Guess Who's Coming to Die? (11 page)
Read Guess Who's Coming to Die? Online
Authors: Patricia Sprinkle
I sat there glaring at that story for a long time, thinking of appropriate ways to wreak vengeance on Slade. I rejected boiling oil as too messy and tar and feathers as too hard to come by. I was in the process of considering resurrecting the stocks so I could encourage people to throw cabbages at him when the phone rang.
“MacLaren, did you see this morning’s paper yet?”
“I saw it, Gusta.”
“I don’t know where Slade unearthed that picture of me. He must have taken it at last month’s Little Bookclub luncheon, since that’s the last time I wore that dress. I’ve never particularly liked it. It makes my neck look scrawny. Still, the picture wasn’t bad, considering.” Gusta always liked getting her picture in the paper.
I knew good and well she hadn’t called me simply to preen, though. Sure enough . . .
“I do think you might have exercised a little restraint. You didn’t need to boast about finding the body and worm your name into the first paragraph twice! And why MayBelle had to bring up that little disagreement Willena and Cindy had at the meeting . . . All I can think is that Slade charmed it out of her.”
“No doubt,” I agreed. “Just like he charmed me into confessing I found the body.”
“Well, please remember in the future that the club does not need this kind of notoriety.” Before I could reply, she added, “I have to go now. I don’t have time to gab all day. Meriwether and I are going down to Hilton Head for the rest of the week, to let this blow over and give little Zachary a look at the ocean.”
“Chief Muggins told us not to leave town,” I reminded her.
“Oh, I had a little talk with him. He knows Meriwether and I didn’t have a thing to do with that mess.” I could almost see her little wave of dismissal. Queens don’t have to obey the same rules we common folks do.
As I hung up, I looked out my window. A CNN van was turning around in our parking lot. The national networks had arrived. Where could we send Tad and Jessica until all this “blew over”?
9
I wasn’t the only one worried about Cindy’s children. When Joe Riddley and I got home that evening — having spent the day holed up in our office to avoid reporters — Walker had left a message on our voice mail. “This is for Daddy, Mama. Don’t listen. Please!”
I handed the phone to Joe Riddley and watched his face turn to stone as he pressed the receiver too close to his ear for me to hear a word. Lulu, our three-legged beagle, sensed that something was wrong. She inched up against my ankles and whined, a wriggling mass of anxiety.
“What is it?” I demanded. “What’s he saying?”
Without a word, Joe Riddley pressed a button to delete the message, and hung up.
“What was it?” I demanded again. “What was Walker saying?”
“You don’t want to know.” He headed for the cabinet where we keep animal feed. “I need to feed Bo.” Bo was a scarlet macaw we had gotten stuck with a couple of years before when his owner turned up dead at Joe Riddley’s birthday party.
3
Joe Riddley dotes on the creature. I tolerate him because Bo was helpful in Joe Riddley’s recovery after he got shot. However, I know Joe Riddley as well as he knows me. If he was trying to divert me from asking questions about one of our sons, things were serious. A chill started in my feet and rose up my entire skeleton.
3
Joe Riddley dotes on the creature. I tolerate him because Bo was helpful in Joe Riddley’s recovery after he got shot. However, I know Joe Riddley as well as he knows me. If he was trying to divert me from asking questions about one of our sons, things were serious. A chill started in my feet and rose up my entire skeleton.
I grabbed his arm. “You know as well as I do that Bo won’t starve if you wait a few minutes to feed him. What did Walker say?”
Joe Riddley gave a huff that means he is plumb fed up with my contrariness. “You don’t want to know, Little Bit. You are an officer of the court.” He grabbed up the bag of feed and strode onto our back porch, which we had glassed in and converted into a glorified birdcage.
I followed him to the door and could hardly speak the words. “You mean he’s done something illegal?” Walker was our impulsive son, the one who raced off on tangents without thinking things through.
Bo flew to Joe Riddley’s shoulder. Joe Riddley stroked the scarlet breast with one forefinger while a vivid rainbow of tail feathers spilled down his back. “Let it go, Little Bit.”
