How Now Purple Cow Read online

  Marja McGraw

  How Now Purple Cow?

  A Bogey Man Mystery

  by

  Marja McGraw

  Other Books by Marja McGraw

  The Sandi Webster Mysteries

  A Well-Kept Family Secret

  Bubba’s Ghost

  Prudy’s Back!

  The Bogey Man

  Old Murders Never Die

  Death Comes in Threes

  What Are the Odds?

  The Bogey Man Mysteries

  Bogey Nights

  Bogey’s Ace in the Hole

  They Call Me Ace

  Awkward Moments

  HOW NOW PURPLE COW – A Bogey Man Mystery, Copyright 2014, by Marja McGraw. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact Marja McGraw at [email protected].

  First Edition, February, 2015

  Cover by Marja McGraw

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  To Patti and Andy, dear friends and the inspiration for Piper and James Hathaway. Although we lost Andy, he’ll forever be a part of our lives. The two of them provided humor and friendship, and one of many reasons to enjoy life.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to Jill Shelton, Diana Perry, Dorothy Bodoin, H. Susan Shaw, and Judy B. Along with critiquing, you’ve offered support and friendships that will last a lifetime.

  Thank you, also, to Chris Kohut for providing me with resources regarding history and the life of spies. I may have used only snippets of the information, but if I had used more, the book would have gone on and on and on. Who knows? Maybe there are more spy stories on the horizon.

  The Purple Cow

  I never saw a purple cow,

  I never hope to see one;

  But I can tell you, anyhow,

  I'd rather see one than be one!

  Gelett Burgess

  1895

  Chapter One

  “What time are the twins arriving?” I asked. My question was like asking what time a hurricane was due to hit, but I’d agreed to help entertain.

  My mother-in-law, Judith, and I were in the kitchen where she was preparing scones for her guests when Mikey ran in from the other room.

  “Mom? Grandma? I think you should come see what I found.” He turned and ran back to the other room.

  I glanced at Judith and rolled my eyes. “The last time he said something like that he’d found human remains.” Maybe the hurricane had already arrived in the form of my son, not the twins.

  My eight-year-old son had tried to bury a dead bird and dug up a century old corpse in the process.

  “He sounds excited, Pamela, but I don’t hear any panic in his voice.”

  “You’re right. Things could be worse.”

  “Mom? Ohhh, Mrs. Cross?” my son sang from the other room. “Are you coming?”

  “Mrs. Cross? He can be a smarty sometimes,” Judith said.

  She took the scones out of the oven. She was somewhat eccentric and came up with whacky ideas from time to time, like pillows stuffed with dog hair from the dog groomer’s. However, this time I thought she might be onto something. I’d know before long. She had a killer recipe for scones, according to her, and her latest idea was to make them and start supplying local restaurants. Friends, or the human storms, were on their way over to taste-test her scones with me.

  My husband and I own a forties-themed restaurant called Bogey Nights and we dress the part when we’re working. That and excellent cuisine keep the customers coming in. Scones might work out for us. Afternoon tea?

  Yes, I had a vested interest in whether they were good or not, but my son was waiting for us.

  We headed for the other room.

  “On our way, Ace,” Judy called.

  “You played right into his hands by using his nickname,” I said. His father, who uses a lot of forties slang, gave him the nickname and it stuck.

  Mikey sat on the floor in front of the stairs, staring at...

  Something didn’t look right and when I looked closer, I saw that a drawer had been pulled out from under the lowest stair step.

  “Judith?” I glanced at my mother-in-law, questioning what I was seeing.

  Her mouth opened in surprise. “I’ve never seen that before. I know this house has hidden compartments, but this is one I seem to have missed.”

  “Mikey, where did this come from?” Not the brightest question I’d ever asked.

  He shrugged. “It was just there. I found a loose screw under the stairs and got Grandpa’s screwdriver so I could fix it. I turned the screw and the drawer popped out.” He rubbed his shin. “It hit me on the leg, too.”

  “I – ”

  He took a step away from the stairs. “It’s what’s in the drawer that I want you to see.”

  Judith and I stepped forward, looking down to find out what treasure my son might have found.

  “Well, will you look at that?” Judith started to chuckle.

  I bent down and took a closer look. Lying in the drawer were two ceramic purple cows, a mother and a calf. “I’ve never seen anything like these before. I wonder why they’re hidden in a secret drawer.”

  “Look under the cows, Mom.”

  I did, and there was a manila envelope marked “Personal” tucked under the… “But purple cows?”

  Judith gently lifted them out of the drawer and set them on the bottom stair step. “There’s an old poem about purple cows, but I can’t recall how it goes. I’ll have to look it up.”

  I picked up the envelope and opened it. I’ve never been known for being shy. Well, for a while I was quiet, but that was because of what life had thrown in my path – a husband with cancer, then the life of a widowed mother – but then I met Chris and my life changed.

