Mint Juleps, Mayhem, and Murder Read online

  Prep clothes for the whole week. A set of hanging shelves is an easy way to divide clothes for the week. For kids, label the shelves with the days of the week and they can dress themselves.

  Chapter Five

  “Her? How do you know it’s from a woman?”

  Denise didn’t answer right away. Instead, she read the message aloud, “Back in town. Meet at four?”

  She gazed into space for a moment, then punched in a message.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, amazed at the assumptions she was making.

  She read over her message, then hit send. “I said yes to the meeting, but said I’d lost the address.” She carefully placed the phone on the table, which was now covered with envelopes, bills, the squadron coin, and the notepad and a pen. “I recognized the number from our phone records. Did you know you can pull those up online? Lewis called it several times during the last few days.”

  “But how do you know it’s a woman? It could be anyone, someone from the base, a business.”

  Denise watched the phone as she said, “I called it last night. No answer, just a voice mail message, no name.” Her gaze shifted to me. “It was a woman. She sounded familiar, but I can’t place the voice.”

  “Denise, this isn’t the smartest thing to do. You shouldn’t pursue this by yourself—”

  “That’s why I asked you to help me.”

  The phone vibrated, shimmying a few inches closer to the squadron coin before Denise snatched it up. “It’s in North Dawkins, somewhere along Tarlton,” she said, naming one of the busiest streets in town that was crowded with big box stores and restaurants. And a few hotels. I hoped it wasn’t one of the hotels.

  Denise stuck her phone in her purse, pulled out her keys, then stopped to jot a quick note for her sister on the notepad. I stood up during her flurry of activity. There was only so much I could say to try and talk her out of this. Even though she worked hard to erase those lines of structure that had separated her from the squadron spouses, she was the squadron commander’s wife. I wasn’t going to push it too far. I wasn’t going to be able to talk her out of going. I could see that.

  She paused at the door to the carport, her purse on her shoulder. She’d switched her red-rimmed glasses for sunglasses. “Well? Are you coming with me? I’m going whether or not you’re with me.”

  “I know.” I picked up my purse and followed her outside.

  Another car whipped around Denise’s hulking SUV as she rode the brake, counting off addresses under her breath, oblivious to the frustrated drivers behind us. She swung into the left turn lane and made a U-turn. “I missed it. It’s got to be behind us because now we’re in the seven thousands.”

  I gripped the armrest and cringed as another car swerved around us. The clock on the dashboard read five minutes until four o’clock. Denise gripped the steering wheel and leaned slightly forward. Even if we found the address, I didn’t see how we’d identify the mystery woman because there was so much traffic. We crept past a strip mall set back into a huge parking lot behind banks of landscaped medians. “It’s got to be right around here,” Denise said, twisting in her seat.

  “I don’t know…I only see a car wash and that new Italian restaurant.”

  “Wait! I bet it’s back there.” Denise slammed on the brakes and turned quickly into the small paved lane by the restaurant.

  “It’s a storage place?” I asked. “That seems…odd.” A heavy-duty fence encircled the low building. The entrance was an automatic security gate of wrought iron with a keypad.

  She double-checked the address. “This is it,” she said doubtfully.

  We waited ten minutes in silence, with Denise checking her phone every ten seconds or so. I shifted, trying to unstick the back of my shirt from my shoulder blades. The humidity had been climbing steadily and despite the cool air blasting out of the air conditioner, I felt as if I was glued to the leather seats. Finally I said, “Denise, I think we should go.”

  She gripped the steering wheel. “No, look.”

  A white SUV rolled to a stop at the security gate, the tinted window powered down, and a lean, tan arm reached down to punch in the code. I could see a bit of a tank top and the swish of a black ponytail as the woman arched over to reach the keypad. I leaned closer…it looked like…no, it couldn’t be.

  “That’s Amy Yuyuan,” Denise said and I could tell she was as surprised as I was.

