The Complete Honey Huckleberry Box Set Page 2

  “Maybe you’d better start at the beginning.” Detective Silas Sampson sat his handsome self down in the green velvet chair next to the piecrust table that held the red lamp, crossed his legs, his notebook on his lap, and looked at me over imaginary half-glasses. At least that’s what I saw.

  “It started in high-school …” and I told him about Miss Mott, even strode across the thick rug, one hand flung into the open air as I recited the last line of that first poem. Dramatic, I admit, but I wanted to make sure he understood the importance of the poems to me and Steven … Steven Hyatt that is.

  “And that’s what the caller recited?”

  “No, that’s where it all started. Steven and I, Steven Hyatt, began to … well … meet … and read poetry to each other. That’s when we noticed how many poems were written by ‘unknown’ and we decided to save him.” It sounded like a crock to me. I sat down in the matching chair at the small table and glanced over at my erroneous—by Peggy’s standards—policeman to see if he was following all this.

  His eyes had glazed a little, but he was still with me, so I went on, easing the credibility a bit by explaining offhandedly, “We were very young, after all.”

  “Now, we knew there was not just one unknown poet, but it was more fun to call him … them … so. We even visualized a description of him, but I won’t go into that. It’s really irrelevant to the current story, unless you want to hear it?”

  “No, no, I trust your judgment. You and this boy started reading these poets and …”

  “Oh, it was much more than just reading their works, we memorized them so we would always keep them alive. And, I’ll know you’ll be glad, Detective Sampson, this is where the phone call comes in.”

  His eyes brightened. “It was Steven Hyatt who called you, but why did he threaten your life?” He wrote in his notebook, but I reached over the polished tabletop with the white Belgian lace doily and stopped his hand.

  “Oh, no, that’s not it at all.”

  He seemed impatient.

  “I’ll try to make this next part quick. Steven and I would call each other and play this game, a stupid one to you, I’m sure, but some people like football. Anyway, Steven … or I … whoever was calling the other … would start the conversation with a line from one of Unknown’s poems and the other would have to quote the next line, no matter where it was in the poem. Oh, now I can see I’ve lost you again. I know. Shall I demonstrate?”

  “By all means.”

  “Well, if the phone rang and I picked it up …” I’ve always thought a demonstration should include all the angles of its purpose, so I jumped up and went to the small desk where the telephone lay and picked up the receiver. “Hello,” I said into the buzzing receiver. “It is only a life, dear friend. How are you, Steven? And, where are you? New York? Well, when are you coming home?” It was only when the phone began an awful racket that sounded like European police vans that I realized I had carried on too far. When the computerized woman’s voice came on to tell me to dial or hang up, I hung up and turned to the detective with a sheepish grin. “Well, that’s how we do it.”

  “I didn’t get to hear what Steven had to say.” I thought I detected amusement in Detective Sampson’s voice, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

  “Oh, he said, ‘How far is it called to the grave?’ I used that poem because that’s the one the other Steven … the fourth Steven recited today.”

  “The fourth Steven. Miss Huckleberry, I’ve been very patient. This isn’t my regular duty, you know, but when your call came in, all the black-and-whites were busy, so they asked me to check it out. I haven’t done this for years, but I don’t ever remember any routine investigation being as confusing as yours. Miss Huckleberry, do you drink?”

  “Yes, I do, but since you’re on duty, Detective Sampson, wouldn’t you prefer a cup of tea?”

  He did.

  As I ran into the little kitchen and put the kettle on, I wondered about the investigation myself. I don’t watch as much television as Peggy, but when I do, I even listen to it, and this wasn’t going like any police show I’d ever seen. The detective seemed okay, so I decided it was me, and when I returned to the living room with a tea tray, I invited him into the dining room to be served. I poured the tea into the English teacups and offered him cookies from the blue tin. “Now, Detective Sampson, I don’t think this is going very well. Suppose I shut up and you just ask me questions?”

