Thirty-Four and a Half Predicaments
Page 36

Neely Kate motioned toward the sanctuary doors. “Why don’t we sit in there and talk? I doubt anyone will see us.” When Miss Mildred gave her a blank stare, Neely Kate added, “So no one sees us together? That’s why we’re here, right?” Her voice ended an octave higher, as if she were talking to someone who was senile. Miss Mildred was a lot of things, but senile wasn’t one of them. Or at least I hoped as much. Otherwise, this whole ordeal was for nothing.
“Oh. Yeah.”
I rolled my eyes as we followed Miss Mildred through the sanctuary door.
Neely Kate leaned close to me and whispered, “Your eyeballs are liable to fall out if you keep doin’ that.”
Miss Mildred picked a pew in the middle of the sanctuary. It felt strange to see the room so empty. Jonah’s televised services had started drawing so many church-goers, especially from neighboring counties, he’d expanded to two services.
Neely Kate sat next to her and I perched in the pew in front of them, turning my body sideways so I could look at them as I pulled my notebook out of my purse.
“So,” Neely Kate drawled. “Henry Buchanan owned Atchison Manufacturing?”
Miss Mildred looked around to see if anyone was within earshot—of course there wasn’t—before leaning forward and whispering, “He inherited it from his maternal grandparents. They started it before World War II. They made rivets or some such nonsense.”
“Rivets?” Neely Kate asked.
Miss Mildred waved. “They used ’em for plane and car parts. But then the fire wiped the whole plum thing out. It was so big you could see the glow all over town.”
“Did they ever say what started the fire?” Neely Kate asked as I took down notes.
“They said it was accidental. Some chemicals got too close to a shorted-out electric fire, but my Kennie was an electrical engineer in the navy, and he said he couldn’t imagine that fire gettin’ started from an electrical short. He said it looked like it was set by explosives.”
Neely Kate’s eyes widened. “And no one questioned it? Didn’t the police and the fire department do an investigation?”
Miss Mildred waved off Neely Kate’s question. “The police were as incompetent back then as they are now, just like the DA’s office.” She shot me a glare. “And it looks like you’ve used your devil ways to get your boyfriends to ignore my neighborhood watch tips.”
I gave her a pointed stare. “You mean like the Contorvas’ dog pooping on your lawn? Or me kissing my boyfriend on my own front porch?”
“I might be old, but I can still make a stand for public decency,” she said with a self-righteous humph.
We were gonna have to filter everything that came out of her mouth. Her own interpretation of what was right and wrong and what constituted justice was totally skewed. I couldn’t forget that she had spearheaded the petition to ban the annual Henryetta Easter egg hunt. Her reasoning was that it mirrored a pagan fertility ritual and the devil was using it to encourage fornication in the town. But she’d abandoned the cause like a virgin in a whorehouse when she couldn’t—try as she might—get any more than six hundred and sixty-six signatures.
Neely Kate shook her head. “Back to the warehouse.”
Miss Mildred pinched her lips and turned back to my friend.
“Do you know anything else about the warehouse or the fire?”
She leaned toward Neely Kate, lowering her voice to a whisper again. “Everyone suspected he was havin’ an affair with his bookkeeper.”
I suppressed a cringe.
“Do you know who his bookkeeper was?”
She grimaced. “No, I never caught her name.”
I had a pretty good idea who it was.
“We know the factory burned down 1986. You said it happened in November?”
“Right after Thanksgiving.”
“Do you know why Henry Buchanan never rebuilt the factory?”
“No. That was a mystery too. It was doing quite well. We’d heard he’d gotten a government contract for his rivets. And it ended up goin’ to someone else after the fire.”
“Who?” Neely Kate asked.
I could see why she was asking. Maybe a rival company had committed sabotage to land the job.
She shook her head. “I’m not sure, but Petunia Picklebie’s husband Dirk would probably know. God rest her soul. He was a ne’er-do-well after the fire. He wore her down with all his gambling.” Her mouth pursed in disapproval.
Now we were really getting somewhere. Dirk had been in Dora’s journal. “Do you know what he did there?” I asked.
She glared at me, as though this whole mess that had unfurled before my birth was my fault. “He was a foreman. Agnes’s husband worked there too.”
I scribbled down the name Picklebie before I processed what she’d said. “Agnes? You mean Momma? My daddy worked there?”
She frowned at me. “Up until the fire.”
I stifled a gasp of relief. So Daddy had worked there.
“And does this Dirk Picklebie still live here in Henryetta?” Neely Kate shifted in her seat. “Do you happen to have a phone number or address?”
Miss Mildred shook her head. “No, but last I heard he was living in the Forest Ridge neighborhood.”
“What about Ima Jean?” I asked. “Were you friends with her?”
Miss Mildred’s eyes hardened. “We were acquaintances.” She squirmed in her seat. “I frequent her shop.”