Black Widow Valley by Frankie Bow

Author:Frankie Bow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: : humorous mystery, small town, Louisiana, southern, senior sleuth, New York State, Upstate New York, humorous mystery
Publisher: J&R Fan Fiction
Published: 2018-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

LOGAN AND JANICE WERE at dinner that evening; no place had been set for Lucetta. Janice asked Mary-Alice how she’d spent the day. Mary-Alice perceived that answering this question was full of possible minefields, so she gave the most truthful, yet superficial, account she could come up with.

“It’s a shame Logan brought you back so soon,” Janice remarked; it seemed more for Logan’s benefit than for Mary-Alice’s. “Downtown Black Valley has a lot of charm, if you look for it.”

“Wasn’t me, Janice,” Logan protested. “Peck brought her home. Look, I couldn’t stay down there all day. I had to get back to the pigeons.”

“Logan was not at all derelict in his duties,” Mary-Alice insisted. “It’s simply that Mr. Peck happened by the hotel, and I accepted a ride from him.”

“It’s nice of you to say so, Mrs. Arceneaux,” Janice replied, fixing Logan with a disapproving stare. “But if Logan had been a more attentive host, we all could’ve avoided an awkward scene.”

“I am terribly sorry,” Mary-Alice said, although she wasn’t, really. She had learned that something important was going to happen within a week. That might be an important clue.

On the other hand, she may have simply witnessed Lucetta trying to put off an unwanted suitor.

That night, Mary-Alice pushed her bed against the door as she had the previous night, but instead of getting into bed and falling asleep, she decided so sit up and listen. Gradually she dozed in her chair, and was jolted awake shortly after midnight by a sense that someone was outside her door.

She heard a key turn in the lock, followed by the rapid withdrawal of feet down the corridor. She leaped up, scrambled across the bed, and tried to turn the knob—it was locked. She rattled the knob, hoping that she might shake the key onto the floor, when she heard from somewhere in the house a cry so anguished that she stopped struggling with the doorknob and listened.

But there was only silence.

She checked her phone, but as before, there was no signal. She tried dialing 911, thinking that telephone networks made an exception for emergency calls. If someone were to answer, she would tell them that there was a murder in progress, and deal with any fallout afterward.

But even the emergency call did not go through.

Mary-Alice unlatched the window and opened it. If she needed to escape, she could. It would involve climbing down a tree, but at least she wasn’t completely trapped.

She lay down on the bed to think. The next thing she knew, she was being awakened with a rap on the door and Hannah calling out:

"Eight o'clock, ma'am. Breakfast is ready."

"Well, I’d love to come down and join y’all for breakfast,” Mary-Alice said as she pushed the bed away from the door. “But it seems that I’ve been locked—”

Mary-Alice pulled the door open effortlessly, and she found herself with her nose practically in Hannah’s bosom.

“Hannah, darlin’” Mary-Alice said, stepping back to a more polite distance, “I may have dreamed this, but I recall hearing a disturbance last night.

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