Hark! The Herald Angel Screamed: An Augusta Goodnight Mystery (with Heavenly Recipes) Read online

  If we could only delay them! “You were the one who killed Dexter Clark,” I said to Jeremiah. “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you why,” his mother answered. “Dexter was afraid to come to our house, afraid he might see Dave or me. My husband never forgave him because of what happened to Dinah. But Dexter got religion, it seems, and wanted to return the locket—”

  “So we’d have something of hers to keep, he said,” Jeremiah added. “When he called, I told him I’d meet him here. Hell, I didn’t mean to kill him!”

  “It was an accident,” Louella added, with unmistakable impatience in her voice, “but nobody would’ve believed it.”

  “We had a slight disagreement,” Jeremiah said.

  Ellis spoke from behind me. “And you pushed him from the balcony?”

  “We fought. He fell.” Jeremiah’s account sounded almost as if he were explaining away a broken lamp. “He was going to—”

  “That’s enough, son!” Louella spoke sharply.

  I threaded my arm through Idonia’s. If we had to run, I would try to pull her along. “Why are you doing this?” I asked. “What are you hiding here that you don’t want anybody to see?” If I was going to be locked away—or worse—I wanted to know the reason why.

  I didn’t get one. “Come on, better get ‘em on up there,” Louella said, heading for the stairs.

  Up there? I thought they were taking us to the basement. “I’m not going,” I said, hanging back.

  “I’m not either!” Ellis spoke beside me.

  With a sudden jerk, Jeremiah wrenched Idonia away from me. “I don’t think you’d like to see me shoot your friend here right in front of you.”

  “He means what he says,” Louella said, stepping in front of us. “Get up the stairs, all of you.”

  “Where’s Augusta?” Ellis whispered as we climbed the stairs ahead of them.

  “She’s here. Don’t worry,” I said.

  “Shut up!” Jeremiah gave us a push from behind. “You know, with a little help, this old place would go up in a minute,” he muttered aside to his mother.

  If Augusta was going to help us, she’d better hurry, I thought. And that was when I heard footsteps above us—or was that just wishful thinking? But Ellis heard it, too. Her hand tightened on my arm, and behind us, Idonia gave an encouraging gasp.

  Melrose DuBois stood at the top of the stairs with something that looked a whole lot like a gun and he pointed it at Jeremiah Tansey. “If you don’t drop that gun right now, I’ll shoot you where you stand,” he said in a voice as solid and steady as the heart-of-pine stairs beneath us.

  elrose! Where did you come from?” Idonia would have run to him if we hadn’t held her back.

  “Idonia, honey! Are you all right?” he said, then added to Jeremiah, “I’d drop that gun now if I were you. I’m about mad enough right now to shoot you anyhow.”

  “Where did you get that gun?” Jeremiah asked, hesitating. But Ellis had had enough of Jeremiah Tansey. His gun clattered to the floor below as she gave him a push that sent him sprawling backward, his head banging on the treads.

  “Oh no! You’ve killed him! Jeremiah, baby, are you all right?” His mother ran to gather him into her arms, and holding to the railing, I stepped quickly around them and made my way down the stairs to retrieve the gun he had dropped.

  Ellis used her cell phone to call the police while the rest of us kept an eye on the two Tanseys. Jeremiah had managed to pull himself into a sitting position and now sat on the bottom step with his head in his hands while Louella hovered over him.

  “Why didn’t they send somebody out here the first time I called?” I asked.

  “Because Paulette sent them out to Winternook,” she said. “You know, that retirement community on the way to Columbia. “Told them Idonia was in big trouble out there.”

  And I’m not sure, but it sounded like a giggle came from Idonia Mae Culpepper.

  “How did you manage to get upstairs all the way from the basement?” I asked Melrose.

  “There’s a narrow stairway that goes all the way up from there. I found the door to it down there while I was trying to feel my way out, but it was so dark, I couldn’t see where it came out. That’s where I was when I heard you, but I wasn’t sure where I was.”

  “So how did you see the exit in the dark?” Idonia wanted to know.

