A Short Story
from the case files of
Oatmeal and Grits
by
Robert Spearman
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental.
Reproduction in whole or in part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to read my work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought this, and tell your friends about it.
Thanks for your support.
Special thanks to Brenda C., Jay B., Jim Y., Cindy S., and Julia Ann D. for their invaluable input.
Copyright © 2025 by Robert Spearman
All rights reserved.
Breakfast Gone Bad
Beau Billings lay dead, his face buried in his half-eaten breakfast. Outside, the drone of crickets faded with the sunrise, oblivious to the tragedy inside the house.
Clara trembled. Her fork hovered mid-air as Beau clutched his throat and collapsed into the eggs, bacon, and grits. Something was terribly wrong.
She dropped her fork and ran to Beau’s side. His clothes carried the faint, rotten-egg smell of the paper mill south of town. She shook him.
“Beau! Beau!” she shouted, shaking him again. No response. “Beau, please!” She tried to lift him from the plate, but his weight was too much for her frail frame. He slumped back into his plate, specks of grits and egg white clinging to his full, curly beard.
Hopeless, Clara knelt and rested her head on his still body, sobbing. Through tear-filled eyes, she glanced at the box of grits on the kitchen counter. She wiped her face and stared hard at it.
Could it be? Did I make a mistake? Clara jumped up from Beau’s side, rushing to the counter to examine the round cardboard box of grits. The Quaker man had a black dot on his eye—the signal that this box contained the poison meant for her aunt.
It was my mistake. I grabbed the wrong box from the pantry. Clara ran to the pantry and checked the other box Beau had purchased the day before. To her shock, the second box was opened and also had a black dot on the Quaker man’s eye.
Oh, no! I saw the dot on the first box and knew it had poison. I just assumed the second box was safe. Hurrying too much, trying to get breakfast finished before Beau returned from work. I never even checked for the dot on the second box.
Clara, twenty-five years old and five years younger than her brother, adored him. When her parents died in an auto crash when they were just teens, he comforted her and became her guardian. Without a home, they came to live with their aunts Vestal and Ruby Lee in their large, old, dogtrot-style home.
Upon arriving at their house, the aunts began treating Beau and Clara as servants, demanding that Clara do all the cleaning and cooking and that Beau help with their enormous pecan orchard.
Anxious to leave the cruel taskmasters her aunts had become, she escaped by marrying early at nineteen. When her ugly, contentious divorce ended, she came begging her way back to the supposed safety of her aunts’ house and the protection of her older brother.
Unsure of what to do, Clara rubbed her dead brother’s back. Tears streamed down her face. The only sounds in the room came from the kitchen clock and the whining drone of the refrigerator.
Tick, tick, hum.
She patted his back once more, turned, and left the kitchen. She wanted to run and never look back, but she knew she had to take care of her brother, even in his death.
Clara looked up and down the wide hall of this old house. The walls seemed to be closing in on her, trying to trap her—just like the life she had come to know since her parents died, leaving her and Beau to live here as teenagers.
Marriage was meant to be my salvation from all this. Instead, I just exchanged one prison for another. Why did I come back here? Nothing to do every day but cook and do laundry while Beau worked at night at the mills and then slaved in the pecan orchard after his shift. He barely had time to do anything but sleep. It was what Ruby Lee demanded. This life … so unbearable after Aunt Vestal died. She was the only one who loved us. Why didn’t I just keep running after the divorce?
The only thing that this place had to offer was the love of her brother Beau and that of her Aunt Vestal. Now, they were both gone.
She longed for her Aunt Vestal, her comfort, her sage advice. Instead of turning right from the kitchen toward the old house’s front rooms, she drifted left—past the open door which led to the house’s original back porch—into the enclosed den and sunroom her aunts had both cherished. The shelves still held Vestal’s mason jars, her watermelon rind pickles, and beets glowing like stained glass in the afternoon light.
A year earlier, her Aunt Ruby Lee had enclosed the back porch with an extended modern roof and a curved brick wall at the very back of the room. In the center of the wall was a wood stove insert to keep the room warm during the South Georgia winters.
Clara sat in her Aunt Vestal’s rocker and struggled with what to do next. Her Aunt Vestal had died of a heart attack in this very rocker six months earlier. A crocheted comforter draped the back of the antique rocker. Clara buried her face in the comforter and took a deep breath. She could still smell the scent of her aunt’s lilac perfume on the crocheted cotton. She wept again.
