. “Same exact words. How did that happen?”

  “Obviously it’s plagiarism,” I said. “The one in the booklet was written way more than a hundred years ago. Maxie Lewis copied her poem from this book. Miss Verily says that Maxie’s mother was a Millsaps. It’s not copyrighted. It’s not on the internet. It was privately published, and nobody remembers it. Easiest thing in the world to steal a poem from.”

  “Is that what you’re so freaked out about?” Kylie asked. “That Maxie Lewis copied a poem? Is that against the law or something?”

  It was pretty clear that she didn’t get the point. I explained about seeing Meredith Merkle at the Cadburys’ sale, which Kylie remembered.

  “She was at a table covered with dusty old books and magazines and things like that,” I said. “It smelled like mold.”

  “This one smells a little like mold,” Darlene said, sniffing it.

  “And,” I said, “Maxie Lewis was a Cadbury, and her mother was a Millsaps according to Aunt Verily. Maxie grew up in that house, and if she copied this one, I’ll bet she’s copied almost all of them at one time or another. And Meredith Merkle found out.”

  Kylie was frowning. I went ahead.

  “I think that Meredith Merkle bought these at the Cadbury Yard Sale, and took them home and saw the same thing I saw, and if I know Miss Merkle, she would NOT have kept her mouth shut about it.”

  “Well, now that’s true,” Kylie said.

  “And,” I said, “the last time we know of that somebody saw her, she was on Mulberry Street heading toward Morgan Road.”

  Buddy had come back into the kitchen.

  “So she was heading toward the Dabneys’ house,” he said.

  “Well, Camelot Court comes before that,” I said, “Maybe she was heading to Maxie Lewis’ apartment to tell her what she knew.”

  And then I told them how fixated Maxie had been on wanting to see Miss Merkle’s personal papers, and how we thought it was about the blue vase because that’s what Hester Foley was having a fit about. I told them about her calls, and how she showed up at my house to see if I had a key, and how she’d offered to clean up Aunt Verily’s house.

  “She wanted to get these poems before anybody saw them,” I said. “That’s her main claim to fame: being River Valley’s poet. It would have been awful for her if it had gotten out that they weren’t hers.”

  They were all three quiet for a moment.

  “I can really see Meredith Merkle being hateful enough to tell everybody,” Darlene said. “And I can see Maxie worrying herself sick about it and wanting to get the booklets back, but I can’t see her murdering Meredith over it. I just can’t.”

  “I know that’s hard to imagine,” I conceded, “And the real question is how she would have gotten the body to the Dabneys’ garage.”

  Kylie bit her bottom lip the way she does when she’s thinking hard, and said, “Look, Kate. Whatever else, it really does sound like Maxie went a little crazy with all those calls and bothering you and your Aunt Verily. I think I ought to take you straight to the police station in the morning and you ought to tell Daniel what you told us.”

  Buddy nodded and said, “And just tell him all this stuff, and let him decide what to do. It’s his job.”

  That seemed about right to me. Tell Daniel and let him handle it.

  “Okay. That’s a good idea,” I said. “And I guess I was feeling kind of creepy about the poems and then whatever it was in the backyard just scared me. It was
probably a possum or a cat or something. I hope you don’t think I’m crazy.”

  “I’ve always thought you were crazy,” Buddy said with a grin, “But this makes a crazy kind of sense. Just stay out of it once you tell Daniel.”

  We talked a while longer, and then I settled down in the guest room. It was good to be upstairs in a big house full of people, and after tossing and turning for a while, I fell asleep.

  “Kate! Kate! Wake up!”

  It was Kylie in pajamas and a kimono, turning on my light. I blinked and looked out the window. It was dark.

  “What time is it?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know. After three, I think,” she said. “Here. I brought you a robe. Daniel and Brenda Breaker are both downstairs. He called Buddy a few minutes ago asking if we knew where you were, and now he’s here.”

  Give Kylie credit. While I was tying the robe on, she was taking her hairbrush to my hair.

