Guess Who's Coming to Die? (30 page)

Authors: Patricia Sprinkle

BOOK: Guess Who's Coming to Die?

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I grinned back. If you had to be imprisoned, Rachel wasn’t a bad person to be imprisoned with. I scouted the room with my eyes. “I wonder if the bar at the back still has running water.”

Rachel beat me there. She was rummaging beneath the counter when I arrived and gave a crow of delight. “Tonic water, unopened lime juice, and gin. Can you drink a gin and tonic without ice?”

“Hon, I could drink a gin and tonic without tonic right now. Mix ’em up.”

She took a couple of glasses from inside a cupboard and wiped them on her shirt. “Don’t be overly fastidious,” I begged. “Just pour.” I could feel my clothes sticking to my body and my face beginning to perspire.

We dragged the chairs over to the open window and sat there, alternating sips of lukewarm liquid with gulps of cool, fresh air.

When we finished that drink we had another. What else was there to do?

I went exploring and found a bathroom in the far corner of the room, but there was no escape route in there.

I kept checking my watch. For over two hours we sat and waited to hear Hetty and Baker come out to their truck.

We chatted about this and that. I finally asked, “Did you and Slade finish your projects?”

“We started on the bathroom paper, but I underestimated how much I’d need. I’ll have to buy another double roll.”

“Those little rooms take a lot more paper than you ever think they will,” I agreed. “The two of you seemed to be working in rare harmony.”

She shrugged. “He’s fun when he gets off his high horse. We discovered that we like a lot of the same books, movies, and music.”

“Slade can be a nice man,” I opined.

“For somebody,” she agreed. “Not for me.”

“Grover?” I hazarded.

She turned and gave me a puzzled look. “Grover?” She laughed. “Heavens, no. He’s like a brother.” Her voice softened. “I loved his wife, and Jamison is the nephew I never had.”

“So you didn’t mind that he was dating Willena?” I wondered how much she knew about their plans.

“They were actually planning to get married.” She drained her glass and sighed. “And I’ll admit I wasn’t too happy about it. Grover seemed happy, but Willena—” She stopped.

“Not somebody I’d want my brother to marry,” I agreed.

“She’d have run Grover’s life for him,” Rachel said bluntly, “and she would never have put him first in anything.”

“My feelings exactly. But if Grover isn’t the complication, do you mind telling me what your problem is with Slade?”

Rachel held her glass to her cheek. “It’s awful hot, even with the window open. I’m tempted to break another to get some cross ventilation.”

I was disappointed not to hear why she didn’t like Slade, but all I said was, “Go for it.”

She picked up her chair and went to the one catty-cornered from where we were. “Timber!” she shouted, and smashed the legs of the chair into the window.

“Timber?”

“What else could I yell, ‘Glass’?” She brushed shards off the seat of her chair and brought it back to where I sat. She sat with her legs stretched out and wiggled her toes in her sandals. “Hot damn, that was fun. Now I understand why kids vandalize buildings. Makes you think you are a lot more powerful than you really are.”

I lifted damp hair from the back of my neck. “I feel more breeze, too.”

She picked up her drink and stared at the dregs in the bottom like they could tell her future. “And now, it seems, we have arrived back at your question. The short answer is, I didn’t get a law degree to stay poor. I grew up that way, and it’s no fun. So I don’t want to work in poverty law all my life. I wish I were that noble, but I’m not. Therefore, I doubt I’ll stay in Hopemore long. I like the town and the people, but I need to earn more than I do now, and there are already enough lawyers in this county, so I can’t go into private practice and make much of a living. Marriage to a small-town newspaper editor wouldn’t add much to my bank account, either. Do I sound mercenary?”

“You sound like Slade. He came up poor, too, and he has told me his three criteria for the woman he will marry. She needs to be rich, beautiful, and smart.” I slid down in my chair and tried to stretch out my legs, too, but the chair was too high. Afraid I’d slide all the way off the seat, I sat back up straight. Then I squirmed, trying to get comfortable, but it wasn’t any use. Those hard seats were made for sitting on between dances, not permanent roosts.

“In that order?” Rachel inquired, her eyes amused.

I had to think a second to remember what she was talking about. “Simultaneously.”

She gave a short, not-funny laugh. “Well, I strike out on two of three. See? We are obviously not suited.”

“Nonsense. You have a lot in common — you are both wrapped up in the wrong things. That ought to count for something.” We were silent for a time, then I mused, “Wilma and Willena have always had lots of money. Do you think it’s made them happy?”

“I have no idea, but I’d rather be unhappy and rich than unhappy and poor. At least you can be comfortable in your misery.”

She had a good point. No matter how miserable a well-to-do person is, their misery isn’t accompanied by the terror of not having a next meal, shelter, or transportation. Still, I felt compelled to point out that money isn’t a panacea for all ills. “Sadie Lowe married for money and it didn’t last.”

“Bad defense, Mac. She got to keep the money.”

“Well, look at Nancy Jensen. She married for money. Look where it got her.”

Until then we had been talking in light, bantering tones. Now Rachel sobered instantly. “Slade said she almost shot Sadie Lowe Thursday.”

“No, she only shot
at
her. If she had meant to kill anybody, she would have. And in her shoes, I’d shoot Horace, not—”

We both leaped to our feet as a motor roared to life below us. We pounded on what was left of the window and yelled for all we were worth. Rachel even leaned out and waved frantically, but Baker’s black pickup growled down the drive without a sign that anybody knew we were there.

I checked my watch. It was five minutes until five. My hamburger was a distant memory. “I sure wish I’d eaten more of those lemon cookies.”

