Mama Pursues Murderous Shadows Page 4

  “Ruby’s eyes were puffy like she’d been crying. I suppose if I had given it some thought, I should have known she’d try to hurt herself. The woman looked like she’d just thrown on her clothes without thinking, just to get away from whatever it was that was chasing her. I mean, it was a hot night and she was all bundled up in a thick black sweater and a scarf.”

  “A scarf?” Mama asked as she took out a small notebook from her purse and began making notes.

  “Yeah, a reddish brown scarf that struck me as being particularly ugly,” he replied.

  “What did Ruby say to you?”

  Jeff shifted in his chair. “Nothing, not a word, but like I told Abe, she had a good bit of money on her. When she opened her purse to pay for the room, I saw a roll big enough to choke a cow!”

  Mama seemed to ponder what she’d just learned. “I was wondering why it was you that checked Ruby into the motel that night and not your front desk clerk.”

  “It was Maria’s dinner hour,” Jeff said, looking surprised. “Maria is my clerk. I always take care of the check-ins between eight and nine o’clock.”

  “Were there many people staying here that night?”

  “It was a slow night. Just a trucker who stays here from time to time and an old couple from New York on their way to Miami.”

  Mama smiled appreciatively. “I’d like to talk to the cleaning woman who found Ruby.”

  Golick raised his eyebrows. “Inez isn’t here. Although she’s only been working here for three weeks, she asked for this weekend off. Something about some business she has to take care of.”

  “Perhaps you can tell me where Inez lives,” Mama suggested.

  Jeff took a deep breath, clearly aggravated by an interview he felt was going on too long. “Two miles past the interstate, turn left, cross the railroad, first dirt road on the right, third house on the right. Her last name is Moore.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Golick,” Mama said, standing. She thought for a minute. “Did Ruby happen to make any phone calls while she was here?”

  “I’ve given that list to the sheriff.”

  “It would be helpful if you could check the number of times she stayed at the motel in the past six months, as well as any phone numbers she might have called during that same period,” Mama told him.

  Jeff let out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t see any reason for that.”

  Mama looked confidently into his eyes, her smile gentle. “I was just thinking that if Abe called you and asked for such a list, it would be nice if you would have already had it made up.”

  Jeff shrugged, his eyes angry, his face impatient. We thanked him and left the office.

  “We’re off to find Inez’s house?” I asked.

  “Exactly,” Mama said.

  Inez Moore’s house was three miles away from the Avondale Inn on a dirt road that runs every bit of a mile from the paved turnoff. It was a road filled with so many potholes that the drive felt like a roller-coaster ride. We ended up in the yard of a tiny unpainted house that had a porch that ran its length. From the outside, it appeared that there were no more than three rooms to the shack. The roof was rusty tin, the yard was dirt. There wasn’t even a patch of grass.

  All around the yard were six or seven dilapidated cars surrounded by mounds of car tires. Behind the house were trees and what looked like more old, rusty cars. The smell of burning rubber was a stench in the air.

  “This must be where everybody in the county abandons their automobiles,” I told Mama, looking around and wrinkling up my nose.

  “It looks pretty bad, doesn’t it?” Mama agreed.

  “If Sarah Jenkins knew about this place, she’d stir up the County Council to put an end to the burning of those tires.”

  “She’d probably tell them that the fumes aggravated her chest condition so much she felt like she wasn’t going to take her next breath.”

  “Burning tires can cause respiratory problems. Come to think of it, isn’t there a county ordinance against burning?” I asked.

  Mama nodded. “It’s against Otis County’s ordinances. But nothing in Otis gets enforced unless somebody complains.”

  Just then a young woman of about twenty-five walked out onto the front porch.

  “Jeff phoned and told me to be on the lookout for you,” she called, her voice cold and hard. “I don’t know what I can tell you, but since you’ve gone out of your way to find me, come on up and take a seat.”

  Mama glanced at me, and headed for Inez Moore’s front porch.

  By the time we’d climbed the rickety wooden steps, Inez had gone back inside and brought out another chair. “I always thought that fool Ruby would go and kill herself. She was just that crazy!”

  “You knew Ruby well?” Mama asked.

