Chapter 3 #3
Floy woke up in the jail cell, only this time when he went to get up, the cell door was locked.
“What the hell?” he muttered, then yelled. “Hey, Watts! Somebody!”
Chief Arnold appeared. “Are you feeling good enough to continue the conversation?”
“Why did you lock me in?” Floy asked.
Arnold shrugged. “Look, Floy. I can’t ignore your physical condition or the fact that your wife is missing. I’ve got the boys searching your house for evidence that backs up your story, so . . .”
Floy’s eyes widened. “Backs up my story? You think I killed her? You think I killed my wife? What the hell’s wrong with you? Why? What’s the motive?”
“Well, she didn’t like your snake, you fought, and you’re all beat up, and I just thought . . . ”
Floy staggered backward until his legs hit the back of the bunk.
He sat down with a plop and looked up at Arnold, his voice cold and bitter with disbelief.
“Well, Lowell, you better hope your toilet never stops up again, or your roof does not begin to leak, or you have a cruiser that won’t start, because I am never going to forgive you for this. ”
Lowell Arnold blinked. Had he just been forever fired as a prospective client from his murder suspect’s customer list?
“Look, Floy, I have a duty to—”
“Just stuff it, Chief. If I’m gonna be railroaded by a hillbilly cop whose biggest case was finding a grow patch in his own granny’s backyard, then I need a lawyer. Call Judge Denton.”
Arnold felt the sting of that truth as he shoved his hands in his pockets and went back to his office. “Son-of-a-bitch,” he muttered, then sat down and picked up the phone.
Priscilla was just coming out of the bathroom down the hall when she heard the phone on her desk ringing. She rushed back into the reception area, a little breathless as she answered.
“Judge Benton’s office.”
“Priscilla, this is Chief Arnold. Is he in?”
“No. He’s at the county courthouse. Probably won’t be back before quitting time. Can I give him a message?”
“Yes. Notify him that Floy Beaudine is in lockup and has requested Judge as his lawyer.”
“Oh my!” Priscilla said. “I’ll text him immediately, and he can respond to you when he is free to do so.”
“Thank you,” the chief said, and hung up.
All Arnold could do now was wait until Tex and Dub got back from their evidence gathering before making any further decisions.
He went back to the jail area to peek in on Floy, but the cot was empty.
At first, he thought he’d escaped like Elvis, until he saw him in the shadows, lying under the cot with his back to the wall, his arms over his head, his knees curled up to his chest, mumbling something over and over.
“Floy? Are you all right?”
“Green beans . . . Glass all over . . . Ate a hog . . .”
Lowell Arnold shoved his hands in his pockets. He didn’t know exactly what he was witnessing, but it sure looked like a man in the throes of a nervous breakdown. He sighed, then went back to his office and stared out the window.
Nearly two hours passed before Tex and Dub returned to the station with the evidence they’d collected from the Beaudine house. They set it all on the table in the break room.
Chief Arnold walked in behind them. “So . . . what did you find?”
“A wastebasket full of broken glass from a Ball canning jar. A whole lot of canned green beans. A mop that smelled like bean juice. A ton of Band-Aid wrappers in the bathroom trash and a lot of bloody cotton balls. A bloody razor still lying on the sink. A bunch of to-go boxes from Edison’s Eats in the trash in the primary bedroom, and a lot of empty pop cans.
There was also a pile of Floy’s clothes on the bed in the spare bedroom that looked like they’d been dipped in bean juice and rolled in crushed glass. ”
Arnold’s gut knotted. Everything exactly as Floy said in his statement. “What about blood in the primary bedroom?”
“Not a drop. Just a bunch of candy wrappers and breadcrumbs . . . Like someone had been eating a lot of meals in bed,” Dub added.
“I know it’s not my place to say, but honestly Chief, there’s not a single sign of foul play inside the house.
Floy said he bled all over, and there are a couple of tiny stains on Sheetrock near where the green beans broke.
Floy said he cleaned all that up, but I did do a swab on a couple of places to check to see if it was his blood.
You can send them to forensics at the state bureau, but it will take days, maybe weeks, to get that back.
The only blood we found outside was on porch, where Floy cut his head when he knocked himself out again when you told him Elvis ate a hog and not his wife. ”
Arnold sighed. “Send the samples anyway, but in the meantime, it appears there’s nothing solid to hold him on.
Release him and drive him home. You’ll probably have to drag him out from under the cot first. He’s having some kind of spell.
If he’s still not making sense, maybe just drop him back off at the ER for a mental evaluation. He doesn’t look too good.”
Tex and Dub stared at the chief, then at each other before leaving the break room. Sure enough, when they got to the jail cells, Floy was under the cot, running his fingers through his hair and talking about green beans.
They eased him out, loaded him up in the back of the cruiser, then headed back to the ER. After passing on the chief’s request, Floy rode back into the hospital in a wheelchair, and back to ER, still mumbling about green beans and the hog Elvis ate.
Quilla was out in her garden gathering some leaf lettuce to make wilted salad for their supper.
Mayrene was on duty in the kitchen, waiting for a timer to go off so she could take the brownies out of the oven.
She heard a phone ding and turned to look, realizing her mama had left her phone on the table.
She was beginning to realize her mother had made excuses and delayed the inevitable about Mayrene calling Floy, and she needed answers. She grabbed the phone and called Floy, expecting to hear his voice—expecting to hear him call her Honey Bee and start apologizing.
The call began to ring and ring until it finally went to voicemail.
She frowned. What the hell? Now she was pissed all over again.
After all this time, he couldn’t be bothered?
Furious, she disconnected, unaware his phone was in an evidence bag in the police department.
Surely to God, Elvis has been dealt with.
The timer went off. She took the brownies out of the oven and set them aside to cool down, but now the unanswered call bugged her. She scrolled through her mama’s phone for contact numbers until she saw Donalda Charmichael’s name and number.
Mama’s beautician! Donalda would know what was going on.