“Me, too. Why do you think Wilma did this? Pure spite?” Rachel shoved her hair out of her face with one slender hand. Damp heat had created a mass of corkscrews curling all over her head.

I repressed the image of corkscrews. “Maybe. I think this past week has made Wilma a tad crazy. She and Willena were very close.”

“She’s crazy, all right.” Rachel began walking about the room with restless energy. I wished she didn’t remind me of stories I’d read of prisoners of war who developed exercise rituals to keep their sanity. “She’s making me crazy, too. She thinks I did it, you know—killed Willena.” She had her back to me, so I couldn’t see her face.

“Why should she think that?”

“Because I was trying so hard to get to know Willena. Wilma would never believe it was so I could look at those albums.”

“I can see how she might consider that a weak excuse to cotton up to someone,” I mused. I looked at Rachel through half-closed eyes and saw a strong young woman who certainly had the strength for the murder. She had gone outside with Grover but not returned with him. Had she stopped off at the ladies’ room to kill Willena on her way in? “You would have needed a motive,” I pointed out.

She laughed. “I’ve got a motive. What I’m missing is an alibi. Listen, how long before your husband will come looking for you?”

I sighed. “I didn’t leave a note,” I admitted.

“But you said—”

“I said Joe Riddley insists that I leave him a note saying where I’m going. I didn’t exactly say I had. This was only supposed to take a few minutes. I thought I’d be back before he was.”

She looked at me in dismay. “It is possible,” she pointed out, “that we could die up here.”

That spurred us to action.

“Maybe one of those chairs could break the door lock,” I suggested. Anything to salvage self-respect after monumental stupidity.

Rachel seized the extra chair and crashed it against the double doors again and again until the lovely wood was scarred and one of the legs broke off. The lock held. By now she was dripping with sweat and I read desperation in her eyes. Or were they mirroring my own?

She eyed the red drapes that hung from each window. “Maybe we could make a rope and climb down to the porch roof.”

I steadied a chair, and she climbed up on it to drag down a couple of lengths of heavy fabric. When we tried to tie them together, the knots were thick and unwieldy. “We could never trust those knots with our weight,” I concluded, “but if we could cut the drape into strips and braid them . . .”

Rachel loped to the bar and began pawing through drawers. “Voilà!” She held up a short paring knife. She brought it back and plunged it into the fabric, then ripped the drape from top to bottom. She stabbed a second spot and soon had torn a long strip. I yanked it between my hands to see if it was rotten. It held.

“Are you good with knots?” I asked.

“Only in shoelaces,” she said ruefully.

“Then you cut. I’ll braid and knot them.” I hoped I could remember distant Scout lessons on knots. I made several long, braided strips, then braided three of them together, knotted at intervals. Proudly I held up my crimson rope. “That ought to hold our weight.”

“Not ours,” Rachel corrected me. “Mine. If I can get down to the porch roof, I can break a window and get into the second floor. Then I’ll come up and let you out.”

“Do you know anything about rappelling?”

“Not a thing, but I’m willing to learn. I don’t want to spend a night in this place. Besides, I’m getting hungry.”

My own stomach gave a growl of agreement. We had only joked about hunger before. Now I felt like I had a ravening wolf inside.

We checked all the windows and chose one in the center. “More margin for error on each side,” Rachel joked. Now that we had a plan, we were getting giddy with relief.

She took what was left of the drape and tore off a short strip to tie her hair at the nape of her neck, then gestured at the window. “Okay, Mac, smash it. Your turn to be demolition crew.”

I enjoyed breaking that window so much that Rachel warned, “Don’t get addicted. We don’t want you smashing up Oglethorpe Street once we get out of here.”

The thought of actually strolling down Oglethorpe energized us both.

Rachel was all for crawling immediately through the hole I had made, but I insisted on removing shards and splinters of glass from the frame. “I don’t want you bleeding to death before you rescue me. You can bleed all you want to afterwards.”

We started laughing, and laughed until we had to hold our sides. That was how glad we were to be getting out.

Until we realized we still had a problem. She looked at the windowsill in bafflement. “What can we tie the rope to on this end?”

We looked around the bare room in dismay.

“A piano leg!” I crowed, and headed in its direction. “Help me roll it over here.”

By the time we had rolled the grand piano across that huge room, we were panting and gasping again. “Will you be able to do this?” I asked, anxious now that the moment had come.

“Just watch me. At worst, I’ll fall to the roof and break a leg. But you tie the knot to the piano leg. I’m not good with knots.”

“Thank God for Girl Scouts,” I said fervently. I made the rope as fast as I knew how and handed it to her. “It’s all yours. Good luck, hon.”

Without another word we exchanged a fierce hug. As she climbed onto the windowsill and looked down, I saw a shiver pass through her body. Admiration welled up in me. I doubted that I’d be able to lower myself out that window into space. Could she?

She threw the rope over the ledge, then knelt and took it in her hands. “Here I go, Mac. Wish me luck.”

“Mind if I pray instead? I usually find it more effective.”

She didn’t answer, just grabbed the rope tightly and lowered herself over the sill.

I prayed her all the way down. She more slid than rappeled, and from a yelp as she was halfway there, I suspected she had burned her palms, but one of the sweetest sounds I ever heard was the thud of her feet on the porch roof.

That sound was followed by silence.

“What’s the matter?” I called down.

“I don’t have any way to break the window. I’m going to take off my shirt and cover my hand—”

“No, wait a minute.” I trotted over to where the chair leg had broken off and snatched it up, then dashed back and called, “Stand clear. Bombs away.”

The leg clattered onto the roof. In another second I watched her swing the chair leg through the window, clear away the shards, and climb inside.

After that, nothing.