  Inez was a short woman, less than five feet. She had large hips and legs but a small waist and bosom. Her face was shrewd, her eyes close to each other. At Mama’s question, she nodded. “Ruby and I worked at the sewing room in Bartow together.” She hesitated. “Three weeks ago I heard there was an opening at the Avondale Inn, so I was the first to ask Jeff for the job. He gave it to me and I said good-bye to sewing piece goods at that factory.”

  “I see,” Mama said.

  “Ruby had no need to look for another job. She coulda stayed there at the factory as long as she wanted because she was in the boss’s pocket.”

  Mama’s brow crinkled. “You’re saying that Ruby’s job was secure because she was a good worker?”

  “She worked but I know for a fact that her work wasn’t what kept her job secure!”

  “So what did?”

  Inez shrugged. “What does it matter? She went and killed herself and I’m stuck making beds.”

  “What do they sew at that factory?” Mama asked.

  “Sweaters, scarves, gloves. Things northerners need in the dead of winter.”

  Mama looked interested. “Ruby probably had a lot of scarves?”

  “We were allowed two scarves apiece from each lot,” Inez replied. “Ruby Spikes followed the rules—two scarves were all she’d take.”

  “Jeff Golick tells me that Ruby had on a scarf when she checked into the motel on Friday night.”

  “Don’t know about that. First time I had a look at Ruby since I left the plant was when I walked into that room and there she was, dead. She had on a nightgown. I didn’t see a scarf.”

  “Tell me, how did you happen to find Ruby’s body?”

  “I’ve already talked to Abe about that.”

  “I know,” Mama said. “But I’d really like to hear the story myself.”

  Inez threw Mama a strange look. “Why are you so interested in Ruby Spikes?”

  “It may be that Ruby didn’t kill herself,” Mama explained patiently. “Somebody could have slipped into Ruby’s room and killed her.”

  Inez’s shrewd eyes grew wide. “Is that what Abe told you?” she demanded.

  “It’s a thought,” Mama admitted.

  “Listen, I didn’t even know that Ruby Spikes was in the Inn that night. I went to clean her room the next morning like I was supposed to do,” she answered, her eyes cautious, like she was concentrating on the details of how she found Ruby’s body. “This is the way I work: I go along my floor and knock on each door. ‘Cleaning woman here,’ I say loud enough for anyone inside to hear me. Most people say something to let me know that they’ve heard me. Then when I start working each room, they’re already getting out of my way. So when I got to the room that Ruby was staying in—Room 217—I knocked and called like I always do. The door slid open ’cause it wasn’t locked. That surprised me. I knocked again and said, ‘Cleaning woman is here!’ The door opened wider. That’s when I saw Ruby’s legs sprawled out on the floor. I ran right down to the office and got Jeff. When we went back to Room 217, we saw Ruby.” Inez paused.

  “The sheriff came,” Mama prodded gently. “After he and his deputy finished their investigation, who cleaned Room 217?”

  “I did,” In
ez answered hotly, “but that wasn’t until over a week later and I ain’t took nothing out of it. Besides, up until that time, I wasn’t allowed in that room. No one was. Not even Jeff.”

  “When you finally cleaned the room, did you see anything?” Mama asked. “You know, something of Ruby’s the sheriff might have left behind?”

  “Like what?” Inez asked it defiantly.

  “I suspect the sheriff took all of Ruby’s personals,” I suggested.

  “Maybe,” Mama murmured. “I just wanted to make sure nothing was left accidentally in that room.”

  “There wasn’t anything of Ruby’s left in that room and like I’ve already told you, I didn’t take anything out of it!” Inez said angrily.

  Mama folded her hands in her lap. Then she asked, “Did you know Ruby’s boyfriend? The man she used to meet at the Inn?”

  Inez frowned. “You think he killed Ruby?”

  Mama didn’t answer.

  Inez cocked her head at an angle. “Come to think of it, I saw him in Avondale sometime after midnight that night. My old man and I was coming in from taking care of some business. I blew the horn at him and he waved back at us.”

