“Tell me to my face you weren’t with some woman at the Blinky Motel last night. Tell me. Don’t lie! Your truck was there, you were there! Don’t lie to me, Eric.”
Eric scooted toward the headboard, pulling his limbs close. “B-b-baby, I promise I wasn’t! I swear on my daddy’s stones I wasn’t! The truck broke down, me and another guy pushed it off the road. Baby, put the pot down. Please!”
“Why were your pants unzipped when you came home?”
He raised both hands. “Please, baby, put the pot down! I took a piss, forgot to zip up. Please, baby, for the love of Jesus, put the pot down!”
Shirley started crying. “All I ever asked was you to love me. If you don’t want me, tell me and I’ll leave you alone. We don’t have to go through all this.” She lowered the pot… then brought it up again. “Tell me the truth, dammit!” she shouted. “Or I’m going to dash you!”
Sweat blotching his face, Eric said, “It wasn’t me, baby! I swear ’fore God and three Jehovah Witnesses it wasn’t!”
Eric screamed as the water flew at him.
He continued screaming after realizing the water was lukewarm. Then he jumped up and hurried to Shirley and smothered her with kisses. “I love you, baby! I love you, baby! I love you so much! I do, I do, I do, I do…”
Shirley allowed him to move her onto the wet bed. “Don’t hurt me, Eric. My daddy is dead, I can’t take no more hurt.” She held him tight. “I can’t take no more hurt, Eric.”
Eric, remaining perfectly still in her arms, mumbled, “I won’t hurt you, baby.” The doorbell rang. “Don’t get it, baby. Let’s just sit here, you and me.”
“It might be Paul.”
“He can wait.”
The doorbell rang several more times… and then there was a knock at the bedroom window.
“Shirley?” Darlene’s said. “Shirley, Robert Earl just called. Your mother is in jail. She confessed to murdering your father.”
Chapter 7
Sheriff Bledsoe downed three aspirins and two Pepsid AC tablets with a cup of hot coffee. His stomach simply couldn’t keep up with all the disappointments in the last twenty-four hours.
Yesterday, nausea set in shortly after he’d talked to Bud Wilson, the owner of BW Feed Store. Juggernaut Gopher Bait, the high-level arsenic pesticide which ended Larry and his dog’s days of playing fetch, was a restricted use product: illegal to purchase without first obtaining a license from the Arkansas State Plant Board.
Bumbling Bud Wilson didn’t keep proper records, a felony; thus anybody could have purchased the pesticide.
I should have arrested his lazy butt.
With each passing hour, the prospect of solving the case, his first homicide investigation, was dissolving like an Alka Seltzer tablet in a swimming pool.
Usually, Pepto Bismol did the trick, a couple or three spoonfuls and pain ceased. But last night, after arriving at the Blinky Motel and missing the victim and the assailant of a purported assault, he downed half a bottle of Pepto Bismol and instead of instant relief, the sharp, burning pain scorched up his stomach to his chest.
A moment he thought he was experiencing the big one. How can you tell the difference, heart attack or gastric indigestion? They both hurt like the dickens.
He wondered who were the players involved in the shenanigans at the motel. Several eyewitnesses reported a naked man assaulting a woman wearing a trench coat was thwarted by a cowboy in underwear toting a shotgun.
Unimaginable!
He had Eric Barnes’ truck towed to an impound lot, yet couldn’t imagine Eric, a petty ne’er-do-well, gallivanting naked in a parking lot. He’d called Eric’s brother, Duane, who said Eric lived with Shirley Harris in the mobile home park north of town but they didn’t have a phone. Duane gave him a neighbor’s number, a Darlene Pryor.
He was dialing her number when Ida Harris waltzed into the station. The look on her face he could tell she had bad news. She took a chair in front of his desk. The phone to his ear, he gestured a hello. Darlene’s phone rang and rang.
Mrs. Harris still had on her funeral attire, black skirt and blouse and a black-and-white hat she wore tilted to the side. He hung up the phone.
Smiling: “Hello, Mrs. Harris, how are you—”
Before he could finish she burst into tears. Her small chest inflated and deflated with each sob and a grayish mixture of tears and mascara gushed down her face. Sheriff Bledsoe sat quietly. He offered her a Kleenex, which she declined.
Ruth Ann, he thought, would one day look exactly like her mother. Even now, save for the gray streaks of hair and crow’s feet around the eyes and the marked loss of muscle tone underneath the neck, Ruth Ann was the spitting image of her mother. Both shared the same caramel-colored skin tone, the small, hawkish nose, the thin mouth and the same Asian eyes.
“I kilt him,” she said. “I did it. I kilt him. Lock me up and throw away the key.”
Sheriff Bledsoe struggled to stave off elation. “Ma’am, Mrs. Harris, what are you telling me?”
Her eyes narrowed. She snatched a Kleenex out the box and blew her nose. “Are you deaf? I said I kilt my husband, lock me up.”
“Ma’am, why don’t you tell me all about it. Take your time. Would you like a cup of coffee?”
Ida shook her head, tears still flowing down her face. “I just want you to lock me up. I confessed.” She blew her nose again. “It’s all my fault. Lock me up.”
“Before we go any further, Mrs. Harris, I need to read you your Miranda rights. You have the right to—”
“I know it already. Just lock me up so I can get it over with.”
“It’s not so simple. Where did you get the arsenic?”
Ida stared at him. “The who?”
“The arsenic. The poison. Where did you get it?”
Her lips quivered and she dissolved into another round of body-racking sobs. Sheriff Bledsoe realized then she was not the killer, as obvious as the varicose veins in the back of her small hands.
Why she confessing to murder? Protecting someone? Her children! She’s sacrificing herself for one of her children.
“Mrs. Harris, you and I know you didn’t murder your husband. I think you know who did.”
“What you talking about?” Ida snapped. “I said I did it. I used rat poison. I don’t know anything about arsenic. I know Raid, D-Con and Black Flag. I said I did it, all you need to know.”
“I see,” Sheriff Bledsoe said. “Tell me why you did it?”
“What?”
“You said you did it, tell me why.”
She licked her lips and glared at him.
“Why? Why after fifty years of marriage you decide to murder your husband?”
“Because I felt like it!”
“Oh, I see. You felt like it. We’re cooking with hot grease now. Where did you purchase the poison?”
“Piggly Wiggly.”
Sheriff Bledsoe scooted his chair near her and took her hand in his. “If you know who murdered your husband, it’s best you tell me. It’s illegal to withhold that kinda information. I understand you want to protect your family… This isn’t the way to do it.”
Ida snatched her hand free. “Are you a pissy fool? I told you I did it. What more I have to do? Hitchhike a ride to the penitentiary.”
He picked up the phone. “Why don’t I call your children? Let’s see—”
“No, no, no, no!”
“—what they think about all this.”
Ida stood up. “What kind of sheriff are you? Why you want to stir up a bunch of confusion? My children don’t even know I’m here—ain’t no need calling them!”
He put the phone down. “Who killed your husband, Mrs. Harris? Leonard? Ruth Ann? Shirley? What’s your other son’s name?”