  Shrugging off my thoughts I realized it was time to get down to business. Why would someone have hidden ceramic purple cows, and what might a manila envelope have to do with them?

  I slid papers part way out of the envelope.

  “It’s a letter from Marguerite Turnbal along with some other pages,” I said. “She may have been a mystery writer, but I think she was a mystery. You never know what to expect around this house. I’ll bet the twins had an interesting childhood. You know they – ”

  “Pamela, what does the letter say? Why would she hide it?” Judith sounded impatient. “And what are the other papers in the envelope?”

  “Give me a minute. Let me read the letter first, before I check out the rest of the contents of the envelope.” I pulled the letter the rest of the way out of the envelope and began reading.

  Judith tried to read it over my shoulder, but I’m about five foot four and compared to me she’s a shrimp, maybe around five feet or a tad taller. Actually, she might be shorter. Her height was neither here nor there, not an issue except that she couldn’t see over my shoulder.

  “Read it out loud,” Judith said, trying to sound authoritative but only managing to sound bossy.

  “Give me a minute to see what it’s about.” I could be authoritative, too. I adored my mother-in-law, but once in a while she got on my nerves.

  Mikey’s blue eyes were wide and he cautiously glanced from me to his grandmother before lowering his gaze to the floor.

  I read the letter through before turning to Judith, who was pacing by that time. Pushing the drawer part way in, I sat down on the lower
stair step and began reading aloud.

  “I don’t know who might end up reading this, but there are a few things I need to get off my chest. Let me preface this by saying since I’m an author of gothic romance and mystery books, I could be reading something into a situation where there shouldn’t be an issue. I haven’t been able to find proof.”

  Judith interrupted the reading. “That sounds ominous.”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll try to keep this overview as short as I can. William Howard and I opened our own publishing company, Turnbal Publishing House. I kept all of the contracts and manuscripts… Well, I kept everything having to do with the business at the office. There was a fire and all was lost. We were in the building when the fire started, and interestingly, the only things I was able to save were three purple cows. William and I were supposed to be in a meeting and I was waiting for him in his office. The cows sat on his desk. Instinctively I grabbed them as I fled the building. I’ll never understand why I did that.”

  “Aha!” Judith glanced at the cows on the step next to me. “But where’s the third one?”

  I rolled my eyes, my one bad habit, before continuing. Unfortunately, this was only one of many bad habits my son had picked up from me. I also understood just how Marguerite felt. Our first restaurant had been destroyed in a fire. I shook my head, not wanting to relive the night of the restaurant fire. Thankfully, no one had been hurt.

  “I brought the cows home and set them on the dining room table, but then there was an incident that changed lives, or at least it changed mine.”

  The doorbell rang, interrupting my reading of the letter.

  Judith headed for the door. “That must be Carol and Coral. Don’t lose your place because I want to hear the rest of the letter.”

  Carol and Coral were the twin daughters of Marguerite Turnbal, the author whose letter I was reading. She wrote under the name Marguerite Holden. She’d been wildly popular in her day, the 1950s, and her books were bestsellers. According to the twins, she had all the hidden compartments added to the house because as a mystery writer she thought it was a great joke on the world.

  Marguerite had written one last novel titled Summer’s Ghost in 1960 before she gave up and stopped writing. As it turned out, there were only five copies of the book and only one was signed and it was quite valuable because she very seldom signed books. She had a fear that someone would duplicate her signature and steal her money. After her publishing house burned down she never wrote another word. The fire was also the reason there were only five copies of the book.

  I glanced up as the twins entered the house like a whirlwind.

  Carol glared at her sister. “You did that on purpose!”

  Coral glared right back. “Oh, blow it out your nose. I didn’t trip you.”

  Some things never change. As hard as they might try, these sisters didn’t get along, even though in their own way they adored each other. We’d learned that the hard way, through experience. I’d never figured out how old they were. Probably in their seventies.

  “Come in, sit down and be quiet.” Judith apparently wasn’t in the mood for their banter.

  Two sets of eyes focused on her in surprise.

  Before they could speak, Judith pointed at chairs in the living room and said, “We found a letter your mother wrote. It was in a compartment under the stairs and what we’ve read so far sounds cryptic. Now quit fussing while Pamela reads it and we try to figure out what it’s all about.”

  Carol sat with care, smoothing her skirt over her knees. “Are you telling me you found another hidden compartment? I thought we knew where all of them were.”

  Coral, unlike her usual cantankerous self, agreed with her sister. “She’s right for once. I thought we knew where all of them were, too.”

  They both glanced at me and finally noticed there was a drawer under my legs.

  Coral sucked in her breath. “I can’t believe it! How could we have missed that drawer?”

  “Mother was just full of surprises, wasn’t she?” Carol nodded her head while she spoke.