  He didn’t answer because he was too busy looking around the dining room, which really was another big addition to the living room when the twelve-foot sliding doors were open as they were this evening. I followed his gaze, but didn’t see anything unusual in the massive oak table or matching side cabinet on the right side of the room. He looked over my shoulder at the piano behind me. He shifted in the oak-armed dining chair and asked me as he jerked his thumb toward the instrument, “Do you play?”

  “No. My mother did. She’s dead. And my father died the next day after she did.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. It was years ago. I was eighteen.”

  “Was it an accident?”

  “No, they were old, were old when I was born, and one day they just died. Or rather two days. One right after the other. We had only returned from the funeral parlor when my father sat down in that very chair you’re in and he said, ‘Honey, I’m too old and too tired to go on without your mother. I should have stayed at the funeral parlor with her so you wouldn’t have to bring strangers into the house again when they come to get me. I’m sorry to have to put you through this alone.’ And then he put his head on the table and died.”

  Detective Sampson snapped his head back from looking at the crystal chandelier and stared into my eyes. His were blue, of course. He didn’t shift in the chair where my father had died as some might do, but kept his gaze steady and asked, “And you’ve been alone since then? In this house?”

  “Yes, but it was all right. You see, they were so old that they always knew they would die long before I was grown, so every day they told me I would be alone someday and when that day came, it was not strange to me. I had been prepared for it since the day I was born. More tea, Detective Sampson?”

  The poor man hadn’t realized he had drunk the first. I poured him another cupful from the pot, kept warm by the cheerful cozy with which I had covered it in the kitchen.

  “What did your father do for a living?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I know the answer to that one. My father was retired long before I was born. He just lived in this house and kept me and my mother safe. And the roses. If it were light, I would show you his roses.”

  “And you stayed here? I mean here in this house? Ever since …?”

  “Yes and no. The house was paid for—had been for years—and there was a little money for awhile. So, I went to college. TCJC as a matter of fact—south campus—then TCU. The money ran out about the same time I received my degree in English. Is this helping the investigation, Detective Sampson?”

  When he said it was, I went on to tell him about going to work in the bookstore, then becoming a sales representative for first one publishing house and then how I’d added several other respectable ones to my list. How often I traveled and where.

  It was only after even the tea cozy couldn’t keep the pot warm any longer and after I’d offered and he’d accepted a small glass of sherry that he brought the subject back to the phone call. By that time, I’d begun to think I was silly to have been so nervous about it, but Detective Sampson—or Silas, as he eventually asked me to call him—was serious as I finally told him the message Steven had given me.

  “And you’d never heard his voice before? You’re sure he wasn’t one of the three Stevens?” By this time, he knew all about Miller, Bondesky, and Hyatt.

  “I’ve told you I didn’t.”

  “You’re positive it wasn’t Hyatt?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you haven’t called him to make sur
e?”

  Of course, that’s what I could do. I smiled at Silas to let him know how smart I thought he was. So, that’s what policemen were for!

  I went to the phone and asked the operator to put me through to Sydney. I even knew which hotel Steven was staying in. It was so simple that I was smiling and carefree with the hotel clerk until he told me that Steven had left four days before for the outback. I didn’t really want a lesson in Australian geography, but the clerk explained that the whole film company was on location in an aboriginal reserve and Steven couldn’t possibly have called me because there were no phones there—only relay systems between ham radio operators. But if it were an emergency, they would try to get in touch with him, although it might take several days.

  When I hung up the phone, I turned to find Silas standing beside me. “I heard,” he said. “Honey, I’ll do what investigating I can do, but there’s not much to go on. Frankly, I don’t think you’re in any danger. Sounds like a crackpot to me.”

  Of course we were on a first-name basis by then. I had politely asked him to call me by my first name and he had given me permission to do likewise. I liked the way he said my name. Most men can’t handle it and get too friendly too fast. Or treat you like a pet.

