Guess Who's Coming to Die? (21 page)
Read Guess Who's Coming to Die? Online
Authors: Patricia Sprinkle
Another long silence. Finally I heard, “The chief is handling that investigation, Judge. Personally.”
Isaac and I both knew that wasn’t a statement. It was a warning.
18
Rain started again in the middle of Thursday night. I heard the first tentative patters, then a sudden rush that meant it was streaming down. I turned over, trying to get comfortable, wishing I were back in the old blue house with its tin porch roof. Rain on the porch roof always sent me to sleep, and tonight I sorely needed sleep. For the second night in a row I had tossed and turned worrying about Walker and Cindy, wherever they were, and all my bones ached.
It was not the rain but exhaustion that finally put me to sleep just before the alarm went off. I eyed the streaming window sourly. Why had I promised to drive Wilma to Augusta?
I dressed stiffly, again putting on nicer clothes than I usually wear to work. Joe Riddley gave me a considering look over the breakfast table. “You aren’t running around on me, are you, Little Bit? All this dressing up during the week?”
I went to fetch the coffeepot. “It would serve you right if I was, the way you sent me off to Scotland by myself. But not today. I just wish it wasn’t raining.”
His mug stopped halfway to his mouth. “Rain gets in the way of your running around?”
“No, but I’ve promised to drive Wilma Kenan to Augusta for a meeting. She’s talking to some women’s group about Granddaddy Will.”
He chewed his toast and thought that over. “Never knew you and Wilma were such particular friends.”
“We aren’t, but Willena was supposed to drive with her, and she said she didn’t like to drive up by herself. She even managed to get us both dispensation from Charlie to go.”
“Oh. Has Lincoln retired or has he finally
gotten
tired of Wilma and quit?”
gotten
tired of Wilma and quit?”
“Neither. She said he’d drive, but I thought I’d use the time while she’s speaking to look for new recliners. Clarinda’s been asking when she can have yours.”
“Did you remind her of the addendum to the tenth commandment, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy employer’s recliner’?”
“Yeah, but she reminded me of the second greatest commandment, ‘Thou shalt love thy cook as thyself.’ ”
Our new house was so small, we could see the living room from our dining room table. He eyed his old brown recliner with a thoughtful look, and I could tell he was within a hair of telling me he liked it fine as it was. He surprised me, though. “You get comfortable ones, now. I don’t want to have to go all the way over to Clarinda’s when I want to watch TV.”
“Come with me,” I urged. “It would make the trip up a whole lot more fun.”
He reached for his red cap. “For you, maybe. Can’t say I would enjoy that much of Wilma’s company.”
I didn’t either. While I steered through sheets of rain that made it hard to see the lines between lanes, she talked incessantly about anything under the sun except Willena’s murder. The closest she came to mentioning it was when she said with a shudder, “They are cutting her up. Did you hear that? They are cutting her up to see what killed her. I can’t stand it!”
“Don’t think about it,” I advised. “She is beyond caring.”
Her voice was small. “I know.” Then she started talking about how much better Grover was than her former stockbroker, and why I ought to move my account to him. In addition to trying to see the road and avoid a wreck, I also had to come up with replies that were polite without committing me to something I had no intention of doing.
I have wondered since if it was the coziness of being shut up surrounded by rain or the fact that I couldn’t pay her much attention that kept Wilma talking—almost like a Catholic confessional where you can’t see the priest. Anyway, while most Southern women would never talk about their finances to their casual friends, by the time we reached Augusta I had learned that Wilma, like a lot of people, had lost money during the crash of tech stocks around the turn of the century and blamed that on her old broker. That was why she was now using Grover. Of course, she thought his smile was real sexy, too, and didn’t he have the smokiest blue eyes?
Reading between the lines, I figured the former broker probably thanked his lucky stars that Wilma had moved her account. From the way she kept repeating, “I told him . . .” I deduced that she had tried to micromanage her account and that her poor broker was probably now recuperating at the state mental hospital over in Milledgeville. I hoped Grover was prepared for what working with Wilma would entail.
