On Sunday, April 12, 1970, Sophie received a call from her cousin Mabel in Texas. Mabel told Sophie that the day before, just after 1:00 p.m. Central Time (noon Eastern), and at the same moment that the Apollo 13 rocket was launched from Cape Kennedy in Florida, Mabel’s father had shot her mother (Sophie’s aunt Molly) before turning his shotgun on himself.
Since Sophie’s father, Patrick, had died a few years earlier, and her Uncle Thomas was in the hospital with a bad gall bladder, she had no family members to travel to the funeral with her. And since she was too distraught to travel alone, she asked me to accompany her. Ordinarily, a CPA can’t even consider taking time off in the middle of April, with the income tax deadline looming. But there isn’t much I wouldn’t do for Sophie. We boarded a plane to Houston at 8:00 p.m. ET on Monday, April 13, at about the same time Apollo 13’s oxygen tank failed as the spacecraft made its approach to the moon. Sophie and I were soon to encounter a few problems of our own.
At the airport, we rented a car and drove two hours north to Union Hill, where Molly had settled in the late 1920s after she’d left town to get away from some bad memories. There, she’d met and fell in love with a farmer named John Tolliver Gilmore, ten years her senior. The Gilmore family had a reputation for producing eccentrics, and John T. had been the latest of these. If he’d been a wealthy New York businessman instead of an East Texas dirt farmer, he no doubt would have spent an hour each week on a psychiatrist’s couch talking about his paranoid conspiracy theories. Instead, he’d written them down, in incredibly intricate detail, in thousands of notebooks, which he stored in cardboard boxes in a shack behind his ancestral home.
A variety of illnesses and accidents had taken the lives of Mabel’s four older brothers before she was born, leaving her an only child. She’d inherited her mother’s gift for song and appetite for fried chicken, and at least some of her father’s unique view of the world. And now that her parents were dead, she would inherit the house and the fifteen acres it sat on.
At just after 11:00 p.m. CT, Sophie and I checked into a pair of rooms at the Come On Inn, a roadside motel in downtown Union Hill. In the darkness, we could see a low building across the street, shaped like a diner. Its partially burned-out neon sign in the parking lot appeared to read GIN AND LACE. I joked that it was an unlikely-looking strip club, then we said good night and each settled down in our separate rooms for some much-needed sleep.
The next morning, I knocked on Sophie’s door and said, “Check out the place across the street.” In the daylight, the entire sign was visible, including the burnt-out letters that didn’t show at night: GINGER AND JOE’S PLACE.
Sophie said, “By night, strippers and whiskey. By day, chili and beer.”
We laughed and went to the local donut shop to get some coffee. Returning to the motel, we sat in Sophie’s room and watched the morning news, where we heard about the difficulties the Apollo 13 astronauts had encountered the night before.
Sophie tried to call Mabel from the phone in the room, but there was no answer. I suggested going for a walk, but Sophie was still tired from the flight, so I wandered out on my own and left her to take a nap. I walked around downtown in the hot Texas sun for a couple of hours, then returned to the motel and knocked on Sophie’s door. She opened it, looking like the nap had done her good.
“Ready for some lunch?” I asked, pointing across the street at Ginger and Joe’s Place. “I think I could go for some chili.”
“Perfect,” she said, and we headed over.
There was an ancient sun dial in front of the diner, showing quite accurately that it was almost two o’clock. Around the edge of the dial were carved the words: SERIUS EST QUAM COGITAS.
Sophie translated: “It’s later than you think.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Uncle Thomas taught me some Latin when I was a kid so I could follow Mass. I never attend, but I guess some of it stuck with me.”
“I’m not familiar with your Mass, but ‘it’s later than you think’ doesn’t sound like part of it.”
“No, it’s not. But you know Uncle Thomas. He may be a priest, but he’s a man of many interests beyond the church.”
“That’s true enough.” I held the door for her and in we went.
“Sit anywhere you like, darlings,” said the woman behind the counter. “Coffee, water or a cold beer?” Her hair, the same color as Lucille Ball’s, was piled high on the top of her head. She wore a light blue dress that was a size too small for her. Her name, Ginger, was embroidered in pink just below the dress’s lapel, which was the same shade of pink. She wore a gold necklace with a golden G pendant. Her face wore a bright, open smile below a turned-up nose and a pair of clear blue eyes. Sophie and I both instantly liked her.