Oh, Aunt Vestal, if you were only here. You could tell me what to do. None of this would have ever happened if Ruby Lee’s had been more kind and gracious. She tried to cheat us out of our inheritance. Beau thought this would work. What should I do? Run? I have no money. I have no choice but to confess.
She reached for the telephone on the table beside the rocker and did the wisest thing she had ever done in her miserable life: she picked up the phone and called the sheriff.
Tick, tick, hum.
The idea had come to Beau early one morning as he sat on the front porch, gulping down his fourth cup of a very sweet, very black coffee. He waited for the next jolt of caffeine to kick in and stared out at the sun just breaking the horizon through the grove of pecan trees.
Ruby Lee finished her breakfast and moved to the crochet room at the back of the house to work on finishing her latest patchwork quilt creation for the upcoming Hahira Honeybee Festival. Meanwhile, Clara cleared and washed the breakfast dishes.
Beau slipped through the screen front door of the house and walked to the kitchen. Clara noticed him standing in the doorway, and he motioned for her to follow him. He strolled out the front door and to the reflecting pool and wall beyond the stoop in the front of the house.
The wall, an ivy-covered, curved brick addition of Ruby Lee’s, matched the back wall of the house enclosing the entire structure like a pair of matching bookends. A small wrought iron bench sat just inside the curved wall that gave a view of the small goldfish pond and the front porch of the old house. Beau motioned for Clara to take a seat and leaned in and whispered.
Clara sat beside him, fidgeting with the chipping polish on her fingernails, her nervous energy filling the silence.
“You know what we gotta do, don’t ya?” Beau finally said, his voice a whisper but firm.
Clara looked up, her brows raised like question marks. “What’re you talkin’ about, Beau?”
“We can’t wait for Aunt Ruby to just keel over. The woman’s built like an oak tree. She’ll outlive us both if we don’t do somethin’.”
Clara’s eyes widened. “You mean…?”
“I mean we help her along,” Beau said, leaning forward, his voice conspiratorial. “We know she eats grits every morning. All we gotta do is mix a little somethin’ extra in the pot.”
“Poison?” Clara asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Rat poison,” Beau confirmed. “It’ll look like an accident. Nobody’ll suspect a thing.”
Clara swallowed hard, her hands trembling. “But what if—what if we get caught?”
“We won’t,” Beau said confidently. “We’ll make sure of it. You leave the details to me. I’ll head into Valdosta tomorrow to buy the poison. We’ll let her have the joy of her little Honeybee parade on Saturday, and then we’ll let her eat her final breakfast on Sunday.”
“Won’t they do an autopsy?” asked Clara.
“Nah, not at her age. They’ll just think it was a heart attack,” Beau replied. “Now don’t go getting all worked up, Clara. Just leave the details to me.”
Meanwhile, in the back room, Ruby Lee finished another row on her current project—a crocheted afghan of the history of Hahira, and smiled. When will you foolish kids ever learn? The only secrets in this house are mine.
Tick, tick, hum.
Eager to set his plan in motion, Beau waited at the Winn-Dixie in the nearby Valdosta for the doors to open. He grabbed a cart and headed straight to the cereal aisle, where he grabbed two boxes of their usual brand of grits.
Clara had given him a shopping list the night before. Beau filled his cart with the items and proceeded to checkout. There, he spotted a black marker pen hanging from one of the pegs and added it to the cart.
On the way back to Hahira, he stopped by Bull’s Hardware. The store appeared closed. A faded yellow sign sat propped in the window with the slogan: “We Sell Hardware, and That’s No Bull.” Beau peered in through smoky gray windows that hadn’t been washed in decades. The store still appeared closed, but he thought he detected some movement inside.
Still not convinced, he tried the door, and it creaked open. Inside, an old, potbellied door closer slammed shut the door behind him. Rising from his cane-backed rocking chair was the ancient Mr. Bull, a short, grizzled, old man wearing a dirty, flat-white cap. He seemed annoyed at the interruption. Reaching up, he pulled a cotton string cord hanging from one of the fluorescent lights on the ceiling. The light buzzed, flickered, and sputtered to life.
“Somethin’ I can help ya with?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. I’ve got trouble with rats. Traps ain’t working, and that stuff they sell at the other stores just don’t seem to be doing the job,” Beau said, knowing the “other stores” comment would get the response he needed.