  We looked at each other for a moment, then watched the SUV roll through the now-open gate and park on the other side of the fence near one of the storage units at the front of the complex. Amy was a fairly new member of the squadron’s spouse club. Her husband had been transferred to Taylor last winter. Thoughts were flying through my mind, mainly that she had three kids, twin boys under a year old and a three-year-old daughter. She didn’t make it to a lot of squadron events, probably because she was so busy with the twins. She was ten, maybe fifteen years younger than Colonel Pershall. What was she thinking? What had he been thinking? And how had she had the time or the energy?

  “Do you think…she and Lewis…” Denise couldn’t finish the sentence. She looked angry.

  “No. It’s probably a coincidence,” I said. “And it’s a strange place to meet. She probably needs something from their storage unit.” Amy’s SUV idled. I hurried on, trying to think of a reason she’d be here at this exact moment, waiting around the parking lot. “She lives on base, right? Those houses, even officers’ quarters, are tiny, so I could see how they’d need extra storage space.”

  Denise nodded, but I could tell my words didn’t help. The driver’s door of the SUV opened and Amy hopped lightly down from the seat. It was actually a pretty good sized drop for her, since she was all of about four foot five. She was wearing a tight tank top, shorts, and flip flops and she had her phone to her ear. She scanned the small parking area, then checked her watch.

  Denise’s phone vibrated in her hand and she dropped it. By the time she’d scrabbled around the floorboard, it had gone to voice mail. Denise put it on speaker. Amy said, “Hi. I’m here. Are you going to make it? I can wait a few minutes, but then I have to go. We can reschedule, if you like.”

  “I don’t know, Denise. She sounds pretty businesslike.”

  “Business. Right,” Denise said, her face set. “What kind of business would she have with my husband? And she always wears too much of that musky perfume.” She opened the door and was marching across the asphalt before I could say anything else. I reached over, turned the SUV off and clambered down, pocketing the keys.

  Denise reached the gate. Amy saw her and hurried over to open it. Right now, that didn’t seem like such a good idea. Denise was pretty mad and I would have felt better with solid metal separating the two women. I sprinted across the parking lot, slipped inside the gate, and walked into an invisible wall of musky perfume. The gate rattled closed behind me. This had to be worse. Now we were all locked in here together.

  “Hi, Denise,” Amy said. Denise had never stood on ceremony—she insisted we all call each other by our first names. I glanced between the two women and realized Denise was so furious that she wasn’t even able to speak. Amy totally missed the hostility aimed at her. She checked her watch as she said, “That’s weird that you’re here, since he wanted to keep it such a secret, but whatever. Hey, Ellie. I guess the cat is really out of the bag now. I’ve only got a few minutes. I’ve got groceries—”

  “The cat is out of the bag?” Denise’s screechy voice shocked Amy to a halt. She took in Denise’s clinched fists and angry face. “What’s wrong, Denise?” she asked cautiously.

  “That’s all you can say?” Denise stepped toward her. I hurried over and practically wedged myself into the space between them. Amy quickly took a few steps back. “Denise, I think there might be a tiny mistake,” I said. Amy didn’t look guilty. In fact, she hadn’t looked a bit anxious until she took in Denise’s angry face.

  “There’s no mistake. I know what it all means, the late nights, t
he messages, his clothes smelling like your perfume,” Denise said, inching closer with each word.

  Before she could say anything else, I jumped in. “Amy, you were expecting Colonel Pershall today?”

  She frowned, looking from me to Denise. “Yes. He wanted to see the bike again,” she spoke cautiously again. “He said you’d be mad and, wow, he was right. I can see why he didn’t want to tell you about it.” She glanced quickly at me with widened eyes as if to communicate, help me here.

  “Bike?” I asked.

  “Here, you can see for yourself.” Amy spun the combination lock on one of the storage unit doors. She unhooked it, then heaved the door up, revealing a jumble of packing boxes, tools, and furniture. She pushed a box out of the way and pointed to one side. “There it is, over in the corner.”