  Daniel didn’t look tired, for a change. He looked grim. So did Brenda Breaker.

  “Sally Turbo called 911 and said she heard a window break at your house,” he said. “It turned out it was the back door. Somebody broke the window and went in.”

  He looked at me almost angrily.

  “Your car was in the driveway,” he said, “And when I called your cell phone, it rang in the bathroom.”

  Brenda Breaker held up my cell phone, which was in a plastic bag marked “Evidence.”

  “I thought you might have been abducted,” Daniel said. “When did you come out here?“

  “Like I told you…” Buddy started.

  “Let her talk,” Daniel said.

  “I got kind of uneasy,” I said, “I thought I heard something in the yard, and I was already kind of scared, so I called Kylie, and Buddy came and got me.”

  Then I thought of something.

  “I left a cardboard box with two folders in it on my bedroom floor. Was it still there?”

  “There was an empty box on the floor by your bed,” Daniel said.

  I shuddered.

  “I got there first,” Brenda said. “Sally was out on her porch with her gun, and she said whoever it was must have left from the back.”

  “We’ve got crime scene people there now,” Daniel said. “And the back door is already boarded up. Didn’t you even think about calling 911?”

  Kylie was watching him with intent interest.

  “She didn’t mean to scare you, Daniel,” she said. “Would you and Brenda like some Krispy Kreme doughnuts? And maybe some milk? There are some things Kate ought to tell you.”

  “I’m pretty sure I know who it was who broke in,” I said once we were seated at the kitchen table. “I think it was Maxie Lewis.”

  Daniel and Brenda both gave me a look and then they gave each other a look, and Kylie spoke up.

  “Kate’s got good reason to think that. I was going to bring her straight to your office in the morning to tell you about it, so don’t be giving each other those looks!”

  “Oh,” Daniel said, “You mean Maxie Lewis was after something in those folders?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Those were the personal papers of Meredith Merkle. But she didn’t find what she was looking for.”

  I got my laptop, and one of the booklets and showed him the poems side by side.

  “Well that doesn’t mean she plagiarized all her poems,” he said.

  “But even one would have been enough to embarrass her very badly,” I said. “She grew up in that house, and I think these old booklets were probably stored away in the attic for years. There weren’t but a few copies and probably nobody else on earth remembers anything about Catherine Jane Millsaps. You can’t find her on the internet. Maybe she didn’t even live in River Valley. It was printed in Charleston.”

  “It’s sorta like that woman whose husband got her to paint all those big-eyed kids and said he painted them,” Brenda said.

  I said “Right!” and she beamed.

  “Camelot Court is right in between where Eddie Robuck saw her and where the body was found,” Daniel said, almost to himself. “I have a little trouble with her visiting there in broad daylight and nobody seeing her in that yellow outfit.”

  “Me too,” I said, “But Maxie’s apartment is right up front, and you don’t know how obsessive and persistent she’s been about wanting to see those papers. It got all mixed up with Hester Foley thinking that Flip Tarver stole that vase, but I don’t think Maxie cared about that. She just wanted to get into Meredith Merkle’s papers.”

  “And would she have known that the papers were at your house?” he asked.

  I remembered my last conversation with Aunt Verily.

  “I guess she could have learned if she visited Aunt Verily in the hospital last night,” I said. “Or even if she called her. I had told Aunt Verily, and she said that we should just give them to her since her mother was a Millsaps. I hadn’t looked at the poems then. Honestly, Daniel, I can’t think why anybody else would break into my house to get those old papers.”

  “Well, we’ll look into it,” Daniel said, getting up. “And you stay put. I mean do not leave this house.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked. “I want to know, and I want my cell phone back before you go!”

  He glanced at Brenda and nodded. She reluctantly turned over my cell phone. Then he actually told me what he was going to do.