“That’s ’cause them other stores ain’t got what it takes to git rid of rats, but I do,” the old man said with pride. “The gubbimint outlawed the good stuff, but I still got some of it left. Aw, not just some, but enough to kill every dadgum rat in the state. Give me a minute.”
Mr. Bull walked to the back of the store, turning on strips of fluorescent lights as he went. He returned, pulling each cord in succession until he reached the front, leaving the back of the store in almost total darkness. He handed Beau a small blue packet marked sodium cyanide.
“Five dollars,” he said.
As Beau headed out, Bull called after him, “Now you be careful with that stuff. The gubbimint didn’t ban it for no reason.”
Clara waited on the front porch when he returned.
“Get everything?” she asked from just outside the front door.
Beau nodded. “Where is she?” he whispered, noticing his aunt’s pickup truck in the driveway.
“She’s inside, in the crochet room.” Clara said. “What’s the plan?”
“I’m going to the shed to mix the poison with the grits,” Beau said. “You mentioned we were almost out, so I bought an extra box. Got a black marker, too. I’ll put a black dot on the Quaker man’s eye of the poisoned box. Once she leaves, I’ll move everything from the shed to the pantry. Just don’t get the boxes confused when you cook ’em. Old man Bull says this stuff is dangerous,” Beau said.
“Trust me, I won’t,” Clara said.
Beau left the porch and moved down the side of the house opposite the driveway to avoid his aunt. Inside the shed, he opened one box of grits and emptied some of its contents behind the shed onto the dirt. Then he mixed the packet of rat poison he had purchased into the box of grits using his pocketknife blade. After removing the black marker from its packaging, he put a black dot on the eye of the Quaker man on the box of grits.
He returned the box to the grocery bag. When he heard his aunt’s truck start, he peered out of the shed to see her pull out of the driveway beside the house and onto the main drive leading away from the plantation. He left the shed and walked through the back door of the house, into the crochet room, and turned right into the kitchen. He proceeded into the small pantry at the back of the kitchen and placed the boxes of grits and the other items from his shopping trip on the shelf.
By this time, Clara had joined him in the kitchen. As she peered into the pantry, he showed her his marking on the box. “Just to be sure!” he said.
He returned to the shed to dispose of the packet of poison. Burning it is probably best. No evidence, just like on TV.
Beau stepped through the creaky front door, his boots scuffing the worn wooden floor. Dawn’s first rays broke over Hahira as he returned home from his grueling night shift at the mill. Though his shoulders sagged with exhaustion, the smell of breakfast lifted his spirits. The aroma of sizzling bacon, freshly brewed coffee, and buttery grits wafted from the kitchen, wrapping around him like a warm hug on a winter’s day.
Ruby Lee had left early that morning, her sharp voice rallying the other town ladies as they prepared to take part in the Honeybee Festival parade. Too busy clucking with the old hens of Hahira, as Beau often joked, she’d skipped breakfast entirely.
“Clara? That you?” Beau called, his voice gravelly from the long night.
“In here,” Clara called from the kitchen.
Beau followed the scent, his stomach growling in anticipation. When he entered the kitchen, he was greeted by the sight of a table laden with food. Clara’s familiar touch was evident in the arrangement, a clear reflection of the time she spent in the kitchen perfecting meals for the family. Crispy bacon piled high on a plate, fluffy scrambled eggs glistening with melted cheese, golden toast slathered with butter. In the center of it all, a steaming bowl of grits topped with a generous pat of butter that was melting into creamy perfection.
“Well, I’ll be,” Beau said, his face breaking into a rare smile. “This is an unexpected surprise.”
Clara looked up from her seat, her face pale and drawn. “Figured you’d be hungry after work. Ruby Lee left early, so I figured we’d spend our last day of captivity with a good breakfast.”
They both laughed.
“Hungry as a hog at slop time,” Beau said, pulling out a chair and plopping down. He grabbed a plate and started piling it high with food.
Clara nodded absently, barely noticing Beau’s eager appetite. Her thoughts were still on their plans for the next morning.
Beau frowned, his fork paused midair. “What’s wrong with you? You’re gonna need to help me finish all this.” He scooped a heaping spoonful onto his plate. “Come on now, dig in, I’m starvin’.”