  “But that’s a Harley,” Denise said in a tone that some people would have reserved for tarantulas or black widows. Her tense muscles uncoiled. She gazed at the gleaming bike, bewilderment replacing her anger. “A motorcycle?”

  Amy twisted the combination lock and shrugged, almost apologetic. “Colonel Pershall said you wouldn’t like it, but Cody never rides it anymore. We sold mine when I got pregnant the first time and now that we’ve got three kids, it seemed like a good idea to sell his, too. We thought we’d use the money to buy a fort for the backyard. You know, the wooden kind with a slide.”

  Her voice died away as Denise inched through the boxes and furniture. When she reached the bike, she ran her hand over the smooth metal. “I would have fought him all the way on this. They’re so dangerous. Just one mistake and it could all be over.”

  Amy swung the dial on the lock again, looking uncomfortable. “Yeah, he was pretty sure you wouldn’t like it, so he said he’d try to change your mind before he bought it. That’s why I was so surprised to see you.”

  When Denise didn’t move or respond, Amy looked at me with raised eyebrows. I signaled for her to follow me a few steps away. When I explained what had happened to Colonel Pershall, she said, “He’s dead? Dead? No way.” When my expression didn’t change, she said, “Oh my god. That’s awful—no wonder Denise is acting so strange. We’ve been out of town—just got in a few hours ago. I called Colonel Pershall because he looked at the bike last week and wanted to see it again this weekend. I told him that if I made it back in time I’d call him and we could meet here like we did last week.”

  “So he’d already seen it?”

  “Yeah. He met me here one night after work.”

  So that explained the sneaky disappearance after work and it was no surprise he’d come home smelling like her perfume. I was sure I’d smell like it, too, after being near Amy for a while. She continued, “He loved it, absolutely loved it, but didn’t want to upset Denise.”

  Denise came out of the storage unit. She blinked in the bright sunlight and shaded her eyes. “Amy,” she said, her voice weak and strained, “I’m so sorry…I had no idea.”

  “I know. Ellie just explained. I can’t tell you how sorry Cody and I are about what happened with Colonel Pershall. Is there anything we can do?”

  “No, I need to apologize for yelling at you. That was inexcusable.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Amy said as she rolled down the storage unit door and clipped on the lock. “You take care and let us know if you need anything. Don’t worry about this at all. Here, I’ll let you out,” she said and ushered us back to the gate.

  “Would you mind driving us back? I’m a little unsteady,” Denise said.

  “Not at all.”

  We climbed in the oversized SUV. Denise leaned against the car door and stared out the window. She didn’t say anything for most of the drive and I was so busy concentrating on navigating the huge SUV through the traffic that I didn’t attempt to draw her out. I’d adjusted to driving my new minivan, which we’d bought after I said a reluctant good-bye to my trusty Jeep Cherokee. Compared to this beast, my minivan felt like a sports car. I spun the wheel and turned onto the long magnolia-lined drive that led to Taylor Air Force Base. As we neared the gate, I fished in my purse for my ID card. “Denise, I need your ID,” I said.

  She started. “Right.” She handed it over and I pulled even with the uniformed security officer behind his bulletproof shield. Security was changing on the base. Instead of the military’s security police monitoring the gates, the military had contracted out some of those jobs and now I was just as likely to see a contractor in a security guard–type uniform as I was to see a member of the military police in fatigues. He scanned the cards, wished us a good afternoon, and waved us through.

  The transition onto the base brought Denise out of her reverie. “Ellie, what is wrong with me, thinking that Lewis could do something like that?”

  I picked my words carefully as I eased off the accelerator. Speed limits were low on base and I certainly didn’t want to get a ticket. “Denise, I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now. I don’t think you should beat yourself up about this. I won’t tell anyone what happened and Amy—she’s so scattered right now—I don’t think she picked up on what you initially thought was going on. She thought you were mad about the bike, nothing else.”

