Fran Rizer - Callie Parrish 05 - Mother Hubbard Has a Corpse in the Cupboard by Fran Rizer Page A

was probably hungry, so I decided to stop somewhere and pick up something for her.
     
    • • •
     
    Big black letters across the top of the St. Mary News in the newspaper dispenser at the Waffle House asked, “DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN?” I didn’t recognize the face, but I’d seen him before.
    I dropped the necessary quarters into the coin slot, took out a newspaper, and read it while the cook prepared a pecan waffle to go. Rizzie loves waffles, and the Waffle House serves them, hot and freshly cooked, any time day or night.
    Folks look different when they’re dead, but the man in the picture was deceased when I first saw him. The reason his face wasn’t familiar to me was because he’d been lying face-down at Mother Hubbard’s Beer Garden. The article told a lot that I already knew—when and where the body was found and that he’d been wearing a Middleton’s Midway jacket.
    Thank heaven the paper didn’t say I was the one who found him. Sometimes I get more publicity than the Middletons or I want when I do something like finding a dead body or shooting someone. What I didn’t already know was that the medical examiner who’d performed the autopsy in Charleston said the decedent was between eighteen and twenty-three and had died of a gunshot wound in his back. He’d had no identification on him, and so far, law enforcement hadn’t located anyone who recognized him.
    When the server gave me the bag with Rizzie’s waffle in its Styrofoam tray, I wished I’d ordered one for me, too. I hadn’t because I planned to either stop and eat after I picked up Tyrone or go to a drive-through on the way home. I put the bag on the back seat, hoping that would lessen the cake-like aroma and make me less tempted to go back and buy a waffle for myself before I reached Healing Heart Medical Center.
    When James Brown started singing, I told myself aloud, “Change that today! ” Though I expected the call to be from Rizzie, Jane, or Daddy, the voice on the line was Sheriff Wayne Harmon. I put my cell on speaker phone in case he asked me if I was driving while we talked.
    “Callie, we have a problem that I need to tell Rizzie about, but I want to discuss it with you before I talk to her. How’s her grandmother?”
    “Still waiting to have the hip replacement surgery. What do you want to talk to Rizzie about?”
    “Her van. It seems that it didn’t catch fire because of damage to the engine. One of the firemen who put it out called and suggested I have it checked further. Said the more he thought about it, he figures it was arson.”
    “Arson? Rizzie said she and Tyrone were sitting on the curb waiting for a tow truck when flames shot out.”
    “I know, but when the fire marshall went to the garage and checked the van, he found evidence that someone threw a Molotov cocktail on the front seat.”
    “Molotov cocktail?”
    “A homemade fire bomb.”
    “I know what it is. I just can’t imagine why anyone would do that or how they would do it with Rizzie and Tyrone sitting across the lot.”
    “That’s why I want to talk to Rizzie, but I’m hesitant to tell her when her grandmother’s condition is so serious.”
    “But if someone did that on purpose, Rizzie could be in danger. I think you have to tell her, Wayne.”
    “I’d like you there when I talk to her.”
    “I’m headed there now.”
    “I’m right behind you.”
    I thought he’d been speaking figuratively, but when I glanced into my rearview mirror, I saw the sheriff’s tan cruiser.
     
     

 
     
    7
     
     
    Maum looked awful, and Rizzie didn’t look much better. Maum’s eyes and cheeks had sunk into her face, and I wondered if she were dehydrating, but the IV solutions she was receiving should be taking care of that. The room felt like an oven, and sweat popped out on my forehead immediately, just like on Rizzie’s. Maum was covered in several blankets pulled up to her chin and tucked around her neck.
    “Where’s Tyrone?” I asked. He wasn’t