Dead on the Bayou. June Shaw

wouldn’t a family have the death of a loved one placed in the paper’s obituary?”

      “Some people can’t afford to have the write-up.”

      “You’re kidding me. It costs to have someone’s death announced in the obits?”

      “Yes, and the longer the piece, the more it costs.”

      “Okay, I can understand that. A lot more words take up space where other information could be written.”

      “And sometimes people close to the deceased really don’t like the person.”

      This statement stunned me and also reminded me of what Mrs. Wilburn’s nephew outside the manor told me. Surely saying nobody in the family cared for her couldn’t be true.

      While I stared at the space to the left of him as this idea sank in, Toby leaned forward. “Are you a close family member of a newly deceased person?”

      “No, thank goodness I am not.”

      All semblance of sympathy washed away from his face and his stance. “Then I’ll walk you out.” He gripped my forearm and turned me toward the foyer.

      I slid my arm out of his grasp and strode to the front door. “Thank you,” I said and stepped out into air that didn’t stifle. This time I purposely hadn’t mentioned my friendly neighbor, his grandmother Mrs. Hawthorne, whom he had insisted was his step-grandmother, probably because his beloved Catahoula hound she’d been keeping in her fenced yard for him had gotten out and never found. His anger toward her said he held it against her, although that elderly woman would not have let a dog out where it might get hurt.

      The urge to call Eve struck before I pulled out of the funeral parlor’s long driveway, and I grabbed my phone from my purse. I knew, however, that she would have called me if she’d come up with something, and I hadn’t found out anything worthwhile to report.

      I left with thoughts scattered about what to do next. At home, I pulled out the plans for what Eve and I expected to do with Jeff and Georgia Andrews’s house after the garage remodeling was complete.

      Since the couple had contacted us for the job, we were the contractors and would hire as many subs as we needed, especially while my shoulder finished healing. Georgia wanted to widen the existing dining area, so we’d need to take down the wall to the bedroom on the opposite side of it. That bedroom could be made smaller, she’d said, since it would become their workout room. It was the only place they wanted carpet instead of hardwood or ceramic.

      Although many larger builders had their blueprints drawn on computers, neither Eve nor I was proficient doing that. While our firm grew, we planned to learn. I stretched out the blueprints and set the ideas we had come up with for the project beside them. The small, drab guest bathroom left much to be desired, and I had proposed a pedestal sink to suggest more space and shelving built into the wall. Images of wall studs and locating electrical wires ran through my mind, along with hammers and electric saws. Those pictures turned into recollections of being at Dave’s new place and the man at the camp beyond his using such tools. Probably most adults did use some of them at one time or another, I realized, my imaginings leading nowhere.

      I took out my mixing bowl and ingredients I needed to bake angel food cakes to bring to the manor in the morning. While I put everything together and the kitchen heated and began to smell like the pinch of vanilla I added to the mix, my mind wandered, going after thoughts of death, finding Mrs. Wilburn, and protecting Dave. It wouldn’t help to try and tell Detective Wilet anything since Eve and I had told him everything we knew while at Dave’s camp.

      I made three of the cakes and by the time my day ended, I had come up with more ideas for remodeling the Andrews’ house but gained little insight into finding a killer. I looked forward to getting out and learning more in the morning. Maybe in the obits? Surely I’d hear gossip from the manor.