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he always seemed downright crazy in love with her. So I was just as surprised as anybody when he didn’t show up for the wedding. I never figured him for the running kind. Now, I’m thinking something pretty important scared him and made him run. If that’s the case, I don’t know what made him think it was safe for him to come back into town after all these years. Whatever his reason, he figured wrong, and it got him killed.”
    “You might have a good point, Rudd. I sure don’t know the answers to either one of those questions, but there’s one thing I need to know.” Aunt Connie leaned forward as far as she could. “I gotta know why you think I didn’t kill Aaron. How do you know that I didn’t just go plumb loony and stab him myself? Maybe I am the guilty one that murdered him.”
    Uncle Rudd leaned forward and met her almost nose-to-nose. “First off, Connie Tanner, you ain’t got a murderin’ bone in your scrawny little body, no matter how crazy you get. You used to cry when our fishin’ worms died. And second,” Uncle Rudd picked up a piece of paper with his handwriting on it and held it up in front of Aunt Connie’s face, “you said so last night. I got it all right here. I wrote down everything you said. Most of it I can’t make heads or tails out of, but one thing you kept saying over and over was, and I quote, ‘The boogeyman came out of the night and killed my Aaron, the boogeyman covered my Aaron in blood.’ Don’t you see, Little Sis, you ain’t talking ‘bout yourself. Someone else did the killin’.”
    Aunt Connie let out a sigh of relief and sat back in her chair. “In my heart I didn’t think I could do such a horrible thing. But since I can’t remember, it’s a comfort to hear you say I didn’t.”
    “Now that we’re clear on that point,” Uncle Rudd nodded, pushing the piece of paper he was holding toward me, “we got to find out who did do it. That’s all the stuff Connie said last night. Take a look at it, Dixie-gal, and see if you can make anything of it.”
    All three of them were silent as I took the paper and looked at it. Except for the part about Aaron being covered in blood, it really was just a jumble of nonsensical words. I kept looking at the paper because it gave me time to think.
    If this letter-size piece of paper was all we had to go on tofind a killer, we were in a lot of trouble. I had no idea what the sentence for obstructing justice might be, but I’m quite certain that hiding a dead body would constitute more than parole and a hefty fine. So, for the time being, I still clung to the notion that the sheriff should handle this. Besides, there was one other little problem concerning the body of Aaron Scott that I had yet to hear anybody address.
    Deciding to meet the problem head-on and give reason another shot, I looked at Uncle Rudd. “These are words of grief and trauma. I don’t know that we can decipher them as quickly as you might have hoped. Considering that time is a factor here, maybe we should have some sort of backup plan. I don’t know where you hid Aaron Scott’s body, but there are limits to…well…you know, limits to how long before his body does what all dead bodies do. And let’s face it, we may not have found the murderer by then.”
    Although discussing dead bodies is not even close to my idea of good conversation, Aunt Nissa took the bait. “What did you have in mind as a backup plan, dear?”
    Before I could take advantage of the opening she gave me, Uncle Rudd spoke up. “I got a pretty good idea what our Dixie-gal here has in mind for a backup plan.” He looked me in the eye and pointed his finger. “We will not let Sheriff Otis in on this until we get the goods on whoever killed Aaron Scott. And there is no need for you to go worryin’ over that body either. Let’s just say it’s hidden someplace where he’ll still look every bit as dead as the night he got himself murdered.”
    I sat there trying very hard not to