Murder Most Grave

G. A. McKevett

• Publisher: Kensington Cozies
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781496729095
• eBook ISBN:
  9781496729118
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

For Stella “Granny” Reid, the 1980s in McGill, Georgia, could be seriously predictable. But a deadly mystery was all it took to make the tranquil Southern town unravel . . .

With a new grandbaby to care for at home, Stella has little time to spare. Her hands are especially full since Savannah, her teenage granddaughter, developed a crush on a boy guaranteed to break her heart. Gallivanting around with her best pal Sheriff Manny Goldford simply isn’t an option—until a freshly murdered body is discovered . . .
 
When a gravedigger finds a local sprawled across the steps of a crypt, Stella and Manny launch into action to investigate who had motive to kill him. But as the pieces start falling together, everything else becomes less certain. Manny soon realizes he could lose his position as sheriff, and there’s the case of yet another shocking death. Now, Stella must protect those closest to her while unearthing the dangerous culprit and putting a real grave affair to rest.

Chapter 1

“That’s it, you little turkey butt. Snooze away. Regain your strength so’s you can torment me at dawn-thirty, when the rest o’ the world’s sound asleep and sawin’ logs. Ever’body but you and me, that is,” Stella Reid said as she gently and oh so slowly laid her sleeping six-month-old grandson in the bassinet next to her comfy chair in the living room.

Once she had the infant settled and covered with his blue flannel blanket, she couldn’t resist one light stroke of her fingertip on his silky cheek.

Baby skin. Softest thing on earth, she thought, feeling a flood of affection flow through her, warming her heart and reviving her exhausted body and mind.

She smiled, whispering, “Even at four in the mornin’, I wouldn’t take a billion dollars for ya.”

Glancing at the tarnished sunburst clock on the wall over the couch, she realized that this peaceful interlude wasn’t going to last long. Any moment now, the rest of her grandangels would return from school and tear through the front door like a pack of prairie coyotes with a brush fire at their heels.

Make the most of it while you can, Stella May, she told herself as she settled down for a brief rest in her old, avocado leatherette recliner. Sit a spell and stick yer feet up. Lord knows, breaks from all this grannying business are few and far between these days.

Like an instant fulfillment of her prophecy, she glanced out the window and saw a big yellow school bus slow down, pull over to the edge of the highway, chug to a stop, and swing its door open.

A million children poured forth and began to race up the long, dirt road toward the tiny shotgun shack that had been Stella’s home for decades. Now, thanks to a compassionate sheriff, who had interceded on their behalf with the local judge, the humble house was their home, as well.

It seemed like a million kids, though it was actually only a gaggle of grandyoung’uns.

The Good Lord had blessed her with eight in total.

Well, the Lord above and my horny son and his ding-a-ling wife, who still ain’t figured out that it ain’t the stork who brings babies into this world, she thought, shaking her head. Babies that need tendin’ and a heap of lovin’ and guidance for the next twenty years or so.

But she couldn’t help laughing as she watched them kick up clouds of dust and listened to them whoop and holler as they rushed toward the house, eager for a welcome hug and some sort of after-school treat.

A few months ago, their snack would have been fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies. But since Macon Jr., the baby, had joined his brother and sisters in her custody, most of the cookie baking was being done by a fellow named Famous Amos, assisted by the Keebler Elves, depending on which brand was on sale that week. These days, Stella barely found time to grab the store-bought goodies off the grocery shelf, let alone whip up a batch herself.

Fortunately, the children didn’t seem to care who made their refreshments, as long as they were readily available, especially after school, when they truly believed they were likely to expire from hunger at any moment.

With a keen grandmother’s eye Stella observed her brood tripping over their own feet, not to mention each other, in their mad dash to the house. Suddenly, she had an inkling.

Something was wrong.

They were always eager to get inside, but they were usually laughing, at least grinning, as they fought to be the first to breach the door. But not with this degree of urgency.

Also, a quick head count told Stella that somebody was missing. Besides the one sleeping next to her chair, there were only six.

“I wanna tell her first!” she heard the second oldest, Marietta, yell as they bounded onto the porch.

Seven-year-old Jesup was shoved aside as Marietta scrambled to enter the house first. But, as usual, the eldest grandchild took charge of the situation.

Thirteen-year-old Savannah wrapped a protective arm around Jesup and told Marietta, “Don’t go yanking on your sister like that, Miss Mari. She’s little, and you might hurt her, manhandling her that way. Besides, you’ve got no more right to be the one to tell Granny than she has. Just leave her be.”

Sliding deftly between Marietta and the front door, Savannah cleared the way for Jesup, who scurried past her disgruntled sister and into the house.

Stella stood and steeled herself for what she was about to hear. She had already figured out that the missing person in the mess of grandkids was her other grandson, Waycross.

He was conspicuous in his absence because everyone rushing through the door was female and had dark hair like her own, a testimony to Stella’s mother, a full-blooded Cherokee.

