#1 Birth of The Lady FBI Read online

CHAPTER 2

  It was Sarah’s habit to walk at least three and sometimes four mornings a week. That was her exercise regimen. She usually called Ruth around eight o’clock when she finished her walk or at seven if she didn’t walk. Neither woman remembers when nor how the routine started, but after years of doing it they just expected it.

  Sarah usually took the long way around the roads nearest her house. It’s a good three miles that would really cause her to breathe hard and break a sweat. Sarah felt that hiking the hills was a good way to burn a few extra calories off this “ole’ body” of hers. Anything that could do that was worth the work it took. Each year this “ole body” took more work and higher hills.

  On her return home, she would head straight for the kitchen, pour herself a cup of coffee and take it into the study where she could sit comfortably at the desk and settle in for a chat with her friend Ruth. After all, one couldn’t have a nice long chat without a hot cup of coffee. At least she didn’t think so. Coffee and the phone just seemed to go together if it was early in the morning. Just like ice tea and the phone went together if it were late afternoon. Everyone knew that. Didn’t they?

  At one time Ruth had walked too, but recently she didn’t. Her answer to that was, “I just can’t see where this is taking any of the fat off my butt. Why should I put out all of that energy so early in the morning if my body isn’t getting anything out of it? I’m certainly not going to do it for my mind.” So now her new thing was aerobics. I guess you should say she’s BACK into aerobics.

  Sarah had tried aerobics the year before, but it had only lasted one day. She had such a hard time getting to the gym that one day. It took more time to get ready to go to the class than it took to do the aerobics once she got there. Between the special tights, shirt and socks, they all wore and the way they all came with their hair combed and lipstick on. Well, she thought she was getting ready to go to work again. And that was when she decided she was going to switch to walking.

  “I’d rather walk,” she told Ruth. “I get up, put on an old pair of shorts, a tee shirt and sneakers. I grab my tape player and take off. I don’t have to worry about how I look because I don’t see anyone on the road that early and if I did, they wouldn’t look any better than I do.”

  That morning Ruth called at 6:45 just as Sarah was tying her shoes and getting ready to leave the house. She said, “I couldn’t wait for you to get back from your walk, this is much too important.” Her voice sounded different, almost like a bit of a hush to it. Maybe she didn’t want to wake George up.

  “What could be so important that you couldn’t wait an hour to tell me?” Sarah wanted to know.

  “Have you seen the New Standard?” she asked, barely giving Sarah time to put the phone closer to her ear. She was trying to figure out the tone of Ruth’s voice.

  “Mike hasn’t even gone out to get the paper yet.” Sarah told Ruth. “I think he’s in the back yard with Lucy.” Lucy is a big bouncing cloud of black fur, and she had those round sad brown eyes, typical of a Labrador Retriever. She would look at you with her head kind of cocked to one side like she knew just what you were saying. Mornings are her time with Sarah’s husband Mike. She would be waiting for him by the back door when he came out of the bedroom. He would take her out in the yard for a romp before getting the morning paper. She seemed to know that was the time she had his full attention. The rest of the day she lay at his feet getting rested for the next morning’s exercise. Her routine never varied. She didn’t look for food or to go into any other room in the morning. Just lay at attention until Mike arrived for her time and her special attention.

  Then Mike had his own routine. He would bring in the paper and get his first cup of coffee. After that he was good for the next couple of hours reading the paper and doing the crossword puzzles. Sarah sometimes laughed as she thought to herself what would happen if she one day got up, hid the coffee pot, took the paper and Lucy with her and left the house for a couple of hours before Mike got up. What would he do? Would he panic or just go into town and get a cup of coffee, the morning paper and report her and Lucy missing?

  Since Sarah usually just threw the paper up on the deck for Mike when she left for her walk in the morning, and since she hadn’t left for a walk that morning, naturally, he hadn’t gotten the paper yet. But of course she wasn’t going into that with Ruth.

  “Why, what has the paper got to do with you calling me before I got back from my walk?” She asked Ruth again. “Now I’ll never go. If I don’t go the minute I get up I don’t go, period.”

  That was a fact. Either she walked as soon as she got up or Sarah just never got around to it. She might tell herself that she was going to get her walk in that afternoon, but it just never seemed to work out. Now she wouldn’t walk until the next day. Today she didn’t even try to tell herself she would. If she wasn’t going to walk, she wasn’t going to lie to herself about it. That was dumb.

  “Well, you’re not going to believe this Sarah. I can’t believe it myself. I just knew I should have made George take Ginger to the vet yesterday and gone with you,” she started. “I had a feeling about it and I should have listened to my feelings. You know my feelings are always right.”

  Ruth has this thing about her “feelings”. Everyone knew about them. She really believes in them. She’s sure it’s something passed down from somewhere or someone in her family. Some of the time she almost had Sarah convinced there’s really something to her “feelings.” That’s some of the time. Not often and not for long. Just when she gets a weak moment.

  “What in God’s name are you talking about, girl? It’s only 6:45 and I haven’t even had my first cup of coffee,” Sarah asked her. “Just let me get one, and then you can start all over and tell me what you’re so worked up over.” She laid down the phone and prepared the coffee maker as quickly as she could, knowing that Ruth was on the other end of the line and waiting for her to pick it up again. As soon as the coffee started brewing she picked up the phone and put it to her ear as she walked to the cabinet and pulled her favorite cup out and placed it in front of the brewing coffee. Before the pot was full she poured a cup and headed for the office and the comfort of her chair.

