Free Soup...Er...Myrtle!: A Myrtle Crumb Mystery (Myrtle Crumb Mystery Series) by Gayle Trent Page A

called Matlock to come
back in. He didn’t want to mind me, so I bribed him with a doggie cookie shaped
like a lion.
    Who in the world had come up with the idea of making
doggie cookies that looked like lions, bears, chickens, and bunnies?
Furthermore, reckon they made good money off of that concept? I’d bought a box.
And Matlock liked them, so I’d buy more when he ran out. I guessed the doggie
cookie makers did make decent money.
    I got me a glass of water and went to the living room to
kick my shoes off and put my feet up. Frank or Heather? Heather or Frank? One
of them had to be the identity thief. But, then, neither one of them
looked like they had two nickels to rub together. If I was robbing folks, I’d
have something nice to show for it. I mean, look at what a big risk this
identity thief was taking. That person could get arrested, have his or her
reputation ruined, get talked about ugly in the newspaper, have to eat old
nasty prison food, wear those horrible jumpsuits that don’t flatter a soul….
It’d be awful.
    I took a drink of my water and thought about it some
more. Matlock ambled into the living room and lay on the floor in front of the
couch.
    What if the thief wasn’t after material comforts? I
remember hearing tell of a show where this man sold drugs so he could pay for
cancer treatments. It could be something like that.
    I was feeling sad over the possibility that Heather or
Frank could have some bad disease when the phone rang. I nearly jumped out of
my skin. Thank goodness, I didn’t spill my water. I put the glass on a coaster
on the coffee table before answering the phone.
    Despite getting jarred out of a terrible thought where
Heather’s teary-eyed daughters were asking me if they were gonna be orphans, I
answered the phone nicely. Anything but nice was the goon on the other
end. It was Tansie, and she was madder than an old wet hen and clucking twice
as loud and fast.
    “What’ve you done to my sister, Myrtle Crumb? You’ve
brainwashed her or something—that’s what you’ve done! She thinks she’s some
kind of detective or something! She even wants to sign up for the police
department’s ride-along program…like she’s some kind of—“
    “Melvia’s a grown woman,” I interrupted calmly. “She can
do whatever she wants.” And then I hung up on her.
    “Wonder how she liked them apples, Matlock?”
    He thumped his tail.
    I laughed and laughed…and, you know, I believe Matlock
was grinning too.
     
    * * *
     
     
     I didn’t go to work at the food bank and soup
kitchen the next morning. Melvia and I had talked it over the night before and
had decided that since Tansie, Bettie, and Dephine were going, we’d just sit today
out. Melvia had heard about my hanging up on Tansie, of course. Shoot, half of
Backwater probably knew about it less than twenty minutes after it happened.
    Anyway, I believe Melvia was half afraid that me and
Tansie would get into it if I went to the soup kitchen. We probably would
have—not that it would’ve bothered me to get into an argument with Tansie
Miller. We’d argued before and, as long as there was breath in both our bodies,
would again. But I decided to stay home because I didn’t want Frank or Heather
to know I was investigating the identity thefts and that they were suspects.
    I explained my reasoning to Melvia and she agreed that
we should stay home today, mull over the evidence we already had, and see what
else Faye came up with. We didn’t want to tie up the phone in case Faye called,
so we agreed to meet for dinner here at my house this evening. I told Melvia
I’d invite Cooper, Faye, and Sunny too. I generously offered to invite the
other M.E.L.O.N.S. but Melvia said we should keep it small…limit it to the ones
doing the real investigating. I was glad. I didn’t have to invite Tansie and
the others, and not inviting them had been Melvia’s idea. It was a win-win for
me.
    So today I sat by the phone waiting for Faye to call.