Waycross was exceptional in the family for two reasons. First, until baby Macon Jr. had arrived, he had been the solitary male child. Second, he was distinctive as the only carrottop. And no simple, subtle auburn shades for Waycross Reid. He had a flaming copper, wild and wooly head of hair that one could spot a mile away in a crowd.

But today, not one ginger kid came through Stella’s door, and that was alarming, as the one child most likely to get into deep trouble was poor Waycross.

He wasn’t a bad kid. Just fond of mischief and resourceful at creating it.

“Okay, where in tarnation is that brother of yours?” Stella asked the eager-faced Jesup, who ran up to her grandmother, wrapped her arms tightly around her waist, and stared up at her, big blue eyes wide and concerned.

“He done run off, Granny,” Jesup proclaimed.

“Yeah!” shouted another voice in the crowd, followed by more excited pronouncements.

“We tried, but we couldn’t catch ’im!”

“I had him by the shirt for a minute, but he wriggled out of my—”

“Even the principal tried to lay hands on ’im!”

“Some of the teachers, too!”

“But he got clean away! Made hisself a proper es-cape, he did.”

“You know how fast he can run when he’s a mind to!”

Stella held up both hands and donned her best, “Don’t-worry, pressure-on-that-cut-will-stop-the-bleeding” look.

She used it frequently, whether she felt optimistic about such remedies or not. With eight grandchildren under her roof, optimism had to prevail at all times.

“This ain’t the first time Waycross has run away,” she told his excited, worried sisters. “Cain’t really blame the boy if he decides he’s had his canful of all of us females at least once a month.”

“Yes, he does run away on a regular basis,” Savannah said softly, a calm contrast to the rest of the gang. “But he always takes time to pack a pillowcase with some of his Transformers, his G.I. Joe, and a pair of clean underwear for each day he intends to be away.”

“Yes.” Stella nodded. “Waycross is big on personal hygiene. It’s true. An admirable quality, ’specially in a boy child.”

She reached for the baby, who was wide awake now and beginning to fuss. As she clasped the child to her chest and patted his behind, she turned back to Savannah and said, “Where was he last seen and what happened right before he made his git-away?”

“It was at school!” Marietta interjected. “Made a dang fool of hisself right there in front of ever’body. Embarrassed the family somethin’ fierce. Like he always does.”

“I figured it was at school, Marietta, since the principal and teachers chased ’im,” Stella told her with a tone far more patient than she felt.

Marietta made a practice of standing on her grandmother’s last strained nerve and dancing an Irish jig on it. “I’ll thank you not to refer to anybody in this family as a fool. We’re all doin’ the best we can, day to day, includin’ Waycross. Sometimes we do well and sometimes we fall flat on our faces, but there ain’t no fools under this roof.”

Marietta stuck out her lower lip. “ ’Cept Waycross.”

“Go to your room, Miss Marietta Reid. Right this minute, and don’t come out till I tell ya to.”

As Marietta flounced off toward the bedroom she shared with the rest of her sisters, stomping and huffing, Stella added, “You’d better stick that bottom lip of yours back in place, too, before you trip over it.”

Stella heard a disgruntled mumbling. Something about old ladies tripping if somebody pushed them hard enough. But she decided to let it go. She had to pick her battles with Marietta Reid. Otherwise, her home would be a constant war zone.

She turned back to the group of girls and said, “Everybody go into the kitchen, raid the cookie jar, and get yourself a cup of milk. Vidalia, you pour for the little’uns. Savannah, darlin’, you stick around. Alma, please bring your big sister some refreshments.”

The room cleared out in an instant, leaving only Stella, Savannah, the baby, and a rare moment of peace and quiet.

“Tell me ever’thing, sweetheart, and don’t leave out nothin’,” she told her firstborn grandchild, the girl who was having to become a woman far too quickly.

Savannah sighed, walked over to Stella, and took the baby from her.

As soon as the exchange was made, Stella realized how good it felt to have her arms empty for a moment. Little Macon Jr. only weighed seventeen pounds, but after a few hours, it took a toll on his grandmother’s arms.

She had once told her best friend, Elsie, “There’s a reason the good Lord don’t give women our age little children to care for. We just ain’t up to chasin’ after ’em, like when we was younger.”

Of course, that had been before Stella’s son had decided he didn’t need to bother raising the children he’d brought into the world and her daughter-in-law had gone to prison for neglecting and endangering them.

Savannah kissed her little brother’s forehead and held him close to her chest. He reached up and laid his chubby baby hand on her cheek.

“The problem with Waycross,” the girl began, “got started by that nasty ol’ Jeanette Parker.”

Stella sighed. “Now why doesn’t that surprise me? I wish that girl would find herself somebody else to torment for a while and give our poor Waycross a break. He could sure use one.”

A look crossed Savannah’s face ever so briefly. Uneasiness along with something perhaps akin to guilt.

Stella’s sharp eyes caught it, and her grandmotherly suspicion was aroused.

“Is there somethin’ else you wanna tell me, sweetheart?” she asked the girl. “Somethin’ you got to say about Miss Jeanette maybe?”

Savannah shrugged and the sheepish look deepened. “Um, well, Gran, I . . .”