  “Sooner or later, Abe is going to have to talk to him,” Mama told Inez. She took out her notebook and wrote her telephone number on it, then held the page out to Inez. “If you run into Ruby’s friend, tell him if he would talk to me, I’d appreciate it—tell him that our conversation could be considered a private matter.”

  Inez took the slip from Mama’s hand.

  “One more question, Inez. Did anybody at the Inn mention to you that they heard the shot that killed Ruby?”

  Inez shook her head. “There were only two rooms occupied that night—a trucker who sleeps so hard he wouldn’t hear the Lord coming to get him. Then there was the older couple, but their room was clear on the other end of the motel. They told Abe they didn’t hear anything.”

  “Is Charles Parker Ruby’s boyfriend?” Mama asked point-blank.

  Inez Moore looked puzzled. She shook her head. “I don’t know a Charles Parker,” she told Mama.

  So why did I think she was lying?

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  We were sitting in my car. It struck me as odd that the people immediately on the scene after Ruby’s demise couldn’t find any sympathy for the woman. Jeff Golick was clearly indifferent; Inez Moore was downright hostile. “Inez didn’t have a very friendly attitude, did she?” I said, sharing my thoughts with Mama.

  My mother shook her head. “Inez is an angry woman, one that’s explosive, one that doesn’t keep wrathful feelings hid inside.”

  “If, in her depression, Ruby’s journey to the motel was a cry for help, she came to the wrong place. Saying that, I can’t help but wonder why did Ruby come to the motel to die? Why didn’t she just kill herself in her own house?”

  Mama thought for a moment although I didn’t get the impression that the question caught her off guard. Knowing her as well as I do, it was something she’d already considered. “The talk around town is that Herman Spikes was in the Otis Motel that night with that silly girl Betty Jo Mets so Ruby would have been home alone.”

  I was surprised. Mama doesn’t usually speak uncomplimentarily about a person. “Why do you call Betty Jo silly?” I prodded.

  “I’m Betty Jo’s case manager. I know for a fact that she’s a lousy mother and she sleeps with anybody that offers her the least bit of money.” Mama shook her head slowly. “What I can’t figure out is why Herman would prefer Betty Jo to his wife, Ruby.”

  Abe seemed to have been waiting for us. His smoke-filled office made me think he’d tried to get as much nicotine in his lungs as possible before Mama and I arrived.

  Once we were seated, Mama said to him, “Abe, isn’t it strange that nobody heard the shot that killed Ruby Spikes?”

  Abe shrugged, picked up a book of matches, then threw them back down on his desk. “There were three other people in the motel that night. I talked to them all and not one of them remembered hearing the shot.”

  “The more I look into Ruby’s death, the more questions come up,” Mama told her old friend with conviction strong in her voice.

  Abe slid Mama a copy of the police report for her to examine. Mama studied the paper for a moment in silence, then handed it to me.

  6:00 P.M. Herman Spikes arrived home.

  7:05 P.M. Ruby Spikes packed a bag and left house.

  9:25 P.M. Herman Spikes picked up Betty Jo Mets and went to the Otis Motel.

  6:09 A.M. Herman Spikes and Betty Jo left the Otis Motel.

  9:00 A.M. Inez Wright finds Ruby Spikes’s body.

  9:10 A.M. Jeff Golick calls Otis police.

  “I got a statement from Herman,” Abe told Mama. “I had Rick talk to Betty Jo. She swears she and Herman were together from nine-thirty until six o’clock Saturday morning.”

  “Who was on duty at the check-in desk at the Otis Motel when Herman and Betty Jo arrived?” Mama asked.

  “Nobody,” Abe told her. “Seems that Herman came in about five o’clock Friday evening right after he knocked off from work. That’s when he reserved the room.”

  Mama’s eyes widened. “Why in heaven’s name did he reserve the room so early?”

  Abe rubbed the bridge of his nose. “According to Herman, he liked getting things ready ahead of time.”

  Mama cleared her throat. Then she said, “Abe, do you have the list of the phone numbers that Ruby called the night of her death?”

  “Yeah,” Abe replied, digging through a stack of papers on his desk. “She only made two calls. One was to her own house, the other to a Bartow number.” Bartow is twenty-five miles from Otis.

  “Would you get the phone company to trace the other number for me? It probably belongs to Ruby’s boyfriend.”