  “I’m going to get about two hours of sleep at the station and then go to the hospital and talk to Miss Verily Pickens. If she tells me she told Maxie Lewis about the poetry booklets, I’m going to get a search warrant, and then we’ll go talk to Mrs. Lewis. I just want to find out if she broke into your house, and that may be fairly simple if she has the folders. May I have one of those booklets?”

  “Yes,” I said, “And I’ve got a full list typed up of what was in the folders. I did it yesterday. Would that help?”

  He looked surprised, but said, “Yes. If we find the folders, that could help.”

  “What if it wasn’t her?” I asked him at the door.

  “Not your problem,” he said.”There’s enough reason to go and talk with her.”

  “I could wind up with every little old lady in town mad at me,” I said, frowning.

  “Me, too,” he said, “And Kate…”

  I looked at him. “Yes?”

  “I’m glad you’re safe. That was scary at your house.”

  Chapter 19

  It was a little after four, still dark when Brenda and Daniel left. I didn’t even try to go back to sleep.

  At eight, just after Buddy had left to take the boys to school, John Robert called.

  He said, “Kate, the strangest thing just happened. Chief O’Reilly came by the hospital to talk to Mama. All he wanted to know was whether she had talked to Maxie Lewis in the last day and whether she had told her about some booklets of poems. She said yes, and he asked if she had told her you had the booklets, and she said yes again.”

  John Robert said he and Aunt Verily were both mystified, not just because of that, but because another police officer, Sgt. Darius Meade, had arrived a few minutes later and taken a seat outside Aunt Verily’s hospital room.

  “Sgt. Meade is a man of few words,” John Robert said. “He says he’s on assignment and not at liberty to talk about it. What’s going on, Katie?”

  I told him to keep it quiet, but they were investigating a break-in at my house, and that they thought Maxie Lewis might be involved.

  He said, “This is about those (expletive deleted) papers of Meredith Merkle, isn’t it?” and I said, “Yes, I think so.” I was happy that he didn’t seem to connect it with Meredith Merkle’s death.

  Then there was nothing to do but wait.

  Kylie decided to monogram all of her dishtowels. Darlene started to cook. I called up my Meredith Merkle file on
my desktop and read it over and added to it.

  Two more hours passed and Josh called.

  “What’s going on over at Camelot Court with all the police cars?” he asked, and I said honestly, “I don’t know.”

  Another hour passed. Darlene was in a frenzy of cooking. She had cooked meatloaf, mashed potatoes, butterbeans, corn, biscuits, and a banana pudding. There was enough for twelve people at least. None of us really had an appetite.

  Kylie ran out of dishtowels and decided to monogram some potholders.

  Then John Robert called and said that Darius Meade had left, so we knew that something was over.

  Finally, Daniel returned. He looked almost relaxed, and he didn’t have Brenda Breaker with him.

  “Whatever you’re cooking, it smells wonderful,” he said to Darlene.

  “There’s plenty,” Kylie said. “There’s enough for your whole department and the sheriff’s department, too. But please don’t start eating before you tell us what’s going on.”

  “In the first place,” he said, looking at me, “You were right. Maxie Lewis has been charged with breaking into your home. We had a search warrant, and we found the folders right on her kitchen table. She had been going through them when we got there. Your list of the items in the folder was very helpful in making a definite identification.”

  “What did she say?” Kylie asked. “What was that crazy woman thinking scaring Kate that way?”

  “We haven’t really gotten a statement from her about that,” Daniel said, “Because we also found Meredith Merkle’s umbrella and shoulder bag under Mrs. Lewis’ bed.”

  Darlene looked pale and sat down on the sofa.

  Kylie sat down beside her and asked, “Mom, are you going to faint?”

  Darlene said, “I’m fine. You look weird. Are you going to faint?”

  I was calm. I’m getting good at being calm. I asked Daniel, “So did she confess to killing Miss Merkle?”

  “Well,” he said. “She’s got Shelton Squires representing her now, so this might change, but the first thing she said when she saw that Brenda dragging those things out from under the bed was, ‘It was an accident!’”