Murder on the Cape Fear (7 page)

But Jon and I knew. We exchanged knowing glances. The journal - he was after the journal. But it wasn’t here. It was still at Two Sisters. I couldn’t wait until we could get our hands on that journal to see what was so valuable about it that someone would kill for it, and then attempt this break in.

Binkie looked defeated. The past two days had taken their toll on him. Aunt Ruby was lying down upstairs, a cold pack on her forehead. Poor dears.

Binkie shook hands with Willie. “I’d appreciate it if you’d take care of everything. If you’ll buy new doors and get them installed as quickly as possible, my bride will sleep better.”

“
Does Aunt Ruby want to return to Savannah?” I asked. “I’d understand if she wanted to escape from this crime wave.”

Binkie fixed me with a glum look. “Ashley, our lovely Belle of the Ball Savannah has become a tarnished lady. The poverty and crime rates in our beloved Savannah are now among the highest in the nation. We were waiting for the right time to tell you this, but Ruby is seriously thinking of donating the Chastain family home to the city to serve as a museum. They have the resources to maintain it and to safeguard it from vandals.

“
And as for our leaving Wilmington, well, that aunt of yours is feistier than the Queen of England. She said it’s bad enough she’s being driven out of one home - and she’s smart enough to know when she’s licked - but she’s taking a stand in Wilmington. Said if she had to go out and buy a shotgun and sleep with it under our bed, she’d do it. She is my kind of woman.”

Willie started for his truck. “Meet you at the Captain’s house in a couple of hours,” he said to Jon and me. “And Jon, I sure am sorry we failed to discover how bad that floor was. I just hate it that it collapsed under you and I’m relieved you were not hurt.”

Then to Binkie he said, “I’ll personally select the doors, and I’ll have one of my grandsons install them for you.” He gave me a pointed look. “Does all this have anything to do with that body you stumbled over on Saturday? I declare, Miz Wilkes, you sure have a knack for finding them dead bodies.” Then he left, looking as disheartened as Binkie.

“
I’m with Ruby,” Binkie said. “I refuse to budge. Just as soon as Cathy Stanley opens her bookstore, we are retrieving that journal and we’re going to read every word until we find out what this is all about.”

“
We’ll work on it together,” Jon said. “If anyone can decipher an old journal, it is you, Binkie. Ashley and I will help. And maybe we’ll learn something that will lead us to the murderer. Then we’ll turn the entire matter over to the police.”

“
That’s the way I see it,” Binkie agreed. “They were not very impressed with this attempted break-in when they came last night - practically yawned in my face. Nothing to report stolen, they said. They just filed a report, attempted break-in. Plenty of those, they said. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’d better lie down for a little while.”

Jon and I strolled up Front street toward Captain Pettigrew’s house. The morning air was soft as a whisper, another beautiful June day. Magnolias bloomed all over town, their fresh lemony smell sweetening the city streets.

“
If it’s gotten as bad in Savannah as Binkie says, I don’t want them staying there,” I told Jon. “The city was going downhill when I did my graduate work there at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Old families like mine, struggling to hold onto their homes in the face of so much general poverty. It’s such a contradiction. There are those lovely, spacious old homes, and all around them people are living in the streets.”

“
The gap between the rich and the poor just gets broader and broader,” Jon said.

“
But not everyone who owns a historic house is rich,” I said. “Some of us, like Aunt Ruby and clients like Laura Gaston are caught in the middle, doing their best to hold onto their heritage.”

Jon gave me a hug. “Don’t let this get you down, baby. I think Ruby’s solution is the best. Donating the Chastain home to Savannah only benefits that city. And on the plus side, we get to have Binkie and Ruby here with us year round.”

I gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Thanks for helping me to put this in perspective. And speaking of vandals, and Goths and Visigoths, guess I’d better check on my own Vandals when we break for lunch,” I said.