“Nothing. I guess I am just having second thoughts about all of this. I mean, she has given us a home, and we can wait. She’s not going to live forever,” Clara said.
“Yeah, and neither are we,” Beau said. “Don’t you want some money so we can live a little? Plus, it ain’t really about the money, and you know it. She’s treated us like yard dogs ever since we came to live here.”
Beau shoveled a heaping spoonful of grits into his mouth, followed by another. Smacking his lips, he reached for his coffee, adding two heaping spoonfuls of sugar from the canister on the counter.
He cupped the coffee mug in his hands. “Too hot,” he muttered, turning back to his breakfast while the coffee cooled.
Stirring it in a weary daze, he waited a while longer for it to cool, then took a big gulp, not even pausing to savor the coffee.
Within seconds, Beau clutched his throat. His body convulsed, rattling the chair beneath him. His hands grabbed the edge of the old, rough-sawn dining table seeking to steady himself. Then his face plunged forward into his plate, body slumping, face buried in the half-eaten remnants of breakfast.
Clara jumped up and rushed to her brother’s side. She shook him, desperately trying to revive him. It was useless. The house stood eerily silent except for the faint hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the kitchen clock. Clara’s weeping and moaning broke the otherwise stillness of the kitchen.
This infernal plan of ours killed my brother.
Sheriff Tovey paced in the open office of the sheriff’s department while waiting on the detectives to arrive from their usual breakfast stop. They both could tell something was up by his agitation and constant glancing at his watch.
“What’s shakin’?” asked Bud Hammontree, a toothpick hanging from the corner of his mouth.
“Big trouble in little old Hahira,” said the sheriff. “Beau Billings is dead, and Clara’s confessed to it. Rat poison in his grits, she claims. Ruby Lee doesn’t know yet—she’s flitting around Hahira for the Honeybee Parade. I need you boys to get up there, get the skinny, and get it wrapped up before Ruby Lee finds out. Clara called me directly, so it’s just between us four.”
Tovey placed a lot of faith in his detectives. Jim “Oatmeal” Miller and Bud “Grits” Hammontree were as different as their nicknames suggested, yet together they formed the backbone of the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Department Detective Squad. Miller, a Northern transplant with a sharp intellect and a knack for puzzles, brought the analytical edge. Hammontree, a Georgia native with a folksy charm and a flair for connecting with the locals, brought balance and heart to the partnership. The duo had solved their fair share of cases, from petty thefts to convoluted mysteries, all with a mix of wit, grit, and undeniable chemistry.
The deputies at the sheriff’s department had coined those nicknames years ago in good fun. After countless solved cases, the ribbing and the nicknames stopped, and now everyone just referred to them as Miller and Bud.
Miller stopped by the department’s small forensic lab—really just a converted broom. Their budget did not allow for a forensics department like the big cities of Atlanta and Macon. The detectives had to do all the forensic work themselves. Miller scanned the various vials and bottles on the shelves and then settled on an amber-colored vial with a rubber-topped dropper. He placed the vial in his inside coat pocket and gave Bud the sign to go.
“I sure hope we can get this wrapped up before Ruby Lee finds out. You’ve never met her before, but she is a living tornado. I’ve heard that during one of her recent land purchases, by the time the deal was finished, she had old man Gaskins to the point of tears. Basically, just stole his land from him. I don’t want to deal with her at all, but it seems like an open-and-shut case, right, Jim?” Bud asked.
Miller didn’t answer. Nothing is ever open and shut.
Bud slid behind the wheel while Miller settled into the passenger seat.
“Lights?” Bud asked.
“Sure, why not?” Miller said. Bud flicked on the police lights behind the front grill of the unmarked car and accelerated.
“So what’s Tovey’s story with Ruby Lee?” Miller asked. “Why’s he so nervous?”
“Well, we all went through high school with her,” Bud said. “She was trouble, bigger trouble now. After graduation, she headed to Augusta for pharmacy school, planning to come back and open a drugstore. But something happened her final year—rumor she had an affair with one of the professors. Apparently, his wife found out and threatened to report her to the dean of the college. She left, but not before shattering almost every piece of lab equipment in the classroom’s lab.”
“So she came crawling back to Hahira?” Miller asked.
“No, not right away,” Bud said. “Her sister Vestal pushed her toward Athens and UGA instead. She got a degree in botany and then came back to work the pecan orchard with Vestal. She’s even developed many new varieties of pecans, got patents and everything.”
