Chapter Eighteen
Peggy Neighbors was next on Myrtle’s list of suspects to talk with. Myrtle was positive that it had been Peggy that Silas had seen the night Charles was murdered.
Peggy worked most days as a waitress at Bo’s Diner in downtown Bradley. Myrtle waited until it was the middle of the afternoon, figuring that would be the slowest time at the diner, then made the short walk over.
A bell rang on the door when Myrtle pushed it open and the aroma of fried vegetables greeted her. Myrtle had lived in Bradley her whole life and one constant had been the diner, which never seemed to change. It had the same dark wood-paneled walls, the same green, Formica-topped tables and lunch counter, and the same scrubbed-clean look. The only change had been that young Bo took over the diner when his father died.
As she’d hoped, the diner was very quiet at almost three o’clock in the afternoon. And Peggy Neighbors was working today. Myrtle sat down and another waitress came up, so Myrtle asked if Peggy could possibly wait on her.
Peggy immediately came over. “Hi there, Miss Myrtle. How are things going? Clarisse said you asked for me to take care of your table?”
“If you could, Peggy. I was hoping to have a chance to ask you a few questions. Oh, and I’ll have a pimento cheese dog.” Myrtle had a fondness for this particular hot dog—coated with pimento cheese and served with a side of the diner’s salty shoestring fries.
“Let me put that in for you and I’ll be right back,” said Peggy. A minute later, she was back and sat across from Myrtle in the booth. “I told Bo you were wanting to talk and he said it was okay for me to take a break. There’s really no one in here now, anyway.”
Bo had probably thought Myrtle was lonely and needed an ear. Fine. Whatever was going to get Peggy a break to talk to her for a minute. “Peggy, I don’t know if you know this, but I write stories for the Bradley Bugle. I’m doing an investigation for the paper on Charles Clayborne’s murder and I’m really making some progress. In fact, I’m putting the last pieces of the puzzle together, then I’m hoping to go to Red with it tomorrow.”
Myrtle was pleased with the way she was spreading news of solving the mystery around. The murderer would come after her tonight, for sure.
Peggy had paled at the mention of Charles. Was that because she missed Charles so much, or because Myrtle said she was figuring out who killed him?
Peggy said, “No, I didn’t really know that. Was that what you wanted to talk to me about?” Her brows were knitted in confusion.
“I did. Because while I was investigating, I heard one witness say that he saw you with Charles near the scene of the crime the night he was murdered.”
Now Peggy’s face was completely pale. “They must have been mistaken, Miss Myrtle.”
“They were pretty positive,” lied Myrtle, crossing her fingers under the table.
“I told Red and the state police that I was home with my daughter that night,” said Peggy, but she didn’t look Myrtle in the eye when she said it.
“And I’m sure that Natalie would back you up on that, too. You’re her mama. But do you really want to put your child in the position of lying for you during a murder investigation?” Myrtle filled her voice with as much reproach as she felt she was able to pull off.
Peggy took a deep breath and let it out slowly, staring down at the table as if trying to figure out what she was going to say. “Okay. I was out there with Charles the night he died. But I didn’t have anything to do with his death, Miss Myrtle—you have to believe me!”
“Why didn’t you just tell the police that you were there? It doesn’t look good to have lied about it,” said Myrtle.
“Think about it,” pleaded Peggy. “I’m a single mom. My mom has been dead for years and now Daddy is dead. Who would take care of Natalie if I were in prison? I decided not to say anything about it. After all, I knew I wasn’t involved. And what would happen if the police just didn’t believe me?”
“What happened that night?” asked Myrtle.
“I was trying to convince Charles to go out with me again,” said Peggy in a small voice. “We’d dated back in high school and he’d told me back then that he planned to marry me after graduation. But he didn’t,” she continued bitterly. “Once we graduated, he moved away and left me behind in Bradley.”
“With a baby,” added Myrtle in a low voice.
Peggy gave her a startled look. “How did you know that?”
“Don’t worry; it’s not a rumor going around town or anything. I specifically talked to someone who knew the situation,” said Myrtle.
Peggy relaxed, but her expression was still guarded. “So I had joined him at the bar where he’d been the last few nights. He wasn’t really that friendly toward me—kept interrupting what I was trying to say to him to talk to somebody else. When he looked at his watch, he looked surprised at how late it was. Probably because he was so tipsy. He said he had to go and I followed him out. I wondered if maybe he was going to be meeting with another woman.”
Myrtle cleared her throat. “I’m surprised you really wanted to get back together with Charles, Peggy. After all he’d done to you. And I thought you were starting to go out with Dr. Bass and starting on a new relationship.”
Peggy gave a hoarse laugh. “No, Hugh and I weren’t going out. That’s just something my dad wanted for me so much that I half-started believing it myself. Even back when I was in high school, my dad kept telling me not to date Charles—that Hugh had a better head on his shoulders. Daddy told everybody that Dr. Bass and I were dating—even Charles. But there were no dates…just once when I sat down with Hugh in a booth when he came here to eat…just like we’re doing now. Daddy was pleased as punch when he found that out.”