Hand in hand, we continued toward the Captain’s house where the noise of hammering created a mighty din. Carpenters on scaffolding were replacing the bad siding with new, while a second crew had removed the plywood and were installing the rehabbed windows. I stopped at my van to get my hardhat out of the backseat and Jon stopped for his. Our heads protected in bright yellow hardhats we stepped under the scaffolding and through the front door which was wide open. Immediately, we bumped into Jimmy Pogue in the reception hall.

“
What are you doing with those boxes?” I screeched. Jimmy was carrying out the boxes of historic artifacts that I had earmarked for the museum. “Put them down now!”

“
You are not allowed in here,” Jon said, as indignant as I. “This is a restricted area. We’ve got liability here. You’ve got to leave.”

“
No sir, you’re wrong,” Patsy shouted from the stairs which, without a stair rail to hold onto, she descended precariously.

I expected to see her fall at any moment. Her legs were stuffed into a pair of tight jeans so that they looked like two Smithfield sausage links, and she was having difficulty bending her knees with each downward step.

But her mouth was functioning super fine. “Melanie said this house is for sale and that includes the contents. And I done told her I intend to buy it and everything in it!”

I exploded. “Melanie is wrong and you are wrong, and if you don’t leave at once I’ll have you escorted out of here!”

“
And put down those boxes!” Jon yelled at Jimmy.

Jimmy dropped the boxes like they were the burning bush.

He didn’t say a word, just twitched a bit as we stared him down. Was he mute? It occurred to me I had not heard him utter a single word since we met.

But Patsy had no trouble speaking. “I have a bone to pick with you, missy.”

Now what?

“
You locked us out last evening. You went off with your lover here and didn’t give a hoot as to how me and Jimmy would get back inside our room.”

Her room?

“
Lucky for us, we had our cell phone and we called Melanie. She had to drive all the way back into town to let us in. But at least she gave us her set of keys so we won’t be locked out again.”

I was speechless. But Jon said, “What do you hear from the police? When will they let you leave town?”

“
We ain’t in no hurry to go home, are we Jimmy?’

But Jimmy was already showing us his back as he headed out, and if he replied I did not hear.

Patsy went on, “Pickins here is good, and I’m on to a sensational story. Got me a humdinger of a plot for my next book. Melanie is bringin’ her boyfriend over tonight for dinner. I’m as good a cook as that Paula Deen any day. Anywho, he’s a big TV producer and I’m gonna make my pitch to him for my own TV show.”

She sashayed past us on her way out. “If you two got plans for tonight, don’t feel like you have to come. I’ll understand. No problem. I done figured out where all the pots and pans were stowed when I cooked us our breakfast this mornin’. You sure do keep a paltry refrigerator, missy. I had to send Jimmy out for bacon and eggs.” She looked from me to Jon. “How’d you expect to keep a man if you ain’t gonna feed him? Didn’t your mama tell you the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?”

“
Leave Ashley’s mother out of this,” Jon declared.

But Patsy ignored him, and pointing to the boxes filled with the Captain’s artifacts, she said, “Don’t you go givin’ them pickins to nobody. They come with the house, and I’m buyin’ this house. Check with Melanie! Whaddya think I drove down here for and why do you think I’m a’stayin’. Ain’t because of them police. If I wanted to leave, I’d leave. I got me the best law firm in Charlotte on retainer to deal with annoyances like the police. And now that Mullins is out of the biddin’, this house is mine.”

At that point I lost it and stuck my face into hers. “For the last time, this house is not for sale!”

But my words didn’t faze her. She stopped on the porch, her gaze fixed on the curb and the pile of trash we had cleared from the Captain’s house. She turned to give me one of the defiant looks I was actually growing accustomed to. “Don’t underestimate me, Missy. I won’t born in no barn. That stuff out their waitin’ for trash pickup is fair pickins. You can’t stop me from goin’ through that stash and takin’ anything I damn well please!”

8

“
You’re looking fit as a fiddle,” I told Binkie.

He beamed and let me into his house through the new front door. “Come on back and we’ll give you the best bacon and tomato sandwich you’ve ever tasted,” he invited. “I spent the morning at my favorite gym, beating the dickens out of a punching bag. If I find someone trying to break down my door again, watch out!” And he lifted his fists in his best pugilistic stance.

