Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
“Come on,” I said to Dottie then resorted to bribing her with her own cigarettes. “You can smoke while we wait for Al.”
“That’s emotional manipulation,” Dottie muttered, though she followed me anyway.
I gently pulled the front door shut behind us, leaving Florence exactly where she was at the bottom of the staircase. Neither one of us wanted to move her. Even if it looked like a terrible accident, it still felt wrong touching anything.
The humid summer air hit me the second we stepped onto the front porch.
Somewhere out in the pasture, a cow mooed softly while frogs croaked down near the creek bed beyond the fence line.
The porch lights cast long yellow shadows across the driveway while cicadas screamed from the trees surrounding the property.
Dottie immediately dug into the waistband of her shorts for her cigarette case with shaky fingers.
“You okay?” I asked quietly.
“I seen dead people before.” She lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply before looking back toward the farmhouse windows. “But I ain’t never seen Florence Sparks dead before.”
Honestly, same.
I sat down on one of the white rocking chairs lining the porch while my stomach twisted itself tighter every second. Florence’s scattered pearls kept replaying in my mind. The shoe. The way her arm had landed awkwardly beneath her.
“Looks like someone’s gettin’ a new dress,” Dottie teased to break our obvious tension. She referred to how Southern women had funeral dresses, and I was sure Florence had picked out what dress she’d be buried in.
The burial outfit was just as important as your wedding dress.
“It looked like she fell,” I finally said aloud, mostly to convince myself.
Dottie exhaled smoke slowly. “Mm-hmm,” she agreed, then headlights suddenly swept across the driveway.
“Well, thank goodness,” I muttered while standing quickly.
A National Park Service SUV rolled up first, crunching across the blacktop drive before parking crookedly near the porch. Ranger Tucker Pyle climbed out almost immediately. Seeing him, I knew this place was now considered part of his territory for the Daniel Boone National Forest.
Even in the flashing emergency lights bouncing off the trees, the man looked annoyingly put together. He was tall with broad shoulders. His uniform was crisp, and he wore a serious expression.
“You called this in?” Tucker asked while heading toward the porch.
“We found her,” I answered quickly. “Florence Sparks. At the bottom of the stairs inside.”
Tucker’s expression shifted instantly into full professional mode. “Is anyone else in the house?”
“We don’t know,” Dottie answered. “Tara Kelly and Alice Charles are missin’ too.”
That got his attention.
“They might not be missing,” I corrected her. “They are all guests of the Milkery for the Historical Society annual fundraiser. They were also coming to Happy Trails. I think we passed an Uber that could’ve been Tara and Alice. I can call Mary Elizabeth to see if they showed up at the campground.”
I didn’t have to tell him the particulars about why they were coming to Happy Trails, because he knew. Everyone in Normal knew I was hosting the annual fundraiser for the locals, and he worked with Hank.
“Naturally, you know she sent me here to fetch them,” I told him.
“You searched upstairs?” he asked.
“No,” I admitted. “We didn’t want to disturb anything.”
Tucker nodded once. “Good.”
Another set of lights suddenly exploded through the darkness behind him.
“Oh Lord,” Dottie muttered. “Here comes the parade.”
Sheriff Al Hemmer came flying up the driveway with enough sirens and flashing lights to alert three counties. Gravel sprayed behind his sheriff’s truck before he stopped abruptly near the porch, crookedly enough to make me wonder if he’d even fully hit the brakes.
The driver’s-side door flew open.
“Stand back!” Al hollered before he’d even fully stepped out of the vehicle. “Official business!”
Dottie looked over at me. “He says that every single time like somebody’s rushin’ to volunteer.”
Al adjusted his oversized sheriff hat, which sat halfway off the back of his head already, then hurried toward us while fumbling with a flashlight and notepad at the same time. His brown uniform somehow looked even baggier than usual tonight, probably because he was sweating straight through it.
“Where’s the body?” he asked breathlessly.
“Inside,” I answered.
Al stopped short. “You touched anything?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, Al,” I said flatly. I didn’t need to tell him how we’d been in a few situations like this before.
Creepy, but when you lived in a forest where hikers and campers liked to hover too close to a cliff’s edge or even thought hiking trails after a little bit of liquid courage was smart, unfortunately, you saw that those decisions led to deaths.
Maybe there were a couple of murders thrown into our history, but I knew enough to not disturb a body, no matter if there wasn’t any foul play.
“Everybody stay put.” He pointed his flashlight vaguely toward the porch.
Tucker ignored the exchange and moved straight to business. “Mae says two additional guests are unaccounted for.”
Al blinked quickly. “What?”
“Tara Kelly and Alice Charles,” I repeated. “They were supposed to come to the campground tonight from here. And they might be there now.”
“You give Hank a call and see,” Al instructed me. “Okay.” He swallowed hard. “Okay. Nobody panic.”
“That usually means panic.” Dottie looked at me sideways.
Al pointed toward Tucker. “You check upstairs.” Then he pointed toward Dottie and me. “You two stay right here.”
“We know the routine,” Dottie muttered around her cigarette.