“You said that she is bigger trouble now. What did you mean by that?”
“Ever since she got back, she’s been on a land-grabbing spree with that snake Bill Tade—her lawyer and rumored bedroom companion,” Bud said, his lip curling. “They’ve bullied widows into selling, snatched up properties at tax auctions. Turned a ten-acre pecan orchard into eight acres of empire. Got all of north Lowndes County shakin’ in their boots. The Hahira blue-bloods didn’t want her in their circle, but fear’s a powerful motivator—stronger than old money. Now she’s even grand marshall of tomorrow’s Honeybee Parade. ”
They rode in silence while Miller studied the surrounding landscape on their way to Hahira, fifteen miles north.
“Vestal was the good one,” Bud said, breaking the silence.
“Vestal?” Miller asked.
“Ruby Lee’s older sister,” Bud said. “Passed away about six months ago from a heart attack, right there in her house back in her sewing room. She was a kind soul, content with what she had, never wanted more. Great lady.”
Ten minutes later, they pulled into the Billings’ driveway.
They walked up onto the porch that bordered the wide front of the old house. Miller, always anxious to get started, reached for the handle of the screen front door.
“You’re not going to wait for the sheriff?” Bud asked.
“No. Kind of anxious to get started. I thought this was a rush case. You coming in?”
“I’ll wait out here for the sheriff,” said Bud, sitting on the wrought-iron bench that backed up against the curved brick wall. From here Bud could gaze into the goldfish pond and the wide porch of the old house. “I think that’s his car pulling down the driveway now.”
Miller shrugged and walked up the steps into the house. The wide corridor leading from front to back was lined with antiques and curio cabinets filled with knickknacks. He peered through the pair of French doors leading into the living room on the left. He opened each door down the right side of the corridor and glanced in each room. The last two doors on the corridor were locked.
Outside, Bud waited as Sheriff Tovey arrived. “Where’s Miller?” he asked. “What are those, goldfish?”
“Inside, Sheriff,” said Bud. His voice dropped to a faint whisper. “You know how persnickety he is.”
Miller paused for a moment as he completed his inspection, arriving at the kitchen at the rear of the house. He heard the sheriff and Bud chatting outside. Miller smiled and almost laughed.
Tovey and Bud moved inside and joined Miller at the kitchen door.
When they all entered the kitchen, Clara was still in a daze, staring blankly at Beau’s body. “It’s all my fault,” she sighed as Bud approached.
“What’s your fault?” Miller asked, his voice calm but probing.
“We had a plan, and something went wrong. I cooked the wrong grits,” Clara stammered, tears filling her eyes. “They were supposed to be for her. Beau and I… we were gonna kill Aunt Ruby. Poison her grits. But I’ve messed up somehow. Oh Lord, what have I done?”
Miller, Hammontree, and Tovey exchanged glances.
“You’re saying you poisoned the grits?” Tovey asked.
“Yes,” Clara admitted, her shoulders slumping. “Beau said it’d be easy—just a little rat poison. I don’t know how it went wrong.”
“What kind of rat poison?” Miller asked.
“I’m not sure. He showed me a blue packet and said the poison was in there. He went out back to the shed to mix it. He bought two boxes of grits and marked the poisoned one with a black mark. He showed me the mark to be sure that this wouldn’t happen. When I went to check in the pantry later, both boxes had been opened and there was a black mark on each one of them. I don’t know how this went so terribly wrong, but I swear on my mama’s grave I didn’t mean to kill my brother.”
Miller looked down at the table and at Beau’s corpse. He reached down and pulled Beau’s head away from the bowl of uneaten grits. Miller took Beau’s spoon and shoveled out some of the cold, congealed grits, then moved over to the kitchen sink with the spoon of grits and placed the spoon in the sink. He took the amber vial from inside his pocket and placed a few drops of the solution onto the grits.
“Hmmm,” Miller muttered under his breath. “Please show me the boxes of grits.”
Clara went to the pantry and returned with both boxes. She placed them on the counter near the sink. Miller tested each box with the solution from the amber vial. He shook his head and sighed. His back was turned to the others in the kitchen. He slouched over the counter like a mad scientist. The others could not see what he was doing. When he turned back around, he was frowning.
“Miss Clara,” said Miller. “I need you to tell me everything that happened at breakfast, from the time you cooked until the time this happened.”