“So Dr. Bass was even an eligible bachelor in high school. Sounds too good to be true.” Myrtle knew how high school kids were from her teaching days. She was always suspicious of reports of angelic teenage boys.
Peggy nodded emphatically. “It was too good to be true. I kept telling Daddy that Hugh was just as wild as the other boys. He wasn’t any better than Charles. He’d go out and play pranks just like they would—bashing mailboxes in, toilet papering the trees, egging houses and cars. It wasn’t like Hugh was perfect or anything.”
“Back to the night that Charles was murdered. He was on foot—is that right?” asked Myrtle.
“Yes, he hadn’t wanted to stay with his mother, so he was in that motel just a few blocks away from downtown. But he wasn’t heading in that direction. At first, I just stopped him in the parking lot of the bar. I told him that I wanted to make some kind of a future with him—to at least have him be involved in Natalie’s life.” Peggy’s face fell. “He didn’t want to listen. He just stomped right off. I followed him, still trying to get him to listen.”
She hesitated, and Myrtle wondered if she were editing her story before she told it. “Like I said, I followed him to see where he was going. I wasn’t thinking real straight. I was pretty far behind him so he wouldn’t see me. I guess I thought that if I saw him meeting with another woman, I’d really tell them both off.”
“By the time I caught up to where he was, he was in someone’s backyard. It was your yard, Miss Myrtle. I knew that because of all the gnomes.”
“You know I have a gnome collection?” asked Myrtle, raising her eyebrows in surprise.
“I think everybody in Bradley knows that, Miss Myrtle,” said Peggy with the first hint of a smile that she’d shown since she sat down with her.
“Once I saw where he was, I wasn’t so worried.” Peggy flushed. “What I mean to say is that I knew that you and Charles weren’t involved in a relationship or anything.”
Myrtle gave a shudder. “Indeed not.”
“Charles stood in your yard for a while, kind of swaying on his feet and staring at your house and the houses next to you. He almost looked like he was confused or didn’t know which house he was going to. Then he walked from your backyard down the hill to your
dock. He sat out there for a while. He had a bottle with him—a beer that he’d started drinking at the bar. The moon reflected on the lake and I could see him sitting there, drinking, and looking at the water.”
Now it made sense why he’d been in her backyard. She’d wondered why Charles would have gone up to talk to Miles from the back. Even though he was drunk, it still seemed as if he’d have staggered up to his front, not his back door. He probably sat down at the lake, drank a little more, and finally screwed up enough courage to go up and persuade Miles to invest in his scheme.
“Somebody came up to join him. I couldn’t hear what they were saying from where I was. But it looked to me like they were having an argument. They were both waving their hands around like they were mad,” said Peggy.
“It was a man?” asked Myrtle, leaning over the table to listen closer. It must have been Peggy’s father. Wanda had told her she’d seen them there.
“I don’t know who it was,” said Peggy hurriedly, looking away. “But I know that it was a man. I figured Charles was trying to do one of those business deals he was bragging about to everybody. Seems like that’s all Charles wanted to talk about once he came to town—money.”
“Did you see anybody else while you were near my house?” asked Myrtle, thinking of Silas. “Anybody coming, going or lurking?”
Peggy thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Now I’ve really got to go,” she said quickly. “Things are starting to pick up in the diner again.”
If picking up meant one additional customer, it was.
Myrtle had one more task she wanted to complete today…talk with Dr. Bass. She knew Miles wasn’t planning on seeing Hugh Bass again, preferring to go to a dentist in another town. She rolled her tongue over her teeth. There didn’t seem to be anything chipped, breaking off, or needing rearranging. She’d just go walk over to his office and wait in the parking lot for him to leave. The office always closed promptly at five-thirty.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to loiter too long in the parking lot. There had already been a couple of concerned dental patients who’d come over to see if she was all right and needed anything. One of them seemed to suspect that she might be suffering from dementia and was determined to drop her off at Red’s house. Myrtle finally dispatched her by being just a wee bit more caustic that she might ordinarily have been. That display of temper had been the only thing that convinced the Good Samaritan that Myrtle hadn’t lost her faculties.
When Myrtle saw Pam-the-hygienist leave, she quickly ducked out of sight. Pam would call Red just to be mean, faking concern all the while.
Finally, Dr. Bass came out of the building, carefully locking the door behind him. He lifted his eyebrows in surprise when he saw Myrtle. “Mrs. Clover? We’re closed right now. Are you having a problem? Why don’t you call Pam tomorrow morning and make an appointment. Tell her I said I’d fit you in.”
“You know, I really do appreciate that, Dr. Bass. But my teeth seem to be doing all right.” Myrtle mentally knocked on some wood. All she needed was dental problems right now. “What I wanted to do, though, was ask you some questions.”
Now there was a wary look in Dr. Bass’s eyes. “Some questions?”
Myrtle nodded. “You might not know this, but I’m an investigative reporter for the Bradley Bugle.”