  I pulled into Denise’s carport and felt like I’d brought a ship into dock. I put the SUV in park and leaned back, relieved I’d made it in the small space without dinging or scratching anything.

  “And I would have been, too.” Denise’s voice was almost wistful as she removed her sunglasses and gazed at the neat rows of trash cans and recycling bins. “What I wouldn’t give to be arguing about buying a motorcycle with him right now.”

  “I know.” I made a move to get out of the SUV, but she was motionless, lost in thought. “Ready to go in?” I asked.

  Still staring through the windshield, she said, “Ellie, I wasn’t completely honest with you earlier.”

  “About what?”

  “I did suspect Lewis was having an affair, I really did. And I didn’t want it to be true. But there’s something else I’m worried about. I know my thinking is warped to say this, but I’d almost hoped he was having an affair because then it would make everything else not seem so bad.”

  “Everything else?” I asked. What could be worse than the situation she was in right now?

  She dropped her gaze down to her fingers, which were clamped around her sunglasses. She swallowed hard and I realized she was fighting off a wave of tears. In a barely audible voice she said, “About a year ago I decided I wanted a divorce.”

  I sputtered, “But—you and Colonel Pershall—you were happy.” She might as well have said she decided she wanted to jump off the Empire State Building to see if she could fly. A crazy statement like that would make as much sense as what she’d just said.

  She nodded and unhooked her fingers so she could press at the corners of her eyes. “We were. We really were, especially lately. But a year ago…well, you know that cliché? ‘We drifted apart.’ There’s a reason it’s a cliché—there’s some truth to it. People do change. Lewis was enmeshed in work and I found myself drifting through the days looking for something to do. I wanted to make a difference, do something significant. It seemed to make sense at the time. We didn’t have kids and we hardly ever spent any time together. We were living separate lives anyway.”

  I thought back over the last year. I’d never seen any indication of a problem or strain in their marriage, but now that I thought about it, I hadn’t seen them together all that often.

  Denise rubbed her fingertips under her eyes to erase the smudged mascara. She sighed and said, “So, I did what all those women’s magazines recommended. I empowered myself. I opened a bank account in my own name and made sure I had a few credit cards with only my name on the account. I made copies of all our financial paperwork and put it in a safety-deposit box. I researched divorce attorneys, even consulted with a few.”

  “What happened? Did Lewis know?”

  “Yes. His reaction was so far from what I thought it would
be. I thought he’d be fine with it. I mean, I knew he’d be stunned, at first, but then I thought he’d realize it was best for us.” She picked up the sunglasses and polished them with the hem of her T-shirt.

  “But that’s not what happened?”

  “No, far from it.” She was actually smiling slightly. “He hadn’t realized I was so unhappy and he said he’d do anything to make things right between us. He agreed to counseling and told me to go for it—really do what I wanted. That I didn’t even have to be ‘the commander’s wife’ if I didn’t want to. That’s when I threw the spouse club open to big changes. And I had…I guess you’d call it an epiphany. I can’t go into the details, but I realized that I could do what I wanted, make a difference, and I didn’t have to break away from Lewis to do it. He could be part of it. By then I wanted him to be part of it.”

  “Is that when you began taking knitting orders?” I asked. Denise knitted the most beautiful sweaters I’d ever seen. She used incredibly soft wool in colors so rich that she had orders from almost every spouse in the squadron. Abby, my acting personal shopper, had advised me to have Denise make a crimson sweater for the holidays. Abby didn’t need to talk me into it—I loved the beautiful colors and textures Denise used for her projects.

  “That was part of it, but other things changed, too.” She put down the sunglasses as she said, “My feelings…it’s hard to describe. You’re not going to believe this, but I started taking golf lessons—that probably says it all. I wanted to surprise Lewis. I knew he loved playing and I figured it would be something we could do together.”

  She went silent and I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have any words to comfort her. Eventually, she said, “All those big plans I made for a divorce weren’t even in my thoughts anymore until this morning.”