“Coffee, please,” Sophie said as we took seats at the counter where we could see through into the kitchen.
“Make it two,” I said.
Ginger filled two mugs with the best-smelling coffee I’ve ever had, and placed a pair of menus before us. “Take your time, lovers. Let me know if you need anything.”
She took the coffee pot to a booth in the corner where a pair of older men sat hunched over their bowls of chili. When she returned, she asked, “Have you folks decided what you’d like to eat? I recommend the chili. It’s the best in the county, and the cornbread cannot be beat.”
“That sounds perfect,” said Sophie, and I agreed.
Ginger turned around and called through the window into the kitchen, “Two bowls of chili, Joe!”
Joe appeared from around a corner and placed two steaming bowls on the window ledge. He was tall, blond, and blue-eyed.
“Thank you, darling,” Ginger said, and brought the chili over to us along with a plate piled with more cornbread than it seemed we could eat. As the two older gentlemen headed for the door, Ginger called to them, “Have a great day, boys! Charlie, tell Phyllis I’ll be over later with that yarn I was telling her about.” Then, to us, “Ok, lovers, anything else you think you need? Freshen your coffee?”
Before we could respond, there was the sound of an explosion in the parking lot.
Ginger screamed and ran outside, with Joe right on her heels. Sophie and I dove under our stools. By the time we dared to come back up, we found a car fully engulfed in flames. The two elderly men inside were burning corpses already.
Firefighters arrived almost immediately from the station across the street, right next to our motel. Ginger and Joe, after making a vain attempt to get close enough to the car to pull out the dead men, stood now in the doorway of the diner, crying into each other’s arms. I was unsure what to do, but Sophie wasn’t. She went to the crying couple and gently rubbed their backs, encouraging them to come back inside. She guided them to a booth and told them to sit. Then she went behind the counter and came back with two mugs of coffee. “You just sit here and drink this,” she said.
Ginger was still sobbing, but Joe said, “Thank you, miss.”
“You’re very welcome. I’m Sophie, by the way, and this is Kenny. Those men were friends of yours?”
“Charlie…that’s Charlie Sugarman. He’s married to Ginger’s sister. Al’s his brother.”
“I’m so sorry”, Sophie put a hand on Ginger’s shoulder. “I’m so very sorry.”
Two cops came in and took our statements, such as they were. After they were finished with us, Sophie and I headed back across the street to the motel without even tasting the chili.
Sophie said, “I wonder how many Sugarmans there are around here. Mabel wrote me a few weeks ago to say her boyfriend Otis had finally proposed to her. His name’s Otis Sugarman.”
We were both still hungry, so after we each visited our rooms to clean up a little, we drove to the next town and found the County Street Steak House. As luck would have it, we also found Mabel sitting at the bar, working on what must have been her third or fourth martini, judging by the degree of her inebriation. She looked a lot like pictures I’d seen of her mother Molly, the singer – minus about a hundred pounds.
Sophie stepped up behind her and said, “Hey, Mabel. I didn’t expect to find you here.”
Mabel jumped a bit in her seat as if startled, before turning to face us. “Well, Sophie! I didn’t expect to see you here, either!”
They hugged, and Sophie said, “Mabel, I’m so sorry about your parents. How are you doing?”
We took the next two seats at the bar, Sophie between me and Mabel.
“Sophie, this is so kind of you to come all the way down here,” Mabel said. “You really didn’t need to.”
“Well, that’s what family is for. Now, tell me how you’re doing.”
“I don’t know, Sophie. I guess I’m still in a bit of shock.”
“That’s understandable—oh, wait. I’m sorry. Mabel, this is my old friend Kenny. Kenny, my cousin Mabel.”
“Pleased to meet you, Kenny. You two fly down together?”
“We did,” I replied. “Just arrived last night, staying at the Come On Inn.”
Mabel’s cheeks got decidedly pinker, and she hesitated a bit before replying, “Oh, across the street from Ginger and Joe’s.”
“That’s right”, said Sophie. “Quite a tragedy, what happened there this afternoon.”
Mabe hesitated again, “You heard about that, did you?”
“We were there, Mabel,” said Sophie. “It was awful. Two men blown to kingdom come. Ginger said they were both Sugarmans. Are they related to your Otis?”
