Pretty is as Pretty Dies: Myrtle Clover #1

Chapter Three

The buck-toothed, one-eared bunny crack on the ceiling mocked Myrtle's insomnia. Altar Guild had been the final straw. Myrtle glared at the rabbit. The gall of Red. And all the jokes he'd been making about farming her out to Greener Pastures Retirement Home. There was no way he was putting her out to pasture. Just because she drove him a little crazy—as if he hadn't contributed to all her gray hairs when he was a teen.

Kicking the covers off, Myrtle pulled herself upright and padded into the kitchen for her obligatory nightcap of warm milk. There was no point in staying in bed with nothing to do but study that crack in the ceiling and mull over the way the overhead light fixture resembled a pug-nosed alien. She sat down at her kitchen table and schemed to solve the case before Red and Perkins could uncover the first clue. It couldn't be much of a stretch to go from crosswords to crime: figuring out clues, making educated guesses, erasing mistakes and starting over. It was a cinch.

Myrtle pulled her grocery list towards her and tore off the top page. She jotted down a list of questions. Why was Althea Hayes in the sanctuary? Who was the mystery smoker? Did the flower arrangement change have anything to do with the murder? Had Kitty Kirk recently left her Bible in the pew, or had it been sitting there since last Sunday? And...who wanted to kill Parke Stockard?

Well, who didn't want to murder her? She'd just recently put herself on Myrtle's own hit list. Parke Stockard was bossy and liked things done her own way. She was beautiful and flaunted it. She played people off each other for fun and maybe even for profit. People were sick and tired of her and she hadn't even lived in Bradley all that long.

She wrote down the names she'd found on Parke's cell phone: Althea, Benton Chambers, and Josh Tucker. She drained the last of her milk and looked over the notes. She was going to do it. Solving the case would flex her brain and prove she still had the brainpower—more than even Red himself, if she beat him to it.

Myrtle was still mulling the case over the next morning while she spooned globs of garlic and handfuls of shredded cheese into a pot of grits. The challenge would be interviewing the suspects. Well, besides figuring out who the suspects were, of course. Casually knocking at their doors and grilling them on their alibis wouldn't cut it. Once they'd tattled to Red, all her fun would be over. There had to be a better, more surreptitious way to ask some questions. Thinking hard, she'd stopped stirring the grits and they spat at her angrily. Myrtle gave them a quick stir and then took them off the eye completely when the phone rang.

"Elaine! Everything going well over there?" Myrtle couldn't hear any crying on the other end. It was a good sign, unless it indicated that Elaine had run away from home.

"It's great, actually. I've got some free time since Jack is over at a playdate."

Myrtle smiled. Would she finally get a sounding board? A Watson? Detectives were supposed to have sidekicks.

"I thought we could go to book club together. It'll do you good to get out after the day you had yesterday. I can pick you up in about 45 minutes."

Myrtle's bubble burst. "But I haven't read the book."

"It's To Kill a Mockingbird."

"Oh. Right." She'd taught it for fifteen years at school. Now Red was enlisting Elaine to 'get Mama's mind off the murder.' Myrtle avoided Elaine's book club like the plague because they considered trashy paperbacks serious literature. They could collectively author a reference guide titled: Book Picks for Chicks: an Exhaustive Collection of Trendy Tripe. This had to be the first time they'd ever picked anything with any literary merit.