Dr. Bass gave Myrtle a smile that he probably intended to show interest, but only succeeded in displaying condescension. “You mentioned that before.”
“Oh. Well anyway, I’ve been looking into these murders and now I feel that I’m very close to putting the final pieces of the puzzle together. Once I do, I’ll naturally go to Red and let him know I’ve solved the case.”
Dr. Bass’s lips pressed together into a thin line.
“But I am trying to tie up a few odds and ends. Take, for instance, your involvement in this case,” said Myrtle.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that I have any involvement in the case,” said Dr. Bass brusquely. “After all, this is a man that I knew back in high school. I’m sorry that he’s dead, naturally.”
“Dr. Bass, I know that you have more involvement with Charles Clayborne than that.” Myrtle noticed the smirky smile of his had finally been wiped off his face. “I’ve learned that when you graduated from high school, you both moved away to the same town, went to the same college, and were even roommates while you were in medical school and afterward.”
Hugh Bass shrugged. “It’s a way of saving money, that’s all.” His gaze was sharp as he studied Myrtle.
“It just all flies in the face of what your position was—that you hadn’t seen Charles for a number of years. You lied. I’ve also heard that you had an argument with Charles Clayborne a few days before he was murdered,” said Myrtle.
Dr. Bass crossed his arms on his chest in a defensive posture. “We may have argued. I didn’t kill the man, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“What was this argument about?” asked Myrtle.
He still looked as though he was wavering, trying to decide how much to tell Myrtle. “None of this is going in the newspaper, right?”
“Dr. Bass, right now I’m just trying to figure out what happened.” That was the truth, after all. No need to scare the man off before he gave her information.
“We argued, because Charles was trying to force me into investing in this shady-sounding business deal that he was setting up,” said the dentist with a sigh. “It was obviously some kind of scam or a pyramid scheme or something like that. Of course, I didn’t want anything to do with it. And Charles was convinced that this time, this deal was going to be the one to finally make him rich. I told him that the best way to get rich was to pick something you’re good at and invest a whole lot of time and sweat into it every day. It wasn’t the kind of advice that Charles liked to hear,” said Dr. Bass. “He started letting me have it. That’s probably what your witness saw—Charles arguing with me, instead of the other way around.”
“Why did he think that he could persuade you to invest in something you so clearly wanted nothing to do with?” asked Myrtle innocently. Would he tell her that Charles was trying to blackmail him? A past incarceration and a revoked dental license, even in another state, certainly wouldn’t be easy for the town of Bradley to swallow.
The wary look was back on Dr. Bass’s face. He grew suddenly busy digging his car key out of his pocket. “We grew up together, remember? There were plenty of instances of youthful immaturity that I’m sure Charles could use to persuade me.”
He clearly still wasn’t inclined to talk about the past. “Did you finally convince him that you weren’t going to invest?” asked Myrtle. “How did you leave it?”
The dentist said, “No, Charles was the kind of guy who was never convinced. He was going to keep talking to me about the scheme, for sure. He told me even this really straight-laced, retired cousin of his was planning to invest.”
Finally, some confirmation why Charles was trying to talk to Miles. Charles had clearly presumed he could sucker Miles into investing in the scheme. Who knows if Miles would have been able to, if that meeting had happened? Miles could be a real softy.
Back at home that evening, Myrtle tried to relax, but a wave of excitement kept streaking through her. She’d done a great job spreading the news around town today that she was on the verge of solving the case and telling Red the name of the culprit. She’d set herself up for an intruder tonight. Plus, she’d been smart and covered her bases. She had pepper spray, a pot of coffee to keep her awake, and a friend coming over. She was in good shape.
At nine o’clock, Myrtle realized she should turn off her lights. What intruder would try to attack her when all her lights were on? And the intruder that she strongly suspected would arrive tonight was definitely not stupid. She also made sure the motion detector lights were still turned off. And she locked her door—she didn’t want the murderer to realize she’d laid a trap.
Then Myrtle unlocked her front d
oor so that Miles could come quickly in at eleven and so that she could quickly exit, if she needed to. She put some pillows in her bed to make her appear to be under the covers. Then she pulled the covers over the pillows. It sort of looked like a sleeping figure. In the dark, she thought it would pass. She certainly didn’t want to be in the bedroom with the killer, though—there really would be no way out.
Instead, Myrtle took a large cup of coffee into the living room with her and put a chair right outside the kitchen door. That way, she could hear when someone was coming in through the back door.
Myrtle wasn’t quite ready to stand guard in that chair yet—it was still very early. She figured she’d sit on the living room sofa and read her book with a book light until Miles came over, then she’d move to her guard post.
At ten o’clock, she thought she heard a scraping sound outside her back door. She frowned. Miles was supposed to be coming in through the front. Besides, it was too early for Miles to be coming over.
Myrtle froze as she strained her ears to hear. Sure enough, the metallic, scraping noise came again.
Someone was trying to unlock her back door in the dark.