Mabel’s eyes filled with tears, but something about her reaction felt false to me as if it took about two heartbeats longer than it should have. Everybody’s different, of course, and what do I know? I had no reason to think she wasn’t sincere. Something just didn’t feel right. She sobbed for a few moments, with Sophie holding her hand and trying to comfort her. Then Mabel drained her martini glass and said, “Charlie and Al are Otis’s uncles. Or, were, I guess. Otis’s daddy’s brothers.”
“Oh, Mabel, I’m so sorry,” replied Sophie. “Where is Otis now?”
“I left him with his mama and his aunt Ginger. You know, Ginger from the diner. Maybe I should have stayed with them, but I couldn’t stand being there.”
“What do you mean, Mabel? What’s going on?”
Again, Mabel seemed to hesitate just a bit longer than natural. “I just can’t stand them Sugarmans, other than Otis, and they ain’t got no use for me, either. Hey, bartender, can I get another one of these?”
The bartender tossed Sophie and me a couple of menus before collecting Mable’s empty glass. “You folks need something to drink?”
“I’ll have a glass of the house red wine, please,” Sophie requested.
“Gin and tonic, please,” I added.
“Coming right up,” the bartender said.
Sophie put her hand on Mabel’s shoulder. “Mabel, talk to me. What’s going on?”
Mabel pulled a marble composition book out of her gigantic purse and laid it in front of Sophie on the bar. “That’s one of Daddy’s books. There’s thousands of ‘em, you know. All stashed in the shed behind the house. I’ve been going through them and just found that one two days ago.”
Written on the cover in the space labeled SUBJECT, printed neatly in red ink, was one word: SUGARMAN.
“It’s all in there. How the Sugarman family has been trying to get the Gilmore’s land away from us for a hundred years.” Mabel was becoming increasingly agitated and loud. “I always knew my daddy and Al Sugarman hated each other, but I didn’t realize how much or all the history of it.” She pointed to the notebook and continued, “Says in there, Daddy believed the Sugarmans killed my Uncle Bobby. That’s why I did it!” Mabel was shouting at this point, and several people in the restaurant were looking our way.
The bartender delivered our drinks and gave Mabel a wary glance. “You folks want to order some food or just the drinks?” he asked.
“I think we need a few more minutes here, sorry,” I told him.
“Sure thing, you let me know when you’re ready.”
Once the bartender walked away, Sophie looked at Mabel and said quietly, “Calm down now, Mabel. What do you mean? What did you do?”
“I showed that notebook to my cousin Bobby,” Mabel said, still quite loudly.
(Mable’s cousin Bobby, I would learn later, was the son of John T. Gilmore’s late brother Bobby. The Gilmores were not terribly creative with names.)
“Mabel, are you saying Bobby killed those men outside the diner today?” asked Sophie.
“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t bet against it. He’s never been able to control his temper.”
Sophie seemed to not know what to say, and I wasn’t about to jump in. I motioned to the bartender and let him know we’d like to order some food.
“Sure, what’ll it be?” he asked.
“I would like a very rare steak with a baked potato and whatever the vegetable of the day might be,” I said.
Sophie asked for a cheeseburger and fries.
“And you?” the bartender asked, turning to Mabel.
But Mabel was asleep, head on the bar, snoring. I began to think I might not be eating anything that day.
“Is she OK?” the bartender asked us.
Sophie gently shook Mabel’s shoulder. “Mabel, honey, wake up. We’ll take you home.”
And there was the confirmation of my fear. Kenny’s hunger was not as important as Mabel’s need to be taken care of. Sophie drove our rented car, with Mabel sleeping in the backseat, and I followed in Mabel’s car, my stomach grumbling louder than the poorly tuned engine.
It took Sophie a while to find Gilmore’s place on the opposite edge of town. The house was well off the unlit road, with a long, winding dirt driveway. It was a small place, with just four rooms and sparsely furnished. Sophie and I guided Mabel inside and deposited her in her bed.
On the way out, Sophie pointed to a little shed not far from the back door, painted the same shade of red as the house. “That must be where John T. kept his notebooks,” she told me. She tried to pull open the door, but it was locked.
“Let’s go, Sophie, I’ve got to get something to eat.”
“OK, Kenny.”
We stopped for a fast-food burger and fries on the way back to the motel. I probably would have been better off just going to sleep hungry.
