A Body at Bunco : Myrtle Clover #8

Chapter Twenty-One

 Myrtle held out a treat to Pasha, who quickly bounded after her. Mimsy. Mimsy was responsible for Luella's death? And Alma's? It hardly seemed possible. Could Florence have been mistaken? But other things seemed to fall into place.

Mimsy had seemed very financially stable. Poppy, for one, even seemed envious of her apparent stability ... according to Mimsy. But when Myrtle and Miles had been dropping off the casserole, John had said that he was interviewing for a job out of town. Maybe they hadn't been as financially stable as they'd appeared, if John had been unemployed. And, since John had also done day trading on the side, perhaps he'd lost a lot of money on the stock market.

What if Mimsy had wanted to maintain her lifestyle and killed to do so? Could she be so calculating? Had she hidden away her own earring as a possible insurance policy for potential future crimes? Acted as if someone were trying to set her up? Pointed suspicion at her own friend, Poppy, by subtly acting as if Poppy had been envious of her all along?

Had she taken advantage of her husband's trip to kill Alma?

Myrtle, for once, felt a strong urge to talk to her son. She took out her phone from her pocketbook. As far as smartphones went, it wasn't a genius, but it was fairly clever. Sometimes she wondered if it were sharper than she was.

She pulled up her contacts and found Red's number. It rang until his voice mail answered. Myrtle hung up, sighing in irritation. He was probably taking that shower at her house. Plus, it always took him a while to check his voice mails on his personal phone. Then she realized Red seemed a lot more responsive to his text messages. The text message screen was so small that she had to fumble around in her purse for her reading glasses in order to type on it. Finally, she typed need to talk to you about Mimsy, Red. Maybe that would pique Red's interest enough to give her a call back.

"Myrtle?" asked Mimsy's voice, very close.

Myrtle just about jumped through her skin. "Mimsy!" she gasped.

Mimsy said solicitously, "Oh, Miss Myrtle, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. You must have been deep in your thoughts."

"I must have been, yes. I was thinking about Pasha, my cat," she said in a rush. Pasha sprawled out on the sidewalk, enjoying the sun on her stomach. "Are you out running errands?" she asked. She glanced around for Mimsy's car, but didn't see it.

Mimsy held up some poster board she was carrying. "Just walking around and putting up signs supporting the Bradley Bugle. I'm amazed how that social media campaign has caught on. It's like the whole town is coming together in support of the newspaper."

"A newspaper is important to small towns," said Myrtle in a rather perfunctory voice.

"Are you feeling all right, Miss Myrtle?" asked Mimsy, staring closely at her. "You don't quite seem like yourself."

"I'm a little tired, maybe," said Myrtle. As if to emphasize that point, she wove a bit unsteadily, still trying to clutch her cane, the bag of cat treats, her reading glasses, and her phone. She was able to regain her balance, but she dropped the cane and the phone in the process.