Chapter Three
Myrtle gave Hubert a sharp look. “Have you called Red?”
He still gazed blankly at her.
“Have you called the police?” she snapped. “Or an ambulance? Maybe you just think she’s dead.”
Hubert’s expression didn’t change and Myrtle gave an impatient sigh. “Miles, could you call Red?”
Miles was already dialing his number.
Myrtle said briskly, “All right, Hubert. Why don’t you take a seat?” She pointed to a white wicker chair on the front porch and Hubert obediently headed over to it and plopped down.
Then Myrtle took out a tissue from her purse and carefully pushed the front door open. She didn’t see anything. Myrtle walked through the small entranceway into the den and then to the staircase against the back wall.
There she saw Pearl, her head in a very odd position on the floor. The rest of Pearl was on the stairs behind her. Pearl’s eyes were staring blankly in an expression that mimicked Hubert’s, except blanker.
“Do we need an ambulance?” called Miles from the porch.
“I’m afraid not,” said Myrtle grimly. “But we will need Red.”
“He’s not picking up, so I called the station and the deputy is coming over,” said Miles.
Myrtle muttered, “That’s right; he was supposed to be speaking at some sort of community policing seminar.”
“Which deputy is this, now?” asked Miles.
“A new one. The last one thought Bradley was a little too small for him,” said Myrtle.
“What is this guy like?” asked Miles.
“Not as bright as the last one,” said Myrtle. “And he requires a bit of hand-holding.”
Miles gave every indication of being about to ask her another question and she quickly interjected, “Can you keep an eye on Hubert? I’ll be right back.”
She crouched down to see if there were any clues that she could see near Pearl without touching or moving her. She couldn’t see any broken fingernails or any other signs of a struggle. It didn’t look as if she’d been strangled and then shoved down the stairs. There were no rugs on the stairs that might have tripped her up. Under the circumstances, and judging from what had happened with the manuscript, her fall and death seemed extremely suspicious.
Myrtle carefully walked into the den and glanced around. There were no signs of a manuscript anywhere. She looked for a chunky, clunky computer with stickers on it and didn’t see one. She walked to the kitchen. Again, no sign of any stack of papers and no computer.
Myrtle walked, frowning, back out to the porch. She was relieved to see that Hubert seemed to be himself again.
“I’m so sorry about Pearl,” said Myrtle to Hubert.
He nodded and gave a big sigh. “It was a shock to see her like that. I’d left for the grocery store to stock up on beer and came back home with it. Then I remembered I had a prescription to pick up at the drugstore, so I headed over there.”
Myrtle said, “Did you speak with Pearl when you came back from the grocery store?”
Hubert said roughly, “I didn’t see her, and she didn’t call out to me, if that’s what you mean. But I was nowhere near the staircase, so I couldn’t see her—if she was already there. I only went to the kitchen and then I was back in the car again.”
Myrtle said slowly, “Did you know that Pearl came to visit me, today?”
Hubert shrugged. “She mentioned something about it last night, but I didn’t realize that’s where she was off to this morning.”
“But you knew that she had written a memoir?” asked Myrtle.
“A book?” Hubert shrugged dismissively again. “She yakked about all kinds of things, you know. Sometimes I’d listen, sometimes not. Yeah, she’d mentioned that she’d written a book. But I had no real interest in it. I haven’t read a book since I was in school.”
A police car pulled into Hubert’s driveway.
Myrtle frowned. “I thought the deputy was coming. That’s Red.”
Her son had inherited her height and was over six feet tall. The red hair that had given him his nickname was now turning gray—something he tended to blame his mother for.
He narrowed his eyes at Myrtle and went directly to Hubert. “You okay, Hubert?” he asked, leaning over to look him in the eyes as he sat in the wicker chair.
Hubert said in a broken voice, “She’s dead.”
“I’m sorry. You just stay right here and we’re going to sort it all out,” said Red in a grim voice.
He strode into the house after nodding in greeting to Miles. Two minutes later, he walked back out again looking even grimmer.
“Hubert, may I speak with you for a few minutes? Let’s talk in your yard over on that bench, if that’s all right,” said Red.
Myrtle and Miles watched as Red and Hubert engaged in a relatively short conversation.
Miles said, “I could tell you weren’t very fond of Hubert,” said Miles.
“He gave Pearl nothing but grief while she was alive. The thought that he might have killed someone I consider a friend is very, very vexing!” said Myrtle.
Miles said, “He does seem very affected by Pearl’s death.”
“He’s probably wondering who’s going to feed him and wash his clothes now that she’s gone,” said Myrtle uncharitably.
“Red’s motioning us over,” said Miles.
“Makes more sense to speak with us here and leave Hubert over there,” said Myrtle. Which is what Red ended up doing.
Red strolled up to them and plopped down in a chair on the front porch. “Mama, I hope you have an excellent explanation as to how you’re involved with yet another dead body.”
“I’m involved with this one because she’s not just a dead body. I’m surprised at you, Red! This is Pearl Prentiss Epps. She taught you Sunday school and knew you since you were a little guy.” Myrtle glared at her son.
Red sighed. “I know that, Mama. I’m just trying to mentally distance myself from that fact. It’s tough to see her like that. But I have the state police on the way and they’ll be able to tell me if Pearl had a coronary event that prefaced her fall. Maybe she had a stroke and fell. At least I know that she couldn’t have been there for long.”
Myrtle gave him a hard look. “What the state police will find is that Pearl was likely shoved down the stairs. And I think that’s what you’re going to conclude, too, once you hear what I have to say.”
Red groaned. “I was afraid you would say there was some sort of story behind this.”