  “I guess I’d better get going.”

  “I’m sorry it took so long—for nothing—Silas.”

  We stood in the dark paneled entrance foyer and he looked up at the dining room’s matching, but more slender chandelier that hung down from the second-floor stairwell. The house seemed to fascinate him. He told me to keep my doors locked and that he’d call me, but it would probably be Monday.

  “No, I go on the road Monday. I’m a salesman, remember? I’ll call you, though.” And I held his card and looked at it long after I heard his car drive away. I could hear it for blocks. It’s easy to hear sounds in my neighborhood. Especially when my house is the only one left, its three stories standing like an island of green and white in the middle of the brick-and-glass medical complexes that surround it.

  I wondered how it had looked to Silas and how I’d looked. He’d certainly stayed long enough—had assured me that he was, in fact, off duty when he’d taken the sherry. I liked him. He’d made me feel safe, and I wasn’t the least bit scared when I went upstairs to bed. I’d almost forgotten why he had come in the first place. It was nice having company. Except for an occasional visit from Steven Hyatt, Silas Sampson was the first visitor I could ever remember being in the house, and the last strangers that had crossed the threshold were the ambulance drivers who had picked up first my mother and then my father.

  I ought to entertain more often.

  FIVE

  The next day dawned bright and clear, a real Texas spring morning.

  It was an uneventful day, full only of my regular Sunday indulgences: croissants in bed, reading every word of the Star-Telegram, enjoying a new unpublished book from my client list, and a long nap.

  It was almost four in the afternoon, and although we call it spring, I could see the lengthening shadows of the still-short day outside as they began to fall across the eye clinic next door. It was time I entered the war room.

  With the tie of my thick terry robe trailing the floor, I went into my father’s room, claimed and renamed by me when, several years after his death, I decided to get organized. There on the sides by the knotty-pine walls and in the middle of the room were large racks of clothes, protected from dust by the sanitized cleaning bags that cloaked them in individual clusters.

  All I had to do was collect a shrouded bag with the tag, Spring—Second Week. And from the pigeonhole box on a small, flat desk, I picked up a typed itinerary that read the same.

  Returning to my front bedroom, I placed the whole bundle in the carryall hanging on the closet door.

  I briefly studied the itinerary—really only noting my first stop—to give me an idea of the next day’s route before I stuffed it into my already stuffed briefcase.

  A warm bath, shampoo, and manicure completed Sunday for me, and I tried to get to sleep early. However, I knew before I started—my mind on tomorrow’s schedule—that it would be impossible, and after about forty minutes, I switched on the bedside lamp and reached for the paperback I had ready.

  It was the trashy kind. One of those with exposed breasts and thighs on its pink, gold, and green cover. I had them by the dozens under the bed, a perk from one of the lines I carried. Or rather one of their subsidiaries. I couldn’t blame the publishing house; it was hard to stay alive in the competitive publishing business, and they had started their Fire series to bolster their legitimate but less profitable compilation of environmental issue publications.

  This night’s offering was Down Under, and I had chosen it because I thought I might learn something about Steven Hyatt’s obsession with Australia. It was set in that faraway country, but the author’s idea of what was Down Under and mine were worlds apart. I was just at the page where Prusilla’s legs were being forced apart by her too-handsome-to-be-true would-be lover who didn’t understand her real story—when the phone rang.

  Caught up as I was in Prusilla’s dilemma, I was sharing some of her forbidden yearning when I answered the ring. Breathless and a little flushed, I said “Hello,” while my eyes raced to the next line.

  “Lydia? Are you there? Lydia?”

  Wrenched from the throes of a nineteenth-century passion to the recognition of the voice on the phone, my blood ran cold. It was the fourth Steven and all the passion of ten Prusillas couldn’t stop the chill that shook me from head to toe.

  It hadn’t been a dream. It hadn’t been my imagination, overactive and easily stimulated by too many Fire publications. Steven was as real as the old-fashioned black receiver that I held in my hand.