  Judith spread her feet apart, placed her hands on her hips and sighed. “Would you two stop cackling and let Pamela read the letter? Please?”

  My mother-in-law had made friends with the twins since moving to town and buying Turnbal House, and they actually put up with a lot from each other. All three were quite outspoken women.

  Again, Mikey’s head swung from woman to woman before he dropped his gaze to the floor. I had a feeling he might be hoping no one would notice he was in the room and listening to them.

  I reread the part of the letter I’d already covered and continued with more information.

  “The girls came running into the house, squabbling, and one of them knocked over the purple bull, breaking it to smithereens. That was all I could take after the fire of the morning. I scolded the twins and sent them to their rooms. I’ll admit I felt bad for losing my temper, but when I started to clean up the broken pieces, all sense of decorum flew out the window.

  “If the bull hadn’t been broken, I never would have known there were bigger issues to deal with, and life might have gone on as before. What was hidden inside the purple bull was – “

  “I’m sorry to say that I was the one who broke the bull,” Coral interrupted. “It seems like I was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. I remember how upset mother was even after we thought she should have calmed down. Right, Carol? You remember, don’t you?”

  Carol glared at her sister, not an unusual expression between the two women. “Yes, I remember, but wouldn’t you like to know what Mother found inside the bull?”

  “Well, of course I would. Now pipe down and let Pamela continue.”

  “I – “

  “You can zip it now.”

  Carol did indeed zip it, but she narrowed her left eye while raising her right eyebrow at her sister and she clamped her lips together.

  Chapter Two

  Somehow it seemed like the hidden object in the bull had gone right over Coral’s head. She was momentarily wrapped up in her guilt and her sister’s expression. “Of course I want to know what was inside the bull, but I always felt so bad about what happened. It seemed like Mom kind of changed after I broke it.”

  “Oh, get over it,” Carol said. “I want to know what Mother found. Now you zip it!”

  Coral, normally the more aggressive of the two, stood and walked toward her sister.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Carol said, brushing lint off the sleeve of her jacket.

  Coral narrowed her eyes and stared at her sister for a moment before taking her seat. “Let’s get on with it. What did my mother find inside the figurine?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let me find where I left off. Oh, here it is.”

  “If the bull hadn’t been broken,” I read, “I never would have known there were much bigger issues to deal with, and life might have gone on as before. What was hidden inside the purple bull was an expensive diamond ring wrapped in tissue paper. William had talked about placing the ring on the finger of Marsha Renquist, who’d disappeared almost two weeks before the fire.”

  Coral interrupted. “I remember Mom and Dad talking about Marsha shortly after her disappearance. For some reason Dad thought she might have taken a trip out of the country. Mother didn’t agree with him.” She looked thoughtful for a moment before snapping her fingers. “Now I remember. They said they thought she’d been having an affair with someone that ended badly.”

  Carol sat forward in her chair. “They wouldn’t have talked about something like that in front of us. In those days that would have been a scandal and people didn’t talk about scandals in front of their children.”

  Coral sighed. “They didn’t know I was listening. I was supposed to be in bed asleep. And that’s exactly why I remember what they said, because it was supposed to be a secret. I started to come downstairs for a drink of water but they were talking so softly that I stopped and listened.�
�

  “That sounds pretty sneaky, and exactly like something you’d have done.” Carol sniffed loudly and looked away from her sister.

  “Any chance we can get back to the letter?” Judith sounded peeved.

  I wondered what her problem might be. She’d been out of sorts all day, which was unusual. Usually it was her eccentricities that got on my nerves.

  The twins seemed to hear the same tone in her voice and they quieted down.

  I started reading again, without further comment from my audience.

  “I believed Marsha and William were having an affair and that he’d already given her the ring. So why was it hidden in the purple bull? And where’s Marsha?

  “I’m actually writing this letter more than a year after Marsha’s disappearance. She never turned up. Her apartment was eventually cleaned out and her things were placed in storage.

  “The police never came up with answers as to her whereabouts. There was nothing to indicate foul play. The police eventually set aside their Missing Person case and forgot about it.

  “I didn’t give them the ring, but I can’t explain why. I asked William about her and he said she’d told him he was too much of a ladies’ man and she wanted nothing more to do with him. He said he thought that’s why she left the country.

  “He never asked about the purple cows. He thought they’d been destroyed in the fire so they weren’t an issue. Little did he know that I had them, along with the ring.

  “Initially I spoke to Jefferson about my suspicions. He and William – “

  “Who was Jefferson?” Judith asked.

  “Our father,” Carol replied.

  “Oh.”

  I returned to the letter.

  “Initially I spoke to Jefferson about my suspicions. He and William had been friends since they were youngsters and he thought there was no substance to my ideas and suspicions. Slowly, over the next six months, he began to believe I might be right because Marsha never turned up and no one heard from her.