She walked through the morning with them. How she went into the pantry and, noticing the black mark on the first box, just reached for the second box and did not check for a mark. “I saw the mark on the first box. I thought that was it. I didn’t bother to check the second box.”
Then she went on to explain how her aunt had decided to skip breakfast with them because she was needed in town to help with the Honeybee Festival activities. She then told how Beau came home from work, prepared his coffee, and then died after eating a few spoonfuls of grits.
“How did he take his coffee?” asked Miller.
“Black with two spoons of sugar.”
“Hmm,” said Miller with a glint in his eye. “Was he a sipper or a gulper?”
“Oh, most definitely a gulper. He liked to drink his coffee sweet, lukewarm and all in one gulp. He didn’t like the taste of coffee as much as the energy it gave him. My aunts often scolded him about this and his table manners.”
“Excuse me,” said Miller as he turned and went back to work at the kitchen counter. After a few moments, he turned to face everyone again, his face beaming with a grin.
“And I am assuming that the only conversations you and Beau had about this plan were outside on the porch?” asked Miller.
“Yes, that’s right, but how did you know?” Clara asked. The look on her face was one of utter astonishment. Tovey and Hammontree had the same look on their faces.
“I’ll tell you later,” said Miller as he smiled.
“Where did Beau mix the poison?” asked Miller.
“Outside in the shed,” said Clara.
“Will you please take me there? In the meantime, Sheriff, do you think we could get the undertaker to come and remove the body? Ask him to please be discreet and not to mention this to anyone,” said Miller.
The sheriff nodded in understanding.
“Now, miss,” said Miller, “let’s go have a look at that shed.”
Clara patted her dead brother on the back and walked out the kitchen door with Miller following. She turned left into the crochet room.
“What’s this?” asked Miller.
“Oh, we call it the crochet room. My aunts spent a lot of time here crocheting and chatting. My Aunt Vestal died in this room,” said Clara. She wiped a tear from her eye.
“This way,” she said and pointed to a small door in the right corner of the room.
Miller and Clara walked through the door. Miller stared in amazement at the shed. It wasn’t a shed at all but a greenhouse and workspace about half the size of a football field. Rows of pecan saplings grew from huge plastic pots lined up like soldiers in a row. Further ahead was another door and another greenhouse.
“What’s in there?” asked Miller, pointing at the door.
“That’s Aunt Ruby Lee’s nursery. She grows orchids and botanicals in there. It’s quite her hobby when she’s not trying to develop a new variety of pecan.”
Miller walked over to the locked door.
“You have a key to this?” he asked.
“Oh, no, sir. Aunt Ruby Lee would not think of giving a key to me or anyone else. Those plants are like her babies.”
“Well, in light of the current situation, I think forcing the door open shouldn’t be a problem. But just to be sure, how about running back into the house and getting the sheriff. I want to get his approval before I do something too severe.”
Clara left and returned with the sheriff a minute later.
“Sheriff, okay to force this door?” asked Miller. “I didn’t want to do it without your nod.”
“Fine by me. I’ll help,” replied Sheriff Tovey.
Miller and Tovey applied their shoulders to the door, and it sprung open. Inside was another greenhouse, about half the size of the previous room. Three rows were lined with orchids hanging from the ceiling. The last row was of potted plants.
“I know these are orchids, but what are these?” he asked, pointing toward the rows of potted plants.
“It’s what she calls botanicals.”
He walked down the row containing the botanicals and stopped at each plant. He stopped at one plant and gave it a long look.
“Clara, Sheriff, see if you can locate a pair of nursery gloves, some pruning shears, and a bag.”
Clara and Tovey scurried about in the greenhouse looking for the items like kids on a scavenger hunt. Minutes later, they returned with the items.
Miller took the gloves and shears from Tovey and he instructed him to open the small paper bag they had found. Miller walked up to a plant. Dark amethyst, hood-shaped blooms added to the mystery of this plant. Clara and Tovey had never seen anything like it. Miller had his suspicions but remained silent. He folded the bag and placed it in his jacket pocket.
Clara looked at the sheriff, perplexed.
The sheriff mouthed the words, “Give it time.” He smiled. He knew his genius detective was on the scent, although none of this made sense to him.
