Since I hadn’t exactly gotten an answer from Idella, before she sped off, about when Mayor Ramelle might be getting home, I parked my bike and rang the bell, hoping Doug Ramelle, the mayor’s husband, was home at least.
Jenny Jane shook her head. As she’d been peering in the windows the whole time we’d been here, I figured she would know whether anyone was inside.
Still, I waited for a couple of minutes before abandoning the doorstep. I’d try looking for Doug at the Delphinium instead.
It was a short ride to his restaurant, which wasn’t too far from my mama’s chapel. The parking lot was jammed with cars, and there was a line out the door of customers waiting for a table.
Sunday brunch was no joke around Hitching Post. I shimmied through the crowd, and once inside I took off my sunglasses.
I nearly bumped into Johnny McGee, a young waiter who was dating one of my clients, and smiled. “Sorry about that.”
“Not a problem, Miss Carly. You looking for a table?” He glanced around the crowded room and frowned. “It might be a bit.”
“Nope, but I am looking for Doug. Is he here?”
He motioned with the jut of his chin. “Working the bar.”
“Thanks.”
With a nod of his head, he disappeared into the kitchen. I sat on a faux-leather barstool and enjoyed being ghost-free for the moment. Virgil and Jenny Jane were waiting for me out front. The bar itself wasn’t crowded—this time of day leaned toward family meals, so it was easy enough to see Hyacinth Foster at the far end of the bar, nursing something-on-the-rocks.
Doug’s blue eyes crinkled as he smiled. He was mostly bald, and what remained of his hair was pure white. Tall and solidly built, he was a former ’Bama football player, and owned quite a few restaurants in town. “The usual, Carly?”
My usual was a pomegranate martini. “Actually, can I get a club soda with cranberry juice and lime?”
“After the night you had, I thought you’d order something stronger.” Grabbing a glass, he glanced over his shoulder at Hyacinth and dropped his voice. “It’s not every day you get a front-row seat to a murder.”
Fortunately, no, but I had seen more than my fair share in the past year. Now probably wasn’t the best time to refresh his memory, however.
“It was shocking,” I said truthfully, then tried to get him to open up. “You didn’t see anything, did you?”
He slid my drink across the bar top. “Nothing at all. Barbara Jean and I were talking with your mama and daddy when it all happened.”
That’s right—I’d seen them myself. So, if Idella hadn’t known Haywood was the heir, and Barbara Jean had an airtight alibi, that left Patricia and . . . Hyacinth.
Where had she been during the murder?
“Dougie, can I get another?” she called across the bar.
“Be right back,” he said to me.
Hyacinth didn’t appear to be a woman who killed her man. She looked like a woman who was about to bury the man she loved. Grief tugged at her features, creasing her forehead and pulling down the corners of her mouth. The headband that held back her blond hair was crooked, her button-down blouse was wrinkled, her red lipstick smudged. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her not looking properly put together. It was troubling to say the least.
She’d been drinking before arriving at the Silly Goose this morning and it appeared as though she had no thoughts of stopping anytime soon.
When Doug came back, I said, “She’s not driving herself home later, is she?”
“She just called for a ride. She always does when she gets like this. Or she walks home,” he added.
Fidgety, I pushed my glass between my hands. “She does this often?”
“Often enough,” he said without really answering, which raised red flags.
I’d assumed Hyacinth had been drowning her sorrows.
But maybe she was just drowning.
If she had a drinking problem, Doug would know. “I can understand why she might drink a lot. She hasn’t had an easy time of things,” I whispered, hoping I didn’t sound overly gossipy. I mean, I was gossipy, but I didn’t want to come off that way. “Three dead husbands, and now Haywood . . .”
Storm clouds darkened his eyes, but he kept his voice low. “I don’t know about the first three, but if you ask me, Haywood Dodd got what was coming to him, sending those letters the way he did.”
Now we were getting somewhere. This was the second mention today about letters in reference to Haywood. Trying for casual, I said, “What letters are those?”
Light shined on his bare head as he ran a hand over it. He snapped a rag against the counter and said, “Doesn’t matter now.”
Squeezing a lime into my drink, I said, “I think it does matter, considering he’s dead.”
“He played with fire, Carly. If you play with fire, you get burned. Simple as that. Let it be a warning to others to mind their own damn business.”
I wasn’t sure whether he was simply blathering or if he was warning me.
It felt a little like a warning.