It was a relief to drop her off and go looking for recliners. Even with the rain, shopping in the middle of a workday made me feel as carefree as those boys I’d seen the day before playing hooky from school. I found recliners I liked in the second store I visited, arranged to have them delivered the following Monday, and discovered I still had nearly an hour before I needed to pick up Wilma. I drove back to that part of town and, spying a coffee shop, decided to treat myself to a cup of cappuccino and a biscotti. Myrtle’s in Hopemore has great coffee and chocolate pie, but her menu doesn’t stretch to cappuccino or biscotti.
I settled at a table by the window and watched droplets run down the windowpane while I sipped the frothy drink from its thick paper cup. After a nibble at the biscotti, I peered around to make sure nobody was watching and I dunked it. There I was, pulling my dripping biscotti from my cappuccino, when I spotted Grover in a booth over at the side. Fortunately, he didn’t spot me. He was leaning across the table listening intently to a companion I could not see. While I watched, a slender hand with bright red nails reached out to touch his. A diamond on the hand looked as big as a blueberry.
Seemed like Wilma was right — Grover and Willena had been nothing but friends. Or was he the kind of man who flitted from one rich woman to another, so long as he could manage her account?
Reminding myself that it was no business of mine whom Grover had coffee with on a rainy business day, I turned back to contemplate the streaming scene beyond my window.
However, when I’d drained the last dreg and brushed my crumbs neatly into a napkin, I had to toss the cup and napkin, and the only trash can was near their table. As I approached, I heard a husky voice murmuring, “So you think I’m safe?”
Grover spotted me before he replied. It would have been rude of me not to speak.
“Fancy running into you here,” I exclaimed.
From the other side of the table, Sadie Lowe Harnett gave me a wide, lazy smile through lips as scarlet as her nails. “Why, hey, Judge. What brings you to Augusta?”
She wore a short black skirt and a red cotton sweater cut to call maximum attention to her magnificent bosom.
“I drove Wilma up for a meeting and did a little shopping,” I told her. “And you?”
She put up one hand and touched the hair behind her left ear. As a girl I used to want hair like that, black and shiny. Today it was piled on top of her head with little curls cascading down her neck. “I came up to see Grover.” Not by so much as a blush did she reveal that she’d been caught with Horace one day before. But then, the woman had acted in soaps. Maybe she thought that in real life women had to have an affair with any male who came on their horizons. I remembered, too, that she had left Hopemore in the first place because she had gotten herself taken into custody several times in tenth grade for having sex in the backseat of a car down near the water tank. Her parents were already lost in the alcoholic haze that would eventually lead one of them to burn down their mobile home with both of them in it, so our juvenile judge and Joe Riddley — who was a magistrate at the time and concerned about troubled teens — put their heads together and arranged for Sadie Lowe to go live with an aunt in Atlanta.
Now she gestured toward papers on the table between them. “He’s such a sweetie about helping me figure out what to do with all my money.” Her voice was more breath than sound, and she gave Grover a smile more appropriate for a bedroom than a business meeting.
He turned the color of a boiled lobster. If he wasn’t careful, he could wind up in hot water, too. Still, his mama had raised him right. He slid out of the booth and took my hand with a smile like he’d been hoping to see me all morning. “MacLaren! Good to see you again. Everything going well in Hopemore?”
I have to admit, that threw me. “As well as can be expected the week of a murder,” I agreed, “but I’m still trying to figure out how the dickens that door to the community center got unlocked Monday night. Do you have a key?”
Grover looked puzzled.
Like hot air, Sadie Lowe rushed in to fill the vacuum. “I still can’t believe it about poor Willena, can you? I mean, who would do such a thing?”
“Do what?” Grover looked from her to me, then back at her in confusion. Sadie Lowe ran her tongue across her upper lip and waited for me to tell him. “I’ve been trying to call her all week, but she doesn’t answer,” he added.