While Miller was collecting the blooms from the plant, he spotted a reflection in the back far corner of the orchid greenhouse. He walked back to where he spied the glint of sunlight. In this corner, he found a complete lab assembly with beakers and distillation equipment. Sitting on the bench were two eyedropper vials. One was marked, “St. John’s Wort Tincture” and the other was marked, “RL Special Tincture.” He examined each of the bottles before secreting them away into his jacket pocket.
He turned and looked at Clara and Tovey. “I have seen enough, and then some,” said Miller. They walked back toward the main house.
Miller looked over at Sheriff Tovey. “Do you think you could spare a squad car from the festival to swing by here?”
Tovey nodded. “I can have one here in five minutes. Why, are we arresting her? If we are, you can just take her back in your car or in mine.”
“Nope, not arresting her because she didn’t kill her brother, but I think I know who did. Let’s all step out on the porch and sit in one of those nice, high-backed rockers while we wait on the deputy.”
Miller glanced at his watch. It was only 10 a.m. The parade was due to start at 1.
A few moments later, a sheriff’s patrol car pulled down the long drive and into the driveway. A uniformed deputy got out of the car and walked up the wide steps to the porch.
“Sheriff, officers,” he acknowledged them all with a tip of the hat. “What do you need?” he asked, directing his question toward Tovey.
“It was me who needed you,” Miller spoke up. “Follow me.”
Miller walked down the steps and spoke with the deputy. He then removed a wallet and withdrew some money, which he handed to the deputy. The patrol car sped off and, in less than fifteen minutes, returned. The deputy exited the cruiser with a large, paper grocery bag. He didn’t walk onto the porch but instead walked down the driveway toward the back of the house. Miller left the porch and followed him. In less than a minute, the deputy returned to his patrol car and left. Miller rejoined the rest of the folks on the porch.
“Sheriff, I need you to handcuff Clara,” said Miller.
“But, but, I thought you said I was innocent,” said Clara.
“You are, young lady,” said Miller. “Believe me, they won’t be on long. This is just to flush out the real killer.” Miller smiled.
Tovey and Bud both looked confused, but the sheriff did as Miller requested and handcuffed Clara with her hands in front of her.
“What now, Professor?” asked Bud. Bud would often call Miller that when he knew he had a case solved.
“Now we wait. The fireworks are about to begin, and the parade hasn’t even started,” said Miller with a hearty laugh.
Jim Miller peered down the long driveway. “Here comes trouble, and right on cue,” he said. Tovey and Bud both noticed the pickup truck barreling down the driveway. Jim nodded at Bud, and they both left the porch and went inside the house.
Ruby Lee slammed on the brakes and brought the pickup truck to an abrupt stop in her driveway. Behind her pickup, a sheriff’s patrol car pulled in with its lights flashing. She ran up the steps to the porch to Tovey. Tovey was much taller than the older woman, but she stood defiant, toe-to-toe with the sheriff.
The sheriff said something to the deputy and the deputy retired to the inside of the house.
“What’s going on here, Tovey?” Ruby Lee asked. “What is this nonsense about Beau being dead?” She glanced over at Clara. “Oh, darling, them lockup bracelets you’re wearing don’t match your fake earrings. So I am guessing you’re the guilty party. What did you do it for? Your half of the inheritance?”
Clara didn’t answer. She lowered her head.
At that moment, the front screen door opened, and Bud walked out carrying a tray of six glasses of ice. He set them down on the small wicker table on the porch. Miller followed him out, holding a pitcher of tea and a pitcher of water, which he placed beside the glasses.
“Well, it’s warmed up nicely today for an autumn day. I’m parched, so I thought I would make us a big pitcher of sweet tea. You guys know I’m from the North, so it has taken me a while to perfect the recipe, but now I know the trick is in the sugar. Got to add lots of sugar to make it really Southern. Shall we all try a glass?” said Miller. He poured tea into the glasses as he spoke.
Tick, tick, hum.
Ruby Lee’s face turned white. “I’m not really that thirsty. I just had a glass of lemonade at the Honeybee Festival before I came here.”
As rehearsed, Tovey said, “Well now, Miss Ruby Lee, unless you’ve suddenly become diabetic, I must insist that you drink a glass of tea with us.”
Ruby Lee’s face tightened. “No, not thirsty,” she insisted. “Besides, I am diabetic.”
Tick, tick, hum.
