Murder on the Ballot, Myrtle Clover #17

Chapter Twenty-One

There was a small shriek from inside and then a trembling hand pushed the blinds to the side to peer cautiously out the window. Myrtle gave a small wave and managed a smile.

Erma swung the door open wide. "Goodness, Myrtle, you about scared the life out of me."

"By knocking on the door?" Myrtle walked inside.

"Yes! Well, you can imagine I'm on edge after what happened with Preston." Erma sat down on her sofa, pushing a variety of medical-related looking devices out of the way and covering herself up with a large, bright-pink blanket. Then she stared at the bag in Myrtle's hands. "Ooh. Did you bring something for me?"

Myrtle set the tote bag down on Erma's coffee table on top of a stack of very old-looking magazines. "Yes. It's a vegetable pie. Sort of a modified shepherd's pie."

Erma said, "Well, thanks. I'll have to try it later."

Myrtle didn't want to get into one of Erma's extended health-related conversations, but she did feel that all of the medical paraphernalia perhaps needed to be addressed. "Are you feeling all right?" she asked, gesturing at the collective equipment.

Erma's eyes lit up at the opportunity to jump into her favorite subject. "Oh, I'm sort of poorly. It's one reason why I dropped out of the campaign, Myrtle. The doctor said it's the stress—I'm sure you can understand. Can you imagine the horror of finding a body out in your backyard? And then the realization that the body was probably there in the first place to attack you?" Erma shuddered and grabbed a large pill bottle, shaking out a couple of capsules and washing them down with a large glass of water. She glanced back at Myrtle. "I guess you'll be the new town councilwoman."

Myrtle shook her head. "No. No, I dropped out, too."

Erma gave her a wide, delighted, toothy grin. "Really? Did you? Was that to show solidarity?"

"Oh, I guess it was for a variety of reasons. One of them was that once Tippy started running for the open spot, I decided she'd do a fine job."

Erma nodded solemnly. "I didn't realize she'd become a candidate."

Myrtle said, "I did want to check up on you and bring you some food, of course, but I also wanted to see if you'd thought of anything that might be helpful in catching the perpetrator. Have you come up with anything that might give us a lead? Or have you spoken to anyone who could shed a little light on any of this?"

Erma wrinkled her brow. "No, and it's all I can think about. I keep running over and over in my head what happened after the debate. Then I start thinking about Preston in my yard and whether I saw or heard anything that would help. But I can't."

Erma, like Puddin, also liked being someone who knew things. This, of course, was likely the entire reason she ended up with a body in her backyard. If she hadn't been bragging about knowing information, no one would have tried to eliminate her.

Myrtle gritted her teeth in a grin. "You haven't had any glimmers of an idea? You were there at the town hall when Royce was killed. Has anything about that night occurred to you?"

Erma looked as if she very badly wanted to say yes. Then she slowly shook her head. "Nope. Not a thing. But Myrtle, it was pouring cats and dogs and I was really focused on just that one thing—my medic alert bracelet. I didn't know there was a killer running around." Then she looked pleased with herself as if something had suddenly come to mind. She added in that smug voice of someone who knows something, "But guess who I did talk to? No, you'll never guess! It was Cindy Cook."

As hard as Myrtle tried not to be obviously surprised by anything Erma said since it only encouraged her, this did surprise her. "Did you go see Cindy?"