Dead Right (Stillwater Trilogy #3)(71)
Author: Brenda Novak

“He never did, you know,” Helen said again. “Not when he was home.”

Pontiff rose to his feet. “How’d you get in?”

“I finally located the key he gave me a long time ago, in case he ever lost his. He’d lock up when I came over to take him places so the deadbeats around here wouldn’t steal his beer. That’s all he had. A few bottles of beer.” She dissolved into tears, and her daughter put an arm around her, crooning, “It’ll be okay, Mama. It’ll be okay.”

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” she moaned.

Ramona’s pen scratched on the sketch she was creating to show Bubba’s head wound. “This much weight would kill anyone.”

“I told him that.” Helen nodded, still sniffling. “I told him he had to get a couple hundred pounds off. But he wouldn’t listen to me. I said, ‘Bubba, that weight’s gonna kill you someday.’”

“And it did,” Ramona said. “You want to have the funeral here in town, Helen? At Cutshall’s?”

Helen nodded again. “Of course.”

“I’ll give them a call so they can pick up the body,” she told Pontiff.

Madeline heard Ramona request a hearse and tried to distract Helen. “I’ll write a nice obituary for the paper, okay?” she said. “If there’s anything in particular you’d like me to say, you just let me know.”

Helen pulled away long enough to wipe her eyes. “I—I’m not much of a writer. But he was a good brother. Say that he was a good brother.”

“I’ll do that,” Madeline promised.

“You sure we shouldn’t do an autopsy?” Toby asked Ramona as she hung up.

“I don’t see any reason to go to the added trouble or expense,” she said. “Do you?”

When he seemed uncertain, she went on, “At his weight, he either died of a heart attack, or that bump on his head when he fell. Nothing mysterious about that.”

Toby turned to Helen. “What do you think, Helen? You want to hold off on the funeral for a few days so we can drive the body over to the hospital in Corinth and have a pathologist take a look?”

Helen pulled a fresh tissue out of her purse. “What good would that do?”

“It might give you some peace of mind to know the exact cause of death,” he said.

But Helen hid her face again and spoke through her hands. “There’s no need. It won’t bring him back. It was his heart. It finally gave out on him, just like I told him it would.”

Chapter Nineteen

Madeline stayed with Helen until Cutshall’s had removed the body, even though she had a glass company coming out to repair her window and a lot to do at the office. Thanks to the revelations of the past week, she’d had trouble concentrating and had fallen behind in her work. Now that Hunter was here, the situation was getting worse. To make sure it didn’t become a problem, she’d hired Bea Davis just this morning to help her. Bea used to write for a bigger paper—before she and her husband moved to Stillwater and started a dog grooming business—and was going to do a short piece on Brittany Wiseman’s debut in the school play, as well as an article on teenagers and alcoholism, in response to the Rachel Simmons drowning. Bea had also asked Madeline if she could do a story on Hunter. Everyone was “so curious” about him, she said. Madeline had refused at first, then relented because she felt she needed to toss the citizens of Stillwater some kind of bone to compensate for her preoccupation.

Besides those stories, Madeline was planning a follow-up on the panties that had been found in the Cadillac so she could thank the people who’d come by to view the pictures and mention the reward again. She thought she might add something about how DNA was helping to solve so many old cases these days. And now, of course, she had Bubba’s obituary to write, which she’d print with his viewing and funeral information.

“What are we going to do with this trailer? And all his stuff?” Helen asked, obviously overwhelmed at the prospect of what lay ahead.

“Just take it one day at a time.” Madeline stood beside her at the door as Toby, Ramona and Norm followed the hearse out of the park. Helen and her daughter were supposed to head over to Cutshall’s to make the funeral arrangements. They walked to their car, but Helen suddenly turned back.

“Wait. What about Sarge?”

“Sarge?” Madeline asked.

“His cat. Someone’s got to take care of the cat.”

Madeline hadn’t realized Bubba had a cat, but now that Helen mentioned it she could identify one of the smells that had nearly overpowered her inside. “Of course.”

“He must be sleeping in the back room.”

“I’ll get him.” Helen’s daughter slipped past Madeline, but when she came back, she was carrying a small aquarium instead of a cat. “Sarge isn’t in there. But I should bring Uncle Bubba’s tarantula, shouldn’t I, Mama?”

Helen nearly twisted an ankle as she scrambled to put some distance between herself and the spider. “No! Get that thing away from me. It’s not coming in my car!”

Madeline wasn’t any more thrilled with spiders than Helen was, especially big, hairy, poisonous ones, but they couldn’t leave it in the empty trailer. There was no telling when Helen would get around to sorting through Bubba’s belongings. It could take a week, maybe two, and Madeline had no idea when the spider had last been fed, what it needed to eat or when it should eat again.

Her own phobia precluded really looking at it, but she reached for the container. “Here, give it to me. I’ll see if one of the neighbors might be willing to adopt it. And I’ll search for the cat at the same time. What’s his name again?”

“Sarge,” the daughter informed her. “He’s big and white and fluffy.”

“Got it.” Madeline tried not to think about the eightlegged creature behind the glass that was now pressed against her arm. “Okay. You two go ahead. They’re waiting for you at Cutshall’s.”

Helen was still eyeing the spider, keeping a safe distance, but Madeline noted the sincerity and relief in her thank-you and was glad she’d offered to help.

“It’s no trouble,” she said. “It’ll give me a chance to get some statements from the neighbors that we can include in the obituary.”

“That would be nice,” Helen said, eagerly reaching for the door handle to her car as if she couldn’t escape fast enough. “These people were his only friends, you know.”