Tucker disappeared into the farmhouse while Al slowly stepped inside behind him. Through the open doorway, I watched him immediately stop short near the staircase. Even from the porch, I could see him push his hat back farther and stare down at Florence’s body.
For once, Sheriff Al Hemmer didn’t have a smart remark.
I pulled my phone out of my sweatshirt pocket, found Hank’s name in the contacts, and hit it with my finger.
“Where are you?” Hank quickly asked. “The women you went looking for are here.”
“All but one,” I said.
“Huh?” Hank asked.
“Well, Florence Sparks isn’t there because we found her dead at the bottom of the steps.” My words were met with silence, though I could still hear Blue Ethel and the Adolescent Farm Boys in the background. “She must’ve fallen and hit her head. She’s dead.”
“Is Al there?” he asked, and I could hear the sound of his feet hitting the ground. I could still hear the band, but they were getting softer and softer.
“You don’t need to come here,” I told him since I knew what he was doing. “Al and Tucker are here. And here comes Colonel Holz.”
One of the two must’ve called the coroner to come pick up Florence because his hearse was rattling up the Milkery drive.
“I’m sure I’ll be back soon, but don’t tell Mary Elizabeth yet. Let her have a good time, and we can tell her later,” I said.
“I don’t like not being there, but it’s Tucker’s territory. If he needs me, he’ll call me.” Hank said the right words, but I could tell by the tone in his voice that it wasn’t what he wanted. “I’ll take care of everything here.”
“Thank you,” I said, gratefully. “I love you, and see you and the babies tonight.”
“Speaking of babies…” There was an exhausted sigh. “I had to put Fifi in the camper because she kept trying to get on stage to Roscoe.”
“Thank you,” I said. “She’s a hot mess that one.” Both of us laughed and then hung up.
The porch fell quiet except for the distant hum of crickets.
And sitting there on Mary Elizabeth’s porch with cigarette smoke drifting through the humid summer air, it suddenly hit me how strange life in Normal could be.
One minute, you were decorating tiki huts and arguing over slaw recipes.
The next minute, Florence Sparks was lying dead at the bottom of a staircase.
“Well.” Al came out and hoisted his pants up a little by the waist. “It seems like you’re right. Heel got caught on a piece of carpet at the top, and down she went,” he said, gesturing the tumble with his hands.
“I’m gonna let Tucker take the lead and call her next of kin,” Al said, tipping his hat. “Colonel will get her out of here and just leave her stuff in her room. Tucker said he’d let her family collect her things.”
“That’s it?” Dottie asked, snuffing out her cigarette in the bottom of her sandal. “You don’t need to rope off anything, take fingerprints, nothin’?”
“Thank goodness,” I told her and then looked at Al. “Not that I would want Florence dead, but the fact that it was an accident really is much better than the alternative.”
“I’ll leave you two ladies to discuss that.” Al took a couple of steps away from us. “Now, y’all go on back to the campground. Tucker and Colonel have this.”
“Hey, Al,” Colonel called as he stepped out onto the front porch of the Milkery. “I think you need to see this.”
“See what?” I asked. “Do I need to call Mary Elizabeth?”
“What’s goin’ on?” Dottie asked.
“There’s some pinpricks in the deceased’s eyes that I think you need to take a closer look at.” Colonel tried to whisper it, but with my good hearing, I knew by not only his words but his tone that he had suspicions about the nature of Florence’s death.
I followed Al closely to the door and wanted to slip in behind him to get a look, but he abruptly stopped at the threshold and turned around, wagging a finger at me. When I stepped back, he shut the door.
“What was that all about?” Dottie asked nervously.
“Colonel mentioned there was some pinpricking in Florence’s eyes.” I sucked in a deep breath. “That means one thing.”
“Toxins,” Dottie said, batting out a cigarette from the case. “I seen that on Diagnosis Murder once.”
“Yeah, toxin means poison.” I gulped and tilted my head to the side so I could see through the glass side panel on the front door. “And Colonel is showing Al her eyes.”
Al and Colonel stood up, and before they could catch me peeping through the glass side panel beside the door, I jerked back fast enough to nearly stumble into one of the porch rocking chairs.
Dottie immediately stepped closer and pressed one ear against the door like she’d been training for this exact moment her entire life.
“What are they saying?” I whispered while waving away the cigarette smoke drifting straight into my face.
“Shh,” she scolded softly before taking another long drag off the cigarette. The tip glowed bright red against the darkness while she listened harder. Her eyes narrowed. The lines around her mouth tightened.
A few seconds later, she pulled away from the door and looked at me.
“We’ve got us a murder,” she said quietly.
My stomach dropped so hard it felt like somebody kicked me square in the chest. Before I could even answer, the front door suddenly swung open, and Sheriff Al Hemmer stepped onto the porch, looking far more rattled than he had a few minutes ago.
Sweat rolled down the side of his face beneath his crooked sheriff’s hat while Colonel stood just behind him near the staircase.
Al pointed directly at us.
“Neither one of you ladies leaves town,” he said firmly before swallowing hard. “And somebody better get ahold of Tara Kelly and Alice Charles right now, because at this point, I don’t know if they’re witnesses…”
He paused just long enough to make my blood run cold.
“Or next.”