I woke early the next day and switched on the local TV news while I waited for Sophie. The lead story was the plight of the Apollo 13 astronauts, who seemed to be safe now, although their mission would be shorter than planned. This was followed by a “man in the street” interview with someone who’d witnessed a bank robbery in a Dallas suburb. Then the anchor said, “Disturbing news this morning out of the small town of Union Hill, where the population of just under fifteen thousand has been reduced by three. First, an explosion just after two p.m. yesterday outside a diner took the lives of two brothers, Charles and Alvin Sugarman. Then, late last night, a young woman perished in a fire at her home in what the local sheriff has called a ‘clear case of arson’. We’ve learned that the young woman, Mabel Gilmore, was engaged to the nephew of the gentlemen killed in the diner explosion, with the wedding planned for later this year. We go now live to reporter Shelby Ireland at the scene of yesterday’s explosion. Shelby, what can you tell us?”
I was more than a little shocked to learn that Mabel, who I’d just met the night before, had apparently died only hours after Sophie and I took her home and helped her to bed. The TV news cut to their reporter, standing outside the diner’s front door, right next to the sundial. I looked out my motel room window—and there she was, along with her cameraman, their van parked in the same spot the Sugarman’s car had been parked in when it had blown up. From the TV, I could hear her saying, “Chuck, residents of this small town are naturally shaken. I spoke a few moments ago with the owners of this diner, Joseph and Virginia Bollinger, who were working inside when the Sugarman brothers’ car exploded here yesterday. I’m told the brothers ate lunch here at Ginger and Joe’s Place almost every day. As you can see, the diner is closed this morning. Mr. and Mrs. Bollinger tell me they don’t know when they’ll reopen, as they are understandably traumatized by this event. Mrs. Bollinger’s sister was married to one of the men in the car, Mr. Charles Sugarman. Both Mr. and Mrs. Bollinger told me they have little doubt that the family of Mabel Gilmore—if not Miss Gilmore herself—are responsible for the explosion and that it’s quite likely some member of the Sugarman family is in turn responsible for the fire that took Miss Gilmore’s life last night. I spoke earlier with Sheriff Abraham Beaufort, who told me he believes it’s too soon to determine if there’s a connection between the two tragedies. But most residents of this tight-knit community have already made up their minds. Back to you, Chuck.” The camera zoomed in on the sundial: SERIUS EST QUAM COGITAS.
I switched off the TV and ran outside to knock on Sophie’s door. She was already outside, on her way to knock on mine. I could tell from her face that she’d seen the news. We both watched as the television van pulled out of the diner parking lot and drove away.
“Are you OK?” I asked.
“This is crazy, Kenny. She can’t really be dead, can she? What the hell is going on down here?”
“I don’t know, kid. What do you want to do?”
“Well, I need coffee before anything else. Then maybe we should check with the Sheriff’s Department to see if they can tell us anything.”
“Coffee it is.” We headed for the donut shop.
As we sipped our coffee and ate our blueberry muffins, we watched the television behind the counter. It was a replay of the Shelby Ireland report we’d seen earlier.
“It still doesn’t make sense to me, Kenny,” Sophie said.
“You got me, Sophie,” I replied. “Something doesn’t add up.”
Finishing our muffins, we each took another coffee to go. The Sheriff’s office was just across the street, on the ground floor of the county courthouse. As we crossed the street, two men wearing Sheriff’s Department uniforms were escorting a handcuffed young man in overalls from the back of a cruiser.
We hustled our way inside behind the officers. They led their prisoner past the front desk, through some swinging doors and out of sight. We stopped at the desk. Sophie explained to the officer on duty who she was and asked if there was anyone we could talk to.
“I’ll see if the sheriff is available,” the officer responded.
It was only a couple of minutes before we were greeted by a tall, toothy, smooth-talking man who extended a beefy hand for us each to shake in turn. “Sherriff Abraham Beaufort. How can I help you folks?”
“Sheriff, I’m Sophie O’Malley, this is my friend Kenny Auerbach. Mabel Gilmore is—or was—my cousin. We’re just in town for her parents’ funeral, and now the awful news we saw on the TV this morning. I hoped you could help us make sense of it.”
“I see.” He seemed genuinely pleased that we were there. “Why don’t you come on back to my office, where we can talk?”
As we followed him, he half turned back to look at me and asked, “Auerbach, did you say? Any relation to that fella who runs the Boston Celtics?”
“Ah, no, Sheriff. I wish,” I laughed.
“That’s a man that knows how to put a team together. Though they didn’t do too well this year, did they? Well, here’s my little corner office. Have a seat there. I’d offer you some coffee, but I see you’ve already got some. We pretty much live on the stuff here.” He lifted a pot from a hot plate on the corner of his desk and poured some into a mug with a big silver star painted on it. Above the star was printed: I’M THE. And below the star, OF THIS OUTFIT.
