“Keep piecing it together,” she threw over her shoulder as she walked away from him.
It was a damn good thing that Kate did not have a weight problem, because when she was angry she had a voracious appetite. She ripped open the cookies and ate the whole dozen as she loaded her cart. Twice she passed Waylon on an aisle, but she didn’t speak and neither did he. She did sneak a peek at his purchases and was surprised to see flour, sugar, and staples that most folks bought if they were planning on preparing meals from scratch.
Where was it he said that he lived? It was a woman’s name, like Marysville. No, Mabelle. Didn’t they have a market there? Maybe he really was following her. Did that constitute harassment?
Back behind the steering wheel with the AC running full blast, she checked the statistics on Mabelle, Texas. Population at last census was nine. That wasn’t big enough to be considered a community, much less a town. It was about nine miles southwest from Seymour and maybe five miles from Bootleg, which sat on the edge of Lake Kemp.
“I guess this is the closest grocery store, so at least he’s not stalking me,” she said as she started the engine and pointed her car north toward Bootleg.
CHAPTER FIVE
Kate let the engine run, keeping the vehicle cool, while she studied the lineup in the rocking chairs on the front porch. Jamie sat closest to the door, with a strange lady with short, curly hair a faint shade of purple beside her. Gracie was in the middle chair, bare feet dangling about halfway to the porch. Next to her, an old gentleman with thick glasses and a rim of gray hair around an otherwise bald head nodded as she chattered nonstop.
Neighbors? Grandparents? Friends? Hopefully, they weren’t there to spend the night, or they’d have to pull out the sofa bed. She’d decided to treat this whole thing like her freshman college-dorm days—a building full of rooms with a single kitchen and lobby/living room. She turned off the engine and hit the button to open the trunk. By the time she got around the car to unload her supplies, the old gentleman was lifting out two bags of groceries.
“I’m Victor Green, and I’m your neighbor to the left.” He nodded over his shoulder. “That’s Hattie Bell up there on the porch, and she’s your neighbor to the right. We know Gracie and Jamie from their week in the summer, but we ain’t seen you.”
“I was here about fourteen years ago, but only for a week,” Kate said.
“So you’d be the oldest wife?” Victor asked.
Ouch, that stung, even if he didn’t put emphasis on the word or even act surprised that they were all there at the same time.
“I might be,” she answered.
Hattie followed them inside and unloaded the bags, setting the food on the table while Victor went back to the porch. “Jamie told us what happened with Conrad. I’m not a bit surprised. I told Iris when she married him that he was a shyster and just out to get her money. A year later she was dead and he owned this house, plus he had all of her savings. Her poor daughter didn’t get a thing, not even the wedding rings that her father had given Iris. Poor Iris was only fifty-five when she had that heart attack.” Hattie lowered her voice to a whisper. “I always suspected that he had something to do with it. And”—she narrowed her eyes until they were mere slits in a bed of wrinkles—“I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t done the same thing before Iris.”
“Is the daughter still alive?” Kate asked.
“Oh, no, she died in a car wreck about six months after her mama.”
“And Iris was fifty-five?” Kate opened the refrigerator to find her sandwich gone.
“That’s right. Conrad said he was twenty-eight, but I always thought he was younger than that. He was a charmer, all right. Iris was a fool to think he was in love with her and not what he could con her out of,” Hattie said.
“Why are you telling me this?” Kate put away milk, cheese, and lunch meat.
“So all three of you understand that you weren’t the first, and if he’d lived, you wouldn’t be the last,” Hattie said. “And besides”—she giggled—“I’m nosy. I want to know what happens with the three of you living in this house together. You got to admit it could be a reality show. Maybe something like Hostile Sister Wives. Me and Victor have a ten-dollar bet going as to which one of y’all killed that son of a bitch. In memory of Iris, I’ll take whoever did it to dinner.”
A smile spread across Kate’s face as she put on a pot of water to boil for tea. “Did you see him—I mean, Conrad, very often? Did he come here and stay a whole week with anyone else other than Jamie and Gracie?”
“Honey, he showed up here all the time, but I never paid much attention to them. I did see him last winter with the redhead, and they stayed a week. Most of the time he’d slink in here with a different woman over weekends. He knew we didn’t like him, so we all ignored one another,” Hattie said.
“He came near the end of each month?”
“Oh, yes. How’d you know that?”
“Just a lucky guess.” She dropped four tea bags into the boiling water, covered the pot, and set it aside. While they steeped, she ran water into a plastic pitcher until it was half-full, added a cup and a half of sugar, and stirred it until it dissolved.
“Just the way I make tea. Your mama taught you well,” Hattie said. “Would you look at the time? Thirty minutes until Sunday night church services. Y’all are all invited anytime you want to attend. It’s the little white church on the north side of town. The one on the south side has been closed down for a couple of years now. We usually have a potluck after Sunday morning services, so bring along a covered dish if you want to join us for that.”
“Thank you for your help, Hattie.” Kate smiled.
“Anytime. Me and Victor will be popping in to check on you girls.” She grinned. “Like I said, I’m nosy, and besides, I’m old. That means I get to ask rude questions and say what I want.”
“Then I can’t wait to get old,” Kate said.
“’Bye, now.” Hattie waved as she crossed the room to the door and disappeared.
Kate removed the tea bags, squeezed all the water from them, and then poured the tea into the pitcher. When it was stirred well, she took a glass down from the cabinet, filled it with ice and tea, and carried it to her bedroom. She gulped down a third of the tea, set it on her dresser, and reached for her laptop. She opened a new folder and typed:
Information about Conrad:
Conrad came home at least one day toward the end of every third week. He would meet with his accountant to discuss his business and sign any tax papers or forms that she needed him to take care of. He’d draw out his monthly paycheck at that time, and he’d be at the house when I got home from the office. The conversation was always the same. He wanted me to divorce him. I refused. He’d have his evening meal in the dining room and I’d take mine to my bedroom. My house was simply a free hotel for the night.
She closed her laptop and drank the rest of the tea. When she went back for a refill, there was not one drop left in the pitcher. Her sandwich was gone and now her tea—it was the old proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. She marched out to the porch to find Jamie and Gracie sipping away at a glass each and Amanda on the other end of the porch chomping on the ice pellets left in hers.
“What’s your problem?” Amanda asked.
“That was my tea and it was my sandwich in the refrigerator,” Kate said.
“Well, pardon me,” Amanda said with a head wiggle. “I was hungry, and it was the only thing in the house. Conrad never said I couldn’t eat something that was left in the refrigerator. And I was thirsty, so I had a glass of tea. What do I owe you?”
“Being the first wife don’t give you the right to get all bitchy over a glass of tea,” Jamie said.
“Conrad is dead, so what he said in this house does not matter. And I’m not the first wife. I’m just likely the oldest one alive today. Didn’t Hattie tell you about Iris?” Kate propped a hip on the porch railing.
“Who is Iris?” Amanda asked.
Kate told them the story, continuing, “I have started a file with things I can remember, like how Conrad only came home a day a month to talk to his accountant—or maybe I should say he came to my house. If you’ll do the same, maybe it will help that detective to see that we aren’t guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.”