Fool's Puzzle by Earlene Fowler (reading eggs books .TXT) 📕

was sure Mrs. Chenier would never recognize it, the air smelled faintly sweet of marijuana.

“I don’t know how it will help, but go ahead and look around,” Mrs. Chenier said. She reached over and stroked the dark stiff hair of a three-foot-high doll standing in the corner next to a tall chest of drawers. “Thank you for being concerned. It didn’t seem as if anyone else cared that my Marla died. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

That made me feel, as Dove would say, knee-high to an ant. It’s not that I didn’t care about Marla’s death, but our friendship wasn’t my compelling reason for looking deeper into her murder. I sighed and looked around the room, not really knowing where to start. The only experience I’d ever had in investigative work was seventeen years ago on my high-school newspaper when Elvia and I tried to discover just exactly what ingredients were in the Rainbow Harvest Casserole the lunchroom served on Fridays.

Her desk seemed the obvious place to start. That’s what they did on television cop shows. Her mother really did believe in keeping everything. I found book reports dating back to 1967 and an old diary of her first year in high school. I didn’t even bother reading it, figuring whatever Marla was involved in was more recent. Standing back and surveying the room, I tried to think where she would hide something that she didn’t want anyone, including her mother, to find. The furniture was shiny clean and the pillows on the bed plumped, so it had to be someplace that did not receive regular ministrations from Mrs. Chenier’s can of spray wax.

After the usual hiding places like drawers and under the bed, I tried the “clever” places I’d hid things as a teenager: the center of the bed between the box springs and mattress, inside the shanks of boots, behind picture frames. After ten minutes of fruitless searching, I pulled out her desk chair and sat down. Why was it always so easy on television?

I scanned the room again, marveling at the time warp I was in. The Troll doll collection, arranged according to size on the dresser, was priceless in terms of memories rather than money. I stood up and grabbed the two stiff hands of her walker doll and attempted to make it perform in the way the TV commercials promised thirty years ago. Its stiff-legged gait was just as unwieldy and unnatural now as it was then. I remembered the Christmas I got one like it and how disappointed I’d been when the doll didn’t perform as I’d anticipated. I smiled thinking about that Christmas, how my Uncle Arnie, fourteen then, and only six years older than me, teased me by kidnapping my doll, pulling her head off and putting gravel inside the hollow body so that she rattled like a castanet whenever I picked her up.

I twisted the head and wondered if Marla ever discovered how easy it was to pop off. The hollow space inside a doll that size could hide a lot of things. I glanced down the hallway to make sure Mrs. Chenier wasn’t coming. I was sure she wouldn’t take kindly to me decapitating Marla’s doll. I popped the head off and peered down into the depths. Well, I knew where her marijuana stash was now. But that told me nothing about blackmail.

I scanned the bookshelves. She had the typical assortment of childhood and adolescent books, mostly mysteries. Her Nancy Drew collection looked as if it didn’t miss one numbered book. I pulled one out and flipped through it. I had been more of a National Velvet and Black Beauty sort of girl, but I had a lot of friends who were addicted to Carolyn Keene. I put it back and pulled out another. I flipped through it and was surprised by a hundred-dollar bill stuck in the pages. I turned the book over and three more fell out. I kept going through the books and finally quit counting at one thousand. I quickly flipped through the others; almost every book contained some bills. Marla obviously didn’t believe in banks. In one book, there was no money, only a white legal-sized envelope. It was sealed, but at this point, I figured, in for a penny. I tore it open and surveyed the contents.

It contained two money-order receipts for five hundred dollars each, made out to a Suzanne Hart, and a small newspaper article. The heading of the article caused me to stop breathing for a second.

LOCAL MAN KILLED IN AUTO ACCIDENT.

When I heard the clump of heels echoing down the oakwood hallway, without thinking, I shoved the receipts and article back into the envelope and stuck it in the band of my skirt behind my sweater.

“Did you find anything?” Mrs. Chenier asked.

“Everything’s so neat. Did you ever see anything when you were cleaning that looked suspicious?” Answering a question with a question seemed like the best way to avoid actually lying.

Her features squeezed together in a helpless look as she shook her head silently.

“I’ve bothered you long enough,” I said, wanting suddenly to just get out of this sad place. The envelope tucked in my skirtband felt as large as a backpack; the significance of its contents made me queasy. “I’ll keep asking around and if I find out anything, I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you for trying.” She walked with me to the living room where I retrieved my purse. Her sisters, embroidered tea towels in hand, watched us from the kitchen doorway. It was probably my imagination, but I felt like they could see through my sweater to the envelope stuck there like an illegal pistol.

“I’m so sorry.” I touched her arm, not really certain just exactly what I meant.

“Thank you,” she said and closed the door behind me.

I resisted pulling the envelope out when I climbed into the Chevy. When I was safely out of her neighborhood, I pulled into a McDonald’s, ordered a coffee and