He settled himself into a leather chair behind his enormous desk and said, “Now, Miss, uh….”
“O’Malley. Sophie O’Malley.”
“Yes, Miss O’Malley. You say you’re Mabel Gilmore’s cousin, is that right?”
“Yes, sir. On her mother’s side.”
“I see, yes, I do recall that Miss Molly’s name was O’Malley before she got herself attached to ol’ John T. You say you’ve just arrived in town?”
“That’s right, Sheriff. We arrived yesterday,” I put in.
“If I recall rightly, now that I think of it, you folks were at Ginger and Joe’s place when them Sugarman boys were killed yesterday afternoon. Is that right?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered.
“Did you try Joe’s chili? It’s the best in the county, in my estimation.”
“Well, we were about to,” Sophie said, “but didn’t quite get the chance. The explosion interrupted things.”
“Yes, I imagine it would have done that. I think one of my detectives also found that the two of you were seen driving away from the County Street Steak House with Mabel last night. Green four-door sedan you’re driving, is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right, Sheriff. We rented it at the airport in Houston,” I answered.
“Now, the bartender at the Steak House said the three of you left just after eight o’clock. He was under the impression you were taking Mabel back to her place, as she was in no fit state to drive.”
“Yes, Sheriff,” Sophie said. “She’d had a few drinks before we got there, and then it was clear that bed was where she needed to be, so we took her home and tucked her in.”
“That was very kindly of you. Now, I don’t mean to imply anything, but there you were at the scene of both these tragic events. Personally, I figure that’s just coincidence, but my detectives are suspicious by nature. They don’t care much for coincidences. I wonder if you could just tell me where you headed after you dropped your cousin off, and how you spent the rest of your evening.”
I told him, “We stopped at a drive-through burger place on our way back to the Come On Inn, where we’re staying. We were back there in our rooms by around nine or nine-thirty, I think.”
“I see. I’m sure that’s right. The thing is, you see, the fire department boys got the call about the fire out there at about eight thirty, and they say it’d been burning for some time at that point. So, it seems you didn’t miss the arsonist by much if you were there at, what, seven thirty or eight?”
“About that, I’d say, Sheriff,” Sophie answered. “But you can’t think we had anything to do with this?” She was trying not to sound as upset at being interrogated as I knew she was. “Mabel was my cousin. Family. And I’ve never even met any of the Sugarmans. I haven’t been here since Mabel’s high school graduation, seven or eight years ago.”
“Oh, now, as I say, I’m sure it’s just coincidence. But the boys on my team, they like to make sure, you understand. They were curious if maybe you’d seen anything—either at the diner or out at Mabel’s place—that might shed some light. Maybe something that didn’t seem significant at the time.”
“I don’t think so, Sheriff,” I told him. “At the diner, we were too shocked by the explosion to notice much. And last night at Mabel’s there was no one around, as far as we could tell. We got Mabel safely into her bed, then we headed back, as Miss O’Malley told you. We’d missed out on two meals, and it had been a long, traumatic day.”
“Now, I’m sure that’s right. I’ll let my detectives know I believe you’re in the clear. I would like to ask that you let us know if anything comes back to you.”
“Certainly, Sheriff,” Sophie said.
“Now, I hope you’ll understand,” the sheriff continued, “there’s not a lot I can tell you folks about the investigation. Certainly, a crime was committed there at the diner and another one over at the Gilmore place last night. You being family, and witnesses, I understand you’re interested and all. Still, I’m afraid I can’t share much information with you while the investigation is ongoing.”
“I understand, Sheriff,” Sophie responded, and there was the hint of a sob in her voice and a tear in her eye. “But I hate to leave without having a better understanding of what’s happened. We’ve heard there’d been some animosity between the Gilmore and Sugarman families before this. I just don’t understand why Mabel would have ever become engaged to Otis, if that’s the case.”
“A lot of folks around here have been wondering the same thing, Miss O’Malley, I don’t mind telling you. But, you know, love can be a strange thing sometimes. Most of the time, I suppose. You never really know why two people might fall for each other. Take you two, for example. If I’d seen you at opposite ends of a barn at the start of the dance, I don’t think I’d imagine you’d be pairing off. But here you are—”
“Sheriff, we’re not a couple.” I interrupted. “Sophie and I are friends, that’s all. In fact, I’m more like an uncle or an older brother.”