I dismissed the notion that Walker had shot Slade over the article, but what else had he done to upset his daddy enough for Joe Riddley to be curt with me?
I knew in an instant. “He hasn’t taken Cindy out of town, has he? She can’t leave while she’s under suspicion of murder.”
Joe Riddley turned without a word and carried Bo past me into the house. “I gotta run an errand. I’ll be back for supper.” He slammed the door behind him. I could still hear Bo squawking on his shoulder. “Little Bit? Little Bit! Back off! Give me space.”
I am never sure whether that bird knows what he’s saying or whether he’s real good at picking up on Joe Riddley’s moods.
As soon as I heard the automatic garage door shut, I tried Walker’s cell phone. I got voice mail. I tried Cindy’s and got voice mail, as well. This was serious, if they had turned the telephones off. They never turned their cell phones off. Joe Riddley and I suspected they slept with them on under their pillows. Each of their children has a phone, since Cindy likes to stay in touch, but those phones were off, too. Walker must have taken the children, wherever they’d gone.
In that Corvette, they could be in Alaska pretty soon. Walker often fails to demonstrate what I would call good sense, but if he had whisked Cindy out of the county while she was a suspect in a murder case, this was the dumbest thing he had ever done, and the most potentially dangerous.
I couldn’t talk about it with a living soul, even Joe Riddley, because as an officer of the court, I was under oath to report any infraction of the law I even suspected had been committed. That was why Joe Riddley had stomped out. He was a magistrate for thirty years and has more integrity than any man I know. If he so much as hinted to me what Walker had done, he’d insist that we report Walker and Cindy so Chief Muggins could alert authorities to pick them up. In all probability, they’d be tried. And while Joe Riddley and I trust the courts to execute justice in most cases, we also know that courts can be fallible. This was our son and his family in jeopardy. Their marriage had nearly fallen apart two summers ago, and they were working hard to rebuild it. Walker’s parents couldn’t fault Walker for wanting to take care of and protect his family. Still, if I’d had him in grabbing range right that minute, I’d have shaken him until his teeth rattled and fell out one at a time.
I settled into one of the two recliners in the living room and sent up wordless prayers which, if translated, would have been something really profound like,
Help! Help! Help!
Help! Help! Help!
As I reached for the remote my finger caught in a small tear in the upholstery, reminding me that I needed to go up to Augusta soon and look for new recliners. Those had been all right in the big house, where we had both a living room and a casual den, but they looked tacky in our new living room. Joe Riddley had agreed I could get new ones if he didn’t have to help pick them out.
Lulu scrambled up and settled on my lap. I don’t know how people survive problems without prayer and a lapful of dog.
When I switched on the national television news, I saw a reporter in front of the Hope County Courthouse interviewing Chief Muggins. I’d never realized before how aptly Charlie was named until he mugged for the camera while assuring the world, “We got things under control down here. We are confident of making an arrest soon.”
“She was killed by a corkscrew twisted through her throat — isn’t that right?” the reporter asked. Why are reporters so avid for bloody details? I touched my throat and closed my eyes, but that image of Willena was branded on the inside of my eyelids. I groaned. Lulu gave me a comforting lick.
Chief Muggins touched the knot of his tie. “I cannot comment on that at this time, but it was a gruesome way to die.” He grinned like a polecat, but the camera shifted to the reporter’s bland face.
“Chief Muggins indicates that the primary suspect at this moment is a member of the ladies’ investment club who had quarreled with the deceased over the use of club funds. He is not releasing the name at this time.”
I knew full well that the only thing muzzling Charlie was his desire to be in the news again. He wouldn’t hesitate to reveal Cindy’s name if he could avoid a lawsuit and still get his pointy nose on television, but he’d drag the story out as long as he could.
Cindy’s desperate eyes floated between me and the screen. I laid my head back and asked the Boss upstairs, “Please, is there something I can do?” This was the first time my daughter-in-law had ever needed my help. I didn’t want to let her down.