I didn’t know if Grover had been romantically involved with Willena, but she had certainly been his client. He didn’t need to hear this news standing up.
“Could we sit down?” I moved toward the bench he had vacated. He stepped back to let me slide in ahead of him. When he was sitting beside me, I said, “I’m surprised Chief Muggins hasn’t already called you. Somebody killed Willena during the break at our meeting Monday night.”
His eyes widened and his mouth fell open, a perfect picture of shock. Either he truly hadn’t heard or he was a great actor and had prepared for this.
“Oh, hon, you mean you really hadn’t heard?” Sadie Lowe’s voice oozed sympathy, and she put out a hand to cover his.
Just before she touched him, he lifted his coffee cup and raised it to his mouth. He didn’t drink, only held the paper cup against his lower lip.
I didn’t mind sounding skeptical. “How could you not know? It’s been all over the national news.”
He tried twice before he got words out. “I . . . I haven’t seen a paper or TV since Monday. My son had a school thespian society competition this week up in Atlanta, and I went along as a chaperone. We left early Tuesday and came back last night.” When we neither one said anything, he added, sounding defensive, “I was with the kids the whole time.” He pressed his free hand to his mouth and swallowed hard, then set his cup down and rubbed his hands together, as if to warm them. “Willena knew I was going, but I tried to call her around suppertime both nights anyway. When she didn’t answer, I figured she was out.”
Again, neither of us said a word, but he went on explaining, as if we had doubted him. “The group went to plays both nights, then tooled around Atlanta. We got in so late, all I wanted to do was fall into bed. Last night when we got home, I was still so exhausted from living with twelve teenagers for two days that all I wanted to do was sleep, and I got up too late this morning to watch TV or read the paper.”
Sadie Lowe leaned across the table, giving us a view that could have raised Grover’s blood pressure considerably, had he been looking her way. He was studying the tabletop like he found beige Formica fascinating. “Maybe it’s a mercy you didn’t know before you left,” she said. “It would have spoiled your trip. Somebody went to the ladies’ room and stuck Willena’s new silver corkscrew right through her throat.” She made a fist of one hand and struck the base of her own throat.
Grover groaned and grabbed the knot of his necktie.
I sat swamped by memories of that horrible night. I saw Willena lying on the floor, the flash of silver, the backs of her plump white knees. I covered my mouth and nose with one hand and took long, deep breaths.
“The judge, here, found her,” Sadie Lowe added.
Grover slid his water my way. “Here.”
I took an appreciative sip. “Thanks. Looks like you need some, too.” I slid it back and he gulped down the rest.
Sadie Lowe leaned farther over and wiggled a little to settle her breasts more comfortably on the tabletop. “The police came and everything. It was like on TV. But you’d already gone. And Nancy.” She dragged out the last two words suggestively.
Grover wasn’t listening. He was bent over the table with his eyes closed. I didn’t know if he was praying or trying not to cry. To give him time to recover, I turned to Sadie Lowe and said in a low voice, with what I’ll admit was a little spite, “I understand you had some trouble with Nancy yesterday morning.”
Her eyelashes rose to meet her wispy bangs. “
Some
trouble? She could have killed me! The woman is mad.”
Some
trouble? She could have killed me! The woman is mad.”
“Or real upset that you were with her husband.”
Sadie Lowe’s right shoulder rose in a shrug that caused the young man at the register to nearly fall over the counter. “Her marriage is over. She needs to accept that and move on.” She reached out for Grover’s hand again. “Are you okay, sweetie?”
Grover recovered the hand and clasped his coffee cup between both palms, moving the cup around the table in little circles. His voice was husky as he said, “I didn’t even say good-bye. She was in the ladies’ room and I wanted to get home. My son is only fifteen and I don’t like to be away late. Besides, we had to pack for the trip.” He turned to me, his eyes pink with unshed tears. “Do they know who did it?”
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