  “After I heard all that was going on, I was determined to try again,” Melrose said. “I felt my way up on my hands and knees until I couldn’t go any farther, but I knew there had to be an opening somewhere … and then the strangest thing happened. The door just started to open by itself. It was behind a bookcase in that big old room upstairs at the very back of the house. The bookcase just swung out, and let me tell you, I got out of there in a hurry!”

  “You must’ve touched something,” Idonia suggested. “A lever or a button or something.”

  “But I didn’t!” Melrose insisted. “It just happened. And you know, this is a funny thing, too, but it smelled just like strawberries up there.”

  I couldn’t see Ellis’s face in the dim light, but I knew she was smiling, too. “But where did you get the gun?” I asked.

  “There’s a room down there you can’t see from the other part of the basement and that’s where he had me tied up until I managed to work loose. The door to it appears to be just another part of the wall, and it looks like it’s been that way forever. That’s where the stairs come out and that’s where I found the gun along with enough stuff to stock a store,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe all the things down there: computers, televisions, jewelry, even a motorcycle. And guns—several guns. That one wasn’t loaded, of course.”

  A motorcycle. According to Weigelia, Kemper had said that when Dexter Clark disappeared he had been riding a motorcycle.

  Melrose put his coat around Idonia when she began to shiver and encouraged us all to go out to the car and turn on the heater, but Idonia didn’t want to leave him with the Tanseys and neither did Ellis nor I. I could barely stand to look at Louella Tansey crouching beside her son. After all the terrible things he’d done, she still excused him, though she knew he was responsible for Dexter Clark’s death and had probably sold the locket that had belonged to his sister. Of course it had to have been Louella who hid the locket in the flour canister, I thought. We should have known right away it wouldn’t occur to a man to put it there.

  Idonia sighed. “Surely that locket wasn’t worth all this!” She directed her question to Louella who continued to fret over her son. “What was so important about that locket that one of you drugged my drink to get it back?”

  “And it very nearly killed her!” Melrose added in a voice trembling with rage.

  Jeremiah struggled to stand but a shouted warning from Melrose sent him back to his seat on the stairs. “Look,” he said, “I only meant for it to make her sleepy. You’ve got to believe me! I didn’t know it would—”

  “Stop it, Jeremiah!” Louella said. “Can’t you see my son is delirious? He has a head injury and doesn’t know what he’s saying. Why, he might even have a con—”

  “Oh, shut up!” Jeremiah shoved his mother’s hands aside. “It was your idea and you know it.”

  “And just whose idea was it to sell your sister’s locket?” Louella snapped. “Of all the stupid notions, Jeremiah! Of course we had to get it back.”

  “The locket was your only connection to Dexter Clark—the only real link with your sister,” Ellis said. “And when Opal Henshaw noticed that photograph of Dinah on your piano, she signed her death warrant.”

  “It wouldn’t have been long,” I said, “before Opal put two and two together and realized Dinah’s husband was her nephew, Dexter Clark.”

  I assumed it was the police when I heard footsteps approaching outside a few minutes later, so I was surprised to see Preacher Dave Tansey standing in the doorway with a lantern in his hand. It was the kind you use for camping and gave out a warm yellow light.

  “I s
aw all the cars over here and thought I’d better check it out,” he began. And then he saw Jeremiah. “You!” he said. “I thought I told you to clear out of here. I suppose you know the police are looking for you. They say you killed the Clark fellow, and probably Opal Henshaw, too. And you might as well have killed your sister. Well, it’s going to end, and it’s going to end now.”

  Dave Tansey set his lantern on the floor and raised a rifle to his shoulder, pointing it at his son.

  “No!” Louella threw herself on Jeremiah. “No! Don’t hurt him! Please don’t hurt him.”

  Jeremiah didn’t speak but stared defiantly at his father as I was sure he had done many times before.

  “Get out of the way, Louella. I don’t want to kill you, too, although you deserve it for covering up for him all these years. If it hadn’t been for the two of you, our Dinah would still be with us. I—I had no idea what was going on until I found her diary, and God help me, I read it. Did you know she left a diary?” His voice broke with a sob.