  I didn’t want to talk to him. But—from somewhere in my mind—I decided that maybe if I did, I’d find out what was going on.

  “Yes?”

  Relief in the voice. “Oh, Lydia. I thought maybe I had misdialed again.”

  “No, this is me. Are you still going to kill me?”

  “No, no. That’s why I called back. It was only a joke … and I’m sorry that you were inadvertently involved.”

  “A joke?”

  “Well, yes. I’m more than a little embarrassed, but I was worried that you might misunderstand. Don’t see how you could keep from it, really. And I wanted to straighten out the misunderstanding.”

  “How did you know about the poem?”

  “I told you it was a joke … a game I play with a friend of mine. I misdialed, that’s all. It was a joke that turned sour, I’m afraid. Will you forget it, please, Lydia? And accept my apology?”

  What Steven was saying now was what I wished he had said yesterday. Why didn’t I believe him today?

  “Yes, of course, I understand.” I said it, but I didn’t mean it.

  And he knew it. Steven tried to convince me again. His voice was low, calm, and without any recognizable accent. “It’s was all a mistake. You won’t do anything rash, will you, Lydia? Like call the police?”

  “Oh, no. I understand now. It was all a mistake. Where are you, Steven?”

  “That’s what I wanted to ask you. All I have is your phone number. I know it sounds strange, but maybe we could meet. Get together and discuss dead poets or have a drink and share a laugh over this.”

  “No. That’s not necessary. I understand it all now, so thank you for calling to clear it up. I must admit it gave me quite a turn, but it’s all right now.” I was desperate to get off the phone with him, but afraid to just hang up.

  “You really do believe me, don’t you, Lydia? I didn’t kill … not anyone. Lydia?”

  Steven’s voice was as strained as mine.

  “Yes, I believe you. Thank you again for calling. I’m hanging up now.” But I didn’t, and in the silence that followed, I heard the undeniable racket of a train pulling into a station, its creaking wheels and screech of brakes unlike and unimitated by any other sound on earth.
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  When he’d called yesterday, Steven had said, before the threat and after he’d claimed to have killed, that he was going to take a train out of there. The train part was true; maybe the killing and the threat were, too.

  “Are you still there, Lydia?” Steven’s voice was soothing, as if he was talking to a frightened child.

  I gently hung up the phone on my strange caller.

  Prusilla and her blatant desires were forgotten as I turned off the light, and this time, it wasn’t the thought of tomorrow’s business that left me sleepless; it was the thought that if I had made the connection with the train and the previous conversation, then Steven, standing somewhere near the track of the loud clatter of an arriving train, had also.

  I finally went to sleep after I had convinced myself that I was in no immediate danger. He didn’t know where I lived. He couldn’t find me tonight. I remember thinking, “I wish you hadn’t called, Steven. I wish you hadn’t tried to make it all better.”

  SIX

  My first stop Monday was in West where, after I had loaded up on sausage and cream cheese kolaches from the Czechoslovakian bakery on the highway, I made a stop at Pages, a small bookstore that was housed in an old filling station. It amused me to see the lengths to which booksellers would go to sell their wares. Some of my clients might as well have spread blankets under a tree and set up shop, and they would have, if they thought they could sell books and avoid the overhead.

  I don’t do malls and chains. They have their own buying system and, frankly, one of the reasons I kept my interest in selling came from my customers and their customers: people who like books and would rather have one in their hands than a sack of gold.

  At Pages, Janie Bridges was dressed in a long blue-jean skirt with a bright plaid flannel shirt over her T-shirt that had a dagger dripping blood under the words I Love a Good Murder. Janie’s stock reflected her own taste in books, and the racks were full of paperback mysteries whose covers in recent years had become almost as garish as Fire’s. She sold other books, even Fire’s, but you had to hunt to find them among the Chandlers, Evanovichs, and Jameses.