“Ah, I see. My apologies. I shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions like that, without gathering all the evidence. You see, I’m not much of a detective. Fortunately, my job has more to do with administration than investigation.” He laughed. “Same way the Celtics don’t rely on Red Auerbach to make the jump shots. That’s what they’ve got John Havlicek for, right? I’ll tell you this, though, folks. I think the idea that the feud between the Gilmores and the Sugarmans is behind all this might be a bit off the mark. My chief detective—my John Havlicek, if you will—is following some very different lines of inquiry, which we believe may end up surprising most of the people around here. Now, I do have some work to do, so I’m going to have to ask you both to excuse me. I believe we should have some information we can share with you by this time tomorrow, though. So, you may want to stick around town for another night if you can.”
“That won’t be a problem, Sheriff,” Sophie said. “We’d planned to stay through tomorrow at least, anyway.”
“Oh, that’s fine, then. Why don’t you plan on letting me buy you a cup of coffee here tomorrow morning, and we’ll see if we don’t have this whole situation sorted out by then.” He escorted us out the door. On the sidewalk in front his office, I noticed a sign stuck in the dirt. It read, “Re-Elect ‘Honest Abe’ Beaufort for Sherriff. A Name You Can Trust.”
Sophie and I spent the rest of that day in a bit of a fog. We saw a movie at the theater in nearby Marstonville, had dinner at the County Street Steak House (best steak I’ve ever had), and were asleep in our beds before 9:00.
The next morning—Thursday, April 16—Sheriff Beaufort called Sophie at just after eight-thirty and asked us to meet him at his office at ten. That left us time for pancakes and coffee at a breakfast place I’d spotted on my walk around town a couple of days ago.
We arrived at the police station right on time and were shown into Sheriff Beaufort’s office by one of his deputies.
“Come right in, folks. Have a seat.” The sheriff poured us each a cup of coffee. “Cream and sugar?”
“Yes, please, Sheriff,” said Sophie, “in mine. Kenny takes his black.”
He placed the steaming mugs on our side of his desk and then sat down on his side with his own I’M THE STAR OF THIS OUTFIT mug. “Folks, as I told you yesterday, we’ve been following a line of inquiry that’s somewhat contrary to how most of the local citizens have been looking at this situation. You may have noticed that we brought young Otis in yesterday. I believe you arrived at about the same time my deputies were leading him in. He’s been most cooperative and confirmed most of our suspicions. In fact, to come straight to the point, young Otis has confessed.”
“He killed Mabel?” Sophie gasped.
“Oh, no, Miss O’Malley, you misunderstand. Otis didn’t kill Mabel—at least not intentionally. He’s confessed to killing his uncles and then to setting fire to Mabel’s shed. He says—and I believe him, as he seems quite sincerely grieved at her death—that his intention was simply to destroy John T.’s notebooks and to create a bit of a smokescreen if you’ll allow me the pun. It was his understanding that Mabel had planned to spend the night with her friend Dorothea McHenry, which Miss McHenry corroborates.”
“But, why . . . I don’t understand, Sheriff. Why did he do it?” Sophie asked the question before I could.
“Well, it seems the current generation of Gilmores and Sugarmans—that is to say, Mabel and Otis—felt that the feud between the two families had gone on long enough. Of course, the older generation disagreed. So, Mabel and Otis cooked up a plan to eliminate the older generation. The first step in that plan was when Otis and Mabel killed Mabel’s parents, John T. and your aunt Molly. Now, initially, my detectives jumped to the conclusion that Otis’s uncles had killed John T. and Molly. But the older Sugarman brothers had what you could call an airtight alibi for the night of that killing. You see, they were playing poker with me and several other members of the local Masonic lodge. So, I knew they hadn’t done it.”
“I’m sorry, Sheriff,” Sophie interrupted, “but I thought John had shot Molly and then himself. Murder-suicide, that’s what Mabel told me.”
“I’m sure she did. That’s how she initially reported it to us, as well. But the evidence—that is to say, the angles the shots had been fired from and the lack of fingerprints on the gun—made it plain to us that Mabel’s explanation was not quite accurate. We eventually came to suspect Otis had been responsible, but we couldn’t prove it, and we had no idea that Mabel had been his accomplice. Well, two days and a fair number of investigative hours later, we began to feel that we had enough evidence to charge Otis with the Gilmore murders. But then he and Mabel caught us off guard by killing Otis’ uncles—an event you were unlucky enough to have witnessed.