  “But I didn’t know. I didn’t!” Louella reached out to him. “Not until it was too late. Our Dinah’s gone … Jeremiah, he’s all we have left!”

  “Preacher Dave! Think what you’re doing,” I said. “This is against everything you believe in.”

  “Let the police take care of him,” Ellis begged. “Don’t ruin your life this way.”

  “It’s already ruined,” he said. “It’s too late.”

  “No, it’s not!” Idonia chimed in. “He’s not worth it. Think of your congregation. They need you.”

  Still, he didn’t lower the rifle but held it steady, ignoring our pleas and those of his sobbing wife. I looked at Melrose, who now held the gun Jeremiah had dropped, and waited for him to speak, to intercede, but Melrose only drew Idonia closer. Maybe he didn’t care if Preacher Dave shot Jeremiah or not. Finally he stepped away from us. “Preacher, that’s not a good idea. You’re going to regret this. Now, listen—”

  I jumped when I heard the clear, deadly click as Dave Tansey cocked his rifle. He meant to kill his son and there was nothing we could do about it. Melrose stood with the gun hanging loosely by his side. He was not going to fire on Dave Tansey and I didn’t blame him, but what Dave was about to do was worse than being shot.

  “I can’t bear to think of what you did,” Preacher Dave said to Jeremiah, and his voice was so full of heartbreak it made me cry. “Please, Daddy, no! I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Jeremiah sobbed.

  I felt as if we were part of a freeze-frame in a movie: the gaunt man with the rifle and the pleading son; the hysterical woman, the dark old house, the soft glow of the lantern, and the rest of us, stiff with dread. And then suddenly, Preacher Dave stepped back and lowered the rifle, and his face seemed to glow as brightly as the lantern at his feet. “Forgive me,” he said, and turned and walked away.

  “I can’t believe she’s really gone and done it,” Nettie said. It was almost a week after Christmas and The Thursdays who gathered around my kitchen table didn’t even pretend they were there to discuss a book.

  “And she didn’t even invite us to the wedding,” Jo Nell said. “Looks like she’d want one of us to stand up with her.”

  “Nathan and his family were there,” I said. “She said she didn’t want a big wedding this time.” Idonia and Melrose had been married in a tiny chapel the day before and were now honeymooning on a cruise ship in the Bahamas.

  Ellis stroked Clementine’s big head. “Sneaky thing didn’t tell us she and Melrose got their license and blood tests when they were staying at that inn near Raleigh.”

  “And we were all frantic thinking she’d been snatched by the evil Melrose,” Zee said, laughing.

  Claudia smiled. “But he really did turn out to be her knight in shining armor, didn’t he?”

  “Sure did,” Ellis said. “He had all of us believing that gun was loaded.”

  Since that frightening night at Willowbrook we had learned that Jeremiah Tansey, with his mother’s knowledge, had been running a fencing operation dealing in stolen goods, which were stored in a hidden room in the basement at Willowbrook. When Dexter Clark met Jeremiah there to return Dinah’s locket, he’d arrived when Jeremiah was unloading some of his plunder and threatened to tell his father. The two fought and Dexter fell or was pushed from the decaying balcony. He dropped the locket before he fell and Jeremiah, hoping to keep the meeting and the locket a secret from his parents, sold it, along with stolen estate valuables, to G. Wayne Gravitt, who asked no questions, and that’s where Melrose came into the story.

  Nettie folded a paper Christmas napkin in accordion pleats. “So it was Jeremiah who drugged Idonia’s punch. But how did he manage to do it?” she asked.

  “When the police finally arrived at Willowbrook that night they found a tape player hooked up to a microphone that could be controlled by a remote, along with a dress and wig in that hidden room in the basement, and the music he played was probably an old tape of Dinah’s. Jeremiah was slender enough to easily fit into the dress. From a distance, no one could tell the difference,” I told her.

  “So he wore those to slip in and drug Idonia’s punch,” Jo Nell said. “But I don’t understand how.”