A voice from heaven would have been good.
I’d have settled for one good idea of how to proceed.
Instead, my first impulse was, “Call Martha!” My other daughter-in-law, Ridd’s wife, is an emergency room nurse, Bible scholar, avid gardener who supplies us with canned goods each winter, and somebody I would unhesitatingly nominate for Wise Woman of the Year. She is my rock in times of storm. But she was not only in the middle of getting her daughter through her final weeks of high school and her little boy through his final weeks of pre-K, she was also “another person.” If I so much as hinted to Martha that Walker had taken Cindy out of state, I’d have to tell Charlie what I suspected. Reluctantly, I pushed the idea of Martha down where it belonged and tried to think of what else I could do.
I wished I were smart like Sherlock Holmes, with all sorts of knowledge at my fingertips, so I could sweep into the community center ladies’ room, take one gander at the site, and say, “The murderer was XYZ. I once wrote a monograph on the subject.”
Instead, I couldn’t even get into the community center, and wouldn’t if I could. I didn’t want another visit to the site. One look at Willena had been enough for my lifetime. The only other thing I could think to do was talk to the other members of the club. One of them might remember something that could clear Cindy. That’s all I asked. If they could also provide Charlie with another suspect, that would be a bonus, but I wasn’t asking for a major miracle, just a little one to demonstrate what I knew: Cindy never killed anybody.
How long did I have before people began to wonder if the younger Yarbroughs were still in town? I didn’t dare let myself think about that for long, or I’d want to know for sure where they were. If I found out, I’d have to report them. Better to talk to people about the murder.
I’d have to act casual, though, so Joe Riddley wouldn’t suspect. He pure-tee hates it when I get involved in asking questions about a murder case. Especially since I’ve gotten myself in sticky situations a time or two. And while he had almost fully recovered from the traumatic head injury he’d gotten when he was shot, his emotions were still a tad unpredictable. He snapped at me once in a while, which he never used to do. And he’d gotten more protective.
On the other hand, waiting for the police to find Walker and Cindy would nearly drive him crazy. It wasn’t good for him to get upset, and from the way he had slammed our back door when he went out, he’d be doing a lot of damage to the property if I didn’t do something.
Having rationalized my determination to look into things, I fetched paper and a pen and jotted down ideas as they occurred to me.
Did anybody else come in while we were there? Why was door unlocked?
Nancy: What got her so upset?
Grover: Did he see Cindy talking on her phone? (could provide alibi)
Wilma: Would she have had time to kill Willena and still do refreshments? Why should she?
Sadie Lowe:
I got stuck at that point. I disliked Sadie Lowe, but I couldn’t imagine a single motive she could have for murdering Willena. In fact, I couldn’t think of a single motive
anybody
could have for murdering her. A lot of women had felt the rough side of her sweet-talking tongue and might want to smack her. But murder?
Murder, I had heard, generally springs from three motives: love, lucre, and . . . what was the other one? I was having a middle-aged moment and couldn’t remember. But neither of the other two seemed applicable here. Willena and Grover, if they were in love, showed no signs of quarreling. They’d been laughing together over some private joke before the meeting started. And Wilma, her presumptive heir, was well fixed in her own right. I had no idea how the two fortunes compared, but doubted that Wilma would have killed Willena for money — especially at a public meeting. She had weed killer and other yard chemicals at home she could have used privately. Besides, for all I knew, Willena had left her money to the Sierra Club. There went Wilma’s only motive. But I reached for my pen and added two additional notes:
- 6.
Find out how Willena left her money. - 7.
Figure out who had the corkscrew last. Who was sitting at the back? Where did they put the box after they looked at it?
After Wilma presented it to Willena, we had passed the whole set around, admiring it. It was a pretty set, and the initials on the silver shot glass were a classy touch. I could picture the little wooden box lined with royal blue velvet going up and down the rows, then . . . what? Had Willena taken the set with her to the bathroom? Or had the corkscrew been filched by whoever admired it last? Who was that?
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