Murder Gets a Life by Anne George Read Free Book Online

and led her toward our car. His khaki shirt was starched and dry.
    “Good afternoon, Mrs. Crane, Mrs. Hollowell.”
    “Sheriff Reuse,” Sister said coolly. I nodded.
    “Mrs. Turkett needs to sit in your car while I go see what’s going on.”
    “What’s going on is a murder and a kidnapping. I told you that,” Meemaw said. “Sunshine’s gone and we need to be looking for her.”
    “Yes, ma’am. You just wait here in the cool, and I’ll go check.”
    “Asshole,” Meemaw said to the sheriff’s back. We watched him go up the trailer steps and disappear.
    “You got that right,” Sister agreed. “And he used to date Patricia Anne’s daughter. Hard to believe.”
    Meemaw looked shocked. “Haley? That precious child who was there last night?”
    “She just went out with him a couple of times,” I explained. “One time was to a policemen’s ball.”
    “Kerrigan loves policemen’s balls.” Meemaw leaned over the front seat between Mary Alice and me and began to sob. Tears pinged against maroon leather. Mary Alice pointed toward the glove compartment where I found a small packet of Kleenex. I handed the packet to Meemaw, saving a couple of the tissues to mop the seat with. “Everything’s going to be all right,” I lied.
    The young deputy exited Meemaw’s trailer, stick in hand, nodded as he passed us, and then got in the police car. Calling for help, I assumed. Or the coroner. Probably both. In a few minutes he went back to the trailer.
    “Why aren’t they out looking for Sunny?” Meemaw sobbed.
    “I’m sure that’s what that young man was doing,” Mary Alice said. “Putting out an APB on her.”
    Meemaw looked up. “An APB on Sunshine?”
    “An all-points bulletin.” Miss Know-it-all dispensing knowledge.
    “Good God, what am I doing in this car?” Meemaw groaned.
    The question was never answered because just at that second there was a tap on Mary Alice’s window. All three of us screamed at the face that peered in.
    My first thought was that it was a bear. Mary Alice told me later that she thought the same thing. There’s a sizable black bear population still left in rural Alabama. Occasionally they even get confused and end up in a metropolitan area where they have to be tranquilized and returned to the wild.
    But this bear, I realized immediately, was wearing a hat, an old brown felt one with a wide brim. I also realized immediately that, in spite of the overabundance of hair follicles, this was Pawpaw Turkett. Meemaw clued me in on that by shouting for Sister to let down her window, that she had to tell her stud muffin what had happened.
    The window came down, and the stud muffin leaned into the car and smiled, actually a very sweet smile, at Mary Alice. “Hey, pretty lady,” he said. “What’s going on?” That’s when Meemaw lunged and grabbed him by his beard, nearly breaking Mary Alice’s neck in the swiftness of her reaction. At least that’s what Mary Alice claimed later.
    Now Pawpaw couldn’t come in the window, Meemaw couldn’t go out of it, and Mary Alice was caught in between. There was a dead man impaled to the floor of a trailer a few yards away and a police car parked behind us with a blue light flashing that looked for all the world like a beacon for a Kmart special.
    And all I had done was accept an invitation to lunch.
    Enough. I activated the old schoolteacher voice, the one that skims across ice as authoritatively as any Olympian.
    “Quit this right now. Meemaw, get out of the car and tell your husband what’s happened.”
    She didn’t get out of the car, but she did let go of Pawpaw’s beard and sit back, allowing Sister to scoot over toward me.
    “Pawpaw,” Meemaw shouted, “Sunshine’s been kidnapped and there’s a murdered man in my trailer.”
    Pawpaw leaned forward cautiously, rubbing hischin. “What?” Then, to Sheriff Reuse who walked up and touched his shoulder, “Hey, Junior. What are you doing here?”
    “Got a problem, Melvin.