  “Jeremiah’s small,” I explained, “and wearing the dress and wig he could walk right past that bunch at Bellawood, then go upstairs, and slip something in Idonia’s punch. He and Louella didn’t want that locket traced back to them as it would connect him to Dexter Clark’s death. It must’ve been a shock when Melrose bought it and Idonia turned up wearing it.”

  “Remember when Idonia carried on so about being followed the night we went caroling?” Ellis said. “I wonder if that was Louella.”

  “Maybe. Those two were determined to get that locket back,” I said. “It could just as easily have been Jeremiah.”

  “Was he the one who pushed Opal from the balcony?” Zee asked.

  “The police seem to think Louella moved the swag and Jeremiah did the pushing, but I don’t think they know for sure,” I said.

  “If only Opal hadn’t noticed that locket in the photograph and told Louella about an identical one in her own family,” Claudia said.

  “That was before most people knew the body at Willowbrook had been identified as Dexter,” Ellis added. “Unfortunately for Opal, the police seemed to want that kept quiet. And, too, Opal had seen the locket Melrose bought for Idonia. She was bound to wonder how he came by it when she heard of Dexter’s death.”

  “If Opal Henshaw hadn’t been so hell-bent on delivering that fruitcake, she’d be alive today,” Zee said. “I always knew that stuff was deadly!”

  “She was only trying to do the right thing,” I said, shaking my head. “And look where it got her.”

  Nettie sighed. “Poor Dexter! It’s a shame he waited until Dinah’s death to change for the better.”

  “Well, it won’t help to dwell on that now,” Jo Nell reminded her. “Are Cudin’ Vance and his fiancée still planning to renovate the old home place?” she asked. “If I were those two I think I’d just find a nice little house in the suburbs.”

  I laughed. “The last I heard they were still interested, but Vance says they’ll probably have to do it in stages, so if they start from the basement up we might not live to see it!”

  Ellis got up and poured coffee all around. “I feel bad about Preacher Dave. It makes me sad to think of what he must have been through. His son and his wife are both in jail for murder, or accessory to murder. And can you believe that mealy-mouthed Louella? I wonder how long she knew that degenerate Jeremiah was abusing his own sister and still did nothing about it.”

  “That must be why Preacher kept Dinah’s things in that locked room,” Ellis said. “It really was a shrine of sorts. I expect he spent a lot of time in there just thinking of what could’ve been, and can you imagine how he felt when he found that diary? That’s probably what drove him to what he almost did.”

  “I’m glad to hear his congregation has been supportive,”
Zee said. “They even helped move him into a small house next to the church out there. I guess your cousin will have to find another caretaker for Willowbrook.”

  “Pete Whittaker told me Dave Tansey had spoken to him about forming a group with other churches in the area to reach out to abused children,” I said. “I’m sure something good will come of that.”

  “I wonder what stopped him from shooting Jeremiah,” Claudia said. “From what you all told me, he came close to killing his own son.”

  Nettie stirred sugar into her coffee. “Somebody told me Preacher Dave said he sensed somebody standing right behind him, and felt such goodness surrounding him he just couldn’t pull the trigger. Kind of a wild tale if you ask me. I don’t know whether to believe that or not.”

  I looked up to find Augusta standing in the doorway and smiled. “Believe it,” I said.

  Some of Stone’s Throw Favorites

  Ellis’s Hot Clam Dip

  One 8-ounce package cream cheese

  ½ pint sour cream

  One 7½-ounce can minced clams, drained

  Juice of 1 lemon

  Dash red pepper, Texas Pete (or Tabasco), and Worcestershire sauce

  Salt to taste

  Cream the cheese and sour cream together and add the other ingredients. Heat in chafing dish until hot and bubbly, and serve with crackers or chips.

  Serves about 6–8 (easily doubled).

  Claudia’s Marinated Mushrooms

  1 pound fresh mushrooms, washed, or two or three 6-ounce cans whole mushrooms

  1 onion, sliced

  ⅔ cup tarragon vinegar

  ½ cup olive oil

  1 medium clove garlic, minced

  1 tablespoon sugar

  1½ teaspoons salt

  Dash freshly ground black pepper