  Abe agreed.

  “I’m pretty sure that Ruby’s boyfriend is not the mysterious Charles Parker,” Mama told Abe. “I’ve talked with Inez Moore, the cleaning woman at the Inn who found Ruby’s body. She knows Ruby’s lover, even though she won’t say his name, but she doesn’t know a Charles Parker.”

  Abe’s face darkened. “I suppose Inez didn’t tell you about the fight she had with Ruby a few weeks ago, did she? For over six months, inventory at the factory kept coming up short and Clyde Thinner, the manager, was getting real concerned. But none of Clyde’s efforts to catch the thief paid off. Then one afternoon he got Ruby to pretend she had a bad headache. He had her sit in the back of her car in the plant parking lot.

  “According to Ruby, she heard a car come up in the parking lot. She watched as Inez’s boyfriend parked directly in front of the door. After a few minutes, she saw Inez come out of the factory and slip a big bundle into the car’s trunk. It was during the busiest time of day, late afternoon, when most workers were preoccupied with reaching their daily quotas. Ruby went right inside the plant and reported what she’d seen to Clyde. Clyde called me and I went to Inez’s old man’s house and found bundles of scarves and gloves. It seems as if Inez stole the stuff and her old man took it up north to one of his cousins who sold them and split the profit with Inez and her old man. Naturally, Inez was fired.”

  “That explains the hostile attitude I sensed Inez had when we were talking to her about Ruby,” Mama told him.

  “Clyde told me that two days after Inez was fired, she sat in her car in the plant’s parking lot and waited for Ruby to knock off from work. The fire in her eyes was like a dragon, he was told. It was like Inez had lost her mind. People saw her tear into Ruby like she was a piece of meat. It took four or five of Clyde’s strongest men to get Inez off Ruby—he claims that several people swear that Inez would have killed Ruby right then and there that very day if she hadn’t been stopped.”

  “That’s interesting,” Mama said softly.

  “The plant headquarters in New York have instructed their lawyers to press charges against Inez, her boyfriend, and his cousin. Seems to me that Inez Moore and her crew ar
e facing serving some time.”

  “Did Inez know about that?” Mama asked.

  “Clyde got the news the day before Ruby died. He told Ruby and he told everybody at the factory. I reckon it wouldn’t have been too much of a problem for Inez and her old man to find out that their troubles were just about to begin that same day.”

  “So it’s possible that Inez and her boyfriend could have murdered Ruby,” I suggested. “It would have been easy for her to have learned that Ruby was in the Inn, to get a key to her room and give it to her boyfriend. She of all people would know that the motel was almost empty that night. She could stand watch as her old man slipped inside and killed Ruby, then just pretend to find her body the next morning when she went in to clean the room.”

  “It’ll be interesting to know what Inez and her boyfriend were doing the night Ruby died,” Abe said.

  “She told me and Mama that she was riding in Avondale around midnight,” I said.

  “She also told us that she saw Ruby’s boyfriend in Avondale about the same time,” Mama said thoughtfully.

  “I’ll get Rick to talk to Inez and her old man,” Abe said.

  “By the way,” Mama said to the sheriff, “Jeff Golick told us that Ruby had a scarf around her neck when she checked into the Inn.”

  “Her clothes were there but a scarf wasn’t in that room,” he answered.

  “I also told Jeff Golick that you would be wanting a list of the dates Ruby spent at the Avondale Inn during the past six months, and the phone numbers she called while she was staying there.”

  “You want me to call him and remind him to get it for me, right?” he asked Mama.

  Mama flashed him a “yes” smile. “Jeff also told me that Ruby had a large sum of money in her purse that night.”

  “I suspect you’ll want to see this too.” Abe handed Mama another piece of paper. “Delcena Walker, the teller at the Otis bank, gave this to me. You’ll see the savings activity shows that six months ago, in March, Ruby had a balance of $35,000. She’d been withdrawing an average of five hundred dollars a month until finally she withdrew $33,500 in May, almost exactly three months before the date of her death. Her checking account shows that she deposited seven thousand dollars six weeks ago, in July. She withdrew all seven thousand dollars the day before she died.”