“When you met Mabel later that evening and assumed that she was drinking out of sorrow or anger, she was, in fact, celebrating, as she and Otis felt they were on the brink of bringing their plan to a successful conclusion. Unfortunately for her, she rather overindulged and left herself incapacitated. You, very kindly, brought her home. Of course, you had no idea that Otis was about to light the place on fire, just as Otis had no idea you’d brought Mabel home.”
“Oh, my,” Sophie, nearly in tears.
“’Oh, my’, indeed, Miss O’Malley. I hope you won’t harbor any feelings of guilt. You are in no way responsible. Mabel’s blood is very much on her own hands. Hers and Otis’.”
“But Sheriff,” I asked, “why did they want to destroy the notebooks?”
“That’s a good question and one we may never fully know the answer to. Otis tells us he believed there was proof in some of them that would have pointed to his and Mabel’s guilt in her parents’ deaths. But my own belief is that they simply wanted to create a diversion and to point a finger at Mabel’s cousin, Bobby Gilmore. I believe that’s why Mabel was so vocal about mentioning to you—at a volume that all the other patrons of the Steak House could not help but overhear—that she’d shown Bobby that notebook she also showed to you. With Bobby in jail, that would have left Mabel the last of the Gilmores and Otis the last of the Sugarmans—other than his poor mama, whose dementia would make her easy enough for him to manipulate.”
“But why, Sheriff?” Sophie asked. “What did they stand to gain from all this killing?”
“Well, you see, the two families’ properties—which abut each other and amount to some thirty-five acres all told—happen to sit right along the county road, as you know. The county is preparing to widen the road and looking to develop much of the land along it. Shopping malls, hotels, that sort of thing. Some developers have been buying up property, but both the Gilmores and the Sugarmans have been holding out. Well, Mabel and Otis smelled money, and money often means greed and murder.”
“This all seems so crazy to me, Sheriff,” Sophie said, a slight tremble in her voice. She normally has tremendous self-control, but I could see she was struggling not to show how upset she was by all these revelations.
“Well, I can understand that, miss. Folks do crazy things for money sometimes, and once they start, they often find it hard to stop. Now, what I recommend the two of you do is to head back over to Ginger and Joe’s Place. I understand they’re opening back up today, and I know you missed out on trying Joe’s chili the first time around. You go have some lunch, check out of your motel, and head back home. There won’t be any funeral, I’m afraid, at least until after our coroner has completed his work on all the bodies.”
“That doesn’t sound like a bad idea, Sheriff. Thank you,” I said as I shook his hand and led Sophie out by the elbow.
We got to Ginger and Joe’s Place at noon, just as Joe was unlocking the front door. He was friendly but clearly still distraught. Ginger was also much more subdued than the first time we’d sat at the counter of her restaurant. But, as predicted, the chili was fantastic and Sophie and I finished off the whole plate of cornbread.
The next morning—Friday the 17th of April—our plane touched down in Boston. As we drove past the Boston Garden, where the Celtics play, the radio was tuned to the news. The Apollo 13 astronauts had splashed down somewhere in the Pacific Ocean just moments earlier.
“Imagine that”, I said. “A couple of days ago, those guys seemed as good as dead. Now they’re on their way home, safe and sound. Doesn’t seem real.”
“I guess you never know, Kenny,” a note of sadness still in her voice, though she was surely relieved to put our own recent surreal ordeal behind her.
Sophie and I made our own way home as well, never to return to Texas again.//
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brian Mosher was born in Foxboro, MA, and currently resides in nearby Mansfield. He does not write for a living, but lives to write.
He has self-published 3 books: “One Bad Day Deserves Another” (short stories) and “Moon Shine and Lemon Twists” (poetry), both in 2016; and “The Broken Mosaic” (poetry and prose), in 2021.
His poetry chapbook, “Dreams and Other Magic” (2023) is published by Alien Buddha Press.
His work has appeared in Rituals (from Anomaly Poetry), Coneflower Cafe, Written Tales, Oddball Magazine, eMerge, Alien Buddha Zine, Esoterica Magazine, Half and One Magazine and Verse Wrights.
He also maintains a poetry blog, Phlubbermatic: (www.phlubbermatic.blogspot.com).
About the Author
