Alice swallowed audibly, and Ruth hugged her arms.
Lemon descended the creaking stairs. “It looks like now we know who the real killer is. Let’s get them upstairs and tie them up.”
Chapter 14
Sable disappeared as soon as we were up the stairs. Well, she had shown us the others. I guess there really wasn’t a need for her help anymore.
“I knew that you two were up to no good,” Lemon said, leading us back to the room.
When we reached it, someone had put on Bing Crosby. As he crooned about a white Christmas, Tex picked at his toenails while Luis and Traylor talked quietly.
“I found them,” Lemon said. “And they brought guests.”
Luis stared at Ruth and Alice in surprise. “Who are they? What are they doing here?”
Roan stalked forward. “Before anyone gets their underwear in a knot, let me explain.”
“You’d better.” Traylor glared at us. “We don’t appreciate being lied to.”
“They didn’t know we were here,” Ruth said. “We sneaked in before everything was locked tight.”
Alice opened her purse. “Cookie?”
Tex reached for one. “Don’t mind if I do.” He fingered a pecan sandy from her purse and took a bite. “Delicious,” he said with his mouth full.
Alice’s cheeks reddened. “Thank you.”
I sidled over to her and whispered, “Stay away from him. He killed his last wife.”
“Oh.” That made her glance at Tex differently. When he reached for another cookie, she said, “Only one per customer.”
Traylor got us back on track. “Did they see what happened to Zelda? Who killed her?”
Luis flung his hand out. “Do they look like they could have seen anything? They’re as old as dirt.”
“Excuse me,” Ruth spat. “I may be old, but I’m sharper than most tools out there.”
“Whoa,” Roan said. “Let’s all calm down here for a minute. Ruth and Alice came because they were worried about Blissful. They didn’t harm anyone, nor did they see anything suspicious. Since we have several more hours here, why don’t we make some introductions and get to know each other?”
Lemon draped her legs on the couch. “Well, I don’t trust them.”
“Really?” Traylor asked sarcastically. “They’re grandmothers. I think what Roan has told us is true—they didn’t have anything to do with your mother’s death.”
“But someone did.” Lemon stared at Luis. Scratch marks still raked one side of his face. “Didn’t they, Luis?”
“You know as well as I do that people were always asking your mother for money. She had cousins that she’d never even heard of begging her for cash. Plenty of people took advantage of her.”
“When you have that much money, people always want a piece of you,” Alice said wisely, as if folks were lining up to nab her cash.
“Exactly,” Luis said.
But Zelda had told me that her finances weren’t the same as they had been—that it was getting harder and harder for her to find people to take part in the séances. What if there wasn’t very much money at all for Zelda to leave her family in case of her death, but no one knew that? They all just assumed that since she had always been a wealthy medium, she was still one.
There were things I needed to know, and the only way to get to the bottom of them was to do a little exploring on my own—no Roan, no Alice or Ruth.My own.
I was convinced that Zelda’s spirit was still here. Maybe, just maybe I could locate her and we’d be able to talk and she could tell me who had murdered her.
As it was, I was stuck in a house staring at four suspects.