“Yes. Spit it out, child. You got nothin’ to fear in my house by speakin’ the truth.”

“Okay.” Savannah drew a deep breath and said, “I think Jeanette’s really mad at me, but she’s been taking it out on Waycross, because he’s little and he won’t fight back like I do.”

“Hmm. Okay. We’ll discuss the ins and outs of that later,” Stella said, pushing her own suspicions and misgivings aside for the time being. “What did she say or do to Waycross that upset him so?”

“I’m not sure. I didn’t hear it all. But I think it was something about his hair being red.”

Stella shook her head. “That child does shoulder more than his share of grief because of that colorful hair of his. Why, I’ll never know. He’s beautiful and easy to spot in a crowd. There’s somethin’ to be said for that in a passel o’ kids this big.”

Savannah just smiled and nodded. She still had that air of sadness about her, and something told Stella there was more to it than just concern about her brother. Later, Stella would have to shake her tree a bit and see what fruit fell to the ground, if any. Now that Savannah was a teenager, she held on to her secrets a tad more tightly than before adolescence had changed her, both body and mind.

“I’ll watch the kids while you go look for him,” Savannah offered. “I’m sure he’s eager for you to find him. He always is.”

Stella hesitated. While she knew that Savannah was far more mature and capable of caring for her siblings than most of the adults in their tiny town of McGill, Georgia, she hated to saddle a child with such a chore.

Stella had left the gang in Savannah’s custody when emergencies had occurred. But that was before baby Macon Jr. arrived. Stella was reluctant to burden the child with an infant as well as her sometimes unruly siblings.

Stella glanced at the sunburst clock again. “Okay. Elsie should be finished workin’ there at Judge Patterson’s place. I’ll call her and ask if she can come over. Then I’ll go scour the countryside for your wayward brother.”

“You can go on ahead. Let me call Elsie. I’ll tell her about Waycross and that you had to go. You know her. She’ll be here in three minutes flat. I doubt anything bad will happen that quick, what with Marietta on time-out in the bedroom.”

Stella chuckled. “That’s true. But call Elsie right now. I wanna know she’s on her way before I leave.”

Savannah laid the once-again asleep baby down in his bassinet, then rushed to the phone and dialed. As Stella collected her purse and car keys from the piecrust table next to the door, she heard her granddaughter say, “Thank you, Miss Elsie. Granny appreciates it. We all do. See you in a minute.”

Savannah hung up the phone and turned to her grandmother, who was waiting by the open door. “Okay, Gran, she’s on her way. I’d check the graveyard if I were you. He was headed that direction.”

“Thank you, darlin’.”

“Tell him Elsie’s bringing one of her coconut cakes. He’ll be making tracks toward home in a jiffy.”

“Will do, sugar. Thank you.” Stella blew her granddaughter a kiss, then scurried out the front door and down the rickety porch steps.

The graveyard. The girl’s right. That’s the first place I’ll look, Stella thought as she rushed across the yard to her old panel truck and climbed inside.

Stella knew her grandangels well and understood they were creatures of habit. When Savannah was upset, she would head for the library to lose herself in a good mystery book. Marietta would run to the drugstore to buy a candy bar, if she had enough money, and to pilfer one if she didn’t. Jesup would huddle deep in the corner of her lower bunk bed with a doll clutched to her chest. Cordele would find someone to boss around or complain to. Vidalia would soothe herself by writing a record of her woes in her diary. Alma would go looking for an unfortunate animal somewhere that, at least in her opinion, was “in desperate need of some lovin’ and doctorin’.”

But Waycross, Stella’s sweet grandboy, with the sun’s fire in his hair and the gloom of a dark, rainy night in his soul, would head for the old cemetery and the unique comfort he had found there so often among the ancient gravestones.

Stella was pretty sure that was where she would find him.

“Bless his heart,” she whispered as she drove. “And bless ever’ red hair on that precious head o’ his.”

Chapter 2

As Stella drove through the downtown area of McGill, pausing at the town’s only traffic signal, a four-way blinking light, she glanced around at the unsightly litter of red, white, and blue campaign posters and decided she would be glad when this election hooey was finally over and done with.

Once Stella had cared deeply about who occupied the White House, but with her current distractions of raising grandkids, she had little interest in whether Mr. Bush or Mr. Dukakis won.

She was more focused on which of the town’s two gas stations was the cheapest. With any luck, she might not have to pay over a dollar for a simple gallon of gas. That might make the five dollars in her purse stretch far enough for her to buy milk, bread, and, if Wakefield’s grocery store had a sale on, maybe even some eggs.

She just wanted the clutter of banners and signs gone from the lawns, business windows, and billboards. Even more, she wanted McGillians to find something else to complain and fight about among themselves. All...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Also by
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Chapter 23
• Chapter 24
• Chapter 25
• Chapter 26
• Chapter 27
• Chapter 28
• Chapter 29
• Chapter 30
• Chapter 31
• Chapter 32
• Chapter 33
• Chapter 34
• Chapter 35
• Chapter 36
• Chapter 37
• Chapter 38
• Chapter 39