Binkie had been boxing since youth, and the exercise kept him in shape, for as a scholar he led a sedentary life style. Still I hoped he was not serious about tangling with a burglar; he was too old to be getting into fistfights. Unlike a punching bag, the burglar would hit back.

“
I’ve got news. I know who sent the journal.”

“
Do tell! Join us for lunch and tell me all about it. My bride watches her waistline and mine too. Turkey bacon and nine grain bread and tomatoes from the garden.”

And he led me through the house to the shady patio where Aunt Ruby welcomed me. I observed that the kitchen porch which Aunt Ruby used as a crafts room had been cleaned up and restored to its former self. “Sit right down here, Ashley dear,” Aunt Ruby welcomed me graciously. She’d been working on her pottery, with paint smudges on her soft loose-fitting slacks and blouse. “Take my sandwich, dear,” she said, “I haven’t touched it yet. It’s still warm. I’ll just run inside and make another. But don’t you dare share your news until I return.”

She went into the kitchen, fetched a tall glass for my iced tea, then disappeared again.

“
She’s the boss,” Binkie said proudly. “We won’t discuss your news until she returns.”

I helped myself to iced tea from the frosty pitcher.

“
She sweetens it with honey,” Binkie said. “That’s why it’s so good. I’m going to live to be a hundred with her watching out for me. You know she’s a retired nurse,” he said proudly. “She knows what’s good for folks our age.”

“
Folks of any age,” I said, and bit into the dense grainy bread. “Oh, yum, this is scrumptious. You know, Binkie, I think you have lured every bird in New Hanover County into your garden.” There were bird feeders of various sizes, filled with a variety of seed, and a bird bath. Sunflowers grew at the far wall that separated Binkie’s garden from his neighbor’s property and mourning doves waddled along under them in hopes of a fallen seed.

Several hibiscuses were blooming a brilliant red. “The humming birds love those red flowers,” Binkie said, drumming his fingertips impatiently on the patio table. He was eager to hear what I had to say.

“
It’s amazingly quiet out here,” I said. From the street came the steady clip-clop of the Springbrook Farms horse and carriage as it carried tourists through the district.

“
Yes, for downtown it is quiet, thanks to our abundant live oak trees and magnolias, and our many azalea bushes. The foliage absorbs noise.”

In the background Memorial Bridge sang with traffic, a sound I was accustomed to and found soothing. There was intermittent street traffic. Then the quiet was obliterated by a fire truck roaring by, siren warbling.

When Aunt Ruby rejoined us with a plate of more sandwiches, I related my news, “I had a call from my client, Laura Gaston. We discussed the progress on the house, and she asked about the murder at Two Sisters. Seems we made the national news - a murder in a bookstore during a book signing, interest there - so she heard about it in New York.”

“
New York!” Binkie exclaimed. “That was the return address. She sent the journal!”

“
She asked me if you had received it. She apologized for sending it by FedEx. She has begun packing for her move back to Wilmington but wanted to get the journal into your hands. And she’s off to a medical convention.”

“
And did you tell her the journal might be at the motive for the murder here?” Binkie asked.

“
I did and she is as puzzled as we are. She has looked through the Captain’s journal and can’t believe someone would kill to get it. She said she had included a letter to you. Did you see a letter?”

“
No,” Binkie answered thoughtfully. “It must have remained in the envelope when I withdrew the journal.”

“
So whoever stole the envelope has the letter too and knows the journal was sent by Laura Gaston,” Aunt Ruby said.

“
I wonder if he didn’t already know that,” I speculated. “Otherwise, how would he have known about the delivery of the journal to Binkie?”

“
Unless the dead man told him,” Binkie said.

“
But how did the dead man know?” I asked.

Binkie answered, “He must know Laura Gaston and knows that she had a journal in her possession that she was sending to me. And of course the journal had to have been written by Captain Pettigrew.”