Miles cleared his throat. “I can confirm it.”
Red nodded. “Okay, that makes me feel better. Go ahead and fill me in.”
Myrtle did, finishing with, “And when we came back in from Bo’s Diner, the manuscript had disappeared.”
Red frowned. “So you’re alleging that someone broke into your house and stole Pearl’s book?”
“I’m not alleging it. I’m stating it. The manuscript is gone. I hardly think that the cat picked it up and spirited it away,” said Myrtle in an exasperated voice.
“Could you simply have put it somewhere and just thought that you had left it in the living room?” asked Red. He sounded hopeful.
Miles shook his head. “Sorry, Red. She left it in the living room and that’s that. And all the windows were open for the cat to come and go as she pleased. It seems that someone took advantage of that fact to climb in.”
“Directly across the street from the police chief? And in sight of an extremely nosy neighbor by the name of Erma Sherman?” Red knit his eyebrows.
“A police chief who’s so busy that he’s rarely home. And Erma has been laid up with some malady that I’d rather not know about,” said Myrtle.
“And which Erma is likely to fill us in on later,” said Miles glumly.
“Besides,” added Myrtle, “I had a window open facing the back yard, too. Someone could have easily slipped back there and climbed in.”
“I don’t know about easily,” said Red, frowning. “People aren’t quite as nimble as Pasha is. But let’s just say that it’s possible. Why would somebody do such a thing? I think about Pearl Prentiss and all that comes to mind is a sweet little old lady with an unremarkable life.”
Myrtle nodded. “That’s exactly the problem. That’s what came to mind for me, too. But Pearl indicated that she was tired of keeping secrets. Perhaps her family wasn’t as tired of it and wanted to stop her. Because soon it would be all over town that Pearl and her family weren’t as sweet and unremarkable as they seemed. And I just can’t see Pearl falling down the stairs. It’s simply too coincidental that Pearl would suffer a fatal fall down the stairs at the same time that her memoir is stolen from my house. Besides, Pearl was a coordinated woman—she could do marvelous needlework. And she was holding nothing in her hands as she went down the stairs. There was no rug there to trip over.”
Red nodded. “All right. While I’m inside, I’ll be sure to look for copies of this book.” He paused. “I don’t suppose she wrote the thing in longhand, did she?”
“No, she typed it on her computer and printed it out. But when I was inside, I didn’t see her computer or any other copies of her manuscript,” said Myrtle.
Red gave her a hard look. “You didn’t go upstairs, I hope.”
“And step over poor Pearl? Of course not,” said Myrtle.
“Okay. Well, it’s possible that we’ll find the computer upstairs in her bedroom. I’ll keep any eye out for it. Now, if both of you could go ahead and head back home, I’d appreciate it. The state police will be here at any time now.” And without another word, Red walked back to Hubert.
Miles drove back while Myrtle sat quietly thinking. “You know, we’re going to need to make Pearl’s daughter, Rose, a casserole.”
Miles gave Myrtle a wary sideways glance. “She doesn’t even know about her mother’s death. A casserole can be put off until at least tomorrow. And remember, we don’t usually have much luck with these ‘in sympathy’ casseroles. It might be better to pick up something from the store.”
“We? The casseroles are always my concoctions. You usually won’t even allow yourself to be credited in their creation. And everyone knows that homemade is better than something store bought.”
Miles’s mouth tightened, but he didn’t reply.
“You have a point about Rose, though. Let’s plan on seeing her first thing tomorrow. In the meantime, we can relax for a little while,” said Myrtle.
Miles raised his eyebrows. “Now that’s not something I usually hear you say right after a murder has happened.”
“Well, finding Pearl has really worn me out. I’m not talking about relaxing the rest of the day, just long enough for me to get my bearings. I’ll need to write up a story for Sloan, of course, too,” said Myrtle.
Miles frowned. “You know that Sloan rarely wants you covering crime stories. Red puts pressure on him to keep you on the helpful hints column.”
Myrtle waved her hand in the air dismissively. “Pooh. Sloan is down in the dumps with his breakup, remember? I’m effectively doing all of the editing. That story won’t get covered if I don’t do it and that would be a pity because it’s going to be a big story. Pearl Prentiss is an important person in this town. She’s lived here all her life, knows just about everybody in Bradley, and was involved in all sorts of activities here. It would be a travesty if her murder wasn’t reported.”
Miles said cautiously, “But Myrtle, Red didn’t seem convinced that it was a murder.”
Myrtle snorted. “He’ll come around. There’s too much evidence to the contrary. Besides, I won’t explicitly come out and say it’s murder.”
They both looked over at Myrtle’s empty table.
“All right,” said Myrtle briskly. “Let’s not dwell on sad things right now. On with Tomorrow’s Promise. I want to find out if Christine will die in that ambulance or if they’re going to bring her back for another season. The idea of ending the last show with her struggling for her life in an ambulance! The producers of this soap sure have a lot of nerve.”
Fortunately for the producers of the show, Christine did not die in the ambulance, although it was all very harrowing for a while. Toward the end of the soap, the plot line became a lot more pedestrian. Myrtle, who was not at all concerned whether Rohan would end up together with Penelope, started writing her piece for Sloan.
At least, she was working on it until her doorbell rang. She raised her eyebrows. “Like I said, Miles, it appears that Red is spreading rumors about the tenuous quality of my health. I’m going to have to put a note on my door, signed by my doctor, to combat this.”
She walked over and peered outside, then drew back in surprise. “Rose,” she murmured to Miles.
“Pardon?” he asked.
“Rose!” she hissed. “Pearl’s daughter.”