Free Mama Pursues Murderous Shadows by Nora Deloach

means we’ll have an uninterrupted weekend.”
    “Sounds good to me,” Cliff said enthusiastically and hung up. I decided to walk across the street and get lunch, which turned out to be a tuna-fish sandwich that didn’t taste like tuna and a diet Coke that had more ice in it than Coke. Maybe that was the diet part.
    Around three o’clock, I called Mama. “How are things going?” I asked.
    “Okay.”
    “Cliff wants to get out of town for the weekend.”
    “Great. Bring him home. I’ll make a meal especially for him. What time can I expect you two?”
    “We’ll be there by nine o’clock in the morning.”
    Going to Otis suited me fine. It would give me another opportunity to work on party plans with Mama. Her cooking would be the thing to ease the anxieties Cliff was having over his penny-pinching client. And I’d get to hear firsthand what was going on in Mama’s private investigation into the murder of Ruby Spikes.

CHAPTER
TWELVE
    C liff’s favorite dish is Mama’s skillet-roasted lemon chicken with potatoes.
    Mama was just sliding this dish from the oven as Cliff and I walked into her kitchen. She’d also fixed fresh string beans, glazed carrots, sliced tomatoes, a tossed salad, and a sweet-potato pie that threatens waistlines. We all sat right down to eat.
    “Candi, I’ve done what you asked,” Daddy said thirty minutes later as he dished himself a second helping of chicken and potatoes. “Neither Coal nor I could come up with the fella who wore a shirt like that piece of material you showed me last week. The more we thought about it, the more we drew a blank.”
    Mama looked disappointed. “I appreciate your efforts, James,” she said as the telephone rang. She excused herself from the table.
    “What shirt?” I asked my father.
    “Ruby Spikes tore a piece off the shirt of the man who tried to rape her. Candi got it from Abe. She wanted to know whether or not Coal or I had ever seen it on any one of the fellas who hang out at Joe’s Pool Hall.”
    Mama came back into the room. Her face looked like it does when she’s trying to figure something out but can’t quite seem to put her finger on it. “Betty Jo Mets is dead,” she told us in a stunned voice. “She called me just last night, said she was confused about something and needed to talk with me. I suspected she wanted to know something about the care of her boys, because she asked me to meet her at Portia Bolton’s house this afternoon.”
    “Who is Portia Bolton?” I asked.
    “Portia is the foster mother I placed Betty Jo’s two little boys with. She is a fine woman. She never had any children of her own, but she’s the kind of woman whose care children thrive under.”
    I pushed back my chair. Mama motioned me to sit back down. “Finish eating,” she said to me. “I told Abe we’d be at his office in a half an hour.”
    “Did Betty Jo have some kind of an ailment that could account for her dying so suddenly?” my father asked.
    “If she did, I didn’t know about it,” Mama said.
    “What happened to her?” I asked, not liking the look on Mama’s face.
    She shook her head sadly. “Abe told me that theparamedics called him. They’d gotten a call from Herman two hours ago. Herman told them that Betty Jo hadn’t responded to his efforts to wake her—I can’t believe she’s dead, she sounded so alive last night when I spoke with her!”

    We arrived at Abe’s office around two o’clock.
    “Tell me exactly what happened,” Mama said as soon as we entered.
    Abe didn’t hesitate. “This is Herman’s story,” he said, toying with an unlit cigarette. “He and Betty Jo went to bed around nine last night. Betty Jo slept through the night as usual—Herman swears he heard her breathing. Anyway, when he got up this morning, Betty Jo was still asleep. He left the house and returned around ten A.M. He did some chores in the backyard before he went into the house. He was surprised to find that Betty Jo hadn’t gotten