  Yep, once she got that first cup of coffee and sat down with the phone, Sarah knew it was going to be all over as far as that walk was concerned. Oh, what the hell, she told herself, she had walked at least three miles yesterday, but she did take the long way around the box of donuts sitting on the counter when she was on her way out of the kitchen. No need for the extra calories along with not getting her exercise.

  Sarah usually didn’t drink her coffee until she got back from her walk, but since she was going to have what had begun to look like a long conversation with Ruth she would have it now She was wondering, what could get Ruth so excited this early in the morning? Not even a shoe sale at Nordstrom’s could do that and Ruth hadn’t mentioned a sale.

  “Well, I’m back,” she said, as she picked up the phone. “Now, what is all the excitement about? You sound like you just won the lotto. If you did, I’d like to borrow a million or so.”

  “No,” Ruth laughed. “If I’d have won the lotto do you think I’d be calling you on the phone? Why I’d be parked in your driveway waiting for you to go into Shreveport to go on the shopping spree of our lives.”

  “Well, then what’s so important that it couldn’t wait an hour until I got back?” Sarah asked.

  “Well,” Ruth began, “You know that little Maggie Robertson, who moved into the yellow house right down the street from me? You know, that sweet little young thing who always smiles at everyone who goes by when she’s out front working in her garden? It’s the house with the green shutters on the front windows. Next to the empty lot where they are just starting construction on the big new house”

  “Yes, I think so. Isn’t she the one who moved here from Shreveport? She works at the big new building in Tanglewield?”

/>   “Yes, that’s her. She’s the one. She was transferred here from one of the state offices I think and now she works in the county commissioner’s building. I’m not sure if she still works for the state or not. I think she changed jobs after she got transferred here. I only saw her when she was out in the yard. I guess she was still trying to get everything unpacked and moved in. She’s only been here a short time. Nobody really knows that much about her yet. And well, I guess now no one ever will.”

  Sarah was itching to go out and get the paper. She didn’t understand what Ruth meant by, “Guess now we never will.” She really wanted to find out what had happened to her. Instead, she let Ruth rattle on. After all, she did know the woman since she lives right down the street from her. It never takes Ruth long to get to know anyone who moved onto her block.

  But before explaining what she meant about Maggie, Ruth just couldn’t resist. She had to bring up the subject of her husband George again. “If George had taken Ginger to the vet the day before, THEN she would have been able to go with them to Jefferson Pool. She had a feeling something was going to happen yesterday and didn’t everyone know her feelings always came true one way or the other?” There it was again. That inherited feelings thing. Sarah listened patiently. But she was sitting on the edge of her chair and she was gripping the phone more tightly than necessary along with tapping her fingers on her coffee cup.

  Finally, she got around to the story in the paper. “Well, she continued, “yesterday they found her dead body in the rocks. “ As Sarah picked up her coffee to take a sip.

  “Dead? Rocks? What rocks? What are you are talking about? Dead, in the rocks?” Sarah asked as she lowered her coffee cup and put it on the desk.

  “The rocks out there at Jefferson Pool where you were swimming yesterday. Those rocks. Her body was found there yesterday.” Now she sat back in her chair and took a deep breath as she let it calmly sink in.

  “Well, we didn’t see anything,” said Sarah and sat up straight again in her chair. “We didn’t hear any kind of screaming and we didn’t see anything that looked like a body. Are you sure it was Jefferson Pool?” Sarah asked. Now she was confused.

  “Yes, I’m sure. Don’t you think I know how to read?” Ruth sounded a little miffed. “They didn’t find her until the late afternoon. Didn’t you say you left right after you ate lunch? Maybe she wasn’t even there yet, how do I know? It just said in the rocks. Maybe it wasn’t even near the area where you were swimming. You were really lucky Sarah.”

  “Yes, that’s right. After we had lunch we only stayed for a short time before deciding to start back early.” Sarah was thinking about the prior day. “Nobody wanted to go up into the grotto; we just stayed down on the beach.”

  “I guess you all were really lucky you weren’t there when it happened.” Ruth said, interrupting Sarah’s thoughts.

  “Well, that goes without saying. When did it happen? I mean what happened? Do they know anything at all?” Sarah questioned.

  “Not really, just that she was strangled,” Ruth said. “The paper didn’t even say how she was strangled. I mean, if it were with hands, or a belt, or whatever. That’s all the information they give.”

  Murder is a rare occurrence in this quiet little town so naturally the local paper was on it right away. All they cared about was a good headline, and how many papers it would sell. They would get every bit of print, out of it they could. Even small town papers tend to play loose with wording to make a story more sensational than it already is. And that was exactly the case here.

  The two of them talked about the story and of course Sarah had to go over every minute detail about what had happened at the pool the day before. Almost word for word. There really wasn’t anything she could tell Ruth. As far as she knew there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. It had been just a quiet day at the pool after a short hike on the trail to the river. It hadn’t been unlike any other time they had been there for a hike. That is except for the MURDER.

  “Well,” Ruth finally said with a sigh, “I guess you’ll want to read it for yourself, but you have to promise to call me later if you do think of anything new.”

  “Now what gives you the idea I’ll think of anything new?” Sarah asked. “Nothing happened. We ate, we swam and we left.”

  “ARE YOU KIDDING?” she said. “A murder happens, you were right there on the scene and you’re not going to try to find out about it. Come on, this is Ruth, your best friend, you’re talking to. I’ll bet right now your mind is already thinking, “WHO DUNNIT.”

  “Well”, Sarah thought. “It’s true; she did have a knack for being at the wrong place at the right time as they say“ But this was different. This was murder.