“I thought you might have sugar problems,” Miller smirked. “So how about a cool glass of water instead? Maybe with a drop or two of your special tincture,” said Miller as he pulled the bottle from his coat pocket. “Which will it be, tea or water?” Miller removed the dropper from the bottle and added two drops to a glass of water.
Her eyes widened in amazement. “Neither! I’ll drink neither and you can’t force me to.”
“You drink with us right now, or go to jail. It’s up to you,” said Tovey.
Tick, tick, hum.
She looked at the glasses. She reached down and took the water glass and moved it toward her lips. Her lips quivered but her stare at Tovey was defiant. She lowered the glass and placed it back on the table.
Ruby Lee outstretched her hands. “I may leave here in handcuffs, but I ain’t leaving here in a hearse.”
“I’ll see you in court!” shouted Ruby Lee as she was led away to the deputy’s car.
“I’ll see you in the chair,” Tovey shouted back.
Tovey looked at Miller. “I’ve got questions that need to be answered.”
Miller took a long sip of the iced tea in front of him. Tovey’s eyes widened.
“Ain’t that poisonous?” he asked.
“Nah, this is from Country Love in town. They make the best iced tea around. I had the deputy go buy a gallon for our purposes today. You don’t want to be anywhere near the sugar in that house. It’s full of potassium cyanide.”
“So, out with it. How did you figure it out, Professor?” Bud asked.
Miller started, “It did seem open and shut. But once I went inside the house, I had a good idea of what might have happened. This old house is an acoustical marvel. Anything you say out there at that goldfish pond or on this porch—no matter how quiet, no matter how much of a whisper—is amplified by that curved brick wall, broadcast down that hall, and amplified again by the curved wall in the back. I speculated that Ruby Lee overheard their planning and decided to turn the tables on them. Clara would confess to the killing, and Ruby Lee could walk away free. I guess this is where me being persnickety pays off, right, Bud?”
Bud blushed at the fact that he had been overheard.
Miller continued, “Ruby Lee hoped that Clara would confess and there would be no need to check anything. Since the supposed poison was rat poison, I figured it could only be one thing. So, I brought a test chemical with me today to check for the presence of cyanide. It’s an old poison, but you can still find some in the older farm supplies and hardware stores. The grits on Beau’s plate were not poisoned. Only one box of grits contained poison but it was full. The grits Clara used for breakfast did not contain poison. Clara walked me through Beau’s breakfast routine and it was common for him to drink sugary, sweet coffee every morning. Clara said that Beau didn’t just sip coffee but guzzled it. My tests had already confirmed that there was cyanide in the sugar, Beau’s coffee-drinking habits made it even more plausible.”
“Well then why didn’t Ruby Lee just use the poisoned grits to kill Beau?” asked Bud.
“Remember how you told me that she was a former pharmacy student at the Medical College of Georgia?”
Bud nodded.
“Well, she knew that a helping of cyanide in a serving of grits would not be enough to kill anyone. It wouldn’t be enough and it would be immediately detectable after a small spoonful. Ruby Lee knew Beau’s coffee-drinking habit of guzzling sweet, warm coffee. It would be enough to deliver a lethal dose and he would not have noticed the taste until after it was too late.”
“And what of that little bottle of liquid?” asked Tovey.
“Aconitine. It’s made from the monkshood flower. That stuff is fast and fatal. A person poisoned with this will appear to have died from a heart attack.”
Tovey fidgeted, “Wait, are you saying?”
“Yes, I am saying that she killed Vestal too with this,” he said, lifting the brown amber bottle. “Now, I’m not a hammer wanting to hit every nail I see but my guess is that if you dig up some of the dead landowners around you might find this poison in their autopsies. Just a guess, a hunch.”
Tovey and Bud’s mouths hung open in amazement. “Jim, you’ve done it again. Before you came along, we would have taken Clara’s confession, and she’d be riding in that squad car now instead of Ruby Lee,” said Tovey.
Tovey glanced at Clara and said, “Now, little lady, I’m sure you don’t want to spend the night here all alone in that house. I think we can spare enough from the department’s budget to put you up in Valdosta while you sort all this out. Boys, take her back into town and find her a place. Bill it to the department. Meanwhile, I’ll head over to the parade—I hear they’re looking for a new grand marshal.”
They all rose. Miller pushed open the front screen door, reached through the doorway to find the light switch, and flicked it off. The old house went dark.
Tick, tick, hum.
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